4
Mary sat near the foot of the sickroom bed and watched Lydia doze. The doctor had given her some kind of medicine and it had made her sleepy. Their parents were out in the hall with the doctor. Murmurs could be heard, but nothing distinct. If she got closer to the door she might be able to hear, but she didn't dare take her eyes off her sister. Mary's insides still felt squirmy and cold. Those goosebumps had never gone away.
After that scary faint, Lydia had come to enough for them to get her to the parlor sofa. Mary had been sent upstairs for Liddie's robe and Alice had telephoned the doctor. When Mary got back to the parlor, out of breath from taking two flights two steps at a time up and down, she'd handed the robe to Mother. Between the two of them they maneuvered Lydia into it. She'd still been very cold and not quite awake. Alice had hovered near the doorway twisting her fingers nervously. Dad had knelt beside the sofa while Mother sat on its edge. Mary, feeling scared and useless, had leaned over the back of the sofa.
Everyone had been holding their breath, it felt like. And they were all staring at Lydia, swaddled in her red robe and looking like death. Eventually she'd come to again, and stared around at the room, herself, and each of them.
"Oh," she'd said. She'd held up her hands and stared at them. Then she'd patted at herself, held a hand over her heart. "Oh, my heart."
"What's wrong with your heart?" Mother had asked urgently. "Are you in pain?"
Lydia had shaken her head. Very slowly. "No...but I can feel. I can feel it. I'm warm. And I smell...oh, I can smell…"
"Rotten eggs?" Mary had suggested. When her parents shot her a look, she'd explained, "Lily Van Dreisen fell off a horse and hit her head last year, she smelled rotten eggs for two months." She'd also fainted a lot and had random bouts of rage. Poor Lily.
"Did she hit her head?" Mother had asked Dad.
"No, no, I caught her, I'm positive," he'd replied. But he'd reached out and run his palm over Liddie's head, as though to check for dents. Lydia had watched him carefully as he'd done it. Usually she'd have slapped everyone's hands away and told them to give her some room.
"At work yesterday?" Mother pressed. "Last night, did something happen?" She included Mary in this question, too, looking back and forth between them.
"No," Dad had said as he'd taken his hand away, face troubled. "Everything was fine. Just as usual. She was perfectly fine all evening, wasn't she, Mary?"
Mary's insides had turned to ice as she realized. Lydia had been perfectly herself until she'd poked her head into the séance. That gust of wind. That boom. She'd swallowed hard before replying, "Yes. She was fine. Until...bedtime."
They'd all turned back to Lydia, who was staring around the room and at each of them in turn. She certainly behaved as though she'd taken a blow to the head, all dazed and bleary. Mother had stroked her hair and squeezed her hand, and, to everyone's horror, tears had started to run down Liddie's cheeks.
Mary had bitten her lip, watching as Mother tried to soothe her sister. Her sister who never cried. Never ever, not in a million years, never in front of people. But there she'd been, on the sofa, weeping and sniffling and unable to say anything.
Then the doctor had arrived and Mary and Dad had been shooed out of the parlor. Then they'd moved Liddie upstairs. Not wanting to make her bother with two flights, they'd put her in the room that used to be Dad's, back when their parents bothered pretending that they didn't share a room. Now they used it for storing sweaters and linens and for when someone was ill and Mother wanted to keep watch over them.
And then it was now. Mary watched Lydia closely. Her chest was rising and falling. Her color was coming back, and she just looked her usual pale, not that deathly ashen kind. Then she started to twitch, her lashes to flutter. Her head fell to one side and she made a few little grunting sounds. Mary braced for a fit of some kind, but no. Lydia was just waking up.
She watched, tense, as Lydia opened her eyes. Lydia took a deep breath and very slowly looked around the room. Her hands ran over the blanket, over each other until at last Lydia touched her own face. When she noticed Mary, she gave a little gasp. And Mary felt that same sense of wrongness from earlier. She couldn't say what it was. Just...something was off. She felt it in her gut.
"I'm still here," Lydia said breathlessly. "Oh. I can't...I'm still here." Maybe it was the medicine, but her voice sounded as strange as her eyes looked. Pitched differently. Breathier. Mary frowned.
"You thought you wouldn't be?" Mary asked. But Liddie didn't answer. She just kept on touching stuff. The pillow under her head. Her hair. Her face. The blankets. The little carved vines and berries on the wooden headboard. Mary couldn't blame her, she remembered how fun and satisfying it had been to trace those designs with little girl fingertips.
But it wasn't the kind of thing Liddie did.
"I've been trying to eavesdrop for you, but they're being very quiet," Mary offered, watching as Lydia carefully sat up with her back against the headboard. "I'm sure Dad and Mother will tell us what the doctor says. Bet you anything he says it's nervous prostration. He always thinks it's nervous prostration. Or a bad sprain. I think those are the only two things he knows."
"Dad and Mother?" Lydia echoed. Her eyes roved around the small room, taking it in. The door to their parents' room. The washstand without a basin. The dresser that matched the narrow bed. Fawn-colored curtains and pale green wallpaper with ivy on it. It was like she'd never seen it before.
"You're...we're sisters?" Lydia asked. She was studying Mary as though just meeting her. Closely. Attentively. Mary felt a touch of discomfort. Usually Liddie's gaze went right over her head, or skimmed over her quickly. Liddie never really paid attention.
"Uh...yes," Mary replied, wondering how badly Lydia's mind might have been scrambled when she passed out. Helpfully she added, "I'm the youngest. You're the oldest. We have two other ones between us." She watched as her sister absorbed this.
Then Lydia asked, "So they're...he's...and she's...they're my parents? They are my parents." There was something like wonderment in her voice, which struck Mary as very odd.
"Yes, all our lives," Mary said, hoping a little quip would make her feel less uncomfortable. It didn't work. She leaned closer to her sister, who was still eyeing her in that weird way. "Do you have amnesia? Are you sure you didn't hit your head? Maybe at work? Like that time you broke your foot on the boat and didn't tell anyone for hours? Because you were afraid you'd look weak?"
Lydia just blinked at her. There was a little smile on her face now. One that somehow didn't fit her lips. Mary took a deep breath, gathered herself, and scooted closer. Lydia bent toward her expectantly.
"I think I know what happened," Mary said in an undertone, just in case the adults were also eavesdropping. "Listen, I lied last night. I was having a séance. And my séance worked, Liddie, it really did!"
Lydia's eyes widened, but she didn't say anything. She pulled her hair over one shoulder and was stroking it. Her smile had drooped a bit. Mary went on, "There was a ghost, I swear, and I took its picture. But I think the camera scared it? Or broke the spell, or something? I don't know how it works. You saw it, didn't you?"
"A ghost?" Lydia asked, still with that wide-eyed expression.
"Yes!" Mary said. "Look, you're a very...math kind of person. And when you're not math you're physical, you see? It's either brainy math or hauling fish and playing tennis with you. You're very much of the physical and logical realm." Mary was proud of that phrasing.
"Am I?" Liddie said, tilting her head to one side. Her little grin was back. There was even the hint of a giggle in her voice. Humoring her. Mary bristled.
"Yes," said Mary evenly. "So when you saw a ghost, it...I don't know...broke your brain a little. And the fact that I was right and that I did it, that probably broke your brain a bit more. I really think that's all it is. Once you see my evidence, my photographic evidence, you'll realize it was real and you're not mad and your brain will fix itself."
There was a long silence. Mary's heart was thudding. She'd been thinking about this all while the doctor had been examining her sister and while she'd waited for her to wake up. It did make a lot of sense. But she braced herself for her sister's criticism, to be told she was silly, that if anyone's brain was broken it was hers. And then to have her hair tousled or her shoulder lightly punched.
But Lydia didn't do any of that. Instead she leaned back against the headboard and let herself sink back down to the pillow. She gave a contented sort of sigh as she arranged her robe more comfortably and pull the covers just so. It was like watching a cat get comfortable on a cushion in the sun. At last she looked at Mary again, smiling that little smile.
"Oh," Liddie breathed. "Oh, I wondered…" She trailed off and let her eyes roam about the room.
"You wondered what?" Mary asked.
Lydia just gave her that weird, inscrutable smile and settled more deeply into the pillows. "Everything is so soft. Isn't it all so soft?" she remarked, almost to herself. She pressed the back of her hand to her cheek and closed her eyes. "I'm feeling things. And breathing! Oh, it's so strange, it's almost too much!"
Mary was now convinced that Liddie was either playing a practical joke or was brain-damaged. But then another thought occurred to her.
Millie Clarke-Bolton talked constantly about the mediums at her mother's seances, how they'd channel their spirit guides and speak to the dead. How their voices and their movements would change. Could a spirit get stuck inside someone? Was that possible? Oh, she wished she hadn't ignored Millie's chatter so much. Mary swallowed around a lump of fear in her throat.
What if the ghost hadn't broken her mind, but was inside it?
0-0
Lydia lay there, palm over her heart, taking deep and deliberate breaths. Every so often she'd touch her cheek or her chin or her hair. Or she'd shift her limbs and make the bedclothes rustle. Sighing every now and then.
All of it quickly gave Mary the creeps, so she'd moved to sit in the wooden chair by the washstand. She was watching her sister with unease, thoughts of ghosts and madness swirling in her mind, when Mother and Dad came in.
Mother perched on the bed beside Lydia. "How are you feeling now?" she asked, taking one of Liddie's hands in hers. Her eyes were big and worried and her voice was sickbed gentle.
Lydia's eyes roamed all over Mother's face before she answered, "Fine. Better. Stronger," in that lighter than normal voice.
"Nervous exhaustion, the doctor says," Mother told her. Knew it, Mary thought. "You're to rest and not strain yourself, nor get too excited. For at least a week."
"You'll have to take a bit of time off work," Dad said hesitantly. "And from your course."
Everybody looked at Lydia and waited for the outburst. For her to say that it was just a dizzy spell, she already felt better. For her to call the doctor a fusty old Victorian and ask if she was still allowed to think or if she was just to stare at the wallpaper all week. For her to pepper Dad with a thousand questions about how the cannery was supposed to function in her absence. Basically a repeat of what had happened when she'd broken her foot. Mary had been glad she'd been able to escape back to school before Liddie's recuperation time had been up. It had been like living with a recuperating bear.
But she didn't.
Instead, Lydia settled back on her pillows, sighed, and set her other hand over Mother's. "All right," she said. "I'll rest."
Mother and Dad glanced at each other. Dad gave an awkward little chuckle. "Goodness, you must truly be ill, to take it that easily," he said. Mother grinned, but wanly. Mary narrowed her eyes.
A growl broke the stillness, low and long. It took everyone a moment to realize that it had come from Lydia's stomach. Lydia put both hands to her middle, a wide-eyed look of surprise on her face.
"Was that me?" she asked, a tiny laugh in her voice. She pressed her palms against her stomach and blinked when the rumble came again. "Oh my. Pardon me."
"You hadn't any breakfast," Mother reminded her. "You must eat something."
"Yes," Lydia breathed. She blinked a few times, fast, and then her voice was a bit husky when she added, "I have to eat. It's been a long time."
Tears once again dripped down Lydia's face. Mother, softly crooning and shushing, leaned in and stroked her hair, wiped at her tears. As though Liddie were a little girl. Though Mary hadn't known her sister when she was very small, she could not imagine this ever happening before. Those tears. Honestly, Lydia had cried more in the past few hours than ever in her life, Mary was positive.
"Why are you crying so much?" Mary asked. She thought she'd kept her tone kind, but Mother shot her a Look and Dad put a hand on her shoulder.
"Please, Mary, she doesn't feel well," Dad whispered. His face was troubled. Mary frowned and thought about Lily Van Dreisen and her head injury, and how she' d thrown that chair through the school conservatory window. Liddie could be weeping due to whatever brain problem made her faint. Or...Mary frowned more deeply.
"I'll have something brought up," Mother said to Liddie. "Toast, perhaps. And weak tea. All right?"
Lydia nodded, indeed looking very ill and pathetic. But her eyes had a queer brightness, Mary thought. Maybe she had a fever.
"I'll go down," Dad offered, clearly relieved to have a job to do. "And I'll ring Father to tell him you're not well, Lydia. Discreetly, I promise."
Lydia giggled in her throat, a sound Mary found deeply unsettling. "Thank you," she said. She was giving Dad the same kind of look she'd been giving Mother, only a lot more intense. "Father."
Was it Mary's imagination or had Liddie put a bizarre emphasis on that word? Dad didn't seem to notice anything strange. He just grinned at her beneath worried eyes and then excused himself. They heard him trotting down the back stairs. There was quiet in the sickroom for a moment. Then Liddie spoke.
"You look so different," she said to Mother, studying her face again. "Oh, it's you, but you're different."
Mother was clearly taken aback, but covered it by adjusting the bedclothes and smoothing back Liddie's hair. "I'm just the same as always," she assured her. "You'll feel better soon."
They didn't talk after that. Mary watched her sister closely, thinking. The more she thought about it the more the evidence was clear—that was not Lydia in Lydia's body. Somebody who giggled and sighed and wept at the drop of a hat was in there. For a crazy second she wondered if Catherine and Lydia had switched bodies. Should she telephone the Stinsons and ask if Catherine was suddenly bossy and acerbic and practicing shorthand?
Most importantly, was Lydia still in there? The thought that Lydia might no longer be there at all terrified Mary and so she refused to think about it just now. Lydia had to still be there. She was too strong a personality to just...disappear. Mary swallowed, her throat tight and dry.
Alice came in with a tray. She was trying to keep herself professional, Mary could tell, but her mouth was set and her eyes were worried when she cast a glance at Lydia. And she lingered a bit after Mother thanked her before withdrawing. She caught Mary's eye on the way out and Mary's stomach gave a guilty flip at how upset she looked. Lydia was absolutely not well. And it was very likely all Mary's fault.
"Here," said Mother, passing Lydia the toast. "Just a little?"
For a long time Lydia just held it as though she didn't know what she was supposed to do with it. It smelled lovely. Mary liked the smell of fresh buttered toast. Lydia closed her eyes and took a breath. Very, very slowly, she raised the toast to her mouth and took a bite.
"Oh!" she cried through the mouthful. She dropped the rest of the toast on the plate and scattered crumbs on the bedspread. As she chewed she said, "Oh!" again.
"Liddie," Mother breathed. "Oh, Liddie, it's all right."
For Lydia was weeping again as she ate her perfectly normal toast. She kept eating even as tears coursed down her cheeks, taking small bites and chewing them with intense concentration. Mother sat close by her and tried to soothe her down.
Mary couldn't watch this any longer. She hopped off her chair and left without excusing herself, but nobody noticed. When she got to the staircase she sat down on the top step and buried her face in her hands.
The séance had worked. There had been a ghost. And the ghost had wound up inside her sister. The camera had startled it, it had been dissolving when Lydia walked in at precisely the wrong moment. Mary had been inside the salt circle, she realized with a gasp. That was why the ghost didn't fly into her. The spirit had panicked and made for the nearest unprotected body. Obviously.
If she told Mother and Dad this they would not believe her. Silly little Mary, worried about her sister, making up stories. And if Lydia tattled on her, they wouldn't believe her either, because she had clearly lost her marbles. Mary needed her proof. Her ghost photograph. She could prove there had been a ghost, and then they'd have to believe her. And then...she rubbed at her face and groaned. What? An exorcism? A reverse séance?
She'd think about that later. First, she had to develop her film. Then she could get Lydia her mind and body back.