Believing (Lily Dale #2)(3)

About the bracelet, anyway.

A few minutes ago, at precisely 3:17 a.m., in her mother’s old bedroom across the hall, she experienced the impossible.

Mom’s old jewelry box opened all by itself, playing the hauntingly familiar melody Calla has been trying to place from the moment she arrived here.

As it woke her from a deep sleep, she finally recalled where she’d heard it before.

And now that I remember—and now that this has happened— I’m really scared.

Calla looks down at the bracelet in her hand.

When she had jumped out of bed, there it was, lying in the open jewelry box.

The same jewelry box she had rummaged through many times since she arrived, as part of her mission to get to know the girl who had grown up here in Lily Dale and gone on to become Calla’s mother.

The bracelet hadn’t been in the jewelry box until now.

And I never really knew you at all, she silently tells her mother . . . wherever she is.

Suddenly the woman who raised her for seventeen years seems like a stranger.

With a shudder, Calla abruptly reaches for the tap and turns it.

Again, the groan of old pipes; again, the deafening splashing sound.

This time, though, she’s hearing only the voices in her head. Mom’s and Odelia’s, repeating a long-ago argument that keeps echoing through Calla’s mind when she’s asleep. She was having the disturbing dream yet again just minutes ago, before the jewelry box opened itself and interrupted those eerie, chilling words that drove her mother and grandmother apart forever.

“. . . because I promised I’d never tell . . .” That was Mom, distraught, tearful.

“. . . for your own good . . .” That was Odelia.

“. . . how you can live with yourself . . .” Odelia again.

And then: “The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake.”

Calla doesn’t know which of them said that. The voice was so shrill and desperate she couldn’t tell.

But they had to be talking about the lake here—Cassadaga Lake, she thinks as she fits the rubber plug into the drain and watches the water fill the basin.

Just last week, Odelia sternly—and inexplicably—warned her never to venture into its cold waters.

Calla turns off the tap and drops the bracelet into the filled basin. A cloud of mud swirls around it, rapidly turning the water murky, then opaque, obscuring the bracelet as it sinks to the bottom.

Just like whatever dark secret lies at the bottom of Cassadaga Lake, waiting to be dredged up . . .

So that the truth can be told at last.

Calla wonders, as an icy ripple of dread flows through her veins, if she really wants to know what that is.

Staring at her reflection in the mirror, she gradually becomes aware that something is changing in the room. There’s a sudden heaviness in the chilly night air.

On the tile wall behind her, the light casts tall shadows.

Human shadows. Shadows.

Two.

Two shadows?

But . . . how can that be?

Eyes wide, Calla stares into the mirror at the pair of distinct human forms on the wall behind her. One is unmistakably hers, frozen in fear. The other—almost the same height and size—is just beside it, as it would be if someone were standing right next to her.

But no one is there.

No one she can see, anyway.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Is it a trick of the light? Or . . .

Is something here? Someone? Some presence?

Calla raises her left arm slowly and watches as one of the reflected shadows—her own—simultaneously does the same on the wall behind her.

The other shadow simply hovers there, motionless.

But it is there. Calla isn’t alone.

She turns her head abruptly to the left, to the right, spins around completely.

The second shadow remains . . . but the small bathroom is otherwise empty.

Heart racing, she reaches for the dangling light chain above the sink and pulls it. The room is instantly plunged into darkness.

She counts to ten, then yanks the chain again.

Blinking in the sudden blast of light, she can see that the second shadow is now gone . . . and with it, the sense of a presence in the room.

She takes a deep breath to steady her nerves. It’s only then that she notices the faint fragrance of lilies of the valley, Mom’s favorite flower, hovering in the air.

“Mom,” she whispers, shaken, “was that you?”

But of course, there’s no reply. The presence is gone and she’s alone again . . . or so it seems.

For now.





TWO

Wednesday, September 5

7:20 a.m.

Tuesday had been a strange, cool, and stormy day. Calla spent most of it lying on her bed, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt handmade from her mother’s childhood dresses, and brooding about all that had happened the night before.

She still doesn’t know what to make of her mother’s emerald bracelet reappearing.

She had tucked it back into the jewelry box, then checked all day to make sure it was really there, just in case she had imagined the whole thing.

Nope. It was definitely there when she fell into bed before eight o’clock, so physically and emotionally exhausted that she drifted right to sleep without even worrying about starting a new school today.

And it was still there this morning, when, for a change, Calla woke up well rested, having finally slept soundly through the night.