The Hunt for the Seventh by Christine Morton-Shaw

Author:Christine Morton-Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

IN CHERISHED MEMORY OF OUR DAUGHTER

LADY ELLEN MINERVA

—NELLIE—

WHO DIED HERE ON THE SUMMER SOLSTICE 1886.

OUR HEARTS WILL NEVER MEND.

Once again there was something left at the base of the statue. I inched forward to take a photograph and gritted my teeth at the bright flash from my camera. Then I picked it up.

It was a small, pretty snow globe, the sort with a curved glass sphere set into a stand. Inside the sphere was water surrounding an ice scene of a little house covered in icicles. Its miniature window ledges dripped with icicles, and the roof was covered in snow. Tiny trees stood cold and frosted over. A little snowman stood there, and a robin on a twig in the foreground. It was old and very beautiful. But I didn’t know where it might lead.

I slipped it into my pocket, glanced back at the door, and gasped.

Blind Meg stood outside the door, her wrinkled face pointing my way. Her eyes were shut, but there was an intensity about her, as if she were somehow observing my every move. How come this blind woman always knew where I was?

I blinked rapidly, willing the face to go away. But the next instant I saw the same face in another window, and then another, and still another. Everywhere I looked, in every single pane of glass, there was her face with its fixed concentration.

I spun around this way and that, not knowing where to turn. But there was no getting away from her. She was in every single windowpane, even the ones above my head. There were hundreds of images of her! I heard her voice, multiplied many times, whispering in the air all about me: “The Seventh! Find the Seventh….”

I blinked, and all the faces and whispers were gone. Then I heard a new noise right behind me. I recognized it at once. It was a sound I’d heard Sal make many times while playing. It was the tap-tap-tapping of a small rubber ball bouncing on the floor.

My skin prickled with that familiar fear. Turn around slowly, I told myself. There is someone in here with you. The colors the flashlight picked out—the greens of the foliage, the deep colors of the tropical flowers, the reds of the tiled floor—all began to fade, to bleach to a sickly worm color. As they did, dread rose inside me.

My throat tightened with fear. I didn’t want to watch another death. Why did I have to keep witnessing these awful things? It was as if each of the children, in trying to help me find my way toward the Seventh, was desperate to show me his or her own terrible story.

I turned around, and there, where the statue of her had been a moment before, was Nellie, dancing and skipping along, all her surroundings stone gray. She was dressed in a pale summer dress with short sleeves, and her silvery hair hung loose and free.

She was laughing as she ran along the path toward me, bouncing a small ball over and over.

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