Isabel wracked her brain for the ghost stories she had read and the movies she had seen. Spirits sometimes tried to find peace by pointing out their killer if they were murdered, but the Bentons had died from disease over fifty years ago.
Some ghosts were malevolent, wanting to harm the living. In one story she had read, the ghost had driven a woman to suicide so her spirit would stay in their house, but that didn't fit here. The Bentons were a normal family. For all their wealth, they were a happy, normal family.
Like we were, she thought.
Isabel thought of her childhood, the happiness she and Max had found with their adopted parents. For years, even their great secret was only an occasional worry, blotted out by the family life. That life was what she wanted to have with Jesse. Something normal, something good.
Maybe it was too much for her to hope for, with Jesse or with anyone else. Now she had lost him, as well as Mom and Dad. It was only she and Max now, just like they were when they first crawled out of the pods and into the desert.
Was that why Robert Benton had shown her his book? Did he think she might understand his loss, if only in some small way?
There were too many questions for her to answer tonight. She felt drained by what she had read. Isabel laid her head down on the bed that Robert and Claire Benton had shared half a century before…
… and heard a noise.
Footsteps in the hallway, then laughter. Her first thought was that her brother and friends had to keep it down. People were trying to sleep. Then she realized that the laughter sounded more like… a child's. When she heard it again, she was sure: It was a little girl.
Immediately, Isabel was on her feet. She slipped on her shoes and was glad that she had never undressed for bed.
She heard running, and then she was opening her own door and looking down the hallway. No one was there.
Well, no one but Kyle, she thought, looking down and seeing him asleep in front of her door. He's keeping an eye on me, she realized. The gesture was sweet, but unnecessary. She was more than capable of defending herself.
Quickly she stepped over Kyle, careful not to wake him. Then she walked down the hallway, following the sound of the laughter and footsteps. She heard creaking and saw that one of the bedroom doors was slightly open. It was the first room they had seen. She knew this had been Sarah Benton's room. Isabel also knew that when she had left the room she had closed the door.
Now the door was half open. Laughter was coming from inside the room. No, not laughter, giggling, Isabel corrected herself. Without hesitation, Isabel pushed the door all the way open, stepped inside, and scanned the room in the dim light that came from the hallway.
There was nothing there.
Isabel flipped the switch on the wall, and suddenly the room was bathed in light. Her eyes adjusted quickly, and when they did, they confirmed what she had seen before: The room was empty. However, the rocking horse was now gently moving back and forth.
That could be because oj the breeze 1 created when I opened the door, she thought. But she immediately dismissed the notion. She was nearly certain that the rocking horse had been still when she'd first stepped into the room, but more than that, she felt a presence. Someone had set the horse in motion, and that someone was still in the room.
Isabel opened the closet. She got a chill when she saw
the little girl's clothes there: frilly dresses, nightgowns, and casual play clothes of different kinds. Sarah's clothes. She looked at the artifacts from more than half a century before and saw Sarah's life as clearly as she could see her own childhood. This girl had worn these clothes, played with the dolls in this room, and she had loved her parents.
And then she'd died in this house, Isabel thought. Her stomach seized when she thought of how this little girl had died. She was third, after her mother and baby brother. It was too horrible, and Isabel turned away from the clothes and stepped out of the closet. Next she bent down to check under the bed. There was nothing there. She heard laughter behind her and whipped around.
Nothing.
If this is one of my friends.,., Isabel thought. If this is someone's idea of a joke…
But it was not a joke, and the sounds were not made by any of her friends. Impossible as it might seem, a little girl named Sarah who had lived and died in this house fifty years before was making them.
It was impossible… completely impossible, she knew. She also knew it was true. "Sarah?" she said, keeping her voice soft.
There was no response. Isabel looked out into the hallway. She didn't see anything in the dim light. Then there was the laughter again, from behind her in the room.
A smile crossed Isabel's lips. It's a game, she thought.
The soft, nearly inaudible laughter continued. Somehow, Isabel knew it would not stop until she turned around. The smile still on her lips, Isabel got ready to
quickly peek back into the room, when her ears picked up another sound.
"Isabel…," a voice said, from the direction of the staircase. The sound of her own name jolted her, much more than the laughter of a girl who had been gone from the earth for more than sixty years.
She also realized that at the exact moment that someone spoke her name, the laughter behind her stopped, as if the voice had startled Sarah as well.
"Isabel," the voice repeated.
"Yes?" Isabel called, starting out the door.
It was probably Max or one of the others looking for her. The voice sounded familiar, but it was hard to be sure. She walked quickly to the balcony.
Looking down, into the dim light provided by the dying fire, she saw a hunched figure dash into the shadows. For a second, she thought she was looking at Robert Benton, who was still alive and roaming the house. But for reasons she could not explain, she was certain that the last entry he had made in his journal upstairs was made on the last day of his life… more than ten years ago.
She glanced quickly back down the hallway, to Sarah's room, and then beyond, where her friends were sleeping. For a moment, she had an urge to go back and wake up Max and Michael, but she didn't want to waste time explaining what she was feeling, knowing they might not believe her… even if they somehow understood.
So she headed to the top of the stairs and then down to the main floor. Once there, she called out, "Hello." There was no response, then she called out softly, "Robert? Robert Benton?" She felt silly for a moment, calling out to