Eleven

As we drove on back roads toward New London, I saw Iris staring out the window. What was going on in her mind? Were there any sparks of recognition? We approached Ocean Beach, a little amusement park on the edge of town. I could see the roller coaster and the Tilt-A-Whirl. Eloise used to love taking the railroad around the edge of the marsh, watching great blue herons fish the shallows. Iris gazed at the rides as we passed, but I saw no reaction, making me think she hadn’t been here before.

“Do you actually remember a city?” I asked her. “A particular one?”

“It’s more like a feeling,” she said.

A feeling. I thought about my own life, the little things that mattered to me, that told me who I was and where I was from.

Black Hall, my home. Sand between my toes as I dove into Long Island Sound. The sweet and salty smell of the marshes. The taste of mocha chocolate chip at Paradise Ice Cream. The periwinkle ankle bracelets Eloise and I had made one summer, first collecting the small gray-blue shells, drilling tiny holes in them, then stringing them together on fishing line. Taylor Swift’s folklore playing nonstop on my phone. Cookouts in our backyard. Going birding. Taking a boat to Dauntless Island.

Those were the thoughts and emotions that defined my life. I wondered which ones made up Iris’s. I wondered how it was possible that she had a feeling about a city and a cat, but nothing specific about her home, her parents, and even Hayley. It seemed so odd to me. But when I glanced at her in the back seat, all I could see was a girl who had lost her memory along with her sister.

When people think “city,” they might picture the tall buildings of New York, Boston, Chicago, places like that. New London is a small seaport at the mouth of the Thames River. It doesn’t have a skyline like other cities: aside from church spires and a radio tower, the eleven-story Mohican Hotel is the tallest building in town. Gram was a history buff, and when I was little, she’d tell me and Eloise facts about the area that became part of our family story.

I knew that Benedict Arnold burned New London down during the Revolutionary War. I knew that in the early 1800s, it was one of the busiest whaling ports in the world. It always made me so sad to think of the whales killed so their oil could light the lamps of cities everywhere.

And I knew that there were ghosts here. Ledge Light, the square brick lighthouse just outside the harbor, was said to be haunted by Ernie, its former lightkeeper. Ella Quinlan O’Neill was said to haunt Monte Cristo Cottage, the house where she lived with her family, including her Nobel Prize–winning son, playwright Eugene O’Neill. One time Eloise went there on a field trip and swore she saw Ella, dressed in a nightgown, hovering on the stairway.

I shivered as we drove past the cottage because now I felt haunted by Eloise. Had she become a ghost? I wished I could see her. And I wished for something else: that we would find Hayley, so we could save her life and keep her here in our earthly realm, with Iris.

“You okay, Oli?” Matt asked, as if he’d felt the chill of sadness coming off me.

“Yes,” I said. “I just want to get to her.”

And, really, who did I even mean by “her”? Hayley or Eloise? Iris’s sister or mine?

Iris looked from side to side, noticing the pink granite public library, the bank, the tattoo parlor, the comics shop, the huge redbrick train station, the little schoolhouse where Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale had taught. She was slumped in her seat, as if discouraged by the fact that she didn’t recognize anything.

I heard her sigh. “This isn’t working,” she said.

“Iris, give it a chance,” Matt said.

“A chance for what? It’s hopeless! We’re driving around a place I’ve never seen before, wasting time while anything could be happening to Hayley!”

As if he’d caught her impatience, Matt sped up, driving a little too fast to go through town. He cut down a steep alley between two buildings that took us closer to the water, onto the service road that ran behind shops and restaurants.

“Wait!” Iris shouted. “Back up!”

Matt jammed on the brakes and put the Jeep into reverse. The tires jounced on the road’s cobblestones. Iris grabbed my shoulder with one hand and began pointing wildly with the other. Matt stopped the car and we all stared.

Iris was pointing at a stone-and-concrete wall that formed the basement level of the old buildings on Bank Street. The wall was weathered by centuries of fog and salt air, with some stones tilted and coming loose, and the mortar crumbling.

“What are we looking at?” I asked.

“Ghost signs,” Iris said. “Advertisements painted years and years ago. They’re so faded they’re barely visible. I grew up seeing ones like these.”

As I stared, the faint colors materialized on the dusty wall. There were faded signs there! Most were advertisements connected to the nautical world: a sailmaker’s loft, a ship chandlery, a master carver of figureheads, the Whalers Tavern, the Barquentine Pub.

But there was also a life-sized depiction of three girls dressed in long white gowns—the paint was so faded, the girls looked like teenaged apparitions. All three of them had ethereally beautiful faces, with wide eyes and mysterious smiles. Their arms were linked, and they had flowers in their long hair. In spidery print above them were the words Sibylline Sisters: Oracles . And the date: 1944 .

“The girls are the same,” Iris said, staring. She opened the Jeep door and got out. She stood in front of the ghost sign of the girls.

“The same as what?” Matt asked as he and I climbed out to stand beside her.

“As the ones on the panels.”

“What panels?” I asked.

“The goddesses,” she replied.

“This is too bizarre,” Matt said, giving me a look as if he thought Iris might be losing her mind. “Goddesses?”

“There were panels painted with classical-looking girls,” Iris explained. “Young women. They were wearing long white dresses. Pleated gowns, exactly like these.” She pointed to the ghost sign. “Remember, Oli? I told you about them?”

“You mentioned paintings,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, impatiently. “But they were painted on panels—tall pieces of board, taller than I am.”

“Where are these panels?” Matt asked.

“In the place where he kept us.”

“Kept you?” I asked, my heart pounding. “You remember now?”

She nodded. “Sort of. I’m starting to?.?.?.?Up all those flights of stairs. Up in the attic.”

“Attic of what?” Matt asked.

Iris gave him a desperate look. “If I knew, do you think we’d be standing here? I’d be running as fast as I could to save Hayley.”

“That’s where Hayley is now?” I asked.

“Unless they moved her,” she said.

“When you say ‘they’?.?.?.” Matt said. “Who do you mean?”

Iris didn’t answer at first. During her silence, I noticed that Matt was busy texting. Then Iris pointed at the spectral figures again. “These girls on this ghost sign are exactly the same as the ones on the panels,” she said. “And the girl in the bed was dressed almost the same way, in a long white nightgown.”

Wait.

“What girl in the bed?” I asked.

“She had a bed, we had mattresses on the floor.”

“Who was the girl?” I asked Iris, but she shook her head, unable to recall more.

I glanced back at the ghost sign and read the words on it. “Who were the Sibylline sisters?” I wondered out loud.

“No idea, and I can’t get enough service here to Google it,” Matt said, looking up from his phone.

As I gazed at the wall, I saw that there were several doors leading into the row of buildings. I pointed that out to Matt and Iris.

“This section of waterfront is only a few blocks long,” Matt said. “Why don’t we park, knock on some of those doors, and ask about the sign? Someone who lives or works here might know what the sign means.”

I looked at Iris, but she was standing there completely frozen and pale. It must have been a shock to see those ghost signs, the images she remembered from the attic. I didn’t want to leave the only spot Iris had seemed to recognize, but it felt important that the three of us stay together.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go park.” We got back into the Jeep and Matt started driving again.

Suddenly, Iris grabbed the back of my seat.

“Get us out of here!” she screamed.

“Why? What is it?” I asked.

“That!” she said, pointing at a dusty blue van parked in a garage. It looked as if it hadn’t been driven in ages; it didn’t even have a front license plate.

“What about it?” Matt asked, startled.

“That blue van,” she said.

“Like the one in your nightmare?” I asked. “Were you taken in a blue van?”

She looked terrified. “I think so,” she said. “Or did I just dream it?” She looked at Matt again. “We can’t stay here!” she insisted.

I wasn’t sure if this blue van in particular was dangerous, but I wanted to help calm Iris down. I saw how distraught she was.

“We shouldn’t go knocking on doors yet,” I said to Matt. “Iris needs a break. Let’s leave and we’ll come back later.”

“Where should we go?” Matt asked.

“Somewhere no one will see us, okay?” Iris asked, her voice trembling. “They’re following us. I feel it. They’re here.”

“Okay, Iris. We’ll go somewhere safe and hidden,” I said, even as my heart was racing. Were we being followed?

“I’ll take us to Osprey Hill,” Matt said.

We smiled at each other. In spite of the stress, all I could think of in that moment was that Matt remembered a place that meant so much to me—because we had been there together.