The Land of Yesterday Page 2

  “Cecelia?” her mother called up from the kitchen. “What was that sound?”

  In a flash, Cecelia leaped down, grabbed the broken knob, and set it gingerly back into place. “Nothing, just . . . cleaning my room.”

  “Hmm,” her mother grumbled loudly. “You’re not breaking anything up there, are you?” Cecelia had become an expert at breaking things: slicing sword marks into walls, lobbing various items through glass windows, carving famous historical quotes into bookshelves and hearths. And Widdendream had always cleaned up after her.

  While searching for an excuse to give her mother (how did she always know everything anyway?), she overheard her brother downstairs. “It sounded like she broke the banister knob,” Celadon told their mother. “She was probably rail-surfing again.”

  Cecelia gritted her teeth. Would he never stop bothering her?

  As usual, Mother not only saw through her ruse, but also took her brother’s side. “Cecelia, if you were rail-surfing again and broke the banister knob, then you’ll need to glue it back on yourself—now, please.”

  The walls rattled and groaned.

  Although Widdendream rarely spoke, Cecelia had gotten quite good at reading its grumblings, and right now, she knew just what it wanted. “But listen to Widdendream moaning. I think it wants to fix the knob itself.”

  For years, Widdendream had taken pride in keeping up with its own repairs, no matter how daunting: straightening its twisted gutters, rebuilding wonky steps, patching cracked walls, cleaning the basement after Aubergine’s experiments exploded. However, unbeknownst to Cecelia, the older the house grew, the harder keeping up became.

  If it weren’t for Mazarine, who’d grown up inside Widdendream and remained its closest friend, its spirit may have left years ago.

  Their home would do anything for her.

  “Widdendream,” Mazarine called throughout the house, “I know you’d rather repair yourself, but you’ve had a hard time doing that lately. So please, you’ll let Cecelia fix the banister, won’t you . . . for me?”

  The house coughed and shook, yet eventually stilled and replied, “Anything for you . . .”

  “Great, then it’s settled.” Mazarine hollered up to Cecelia, “Widdendream promises not to interfere.”

  Cecelia groaned. “Fine.” Then she hugged the banister tight and whispered, “I’m sorry I broke you, old friend. But I’ll let you fix yourself if you want? It can be our little secret.” The hallway lights flared. Cecelia took that for a yes. “Wonderful, then—” Widdendream hacked another puff of dust. Cecelia furrowed her brow. “Hmm, you do seem a bit under the weather. How about I check on you before bed? If you can’t fix it yourself, I will. I promise.”

  Later that evening, Cecelia fell into a book, and later, into the land of dreams, never thinking of the broken banister knob again.

  Until just after midnight on that first evil Tuesday, when Cecelia’s little brother, nine-year-old Celadon Ignatius Dahl, fell down the stairs from the second floor and broke. Though Cecelia didn’t realize it at the time, she had heard the whole thing.

  A muffled thud-thud-thud occurred beyond her closed bedroom door. The grandfather clock downstairs ticked and tocked. Cecelia flushed with sweat and sprang up in bed. She thought that maybe she heard a small startled cry. However, her blankets were warm and her floors cold, and she decided she’d had a bad dream. So, Cecelia closed her eyes, pulled up her covers, and quickly fell back to sleep.

  Come dawn, her mother would find Celadon’s body. She would wail until the walls cracked deeper and floors shook. Mazarine would shout at Cecelia for not fixing the banister, and for hearing Celadon fall and not trying to save him, which Cecelia admitted to in her shock and sorrow. Aubergine would cry and wrap Cecelia in his arms while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

  And Cecelia would force herself to look at Celadon, so quiet now, no more laughter, no smiles. She would whisper, “You looked up to me, and I failed you.” Her hair would try to comfort her. But Cecelia, feeling undeserving of such love, would push it away. Then she would bid her brother one final goodbye. “Celadon, daisies will always remind me of you.”

  From that moment on, each time her heart beat, she would remember that Celadon had died because of her. And no matter how much she wanted to forget this horrible truth, she knew she never could.

  Hours later, her mother locked herself in the bedroom and cried. Her father retreated to the basement. Alone, Cecelia stole to the attic. It was the room that held each house’s spirit, and the perfect place to tell Widdendream how sorry she was for breaking her promise.

  When she arrived, she found the door had drastically changed. The wood had turned funeral black. It crawled with scary-looking vines. Cobwebs and hissing spiders scurried about each rusted hinge. This didn’t look like grief to Cecelia, but resentment and fear and rage.

  She listened at the door, and overheard her house sobbing and muttering angrily, which she’d never heard it do before. “How could you? It’s your fault. I curse you, curse you, curse y—”

  Cecelia knocked. Spiders nipped at her knuckles; she listened and swiped them away. When no response came, Cecelia pushed open the door.

  “Widdendream?” The inner room was dim. She took careful steps inside. Each ancient Dahl artifact had been overtaken with grime, stink, and thin black vines. Green poisonous-looking mist climbed the sunbeams like motes. The air was ice cold. All at once, Cecelia was sure: Widdendream had been muttering about her.

  “I know you don’t want to see me. That you must blame me like everyone else for what happened.” Fat tears sprung to her eyes; her long hair brushed them away. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I promised to check on you, fix your banister if you couldn’t, and I didn’t keep my promise. Celadon’s fall—it’s all my fault.”

  Widdendream cried out in pain, “You promised. You fell asleep, and our boy died!” It shook, and then groaned in agreement, “Yes, you’re right, so very right. It is all your fault.”

  “I swear,” Cecelia sobbed, backing out of the attic in tears. “As long as I live, I’ll never hurt you again.”

  Too ashamed to apologize to her mother, Cecelia entered Celadon’s room. It still smelled like him—like the lake, summer breezes, and earth. She wrote her brother a letter with her wonderfully special pen in a fit of horror and tears, expressing how sorry she was. About how much she missed him. How desperately she wished she could hear him say “Sweet dreams, Cee-Cee” just one more time. How she longed for those rare days when they used to laugh instead of fight, when Celadon would giggle so hard he honked, which made them laugh even harder. She wrote about how scary it was to feel all alone. How she wanted someone to love her as her brother always had, even when she was disagreeable. She begged him repeatedly to come home, then signed her letter:

  Thank you for loving me anyway.

  I miss you,

  Cee-Cee

  Next, she placed the envelope under his pillow, hoping the letter she wrote would perform a miracle and find her brother in the Land of Yesterday. Yet when Cecelia woke, her note remained unclaimed, unopened, and unread.

  She wrote more letters on more days, all with her special pen, and all of which suffered the same undeliverable fate. Cecelia swore she felt her heart shatter, and the wind whisper, “For you, Cecelia Dahl, this day may never end.”

  And it hadn’t.

  For Cecelia, Tuesday remained evil, and yesterday hung on like a vulture, refusing to let her go.

  Chapter 3

  The House of Widdendream

  Aubergine drove on in silence. As he approached their driveway, Cecelia noticed Widdendream looked more crooked and decayed than it had earlier that morning. Their home hunched like an old man in a wrinkled suit. Mold snaked the exterior of the attic. Widdendream’s gutters stuck out willy-nilly like furious eyebrows. As decrepit as her home had become in recent years, Widdendream had never looked threatening until now.

  Suddenly, candles lit in the attic windo
ws with an ugly green light. Prickles of dread ran up and down Cecelia’s spine.

  How did they get lit?

  She knew no one was home.

  The car turned onto their driveway, and their neighbor, Mr. Curmudgeon, who was always shouting at someone about something, rushed at their car from the street. He pointed at them and shouted, “??? ???? ?? ???? ????? ?? ??????!” Cecelia froze. “What’s gotten into him?” Aubergine asked with a blank expression. She wondered if her father could understand Mr. Curmudgeon’s words, or if he only heard barking honks, too.

  “Word farts,” she wanted to reply, but answered, “I don’t know,” instead. Because what if he didn’t believe in Wordfartopotamus Syndrome, or simply thought she was losing her mind? Then maybe he’d send her away, to one of those houses for those who’d lost their minds completely, and she’d never see him again.

  She could not let that happen.

  Mr. Curmudgeon’s house spirit, which was as crotchety as its resident, flashed its lights in a fury. Each beam pointed accusingly at Widdendream. After one last frightened look, their neighbor hurried fast as a herd of turtles to his house, propelled himself inside, and slammed the door.

  Cecelia’s father parked the car. For a moment, neither exited the vehicle, only stared wide-eyed at the dark house. It looked so sinister. Cecelia guessed Widdendream must be taking her mother’s leaving as hard as they were.

  Side by side, they approached the front door. The attic windows, shaped like triangles with points as sharp as butcher’s knives, seemed to glare down at them. Vile shadows danced past the glass in the candlelight. A beat later, the shadows had gone.

  The door creaked open. Her father flipped the light switch, but the lights would not turn on. The sole illumination was a mazarine-colored mist, the same shade as her mother’s eyes, snaking their feet. A foul stench plagued the foyer, like decomposing greenery. Their boots echoed across the floor.

  “Mazarine . . . ,” Widdendream groaned. “Celadon!” it cried next, and pounded the walls.

  Thud, thud, THUD.

  Thud, thud, THUD.

  Fear dug in its fangs.

  “Mazarine . . .” The walls moaned so quietly, Cecelia had to strain to hear. “I can’t live without you. My light, come back to me!”

  Narrowing his eyes at the walls, her father turned on the stairs. “Cecelia, did you hear that?” Aubergine glanced down into the foyer, head cocked, listening.

  Cecelia removed her special pen from her pocket and drummed it anxiously on her thigh. Each mournful plea made her feel worse. “I did. It’s Widdendream.”

  Her father shook his head. “It can’t be. House spirits only talk to themselves when they’ve gone mad.” Aubergine patted the banister. “Our Widdendream might be upset, but it wouldn’t go mad, would you, Widdendream?” He sighed dramatically and continued up the stairs. “It must just be the ghost of your mother’s absence I hear.”

  Widdendream laughed—a cruel and frightening laugh, so unlike its usual gentle spirit. The staircase swayed, yet Aubergine didn’t seem alarmed. He glanced back at Cecelia with a weary look of either love or shame—she couldn’t tell anymore.

  The purple-blue mist whispered, “Murderer. Payback. Revenge . . .”

  Hair hiding behind her back, Cecelia called after him, “Wait! Father, don’t go!” Fresh mist bloomed from the walls.

  “Cecelia.” Her father peered at her over his shoulder. “I understand you’re hurting. I am, too. But I was up all night and I’m so tired, I can’t think straight.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “If we’re going to figure out where we go from here, I need to rest. Maybe you should do the same.”

  Frozen in place, Cecelia covered her ears and shut her eyes. She didn’t know if she’d heard Widdendream whispering those horrible things or if she’d imagined it. Clearly it was upset that her mother left, and was still grieving Celadon’s death, but she thought, under all its pain, Widdendream loved her anyway.

  When Cecelia was little, she used to come home and fall into Widdendream’s comfy library chair. It had become her refuge after her classmates had teased her about her curious freckles, strange interests, and, more often than not, her know-it-all cleverness, which often got the best of her. The chair would wrap her in its arms and Widdendream would read her stories of faraway lands and famous explorers: of Sea Captains, the Gnomes of the Stratosphere of Now, and the mythical Guardians of Yesterday. Whenever the crueler children made Cecelia feel like nothing, Widdendream had a way of making her feel like something again. Her home had helped her understand what it meant to be brave. Now it made her afraid.

  “How could you rest at a time like this?” Cecelia cringed at the rotten stink inside the darkened house and stepped closer to the base of the stairs. “Why did you get me out of school early if you wanted to be alone?”

  Aubergine gave her a weary smile. “It’s Tuesday, a treacherous day for the Dahls at the best of times, but now . . . I just needed to know you were safe, that’s all.” He started back up the stairs. “And where could be safer than home?”

  In the background, Widdendream growled, “Revenge!”

  How could her father not hear it?

  “But—”

  “No buts, sweetheart. Go to your room and rest. We’ll make a plan later, okay?”

  Cecelia didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to let her father out of her sight, but what choice did she have? Adults always did what they wanted, despite their children’s sensible suggestions.

  “Fine,” she grudgingly complied.

  And softly, Widdendream laughed.

  The feeling of wrongness followed Cecelia upstairs, past the top step, from which her brother had fallen, and the banister knob, which her father had fixed. It dogged her heels by the small table on the second-floor landing that once held a fresh vase of daisies. It moved with her past the fractured walls, yet, to her relief, the threatening voices seemed to have ceased.

  Inside Cecelia’s bedroom, everything looked the same—same bed, desk, and chair, same shredding wallpaper, the same Cecelianess of her things. The garland of paper dolls strung from her ceiling still taunted her with memories of her brother. The familiar hauntedness of her room filled every inch of space.

  She tried turning on her lights, but they wouldn’t turn on either. Cecelia stood by the window and let the overcast sky light her intergalactic map. It covered an entire wall. Looking at it usually helped her relax.

  In the center of the giant map was her own small world, which included the town of Hungrig. The Stratosphere of Now, a wonderfully gassy asteroid belt, surrounded her planet and housed the brave souls who flew the mysterious Intergalactic Taxies to Yesterday: the infamous Aeronautic Gnomes. Only rarely did they show themselves. But when they did, it was always to help those in the direst need.

  In the upper-right quadrant of her map hung a planet called Earth. The cosmic outlaw Stella the Invincible, who lived there for a while, said it mirrored Hungrig almost exactly. She even wrote one of Cecelia’s favorite books, Heroes of Earth, which included one of her favorites, a girl called Joan of Arc. Infinite other planets and stars of all sizes, shapes, and colors dotted everywhere else. Yet, as grand as her map was, it, like every other she knew of, failed to contain the perilous and forbidden Land of Yesterday: the floating black desert where souls went when their bodies died—the land where Celadon lived now, and where her mother was currently headed.

  Some claimed the Land of Yesterday didn’t exist. The few cartographers who did believe refused to put it on a map. When Cecelia had asked her father why, he’d told her, “If people knew how to get to Yesterday, they’d leave Today, and the world would be nothing but ghosts.”

  But if it didn’t exist, as some claimed, then where were her mother and brother now?

  All of a sudden, Cecelia burst into tears. Oh, how she hated that! She wanted her old heart back. It never ached, not like this. Six weeks and one day ago, it beat strong as a warrior; it took punches and di
d what it needed to survive. It most certainly didn’t make her a weeping mess, scared of her own house, scared of her own self.

  This made Cecelia angry.

  She balled her fists and stomped about her bedroom glaring at the posters on her walls. Cecelia’s favorite explorers and adventuring heroes pinned over her bed—Eric the Blue from Hungrig, Joan of Arc from Earth, and Mortavia the Wild from the Gamut of Question—made her angry. She’d bet her collection of ancient coins none of them ever cried. Her antique swords in the glass case beside her dresser made her angry. The stuffed animals and metallic trinkets her brother gave her—mythical beasts and elsewhere planets he knew she’d love—made her angry. Her books—stories of characters stronger, braver, and wiser than she was now—made her angry. But the paper dolls circling her ceiling like holiday garland made her angriest of all.

  Cecelia made them the day before Celadon died. She yelled at him when he tried to touch them—how she wished she could take that back! She hung them up after his death to remind her of all the times she’d pushed him away, and how she would do almost anything to have him help her now. She fell to her knees and punched the floor. Tears and hair flying, Cecelia cried, “I wish I was a tearless paper doll so I could stop crying and feeling so much. I want to be heroic like I used to be!”

  Heated tears pouring down her cheeks, Cecelia pounded the floorboards again and again. She hated everything and felt, all at once, that everything hated her back.

  And then, from the place she’d struck the floor, a stain of blackness pooled, and spread. Everything inside her room shook. Spiked vines slithered through the cracks in the walls, like those she’d seen in the attic. Cecelia’s hair coiled her neck, trembling. She sensed Widdendream’s eyes on her.

  “What do you want from me, Widdendream?” Cecelia howled and jumped to her feet. “How can I make you stop hating me?”

  Widdendream thundered in reply, “It’s your fault Mazarine is gone!” Dust and chunks of mortar flew from the quaking walls. Cecelia covered her head with her hands. “You drove her away! Now I’m dark and falling apart—can’t you see?” Bits of ceiling crumbled and fell. “My best friend—the one who lit me up and never let me down—is gone, and it’s all because of you!” The room inhaled a slow, shuddering breath, then exhaled in a blast of words, “BRING HER BACK TO ME!”