The rain fell in glacial sheets the day the Fitzpatricks moved into 21 Pleasant Street.
The arrival of the family in the diminutive seaside town of Blue Hill, Maine would have been the topic of morning chatter at the co-op under any circumstances. The Fitzpatricks had six daughters who ranged in age from four to seventeen. In a town where the graduating class at the high school was twenty students in a good year, the arrival of this many school-age children was cause for excitement. There was something more, though, that kept the co-op chatter going on for months rather than weeks. Shadowy whispers had spread through the community like curls of smoke. The reasons the family had moved from the soft hills of Appalachia to the craggy coast of Maine were unclear, but there were rumors. Murmurs of threats made against one of the children. Hints that the move had not been a choice for the family, but rather something essential to the safety of one of their girls dampened the excitement and replaced it with concern. Then there was the matter of the house itself.
The sturdy white house on Pleasant Street had been one of the first homes built when the town was founded in 1789. It originally belonged to a prosperous sea captain named Steven Norton. Captain Norton had been married twice and moved to Blue Hill after having the house built for his second wife, Clarissa. His first wife, Mehitable, had borne ten children and Clarissa would go on to bear ten children as well. This was a house, by all accounts, filled with joy. Captain Norton is said to have been a devoted father and husband who was fair in all ways save one: he had a soft spot for his third child with Clarissa, a girl he had christened Clara Windship after his best and fastest vessel. Everyone knew Clara was his favorite, but Clara was everyone’s favorite so none of the children minded. Life in the bustling house at 21 Pleasant Street was idyllic. Until tragedy visited one grey September morning in 1841. Just two weeks after her fourth birthday, Clara was helping some of her older siblings wash the comically large pile of laundry the family produced each week. Not wanting to carry the entire box of lye to the front lawn where they were washing clothes, one of her older sisters had placed a mound of the fluffy down colored powder in a little kitchen bowl. Clara, thinking it was sugar, had scooped up a snowy handful and eaten it before her siblings could reach her. Hearing the screams of his children, Captain Norton raced down to the yard, but his eyes told him what his heart did not want to believe. Clara Windship slipped from this life into the next nestled in the cradle of her father’s arms and pressed against his shattered heart.
The story of what happened to the Captain’s family after Clara was taken from them has been lost to time and history, but the house has stood empty for as long as anyone living in Blue Hill can recall. There have been debates about who the home belongs to that go in circles until they finish up right where they started. All anyone knows for certain is that the house has always been maintained by a company out of Portland. Or maybe Lewiston. There have been debates about that as well. The company comes in once a season to clean the house, repair the things that break down in 200-year-old homes, and tidy the lawn and landscaping. Folks have asked the maintenance workers who hired them, but they just shrug and return to the task at hand. It seems like they are anxious to leave as they work quickly to finish the caretaking of the lonely old home. Maybe they are just efficient workers. No one knows that, either.
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The Fitzpatrick girls are giddy as they run through the halls of their new home counting the seemingly endless bedroom options. Their cozy cabin nestled in the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee had featured walls of golden wood that seeped sap on warm days and a tin roof the same color green as the trees that encircled the house like an embrace, but there were only three bedrooms for the eight people in their family. The prospect of rooms of their own is both dizzying and a tiny bit scary.
“I want to keep sharing a room with Hattie and Mabel,” says Grace. She is the oldest sister and the one the younger Fitzpatrick girls look to for approval. “The attic bedroom is huge and we can see the ocean from the windows. I just think it will be lonely and boring without you guys.”
Harriet is the second oldest at 15 and, while she had kind of wanted her own room, she agrees that an attic bedroom with an ocean view is too good to pass up. Their mom calls the three oldest girls “The Three Musketeers” because they have always had an unspoken “all for one and one for all” motto. It is no surprise, then, when 13-year-old Mabel also agrees to continue sharing a room.
With the older girls sorted out, attention shifts to the younger three. Esther, eleven-years-old and a middle child in every sense of the word, lays claim to a smallish pink bedroom with a bay window.
“I don’t want to share a room with Jemima and Susan anymore,” Esther blurts out more aggressively than she intended. She softens her tone as she speaks to her little sisters, “I love you guys but I want to make friends here and have sleepovers and stuff. Your bedtime is 8 o’clock so I don’t think sharing a bedroom is a great idea.
Harriet takes each of the littlest sisters by the hand, “Okay, nerds, let’s figure out which bedroom you want.”
“Can I have my own room?” Jemima asks unexpectedly. “I want to have sleepovers like Essie. Plus, Susan snores.”
The three older girls catch each others' eyes. Then all of the girls turn to Susan who is clearly fighting back tears. When the dam breaks and she dissolves into choking sobs, Hattie picks her up and makes “sh-sh-sh” noises in the little girl’s ear.
“Hey, little bird, what’s up?” Harriet asks quietly.
“No one wants to share a room with me and it’s cold here and this house makes me sad and I miss Mimmy and I just want to go home!” Susan wails into Harriet’s shoulder, her words tumbling over each other. “I don’t know why we moved anyway!”
The older girls exchange worried looks but say nothing.
“Hey,” Grace says, “I think I have a good idea. There is a little room at the bottom of the stairs to the attic. If you sleep there we will be right up the stairs -- there are only five of them, I counted. If you get lonely or sad or scared, you can just come up and see us. We will even put a mattress on the floor and you can sleep there as often as you like. How does that sound?”
Susan crinkles her eyebrows together and frowns. “Is the room blue?” she asks.
“I think it is yellow but I saw a paint store when we drove through town. You can go and pick out your favorite color blue and we will help you paint it,” Grace says, making her voice an exaggerated shade of cheerful.
Zuzu’s face brightens. She takes a couple of deep, shaky breaths and wipes her tears away before nodding her agreement to the plan.
Jemima picks the biggest room she can find, because more is more with her, and asks if she can paint her room as well. A warning glare from Mabel lets her know that shutting up right now is probably a good idea, but she is going to ask Mum about it later, anyway.
With the rooms figured out, the girls head downstairs and outside where their parents are unloading the moving truck.
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The first morning after sleeping in their new rooms, the girls are up early. Their mom had told them they could take a couple of weeks off of school to settle in, so they want to make the most of their mini-vacation. Their parents had run into Bangor to do some things and the older girls are making french toast and talking in the easy way sisters often do. Susan is perched on Mabel’s scrawny knees, giggling as the older girl makes fart noises in her ear, when Mabel suddenly stops.
“Hang on,” Mabel says as she parts her sister’s dark curls, “you have something white in your hair. What is this? What the heck? Grace, Harriet - come here.”
The girls put down their spatulas and hurry over to the table, peering into Susan’s curls where Mabel is pointing.
“Is that paint?” Grace asks, scraping at the small section of white hair with her fingernail. “Dang it. I have no nails. I have to stop biting them. Harriet, can you try and scrape that off?”
Harriet looks at the silvery curls and feels the blood drain from her face. “Grace, I don’t think it’s paint. It looks like her hair turned white right here.”
Grace laughs nervously, “She is four, Harriet, that’s not possible. Right? Susan, what did you get into?”
The little girl insists she hasn’t gotten into anything as she wiggles off her sister’s lap and runs up to her room to play. “Call me when breakfast is ready, okay? I’m HUNGRY!” Susan calls over her shoulder as she disappears up the stairs.
“Well. That is definitely weird,” says Mabel. “I don’t like that. At all.”
Harriet pulls out her phone as Grace finishes up the french toast. “It says here that hair turning white overnight is called canities subita. Mostly it is an urban legend but there have been like 85 medically documented cases of it happening.”
“I guess they need to update that number to 86,” Mabel says, almost inaudibly as she gazes up the stairs after Susan.
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The girls only have a week left before they have to start school, but it is the furthest things from their minds. The white area in Susan’s hair continues to spread. Their parents have taken her to a doctor today to see what might be causing it, leaving the girls home alone again. Knowing how worried everyone is about their baby sister, Grace suggests they do something to cheer her up.
“We promised we would paint her room blue but I know Mum and Roger haven’t had time. Let’s go get some paint and surprise her when she comes home,” Harriet suggests.
“That is perfect!” Grace beams.
Mabel isn’t so sure, “We said she could pick out the color, though. What if she doesn’t like the one we get?”
“Her favorite color is ice blue,” Esther reminds them. “She will love it and she has been so sad since the move.”
The sisters make the short walk to town, pick out a color creatively named “Icy Blue” and are back at home ready to work in less than an hour. Harriet texts their parents to take Susan out to do some fun stuff after the appointment because they are planning a surprise for her. Then they head up to Susan’s room and get to work.
“We need to push all the furniture to the middle of the room,” instructs Grace. “Then we can cover it with these moving blankets while we paint”
The sisters get busy picking up typical four-year-old clutter and moving everything away from the walls. They are working quickly, as they know they don’t have that many hours to finish when Jemima’s annoyingly squeaky voice breaks the silence.
“Hey! Why isn’t Esther helping?” Jemima pouts, pointing to her sister who is standing motionless next to the window. “Essie!”
Esther startles at the sound of her name. “Oh, sorry guys. I was just watching that swing on the tree. It is moving but none of the trees and grass and stuff are. It is kind of freaking me out.”
The other girls huddle around her and watch silently as the black swing glides back and forth through the still air. None of them say a word, but they all jump and spin around as they hear something loudly slap the ground in the middle of the room. Susan’s drawing pad, which had been hastily perched on the edge of a dresser as the girls abandoned the clean up to look out the window, had fallen down.
As she bends to pick it up, Grace says, “Huh. Susan must like that swing. Look how many pictures of it she has drawn.” She fans the pages of the thick pad and sees that most of them are covered with drawings of the swing which hangs from an ancient oak tree. “That’s a lot of drawings for a week.”
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“What did Mum say?” Harriet asks as Grace sits down beside her on the pink and yellow floral comforter that covers her twin bed.
“The doctor says it is weird but harmless. He made some stupid joke about her being like Anna from Frozen. Mum says Susan glared at him and told him she hates that stupid movie,” Grace says.
Both girls laugh knowing their baby sister’s temper.
“Well, I guess it will be easier for her to dye her hair green when she is a teenager if she wants,” Hattie smiles. Hattie is always looking for silver linings.
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Grace stands in the dark doorway of Susan’s sweet blue room watching her sister sleep. They got her a light that casts moons and stars around her room making it seem like she is sleeping on a cloud in a pale night sky. Grace draws her sweater around her, shivering. “Dang. Maine is cold,” she thinks as she crosses the room to make sure the window isn’t open a crack. As she checks the latch on the window, her eyes are drawn to the swing which always seems to be moving. The moment she fixes her gaze on the swing, it comes to an abrupt stop. Not gradually, but all at once, as if someone was swinging on it and suddenly dragged their feet on the ground to bring it to a halt. She is unable to move. Her eyes are fixed on the swing which isn’t swaying at all. As if it is weighted down. As if someone is sitting in it deciding whether or not to get up. Susan’s light snoring breaks her reverie. Without thinking about it, Grace scoops up her sister’s sleep-heavy body and runs from the room and up the stairs to her own room. As she turns to close her door at the top of the stairs, a movement catches her eye. She swears she sees small bloodless fingers slide across the door jam and disappear into Susan’s room.
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By now, the Fitzpatrick girls know they won’t be starting school in three days. They are packing again. They have lost track of how many times. The cozy cabin in the rolling hills of Appalachia was so long ago. Their first home and the last one that felt safe. Grace was 12 years old when Susan was born. Hattie was 10, and Mabel was 8. They remember the before so they understand the after. Maybe Essie remembers a little, but not enough to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. Not enough to comprehend how much they have lost. All the little girls have ever known is running. The family thought if they went far enough this time they might carve out a life for themselves. Maybe not anything approaching normal, but one where they could keep Susan safe from the frigid hands and icy whispers which sought her out like moths drawn to the bright beauty of fire. She felt broken for her parents, they had done so much research, they had been so full of hope. They were assured that this home had been made safe, that it was cleansed every time the seasons changed, that the protections were strong enough to keep Susan out of their reach. Their parents had told the girls this was the last move they would make. Now they understood the truth.
They could never stop running.
