Dead Voices

Mr. Voland said mildly, “I can’t help you unless you tell me everything, Ollie.”

She glared. He raised his eyebrows, still waiting.

Hesitating, Ollie began again, “My mom died. In a plane crash.”

She darted a glance up at his face. More than anything, Ollie hated sympathy face: that look of solemn pity she got from grown-ups who knew she’d lost her mom. But Mr. Voland looked completely unmoved, except for mild interest. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I assume you are hoping to talk to your lost mother, then? You do realize that talking to her won’t bring her back.”

“I know that,” said Ollie, between clenched teeth. “That’s not what I—”

“Talking to her,” Mr. Voland went on relentlessly, “won’t make you any less jealous of your friend, whose mother is there to worry about her and make her sandwiches, who will always love her more than you. So what do you hope to gain?”

Ollie gaped. “Jealous? Of my friend? You mean Coco? But I—I would never be. That’s not why I wanted . . .” She trailed off, staring at him.

“No?” said Don. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, the two-colored eyes intent. “Then start from the beginning and tell me the truth, Ollie.”

Ollie bit her lip and glared. She didn’t want to tell him about her watch. She didn’t want to tell him anything now. What right did he have to say something like that? She wasn’t jealous of Coco. She loved Coco. Even if Coco could be annoying and sometimes Coco did complain about her mom, and hug her mom, never thinking about how it would make Ollie feel . . .

“I—” Ollie began. But she was cut off by her watch, which started beeping again, loudly and furiously. Ollie looked down. Still blank.

Then she heard a sudden thunder of footsteps down the stairs. Ollie looked up. Brian and Coco came sprinting into the lobby, and both of them were pale and stammering.

Mr. Voland looked once, narrow-eyed, from Ollie’s still-beeping watch to Brian’s and Coco’s frightened faces. But he didn’t say anything about the watch. Instead he turned to Ollie’s friends. “Has something happened?”

They launched into speech together. He raised a hand. “One at a time, please.”

Taking turns, Brian and Coco blurted out a strange story about a rattling closet and a voice inside, begging. “But when we opened it,” Coco finished breathlessly, “no one was there.”

Ollie frowned, listening. The word closet rang a bell. Something she’d dreamed?

“Well,” Don said, “it seems that the simplest course will be to investigate this closet.” He looked excited. “The sooner the better.” He took off up the stairs at once. Brian and Coco, after a brief hesitation, tagged along at his heels, looking anxious, leaving Ollie behind.

Ollie’s watch had

stopped beeping, but the face was still blank.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Ollie whispered.

No answer. Ollie clenched her fists and hurried after Brian and Coco. She couldn’t let anything happen to her friends. She had to find a way to talk to her mom!

She caught the others at the top of the stairs. Ollie gave the rest of the hallway a suspicious look, but there was no one there except for them.

“Is this the closet?” Mr. Voland was asking Brian and Coco.

“That one,” said Brian, pointing. It was a plain white door with a sign that said UTILITY CLOSET. He and Coco were both looking at that ordinary closet door like it contained snakes.

“Excellent,” said Don, rubbing his hands together. “Well, first let us see if the situation repeats itself. A knocking, was it? Hush, let us listen.”

They all fell silent. Ollie glanced again at the empty gray screen of her watch. The sight made her feel cold and scared, as though a steadying hand had gone.

Silence lay thick in that lodge. But it wasn’t, Ollie thought, an empty silence. It felt heavy now. Aware. Like someone was watching them, just around the corner. The back of her neck prickled. She looked up and down the hallway. Still no one but them.

“Nothing so far,” said Don, after they’d listened in silence for a few minutes. His eyes were bright and eager. “Now we’ll see what’s inside the closet.”

When he reached out and opened the door, Brian and Coco took a step back.

But the closet was empty. Just some brooms, a few spray bottles.

“Nothing,” said Ollie.