The Old Willis Place

furniture. The room itself had no windows and its walls were thick.
    Georgie and I had fixed it up like a clubhouse, with candles and books and a few board games, along with blankets and pillows borrowed from the attic. It was a great place to play without fear of being caught by Miss Willis.
    "But Miss Lilian came down the steps behind us," Georgie went on for me. "She was waving a broom and screaming at us. We ran into the room and slammed the door. It was a stupid thing to do."
    "We thought we were safe," I said. "But she bolted the door and locked us in." In my head, I heard Miss Willis again, just as I heard her in my worst nightmares. "Stay there! Think about how you've treated me. I'll come back when you're ready to apologize."
    "And then she left," Georgie whispered. "And she never came back."
    "No, she never came back." My heart beat faster. I wished Georgie would say, "Stop," but he lay beside me, still and tense, a rabbit poised for flight. So I went on to the worst part.
    "We cried and shouted for Mother and Daddy, we pounded on the door till our fists ached, but no one heard us. No one came. No one let us out."
    Georgie shivered and curled into my arms. I could feel his heart beating as fast as mine.
    "We lit candles," I told him. "We ate the crackers we'd left there. But after a while the candles burned down and went out. It was so dark. And cold. We told each other stories, we sang songs..." I paused, unable to go on.
    "What happened next?" Georgie whispered. "Do you remember?"
    "I think we fell asleep. At least that's how it seems. A deep sleep."
    "And then we woke up," Georgie said, sounding cheerful again, "and we were outside and the sun was shining."
    "Yes." After the darkness of the cellar, the light had hurt our eyes, almost blinded us. We stood in a field overgrown with thistles and poke weed, wild daisies and Queen Anne's lace, swarming with bees and butterflies. At first I'd thought we must be in heaven, but when I looked around, I realized we were still on the farm. The familiar woods lay ahead, their leaves swaying in a summer breeze. The sky was blue, almost cloudless, and a mockingbird sang from a fence post. Grasshoppers jumped around our feet, bees buzzed, a crow cawed in the woods. A tractor rumbled in the distance. The air smelled of honeysuckle and damp grass.
    Behind us was Miss Lilian's house, barely visible through a screen of trees in full leaf.
    Everything had been just as it should be, yet I'd felt strange. Not thirsty, not hungry, not weak from our days in the dark cellar. It was as if I'd become very light. A gust of wind might send me spinning higher and higher until the earth was a tiny ball lost among stars.
    In the dark shed, I squeezed Georgie's hand, glad to feel its warmth. He propped himself up on his elbows, more himself now that the worst part of the story was over, and peered into my eyes.
    "How did we get into that field, Diana? Who opened the door? Who let us out?"
    "It was like a dream," I said, at a loss for an explanation. "First we were in the cellar, and then we were in the field with nothing in between. Bing —there we were in the sunshine."
    "We wanted Mother and Daddy" Georgie said, sad now. "We wanted to go home."
    "But we couldn't," I said. "It was against the rules."
    "The rules," Georgie muttered. "Always the rules. Where did they come from, Diana? Who gave them to us? Do you remember?"
    "It wasn't Mother or Daddy," I said.
    "They gave us plenty of rules before the bad thing happened." Georgie yawned. "Like not going into Miss Lilian's house and not touching the piano and not talking with our mouths full and not interrupting. And not, and not..."
    Georgie's voice trailed off into a mumble and he fell asleep, but I lay beside him, thinking, trying to remember. No one had told us the rules, I was sure of that. No one had written them down and handed them to us. They were just there, in our heads:
Rule One: Do not let anyone see you.
Rule Two: Do not leave Oak Hill Manor.
    As long as we obeyed those two rules, we could do anything we liked. Play all day, stay up as late as we wanted, roam the woods and fields, tease and play tricks on the living.
    ***
    The first night of our new life, Georgie and I had crawled through the open kitchen window of our house and crept to our parents' bedroom. The light was out, but they weren't asleep.
    "If Miss Lilian recovers," Mother was saying, "she might be able to tell the police something about Diana and Georgie.