Free A Curious Tale of the In-Between by Lauren DeStefano Page A

wouldn’t believe it coming from me.”
    With that, he was out the door. He was an excellent runner; before his mother died, he’d run nearly every day, and now even without the practice, he was fast as ever. He felt a wind at his back that wasn’t entirely normal, and he knew that Felix was steering him in the right direction.
    “Where is she?” Clarence asked. And then, as though Felix could answer, he saw Pram in her nightgown, lying just outside a street lamp’s glow.
    “Pram!”
    He knelt at her side, gasping and flushed.
    She was in a deep sleep and shivering from the cold. He tried to wake her, but her shoulders fell heavily against his arm when he lifted her, and her head rolled back.
    She was exactly as she had been in his dream, and now Clarence felt that he must have been dreaming still. He had never seen Pram look so gray, as though she were a machine that had been turned off. It was with disbelief that he took off his coat and wrapped it around Pram’s shoulders.
    He touched her cold cheek. “What’s happened to you?” he said.
    The headlights of a car shone in Clarence’s eyes.

    The doorbell rang several times, followed by a knock that held all the authority one would expect from a man of Mr. Blue’s status. It was the authority of that knock that got Aunt Dee and Aunt Nan from their beds. They hurried down the stairs, complaining and fussing about the commotion.
    The aunts opened the door and gasped. They had been certain Pram was safe in her bed, and yet there she was, sleeping in a strange man’s arms. They might have screamed for the police, except that Clarence Blue was there, and from the man’s curly hair it was obvious the strange man must be his father.
    “I’m sorry,” Mr. Blue said. “When I drove by, she was sleeping on the sidewalk. I’m not sure what happened. Clarence insists she’s a friend of his, and that she belongs to you.”
    As Aunt Nan retrieved Pram from Mr. Blue’s arms, Pram opened her eyes just long enough to get a look at Mr. Blue and whisper, “Are you my father?”
    If Mr. Blue had a response to this, it was buried in the nervous laughter of the aunts. “The poor thing is a sleepwalker,” Aunt Dee said.
    “Been happening for as long as she could walk,” Aunt Nan said, furthering the lie. After eleven years of caring for Pram, they’d developed a sense of creativity so they could conceal her eccentricities.
    “We used to find her in the pantry some mornings, hugging the flour like it was a little teddy bear,” Aunt Dee said. “And always muttering nonsense.”
    “Thank you again, and so sorry for the trouble.” Aunt Nan closed the door on Mr. Blue’s startled expression and Clarence’s worried eyes.
    The aunts stared at Pram, still wearing Clarence’s coat, and then they stared at each other.
    Pram had always been a peculiar child. She had imaginary friends, and she wasn’t frightened of the things little girls ought to be frightened of. But nothing like this had ever happened. The aunts had believed that with enough patience and their best efforts, they could keep Pram safe from a world that would be cruel to her. The world had been crueler to Pram’s mother than Pram would ever know.
    But now they weren’t so sure they could protect her.
    They carried her to bed and tucked the blankets to her chin. They made certain the windows were locked and the door downstairs was latched. Aunt Nan took a bear from the shelf and placed it on Pram’s bed.
    She looked like a normal girl for the moment, Aunt Nan thought. A normal girl who was safe and asleep and dreaming of ribbons.
    She looked like her mother, Aunt Dee thought.
    Aunt Dee and Aunt Nan didn’t speak of their younger sister, or the cruel manner of her death, and especially not the part where she nearly took Pram with her. They didn’t speak of the sailor who’d told her nice things and then left. Or the sadness in her eyes and in her heart, or how for the last months of her life she didn’t