The Ice Cradle Read Free Page A

something catches you off guard, and for a moment or two, I could barely breathe.
    From the time he was just a baby in my arms, I had wondered whether Henry would grow up to share my gift. Now, it seemed, I had my answer.
    Henry could see the ghost.

    When my child was three and a half, I realized that I could do something that really baffled me: I could read out loud to him, page after page, while my mind was thoroughly occupied with something else. This probably wouldn’t surprise a neuroscientist, but it sure shocked me.
    It wasn’t just books that I knew by heart, either—the Babar chronicles, the rhyming tales of Madeline in that old house in Paris—but stories that were completely new to me. And I wasn’t just idly drifting, mentally, while keeping most of my focus on the page. I would find myself three or four pages from the last words I remembered saying, while Henry sat perfectly happy beside me, having detected in my tone and manner no hint whatsoever that I was actually miles, or years, away. I suppose it’s like driving on the highway at night and suddenly realizing that you are where you wanted to go, having been virtually unaware of the fact that you were getting there.
    This was what the rest of Saturday felt like. To all the world, I must have appeared energetic and engaged, but inside, I was in shock. Something deep in my worldview had shifted, and yet I chatted with Lauren as she showed us to our room, an expansive double with a window overlooking the ocean. Then I took Henry exploring for close to three hours, to the Southeast Lighthouse and to the rocky cliffs I would later learn were called the Mohegan Bluffs. I watched Henry carefully in thearea around the lighthouse, which was positively teeming with ghosts. If he saw them at all—and they were everywhere: on the rocks, on the wrought-iron balconies of the lighthouse itself, on its deep, secluded porch—he paid no real attention. He seemed to care only about the dramatic bluff towering over the crashing waves; specifically, how close I would let him get to the edge.
    Later, as I lay on my bed and gazed over at Henry’s sleeping form, I turned my thoughts to what I had witnessed upon our arrival at the inn. It wasn’t the first time Henry had seen a ghost. Like most children, he’d once had an “imaginary playmate,” an eight-year-old named Silas, the earthbound spirit of a child who had died after having been kicked in the head by a horse. This event took place in a barn that once stood where the house containing our apartment now stands.
    Imaginary playmates are actually ghosts. Most kids can see and talk to them until they’re six or seven. But eventually, children are taught the “truth” by adults: that ghosts don’t exist. Once children come to believe this, they lose their easy access to the spirit world. Henry was only five, and I wasn’t one of those nay-saying adults, but even so, I knew that just because he’d been pals with Silas, that didn’t necessarily mean he would see ghosts all his life.
    Earthbound spirits retain the personal qualities of the people they were in life, and Silas was a bully. I always figured that that was why he’d gotten kicked in the head in the first place. He’d probably been tormenting the horse. At a certain point, though, I decided that I’d had quite enough of his leading Henry around by the nose and teaching him rude tricks, like how to pull a chair out from under someone who was about to sit down. I cornered Silas one night just after Henry had fallen asleep andinformed him that the fun and games were over, and it was high time for him to join his family on the other side. The poor young spirit burst into tears of relief.
    I was able to create the white doorway for him, a skill I learned from my grandmother. As far as I can tell, this doorway, which I can imagine and then make real, leads to a shining tunnel to the other side. I can call it up through an act of will and imagination,