What the Dead Want
By Norah Olson
3/5
()
About this ebook
Haunting photographs and dark family secrets make this second spine-tingling novel from Norah Olson the perfect read for fans of creepy, suspenseful teen fiction.
A love of photography, an old camera, and countless questions—these are all that sixteen-year-old Gretchen has left of her mother, who mysteriously disappeared years ago.
Now she must return to the place where her mom vanished—a decaying mansion that Gretchen has suddenly inherited from her great-aunt Esther. However, Gretchen won’t find the answers she’s seeking without unraveling the secrets that lurk inside the house. There are stacks of photographs and letters from her ancestors that go back centuries, pointing to some kind of haunting past. But when proof of the mansion’s dark history appears to Gretchen in the form of ghostly visions and the soft, eerie whisper of her mother’s voice, there’s no doubt that something sinister has taken place there.
No matter how scared she might be, Gretchen must somehow uncover the reasons why this indescribable force has descended upon her family and find a way to set everyone—even the dead—free.
Norah Olson
Norah Olson is a former journalist who covered criminal cases for a regional New York newspaper and received a prestigious fellowship for her work. She was educated in New England and lives in Manhattan. Her novels for young adults include Twisted Fate, Before Now, and What the Dead Want.
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Reviews for What the Dead Want
16 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book could have been better. The author left a lot of questions unanswered, the ending fell flat, and some things just didn't make sense. I did enjoy the historical aspect of it. If you are looking for a quick, spooky read you'd like it, but don't expect it to be spectacular.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5** spoiler alert ** Overall I liked this book quite a bit. There were a couple of things that bothered me, so I'll just get those out of the way. Gretchen is 16. And her dad and mom's best friend are fine with sending her out to the country and letting her stay there after, second thing that bothered me, her great aunt Esther commits suicide by drinking developing fluid in front of her. No discussion of any trauma, not to mention the ghosts and Esther not revealing why she wanted her to come. The next problem is Hawk and Hope not having any adults around either. This seems to happen a lot in YA books. If Gretchen had been older, say, 18, it wouldn't have been a big deal. It was also odd that, coming from an artistic family with the last name of Axton, it would never have occurred to Gretchen to ask, or notice, that E.E. Axton, the famous photographer, had the same last name.Other than those things, I actually really did enjoy the book. I thought it had an interesting story (and a timely one), and a good mystery. Gretchen wasn't spoiled or awful, and she really threw herself into solving the mystery once Hope and Hawk got involved. Once the reason behind their deaths was figured out, it was even possible to feel sympathetic toward Celia and Rebecca, and how their understanding of what had happened had driven them with such anger for all those years. I enjoyed the details of Fidelia's journals and her desire to help rescue runaway slaves.Most of the rough/hard to believe things were in the beginning, and after that, the book rolls along at such a pace that I was simply caught up in it. The history behind the story was well-developed, and I liked the fact that Valerie and Fidelia were related.I actually think that this might be a good book to try to get kids uninterested in history to possibly get a little more involved in learning about the Civil War period, even though it only brushed on that with James's death. It might spur some kids into taking a closer look by getting them involved in a more personal story and linking to the Underground Railroad, etc
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When you're exposed to it since childhood, then there's no rhyme or reason why you won't accept it immediately. I would have gone to the nearest house, use their phone to call my aunt and a car service and a demolition crew, no matter how crazy my great-aunt was insisting me to stay. And I would have destroyed the salamin pronto the minute I saw it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gretchen's adventures begin when she receives a phone call from a great-aunt she doesn't remember inviting her to come visit the mansion in upstate New York that she will be inheriting. Gretchen is eager to visit, grabs her camera and takes off. But things are not what she expects. The mansion is falling to pieces but also stuffed with family history - and ghosts, lots and lots of ghosts.Gretchen's mother who disappeared almost five years earlier was a photographer who collected sample of Victorian spirit photography. Her mother believed that the camera could sometimes see things that the naked eye cannot. Gretchen is also a photographer who shares some of her mother's beliefs.Shortly after Gretchen arrives, her aunt commits suicide leaving her with the task of laying those many ghosts to rest. Gretchen is exploring some of the family history, particularly the diary of Fidelia who lived around the time of the Civil War and who was deeply involved in the Underground Railroad. We also learn what it was like for a woman living in the time and place with no freedom, no opportunities, and no choices. Excepts from Fidelia's journals are salted through this story. The book also has a number of photographs (only some of which made it to my Kindle eARC) that enhance the moody and spooky atmosphere of this story. Aiding Gretchen in her quest are neighbors Hope and Hawk who are orphaned descendants of some of the blacks who settled in the area after escaping slavery. One of their ancestors was Fidelia's best friend. The kids are in something of a time crunch. The anniversary of a fire that destroyed a local integrated church and killed Fidelia, her friend, and Fidelia's daughter and her friend's daughter along with many of the black residents of the area is coming soon and ghostly activities are becoming more frequent and more dangerous.This was a great story. I enjoyed this peek into a part of America's history that needs to me made more visible. As one of the characters says, "We learn history so we can break with the past, not repeat it."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5What's It About?Haunting photographs and dark family secrets...A love of photography, an old camera, and countless questions...these are all that sixteen-year-old Gretchen has left of her mother, who mysteriously disappeared years ago. Now she must return to the place where her mom vanished—a decaying mansion that Gretchen has suddenly inherited from her great-aunt Esther. However, Gretchen won’t find the answers she’s seeking without unraveling the secrets that lurk inside the house. There are stacks of photographs and letters from her ancestors that go back centuries, pointing to some kind of haunting past. But when proof of the mansion’s dark history appears to Gretchen in the form of ghostly visions and the soft, eerie whisper of her mother’s voice, there’s no doubt that something sinister has taken place there. No matter how scared she might be, Gretchen must somehow uncover the reasons why this indescribable force has descended upon her family and find a way to set everyone...even the dead...free.What Did I Think?It was a YA novel so I wasn't really expecting it to be much more than just a good ghost story...which it was. I found parts of it to be somewhat slow and drawn out...while other parts seemed overly rushed. Gretchen and her two friends, that she had only just met, discovered the families secrets in two days. That just didn't seem possible as those secrets had been buried for 200 years. I didn't dislike the book but it had potential to be so much more. If you are looking for something light with just a bit of a creepy tone to it, you're definitely going to enjoy this one.
Book preview
What the Dead Want - Norah Olson
PART ONE
ONE
HER MOTHER HAD SAID THE HOUSE WAS BUILT BY ANCESTORS. That it was a century and a half old. That it was in the middle of nowhere
and that the rooms and hallways were full of portraits of long-dead relatives. There was a library full of letters and journals and books from the past. But Gretchen’s mother had told her almost nothing else about the Axton mansion, not about the years she’d lived there as a child, not about any of her other relatives, nor why her parents had left it behind.
Only once had Gretchen seen an image of her mother’s family at the place; a snapshot of her mother as a child, standing on the large round front porch with her parents, a rose trellis growing up the side, and a smaller child running through the frame, looking like nothing more than a blur, a smudge in the background. The photograph was focused on the porch and the immediate foreground, and honestly, it could be any house. The picture she liked better was an old sepia-toned print they’d had hanging in their apartment in the East Village, taken from farther away down a little slope. You could see the whole house, the rounded cupola, the balconies, the rosebush, up to the top of the front porch.
She could barely tell it was the same front porch the driver was pulling up to now, it bore such little resemblance to the house in the picture. The Axton mansion was waiting at the end of a long dirt road surrounded by trees. The entire place leaned undeniably to the left, bricks uneven and precarious, porch columns no longer straight, shedding their paint like some kind of molting bird. Kudzu and ivy and clematis climbed up one side of the porch and part of the front of the building, and on the other side was a thicket of thorny roses, untended and untrimmed for maybe a century, grown into an unwieldy monstrous tower as high as the third floor. She could smell their dense, smothering sweetness without rolling down the car window. The place had been beaten by the wind and the rain, and the heat of the sun had bleached and cracked it. The roses—so tightly ingrown with the pillars—may have been one of the only things providing structural support to that part of the house.
She knew the place would be old—ancient, even. And that it wouldn’t be well kept up. It wasn’t like she expected a real mansion. But she in no way expected this.
It was so different from the image she’d had in her mind all these years, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to utter a cry of horror or burst out laughing. Then the driver double-checked the address on his phone and said Nah, seriously? in a heavy Bronx accent and she really did start laughing.
He’d picked her up at Eighty-Eighth and Park Avenue in the city and the job was to drive her all the way to Mayville. She must have seemed like some spoiled rich girl, but there wasn’t really another way to get there; her aunt had paid for the long car ride because Gretchen didn’t have a car in the city, there were no trains to Mayville, and buses rarely ran there. The landscape had gotten stranger as they drove, and part of the trip was through a deep wood.
A scrawny gray cat sat on a weathered rocker on the front porch, eyeing them blankly. Then the front window curtains parted and a pale face with fierce dark eyes peered out.
The driver cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders involuntarily, then glanced at Gretchen in his rearview mirror. She could only see his eyes, but his expression looked remorseful and a little incredulous. You gonna be a’right here?
he asked.
She smiled at him. Yeah, totally,
she said, still laughing. The question was ridiculous; of course she’d be okay—she was a city girl, used to doing things on her own. I’m fine. Thank you.
You sure?
the driver asked, putting the car back in gear.
I’m sure,
she said, though the house had been startling, even to her. That’s my aunt.
He shrugged. A’right then, I’ll pop the trunk.
But as she got out to help him with her suitcase Gretchen fought her own creeping sense of astonishment and unease.
This was indeed the place. Her aunt Esther’s house: the mansion her family had owned for centuries, but she had long stopped thinking about the mansion, and had barely even heard of this aunt until yesterday. When the landline rang.
Gretchen and Janine had looked at each other in surprise. "I forgot we even had one of those," Janine said on the third ring. Then she went back to their argument.
You can’t use Pythagoras,
Janine said. I’m sure you can’t because it’s a proper noun. Totally against the rules!
Scrabble marathons, Chunky Monkey ice cream, and reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were what they did in the evenings when Gretchen’s dad was away for more than a few weeks and her mother’s best friend, Janine, came to stay at their place. This time he was away for a few months building a hospital in Guatemala.
On the eighth ring Janine looked pointedly at Gretchen and raised her eyebrows—like she should get up and answer the damn phone.
Not it,
Gretchen said, putting a finger on her nose.
Janine sighed and walked over to the kitchen while Gretchen flopped back on the couch and watched Will Smith talking to Geoffrey the butler. She didn’t like the laugh track, she didn’t know if she really liked the show at all, but Janine did, and it had become a kind of welcome, if not so interesting, routine.
She texted Simon while Janine was on the phone. Fresh Prince night!
Two seconds later he texted back: Chunky Monkey??
Yes.
Can I come over??
Yes.
Since he lived in the building he could achieve this by a simple elevator ride. Simon’s coming over,
she yelled to Janine—who put her hand up and scowled. Janine pointed to the big ridiculous house phone and mouthed the word Wait.
Wait, sorry. No, Gretchen texted Simon, who replied with a brief u suck see u tmrw :P
Gretchen expected it would be a sales call and Janine would hang up right away, but instead she was silent, listening intently, and then there was a series of Mmmhms
and then WHO?
and then "Yes. Wow; no, of course I’ve heard of you. Of course, I totally understand. Oh really? That’s . . . mmmhm . . . Well, I’ll ask her."
Then she held the phone out to Gretchen. It’s your aunt,
she said.
Who?
You’re inheriting a house.
She shrugged, then mouthed the words I don’t freaking know
and handed Gretchen the phone.
Hello?
Gretchen said skeptically.
Hello, sweets. This is your great aunt, Esther.
When she heard the low, melodic voice so full of authority, her heart skipped a beat. It sounded so much like her own mother it made her eyes immediately fill with tears. The woman even used her mother’s nickname for her.
You don’t know who I am, do you?
her aunt asked. Did your mother ever tell you about me?
Yes,
Gretchen said, though she was pretty sure that wasn’t true. She struggled to remember anything at all about an aunt Esther. My mother said you . . . ah . . . I remember . . . You were a . . . She wrote you letters.
She groaned inside at how lame that sounded. She racked her brain. Was Aunt Esther an artist of some kind? Was it Aunt Esther who sent that box of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs years ago? Those rare Victorian photographs that her mother had hung in the gallery alongside contemporary work? Suddenly Gretchen was wondering why this was the first she was hearing from Aunt Esther. If she was close to her mother, why didn’t she get in touch when she’d disappeared?
I’m leaving the Axton mansion,
her aunt explained bluntly. There was a strange buzzing sound, more like insects than a bad connection, that seemed to be coming from somewhere on the other line. I don’t want to, but I have to and I need help. Janine can tell you my proposal, but it would require your coming here to Mayville. And soon.
Oh,
Gretchen said. Uh . . .
She turned and glanced at Janine, who was eating ice cream out of the carton with a spoon and looking glassy-eyed at the TV. She thought of Simon, and their plans for the summer, which mostly involved going to all-ages shows down in the Village and talking to boys. Her father wouldn’t even be within cell-phone range for the next three months. The city was hot as hell and the country would be cool and breezy. And she could finally see the mansion she’d only imagined. And what was this about a inheriting a house?
You’re next in line,
Esther said. And Gretchen wondered, embarrassed, if she’d asked the house question out loud.
What?
"There’s only you, Esther said.
After me—there’s only you. I can’t do this by myself, sweets."
Gretchen had always wanted to see the mansion. See where her mother had started out.
Um . . . okay!
she blurted out, surprising herself. Great. That sounds great.
The abruptness of her own decision startled Gretchen and seemed to startle the old woman as well.
Really?
Aunt Esther asked, sounding relieved. Oh! Wonderful! Thank you, thank you. I have a darkroom here, of course, but I suppose you’re all digital now, huh? Well, bring your camera anyway.
I don’t go anywhere without it,
Gretchen said, wondering how this woman even knew she was a photographer or would be interested in a darkroom. The idea of living in the country in an old mansion and taking pictures, being able to develop them herself, was growing on her by the second. It sounded very posh. She could tell kids at Gramercy Arts, where she and Simon went to school, that she was going on an artist’s residency this summer. She could take photographs all day, wander dewy fields of flowers, find a swimming hole . . . Maybe her aunt had a cook or a butler. It was a mansion, after all.
I’ll send a car for you tomorrow,
Esther had said.
Tomorrow?
Gretchen asked.
There an echo in here? Yes. Tomorrow.
Then she abruptly hung up.
Gretchen stood there with the phone in her hand until it started making a loud, low beeping noise; then she also hung up. What did my aunt tell you I’d be doing in Mayville for the summer?
she asked Janine.
She said she needs help moving.
As usual, Janine didn’t think anything strange or exciting was going on. This was Janine’s thing. She had been Gretchen’s mother’s best friend, but she was the total opposite of Gretchen’s mother. Where Mona had been sensitive and passionate about life and art and pretty much everything in the world and even out of this world, Janine was meticulous, orderly, and yet somehow very laid-back. Unflappable
was how Mona used to describe her. She’d worked as a scientist for a pharmaceutical company.
You sure she wasn’t getting high on her own supply?
Simon had asked when he first met Janine. "Seems like she was taking drugs all that time instead of inventing them. Doesn’t she seem a little, uh . . . too calm? Like, permanently calm?"
But Gretchen was sure these were the very qualities that her mother had loved in Janine. Mona had been a kind of cult figure in the art world—Mona Axton Gallery in Chelsea was renowned. She dealt constantly with the woo-woo personalities of the artists who showed in her space, or came to her as an authority on paranormal ephemera—photographs and objects they believed were haunted.
Mona was deeply interested in all things otherworldly, but she also wanted to substantiate these things—make sure they weren’t just made up. Maybe it wasn’t that odd that she’d had a scientist for a best friend, someone who could keep things in check. Once the gallery was doing really well, her parents moved from their creaky walk-up apartment in the East Village, with its strange artifacts and incessant weirdo visitors, to the clean, cool splendor of their place near Central Park. In their new apartment there was more room, a doorman, an amazing view—and wild-eyed photographers didn’t show up at all hours claiming to have seen the ghost of Allen Ginsberg levitating above a tree in Tompkins Square Park. Collectors of Victorian ephemera didn’t show up on the doorstep unannounced trying to sell them necklaces made out of human hair, or haunted objects.
It was six years ago that they’d moved. And four years and eight months since her mother disappeared. Gretchen missed her mother so much she still didn’t know if she would ever be happy again. She had been frightened and worried, then finally she’d felt a terrible mix of guilt-ridden anger, thinking that her mother had left her and her father. She started thinking that couldn’t be true and she was awful to think it—especially if something terrible had happened.
Police searches and private detectives turned up nothing. Mona’s picture was all over town and in the paper. The story of her disappearance was even on a television show about unsolved mysteries. They implied that her close ties to the occult were responsible somehow—like there was some otherworldly mystery to her disappearance.
That stuff in the papers, it’s nonsense,
Janine had told her. There is a logical reason for why people go missing, and we might not know what it is, but it is certainly not because of the work she did with spiritualist photographers. That’s art, Gretchen. Don’t let these people confuse you. Your mother may have been an artist and a spiritualist at heart—but she believed in evidence as much as any scientist.
From then on Janine had taken Gretchen to school, babysat when her father was out. If Gretchen needed special film or art supplies or weird clothes from the thrift store, or anything at all, Janine got it for her. And if Gretchen had a bad day thinking about her mom, Janine would tell her to stay home from school and just hang out. Janine was the queen of hanging out. She’d take Gretchen to movies or ice-skating or on trips upstate to go apple picking.
Do you think Mom’s dead?
Gretchen asked her once.
I don’t,
Janine had said.
Because you have evidence?
Gretchen asked. Because there’s some evidence she’s alive?
At that Janine looked right into her eyes. There’s no evidence one way or the other, but what I feel, what I know about your mom, I think she’s out there somewhere. We just don’t have enough information. And until there is proof otherwise, I choose to believe she’s alive.
Gretchen had wanted to hear that Mona was alive, but once Janine said it, it made her feel worse. The idea that someone had taken her mother and was holding her somewhere was terrifying. But the idea that her mother had simply left them, had walked away and never come back, no good-byes, no explanations—that hurt like a dull throb in her heart.
Janine had seen the pain in her eyes and put her arms around Gretchen.
The truth is,
Janine said, we just don’t know. But you asked me how I feel. And I feel the force of your mother’s life around us. Sometimes you have to follow your gut to get to the proof you’re looking for.
At the apartment, after Aunt Esther’s call, Janine looked right into her eyes again. You sure you want to spend the whole summer upstate in Mayville?
Yeah,
Gretchen said. It sounds like it’ll be a good vacation.
Janine looked a little skeptical. It’ll be interesting, anyway,
she said.
Can I inherit a house if I’m only sixteen?
Gretchen asked.
Sure you can,
Janine said, laying down some Scrabble tiles that spelled the word pickle.
You just can’t do anything with it yet.
The next day Gretchen barely had