by Bryan Davis
The glow vanished. At the room’s intersection to the hallway, a shadowy figure appeared, a female adult judging by the shape. When she turned toward me, moonlight shone on her face and long hair—Francine. She walked in, stopped at the foot of the sofa, and leaned close to Marc. Apparently satisfied that he was asleep, she retreated on tiptoes toward the kitchen. Dressed in her Joan of Arc trousers and a man’s work shirt, she appeared ready for rough duty, perhaps primitive travel.
Seconds later, the back door opened and closed. I put my shoes on and followed. When I exited, I searched the alleyway. Perhaps three blocks to the left, Francine walked at a rapid pace toward the main street on that side.
Keeping my footfalls quiet, I jogged in pursuit. As I closed in, an unlit lantern in her hand came into view. With moonlight so bright and gas streetlamps not far away, the lantern’s need was not yet clear. When I drew within half a block, I slowed to her pace, again careful to maintain silence.
Upon reaching the street, she turned left and accelerated. Again I followed but allowed a greater distance between us in case my presence had already raised an alarm.
Soon, she walked to a cemetery gate. I ducked behind a bush and peeked around the edge. When she opened the gate, she looked back with darting eyes. After another moment, she entered the grounds.
Once again I followed, now on a winding path that led us past tombstones, monuments, and various mausolea. An owl hooted, giving me cause to duck behind a tombstone when Francine stopped and looked around. Twice more I had to hide as various noises incited halts and nervous scans of the graveyard. Yet, she kept the lantern dark, perhaps to make herself as invisible as possible.
After a few minutes, she stopped at a mausoleum—a relatively unornamented stone structure with only a pair of columns framing a head-high entry. She grasped an iron ring on the door and pulled, but it held fast. She plucked something from her shirt and looked at it. Standing perhaps fifteen feet away, I could tell that it was an ornament of some kind, likely the brooch she had so desperately searched for at the school’s ruins.
She opened the brooch, withdrew a small key, and inserted it into the mausoleum’s door. When it turned, she again pulled the ring. As the hefty door shifted, she leaned back and gritted her teeth. Inch by inch, the rectangular block dragged outward, making a grinding noise. The moment the gap grew large enough for entry, she stopped, struck a match, lit her lantern, and slipped inside.
I leaped from behind the bush and ran to the door. Slowly, ever so slowly, I eased my head around the door’s edge and peeked inside. Francine knelt with her back to me and leaned over a white sarcophagus—a small stone coffin, perhaps a child’s.
She set the lantern on the floor and turned up the wick, shedding more light in the cubical room. The walls were plain, without carvings or ornaments. Wispy cobwebs, long abandoned, dangled at upper corners, swaying in a drowsy dance aroused by renewed air.
Francine set her hands on the coffin’s lid and slid it toward the side. As another grinding noise ensued, I crept in and stood against a wall, behind her and to her left.
When she set the lid down, she looked inside the coffin. I dared a step closer and peered in. A child lay on dark velvet. Long, blonde hair and a lacy white dress indicated a girl, about six to eight years old, judging by her size. From my vantage point, her withered face seemed mostly intact, though dark splotches, perhaps mold, marred her cheek and forehead. Since I had no idea whether or not she had been embalmed, I couldn’t guess how long she had been in this crypt.
Francine unpinned a brooch from the girl’s dress and hooked it back to back with the one she already had. She then withdrew a small book from her dress’s pocket and laid it on the edge of the coffin. As she held the book open with one hand, she waved the combined brooches over the dead girl’s face while reading out loud in Gaelic.
Mother, I had not heard your native tongue spoken since your lullabies caressed me to sleep too many years ago. You sang with ardor and passion that is birthed by experience, years of life on the green island. In contrast, Francine sang as one ignorant of the language, simply reciting words on a page, even mispronouncing some, though she managed to stumble through the verses with a modicum of meter.
Unfortunately, as I translate here, I am unable to reproduce the author’s rhyme and meter scheme. Yet, here it is, reproduced to the best of my memory with an added dash of syllabic orientation and rhyme of my own.
Child of mayhem
Born in chaos
Destroyed by cruel hands
Shed your nightglow
On the moonstones
Reveal your secret plans
When she finished, the combined ornaments emanated a greenish glow that provided a view of her hands and face. She smiled in a childlike way, fascinated, mesmerized. The juvenile aspect seemed eerie, as if she had taken on the dead child’s expression—chilling, to say the least.
A whisper entered my ear. “She’s a witch.”
Chapter Eleven
I looked to my side. Jean stood next to me, his stare locked on Francine.
As if startled by the whisper, she disconnected the brooches, slid them and the book into her pocket, and reached for the coffin lid.
I grasped Jean’s hand and hurried outside. We rushed around the corner of the mausoleum and set our backs against the wall. I peeked at the door. Francine emerged, the lantern again dark. She pushed the door closed, pulled the key from its lock, and jogged down the path in the direction we had come.
I crouched next to Jean. Moonlight illuminated his cherubic face. “What are you doing here?”
“I followed you. I don’t trust her.”
“You don’t trust her? Do you mean you’re trying to protect me from her?”
“Yes. Witches are dangerous.”
“She’s not a witch,” I said, though her actions seemed to contradict my words. “I have to hurry back to the house before Francine gets there. She might lock me out.”
“I know a shorter way.” He took off in a trot.
I followed at the same pace. When we reached a fork in the path, he led me on the narrower of the two options, a trail covered by vines that, in the shifting shadows, raised images of crawling vipers. I trained my stare on Jean and ran, driven by fear, not of snakes but that Francine might be drawn into some sort of dark arts that could endanger her well-being.
Michael’s warning returned to mind. A shadow of evil lurked in Francine’s home. And I was a guest there, a vulnerable spectator who had to feign ignorance of her secrets.
When Jean and I arrived at the house well ahead of Francine, we crept past Marc and into my room. I closed the door with a quiet click and listened. A few minutes later, footsteps approached, light and quick. They halted at my door.
As silent as death, I slid into bed, pulled Jean with me, and covered our bodies, including Jean’s head. I kept my face uncovered and closed my eyes, though I allowed a slit to remain open.
A light appeared at the door, Francine carrying the lantern, now relit. She walked in, set the lantern on the floor, and withdrew the brooches, again combined. The green aura shone more eerily than ever—ghostly, demonic.
As she set the brooches close to my face, a sound filtered into my ears, the distant wailing of a frightened little girl, perhaps lost or grief stricken.
I steeled myself to keep from trembling. Francine’s eyes moved from side to side, her expression nervous, anxious. After a moment, she breathed a relieved sigh and returned the brooches to her pocket, dousing the ghastly glow and silencing the forlorn child. Then she rushed out of the room and closed the door.
Again in near darkness, I threw the covers back and climbed out of bed with Jean. My hands trembling, I withdrew Michael’s black candle and the matches from my pocket and lit the wick. The flame sputtered before rising tall and burning brightly.
“My master’s candle,” Jean whispered as he stared. “Why do you have it?”
I bypassed the whole truth, that I w
as summoning Michael, and whispered in return, “He lent it to me.”
“You’ll shorten our lives.” Jean blew out the flame. When my vision readjusted to the renewed darkness, his sincere countenance returned to view. His eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m not ready yet.”
“Not ready? What do you mean?”
“Like my master tells me, I still have darkness in my heart. I want to kill people. Like Francine.”
“Because you think she’s a witch?”
His eyes narrowed. “Of course she’s a witch. You saw what she did. You heard the dead girl’s cries, didn’t you?”
“I heard, and I’m not sure what it all means, but I intend to find out.” I set a hand on his shoulder. “Will you help me?”
He nodded. “But I wonder what she was doing with that light. Will her witchcraft affect you?”
“I suffered no ill effects, I assure you. Besides the odd sounds, it was merely a light.”
“A witch’s victims sometimes never know, especially when she is hoping to addle their minds.”
“Nonsense. If anything, the frightening experience has fully cleared my mind.” I lifted my hand. “In any case, if memory serves, Madame Noël has a family tree diagram hanging on her bedroom wall. I would like to examine it without Francine knowing. She probably went to bed, so I don’t expect her to interrupt, but you can help me watch and listen for her.”
Jean nodded again. “I can do that.”
“Then follow without a sound.” I found the room’s candlestick and lit its nearly spent candle. Guided by its bare glow, I opened the door and padded toward the house’s master bedroom with Jean at my heels. As I had hoped, he made no noise at all, perhaps because he was really a ghost, a fact I had pushed from my thoughts until this moment. His deathly quiet presence added to a chill that rode across my skin.
When we arrived, I found the door ajar and pushed it open. The aroma of scented wax wafted past, as if someone had burned perfumed candles in recent days. After pushing the door to its original position, I walked to the adjacent wall on the left and lifted the candle close to a framed drawing—the Noël family tree.
Printed names, as well as dates of birth and death, ran along a tree-like shape. It took only a moment to find Marc and Francine near the top. A quick trace down the tree revealed their father, Henri, their paternal grandfather, Adolphe, and his wife, Claire—born in Killarney, Ireland, and died in Marseille, France. Adolphe died at the age of forty-seven, making Claire a widow a month before her forty-second birthday.
I scanned other names, searching for a girl who died young. Retracing up the branches revealed a third child of Jacqueline Noël—Siobhan, an older sister to Marc and Francine. She died at the age of seven, a year before Marc was born. Maybe she was the girl in the crypt.
I read the birth years again—Siobhan in 1830, Marc in 1838, and Francine in 1840—an eight-year gap between the first and second child. Their father died in 1849, a fact I already knew. He had been a victim of that year’s cholera epidemic. Yet, my recollections told me that he and Madame Noël had been married twelve years when he died, placing their wedding in 1837, the same year Siobhan died. Had Madame Noël been married before? If so, the tree gave no such indication.
And Siobhan was an Irish name. Why would they choose it?
I held the candle closer to Siobhan’s entry. Unlike the connections between the other two children and their parents, no line attached Siobhan to any parentage, as if she were hovering on the tree with no support—an orphan, separated and lost.
A new tingle ran along my skin. The candle’s light pulsed, and the sound of shallow respiration reached my ears.
Jean whispered, “I hear someone breathing.”
Without a word, I tiptoed to the door and set my ear next to the gap. No sound emanated from the hallway. The breathing was coming from somewhere in the bedroom. I spun and lifted the candle high, shifting it from left to right as I scanned the area from wall to wall. The bed sat with its covers undisturbed, and every piece of furniture, from a tall dresser to a full-length mirror, stood where I had always seen them.
My heart thumped, now much louder than any competing sound. Although no other humans were in sight, someone could easily hide under the bed or in the shadows. I had no desire to search for the mysterious breather. Whoever this person was, living or dead, he or she could stay hidden.
In a rush, I opened the door and, taking Jean by the hand, walked with long, silent steps to my bedroom. When we entered, I closed the door and leaned against it, now heaving shallow breaths myself.
Jean looked up at me. “Are you scared?”
I swallowed and gave him a nod. “Aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “What is there to be scared of?”
“The breathing. It sounded like …” I was about to mention the possibility of a ghostly presence, but his unearthly bright eyes reminded me that I had been accompanied by a ghost all along. “Well, I suppose it felt like a stranger lurked in our midst, and I wasn’t certain of his or her intentions.”
“I don’t think she wanted to hurt us.”
“She? A woman?”
“A girl. Maybe my age.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her. Didn’t you?”
“No.” I pushed away from the door. “Where was she? What was she doing?”
“Standing by the bed, looking at us.”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
“But you heard her breathing, so you know she was there.”
“Was she a ghost?”
He nodded. “Like me, I think. Only maybe she hasn’t learned how to be visible to you.”
“Interesting.” I narrowed my eyes. “Do ghosts also have to learn how to manipulate physical objects?”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You have a physical presence. I held your hand. You can move objects. Do you have to learn how to be physical?”
“Not really. When we’re visible, we’re … solid. If that’s what you mean. Sometimes we can be sort of visible and not solid.”
“Transparent?”
He offered another nod.
I stooped and looked him in the eye. “Jean, tell me what you saw the night Madame Noël was hanged. You said you’re innocent, but since you can see things I can’t, maybe you can tell me more about what happened.”
Jean averted his gaze. After a moment of silence, he looked again at me, his eyes awash in tears. “I said I didn’t do it, but I really don’t know if I did or not.”
“You don’t know? How could you not know?”
A deeper voice replied. “Because Jean forgets what he does during his bouts of rage.” Michael stood at the door, hands folded at his waist, his body semitransparent. “He truly doesn’t know if he was involved in the killing.”
I touched my chest. “Why does he believe that I am not the murderer?”
“Jean is putting his heart into one of his lessons, which is, in the absence of damning evidence, to believe an accused person who claims innocence. To err on the side of mercy.”
“I see.”
Michael became fully visible and grasped Jean’s hand. “You must come with me. We are too close to success and too close to our deadline to abandon your lessons now.”
“When is your deadline?” I asked.
“As I told you before, when the candle is spent.” He extended his hand. “May I have it, please?”
I withdrew the black candle from my pocket and set it in his palm. “When Jean runs away,” I said, “you have to use the candle to search for him. He shortens his own life. That makes no sense.”
“True, but people often act in ways that bring about their own demise, do they not?” Michael raised a hand. Like fog rolling along a meadow, glowing mist spread across the floor. People appeared as if formed from the mist—drunken men fighting in a bar while scantily dressed prostitutes looked on, laughing. “Look at these pitiful souls. Are they considering tomorrow? The next
day? Where will they end? Although they see the results of their perilous behaviors in cemeteries throughout the city, they carry on as if the evidence has no import. Momentary pleasure outweighs time-tested wisdom, and they rush to their graves as if eager for eternal darkness.”
I let out a sigh. “I suppose you’re right. People can be blind.”
“And yet Jean has no such examples. Although he gives lip service to the dire prophecy about the candle, he has never seen someone perish at the dousing of a flaming wick or at the dripping of a final dram of wax. Experience is not his teacher, so he must rely on words and the integrity of those who speak them.”
“Such as yourself.”
Michael nodded. “And I taught him in the catacombs, which is far from an ideal learning environment. He sees only death in that place, nothing that promotes the value of life. That’s why we moved to the abandoned schoolhouse not long ago. Jean progressed much better there, and his moments of rage diminished substantially.”
“Was the same true for Pierre?”
A light knock sounded at the bedroom door. “Justin?” Francine said from the other side. “May I come in?”
I stiffened, unable to come up with a response.
“We will take our leave,” Michael whispered as he and Jean faded into transparency.
“Jean,” I whispered, “tell Michael about what we saw at the crypt and in the bedroom.”
After Jean nodded, they disappeared. My muscles tightened further. I had to clear my throat with great force just to squeak, “Come in.”
The door opened. Now wearing a house dress and carrying a lit candelabrum, Francine bustled in and closed the door behind her in hurried motions. After setting the light on the bedside table, she faced me and looked into my eyes. “We’re alone,” she said in a breathless whisper.
I looked at the closed door. Barely able to breathe myself, I fumbled through my response. “Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“I heard voices.” She glanced around. “Yours and someone else’s.”