by John Saul
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Trying to make a bridle for Whitesock."
Michael frowned. "Who's Whitesock?"
"Magic's colt. He's got one white stocking, so we named him Whitesock. I found this old bridle, and if I can make it small enough, I can start training him."
"Where is he?"
"Out in the pasture behind the barn."
"Can I go play with him?"
Eric shrugged. "I guess so. But he probably won't play very much. Today's the first time he's been away from Magic, and he's kinda skittish."
A few minutes later, Michael was staring over the pasture fence. Just yards away, the colt stared back at him through large, suspicious eyes.
"Hi, Whitesock," Michael said softly, and the colt's ears twitched interestedly. "Come on, boy. Come over here." He reached down and tore up a fistful of grass, then held it out toward the colt. "Want something to eat?"
The colt took a step forward, then quickly changed its mind and backed away. Michael frowned, and shook the grass. The colt wheeled around and trotted across the pasture, then finally stopped to look back at Michael.
Grinning, Michael scrambled through the barbed wire fence and began walking toward the colt, holding the grass out in front of him. "It's okay, Whitesock. It's good. Come on, boy. I'm not going to hurt you."
But when he was still a few yards away, the colt once more bolted and ran off to the far corner of the pasture.
Michael was about to follow the horse once again when he felt something brush against him. He looked down to see Shadow, his tail wagging happily, crouched eagerly at his feet. "You want to help, Shadow?" The dog let out a joyful yelp and jumped to his feet. "Okay, let's sneak up on him. Come on."
Slowly, the boy and the dog approached the colt, and this time Michael was careful to do nothing that might spook the little horse. He moved only a few feet at a time, pausing often to let the colt get used to him. Shadow, seeming to sense what his master was doing, stayed close to Michael, matching his movements almost perfectly.
Finally, when they were only a few feet away from the horse, Michael began speaking quietly, as he'd heard Eric do when he was calming Magic. "Easy, Whitesock. Easy, boy. No one's going to hurt you. Look." Slowly he raised his hand, offering the colt a taste of the grass. "It's food, Whitesock. Come on. Try it." Michael inched closer, and Whitesock tensed, his eyes fixed on Michael, his right forepaw nervously scraping the ground. Again Michael moved toward the horse, freezing when the colt's head came up and he seemed to be seeking a means of escape.
At last when he was only a foot from the colt, he reached out and gently brushed the grass against Whitesock's muzzle.
And then, from the other side of the fence, Eric's voice broke the quiet Michael had been maintaining. "Hey! Whatcha doing?"
Startled, the colt reared up, his forelegs striking out at Michael. But before the horse's hooves could come in contact with the boy, Shadow had hurled himself against Michael, knocking him to the ground and out of the way of Whitesock's flailing legs. Michael rolled away from the frightened horse, then got to his feet as Whitesock broke into a gallop and dashed across the field, Shadow behind him.
"Shadow!" Michael yelled, and the dog instantly came to a stop, turning to stare back at Michael. "It's okay, boy. Come on. Come back here!" Obediently, the dog began trotting back.
"What were you tryin' to do?" Eric demanded.
"It was your fault!" Michael shot back. "I was just trying to make friends with him. I was giving him some grass, but you scared him when you yelled."
"Well, you shouldn't've been in there at all!"
Stung, Michael glowered at Eric, and his head began to throb with the familiar pain. "You said I could play with him."
"I thought you'd have enough brains to stay out of the pasture. What do you know about horses?"
"I didn't get hurt, did I? And I wasn't even scared!"
"Just get out of the field, and let me take care of him, all right?" Then, ignoring Michael's protestations, Eric climbed through the fence, and holding the bridle in his left hand, started toward the colt.
His headache growing, Michael watched as Eric began working his way toward the colt, weaving back and forth across the field, countering each of Whitesock's moves with one of his own. Slowly, he began trapping the colt in one corner of the field.
Finally, he moved in on the frightened animal and tried to slip the bridle over the colt's head. Whitesock jerked at the last second and avoided the harness straps.
Once again, Eric made a move to bridle the horse, but again Whitesock ducked away at the last second. But this time, instead of trying to move away from Eric, he reared up and struck out. Eric dodged the flying hooves, but tripped and stumbled to the ground.
Horrified, Michael watched as the colt danced for a moment on his hind legs, then came down to glare angrily at Eric, who was rolling away at the same time he was trying to scramble to his feet.
He's gonna kill him, Michael thought. He's gonna trample him. Suddenly his vision blurred, and Michael's senses filled with the smell of smoke. And he heard a voice in his head.
"Kill him."
Obeying the voice without thinking, Michael focused his mind on the colt.
Die, he thought. Die. Die. Die…
The colt seemed to freeze for a moment, then with an anguished whinny, rose up once again on his hind legs, his forelegs flailing as if at an unseen enemy. Finally, as Eric got to his feet and began backing away from the terrified colt, Whitesock crumpled to the ground. He lay still, his eyes open, his breathing stopped.
Michael's vision cleared, and his headache faded away. The smoky odor disappeared, too, and all he could smell now was the sweetness of the fresh grass in the pasture. Shadow sat at his feet, whining softly. Michael gazed across the field, unsure of what had happened.
"Eric?" he called. "You okay?"
There was a moment of silence, then Eric turned around to stare at him. "He's dead," Eric said. "He's just lying there, and he's dead."
Michael's eyes shifted from Eric to the colt, and he knew his friend's words were true.
And he also knew that somehow he had done it.
Somehow, while his head was hurting and his vision was blurred, he'd made Whitesock die.
His eyes filling with tears, he backed slowly away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Supper was over, a supper during which much of the conversation had centered on what had happened in the Simpsons' pasture that afternoon. In the end, though, Leif Simpson had put an end to the discussion. "The colt just died," he had said. "It doesn't really matter much why it died. The point is that if it hadn't, it might have hurt Eric pretty bad. So I guess we might just as well chalk it up to providence. It was God looking after Eric, and that's that."
Michael, who had taken little part in the discussion, said nothing, though he didn't believe what Eric's father had said. He'd thought about it all afternoon, and no matter what anybody said, he knew that somehow he'd made the colt die. He hadn't wanted to—all he'd wanted to do was help Eric—but still, he'd done it.
And he couldn't tell anybody. For one thing, no one would believe him. And he couldn't say how he'd done it, because he didn't know. Sighing inaudibly, he decided it was one more thing he could never talk about.
As Janet and Ione attacked the dishes, the two boys headed upstairs toward Michael's room. But when they came to the landing, Eric stopped, gazing up at the trapdoor to the attic. "What's up there?"
"I don't know," Michael replied, his mind still on the colt. "Nothing, I guess."
"Why don't we go up and look?"
A moment later Michael had dragged a chair from his room and climbed up on it. He was barely able to reach the folding ladder that gave the attic its only access. It creaked angrily as he pulled it down, but when he tested his weight on it, it seemed secure enough. He climbed up and pushed at the trapdoor. It stuck for a moment, then gave way, dropping a shower of dust on him. Michael poked his he
ad through the trapdoor.
"Go down and ask Mom for a flashlight," he told Eric. "It's too dark to see anything."
Five minutes later Eric crowded up behind Michael, flashlight in hand. "Let me see."
"Give me the light," Michael replied. "It's my attic, and I get to look first."
Reluctantly, Eric passed the light over, and Michael switched it on, throwing a weak beam into the blackness of the attic. "Wow," he breathed. "It's all full of old crates." He scrambled up into the attic, and Eric followed. "What do you think's in 'em?"
Eric shrugged in the gloom. "Let's get my dad and bring them down."
Fifteen minutes later, the contents of the attic had been transferred to the living room. There were five crates: old pine boxes held together with hand-forged nails, their boards dry and brittle, shrunken with age. The last thing they brought down was an ancient trunk, and when Leif Simpson had deposited it, too, in the living room, the six of them gathered around, staring at the strange collection. Peggy Simpson, with the curiosity of her two years, was busily trying to open one of the boxes with her stubby fingers.
"Do you have a hammer and screwdriver?" Leif eventually asked. "We'll never find out what's in them if we count on Peg."
Michael found the tools in the kitchen drawer that had already been established as a catchall. "Which one first? The trunk?"
"Let's save it for last," Janet suggested. "Let's do the boxes first."
"They're crates," Michael corrected. "Boxes are made of cardboard."
"Never mind," Janet replied. "Just open them."
One by one, Michael and Eric began prying the lids off the crates. The first one was filled with old china, thin and delicate, with an ornate floral pattern done in pink against a white background.
Janet picked up one of the plates, examining it carefully. "I know what this is," she said. "It's French. My grandmother had some of this." She flipped it over. On the back, faint but distinct, was the Limoges mark.
"It's ugly," Michael pronounced, already beginning to pry at the second crate.
Janet and Ione exchanged a knowing look. "It may be ugly, but it's valuable," Janet said. Then, as she passed one of the plates to Ione, the lid came off the second crate, revealing a cache of battered cookware.
"That's old, but I don't think I'd call it valuable," Leif Simpson remarked, holding up a badly dented tin coffeepot with a hole in the bottom. "Why would anyone keep this?"
In the third crate there was a wooden toolchest, bereft of its contents, and the fourth produced a mass of old linens, rotted with age, which crumbled in their hands as they tried to pick them up. Finally Michael pried the lid off the fifth crate.
"My God," Janet whispered. "Look at it. Just look at it."
"Wow." Eric reached out and touched an elaborately tooled coffeepot. "Is it real?"
Inside the box, wrapped in disintegrating paper, was a large set of sterling: the coffeepot, a matching teapot, creamer and sugar bowl, and a tray to hold them all. Below the coffee service they found a condiment caster, each of its silver-topped glass cruets and pots carefully wrapped. In a separate box, there was a set of silver flatware, all of it as heavily decorated as the coffee set. The value of the china faded into insignificance as Janet assessed the silver.
Suddenly the sound of Michael's voice echoing Eric penetrated Janet's mind. "Is it real?"
"It's real," Janet assured them.
"Maybe it's plate," Ione Simpson suggested.
Janet shook her head. "It's not plate. It's sterling, and it couldn't have been made much after 1820."
"How can you tell?"
Janet smiled wryly. "One of my hobbies over the last few years has been drooling over things like this in stores on Madison Avenue. Believe me, I know what this is."
"But whose is it?" Eric suddenly asked.
Michael threw him a scornful look. "It's ours, stupid. It's our house, isn't it?"
Eric ignored him. "But where'd it come from?"
"I don't know," Janet said softly. One by one, she picked the pieces up, examining them carefully. Though they were heavily tarnished, she could find no dents or scratches, and none of the sets seemed to have pieces missing. "But I think Michael's probably right. If they've been in the attic as long as I think they have, they're probably ours." Suddenly, her anticipation heightened by the discovery of the silver, she turned to the trunk. "Pry it open, Michael. Maybe it's full of gold!"
Five minutes later, with some help from Leif Simpson, the old locks gave way, and the boys lifted the lid. Their first feeling was one of disappointment—the trunk seemed to be filled with nothing but old clothing. Carefully, Janet and Ione lifted out garment after garment, all of it seeming primitive in contrast to the silver and china. The materials were coarse homespuns, and much of the stitching was inexpertly done. Below the clothes—mostly dresses and shirts—there was a tray containing some shoes, a few pairs of rotted cotton hose, and some moth-eaten woolen socks. Below the tray, more clothes.
Buried at the bottom, Janet found a book. She took it out of the trunk and held it under a lamp. It was a small volume, bound in leather, with a leather strap held fast by a small gold clasp. The clasp was locked, but when Janet gently tugged at the strap, it easily tore away.
"Damn," she swore softly, immediately regretting the curiosity that had caused her to damage the volume. Gingerly, she opened the cover. The first page was blank, but starting with the second, the pages were filled with an uncertain script, done mostly in black ink. Janet glanced up, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to her. Instead, they were engrossed in examining the contents of the various boxes. Ione was carefully sorting the silver, while her husband unwrapped the china. Peggy had found a wooden spoon, and was happily beating on the bottom of a rusted pan, while the boys examined the trunk, in search of a secret compartment.
Impulsively, Janet turned to the last page of the diary. The script seemed to her to be particularly shaky, as if the writer had been ill or nervous about something. Slowly, she deciphered the old-fashioned penmanship:
March, 1884—Spring comes, and it is almost over. Nathaniel and I still live, but when they find out what Nathaniel has done, I am sure they will kill him. In the meantime, though, my baby grows inside me, and it is better that some of us live than that all of us die. I have decided to tell them a man came for the children, and though they will not believe me, and will think me daft, perhaps it will save Nathaniel—all that matters now is that Nathaniel and my unborn child survive.
Janet reread the passage several times, and then slowly closed the little book. She held it in her lap, staring at it. A moment later her eyes drifted to Michael. As if feeling her gaze, he turned and looked at her, as did Ione Simpson. It was Ione who spoke.
"What is it?"
"It's nothing," Janet replied. "Just an old diary."
Janet let Shadow out the back door, and watched as he disappeared into the darkness, intent on making his evening rounds of the little farm. Then, knowing the dog wouldn't be back for a while, she went upstairs, tapped on Michael's door, and stuck her head into his room. He was in bed, his head propped up on his left hand, reading.
"Where's Shadow?" he asked.
"Prowling," Janet told him. She sat on the edge of Michael's bed and took his hand. "I want to talk to you about something," she said.
Michael looked nervous, but didn't turn away. "A-about what I saw?"
Janet nodded. "And about what you said about that little girl—Becky—today. That you think someone killed her and buried her in Potter's Field. What made you say that, honey?"
Suddenly Michael's eyes filled with terror. "I—I can't tell you. I—I promised not to tell anybody."
"Not even me?"
Michael nervously twisted the bedcovers in his clenched fist.
"Please?"
"You won't tell anyone? Anyone at all?"
Sensing that her son's fright was genuine, Janet promised.
"I—I lied to you," Michael sa
id at last, his voice quavering.
"Why would you want to do that?"
"I was scared."
"Of me?"
Michael shook his head.
"Of Grandpa?"
"I—I'm not sure. I guess so."
Janet reached out and gently removed the bedclothes from Michael's hand. "Why don't you tell me what really happened?"
Slowly, Michael began telling his mother as much as he could remember of what had happened that night.
"And on the way home, I saw something," he finished. "But it wasn't Abby."
"Then what was it?" Janet pressed.
"It was Nathaniel," Michael whispered. "I saw Nathaniel, and I talked to him, and I saw someone else, too, but I'm not sure who it was."
Janet swallowed. A knot of tension had formed in her stomach. "You saw Nathaniel, and you were talking to him," she repeated.
Michael hesitated, then nodded in the darkness.
"But Nathaniel's just like Abby. He doesn't exist, honey. He's only a ghost."
"Maybe—maybe he's not," Michael ventured. In his memory, Dr. Potter's words returned, the words with which he'd described Nathaniel: 'He looked like you, and he looked like your father…'
"All right," Janet said patiently, still unsure of exactly what Michael was trying to say. "Let's assume Nathaniel isn't a ghost. What did he say that scared you so much?"
Michael racked his brain, trying to remember what Nathaniel had said, the exact words. But they were gone; all that was left were the warnings. And a vague memory. "He—he said they'd brought us something. A—a baby."
"A baby?" Janet repeated, unable to keep her incredulity out of her voice.
Again Michael nodded. "They were burying it out in the field."
Janet's heart began to pound. "What field?"
"The one down near the woods by the river. Potter's Field."
"And you think it was Aunt Laura's baby they were burying?"