by J. S. Volpe
“Hamilton raced along the riverbank, scanning the storm-churned water for any sign of Olive. He found her limp, sodden corpse washed up by the mouth of the cave he had dynamited shut nine years earlier. The coroner’s examination of the body the following day confirmed that she had drowned.”
“But if she was so weak she could barely sit up in bed, how could she make it all the way to the river?” Calvin asked.
“The coroner’s hypothesis—and though it has its flaws, I can see no reason to doubt it—was that the violence of the storm had agitated her enough to provide a brief and final burst of strength that enabled her to stagger away in search of the music she often claimed to hear.”
“That’s…creepy,” said Cynthia.
“Indeed it is,” Mr. May said. “Actually, I have to admit, I’m a little surprised you haven’t already heard about any of this.”
“I don’t know, I guess no one in my family is very big on genealogy. I mean, I know we co-owned the brewery and we were kind of hot stuff in the community way back when, but that’s really about it. Oh, and we had a mayor. Stephen. Was that the same Stephen who was Olive’s brother?”
Mr. May nodded. “Yes. Stephen Crow. He was the mayor of May during most of the first decade of the 20th Century. There isn’t much to say about him, to be honest. At least not vis-à-vis our topic of discussion. Nor is there much more to say about his contemporary, James May. It’s their children who are of interest to us. Or rather one child of each: Anna May and Randolph Crow.”
“Randolph was the painter, right?” Calvin said, nodding at Door.
“Correct. And despite what you’ve seen so far, his favorite subject was not doors or medieval throne rooms. It was his neighbor and peer, Anna May. Which isn’t much of a surprise. She was a beautiful girl with long chestnut hair and dark-brown eyes. Like Olive Crow, she often visited the woods, but unlike Olive she was full of life, preferring to climb trees and chase squirrels than sit reading by the river. More than once she was compared to some Greek nature spirit, and such was her beauty and grace that nearly every eligible young man in town took a shot at wooing her, all to no avail. Anna dismissed them all without a second thought. She preferred to spend her time with Randolph Crow.
“Tall and slim, with black hair and dark eyes, Randolph was a brilliant painter whose canvases typically depicted fantastical scenes from mythology and folklore painted in a photorealistic style. Randolph’s artistic bent was a source of constant irritation to his more prosaic-minded father, who had hoped his eldest son would follow him into the family business. But even Stephen had to admit that Randolph was a gifted artist.
“When they were children, Randolph and Anna often spent whole days together in the woods, exploring, swimming in the river, and pursuing hapless squirrels. As they got older and hit puberty, their meetings grew less frolicsome and more cerebral. Where once they played, now they just walked and talked for hours on end. Sometimes Randolph would set up his easel in the woods and Anna would pose for him while he painted her as some white-clad woodland spirit. As I mentioned earlier, I have two more of his paintings upstairs. Both of them feature Anna May. Perhaps I can show them to you later, if there’s time.
“Randolph and Anna seemed perfectly matched and clearly preferred each other’s company to that of anyone else. It seemed all but certain that the couple would take their relationship to the next level, and both sets of parents eagerly awaited an announcement of Randolph and Anna’s engagement. But no announcement ever came. And as time wore on, everyone wondered why. Admittedly, Randolph and Anna were free-spirited sorts, not given to conventional mores, but it still seemed odd that such a well-matched pair would keep their relationship purely platonic.”
“Maybe it wasn’t platonic, but they were keeping it secret for some reason,” Calvin said, unable to refrain from glancing at Cynthia.
Cynthia frowned. “Maybe they just weren’t interested in—in taking things to the next level. I mean, is everyone sure she was—or him, too—that they were heterosexual? Maybe she liked girls, or he liked guys. Or both. Or maybe they just didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship.”
“But they wouldn’t spend that much time together if there wasn’t some kind of, you know, interest,” Calvin said.
“What, you think men and women can’t be friends?”
“I…” Calvin squirmed. “I don’t know. It’s just, you have to admit the relationship between the two of them was…unusual.”
Cynthia wobbled her head about in a sort of grudging nod. “I guess. But that doesn’t make it wrong.”
“I didn’t say it was wrong. I said it was unusual.”
Mr. May, who had been watching all this with interest, now interjected, “Fascinating as this little debate may be, we should move on.”
“Sorry,” Calvin and Cynthia said in unison.
“So what happened next?” Cynthia asked.
“Next came the influenza pandemic of 1918.”
“Uh-oh,” she said. She and Calvin glanced at each other. “This isn’t gonna be good, is it?”
“Not even slightly. I don’t know how much you know about the pandemic, but it was devastating. I believe I read somewhere that it killed around five percent of the entire world population. The United States was hit particularly hard in the fall of 1918. As the plague swept the country, people died faster than they could be buried. For a while it looked as though May would escape the worst of it: There had been only a few cases of the flu, and the town had adopted strict measures to keep it that way—restricting travel, quarantining suspected carriers, even prohibiting people from spitting on the sidewalks. But in late September the town was hit hard. Hundreds died in only a few weeks. Businesses shut down. People locked themselves in their homes.
“At the height of the epidemic in mid-October, Anna May fell ill. The hospitals were full, so she was treated at home by a local doctor. Though she was supposed to be under quarantine, Randolph visited her every day. He fed her, read to her, talked to her, hoping that his love and care would help her. But her condition only worsened, and it soon became clear that she was dying.
“Randolph channeled his anguish and rage into a new painting. When not at Anna’s bedside, he locked himself in his workroom in the basement of the Crow house and worked furiously without food or sleep. He wouldn’t let anyone see the painting before its completion. He said he was creating it only for Anna and would give it to her before she died. No one thought he would be able to finish it in time, but the manic, obsessive pace at which he worked ensured he did.
“When he presented it to her, hanging it on the wall opposite her bed so she could look at it, members of both families braved the risk of infection to view it.”
Mr. May half turned in his seat and pointed at Door.
“That’s the painting.”
“Wow,” Calvin said. He and Cynthia stared at it with something approaching awe.
“Randolph told the assembled Mays and Crows that the painting represented a doorway to a better world. Anna smiled weakly and whispered, ‘It’s perfect.’ Those were the last words she ever spoke.
“Less than half an hour later, she slipped into a coma. It was as if she had been waiting to see the painting before allowing her illness to make its final advance. The doctor was called but there was nothing he could do. She died a few hours later without regaining consciousness. When the doctor pronounced her dead, Randolph stared silently at his painting for several minutes, then strode out of the house. Everyone assumed he was heading off to mourn alone, but a few minutes later a gunshot rang out in the woods to the north of the house. After a short, frantic search, they found Randolph slumped against the Stone Pillar. He had shot himself in the head with one of his father’s revolvers.
“The May and Crow burial plots in Indian Hill Cemetery adjoined each other, and the families arranged for Randolph and Anna to be buried side by side.
“This particular tragedy marked the beginning of a long, bad peri
od. In the wake of Randolph and Anna’s deaths came Prohibition, which forced the brewery to close and threw the two families and the town itself into a steep economic decline. Just when things were starting to pick up again the Stock Market crashed and the Depression hit. The Mays and Crows weren’t wiped out, exactly—they were still better off than most of Depression-era America—but their glory days were over. But none of that is relevant to our specific line of inquiry.”
“It isn’t?” Cynthia said. “I mean, they were still bad events that befell the families, right? Isn’t that the common thread of all this?”
“Not exactly,” Mr. May said. He looked at Calvin. “Have you discerned the pattern?”
“Um…” Calvin shrugged.
“Well, we’ll discuss it later. For now, let me finish up. We’re nearly done, actually. There isn’t much else to say about my family. Michael May, Anna’s brother, lived a quiet, peaceful life, got married, begat yours truly, and then passed away. And as for me…well, we’ll discuss that later, too.
“Turning now to the Crows: Randolph’s brother Alexander begat Hardesty—”
“That was my grandpa!” Cynthia said. “Finally someone I know.”
“And Hardesty begat you father and your aunt Wendy. It’s your aunt who is the final focus of this long, strange history. Or rather, her and her husband.”
Cynthia goggled at him. “What are you talking about? She’s not married!”
“Not anymore. Not after her husband Eugene died.”
“Who?”
Mr. May cocked his head. “You don’t know any of this?”
“No!” She sank down in her seat, shoulders slumping. “Nobody tells me anything!”
“Well, since Wendy is still alive, it’s no doubt a rather sensitive subject. And a mysterious one, to boot. People usually prefer to sweep genuine mysteries under the rug and pretend they never happened. It’s safer that way. But you know about her seizures, right?”
“Yeah.” She frowned. “Well, just the fact that she has them. Or used to have them. I don’t know any actual details.”
“Then it’s time you learned. Wendy’s first seizure struck in 1963, when she was seven years old. She was out playing in the woods late one autumn afternoon, with strict instructions to stay near the house since dinner would soon be ready. But when dinnertime came she was nowhere in sight. After a panicked search, her parents found her on the path that connected the Crow house to Indian Hill. She was writhing and gasping, foam flying from her lips, eyes rolling and white. As Hardesty was about to race back to the house to call for an ambulance, the seizure ended, and Wendy sat up, wondering why her parents were standing over her looking scared out of their wits. She remembered nothing of her seizure.
“From then on she had seizures at seemingly random intervals. Sometimes she would have three in one week, sometimes months would pass without one. The official diagnosis was cryptogenic epilepsy.”
“Cryptogenic?” Calvin said.
“It means they don’t know exactly what caused it.”
“Oh.”
“The doctors gave her medications which lessened the severity and duration of the seizures but didn’t stop them completely. Her parents home-schooled her until she was fourteen. At that point they learned of a special boarding school that catered to students with medical conditions that prevented them from attending regular school, so they sent her there. She thrived in her new surroundings. She got excellent grades and wound up being the class valedictorian. During this time her seizures gradually vanished.”
“Wait!” Calvin said. “Did she stay at the boarding school all that time?”
Mr. May nodded, a small smile on his face as if he understood where Calvin was going with this and was pleased. “She spent the school year at the school, from September to June, and spent only summers and holidays at home.”
Cynthia saw where Calvin was going with this too. “It’s because she wasn’t here anymore, right? The seizures were, like, environmental. They were caused by something about this area.”
“It’s certainly the most logical conclusion, though there’s no way to be sure. The disappearance of the seizures could also have been due to age and to the various physiological and psychological changes associated with adolescence.”
“Did she have the seizures when she came home for the summers and holidays?” Calvin asked.
“No. But if one accepts the environmental hypothesis, the seizures could have occurred only after long-term exposure to the conditions in question, like a sort of toxic buildup. Spending months away might have eliminated the metaphorical buildup, and when she returned home it would have been like starting over with a clean slate. After she started going to the boarding school, she never spent more than three months in this area. That might not have been long enough to restart the seizures.” He shrugged. “But like I said, this is all hypothetical.
“Whatever the cause, the seizures were gone by the time she was eighteen, and she enrolled at Ames University, majoring in Graphic Design. Two things of note happened while she was at Ames. First, she began to manifest psychic powers.”
“Psychic powers?” Calvin said. He looked at Cynthia. She nodded.
“She exhibited a wide range of psychic talents,” Mr. May said. “Precognition. Clairvoyance. Telepathy. But most of it was frustratingly sporadic and uncontrollable. She would foresee the most trivial incidents with incredible clarity but completely fail to foresee major, life-changing ones. It’s that way with a lot of psychics, actually. It’s often more curse than gift.”
“But still,” Calvin said. “Wow. That’s kinda cool.”
“Yeah, kinda,” Cynthia said with a shrug. She didn’t want to admit that she was glad Aunt Wendy lived far away. Cynthia hated the idea of someone being able to see into her thoughts, however randomly and unintentionally. When the family visited Wendy in Boston during their summer vacation, Cynthia had spent the whole time dreading that Wendy would have one of her “insights” and realize that her oldest niece was gay and unwittingly blurt something out in front of everyone. Cynthia had breathed a huge sigh of relief when she saw Wendy’s house shrinking in the rear window of the family minivan. And now the whole damn process was about to repeat itself because…
She shot bolt upright. “I almost forgot!” she said to Mr. May. “You’ll probably want to know about this.”
“Know what?” Mr. May said.
“My aunt’s coming to visit tomorrow. To help out with things and maybe try to, you know, see something that might help find Emily. Psychically, that is.”
“How long will she be here?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
He grunted. “It’ll be hard for her, staying here.”
“Why?” Calvin said. “I thought the seizures were pretty much gone.”
“The problem isn’t the seizures. It’s because of what happened to her husband.”
“Yeah, what happened with that?” Cynthia asked. “I mean, whatever it is, it must’ve been pretty bad, seeing as how no one in my family has ever mentioned it.”
Mr. May nodded. “That was the other notable event that happened while Wendy was at Ames. During her freshman year, she met a fellow student named Eugene Scott, an aspiring pianist. By all accounts it was one of those rare cases of love at first sight, and after only three months the couple got married.”
“Three months?” Cynthia said. “That’s insane.”
“That was pretty much Wendy’s parents’ reaction, as well. At least at first. When they finally met Eugene, they changed their tune. Eugene was a rare man, always smiling, always friendly to everyone, always choosing to find the best in the worst the world could offer. He was the sort of person only the bitterest misanthrope could dislike. Plus he was an incredibly talented musician whose bright future seemed all but guaranteed.”
“But it wasn’t, obviously,” Cynthia said.
“Sadly not. Tragedy struck while the couple was staying at your house during the
summer of 1978, at which point the couple had been married for barely more than a year. The visit had been fine, with no problems or acrimony. Everyone was getting along well. No one seemed unhappy. Eugene had been in fine spirits the whole time.
“But late one night toward the end of the summer, Wendy was wrenched awake when Eugene violently scrambled out of the bed they were sharing in the second-floor guest bedroom. Groggy and confused, she asked him what was wrong. At first he didn’t respond. He merely stood there, shaking and covered in sweat. But finally he muttered, ‘It was just a dream. That’s all.’ Then he told her he going to get a bite to eat and slipped out of the room. She was on the brink of sleep again when she heard a crash. She got up to investigate and found Eugene sprawled in a pool of blood in the middle of the first-floor hall, dead. He appeared to have jumped or fallen off the balcony overlooking the hall and smashed his skull. It seemed unlikely that happy, well-adjusted Eugene would have committed suicide, no matter how bad a dream he had had, but given the height of the railing it was virtually impossible for someone to tumble over it by accident.”
“Yeah!” Cynthia said. “I was gonna say, that railing is, like, chest-high. There’s no way someone could fall off it. Unless you were climbing on it for some reason.”
“Indeed. The whole thing was a mystery. It was ultimately ruled an accident, but the truth is, no one knows for sure.”
“God, now I understand why Aunt Wendy hardly ever comes out to visit. Between Eugene’s death and the seizures…” She shook her head. “And she’s coming out here tomorrow. I almost wish she wasn’t now.”
“Yes, she never really got over losing Eugene. He was the love of her life. After his death, she took to wearing black constantly and swore she would never remarry—a vow she kept. To the best of my knowledge, she never even dated again.”
“That’s why she’s always wearing black. I thought it was just a fashion thing.”
“No. It’s mourning. Perpetual mourning. At any rate, with Wendy we have come to the end of this strange, sad history.”
“So what about you?” Calvin said.