“I have your cell phone number. I’ll put in a call to Rome and let you know the minute I hear.”
“Thank you, Father.”
I left the church and emerged into a bright day. The town was bustling, and I decided on a coffee at the Honey Bea. Before another hour got away from me, though, I had to find Bonnie’s journal and haul my computer to an expert. If he could resurrect my dissertation, I would find bits and pieces of the journal in the text. My aspirations for a doctorate were destroyed, but if I could prove there had been a journal, maybe Joe would believe me about Mischa. My work had to be on the hard drive somewhere. I wouldn’t give up without a fight.
But first I had to go to Walden Pond.
47
I knew Mischa would hide pages of the journal at Walden. It made perfect sense. It was where I first saw her, and where it would all end. The path home. If the church granted an exorcism, I would have it here beside the pond where Bonnie’s life ended. Where Karla was murdered. Where I met Joe.
Birdsong trilled at Walden, though spring was still a long distance away. I settled onto a fallen log on the edge of the woods. The sun warmed my face, and I basked in pleasure. I was toasty even when the wind kicked up and blew across the pond.
Back in the 1800s, the 61-acre lake had provided ice for Southern cities as well as the Caribbean, Europe, and India. Frederic Tudor, Boston’s Ice King, cut ice from the lake and shipped it in huge blocks to the warmer climates, but that was before electricity put a Frigidaire in every home.
Thoreau had written about the ice harvesters. I’d read it somewhere. Funny, but so much of the information I’d reaped had begun to jumble in my head. For an English doctoral student, I was becoming careless of my sources. But what did it matter. I could no longer remember why I’d wanted a Ph.D. Now, I wanted to save myself. And Bonnie. I wanted to confront Mischa and send her back to the hell Jonah Cahill had pulled her from.
I had to find the journal. I’d delayed enough. The confrontation with Mischa was something I dreaded. I knew her tactics, and I wondered if she was aware of my visit to the priest. She spied on me all the time. She probably knew. But was she worried? It might be leverage to get the journal back.
I didn’t know where Bonnie had died, but I did know where Karla’s body had been found in a shallow depression. I’d find the first page there. Bread crumbs. Mischa had used the journal to manipulate my ego. She wanted me at the pond, and she knew me well. She’d been one step ahead of me since I was born. Unless I figured out a way to destroy her, she’d take my soul.
Passing the model of the cabin where Thoreau lived, I peeped in at the wood-burning stove and the narrow bed. There was hardly room to turn around. “Intimate” didn’t begin to describe the arrangement. I could have lived like that with Joe. It would have been joyful. Still, Dorothea’s cabin was much more spacious, perfect for the two of us—if Mischa hadn’t interfered.
I hiked down the trail wondering if she could be killed. If she could be exorcised or banned or sent back to hell where she belonged, would I be free of her?
I chose the trail into the deep woods. Behind me, I heard the crackle of a dry stick. Mischa. Or Bonnie. I prayed my aunt would come to help me. I doubted she was able to do so.
I continued. Behind me branches swished and snapped, and in front of me the birds fell silent. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a splinter of red floating through the trees about fifty yards to my left. When I looked full on, I saw nothing except the black trunks. She was following me, shadowing each action I took.
The sun slid behind a thick gray cloud, and unease settled over me. Mischa had almost killed me the day she’d lured me to Yerby Lane on a false journey. If her intention was to kill me now, she might succeed if I wasn’t smarter and more cunning than she was.
When I came to the small glade beside the two oaks, I stopped. Turning slowly in a circle, I looked for the journal page. This was the place. It was logical. Mischa was a very practical girl.
But all I saw were woods and leaves and tree trunks and the tatter of crime-scene tape that remained tied around the trunk of one of the oaks. The impression where Karla had been discovered was between two oaks. Stones and tree roots made digging next to impossible. I knew that from burying the wine glasses.
When no journal pages were in evidence, I wondered what Mischa had in store for me. My inclination to come to Walden was correct, I just knew it. She wanted me here, but not, it seemed, for the reason I assumed.
She was here. Watching me. Hiding in the woods and darting out. A game. Everything was a game with her. If I called her, she would giggle and come to me, as docile as a lamb. But she was no innocent.
I entered the trees’ shadows. “Come out, you murdering bitch. I’m not afraid of you.”
She sped through the trees, a blur here and there, childish laughter trailing behind as she ran. This was fun for her.
I took the pepper spray but left my bulky purse in the clearing and gave chase, knowing she was preternaturally fast. I’d never catch her, but the fantasy of my hands choking her slender throat was satisfying. I pursued her. And she ran me in a circle. Ten minutes later, I ended up where I’d begun. She was gone.
The wind kicked up, and a page from the journal blew against my leg. The wind crumbled it to dust before I could save it.
Another page tangled in a dead tree limb as it broke into bits and disintegrated. I ran to snatch it and caught a fragment of the crumbling old page. She hides in the edge of the trees was written in fading brown ink.
I slid it into the pocket of my jacket. I could show McKinney this. It was evidence, if not a lot.
I saw her ten feet from the edge of the trees. She held the journal in both hands. She set free another page that fluttered among the branches of an elm and then burst into shreds.
“Your aunt and Thoreau. You’d be laughable if you weren’t so pathetic. How you wanted to believe. A true believer, Aine. So desperate in your need to be somebody. Even when you couldn’t find proof that Bonnie existed, let alone shared years with a famous man, you still clung to the belief.”
None of it had been real. For the past four years, my life had been Bonnie’s journal. It had dictated all of my decisions, my sacrifices, my dreams. I felt empty of all emotion or hope. All of it had been Mischa. With her powers she’d created the one fantasy she knew I couldn’t resist. I was no match for her.
“Now you understand. You’re here, exactly where I want you. Just as Bonnie came here. She almost escaped me. She almost figured it out and broke the curse. But in the end, she couldn’t. Her gift, her ability to see the dead, owned her. And then she was mine. Like you, Aine, she couldn’t shoulder the burden.”
Mischa tossed the journal down, and it exploded in a cloud of dust.
When I looked for her, she was gone. But someone was in the woods. Not Mischa or Bonnie. She came slowly forward.
“Aine, it’s me, your mother.” She stood at the edge of the woods. She wore denim shorts and a red-checked shirt. Her tennis shoes had once been white, but now they were covered with bloody gore and a multitude of flies. They buzzed and swarmed about her feet.
She held up her hands and blood dripped off her elbows. “Look what you made me do, Aine. You were so bad. So naughty. I couldn’t live with the things you did. You sentenced me to eternal hell.”
I put my hands over my ears. Mischa meant to punish me. This was not my mother. This was not the woman who’d held me against her pregnant belly while we lay on a checked picnic cloth in the Kentucky sunshine.
“There’s a devil in you, Aine.” Mother was closer. Her dark hair curled around her face and her red lips moved, but I blocked her cruel words. I couldn’t listen.
“Your baby brother, Aine. Little William. He laughed when you tickled him. Your innocent little brother. You suffocated him. Do you remember? I left you alone with him for five minutes, and you put a pillow over his face and smothered him. It was my fault. I knew you were bad. I knew you were fil
led with evil. But you were my child and I loved you. I thought my love could heal you, but I was wrong.”
She was close enough to touch. Blood soaked the ground around her and the buzzing of the flies was a deep whisper.
“You’re a liar. You aren’t my mother. The dead lie.” I didn’t run. Couldn’t. I was mesmerized by the sight of her. I hadn’t seen my mother in twenty years, but this apparition looked exactly as I remembered her.
“You belong to her, Aine. You always did. I tried to block it. But you were bartered to her the day Jonah Cahill turned to serve the darkness.”
“No.” It was a trick. I knew it, but her words still hammered me. “That was hundreds of years ago. It had nothing to do with me.”
“Bryson Cappett. Dead these ten years, moldering in a grave. Because of you.”
“No.” Bryson had fallen during a hike. He’d been supremely athletic. “No.” I repeated the word because I knew now for sure that Mischa had pushed him. “I’m not to blame for what she does.”
“Your father, dead from drink. He knew what you were and he couldn’t live with it. He’s waiting for you, too.”
She battered me with the past. “I was a child. I couldn’t help him.”
“You destroyed him. And your granny, too. Caleb couldn’t look at you without knowing what you were. And Granny Siobhan, once she knew you had the journal, she realized you were lost. Doomed. She tried to tell you, but the truth stopped her heart. It always goes back to you, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t believe you.” But I did. I did believe her. The things she said were all true. While I hadn’t raised a hand to do any of the acts she recounted, they happened because of me. “I was a child.”
“I should have slit your throat the minute I knew what you were.”
“Mama… .” I only wanted her love. “I didn’t mean to be bad.”
“Stop it here and now. Stop it before more innocent people are harmed. It’s the only way, Aine. Bonnie realized this. She did what had to be done.”
“What should I do?”
She stepped closer. “Come to me. I’ll take care of you.”
I wanted nothing more than to rush to her, to bury my face in her stomach the way I’d done as a child. Behind her, I saw my father, a glimmer of substance in the trees. There were others. Some I knew, some I didn’t. They waited for me. If I stepped beyond the veil, I could leave behind all the worry and fear.
“That’s right, Aine. The pain will end.”
Sunlight glinted from an old tree stump not thirty feet away. I walked toward it and saw the knife. It hadn’t been there a moment before. I picked it up and felt the blade, so sharp; it would slice cleanly. Pushing up the sleeves of my coat, I looked at the thin skin covering the pale veins. I wouldn’t have to cut deep.
My mother held out her arms, as if to welcome me.
“Will Joe be safe?” I needed one assurance.
“He has his own destiny.” My mother’s fingers beckoned. “Hurry, Aine. Hurry. We’re waiting for you.”
I placed the blade against my skin. One swift cut. There would be some pain as the blood left, but it would be over quickly.
“I’m coming, Mama.” I looked up to smile at her. Something in the darkness of her eyes stopped me.
The dead are liars.
Granny Siobhan had repeatedly warned me. I could hear her voice.
“Aine, hurry. I can’t wait much longer.”
Her smile stopped me cold. “Mischa?”
“Hurry, darling. I’m waiting?”
But it wasn’t my mother who waited, it was the demon. She’d used the oldest trick in the world. Bait and switch. I recognized it. A raw sound tore from my throat as I lunged at her, knife slashing. She wouldn’t push me into taking my own life. That’s what she wanted. That was her goal. Then she’d truly own me.
My mother disappeared. The wraiths dissipated with her. Not even Mischa was left. I was alone in the place where Karla had been beaten to death, and the afternoon had fled.
The sun poised on the treetops in preparation of disappearing. I’d been tranced by the dead, and soon night would cover Concord like a bell jar. I would be alone in the woods.
I caught the flash of red just beyond clear vision. Mischa. She’d failed, but she was expert at clinging to the shadows. She wasn’t banished, just momentarily defeated.
A childish laugh echoed from her location. “I almost had you then. Almost. Play with me, Aine. It’s your destiny. You’re mine, you know. You’re cursed and I’ll have you before it’s over. I have all the time in the world.”
For the first time in weeks, I felt in complete control. She’d done her worst and failed. Now that I understood, I would be vigilant. I traced my way back through the woods. I had to find my purse and get out of Walden Pond. Mischa had played me for a fool, and she’d used my own dead mother to try to trick me. But I’d survived.
I understood there was no journal. Gone, turned to dust. I had no evidence to prove my innocence, but there would be a way. I only had to find it.
I broke into the clearing and picked up my bag. When I started toward the path, I saw the wine glasses, clotted with dirt and debris, sitting on an old, fallen tree trunk. They’d been dug up. I dropped to my knees and used my hands to dig the hole deeper. I had to rebury them, return them to the earth. Such things should stay buried.
I’d just placed them in the ground when I heard a dog barking and scrabbling through the underbrush. Men shouted behind the dog. They’d come at last to arrest me for Patrick’s murder. I bent to the task of covering the evidence. Mischa would win, but I wouldn’t make it easy.
When I looked up, Chief McKinney stood twenty yards away. Behind him were two officers. One of them held a bloodhound on a stout leash.
“Stand up, Aine,” the chief said. “Move away from whatever you’re trying to bury.”
I was a rabbit, caught too far from my warren, paralyzed by the hound and the hunter.
“Stand up.” He spoke sharply.
I rose slowly, my hands covered in dirt. I tried to hide them behind me, but it was too late. He’d seen. I side-stepped away from the glasses, hoping to distract him.
He grasped my elbow, pulling me away from the spot.
“Liam, see what’s there,” McKinney said. “She was digging in the ground with her bare hands.”
The policeman without the dog came forward and within moments had both wine glasses.
“Why would you bury glasses?” McKinney asked. “I think I know the answer.”
Nothing I said would make a difference. Mischa had ensnared me on this plane, but she would not have my spirit. I would go to prison for a murder I didn’t commit. And she would be waiting. She would reappear in my life. A warden, a correction officer, a priest—the irony evoked a smile. I would be on the lookout.
“What are you doing here?” McKinney asked.
“Waiting for Father O’Rourk.” It wasn’t an out-and-out lie.
“The priest at St. Benedict’s?”
At least I’d startled him. He hadn’t expected that answer. “Yes.”
“Why would he be here?”
“I asked him to meet me here. To perform an exorcism.”
McKinney’s hand tightened on my elbow as if he expected the forces of evil to take hold and send me flying through the woods. “Aine, you’re not well.”
“No, I’m not.” I tried to snatch free, but he held on. “I’m possessed. I’ve brought this to Concord, or I’ve awakened it. I have to stop it before anyone else is hurt.”
McKinney signaled an officer. Now they would bring the cuffs. I would be taken to jail, charged, and there I would remain for the months it took to bring the case to court.
“Aine, I put in some calls to your family members in Kentucky.”
A flock of crows broke from the wild grass, cawing as they flew overhead. The Sluagh. “They were surprised, no doubt, to hear I was alive and in Massachusetts. I told you everyone close to me is dead. Wh
at would the rest of them care about me?”
“Your aunt Matilde was glad to hear you were okay.” McKinney waited for me to respond. I was smarter than that. I had no idea what my relatives knew of me, much less said about me. Matilde suspected me of murdering my brother, and I wondered if she’d been only too glad to heap that gossip on the chief.
McKinney eased me toward the car. One of the cops bagged the wine glasses. They would go to forensics for testing. The poison would be detected and I would be straight-lined on Patrick’s murder. It was too beautiful. Even I had to admit the pure genius of the plan and its execution. Give it to Mischa. She was brilliant when it came to ruining people’s lives.
I started toward the front seat, but he opened the back door and assisted me in. Still, I wasn’t cuffed. When McKinney was behind the wheel, I put my hands on the grill. “Am I under arrest?”
“For what?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“What are you doing with me?”
“It’s growing dark, Aine. And colder. You don’t need to be out in the woods.”
It wasn’t an answer, but it also wasn’t an accusation. “So where are you taking me? To my cabin?”
He drove until we were out of Walden Pond without answering. “I spoke with Dorothea. She’s taking care of your things, Aine.”
“Why?” I couldn’t grasp what he was getting at. He wasn’t acting like he thought I was a murderer. But he also wasn’t treating me like I was innocent. “My things are perfectly fine.” What had been valuable was already lost. There was nothing for Dorothea to worry about.
“There’s someone I want you to speak with.”
“Joe?”
He slowed the cruiser and pulled to the shoulder. “Joe’s in jail.”
“What?”
“He’s charged with the murders of Karla Steele, Patrick Leahy, and Mischa Lobrano. We found the child’s remains this afternoon.”
He was trying to trick me. He thought I’d jump to confess if Joe was in danger. “Joe didn’t kill anyone.” I could defend Joe without sacrificing myself.
The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) Page 28