by John Saul
When Juan had been born, Theresa Whitefawn, the midwife from Shacktown, had told her to send Juan to live with the children in the cave, but Esperanza had refused. To her, Juan looked perfectly normal. His brown eyes had laughed at her, and his tiny arms had waved in the air. If he didn’t grab her finger right away when she put it in his fist, it meant nothing. Only when he hadn’t begun talking until he was four did she finally face the truth.
But still the doubts lingered. He was her son, and he had been alive when he was born, and she couldn’t send him away. To send him away would have been a mortal sin.
Besides, she loved Juan.
He was nearly thirty now, and if he didn’t talk very well and couldn’t think very clearly, that was all right with Esperanza. She could take care of him, and he enjoyed helping her, as best as he could. And he was gentle, despite what other people said. It was just that he never realized that he was a grown man.
Esperanza, of course, never treated him like one. She understood, in her own way, that inside his head he was still seven or eight years old, and she saw no point in trying to make him be what he was not.
She bought him the comic books he loved and sat with him hour after hour as he turned the pages and tried to read the words. But Esperanza herself read only a little, and for her, English did not come easily. She preferred the Spanish of her childhood.
Living quietly together, Esperanza and her son earned a little money helping the Ambers. They were all that was left of the once-large staff of the ranch. Esperanza worked in the house two or three days a week, and Juan rode the land with Miss Diana, helping her mend the fence that kept the few head of cattle from wandering away. They lived in the old cabin by the mine, and Esperanza tried to keep an eye out for the children who loved to sneak up the mountain to play among the rusting mining machinery that, though long ago overgrown with weeds, was still strewn over the mountainside.
The stamp press was still there, a relic from a period when Amos Amber had briefly struck a vein of gold and had immediately invested in all the equipment he would need to develop it. The press, and the steam engine to run it, had barely been used before the vein had played out, and the miners had returned to their old duties of hauling load after load of coal out of the hillside.
Miraculously the mine had not collapsed during the 1910 flood—Amos Amber had always insisted that it be constantly reinforced with strong timbers, and although Amos had died, his timbers had held. Here and there, however, the honeycomb of shafts was weakening now, and there were telltale signs of the beginning of collapse where the constantly shifting temperatures, the freezing and melting of ice, and the workings of trees and animals had loosened the earth. Sinkholes were beginning to appear.
Esperanza, in her constant wanderings of the mountainside, was well aware of these places, and she watched them closely.
Only a week ago she had discovered one of the strange sinkholes not too far from the cave.
Los niños, she was sure, were stirring.
And now Señor Lyons had died in the mine.
Esperanza, with the wisdom of her ancestors, was sure that the children had killed him.
She went into the cabin and found Juan lying on the floor, his chin propped in his hands, looking at one of his comic books.
“Juan?”
He grinned up at his mother. “Hi!”
Esperanza sat down on the floor beside Juan and gathered her skirt close to protect herself from the drafts that flowed up through the loose boards. She gently took the comic book from Juan’s hands and tipped his face up so his eyes met her own.
“Juan, were the children crying today?”
Juan’s eyes took on a puzzled look, and he shook his head. “No, Mama. I didn’t see any children today.”
“Not the children you can see, Juan,” Esperanza said. “The other ones. The ones you can’t see.”
Juan frowned, then stood up. “Should I go listen?” he asked.
Esperanza smiled at her son and reached for his hand.
“Both of us,” she said in Spanish. “Both of us will listen.”
Together Esperanza and Juan went out into the evening, but that night the full moon cast a silvery glow over the valley, and only a soft breeze drifted out of the mountains to set the aspens to murmuring.
The children were silent.
* * *
Diana Amber let Christie sleep on the sofa until the sun had set completely. She wandered through the first-floor rooms, turning on lights until the whole house was illuminated. Only then did she return to the living room and ease herself onto her knees next to the sofa.
“Christie?” she said softly. The little girl’s eyelids fluttered, then opened. At first Diana saw only blankness in the little girl’s eyes, but then they slowly filled with a melancholy that tore at Diana’s heart.
“Daddy,” Christie whispered. “Please—I want my daddy.”
“He’s gone,” Diana told her. “Try not to think about it, sweetheart. All right?”
For a long time Christie lay still, her eyes fixed on Diana’s face, and then a single tear filled her left eye, overflowed, and ran down her cheek. She made no move to wipe it away, and when Diana reached out to touch her face, she shrank away.
Diana’s hand hovered in the air for a moment, and the softness in her eyes suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by a flash of anger. And then, checking herself, she dropped her hand to her side and smiled. “Would you like something to eat?”
Christie shook her head warily, sat up, and looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.
“Everything’s old here,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. Her eyes went from the crystal chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling to the ornately carved rosewood mantel that dominated one of the walls. She ran a hand over the horsehair upholstery of the Victorian sofa. “It feels funny.”
“When I was a little girl,” Diana said, “I used to slide right off it. And I thought it was lumpy,” she added, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial level. Christie poked at the sofa, then nodded.
“It is.”
“Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
Christie hesitated, then nodded silently and stood up. Diana got to her feet, unsure where to begin. Finally she led Christie into the parlor, where there was another fireplace, two chairs, and an old-fashioned square piano.
“I never saw a piano like that,” Christie said. She reached out and pressed a key. A tinny note emerged from the antique instrument.
“It’s a Bosendorfer,” Diana explained. “One of my ancestors brought it out from Boston. Do you know how to play?”
“A little,” Christie replied. “I took lessons before we came out here.”
“Well, maybe I can teach you more,” Diana said. “Did you like your lessons?”
“They were fun. But I’m not very good.”
“Neither am I,” Diana admitted. “Maybe we can practice together.”
“Who taught you?”
“My mother,” Diana said. She drifted into silence for a moment. “But it wasn’t much fun,” she added.
Christie looked at her curiously. “Why not?”
Diana hesitated, then decided to change the subject. A sudden vision had come to her in the parlor, a vision of herself as a little girl, sitting on the hard piano bench, her mother standing over her, pounding out the rhythm with the cane she had already begun carrying, demanding that Diana play the notes exactly, criticizing the smallest mistakes, adding hours and hours to her daily practice sessions. She had hated the piano, and she hadn’t played in thirty years. But now she might try it again. In retrospect the discipline had been good for her and would be good for Christie, too. It might, indeed, be fun. But there was no reason to tell Christie what it had been like for her. No reason at all.
They wandered through the day rooms on the main floor, and for the first time in years Diana saw her home through the eyes of a child. She had always taken the b
ooks that lined the walls of the library for granted, but as Christie stared at them, then ran her fingers over the leather-bound volumes, Diana found herself wanting to touch them, too.
As a child, she had never been allowed in the library. It had been her father’s, and even though she had never known her father, she had learned very early to respect his things. Even now, as Christie took one of the volumes from the shelves and opened it, she had an urge to take the book from the child’s hand and put it back on the shelf. But it was, after all, only a book, and her father had been dead for half a century.
“Do you like to read?” she asked.
Christie nodded, turning the pages. It was a volume of bound copies of St. Nicholas magazine, filled with stories and drawings that appealed to her. “Did you read these when you were little?”
“Oh, no,” Diana explained. “I had my own books, up in my nursery.”
Christie cocked her head and looked up at Diana. “You had a nursery?”
Again Diana’s mind drifted toward the past. “For years and years.”
“Can I see it?” Christie asked.
Diana felt her stomach tighten, and there was a ringing sensation in her ears. Why had she even mentioned the nursery? She hadn’t been in it herself since—since when? She couldn’t even remember, it had been so long ago. It had to be at least thirty years.
Yes, that was how long it had been.
She had been twenty, and she had been sick. She still vaguely remembered the illness. It had gone on for months, and for a while she had thought she was going to die. And then one morning she woke up, and she was no longer in the nursery.
Instead she was in a room on the second floor—the “guest room,” though she couldn’t remember there ever having been a guest. From then on, that room had been hers. In all the years since then, she had never gone back up to the nursery.
“I don’t think so,” she said, coming out of her reverie. But Christie was no longer watching her. She stood perfectly still, the book in her hands, her eyes fixed on something behind Diana. Diana turned and saw her mother standing in the library doorway.
“What are you doing?” Edna asked, her voice crackling with anger. “What is that child doing with one of your father’s books?”
“Mama,” Diana breathed. “I—I thought you were upstairs.”
“What has that to do with it?” Edna’s icy blue eyes raked Diana, then went to Christie. “Put that book down!” she demanded. Instantly Christie put the book on a table.
Diana moved close to Christie and slipped her arm protectively around the little girl’s shoulders. “Mama, she isn’t going to damage it. She’s just curious.”
Edna ignored her, her baleful gaze fixed on Christie. For the first time she analyzed the odd resemblance between her daughter and the child. The soft blue eyes, the blond hair, the pale complexion. She had to admit that Christie Lyons was a pretty little thing. But the way Diana had her arm around the little girl bothered Edna.
Possessive.
It struck her that Diana was already being possessive about the child.
“Small for her age, isn’t she?” Edna observed at last.
“Mama, she’s only nine—” Diana began, but Edna cut her off.
“Most nine-year-olds are larger than that. Except you. You were always small for your age, too.” Abruptly, as if there were nothing more to be said about Christie, Edna changed the subject. “Are you going to fix dinner?”
“Yes, Mama,” Diana said meekly. “As soon as I take Christie upstairs and get her settled in my room.”
“No,” Edna said. Then, before Diana could ask what she meant, she explained herself. “Until I decide what’s to be done with her, she’ll stay in the nursery.”
Edna turned and walked out of the library. At her side Diana could feel Christie trembling.
And, she realized, she was trembling, too. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind: Until I decide what’s to be done with her. Her mother was going to take Christie away from her.
She couldn’t let that happen. No one would ever take Christie away from her.
Never.
3
The one problem with a restored house, Joyce Crowley decided as she wrestled with her wood-electric stove, was that you had to put up with a lot of inconveniences. The wood-electric itself had been something of a compromise. Her house, built in 1870, had certainly had no provisions for electricity. Or plumbing either, for that matter.
When she and Matt had bought the place ten years earlier, it had been a crumbling wreck. Its only saving grace had been its price. The restoration of Amberton had barely begun then, and no one, except Joyce Crowley, had been the least bit interested in taking over the two-story hulk that sat across the street from the Methodist Church. The house itself was sturdy enough, though the roof had rotted badly. It was one of the few houses in town that had been built of sandstone blocks, but its featureless form was distinctly utilitarian. Two rows of four windows each faced the street, topped by an uninterestingly peaked roof. The front door was on one side, and the back door on the other, and at the rear of the house there was nothing. It was, basically, a square box with a lid on it, but at ten thousand dollars she had felt it was a deal they couldn’t pass up. And now, after ten years of hard work, even Matt had to agree she was right. They had scraped away the layers of paint from both the exterior and the interior, reroofed, replumbed, and rewired it, then painted it white with what few features of interest it had—mostly fancy stonework at the corners and scallop work under the eaves—cheered up with reds and olives. Now, sitting only a couple of blocks from the center of town, it was a landmark, and all summer long Joyce took a quiet pride in the number of tourists who stopped to stare at the house, read the plaque describing its history, which she had installed by the gate, then stepped across the street to photograph it. Only Jane Berkey’s pink, white, lavender, and purple Easter egg of a Victorian attracted more attention, and Joyce took a certain not-quite-malicious satisfaction in the fact that while Mrs. Berkey had had professional help with her house, she and Matt had relied on no one but themselves for their own restoration.
Still, it would have been nice to have had a new stove instead of the wood-electric that had been rescued from the dump. But in Amberton it was a matter of pride to have your restoration as accurate as possible, excluding such details as outhouses, so Joyce cheerfully made do.
As she tested the meat pie her thoughts turned to her husband. Matt had been gone all afternoon.
She knew he was terribly upset over the accident—not only had he held Elliot Lyons in high regard, but Matt was one of those in town who hoped that the mine could be reopened and once again provide a flow of wealth into Amberton. To Joyce, the mine represented only a source of pain. Her grandfather had died in the 1910 accident, and her grandmother had never recovered from it. In Joyce’s view, the mine had never been as good for Amberton as her husband liked to think. For years Amberton had been dependent on the mine, and when it had closed, the town had gone into shock and poverty that had lasted half a century. Only now was Amberton beginning to become hopeful again. And it had nothing to do with the mine.
Instead it had to do with the restoration. To Joyce’s mind, the restoration was constructive—it was safe, and it didn’t pollute the environment. She had silently dreaded the return of the mine and the black cloud that would hang over the valley—a cloud composed partly of coal dust and partly of fear that someday, any day, disaster would strike again. Though Joyce was sincerely sorry that Elliot Lyons had died, there was a part of her that felt relieved. Now the mine operations would stop. At least no one else would die.
The back door opened, and Matt came in, his face streaked with sweat and black dust, his expression grim.
“Well, it’s done,” he said. He opened the refrigerator, which had been built into the space once occupied by an icebox, with its antique façade retained, and pulled out a Coors. “A damn shame, that’s what it is.” He flipped t
he top off the bottle and pulled at it deeply as Jeff, ten years old and as darkly handsome as his father, slipped into the kitchen.
“What’s a damn shame?” the little boy asked.
“What happened today,” Matt said. “And don’t say ‘damn.’ ”
“You say it,” Jeff fretted.
“My father used to tell me to do what he said and not what he did. I’m telling you the same thing. Get it?” Behind his grim expression there was a gleam in his eye that let Jeff know he was in no serious trouble. He grinned at his father.
“The hell you say,” he said in perfect imitation of Matt.
“Jeff!” Joyce did her best to make her voice severe, but failed. She pointed to the drawer in which she kept the silverware. “Set the table while your father drinks his beer, okay?”
“Aw …” Jeff complained, but not loudly enough so that his father would have to scold him. He scooped up some silver and began setting the table.
“I suppose they’ll give up on the mine now,” Joyce said carefully as she began mashing some potatoes.
Matt swished some beer around in his mouth, then swallowed it. “Don’t know. Don’t know what happened to Elliot yet.”
“Maybe the water babies got him,” Jeff suggested.
Joyce stared at her son. “Water babies?” she echoed. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“You know,” Jeff said, his voice filled with the scorn children reserve only for the ignorance of their parents. “They wait up in the mountains, and they eat people.” His face turned thoughtful and he frowned. “But I guess it couldn’t have been them, ’cause Eddie says they only eat children.”
“Eddie Whitefawn?” Joyce asked. “Is that who told you?”
“Unh-hunh. And he knows, too. His grandmother told him. She told him when Indian kids die, they go up in the mountains and wait for other kids. Then the dead ones kill the live ones.”