Ghosts of Graveyards Past

by Laura Briggs

  A silent scream filled her throat. She shrank from them, or tried to, but the water had risen to her waist without her even noticing. In a heartbeat, it rose to her shoulders, cold and slimy as it splashed her skin. She was stuck, frozen in place as the dead moved closer, closer, almost touching her as the waves came up to her chin—

  Gasping, Mariah came awake, her body racked with hoarse coughs.

  The candle on the table had burned down its wick, the growing daybreak her only source of light as it seeped through closed curtains. She sat up, fumbling for the medicine vial on the bedside table. Instead, her hand struck the tumbler in its haste, knocking the half-filled glass to shatter against the pine floor.

  Mariah leaned past the side of the bed, watching as water trickled into the cracks between the boards. Water…yes, she had dreamed of water.

  A river of death, ghostly figures in rotting gray uniforms.

  The washerwoman crouched on the shore to prepare their burial garb, staining the water red.

  Water. That was important—but why? She felt thirsty, her mouth parched, yet something else tugged her thoughts, like a word just out of reach from her tongue.

  She pushed her hands through tangled hair, sweaty strands catching on her frustrated fingers, body rocking back and forth, as if willing the memory to push to the forefront of her thoughts. Her gaze fell on the open Bible, still turned to the page that bore her mother’s handwriting.

  The prayer she’d said hours ago came back to her, parts of it tangled up with the memory of her dream. This was her answer, perhaps, a sign that death had come for her, the same as it did her mother years ago. For Charley and the Lesleys, the teacher and others. The soldiers perished in a muddy grave at the cornfield, their life choked from the blood and water that stirred around them.

  “The water,” she mumbled, body ceasing to rock. “Water…yes, water. It must be—”

  She sat forward, hand covering her mouth to hold back the wracking coughs. An idea was forming as if rising from the depths of her consciousness. Her gaze flitted to the stain on the floor, and then the desk piled with papers in the corner. She needed to write it down, capture the notion before another stupor came over her.

  With a groan, Mariah pulled herself from the bed. Bare feet avoiding shards of glass, she stumbled the few feet to the desk, clutching the back of the chair as nausea swept over her. Her eyes closed briefly in a silent plea, trembling limbs easing her slowly into the chair’s seat.

  Shoving aside the stack of textbooks, she let them drop to the floor with a loud thud. Her hands scattered papers in every direction until she unearthed the daybook and pen she used for making her medical entries. Flipping to the first blank page, she pressed her quill against the paper, writing in a shaky script that barely resembled her own.

  Perhaps the fever has already claimed my thoughts. I suppose it is possible, yet this feeling in me is so strong, I dare not ignore it. It is almost as if God had reached into the heart of my memory and plucked from it the very thought I searched for these many weeks. I cannot recall the name of the man or the medical journal which published his essay, but I have read before of a doctor’s work in England where cholera outbreaks—

  Pain stabbed through her. Her insides were being wrenched, twisted by an unseen hand. Crying out, Mariah dropped the pen, her knees hitting the floor alongside it. Her legs were too weak to stand, fingers scrabbling helplessly at the desk’s edge. She tried to reach the daybook and pull it off, pleading for help under her breath when it proved impossible.

  Exhausted, she leaned against the desk, eyes sinking closed. She was so close, just a sentence or two away from forming the answer she so desperately needed. Unless this was all a dream, a fevered imagining from a dying woman’s brain.

  How long she lay there she didn’t know, her thoughts rambling from a prayer to the memory of sitting with her mother in the childhood nursery. A grown girl, years later in her father’s study, surrounded by conversation and men’s pipe smoke. Downstairs in the Darrow’s parlor, Arthur’s voice soft in her ear while his arms clasped tight around her waist.

  These murmurs in her head gradually gave way to another voice, one calling from somewhere nearby. Mariah lifted her head, eyes struggling to open at the sound of the door hinges creaking. Footsteps pounded the floorboards, a woman’s shape kneeling beside her to lift her weight.

  “It’s all right,” Nell assured her, face gazing down with gentle concern. “Don’t try to rise. Let me help you.”

  “Please,” she said, voice a rasp in her throat. She needed to tell her, to let her know what had happened. But her speech was as scattered as her thoughts, the other girl already shushing her attempts to explain. In another moment, she found herself returned to the sick bed, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

  The daybook, with its unfinished thought, was left behind on the desk.

  22

  “That was it,” Jenna said. “No explanation, no way to find out what happened next. Just that she knew of a medical case that resembled the town’s illness. She wrote nothing else afterwards.”

  She sighed, frustrated as she balanced the tea cup in its saucer. Across from her, Josephine Maudell listened intently to the account of the doctor’s struggle. Her great-great-grandfather’s sweetheart, whose battle against the plague had proved as deadly as the combat Arthur and his fellow soldiers faced a hundred miles away.

  “I never knew there was someone who had an answer for that supposed plague,” Josephine said, gray head shaking in disbelief. “Those stories about the sickness had always seemed a lot of foolish superstition. Exaggerating the past and whatnot. To think, all those people were really dying that way—and most of it forgotten, until you took an interest.”

  They were sitting in a room that might have served as the Maudell’s formal parlor at one time. The furniture had all been draped in sheets, except for the wingback chairs the hostess and her guest occupied, and a coffee table that held a silver tea service.

  Josephine wore a dress that came from another era as well, with spread skirts and a high-necked collar that was pinned with a brooch. “I want you to find out what happened,” she said, leaning forward in a motion that threatened to spill her tea. Placing it on the table with trembling hands, she insisted, “The past deserves its respect, something most around here don’t know how to pay. You do, though. I can see that now.” She ran a hand across the wrinkled mouth, smearing the dab of lipstick painted there. “Yes,” she said, “the story must be finished. Then our ancestors will be remembered as they should. With the truth of what happened to them in those dark days.”

  A stab of anxiety went through Jenna with the woman’s excitement, knowing she would have to crush it with her next words. “I don’t know where to start,” she admitted. “The courthouse fire took everything that might have recorded the doctor’s findings. Death certificates, newspapers—all those things burned with the rest of the archives.”

  Triumph flickered briefly in the woman’s gaze, shoulders straightening as she said, “My collection is far superior to anything the courthouse might have had. If there’s a document of importance to the town’s history, there will be a copy of it somewhere in my things. I made sure of that much when I still had a mind as sharp as yours.” A chuckle accompanied this, Josephine raising her cup again for a thoughtful sip. “I have a doctor’s visit tomorrow—bothersome, but it has to be done. We can start the day after that. The attic is the most likely place, though I kept a few things in my husband’s study. Bless him, he didn’t understand my hobby, but he never spoke against it.”

  “You would let me see your history collection?” Jenna was floored. She had assumed her presence was seen as a threat to the woman’s territory, one tolerated only because of the compliment it paid to her ancestor’s war service.

  The lines softened in Josephine’s face. “I believe you, of anyone I’ve known, could appreciate it. You know the past isn’t dead,” she insisted, “and isn’t just a ghost
story for parading around once a year. That’s why I can show you what I’ve saved, because you understand how much it means.”

  Jenna nodded, eyes watering with the gesture of trust.

  The woman’s nurse seemed equally excited, penciling the date onto a calendar space next to the doctor’s appointment. “All that stuff just sitting up there gathering dust,” she said, “and now it’s finally found its use. Mrs. Maudell’s been hid away with it for so long, I can see it’ll be a good change for her, too.”

  Jenna smiled, but the comment made her think of something else. The forgotten cemetery and Con, whose workshop was almost as hard to find amidst the wilderness landscape. Would it make a difference to him if she could discover the full meaning behind the stones? Somehow, she felt that it would, even though he’d never really said as much.

  

  Sage tumbled over the sides of the landscape boxes, vivid blue flowers that were destined to wither after the first hard freeze. Con ladled mulch out of a bucket, winterizing plants with a mixture of sawdust and wood chips. Less hearty varieties were potted for a season indoors, or else clipped to a stub and covered with a protective layer of soil.

  He’d grown used to this after two winters of being the sole caretaker for the small herb garden. At times, it was almost therapeutic, more so than visiting a gravesite or staring at pictures that only skimmed the surface of the woman he knew.

  This place had been rooted with Colleen’s touch, imparting its scent to her skin and hair. He could breathe those memories without even trying, feeling for a while as if she kneeled beside him in the soft earth. When he couldn’t pray—or wouldn’t, as he knew was the case—the crushed fragrance of those same herbs gave him a sense of calm for sorting his thoughts and emotions.

  Only it wasn’t helping now as he faced the aftermath of that moment at the spring. He had not meant for it to happen, of that much he was certain. What surprised him was that he had wanted it to happen.

  Closing his eyes, he felt again the touch of Jenna’s hand. Her lips moving against his in kisses long and deep. The sense of not wanting to let go, even as he pulled back from the warmth of her arms.

  Was it guilt that made him question it? A fear of somehow lessening his memories of Colleen by letting himself get close to another woman, perhaps. He had never pictured himself loving anyone as much as his wife, but then, it wasn’t a theory he had ever put to the test before.

  “When it’s time, you move on, whether you want to or not.”

  Advice he once heard Mr. Sawyer give to a customer who was also a friend. The older stone carver had never remarried, of course, making Con wonder at the time how he could speak with such certainty. Not realizing until he was in the same position that “moving on” could mean anything from throwing out her junk mail to changing the message on the answering machine to just his own voice.

  He reached for a pair of pruning shears by the fence, hand brushing one of the faded markers that rested there. These were headstones he was hired to duplicate, their original materials a kind that couldn’t be recycled by the quarry. He had kept them, feeling it would be a shame for their beauty to be cast away unnoticed because of their damage. Scrubbing away the names from each surface, he had let them retire as garden ornaments, where visitors cast a wary eye until they noticed the sign above the workshop.

  Jenna had looked at them differently, he noticed, with an eye for the details still faintly visible beneath the layers of rust. It was the same way she looked at him: past the rough exterior to the part she felt was still capable of making a difference. She thought he would help to bring the wooded cemetery out of the shadows, even though he was almost as forgotten as the crumbling stones.

  A half-smile tugged his mouth for how optimistic she was, thinking answers could be found to mysteries other people gave up on years ago. That was her job, of course, but it seemed to be part of her nature as well.

  Tonight she would be at the same place as almost everyone else in town: the Ye Old Hallowed Days Festival. Her camera in hand, no doubt, capturing the spectacle her research was supposed to change. Although, she had yet to find anything he could see standing up to the town’s oldest legend.

  Using the shears, he pruned the damaged vines of a rosemary plant until only the healthy parts remained. If he could do the same for his life, then maybe he wouldn’t feel so helpless facing these changes. He would be able to see the reason he was drawn to Jenna, whether it was real or simply born out of loneliness for what he used to have.

  Maybe it’s not you who should do the pruning. His conscience was right; that Someone else was far better at recognizing his worst doubts and how to fix them. The same One stood by him when a call from the hospital shattered his life. Who gave him the promise of seeing his loved one again, in a place where death and pain had no power?

  Already on his knees, he let his head bow, hands planted firmly against the soil. You know what’s on my mind, the questions I have. There’s so many things I don’t understand about this, least of all what I should do about it. Since You’re the only One who knows where it’s going, I’m asking You to lead me there. Tell me where to go from here.

  23

  Jenna moved through the festival, snapping pictures with her camera. The whole downtown had been transformed to house a collection of booths and tents that featured a wide array of artisans. Music makers, craftsmen, cookery—it was all there, with a fireworks display scheduled to close the evening’s entertainment.

  Tying it all together was a strong sense of Celtic and Scottish folklore, particularly those related to All Hallow’s Eve. Jenna felt her brows arch at the sight of women telling fortunes off a customer’s lock of hair.

  Another one predicted the gender of unborn babies while dangling a wedding band over the mother-to-be’s open palm. “A girl,” she cried as it swung in a circle over the beaming customer’s hand. Back-and-forth motion signaled a boy, while a pause between different ones told of twins or possibly even future births.

  Children in paper masks ran laughing as they scurried between displays of seller’s wares.

  Jenna stopped where a crowd had gathered to watch a silver-haired craftsman hollow out faces in gourds and turnips with a paring knife. Fiendish eyes appeared beneath the motion of his blade, a laughing mouth already cut below. The Celtic version of the pumpkin Jack o’ Lantern.

  Some that were finished had been lit with candles on the shelves behind him, ghoulish expressions and otherworldly scenes shining in the night with intricate detail.

  “Makes it look easy, doesn’t he?” Con was standing beside her, dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled almost to his elbows. Nodding to the lantern carver, he said, “It’s not so different from stone carving, or woodworking when you think about it. We’re all cut from the same cloth.”

  She stared, not realizing until now how much she had hoped he might show up.

  He made it clear more than once that the festival wasn’t in his plans. What had changed his mind?

  “I didn’t think you would come,” she said at last.

  “Neither did I.” His expression grew somewhat awkward, a hand ruffling his dark hair. “I’ve, uh, been doing a lot of things I can’t explain lately.” There was no mistaking the meaning behind the words.

  Jenna toyed with her camera strap, flustered with the recollection of their kiss just a day ago. It had been on her mind several times since then, a flash of emotion that came over her when she didn’t expect it. To cover her nerves, she snapped a picture of the finished lantern, the craftsman holding it up while his audience applauded.

  “You have a request?” he asked, scanning the faces around the booth. “Goblins, ghosts, witches—they’re all within my reach, and more, besides.” Suggestions were tossed out. The man took up his knife to carve a banshee’s screaming face this time.

  Jenna watched for a while and then drifted through the aisle again, Con falling in step beside her.

  “
You know,” he said, “the lanterns were used for warding off spirits. If you put one in the window on Halloween, the dead won’t cross the doorway.”

  “Then I wouldn’t use one,” she teased back, “because if the dead really could return—which they can’t—I’d want to get their story. Then people could learn from their mistakes and experiences.”

  He smiled, a subtle turn of the mouth she felt was just a hint of the real emotion inside. At times, she would glimpse it, this part of him kept hidden beneath the serious demeanor. The reason his neighbors labeled him a recluse, perhaps.

  They walked on, passing a band of musicians who coaxed ancient tones from pipes and drums.

  She aimed her camera towards the spot where a woman in old-fashioned garb demonstrated the art of making corn husk dolls.

  Con spoke. “Did you find anything? The other day you mentioned something about the doctor’s notebook. I thought maybe it shed more light on the grave’s connection with the plague.”

  “Yes—but not exactly,” she admitted. “There was a problem with the end. Notably, that it didn’t have one. At least not in that particular book.” Forgetting they were part of a crowded festival, she began recounting the details of the doctor’s final entries.

  He raised his brows at the mention of the symbol as a prophecy mark and the doctor’s speculation that she might know the cause of the dreaded plague.

  With a laugh, Jenna’s narrative ceased. “Sorry,” she said. “That was probably more detail than you were looking for. I get carried away when someone asks me a question, since most people don’t find dusty old manuscripts all that interesting.”