Mercy

by Sarah L. Thomson

  My father, by that time, had been wrung dry of tears. He stood watching as they slid my coffin into its resting place. Huddled in his long brown woolen coat, the collar turned up to his ears, the beard that he kept thick and long in winter covering half his face, he looked baffled and angry, not grief-stricken. Like a great bear woken too early from his winter sleep. He looked as if he wanted to roar with fury, swing a strong clawed arm and split someone in two. But who was there for him to attack? Where could his rage go?

  Behind my father, a little to one side, were his two remaining children. Patience had Edwin by the hand. All around her, people tugged capes and coats closer, hugged their arms tight, but Patience was never bothered by the cold. She looked as if she were counting the mourners, adding up the total in her mind, calculating the respect shown to the Brown family.

  Some of the women wept openly. The men frowned and shuffled their feet. None of them gathered together to whisper, to cast sidelong glances, to put fear into ugly shapes, into words with claws and fangs to hurt, words with wings to flit from ear to ear, mind to mind, heart to heart.

  That would come later.

  Edwin clung to Patience’s hand. Thin and pale, he looked half-smothered in coat and scarf and cap. He shivered in the icy air.

  Sunny was so happy to see Jake that she couldn’t contain herself. She wouldn’t jump on him, but she nearly crawled up onto his lap as he sat on the edge of his bed. After letting him pet her for a few seconds, she flung herself away to race around the room, sniffing eagerly at everything her nose could reach, before returning to Jake’s side, panting happily.

  Maia laughed. “Now I see what I’ve been doing wrong. All those dates I’ve been on—what a waste! I need to get myself a dog. Just someone to be that glad to see me when I get home.”

  Jake still had his pajamas on, a limp gray T-shirt over flannel pants, his feet bare. That meant he probably hadn’t gotten out of bed until Maia had arrived. He hadn’t shaved.

  “Much, much better than dating,” Jake agreed, fondling Sunny’s ears. “For one thing, it’s not so expensive to take her out to dinner.”

  Maia’s laugh was rich and dark and chocolaty. Haley had never understood how Maia could be so happy. A visiting nurse for terminal patients, spending her days with dying people—how was this a cheerful job?

  Maia was checking Jake’s medications, seeing if he needed refills. “You taking these new ones?” She waved a tiny brown bottle at Jake.

  “Sometimes.”

  “They don’t do you any good in the bottle, you know.”

  “I take them when I need them. Don’t fuss.”

  “Well, fussing. Lord forbid I should fuss. Haley, you gorgeous thing, how’s school treating you? Beating those boys off with a stick?”

  Haley used to blush and squirm when Maia teased. Now she hung up her jacket and shrugged. “A great big one. With nails in it.”

  “I’m getting her karate lessons for her birthday,” Jake added. “That’s the only thing that will keep the guys at bay.”

  While Maia laughed some more, Haley wandered around the room. She took a mug stained with coffee dregs to the kitchen and rinsed it out. She picked up a book, a fat paperback mystery, lying facedown on the arm of Jake’s chair, and dogeared the page, closing it neatly, smoothing the creased spine.

  “You have another nosebleed last night?” Maia asked. Haley, glancing up, saw Maia frowning at the rusty brown stains on Jake’s pillowcase.

  Jake’s voice was uninterested. “Apparently.”

  A sketchbook was lying on the table. Jake had been drawing something. A crumbling stone wall with a wide arched opening. The shadows inside the arch were thick and black. He’d pressed hard enough on the pencil to dent the paper and scatter little grains of carbon across the page. Haley blew them gently away. In the corner of the page, Jake had scrawled, Macbeth.

  Haley stacked the sketchbook and the mystery novel on the table, lining up the edges precisely. She collected two pencils and a stick of charcoal and laid them neatly alongside. All this let her keep her head down as Maia checked Jake’s blood pressure. She didn’t like to see her cousin’s arm as Maia wrapped the cuff around it, to notice how thin it had gotten, the bicep no thicker than his forearm.

  Maia let out her breath in a hmmph sound as she looked at the numbers on her dial and whipped the cuff off Jake’s arm. “Let’s get you on a scale, then. Come on, I haven’t got all day.”

  “Oh, you’re the one with the hot date tonight?” Jake got to his feet. Out of the corner of her eye, Haley saw him wobble a little. Maia’s hand moved quickly to his elbow to steady him.

  The scale creaked a little as Jake stepped onto it. Maia went hmmph again.

  “You drinking those milkshakes I brought?”

  A bright thread glinted on the floor, near a leg of Jake’s chair. Haley bent down for it.

  “The ones that taste like cardboard? Yes.” Jake’s voice sounded as if he’d been running hard rather than walking a few feet.

  The thread came up in Haley’s fingers. It was actually a chain of small silver links. The clasp on one end was broken.

  Slow footsteps, dragging a little, and Sunny’s claws clicking on the wooden floor. Jake sank into his chair beside Haley. Sunny laid her head on his lap, and the hand he lifted to stroke her ears trembled very slightly.

  Shifting her eyes quickly from his face, Haley held the chain out to Maia, glad for the excuse to talk about something that wasn’t Jake’s health. “Is this yours?”

  “Why would I wear a thing like that?” Maia shook her head a little so that her earrings—dangling confections of jade and ivory and something purple—swung and chimed quietly. “That’s something my grandmother would wear.”

  “Well, then, whose is it?”

  “Maybe it’s Elaine’s.” Jake glanced briefly at the necklace. “She and your dad were here a couple of days ago. Maybe she dropped it.”

  “Elaine doesn’t wear jewelry. She says you can have jewelry or a child under three, but not both.”

  “Must be somebody else’s, then.” Jake leaned his head against the back of the chair.

  “Haley, come on in the kitchen,” Maia told her. “I’m going to make myself a cup of tea, since your cousin there’s too lazy to act like a host.”

  Haley slipped the necklace into her pocket as she followed Maia. The nurse filled a kettle and set it on the stove. “Get down some mugs, will you?” She snorted as she pulled open a cupboard. “I’m going to bring that man some real tea. Nothing here but this pomegranate stuff. It’ll have to do, I guess.”

  Maia dumped tea bags into Jake’s mugs. Earth brown with splashes of green like pine trees, and Haley’s father’s initials—NJB, for Nathan Joseph Brown—scribbled onto the bottom. Steaming water poured over the tea bags.

  “Haley. Honey,” Maia said softly. “You can see it, right?”

  Haley picked up her tea, curling her hands around the hot mug. “See what?”

  “He’s getting worse.”

  Haley froze, holding her mug to her lips, looking at Maia through the steam. “But—but, that new medicine—you told him he should take it. Won’t that help?”

  “That’s just to help with the nightmares, baby. So he can get some sleep. It’s not going to cure him.”

  The thin layer of clay between Haley’s hands and the scalding water was growing hotter and hotter. In a minute she’d have to put the cup down.

  “But—but there’s something, right? That you can do?” She remembered to keep her voice low. “Something more that he can try. Something—”

  “He doesn’t want to try anything new, Haley.” Pity softened Maia’s voice. One corner of her wide mouth tucked in a little, as if to control her own pain. “You know that, honey. You knew it when he came home from the hospital this last time.”

  “But not—but not so soon!” Hot water sloshed over the edge of Haley’s mug and onto her fingers. It hurt. “Six months. He said six months. The doctor said—
”

  Six months. That was half a year.

  “That wasn’t a guarantee, honey. It was just a guess.”

  Doctors weren’t supposed to guess. They were supposed to know.

  And they’d said six months. Back in August, they’d said six months. Not until winter, they’d said. And it was only November.

  Six months was half a year.

  The first snow hadn’t even fallen yet.

  Six months was still a long time away.

  And now Mercy’s glove was missing.

  Haley’s report was due tomorrow. She’d finished her display and printed out her notes. Now she was packing up the papers Aunt Brown had given her. She slid the newspaper article and the family tree back in their envelope and laid the package on her bed. But where was the red box with Mercy’s glove?

  Nothing, nothing, stayed where it was supposed to in this house. Haley went back to her desk, picked up books and looked beneath them, checked behind the printer and the laptop. She got down on her hands and knees to look underneath. Nothing but dust and cables.

  This was crazy. Haley had left the box on the desk. She remembered. Could her dad have taken it? Or Elaine? Why would they?

  “Mine, mine!” Eddie said, delighted. Haley scrambled to her feet and snatched the envelope full of Aunt Brown’s papers out of Eddie’s hands.

  “Mine!” he insisted angrily.

  “Not yours,” Haley objected. “No, Eddie, leave that alone!” He’d grabbed a fat blue pillow off her bed this time. It had a photo printed on it, Haley at six, grinning a wide, gap-toothed smile, hugged between her parents.

  That had been eight years ago. More than half her lifetime. Eight years; that was a long time. Next to eight years, six months looked like—

  “Give it back,” Haley told Eddie.

  Giggling, thrilled to have her attention, Eddie ran out of the room and thumped into Elaine, a basket of clean laundry balanced on her hip.

  “It’s not a game!” Haley yelled after him. “Elaine, that’s my pillow. Get it away from him. He’ll spill something on it.”

  “He’s not going to hurt it, Haley.” Elaine set the laundry basket down with a tired sigh. But she bribed Eddie to give up the pillow, handing over a pair of rolled-up socks in exchange.

  “You don’t know what he’s going to do,” Haley grumbled. “And Mercy’s glove is missing. If he took it—”

  “Who? Eddie?” Elaine looked up, startled. “What would he want with an old glove?”

  “What does he want with anything? What did he want with my flash drive last week?”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have left it on the coffee table.”

  Of course it had been Haley’s own fault that Eddie had dunked Haley’s drive in Sunny’s water dish. She couldn’t even leave something on the coffee table in her own house.

  “And we said we’d replace the drive. Honestly, Haley . . . ”

  “How are you going to replace an antique glove? A historical one? A, a, an heirloom?” An heirloom you weren’t supposed to take, Haley’s conscience whispered, and her stomach squirmed. If she had to tell Aunt Brown that she’d taken the glove and Eddie had ripped it up or chewed on it or fed it to Sunny . . . Her imagination cringed.

  “Haley.” Elaine’s lips tightened. “Why don’t we look for it first? Before we try, convict, and execute Eddie for taking it?”

  “I’ll look for it,” Haley snapped. “Just—can’t you keep him out of my room?”

  “Not if you leave the door open.” Elaine picked up a folded shirt and three pairs of socks out of the laundry basket and handed them to Haley. “Here. If you want me to wash that stuff on the floor, you know you’ve got to get it in the laundry basket. And what’s that on your bed? Isn’t that what you’re looking for?”

  She heaved the basket back up and followed Eddie down the hall. Haley looked back over her shoulder. The red box was lying on her quilt, open. The fingers of the glove spilled over the edge, pale against Haley’s dark blue quilt.

  She couldn’t have missed seeing it, if it had been there before.

  Except she must have. What was she imagining? That the box had moved by itself? That the glove had crawled out while her back was turned?

  Now there was a creepy thought. Creepy but stupid. She just hadn’t seen the box, somehow. Hadn’t seen a red box on a blue quilt.

  The glove did look a bit as though it had tried to crawl out of the box on its own, though. Haley fought back a shudder at the thought of those flat white fingers stirring to life, like blind white worms.

  She reached out a hand to put the glove back into the box and then stopped.

  Eddie had done something to it! There were stains all over the ivory leather, rusty splotches, brown tinged with red. Appalled, Haley snatched the glove up. Was it peanut butter? No, the marks were a deeper red than that. And so fresh they glistened, shiny and wet. So fresh they were spreading, getting larger and larger, meeting and merging into one large gory stain the color of blood.

  Haley dropped the glove on her bed. Now the stuff—whatever it was—would be all over her quilt. But it was on her hands too—gross! Haley rushed for the bathroom, turned the hot water on hard, and stuck her hands under the stream. Faintly pink water swirled down the drain.

  Hands clean again, she came back to her room. What was she going to do? There was no way, just no way, she could tell Aunt Brown. Maybe she could lie. Maybe she could bury the thing in the backyard. Maybe she could clean it somehow.

  She picked the glove up gingerly, by one finger. It felt warm against her skin, almost as if it had just been pulled off of a living hand.

  And it was clean. Nothing on the pale leather but the yellow tinge of age.

  Haley turned the glove over and over, staring at it. It was spotless.

  A trick of the light, maybe. Her eyes had fooled her.

  But if that was true, what had she just washed off her hands?

  Carefully, Haley packed the glove away. She wrapped the yellow cord several times around the box and tied the knot tight.

  “If untreated, tuberculosis, or consumption, which is what people called it back then, had a death rate of fifty percent. It, um, it had killed two people in the Brown family before Mercy.” Haley stopped to clear her throat. “It was, it was . . .” She glanced hurriedly down at her notes. “It was sad. It was tragic. But it wasn’t supernatural or anything.” Or anything; great, Haley, that sounds really sophisticated. From the back of the room, Mr. Samuelson gave her a quick smile and nodded encouragingly, which only rattled her further. If he thought she needed encouragement, she must be doing badly.

  “Not everyone at the time believed in this old New England superstition. Not even everybody in Mercy’s family did. Umm . . .” Her eyes skittered down over her notes, found the right place. “A reporter wrote an article for a newspaper right after it happened. This is what he said. ‘The husband and father of the deceased has, from the first, disclaimed any faith in the vampire theory, but being urged, he allowed other, if not wiser, counsel to prevail.’ ” Thank goodness for Aunt Brown’s newspaper. It really made her report sound historical.

  “Everybody was looking for somebody to blame, and they picked Mercy. It was like a trial by mob. Only Mercy didn’t really get to defend herself. Since she was, um, dead.” The few people who were listening laughed. “Superstition and ignorance made a natural tragedy into something worse,” Haley said in a rush, then gathered up her notes and sat down so they’d all stop looking at her.

  Mr. Samuelson led the brief round of applause. “Very colorful, Haley, thank you. All right—that’s the last report for today. Chelsea, you’re up first tomorrow. Remember, by the end of the week you should be finished with chapter eleven and—” The bell rang, cutting off his words.

  Haley shoveled her laptop and her notes into her backpack. Mel leaned over her desk. “Haley, that was really good.”

  “I got nervous.” Haley made a face.

  “I couldn’t tell.”<
br />
  Haley knew Mel was just being nice, but wasn’t that what best friends did? She grinned, comforted, as she got up. It was too bad every school project seemed to involve writing something. Reports definitely weren’t her best area. But if she could just get graded on the display . . .

  Haley looked up at her poster board. Her captions, maybe, were brief compared to some of the others ranged along the blackboard. Annie Lewis’s display was almost completely covered in pages of neatly typed text. But what did you need words for when that photo of Mercy’s gravestone was in the center? Dead at nineteen. Dead, demonized, blamed for something she could never have done. A victim of ugly superstition as much as of a fatal disease.

  “I vant to suck your bloooood,” moaned a voice in Haley’s ear. She jumped. Papers and pens spilled out of her open backpack to the floor and her laptop nearly followed.

  “Knock it off, Jaffe.”

  Thomas Jaffe laughed ghoulishly and widened his eyes. “Hey, Lady Dracula, want to bite me? I’ll show you where—”

  “Shut up, Thomas, you’re disgusting.” Mel glared at him, hugging her books tighter over her chest. As Haley bent over to pick up her belongings, Thomas closed his hands lightly around her neck from behind.

  “Get off!” Standing up quickly, Haley jammed her elbow back into Thomas’s ribs.

  “Hey, ow!” Thomas let go. “I was just kidding!”

  “You were just stupid,” Haley snapped.

  “Check her out, she’s scary.”

  “Watch out, biting might run in the family.”

  “Maybe she wants to bite all of us . . . ”

  Haley felt her stomach tighten. She clutched her backpack closer. Even though it was just Thomas and his friends, Andy Chen and Kevin Christianson, acting like idiots as usual. What was she so tense about? What could they possibly do to her in the middle of a brightly lit classroom, with Mr. Samuelson right outside the door, yelling at some kid to stop running in the hall?

  “Come on, Haley.” Mel’s voice dripped disdain. “Let’s go.”

  But Thomas blocked Haley’s path, rubbing his ribs. She glared. He didn’t move.