by Julia French
A faint rustling in the underbrush to her left gave way to a high-pitched squeal as an owl pounced upon the field mouse it had chased into the weeds. But if there are no such things as ghosts, what are we doing here anyway? Rachel peeled her arms away from herself, wondering if True had seen how nervous she was.
“Hold this.” True pressed the flashlight into her trembling hand and strode off among the weed-choked rows. His long legs pushed through dried remnants of burdock and nettle, and the weeds made whap-whapping sounds as they struck his pants. Rachel followed a few paces behind him, forcing herself to hold the flashlight steady. Holding the light gave her something to do, and she felt the grip of fear start to loosen.
They had entered the cemetery by the southeast section, the most recent area. Most of the grave markers were unassuming rectangles of marble or limestone with names, death, and sometimes birth dates cut into the stone along with a subdued decoration or embellishment, a Biblical verse, or a line of poetry. A few grave sites were enclosed by stone curbing and boasted tall and elaborate monuments testifying to the wealth and importance of the bones beneath them. The poorest graves, set off by mossy and illegible slabs of limestone, sat lonely and stark in their quiet dissolution.
Rachel and True continued walking into the heart of the burying ground, shining the flashlight around them, pausing to read an inscription here or a marker there: Ruth P. Zimmerman, Beloved Wife, 1800-1843. Richard Martin, Cherished Son and Brother, 1808-1829, Gone Too Soon.
In the southeast section of the cemetery the conventional symbols of death carved into the stones were modern: tendrils of ivy, poppies in bloom, draped urns, and bulging clusters of grapes. When they reached the older section of the burying ground, however, it was as if they had travelled back in time. The vines and poppies were replaced by the mournful bas reliefs of weeping willow trees and the fat, decaying faces of grinning cherubs. Rachel paused to examine a white column with an anchor carved on one side, and noticed True stopping before a low marker topped with a little stone lamb. He inclined his head very slightly, and she warmed toward him for his gesture of respect toward the long-dead infant.
“Lucy Devereaux Eighteen Mo. Our Own Angell.” He made out the pitted script with difficulty.
“Only eighteen months old. What do you think she died of?”
“Back then people died of simple things like fever or sore throat, not like today.”
“It must have been hard back then. Life, I mean, and death.”
“Not so easy as now, if you could say life is easy. We have better medicines than they did, anyway.”
They continued along the rows, stopping at intervals to examine names and dates. When the grinning cherubs and weeping willows gave way to the cartoonish winged skulls, crossed shinbones, and draped skeleton figures of early Colonial times, Rachel knew that they had entered the oldest section of the burying ground.
The heights of the grave markers here were more variable not only through individual choice, but also through sheer age. Some of the headstones had managed to withstand the pull of gravity and remained proudly erect, while others had fallen flat on their backs as if in surrender to the advancing years. Still others had sunk vertically into the earth for almost their full length, obscuring any information that the action of water and wind might have spared. The lettering on the stones became increasingly hard to read, and more than once, they had to stoop and run their hands over an all-but-invisible inscription, attempting to read by touch what they couldn’t make out by sight.
Rachel turned away from Mercy Fisher Loving Daughter and put a hand to the small of her aching back. “True, this can’t be the right place. We haven’t found any of the names from the church register.”
“Maybe they didn’t have headstones.”
“Everybody has a headstone. It’s a law or something.”
“You can go into the ground without a headstone. If your family is too poor to buy one, you have to. Or—” True frowned, thinking. “The people who died of plague might be buried in a mass grave. That means everybody together, and maybe there wasn’t any marker.”
“Or maybe they were buried separately and the markers are gone.”
“Then where are the holes where the stones used to be?”
“Maybe I read the wrong church register. Saint Thomas can’t be the only place that had a lot of burials in 1666.”
“But it feels like the right place.” He stood back from the circle of the flashlight, his head cocked to one side.
The flashlight beam quivered in her hand. “What are you doing?”
“Listening.”
She was sorry she asked.
The moon had risen further, and shone crisply clear above the bare limbs of the trees. She pulled the zipper of her jacket higher against her chin and kept the light trained upon the ground out of the way as True listened. There was no wind, and the trees and weeds were motionless.
Then, outside the circle of light, came the sound of one stick snapping—a careful, deliberate sound. Rachel held her breath, but couldn’t force herself to bring the flashlight up. Instead she strained her eyes to pierce the dimness, and True did the same. His face drawn and white, he pointed wordlessly to a spot ahead of them near the edge of the trees where two pale eyes were suspended in midair.
Rachel froze with fear. The hairs on her head literally stood on end. Silently the hovering eyes rose higher and higher, above the height of a man. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel and her head swam. She felt she was going to faint.
By her side came a choking sound and she forced her stiff neck to move. True was bent double with laughter, his face almost touching the tall grass. One finger thrust out toward the eyes that were ascending into the darkness.
“Possum! It’s a possum!”
Rachel brought the flashlight to bear on the eyes, and saw the furry whitish-gray head and body of the animal and the bare rat-tail outlined against the black trunk of an elm tree.
“He’s scared of us!” True managed to get out, and it occurred to her that True was as nervous as she was, just better at hiding it.
She laughed along with him until tears of relief oozed from the corners of her eyes. “I thought something was coming to get us,” she confessed, and he broke into another gale of laughter.
“Opossums are dangerous characters! This one’s a big one-he could drag you off and eat you alive, maybe save some for later.”
“Very funny.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“I should’ve bought my opossum repellent, but I clean forgot.”
“Cut it out.”
“I don’t have a spell to make opossums go away, but I could make it fall in love with you. That way it won’t eat you for dinner.”
“That’s enough, True! I was really scared.”
“Next time we sneak around in a cemetery I’m bringing the twelve-gauge. It’s good for fierce opossums and even tigers, but not so good for elephants, so if an elephant sneaks up on us we’d better run for it.”
“Who says there’s going to be a next time?” she retorted, flashing the light up and down the trunk. Startled, the opossum clutched the tree and a chunk of bark flew off and struck the ground. Spooked by the noise it had created, the animal scrambled up beyond reach of the scary beam of light into the safe and friendly shadows.
“What’s that?” She indicated the tall shape that loomed beyond the tangle of black branches.
“Maybe they’re in there.”
“The dead people.”
“No, more opossums.” True’s grin was ghastly in the moonlight. “Let’s go and see.”
She stayed very close to him as he walked all the way around what was left of Saint Thomas Church. Moving too slowly for her, he studied the ruined structure from every angle, and as they came around to the front of the caved-in building, he
paused, cocking his head in the same listening attitude she’d seen earlier.
Please, this is obviously the wrong burial ground, I’d rather not go inside that thing. I’ve had enough for tonight and I want to go home. “What are you doing, True? It’s just a wreck.”
“Old-time churches sometimes buried folks in the basement.” He stepped into the arch of the doorway, his head outlined darkly against the stars that glimmered through the fallen-in roof. “Give me the light.”
She handed him the flashlight and entered the building behind him, walking practically on his heels.
Inside the church was the weight of years made visible. Most of the roof had collapsed, but the section over the altar, the part which held the steeple erect, remained intact. Pews loosened from their moorings were toppled head over heels, blocking the central aisle that led to the pulpit. The unshuttered windows gaped open, and on the floor lay a litter of blue, red, and yellow glass, and the strings of twisted lead which had held the glass in place. The pulpit had collapsed onto the communion rail and one of the supports for the altar table had partially given way, skewing the sacred table to one side.
If there had ever been statuary it was gone, as was any cross or other image that might have hung behind the altar. The ruin wasn’t festooned with cobwebs only because it was completely open to the elements.
They picked their way through fallen shingles and pews, broken glass, and splinters of rotted wood to the pulpit. The moonlight groped for them between the intact beams of the roof. One second they were in the light, the next plunged into darkness.
“I’ll bet the last preacher’s dead long since.” True nudged an empty bird’s nest with his foot.
Rachel fought the urge to clutch his arm. “There’s no basement.”
His eyes searched the width of the altar space, and to her dismay, he bent down and brushed away the debris from the heavy iron ring embedded in the scarred wooden floor.
“True, I don’t think we should—”
True braced himself and pulled the ring, and the agonized wrench of rusted hinges echoed through the ruin as the trap door came away in his hands. Her stomach sinking, Rachel trained the flashlight down into the hole and saw a passageway lined with cream colored brick and steep, narrow steps leading down into the bowels of the church, stretching as far as the beam of the flashlight reached. The passageway was only slightly wider than the width of a human body. Some of the bricks on the wall had heaved loose with frost, and her scalp tingled in anticipation of falling debris.
“Stay up here,” True ordered, holding out a hand for the flashlight.
“Not by myself! And what if something happened to you? What if you need help?”
“Then you can call the hospital or the funeral man, whichever one I need. Don’t worry, it’s safe down there. No opossums,” he quipped, but she saw his forehead was damp with sweat.
“Please don’t go down there.”
“If I don’t come back soon, call out to me. If I don’t answer, don’t come down after me. Take the truck and drive right through Maddington to the drug store west of town. There’s a man named Forrest. Tell him what happened, and he’ll know what to do.”
She thrust the flashlight at him. “I won’t stay up here by myself. I’m coming with you—but you go first.”
The narrow passageway was cramped and oppressive. Rachel counted seventy five steps before the passageway opened out into the basement proper. The walls of the basement were paved with the same cream-colored brick as the passageway, but the floor was of hard-packed dirt. The ceiling was simply the floor of the church above them reinforced with haphazard pieces of lumber propped upright and nailed to the beams.
“Somebody dug this themselves. Not builders.” True shone the flashlight around, highlighting the amateur workmanship.
“Whoever it was didn’t want anybody to know there was a basement.” He extended his hand, palm down, over the dirt floor. “Here they are, the dead folks, all in a bunch.”
Her feet itched at the thought of what lay under them. “Are you sure?”
“Want to dig them up and see?”
“No! I believe you.”
“Now we can do what we came here for.” He held out his hand for the list, and she fumbled in her jacket.
“I know you wanted the names, but it’s a mass grave. Why can’t you do a mass spell?”
“Because names have power. In ancient times and sometimes today, people keep their real names secret from strangers until they’re sure the stranger doesn’t wish them harm.”
True drew out a packet from his pocket as he spoke. “When a demon torments someone, you can gain power over it by learning its name. Besides—” he took the paper Rachel handed him and studied it a moment. “Besides, ‘howdy there you ghosts’ doesn’t work as good as the names, and we want this spell to work so they won’t tell Joshua what he wants to know.”
“They won’t be able to speak, ever?”
“If Joshua makes these ones speak, we’ll be dead alongside them sooner or later.”
He knelt on the dirt floor and unrolled the bundle in his hand. Inside it were two white paper packets cut from the corners of envelopes. He opened one of the packets, drew out a pinch of green powder, and sprinkled it in a circle on the floor in front of him.
“Sage,” he explained, opening the second packet which contained a brown powder. “Sage purifies and ginger keeps evil from coming back.” Then his voice dropped to a murmur. He was whispering the names on the list, person by person, a roster of the plague dead. A chill came over her as she listened, and a tendril of air stirred the hair on her forehead. It might have been a breeze.
His voice became audible again. “You whose names I named, let your tongues be still forever. A mountain lies on your breasts, an ocean runs over your heads, be your voices bound and bound until the stars fall from the sky.”
Rachel waited for something to happen, but the ground didn’t shake, the dirt floor didn’t burst open at their feet, and no moans or screams erupted forth from the darkness that surrounded them. If she hadn’t been so relieved, she would have felt disappointed.
True sprinkled more of the green and brown powders. “Be silent, forever silent. Snow is frozen on your tongues, a glacier lies upon your mouths, be silent and silent again until the end of this world.”
There was a slight movement outside the circle of the flashlight. A worm wiggled in the darkness, piercing the surface of the hard-packed soil. Rachel had never seen a worm like it. It didn’t look soft and squishy but hard, like—
“True!” she yelped, and he whipped around.
“Be still!” He flung a pinch of sage toward the moving object, and the finger bone squirmed back into the dirt from which it had sprouted. “Are you okay?”
It felt like she’d wet herself, but it was perspiration growing clammy in the cold. “Yes. Please hurry up.”
“They can’t hurt you,” he reassured her. “They just don’t want to be made silent, and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t like it either.”
“We know they’re listening, anyway.” God, please don’t let anything else poke up out of the ground or I’ll lose my mind.
True placed a twig covered with vicious-looking thorns in the center of the circle of herbs. “It’s from a hawthorne bush,” he told her, and made a pass with his right hand over the circle and twig. “Any of you under here who breaks this spell, be cursed for a hundred years. Thorns of hawthorne will pierce your soul and a hundred glaciers will crush your tongue. Not one among you can break this spell until the Judgment Day.”
That was all. True placed the list of names together with the packets of ginger and sage, rerolled the bundle and stuck it back into his pocket. Then he and Rachel ascended the claustrophobic passageway out into the moonlight-splotched remains of the church. Neither of
them spoke a word as they retraced their way through the ranks of crumbling gravestones to the edge of the burying ground. Rachel heard what she hoped was the opossum scrabbling in another tree and turned her face resolutely away from the sound.
“Do you think your spell will work?” She was asking for reassurance, not an objective evaluation, but he seemed to know that.
“It’ll work, I promise.”
“What if it doesn’t? What if we went through that for nothing?”
“It’ll work,” he repeated, taking her hand. “It’s got to. Or else.”
Chapter Thirty
Mark had hired the detective in order to confirm his suspicions, but the news hit him like a physical blow.
“Are you there, Mister Jeffries? Mister Jeffries?” The cell phone squawked in his hand.
“I heard you. Go on.”
“I told you, you might not want to know, but you insisted—”
“Just give me the facts.”
“Sure thing. Looks like she’s got more than one of ‘em, a man in town and another over by Maddington. No disrespect intended, but your wife’s a busy lady.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“For three days? What kind of a fool do you think—”
“I found what you wanted me to find. You aren’t planning to stiff me, are you?”
It wasn’t worth losing his temper. He had bigger fish to fry. “I’ll send you a check today.”
“When I get it I’ll forward a copy of my report to you. Remember, a court appearance is extra.”
“That won’t be necessary. Just mail me the report.”
“Will do. You’re welcome,” the detective added and hung up.
Numb and shivering, Mark sat down on the unyielding mattress of the motel bed. He’d given Rachel everything he had to give. The ambition of his life had been to make her happy. He would have done anything for her, anything at all, but it hadn’t been enough, for in spite of everything she had judged him wanting. Why had she done it? Was she getting back at him for some reason? What had he done, or not done, that had made her turn against him?