The Ghosts of Aquinnah

by Julie Flanders

  Hannah smiled. “I will. Let me think about it.”

  “Okay then. I can pick you up on Thursday morning.”

  “Great. I'll text you my address and a boat time as soon as I make our reservation.”

  “Perfect. Looking forward to it, Hannah.”

  “Me too. Thank you again.”

  Hannah ended the call and paced around her bedroom before sitting down and booting up her laptop. She couldn't resist looking at the webcam. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of Stella on the steps leading up to the overlook.

  Still, Hannah stared down at the driveway and green hills heading down to the sea and imagined that somehow Stella was there.

  “I'm going to find out what really happened, Stella,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  ****

  Hannah drove along South Road towards Abel's Hill Cemetery while Tim sat silently in the passenger seat and watched the passing scenery. The funeral home director drove behind them in a hearse. Hannah couldn't get over the strangeness of a hearse for a man who had been dead for more than 125 years. The closer she got to the centuries old cemetery, the more she wondered if she had made the right decision in accompanying Tim to the grave site.

  It wasn't just the weirdness of digging up a long-buried corpse. She also felt darkness closing around her as soon as she and Tim had arrived at the funeral home and seen the hearse. As if no time had passed at all, she was back at the funeral home in Indianapolis, trying to maintain her composure as she made arrangements for the burial of her parents. She hadn't been near a funeral home since, and she realized now that she wished she could still say that.

  Still, she had started this whole thing in motion and it was only right to see it through. Without her, neither Tim nor the funeral home workers would be spending their day digging up a grave and bringing the remains of Josiah Winslow back up to the surface. And, in spite of her personal issues, she felt certain that whatever they found in Josiah's grave was going to be the answer to the mystery of what Stella wanted her to know.

  Hannah saw the cemetery coming up on the right and slowed down before putting on her turn signal and turning into the grave yard. She slowly drove down the hill towards the parking spaces, passing the grave of John Belushi on the left.

  “Is that John Belushi's grave?” Tim asked.

  Hannah nearly jumped in her seat. She had been so engrossed in her thoughts and Tim had been so quiet that she'd nearly forgotten she had a passenger.

  “Yeah, it is,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the empty beer bottles and ash trays that littered the site. “I think it's crap that people still put stuff on it like that, but it happens all the time.”

  “I remember reading it was here but I never saw it. I'm surprised people still leave stuff at the grave.”

  “It's dumb to me,” Hannah said, parking the car and turning off the ignition. “And I think it's disrespectful. It's like they use it as an excuse to litter in a cemetery.”

  Tim nodded his head and got out of the car, glancing around at the hundreds of graves dotting the landscape.

  “I bet this place is something at night,” he said.

  “If by something you mean creepy and spooky, you're right. You wouldn't believe what it's like here when the fog settles down in this valley.” Hannah shuddered. “Creepy as hell.”

  “How old are the graves here?” Tim asked.

  “I'm not sure, but I know there are several from all the way back in the 1700s. I guess those are the oldest, but I don't really know.”

  The funeral director Joe Hammond came to stand beside them.

  “The Winslow grave is right up that hill,” he said, pointing to their left. “We've already had workers digging there this morning so they're probably close to reaching the remains.”

  “Let's go join them then,” Tim said.

  Hannah followed behind the small group, trying her best not to look at any headstones. Instead she focused on the red maple trees that punctuated the lush greenery of the cemetery. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Tim that Abel’s Hill was creepy in the dark of night. But that didn’t change the fact that on a sunny summer day the place was beautiful. As long as you didn’t pay too much attention to all the headstones.

  Hannah hated being in the cemetery, of that there was no doubt. But she had a strange sensation that Stella was there too, and that she approved of what Hannah was doing. She made sure to keep this feeling to herself, lest the rest of the group have her locked up for a mental evaluation.

  They reached the grave site and waved a hello to the three workers who had been digging up Josiah's remains. Joe Hammond made introductions and all involved nodded as if there was nothing unusual involved in the scene. All except Hannah. She felt like she was in some sort of surreal dream that she would surely wake up from soon.

  Josiah's headstone was at her feet, with the simple engraving “Doctor Josiah Winslow, 1843-1884” etched into its stone. As was the custom of the time, the engraving included Josiah’s exact age at the time of his death - “aged 40 years, 9 months, and 3 days.”

  It dawned on Hannah that when she had been reading about Josiah she had imagined him as being quite old. It was odd to realize he hadn’t been much older than she was now at the time of his death. And he had been younger than Tim.

  The three grave diggers pulled themselves up onto solid ground and lay their shovels down at their feet.

  “We've reached the remains of the poor bastard,” the tallest worker said. Hannah had already forgotten his name. “The coffin's nothing but rotted wood but we should still be able to bring it up if we're careful.”

  The workers had an assortment of pulleys around the grave and a large gurney pulled up as close to the hole as possible.

  Hammond nodded. “Great work, Stephen,” he said. “Let's do it, then. I've got the hearse ready.”

  Stephen and one of his co-workers leaped back down into the grave and arranged their ropes and pulleys around the rotted casket. The other slowly began to turn the wheels to begin lifting the remains.

  Hannah felt a combination of horror and nausea as the old casket started to come into view. Chunks of rotted wood fell off the box and back into the ground, leaving glimpses of bones in plain view. She folded her arms tightly against her chest and wondered how anyone ever got used to this kind of work. If Josiah did do what she suspected, she had no doubt that he was a miserable and horrible man. But she still felt shame and disgust at what she had set in motion. She imagined someone digging up her own parents' graves and nearly vomited on the ground. She turned away and faced the road in an attempt to regain her composure.

  Tim came up beside her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Hannah nodded. “I guess this is just harder to see than I expected.”

  “It's difficult, I know. Not something you ever really get used to seeing.”

  “I wonder if I was wrong to ask you to do this. None of this is any of my business.” Hannah shook her head. “I had no right to disturb this man's remains.”

  Tim put his hand on her shoulder. “You wanted the truth about an old mystery. If you turn out to be right, you'll be responsible for clearing an innocent person's name.”

  “And what if I'm wrong?”

  “Then they'll be no harm done,” Tim said. He gestured towards the remains that were now being carefully placed on the gurney. “You can see that this guy's way past caring. And we'll treat the remains with the utmost respect, trust me.”

  Hannah let out a deep sigh and turned back towards the gurney. “This is just plain gruesome.”

  As if to make her point, a crow cawed and and loudly flapped his wings as he took off from a nearby headstone and lifted himself into the air. Hannah jumped.

  “I told you this place was creepy,” she said. “I think there are ghosts everywhere here.”

  “I wouldn't argue with you,” Tim said.

  It dawned on Hannah that she had never checked to see if Stella was also buried here in Abel's
Hill. If she was, it wasn't next to her husband. Although with the circumstances of his death, she supposed that was hardly a surprise. Still, she realized that she had been so busy reading about Christopher and his fate that she hadn't thought about what happened to Stella after Josiah's death and Christopher's murder.

  “You ready to go?” Tim asked. “They've got the remains in the hearse.”

  Hannah had been so lost in thought that she hadn't even noticed the funeral home workers moving the gurney back down to the parking lot.

  “I'm more than ready,” she said.

  Tim smiled. “Listen, I've gotta warn you. If this upset you, I don't think you want to be there when I examine the bones. I can give you a full report afterwards. You don't need to see more of this.”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, no. I want to be there. I can handle it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  Hannah left the grave site and made her way back to her car with Tim following behind. She ignored the hearse and kept her attention focused on her thoughts of Stella. Whatever happened with the investigation into Josiah's remains, she had more work to do. She couldn't believe she had nearly forgotten the most important person in this long-ago tale and the whole reason she had become wrapped up in the mystery in the first place. That was a mistake she intended to rectify. She still needed to find out what had happened to Stella Winslow.

  ****

  The embalming room in the funeral home basement reeked of antiseptic and formaldehyde, and it brought Hannah instantly back to her high school biology class and the dissections she had always loathed. There had never been any doubt in her mind that she had no interest in being a surgeon. She had enough trouble dealing with the dead frogs in front of her, the idea of a live human body was horrifying. And now she knew that a dead human body was even more difficult for her to stomach.

  Josiah's remains, which were nothing more than bones and a few shreds of clothing that had somehow remained intact, were set out on an embalming table waiting for Tim to work his magic. Hannah stared at the table and felt the room starting to swirl around her. She grabbed hold of a nearby stainless steel sink to steady herself. While she knew they had been much more than bones, she knew her parents had been set out on tables identical to the one in front of her. She felt dizzy and struggled to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat.

  Tim was clearly in his element and, to her immense relief, oblivious to her discomfort. He used some sort of fluid to gently clean Josiah's bones and check for signs of injury. As they knew from newspaper accounts of the time that Josiah had been shot in the chest, Tim focused on the bones of his sternum and rib cage.

  Tim looked over at Hannah. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I'm fine. Why?”

  “I can show you something interesting if you don't mind coming closer.”

  Hannah forced her feet to start moving. “I don't mind.” She leaned over Tim's shoulder. “What is it?”

  “It looks to me like Josiah was shot near the heart. And since he was a doctor, I can see where if he wanted to kill himself he'd know the best place to shoot, or at least close enough to it.” Tim cleared his throat. “There's a star shaped wound here on one of the top ribs near his sternum where the bullet obviously hit. That wound indicates the gun was fired from very close range.”

  “You mean like he fired it himself?”

  “A definite possibility. And, the bullet looks to have struck the bone at an upward angle. That also points to suicide.”

  Hannah felt herself growing excited. “How so?”

  Tim stepped away from the table and grabbed a scalpel from his table of instruments. He moved towards Hannah, who instinctively backed away.

  “Don't worry,” he said. “I'm not going to hurt you.” He raised the scalpel. “For demonstration purposes only.”

  Hannah tried to relax as he came closer to her and touched the outside of her sweater with the scalpel.

  “Let's say this is a gun and you're using it to shoot yourself. You're most likely to hold it like this, angling upwards and right up against your skin. Obviously if the gun was held like this the bullet would enter your body at an upwards angle.” Tim moved back several steps. “But if I'm the one who is shooting you, I'm probably going to be at least a few steps away from you.” He held the scalpel out straight in front of him. “And, I'm going to be holding the gun straight. There'd be no reason for me to hold it at an angle.” He held the gun pointing slightly upwards. “Why would I hold the gun like this when you're standing in front of me?”

  “Okay. So this is all good for my suicide theory, right?”

  “Right. Although I have to caution you, you know this is all just my best guess, right? This doesn't prove anything, especially with bones this old.”

  “I know, I know. But I think it makes a good case.”

  Tim walked back over to the remains.

  “There's something else here I want to have checked out.”

  “What's that?”

  “Josiah was wearing leather gloves when he was buried, there are shreds of them left around his hands here.” Tim pointed towards the skeletal hands. “Leather decomposes more slowly than any other kind of natural fabric so that's not a huge surprise.”

  “What do you think you can find out from the gloves?”

  “If by some chance he was wearing these gloves when he shot himself, it's possible there could still be gunshot residue on them. Honestly that isn't that much of a stretch because people were buried much more quickly in those days so it's reasonable to think that he could have been buried in the clothing he had on when his body was found. Remember I told you GSR was a possibility with remains if there was any clothing left.”

  “I do remember. So how do you test for that?”

  “I don't,” Tim said. “That's not my area. But one of my colleagues back at Harvard does and I’m going to ask her to do it. I can talk to Mr. Hammond about getting these bits of leather shipped up to Harvard for testing.”

  “Great.”

  Tim continued to eye the bones, gently touching them with gloved hands. “There's something that's bothering me about these bones,” he said.

  “What?” Hannah asked, surprised that he sounded so puzzled.

  “I can't say for sure since I'm not a medical doctor, but I feel like there's something wrong with them. They're weaker and more brittle than I'd expect. I feel like I could snap them like a twig if I wanted to.” Tim let out a breath and stood up straight. “I'm going to ship the bones to Harvard as well and have them x-rayed. I want a medical pathologist to take a look at them.”

  “Is this allowed? Shipping the remains off the island, I mean.”

  “Sure. It's all part of the court order. And we'll treat them respectfully, obviously. Mr. Hammond can sign the remains over to my care, and then I'll be responsible for getting them back to him for reburial.”

  “So you're thinking Josiah had something wrong with him,” Hannah said, more as a statement than a question. “That could give him a motive for suicide then.”

  “It could, but this is just a theory on my part. Like I told you, I'm not a medical doctor and I have no qualifications to make any kind of medical diagnosis.”

  Hannah couldn't help but chuckle. “Don't worry, I wasn't planning on quoting you and then suing you for fraud.”

  “Well, that's good to know,” Tim said, chuckling himself.

  Hannah found herself so wrapped up in the possibilities she had nearly forgotten the fact that she was in an embalming room in the basement of a funeral home - until the stench of formaldehyde hit her again and she felt a wave of nausea wash back over her.

  “You okay?” Tim asked. “You suddenly look a little green around the gills.”

  “That's because I am,” Hannah said. “I don't know how you ever get used to formaldehyde. God, what a disgusting smell.”

  Tim laughed. “I don't even notice it anymore.”

  “Well I don
't just notice it, I actually feel like I'm going to vomit. I think it's time for me to get out of here.”

  “I'll be right behind you. I just need to set the transports up with Mr. Hammond.”

  “I'll wait outside,” Hannah said.

  “I guess this isn't a good time to ask about dinner?” Tim asked.

  Ignoring his chuckle as she ran from the room with her hand over her mouth, Hannah quickly walked up the steps and outside the home where she gratefully gulped in fresh air. In spite of her nausea, she couldn't shake her excitement over Tim's findings. And, now that she was away from the stench of the formaldehyde and instead smelling the fresh sea air of Vineyard Haven harbor, she realized that she was hungry. And that she couldn't wait to have dinner with Tim.

  ****

  Hannah had booked two rooms, one for herself and one for Tim, back at the Hammett House, and waited for him on the porch of the house now as he cleaned up after his day spent with Josiah Winslow's remains. Hannah had decided to take him to dinner at the Village Inn in nearby Menemsha. While Sandy’s was her favorite place to eat on the island, the Village was the place she'd always wanted to try and never had. So she'd decided there was no time like the present and booked a reservation for two at the pricey and secluded restaurant.

  She didn't regret her choice when she and Tim were seated at a window table overlooking Vineyard Sound and the Menemsha harbor. Hannah had seen more Menemsha sunsets than she could count, but none from a view quite like this. The sun was a perfectly round ball of orange in the sky, which had turned a deep shade of magenta above it. Stripes of pink danced above the dark blue water.

  “It's spectacular,” Tim said, taking a sip of water. Hannah had forgotten that Chilmark was a dry town and restaurant patrons needed to bring their own alcohol if they wanted drinks with their dinner. She felt like an idiot, but Tim didn't seem to care.

  “It is,” Hannah said. “Not many other words to describe it.”

  Tim had ordered lobster, while Hannah had chosen the pan seared bluefish. The waiter came to the table with their orders and placed the delectable meals in front of them.