I stood up and went over to look at the gravestone, the one she’d been crouching in front of. Then my breath caught in my throat and I just stared.
MARGARET ANN (DUGGAN) WINDSOR “MEG”
BORN SEPTEMBER 5, 1946
DIED DECEMBER 10, 1967
___
MOLLY SUSAN (DUGGAN) PEDDLE
BORN SEPTEMBER 5, 1946
DIED DECEMBER 10, 1967
___
LOVELY AND PLEASANT IN THEIR LIVES, AND IN THEIR DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED
2 SAMUEL 1:23
Ruby hopped back and saw what I was staring at.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
“Ruth,” she said, grabbing my arm and giving me a little shake. “Ruth, are you okay? What is it?”
I kept shaking my head. It was the oddest feeling, having the words in my throat but not being able to make them come out.
Finally I managed a kind of croak. “My mom—my mom—”
Ruby glanced at the gravestone, then back at me, then the light dawned.
“You didn’t know?” she whispered. “You didn’t know she was buried here?”
I shook my head.
“Sit down,” she said, hauling me down to the grass. “Take a deep breath.”
I obeyed.
“And another,” she said.
I continued to breathe, in and out.
“Your dad never told you?”
I shook my head.
“What’s wrong with him?” she said. “He never told you anything about your mom, about her family, about Newfoundland, not even that her ashes were sent back here to bury?”
I tried my voice. It was shaky, but I had the connection now.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it. It makes him sad, I think, so I stopped asking about her. A long time ago.”
“It’s not fair,” said Ruby, pulling angrily at a tuft of grass. “You have a right to know about your own mother.”
“Why is she here? I don’t understand.”
“Aunt Doll told me Meg and Molly both made wills before they went off to school, saying that no matter where they died, their ashes were to be sent back here and buried in the Buckle graveyard, side by side. Aunt Doll said they were worried about leaving Buckle, both of them, and thinking they might not ever come back. So then when Meg died, your dad sent the ashes back. And since Molly died the same day, they buried them together.”
“Oh,” I said, and stared at the gravestone. “It’s so sad,” I whispered. “Almost like they knew something was going to happen.”
“I know,” said Ruby. “I’ve always wondered about that. If they had some premonition. Or if Meg did, that is. She was the one with the Sight.”
I stood up and started walking toward the back of the cemetery, pretending to look at the gravestones.
“Ruth?” called out Ruby. “What are you doing?”
I turned. “Nothing. Just—nothing.”
She jumped up and came after me. “What’s wrong? And don’t say ‘nothing.’ We were in the middle of an important conversation, so why—Oh. I get it. You didn’t like it when I mentioned the Sight.”
“It’s not that,” I protested. “I’m interested in these old gravestones.” I glanced at the one beside me. “Like this one.” I bent over to read it.
“You are not!” said Ruby. “You just don’t want to talk about it because you’re scared. You do have the Sight, Ruth. You saw the ghost, twice, the sheep came to you, and Eldred told me that animals recognize people who have the Sight and you said animals always love you and—what?”
I just pointed at the stone.
FIONA MARY (DUGGAN) WHALEN
BORN JUNE 7, 1877
DIED JANUARY 1, 1910
___
FENELLA MARGARET (DUGGAN) BRENNAN
BORN JUNE 7, 1877
DIED JANUARY 1, 1910
IN THEIR DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED
“Isn’t that cool?” said Ruby. “Those are the twins they found in the root cellar, the first Finns who were adopted by the Duggans. Our great-great-great-great-something grandmother and aunt.”
“But they died so young,” I said. “Just thirty-two. And on the same day, just like Meg and Molly.”
“They did?” asked Ruby, squinting at the inscription. “I never noticed. I knew this was here, because Aunt Doll pointed it out to me once, but when I come here I always go to my mother’s stone. Hmmm, 1910. Both of them.” She frowned.
“Isn’t that…isn’t that quite a bit of a coincidence?” I said uncertainly.
“According to Eldred, there’s no such thing as coincidence,” said Ruby, going over to another gravestone, reading it quickly and then moving to another. “Everything happens for a reason.”
“Well, scientifically,” I began, quoting something my father always said, “coincidences are part of a random pattern of causality and—”
“Here, look!” cried Ruby, waving me over to a stone that stood a few yards away.
I went over and peered at it.
LUCY ALICE (WHALEN) DUNPHY
BORN OCTOBER 3, 1900
DIED MAY 10, 1935
___
LILY MARY (WHALEN) DUGGAN
BORN OCTOBER 3, 1900
DIED MAY 10, 1935
AND IN THEIR DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED
“They were thirty-four when they died,” she said grimly. “That’s—” She counted on her fingers. “Meg and Molly, Lily and Lucy, Fiona and Fenella—that’s three sets of twins. All of them Finns, all of them dying young, all of them dying on the same day as their twin. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a curse.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE CURSE
“A curse,” I echoed. “But…but there’s no such thing as a curse. Not really. It’s just a superstition.”
“Then you tell me,” said Ruby, her eyes glinting. “You tell me why every set of twins in our family has died young, and always on the same day.”
“It can’t be every set of twins,” I protested. “Just these three…wait a minute, wasn’t Aunt Doll a twin? She didn’t die on the same day as her sister. Where’s Daphne’s grave?”
It wasn’t far away.
DAPHNE ELIZABETH DUGGAN
BORN APRIL 15, 1926
DIED MARCH 3, 1958
“See?” I said to Ruby, who was frowning. “It doesn’t hold up.”
“Oh, it holds up all right,” said Ruby. “Daphne was thirty-one when she died, so she died young too. Aunt Doll didn’t die because she isn’t a Finn.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aunt Doll and Daphne weren’t identical, like the others. Aunt Doll is dark and Daphne was blonde. I’ve seen photographs of her. Daphne was a Finn, but Aunt Doll isn’t.”
I shivered. The sun had disappeared again and a cruel little wind whispered in the trees at the edge of the cemetery. It sounded almost like a human voice, muttering and sighing. Ever since Ruby had brought up the subject of the curse, I’d felt this growing sense of dread, like a shadow was creeping up all around us, swallowing up the light and making it hard for me to breathe.
“No, Ruby. It doesn’t hang together. It’s not true. There’s no such thing as curses and ghosts and fairies and all the rest of this crap you’re trying to put over on me all the time. I don’t believe in it. We live in 1978 and this a modern world where we understand why things happen. All those twins died because of some illness or some accident, and I’m not gonna listen to any more of your fairy tales. Nobody is cursed.”
I stopped. I realized I was yelling. Ruby just stood there, looking at me, not saying a word. My hands were shaking.
“There’s something else I need to show you,” she said finally, and turned and started walking toward the darkest part of the graveyard, in the corner, under the trees.
I hesitated for a moment. I wanted to get out of there fast. Go back to Aunt Doll and get her to teach me about stocks and bonds and baking bread. Anything that was brightly lit an
d ordinary, with no shadows.
“Come on,” called Ruby.
I went.
She was standing beside another old stone, this one larger than a regular gravestone. It had a lot of writing on it.
It began, “In memory of the thirty inhabitants of Slippers Cove, who lost their lives in the hurricane of 1879, when their houses were swept into the sea.” Then listed all the people who had lived and died there, including “Caitlin Bridget (Keegan) Parsons” and “Catriona Irene (Keegan) Duggan, born 1850, dear mother of Fiona and Fenella.”
“Twenty-nine,” whispered Ruby, and I felt her warm hand slip into mine. “They were twenty-nine when they died, Ruth. On the same day.”
The chill that went through me had nothing to do with the breeze. I felt like the world was tipping and everything that was sure and certain was slipping away, and I was sliding into something dark and cloying that was going to swallow me up. I could hear that voice again, murmuring in the wind. It sounded so human. I could almost, but not quite, make out the words.
“It can’t be a curse,” I said weakly. “I don’t believe it.”
Ruby gave my hand a tight squeeze. “Eldred will know,” she said. “Let’s go find him.”
* * *
We found Eldred in the chicken house with tiny black chicks running around his feet. He looked up with a grin.
“They’re full of mischief today.”
Ruby gave a little squeal of delight and ran forward, chasing one till she could corner it and pick it up. She held it gently, encased in her two hands like a little cage. Then she laughed.
“It tickles. Try it, Ruth. It feels so funny.”
I started a little reluctantly after one of the chicks, but he was too fast for me. Ruby laughed, and Eldred leaned down and scooped it up, then placed it in my hands. I closed my fingers the way Ruby did.
It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I could feel its little heart beating steadily and wings fluttering against my fingers. I felt like I held a little ball of light.
Ruby laughed again, watching my face. “Isn’t it the best feeling? Newborn chicks,” she said, and then placed her little captive down carefully on the straw. I followed suit.
Eldred murmured something to the hens, and they clucked around him as he produced some seed and filled their feeders. When he had done, he looked up at Ruby.
“You didn’t just come here to see the chicks, now, did you? What do you want from me?”
Ruby laughed and grabbed his arm, swinging on it a bit.
“A story,” she said. “I always want a story, you know that, Eldred.”
“That you do,” he responded. “Let’s go into the barn where we can sit down.”
Once we were settled in the barn, Ruby and Eldred on their old chairs and me on the crate I’d sat on before, Eldred said, “Right. Out with it, Ruby. What’s on your mind?”
Ruby glanced at me, a glint of mischief in her eyes.
“Tell us about the curse, Eldred. The curse on the twins.”
A look of alarm passed over his face. He tried to hide it by looking away and saying slowly, “Now what curse would that be?”
“You know,” said Ruby. “You must know. We’ve just been up to the cemetery and we saw all the graves. Every set of twins since the ones that died in the flood, every single set of twins has died young. And both of them on the same day.”
“Except Aunt Doll,” I put in firmly. “Her twin died and she didn’t. I think it’s all just coincidence, or some health issue all these twins had, some weakness…” I stopped. Eldred was looking at me like he could see right through me and it was no use pretending.
“I wish that was true, Ruth,” he said. “I really do. It’s not something we ever talk about, and your Aunt Doll would have me for dinner if she knew I was talking to you about it. But…you have a right to know, just like your mothers before you.”
“I knew it!” breathed Ruby. “There is a curse.”
“Yes,” said Eldred. “And as far as I know, it goes back even further than those two little Finns in the root cellar. Right back to Ireland, or so the story goes.”
The shadows in the barn seemed to deepen around me, and I felt that smothering feeling I’d had in the cemetery. I closed my eyes, and suddenly I was in the shipwreck dream for just an instant, the storm raging, the decks tilting, my mother calling my name, “Moira! Moira!” There were people screaming all around me, or was it the wind? It sounded like the wind in the cemetery, a wind with a human voice.
Suddenly I understood the words: “By water! By water! By water!”
I opened my eyes and the barn was gone. I was on the ship, drenched with rain, and my mother was reaching for my hand.
“Ruth!” called a sharp voice, and the ship blinked away, and I was back in the barn, lying on the ground, with Ruby looking frightened above me, and Eldred just behind her.
I started to sit up, but my head was spinning. A gentle hand stroked my hair. For a moment I thought it was my mother, but when I could focus, I saw that it was Ruby.
“Just lie still,” she said.
Eldred’s face swam into view. “You’ll be okay in a minute, Ruth. Ruby, get her some water.”
Ruby ran off. I lay on the floor, with the sweet smell of dried hay around me, and Eldred sitting quietly a little way off.
Ruby was soon back with the water and she helped me sit up a bit so I could drink it. It tasted so delicious, like the best drink I’d ever had. Eldred and Ruby just sat there, watching me as I took little sips and slowly came back to myself.
“What happened to me?” I asked, looking at Eldred.
“You tell me,” he said.
I hesitated. “I felt it before, in the cemetery, when Ruby started talking about the curse. Like I couldn’t breathe, and everything was closing in on me, and there was a voice muttering in the wind. Only this time, when I closed my eyes…” I faltered.
Ruby reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze.
“It’s okay, Ruth,” she said softly. “You can tell us.”
“My dream…the one I always have,” I said. “The one about my mother and the shipwreck, where she saves me, only this time I wasn’t asleep, and I couldn’t reach her, and the voice in the wind was screaming, ‘By water, by water!’ over and over again. And my mother was calling my name, only it wasn’t my name, but it was my name, I don’t know…”
“What name was it, Ruth?” asked Eldred.
“Moira. She called me Moira. And the wind was screaming. And then when I opened my eyes, I was still in the dream. And…this time I was going to die, in the shipwreck…” I was starting to cry.
Ruby put her arms around me and hugged me hard. “You’re not going to die,” she said. She was warm and solid and real.
“No,” said Eldred. “You’re not. It’s the Sight, Ruth. You have the Sight. You’re a true Finn. It was the past you were seeing, back when the curse was new.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
DUSTING
“But I don’t believe in the Sight,” I said. I didn’t sound convincing. Not even to myself.
“It doesn’t really matter if you believe in it or not,” said Eldred. “You’ve got it. Every generation, one of the Finns has the Sight. Your mother, Meg, had it. And her mother, Daphne, your grandmother, she had it too. And her mother, Lily, your great-grandmother. And her mother, Fiona, your great-great-grandmother, the one who was found with her sister in the root cellar, she had it too. Before that…” he went on, a faraway look in his eye. “Before that I don’t know. But I can guarantee that there was one in each generation. That’s how it works.”
I gave it one more try. “But it’s not scientific. It’s superstition. There’s no such—”
“No, it’s not scientific,” said Eldred. “Not as far as they’ve discovered so far. But it’s real just the same.”
“You saw the ghost,” said Ruby. “Twice. And now you’ve had a vision. Right, Eldred?”
“What ghost?”
he asked, frowning.
“Her mother,” said Ruby. “In our room.”
He looked at me. I nodded my head.
“I thought maybe I was dreaming…” I said. “But it didn’t feel like a dream.”
“Listen to me, Ruth,” he said, leaning forward and fixing me with his strange green eyes. “The Sight is a gift. It’s not always comfortable. Well, maybe never comfortable. But it’s a gift nonetheless and there’s no use denying it. You need to learn how to use it, and it will help you, and help the people around you. If you keep trying to deny it, you’ll just make yourself sick and scared and you’ll only be half what you could be.”
“But I’m scared now,” I whispered.
“You need some protection,” he said.
“Ruby! Ruth!” Aunt Doll’s voice wavered on the sound of the wind. “Lunch!”
“Better go,” said Eldred. “Ruby, tell her about the candle. And mind,” he said, with a faint smile, “not a word about any of this to Doll or we’ll all be sorry.” Then he winked at me.
* * *
Aunt Doll kept us busy most of the afternoon helping her with cleaning, baking and preparing the vegetables for supper.
“By the time you go back to Ontario, you’ll know how to run a house yourself,” she promised me. “Everyone helps out here, don’t they, Ruby?” Ruby groaned, and went back to sweeping the kitchen floor.
“Now I want you to turn out your room,” said Aunt Doll when Ruby finished sweeping. “Do a good dusting and sweep under the beds and then you can have some free time before supper.”
Ruby rolled her eyes, grabbed a couple of rags and headed upstairs with the broom. I followed.
First we went quietly into the boys’ room next door through the secret passage and returned all the clothes bags that we’d left on the beds back to the closet. Ruby was right: Aunt Doll hadn’t been up there all day, or we would have heard about leaving such a mess.
The Ghost Road Page 9