by Joanne Dahme
I looked around the kitchen.The house was completely silent, with the exception of the incessant whir of the air conditioner. My hands were trembling as I picked up the papers. I swear, the house could have burned down all around me, and I would not have noticed as long as those copied pages from Christian’s journal were in my hand.
I felt myself flush as I began to read the first entry.
The witch. She keeps coming back. This morning I found her standing beside the woodpile, her horse tied to my fence. Yesterday, she stood brazenly on the road, ignoring the wagons and coaches that passed to and from the cemetery, kicking cold dust at her back. She knew I was peering at her from behind the shutters. She smiled each time. She made me feel like an idiot.
She knew I was afraid to go out. She coaxed me with her bewitching smile. I was sure she knew something about Prudence—something I did not want to hear.
I instinctively looked over my shoulder, out the window and past the clinging ivy, to see if Christian’s witch happened to be standing beside our shed. Of course the yard was empty. I greedily took up the second entry.
The ivy is all I have now. When I wake in the morning, I use it to guide me down the stairs. Each leaf in the banister reminds me that I am alive as I feel the smooth and sharp grooves of the wood where I gouged the ivy to life. The ivy on my walls is a covenant—an unbreakable bond between Prudence and myself. I placed both hands on this ivy when I heard the rap at the door.
It was the witch.
“Sir, I am concerned about you.” Her gaze took in my walls and stopped at my banister. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said. It was the first time she ever turned away from my stare.home get,“ I reminded her
“Prudence has not come home yet,” I reminded her bitterly,“You are no witch.”
Now she turned back to me, a flash of hell in her eyes.
“Oh, but I am. I came to offer you an eternal bond.”
Her voice was strange. Not at all like a woman’s.
I tried to close the door but her black boot held it in place.
“If you truly love your Prudence, you will let me in.”
“There is nothing more you can do,” I argued. She had already turned me into a recluse—a man who lived best with the dead.
Suddenly she grasped my hands and turned them gently in her own to reveal my callused palms. There was a new softness in her green eyes as she caressed my hands with her own.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. She was more frightening in her mildness.
“Do you believe in the spirit? Do you believe that one’s essence, made of their love and hate and desire, is so powerful that it lives on long after the body is eaten by worms?”
I looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“You must believe,” she insisted. “The very air we breathe is seething with the passions of all of those who have passed before us. The dead are not in their graves.
Only their bones reside there. The dead make up our elements. They fuel the wind, fire, and water forces that churn our world. I can harness this force for you to ensure that you and Prudence are forever bound.”
“Leave me alone,” I begged. The witch was tempting me beyond my sanity.
I was not ready to read the final excerpt. This last one had set my heart pounding. What did she mean that the dead are not in their graves? That their essence lives forever? Spirits going to heaven is one thing, but spirits hanging around the earth?
I looked at the ivy on the window, a dull green in the brilliant morning sunlight. Are those leaves staring at me? Ridiculous. Just because they seem to be hanging so attentively from their vines.What else were they supposed to do? Suddenly I wished Mom was home.
I looked at the paper in my hand—Christian’s nightmarish thoughts in Margaret’s careful script. He sounded scared, and he was an adult. He didn’t have to listen to the witch. I moved the third journal entry to the top of my thin pile.Would this one tell me just how desperate Christian really was?
Each morning I found her standing in a different spot—by the privy, the woodpile, the wall, or the road. It was as if she were tracing a charmed circle around my house with her presence. On the eighth morning, she stood outside my door.
I wouldn’t fight her anymore. The cold air was meaningless against my chilled bones.
“Are you ready, sir?” she asked tenderly. Today she spoke like a woman.
“I am,” I replied. My voice already had the tone of the dead.
She pulled a few tendrils of fresh ivy from her cloak. It was February, but I did not ask her of the ivy’s origin.
“This has become your symbol—the symbol of your love for Prudence. Tonight you must burn this ivy and sprinkle its ashes about your bed. Its essence must become a part of your earthly prayers and must be inhaled with the breath of your dreams.”
She placed the ivy in my hands and closed my fists around it. Then she began her incantations—a slow whine that ended like the screech of death. This time I did not recognize any of the words.
“What did you say?” I asked. She was shaking, as if possessed, but her smile was serene.
“Your search for Prudence will reach over the centuries—will be a seed of desire in all of those who come after you, until you and Prudence are united.”
I SAT IN THE GRASS IN FRONT OF THE CEMETERY ENTRANCE, Memento Mori above my head like a banner. As if somebody living next to a cemetery could actually forget death, I thought peevishly. I was a half hour early for my rendezvous with the Geyers, but I wanted to make sure that I did not miss them. I had so much to ask.
I leaned my back against the iron posts of the fence with the envelope in my hand. I knew I had to give it back to them for safekeeping. We were sort of our own little team now in our quest to help the Geyers and the cemetery.
I glanced down the road and saw Dad’s red pickup truck cruising slowly in my direction. A blue car that was idling behind him beeped as Dad turned left to pull into the apron of the cemetery entrance. He frowned as he muttered, “I had my turn signal on. Road rage is supposed to be a city phenomenon.”
He switched emotional gears when he turned his attention back to me. “Courtney, are you okay? You bolted past Mom and me at breakfast and you were so quiet during dinner last night.” He scrunched his freckled nose in concern. “You even agreed to do all the weeding in the back of the house without so much as a dirty look.” He sounded playful but I could detect the caution in his voice.
“Dad, I’m fine, really. Planning this cemetery protest is a great service project for school, don’t you think?” I smiled brightly at him. He squinted at me. Obviously he did not buy it.
“Courtney, I know you and Mom are really excited about this, and it is a good thing that you’re fighting to preserve the history of Murmur.” He glanced at Memento Mori. “It’s just that you seem sort of preoccupied or worried about something.”
“I am worried, Dad. What if we lose our fight for the cemetery?” My reaction this time was genuine.
We both seemed to lift our heads as if to welcome the gentle breeze. It smelled of the cornstalks that it tickled. “Courtney, it’s the fact that you’re fighting a battle that you believe in that’s important. Not whether you win or lose, okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know. But I want to win.” I needed to win, I thought—for Margaret, for Mr. Geyer, and for Prudence. I was unsure whose side the witch was on.
Dad suddenly grinned. “With Mom fighting on your side, you should come out on top.” He peeked at his watch. Watch checking every five minutes was wired into his being. “Okay. I have got to go. Get up and give me a kiss,” he demanded teasingly.
I jumped up and kissed him good-bye on the cheek. It was smooth and smelled of his lime aftershave.
“Love you, sweetie. See you at dinner.”
I waved as I watched him drive down the road toward Murmur.What could I tell Dad? We could probably use at least one practical guy in this battle.
“Courtney
!”
I turned to see Margaret waving enthusiastically as she and Mr. Geyer walked along the swale. She sounded excited and relieved to see me. Today she was wearing shorts and a red tank top, and her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. She looked great. Mr. Geyer was wearing another pair of his seemingly endless supply of old-man plaid shorts and a black shirt and socks. His glasses glinted in the morning sunlight. A black backpack hung loosely from one shoulder, bouncing lightly as he walked. This morning I did not wince at the spectacle, I was so glad to see him.
When they were only a few yards from the cemetery entrance, Margaret ran up and hugged me. I was surprised by the fierceness in her voice.
“I’m so glad that you’re here, Courtney, and that you are all right.” She pulled away to fix her probing green eyes on mine.
A shiver of panic ran through me. All right? Did she think that the witch would hurt me?
“Of course I’m okay.” I brushed my own fear away with a false bravado. I was a little embarrassed by my behavior in the woods.
I turned to Margaret and offered her the envelope. “I wanted to give this back to you. Mom would have loved to have gotten her hands on it.” I laughed.
Margaret smiled knowingly. “So that’s where you get your inquisitive nature,” she added impishly.
“Did these help you at all, Courtney?” Mr. Geyer asked, still serious.
“A little bit, I think,” I answered honestly. “But do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I asked softly. Margaret was searching my face with those wide green eyes. I was nervously fingering the hem of my shirt.
“Of course,” Mr. Geyer replied. He was looking into the cemetery now, as if he was assessing the kingdom of monuments that we were fighting to protect.
“Did the witch put a spell on Christian that was passed on to you?” I whispered, afraid to ask the question in a normal voice.
Mr. Geyer nodded. His larger-than-life eyes, forever trapped behind those lenses, were moist. “Yes, and on to Margaret, too. Although Christian did not have direct descendants, all who share his bloodline are touched by this spell.”
My heart picked up speed. “How can you break the spell, then?” All spells could be broken, I thought.
Mr. Geyer smiled sadly, then visibly sagged. Margaret grabbed her father’s hand.
“We have to find the remains of Prudence and Christian and reunite them,” she said almost matter-of-factly, as if it were the most perfectly normal thing in the world.
“Christian?” I echoed. I had never even wondered about Christian’s burial place. “You mean he’s not in this cemetery?”
Mr. Geyer and Margaret shook their heads. “No.There is no record of his death.We’ve been searching a number of known family plots for years, without any luck.”
Another thought struck me. Again I was jolted that I had never questioned this before. “What about Prudence’s mother?”
Mr. Geyer sighed before answering. “We don’t know anything about Prudence’s mother. Record keeping back then was not quite as good as it is today,” he added wistfully.
“Christian never even mentioned her in his journal?” I asked, incredulous.
“No,” he replied soberly. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”
I stared into the cemetery. Christian had spent a good deal of his life carving memorials for people who died before him. Remembering was his job. How could he neglect to make sure that Prudence’s mother would not be forgotten or that his own resting place would be known to his descendants? Was it because of the spell and the witch?
“What about the witch?” I asked boldly, ignoring my instinct that I was pushing all bounds of decency. Each of my questions seemed to knock Mr. Geyer in the gut.
Margaret’s grip on her father’s hands tightened. Mr. Geyer patted her arm reassuringly. Is Margaret afraid of the witch?
“We don’t know much about the witch, Courtney, except from what we have gleaned from Christian’s journal.” He pulled Margaret closer to him and gave her a gentle hug. “Neither of us has ever seen her, although she makes her presence known to us from time to time.”
My jaw must have dropped.
“Then why did I see her?” I asked, fighting goose bumps despite the early-morning heat.
“We don’t know, Courtney, but I prefer to take her appearance as a good sign.”
Margaret looked at him, a question in her eyes. I looked at Margaret, searching for some reassurance. She reached out and grasped my hand.
“Perhaps because you are not a member of our family.” She smiled, as if this reason alone should provide me with comfort.
We took the jitney, as Mr. Geyer called it, into Murmur. Although its seats had lost their spring and the true color of its interior had long ago faded, it was air-conditioned. A few older women with cloth shopping bags clutched against their laps sat in the front. Probably to better position themselves to be the first into their targeted stores.The three of us were fairly quiet as we bounced our way into town. I could not stop thinking about the witch and about what Margaret had said. Why wouldn’t the witch want to appear to Christian’s family? Wouldn’t she feel closest to them? But when I had opened my mouth to ask Margaret about it, Mr. Geyer shook his head just enough for me to see. Not now, his eyes had beseeched, seeming to float confoundedly behind his glasses.
Murmur was already familiar to me, thanks to my trips to the grocery store and library with my mom. We passed more farms, thatched with cornstalks and some other long, brown, wavy crop that I could not identify.
“Wheat,” Margaret said into the air. She was staring out the window, as if hypnotized by the fields that flowed into the horizon.
I was beginning to believe that she could read my mind.
The landscape began to change as we approached Murmur.The road suddenly began to gently weave and dip between the thick maple trees and homes that resembled farmhouses but without the farms. Instead most of the homes were surrounded by bushy, trimmed hedges thicker than walls.
Plain stone churches anchored a number of corners, with their glassed-in announcement boards blaring daily reminders to passersby. Now is the Time. Believe and you will touch Heaven. It was nice to think that life could be so simple. I bet these ministers never had to deal with missing remains and witches.
The jitney slowed as it turned onto Main Street. It pulled to a stop in front of the post office, its door swishing open to introduce the noises of the little town—horns beeping, people laughing, and a church bell ringing. I could hear the sound of locusts in the trees, invisible but obviously numbering in the millions. At home, the cicadas were our one-instrument orchestra.
“This is the corner,” Mr. Geyer announced. The shopping ladies did not even glance our way as they clogged the exit of the jitney. We thanked the driver, and he gave me a friendly nod.
We crowded around the mailbox as Mr. Geyer unzipped his backpack and removed a folder. He gently unclipped the stack of flyers.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked proudly.
Margaret and I stared at the paper. It read:
CARE ABOUT MURMUR’S HISTORY
AND HERITAGE?
CARE ABOUT PRESERVING MURMUR AND HALTING
GREEDY DEVELOPMENT?
Then please attend a tour and presentation
of Murmur’s cemetery
Saturday, August 22, 11:00 A.M.
Tour will begin at the Memento Mori entrance.
Historian Christian Geyer will be your guide.
Wear good walking shoes.
A photo of the cemetery’s Memento Mori entrance graced the top of the page.
“Do you think it says enough?” I asked. I knew nothing about putting a flyer together.
Margaret’s eyebrows were scrunched in study. “I like the photograph,” she said.
Mr. Geyer laughed. “I’ll have you know, Courtney, that I worked on this text with your mother. She told me to keep it short and simple, particularly since her article will appe
ar in tomorrow’s newspaper.”
I smiled. I should have known Mom would have had a hand in this.
“Here, let me give you each a short pile.We’ll split up, going up and down these few blocks to post them.”
Margaret and I each extended our hands as if we were receiving a gift. It was then that I noticed a number of people eyeing me curiously as they entered and exited the post office. Maybe they were already wondering what the flyers were all about. Good. I pressed them against my chest as if they were a secret.
“I’ll begin at this corner,” Mr. Geyer directed as he pulled three small rolls of masking tape from his backpack. “Courtney, why don’t you start across the street at the coffee shop? They have a community bulletin board in there. Margaret, you head on over to the next block. Try the realty office and the library. Only hang them on bulletin boards. Telephone poles are not an option in Murmur.”
I was excited as I crossed the street. I felt like I was doing something tangible to save the cemetery. As I entered the coffee shop, the aroma of hazelnut pinched my nose. I was surprised to see that the little tables and chairs were filled. Judging from their clothes, they were tourists and businesspeople. I quickly pinned a flyer smack-dab in the middle of the board.
“Cool! Why don’t you leave one at each table?” the young guy behind the counter asked. He was looking at the photo on the flyer. I looked at his Grateful Dead T-shirt.
“Sure,” I replied in my friendliest voice. Every person helps.
Outside the coffee shop, I stood for a moment to select my next target. I smiled as I watched Mr. Geyer exiting the post office, a small stack of flyers draped over his arm. He gave me an encouraging wave, but there was something strange about him, stranger than usual.
I kept staring at him as he walked down the sidewalk toward the grocery store. He dropped his tape. As he bent down to pick it up, a guy walking in the other direction nearly walked right on top of him. The guy didn’t slow down or even look back to apologize to Mr. Geyer. Mr. Geyer seemed unfazed.