“Not now,” Robert replied.
Eliza dropped into the River and immediately felt the nausea wash over her as the room went dark red. The pail was in the corner, just where she’d seen it before, and severed limbs were strewn across the floor, all seeping blood. She looked down at herself; her clothes were matted in a dark, warm, sticky substance, as were her arms and hands. She realized she could see her legs, too — her clothes were different. She was wearing a dress.
She dropped from the River and took a huge breath, then bent over as though she might be sick.
Robert rushed to her side, placing his hand on her back. “Are you alright?”
“You can’t see that?” she asked. “All the blood?”
“No,” Robert said, rubbing her back gently.
“This is why Rachel set you up,” Granger replied. “You’re somehow tuned to this in a way that Rachel and the rest of us aren’t. That’s why the creature wanted you. There’s something about you.”
Great, Eliza thought, feeling herself heave.
Chapter Nine
It had been months since she’d had the kind of anxiety dreams that used to haunt her regularly. The dreams used to involve money and losing the house through some mistake she couldn’t control. They had become worse after her father died and she found herself in charge of the homestead. Her sister Janie was at school in Boston, and that left her younger brother Shane in need of parenting, even though he was fourteen and almost able to manage himself. The added responsibility caused the anxiety dreams to go into overdrive.
Still, the dreams cleared up since she met Granger and Robert. The past few months had been mercifully free of the nightmares that left her feeling weak. She had begun to feel as if she was coming into her own, developing a personal power. Her time with Aceveda had helped, too.
As she awoke this morning, however, it felt like a remission. The dream had involved a banker who held their mortgage; he was insisting that she deliver the mortgage as a cardboard box of water. She tried to do it, but the water always drained out of the box before she could deliver it. He was angry about her inability to perform such a simple task, and threatened foreclosure.
What really bothered her about the dream were the images and thoughts she had just before she woke up: trapping the banker in a cage in the barn. Laying his body out on a table and cutting him into pieces. Placing his flesh into a pail and carrying it across the grassy field that separated the red brick store from Waverly Hall.
She went downstairs and made some coffee. Shane had spent the night with a friend. She hadn’t been around the night before to give permission or object, so he’d done what any other opportunistic fourteen year old would do and left a hastily written note. It was still on the dining room table. She lifted it and read it again, remembering it from the night before.
Love, Shane, it was signed at the bottom.
He only says that when he doesn’t want me to get mad.
And I have no reason to be mad at him, she thought. He was staying with a longtime friend who lived two farms over.
As the dream rumbled around in her head, slowly leaving her, the reality of Waverly replaced it. Peter’s plea kept repeating like a catchy tune. The reality of what Gloria had done seemed obvious.
She killed him, and then she dragged his body into the room next door, and cut him up just like she did with the others.
Eliza was reasonably sure that’s what had happened. The madness, Peter had called it. Just before she stabs him, Peter had said she must stop, that it was going to kill them both.
It killed him, for sure, she thought. Did it kill Gloria, too? How did she die, finally?
She took a sip of coffee and contemplated the words she’d heard from the creature in the hall’s basement. Now he expects me to do the same, the same as Gloria. When she pictured the creature, its transforming face and the dark feathers of the wings at its side, she felt the tug once again, and for a bizarre moment she wondered what it would be like to be Gloria: killing people, cutting them up, and serving them to the monsters in the hall.
For a horrible split-second, it felt appealing.
She forced the thought from her mind, finding the fact that she’d entertained the idea repulsive.
I wonder if Gloria found it repulsive, at first. You wouldn’t have to do it very long before you’d lose your mind and become mad. Just like Peter said, madness. But not at first. At first you’d resist it, like dipping your toe into cold water.
The refrigerator began to hum, and she looked up at the old metal wall clock hung next to it: 8:15. The phone rang, startling her. She quickly walked to it and lifted the receiver.
“Eliza? It’s Robert.”
“Hi Robert. What’s up?” She returned to the table to grab her mug.
“Granger did some work on the Ben Smoke name I got out of the diary. He reached out to a guy who lives near Horicon. We’re going to see him around noon. Can you come up?”
“I’ll be to your place by ten,” Eliza replied. “That enough time to make it?”
“Should be,” Robert replied. “See you then.”
She walked the receiver back to the phone and hung it up, its long curly cord quickly tangling into several knots below.
After downing a quick bowl of cereal, she headed for the shower. More than once while turning inside the tub, the image of the room above the red brick store flashed into her mind, the hot water of the shower making the memory more vivid. Reaching for the control, she turned the water cold, hoping it would wash away the warm, sticky blood.
●
“So this is not Ben Smoke,” Granger said as they made their way north. “Ben died years ago. This is his son, John. He’s native. Oneida.”
“What did you tell him?” Eliza asked.
“Just that we’d been working with someone who knew his father,” Granger replied. “That seemed enough for him to invite us up.”
“How do we want to approach this?” Robert asked. “You know how wacky these things can seem to laymen.”
“Well, we’ll just have to feel him out on that,” Granger replied. “Let me do the talking.”
“If he’s native, he might be more open minded than the average layman,” Eliza said.
“True,” Granger said. “They don’t call it the River, but many natives I’ve met over the years know exactly what I mean by it. Then again, I’ve met some who think it’s all hogwash.”
They arrived at the man’s home on the outskirts of Horicon. It was small, single-story, and surrounded by trees. As they walked to the front door, Eliza let Granger take the lead.
The door opened to reveal a tall, striking man in his fifties. His hair was jet black and cut short. He was wearing a necklace of native design with a large silver pendant. He introduced himself as John. Granger introduced the group, and they were invited in.
“Welcome,” he said, motioning to chairs and a sofa in his living room. “Please, sit. What can I do for you?”
“Well, we wanted to talk to you about Waverly,” Granger started. “It’s a little town north of here. A woman named Gloria Grignon lived there.”
“Oh,” John replied, his tone carrying both surprise and concern.
“You know of Gloria?” Granger asked.
“My father told me a lot of things before he died,” John said. “It was his way of passing down what he had learned. Most of them were warnings, things he thought I should steer away from. Waverly was one of those things.”
Eliza found John physically intriguing, but was even more intrigued by what he was saying. She unconsciously moved to the edge of her seat.
“Well, that’s what we’re concerned about,” Granger continued. “We learned that Gloria communicated with your father, Ben, years ago. We think she went to him for help.”
“She did,” John replied. “Many people sought out my father.”
“Some people think Gloria had a gift,” Granger said. “Could see things that others couldn’t. Some peop
le call it second sight.”
“And the place they go to see these things is the River,” John said.
“Ah,” Granger said. “I can see we’re on the same page.”
“We were hoping you might know why Gloria sought out your father,” Eliza said.
John’s gaze turned to her. He studied her for a moment, not responding. When he spoke, it was with a concerned tone. “What is wrong with you?”
“Wrong?” she said, taken back.
“Something is very wrong with you,” he replied. “A good wrong and a bad wrong.”
Eliza turned to Robert, looking for how to respond.
“We’ve experienced a few strange things in Waverly,” Robert said to John. “We’re all a little rattled by them.”
“Not rattled,” John said, still looking at Eliza. He rose from his chair and moved across the room, sitting next to her. “Wrong.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean by wrong,” she replied.
“The compulsion,” John said, raising his hand and pressing the tips of his fingers against her chest, just below her throat. “In here.”
Eliza was confused. She turned to Robert and Granger, but from the looks on their faces she could tell they were just as confused as she was.
“Can you feel it?” John asked, his finger still pressing against her chest. “It’s growing. Not many days now.”
“What do you mean?” Granger asked. “What is growing?”
“The compulsion,” John repeated. He removed his fingers from her chest and reached for his necklace, lifting it over his head. He held it open toward Eliza, and she took the hint, bowing her head so he could place it on her. As it settled around her neck, she felt something surge within her chest, directly under the point where the silver pendant hung — a slowly twisting ache that felt foreign and rotten.
“You feel it now?” John asked.
“I do,” she replied, trying to examine the sensation within her. “What is it?”
“My father called it ‘the compulsion’,” he replied. He raised his arm, holding it inches from her mouth. She could see the dark hairs on it.
“Smell,” he said, and she leaned forward, inhaling. “What does your body tell you?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to vocalize the sensations running through her olfactory glands; they horrified her, and she didn’t want the others to know how she felt. Her stomach decided to speak for her, emitting a loud growl that everyone in the room could hear.
“That is what is wrong with you,” he said, lowering his arm.
“John,” Robert said, “you obviously know something more than we do. Can you please share with us what this is all about?”
John rose from his seat and walked into an adjoining room. Eliza looked up at Robert and Granger, both of whom shrugged at her, unsure what to make of John. He returned with a large book in his hand and stood in the middle of the room, flipping pages, until he found the one he was after. He turned the book around, showing them.
It was a large, fanciful picture. In it, several bodies were lying on the ground around a small campfire. Dark figures with red eyes were feasting on the bodies, their mouths clamped down on various body parts, chewing and ripping the flesh. Above the bodies, white skulls were floating, each distinguished by a pair of dark-feathered wings attached to the sides, lifting them through the air.
Eliza recognized them immediately, and she could tell that John picked up on that fact. He pointed at the image of the skulls in the book. “Kanontsistonties,” he said, and handed the book to Granger.
“Is that what you saw?” Robert asked Eliza.
“They looked exactly like that,” she replied. “Except for the one that talked.”
“The knutsí:ne,” John said. “The head.”
“You know all these creatures?” Robert asked.
“I do not know them personally,” John replied, sitting again in his chair. “I only know what my father told me about them.”
“Which was what?” Eliza asked.
John stared at her. “Normally I wouldn’t speak of them, but you are infected, so you must know. My father told me about Waverly. I’ll tell you what he told me.” John settled back in his chair.
“There are men for whom the taste of plants or animal flesh is not enough,” John said. “They eat the flesh of other people. Such a man was Frances Scray. He lived many years ago, near Green Bay. He was friendly and charismatic, but crazy.
“Originally he killed in secret, eating his victims to satisfy his tastes. Eventually he became bolder, and tired of dining alone. He began to recruit others, spreading his sickness. He held secret feasts, where dozens of his followers would join. He recruited many natives from the area, and this angered some of the tribal leaders. They wanted him gone, so that he couldn’t recruit more.
“He was forced to move many times, avoiding detection and capture. He and his followers became like a nomadic tribe, looking for a home.
“One of his native followers told him of an old Iroquois legend, of the Kanontsistonties — the ghosts of cannibals, more powerful in the afterlife than they ever were in this one. The legend intrigued Scray, and eventually, weary of the constant evasion, he decided to pursue the legend. Scray led his followers to a spot where he thought they could all become Kanontsistonties and live forever, dining on the flesh of ghosts instead of the flesh of living people, free from the disapproving elders and local townspeople. He chose Waverly. Back then, the town was made up of families who had left the socialist commune in Ceresco, and was steadily declining in population. It was remote and small. He and his followers picked the town hall as a kind of headquarters; somewhere they could inhabit as ghosts and attract more spirits as food.”
“How long ago?” Granger asked.
“More than a hundred years,” John said. “They committed mass suicide in the basement of the hall, following a ritual that was supposed to achieve their goals. It was seen by the locals as both a good and a bad thing. Rumors of cannibals had been rampant for years, inspired by occasional disappearances, and although they could never prove that the Scray followers were the perpetrators, there were plenty of people who saw the mass suicide as the end of the cannibal problem. The bad news was that it put a stain on the town. Waverly began to die. Scray and his followers haunted the hall, devising ways to draw more ghosts there. The more haunted it became, the more Waverly perished.”
“I talked with a man in the basement of the hall,” Eliza asked. “He seemed to be different than the others. I wonder if it was Scray.”
“Did he have a body, in addition to the skull with wings?” John asked.
“Yes.”
“It was most likely him.”
“And Gloria?” Robert asked.
“My father had a reputation,” John replied, “and she was looking for a way out. She thought he could help.”
“A way out?” Eliza asked. “Out of what, exactly?”
“I told you Scray was crazy,” John replied. “His plan was flawed. He focused only on part of the legend. The Iroquois taught that Kanontsistonties are the ghosts of people who were cannibals in this life; that much is true. What he ignored — or, perhaps, his native followers didn’t tell him — is that their appetite is never satiated. They forever desire human flesh, but the ghosts they attempt to eat do not satisfy.
“So, after the ritual and mass suicide, he found himself with his followers, haunting the hall at Waverly, failed in their plans. His followers were angry and felt cheated. They were all starving, endlessly trying to devour each other and the ghosts they attracted to the hall, but the hunger kept getting worse. Scray realized he had to do something, so he made a deal.”
“A deal?” Granger asked.
“With a very powerful Oneida shaman,” John replied. “Someone who practiced more on the dark side than the light. The shaman made it possible for them to enjoy the taste of human flesh once again. In exchange, Scray made sure the shaman received
Kanontsistontie feathers, which are very rare. The shaman wanted them for his dark work.”
“How does this connect to Gloria?” Robert asked.
“Thanks to the shaman, Scray and his followers had found a way to once again dine on humans. However, since they were ghosts, they were incapable of physically securing bodies to eat. They needed someone living to procure and process their meals.”
“How?” Eliza asked. “Did they force her?”
“They needed someone who was gifted, someone who had a particularly strong sight in certain respects. Do you know about the gateways? The tokens?”
“Kind of,” Eliza said. “I figured out you have to pass through one in Gloria’s house, and a second one at another location.”
“How did you find out about them?” John asked.
“I was tricked,” Eliza said. “Set up by a friend. I was trying to help her. She claims that she and a friend of hers tried to access the hall without having gone through both gateways.”
“If you go into the hall without having received tokens from each gateway,” John replied, “you’re subject to attack.”
“That’s what happened to my friend,” Eliza said. “She claimed her friend was abducted, and she was trying to get him back.”
“Ah,” John replied. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” Robert asked. “I’m completely confused.”
“The cannibals use the hall as leverage,” John said. “They need people to do things for them in the real world — physical things — so they find ways to gain advantage over them and force them to fulfill what they want done. You and I could take a dead body to the hall and drop it inside; they wouldn’t be able to eat it. The system the shaman set up to allow them to consume human flesh required that the flesh be transformed; the gateway performs the transformation that makes it edible.”
“Why two gateways?” Eliza asked.
“Transformation of the meat,” John replied, “and security. Any gifted could come to the hall from a single gateway. Two in sequence made the odds of that much smaller. Gifted visitors who didn’t use the gateways were subject to attacks by the Kanontsistonties inside, but the one gifted person who they needed to get through — Gloria — was able to deliver their meals by using the gateways to transform the meat and simultaneously protect herself.”
The Haunting of Waverly Hall Page 8