by Jan Burke
When I turned to see if anyone was watching before bidding him to hurry away, I was vexed to espy Mrs. Farthington and entourage approaching the display. There was nothing for it now but to wait until the group had passed on to the next display. But as if taking a page from her tortoise’s book, Mrs. Farthington was not to be hurried, and stood transfixed, perhaps on some subconscious level perceiving what Pythag had perceived so recently-that something was not quite right about the Eskimos.
Pythag was masterful. Even under this prolonged scrutiny, he-as the saying goes-kept his cool. Or would have, were it not for the television lights. The heat they generated would have made puddles of the exhibit if any of the ice and snow had been real. Instead, it made a puddle of Pythag. He began to perspire profusely.
I do believe he still might have carried it off, had not Mrs. Farthington chanced to look at him just when he felt forced to lift a finger to swipe a ticklish drop of moisture from the end of his nose.
Mrs. Farthington, startled to see a mannequin move, clutched at her bosom and fell down dead on the spot.
The tortoise inherited.
When his friends in the police department refused to pursue a criminal case against him, Pythagoras Peabody was sued by the museum.
Persephone was not pleased with me.
This last was uppermost in my mind when I strolled alone through the museum the day after the civil suit was announced, and my own suit of Persephone rejected. Had I not loved her so dearly, I might have been a little angry with Perse. Her brother was a confounded nuisance, but she blamed me for his present troubles. I should have kept a closer watch, she told me. Had she deigned to accompany him on his daily outings? No. Monday was the worst day of the week, as far as she was concerned. That was the day her lunatic brother stayed home. I decided to give her a little time with him, to remind her of my usefulness to her.
One would think I would have gone elsewhere, now that I had the chance to go where I pleased, but there was something comfortable about following routine at a time when my life was so topsy-turvy. So I returned to the museum.
Standing before the great mastodon, I sighed. It had been Pythag’s ambition to ride the colossus. Could it be done? To give the devil his due, that was the thing about going to a place like this with Pythag-he managed, somehow, to always add a bit of excitement. I mean, one really doesn’t think of a museum as a place where the unexpected might happen at any moment. Unless one visited it with Pythag.
Why should Pythag have all the fun? I overcame the hand-railing with ease.
It was not so easy to make the climb aboard the skeleton, but I managed it. I enjoyed the view from its back only briefly-let me tell you, there is no comfortable seating astride the spine of a mastodon. Knowing that Pythag would be nettled that I had achieved this summit before him, I decided that I would leave some little proof of my visit. I made a rather precarious search of my pockets and found a piece of string. Tied in a bow about a knot of wires along the spine, it did very nicely.
The skeleton swayed a bit as I got down, and the only witness, a child, was soon asking his mother if he might go for a ride, too-but in a stern, Pythag-inspired voice, I informed her that I was an official of the museum, repairing the damage done by the last little boy who climbed the mastodon, a boy whose parents could be contacted at the poor house, where they were working off payments. Although we haven’t had a poor house in this city in a century, she seemed to understand the larger implications, and they quickly left the museum.
As anticipated, Persephone called the next day.
“Take him,” she pleaded. “Take him anywhere, and I’ll take you back.”
“Persephone,” I said sternly.
“I know, and I apologize, dearest. I will marry you, just as we planned, only we must wait until this suit is settled. I won’t have a penny to my name, I’m afraid, but the three of us will manage somehow, won’t we?”
“Three of us?”
“Well, I can’t leave poor Pythagoras to fend for himself now, can I?”
And so once again, I found myself in the Museum of Natural History with Pythag at my side. He had donned a disguise-a false mustache and a dark wig. A costume not quite so warm as the Inuit garb, but no less suited to its wearer.
He began teasing me about my recent setback with Persephone. If he was an expert at devising troublesome frolics, Pythag’s meanness also derived benefit from his ingenuity. When he told me that Perse would never marry me, that she had only said she would so that I would continue to take him to the museum, I felt a little downcast. When he averred that she would keep putting me off, always coming up with some new excuse, I found his Pythagorean theorem all too believable.
I had experienced such taunting before, though, and I rebuffed his attempts to hurt and annoy me by remaining calm. Outwardly, in any case. The result was that he became more agitated, more determined to upset me. At one point, he said that she would never marry me because I was dull, and lacked imagination and daring.
“Really?” I said, lifting my nose a little higher. “As it happens, Professor, I have done something you haven’t dared to do.”
His disbelief was patent.
“I’ve climbed the mastodon,” I told him.
“Rubbish,” he said.
“Conquered the proboscidean peak.”
“Balderdash!”
“Not at all. There’s a little piece of string, tied in a bow on his back to prove it.”
It was enough to do the trick. He climbed, and it seemed to me the skeleton swayed more than it had the day before. As I watched him, and saw him come closer to my little marker, it became apparent to me that I had tied the string at a most fragile juncture of supporting wires.
It was a wonder, really, that I hadn’t been killed.
The thought came to me as simply as that. One minute, Pythag was astride the spine, asking me to bring him a piece of string, so that he might tie his own knot. I imagined spending the rest of my days nearly as tied to him as I would be to his sister. All my life, protecting treasures of one sort or another from a man who thought rules were only for other people, never himself.
“You must bring my own string back to me,” I said. “That is how it’s done.”
And that was how it was done.
I was horrified by the result, and remain so. Mastodon skeletons are, after all, devilishly hard to come by. Persephone is convinced that the experts there are actually enjoying the challenge of reassembling the great beast.
The museum, no matter what it may say to the papers, is considering dropping its civil suit, hoping to extract a promise from Persephone not to pursue a wrongful death action against them. We are mulling it over.
I say we, because Pythagoras was mistaken, as it turns out. His sister will marry me. I confessed all to her, of course. Persephone merely asked me what took me so long to see what needed to be done.
Persephone and I are indeed well-suited.
Agatha Award Winner for Best Short Story 2000
Macavity Award Nominee for Best Short Story
The Haunting of Carrick Hollow
I reached the end of the drive and pulled the buggy to a halt, looking back at the old house, the modest structure where I had been born. At another time, I might have spent these moments in fond remembrance of my childhood on Arden Farm, recalling the games and mischief I entered into with my brothers and sisters, and the wise and gentle care of my loving parents. But other, less pleasant memories had been forged since those happier days, and now my concerns for the welfare of my one surviving brother kept all other thoughts from me.
Noah stood on the porch, solemn-faced, looking forlorn as he watched me go. It troubled me to see him there; Noah had never concerned himself overmuch with formal leave-takings-only a year ago, he would have all but pushed me out the door, anxious to return to his work in the apple orchards.
Upon our father’s death six months ago, Noah had inherited Arden Farm. From childhood, we had all of us kno
wn that Noah would one day own this land, and the house upon it. The eldest sons of generation upon generation of Ardens before him had worked in these same orchards. In our childhood, I had been the one whose future seemed uncertain-no one was sure what useful purpose such a bookish boy could serve. Now Noah spoke of leaving Arden Farm, of moving far away from the village of Carrick Hollow.
At one time, this notion would have been nearly unthinkable. Noah had always seemed to me a steadfast man who did not waver under any burden, as sturdy as the apple trees he tended. But then, as children, we never could have imagined the weight that would come to rest on him-indeed, on everyone who lived in our simple New England village.
I pulled my cloak closer about me, and told myself I should not dwell on such matters. I turned my thoughts to my work. When I first returned to Carrick Hollow after medical school, I wondered if my neighbors would be inclined to think of me as little Johnny Arden, Amos Arden’s studious fourth son, rather than Dr. John Arden, their new physician-but my fears of being treated as a schoolboy were soon allayed. I attributed their readiness to seek my care to the fact that the nearest alternative, Dr. Ashford, an elderly doctor who lived some thirty miles away, was less and less inclined to make the journey to Carrick Hollow since I had set up my practice there.
Now, driving down the lane, I considered the patients I would visit tomorrow morning. Horace Smith, who had injured his hand while mending a wagon wheel, would be the first. Next I’d call on old Mrs. Compstead, to see if the medicine I had given her for her palsy had been effective.
A distant clanging and clattering interrupted these reveries. The sounds steadily grew louder as I neared a bend in the road, until my gentle and usually well-mannered horse decided he would take exception to this rumbling hubbub. He shied just as the source of this commotion came trundling into view-an unwieldy peddler’s wagon, swaying down the rough lane, pulled by a lanky, weary mule.
My horse seemed to take even greater exception to this plodding, ill-favored cousin in harness. The peddler swore and pulled up sharply. I have never claimed to be a masterful handler of the reins, and it took all my limited skill to maneuver my small rig to the side of the narrow lane, which I managed to do just in time to avoid a collision. The mule halted and heaved a sigh. And there, once my horse had regained his dignity, we found ourselves at an impasse.
This was obviously not, by the peddler’s reckoning, any sort of calamity. After profuse apologies, but making no effort to budge his wagon-which now blocked my progress completely-he chatted amiably for some minutes on matters of little consequence. He then ventured to offer to me-a gentleman he was so sorry to have inconvenienced-several of his wares at especially reduced prices. “Far lower,” he assured me, “than any you could find by mail order catalogue. If you will only consider the additional savings in shipping costs, and how readily you might obtain the goods you need! Consider, too-you may inspect any item before purchase! You will find only the finest quality workmanship in the items I offer, sir! And you must own that buying from one with whom you are acquainted must be seen to be superior to purchasing by catalogue!”
“Pardon me,” I said, a little loftily, hoping to stem any further flow of conversation, “but we are not at all acquainted. Now if you would be so good as to-”
“But we are acquainted!” he said, with a clever look in his eye. “You are Dr. John Arden.”
I was only momentarily at a loss. Sitting at my side, in plain view, was my medical bag. Any local he had visited might have told him that the village physician, Dr. John Arden, had urged them not to buy patent medicines or to be taken in by the claims of those who peddled tonics.
“Forgive me, Mr.-” I squinted to read the fading paint on the side of his wagon “-Mr. Otis Merriweather, but I cannot agree that knowing each other’s names truly acquaints us.”
He grinned and shook his head. “As near as, sir, as near as! You’ve been away to study, and were not here on the occasion of my last visit to Carrick Hollow. You are young Johnny Arden, son of Mr. Amos Arden, an apple farmer whom I am on my way to see.”
“Perhaps I can spare you some trouble, then,” I said coolly. “My father has been dead some months now.”
He was immediately crestfallen. “I’m sorry to hear it, sir. Very sorry to hear it indeed.” I was ready to believe that his remorse was over the loss of further business, but then he added, “Mr. Arden was a quiet man, never said much, and little though I knew him, he struck me as a sorrowing one. But he was proud of you, boy-and I regret to hear of your loss.”
I murmured a polite reply, but lowered my eyes in shame over my uncharitable thoughts of Mr. Merriweather.
“And Mr. Winston gone now, too,” he said.
My head came up sharply, but the peddler was thoughtfully gazing off in the direction of the Winston farm and did not see the effect this short speech had on me.
“Do you know what has become of him?” Mr. Merriweather asked. “I’ll own I was not fond of him, but he gave me a good deal of custom. It seems so strange-”
“Not at all strange,” I said firmly. “These are difficult times for apple growers-for farmers of any kind. Have you not seen many abandoned orchards in Carrick Hollow? Indeed, we aren’t the only district to suffer-you travel throughout the countryside in Rhode Island, and you must see empty farms everywhere. Scores of men have left their family lands and moved to cities, to try their luck there.”
“Aye, I’ve seen them,” he said, “but-but upon my oath, something’s different here in Carrick Hollow! The people here are skittish-jumping at shadows!” He laughed a little nervously, and shook his head. “Old Winston often told me that this place was haunted by…well, he called them vampires.”
“Winston spoke to you of vampires?” I asked, raising my chin a little.
He shifted a bit on the wagon seat. “I wouldn’t expect a man of science to believe in such superstitious nonsense, of course! But old Winston used to prose on about it, you see, until my hair fairly stood up on end!”
“Mr. Winston was always a convincing storyteller.”
“Yes-but nonsense, pure nonsense!” He paused, and added, “Isn’t it?”
“I never used to believe in such things,” I said.
“And now?”
“And now, perhaps I do.”
Merriweather’s eyes widened. He laughed again, and said, “Oh, I see! You pay me back for guessing your name!”
I smiled.
“Here, now!” he said, “I’ve left you standing here in the lane, taking up your time with this idle talk-Otis Merriweather’s all balderdash, you’ll be thinking.” He cast a quick, uneasy look at the sky. “Growing dark, too. Hadn’t realized it had grown so late. I hoped to be in the next town by now, and I’m sure you’ve patients to attend to. Good day, to you, Doctor!”
With a snap of his reins, he set the mule into motion. Soon the clattering, jangling wagon was traveling down the lane at a pace that made me realize I had underestimated the homely mule.
My own vehicle’s pace was much more sedate. I wondered how much faster the peddler would have driven if he had known how much I knew of vampires. I had long made it my business to make a study of the subject. I knew that tales of vampires had been whispered here and there in New England for more than a hundred years, just as they had been told in Egypt, Greece, Polynesia and a dozen other places. The New England vampire has little in common with those which caused such panic in Turkish Serbia and Hungary in the last century-no fanged creature attacks unwitting strangers here. No, our Rhode Island vampires have always more closely resembled ghosts-spirits of the dead who leave their tombs in the night, to visit their nearest and dearest as they dream. Our vampires are believed by some to cause the disease of consumption-it is they, we are told, who drain the blood of living victims into their own hearts, and who thereby cause their victims’ rapid decline. The Ardens were never among the believers of such superstitions, never held with any talk of vampires. Indeed, how clearly
I remembered a winter’s night five years ago, when I assured my youngest brother there wasn’t any such thing.
“Mr. Winston said that Mother will come for me,” Nathan said. “Will she, Johnny?”
“Pay no attention to him,” I said, smoothing his fair hair from his damp forehead. His eyes were bright, and his cheeks ruddy, but he was far too frail for a six-year-old boy. His cough was growing worse. He needed his sleep, but Winston’s talk of vampires had frightened him. I tried to keep my anger at our neighbor’s thoughtlessness from my voice. “Mother loved you, and would never harm you, you know that, Nate. And she’s up in heaven, with all the angels. You must not worry so. Just try to get well.”
“But Mr. Winston said-”
“Mr. Winston is a mean-spirited old busy-body,” I said with some exasperation. “He only means to frighten you, Nate.”
Nathan said nothing, but frowned, as if making a decision. After a while he took hold of my hand. “I’m glad you’ve come home, Johnny,” he whispered. “I know you wish you were away at school-”
“No, Sprout, I could not wish to be anywhere else if you need me.”
He smiled at the nickname. “You’ll stay with me tonight, won’t you?”
“Of course I’ll stay with you,” I said, and reached into one of my pockets. “And see here-I’m armed-look what I’ve brought with me!”
“The slingshot I made for you!”
“Yes, and I’ve gathered a few stones for ammunition,” I said, winking at him. “So you’re safe now. Only get some sleep, Sprout. I’ll stay right here.”
He slept soundly. Noah came in to spell me, even though I protested I would be fine. “I know,” he whispered, “but please go downstairs to see to Father, Johnny. Try to talk him into getting some sleep.”
Downstairs, my father stood near a window, looking out into the moonlit night. I thought he looked more haggard than I had ever seen him. The previous year had taken a great toll on him, and when Nathan fell ill early in 1892, Father could barely take care of himself, let alone a small boy with consumption. So I came home from the private school for which my godfather had so generously paid my tuition; my instructors had been understanding-my family, they knew, had suffered greatly of late. Even though this was not the first occasion upon which I had been called home, my marks were high and I was well ahead of most of my classmates in my studies; the headmaster assured me that I would be allowed to return.