House of Echoes: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  “She’s just clearing the table for dessert,” Ben said. “And don’t worry about it; you’re our guest.” He filled her glass with sambuca. “I’m going to check on the coffee. I’ll be right back.”

  “I thought they’d eat more,” Caroline said when he got to the kitchen. There were mountains of leftovers on the counter, but Caroline always made too much.

  “But they definitely liked it. Everything was fantastic.” He began slotting glasses into the dishwasher.

  “Well, I hope they brought their appetite for this,” Caroline said. She opened a cabinet to reveal the dessert: a huge two-tiered cake iced with dark chocolate. Its sides were decorated with a pattern made from gold leaf.

  “Each tier is three layers. White cake with whipped ganache filling,” Caroline said. “I made it for you.”

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  She’d outdone herself with this one. Even among the spectacular cakes she’d made for his birthdays, this was a standout. He remembered how he used to look at those birthday cakes and feel the time and love that had gone into their perfection.

  “I’m so sorry about Hudson, Ben. I really am.”

  He turned to Caroline and saw her eyes brimming with tears. There was a time not long ago when this would have filled him with sympathy, but now he felt something closer to disgust.

  “You didn’t have to bake me a cake,” Ben said. He turned away from her and the dessert. Why she thought this was a good time to mention Hudson, he had no idea. “Do you want me to make the coffee?”

  “I almost forgot,” she said.

  “I’ll take care of it.” He wanted a few minutes to himself. He was so tired of pretending. “Have some port and sit by the fire. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

  While Ben’s hands were busy with the coffee brewer, he felt Caroline watching him from the doorway. A moment later he felt her lips on his cheek. Months ago, his heart would have hummed at such spontaneous affection, but it was not that kind of kiss. Long after her footsteps faded down the hall, the feel of her mouth lingered alongside his, sitting there like an exhausted goodbye.

  —

  Ben picked at the cake as he emptied tumbler after tumbler of brandy. This evening could not end soon enough. His thoughts had turned as dark as his mood.

  “The Swanns didn’t drink, you know,” Henry said.

  “I’d heard that,” Caroline said.

  “It must be about two years,” Ben said.

  They turned to him.

  “Since the Swann sisters died,” he said.

  “Shame the aunties couldn’t see the place like this,” Lisbeth said. “Doubt it looked this fine even when they were children.” She shook her head. “There were times when the wind was howling that I was afraid the roof would fall in on them while they slept. But two nicer ladies you couldn’t find.”

  “Everyone has very nice things to say about them,” Caroline said. “Jake told us how they died. Such a tragic accident.”

  “It was their time,” Mary said.

  “And we can’t go around second-guessing God’s plan,” the chief said. “Isn’t that right, Father?”

  “It’s hard to make sense of so many of the things that happen in this world,” Cal said. “Terrible, unthinkable things happen every day. It’s faith that sees us through. Faith that there’s something better waiting for us.”

  “Those dear sisters,” the chief said. “They are missed, but they are also remembered. Isn’t that right?”

  The others all nodded at that.

  “In the end, maybe that’s the best anyone can ask for,” Ben said. He drained his glass.

  “What’s that?” Lisbeth asked.

  Everyone at the table turned, and at first Ben thought that they were looking at him. Then he pivoted to see an orange glow lighting the room’s large windows. He walked to the nearest window, but the glass was too heavily frosted for him to see through it.

  “We haven’t been here all night, have we?” Henry joked. He looked at his watch. The light looked like the sunrise, except it came from the west.

  “Ben?” Caroline said from her seat.

  “I’ll look,” he said.

  The dining room had French doors that opened onto the veranda, but they were locked and Ben didn’t have the keys with him. He headed for the front door. Jake, Cal, and Chief Stanton followed him.

  “Looks like a fire,” the chief said. “But I can’t guess what could be burning out there.”

  “The elder tree,” Jake said. “That’s what’s out there.”

  “What’s that?” Cal asked.

  “Our oldest tree. Been here since the beginning. Since Aldrich Swann cleared the rest of the forest,” the chief said.

  Ben pulled open the door to see that Jake was right.

  The great elm on the lip of the Drop was on fire. Orange flames washed over its branches like infernal foliage. Even at the distance of a hundred yards, Ben could hear the tree crackling. The snow danced in the unexpected light. An hour ago the Drop had seemed as stark as a charcoal sketch; now it blazed.

  Ben looked down and realized he’d run out into the snow toward the tree. The snow was almost to his knees. The tree had been the size of a torch from the veranda, but the flames now encompassed most of his field of vision. His face burned, but his feet were cold. He felt a hand yank him backward.

  “Too close,” Cal said. “One gust of wind will send the flames into us.”

  Chief Stanton helped pull Ben back. “Can’t do anything about it,” he told him. “Lucky it’s too far from the house to be a danger.”

  “Lucky it’s not summertime, with the grass all long and dry,” Jake said.

  “What did this?” Ben asked. “Lightning?”

  They all looked at the sky. The stars were hidden by clouds, but there was no evidence of electrical activity.

  “Woulda heard the thunder, wouldn’t we, Chief?” Jake asked.

  “Weather’s strange on the Drop,” the chief said. Ben watched as the man’s eyes wandered to the edge of the north woods.

  “Should I call 911?” Ben asked.

  “Call them.” The chief began to walk around to the other side of the tree. “Tell them I’m here and to send the North Hampstead volunteers over.”

  Ben pulled out his phone and began dialing.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” he heard Cal say. “Oddly beautiful. The flames and the snow and the darkness.”

  “I’m seeing it with my own eyes and I can’t believe it,” Jake said. “That tree was as old as the mountains.”

  Ben spoke to the 911 operator, pacing as he talked. Wetness from the snow climbed the legs of his pants. He figured he’d ruined these shoes. The operator said they were sending an engine over.

  “This place has some trouble with fire, doesn’t it?” Cal asked him.

  Ben felt something in his chest shift position. It was one thing to burn a dry shed at the height of summer, but could anything in The Book of Secrets advise someone on how to set a frozen tree ablaze? The Crofts glowed with reflected light as he searched its windows for small faces. Some of the guests approached through the snow. They’d taken the time to put on their winter gear, and Ben felt colder looking at them.

  “How? How?” was all Caroline was able to say when she reached him.

  “I don’t know.” He glanced back at the Crofts, but it revealed nothing. “The fire department is coming.”

  “Footprints here,” the chief called. “Don’t get too close now. Evidence.”

  Ben followed the chief’s own tracks in an arc around the burning tree. When he got there, he could see two sets of footprints. One led to the tree, the other headed away, toward the north woods.

  “What size would you say?” Ben asked.

  “Fourteen or bigger,” the chief said. “Some big feet.”

  A blast of static came from the baby monitor on his belt.

  “It sometimes acts up if I get too far from the house,” Ben told the ch
ief. Then he heard Bub crying. The boy hardly cried, even when he woke up in the middle of the night. He usually talked to himself until he fell back to sleep.

  “No reason for all of us to be out here,” Ben said. “We should at least get our coats.”

  Another sound came from the monitor. A man’s low growl: “It’s okay, baby. Be quiet, baby.”

  Ben and the chief both stared at the monitor. The chief took off first, running for the house. Caroline asked Ben a question as he ran past, but he didn’t hear it. The house seemed far away, and the snow slowed them.

  He saw Henry Bishop by the front door in his jacket. The man’s head was jutted forward, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He opened his mouth as the chief approached him, but something he saw made him shut it again.

  Ben got inside just after the chief.

  “Which room?” the chief yelled. His face was red enough for it to be on fire, and his eyes blazed, too.

  Ben took the lead up the central stairs. They ran down the second-floor hallway for Bub’s room. When they got there, the room was empty. Ben ran to the crib, but it, too, was empty.

  “What about Charlie?” the chief asked.

  “Next door,” Ben said, pointing. He couldn’t feel his legs.

  Charlie’s room was also empty. Ben ripped through the bedclothes, looking for him.

  “Gone,” he said. “They’re both gone.”

  There was a creak from the wall of cabinets. Ben unfastened a telescope from its tripod and held it like a baseball bat. The chief took a large geode from the bookshelf. One of the cabinet doors inched open. Ben could see the rims of two pale eyes watching him.

  “Dad?”

  “What are you doing in there?” Ben dropped the telescope and heard its lens shatter against the ground.

  “Hiding,” Charlie said. He climbed out of the space.

  “Where’s Bub?” Ben asked.

  “He took him.”

  “Who—”

  “Where did he go?” the chief asked. “Which way?”

  Charlie pointed the way they had come, and the chief took off running again. Ben stared at Charlie. This would have been the time to hug his son, but he didn’t.

  “Who was it?”

  “Him,” Charlie said. He wouldn’t look at Ben.

  “Look at me!” Ben shouted at him. “Who?”

  “The man,” Charlie said, wiping at his face. “The man in the smoke.” He stared up at Ben, and his face shone in the light. Ben saw that he was crying.

  Ben staggered back into the hall. For a moment he forgot which way the chief had gone. He began to follow him, then stopped.

  He wouldn’t believe it. He went back to Bub’s room. He looked under the crib and under the blanket. He lifted the cushion and tore through the laundry.

  But he was gone. Bub was gone.

  December 18, 1777

  Dear Kathy,

  I know now that these letters will never be sent, but what have I to do but write them?

  We have eaten the last of the flour. Now nothing remains for us but to wait. The hunger that has taken us is strange. It is not of the same kind as when a meal is missed, nor is it like the pangs one feels upon waking after a long sleep. It is a cloak that encloses me, like a husk of corn. Sometimes warm and sometimes cold. Sometimes it is heavy enough to press me into bed, and sometimes it is so light that I imagine I could fly if only I moved my arms swiftly enough.

  There are dreams, too, bright and wild, though they are not always bad. It is only upon waking that I regret them. They sit upon my chest like a sin.

  Goody Smythe has perished, and so, too, has little Susie Harp. The Coxes died last night. Their stove was extinguished in the night; we do not know whether on purpose or by accident. Martha Goode found them frozen together in one bed. She said that they looked at peace.

  Now all of the families stay in the Crofts, as it is the farthest dwelling from the trees. The forest seems to get louder each night, as if the trees themselves are demons. It is difficult to sleep. And when we sleep, the dreams give us no rest. All of us are sacks of bone, except for James. The men watch him to see if he has hidden a store of food for himself. One of them caught him going into the forest last night. I do not know why he goes there or how he still looks so well. He was never a conniving child—had he found food, he would tell us, would he not? But the time here has made us all strange. Men so placid in the warm months have grown violent, and the kindest of women have become cunning. I can now imagine that any terrible thing is possible. Mother has left her bed and tells us that God speaks to her, and she asks us to remain faithful to Him.

  Father has also returned to us with renewed vigor. He gives a sermon every morning and every night. His subjects are of the Old Testament, of the tests given the faithful. There is a new light in his eyes since Jack was taken. Sometimes I am myself fired by it, but other times it frightens me, when I did not think I could be frightened any further.

  And perhaps he does indeed know what must be done. Are we not the only ones who live while so many are dead? Is that alone not a sign of God’s blessings? What else is there to believe when our own forest has turned against us? But I fear the time is coming when unthinkable things will be asked of us.

  I have nearly knocked over my candle laughing, dear sister. People such as you say “the unthinkable” as if there is but one unthinkable thing. But I tell you they are legion, and I come to know a new one each day.

  Your Bess

  39

  Caroline heard it again.

  Her ear pressed against the wall, she filtered out the sounds of the heat and plumbing. It was there, she was sure, just beyond the hum of electricity.

  Behind her, Charlie tugged at her shirt.

  “Come here, honey,” she said.

  She hoisted the boy onto her knee without removing her ear from the wall. Normally Charlie would have squirmed under her grip, but all their normal days had been spent and he was docile as a lamb. She pressed his little head against the wall.

  “Do you hear it?” she asked. His thick hair still smelled of Johnson & Johnson, just like his brother’s would have.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said after a few long moments. “Is it…is it kind of a scratching?”

  “It does sound like scratching sometimes,” Caroline said. “But it’s more of a creaking, I think. And sometimes—”

  “There are mice,” Charlie said. “I’ve seen them in the cellar.”

  “Not big enough to make that creaking noise. And sometimes there’s another sound, too. If we listen carefully enough, I know you’ll hear it.”

  They leaned there like that for a few minutes, their ears pressed against the wall that separated Bub’s room from the hallway.

  Caroline tried to focus the entirety of her attention on the noise in the wall. Over the last day she’d discovered that it was a tricky sort of sound, the kind that knew just when your attention began to wander.

  It was poor planning that she hadn’t put her other ear against the wall. If she had, she might have been able to see the window and guess what time it was. It was too late now: She didn’t dare move and risk missing the sound. Something in the room’s shadows made her think it was morning again.

  Caroline had searched with Ben and the others through the first day. The ice-glazed trees were terrible in their beauty, the air in the forest cold enough to make her teeth hurt. Full-grown adults swaddled in down and neoprene lasted barely a half hour outside, and yet that’s where they thought Bub was.

  Charlie had trudged through the snow between them. They were not about to let him out of their sight. Not now. Not ever, probably. The little man hadn’t uttered a word of complaint. Had not said a word of any kind that Caroline could recall. He wanted to find his baby brother as badly as anyone, but it was clear he was too small for the search. The drifts in the woods were too deep and the wind was too cold. Caroline decided to stay at the Crofts with him. This might have been the most important
decision she’d ever made.

  After Caroline made hot chocolate for Charlie and some tea for herself, they’d gone upstairs. She’d meant to get Charlie dry socks, but they ended up in Bub’s room. Clothes covered the floor, emptied drawers lay against the walls, and pictures hung askew on their nails. Ben had torn the place apart looking for Bub, and so had Caroline.

  Still ajar was that cabinet that swung into both Bub and Charlie’s rooms. Caroline checked it again, just in case. Then she made Charlie scamper through it into his own room, and she watched as he retrieved fresh socks from his dresser. When he returned through the cabinet, she made him sit between the two doors. While Charlie stayed there, she’d looked at him from the doorway of Bub’s room, then walked down the hall to his own room’s doorway to examine him from that vantage point.

  It struck her as so strange that a boy could be in both rooms at once yet in neither one at all. She checked from both doors again and then joined Charlie in the cabinet that was in both rooms or in neither.

  That’s when she’d first heard it.

  Charlie had been right next to her, but he hadn’t caught it that time. They’d sat there through the night, and each time Charlie seemed to miss it. Between the howling wind and all the noises of the old house, it was a hard sound to grab hold of.

  She’d tried to get Ben to hear it, too, but had no luck there, either. This wasn’t much of a surprise. He’d come in, stubble glazed with frost, skin raw from wind. So cold that his breathing was practically the only thing she could hear.

  When he couldn’t hear what she heard, Caroline was sure she knew what would happen next. Time to call Dr. Hatcher, he would say. Have you been keeping up with your pills? he’d ask, with that pitying smile that he thought looked kind. But it hadn’t gone like that at all.

  “Good,” he’d said. “That’s real good. You look in here and I’ll look out there. We’re doubling our chances. We have to try everything.”

  That was the first time she’d considered letting herself cry since the night of the abduction. Finally, she thought, her insides swelling with gratitude and love. He’d hugged her then as fiercely as he used to. Not as if she was broken but as if she was the only thing he had left to hang on to. Finally. She’d flushed, thinking of the terrible things she’d said to him a week ago, about not being happy. She had come to feel besieged, she knew, by the rough acoustics of everyday living; every perceived slight, every misjudgment of tone was a dissonant note that could not be unheard. Each little failure building upon the others until you couldn’t hear a thing over the cacophony. But that was Before. She remembered now that Ben was the root of her happiness. Ben and Charlie and Bub were her reasons for living.