When they had come and told Kiah what they suspected, Kiah didn’t even bother to say their thinking was screwed. Kiah believed she was smarter than everyone else, that she knew everything, just like Shirleen said about Trina, but with Kiah it was true. Ms. Oreo Kiah Wilkinson, always strutting around, showin’ off, when all the time all she was doing was helping the white folks figure out how to lock up more black folks without the black folks getting riled about it.
Right before the cops showed, Kiah had caught Trina talking with Lionnel at the window. So she was already pissed off and had her mind all made up against Trina before it even got started.
“Girl, you have not changed,” Kiah said to Trina in the kitchen after the man was gone. “And not changing is gonna get you right back where you were or put you in jail—or it’s gonna get you dead.”
Well, what did Kiah expect? Nobody changes. Nothing changes. It was what Trina knew all along.
“Go to your office,” Mike Dannow had said. “Work on that Underground Railroad project … Look normal. Be normal. Assume everything is normal.”
In the movies, the character who ignores her lawyer’s advice always ends up in big trouble, and with Trina on house restriction, it was obvious which piece of Dannow’s advice I needed to tackle first—but I didn’t like it. I reminded myself this wasn’t the movies, then sifted through the piles of papers on Gram’s desk until I found a file labeled “cellar construction” in Trina’s tiny handwriting. Gram didn’t believe in files.
The largest single piece of Park Service paperwork that remained still undone was completing the forms that described the status of Michael’s repair work to the cellar. I opened the file and scanned the packet of blank questionnaires, then I closed it and put it back on the desk. The movie character who ignores her gut feelings always ends up in big trouble, too.
I drummed my fingers on the manila cover, knowing I was going to have to fill out the forms sometime, and guessing if I waited too long, allowed myself to obsess too much, the task might never get done—and neither would the tunnel that had to be filled before Lexington Cement and Gravel showed up Sunday morning. Michael could be tied up with his mother for days, Trina was out of commission, and Beth was pretty much useless. I owed it to Gram to see her pet project through, but I didn’t want to go into the cellar alone.
I reminded myself that there really was nothing to be afraid of. What did I have to worry about? A few dreams? A charm bag that had gone missing for a few days? I stood and tucked the file under my arm. If I was going to get into big trouble either way, I might as well err on the side of execution. I marched resolutely through the dining room, but when I reached the kitchen, I turned around and went back into the west parlor. I opened the bottom drawer of Gram’s desk and scooped out the charm bag. I put it in my pocket. Whether for luck or protection, I wasn’t certain.
As I stepped carefully around the missing stair tread, I thought about Blais with her leg in a cast and wondered how it had happened, why it had happened. Maybe there were some things we weren’t supposed to know. I touched the charm bag in my pocket, then flicked on the lights.
The illumination consisted of two bare bulbs: one in the new cellar, one in the old. Michael planned to install more light fixtures, but the electrician had shown up for two hours one morning and then never returned. Coils of wire were piled in the corner near the new sump pump, and a mass of thick cables hung from a metal box on the wall, but nothing was connected and puddles of standing water pooled on the floor. The light was feeble, just barely bright enough to read by, so I sat down on an empty spool to bring me closer to the bulb and squinted into the file.
I glanced at the gaping mouth of the tunnel to my right—a tunnel that may have once led the way to a man’s freedom, a tunnel which that man might believe still did. Gram had tried to fill in the tunnel, and Gram had died in the attempt. Had the man been afraid she would block his way, stop him from reaching Canada, confine him to a life of slavery? Did he think he still needed to help his brothers? Would he continue to maim and kill until he succeeded? I forced my eyes back to the questionnaires.
It took almost an hour to fill out the forms, stipulating to the exact condition of each of Michael’s repairs—although I did fudge on the status of the puddles and the tunnel, figuring that by the time the papers were submitted to the Park Service, the sump pump would be installed, the hole filled and the fieldstone wall reinforced with concrete. There were seven separate documents, three over five pages long, almost all the questions redundant, bureaucratic bullshit. Our tax dollars at work. I stood and stretched, annoyed by the task, but proud of having completed it—and of my ability to survive an hour alone in the cellar. There had been no sounds of digging, no ghostly sightings, no stairs ripped apart by incorporeal hands. Perhaps things were more normal than I had thought.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was leaning toward dinnertime; I had forgotten to eat lunch, and my stomach rumbled now that I remembered. A shovel rested against the wall at my left, and two large piles of dirt lay in front of me. The tunnel opening yawned behind me; I could feel it, empty and waiting to be filled. I sighed and put the completed forms carefully down on the ground. I would dig for an hour, then take a dinner break and hope that Michael showed up; if he couldn’t leave the hospital, I’d just have to finish the job myself. I took the charm bag from my pocket, pressed it between my palms, then put it back again.
The shovel was heavy in my hand. I bent my knees as Beth had instructed and reminded myself that nothing untoward had happened in the hour I had been in the cellar, and therefore nothing would now. I began to move dirt from the pile at my feet to the hole in the wall. It was easier than I had imagined, and I got into an almost pleasant rhythm: bend, push, scoop, raise, turn, dump, turn; bend, push, scoop, raise, turn, dump, turn. It was soothing, in a sweaty, dusty kind of way, flowing and repetitious, satisfying.
I was half-hypnotized within the cadence of my motions, feeling good, strong, capable, when I began to have the vague impression I wasn’t actually accomplishing anything, that the tunnel wasn’t getting filled. I double-checked and saw that the pile from which I was taking the dirt was growing smaller, and that the depth and width of the tunnel were too, so I went back to work. Bend, push, scoop, raise, turn, dump, turn.
Then I felt it again, this time as a certainty: the dirt wasn’t staying where I was putting it. I was getting sloppy, or tired or hungry or all three, so I moderated the speed of my movements and promised myself I’d only work for a few minutes more. But even as I went more slowly, was more careful to put the dirt deep within the tunnel, when I turned back to the hole, my shovel brimming with dirt, the last shovel-load seemed to be at my feet.
I stared into the tunnel, at the soil on my shovel, at the growing pile of dirt on the earthen floor in front of the tunnel’s mouth, and I deliberately placed the shovel into the hole. I patted down the dirt and this time did not turn away; I stood my ground and watched, still partially anesthetized by my rhythm, not knowing what I expected to see, not sure I was expecting anything. And that was what I got: nothing.
I picked up another shovel-load of dirt and started again. But on my third cycle, after I had swiveled and thrown the dirt into the tunnel, the dirt flew right back out at me, pummeling me with its power, stunning me with its force. I stood immobile, unbelieving, staring into the hole as small rocks and pieces of earth pelted my chest. Someone did not want the tunnel to be filled.
The dirt shot out with a fury, a viciousness—a hatred.
The base of the shovel quivered, then the whole thing jerked in my hands. It was as if someone were reaching out from inside the tunnel—from inside the grave—to seize it from me. To stop me. I flashed on Gram struggling against her invisible opponent, yelling at no one. Just as it was then, I now saw nothing, no one, only the penetrating blackness of the hole.
Then it came again: a powerful force on the other end of my shovel, pulling it, jerking it, trying to take it a
nd stop me from filling the tunnel. My hands tightened on the handle, then when I realized what I was doing, what Gram had been doing, what was happening, I let go. The shovel hung in the air in a few seconds, defying gravity, then clattered to the ground. I turned and ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lexington rush hour swirled around me: weary commuters, blank-faced behind tightly sealed automatic windows, listening to cerebral discussions on NPR or songs of their youth on classic rock; high school girls flirting with gangly boys smoking cigarettes; streams of young mothers dragging children to the bank or CVS, anxious to be done with their errands and home for dinner. It was amazing to me that the mundane world of the everyday could continue on so smoothly when my world had been rocked apart.
I was standing in front of the phone booth on Mass Ave, frantically searching my pockets for change. I needed thirty-five cents and didn’t have my purse. I hadn’t been thinking about purses and telephone calls when I raced out of the cellar—all I had been thinking about was getting as far as I could from whatever was down there.
An over-excited toddler bumped into my leg. His mother threw me a quick glance, grabbed the boy by the hand and led him hurriedly away. A black woman sitting at the bus stop looked at me suspiciously, turning as our eyes met. I didn’t blame either of them; I would do the same had I been in their position. I was dirty and disheveled and obviously distraught. I probably looked deranged—and perhaps I was. Dotty Aunt Hortense.
I finally found two quarters in the back pocket of my jeans. I dropped them into the coin slot and punched Beth’s number. Beth’s son Zach answered and regaled me with the details of his baseball game. I waited as patiently as I could without screaming through the description of his three RBIs and his best friend’s game-winning catch, then asked for his mother. When Beth came to the phone, I said, “I need you to pick me up right away.”
“Where are you?”
“In Lexington Center. At the bus stop in front of Depot Square.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I sank gratefully into the bench at the bus stop. The woman who had been watching me moved to the far end, presumably to put more distance between us, but I didn’t care. Beth was coming to get me. She hadn’t asked any questions, and she hadn’t hesitated; she had just said she would be here. If home was where they had to take you in, family was who came to get you without asking why. When Beth’s Range Rover pulled up in front of me, I jumped in before she could come to a full stop.
“Well, aren’t we all gussied up,” Beth said, running a critical eye over my dirt-streaked clothes. “There’s something on your left cheek.”
“The least of my worries,” I said, but swiped at my cheek with the back of my hand.
Beth drove me home without saying a word. She parked in the driveway behind my car and turned off the key. “Want to tell me what this is all about?”
I stared through the windshield at Harden House. It looked so inviting, so warm and cozy; even the paint flaking on the front door was appealing. “I read an article in the Globe about a bunch of theologians and physicists who got together at MIT last week to see if they could find any common ground in their work.”
“And that’s why you had me leave my dinner and pick you up in Lexington Center?”
“One guy was talking about how he saw the glory of God in the workings of the universe, in the goodness of the human soul.”
“Lee …”
“And then this scientist gets up and says that the soul is nothing more than a series of electrical impulses. A collection of memories.”
“Is this about your ghost?”
“I got a book from the Lexington library that says that a ghost is the emotional memory of a person who died under tragic circumstances.”
“And you believe everything that you read?”
I looked down at my hands; dirt underlined my fingernails and clumped between my fingers. “I felt him,” I whispered.
“You mean his spirit? His emotional memory?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but just now, right before I called you, I was down in the cellar, filling the tunnel. I was putting the dirt in, and everything seemed to be going fine and then, and then it was like the dirt wouldn’t stay—like it wasn’t staying where I was putting it.”
“Where was it going?”
“Out. All of a sudden, it started to fly back out at me—I mean really flying. At my face. All over. It was like it was being blown out by something really powerful, really angry. Something that didn’t want the dirt there. And then, then I felt someone grab the other end of the shovel. He yanked on it, like he wanted to take it from me, and I started to pull it back, but then I realized I was acting just like, just like …”
“Just like Gram.”
My hands began to tremble.
“Shit,” Beth said. “Wow.” She roped her fingers through mine. “You look tired. How about spending the night with us? I’ll run in and get your things—you can wait in the car.”
I didn’t answer. I just held onto Beth’s hand and watched the facade of Harden House. Was something evil hiding behind those innocent, weathered clapboards? Cars rumbled past, music blared from an open window, two little girls argued with each other about a lost shoe, and the setting sun spread twilight over the neighborhood. Harden House watched me back.
I turned to Beth. “I thought you had some big mucky-muck gala tonight?”
“Russ got us out of it.”
“I thought Russ loved that stuff?”
Beth let go of my hand and shrugged. “You want me to go in?”
I hesitated, then said, “I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a great idea …”
“It’s the getting back up on the horse thing,” I told her with more confidence than I felt. “If I don’t go back in now, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to get myself to walk in there again.” I opened the car door and dropped down to the driveway. I started toward the house.
Beth followed me to the back door. We stood silently staring through the window into the kitchen. “Looks pretty harmless to me,” she finally said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” I agreed, but neither of us moved.
“Unless, of course, the woman with the iron teeth is hiding in there—then we’ll really have something to worry about.”
I was beginning to feel foolish, to wonder what had in fact happened in the cellar, what was real and what I might have imagined. “Maybe it was the woman with the iron teeth who was pulling on my shovel,” I suggested, trying to show Beth that I was maintaining my sense of humor. “Maybe she finally wants that dental work.”
Beth walked into the kitchen and surveyed the room with exaggerated thoroughness, then held the door open. “I think the coast’s clear,” she said.
“So this parapsychologist guy really says doing renovations upsets the ghosts?” Beth asked, flipping through the pages of Holzer’s book.
“He claims they get dislodged by all the activity. Wakes them up, I guess,” I said. We were sitting in the west parlor, drinking tea and eating cookies.
“Nasty shock.”
“I guess. The ghost doesn’t know where he is—he’s confused, lost, has no clue he’s in a different time. So he thinks the people in the ‘now’ are where he is—or was—and that they’re messing with his space and his things.”
“He doesn’t know he’s dead?” Beth appeared to be growing more interested, more believing.
As Beth’s acceptance increased, I felt mine diminishing, and I remembered that this was the pattern we had followed in our last conversation on the subject. “How can anyone know they’re dead?”
Beth snapped the book closed and tapped the cover with her fingernail. “But the reason he’s a ghost in the first place is because something bad happened to him, right? Isn’t that what you said? He’s a ghost because he was murdered or something?”
“‘Caught in a web of his unresolved emotions at the ti
me of his physical death.’” It sounded like such nonsense.
“So he’s got a score to settle?” There were two bright circles of color on her cheeks are she leaned toward me. “He’s wants revenge?”
“Or he’s just trying to get a job finished.”
“Like digging the tunnel?”
I didn’t answer.
“This actually makes sense,” Beth said, her voice rising with excitement. “A runaway slave, who was hiding in the house and digging a tunnel to get farther away, was killed by some anti-abolitionists, and his unhappy, restless spirit, which has been sleeping in the cellar for all these years, was finally awakened by the construction! This could be the answer to the question you asked the other day about why now and not before. This could be the answer to a lot of things.”
“I doubt it.”
“Don’t you see? This is why he killed Gram! He thought she was trying to stop him from digging his tunnel, trying to keep him a slave. And that policewoman—he messed with the stairs so no one else would be able to get down and bother him!”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, then why’d you run out of the house and need me to pick you up?”
“It sounds so ridiculous when you put it into words.”
“You’ve got a better explanation?”
“The stair broke because the house is old,” I said. “Gram took too many blood-pressure pills.”
“Or she was scared to death.”
I slumped in my chair. “Maybe I did get the Dotty Aunt Hortense gene. Maybe I’ve been imagining it all.”
“Well,” Beth said with mock seriousness, “that’s always a possibility.”
I smiled weakly. “I’m tired. Tired and hungry and all wrung out—I don’t know what I think about anything anymore.”
“Well then how about Trina? Maybe there aren’t any ghosts and you aren’t losing your mind. Maybe it’s like the cops think: Gram caught Trina stealing the bracelet so Trina killed her and then broke the stairs to keep the police from finding something incriminating in the cellar.”
The Safe Room Page 20