“Oh, you hurt him, Aine. Don’t play coy. You rebuffed him. You threw him over for Joe. You sent him into such a depression that … he died.” She spun on one heel as if she meant to leave, but she only laughed and turned back to face me. “You were instrumental in his death, Aine.”
“That’s a lie.” My voice shook.
“No, it’s the truth, though you’ll try to deny it. Especially to yourself. You set him up for me. You hurt him, and so he drank. You’re at the root of his death, and this time they’ll trace it back to you.” She closed her eyes, held out her arms, and spun, a child playing Blind Man’s Buff.
“That’s insane. There’s nothing to trace back to me.”
“Don’t be so sure. Remember the epidemic of rabid raccoons the last time you were home? What did you buy at the feed store?”
“What are you talking about?” At Granny Siobhan’s funeral, I’d been sent to the store to get something to poison the raccoons. I’d handed the strychnine to my cousins.
“You signed for the poison. There’s a record.”
“You’re sick and dangerous.” Even as I said it, I knew she wasn’t crazy. She was evil. She’d plotted two murders, and each time she’d put me in a place to be the prime suspect. “Why Patrick? What did he ever do to you?”
“You wanted him dead. I merely obliged.”
“How dare you?” My fingers clawed the dirt patch for rocks. With every bit of my strength I hurled them at her.
“Ouch,” she said. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“I didn’t want Karla dead and I certainly didn’t want you to kill Patrick. He was just a kid.”
“He was in the way. He meant to create trouble for you.”
“I’m going to find a way to kill you. My aunt knew things. I’ll figure out how to do it.”
“Yes, Aunt Bonnie, by all means.” She faded to a red stain against the shadowed woods. “You’ve been afraid to do it until now. Grit up, Aine. Do it. Consult Bonnie’s journal. You can really read it now. There are secrets there you’re finally ready to understand. But remember, things didn’t go so well for Bonnie, did they?”
I clutched another handful of rocks but when I drew back to hurl them, she was gone. The path before me was empty of everything except moonlight.
34
Panting in terror, I reached the cabin, wrenched the unlocked door open and slammed it shut behind me, sliding the thumb bolt home. The rough wood rasped through the thin material of my ruined dress. When my fears calmed, I pushed away from the door and stumbled into the chilly room.
The fire was almost out, and I added logs and stirred the embers with a poker until a bright flame jumped toward the chimney. As I stood, I caught my reflection in the dresser mirror. My hair, disheveled and tangled around my head and shoulders, was filled with twigs and leaves as if I’d run pell-mell through the woods.
My face was scratched, bruised, and bloodied. The beautiful dress I’d wanted so badly hung in tatters from my shoulders. Blood from my busted lip splotched the front of it. Runs laddered my stockings, revealing the purplish skin of my naked legs. Based on my coloring, I could pass for a corpse. At last I looked at my ruined shoes and bleeding feet.
Self-pity rose in me, and tears stung my eyes—until I noticed something else. Two wine glasses sat on the kitchen counter. One bore a trace of lipstick, and contained half an inch of wine. The other glass was empty and rested beside the uncorked red wine I preferred.
I had no memory of drinking wine with Joe or anyone else. I didn’t remember opening the bottle.
Someone had been in my cabin.
I walked slowly to the counter and picked up the dark green bottle. The foil sleeve was torn, not cut. I always used a knife, rather than leaving it jagged. Long ago, vintners used lead foil to keep rodents away from the cork. Knowing that, I always removed the entire sleeve.
The truth slammed into me. Patrick had come back to my cabin. He’d opened the wine. He’d drunk from the empty glass, a glass which would test positive for poison. Patrick’s fingerprints would be on the glass.
I’d been set up.
I didn’t know how she’d done it, but Mischa had lured Patrick here and coerced him into drinking my wine. And she’d poisoned him. She’d concocted the perfect trap and she’d herded me and Patrick straight into it.
I put the two glasses in a paper bag. I poured the wine down the sink and added the empty bottle. I had to get rid of them right away, before Joe followed me to the cabin.
Sacking the clinking glass in a kitchen trash bag, I pulled it from the can and tied it off. I didn’t have a car, so I’d have to hide it in the woods until I could bury it or figure a way to dispose of it. But Mischa was in the woods. Terror and indecision held me captive.
A gentle tapping came at the front door. I couldn’t move, uncertain what do to.
“Aine, let me in.”
Mischa had followed me and wanted inside. I wasn’t going to open my door to her. Not ever again.
“You can run, but you can’t hide.” She mocked me. “Come on, Aine. I’m just a little girl. Let me in. It’s cold and dark out here. I’m afraid.” She sounded exactly like a frightened child.
“Leave me alone.”
“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your door down.”
Her giggle sounded so much like a grade-schooler, an innocent child engaged in a foolish prank. Mischa was not innocent and this was no prank. “Go home. Or go back to hell where you came from. I want nothing to do with you.”
“You hurt my feelings, Aine. I thought we were friends.” There was a brief moment of silence. “No matter. I’m going to leave a present for you.”
“No! I don’t want anything.” The idea of what she might entrust to me was terrifying. “Go away! Leave me alone!” The urge to beg rose up, but I fought it. Pleading would amuse her. She seemed to thrive on the pain of others. “Haven’t you done enough?” I thought of Patrick and rage consumed me. I wanted to feel my fingers around her throat. “Just go away!”
Only silence met my response. It seemed that I waited forever. I had to get rid of the wine glasses, but I feared Mischa more than I feared being caught with evidence that might incriminate me.
An eternity later, I moved to the door and threw back the thumb bolt. Inching it open, I peeked out. A frigid breeze hummed through the fir trees, but otherwise the night was silent. There wasn’t a trace of Mischa to be found, until I looked at the floor of the porch beside the door. Bright moonlight fell on a doll with auburn hair. She wore a black floor-length dress from the 1800s. The face was a work of art, a bisque replica of a beautiful woman.
I reached out an arm and brought the doll into the cabin. The curled auburn hair was real. I touched it to be certain. And the eyes opened and shut as I picked her up. Her little lips were parted to reveal four perfectly formed teeth—stunning little teeth. Ready to bite.
The doll terrified me. I touched the bisque face, aware that the mint condition of the antique doll meant she was likely quite expensive. What did she symbolize?
Why had Mischa given her to me? Why dolls?
I closed the door and re-latched it. I’d dropped the trash bag on the floor, so I picked it up and pushed it under my bed. Tomorrow I would get rid of it. I shoved the doll under the bed, too. I had no explanation for her if Joe arrived and asked.
After those things were concealed, I picked up Bonnie’s journal and settled in the rocker before the fire. If there was help for me within the pages she’d written, I had to find it. Whether ghost or demon, Mischa had to be banished. She was malevolent. Death followed her. Whoever she touched sickened and died when she was done with them—and she had infiltrated my life. She’d tricked me with her childish image. I’d felt sorry for her, worried about her. She garnered my sympathy and gained access to my life.
All of Granny’s machinations, her packing me up and sending me off—all for nothing. In the very woods where I hoped to attain my future, I had found the past
. The Cahill past.
And what was Mischa? A dead girl come back for justice? No. Mischa was more. She had power in the corporeal world. She could wield a weapon to beat someone to death and poison wine. And she meant to hurt people. She liked it.
The journal fell open two-thirds of the way through. Several of the pages crumbled along the edges, flakes falling to the floor. The paper was brittle. I’d been careful with it, but it should have been preserved instead of hauled from pillar to post. Mischa had said there were secrets here, and the journal was all I had. Panic that it might disintegrate made me anxious.
It took several moments to calm myself. I was a total emotional wreck. Since the first sighting of a child in the woods, my life had spiraled out of control. Two people were dead. I had to stop it. I’d witnessed the destruction of too many of my relatives: my father lost to drink, my mother dead by her own hand when I was only a little girl; countless cousins victims of violence; or going back generations, the bloodlust of whalers. My line had been doomed since Jonah turned his back on goodness and joined forces with the practitioners of evil. I began to wonder whether Mischa’s relationship with my family went back centuries.
A long ago echo sounded in my head and the present faded away, leaving only memory. Aunt Matilde. She stood on the stairs of my home, my real home, where I’d lived with my parents and started school, in Coalgood. Back when Daddy worked at the post office and we’d moved away from the Cahill mountain land and into town.
A fresh start, my mama called that house. Daddy had an education. He’d graduated from high school and passed the civil service test to hire on as a rural route carrier. He was the only one of his brothers to complete the twelfth grade, and he was destined to make good. Everyone said so. He’d escaped the family traditions of addiction and cruelty, but moving away from the Cahill Clan hadn’t saved him.
The scene replayed in memory.
Aunt Matilde had my daddy by the arm. She pressed him hard against the landing as he tried to escape her. She was his older sister, and she leaned toward him with such intensity that his back arched over the railing. Watching from the ground floor, I feared he would fall.
“The infant was suffocated,” Aunt Matilde said. “She was alone with the child. She talks about another girl, but there was no one there. She goes on and on about her friend that no one sees. She did this, Caleb. Face up to it.”
“That’s a damn lie, Matilde.”
“Rachel told me all about her imaginary friend. About the things the girl tells her to do. Cruel things, Caleb. Rachel’s been worried about her. She said you won’t listen. That you won’t admit the child is sick. Now look. The baby is dead, and you know who’s to blame. Your daughter. Rachel is on the verge of losing her mind with grief and guilt.”
“Listen to yourself, Matilde. You, of all people, should understand. You have the same blood. This isn’t Aine’s fault. Rachel can’t grasp this. She isn’t a Cahill, but you are. You know the burden this family carries. Aine has an ability, and we are fighting it. Rachel doesn’t see an imaginary friend, but Aine does.” His voice broke. “God help her, she sees it. To her, it’s not a monster or a demon, It comes to her like a child, a playmate. We’ve warned Aine, but—”
“I never took you for a superstitious fool, Caleb. Your son is dead, and it wasn’t an imaginary friend who killed him. Your wife is in jeopardy because you won’t face the truth. Aine is insane and dangerous.”
My father pushed Aunt Matilde so hard she fell against the landing wall with a loud thud. He made a strange sound as he ran up the next flight of stairs to the second floor. Then I heard the door slam and my mother’s cry of anguish.
I’d heard the talk—that I’d smothered my infant brother and because of that my mother killed herself. Daddy sold the house and we moved to the old Cahill homestead with Granny Siobhan, and no one talked about me any more. Granny put a stop to it.
Besides, none of it was true. I loved baby William. I would never have harmed him. Never. But I did have a friend. Strange but I couldn’t recall her appearance. I only remembered she was about my age and size, and she came to see me when I was in my room alone or walking in the woods. She laughed and skipped around me and told me secrets that shocked the grown-ups.
When we moved to Granny Siobhan’s, I left her behind.
Now, the memory surfaced like a fat bubble in a still pond. The truth popped loudly in my head and all external sound disappeared. I was completely alone in silence as memories returned. Mischa had been with me for a long time. With our family even longer, perhaps. Her thumbprint was clear to read in the family history.
The Cahills suffered. Tragic things happened in our family. Hardship moved up and down the family tree. Even relatives who set out to leave the family behind suffered terrible events. Once the word got out, my male cousins had poor luck courting local girls. No one wanted to taste the acrimony of the Cahill legacy. No one wanted to marry into our family. My mother was from Lexington, and even though she was warned, she ignored the Cahill reputation. And she lost her son and her life.
Sins of the father or just a streak of insanity in the family, I didn’t know. But addiction, suicide, and loneliness were the trinity of the Cahill Curse. No matter how hard I focused on “the good future” Granny wanted for me, I found myself at the edge of the pit. Education could not rid me of these spirits. Distance could not save me from my dark gift.
Perhaps Bonnie could.
The page the journal opened to was dated Winter 1845.
Henry came to the woods because he wished to live deliberately. He wanted to learn what life had to teach. He feared that lying on his deathbed, he would discover he had not truly lived at all. Noble ambitions for a man who never suffered tragedy until his brother died. My tragedy is that I know he will never know the pain of losing a child or even his parents. He will die young.
I’ve dreamt his death many times, the filling of his lungs with blood. Consumption. His contamination likely from the pencil factory his family operates. It is indeed bitter when those who love us sow the seeds of our destruction. This has also been the lesson of my life.
I have tried to warn Henry that his health is fragile. He will not listen to me. Over time, he has grown to fear my dreams and portents of death. He sees darkness in me that I cannot erase from his vision. When I visit with the child in the woods, he pretends he cannot see her. Whether he sees her or not, he fears her. How can a man fear something he cannot see? How can he claim to know that she is not the spirit of a dead child? She offers me wise counsel when the Sluagh come pecking at the cabin windows. They wait for Henry, and I will not give him up so readily.
My heart pounded so loudly in my ears, I couldn’t think for a moment. I’d never seen this passage. Never. I would have remembered this. My first impulse was to throw the journal in the fire, but I didn’t. Mischa had said there were secrets in the journal I was now ready to understand. If I could gain an insight into Mischa and what she intended, perhaps I could stop her. I bent over the journal and continued reading.
I came to Walden Pond for Henry. My love for him has been my greatest joy and my most painful journey. Though it is a contrary thing, I have learned that it is possible to both love and despise the same person. It is one thing to embrace the eccentricities of a man when you are not beholden to him for warmth and food, and it is another matter when the winter wind howls and there is no firewood split for warmth because his thoughts have sent him on another mission.
When I think of leaving him, I know I can’t. I fear what she will do if I am not here. Then I despair that she is here because of me, that somehow I have called her to me. God save me if that is the truth, because I have called up a monster.
I closed the journal, unable to read more. From the moment the journal arrived in my hands, I had been Mischa’s pawn. How much of this journal was from my aunt, and how much from Mischa? I couldn’t tell anymore. But the dread that wedged heavy in my breast belied my fears.
; Heavy footsteps and a voice on the porch finally galvanized me to action. I stuffed the journal under the bed and went to open the door for Joe.
35
Flames leaped up the chimney after Joe stoked the fire to the point I feared he might burn the cabin down. He worked not for warmth, but to erase from his mind the cruel death of a young man. I sat on the bed and watched, unable to help him. Unable to help myself. At times, the wind moaned outside the cabin and my heart clutched. She was out there, and I wondered if she might be tormenting me, howling at the windows, wailing under the house. Having her fun at my expense.
I had to find out more about her. If my aunt’s journal spoke any truth, the child had wandered these woods for a long time. I’d named her Mischa, and I would call her that because I had no better name for her. But she was older than Mischa. Older than Bonnie. Older than time.
Joe left the fire and came to me. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He picked up my hands where they curled uselessly on either side of me on the bed and held them in his large, warm ones. He touched my battered face. “What happened to you?”
“I fell.”
“I looked for you at the inn. When I realized you’d gone home in this freezing weather without a jacket, I came after you.”
“I couldn’t stay at the inn any longer.”
He eased down beside me, his arm going around my shoulders to pull me close. “My god, I don’t know what Dorothea will do. She feels responsible.”
“Why? She had nothing to do with his death.”
“He was poisoned. I’m pretty sure of it. Patrick was at the inn all afternoon. He must have been poisoned there. Dorothea told me that she had no idea how he could have eaten anything contaminated, but she believes that’s what happened.” He turned my face to his with a gentle touch. “What do you think?”
Because I couldn’t lie while looking at him, I closed my eyes. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. Patrick was just a kid.”
Joe’s fingers stroked my jaw. His thumb whispered over my bruised and swollen lips. “Patrick made no secret that he … enjoyed flirtations with quite a few of the ladies who stayed at the inn. Do you think a jealous husband, or maybe a jealous woman, might have harmed him?”
The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond Page 20