The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond

by R. B. Chesterton

  “All rise.”

  Father Declan O’Rourk’s voice cut through my thoughts. He was a young man, not ashamed to show he was touched by the sadness of Patrick’s death. The service began, and the familiar vocal patterns, lifting and falling, comforted me.

  Joe had not appeared, and I began to doubt he’d arrive before it was over. Chief McKinney was in the back of the sanctuary, his gaze drifting over the mourners. Hoping, perhaps, the killer was in attendance.

  That wasn’t true. Mischa had killed Patrick, and she wouldn’t come here. I wondered if she could cross the church’s threshold, or if she’d wail in anguish from the power of good. Even if she entered and sat right down, no one would see her but me. Patrick’s murder, like Karla’s brutal death and Mischa’s disappearance, was destined to be another unsolved crime in Concord. Unless I could figure out a way to expose her.

  I didn’t listen to Father O’Rourk’s words. His tone was soothing, but I knew the drill by heart. I’d been at too many funerals. The priest’s job was to profess his belief that Patrick was in a better place, a happier place, where he would be joined by those who loved him in the not-too-distant future.

  The service ended with a hymn I didn’t know. I filed outside into the late December sunshine.

  “Aine!” Joe called. He was there after all! “Are you going to the Leahys’ home?” he asked.

  I shook my head. More than anything, I wanted solitude. I needed to think. Action was required. Immediate action. I’d drifted for the past three days, but now I had to develop a rational, decisive plan.

  “I’ve been called to a state rangers’ meeting in Boston, but I’m reluctant to leave you alone.” He didn’t touch me. Not in public.

  “I’m fine,” I told him. I backed it up with a tight smile. “Really, I’ll keep an eye on Dorothea.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go on. Has Chief McKinney discovered any clues about how this happened?” He squinted against the glare of the day as he searched the crowd. “He said he was hoping for a break, but he didn’t give me any details. There’s nothing I can tell you.”

  A short murmur swept over the congregants standing outside the church. The crowd seemed to part. A man in a gray suit stood at the edge of the crowd, clenching and unclenching his hands. He stared at Joe with anguish and hatred.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “DeWitt Lobrano.”

  “Shit,” I whispered. “Let’s go.” I grabbed Joe’s arm to pull him along the sidewalk, but he balked.

  “I won’t run. I didn’t hurt his daughter. I won’t skulk off like I’m guilty.”

  “Please, Joe.” I tugged and begged. A scene between Joe and the father of a dead child was the last thing anyone needed after Patrick’s funeral. “Let’s go to your truck. You can take me back to the inn. I’m not well.” I tried to reason with him even as he dragged me toward Lobrano.

  “Joe!” My sharp tone was like a bomb. Everyone hushed and gave us their full attention. DeWitt Lobrano remained on the edge of the church grass. Before Joe could move, I doubled over and vomited.

  A murmur swirled through the spectators, and Joe put an arm around me for support. “I’ll take you home,” he said.

  When I looked up, Mr. Lobrano was gone. At the edge of the churchyard, standing among the hedges, was a blond girl in a red jacket. I closed my eyes and began to weep. The reprieve was over. She was back.

  39

  I awoke, too hot, in my bed in the cabin. Joe must have stoked the fire to the maximum, because sweat trickled down my neck and ribs. Pushing back the heavy quilts gave immediate relief. The cabin was dark and there was no evidence of Joe. He might have driven to town for food or medicine. Or perhaps he’d gone on to his meeting.

  Uneasiness swept over me at the realization that I was alone. Night had fallen. Without Joe, there was nothing between me and whatever waited outside. No locked door had ever stopped Mischa. It wouldn’t now. If she wanted in, she would be standing beside my bed.

  The thought went through me like electricity, and I threw the covers all the way off and sat on the side of the bed. Sudden awareness of another presence in the cabin made me wish for a weapon. The canister of pepper spray Dorothea had given me was still in my coat pocket, if I could get to it. Turning slowly, I saw Patrick. Or perhaps it was Mischa in Patrick’s form. Either way, it was a cruel vision.

  He stood on the other side of the bed and slowly began to unbutton his shirt. In the dim light of the cabin, I couldn’t see him clearly, but I knew the outline of his body, the lean torso, the round tautness of his buttocks in the tight jeans. He was so young and beautiful.

  And so dead.

  “Aine, have you missed me?” he asked. “I’ve missed you. I watched for Joe to leave so I could come to you.”

  “If you are truly Patrick, you’ll leave. You’re scaring me.”

  He only smiled and eased the shirttail from his jeans.

  “Why are you here?” My body tensed, ready to move quickly.

  “I love you,” he said. “You know I do.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not possible, Patrick. It can’t be.”

  “I’m here for you.” His shirt dropped to the floor, and his muscled chest was a study in light and shadows. “Remember the first time? It will be like that forever.” He unbuckled his belt and the snap of his jeans.

  “This can’t be.” I kept my voice steady. I could not afford to faint. Mischa had corporeal powers. For all I knew, Patrick did too. If I fainted, I would be easy prey. The idea of such a thing made me gasp.

  “Let me touch you,” he whispered, stepping out of his pants. “I’m so cold. Let me lie beside you in the bed.”

  “Go away!” I jumped up and moved across the room.

  “I’m here for you, Aine.” He crawled across the bed and stood on the side I’d just vacated. He sat down, the firelight catching the contours of arms and back. He patted the quilt. “Come here, Aine. It won’t be scary once you let me kiss you.”

  “Patrick, you’re dead.”

  He tipped his head like a mischievous child. “I know that. But it doesn’t matter. You can cross between the living and the dead. It’s your talent, Aine.”

  “No. That’s not true. I can see you, but I can’t cross over. I can’t touch you. You aren’t real. You’re a phantom.”

  “Let me kiss you and you’ll see. In your heart, you know the truth. You know what happened to your aunt. You’ve always known. You simply didn’t care to believe it.” He reached for my hand and the brush of his fingers was cold. I could indeed feel his touch. “You’ve always walked with one foot among the living and one with the dead. I’ve learned so much since I died.”

  “What happened to Bonnie?” Though the dead are not to be trusted, it was worth asking. It was possible he knew the truth. Bonnie had died young. I found her grave. Thoreau had buried her as close to his final resting place as he could without claiming her as family. He should have married her. She gave him everything and yet she still wasn’t good enough to be his wife.

  “You think you know, don’t you?” Patrick tugged at my hand, trying to pull me off balance and into the bed with him.

  I snatched my hand away.

  “I do know,” I said. “She killed herself. That’s why she isn’t buried in the cemetery proper. Suicides can’t be buried in church ground. Bonnie couldn’t take that little bitch Mischa, or whatever her name is. She shadowed Bonnie, she eroded her confidence and harmed the people Bonnie loved, just as she’s dogging me. I’ll figure a way to kill her.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Patrick asked.

  The longer he sat on my bed, the grayer his flesh became. I’d never noticed that about Mischa. She seemed able to manifest without consequence. She was stronger than Patrick. Perhaps because of her age. She was hundreds of years old. Maybe thousands, a concept that offered me no comfort.

  “Bonnie didn’t kill herself.” He was matter-of-fact. “She isn’t excluded fro
m the cemetery for that reason.”

  I had to stop talking with him. The more I spoke, the more power he drew from me. I was his link to life, to all he’d once known. “Bullshit.” I picked up my jeans and slid into them. If he wouldn’t leave the cabin, I would.

  “You saw her burial. You lived it. The cold night. The desperation of her lover. The blood seeping through her shroud.”

  “That was a dream. A vision. A might-have-been. It wasn’t the truth. Mischa makes me see things that aren’t real.”

  “It was real and you know it. You can see the dead, and you can see the past. I wonder if you can see the future or if you’re too afraid to look.”

  His words horrified me, but I couldn’t block them. I had to get away. I’d witnessed Thoreau digging her grave, the shrouded body lying on the ground, the splotch of blood staining her front. I’d seen it all. My gift. What a terrible joke. This wasn’t a gift, it was a sentence to hell.

  “Think! The blood, Aine. Why was she bleeding?”

  “Shut up!”

  Patrick laughed his old carefree laugh. “You can’t hide from the truth.” He teased me like a grade-schooler, and a chill of recognition passed through me.

  “Mischa?” I whispered her name.

  Patrick only laughed again. “We’re really working on you, aren’t we?”

  I had been right to suspect her, damn her to hell. My jacket hung on a peg by the door and I eased sideways to grab it and slip it on. My boots were on the floor beside the fireplace. I stepped into them without tying the laces.

  “Going somewhere?” Patrick asked.

  “I won’t stay here with you.”

  “Now that I’m dead, I’m not so easy to avoid. You hurt me, Aine. When you dumped me. You treated me like I was nothing.” There was a new element in his voice. Anger.

  “Go away, Patrick. Leave me be.”

  “Why did you hurt me?” He demanded an answer. Patrick was suddenly on his feet.

  “Who are you?” This was Patrick, yet it wasn’t.

  “I know things you should hear.” He advanced.

  My back pressed against the door as my hand found the knob and gripped it. I could make a break for outside. I didn’t have a vehicle. I would have to run through the woods to the inn. The keys were in my pocket. I could get inside, maybe. But so could he, just as he’d gotten in here.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry to run. I have information you’ll want, Aine. It might change your dissertation a little, but you’ll want to hear it.”

  “Patrick, please, stop. Just go away. You’re scaring me.”

  “You should be afraid, but not of me. It’s your blood that should scare you. If you’ll admit the truth, perhaps you can save yourself.”

  “What truth?” My fingers clutched the doorknob, but inertia held me, trapped. As terrible as Patrick was, what waited outside the door could be worse.

  “Your aunt was murdered, Aine.”

  His words destroyed all thoughts of fleeing. “What are you talking about?”

  “She called up things that shouldn’t have been brought to the light.”

  I couldn’t listen. He was a liar. The dead lie. All of them. Granny Siobhan tried to prepare me. The day after my infant brother died, Granny warned me against talking with him or any of the dead. Not even my mother, who followed my brother to the grave. I could hear Granny’s voice, feel her bony fingers pressing my upper arms. “The dead lie, Aine. When they come to you in memory with promises, don’t listen. When they bring guilt or accusations, turn them away. These are not the spirits of anyone you knew. It’s your imagination. Clever imitations. Resist everything they tell you. They never rest and they never stop lying. Don’t traffic with them. Don’t trust anything. Cut them out of your life.”

  “You don’t want to acknowledge what really happened, do you, Aine?”

  “You’re a liar.” I put my hands over my ears.

  “Bonnie was murdered. She didn’t kill herself.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Thoreau killed her. He found her at his table with the dead she’d called forth, a regular little tea party of decaying corpses. Among them was his beloved older brother John. He sought her out for her talents, but he wasn’t prepared for the full extent of raising the dead.”

  “Shut up!” I banged the back of my head against the door to knock his voice out. “Shut up!”

  “John was at the table, flesh falling off his bones. He was something of a mess. When David Henry saw the full horror of what Bonnie had done, he stabbed her with the kitchen knife. He thought killing her would end what she’d begun. We both know that isn’t true.”

  I could hear him clearly, though my hands covered my ears. I slid down the door until I sat with my knees up to my chin. I closed my eyes and tried to call forth something pleasant from my past. Granny sitting on the front porch of her mountain home with the laurels in bloom all around. I could see her in her cotton dress and apron, shelling crowder peas into a pan on her lap. The peas pinged into the bottom of the pan as her thumb slid down the crease and she turned the hull inside out to release what would be our supper.

  But then she looked at me, and she spoke words I didn’t remember. This wasn’t a real memory. This was something Mischa conjured and put in my head. I fought against it, but Granny’s voice came through.

  “If you see them in the woods, Aine, don’t speak to them. They can’t harm you unless you converse with them. If you engage them, they’ll get their claws into you and use you to come here to a place meant only for the living.” Granny shelled the peas, her fingers flying, but her gaze rested on me.

  “But I see Mama. She wants to tell me things.”

  “It isn’t your mother. It’s something else. Leave it be, Aine. I want you to grow up strong. Education will dampen their whispers. You’ll learn to ignore them. Remember that. Ignorance breeds trouble. Get an education and shut your ears to their whispers and promises.”

  “Mama says I should listen.”

  Granny put the pan of peas on the porch floor and rose to her feet. She was a tall, angular woman in a dark dress. Her fingers dug into my arms and she shook me, hard. “You have to fight, Aine. Go to your room and finish the paper you’re writing. If you get into boarding school, you’ll stand a chance.”

  She released me, but I felt the pressure of her fingers as I ran to my room and found my paper and pen.

  “You’ve gone visiting in the past, haven’t you, Aine?” Patrick drew closer. “You see it more clearly now. They tried to trick you. To stop you from reaching your full potential. Old Granny Siobhan didn’t want you to accept the gift of your blood. She and your father deceived you into believing that the things you see are dangerous and bad. But it’s your gift. The Cahill gift.”

  His eyes mesmerized me and I lost the will to escape. He was so beautiful, young and vibrant. No longer dead but alive. His hand brushed across my face like a web of fire.

  The lights of a vehicle came through the cabin window and struck the wall beside my bed. In the swath of light, Patrick faded. A few seconds later, Joe pushed against the door, trying to enter. My body blocked him, and I shifted so he could enter.

  “Aine!” He sounded terrified when he saw me. “What have you done?”

  I touched my cheek. Blood was seeping down my face where Patrick’s hand had claimed me.

  40

  Joe poured coffee for himself and pulled up my desk chair beside the fireplace where I sat, draped in a quilt in the rocker.

  “We need to talk about what happened last night.” Joe stared into the fire. I’d been so upset the night before, I’d taken a sleeping pill and dove into oblivion.

  “I had a bad dream and somehow scratched my own face. That’s all. I’ve been upset, and it got to my subconscious.”

  A moment of silence passed. “Aine, you hurt yourself.”

  My fingers lightly traced the four claw marks on my cheek. “It isn’t serious.”

  “I’m worried. This has b
een a lot for all of us to handle. Karla, Patrick. It’s too much. Can I call your family?”

  “There’s no one to call.” No one I wanted near me. “I’ve been on my own since I went to boarding school. My father and grandmother, the people who raised me, are dead. My mother died when I was a child.” I’d dodged Joe’s prior efforts to talk about my family. Whaling, bloodlust, moonshining, drugs—there wasn’t a single aspect of my family I wanted to share.

  “There’s no one?” He held his mug in both hands, his elbows on his knees and his shoulders slumped.

  “I’m not your responsibility. Don’t worry.” Bitterness crept into my tone.

  His sigh was long. “I haven’t wanted to tell you this. The chief thinks someone at the inn poisoned Patrick. He’s been questioning the guests who were here at Christmas. McKinney won’t say it, but Patrick was poisoned on the inn grounds. It couldn’t have happened any other way. He didn’t ask, but I’m backing out of the investigation.”

  There it was. Not an accusation, but a hint of suspicion. Had Joe found the wine with the poison, I’d be in a cell by now. “He suspects it was someone at the inn, or he knows it? Who would do such a thing?”

  “I heard Patrick flirted with the female guests.”

  I pulled the quilt more tightly around me. “So what? Patrick was a free spirit. He never harmed a soul. Those ladies enjoyed his attention, and none of it was serious.”

  “Jealousy can make a person do strange things.”

  I wondered if he was thinking of Karla and the way she’d attacked me. I’d never done anything to her, but I was with Joe, the man she’d set her cap for. Jealousy had driven her to extremes.

  That wasn’t the case with Patrick. Still, I was tempted to let Joe think that a spurned lover was at the root of the murder. Those suspicions would lead to naught. Sipping my coffee, I chose silence.