The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond

by R. B. Chesterton

  In boarding school, I was the butt of jokes and pranks. The other girls mocked my accent, but the teachers were encouraging and found my interpretation of the novels and stories we read to be unique. I wonder now how much they knew of my background, if they were aware that I could likely never go home again. What had Granny told them about my circumstances? Too late to ask now.

  Water under the bridge, as Granny would say.

  This night, though, I missed the mountains. There were places where waterfalls covered secret caves. I’d explored them and found the carcasses of small animals. Skulls with sharp incisors that might be a cat or fox, or something else. Creatures lurked in the mountains, older than the rocks themselves.

  My hands and arms ached from the intensity of my grip on the journal. And I was freezing. I needed firewood, but I was afraid to brave the woodshed. The cabin couldn’t keep Mischa out, but it felt safer nonetheless. Outside, she could come from any direction. But it was chance Mischa or freeze. My feet were numb, and I worried that frostbite would take my fingers or toes. Or my nose, like my poor cousin.

  That grotesque image sent me shuffling into my boots and coat. The woodpile was behind the toolshed in back of the cabin. The trail to it was obscured with bushes that Dorothea always intended to ask Patrick to cut back. Now that would never happen. I found my heaviest gloves and opened the door.

  The night was silvered in moonlight. If the moon wasn’t full, it was close. It cast long shadows painting the tree trunks black and silver. My breath frosted as I eased down the steps and hurried along the path. I needed at least two armloads, but I would make do with one for the remainder of the night. Tomorrow I would stack the split logs to the porch rafters for easy access.

  I was only halfway to the woodpile when I heard the giggle. I couldn’t determine which direction it came from, but there was no doubt who it was.

  “Mischa.” I spoke her name with authority. Servility would have no impact on my destiny. If she meant to kill me, she would.

  The musical laugh came again. On a whispery breeze, I heard her voice. “She’ll come to us.”

  I kept moving. If she wanted to confront me, she’d have to abandon the woods and show herself. I aimed to grab the firewood and rush back inside.

  But it wasn’t Mischa looming in the center of the trail. It was a woman in a long black dress. She wore her hair in a bun, but she reached up and loosened the pins to let it fall down her back, a deep auburn cascade. She was beautiful in a severe way. And I knew her.

  “Bonnie.” I was afraid to approach her. “Help me, please.”

  “She has need of you,” she said, and she floated toward me without walking.

  I stumbled from the surge of fear. “No.” I backed up several steps before I gathered my courage and held my ground.

  “She has need of us both. We offer a path. She fears us.”

  She was close enough to reveal pale skin and dead eyes. Though her dress was black, the front was soaked in blood.

  “I’m nobody’s path.” I couldn’t let her convince me otherwise. “What happened to you?”

  She chuckled, a dark and smoky sound. “My destiny. Just as yours will happen to you. We’re cursed. The lot of us. Cahill blood has damned us. But you and I carry the darkest curse. We can see her, and that’s the thing she covets most. The thing she fears the most.”

  “Why do you serve her, Bonnie?”

  She looked confused. “There’s no escape for me. She tricked me, and now I’m hers. As you will be, too.”

  I wouldn’t believe that. I couldn’t. “Tell me how to fight her. I’ll save you.”

  She floated closer. “You can’t win. I tried. She’s cunning. She made me trick you with the journal. She knew the lure would be irresistible. She’s planned this from the day you were born.”

  “Why?”

  “You see her, and with that sight you can defeat her.”

  “How?” I tried to grasp her arm, but I captured only air. “You have to tell me.”

  “I tried to tell you. In the journal. She made me write it, but I put things in it, for you. To help you.” She heard something and flickered, as if she might fade away. Fear shifted across her face. “She’s coming.”

  “Did Thoreau kill you, or did you kill yourself?”

  “It’s a fiction, Aine. You read what she writes. And you see what she projects. Find the difference and save yourself if you can. I tried to fight her, but I didn’t succeed. For all these years, she’s held me here. Waiting for you.”

  I couldn’t let her manipulate me. She might not be real. It could be another of Mischa’s tricks, using my aunt to control me. “I won’t be wandering these woods for centuries.”

  “You won’t have a choice. Unless you walk between the worlds. Let go of life a little. Reach for the twilight.”

  She flickered like a bad connection, and then she was gone. The path was clear. I hurried to the woodpile, loaded my arms, and rushed back to the cabin just as Joe’s truck bumped down the driveway.

  45

  I raced toward the truck with everything I had in me, dropping the wood as I went. I ran as if my life depended on getting to him, because it did. His accusations were forgiven. He’d seen the error of his ways and returned to me.

  Everything seemed to be slow motion. It took an hour to gain the hundred yards. More than anything in the world I wanted to be in Joe’s arms. To feel his body against me, sheltering me. Protecting me. He was solid and real against the phantasms in the woods.

  He opened the truck door and slid out. I hurled myself at him with a cry that sounded like a savage, wounded animal.

  “Aine!” He held me tight. “What’s wrong? What are you doing out in the cold?”

  “I went for firewood.” I pressed against him but couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder. The two of them, Bonnie and Mischa, stood side-by-side behind the first row of trees. Bonnie’s hands hung limply. Mischa’s black eyes watched me, and a cruel smile curled. “There’s someone in the woods and they mean to hurt me. Please don’t let them.”

  “Who?” Joe looked in the same direction, but confusion touched his features. “Who’s out there?”

  He couldn’t see them, and they knew it. That’s why Mischa was so smug. But I had to tell him now, to make him understand the danger I faced, that we both faced. I knew what I wanted then. I wanted Joe. I wanted to leave Walden Pond. To go somewhere new and start again, with Joe.

  “Who do you think is out there?” he asked.

  “It’s Mischa.” The instant I said the name, I realized my mistake.

  Joe’s pushed me away. “I can’t do this.” He slid behind the steering wheel of the truck.

  “You don’t understand.” I tried to hold on to his arm, but it was useless. I blocked the door before he could close it. “She’s not really a child. She’s evil.”

  “Stop it, Aine. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but stop. I don’t know why you feel the need to hurt me, but I’ve had enough.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I’d held the secret for so long, been helpless to prevent her from harming and toying with everyone around me. She’d done terrible things, and she meant to hurt Joe. “She killed Karla and Patrick. She may have killed my aunt Bonnie. She’s very old, Joe. So old. She looks like a child, but she’s ancient. An ancient evil.”

  He started the truck. “You need help. You’re hysterical.” He snatched the door from my grip and slammed it.

  Dead calm stole over my bones. I drew my shoulders back and met his gaze. I’d frightened him. He wasn’t afraid of me, he was afraid for me. He thought I’d lost my mind. I stilled completely and his hand stalled on the gearshift. “Come inside and I’ll explain.”

  “I can’t take more of this. I should leave. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I care about you, Aine. I’m afraid for you.”

  “It’s fine.” I dipped my chin twice. “I’m fine. Just come inside. Please
.”

  He removed the key from the ignition, eased out, and slammed the door. He was hesitant to enter the cabin with me. “What did you see? Just tell me. I looked but there was no one there. Aine, I don’t know what’s going on with you. Who killed Karla and Patrick?”

  He wasn’t ready to hear the complete truth. But I could try a bite at a time. “I’ll tell you once we’re inside. It’s cold out here.”

  “You go in. I’ll get the firewood.”

  “I’ll help.” No way was I going to leave him alone in the woods for Mischa to club in the head with a fire log and pin the blame on me.

  The woods sighed and crackled as we went to the woodpile. A breeze had sprung up and the bare limbs above us chattered like skeletons. Joe gathered an armload of small logs, and I picked up the wood I’d dropped, or as much of it as I could make out in the moonlight. While I worked, I listened for the crunch of leaves or a giggle. Mischa watched me. So did Bonnie. They watched my every move.

  I had to determine if Bonnie had thrown in with the little bitch or if Mischa had trapped my aunt’s soul. Could I save Bonnie? Did she want to be saved? She’d sounded so plaintive and trapped. But Mischa was a master manipulator. When Bonnie advised me to let go of life and seek the twilight, was it a trick to put me in a place where Mischa could harvest my soul?

  “Aine?” Joe’s voice sounded hollow, empty.

  “Yes.” I swung around to find him frozen, staring into the woods. “What is it?”

  “There’s someone out there. In the woods. I don’t see them, but I sense them. Who is it?”

  If he could believe me, a future together was possible. Whatever future we chose to build. But we couldn’t remain so exposed. “To the cabin. Hurry.”

  “Who poisoned Patrick? You know, don’t you?” He demanded more than asked.

  “Come on, Joe.” I ran.

  He had no choice but to follow. Would Mischa let us gain the interior, or would she do something terrible, something cruel?

  At the steps of the porch, I slowed. Joe almost bumped into me. “What is it?”

  I couldn’t move forward. The doll with my aunt’s hair was leaning against the front door. A nail was driven into her heart. A dark substance that looked like blood spread down the front of the doll and onto the wooden porch.

  Mischa meant to make my aunt pay, and dearly, for our conversation.

  “Son of a bitch,” Joe muttered. His breath warmed the back of my ear. “Who did that?”

  We stood on the steps, an easy target. I chunked the fuel on the porch and grabbed Joe’s coat sleeve. With a mighty tug I hauled him after me. I pushed the front door open, jumping over the doll and goo as I urged Joe to follow. When he was inside, I slammed the door and slid the thumb bolt home.

  “What in the hell is going on, Aine?”

  “Sit down.” I fought to remain calm. If I became emotional, erratic, he’d never believe me. He’d think I was insane.

  “Let me light a fire, then we need to talk.”

  As he laid the wood I retrieved the lighter and kindling and gave them to him. In under two minutes flames jumped high, then settled down as the logs caught. I huddled near the fireplace. Near Joe.

  After he’d warmed a bit, he went to the kitchen and poured two glasses of red wine and brought one to me. I took it and basked in the warmth of the flames, wondering how I would ever make him understand the things that had happened.

  “Tell me, Aine.”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  “Try.” He hesitated. “I want to believe you.”

  I glanced at him. His expression held no softness, and a pulse jumped in his throat. I would try with a little part of the story and see his reaction. “It’s a longish explanation.”

  He went to the bed and gathered the pillows, fixing a pallet on the floor beside the hearth. We sat cross-legged, profile to the flames, as the cabin gradually warmed.

  “What are you involved in, Aine?”

  I reached out to touch him but dropped my hand to my lap. “I didn’t hurt anyone, but I’m being framed.”

  “By who? Why?”

  I put a hand on his knee. “Give me a chance to tell you. Promise me you’ll let me finish. Before you label me crazy, you have to hear the whole thing. I deserve that much.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I told him about my family. I told him all of it, how Jonah Cahill let the starvation of his family in Ireland turn him into a hard man who turned his back on goodness, how he took whatever he could, to hell with the consequences. About the family’s moonshining and Oxy dealing. About my brother’s murder, the way my mother killed herself, and my father’s drinking. About the Cahill Curse, and the way it showed itself in me.

  “You truly see spirits, dead people?” There was no inflection in his voice and I couldn’t be sure if he believed me or not.

  “I do. Granny taught me how to hold them back, and she sent me away to school, hoping education would shut off that part of me. Granny thought she could protect me from the gift if she sent me away from the mountains and my relatives. And it worked for a long time.”

  “But you see them anyway.”

  Here was my moment. Joe was more receptive to my abilities than I’d ever dared hope. “I do see the dead.” I let that sink in. “There is one in particular. A child. I call her Mischa, because that’s who I thought she was, at first. I assumed she was the spirit of the young girl who went missing a decade ago.”

  The color drained from Joe’s skin. Not even the flickering fire could hide his pallor. “Aine, this is wrong. There’s no proof Mischa is dead.”

  “Let me finish. You promised to let me finish.”

  “Why are you doing this, bringing up the past? I never hurt her. I wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  I was almost relieved I’d finally met resistance. His willingness had seemed too easy.

  “Please, Joe. Just listen.” When he indicated he would, I continued. “I saw a child in the woods. When I realized she wasn’t a living child, I made an assumption, but I was wrong.” He started to interrupt me but I didn’t let him. “This isn’t the spirit of a dead child. She isn’t Mischa Lobrano. She is something much older and very evil. I don’t know who or what she is, but she intends to harm me.”

  “Harm you? How?”

  “She killed Karla and Patrick, and she means to blame it all on me. She did the same thing to my great-great-great-great aunt Bonnie. She used Bonnie, gained her confidence, and then she murdered Bonnie and tried to frame Thoreau.” My words tumbled over each other as I tried to talk fast. Joe was beginning to balk. I could see the stubborn disbelief in the jut of his jaw. If he’d tried to sell this story to me, I would have felt the same skepticism.

  “What are you talking about? Your great-aunt was murdered? But how was Thoreau involved?”

  I’d failed to tell Joe or anyone the implications of my source for my dissertation. He had no clue how I intended to rewrite literary history. There was so much to catch him up on, and I was losing him. “My great-aunt was Thoreau’s lover. Her name was Bonnie Cahill, and she lived with him at Walden Pond. I told you about her. That she’d left a diary of sorts. But it’s more than just her musings. It records the time she lived with Thoreau. She—”

  “No more!” His hands captured mine and he squeezed.

  I tried to yank free, but he held me tightly, which only made me tug harder. When he refused to let me go, I panicked and began to twist and turn. The tighter he held me, the harder I fought against him. He said my name over and over, but I ignored him.

  “Be still and I’ll turn you loose.” His words finally penetrated the black fog that had settled over me. Though my impulse was to struggle, I went limp. He dropped my hands. “Aine, Thoreau lived alone at Walden Pond. It’s a well-known fact. He didn’t have a woman with him. He was a bachelor. A virgin. He died when he was still a relatively young man, unmarried and never bedded.”

  “That’s a fallacy.” I spoke clearly and with
out any emotion. I wanted to stomp my foot and throw a fit, as I had done as a child, but it wouldn’t do any good and I knew it. Only reason would win Joe, and I felt it slipping outside my reach. “That’s bullshit, a convenient belief that suits the tourist industry you’ve built up around Thoreau and his mooning about solitude.”

  Joe’s expression registered nothing. He’d shut himself away from me. “If Thoreau had a woman at the cabin, everyone in Concord would have known. Emerson. The Alcotts. No one would have gone along with such a deliberate falsehood.”

  “They knew. They all knew. But they let Bonnie be his secret.”

  He only shook his head.

  “I have proof.” I’d wanted to share Bonnie’s journal with him for a long time. I’d never shown anyone. It had been a bond between me and my aunt, the sustenance that fed my secret ambition. Now I no longer cared about dissertations or degrees. I wanted to save myself and Joe.

  “The journal. Written in hand, no doubt.”

  I ignored the skepticism. “Let me get it. I’ll show you. Bonnie said there was a way to defeat Mi—the girl.”

  I left him beside the fire holding his wine and mine while I went to my bed. I reached under, my fingers groping for the familiar leather-bound journal. But there was nothing there.

  Flattening myself on the floor so I had a longer reach, I tried again. My nails clicked on the bare floor and I found something mealy and crumbled scattered under the bed. When I lifted the bed skirt and looked, I had to accept there was nothing there—except bread crumbs. I picked up several and examined them. Mischa had crumbled a piece of toast under my bed.

  It took a moment for the full reality of what she’d done to set in. While I’d been out at the woodshed, she’d sneaked in and taken the journal and left crusty old food. She’d stolen my most valued possession and left the doll made with Bonnie’s hair at my front door. A doll with a nail driven through her heart. Bonnie would really suffer for trying to help me.

  “What’s wrong, Aine?”