The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond

by R. B. Chesterton

  I sat up. “It’s gone.”

  He wasn’t surprised or worried. “Really. How convenient.”

  He’d never believed me about the journal. A part of me understood his reaction. It was normal, the doubt anyone would have when confronted with visitations of spirits, dead girls, ancient evil, family curses, and desecrated dolls.

  But I needed better than doubt from the man I’d fallen in love with. He must have read my need on my face because he put the wine glasses on the mantle and wrapped his strong arms around me. But I didn’t feel safe. He didn’t believe me. Not about the journal and not about Mischa. His protection was a sham, because he believed I needed safeguarding from myself.

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry now,” he whispered as he stroked my back.

  When he thought I’d collected myself, he led me to the rocking chair and assisted me into it as if I were a child. A docile child. I didn’t move, but my brain wasn’t obedient.

  He knelt in front of me. “Aine, can I look at your dissertation?”

  “No.” He didn’t believe anything I told him. Why should I let him read the paper?

  “You’ve been using Bonnie’s journal, you said. Maybe I can learn something from the passages.”

  He was right. I’d quoted sections from the journal. Maybe the dissertation could help him understand. “It’s on the desk. Please hand it to me.”

  He stacked books and papers, checking over the desk twice before he paused. “There’s nothing here.”

  The little bitch had taken my printed pages, along with the journal. I rose and went to the desk. When I turned the computer on, I opened the file marked Dissertation. “See, you gave me the title in the coffee shop. A Conspiracy of Silence.” I opened the file.

  The jumbled words on the page looked as if a child had been at play. They were nonsensical, the unhinged gibbering of a fool.

  Joe’s hand captured my wrist, as if he expected me to flee. The opposite was true. I sank to my knees at the desk. She’d erased my file. She’d destroyed the months of hard work. And she’d taken the journal, my only hope of fighting her, of saving myself and Joe and maybe Bonnie.

  “She destroyed it all.” She’d taken everything. Every single thing that mattered. Even Joe. By painting me as crazy, she’d taken him, too.

  Joe stared at me with pity.

  “You won’t believe me when I tell you she stole it. Mischa, or whatever you want to call her. She took all of it. She set me up.” I thought of Bryson Cappett, who lay buried in the Concord cemetery. “She’s been working me for years.”

  Joe knelt beside me. “That doesn’t make any sense, Aine.”

  “Then why did she murder Patrick and Karla? Answer that? Why did she kill two people and try to frame me?”

  “I don’t want to upset you, but you’re sounding … paranoid.” He grasped the arms of the rocker. “Tell the truth, Aine. You haven’t written a word since you’ve been here. Before he died, Patrick told Dorothea you weren’t doing anything. He said you hadn’t written a paragraph, not even an outline. He was worried about you.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but whatever I said wouldn’t change Joe’s opinions. I was too hardheaded to quit without a fight, though. “Patrick saw the printed pages stacked right there on my desk.”

  “And they’re suddenly gone.”

  My life was like a loop. Every action I’d taken in the past ten years led straight back to Mischa. Even before that. She’d destroyed my family, my chance at happiness, my mother who refused to see the darkness in the Cahill blood. She’d played me like a finely tuned fiddle. “I’m fine, Joe. Really. It’s okay that you don’t believe me.” I closed the laptop.

  “I’ll help you find a good doctor, Aine. I’ve already checked into it. Dr. Hitchens has the best reputation in Massachusetts.”

  So it had come to this. If I escaped murder charges, I’d spend the rest of my life in a mental institution. How long would I last before I found a way to kill myself? This was Mischa’s ultimate goal. To harvest my soul for her own use.

  “Thoreau didn’t kill Bonnie.” How clearly I saw it. The vision Mischa had sent to me was a sham. Bonnie had killed herself. This was what Mischa wanted from me. She wanted me to take my own life.

  “Thoreau didn’t kill anyone, Aine. There never was a Bonnie. At least not one living at Walden Pond,” Joe insisted.

  The truth of his words should have cut me, but I was beyond that. Or maybe I’d begun to suspect before he said it. Even back in the 1850s there should have been some documentation of Bonnie’s life in Concord. If she’d had a permanent residence, a record should have existed. Had she even been a governess for the Emerson family? I didn’t know. Like the branch of the traveling Cahills, she might have stayed for only a brief few months and moved on. My entire world had been constructed of Mischa’s lies.

  “I’ve been such a fool. Bonnie told me the truth. She said it was all a fiction. Now I understand.” It was the ultimate con. And I’d bought it without even a questioning glance. The journal had arrived and I’d hoarded it, building dream upon dream upon ambition. The demon knew exactly how to set the hook with a bombshell journal that would turn the reading of Thoreau on its ear. She’d appealed to my ego, my desire to be a stand-out academician. And now I realized that Bonnie had probably never lived with Thoreau. The journal had been created at Mischa’s direction, a way to lure me here. To bring me into her clutches.

  She’d had me at every corner. Let me dream what she wanted me to imagine, showed me lamp-lit shacks and pretty blond children who skipped and sang. She’d used my own naïveté and ambition as the cruelest of weapons. And if she couldn’t win me over, then she’d made certain I would be locked away in prison or a mental ward. Tremors passed through me.

  “Aine, you need to rest. You look exhausted.”

  “Go home.” I rose and put the computer on the table. “Just leave.”

  “I can’t.” He seemed dismayed.

  “You can and you will.”

  He shook his head. “No, Aine. I can’t leave you. I’m afraid you may harm yourself.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. I’ll stay with you tonight, and tomorrow we’ll visit Dr. Hitchens. Hear what he has to say.”

  The way he charted out my future—my disposal—terrified me. If he took me to a mental institution and said I was delusional, no one would ever believe me. “Joe, I’m not crazy. I’ve been naïve and foolish, but I’m perfectly sane.”

  “You’ve been here months, Aine, and done nothing. All the talk about your degree … you aren’t even in the doctoral program at Brandeis.” His voice broke. “Sure, last year you were enrolled, but not now. The chief told me all of this, and he told me your answers. But when I look for this big paper you’re supposed to be writing, I can’t find a page. You’ve done nothing toward your dissertation. Everything you’ve told me about why you’re here in Concord is a lie.”

  “There is a journal. I’ve read it many times. I no longer believe it’s the story of my aunt and Thoreau, but once you read it, it will prove to you that everything I’m saying is true.”

  “It isn’t me you should worry about convincing. It’s the chief. You were at Walden Pond the night it snowed so hard. You were close to the place Karla was killed. And you were in the kitchen at the inn for several days before Patrick was poisoned. You had access to the wine. You had opportunity and motive to kill them both.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t leave you alone.”

  “For fear I’ll harm myself? Don’t give it another thought. I’m not suicidal. That’s exactly what Mischa wants. Then I’ll be hers.”

  He stood by the fireplace where the flames leaped and crackled. “I have to ask you. I’m sorry, but I need to hear you say it. Did you kill them?”

  “Tell me, Joe. Did you kill them? And Mischa, a little girl who maybe knew too much about you. What really happened to her?” That hit home
and he blanched. “It doesn’t feel so good to be accused, does it?”

  He turned abruptly and went out the door, closing it softly behind him.

  I was alone in the cabin.

  46

  Mischa had taken everything. She’d robbed my life of meaning. And worse, she’d set me up for two murders.

  To fight her, I had to recover the journal. I didn’t think Mischa would destroy it. It was her weapon to torment me. She’d leave it, page by page, around the area. A scrap here and there to force me to play her game. I understood her last, clever little message. Bread crumbs. Hansel and Gretel. The way home. She’d left me bread crumbs to follow. Taunting me. Tricking me. Pushing me to whatever evil purpose she intended.

  The last thing I’d read from Bonnie, the message she’d written in the book and left for me, involved her attempts to locate help. She’d gone to Salem, to those who she’d heard were practitioners of the dark arts. I understood her decision to seek witchcraft to fight Mischa. I’d been shocked at first that Bonnie would consider such a thing, but now what other option was there? Granny Siobhan had warned me against speaking with the spirits. She’d told me there were tricksters among the dead, those pretending to be one thing when they were evil. She’d tried to safeguard me from the thing that could destroy me, but she’d handicapped me. I didn’t know how to use my gift.

  Bonnie had turned to Salem, a community, back in the 1850s when travel was arduous, a fair distance from Concord. She’d consulted an herbalist, a gentler name for the crones who knew the art of conjure. What path was open to me? Since I knew of no practicing magicians or conjure women who used native plants, I had only one recourse. A priest. I’d meant to visit one, but Patrick’s death had derailed my plans. Now I had no choice. Time was running out. McKinney would be at my door soon enough to snap the cuffs on and charge me.

  Father Declan O’Rourk at St. Benedict’s Holy Catholic Church had conducted Patrick’s funeral. That was a place to start. As soon as it would be decent to rouse the priest, I would go there. As soon as dawn struck the darkness from the sky. My nerve was not strong enough to take on Mischa lacking sunlight.

  I spent the rest of the night sitting in the rocker before the fire, searching the Internet for possible help. At times I nodded off, but I was always half alert. Each strange noise brought me wide awake, fear choking the breath from me. Like it or not, I was afraid of her.

  Several times, the Sluagh pecked at my window during the hours that Nyx ruled. I refused to look at them, but I heard their sharp beaks tap, tapping. Then there would be the flutter of wings and a raucous caw. Silence for an hour or more. Then again, the tapping. They didn’t really desire entrance; they meant to torment me.

  At times I jumped from my rocker when I thought of a place she might have hidden the journal. I had to locate it. In my heart, I knew she’d taken it, but I couldn’t stop myself from searching.

  Dawn broke the eastern sky, and I yanked on my boots and heavy coat and gloves and raced out of the cabin. The inn was shuttered when I passed. Only a week ago, Dorothea would have been in the kitchen, hot biscuits coming out of the oven and coffee brewing. So much had changed.

  I knew I should stop at the inn and check on Dorothea, but instead I raced by. St. Benedict’s was all I could think about. The priest had a picturesque cottage behind the church. He would be there. Where else would a priest be at dawn on a freezing January morning?

  By the time I reached Concord, the early risers in the town were retrieving morning papers, heading to coffee shops, warming their cars for the commute to work. The bustle of normality reassured me, and I slowed my pace, allowing my lungs to catch up.

  I didn’t want to arrive at the priest’s at the crack of day panting and wild-eyed. There were those who already thought me insane. I needed the priest to believe me, not to think I was mental. To that end, I needed to plan what I would tell him. Only there seemed no way to broach the subject of Mischa without sounding crazy. That was her trump card.

  The nearer I got to the church, the slower my speed. When I gained the stone steps to the chapel, I sought a cohesive plan. Still undecided how to proceed, I entered the church and sat down. A moment of reflection was called for.

  I knelt and said a prayer from childhood. The remembered words sent me back to the past, back to Coalgood, when we had our home on the edge of town, Mama, Daddy, and me.

  I went to mass twice a week with Mother. I remembered the hard wooden church pew, Mama’s stomach blocking my view of the priest as he came down the aisle, swinging the incense and singing a prayer. My pregnant mother found it peaceful. I thought it was funny to see a man in a dress singing. Did my mother see something in me even then that she felt a need to haul a four-year-old to church twice a week?

  After she died, she tried to come to me. I would catch glimpses of her outside my window at Granny Siobhan’s. She looked so sad. Sometimes she held my little brother. Sometimes her wrists leaked blood. At Granny’s urging, I had turned away from her. Now, I wondered if I’d done the right thing. Maybe she hadn’t come to haunt me but to help me. I had no doubt that she loved me.

  I remembered my blue Sunday dress, the one I wore only to Mass. Gauzy and light, like wearing air. We went to early Sunday service, because it was Daddy’s only day off. After mass, Mother and I would change our clothes. We sometimes went for a picnic beside the river. My parents were happy. My father didn’t drink then. He went to work and came home to a hot meal on the table and time with his family. I was happy too.

  When Mother became pregnant, she joked that she was big as a whale. She would lie in the sunshine on the picnic cloth, her stomach a huge mound, and she would laugh when my father dribbled cold river water on her.

  I put my head on her stomach, listening. But the things I heard were not happy sounds. There was the swell and fall of the ocean, the turning of the fetus in the womb, like a whale calf just born. My baby brother was doomed before he drew his first breath, for he too was a Cahill.

  The whisper of a prayer spoken by a woman who knelt at the altar brought me out of my reverie.

  Strangely enough, the Concord church smelled exactly like the one in Coalgood. The scent of hot wax and old wood. This church, though, had stained-glass windows and beautifully carved Stations of the Cross. The altar was gold and intricately designed, and a huge arrangement of lilies centered the front where congregants knelt to take the wafer and the wine.

  I was mildly surprised when a woman came out of the confessional. My watch showed only 6:30. As she hurried past me, wiping at her face, I recognized Mrs. Leahy, Patrick’s mother. She did a double-take when she saw me, but instead of stopping to speak, she rushed by. Whatever burden she carried, Father O’Rourk had been willing to hear her confession at an early hour.

  He exited the confessional, a tall man with a perpetual five o’clock shadow. I wondered idly if he fit the phrase black Irish. His green gaze found me, and he came forward.

  “Miss Cahill, I haven’t seen you in the congregation before.” I must have appeared startled because he smiled. “We’re a small church. I know all the parishioners. With a name like Cahill, I figured you were Catholic, but non-practicing.”

  “You have it right.”

  “And yet you’re here.” He waited.

  “Yes, to see you.” I spoke slowly, thoughtfully. He was used to grieving and hysterical women. I doubted he was prepared for one asking for an exorcism.

  He carried the weight of his parishioner’s secrets with grace. What would it be like to know the sins of a multitude of people? I could barely manage my own.

  “Have you come to confess?” he asked.

  “In a manner of speaking.” I’d not intended to use the confessional, but it occurred to me that anything I divulged would be protected if I did. “Yes, a confession.”

  His robes rustled as he allowed me to precede him to the booth. Once inside the polished conf ines with the grate separating us, I lost my confidence. Father O’Rourk wen
t through the prayers. I half-listened, trying to find a way to launch into what I needed to say.

  When the silence grew between us, I finally spoke. “There’s evil in the woods, Father. An ancient evil. I’m haunted, and I need an exorcism.”

  Father O’Rourk cleared his throat, a ploy to gain time before he responded. “What form does this evil take, Aine Cahill?” he asked.

  It was the perfect question. The one I could answer clearly and begin the story of my relationship with the demon I called Mischa.

  By the time I finished, it was 7:30. Father O’Rourk gave me a penance to do and told me he would take my request for an exorcism to his superiors. He met me outside the confessional, an older man than he’d been an hour before.

  “Aine, have you talked with anyone else about this?”

  “Joe Sinclair. I’ve tried to tell him, but he won’t listen. Not really.” I tried to smile but produced only a twitch. “He thinks I’m mad. ”

  “I see.” He touched my shoulder, a gesture of compassion. “Will you be safe to go home?”

  “You’ll take it to the higher church authorities? And quickly?”

  “I promise.”

  “What are my chances?”

  His expression showed concern. “I don’t know. This is new to me. Not to the church,” he hastened to add. “But to me. I’ve never petitioned for an exorcism. And I’m not clear. Do you honestly feel that you’re possessed?”

  I’d been rather vague on that point, because I wasn’t certain. “I’m the only one who sees her. She seems attached to me, as she was to my aunt Bonnie. Does that make me possessed? I don’t know. But if it is me, I want her gone.”

  “Is there any evidence she killed Joe’s former girlfriend and Patrick?”

  “Yes.” The wine glass with the poison. The glasses also implicated me, but if the priest believed me, and they were necessary to gain an exorcism, then I would tell.

  “What evidence?”

  I had to be certain of the exorcism before I told him. “When the Holy See agrees to exorcise me, I’ll tell you.”