The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

  No great flash of insight hit me. I opened my eyes. Moonlight suffused the office, weaving ghostly patterns through the room. The mystery woman gazed down at me from her portrait. Moonlight, crisp as a spotlight, shone on her pointing hand. I got up for a closer look.

  The wall below her, with its chair rail painted green, had seemed smooth and unblemished, but now, when I looked again, I saw what she seemed to be pointing at: a crack in the wainscoting. I dropped to my knees, slipped my hand into the shadowed breach. I pulled at it, and a small door concealed in the wall dropped open.

  Something thunked to the floor. I shivered, a deep shiver that started at my spine, radiated out to my skin. A book had fallen at my knees. It was covered with worn crimson leather and there was printing in gold on it: The Hawley Book of the Dead. The book from my dreams.

  I closed the small door. I could see it was cleverly hinged—impossible to detect, except on certain moonlit nights. I took up the book. It seemed light for its size, and inexplicably warm, as if it had been beamed in from a sunny meadow on a summer afternoon. I carried it to my chair and opened it. The fragrance of lilacs hit me like a truck. And another smell beneath that one, a metallic scent I couldn’t identify for a moment. Then it came to me. The book also smelled of blood.

  I didn’t need any more mysteries, and I almost closed it right up again, but something made me begin turning the pages. They were thick, like woven linen, and at first glance, completely blank. I riffled through them, and near the very end, ink began to shimmer onto the page, form words. I could read them in the moonlight. Then after a few words, I didn’t need to read at all. I could see everything the book described. More than that, I could feel the story the words told unfurl inside my head.

  A man sat at the entrance to a shallow cave in a sandstone ridge. He looked down on a house, sometimes raising binoculars to his sunburnt face. For days, all there had been for him to do was think. He ate PowerBars and thought. He thought while the heat dried his lips, made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth between sips of warm water hauled from town. He thought while the stars, huge and almost menacing in their clarity, wheeled above him every night in the frost-lapped desert. His thoughts began in one cankered, corrosive track, then shifted to a place of bright desire. Revenge, then redemption.

  But this night was different. There was something in the air, something old that didn’t belong in the desert. The man turned toward the East. He inhaled the ghostly scent of a New England flower, a faint breath on the air. It made him think of the old days, before he’d been caught in this web of hatred and vengeance seeking. It reminded him of his mother’s garden in Massachusetts. It reminded him that the woman he sought was from the East. And in that moment, he knew where she had gone. She had gone home.

  I woke from my trance, gasping and struggling. The man in my vision was hiding out in a cave above our house in Nevada. He was a man I knew. Our Fetch was the ice-eyed man who’d pursued me in the tunnels.

  Caleigh’s Vision: Turkish Delight

  Caleigh woke, shivering. She had been having a dream of the magician, Setekh. It was a dream of a real memory. She was in the Bijoux, her parents’ theater, soon after she’d gotten her string, during a party they’d hosted after the World Magic Awards.

  Caleigh had been with her sisters in a little cubby behind the stage where they often hid, watching all the performers arriving, many still in costume, coming right from their shows. Criss Angel looked normal except for big sunglasses. Siegfried was there without Roy. Their friend Penn was still dressed in his tuxedo and the bright red socks he wore for their show, carrying Teller’s head around on a platter, making the showgirls laugh. The Maskelyne sisters didn’t know what he was saying, but he always made them giggle, too.

  “Hey, Caleigh.” Grace jabbed her with her elbow. “Get us some crab cakes, okay?” The buffet was set up on the stage right below them.

  “Why can’t you go?”

  “It’ll just be boring down there.” Grace nudged Caleigh with the toe of her light-up sneaker. “It’s all grown-ups. Go on. You know you want to.”

  “And bring some for me.” Fai flopped down on the rug. Having watched enough, she went back to reading Lemony Snicket.

  “You guys are just lazy.”

  “But you’re the littlest, can get between people and snag stuff easier,” Fai observed without looking up from her book.

  Grace pushed with her sneaker again. “And don’t forget cake.”

  Caleigh was hungry. Even though they’d had dinner with Marisol at the usual time, it was late now, maybe even after midnight. She liked staying up past her bedtime. And she liked being in the theater when there wasn’t a show. Even with so many people down in the house, it was all dark and mysterious backstage. She could hear the buzz of talk and laughter out front as she skipped along behind the scrim.

  Then she saw someone up ahead. A shadow moved in the dusky light spilling from her mom’s dressing room doorway. She stopped. “Mom?” But she’d just seen her mom, all glittery in a long silver dress at the back of the house, greeting new arrivals. “Wesley?”

  But it wasn’t Wesley, either. A tall man emerged from the shadows. The light blazed behind him, so Caleigh couldn’t see his face. She heard the swish of tuxedo tails as the man came toward her. She didn’t know why she felt afraid, in her parents’ own theater that she knew as well as her own home, but she did. She was frozen, as if something was keeping her from running away, into the light and the crowd to safety. She took a big breath, in case she had to scream. Then the man spoke. “Caleigh. My little friend. Fancy you being allowed to stay up so late.” She unfroze and heaved the big breath out. It was only Setekh the Magnificent.

  “You scared me.”

  “I didn’t mean to, my dear.”

  She wanted to ask him what he was doing in her mother’s dressing room, but when Setekh bent to her level, so they were eye to eye, his candy-cane breath soothed her. So close, his face was beautiful, as striking as a lion’s or an eagle’s. “But where is your string?” he asked her.

  She reached into the pocket of her overalls and produced it. Even though he had given it to her months before, it was still bright white. It glimmered even in the darkness, almost as if it had its own interior light.

  “Show me how you’re doing, would you?”

  Caleigh looped her string through her fingers, making the white rabbit pattern, and soon a little white bunny with pink eyes came hopping from behind an abandoned shoji screen.

  “Very good!” He scooped the bunny up, stroked its ears flat. The creature looked frightened, and squirmed in his hands. Caleigh reached for it, felt its soft fur, its small heart beating wildly. Setekh let go of the bunny. Caleigh scrabbled at thin air, trying to catch the poor thing, but the magician just clapped his hands together, said, “I-undias!” And the bunny was nowhere to be seen.

  “Now I think you must be hungry, Miss Caleigh.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Setekh’s voice was low, soothing. It lulled her. He reached into his pocket and brought out a beautiful red satin box. He opened the box, and the scents of roses and oranges, peppermint hot chocolate and lemon meringue pie perfumed the air around them. Pieces of glowing candy tempted her, layered on velvet, as plush as a rose petal, as lovely as the moon. “This,” he told her, “is for you!”

  She wanted to eat it all then, but she thought of her sisters, as hungry as she was.

  “What is it?”

  “Why, it’s Turkish delight. And it’s all yours. Eat up!”

  She reached in and took a piece. She chose a lush mauve square that carried the scent of violets. It felt heavy in her hand, and warm, as if it had just been made fresh, just for her. She was about to take a bite of the heavenly candy when she heard Fai’s voice call, “Hey, Caleigh, what’s taking so long?” Then Grace chimed in, “We’re starving.” She turned to see the lights of her sisters’ sneakers twinkling as they ran toward her. The
piece of candy she held disappeared in a flash, as if she’d never held it. She spun around to see that Setekh was gone, too.

  “Come on.” Grace grabbed her by her overall straps. “What’re you just standing here for?” And she dragged Caleigh back to the real world, back to the noisy party, and crab dip and chocolate cake. But no Setekh, no Turkish delight. It might have been her imagination, but when Caleigh looked at her hands, they were dusted with sugar so fine and light it glowed. It could have come from the moon, after all.

  The dream disturbed her, and made her hungry, too. She’d forgotten all about that Turkish delight over the years, but now she longed for it. She held her breath and listened to the house sounds. She could hear her sisters rustling their sheets, running and sighing in their sleep. She listened for her mom, and heard her soft footsteps on the third floor above. She was in her office. Caleigh slid her string, still the brightest white after all these years, from under her pillow. She made a box pattern and tried to fill it with the candy she craved, but the closest she could get were Russell Stover chocolates. She set them aside for her sisters. Then she tried again, and in the string box she’d made, lo and behold, was one perfect piece of moon-colored Turkish delight. She popped it into her mouth before it could vanish. It melted on her tongue into all her favorite flavors, lemon giving way to chocolate, creamy brie giving way to honey. As the candy melted away, she found she was very tired. She put her heavy head on the pillow and slept, and dreamed again.

  The next morning, no trace of these dreams remained, except for the ghostly taste of honey in her mouth.

  The Perpetual Tag Sale—October 25, 2013

  1

  I would have thought that finding the book was a dream, but there it was on my night table. The Hawley Book of the Dead. I hesitated, then reached for it. The small red leather book felt colder than it had the night before, and no lilac scent wafted from it, only a clean, meadowy smell. I opened it, expecting to find the closely written words I’d seen the night before.

  All the pages were blank.

  So much for the vision. It must have been a dream.

  But I couldn’t lose the panicky feeling I’d had when I saw the man in the desert. The Fetch. Even if it was a dream, it seemed somehow right that he’d been in the tunnels, too, had almost caught me there more than twenty years before. Dream or no, I pondered all the strands and webs of incident that might bind us while I fruitlessly checked my e-mail, woke the girls, fed the animals, and wondered what fresh strangeness this day would bring.

  I didn’t have to wonder long. I was raking up loose hay, my last barn chore, when I saw a man walking down the driveway. I looked to the gate and it was closed tight, but there he was, striding toward me. My mouth went dry. I called to him, “Stop right there!” I ran for the pitchfork resting against the barn wall, then brandished it at him, while random thoughts flew through my mind. How did he get in? More to the point, what if he had a gun? Why hadn’t I hired a bodyguard? Was it really worse to have guns around my girls than have an intruder shoot us now?

  The man held out his hands, showing they were empty of weapons.

  “Your Nan sent me. I come not to harm you, but to keep you from harm.”

  Only then did I recognize the falconer’s costume, the breeks, the leather gloves. Falcon Eddy. Still dusty and unkempt, still looking like he’d come walking across deserts and over mountains. His hair resembled a bird’s nest. I kept the pitchfork raised. “How did you get through the gate?”

  He laughed, a booming sound that startled me. I dropped the pitchfork, then scrabbled for it.

  “Well now, dearie, we have our ways. But I’ll let your Nan tell you, or no. What matters now is that I’m here to keep you safe.”

  I let the tines of the pitchfork rest on the ground, but kept a grip on the handle. I might need it yet. “Just … just stay where you are.” I pulled my cell phone from a back pocket, punched Nan’s number. Her phone rang and rang. Eventually the machine picked up. Nan’s quavery recorded voice said, “For the Bennington School of Falconry, press one. For the Reverend Steel, press two, for the home of Hannah Dyer, press three. If this is Revelation, and Falcon Eddy has appeared, he’s what you asked for. Make him feel at home.”

  I pushed “end,” stuffed the phone back in my pocket. Appeared. I supposed that was the word for it. I gave Falcon Eddy a dubious look. “Okay. Just tell me this. How exactly are you going to protect us?”

  He laughed again, then reached behind him. In one hand, he held a wooden bow. The other hand held an arrow. It was my turn to laugh. “Look, the man who killed my husband is coming for us. And I somehow doubt his weapons are as outdated as yours. I think you mean well, but I just don’t see bows and arrows being much help.”

  I didn’t see him release the arrow. I didn’t even see him string the bow. I only heard what I thought was a mosquito whine by my ear. I reached up to slap it away.

  Falcon Eddy kept up a steady grin while he walked around me, giving the pitchfork a wide berth. He walked to the barn, and calmly pulled an arrow out of the wood. An arrow that skewered the baseball cap I’d been wearing. He’d somehow shot it right off my head. I touched my scalp, my ears, expecting blood. There was none. “But, I didn’t … how did you …”

  “Don’t worry yourself, now. You have your magic. I have mine.”

  I showed Falcon Eddy the grounds, then brought him into the house. I still wasn’t sure about him, but after his bow-and-arrow display, I was willing to take him on trial. The kitchen was fragrant with freshly brewed coffee, which thankfully camouflaged the whiff of falcon mews that trailed after Eddy. Mrs. Pike was nowhere in sight. I thought maybe she was starting to exhibit a Yankee version of the treasure-like qualities that characterized Marisol back home. Mrs. Pike had never before made coffee for us without prompting. I poured some for Falcon Eddy and myself.

  As we sat at the kitchen table with our steaming mugs, the outside doorknob rattled. I leapt up.

  “Hellooo,” a man’s voice called. Falcon Eddy threw open the door, seized a tiny white-suited man by the collar, and dragged him into the kitchen.

  “Don’t hurt me, oh, please don’t! It’s only old Reverend Steel come to pray with you, ease your pain! A man of the Lord doing his duty!”

  “How’d you get in the gate?” Eddy demanded.

  “The estimable Mrs. Pike opened the floodgates. A fine Christian lady.”

  I was not happy with Mrs. Pike.

  “I’ve come to lift your burden. Prayer is the answer!” His spit hit me on the upper lip. I wiped it away.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” Falcon Eddy seemed to know him, but still held a fistful of the Reverend’s collar in his grasp.

  The Reverend swept off his hat, one I imagined had been kicking around on the floor of the shiny new white Cadillac I could now see parked just beyond the open door. An old straw hat for impressing his followers with his meekness. “The Reverend John Steel at your service. From the Bennington First Baptist Church. Well known to Revelation, as she can tell you, you … oaf! Could you bring yourself to unhand me?”

  I nodded to Eddy. Eddy turned the Reverend around and gave him a long, questioning look before dropping him. Then he frisked the Reverend thoroughly, with more loud protests from the little man.

  The Reverend Steel was a Baptist from the South, come to bring salvation to the heathen of Vermont. From Nan’s reports, the Bennington First Baptist Church had recruited him twenty years before, and he had won over the dour Yankees. Quite a feat, I had to give him credit, especially considering his lack of good looks. A handsome face often was the leverage needed to sway church ladies of all stripes, in my limited experience, and the Reverend didn’t have it.

  He was maybe sixty, his longish white hair thin and streaked yellow. His face was pink, his ears were pink, even his eyes had a pink cast to them, like a white rabbit’s. He was not a true albino; his pupils had a rheumy brown tinge to them, and his hair had once been blond, but his pinkness had an
unsettling effect. As did his size. He had tiny hands and feet, was shorter than I am. The word that came to my mind, not often applied to men, was petite.

  I had no real reason to dislike him, but I did. I saw him infrequently, maybe five or six times in the years he’d been living in Nan’s house, and each time he made me uneasy. I always felt as if I’d seen him somewhere, in some other context. I could never name it, but I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t a good one.

  “I suppose I should invite you in. Although technically, you are in.”

  The Reverend burst into fresh exaltations. “The Lord is good, the Lord is great, He’ll protect your sweet daughters, never you fear! Unless they’re meant to be safe with Him in His heaven, the lambs.”

  “Balls,” I told him. “What have you done with Nan?” I didn’t see any point in mincing words.

  The Reverend tugged a handkerchief from his vest pocket with a flourish, and swiped at his brow. “Well, I have to say, I take umbrage at your tone. I haven’t done anything with your grandmother; she’s at home with a cold. She’s a fragile little lady now, and we don’t want to risk pneumonia.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Fragile, my foot. Nan caught cold teaching falconry to fools in a thunderstorm. I know all about it; my mother told me. Why aren’t you home with her, anyway, if you think she’s so fragile? Nan didn’t tell me anything about your coming today.”

  “She and I spoke only this morning of the possibility of my visiting you, praying with you for the safety of your girls.”

  “At the moment, praying isn’t high on my list of things to do. But since you’re here you may as well sit down. I suppose you’d like some coffee.”

  “Well, now, that would be most welcome.”

  Mrs. Pike had undoubtedly been skulking behind the pantry door, for she bustled in then, greeted the Reverend, and brought out a freshly made cake. She did a double take when she saw Falcon Eddy, but she didn’t comment on his presence. I could see I’d been set up. She poured the Reverend’s cup of coffee, and I noticed she didn’t ask before she poured cream and spooned sugar. Just the way he liked it. I remembered she was a denizen of the Hawley Baptist Church, and that the Reverend sometimes took over when their preacher went on vacation. So Mrs. Pike had some truck with him. She cut two enormous slabs of cake. Chocolate with creamy frosting, the Reverend’s favorite, I surmised. She set plates down before the Reverend and me, giving Eddy a few nods toward the door as she did so. Eddy did not budge. Mrs. Pike huffed disapprovingly, but decided there was nothing further she could do to oust the intruder, and sidled toward the door.