Wicked Cruel

by Rich Wallace

  “And who else?”

  “As if you didn’t hear me when I said Emma?”

  Owen slung his backpack over one shoulder and shoved open the door. The day was overcast and windy, but he hadn’t bothered with a jacket this morning because his mom had dropped him off. It would be a cold fifteen-minute walk home in his T-shirt.

  “It’s some Daughters of the Revolution thing,” Mason said. “You know, a Historical Society event. You dress like it’s the 1700s. We might even meet some out-of-state girls from Brattleboro or Massachusetts.”

  “What good would that do us?” Owen would have been more than happy just to get to know Emma better.

  “Are you with me on this?” Mason asked. “I have to let Sophie know by tomorrow.”

  “What’s the rush? It’s three days from now.”

  “It’s a very limited party,” Mason said. “If I don’t say yes tomorrow, she’ll get somebody else.”

  Owen thought it over as they crossed Main Street in front of the Monadnock Savings Bank. Sophie had probably already asked all of the cooler guys and got turned down. “Dressing like it’s the 1700s? What does that mean? Buckled shoes with stockings? A powdered wig? We’ll be voted geeks of the year if anybody sees us.”

  “You don’t know how girls work,” Mason said. “Believe me, it’ll be worth it.”

  Owen stopped on the sidewalk and stared into the China Castle takeout place. The door was propped open with a cinder block and he could smell egg rolls frying. This was where he and Mason usually parted ways, with his friend turning toward the river and Owen continuing on toward his neighborhood across from the college.

  Owen smirked. “Emma, huh?”

  “And she does not have a boyfriend. I checked.”

  “With who?”

  “Sophie.”

  “You better not have said nothing!”

  “Why would I have to?” Mason said. “It’s not like you aren’t obvious.”

  “I am not,” Owen said.

  “Then how do I know that you like her?”

  “I never said I did.”

  “Right. But like I said, it’s obvious.”

  Owen let out his breath. “You’re very observant. Now I gotta get out of here.”

  “So you’re in?”

  Owen shook his head and frowned. “Do we have to dance?”

  “We don’t have to do anything. But standing around won’t get you anywhere.”

  “What did they do back then? Waltz?”

  “Something like that,” Mason said. “You just hold her waist and spin her around. How hard could that be?”

  Owen was starting to freeze. “I gotta go home. It’s wicked cold out here.”

  “I’ll text Sophie to let her know we’ll be there.”

  “I didn’t say I would.”

  Mason was fiddling with his phone. “Hold on,” he said to Owen. Then he looked up and grinned. “It’s all set. Thursday night. Polish your shoe buckles, man.”

  Chase Tavern is haunted, and some who’ve been there alone late at night have heard the soft humming of a child or caught a glimpse of wispy gray matter descending the narrow wooden staircase. Sometimes there have been cries of pain, or doors swinging open and slamming shut.

  The tavern was built in 1762—more than a decade before the Revolutionary War. It functioned as a taproom, restaurant, and inn for almost a century and then became a private home. Only two families lived there in the many years that followed.

  On the death of the last of the Wheelers—who owned the place from 1875 until 1968—it was turned over to the Cheshire Notch Historical Society, which has restored the earlier feel and furnishings and offers occasional tours. Most days the tavern sits empty on its dark, wooded lot toward the lower end of Main Street, its many trees and bushes and a high wooden fence shielding it from the college that dominates the neighborhood.

  The tavern’s ghostly history is rooted in the two decades before the Wheelers—when the Gilmans lived in the house and worked the fields beyond it, which later became the site of Cheshire Notch State College.

  Henry Gilman married a woman named Ida in 1854. They had five children, none of whom lived past age fourteen.

  There was a barn on the property when the Gilmans took ownership. When their oldest child was killed while hunting deer, Henry buried him under the floor of the barn and sealed the door with bricks. He built another barn next to it.

  A daughter died a year later. She was buried beneath the second barn, and it, too, was sealed off. A third barn was built.

  By 1875, the Gilmans had five barns and four dead children, and there were suspicions that none of the deaths had been accidental. After the fifth death, the Gilmans sold the property and packed up for Massachusetts.

  That fifth barn still stands on the Chase Tavern grounds, painted the same brownish mustard color as the tavern’s wooden clapboards. The other four barns were demolished long ago to make way for college walkways and green spaces. The legend has become part of the ghostly lore of Cheshire Notch, a town where kids grow up aware of the many spirits in their midst.

  Owen scanned the Internet for “Ben Franklin clothing” and found a video of a man dressed as Franklin, explaining that he was wearing a linen shirt, a woolen waistcoat, knee britches, black shoes with a gold buckle, and a tricornered hat.

  He found his mother in the kitchen, microwaving dinner.

  “Mom,” he said, “do I have any linen shirts?” He knew he didn’t have a waistcoat or knee britches.

  “Why would you want that?” Mom asked. “Something for school?”

  “No, this … thing I might go to up the street. At the Chase Tavern.”

  The microwave beeped. Mom lifted out a chicken potpie, jabbed her thumb into the crust, and put the potpie back in. “It won’t be crispy, but it’ll be done in three minutes,” she said. “It would take an hour in the oven.”

  Owen frowned. “This thing at the tavern? We have to dress like it’s the 1700s.”

  “And it isn’t for school?” Mom asked. “And you’re actually interested in going?”

  “I said I might.”

  “You care about history all of a sudden? You?”

  “Do we have a tricornered hat?”

  Mom laughed. “We can find one at Walmart, I suppose. With the Halloween costumes. You might find some old clothes and things at the Saint James thrift store. You know where that is?”

  “Behind the diner?”

  “Try it after school tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  Owen’s mother was a bundle of energy, working long hours in the admissions department at the college and coaching the jumpers and hurdlers on the track team. His father lived all the way over in Manchester, so Owen had a lot of time on his own.

  “What’s this all about?” Mom asked. “You’ve never in your life expressed any interest in history. The Chase Tavern is two inches away from here and you’ve never once asked to go.”

  “It’s just some event. Mason talked me into it.”

  “What night?”

  “Thursday.”

  Mom pulled out her phone and tapped a few keys. “It says it’s a Colonial tea social and dance,” she said. She looked at Owen as if he’d gone crazy. “A tea social and dance.”

  Owen blushed and let out a sigh. He tapped his fingers on the kitchen table and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Okay,” Mom said. “I get it.” She rubbed the top of Owen’s head and kissed it. “Are you going to tell me who she is, or do I have to find out on my own?”

  Owen left the house after dinner, feeling lured to the tavern. The building was a hot spot of ghostly energy, and he’d always felt a weird and frightening connection to the place.

  It was a three-block walk up to Main Street, then a couple more blocks past college buildings under a canopy of maples and sycamores. Only a few trees still held their leaves, and those that remained had turned to brown or rust.

  The picket fence in front of the tave
rn offered little resistance—it was less than two feet tall. There were no lights on in the building and the grounds were very dark.

  Owen stepped over the fence and went around to the side, climbing four brick steps. He tried the door. Locked. He wouldn’t have gone in anyway.

  He peered through a window with black shutters and twelve rectangular panes. There was the taproom, a narrow area that ran the length of the building—perhaps forty feet. But it was too dark to see much.

  Owen had been in there before on school trips; he knew the pine floorboards were wider than any he’d ever seen, and that the room had a fireplace with a brick hearth.

  He walked along the dirt driveway toward the barn, which was about fifty feet behind the tavern. The grounds were the size of a football field. He could see a college dormitory in the distance, but things were quiet back here.

  The barn wasn’t much bigger than a two-car garage. The large doors were thinner than he expected, and the one he pulled open creaked and shook. A damp, grassy smell came to him as he stood in the doorway.

  Something scurried toward a corner. Maybe a mouse. Overhead there was fluttering in the loft as a pigeon or a bat moved to safety.

  He took two steps onto the dirt floor and looked around, but he couldn’t make out anything distinctly in the blackness.

  There hadn’t been a cow in that barn for seventy years, but the smell of manure was still faintly present. As his eyes adjusted, Owen could make out the shape of a lawn tractor. A wooden ladder leaned against a wall. A wheelbarrow.

  And two eyes.

  The eyes were gleaming at him from the far corner, but he could see nothing else there. Was it a cat? How were the eyes shining? There was no light to reflect. They were at about his eye level.

  The eyes, small and greenish and unblinking, were fixed on him.

  Owen took two steps back. He couldn’t take his gaze off the eyes. He tried not to sound afraid. “Hey!” he said softly.

  The eyes narrowed.

  It has to be a cat, Owen thought. He stared for another minute. Then he carefully closed the barn door.

  The eyes had looked angry. They didn’t seem like a cat’s at all.

  Owen swallowed, but his mouth had gone dry. He pulled up his sweatshirt hood and tightened the cords; the soft, warm material made him feel more secure.

  He walked around the outside of the barn to the back corner. There were no windows in the barn, and he couldn’t see any sizeable holes in the walls. But cats were sneaky; they could get in and out of very small places.

  He returned to the door and gently pulled it open. The eyes were gone. Owen took a deep breath and headed for the street. He could use a chocolate bar or a giant cookie.

  The Citgo station on the corner of Main and Adams has a large, brightly lit convenience store. It was crowded with college students when Owen walked in. Hot dogs were turning slowly on a rolling grill and the local classic-rock station was playing “Dream On” a little too loud.

  Owen circled the outer aisles, looking at Twinkies and bags of chips and an entire wall of refrigerated drinks of all sizes and types. He reached for an ice cream sandwich and turned quickly when he heard a chirpy voice saying, “Hi, Owen!”

  “Oh. Hi, Sophie.”

  “My dad’s getting gas,” she said. Then she laughed. “In the car, I mean. He gets his other gas from beans and beer.”

  Sophie was pretty. She was only an inch or so taller than Owen, which wasn’t much. All four elementary schools dumped kids into the one middle school, so many of his classmates, like Sophie, were new to him. Some were more intriguing than others. Emma, for example.

  “That’s going to be so cool on Thursday night,” Sophie said. She was holding a large bag of barbecue potato chips. “I can’t wait.”

  Owen could wait. But he nodded and said, “Yeah.”

  “My grandmother’s the president, you know,” Sophie said. “Of the DAR chapter. That’s why I have to go. But it isn’t easy convincing people our age how much fun it is.”

  Owen nodded again. He wasn’t convinced yet.

  “It’s so great that you guys are coming. There’s a band: the Monadnock Fiddlers.”

  “Wicked,” Owen said flatly.

  “One of my great-great-grandfathers—or even further back than that, I guess—fought in the Revolution,” she said. “He marched from Chase Tavern to Boston with the local militia. So I’ve got a direct connection to that place.”

  “I was just there,” Owen said.

  “Recently?”

  “Ten minutes ago.”

  Sophie frowned. “I didn’t think it was open.”

  “It’s not. I was just looking around.”

  Sophie raised her eyebrows and smiled. “You were trespassing.”

  Owen shrugged. “Was I? It’s not like there’s a sign or a guard or anything.”

  Sophie’s face brightened. “Oh, it’s guarded.” She touched Owen’s arm, then pulled her hand away. She lowered her voice, practically hissing the next word: “Spirits.”

  “Sophie?” A man was standing by the entrance, beckoning to her.

  “Gotta go,” she said. “Coming, Dad!”

  Owen looked at the ice cream sandwich. He’d squeezed it hard when Sophie touched his arm. It was dripping out of the wrapper already and his hand was sticky. Should he put it back and get another one?

  He gingerly gripped the sandwich in his other hand and wiped the sticky one on his sweatshirt. Then he paid for it and ate it on the walk home, alternating biting it and wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

  * * *

  At sunrise on April 21, 1775, twenty-nine minutemen set out on foot from the Chase Tavern, headed for Lexington and the fight for independence from British rule. They were led by Captain Eleazor Chase. A plaque on the tavern’s outer wall commemorates the occasion. It was posted by YE CHESHIRE, NH, CHAPTER DAUGHTERS OF YE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

  Just less than one hundred years after those soldiers departed, a thirteen-year-old girl sat weaving in the former tavern’s sewing room, intricately working the foot pedals of a wheel as she fashioned a brown and scarlet rug. The room’s walls were painted dark red, and the boards beneath her feet were wide and scuffed and gray.

  The February day was cold, and a fire burned in the sewing room’s brick fireplace.

  She could hear her mother crying in the adjoining kitchen, so she rose to comfort her. The girl’s young brother had drowned a few months before, crashing through thin ice on a nearby pond as he and their father were hunting waterfowl. He was the fourth of the Gilman children to die, and the latest tragedy seemed too much for Mrs. Gilman to bear.

  Bread was baking in the small oven built into the brick wall adjacent to the hearth, and it smelled as if it might be overdone. The girl removed the bread; its crust was dark and slightly scorched, but it would be all right.

  Mrs. Gilman sat in a black wooden chair, her face in her hands. The girl placed a comforting hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  “Let her be, Charity,” her father said sternly, appearing in the outer doorway. He had returned for his noon meal.

  The girl returned to her weaving. She tried to block out the harsh words her father was whispering in the kitchen. She tried not to hear her mother’s sobs.

  The kitchen door slammed. The girl looked up in surprise.

  A moment later, her mother heard her scream. It was the last sound the girl ever made.

  “Did you see the way she was looking at you in English?” Mason asked as he and Owen headed for the cafeteria.

  “Who was what?”

  “Emma. She’s looking forward to the party. She knows that you like her.”

  Owen hadn’t seen Emma look his way at all. He elbowed Mason hard in the ribs. “How would she know that?”

  “Everybody knows it.”

  “Get out.” Owen grabbed a tray and sized up the lunch line. Chicken fajitas and corn.

  “It isn’t real chicken,” Mason said.

  “S
o what? I’m hungry.” Owen pushed his tray along and grabbed a carton of chocolate milk and a banana. “What’d you say to Emma?”

  “I didn’t say nothing. Just that we’d try to get there early so we’d be sure to get free cookies and stuff. She said she’s looking forward to dancing, so watch out.”

  “She said ‘watch out’?”

  “No. I’m saying watch out. Be prepared to dance.”

  “You better, too.”

  “Count on it.”

  “With who?”

  “Darla, I hope.”

  “I thought you liked Sophie?” Owen asked.

  “I do. But I like Darla better.”

  Owen and Mason took seats in a corner of the cafeteria. Across the way, Sophie and Emma and Darla were at a table with the cooler crowd, including several boys. Owen turned his head so it looked like he was gazing out the window, but he shifted his eyes over toward Emma: soccer player, light brown ponytail, tough-but-sweet smile, great sense of humor.

  “Thursday night, everything changes,” Mason said. He picked a tiny cube of tomato out of his fajita and wiped it on his tray. “We take several steps up in status, Owen. Just for being brave enough to look like idiots.”

  “As if that’s something new?”

  “Colonial idiots,” Mason said. “Girls love that sort of thing.”

  The St. James thrift shop was below street level in an old stone building. A bell tinkled as Owen opened the door, and he smelled old clothes. Racks of dresses and women’s coats filled the small space. A short gray-haired woman at the counter smiled and said, “Hello there. We have some children’s clothes in the back.”

  Owen just said, “Okay,” but he looked around until he spotted a section of men’s items. He flipped through a rack of sports coats until he found a black vest. It didn’t look particularly old, but it might do over a white shirt.

  The vest was big for him, but it was the only one like it.

  Owen was the only customer. The woman asked if she could help.

  “I was looking for some old-fashioned stuff.”

  “For Halloween?”

  “Sort of. There’s this party …”

  “At the Chase?” The woman seemed delighted. “I’ll be there. Serving punch. I’m a member.”