by Daniel Mills
Mr. Flood asks: “And your father? I understand he left.”
Father. That face floating up from the storm as it nears. His mouth turned in on itself, the breath rank and heavy. Those prayers he whispered of an evening in his room. The belt with which he cleansed the sin from his own flesh and from his children. The pot in his hand, the tallow hot and bubbling.
My head strikes the shelf. Books falling behind me, hymnals on the floor.
“Ambrose?” Mr. Flood says. “Perhaps you should sit down.”
Footsteps coming fast. A figure in the doorway. Thaddeus with hands like Father’s and the colour coming to his neck. The same rage in him, too, stopping the words in his mouth.
A face like summer’s stillness, fixed before the lightning. Or Father’s gaze in that moment with the statue lying broken on the floor between us. His hand raised against me. His voice coming slow in the fog of all that fear.
What’ve you done? he said, just as Thaddeus is saying it now. And I’m closing my eyes, sliding down inside myself. Curling up with the floor under me.
Mr. Flood says: “Your brother has taken ill. I don’t—”
Thaddeus’s footfalls quickening. His voice nears Mr. Flood’s then overtakes it, drowning him out, and he’s whispering through his teeth. Standing close the way he does with Sally when he won’t shout. When the house is full, strangers
about.
“He’s got nothing to say to you. Thought I made that clear.”
“I asked him about your father, what he remembers of him. That is all.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“I have done nothing improper, I assure you.”
“You don’t listen. In five days you’ll go back to New York, and you’ll write whatever you want about us, won’t you. Think I don’t know that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Saw your column, Mr. Flood. Last night. The old widow bought it in when she heard as you were coming. Picked it up yesterday when she walked down to Pittsfield.”
“You have read it,” Mr. Flood says, weakly.
“Full of all the same lies about us.”
The rustle of paper unfolded, Thaddeus reading.
“Ambrose Lynch is said to speak with the voices of spirits, to channel the dead of seven continents and all the languages thereof into a kind of unruly Pentecost, which has recalled to some observers the atmosphere of a tent revival or indeed a travelling sideshow.”
“They are cruel words, I admit. But they are not mine.”
“No? Whose, then?”
“I was merely attempting to summarize what others have said before me. You must understand that.”
“There’s nothing I need to understand.”
“I may not be a believer, Mr. Lynch, but I’m not like other skeptics. My mind is not made up. Tonight I intend to join you at your brother’s circle so I might hear for myself the spiritual voices and draw my own conclusions. I will be fair. On that you have my word.”
Rain in the grass, tapping at the windows.
Spreading my fingers now and looking out through them. See the two stood face to face and Mr. Flood with a look of such sorrow and calm as I see sometimes at the circle, and Thaddeus staring back sneering.
“Your word?”
Mr. Flood nods. “It is all I have to give.”
Thaddeus steps back, sagging as the anger goes out of him. That chill in its place, that absence. His voice empty when he speaks. “Leave us alone,” he says.
Mr. Flood goes and Thaddeus kneels in front of me. Fingers gripping my arm. Slowly lowering one of my hands, then the other, baring my face. And we’re looking at each other, my eyes in his, shining from the mask of Father’s face.
“It’s all right,” he says, gentle in the way he used to talk like when we were boys and called the spirits to us. Or hid ourselves in the pantry, after Spring Willow left, and Father stalked the house with the belt in his hands, crying, pleading with us to come out. Mother screaming at him. Thaddeus holding me, his hand clapped over my mouth.
“Shouldn’t have shouted,” he says. “No cause for it.”
Still shaking, the sweat sliding off. Falling away like all that pain.
“Had no right to corner you in here. Asking about Father. You tell him aught?”
A sharpness in his voice. The same chill coming on.
“No.”
“You sure of that?”
Say naught, and I’m closing my eyes. Thaddeus straightens up muttering to himself with his voice like Father’s and that stink on his breath. Frightening me and hating himself for it. Hiding behind it, that hate, the same as we used to hide together.
He’s gone and I slump back against the hearthstone. Nails find the old grooves in the mortar where my fingers clung to it. And Father behind me with his belt and the Holy Words upon his lips. Sounding now from the stones, hissing through the dent he put in my skull. These rooms all haunted, the voices coming now as at the circle.
You cannot hide from Him, boys. He will find you even as I have done. There is no running from it. He looks at you and sees your very soul, the sickness that’s taken root there. But he does not hate you for it. No more than I do. No more than a smith hates the scythe that has gone crooked and must be beaten straight. Can you imagine the fire? The heat of it? It is a hell for the smith as much as for the steel. But he makes the forge his cross and remains obedient to it. He could scarcely do otherwise, so great is the force of the love inside him, His Love, which guides these hands, giving me strength even in the teeth of my weakness. A faith to move the mountains. The power to cast out demons.
Then comes the sound of singing from above. Rebecca’s room, which now is Sally’s, and where she was confined. Father’s face looking up, black with the blood which rushes to it. The belt-loop quivering in his hands. Thaddeus crying, curled up, and her singing getting louder. Father wheels, shouting up toward it. Snaps the belt back on itself like a whip. Mother follows him into the hall and up the steps, pleading.
“You’ll kill her,” she says. “In her condition—”
“The girl is weak only in her sin. The same as you and I.”
“What are you, then? If she’s weak.”
“I know what I am. And I know that sin can be put right.”
Their footfalls fading. Vanishing with the murmur of thunder from the hills, hard rain with it, scattering the voices like chaff.
Mrs. Ambler looms over me in her veil, black like Mama’s and with her white hair, too. Her skin pale, the colour of her hair, and the bones showing through, wound about with blue veins like Sally when she was a little thing. Born early, Mama said. Too small. Too thin.
“I will fetch your sister,” she says, skirts trailing as she glides out.
Standing now, trying to stand. The feeling gone from my legs. Catch myself against the hearth. Fingers red. The nails broken, dangling. Forward to the doorway, the dining room beyond. Blue-black with the shutters drawn. The din of the rain flung by gusts and the quiet drawing back toward the kitchen.
Sally with Mrs. Ambler, talking low as I’m not meant to hear.
“Please don’t be concerned,” she says. “There was an accident, you understand. Many years ago. When he was a child.”
Mrs. Ambler’s thin bleat. A trembling in her throat as she speaks.
“And tonight? I trust he will be recovered fully?”
“Almost certainly. Again, you really mustn’t worry.”
Mrs. Ambler again, the crack in her voice growing wider. Some words missing, swallowed by the rain. “A year since he has come.”
Then the old woman’s step moving away into the parlour. Sally’s approaching and she’s smiling to see me, loops her arm in mine. Walks with me to the kitchen.
“Mrs. Ambler was worried,” she says.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize. Not to me, anyway. Certainly not to Thaddeus.”
The kitchen empty, the supper pot b
ubbling. Rain blowing in where the door swings back and forth, left open to vent the steam. Rain-sounds from the yard beyond.
Sally leads me to my chair, makes me to sit.
“Come, you must eat,” she says. “You had no breakfast.”
She places a bowl of stew before me. Sits down across from me with her own supper in front of her. A newspaper crumpled but open on the table which she reads from as she sips at her stew with the grey light coming through the door. The clock’s bell ringing.
I ask her about Thaddeus.
“He isn’t far, I’m sure. Surprised he isn’t here now. Heaven knows he means to keep an eye on us, make sure we aren’t talking to Mr. Flood.”
“He’s kind to me,” I say. “Like Mama was.”
Sally looks down. “To me, too,” she says. “But don’t tell Thaddeus.”
She finishes her supper. Places her spoon in the empty bowl, pushes it away. Watches me, though I won’t look at her, not even when the stew’s done and I see my face reflected in the grease at bowl’s bottom. Staring back at me.
The door slams in, wind blowing rain across us where we sit. Sally cries out, running to the door. A flash of lightning through the crack as she draws it shut. The thunder overhead, ripping a hole in the sky, bursting through the rent in my head. The rain like drums.
And Sally turning round, hair all wild. Laughing through the damp on her face like Spring Willow did when once she danced for us, for me. Sally carrying that face like a voice inside her, though Mama said she couldn’t call to the spirits, that she took after her father.
Then the light, it’s gone from behind her and she’s sweeping up her hair, tying it back. Stirring the pot for supper. Warming biscuits in the oven. Going in the pantry and bustling about.
Then upstairs to change before supper and the circle and I’m thinking of Spring Willow even after she’s gone and Thaddeus comes in. He busies himself with supper, doesn’t talk. Shows me his back, his jacket with its tears and creases and the sleeves rolled up. Ignores Sally, too, when she returns in her black dress, and John Turner, our cousin, sweeps inside with the wetness dripping off. He greets me by name, Thaddeus too. Wipes his brow with his cuff and smiles at Sally.
“Evening,” he says, and she answers in kind, though she doesn’t cease from working.
“Thought you weren’t coming,” Thaddeus says.
“You mean you hoped as much.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s only a summer storm,” says John. “It’ll pass.”
Thaddeus turns to Sally. “Go on upstairs,” he says. “Things we need to talk over, me and John.”
She ignores him, keeps working. Filling the tureen, ladling out gravy. Walking with the tray past Thaddeus like as though she hasn’t heard.
Thaddeus glares. To John he says: “We’ll go up to the Circle Room.”
Then the two going out, passing behind me. Talking together though I don’t hear what they say. Thumping upstairs over Sally’s head as she comes back into the kitchen, looking upset. Thinking of aught though she won’t speak of it.
She brings out the tureen, the biscuits, the gravy. Returns again with her hands empty. Collapses ’gainst the counter and hides her face in her hands. “Just tired,” she says, and smiles, faces me with the hair in place once more, the powder turning her face pale. Hiding herself from us and from the others. Her sadness first, then that anger just beneath. Burning in her like in Thaddeus and looking nothing now like Spring Willow, who never wept nor shouted. Who held me in her arms as we flew, her soft voice tickling at my ear. Coming when I called her, when I said her name.
A morning in summer with the dust all round, glowing with the sun shot through it. Spring Willow at the centre, dancing, and Thaddeus beside me. The stones quaking, humming to make a kind of music. Spirits gathering in the trees, the branches. Watching with our eyes. Stirring beneath our skin and settling in the bones.
A coldness felt even in summer, a shivering. The rocking spread ’til it reached the tongue and burst from out my lips. Screaming children. Our dead brother. Their voices sounding out, once, in the stillness of that place. Here, not here, like Mama said. Resounding still. Heard in our frothing blood, the noise of the breath inside us.
Sally breathing hard as she sits across from me. The cup trembling as she holds it with both hands. Water sloshes over the brim, fanning out on the table, and the hour’s come. Sally, rising, leads me through the other doorway and onto the steps. Through the unlighted hall toward the flickering lamps, leaving me there near the doors to the Circle Room.
Everything in readiness. Chairs stacked against the far wall with the round table at the room’s middle. Seating for six. One lamp on the round and another on the long table ’gainst the near wall, where the instruments are, strings shining where the shadows don’t cover them.
Thaddeus is there. Face red and twisted and John Turner behind him grinning. John, who doesn’t have the Gift, but comes to Thaddeus’s séances to see Evening Star dance. Most nights he sings and sometimes he prays, though Thaddeus doesn’t like it, doesn’t want him there.
His guitar’s on the table. John takes it, strums out the start of a song. Playing soft as he’s always done, even when Thaddeus and me were boys and he wasn’t much older. When we saw him walking with Rebecca. When we heard them singing in the barn, their voices rising.
Movement below us. A clamour on the stairs moving through me in rings. The spirits swimming in the blood, beating at the walls of my chest, begging for release. Throbbing in my brain. Louder, it seems, when John grins at me. His wet mouth. His wolf’s teeth.
“Get out,” Thaddeus says, quietly. John leaves and Thaddeus snuffs the lamp. Blacks himself with his shadow and goes to meet them coming in.
The Germans, first, with Mrs. Ambler behind them. Thaddeus motions to the round table and tells them to sit. The widow brushes past him to come and sit beside me, sitting close, smell of old bed-sheets on her breath.
Mr. Flood, last of all, then closing the doors as directed. Refusing the seat that’s offered him near the German woman and standing up, asking in a voice like dry leaves blowing if he might be allowed to sit beside me in Thaddeus’s chair.
Mr. Flood says: “I believe it would be most informative. For my readers, you understand.”
Thaddeus shakes his head. “Impossible.”
“But surely I might—”
“The spirits know me. Won’t take fright at my presence.”
“They have nothing to fear from me, Mr. Lynch.”
But Thaddeus is stubborn. He talks and talks and won’t quit from talking, though a tension creeps over us and the voices getting louder. Thudding and scraping and with no words all the while. My own voice gone so I don’t dare speak, but motion Mr. Flood to sit beside me.
Thaddeus breathing fast. He goes and locks the doors from inside, yelling loud enough to be heard downstairs. Sits himself next to the German woman, who shrinks from him. She pushes up close against her husband, eyes black and hooded when Mrs. Ambler dims the lamp.
The darkness loud with storming. Thunder cutting night from the whiteness that follows. Our hands joined, Mrs. Ambler praying to start the circle. Just like Mama used to do when she heard the spirits moving in me. When she sensed them perching on my tongue and begged her God to let them speak. Her firstborn, years in the grave. Her babies.
And Mrs. Ambler, knowing naught of this, gives thanks, offering up praise of the Gift He’s bestowed on us and on our blood. Ends with a plea that He might come.
One of the guitars starts to chiming behind her, a sound like bells. Those first notes ringing, merging with the hiss-and-spit of the rain and the wind in the rafters. A tremor through her hand, held in mine, and the prayer dying down with the song in its becoming.
Like nothing I’ve heard before. A melody without pattern, the notes too high. Cold, somehow, and climbing, like the creaks in a winding stair. Always going up. Only a soft thumping for accompaniment, a knee keeping time
’neath the round table.
Mrs. Ambler’s hand clasping mine. Mrs. Bauer gasping, illumined in the lightning’s flash. Then the child coming into me. My throat tightens, strangling the voice which rises, welling up like a gorge I can’t pass. Lips wide. Choking as the tongue rolls back against itself, the words spilling out. A high sound, and thin, and always the rain and that guitar chiming behind us. Playing three notes over and over. Small in the dark surrounding, a cavern without end. Emptied of all but myself. Winter’s chill, its loneliness. The roar of the tempest circling.
His voice in me. I’m frightened, he says. Hold me.
A woman nearby, her voice. I can’t hear.
Where are you? he says. What are you saying? That noise.
The woman again with a voice like Mama’s.
“It’s only the wind,” she says. “There is nothing to fear, child.”
Hold me. Say you won’t let go.
Another voice, a woman. Closer, too close. Her cry like thunder bursting on my ears. A yielding sound, then, like timbers groaning, falling through, and a third voice, a man’s, babbling words as I don’t know.
Mrs. Ambler: “Hush! Please, you must be silent. You’ll frighten the poor child.”
But the spirit’s gone from me. The tongue, slack, drops down in the palate, opening the throat so the breath streams in, filling the lungs. The spirits hiding, going still. And Mrs. Bauer crying, her husband cold and quivering beside her.
“Foolish woman,” says Mrs. Ambler. “You have ruined everything.”
Clenching her fists then unclenching them, the knuckle bones rubbing. Near shaking as she waits with her jaw set firm in the lightning’s flash. And Mrs. Bauer, shamed and weeping, the drips hanging from her nose where she cannot wipe them away, her hands held fast.
The tongue twitches in my mouth, a man’s voice taking shape on it. Curling the organ to itself and pouring out like a yell. Loud enough to startle Mr. Flood, his grip on me tightening though the table bucks and leaps with the force of a blow from beneath.
A second shout. A howl of agony and the hot pain rising up behind. Blowing through me from places beyond. Getting into the blood somehow and filling me like the water in a sluice, hottest where it pools and collects in my belly, pinning me in place.