They caught her in the doorway as she wailed, arms wrapped around her leg. They sat her down in the dark hall, both at a loss how to cope with her, how to silence her. But it was too late: Amy’s caterwauling brought Lavinia charging up the stairs with one of the oil lamps. Mr. Charter followed close behind her.
“What have you girls been doing?” the stepmother demanded, and, taking it all in at a glance, pronounced her sentence: “You two, torturing your poor feeble sister. You’re wicked, both of you.”
Amy wailed louder at being called “feeble.” “It wasn’t them, it was the ghost!” she cried. “He would’ve touched me, he tried to, he grabbed my arms, and he moved the bed to trap me!”
“What foolishness is this? What ghost?”
Vern and Kate glared at their sister for revealing what they’d been doing. This was precisely why Amy found herself excluded from their activities. She hadn’t the sense to keep things to herself.
“What ghost?” Lavinia repeated precisely.
It was clear that Vern couldn’t speak of it. Kate replied guardedly, “Vern was communicating with…with something. In the wall.”
“Show me.” Lavinia pointed the way back into the bedroom. They turned, but as she passed by her stepmother, Kate glimpsed the strangest tiny smile sliding across Lavinia’s lips—there and gone in an instant—as if this turn of events were delighting her. She craned her head back, but Lavinia was already herding her sisters in with her lamp.
It threw their shadows ahead as if into a hollow cavern. She lit Amy’s candle from it, then walked to the far end and lit the lamp on their mantel as well. Wind whistled in the chimney. “You should have a fire in here to keep you warmer,” she said, then turned around. The room was all in order. Vern’s bed was not in the middle but against the inside wall where it belonged.
Amy blubbered, “It was too in the middle. This isn’t fair. He’s put it back.”
No one much paid attention to her grievances.
“Where is this ghost?”
Kate pointed at the wall over her bed.
Lavinia marched around the bed. Mr. Charter trailed after her like a judgment.
Vern moved up beside Lavinia. With obvious reluctance, she explained, “You ask him a question.”
“What question?”
“Any question.”
Lavinia opened her mouth but said nothing for a moment. She faced Vern. “You ask.”
Vern pressed her palm to the wall. “Spirit, are you with us?”
Nothing happened.
“Samuel?”
“Oh, has it a name, your ghost?”
“It’s Samuel,” she answered, her head bowed, brow creased. She stood a few more moments, then with a sigh removed her hand. “He’s gone. He told me not to tell anyone, and now he’s gone.” She was nearly in tears.
Lavinia’s look would have withered an olive tree. “Is he, now? No doubt all the ruckus here drove him away, a bunch of screaming girls carrying on like they were half their age, and causing such commotion as this house has undoubtedly never seen. Mr. Charter?” she said expectantly.
The girls stiffened. They’d heard the request in that tone many times.
Mr. Charter studied the floor and cleared his throat. “Lavinia,” he said, “we’ve only just arrived, what possible punishment can we invent when there’s no routine even established yet?” He said to his daughters, “I expect that you girls may not go into town now for some days, except as to help us carry supplies back home—”
“The belt, sir.”
Mr. Charter stood a moment before answering. His shoulders sagged, and the girls dreaded that he would obediently retrieve the heavy belt that Lavinia wanted. For once, he chose to stand his ground. “Lavinia,” he answered, staring at the floor, “I’ll not take a belt to my daughters for the nothing that this nonsense is.”
The stepmother’s Medusa gaze swept the room. Collecting the lamp, she walked stiffly out the door, her skirts swishing like whips.
“Papa, it was—” Vern started to protest, but her father raised his hand to silence her, though his head remained bowed.
“The spirits of children are corrupt,” he said, but without much conviction behind the words. “Those of us who guide them must remember they are born into it and cannot help.”
“But he’s real, Papa, the ghost—”
“Vernelia Anne!” he snapped, then more softly, “It matters little if he is or not. The penalties we all endure are the same either way. Think on that awhile, if you would, before you make your apology on the morrow.” He withdrew into the dark hallway and was gone.
Amy sulked and rubbed her toes.
Kate told her, “You didn’t break anything. It’ll stop hurting after a bit.”
“But the bed really was in the middle of the floor. How could I have run way over to there.” She pointed.
“Oh, sister, you are cutting up the didoes with us. You provoke us that way and then you give up everything. Why couldn’t you keep it to yourself for once? Why did you have to tell them when you could have just said you stubbed your toe, which is what you did?”
Amy refused to be made the villain, but could think of no adequate defense. Her soul was corrupt and spiteful—this she knew about herself, although knowing didn’t seem to prevent her from acting that way. She supposed she should apologize to Vern, but she simply could not. She was the wronged party, the one left quite literally in the dark. In mute frustration she resigned from the battle. She turned away and went to her bed, where she started unbuttoning her dress.
There seemed to be nothing left to say. Kate went downstairs, out through the kitchen to the back of the house, and collected an armful of wood. When she returned to the room, Amy was in bed and Vern standing as before. Kate knelt and made a layer of crisscrossed kindling, which she lit using a lucifer match and striker from the mantel cup. She added the larger wood to the blaze. Only when there was a decent fire going did she begin undressing for bed as well.
Vern was still looking at the wall.
“You should go to bed,” Kate told her.
“I cannot,” she said.
“Why?”
“I can’t change in here. He’s watching me. Samuel’s watching me.”
Kate glanced at Amy. “Sister,” she said, “if he’s truly a spirit or an angel then he can watch you wherever you are. It won’t make a difference what room you’re in or even if you’re in the house. And why should it, if he’s a spirit—your body can’t mean a thing to him. Besides which, he’s gone away.”
“I know it, but I can’t. I can’t.” And she walked out into the hallway, closing the door after her.
Amy asked, “Now, where does she think she’s gonna sleep?”
Kate hung her dress on a peg. In her chemise she sat on her bed. She was the one nearest the point of communication, closest to the wall and the ghost. She ought to have been the one most fearful. Yet what she felt was an unease less specific in its source than Vern’s displaced Shaker.
As she climbed into her bed, she was thinking that they had been in this house for less than two days and already their world had been turned upside down. The world was supposed to be ending, Jesus awaiting, and Heaven approaching. What did ghosts have to do with that? Were they privy to the opening of a door between worlds? Could this be seen as a sign that Reverend Fitcher was right? If so, then why did she harbor such undeniable doubt?
She stared at the wall and asked quietly, “Who are you?”
The wall chose not to reply.
Six
THE MAN TOOK SHAPE FROM THE words of her sisters. Vern heard Amy say, “A tall man,” and Kate add, “He has to have dark hair.” In her dream they were playing the game of making up a husband, but this time he appeared, coalescing into a handsome, dark-haired man who had no mouth. Then Amy and Kate were gone, and the man they’d conjured was reaching to touch her while she retreated down eerily lit hallways that seemed to unfold forever; she turned and he followed her, an
d behind him the view went black, as though his body cast the light by which she saw. Stranger still, though she was always moving away from him she didn’t fear him; in fact she was not moving by her own volition but could not face what impelled her, what dragged her away from him. Then all at once something supple, fluttering, like live tendrils of smoke reached out of the blackness behind him, looped around his throat, and snatched him into it, and everything went dark. She cried out and awoke. She lay in her bed in the predawn grayness, listening to her sisters’ steady breathing, guessing that she had made a noise only in her dream. She called out in her mind to Samuel. Nothing answered, but when she glanced at Kate’s bed, the wall above it seemed to glow with lambent fire, as though the plaster were luminous.
She stared at the glow, expecting every moment for something to emerge. Instead, the glow faded slowly away and the room darkened as if the wall were absorbing all incoming light. A shadow took form in the air beside her, a shape made from nothing. It reached toward her.
She awoke with a start.
It was morning, her sisters stirring beneath their quilts, and the air in the room crisply cold. Kate’s fire had long since gone out. No shadow stood beside her. The wall above Kate’s bed looked perfectly normal. Vern had dreamed that she’d awakened, that was all—one dream encapsulating another. Nothing called to her, no voice echoed upon the aether, the room was silent. If Samuel had been driven away, it was Lavinia who had done it, and not she.
As she sat up, her foot brushed the chamber pot beneath her bed. It sloshed, and she leaned down to look at it. Someone had used it during the night without waking her—one of her sisters, despite having their own pots. Probably Amy. She said nothing about it, but once dressed carried the pot out back to empty it. The ground was covered over in a rime of ice, and her breath made a mist in the air; but the sun was already blasting its rays through the trees across the road.
The breakfast that morning was boiled oatmeal and pan bread. Amy had made it, and it was quite good. Vern had to admit, Amy had the instincts of a cook, which she did not, though she still made some meals. It was something she could respect about her younger sister, and the Lord knew, sometimes Amy made that difficult to do. She silently forgave Amy for telling everyone about her ghost. It really wasn’t Amy’s fault that she couldn’t lie. If anything it probably made her a better Christian. Better than her oldest sister, anyway. Vern just hoped that the ghost of Samuel would come back, that she hadn’t lost him, too. If she had, she knew, it was not Amy’s fault. She wanted to blame Lavinia, she had done, but the truth was, he’d instructed her to tell no one and she had disregarded that and told Kate, and then Amy, and then…
She wondered about Judgment Day, and what it truly meant. Wouldn’t God be able to look into her soul and see that it was good and kind, and that what she’d done with Henri had been an expression of love? She had loved him. She still did, but she was resigned that she wouldn’t ever see him again. He wasn’t going to be let into Harbinger, wasn’t going to be saved unless he changed his mind soon. She wouldn’t be punished for caring for him, surely. It wasn’t evil to care for someone, even if they weren’t saved. Lord Jesus had cared for everyone, even prostitutes. She maintained a secret hope that she might intervene for Henri’s soul when the time came—rescue him. That was a very romantic notion, but didn’t it also provide proof of her purity?
She’d nearly convinced herself that she could portray her actions in the proper light if given the chance. She just didn’t know how her life would be confronted, and whether she would have to look back over it as one looked back along a road one had walked down. Would she have to answer for every action, every mistake, and would they arrive finally at Henri and allow her the chance to wrap herself around him and beg for his life? She would be like Esther or Ruth. She would save somebody. Her affection for her mother lay bound up in the past, too. So much love abounded inside her, how could she be judged harshly? Not if God were fair…
It was then she turned to Lavinia and said, “Please forgive me, ma’am, for the events of last night, which were purely my fault and no one else’s.”
Everyone stopped eating, Amy with her spoon halfway to her mouth.
Lavinia flushed. She bowed her head as though to pray. After a moment, she raised her napkin to her lips and patted them dry. “Of course, child, I can grant you my forgiveness. But you require a higher power’s absolution than mine for your wickedness. I believe you should stay in your room awhile once we’ve finished arranging our household for company—stay there and think on what act you must perform to be absolved of your sins. Later, I’ll call you down to make those candles that couldn’t be done yesterday.”
Vern licked her lips. She traded a look with Kate, and saw in her sister’s gaze a warning not to take the bait. She bit back her outrage and said, “Yes, ma’am.” Picking up her spoon, she began to eat her food as if her entire world lay in that bowl.
The parlor had been assembled. Kate had found some way to persuade her father to use the furniture from the third floor—at least, the chairs: The dresser and sofa remained where they were, which gave the small attic the look of an inhabited garret. Vern had to admire Kate’s skill in maneuvering him. Whatever Kate had done, neither Vern nor Amy could have accomplished it. Amy was limping around the kitchen barefoot, claiming that she couldn’t tolerate a shoe, though her toes didn’t look at all swollen. Her father made it clear that he didn’t believe her, either, and certainly she could have asked no favors from him at the moment.
Some of the rugs had been beaten, the lamps and vases and dishes arranged, tea tables set up, the antimacassars laid over the back of the sofa. She knew what was coming next, but rather than have Lavinia banish her—which would surely include further upbraiding for having not governed herself—she retreated to her room on her own.
There was nothing to do there, of course. She had no needlework at hand, and the only thing to read was a copy of Wieland that had been unpacked from Amy’s things. If nothing else, it might provide a diversion to make the time go faster.
She removed her shoes and lay down on her bed, opening the book. She read aloud, “‘Wieland, or the Transformation. An American Tale.’
“From virtue’s blissful paths away,
The double-tongued are sure to stray;
Good is a forth-right journey still,
And mazy paths but lead to ill.”
This was followed by an advertisement by the author, who promised that the book would address “some important branches of the moral constitution of man.” Well, Vern thought, no wonder Amy felt compelled to read it—she was always worried about her moral constitution and never entirely resolved that she might have one.
All Vern had known of it was that Amy thought the book spooky and strange, but didn’t really seem to understand it.
She started to read the first chapter, but had gotten only a few lines along—to where the narrator promised to tell of things that had happened to his family—before her eyes were drawn beyond it to the wall over Kate’s bed. Of course it was dull and blank. There was no glow, nor anything else that had been in her dream.
No, she didn’t want to think about it. About the voice of Samuel.
With a furrowed brow, she plunged into the book again, trying to absorb the full depth of what was being proposed. Something had happened to this narrator, something to destroy his hope. She read with growing unease, as everything he said seemed like a description of her own state: “I have nothing more to fear. Fate had done its worst…the storm that tore up our happiness…” She closed the book before some detail might destroy the illusion that this was her life, her misfortune, her own happiness torn up. It wasn’t fair that she’d been robbed of it before she was old enough to know life, to make one of her own—a conspiracy of fate. All of humanity doomed, and she along with it.
Sitting up, she walked over to Kate’s bed and sat down. At that point her nerve failed.
She sat without saying a
nything, afraid to inquire, afraid that he wouldn’t be there and that if he wasn’t she would have to admit she’d driven him away. And that would be too terrible to bear. Everyone was driven away from her.
She wanted him to make a sign so that she wouldn’t have to ask—to show that he knew where she was—but there was no tapping. No voice spoke.
She rested her chin on her fists. There was no point in going back to her bed and trying to read that book. No point in trying to do anything else. What she really wanted to do was talk to her ghost.
Finally, she said, “Samuel?” She closed her eyes and listened. “Samuel, are you there?” She thought she heard a scratching in the wall, and placed her cheek against it. “Can you hear me?”
There was not a sound, but something slid against her face, crawling caterpillarlike over her cheek where it touched the wall. She drew back in alarm.
She heard his voice then: “Vernelia.” Her name spoken as though by rustling leaves or wind upon long grass. “I am here.”
“Yes,” she replied. Her heart opened to him with a loving tenderness that was almost painful to bear. She touched the wall and it seemed that her hand passed straight through the surface of it, as if she were the ghost. So close, the plaster became a mist, a fog. She let it draw her in.
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