Out of the Mist

by EvergreenWritersGroup

  The quiet children under the sod were her friends, and she brought wild flowers to decorate their graves, or special things like a blue jay’s feather or a shining white stone.

  Sometimes Marjory wandered over the mossy turf, reading the inscriptions and trying to make out the meaning of the carvings and mottoes on the stones:

  Praying hands and “Be Thou Also Ready”

  “Rest Eternal” and “In Peace”

  One inscription presented a mystery:

  “I fought for family and for farm

  Against the French when they did swarm.

  Now here at home my bones do rest,

  Where my head lies, none can guess.”

  Often and often, Marjory returned to this stone, one of the oldest in the cemetery. She had brushed the moss away to read the name:

  Henry Ainsworth

  Born Norwich, England 1720

  Died Dartmouth, Nova Scotia 1749

  Marjory imagined the bones buried six feet under the earth: feet, legs, ribs, arms—but no head! What had happened to Henry’s head? Suppose he woke up on Judgement Day, and found he had no head? Marjory wondered if a headless person could enter Heaven. How would St. Peter know it was Henry?

  On the thirtieth of October, Marjory gathered especially large bunches of goldenrod and purple asters, and placed them on Henry’s grave. Tomorrow night was Hallowe’en, when ghosts were supposed to walk, and spirits rose from the grave to have one night when they could range about and celebrate before returning underground. And she wanted everyone to know that someone cared for Henry Ainsworth, even though he had no head.

  “There, you’re not forgotten,” she said to Henry.

  “Who are you talking to?” A boy’s voice startled her.

  Marjory stared. “What are you doing here?” It was Ned, a buddy from her fifth grade class. Ned lived the next street over from her and their mothers were friends.

  “Checking out the graveyard,” said Ned. “Some of the guys are daring each other to do a ghost walk here, tomorrow night, and I thought I’d get here first and scare them! What are you doing here? Aren’t you afraid of a graveyard?”

  “Of course not,” scoffed Marjory. “Why, I come here all the time!”

  “Who were you talking to?” Ned asked again.

  “Henry.” Marjory pointed to the stone. “I tell him I’m sorry for him because he has no head.”

  “No head?” Ned came closer and studied the grave marker. He read, “‘But where my head lies, none can guess.’ Say, that’s weird! How come he doesn’t have a head?”

  “It’s a mystery,” Marjory replied. “At least, I don’t know.”

  “Say, that would be scary. To see a skeleton without a head.” Ned thought for a moment, then his eyes lit up. “That would make a good costume for Hallowe’en! But I wonder what his story is.”

  Marjory showed Ned around the cemetery, pointing out stones she was familiar with. But both of them kept returning to Henry Ainsworth’s plot, the man without a head. Marjory patted the gravestone. “Don’t worry, Henry, we’re your friends even if you don’t have a head!” Then she jumped back. “Something moved!” she exclaimed. “Under my feet!”

  Ned stared at the turf covering the grave. He said in a low tone, “Did you hear that rumbling sound? Something’s under there.”

  “Of course,” Marjory replied, with a nervous laugh. “Henry’s there!”

  “Do you think he heard us?”

  “He might be sensitive about having no head.” Marjory took care not to step on the grass over the grave again.

  “If only we could find out where it was, we could get it back for him,” Ned suggested. “I could ask my grandfather about it. He knows a lot of early history.”

  Was there a movement atop the grave? Both children stared at the grass. “I thought it rippled a little,” said Marjory.

  “Probably just the wind,” Ned offered, but he was quiet as they turned to go home.

  “If you find out anything from your grandfather, tell me in school tomorrow,” said Marjory.

  The next morning, Marjory hurried over to Ned, who was standing in line in front of the school, waiting for the doors to open.

  “Did you find out about… you know?” she whispered, so the other kids wouldn’t hear.

  “Gramp told me the whole story! It’s wild!” Ned’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t right now. The bell’s going to ring. I’ll tell you at lunch.”

  At lunch, she managed to snag a spot in the window alcove in the corner of the classroom. Ned sauntered over to join her, trying to appear casual. But as soon as he sat down and opened his lunch box, Marjory cried out, “Tell! Tell!”

  “It was Indians! In the Seven Years War! Henry was cutting wood. He and five other men. Some Indians rushed out of the forest and Henry was killed!”

  “But why no head?”

  “Gramp thinks the Mi’kmaq may have taken it away. He said the French rewarded the Indians for every Englishman they killed or captured. They scalped some others, and took one man prisoner. They must have cut off Henry’s head to show the French in order to get the reward.”

  “Ugh!” Marjory made a face.

  “Well, the English did the same thing Gramp said. They paid a bounty for every Indian scalp the English took.”

  “I wouldn’t want to carry around an old head.”

  “Maybe they dropped it on the way home,” Ned speculated. Ned and Marjory looked at each other, and then down at their lunch boxes. Neither felt much like eating anymore. Ned had an image of a head carried by its hair, blood dripping from its neck. In Marjory’s mind, she saw the lost head, flung down on the hill above the harbour, and rolling, rolling down to the shore with a ghastly smile on its face.

  When lunch was over, the teacher, Miss Primrose, smiled at her restless class. “Come on, get your coats on. We’re going on a field trip!” she announced. “The Parent-Teacher Organization has arranged with the Museum down the block for you to attend a special children’s Hallowe’en program.”

  Within a few minutes, the fifth graders, all 26 of them, were marching two by two to the Alderney Museum. The entrance had a large banner: “Hallowe’en exhibit: Ghosts, Goblins, and Haunts.” A museum instructor led them to a darkened maze set up in the galleries, with phosphorescent stepping stones for the children to follow. There were black “spider web” curtains they had to lift to go between the galleries.

  The first gallery had enlarged models of insects displayed on the walls: praying mantises, cicadas, wasps, and dragonflies. There was also a remote-controlled spider. The instructor let the children take turns using the control stick to make it crawl across the floor.

  The next gallery had a mock jail set up in a corner, and life-size “stocks” to punish early settlers who had a run-in with the authorities. “You could be put in the stocks for not attending church on Sunday,” said the instructor. “And when ships came in, the jail would fill up, because sailors would often be jailed for public drunkenness.”

  While several classmates vied for the chance to be put in the “stocks”, or locked in the “jail”, Ned and Marjory peered around the door to the next gallery. Paper skeletons hung on the walls beside charts naming all their bones. A large glass case was in the centre of the room. Marjory hung over the glass. “Ned! Look!” Ned hurried over. Staring back at them from under the glass were the black empty eye-sockets of a human skull!

  “We don’t know whose skull is in this case.” The Museum instructor moved to the display case. “It was dug up recently by a construction crew. The experts who looked at it say it is a man’s skull and that it must be very old, because it was under layers and layers of soil.”

  The fifth graders crowded around. “Was he murdered? Who killed him?” someone asked.

  Miss Primrose said, “How do you know he was murdered? Maybe he died of disease.”

  “No, Ma’am,” said the instructor. He pulle
d on a pair of white gloves, unlocked the case, and carefully turned the skull so the class could see the back of the head. The back of the skull had been split and there was a hatchet head still embedded in the bone. “We think he was one of the early settlers. During the Seven Years War, there were many skirmishes between the English, and the French and their Indian allies. Many Englishmen and many natives were killed, right here in Dartmouth.

  “The skull was found right near here, at the bottom of the hill, near the shore. So he was probably an early settler or a soldier in the Halifax area. But the strange thing is we didn’t find any of his other bones or anything else, like a belt or uniform buttons that we could have identified him with.”

  Ned and Marjory stood back from the crowd. They exchanged slightly startled and meaningful looks, but didn’t say a word.

  Later, on the way back to school, Ned was excited. “It must be Henry’s skull!”

  Marjory agreed. “No bones were found with him because they weren’t there!”

  As school let out, many of the kids were calling back and forth about Hallowe’en:

  “What are you going to be, tonight?”

  “I’m going to be a witch!”

  “A zombie!”

  A bunch of boys were calling out to each other. “I’ll meet you for trick or treating!”

  “You’re scared! Bet you won’t show up!”

  “I’ll be at the Old Cemetery, but I won’t see you! You’ll be home hiding under your bed!”

  “Dare you to walk through the whole grounds!”

  “Double-dare!”

  Marjory asked Ned, “Are you going to the graveyard to scare those guys?”

  “I’m going to wear an all-black outfit,” Ned said, “and glue a paper skeleton on it, but I’ll take off the skull! I’ll be the skeleton without a head! That ought to shock them.”

  “I’ll come with you. I’ll be a ghost in a white sheet.”

  The problem of how to stay out late was solved by each of them telling their parents that they were going to a Hallowe’en party at the other’s house. Neither took bags to hold candy with them.

  “It’s tricks for me tonight, not treats,” said Ned, when they met up later.

  Marjory nodded. Marjory was carrying a sheet, and when she put it over her head, she could see out of the holes she had cut for the eyes. The sheet draped down over her, so that nothing showed except her shoes.

  Ned’s white paper skeleton contrasted quite well against his black outfit, and he wore a black ski-mask over his head so that it would not be seen in the dark.

  In the Old Cemetery, they hid behind Henry Ainsworth’s stone to wait for the boys from school. At first, it was scarcely dark enough, but as the night closed in Ned and Marjory peered around the stone every few minutes to see if the boys were coming. They could see the other graves, lit by faint moonlight—the little children with lambs, the carved angel with outstretched wings. It was too dark to read the inscription on Henry’s grave, but they could recall it without having to read it.

  “Where my head lies, none can guess!” said Marjory. “But we know, don’t we?”

  “Right there in the Museum! They say that dead men who lose their bones constantly seek to find them,” said Ned. “I wonder if Henry’s skeleton….”

  “Hush,” shushed Marjory. She had heard something.

  “Are the guys coming?” whispered Ned.

  But the creaking noise did not come from the cemetery entrance. It came from the other side of Henry’s stone. Marjory peered around. Something funny was going on. The earth of the plot was rippling, the way it does when a mole is digging under a lawn. Marjory grasped Ned’s arm.

  “What is it?” hissed Ned.

  “Look!”

  Not only was the grass heaving, but a crack opened between the grass and Henry’s tombstone. Ned and Marjory froze. Marjory’s heart beat fast as a long bony finger reached up out of the crack, followed by the whole hand, and then an arm-bone. As the children held their breaths, a whole skeleton clambered out of the narrow crevice. There was a rib cage, hip bones, long thigh bones and lower legs, and feet with big bony toes. But as the skeleton stood up, they saw above the rib cage and spine—nothing! No head! The spine ended at the neck vertebrae.

  Ned and Marjory huddled together behind Henry’s stone, too terrified to run. They hoped the skeleton didn’t see them. Did you die if a skeleton touched you?

  Henry’s skeleton took a few steps, but his stance appeared wobbly. Ned and Marjory saw spaces between the bones. There was no flesh and no tendons to hold the bones together. Only a pale phosphorescent light, like an electric gleam or a magnetic pulse, joined the bones.

  “He’s going to seek his head!” gasped Ned. “I told you dead men look for their bones!”

  As they watched, Henry’s skeleton set off from his grave along a cemetery path. Where the path turned, however, Henry went straight ahead into a ditch and fell down in a clatter.

  “He can’t see!” exclaimed Marjory. “His eyes are in the skull! He’s blind!” Impulsively, she stood up and ran around the tombstone to follow the skeleton.

  “Wait! Marjory!” Ned followed her. Marjory ran along the path to where the bones were piled in a ditch. They had come apart, but under Marjory’s astonished gaze, they joined together again, like drops of mercury, pulled by some secret force. Within half a minute, Henry’s skeleton stood up and tried to find his way out of the ditch.

  “Oh, the poor thing!” cried Marjory. She reached out her hand and took the bony fingers in her grasp. She winced at the coldness of the bone, but she couldn’t leave Henry’s blind skeleton to stumble into ditches. “Come on, this way!” She guided him back to the path. “Ned, come on! We have to help him find his skull!”

  Ned only hesitated a second. He wasn’t going to let Marjory see he was afraid of the skeleton. He reached for Henry’s other hand. The two children, with Henry between them, took the path that led to the cemetery’s entrance. Ned found he wasn’t afraid any longer. It was quite like helping his granddad to his rocking chair on the porch. Henry’s hands loosely grasped Ned’s and Ned helped steer him along the path. As they approached the cemetery gate, a piercing shriek rang out, followed by cries of, “A Skeleton!”

  “Two Skeletons!”

  “And a Ghost!”

  They caught a glimpse of a group of boys, turning and running for dear life in all directions away from the cemetery.

  “The guys!” said Ned, and he began to laugh. “They saw Henry, and they thought I was a skeleton, too!”

  “I guess I made a good ghost.” Marjory grinned. “Henry, you sure made them run!”

  Henry’s bony hands pulled at them. His one purpose was to find his head!

  “Maybe we should try to hide him,” Marjory suggested. “He’ll likely scare the whole street!” But the skeleton insisted on walking right on down the street, and they had to go with him to keep him from running into lamp-posts and crashing into garbage pails.

  Halfway down the street to the Museum, a group of costumed kids approached, running, whooping, and hollering. They were ringing doorbells and collecting treats. As they came closer, Marjory and Ned expected them to scream and run away, but surprisingly, nothing of the sort happened. The costumed witches, pirates, and zombies paid little attention to the two skeletons and the ghost, except one girl who said, “Great costumes!” as she rushed by.

  “I can’t believe it!” Marjory exclaimed. “They think he’s just someone dressed up as a skeleton!”

  “Better costume than mine,” laughed Ned, studying Henry’s detached limbs, held together by little gleams of light.

  At the Museum, they had to help Henry climb the steps, lest he fall over backwards. Once they reached the top, Marjory groaned, “Of course, the doors are locked!” But that did not stop the skeleton. Without even trying to open the doors, he just slid through them without breaking them, like water through a sieve, leaving the two children outside, amazed.

&nbs
p; As Henry disappeared into the galleries, Ned and Marjory were left open-mouthed. Was this really happening? They were not left to question long. First, they heard a crash of glass. Then bony footsteps click-clacked as Henry returned, holding his skull in his hands. He came out through the door the same way he went in. “Sliding through the atoms,” said Ned, who was a science freak.

  Once outside the Museum, the skeleton lifted the skull, and put it back on his neck vertebrae, where it seemed to fit. “As if made for him,” said Marjory. Ned noticed the hatchet sticking out of the back of Henry’s skull as the skeleton walked on his own down the Museum steps. He needed no guidance this time, and seemed to know his way back to the cemetery. He didn’t pay any attention to Ned and Marjory, for which they were thankful. They weren’t sure that a skeleton, however indebted to them for their help, might react. In fairy stories, the “Little People” were supposed to entice mortals down into their barrows underground. Neither wanted his bony hands to pull them into his grave.

  Following at a safe distance, they turned into the cemetery, just in time to see Henry reach his tombstone, sit down on the edge of the opening, insert his long bony limbs into the grave, and quickly drop completely underground, and out of sight. Then from the grave-hole, two skeletal hands reached up, and for a minute, Marjory thought with a shudder that he was going to climb out of the grave again. If he wants me to take him home, Marjory thought, I don’t think Mother would like it. But no, he simply reached up, grabbed the turf, and closed it with his bony fingers, like a blanket.