by Simon Holt
On February 2, 1954, one Joseph Garney had set fire to a country church with the priest and a Sunday school class of five trapped inside. Eighteen years later, he died in prison. His body was shipped back to his hometown of Fredericks, a farm town at the foot of the Berkshire Mountains, in a plain pine box.
During the ride, Reggie felt an ember of hope flicker to life inside her. After they pulled into the local gas station and learned there was only one cemetery in Fredericks, it flared even brighter.
When they found the place and drove through the open gates of the cemetery, Eben started coughing, a painful, sticky hack that forced him to pull to the side of the poorly plowed road. Tombstones dotted the slopes, and a few bleak mausoleums stood on the crests.
“You okay?” Reggie patted Eben gently on the back.
“Fine, fine.”
“Stay here where it’s warm. We’ll be back in a few.”
Eben just held his white handkerchief to his mouth and nodded.
Reggie and Aaron got out of the car and surveyed the grounds.
“You start at the top row and work your way down,” Reggie said. “I’ll take the bottom one and work up.”
Aaron nodded.
“Joseph Garney,” he whispered. “We’ll find him.”
The muddy snow beneath Reggie’s feet pulled at her boots, making a crunch-sucking sound with every step.
Louise Wilkes. Hollis Johnson. Charlotte Mundt…
She trudged onward, trespassing in the land of the dead, imagining creatures of desiccated skin and moldering bone seething beneath her feet.
. . . Hugo Branz. Katherine Stahl. Miriam Lukowski…
So many graves. So many stones.
. . . Simon Hastings. Bette Youmans. Fiona O’Connell…
This is what awaited everyone.
. . . Beloved Father, Cherished Wife, Dear Son…
Could Henry already be dead? If he wasn’t in his body, then where was he? Where had the Vours taken him?
Shivering, Reggie knelt in front of a small, nondescript stone caked in grime and frost. She cleared the stone and saw the epitaph:
Pray God Forgive Him
Joseph Garney, 1935 — 1972
“Aaron! Down here!”
Aaron scrambled down the slope as Reggie started clearing away snow from an adjacent headstone.
By the time Aaron reached her, Reggie had uncovered the name:
Joanna Canfield
1901 — 1929
Beloved Mother
Aaron scraped the ice from the stone right beside it, revealing the name of Joshua Canfield, who died and was buried beside his wife a decade later.
“Canfield,” said Aaron. “These have to be Macie’s parents, right?”
Reggie nodded. “Macie Canfield. She’s our girl.”
Aaron placed his hand on her shoulder. “Now let’s go find her.”
Eben looked tired when they returned to the car, but his coughing had calmed. He smiled when they told him Macie’s full name.
“Now we can find her, Eben!” Aaron shouted. “All we need —”
“Tomorrow.”
“But we’re so close. All we need is —”
“Aaron,” Eben said, “it’s Christmas. Everything is closed. Libraries, post offices, courthouses…”
“So tomorrow.”
12
Early the next morning, Reggie’s dad didn’t yell at her. He didn’t speak a word to her. He wouldn’t even look at her when she passed him in the kitchen. The sad silence made it unbearable, and she wanted to take his hands in hers, to talk to him, to make him hear the truth. But it wouldn’t do any good. Reggie was like a phantom to him.
But right now, she had Henry to worry about.
She grabbed a bagel and some orange juice, and then walked to Aaron’s house. They scoured the Web all morning together, but it offered few clues. Eben drove them back to Fredericks at noon, to the courthouse there, but records of land deeds were still kept in paper files (and in complete disarray).
Finally, a visit to the local postmaster provided the address, though he gave Eben a strange look when he asked about the Canfield place. Mail had stopped going there years ago. Aaron bounced in the back seat of the Cadillac like a child going to the beach, but Reggie and Eben were solemn.
Few street signs existed in Fredericks, so they spent the bet-ter part of an hour doubling back in search of the mailboxes or forked oak trees to which the postmaster had directed them.
When they at last arrived on the lonely road at the edge of town, a coldness gripped the place, even though they were snug inside Eben’s heated car. The wintertime forest looked monochromatic, black on white, as if something had sucked the warmth and color from the world. Eben coughed and hacked up some phlegm.
“You sound terrible,” said Reggie.
“I get this thing every winter. It lasts a week and then goes away.” Eben took out his handkerchief and dabbed his red nose. “Don’t worry about me.”
As they rolled down the forest road, the asphalt beneath broke up and turned to icy dirt. Snow had drifted over the lane in parts, but Eben expertly navigated the treacherous roads, driving his Caddie like a professional wheelman. The forest grew denser as they progressed, the undergrowth more twisted and thorny. Beyond the trees hung the white and empty sky. They were on their way to the end of somewhere.
They came to a clearing. The hole in the woods around them seemed sudden and strange, as if it had been the site of a meteor impact or a toxic spill. An old, decrepit house sat below the road, halfway down a slope leading to acres of flat, snow-shrouded land. Its cracked cedar shingles looked like skin mottled with lesion-like clumps of rot. Half of the chimney had crumbled away. The hill was littered with its stones.
Eben stopped the car. “Remember. If there’s anybody here, I start things off. Right?”
Reggie nodded, and they all got out. No birds chirped, no dogs barked, no animals chattered. A metal mailbox, shaped like a barn, lay on the roadside, half-covered with frost. All the letters of the name had peeled off, but the outline remained: M. CANFIELD.
“Guess we’re at the right place,” said Reggie. She flipped the little door open. There was nothing inside.
They made their way down the slope and stepped onto the decaying porch. A rusty wind chime hung silent and lifeless in the still air. Four empty bird feeders were suspended from the eaves. Aaron nudged one with a finger, and it creaked on its wire.
“Somebody likes birds.”
Reggie peered inside through a window. The curtains were threadbare, but thick enough that she could only see outlines of the things on the other side.
Eben knocked on the front door. Nothing stirred inside. Reggie pounded on it and twisted the knob, but it was locked.
“Ahem.” Eben cleared his throat. “What are you doing? Trespassing is one thing, but breaking and entering is quite another.”
Aaron pointed to the door’s windowpane. It had a crack down its center.
“Looks already broken to me.” Aaron took off his scarf and wrapped his fist with it.
“Aaron,” Eben said, “Don’t —”
Aaron punched the glass. Reggie looked at Eben.
“I know you don’t approve. But I have to know I’ve done everything I can to help Henry.”
“This isn’t research, Regina,” he said, shaking his head. “This is burglary.”
“He’s my little brother, Eben. Even the slightest clue would be worth it.”
Aaron stuck his hand through the pane, clutched the inside knob, and opened the door. The trio stepped inside and into a kingdom of cobwebs. A wave of foul, dead air greeted them.
“Jeez…”
“Hello?” Reggie hollered. “Anyone here?”
Aaron flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.
Pale light streamed through the grimy windows. Rusty food cans littered a small kitchen to their right — on the table, the floor, piled in the sink. The refrigerator and stove were relics, the
sort of old appliances that looked as though you’d need a crane to move them, or a wrecking ball to destroy them.
“Real neat freak,” said Aaron. He picked up a can and wiped the dust from the label. “Canned peaches.”
Eben shined a flashlight around what looked to be a dining room. A few large sacks of something were piled on the table. He walked over to examine them.
“What’s for dinner over there?” Reggie called.
“Cement mix,” he answered. “It seems Miss Canfield never got around to fixing up that chimney.”
Reggie picked up a butterfly net from beside a rotting sofa. She plucked out a feather from the ragged netting.
Aaron came into the room holding a wooden baseball bat he’d found. He gave it a swing or two. “Eben, shine the light over here.”
The bat was crusted with something dark and reddish brown.
“Now what does that look like to you?” asked Aaron.
Reggie took a step toward the opposite doorway and stopped. At her feet were the shriveled remains of a bird. The feathers looked like they had once been blue.
“Gross.”
“Must have come down the chimney and couldn’t get out,” Aaron said.
The light was much dimmer in the next room. Reggie felt blindly as she stepped through the doorway. Something dry and brittle crunched under her foot. She took another step, and the toe of her sneaker sent a mass of small things scattering across the floor.
“Eben, I’m stepping on something…”
He shone the flashlight into the room.
“Oh, God … ,” whispered Reggie.
Little bones blanketed the living room floor. Aaron bent down and picked up a tiny rib cage.
Eben panned the light around.
At the far end of the room was a mountain of feathers of every size and color, enough to fill dozens of garbage bags.
“Birds,” Aaron said.
Aaron walked toward the feathers, the bones crunching beneath his boots. “I don’t think they all came down the chimney.”
“My guess is those bird feeders were the bait,” Eben said. “Someone caught them with the net —”
“And killed them with the bat,” Aaron finished.
“But … why?” Reggie asked. “Some kind of Vour defense ritual?”
“Maybe,” said Aaron. He picked up a feather and twirled it in his fingers. “Or she could have eaten them.”
“Ew, that’s just nasty,” said Reggie.
“Ran out of peaches.”
“But there are supermarkets fifteen minutes away.”
“Macie was too scared to leave her place, remember?”
They searched the house, moving quickly. They opened every drawer and cabinet. Dug under every cushion. The bedroom had a stained, prehistoric mattress that Eben lobbied against anyone touching, but Reggie lent Aaron one of her gloves and they dragged it off the frame. There was nothing underneath it.
Back in the living room, Eben pushed aside one of the mildewed curtains and looked at the dimming sky. “It’s going to get dark soon, and we’ve got a bit of driving ahead of us.”
“But there has to be something here besides bird bones!” Reggie kicked the pile of bones and scattered them everywhere.
Aaron pointed at her feet. “Look at the floor!”
There was something embedded in the wood. It had a dull shine of very old metal. Eben leaned forward to get a better look.
“It’s a hinge,” he said.
Reggie and Aaron kicked away the bones, hacking and coughing as dust filled their lungs. After clearing a space, they stared silently at a double-hinged door set in the floor with a recessed ring handle.
“A cellar,” Reggie said. She reached for the handle.
“Wait,” said Eben. He went back into the kitchen and returned with the bat. He handed it to Aaron, then grabbed the handle and yanked, showing a strength Reggie hadn’t seen before. When the door opened, air moaned down the dark passage, as if the room below had been holding its breath for years. Wooden steps led into blackness.
“How did you do that?” asked Reggie.
“The cane fools most people,” Eben said. “But only parts of me are frail.”
Reggie grabbed the flashlight and started down. Each step groaned under her weight, as if protesting her intrusion. The air was rank and tomblike, the darkness unnaturally thick. When she reached the bottom, the flashlight’s beam seemed feeble and dying.
Aaron and Eben followed Reggie down the hole and joined her in the middle of a near-empty room. There were no boxes of keepsakes stacked on the dirt floor, no old trunks filled with letters and manuscripts. A wooden chair stood against the far wall, with a ratty coat hanging on its back. A metal washtub sat in the corner.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Reggie said.
“I’m sorry, Regina, but what did you expect to find?” Eben asked. “Macie was a troubled woman. That’s all. Will you now accept that Vours aren’t real?”
Reggie didn’t answer. Eben was right; she couldn’t believe that for a moment she’d actually thought these storybook monsters existed. Maybe she was just going crazy.
“Give me the flashlight for a second,” Aaron said.
Reggie handed it to him. He crossed the room, leaned over the wash bin, and reached behind it. When he stood up, he held a trowel in his other hand.
“The tub’s full of dry cement,” he said. “What was she doing, you think?”
“You’re talking about a woman who played home-run derby with birds, ate them, and turned the bones into home decor,” said Reggie. “It’s not like she exactly made logical choices.”
“Sure,” said Aaron, “but even wackjobs have their reasons.” He continued his exploration. Eben pulled his own coat tighter.
“It’s getting colder down here.” He put his hands together and blew on them. “Aaron, exactly what are you doing?”
Aaron straightened up, raising the beam of light. He touched the wall at eye level, moving his fingers across it in a straight line. He rapped his knuckles against it.
“Come here,” he said.
Reggie stepped closer. Aaron tapped the concrete again.
“It sounds hollow,” said Reggie.
“No more than a few inches thick. And this section here” — he traced a two-by-two area with his finger — “is patched, like someone covered up a hole. Here, hold this for me.”
He handed Reggie the flashlight. Then, without warning, he slammed the bat against the wall. A crack formed in the middle of the patch. Aaron smashed the wall again and again, each stroke harder and wilder. “It’ll give. I can feel it!”
The concrete crumbled and fell, leaving a two-foot hole in the wall. Reggie raised the light, and the three gathered close and peered inside.
Six inches back was a second wall, coated with dust.
“Another wall. What is this place?” said Reggie. She flashed the light up and down. In some places where the dust wasn’t as thick, it reflected back.
“It’s glass,” said Aaron.
“Like a window?” asked Reggie.
She reached in and rubbed away the dust, revealing glass panes etched with an elaborate network of silvery lines and indecipherable lettering. She held the flashlight to the window.
Aaron yelped and jumped back. Eben caught his breath and coughed again.
Reggie didn’t make a sound. Ice-cold fear flooded her body, but she didn’t turn away. This was why she had come.
She was looking into another room, half the size of the room in which she stood. Reggie recognized giant versions of some of the symbols she’d seen in the journal, now scrawled in chalk all across the walls and floor. Six feet behind the window, a man sat in a rocking chair, dressed in the tattered remnants of a flannel suit and dress shoes. His wrists and ankles were lashed to the chair with heavy cord. A dusty Bible rested on his lap, and the little that was left of his decayed flesh clung to his bones in shreds. His jaw hung open in what was either a death’s
grin or his final scream.
Eben and Aaron peered over her shoulder.
“In pace requiescat,” Eben muttered.
“My God,” Reggie said. “It’s like Poe’s ‘Cask of Amontillado,’ except for real.”
“Or that woman they found on a meat hook in your bookstore, Eben.”
“No. Someone put him in there alive,” Reggie whispered. “And strapped him down. And sealed him in.”
“And made a window so they could sit and watch him die,” added Aaron.
“This has gone too far. Let’s go,” said Eben. “This isn’t a game anymore.”
Reggie shifted on her feet, and the changing angle of the flashlight made something gleam on the corpse. Reggie hadn’t noticed it before.
“Aaron, come closer, look at this.”
“No way!”
“Aaron, for God’s sake — he’s dead! He’s more than dead!”
Aaron grumbled and leaned toward the window.
“Look,” Reggie said.
“Reg, I already —”
“Look at his chest.”
Aaron squinted through the glass. Hanging on a chain around the corpse’s neck, resting against his breastbone, was a round, silver medallion. It depicted a bearded man holding an arrow.
A St. Giles medal.
Aaron’s lips parted, but he said nothing.
“Now we know what happened to Jeremiah,” said Reggie.
“How do you know this is Jeremiah?” asked Eben.
“The medal. He always wore it.”
Eben frowned.
“Reggie, just because this poor soul wore a religious token —”
Aaron stabbed a finger at the window.
“Come on, Eben! When will you start believing? This house belonged to Macie Canfield! Jeremiah was her brother! The Vours got him — she saw the whole thing and wrote it down!”
“You shouldn’t believe a stranger’s story so easily,” Eben replied. “Maybe this man died because of Macie’s delusions, and maybe you’re heading down the same road she did.”
“Reggie, tell him that — Reggie?”
Reggie stared into the chamber. Something hovered on the ceiling over the dead body, a moving shadow. But when she looked at it directly, it dissipated like steam in the wind.