by Ivan Blake
“No. He seems perfectly happy where he is,” Nigel replied. “I’m going to find a bed of my own. You’re staying with Chris?”
“I want to keep an eye on him.”
Gillian covered Chris with a blanket, wrapped herself in a large afghan, and lay down on the couch. She stared across the room at Chris, his chest gently rising and falling. “This is it, huh?” she said to herself. “Never to touch, never to say what’s really on our minds? Well, things are about to change, Mister Chandler.”
* * * *
Dolli, it turned out, was mad as hell when Gilbert and the twins returned with their haul in the early hours of the morning. First, she was mad because they’d stolen an entire family. Gilbert scoffed and said she was being squeamish. Second, she was mad because Gilbert had spoken directly to the client; he’d violated their anonymity. Gilbert explained he’d had to call the guy because he wanted the cash wired as soon as the packages were on route. Third, Dolli was angry because Gilbert seemed to think he’d solved their financial problems for some time to come. “Get real,” Dolli said. The cash they were getting paid for the family wasn’t going to last the week. And finally, she was mad because they’d missed two full days of rehearsal.
“Give me a break,” he said with a sigh. “We needed some guy time, right?” He winked at Blood who was straightening his stockings.
“We need plays, you idiot!” Dolli said. “We open in three weeks!”
“All right, all right. Tomorrow, we get serious about rehearsals.”
“And money and publicity and tickets!” Dolli said as she marched away in disgust.
“Keep this up,” Gilbert muttered, “and I know where I’ll get one more skeleton.”
Chapter 8
Saturday, March 7
Geraldine spent a cold and uncomfortable night on the filthy carpet alongside Lady Twilight’s sofa. When she’d returned from Rose’s apartment in the early hours of the morning, she’d narrowly avoided running into Gilbert and the twins arriving back from their business trip. She’d hidden in the shadows as they’d unloaded several large garbage bags from the van and waited as Gilbert and Dolli argued about something. Geraldine then crept into the theater and across the darkened stage to Lady Twilight, bedding down on the carpet with bunched-up cleaning rags as a pillow and discarded curtain as a blanket. There she’d managed to doze fitfully for five or six hours before Gilbert came stomping down the stairs at dawn and marched to center stage with Dolli behind him. He was clearly upset about something.
“Can I have everyone onstage?” he called. “Everyone!” He waited as his performers emerged from their sleeping cubbies, rubbing their eyes and stretching. “Everybody, Dolli has something to say. Dolli?”
“Gilbert, I was talking to you.”
“What you said to me, you can say to everyone.”
She shrugged. “Okay. I told Gilbert the stock they brought back from their trip won’t cover our needs.”
“What stock? What’s she talking about?” Emelia Tombstone muttered.
“And?” Gilbert prodded Dolli.
“Not by a long shot,” Dolli replied.
“Even though the guy is paying us more than a thousand dollars?” Gilbert asked.
“What we’re trying to do is expensive. We’re three weeks from opening night, and we need so much money for equipment, and publicity, and repairs, and on and on.”
It was obvious Dolli was trying to be reasonable, to keep a rein on her frustrations, but Gilbert’s childishness was clearly getting the better of her.
“Hear that everybody? The forces of shallowness are arrayed against us. They think they can stop us with their bills.”
The look on most peoples’ faces was the same: utter mystification.
“But I have a plan!” Gilbert cried out and raised his hands to the sky like some kind of miracle healer. “We shall employ the dead to fight the Philistines!”
Quizzical glances all round. Finally, Doctor Shadow asked, with an obvious sneer in his voice, “You’re saying we’re going to hire zombies?”
“You’re not talking about killing anybody, are you?” Lassa Tetana asked.
“No, of course not zombies, and I’m not talking about killing anyone either, but I am talking about enlisting the dead in our cause.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. How can the dead help us?” Emelia asked.
“By rising up from their graves...and earning us cash,” Gilbert announced with a flourish.
“Rising from their graves?” the Necrodancers said in unison.
“He means we dig them up,” said one of the twins.
“You want us to dig up dead people?” Lassa Tetana said.
“And then we sell their bones,” said the other twin. “It’s so cool!”
“But isn’t that illegal?” Caspar said.
“Perhaps it’s a crime to the soulless who know nothing of the beauty of death. Death should mean freedom, not interminable imprisonment in the earth. I believe our souls remain near our bones, and they should be free to travel the globe, not to rot away beneath tree stumps,” Gilbert said.
“So what graves are you talking about?” Caspar asked. “The ones across the street?”
“No, not yet, not unless we have to. No, we start with the old graves out at Cathy’s Pond.”
“Won’t old lady DuCalice stop us?”
“Not if we do it at night, when there’s no moon. I figure we’ll test a few graves first and if the pickings are good, then...” He shrugged.
“And you figure people will pay for these bones?” Lassa asked.
“Oh yes. I know they will.” He looked at Dolli and grinned.
“And we have to do this if we want to put on our plays?” Wolfgang said.
“Yes, we have to do this,” Dolli replied.
Gilbert took Dolli’s hand. “Come, take hands. We’re a family, we embrace death, we see beauty in the shadows, and we savor pain. Caspar, play something for us.”
Everybody got to their feet and grudgingly formed a ragged circle. Caspar produced a small flute from his shirt and played a mournful melody.
Gilbert pulled a sheet of paper from his jeans pocket. “I wrote this for my darling Dolli for our anniversary,” he said over the music.
I await you, here in my cold and quiet tomb, I await you. For the moment, the fleeting pleasures of the flesh may keep you from me, but I am patient. Do not think me dead. Think me a diamond, seeming still, frozen but alive forever, a love outside of time. As my life once ebbed away into you, so your life will one day ebb away into others and your eternal soul will settle like a snowflake down into my icy and loving embrace. Live for the moment as you must, my treasure, but trust me, trust me, I await you on the other side. Trust me when I tell you, you shall die sweetly. You shall die and be free. Trust me when I say we shall be together always.
Lady Twilight said, “That’s so deep, Gilbert.”
Wanetta added, “What a beautiful gift.” Dolli looked like she would have preferred a case of toilet paper.
“Surely that’s what love means—trust,” Gilbert said. “You must trust me when I say I love you. And I shall trust you to come to the graveyard when I call.”
“You mean now?” Lassa said. “Because I’m not going in these heels.”
“No, later. We have to rehearse now. Take fifteen minutes to eat something, and then we tackle the Asylum play.”
The performers drifted away in silence, probably a little grossed out by all the talk of bodysnatching on an empty stomach. Had anything Gilbert said made sense to the others? Whatever shred of meaning there may have been in all Gilbert’s poetic crap was lost on Geraldine. One thing was clear, however: Gilbert intended to desecrate Rose’s cemetery, and Geraldine had to stop him.
* * * *
The old bed squeaked and groaned each time Nigel shifted which he did frequently in his struggle to find comfort amid the bed’s many lumps and valleys. He slept poorly and ached everywhere, and since there was little p
oint trying any longer, he slowly opened his eyes.
Gray light seeped through the dark and dusty curtains covering the gabled window. The small room on the third floor where he’d bedded down had turned out to be drafty, the mattress the worst he’d ever slept on, and the bed covers woefully inadequate to keep away the raw, damp cold. Wrapping a thin coverlet around himself, he rolled off the bed. The bare wood floor was icy. He hopped to the window, pushed back the heavy drapes and scraped some of the frost from its panes. The early morning sky was a pale, watery gray, the grounds around the cottage rimed with frost, and the pond below a sheet of glass. Nigel tossed aside the coverlet, pulled on his trousers, a sweater and some heavy socks, and headed downstairs in search of warmth.
First he checked the parlor where Gillian was still sound asleep on the huge leather sofa. Chris he found in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal.
“You’re looking a little better this morning,” Nigel whispered. In fact, Chris looked a lot better. He’d apparently showered, and changed the bandages on his face and hand, and even had some color in his cheeks.
“I’ve been through this many times,” Chris replied. “I don’t take long to bounce back anymore. It’s like Mallory’s interest in me is waning, like she’s getting bored. I don’t understand it, but hey, I’m not complaining.” He downed a last spoonful of Cheerios. “I made coffee if you’d like some.”
Nigel poured a cup from the percolator on the stove, and sat down across from Chris. “So you really believe it’s Mallory hurting you?”
“Crazy, huh?”
“I have to be honest, if I’d known how badly you’ve been injured by your...your—”
“Say ghost...just for the sake of argument.” Chris refilled his own coffee mug.
“Okay...by your ghost, I’m not sure I’d have helped you leave Bemishstock, or let you come here by yourself. I sure as hell wouldn’t have promised your parents I’d keep you safe.”
“I know you don’t believe Mallory’s doing this, but I promise, it isn’t me. More than anything I want this to be over.”
“And by over you don’t mean—”
“Not my life, no!” Chris laughed. “I want my life back. I want to drive a car without worrying about Mallory’s next attack. I want to walk down the street without people staring at me like I just went twelve rounds with Mohammed Ali. I want to shake people’s hands without them getting maimed. I want to hold Gillian...” Her name caught in his throat.
“She’s very special to you.”
The look on Chris’s face spoke volumes of his heartbreak and longing.
“I’m sure she feels the same way about you,” Nigel said.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” Chris replied. “She wanted me to stay in Bemishstock...but I couldn’t. And I think she’s upset, maybe even angry. Maybe I’ve driven her away.”
“Would we be here if you had?”
Elena would not have believed this, me sitting at the breakfast table, chatting about young love, like fathers with sons all over the world.
That he and Elena had never had kids had been the dark void in their thirty-five-year marriage, a void they’d tried to fill with charities and New York excitement and hard work. For the most part, they’d kept the void at bay, until Elena died that is, and then the void had almost consumed him. And just at his most desperate moment, back into his life had come Felicity, and Nigel’s world had taken a raucous and joyful turn toward the light again.
Suddenly, he’d been swept up in gallery openings and art auctions and legal battles with dying towns, and he’d had a blast. But then she had died, and his nightmare might have returned but for the young man sitting across the table. Felicity had said Chris was special. The boy had an old fashioned sense of honor and justice, of right and wrong which rang bells in Nigel’s heart. But he’d been wronged by others, and it had been Nigel’s proudest moment to win him exoneration. And now, here they were, discussing romance together. On top of all that, Chris’s infatuation was with a wonderful young lady who—if the Fates smiled on him a second time—might soon become his stepdaughter.
Incredible.
“I have to ask you,” Nigel said, “why didn’t you accept the Willards’ offer to stay in Bemishstock?”
“Because I can’t risk Gillian getting hurt again. Gillian’s so brave, she’d do anything to protect me, but I can’t let her. If Mallory hurt Gillian again like she did the night of the fire…if Gillian died...because of me…. No, I have to stay as far away from Gillian as I can until I get rid of Mallory.”
“Hence the importance of the letter from Mallory’s dad.”
Chris nodded. “And when Gillian asked you to bring her here, you dropped everything…just like that. Nigel, I can’t tell you how much we’ve appreciated your help.”
“I’m doing it for Felicity,” Nigel said softly.
They both took a moment to savor their memories of Felicity, crazy, rude, colorful, kind, understanding, Felix.
“So tell me about the hearings,” Chris said.
Nigel summarized the highlights of the Inquiry, but what Chris really wanted to know was how soon he’d be free to leave New England.
“Do you intend to leave Lewis as soon as you’re cleared?” Nigel asked.
“Probably not, but I’d like to have the choice.”
“Is it so bad here?”
“Not really.”
“Then what is it?”
“Can I ask you what you know about the Monsegur family?”
“Well, Bernard is a friend. I met him in connection with Felicity’s paintings. He mounted her first exhibition. His gallery is one of the most prestigious in New York. I gather Bernard arrived in the city decades ago and shot to the top of the art world with an extraordinary exhibition of religious art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, works which had never been seen before, works he’d uncovered all over Europe. He’s never looked back. I know the family money came from granite and he grew up here with his sister Rose with whom he’s still very close.”
“So why doesn’t he ever visit this place?”
“Too many unsettling memories he says. He described Marymount as a kind of vault in need of a watchman. I thought it sounded perfect for you. Was I mistaken?”
“No, not really. It’s just I’ve been asked to guard the family cemetery as well.”
“Guard a cemetery?”
Chris explained about the ancient cemetery across the pond, and the disappearance of a skull from a grave. He then described the Goths in town and how they wanted access to Monsegur lands for some sort of festival.
“Chris, I swear, I never meant to get you involved in anything more than house- sitting.”
“It’s okay, so far anyway. Besides, the place is so weird, it’s fascinating.”
“Weird how?”
He began by telling Nigel the tale of the Cathars, how several dozen had come to Vermont nearly three hundred years after the last Cathar was supposedly exterminated, how they’d settled in Lewis, and how all their descendants were supposed to be buried in the cemetery. He then described the locked tower and everything he’d learned about a Cathar treasure.
“So you think there may be a treasure here?” Nigel said with a broad smile.
“No. But it’s kind of strange how secretive Rose DuCalice is, especially about her graveyard.”
“Maybe she’s just eccentric. Her brother did say she’s standoffish.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Word to the wise, Chris. Whatever her secret is, respect it.”
“And Marymount has ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“And Rose can see Mallory.”
“She can?”
“And Mallory’s not the only ghost she can see. There’s one in the graveyard, the one whose skull was stolen. And then there’s another in the basement.”
Nigel didn’t know how to react. Suddenly his courageous young man was sounding like the front page of a supermarket
scandal rag.
“Morning,” Gillian said as she walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes.
“Did we wake you?” Chris asked.
“No.” She sat down at the table.
“Cereal okay?” Chris asked.
“Mmmm.”
Chris got her a bowl and spoon, and placed the cereal box and milk in front of her.
“What were you saying when I came in? Something about ghosts?” she asked.
“There’s a ghost in the basement,” Nigel said with a smile.
“Okay,” Gillian mumbled through her mouthful.
“She’s named Braida de Montserver,” Chris explained. “She jumped to her death in 1863 over the loss of her son at Gettysburg.”
“Jumped to her death in the basement?” Nigel asked.
“Look, I know it sounds weird, but she actually jumped from the top of the tower before the house was built. Her ghost doesn’t seem to realize a house now surrounds the tower, so when she jumps from the top of the tower, she ends up in the basement.”
“And you’ve seen her?” Nigel asked.
“Yes.”
“Can we?”
“Maybe…but she only appears in the evening.”
“Ghosts in Vermont have schedules?” Nigel laughed out loud.
* * * *
After a leisurely morning and much chatter about happenings in Bemishstock, and then a lunch of canned stew and tea, Gillian and Chris decided to walk to the gate to get some fresh air and to retrieve Nigel’s rental car.
The March afternoon was damp and cold. The temperature hovered around zero and there was the threat of freezing rain overnight. The rutted, muddy, mile-long lane to the gate had not a single turn in it, and the lines of towering elms along both sides arched overhead like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. The lane was bathed in a deep, chill shadow. Only the narrowest strip of gunmetal gray sky was visible overhead. The air was tinged with the fetid smell of rotting vegetation as the last of the winter frost released its grip on the sodden soil. Their footsteps, crunching through the ice which crusted the many small pools of meltwater along the trail, were the only sounds to break the almost oppressive silence of the afternoon.