by M Dressler
Sometimes time almost seems to stop.
For a moment.
The living, they divide time up, as if by measuring spoons. Months, seasons, years—they tell themselves that because now there’s snow, this season is different than the last, the warmer one. They try to make of time a solid thing, a cupboard or a chest, carve time into drawers, in which this or that might be stored. They lay in goods.
But time isn’t a cupboard. It’s a river. And pours only toward one sea. There’s nothing solid to it. It holds no compartments. Little to slow it. A body, I know, I remember, can build a little dam against it and stem the rush, for a while; until, at death, the dam is swept away. And then there is only time, again, as it always is: a single flood. Even when it carries on its back, as this day does, a tiny apple of snow.
I stare at this tuft on the Prospector’s hat. It moves, as though pushed. It hangs suspended, round in the air, without falling to the ground.
No. Not an apple of snow. That is the shape of a glowing fist. A pale fist is being raised at Pratt and his companions as they motor away on a roaring sled. The hand freezes, and now a black coat flaps behind, around the Prospector, as if in the wind.
The muffled flap of a tattered black coat.
Longhurst, I whisper.
All I can think is that I must lead him away from where the children might be already hiding. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to win this race between us, find the children and get them clear of him and his mad bargain. Still, to show himself, here where the entire town might see, if anyone were looking—that’s bold and a gamble, I’ll give him that.
But why is he doing it? Perhaps to show the children how powerful he is, in his anger? To frighten and win them back?
Time, it starts again. I fly invisibly up to the balcony of the Huellet House. There I lift my own angered fist, my ghostly shape at him. With any luck, it will pull him away from the others and toward me. He can do nothing to me, after all, who’s so far survived death and everything after it that’s been flung at my head. I haven’t come so far, all these months, to these mountains, and given myself away to Pratt, for it all to be for nothing.
I feel him land on the balcony beside me, a ripple in the cold light. We’ve both cooled ourselves, are invisible now to the town. Yet surely he feels, as I do, the danger perched and balanced between us.
“How do you do, Mr. Longhurst,” I greet him.
“How do you do, Miss Finnis.”
His voice is as I remember: crisp with book learning and the accents of the East.
“We should go inside,” I say, “where we can safely talk.”
In a twist of the light, the wintry air seems to bend and bow to me. “Apologies. I won’t enter the house of any Huellet.”
Fair enough. “We needn’t move,” I say. “As long as we’re careful.” As long as he’s away from the children.
“How is it”—the whisper beside me changes, becoming interested—“you move, you travel, the way you do? Inside a body and out of it?”
More than curiosity in that voice. Envy. I must be cautious.
I don’t answer his question. “You tell me you won’t go into the house,” I say instead. “Is it because this is the balcony they hung you from? Where all the town gathered, in the photograph, to celebrate, and see the sentence carried out?”
The ripple of light beside me wavers, but doesn’t grow stronger. He’s keeping himself invisible and in check.
“It wasn’t here I was put to an end. They noosed me on a tree by the falls. It was the custom then to carry out a sentence in a place close to the crime.”
My first day at the Bar. Standing beside the river. A rippling light, then shadowy footsteps had come from a swaying tree toward me.
“Close to the crime? Did you kill the children by the falls, Mr. Longhurst?”
“No. That’s where our ashes were scattered, into the water. The ground being too hard in winter for any burial. It was also the place where four other men died. The town thought it worthwhile to clear that account, as well.”
His whisper is even and calm now. A man speaking of his own death as though it were no more than a bill delivered. To be sure he needs, as I do, to keep cold so as not to be seen—but can a man truly recall his guilt so quietly, without even a tremor?
All at once I want to see his face, so I’ll know, as I have with Pratt, how better to deceive it.
“We have both been equally,” I say kindly, “at the mercy of others.”
The light shimmers beside me. “Come to the jailhouse,” he says, quivering, “and I’ll show you.”
He can do nothing to me, I remind myself, as I feel the air behind his coat swoop away like a blackbird darting toward the square.
The snow in front of the museum is trampled where Pratt’s boots have limped through it. I slip through the keyhole of the iron door. Inside, all of Ruth Huellet’s trinkets are gone. The walls are bare stone. A table and six spindle-backed chairs are the only furnishings standing on an unswept, earthen floor.
Longhurst stands in damp, stained garments inside the shadows of the jail cell, his fingers wrapped around the bars.
He nods, looking past my shoulder.
Behind me, the iron door opens.
Snow crumbling from their boots and from their bent, hatted heads, half a dozen men shuffle into the jailhouse. Pistols flash at their belts. They wear heavy leather pouches. Two of them, this vision reveals to me, are the men who rocked haughtily in their chairs at Huellet House. Another wears the badge of the law on his coat. The rest are unfamiliar to me, unshaven and red-cheeked from the cold.
“Gentleman,” Mayor Caleb Huellet says, dusting off his beaver hat, “on this grim day, we must call this court to order. Berringer, let’s get on with it.”
The sheriff comes from stoking a potbellied stove and sits at the wooden table. The others take chairs in front of him, the Huellets in the first row.
“Court is convened,” Berringer announces.
Longhurst calls calmly from his cell, “This is no court.”
The mayor snaps, “Lynch law is your cellmate, now! Go on, Berringer.”
The sheriff folds his arms across his chest. “I affirm that these men here present have the authority to render judgment and pass sentence upon you, Landon Albert Longhurst, on behalf of the town and encampment of White Bar.”
“And what”—Longhurst grips the bars—“are the charges against me?”
“You know well enough.” The Berringer badge glints in the light from the stove. “Luring children to their deaths.”
Dr. Huston Huellet takes his white hat in his hands and shakes it. “Killing innocents! Their poor families are wailing all over town!”
“I’ve heard them,” Longhurst says quietly. “I’ll never stop hearing them. Nor should you.”
“The criminal will speak when addressed!” Caleb Huellet commands.
“I say then, you should address yourselves.”
“Let’s just get on with it,” a man in the back says, as if frightened. “Before cold and fever take us all.”
Longhurst faces him. “You can thank our local charlatans—forgive me, our leaders—for that.”
“We’d have you whipped for slander but the rope will break your neck first,” Huston Huellet snorts.
“Let’s just string him up and go find our suppers,” a weary man calls out, “and give the Bar some peace.”
“My actions,” Longhurst says, “could have been prevented if these brothers had only had the decency to quit camp after seeing their poison only hastens the deaths of those already sick.”
“A fine speaker, ain’t he?” the mayor taunts. “Got that schoolmarmish wheedling voice down. Says whatever cowardly, womanish thing it takes, don’t you, Longhurst?”
The sheriff turns nervously toward him. “No need to defend yourself, Caleb. This man can’t escape his fate by any means.”
Longhurst nods slowly, as if in agreement. “Only the unscrupulous can
do that—including you, Berringer. I’ve watched you look the other way as these tricksters created pestilence where there wasn’t any, then offered up a false cure. How much were you paid to do it? And how many bodies have you, undertaker,” Longhurst calls to the man at the back, “put in coffins at a tidy profit? And why are so few others from town here, I wonder? Afraid to leave their houses because of the sickness in the air? How many will survive this lean winter? Ask yourselves why the good doctors, if their medicines are as potent as they claim, have suddenly told their wives not to come West. You might also ask them why Brinks, Collum, Tanheuser, and Smith would drunkenly set dynamite along the river for no good reason. Did you put the powder there yourselves, boys? Or merely get the men drunk on your poison and send them on their way? Or was it both?”
“Spare us your ravings,” Berringer cries and leaps up. “No one’s paying them any heed! And it’s a fact, generally speaking”—he turns to the rest, quickly—“that someone guilty of a crime will try and shove that guilt onto someone else, if he can. Kiersten,” he calls to the undertaker, “why don’t you show us what you have with you.”
The man in black draws sheets of paper from his pocket, all the while keeping his head lowered. He stands up from his chair and brings them forward to the table.
“It gives me no pleasure to do this, gentleman,” the undertaker says, clearing his throat, “but here you can see we have a sample of the murderer’s handwriting, in this letter, unsent by him. And here, a second letter, in a matching hand, bragging of his cleverness in killing the men to get land for the schoolhouse and his own reward. We all know, Longhurst, your claim was played out, and you had no money to move on.” The man keeps his head bowed, uneasy, as he sits down again.
Longhurst shakes his head. “I wrote no such second letter. The first was purloined from my lodgings—was it by you, postmaster?” He looks at another man sitting with his eyes averted. “My handwriting was obviously copied. No logic accompanies these accusations. How could I have organized such a murder? By what farseeing trick could I have predicted the meadow would be cleared, and a schoolhouse—not by me but by the doctors—proposed?”
“It establishes a pattern!” Berringer slaps the table. “And let us all note this murderer has yet to express remorse for the killing of five children!”
“You’re wrong, Berringer. You’ve seen me do nothing but mourn and lament in this cell. Yet you’ve denied me the chance, when I’ve asked, to speak to and beg forgiveness of the families. I’ve been allowed to see no one, apologize to no one. I’ll forever carry the horror of those small, snuffed bodies in my heart. You’ll never understand or accept what drove me to my desperate actions. You’ve made that clear. This is no court. This is more lust for murder.”
Longhurst steps back from the ghostly bars and straightens his tattered tie. “My remorse is known to my soul only,” he goes on. “You”—he stares at the brothers—“know none. You have been the architects of our town’s misery, laying down bones to build your mansions. Your snake oil does nothing for ailing people except keep them from seeking a real cure. You knew this, and did nothing. You are cowards in every respect, not only you but every man in this room—my God, the children as they died were far braver than any of you, stronger than you! They showed more will in their smallest fingernails than you can find in all your empty profits. Unending remorse for me, yes. But unholy shame for you. And may the trail of your shame follow you from now through all eternity.”
“Enough of your curses!” The mayor stands, stung. “It’s time, it’s been long enough. We’ll string him up near the meadow. At the falls, yes, men? To honor the children and all the men who suffered at his hands.”
The postmaster mumbles, “March him through the snow and let’s get it done.”
“But,” the undertaker whispers, “as with the children, there can be no burial. And like the children, he might be carrying the fever, too.”
The men recoil.
“Then we hang him and you publicly burn the body, Kiersten,” Huston Huellet says.
“Sir? The town’s not likely to come to witness it. Not if there’s more contagion.”
“Can’t be helped,” Berringer says. “They’ll be grateful, in the end, for what we’ve done for them in absentia. Pass the word to everyone—Longhurst was dead within a day of those precious little ones passing and being laid to rest. Enough. Let’s go. We have a winter still to meet. Let’s finish this.”
Like a rope cut, the vision Longhurst has shown me ends.
I stand alone in the museum—with the silent Indian arrowheads, the baby carriage hanging overhead, the prospectors’ metal pans.
The schoolmaster is invisible. Yet I feel him in the room, still.
I must think. Think.
Is this vision all true? But what does it matter, if even now he still clings to the children, wanting them behind bars with him, is hunting for Ola and the rest, to put them all back in the schoolhouse again?
The undertaker’s writing was on the letter Ruth was given. The writing read: Letter found among the possessions of and in the hand of the deceased, Landon Albert Longhurst. The letter Ruth Huellet would have been holding in her hands, when her head was struck.
“You struck Ruth Huellet in revenge,” I say.
“No.” I hear only his voice. “I swear to God. I showed myself in anger to the woman without meaning to. I’d been searching for the children ever since they flew away to chase Ola. I flew into a rage when I saw the letter. I hadn’t seen it in years.”
It doesn’t matter. “You killed the children.”
“Yes,” the voice says.
“Then let them come with me.”
“I’m all they have,” he pleads. “They’re all I have. We have no other place.”
“They must come with me.”
“Where? How? And how could you possibly help them?” His voice is full of judgment now. “They’re not like you. It would only torment them to be with you, a stranger, and drive them mad with jealousy to see you, them lacking the flesh, the form you’ve grossly stolen. You’d exile them from their only remaining home. And all the while the brutes here, heirs to the sins of this town, they’ll be free of us. They’ll have won the field.”
I see the outline of the black coat again, crawling along the beams above me. He’s growing angry.
I keep my own temper. “I’m no thief. Nor will I let anyone tell me what form I may take. Not you. No one. A hunter is here. You’ve seen him. Will you give the children no way to escape him? You have a chance, now,” I say quickly, “to atone for your crimes. When the hunter returns with his weapon, you can—”
A pair of screams.
Not from Longhurst. Or anyplace here in this cell.
Outside.
On the square.
The children.
25
Motorsleds are whirling in from every direction.
Lights flash. Horns blare. The living of White Bar are racing on sleds and on foot. The Berringers come from their porch into the snow, the mayor stumbles from her hotel, Bill, others, come floundering through the snowdrifts. Su steps out of her gallery, her jaw dropping.
The children. From the roofs, the balconies, they fly.
Shrieking.
Below the Prospector, a statue unmoved, the living tumble and fall together. The children swoop and keen around them, dancing, diving down. Ola dives with them, then twists like a sheet and lands atop the statue. She raises her burning hand.
There’s nothing I can do, I think. Every ghost’s fury is her own.
Longhurst appears on the roof of the General Store, livid above her.
She points away from him.
“There!”
“What have they done, Ola?” he calls, clearly.
“They’re talking about choosing one of us to teach us a lesson.”
“Who is talking?”
“All of them.”
“And which one of you did they choose?”
<
br /> “Anton,” Ola cries. “They chose good Anton!”
I follow her blazing eyes. Toward the one who would cause the town the least trouble. The obedient, rule-following boy.
Anton, shimmering, hovers a few feet above the roof of the jailhouse.
“No!” Su cries out from her porch. “Wait! I told the Berringers it was Rose—”
The plan didn’t work. Why?
“Then the bargain is broken completely!” Longhurst’s raging voice echoes. “Do you hear that, White Bar? You’ve sundered the pact. It’s done!”
The ghosts, keening, rise slowly from their roofs and perches. They rise in a white foam and surge together, like a falls. Then they drop and disappear. Scattering, hiding from all of us.
“You said”—a woman sputters and claws her way out of the snow, pointing wildly at Martha—“you said this was under control! You call this is under control? This is ridiculous, a nightmare, a disgrace, a, a—”
“I don’t understand.” Martha struggles to wade toward Mary Berringer. “Didn’t we decide to say it was Rose?”
“The cleaner wasn’t going to swallow it.” The old woman straightens calmly now and brushes off her coat. “Pratt’s with Ruth. Harold’s with them, and he’s been texting me. Ruth is telling him it was a male spirit that attacked her. Harold will try to stop her from saying there’s more, but she likely will. They’ll need to give up one of their own if they want our help.”
“But why one of the children? Why not the schoolmaster?”
“He keeps the rest in line.”
“That’s not,” someone shouts, “what he did just now!”
“Just get the hunter to blast them!”
“And lose our traditions?” Mary shouts back. “Our rights?”
“I’m not letting any spooks make a fool out of me like this!”
“Least of all them!”