Among the Lilies

by Daniel Mills

  This was where it happened, where they found you.

  Alfie is in the hall. I hear him scratching. I must

  The remaining pages are blank.

  The next day I visited the hospital in Danvers and sought out the nurse who had sent the diary. She was younger than I had imagined, perhaps twenty-five. She thanked me for coming and for my kindness in reading the diary then showed me to the room in which the late Isabella Carr had lived out the final years of her life.

  The nurse explained Mrs Carr had been committed to the State Hospital by her husband following an incident in their Beacon Hill home in which the family’s Irish maid was nearly killed. Her uncle Edmund Ashe contested the committal on his niece’s behalf but these efforts failed in court when evidence of her opium dependency came to light.

  She spent ten years at Danvers and was never seen to write letters or keep a diary. She passed her days at her window, keeping watch, perhaps, or waiting for someone to come back for her. No one did. Aged twenty-eight she contracted pneumonia and died. The nurse cleaned out her room and found the diary inside her bed, concealed beneath the bolster where she had hidden it ten years before.

  “It gave me chills,” the nurse said. “For a moment I even imagined she meant for me to find it. Nonsense, of course. She wasn’t well. Probably she had forgotten all about it. I should have mailed it to her mother, I suppose, but after reading it, learning what they did to her… well, it didn’t seem right. And Edmund Ashe has been dead for three years.”

  “And she had no other family?”

  “No,” she replied. “She didn’t.” Her eyes moved over the empty walls and she was far away. “Though it emerged in court that Isabella had mothered a child some years previously, a little boy. She was unmarried at the time and it was all hushed up. Her mother and stepfather hid the pregnancy from their neighbors and married her off to Horace Carr. He was Mrs Orne’s cousin, as you know, and it was rumored the marriage was never consummated.”

  “And the little boy? What became of the child?”

  “He went to an orphanage. A woman came and carried him away. The poor child didn’t see his first birthday. Cholera, I believe.”

  “What was his name?” I asked. “The baby’s.”

  She did not answer me immediately. Instead, she went to the window and closed the curtains halfway, drawing a shadow across the bed then pausing in the doorway to address me a final time. “Alfred,” she said. “The child’s name was Alfred.”

  She disappeared into the hallway. Her footsteps retreated down the corridor. The sun broke through the parted curtains, and I was alone with my thoughts.

  The Woman in the Wood

  From the diary of James Addison Thorndike II (1828-1843?)

  14th July. Thursday.

  Evening. I spent to-day with my Aunt while Uncle Timothy was at work in the fields. His farm is the largest for miles around with hundreds of acres of hilly pasture. There are few trees save for a solitary stand of pine at the edge of his property & the wind is strong & constant. It comes down from the bare mountains & crosses the open fields.

  Aunt Sarah is not at all what I expected. She is only a little older than myself though Uncle Timothy is older even than Father. She is his second wife, the sister of a traveling preacher. She speaks plainly & with an accent & is fond of quoting Scripture, as is my Uncle, though she is superstitious & shivers to hear the whippoorwills passing overhead.

  The baby Mary is not yet two. Aunt Sarah dotes on her. She carries the child with her all about the house, though she is only a small woman & expecting another besides.

  I arrived in the village last night.

  It was well past suppertime when the coach reached town & my Uncle was surprised to learn that my parents had permitted me to make the journey alone.

  Later I heard them talking about me. My bedroom is next to theirs at the back of the house & I could hear them quite clearly.

  A boy of his age? my Uncle asked. It isn’t right.

  Surely there’s no harm in it, Aunt Sarah said. Traveling on his own.

  He isn’t yet fifteen.

  Aunt Sarah laughed. She said: I weren’t much older than that when you met me.

  Yes, he said, a little sadly. I remember.

  Then came a long pause before my Aunt spoke again. She asked: Is the boy truly ill? His father’s letter says he does not sleep or eat—

  Of course he isn’t ill, my Uncle said. It’s country air he needs, that’s all.

  [The following passage is the first of several written in a rushed and nearly illegible script denoted here by the use of italics. The text was subsequently crossed out while the ink was wet, presumably by the diarist himself—ed.]

  & she’s standing by the bed in her nightgown which she slides over her head, smiling as she reveals herself to me. She is white as milk & stinks of sin. Her belly bulges outward where the baby turns & kicks within her & below that the blackened mouth with its lips spread & dripping

  15th July. Friday.

  I found it in the fields near the pine-wood.

  The beast was lying on its side & I thought perhaps it was sick. But I smelled the rot as I drew near & saw its blood splashed through the grass—

  This morning it rained, though the skies were clear by noon. The day was hot so I wore my linen shirt & trousers. I ate sparingly of the dinner my Aunt had prepared (mutton roasted & charred) and afterward announced my intention to walk outside on my own as Father would never have permitted in Boston.

  I walked the fields for the best part of an hour without seeing man or beast. Then I came over a rise & saw the great herd of them before me. They were grazing at the end of the stony pasture: dumb & grunting & caked in their own filth.

  I went eastwards & climbed over a wall to the adjoining field where the land slopes down to the neighbors’ property & the pine-wood, which lies in a depression between so that none know for certain who owns it (or so my Uncle says).

  The grass is higher there & that is where I found the ewe.

  Uncle Timothy was at work in the pastures to the south. I ran toward him, waving & shouting & he came to meet me at a sprint. I told him what I had found & he sent me back to the house. Then he called to Auguste, one of the hired men.

  Come, he said. And bring your gun.

  I went back to the house & told Aunt Sarah that I had found a dead sheep. She said it was probably dogs or a wolf, but Uncle Timothy returned to the house at dusk & said it was likely a wildcat, though he hadn’t heard of them coming so far south, especially in the summer.

  Supper was strained & silent. Aunt Sarah was quiet where she sat opposite me & I could not meet her eye without thinking of the pasture & what I had found there.

  I had no appetite. I asked my Uncle if I might be excused & he nodded.

  So I came upstairs, thinking I might read Wieland, which had been Father’s gift to me before leaving. But I could not touch my books & I passed the evening by the window, watching the clouds as they covered the moon & the stars.

  without thinking of the beast where it lay in the grass with its mouth forced open, the jaws broken & the organs wrenched from out the shattered mouth: its heart & lungs & the ropes of its intestines, spread out on a slick of blood & the stench of shit coming from the mass of them where the sun’s shone down through the day

  There is something else.

  After I found the ewe, I turned & ran to fetch my Uncle & nearly collided with a woman in white who had, it seemed, emerged from the pine-wood. She was of much an age with my Aunt, though her dress & bonnet were as fine as anything Mother might wear to a Society Ball.

  She smiled & stepped aside to let me pass, though she did not speak & appeared untroubled for all that she must have seen the fallen beast behind me & the long streaks of its blood in the grass.

  17th July. Sunday.

  Church this morning—or “meeting,” as they call it here. Uncle Timothy is a Calvinist of a kind, as is most of the village. The service lasted t
il well past noon with much of the town crowding into the low meetinghouse, apart from my Uncle’s hired men (who are French-Canadian) and the woman I saw in the field.

  My Uncle wore his Sunday suit while Aunt Sarah wrapped herself & the baby in a lacy shawl. There was little music but for some hymns & these were unaccompanied with the preacher (a Mr Gale) leading the congregation in a reedy voice.

  He sang with great feeling of “the redeeming blood” & “the dear slaughtered lamb” & this though he is the town’s butcher. There was black grit under his fingernails & dark flecks about his beard & lashes. I tried to listen but could not concentrate for the force of the thing inside me & when the bread was passed I would not touch nor taste of it.

  Afterward we had our dinner on the town green. Uncle Timothy introduced me to Mr Gale & to his wife (a shy, slight creature) as well as to our nearest neighbors Mr Batchelder & his son, whose farm borders ours along the pine-wood.

  He’s my brother’s boy, my Uncle said. Up for a taste of country living.

  No mention was made of my sickness.

  Soon the baby coughed & started to cry & I gathered she was hungry. Aunt Sarah excused herself, but later I saw her gossiping with Mrs Gale. The two women huddled together beneath a spreading oak & spoke with lowered voices.

  They fell quiet when I approached. Mrs Gale was pale & frightened & she brushed past me as though I weren’t there.

  I wandered down the green & paused by the gate to the churchyard. I went inside & came upon the place where my Uncle’s first wife is buried. Someone (my Uncle?) had placed cut herbs & wildflowers at the base of the stone & these I cleared away to read the words inscribed there.

  Martha Jane Thorndike

  Who was once well belov’d & who

  vanish’d into the wood

  19th Aug 1838

  No one else was about & I cannot say how long I lingered there. But the light was dimming as I walked up the green & when I reached the steps of the meetinghouse Uncle Timothy rose & said it was time for us to go.

  watching as the blood seeped into it, turning the bread green & putrid. Corruption spilling from it, a dark fluid. The taste of it filling my mouth & nose & getting into my brain where the blood pulses, black & wild. Beating through the night so I do not sleep & then the woman comes for me, wearing her fine white dress with the skirts lifted up & the black mouth yawning beneath them, opening wide & then wider so her bones crack & break

  19th July. Tuesday.

  I saw her again, the woman in white.

  After breakfast, I went with Auguste to the village & helped him unload the ox-cart. We returned to the farm around noon & took our dinner in the empty cart.

  Auguste’s English is better than that of the other hired men. As we ate, he told me stories of Quebec & of the Cree Indians & of an evil spirit called the Witiko, which possesses sinful men & fills them with unnatural desires.

  Then he asked me not to repeat anything I had heard.

  It is your Uncle, he explained. He would not like it.

  In the afternoon, I crossed the low fields on my own & walked north & east til I reached the edge of the Batchelders’ property then climbed uphill along the winding stonewall til I had a view of my Uncle’s farm. From there I looked down toward the pine-wood & spied a flutter in the grass where the woman walked, moving away toward the trees.

  She wore the same dress as on Friday & her hair, I saw, was long & black, for to-day she wore no bonnet. Her steps she took slowly & with one white hand extended as though to hold the hand of another.

  She turned around. The distance between us was great, but I distinctly thought that she smiled at me.

  Just now I heard them talking, my Aunt & Uncle. They were discussing the dead sheep which I had found near the pine-wood.

  That were no wild cat what did it, Aunt Sarah said. No catamount could do as Auguste described to me.

  My Uncle said: You’ve been speaking to Auguste.

  I knew you weren’t telling me the truth, not all of it. I saw the boy, the way he was shaking—and no wonder. To have seen that poor beast, with the insides sucked out of it—

  Quiet yourself, said Uncle Timothy. We shall speak no more of this madness.

  It is no madness, she said, to believe the evidence of your own eyes.

  S’s mouth clamped over my own. Her tongue pushes past my lips & wraps itself round mine, long & slick as an eel. I bite through it. I choke it down, the twitching weight of it. And then with the Witiko riding me devour her lips & nose, tearing the flesh from the skull til only those eyes remain, crusted round with blood & gazing into mine

  20th July. Wednesday.

  My Uncle will not speak of his first wife.

  This evening at supper, I mentioned I had visited her grave & read the words carved upon the stone. He did not respond but proceeded to cut his lamb into dry strips, the knife scraping on his plate. Mary slurped & suckled at her mother’s breast.

  I said: I do not understand. Was she never found?

  Uncle Timothy set down his knife. His hands folded themselves into fists & I knew he was angry, though he is not one to show it.

  He said: You saw her grave. You know as much as anyone.

  And here he stood & stalked away from the table. My Aunt turned in her chair, as though to call him back & the babe’s mouth slipped free of her breast, exposing the nipple, which was red & inflamed & with a dribble of milk hanging from it.

  She was not embarrassed by this. She shifted the babe against her breast & covered herself with its mouth once more.

  She said: Martha went to meet someone in the wood. Another man.

  Oh, I said & was ashamed.

  It’s all right, she said. You weren’t to know.

  and felt my teeth bite through the teat, my mouth filling with milk. The foul taste of it, bitter as gall. I am

  21st July. Thursday.

  Ninety degrees when I awoke. The barometer in the parlor read thirty & rising. Uncle Timothy feared a storm & left before dawn to fetch in the sheep.

  In the kitchen Aunt Sarah floated between the counters & the table with her hands dusted in flour, singing to Mary in the cradle.

  I went outside. Even with my books & journal I could not bear to be indoors. Again I walked to the edge of the Batchelders’ property where it overlooks the pine-wood. The air was damp & sour & there were clouds blowing in so I knew I should turn back but didn’t.

  Then I smelled it: blood & rot & the odor of sheep’s dung. There were five beasts this time, arranged in the grass in a circle with their heads pointing inward. The jawbones were cracked to pieces as before & the steaming mess of their insides pulled out of them.

  And I think I must have fainted because I remember nothing more until the storm broke & I felt the first of the rain on my face.

  I opened my eyes & saw the woman standing over me. The sky sheared in two with a deafening roar. The storm was upon us but she appeared as serene as the angels & wore the lightning about her like a halo, though her lips were red where she had bit through them.

  She gathered her skirts into her fingers & lifted them above her knees so I could see it all (the black mouth yawning…) and a drop of blood from her mouth spattered her breast.

  She walked off toward the wood.

  Somehow I made it back to the farm. Auguste met me at the gate. He sheltered me in his coat & ran with me to the house. By then Uncle Timothy had returned but he left again at once.

  He was a long time in returning & would not speak of the matter until after supper when I had been sent to bed. I heard them arguing in the room next door: Aunt Sarah’s voice shrill & stabbing while Uncle Timothy tried to shout her down.

  She said: That devil has come among us again.

  Do not speak such foolishness. You’ll frighten the boy.

  Good, she said. He ought to be scared.

  How do you mean?

  Those horrible things he reads. That little book he’s always writing in. He’s terrified of somet
hing. Surely you saw the way—

  Hush, Sarah. He is ill.

  Ill? You said it were country air he needed.

  And so it is. We’ll go for a walk to-morrow, the four of us. Up Bald Hill if the weather allows for it.

  But the sheep—

  Auguste can see to them.

  I could not make out her response to this. For a time, they were quiet, their argument over & later I heard noises from their room.

  S moaning as she rides me, her face looming over me, ringed with light like the woman’s in the field. A skull with the flesh peeled back, the eyes white & wide. Her fattened belly swinging, slapping against me at every thrust as to smash the child inside, its bones breaking as the dark pours out of her to cover us both

  22nd July. Friday.

  Rain again this morning & lasting through the day. We did not go up Bald Hill. Uncle Timothy forbade me going out-of-doors & I spent the morning in this room, watching from the window as rainclouds drifted in the sky. I wanted to read but could scarcely touch the pages & found I could not concentrate for the images that crowded about me.

  Around noon Aunt Sarah called me down for dinner. We ate together while Mary played beneath the table, murmuring to herself & ringing her bell. Presently she crawled away toward the parlor & my Aunt came to sit beside me. Her stomach bulged grossly beneath the plain dress she wore, but her voice was gentle & she did not try to touch me.