Coffins (32 page)

“Hear what?” Lucy asked, gliding into the kitchen behind me, with considerably more grace than I'd been able to muster.

“A noise,” he squeaked. “Like a thump. Coming from below.”

I crouched upon the damp floor and touched my hand to the boards. Exactly as I did so, there came a distinct
thump
, seemingly from directly beneath my feet.

“Felt that, didja?” Barky asked with concern, as if fearful that the strange
thump
might have originated in his mind alone.

“Does the cellar extend under the kitchen?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Under the whole of the house. The Captain's a great one for wanting a good foundation. Dug it down to ledge, they did, and built up with slabs of quarried granite.”

I stood up and dried my hands on a handkerchief. “Someone must be down there. One of the brothers, possibly.”

“Not Jeb, he ain't left his bed.”

“Benjamin or Nathaniel?”

Barky considered the question. “Ben ain't never liked the cellar much. Says the damp gets in his bones, and everybody knows cellar damp is worse'n ship damp. And Nathaniel bides with his wife, at Merriman's boardinghouse.”

There was another, louder
thump
from beneath our feet, and something that sounded like muffled voices.

“Fetch a lantern,” Lucy suggested, and marched resolutely for the cellar door, situated in an alcove off the kitchen.

“Stand back, missy,” Barky suggested, when he arrived with lantern in hand.

He was about to thumb the latch on the door when Benjamin appeared in the hallway, demanding to know what was going on. When I explained that noises had been heard, coming from below, he shot a stern glance at Lucy. “Have you anything to tell us, cousin? Has your friend left us with more runaways?”

I instantly understood that he was referring to Mrs. Stanton, and to his suspicion that she, like Mr. Douglass, had come to visit while shepherding fugitive slaves along the underground railroad.

Lucy took a breath and met his stern gaze. “If so, she told me nothing of it,” she said firmly.

Benjamin nodded, satisfied. “They know this place,” he said. “Could be a stray, I suppose. Crack the hatch, Mr. Barkham, and let us shed some light on our ‘visitors.'”

Immediately the door was open, voices came up from the stairwell. I took them to be Negro voices, speaking one of the African tongues, for it was not a language familiar to me. “There,” said Benjamin with some satisfaction. “Strays. Lucy, you stay behind. We'll see to their needs.”

“Nonsense. A woman's kindness may be needed.”

Seeing that she would not be dissuaded, Benjamin shrugged his big shoulders as if to say,
let it be on your head
. With the door open, and the musty smell of the cellar air rising to greet us, Barky led the way, holding high the lantern. We were about halfway down the stairs when there came a distinct
crack!
of a lash on flesh, and a stifled moan of pain.

“What evil is this?” Benjamin exclaimed.

Behind me Lucy caught her breath. Suddenly the stairwell began to vibrate with the sound of chains smashing rhythmically against a wooden surface. Foul smells rose up from below. The stinging, highly unpleasant odors of unwashed human beings confined in a small, hot space.

“How can this be?” Lucy cried out, grasping my arm as she nearly lost balance on the stairs.

Meanwhile Benjamin was bulling ahead, having taken the lantern from the cook's reluctant hand. He had the attitude of a man who must move swiftly or be frozen by fear, and the fear emanating from the cellar was palpable, as strong and nauseating as the eye-watering stench of human waste.

I begged that Lucy leave us at once, but she would not, and linking her hand firmly to my own, bade me follow Benjamin into the black depths of the stairwell, into the gloomy, Stygian darkness of the cellar itself.

The smashing rhythm of the chains was like that of drums. African drums, I supposed, never having heard any. I tried to imagine the previous group of fugitives—meek and frightened—having the rude audacity to raise such a din, and could not. They had moved like silent shadows, fearful of discovery, and the only thing that had disturbed their furtive silence was the cry of a newborn baby. What kind of fugitives were we about to encounter, then, who announced themselves so purposefully? And why, having freed themselves from their masters, had they kept their chains?

I confess that I wasn't thinking clearly, or I might have had some intuition as to what we would find in that terrible black cellar. As it was, the sensations came too fast for me to reason properly. The noise, the smells, the chanting voices, it was all too much for my poor, addled mind to comprehend. It wasn't until Benjamin got to the bottom of the stairs and pivoted around, using the lantern to illuminate the darkness, that I got an inkling of the true reality—if truth or reality can be said to factor into the inexplicable phenomenon we all experienced.

I say “inexplicable” because the cellar was empty. Completely empty save for ourselves. Though Benjamin bravely carried his light to every corner, searching for the source of the deafening noise, we found not another human being in that place. And still the frantic cacophony carried on around us—the smashing of chains, the moaning of prisoners, the haranguing of the one most powerful voice, and the responding chant from his followers or supplicants. A phantom voice raised in high dudgeon, calling, I could only suppose, the gods of the drums, seeking vengeance.

It was exactly as if the slave deck of the
Whippet
had somehow sent forth an echo from the past, or from hell itself, and whose angry voice could it be but that of Monbasu, exhorting his fellow captives to revolt? Had I not been in the company of others, I might have supposed these horrible sounds to be a figment of my overwrought imagination, but we all heard it as clearly as if we, too, were chained upon the slave deck.

Poor Benjamin seemed to take it the worse, as if the manifestation was a blasphemy against his own God, and he raised his voice, trying to shout down the pagan chants. Lumbering about with his lantern swinging, as if determined to give the shadows substance.

“Be gone from this house!” he shouted, as fearsome as any Old Testament prophet. “Leave us alone! In the name of God, get thee out!”

Whether his exhortations had any effect I cannot say, but within five or ten minutes of our entering the cellar, the chanting slowly began to fade, growing ever more distant, as if the foul ship was drawing away from us through the intervening years, carrying the plaintive moans across the unseen waters. The last we heard was a distinctly feminine whimper, the last gasp of an unbearable life drowning in pain and misery, and then silence.

Only the stench of human degradation remained when we wearily mounted the cellar stairs, and bolted the door behind us. We stood there in the hallway, in the welcome stillness of the great house, and could not bear to look upon one another, as if we had witnessed something too shameful to acknowledge.

As, indeed, I believe we had.

3. What They Did to Witches

That evening, after a cold supper at which we all picked glumly at our portions, appetites ruined by foreboding, Lucy and Benjamin whispered among themselves, and then left the house without explanation. I assumed it must concern poor Sarah, but less than a half hour later they returned in the company of Father Whipple, the kindly Episcopal priest. He was delighted to see me again, and straightway wrung my hands with such enthusiasm that his spectacles went askew, which had the effect of making him look like he was about to tip over.

“Father Whipple has agreed to help us if he can,” Benjamin informed me, somewhat shyly, as if he thought I would disapprove.

“Whatever's expected,” said the priest agreeably, as Lucy took his shabby greatcoat and hung it up to dry. “We'll keep this on the hush though, will we?” he said sotto voce. “Mustn't upset the old boy, hmm?”

Benjamin quietly assured him that Captain Coffin had not left his tower room in weeks, and would not be likely to do so even if he knew a priest was present. Then, he added, “Bless you, Father. It was fine of you to come, considering how you and your kind have been abused in this house.”

Whipple waved away his concern as we drew up seats not far from the parlor stove. “Piffle. Didn't take it personally, hmm? Your father had his reasons.”

“Father is a great man,” said Benjamin, somewhat stiffly. “But in this he's been a great fool. Why should the word of God be forbidden in this house, just because a priest once insulted him?”

Whipple looked alarmed. “Forbidden? The word of God? But surely you have prayed, Ben?”

“He's done little else but pray, these last weeks,” Lucy said primly, casting a glance my way, for confirmation.

Benjamin hung his head, quite miserable. “I keep praying, Father, but the presence I spoke of, it pays no heed, but comes and goes on its own evil whim. I'm a weak vessel.”

Whipple patted his arm, attempting to console him. “Nonsense! Weak vessel, what rot! A Coffin, weak? Unheard of. Nothing weak about you, Ben, but that we're all of us weak in the eyes of God. All humans are, in that respect, hmm? I'm certainly no exception.”

“Then tonight you must be strong, Father,” said Lucy, making clear she expected no less.

“Yes, my dear, I'll try. With the Lord's help.”

“There is evil in this house, and you must cast it out,” she said, staring at me as if daring me to disagree.

Whipple gulped, his watery eyes magnified by the odd spectacles tied to his head with a black ribbon. “Only our Savior has the power to cast out evil, Miss Wattle. I explained that when you came to find me. All we can do, as true believers, is ask for the Lord's help.”

“Yes, so you said,” said Lucy, in her argumentative way. “But isn't there something in the Bible about casting out devils? What good is a priest if he can't cast out devils?”

“Lucy!” said Benjamin, highly insulted on Whipple's behalf.

“No, that's all right,” said the priest gently. “Go on,” he encouraged her.

“The Pilgrims cast out devils, didn't they?”

“They were Puritans,” Whipple patiently explained. “They believed that every flaw of human nature was the result of demonic possession. But we live in the Age of Enlightenment, Miss Wattle. We have come to understand that we're all flawed creatures, and the fault is within us, not the devil.”

“He doesn't understand,” said Lucy in despair, to her cousin and me. “How could he? Tell him, Davis, tell him what happens in this house!”

I hesitated. How much did Benjamin know of his father's hidden past? Could he, as a devout, God-fearing Christian, accept the idea of another, darker god having dominion over his own father, and his father's children? It was contrary to everything he understood and believed, to all that he held dear, to the very shape of the world he carried within. And yet I too, believed the time had come for plain words about all that had happened, even if it grieved Benjamin to hear it.

“Father Whipple, do you consider me a rational sort of man?” I began.

“Oh, most certainly,” he responded, very eagerly.

“A man of science and the modern philosophies?”

“From what I know of you, yes, indeed.”

“Would you be surprised if I confessed that as of a month ago, I did not believe in devils or ghosts, and lacked what you would call faith?”

He chuckled. “I'm not one for ghosts or devils myself. But what do you mean, you lacked faith? Do you mean belief in our Lord?”

“Not exactly that,” I said, hedging a trifle. “Let us say I had more faith in Emerson, who teaches that we all have God within us. And that if we seek the God within, we may achieve a state of transcendence.”

“Hmph!” said Whipple. “Can't say I've ever understood what that Emerson fellow was always going on about. Sounds a bit like having visions, hmm? Saints wandering in the wilderness and so on.”

“But you take my meaning, that I was not in the least superstitious? That I abhorred the very idea of otherworldly manifestations, or spiritualism?”

“I'll so accept,” Whipple said, looking around the room and smiling at our little gathering. “Let us all stipulate, ‘Dr. Bentwood is not given to superstition.'”

“Then you may be surprised to learn that I now believe this family to be haunted by an evil presence that seeks revenge upon Cash Coffin and all of his descendants. I say this by direct observation and experience. A few hours ago we all heard it. And only last night I felt it move me.”

Lucy gasped in astonishment and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Davis, you, too?”

Benjamin also groaned, and buried his face in his hands. “We have all felt it, Father. An invisible thing that sucks the life from your soul.”

“Ben!” Whipple cried with concern. “Poor lad!”

“I live in dread that I will die in its presence,” said Benjamin, his voice thick with weeping. “It steals into my dreams. It steals my faith away. You must help us, Father, please! Bring God back into this house, and cast the devil out!”

Then, for a time, all was silent, as Lucy comforted her cousin in his misery. Father Whipple was busily leafing through his Bible, but it was obvious that he was becoming exasperated. He looked to me for commiseration. “The Roman church had a rite that was used for casting devils out of souls possessed, but it has fallen out of use in the last century. From what I understand, their so-called exorcism was little more than an excuse to persecute the Jews for an imperfect conversion to Christianity, during the Spanish Inquisition. It's what they used on witches, too, when they wanted to drown or hang them. I'm not familiar with any Episcopal rite that's applicable.”

“It isn't that we're possessed, Father. Or not exactly that. More that the evil presence wishes to do harm. And has done great harm.”