Rochester Knockings (9 page)

William Pill pulled the bridle in the direction of these habitations, curious by their silence. Quick to change course, with one ear back, Her Highness ascended onto the main street. Her hooves rang in quarter-time rhythm, raising a white dust. The man had started to have a doubt in this desert; he had seen more of it in the south, where entire villages were empty of inhabitants. People around here had held on to their own good land, but California gold had driven many others mad. However, two young Mohawks crouching on the church steps gave him pause: Indians don't like abandoned houses. He greeted them by raising a finger to his hat
and continued his distracted visit of the place. An old man in suspenders smoking on his doorstep, some toddlers hanging from the skirts of a black nurse, a horse hitched to the gate of a grain counter, a band of cats around a tanner blind in one eye: these fragments of life in the flying dust were part of a community still intact, probably gathered together elsewhere, by the attraction of a healer come from Boston or Rochester, some itinerant preacher or the lynching of someone who'd been stealing chickens. At the window of a rather nice building that he recognized to be the home of Reverend Gascoigne, the tulle curtains parted to reveal a woman's face, so luminous with her blonde hair let down, that he froze on his saddle to the point that his surprised Quarter Horse turned her neck and flinched.

Piqued by a sensation of unspeakable emptiness somewhere between his diaphragm and throat, William Pill took his reins in hand. He signaled a trot, eager to get back to Long Road, and his horse, mane in the wind, started to pick up speed. That's when the click of a gun barrel engaged nearby.

“Stop there or I'll shoot!” yelled a man, rushing over without losing sight of his target in the middle of the road.

The newcomer obeyed in good faith. He had recognized the marshal despite his heaviness and wrinkles. Was it possible that Robert McLeann would have remembered him?

“Get off your horse and approach with your hands up,
Willie the Faker
! We've got a lot to catch up on, the two of us . . .”

Knowing the unreliable trigger of the type of firearm being pointed at him, he did as he was asked. This McLeann, with his migraine-inducing integrity and respect for procedure, had always amused him.

Seated behind the office desk, gun lowered, the marshal had to admit his blunder while unrolling the Certificate of Merit personally signed by General Zachary Taylor.

“If it weren't for your name and birth date written out, I might believe that you won this in a poker game from some other heroic fellow!”

“I won it with my own blood!” Pill replied with a certain emphasis, exposing the nasty scar on his shoulder. “And if you were only equipped with a telegraph, like all respectable sheriffs are, you could avoid these unfortunate mistakes . . .”

“That's not going to prevent me from sending a request for information on your record first thing tomorrow by post!”

Pill laughed, one eye on the closed saloon door through the window, the other across the road.

“So what's going on around here, Marshal? An outbreak of dysentery?”

“I would have preferred that. Or even yellow fever . . .”

And with these enigmatic words, the Sergeant of the Army Reserve left the former Jefferson County Sheriff, downgraded now to Monroe County police officer because of an inconstant woman or, if one prefers, a woman constant to her own instinct alone.

Night started to fall without resurrecting any more of the Hydesville population. Stray dogs and a lone escaped cow occupied the main street in the false light of dusk. One could easily distinguish lights in the windows, and sometimes the hanging faces of ancestors, but everything with legs seemed to have vanished on a secret pilgrimage. Her Highness took up again the path to Long Road, between the shadowy profiles of groves and the evanescent flight of hills that one could confuse with the
malleable contours of dream. Imbued with the mystery of spaces transfigured by the inversion of light, hidden and intensified at once, the spring evenings had a surprising freshness that fell down from the stars. These moments of approaching darkness, between the dog and the wolf, reminded William Pill of a background of exaggerated images and feelings gaping like wounds. But all that was from a different world, now claimed to be old, that on reflection had its cruel youthfulness, with its share of disasters striking children first. And it was his brothers and sisters brought here to escape the cholera that were, beyond all logic, keeping the youthfulness of this continent intact.

Sailing thus between hill and valley, riding now into the night, his mind taken next by the continuous shipwreck that was his Atlantic crossing on that skiff of bitter discord baptized in derision as the
Brotherhood,
William Pill thought he could perceive, surrounded by darkness, an entire array of floating lanterns glittering on the sea of tall grasses and boughs.

XIII.

Evening Visitors to the Haunted House

C
uriosity pushed to its fever pitch often turns into a riot, but for the moment the crowd was huddled in an avid silence around the Fox family farm, lanterns and lamps in hand, most of them outside, while inside the house, the first-comers pressed against the walls listened with an air of studious fright to Mrs. Fox's injunctions:

“Don't move, my dear neighbors, don't make a sound, that was how we were last night when the knocking occurred against the floor and under our beds, which honestly made us jump. We heard footsteps in the pantry, and right here, at the foot of the staircase. It was impossible to close our eyes: an unhappy spirit was prowling around my daughters and me, looking for any means to make itself known to us . . .”

Crossed with conflicted feelings, from joviality to the most incomprehensible of terrors, the faces of the villagers wrinkled like curtains in the wind beneath the dangerous flames of an oil lamp. More and more assured, the voice of Mrs. Fox was identified with a wave of amazement changing their faces with each moment.

“So I said, ‘Is this a human being who is ready to answer in an honest manner?' But then, nothing, not even the rattle of a key. I added: ‘Is this a spirit? If that's the case, knock twice.' Two knocks, I swear it, immediately followed. I added again: ‘If you are an injured spirit, knock three times.' The house was entirely shaken by the count. Then I asked, not at all reassured: ‘Were you wounded, then, under this roof?' The answer came without delay. ‘Could it be that you might have once been attacked?' It was yes, inarguably! By this same process, I was able to discern that the spirit of the deceased who was giving me all this information had been a peddler and the head of his family when he was alive, and that he'd been killed for his money fifteen years ago in the age of our Lord in this house, that his body is in fact buried in the basement . . .”

At that exact moment, a dry and unusually violent rapping sound translated into the bursting of a white vase filled with cornflowers, bluebells, and gentians, which scattered all over the table and the floor. With round eyes, Mrs. Fox pointed at the broken glass.

“That's the second time!” she exclaimed. “Are you going to break all my dishes like this?”

In the living room full of people, there was a general movement of stepping back accompanied by a stifled groan of rising fear in everyone's throats. This panic contrasted with the beginnings of jubilation that had overtaken the crowd gathered outside, for it is true that, even at the worst moments, a few lamps in the hands of good people on a clear night can suffice to put everyone in a festive mood.

Standing on a step in the threadbare dress suit that he never seemed to take off, Mr. Fox considered his world from a certain
height, arms crossed beneath his beard like an easily offended Mormon. Significant events were taking place under his roof, and the idea had gradually occurred to him to take some pride in it. A poor Methodist farmer unknown by his contemporaries and made fun of by his daughters could well, for once in his life, imagine himself chosen for mysterious purposes. For he had been persuaded that a great curse had struck them. Wasn't he for a long time the sole person in the household refusing to accept all this madness? But a demonic will had imposed itself from another world. There was nothing he could do. A simple man who's only been taught about God couldn't know how to fight against such phenomena. And how could he have anticipated the madam his wife would become in a matter of days, more loquacious than Reverend Gascoigne? The spirit had touched her tongue, without reaching her brain! It was she who had sent him to find their closest neighbor, the widow of High Point. Mrs. Redfield, handkerchief trembling, almost fainted when Mrs. Fox finished describing the peddler's slit throat, especially when at that precise moment a vase that little Katie had just filled with wildflowers shattered into a thousand pieces.

Mrs. Redfield and all the others turned their batrachian eyes to the floor and the table. First in line was Isaac Post, the only one in the group knowledgeable about transmission. Almost sober, mustache quivering, this good Philadelphian shook his head like a contrary mule. The Dueslers, former breeders who turned to farming after a ruinous epidemic of equine rhino-pneumonia, were only too willing to rush over. It was Mrs. Duesler who gathered all in the area who were still dragging their heels. A respected woman of independent means, the austere Mrs. Hyde—now a septuagenarian and daughter of the founder of Hydesville,
an enterprising pastor who had a giant sawmill built in the middle of the valley with the hopes of profiting from the agriculture and its foresters—ascended by foot up Long Road, her servant at her side, a dim lamp in her hand. Mr. and Mrs. Jewell wouldn't have missed the opportunity, the two of them trembling with a mad hope. And George Willets, the solitary bear the village only just tolerated ever since he instigated his own quest for an inner light and separated from the Society of Friends. Stephen B. Smith, big hunter and lover of guns, was counted there, and his wife Louise who claimed to be a distant relative of Mrs. Fox. As well as the eldest of the siblings, David S. Fox and his wife, farmers three miles from here in the district of Pittsford. The mistress of the event was trying to take it all in, this whole group here on the lookout. Never, not even at church on public confession days, had she found herself to be in the center of such an assembly. Without really planning it, she had invited the village community over to put an end to rumors and in order to share a wonder. Wasn't it amazing that for the first time since the resurrection of our Lord, the afterlife was making itself known to poor mortals!

“I asked: ‘Are you going to continue to sound your responses if I gather the neighbors so that they can benefit from this too?' The spirit answered in the affirmative . . .”

“In that case, would you allow us to interrogate him ourselves?” interrupted Isaac Post, weary of this woman's homily.

“I would like to ask him questions about my dear son,” Mrs. Jewell cried out.

A good head taller than the circle of farmers, standing firmly in his dusty boots, a solid man with a pockmarked face called mischievously from his corner: “And how can you prove to us that your daughters aren't both in a closet fooling us with a broomstick!”

Eavesdropping on the landing since the invasion had begun, Kate and Margaret descended the stairs in a dignified manner to counter the mean laughs bursting forth.

Isaac Post intervened with his cavernous voice, exhorting his hosts and the public not to disturb communication by unwanted interference. He discoursed to everyone's boredom on the encrypted codes of the electric telegraph of Morse and Vail.

“What are you getting at?” Stephen B. Smith interrupted.

“It's simple. Because we can now transmit and receive messages from considerable distances, between Washington and Baltimore for example, by the means of electrical pulses, it seems like we could do the same thing with the other world . . .”

“But because he answers only with yes or no, why would we annoy him with your codes,” grumbled a second Quaker. “A ghost isn't a little telegraphist . . .”

A restless murmur ran through the group. The woodstove had been relit because of the cool nights, its acrid fumes emitting an odor of sulfur to the nostrils of the Dueslers and Mrs. Hyde.

Isaac Post went over to the table and with the knuckles of his fist, clearly explained his system: each letter was assigned a number of knocks, from one to five for the vowels A, E, I, O, U, from six to twenty-six for the consonants B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z. Two quick knocks to agree, three spaced knocks to reply no.

“Spirit, are you there?”
he drummed out, letter by letter, without forgetting to translate orally in good English as assistance.

The coded response, one of the loudest, emanating indistinctly from the wooden floor and walls, subdued even the most skeptical.

“What is your surname and first name?”
Isaac Post telegraphed with dexterity.

“
7-11-1-19-14-2-20 . . . 11-1-25-16-2-20
,” the entity immediately responded.

Isaac Post continued his investigations without worrying about interjections from the group. A religious silence followed this long sequence of knocks. The man turned finally toward those witnessing like a judge before the jury: “C-h-a-r-l-e-s . . . H-a-y-n-e-s . . . the Spirit is named Charles Haynes! This is a historic moment that we're witnessing, fellow citizens. For the first time in the world, on this night in April 1848, we've entered in direct contact with the dead, which is to say that the doors of the other world have opened for us with the assistance of our Savior. Do any of you realize for a single moment the consequences of such an event?”