The Darkening Dream (5 page)

Sarah and Anne strolled across a thick carpet of grass that soon gave way to the ivy-covered stretch under the trees. Their boots crunched hidden twigs as they picked their way over to the narrow cattle path ringing the pond.

“I’m floating like a dandelion in the breeze,” Anne said. “That licorice drink…”

“It’s not just the alcohol — I’ve been feeling weird all day. Last night I had a nightmare about a bloody tree.”

Her friend swooned in operatic terror. “Stop my heart in its tracks: a bloody tree!”

Sarah swatted at her. “There’s more to it. Yesterday when we met Emily’s friend I thought I saw the same tree in the shadows on the wall, and this morning I realized it looked like the big sycamore behind the house. Maybe God’s trying to send me a message.”

“Sarah, how much of that stuff
did
you drink?”

She smiled, not wanting Anne to think she was serious, even if she half was. Behind them in the distance, shots rang out as the boys practiced their marksmanship.

“Enough of that,” Anne said. “Tell me what you think of Alexandros.” Of course she didn’t pause or wait for a reply. “I think he fancies you, and he’s handsome in a goaty Mediterranean way.”

“Anne, he’s not even Jewish. And
goaty
? What kind of person is goaty?” Religion aside, the picnic had been fun, and she was pretty sure their new friend was no small cause in the effect.

“Well, the curly hair and that little bit of dark beard on the chin, goaty. Not a Billy goat but an Alexi goat. Baa!”

Anne placed her index fingers to the sides of her forehead like horns. There ensued a fit of giggling, punctuated by an occasional bleat from one girl or the other.

More gunshots rang out in the distance. Anne glanced back.

“I hope that awful tonic didn’t rob the boys of too much common sense — they’d better aim away from our direction.”

They were roughly halfway around the emerald-green pond when Sarah saw something white protruding from a large mass of brush.

“What’s that?”

Anne turned to look and Sarah forced her myopic eyes to focus. It was a naked human leg, jutting from the undergrowth. Unnaturally white, not even the slightest hint of skin color, splattered and streaked with a dried brownish-red blood. The limb was twisted grotesquely at the knee, the joint bent oddly, perpendicular to the direction of the ankle.

Anne screamed.

Sarah stood paralyzed by fear. Anne’s scream went on and on until, finally, she stopped to breathe. Her face was almost as pale as the leg before them.

Sarah took Anne’s hand — warm and clammy. Behind them, a loud rustling in the brush injected further terror until she saw Sam and Alex crash through.

“You two okay?” Sam said between heavy breaths.

Anne threw her arms around him while Sarah pointed at the thicket.

Alex swung his rifle off his shoulder to aim at the brush, stepped closer, and returned the weapon to his back.

“That poor soul’s done with violence for this life,” he said.

Good Lord. A dead body. Sarah had never seen one, not even when Judah died — her parents hadn’t allowed her into the room.

Sam joined Alex in examining the form under the brush.

“This is no accident,” he said. “We should summon the authorities.”

Sarah straightened her broad hat and brushed at her pants. She needed something practical to focus on.

“Sam’s a fast rider. Maybe he should find a house and ask them to call the police. The rest of us can wait here.” With the body. She shuddered.

Sam glanced at Alex. “Will you girls be okay here with him?”

Did he mean the Greek or the corpse?

Alex turned his eyes to the ground.

“We’ll be okay,” Sarah heard herself say.

“I’m over the worst of it,” Anne said. “Alex has his gun.” She tried to smile.

“Hurry, Sam,” Sarah said. “And remember to look for a house with telephone wires. We’re pretty far out of town.”

“In Greece,” Alex said, “you could ride for a whole day to find a telegraph.”

Sam snorted. “I don’t suppose it’ll take that long.”

They watched him sprint off in the direction of the horses.

Alex stepped toward the body. “Let’s see what we have here.” He leaned down to clear brush off the remains.

“What’re you
doing
?” Sarah said. The deceased belonged to God now — and the police.

But she spoke too late. Alex heaved the tangled ball of vegetation off the cadaver and to the side. Anne gasped.

The body of a boy lay naked in the dirt, belly up, covered only by a few remaining sticks and leaves. His eyes stared at the sky, his face frozen in bewilderment. His skin was bluish-white. One arm was twisted behind his back, the shoulder bulging unnaturally. On the opposite side his mangled knee was twisted, lending him a ghastly diagonal symmetry. Gashes scarred his wrists and ankles, and a deep gouge split the side of his torso. There was surprisingly little blood, though flies buzzed about the wounds, crawled in and out of his nostrils and mouth.

Oh, God. The crust of blood around his lips made Sarah think of Judah. In those last months, when the consumption had all but eaten him from the inside, she would sit by his bed and hold a damp cloth to his bloody mouth as he shuddered and coughed his life away.

Anne whimpered nearby.

“I think it’s Charles,” she whispered.

Sarah forced herself to look at the face. She’d met Charles only that once, yesterday, and the dead boy’s face looked different — like a wax mannequin’s — but it was him, at least the material part of him. His soul, she hoped, had moved on to some better place.

The slow tone of the mournful horn rose out of nowhere to sound in her ears. Charles’ lifeless face lifted slightly, his right eye winked at her, and he raised an arm to point at a leafless tree glistening with black wetness in the warm afternoon sun. Blood slicked the trunk and roots.

Sarah jumped back. The little shriek that passed her lips sounded like someone else’s.

“Are you all right?” Anne’s voice severed the horn blast.

She looked around. Sunlight streamed in through the thick foliage to dapple the unstained bark of the mossy tree. The startled birds resumed their songs and Charles’ ashen body lay still on the leafy dirt.

She wasn’t crazy. But she should have warned him yesterday. Somehow, for some reason, God had sent her a sign, and she hadn’t listened.

Six:

Paradise Lost

Near Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday afternoon, October 19, 1913

A
LEX SHIFTED HIS WEIGHT
from one foot to the other. It seemed inappropriate to comfort the girls — he had, after all, only met them today. He tried to distract himself by studying the body again, eyes drawn repeatedly to the boy’s nearly hairless manhood, lying there like a pallid little worm. Sarah and Anne had likely never seen any man naked, and certainly none like this one. He pulled a silk handkerchief out of his vest pocket, unfolded it, and draped it across the organ in question.

“Thank you, Alex,” Anne said. “I feel so bad for his mother. Who could’ve done something so horrible?”

Alex had seen his grandfather dissect enough crimes to make an attempt at an explanation.

“The body was concealed, and someone wrenched that leg and arm with tremendous force. It’s possible he had a machine accident and someone dumped him here.”

He didn’t really think it was an accident, and he was far less calm than he appeared. Anne’s screams had triggered one of his old memories: a woman wailing, her shadowy face illuminated by firelight. Knowing that to chase the image into the labyrinth of his mind would only lead to a headache, he forced his thoughts elsewhere.

“It wasn’t a machine,” Sarah said. “Look at the wounds on the wrists and ankles, the big slash on his torso.” She paused for a second. “Could they be stigmata?”

Could she be right? There was something ritualistic, even Christlike, about this killing. The body lay there, pale shoulders twisted, rib cage protruding, arms extended, macabre. He tried to watch Sarah without looking directly at her. First she talks about the fall of Constantinople, then stigmata?

Anne shivered despite the bathhouse air. “Alex, can I borrow your jacket?”

An hour later, Alex heard a siren, followed by the distant growl of an automobile. Sam arrived not long after, accompanied by two men in uniforms and a third in a dark suit.

“Inspector George Finn,” said the gentleman in the suit. He looked back and forth between the brush pile and the body itself. “One of you removed that?”

“I did,” Alex said. “Only a leg was showing, and I thought it best to make sure he was dead, not merely injured.”

The inspector nodded. “From the look of him, since yesterday or last night. Rest assured, we’ll get to the bottom of this. One of you mentioned you knew the boy’s name?”

Anne said, “It’s — I mean he was — a friend of my younger sister, Charles Danforth. He even visited our house yesterday.”

“I’ll need more details on that,” the inspector said. “Do you know where he lived?”

Anne shook her head.

“There are Danforths about a mile from here, sir,” one of the officers said. “I think they have a son about this age.”

“If you know the house,” the inspector said, “take one of the motorcars and head on over. Don’t mention anything about a death. If they have a son, and he’s missing, ask them to come to the station at…” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Five o’clock. That’ll give us enough time to document the scene and bring the body downtown. Please try to be tactful.”

After the police released them, they walked quietly back to the horses. Bucephalus bit playfully at Alex’s shoulder when he adjusted the bridle. Yesterday, he would have considered the stallion his only friend.

The picnic earlier had been great fun, and he’d even enjoyed losing thirty cents to Sam. He hoped the disturbing turn of events at the pond wouldn’t sour his new fellowship. The fates could be cruel, tempting the starving man with a feast and then snatching it away just as he approached the table.