The Hawley Book of the Dead (41 page)
Read The Hawley Book of the Dead Online
Authors: Chrysler Szarlan
I made sure I was firmly in the chair in case I was overtaken. When I opened the Book, what I saw first was narrow blue-black writing, which then swirled to a leaden sky blackened by splotches. Dark dots on the horizon shifted closer, until I could see what caused the blackness. Crows. Hundreds of them. Then my vision cleared, and the knowing came.
It was 1862. The height of the Civil War. Just after Antietam, where more than three thousand men and boys had died on the blood-soaked ground. Revelation trudged in the ankle-deep mud, her boots seeping liquid, water mixed with blood. She shivered, tried not to think of it. Hundreds of crows picked at the bodies. She tried to shoo them away, but they just flapped a few feet to another pile of stinking flesh and blood and bone.
It was hot. Maryland in September. She longed for the cool of Hawley Forest. Her skin itched in the wool uniform she’d exchanged for her skirts months before. She’d come south, searching for the Book, and now she’d found it. Her brother Ezra had taken it, tucked in his sack with his Bible, by mistake or design, when he’d run away to join the Union army. She’d found him just before the battle, in a dirty tent in the woods nearby. He was shocked to see her, his dainty sister, in faded Union blue, her face brown from the sun, her hair cut short and uneven with a knife. He’d been loath to give up the Book; he thought it kept him safe, and maybe it had.
“I’ve killed men to get to that Book, Ez. Don’t make me do
you
harm.”
He’d handed it over, just as they were called to arms at dawn. She’d fought alongside Ezra; she saw him fall from the bridge over Antietam Creek. Now, the day after the battle, she’d found
all the Hawley boys, broken, dead, already decomposing in the sun. Her own brother’s body bloated with creek water. She sat finally on a rock, her sword by her side. She held the Book close, took in its scent of faraway meadows, and cried until she had no tears left in her. She did not see a man in a tattered shirt creep up behind her, pull his knife, ready himself to plunge it into her back. Suddenly the smell of lilacs swirled heavy around them. It made the man pause to sniff the air, and in that moment Revelation rose and swung her sword. It hit the man’s thigh, cut deep. She pulled it away, bloody, then drove it into his chest.
I came up from the vision gasping. Even with a face dirty and swollen with tears and grief and rage, it was plain to see that this Revelation was the woman in the portrait. And the sword was the very sword from the Perpetual Tag Sale. Its jewels had flashed dazzling, even through the muck and blood. I stayed in the present long enough to take in that knowledge, then sank into the Book, into the past again.
In Hawley, a boy walked down a road. Jordan Sears walked down North Road with a mission. Sent by his father to drive home two cows bought from Martin Klausen. But Jordan, sixteen and willful, wasn’t planning on going to Klausen’s farm, or on driving cows at all from then on. Or going home, for that matter. He was all aflame with war fever, had made a plan with Luke Miller and Del Hanson to meet on the road and walk to Pittsfield to join the militia. March south to the battlefields with a company of men. Wear the Northern blue. Carry a rifle on his shoulder. Come back a man himself.
He was walking past the charred remains of Joy Tavern, which had burned the year before. He saw smoke, a big plume of it, rising from the place. It transfixed him. The smoke had a womanly shape, soft in the right places, streaming hair, and white arms beckoning him. He walked toward the smoke woman. He could not help it. Walked straight into those shifting,
misty arms. He put his head on her breast and knew no more until he awoke in the same spot.
He rose and splashed his face with water from the stream. He walked to meet Luke and Del, thinking he’d been asleep for an hour or so. But they were not at the crossroads. He walked to Luke’s farm. Luke’s mother saw him from her window, ran to him, held him to her, asked for news of Luke. Was he on the road home, too?
“But I came to
find
Luke.”
She looked at him as if he were addled, placed a hand on his brow. “Honey, Luke’s in Virginia, last we heard, near six months ago. Your mama is worried sick. Three years gone and no word! Shame on you, boy!”
“But … Luke went without us?” How could Luke get there since they’d made their plan yesterday? How could he himself have slept for three years?
Mrs. Miller gave him another worried glance. “Luke signed up in 1862. Ran away with Del Hanson, and we thought you went with them. The war’s over, now. Where have you been?” But he didn’t know, couldn’t say.
Luke never did come home to Hawley, nor did Del. Two years later, Jordan married Loreen Wilton. They prospered, but had no children. In 1869, Loreen died after a short illness. In 1871, Jordan married Revelation Dyer, his own cousin and an old maid at thirty-five, although a great beauty still. Revelation was eight years his senior. She kept her own name. It was whispered that she’d fought in the war, dressed as a man. It was also whispered she’d bewitched Jordan. She bore him a child before he died in a sawmill accident, a girl, who bore in due time another girl. That girl’s parents died in the Spanish influenza epidemic that carried so many away. Her name was changed to her mother’s, to Hannah, when she went to live with her Sears cousins. But she’d been christened Revelation, after her brave grandmother.
The Day of the Dead
1
I awoke late the next morning. I’d slept hard, my cheek resting on the Book. I thought about what I’d seen in it, what the visions could mean. The sword Revelation had wielded, the sword from the Perpetual Tag Sale—it must be the Sword of the four treasures that Nan had spoken of, one of the treasures Simon Magus sought. It surely had come in a time of trouble, one created by the magician spinning his evil web.
The sky was clear, the driveway was plowed. My dad told me of all the changes that had occurred while I slept. “They say we’ll either have a nor’easter with lashings of rain, a fierce ice storm, or more snow today. Nathan’s gone to town for water and batteries. Jolon said we might be trapped if the storm’s as bad as they say.”
I hadn’t planned on more bad weather. “Dad, do you think you and Mom could go to Nan’s, check on Caleigh? Make sure they’re okay? Falcon Eddy can stay with me. And bring Nan this.” I gave him the envelope with Henry’s photos.
“Sure. We can be back before the storm hits.”
But they couldn’t. It turned out no one could. Not in time.
The birds flew all morning and into the afternoon, darkening the sky just as they had in my vision. Crows black as the bottoms of cast-iron pots, looking greasy as if they’d been basted and half-cooked. Their squawks and screeches sounded like children arguing, like old men watching sports on TV, grumbling and murching. I felt the birds, heard them all around the house, like a plague.
Nathan called to tell me he was heading to Northampton, since all the water and batteries in Elmer’s had been bought up on Halloween. A brooding restlessness came over me. I was unsettled by the mobs of birds swooping by the windows. Or the coming storm. I wasn’t sure which.
I ran down the stairs to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, the cupboards. I closed them all again, not finding what I sought. Thinking it might be Jolon, I picked up the phone and called him.
The snow had nearly stopped, but at least a foot had been dumped on the forest in the night. Jolon told me the wider search was off, at least for the time being. “I’ll still be going out, but the state boys will decide on calling in a snow-certified team. It’s drifted too deep in the woods. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to wait, for them or for a melt.”
“You didn’t find anything last night? Any sign of Voss, or … anything?”
He puffed out a breath. “No. Nothing.”
“I guess that doesn’t surprise me.” I was desolate, heart heavy with the feeling that I’d never see Grace and Fai again. And I missed Caleigh fiercely.
“Did you see the sky?” he asked.
“The crows, you mean?”
“Crows? I don’t know about crows, but you can see the storm coming.”
I looked out and saw only trails and clumps of crows, straggling in flight, landing on the barn roof, the fences.
“There’s a storm of birds here. Like Hitchcock. Who was that actress? Tippi Hedren? Was she ever in anything else?” My mind ran to
non sequiturs. I didn’t want to think of what was happening. What
had
happened.
“I’ll batten down the hatches here, then come to you. I should be there in an hour or so. The storm’s going to be bad, Reve. Bob’s still at Nan’s, so I can’t send him out to you, and even Mrs. Pike’s old guys probably aren’t out on their Ski-Doos.”
“Wait, what? What about Mrs. Pike?”
“Didn’t I tell you? She’s responsible for the crew of old guys following you around in the woods. She gives the rallying cry. Calls around and tells them where you’re riding.”
“Mrs.
Pike
?”
“Her husband’s the ringleader. Remy Pike.”
“No!”
“Mrs. Pike’s a deep one.”
I contemplated this, and looked out again at the storm of crows. It was so much like
The Birds
. “But what about Tippi Hedren?”
“I don’t think this will be a night for scary movies. Reality will be scary enough.”
I called Nan, for the third time that day. “How’s Caleigh?”
“She woke up for a bit, but she still won’t eat. Now she’s asleep again.”
“That’s not like her.”
“She misses her string, and no other will do. She’s still enchanted.”
“Did you get the photos?”
“Yes. They’re very … helpful. I think they’ll make all the difference.”
“Are Mom and Dad still there?”
“No, they’re headed back to you. But it’s icing here now.”
“I’ll call them. Make sure Caleigh … just make sure she knows I called.”
I tried my dad’s cell next, and got a network busy signal. I punched in their landline in Williamstown. My mom answered.
“I’m so glad you made it home!”
“We just got here. The roads are bad.… I don’t think we can get back to you.”
I thought of Route 2, winding and treacherous between Williamstown
and Hawley. “No, don’t even try. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. It hasn’t started here yet.”
“Is Jolon with you?” Mom asked.
“No, but he’s coming. And Falcon Eddy’s here, Nathan should be back soon. I’ll have plenty of company.” I heard the line crackle, cut out, then Mom saying, before their phone went out completely, “Stay safe, Reve. Stay inside.”
But of course I couldn’t. I had the animals to consider. I pulled on a jacket, slogged through the snow to the barn, arms over my head to fend off crows. They were flying low, cawing so my ears seemed filled with their talk. The air smelled of ozone and sap. I bolted all the barn doors, gave Zar and Miss May their grain, topped up their water, gave them extra buckets. It was early to feed again, but it felt ominous enough that I thought it might be too difficult to get out later. The sky was slatey, the clouds rumpled like tossed bedsheets. The weather forecasters didn’t seem to know what the storm would bring—snow, hail, rain—it could be any or all of those, in any combination.
I thought of Grace and Fai—could they still be out in this? One hundred and forty-four hours. Almost a week. Where could they
be
?
The suggestion that they were being hidden by the Tuatha De Danann seemed laughable again. So I did laugh. The sound echoed in the barn, mocking me. There was no one to hear. Eddy was busy with the generator. I could feel the hundred-year storm inside me, no choice but to ride it out. The prickly feeling that someone was watching swept over me. I felt a human presence, almost breathing nearby. I froze.
“Eddy?” I whispered. But my voice was lost in a deafening crack of thunder. I flinched when the scent of lilacs swirled around me. I ran. Overhead, the sky was purple. The crows had fled. The snow had begun again, huge wet flakes big as half-dollars. I ran for the house as marble-sized rounds of ice began pelting me.
I went to the lean-to near the kitchen that housed the generator. Eddy was bent over it. He’d stripped his shirt off in spite of the cold. He was swearing as well as sweating. He looked up when I shoved the door open.
“Oh. Sorry for the language, dearie. I can’t get this thing to turn over.”
“Good thing Nathan is bringing batteries for the flashlights, then. And water.” No water in the house without power to run the pump, unless Falcon Eddy had some success with the generator. “If he makes it back at all.” At least we had enough wood to last through the winter, big storm or no. We’d have heat courtesy of the woodstoves and fireplaces.
“I’ll get this going if it kills me.” He gave the side of the generator a gentle kick. The reverberation of boot on metal was echoed by another peal of thunder.
“Eddy, you’ve been out here for a while?”
“Wish I hadn’t been. Why?”
“I just thought … Never mind. It’s starting to snow. And hail. I’ll just be in the kitchen, okay?”
“And I suppose I’ll be out here.”
“I’m making a big pot of beef stew for us all, in case the power goes. We can heat it on the woodstove.”
“It wouldn’t have Guinness in it, now?”
“It could.”
“That’s fine!” I could see in his face the boy he’d been.
“I just hope Nathan and Jolon make it.”
“If they don’t, then more for us.”
That was one way of looking at it. I closed the door against the cold, glad at least that I could brighten Eddy up with thoughts of stew.
I started chopping onions and listened for Nathan and the SUV, the whine of Jolon’s sled, the thump and roar of the generator starting up. Any sign that soon a door would open and one of the men would rescue me from the fear that tingled up my spine, lodged in my brain like a prehistoric animal. I chopped and braised and poured and stirred, all the time pushing back the panic. I resisted the urge to go for the Book. I didn’t need it anymore. I knew, had known since the not-quite-silent barn. No matter what the Book told me, I knew it was Voss, my Fetch, coming for me.
