The Hawley Book of the Dead (7 page)

“If you don’t take off that alien life-form that calls itself a dress this minute, Mrs. Maskelyne, I swear I’ll do something drastic. I’m in a fair way to bursting.”

I reached down to feel his burstingness, laughed again. “Well, Mr. Maskelyne, you’ll just have to wait. I can’t take it off without help. I can’t even
pee
without help.”

“I’ll help you, then.”

“You’d just rip it.”

“So?”

“So I want to save it for our daughter.”

That sobered him. He sat up, stared at me. “You can’t mean it?”

“I might. I
think
so.”

He just sat for a moment, with that startled horse look he had. Then he leapt up, took my hands, pulled me to my feet, and hurried me outside again.

He stopped to talk to the glitter-rock cover band, and in moments they began the first familiar chords to “Golden Years,” and we danced, until long past the late English twilight descended. Jeremy, me, and the first glimmers of the twins inside me, we all danced. He bent his shining blond head down and kissed me, mussing my hair, then smoothing it down again. “What a perfectly disappearing darling you are, what a Revelation.”

So I became the Great Revelation, the disappearing half of the Amazing Maskelynes, and gave up the Dyer name.

Every feat of magic tells a story. Often it’s the story of resurrection. Of death and rebirth. We went through it countless times, Jeremy and I. Jeremy, my Maskelyne, my love. He was always there to take my hand, to hold me in his arms when I reappeared, resurrected, while the audience gasped, then cheered. He’d hold out his hand and there I’d be, back from the lobby of that other world. Until the day he died in my arms, and I became a Dyer for the second time, and probably forever.

The girls were beguiled by the town.

“Mmm … spooky. This place looks like it belongs in a Shirley Jackson story,” Grace said.

“Well, I like it. It’s cool.” Fai popped a car door open.

“I didn’t say I didn’t
like
it, you dweeb. And stop saying
cool
,” Grace commanded. “
No
body says
cool
anymore.”

“Are Grand and Gramps and Nan coming?” Caleigh asked.

“You never know about Nan, but Grand and Gramps will be here tomorrow. I thought we’d be too tired to be much fun tonight.”

“I’m not tired,” Fai informed me. “Hey, is that the barn, behind the house?” She scanned the lawn, the green paddocks, a breach in the woods that surrounded us. “The horses will love all the grass.”

“All you think about are horses.” Caleigh kicked her door open and jumped out.

“At least I’m not obsessed with
string
.”

“Stop, now. Who’s going to help me with the bags?” Nathan had the back hatch open, hefting suitcases and Caleigh’s stuffed animal trunk.

“I’ll help, let me.” Caleigh started pulling things from the back, while Grace and Fai slumped to the house, trying not to be seen and called back to help. I let them go. I lifted the heaviest of the suitcases out of the car, began wheeling it behind me. The twins left the front door open. Caleigh,
hauling a heavy duffel bag, staggered then dropped her load, ran back to me. There was a woman standing in the doorway. Gaunt and stiff, she wore a dark housedress, her hair ratcheted behind her head in an unforgiving bun. Grace may have been thinking of Shirley Jackson, but this woman put me in mind instantly of Mrs. Danvers in
Rebecca
.

Caleigh clung to me. “Mommy, there’s a lady!”

“Honey, it’s just Mrs. Pike. She’s going to be our housekeeper. Like Marisol back home.”

“But she’s nothing like Marisol. She’s old. And
really
wrinkly.”

“You’ll get used to her.” I kissed the top of her head, took her hand. It wasn’t often I still got to feel like the mother of a young child. Children grow up so fast; even ten-year-olds rarely want to be seen holding their mother’s hand. But Caleigh didn’t pull away.

“Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

We trudged up the walk, the stones slanted and uneven, grass growing between them. The suitcase thunked behind me, threatening to topple over.

Mrs. Pike didn’t rush out to help us. She raised an arm in greeting, that Yankee wave that I remembered from childhood, the hand unbending, unmoving, as if warning us to stop right there.

“You must be Mrs. Pike.” I smiled, held out my hand. She nodded curtly. I’d never actually clapped eyes on her before that moment. She came by way of a recommendation from Carl Streeter, who’d sent me her business card.
GOOD HOUSEKEEPER, COOK. REASONABLE RATES. RELIABLE
. The essence of brevity. When I called she’d been agreeable enough, except for one strange moment.

“Yut, could do for you weekday mornings.”

I told her the date we’d be arriving, that we would want dinner that night, and the address of the house.

“That’s at Hawley Five Corners,” she told me, as if I didn’t know where my own house was. I said that yes, it was, and a long pause hung between us, so long I thought the line had gone dead.

“Mrs. Pike?”

“Hang on, will you?” I heard a mumbled conversation, then Mrs. Pike
was back. “I’ll have to charge more. Fifty an hour.” It was twice her usual rate.

“May I ask why? It’s not far from the village.”

“Well, the roads are one thing. Dirt roads, wear and tear on the car.” But I could sense that there was something else, the other thing that Mrs. Pike wasn’t saying, nor would she.

“What’s the other thing? You said the roads were
one
reason.”

“Did I? The roads is all I meant. It’s only that.”

I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere. “Okay. Fifty is fine.”

I could tell by her silence that Mrs. Pike wasn’t expecting agreement. She thought I would balk, try someone else. I wanted to be done with the housekeeping question. I could find someone else if she didn’t work out, or maybe wouldn’t need anyone after the initial clean and spruce-up. “I’ll see you, then. October tenth. We’ll be there before dark, but I’d like you to wait for us, so the house is open. It will be more pleasant for my girls if someone’s there when we arrive.”

“Oh, someone will be there, don’t you worry.” Mrs. Pike laughed tinnily, a sound like a rusty hinge. It made me uncomfortable, a little shivery. Like she knew something I would have to find out on my own, like she had one up on me.

She seemed normal enough, however, standing in the doorway, greeting us with her thready smile. Just an elderly woman having to make ends meet. Maybe she’d heard about the work being done at the Five Corners, figured I could afford her doubled rate. Nothing strange in that.

“This is my daughter Caleigh.” Who had become unaccountably shy, turning her face away and pressing against me. “Grace and Faith were just here. My twins. Maybe you saw them?”

“I saw two others run upstairs. Why I came out.” The tinny laugh again. “Thought maybe they didn’t belong here.”

“I’m sorry if they startled you. They can be oblivious sometimes.”

“No, that’s all right, then. Just thought …” But she didn’t say what she thought.

“And this is Nathan Landry. Nathan is the girls’ cousin. He tutors them, as well, so they won’t be going to school in town.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Miz Pike,” he said, dropping the bags and taking her hand gently, as if it might break. “I’m sure you have a lovely dinner ready for us.” Always the charming southern gentleman, yet moving things along all the same. Nathan, the Renaissance man. I suddenly thought how his many talents would be wasted here, felt a stab of guilt that he’d left his life in the city for us. I hoped it wouldn’t have to be for long.

Either not noticing or not caring that Nathan was gay as well as charming, Mrs. Pike smoothed her hair, patted down her dress. “Supper’s keeping warm in the oven,” she told him. “Pot roast, potatoes, string beans. And there’s a white cake for dessert.”

“That sure does sound splendid, and we’re all famished.”

“Guess I’ll get along then, leave you to your supper and settling in.” She gave Nathan a smile, which faded as she looked back to me. “I’ll be by tomorrow morning, missus. Nine sharp.” She turned and marched out the door.

“Please call me Reve,” I petitioned her retreating back. She kept walking to her car, a Buick so ancient and decrepit I thought it surely had been abandoned in the forest. But the rusted, piebald car started right up, and Mrs. Pike rattled off, the car’s taillights glowing in the shadows beneath the many trees.

“Not exactly the Welcome Wagon,” Nathan remarked.

“No, but I think I like her. I guess I’m still a Yankee at heart.” And she seemed too taciturn to be much of a gossip. We hoisted our bags again, and the house claimed us.

No one in town knew anymore when the original part of the house was built, Carl Streeter had told me. But in 1775, when it was owned by the Sears family, a large extension was added. Urbane and his wife, Bethia (née
Dyer: She figured in some of Nan’s stories), lived there for many years, a well-to-do couple with eight children. Urbane was the first merchant of Hawley, and the progenitor of the Sears clan that populated all corners of these Berkshire hill towns. Urbane Sears came from Gloucester to open the Hawley General Store, now home to the hardware store and Pizza by Earl in the village. Then he married Bethia, and nine years later renovated the house at Hawley Five Corners for his growing family. He opened a second store there near the tavern. Neither building—store nor tavern—exists now. Just old cellar holes a quarter mile down Hunt Road. That was the thumbnail historical sketch Carl gave me, unbidden. He probably had no idea the town’s history involved my family. As far as I knew, Nan never made an appearance here, never kept up the houses, just paid the taxes and left them benignly neglected. Carl didn’t seem to know that the Five Corners had been in our family one way or another for more than two hundred years. I didn’t enlighten him. Our family stories stayed in the family.

When I’d seen the photographs Carl e-mailed, I knew instantly which house was the one to restore for my own family. The lines of the Sears house were still true, the barn large and airy. But the widow’s walk was the main draw for me. It was a peculiar addition to a house of that era, a few hundred miles away from the sea. There is no record of why it was there, but since Urbane Sears had come originally from Gloucester, that seemed reason enough. Every other house built in that period in those seaside towns north of Boston had a widow’s walk. It was what Urbane was used to, I guessed. And compelling to me. Now I was a widow, after all. So I ignored the rambling King house, the Warriner house with its broad porch. Because as a young girl I had looked up and wondered so many times about the view from that narrow catwalk on the mansard roof. Although Jolon and I had managed to jig the locks of the church and the other houses, we had never been able to break into the Sears house to see that view. And when I’d asked Nan where the key was, she told me to mind my own beeswax.

I remembered coming upon the houses with Jolon the first time we rode his pinto ponies bareback into the forest. It was the summer I turned eight, the very first summer we were allowed to ride on our own. Even
then the abandoned village seemed to hold magic, to be a little unearthly, part of another world altogether. Although they’d been deserted for so many years, the houses were not decayed. I’d thought Nan was crazy when she’d urged me to go to Hawley as a place of refuge. When Carl Streeter sent the photos, I expected collapsed roofs and rotting hulls of houses. But they were the same as when I’d first seen them as a child. Untouched by time. It did seem as if the Five Corners was waiting for me.

All the same, everyone around Hawley probably thought
I
was crazy, to move there. The houses were in good shape, considering their age, but they were a far cry from the pristine homes of the other city folk who’d migrated to Hawley Village. They would need a lot of work to rise to that standard, so I was sure all kinds of rumors were flying. That I was the heiress of a steel or soap-producing family, that I’d married an old billionaire who’d finally kicked the bucket. That I’d won the lottery. The possibilities were endless, really. As for the fence, the electronic gate, well, we had to be wealthy to move there in the first place, and wealthy people were often paranoid, as well as crazy, weren’t they? But there was no security against ghosts. Mrs. Pike wasn’t the only one who reacted strangely to the mention of the Five Corners.

I’d asked Carl Streeter to hire electricians and plumbers, so the house would be marginally habitable when we arrived. But when he’d called Hawley or Plainfield contractors, they’d never called me with the estimates. Carl hemmed and hawed, but finally had to hire from Pittsfield, the nearest city “down the valley,” as they say in the hill towns.

Ghosts or not, the house was as ready for us as a hasty few weeks could make it. It had seemed silly to move all our things, so I’d enlisted Mrs. Pike to shop for the basics: some towels and sheets, a few pots and pans, plates and glasses. Carl had also been there to take delivery of the necessary pieces of plain pine furniture I’d bought online, so we had beds set up, a sofa, a kitchen table and chairs, a desk for my office.

Even so, the big house still felt empty and unlived in. It
felt
like it might be haunted. Mrs. Pike had begun cleaning, but the house retained an ancient smell, of old smoke and dry wood. An aura of disuse and abandonment pervaded the very air. Cobwebs still clung to corners, and the
walls needed washing. The floors were stained, the windows were dirty. But at least we could use new dishes, sleep in clean beds that first night.

I wanted to thank Carl, and when a big man with white hair and a handlebar moustache stepped out of the kitchen and crushed my hand with his big meaty one, I knew I’d have the chance.

“I came to let Mrs. Pike in, been fiddling with the water heater downstairs when she wasn’t happy with the temperature. Good to meet you in person. I’d be glad to show you around, since I’m here.”

After he’d taken me over the house, we went out to the barn. It still needed to be cleared of the bits and bobs that had been stored there and never taken out—nothing interesting, only old boards and cans of dried-up paint, some shredded old canvas tarps, and endless bales of musty, decaying hay. I’d have fresh hay delivered before the horses came, but I made a mental note to get the old nasty stuff cleared out, adding it to about a hundred other mental notes. So much needed to be done. But at least we were here. Safe. I crossed my fingers behind my back whenever I thought that word.