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Authors: Chrysler Szarlan

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BOOK: The Hawley Book of the Dead
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“Oooh!” Caleigh squealed. “Tell that one!”

“Well, sometime in the 1800s, this guy was driving a wagon with his wife and baby through the town of Jolon, going to claim his land. The Indians warned him the river was too high to cross, but he was dumb and tried it anyway. His wife’s head got chopped off, and she haunted the town forever after, looking for her head.”

“Cool!” Caleigh had a consuming love of ghost stories.

“But I found Mom’s old Jolon, too. It’s got to be him, or else he’s a performance artist that looks about sixteen in Seattle, or he had a sex change and is a lady realtor in Texas. There were only three actual people with that first name.”

“Well, where is he then?” My skin stung, hot all over, like a sudden fever had engulfed me.

“You have to guess!”

Nathan, looking up from spooning Mrs. Pike’s pot roast, told Fai, “No need to torture your mother,
chère
.”

“Oh, all right, then. He’s here. In Hawley. He’s the chief of police!”

“You were right,” Grace begrudged her. “He came back. Not that we care. We don’t need him.”

I hoped she was right. I hoped we wouldn’t need to have anything to do with the police in Hawley.

“Is Mom okay?” Caleigh was staring at me.

“Hey, Mom. You look pale.”

I felt pale. I felt like all the blood had drained from my body. I looked down at my laden plate, picked up my fork. “Nothing dinner won’t cure,” I asserted, pushing away thoughts of Jolon. I was the mom. It was up to me to keep on, always, in the midst of any storm, in the real world or in my own heart. We bent over our plates to do justice to Mrs. Pike’s pot roast.

After dinner and a ferocious game of Scrabble, I made the girls turn in early. They clamored for a Revelation story, so I told them about our ancestor who had spied for the patriots during the Revolutionary War. Her power was reading minds. After the story, I settled them, kissed them all good night, and went to my room. I paged through a new cookbook. I like reading cookbooks before bed. They’re soothing, innocuous. Nothing troubling in a cookbook. But I couldn’t concentrate on the recipe for polenta soufflé with mushroom cream sauce I’d turned to. Our big day, our candlelit dinner with the night and the forest pressing in around us, had not tired me. The yaw and pitch of my memories, and the discovery of Jolon’s return, unsettled me. I gave up on sleep, went to my office, and sat at the desk. Right by the phone was a Hawley telephone directory with a picture of the historical society on the cover. I opened it to the first page. There it was in black and white: “Chief of Police, Jolon Adair,” and a phone number. My hand went to the phone without my consent. I snatched it back. It was thirty years too late to call. I’d keep the past in the past. I slapped the town directory shut, went out to the widow’s walk. I paced its length, heard an owl calling for its mate. I thought about that more recent past that had made me into a widow, walking. I thought of Jeremy, in those few moments before I pulled the trigger, juggling bright things for the last time. Barely two months ago. I shook my head, tried to clear the image. It never did me any good to remember that night. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I thought of the shirt that still held my husband’s scent, the first thing I’d unpacked. I’d had enough memories for one day, enough pain. I went to bed, where I dreamt of Jeremy anyway. I
dreamt of being with him in the golden sunlight of a long western afternoon, where I had thought we’d live forever, together. It wasn’t a nightmare, but good dreams can be bad, too. They are almost worse than the nightmares, their fleet moments of hope always shattered by waking.

Caleigh’s Vision: Nightlight

Caleigh minded the move to Hawley much less than her sisters, because of her string. It was always with her. Plain white, woven, hard string that slipped through her hands easily, yet took form quickly and held its shape, the lines crisp. She liked yarn less, even with all the colors. It didn’t slide as well into the forms she required. For every pattern had a different reaction and interaction with the world. She had to be precise and careful.

That is what he’d told her, the magician who had given it to her, years ago, when she was only five. The magician was not a close friend of her parents, but she knew him. So when she saw him in the playground at the park she went to sometimes with her friends and their mothers, she was not afraid. She went about her business, which was hanging from the monkey bars. She was a pro at monkey bars. So why she should suddenly lose her grip and begin to fall, she couldn’t think. She had that heart-stopping feeling for only an instant, and then was caught up by the magician, the not-quite friend. He set her down and brushed her off. “A good thing I was near, Miss Caleigh,” he told her. “That might have been a nasty tumble.” His smile transfixed her, made her think of Siegfried and Roy’s tigers, for some reason. “You remember me, don’t you?” he asked her, his very white teeth gleaming.

She nodded. She did remember him. She’d seen him at the magic award shows her parents sometimes took them to. He was tall, taller than her father, with coal black hair. Even though he was older than her dad, he was very handsome, like the prince in the fairy tales. He wore his magic cape, though it was hot outside, and his tuxedo. That didn’t seem so strange to Caleigh, a child of magicians. Maybe he’d just come from his matinee show, and hadn’t bothered to change. It happened. Everyone around Las Vegas was used to seeing performers out in the normal world wearing costumes of some kind.

More troubling was his breath, sweet like candy. And his eyes. They seemed extremely old and keenly watching, as if he were the wolf come to eat her up. But only for a minute, then he laughed and held out a shining length of string. “This,” he said, “is for you!” As he threaded his long fingers through it, wove and twirled it, it turned into a white rabbit made of string. Caleigh could see its long ears poking up. Then he said a strange word, like a magic word,
“I-undias!”
And a real, fuzzy white rabbit hopped up through the grass and nibbled at her sneaker.

“How did you do that?”

“It’s easy,” the magician told her. “You were born to do it, too.” He wove the white string through her fingers. His hands made her own feel fiery when he touched her, but then a pattern emerged. It was a butterfly, and yes, a blue butterfly came from out of the sky and landed on her shoulder. “You can see it isn’t difficult at all. Just practice, hone your patterns, and make sure you’re careful to only summon what fits wherever you happen to be. That’s the rule.” She was staring at the butterfly with its azure wings. She couldn’t quite believe that she had summoned it. Maybe it was a trick the man was playing on her. She looked into his old eyes again, the string slack in her fingers. “Oh, it’s real enough,” he assured her. “But let it be our secret. You needn’t tell anyone, even your lovely mother, that I gave you this string. Its magic could fade the more people know about it. That’s the way magic works. You know that, don’t you, Caleigh?”

“Yes,” she told him. Her mind felt heavy, her tongue slow. She thought she might fall into his dark, deep eyes. “I know that.” Then she saw a flash of red behind him. It seemed to release his hold on her. Her friend Sharon’s mother walked toward them, her red shirt fluttering in the breeze. When Caleigh looked back, both the man and the rabbit were gone.

“Where did he go?” she asked Sharon’s mom.

“Who, sweetheart?” She smoothed Caleigh’s hair, wove it through her fingers.

“The man.” Then she suddenly remembered the man’s magic name. Setekh the Magnificent. But she wasn’t supposed to tell it. Sharon’s mom scanned the playground for strange men.

“Just a man who had a white rabbit,” Caleigh told her.

“Oh, a magical friend of yours?”

Caleigh nodded. She guessed that about summed it up.

“Well, don’t worry about him.” Sharon’s mom seemed relieved. “Come and have a snack with the other girls.” And Caleigh went, trailing her string.

For the most part, she followed the rules, but when she was younger, she liked to confound the universe by calling forth lightning in February, moose in the city. Once she had perfected the patterns, she could change things, summon things. Some patterns took longer to perfect than others, especially ones that affected living things. When she was six, the moose she’d conjured onto the Las Vegas Strip was killed by a car while it was ambling by her parents’ theater, and she realized the power that was in her hands. She felt terrible, promised herself she’d be more careful. Since then, Caleigh tried to weave her patterns in accordance with the elements and the geography, as the magician, Setekh, had told her. Sometimes she felt the fiery feeling he had stirred up in her fingers, but it no longer troubled her. She thought of him fondly. After all, he had given her the string, her most precious possession.

But Caleigh was worried that her ability to summon with string hadn’t followed her to Hawley. The first night, she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, before she had a chance to find out. She woke in a room bathed in moonlight. Her string was beneath her pillow. She pulled it out, lay in bed, and tried a simple pattern, one she’d worked many times before. “Nightlight,” she called it, and when it was formed, it looked like a flashlight beam. At first, she couldn’t see the pattern in the darkness, but as her fingers worked, a faint glow began to creep from the corners, sliding up the wall to encase her in the bed. Caleigh boxed out the corners of the pattern, then said “Stay,” as she might to her dog if she had one (why hadn’t she ever thought to summon a dog for herself?). She dropped the string. The light remained. “Well, that’s all right then,” she said to no one in particular. She sighed and closed her eyes, but her fingers still worked on the string, as if she were telling herself a bedtime story. Thinking of that, she wanted her book. She was reading
At the Back of the North Wind
, but she’d forgotten it in all the excitement of getting to Hawley, had left it
in her mother’s book bag, the one from the Petroglyph National Monument, where they’d gone the year before. She thought she’d seen Nathan carry the bag upstairs.

She listened hard, but didn’t hear anyone stirring. She thought it must be very late. She’d just run upstairs quick to get her book. Moonlight streamed into the hall from the window on the landing. She didn’t really need the nightlight, but it preceded her anyway, reminding her again of an obedient little dog. She climbed the stairs to the third floor quietly, her bare feet gliding on the smooth wood. The moonlight splashed small pools and intricate, lacy shadows in her path. The house was so still around her that she could hear her own breathing. If she had been a fearful child, she would have been afraid then.

Caleigh walked into her mother’s office and spied the Petroglyph bag, leaning against the desk. She shone her nightlight inside the bag. Just as she placed a hand on her book she felt someone watching her, but still she was not afraid, only curious. She spun around quickly, shone her nightlight at the watcher. It was a lady, in a painting from another time. The lady looked nice. She looked smart and very kind. She looked as if she was just about to ask or tell something important. Washed in moonlight and nightlight, Caleigh could see that the lady’s hand was pointing downward. All that blue, milky light shone on a slight crack in the wall just below the lady’s pointing finger. In the crevice, Caleigh saw a flash of red and gold.

She put down
At the Back of the North Wind
and slid her fingers over the wall. It was smooth and unbroken. The crack in it was gone. She shrugged her shoulders, scooped up her book, and ran on tiptoe back to her room.

Caleigh jumped into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and started reading by the nightlight, which had scooted in under the blanket with her. As soon as she started reading the part of the story about the fairies who lived in the woods, her eyes grew heavy. She dropped the book and slept.

Behind her eyes, in her dreams, a room popped up, a room that she knew to be the dining room below her. Only it was changed. The ceiling
was low, and plants hung from the rafters upside down. Herbs, she decided, like her grandmother grew.

A girl about her age walked into the room, carrying a metal pail. She dumped it into a wooden trough. She wore a long dress that touched the toes of her thick brown boots, and a white hat with sides like wings. Caleigh couldn’t see her face at first. A woman walked in then, way too old to be the girl’s mother. Maybe her grandmother. She wore a long brown dress as well, but only a delicate lace cap perched on her gray hair. She asked the girl, “Be the cows in the hollow?”

“They are.”

The girl took a big wooden spoon and had a drink from the trough, then handed the spoon to the woman, who shook her head. “Is your father down plowing still?”

“I brought him water.”

“Then rest, girl, and I’ll show you a thing you’ll need fore long.” The woman moved to the big brick fireplace that took up half of a wall. It was where the Noah’s Ark fireplace was now. The woman looked toward the door, pried out one brick, then another. She reached her hand into the space she’d made in the wall and pulled out a book with a faded red leather cover, gold writing. It looked very old. The woman stroked its pages.

“Tell no one of this. Keep this to your own breast. Soon you’ll be the woman of this house.”

“I cannot …”

“You know how it must be.” The woman spoke sharply. “I am old. I have lived beyond my years. You must know how to use your power. You will be the next to write in this Book. You will be the Keeper of the Book, Revelation.”

Caleigh’s eyes flew open. The girl, the woman, and the room spun, then were whisked away, just like when she closed a document on her computer.

Revelation
. The old-timey girl had the same name as her mother. She was one of them.

8

My eyes flew open. I sat up, but nothing seemed familiar, the dark shapes of furniture in the wrong places; even the dusty air seemed wrong. Then I remembered. We were in Hawley. The setting moon shone bright through the curtainless window, and its steady light calmed me. I remembered my dreams of Jeremy, then a weird pastiche of nightmare. I’d been in the theater, trying to practice a trick. The trick was called Book of Life, and it was one I’d never done. To perform the trick, I held a red leather book open before me, and in it I could see scenes from the past. People from other times lived their lives in it, were children, crawled then walked, learned to ride, work sums, tend fires. Courting couples were in the book. Battles and babies and treks through great forests and deserts were there, too. The trick was that every scene in the book must spring onto the stage, take its turn under the lights. I couldn’t make it happen, though. I couldn’t concentrate because a man’s voice was in my head, saying, “I’ll find you, my pretty one. I’ll have you yet. I’ll find you, always and forever.”

BOOK: The Hawley Book of the Dead
8.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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