The Secret (10 page)

Ezra leveled the rifle at Jonathan. “Do not get in my way again, son,” he growled, his voice hard and sharp as a steel blade. “I am warning you.”

Jonathan said nothing. Ezra turned back to the minister. “All Goodes will die,” he repeated.

Reverend Wilson clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Please do not shoot me,” he begged again. “I am not a Goode!”

“Your lies will not succeed with me,” Ezra snapped. “You cannot save yourself. My wife is dead because of you—and now you must pay the price.”

Delilah's father shook in terror. “It is true! I swear to you! I am not a Goode. Delilah was not a Goode either!”

He turned to Jonathan and added, “Jonathan—she lied to you!'

“W
hat are you
saying?”
Jonathan cried in disbelief.

“Do not listen to him, boy,” Ezra urged coldly. “He is only looking for a way to save himself.”

“I am telling the truth!” the minister insisted. “It was all a trick. A fraud! I
swear
it!”

Jonathan ignored his father and the rifle. “A trick?” he repeated weakly, grabbing the front of Reverend Wilson's robe. “A trick?”

“I—I wanted Delilah to marry you, Jonathan,” the minister sputtered, his eyes on Ezra's rifle. “We are so poor, you see. And you are so well off. Delilah—she came home and told me the story of your feud with the Goodes. I—I had an idea. I saw a way we could use it—to trick you into marrying her.”

“To trick me …” Jonathan murmured.

“I made her do it!” the minister cried. “I forced her
to.” He lowered his gaze to his daughter's body. He stared at it for a moment as if he just realized she was dead. Then, with a shudder, he pulled his eyes away.

“Delilah was a good girl at heart,” Reverend Wilson muttered. “A good girl.”

“This is all nonsense!” Ezra snarled. “Prepare to die, Goode! I have waited so long, so long—all my life—for this chance. You will not cheat me of my revenge with your desperate lies.”

“Please, Papa,” Jonathan begged, pushing the rifle aside. “Let him speak.”

“I forced Delilah to pretend that she was a Goode,” Reverend Wilson confessed sadly. “But I knew you would not marry her just because of that. So she made you think your dead sister was haunting you. She made terrible screaming noises at night. Delilah filled your well bucket with chicken blood. She made a cap with blue ribbons on it, like the one she saw in a painting of your sister. And she climbed your rose trellis to appear in your windows at night.”

Ezra lowered the rifle. His face grew red and his jaw trembled as he listened.

“Delilah lured your mother outside with that blue-ribboned cap,” the minister continued in a quivering voice. “She threw it into the well. Your mother leaned over to retrieve it. And—she fell into the well….”

He swallowed hard. “Delilah tried to help her, but she couldn't reach her.”

He stopped again. He was breathing noisily, his chest heaving under his dark robe.

“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Why did you make Delilah do all this?”

“We had to frighten you, to make you desperate,”
answered the clergyman. “So desperate you would do anything to stop the horrors. So desperate you would marry Delilah. We were so poor, you see. So poor—”

“But I loved her,” said Jonathan. “I would have married her anyway.”

He dropped to his knees beside Delilah's dead body. Her mouth had fallen open, and a trickle of blood ran down her chin. Jonathan stared at the body as if it belonged to a stranger.

The minister shuddered violently now. “I know you cannot forgive me,” he pleaded with Ezra, “but please, please do not kill me!”

Ezra's face hung slack. The anger faded from his eyes. The rifle fell from his hands and clattered on the church floor.

“My wife—my daughter—” he murmured. “The curse…”

His face had become as pale as Delilah's. His thin lips barely moved as he whispered, “The curse. The Fiers are truly cursed….”

His hands flew to his head and he uttered a sorrowful wail and tore at his graying hair. Then he ran from the church, screaming.

Jonathan heard a horse whinny. Then a piercing scream, and finally a sickening crunch.

“W
hat was that?” Jonathan cried, knowing the answer to his question.

He ran outside. A small crowd had gathered around a horse and wagon.

Jonathan shouted, “Papa! Papa!” and pushed through the silent crowd.

“Papa!” Jonathan cried, seeing Ezra sprawled on his back, a dark open wound in his side, blood puddling on the dirt street.

“Get the doctor!” someone cried. “This man has been trampled!”

Jonathan knelt beside his father. Ezra's eyes rolled around blindly for a second. Then they focused on Jonathan.

Ezra lifted his hand and let it fall on the silver amulet.

“Take this,” he whispered to Jonathan. He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his strength. “Jonathan—”

His voice grew weak. “The power of the Fiers is in this amulet. You must wear it always. Use it—use it to avenge my death.”

Ezra took one last, shuddering breath. Then blood poured from his mouth. His eyes froze in a fixed and lifeless stare.

“Papa—” cried Jonathan. “Papa …”

Jonathan buried his face in his hands and sank deeply into his sorrow.

So many people have died, he thought. Abigail, Mama, Delilah, Papa. All because of this dreaded curse.

His father's strange silver pendant glinted in the sun.

The curse dies with my father, Jonathan thought. I will put an end to it, here and now.

No minister would give Ezra a funeral or allow his body to be buried in a church cemetery. He had been insane, a murderer, Reverend Wilson had warned. So Jonathan had Ezra's body cremated. Now all that remained of Ezra was a jar of ashes.

Rachel cried herself to sleep. Jonathan listened helplessly to her sobs, every cry torturing him.

He sat by the hearth, waiting for her crying to stop. At last the house grew still, and he knew she was asleep.

He took Ezra's ashes and poured them into an iron strongbox. Then he picked up the silver pendant.

To Jonathan's surprise, the pendant grew hot in his hand. He saw flames, flames he thought would swallow him up.

But the flames died as quickly as they had appeared. And the jeweled pendant cooled.

Jonathan examined the pendant, felt its weight against his palm.

His father's last words echoed in his mind. “Use it—to avenge my death.”

No, thought Jonathan. No more revenge. No more feud. No more curse.

“I am sorry, Papa,” he whispered. “But I cannot let our family suffer any longer. There is still Rachel….”

He thought of his little sister, sleeping upstairs in her bedroom. She had already been through so much. But she might have a chance at happiness still. At least, Jonathan hoped so. He would do everything in his power to make her happy.

The first step, he decided, was to get rid of the pendant.

He dropped it into the strongbox. It landed softly on top of Ezra's ashes. Jonathan closed the heavy iron lid and locked it.

Then he took a lantern from its hook by the hearth. He made his way out into the night. He knelt beneath the apple tree. With a spade, he began to dig up the moist earth.

Bitter memories leapt to his mind as he worked under the tree. He tried to force them away as soon as they arose, but they kept coming back.

He remembered drinking lemon water with Rachel and Delilah one hot day, on that very spot. Delilah …

He stopped digging and shoved the iron box in the hole. Then he scooped dirt back on top of the box.

This box is Papa's coffin, Jonathan thought. This shallow hole, his grave. This lonely, secret ceremony is his funeral.

Papa and the cursed pendant will be buried here forever.

Jonathan finished filling the hole and smoothed the dirt. He left nothing to mark the spot.

It is done, Jonathan thought. He stood and wiped the dirt from his hands. That is the end of the horror. The curse is finished. The feud is over.

The Fiers and the Goodes will suffer no more.

N
ora's entire body tensed as she listened. She held her breath as the footsteps in the hall came closer and closer to her room. She waited for them to stop at her door….

But they passed by.

She exhaled, then picked up her pen and began to write again.

“Jonathan Fier hoped he could bury the curse along with Ezra's ashes,” she wrote. “And it seemed to be true. The evil stayed buried for one hundred years. For one hundred years the Goodes and the Fiers lived in peace.

“In fact, the feud was forgotten. Children grew up hearing none of the horrifying stories. They knew nothing of the curse upon the two families.”

But it is not easy to end a curse, Nora thought.

Jonathan Pier's great-great granddaughter innocently
unleashed the evil once again. During that hundred years of sleep, the evil power had grown even stronger.

Nora touched the pendant around her neck. Oh, she thought mournfully, if only it had stayed buried forever….

PART THREE

Western Massachusetts
1843