What the Dead Want (5 page)

“When the Civil War started,” Esther went on, “James went off to fight and left George here to be pastor of the church.”

“You can just do that?” she asked skeptically. “You can just be, like . . . I'm leaving, so you're the pastor now, tell everyone Jesus hates bigots?” Gretchen asked.

“Hush,” Esther said. “Don't be a wise ass. Where was I? Oh . . . in any case, George kept working in the family business, and presumably kept up the mission of the church. He and Fidelia got married and had two children, Celia and Adam, and from what we know they kept helping people escape slavery, bringing them through here. Some even settled in the town eventually.

“And then everything went to hell. We don't know exactly what happened. The church was burned to the ground. We don't even know how many were killed, though some think it could have been half the congregation. The entire thing was ruled an accident. But it's obvious it was white supremacists. No one knows how they found out it was a safe house. No one did anything to put out the fire or to save the people who were trapped inside.” Esther looked down and shook her head, lit a cigarette. “An accident,” she said with disgust.

A shiver went through Gretchen. She thought about people finally broken free of their torturers in the South,
then terrorized, hiding in the church, only to die here in the north, murdered by the same kind of racists they'd escaped. She thought of the people who did nothing—made it possible for the racists and Klan to grow stronger, to get away with killing the innocent.

“Fidelia and her daughter, Celia, also died in the fire,” Esther said.

“They were African American?” Gretchen asked, as she looked again at the portrait. It was sepia-toned, and difficult to make out Fidelia's complexion. Esther shook her head. “No. They were the only white people who died that day.”

Gretchen stood and walked to the middle of the room, suddenly restless. And people think New York City is violent, she thought. They think that things are so quaint and wholesome in the country, or back in the past.

“The Axtons held on to the house through all of that?” Gretchen said.

“Well, the family business was still thriving, of course,” Esther said. “The Axtons made a lot of money shipping goods overseas. After that the church was never rebuilt and life just went on, business as usual.”

“But why would anyone want to keep living here? I can't imagine living on the site of that kind of crime.”

“Come now, sweets,” Esther said, looking at her with
weary incredulity. “There are few places in the world that aren't soaked with blood when you take a close look. And people need a place to live.”

“So the house was passed on through George? Did he remarry?”

“No,” Esther said. “George stayed here and raised the little boy—Adam—the only descendant who lived through all the violence; he was an infant at the time and home with a nanny.”

“And is there somehow . . . is there a link between this and my mother disappearing?” Gretchen thought of some centuries-old cover-up her mother might have discovered.

“Maybe a lot,” Esther said, a strange expression beginning to cloud her face. “But you look exhausted, and I've talked your ear off since you got here. I'll tell you more after you get settled in.”

Gretchen nodded, even though she couldn't imagine getting settled in a place so dilapidated. She wanted to know more right away. And to be able to give it all the proper thought and scrutiny. She could see why her mother would have wanted to study their family history more—document it—but the idea that anything that happened over a century ago was tied to her mother's disappearance seemed sketchy, and maybe this tale of fire and freedom fighters, which she'd never heard before, wasn't even true.
A prominent wealthy family running a safe house for the Underground Railroad? A particularly brutal killing of escaped slaves? She'd never encountered it in a New York State history class, even a story that said it was an accident, and it seemed like the kind of historical event that would be written about.

Esther stood to leave.

“Wait, Aunt Esther,” Gretchen said. “Why have
you
stayed here all this time?”

“There's much to be said for having a roof over your head,” Esther said. “Listen, sweets, good things happened here too. Hundreds of people who'd been enslaved got to freedom through this house and the church, and they went on to have children, generations of people, some who still live around here. Those are a couple reasons I stay. The others we'll talk about over a good stiff drink.”

Gretchen thought about her aunt out here alone in this enormous house surrounded by miles of forest, on the site of a massacre. Crazy or not, she was a brave old lady.

“You get settled in,” said Esther. “I'll go make us some cocktails. The washroom is down the hall, and my room is right above yours. But we'll save the tour for later.”

Gretchen tried to smile. She wished Esther had said something about dinner instead of drinks. Suddenly she was very hungry, and this made her miss the city, where
you could just step out the door and get something delicious right away. Asian fusion or Indian would be wonderful right now. She was about to suggest they go out to eat and then stay in a hotel, get a fresh start on archiving in the morning. But when she looked up at Aunt Esther, the woman was smiling at her with such love and old-lady coolness, she felt embarrassed to bring it up. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had seemed this happy to see her, to be with her—except, of course, Simon. And there was that shadow of her mother's face she could see in Esther's, and the shadow of Fidelia in all of them. It melted her skepticism, made her want to learn more—even if all she'd find out was that Esther's various ideas about accidents and church burnings were because she had dementia. She'd stay. At least for the night. Go through the letters Esther had given her, start looking at what her mother had been collecting. Tomorrow she'd give Esther the kind of help she really needed: find out about hiring a cleaning crew, maybe get an antique appraiser to have a look around. Maybe even see if there was a doctor who could give her a checkup. Her father's mother had dementia and she had nurses living with her to help her. Country people always thought they had to do everything themselves—a lifetime of not being able to order takeout probably does that to you, Gretchen thought.

Once Esther had gone downstairs Gretchen went out into the hall and looked at the mirror again. The surface was smoky and mottled and it distorted her reflection. It seemed to have a magnetic pull. Not like an actual magnet, but the way cool water feels on a hot day, draws you to it. The wasps buzzed from inside the vase but she wasn't afraid of them. She reached out again to the mirror and watched the reflected hand reach toward her. Then, again as if it were rising from water—she saw her own face, distorted by the mottled surface, her eyes looking like they were trying to tell her something she couldn't yet understand. Her skin broke out in goose bumps and she tore herself away from the mirror's pull.

This awful thing, Gretchen thought, will be the first to go up on eBay. She went back into the library and shut the door.

Gretchen didn't bother to unpack but sat on the creaky bed and looked around. There were boxes and
boxes of photographs and letters. The bookshelves were stuffed with cracked leather-bound books. Shelves full of classics, and also academic books, historical tomes, great novels. This was one of the last places her mother had been; she was surrounded by the things Mona had amassed to study and could almost feel her presence. The Axtons had once filled
this mansion, generation after generation. Now there was just her and Esther. The idea of going through the library for clues to something she barely understood was daunting. But it was as close as she'd ever come to any lead on her mother. She flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

The afternoon sunlight shifted as the curtain blew in the breeze and something on top of one of the tall glass-front bookcases caught her eye. It looked like a hatbox, and she realized that probably all the clothes people had worn were also still in the house. She had always been fascinated with vintage clothes. She walked over and stood on tiptoe to take it down, and when she opened it, she found a very well-preserved hat. It had a double black-lace-scalloped border and a shiny black bow in the back. She opened the door to the musty closet and indeed there were hangers full of dresses, and more boxes on the floor. She touched a gauzy pink skirt topped with a narrow bodice and it nearly came apart in her hand, delicate and brittle and worn through from age and neglect.

Crouching, she opened a few of the boxes to find shoes in a size that seemed impossibly small. In a taller square box with a plain white card affixed to the top she uncovered something else: a pile of leather-bound books, all tied together with a black ribbon with a round locket at the end of it. She opened the locket. Inside there was what
appeared to be a small clump of lint, but no, that wasn't it. It was hair that looked like it had come from two different heads, tied in a bow. On the inside of the locket someone had written
R & C
in a beautiful calligraphic hand. She snapped it shut.

The books beneath the ribbon turned out to be journals. Pages and pages all written in that same elegant handwriting she had read over as a girl, some of the pages dark with mold, the pages completely illegible; others were perfectly preserved. It was remarkable. Her mother had given her Fidelia's journal from when she was in her early teens, and here Gretchen was, nearly grown herself, discovering the rest of them. The years that chronicled Fidelia's days of cooking and sewing and caring for children. She cracked another one open. And breathed in the smell of decaying paper and fading ink—and her heart raced.

February 17, 1860

Last night James returned with a young man—or perhaps not a man yet, still a child. He wore coarse fabric over his head like a hood to cover himself, and he had taken off his shirt to cover an old woman. She was so small that at first I thought he was holding only a checkered cloth in his arms. I said to follow me, but he indicated that he could not, another was still to come, and soon she ran from the trees in a dress too long for her. Perhaps five years
of age, with bright eyes as if a candle had been lit behind them. I had no time to ask her name, only to tell her to hurry after me. I felt shame and rage that anyone could treat a person as she'd been treated. George told me this morning that these three belong to a Mr. Grant, of Baltimore, who offers one hundred dollars of reward for the return of the boy and the girl together. Or fifty dollars each. The old woman he no longer needs.

She stood for a moment, stunned to be holding this kind of artifact in her hands. Esther wasn't just making things up. Gretchen thought about her ancestors—how good they were, or maybe simply so guilty they couldn't bear to watch any more pain. She looked up again at the portrait of Fidelia and for the first time felt a connection to her roots, or maybe to the roots of all women fighting for something they believed in.

Gretchen checked her phone, dying to talk to Simon, and—at last!—there was full reception in this room.

She took a picture with her phone of the wall of books and portraits, the rosebush just visible out the window and tattered curtains blowing in the breeze, and sent it to Simon with the understated message
I'm here.
Three seconds later he replied,
OMFG insane!

“You don't know the half of it,” she whispered, then headed downstairs.

Dear James,

How are your studies? I was happy to hear you received the mittens! I bought so much wool from Elias's farm that I have been knitting up a storm. It's good to have something to do with my hands as I find myself quite restless. Reading the papers you send is a joy, though it makes me even more eager to be by your side. To be engaged in meaningful work.

I'm wondering if it would not be too presumptuous of me to ask you to send me some books. You know too well that the quality and variety of books here in Mayville leaves something to be desired and I fear becoming a sheltered country mouse! My father has even forbidden me a subscription to the
N
EW
Y
ORK
E
VENING
P
OST.
Were it not for our friendship, James, or the conversations with the ladies who tend the sheep at Elias's, I would be even more badly informed.

Yours,

Fidelia

“M
AYBE SHE DIDN
'
T TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT WAS GOING
on here because you were too young,” Esther said, answering Gretchen's question and swirling her drink with a bony finger as she settled into a chair that had long since lost its original form.

Gretchen shook her head. She was a city girl. She'd seen more strange things just riding the subway with her parents before she was five than most people see in a lifetime. And her mother told her all kinds of things when she was very young; about ghosts and psychics and what the Chelsea Piers were like in the seventies. It wasn't like her mother kept things from her. She wanted Gretchen to be
strong and able to take care of herself, to think for herself. There had to be a better reason her mother had been silent on nearly everything Axton-related.

She took the tiniest sip of the gin fizz Aunt Esther had made her. This liquor tasted flammable or like it would make her blind. Gretchen thought maybe another reason this tough, smart white-haired old lady never made it out of upstate New York all these years was because she was an alcoholic.

Esther held up her glass in a toast and Gretchen took her picture.

“Okay. So tell me about it,” Gretchen said. “All of it. Did you ever visit when my mother was a kid living here?”

“No,” Aunt Esther said. “In those days, I was traveling.” She rattled the ice in her glass and downed the clear liquid. “When your mother's parents moved, they just gave the house to me, didn't even want to sell it, or have anything more to do with it. Piper's death had taken so much out of them. Mona had some little tumble, tripped on a rope, and they made their decision to leave; move on and concentrate on giving your mother a good life.

“When I first came back, I thought I would simply pack up everything, sell it, and move to New York City. But after a little while of poking around here I knew the house needed me.” Esther got a distant look on her face and
shook her head almost imperceptibly. “I failed it, Gretchen, I failed the house. But I stayed as long as I could.”

It was clear that she had indeed “failed the house” in some way—in forty years she'd not managed to do anything practical, like rent out rooms or renovate—but to say the house “needed her” seemed crazy.

Why wouldn't someone living alone have sold some of the furniture or artifacts? The place was full of antiques and architectural salvage, and the vintage clothes alone could make thousands in New York. If Janine had inherited this house, it would be shipshape by now and they'd be sitting on some fancy modern furniture watching TV and eating takeout while landscape architects put in a placid Japanese garden in place of the crazy overgrown yard.

Gretchen was waiting for the details Esther had promised. But the woman just took another sip of her drink and seemed to be lost in thought.

“That's a beautiful piano,” Gretchen said, trying to change Esther's mood, get her talking about something relevant again.

“Some of the keys stick a little, but Hawk tuned it just two months ago and it sounds fine. He's quite a musician. Plays a mean banjo, has a good ear. It should be fine for another year. But you'll have to take better care of it. I've left instructions about all of this, of course, for when I'm
gone. All of it. And you'll need to talk to Hawk pretty soon, I figure. He and his sister, Hope, are right down the road if you need help—oh, you know that, you saw their house. You'll like Hope, she's a smart one. Their mother's famous too. You'll be fast friends.”

Suddenly, Gretchen's aunt seemed full of melancholy urgency. All the “wes” in her conversation had disconcertingly been replaced by the word “you.” Gretchen nodded but said nothing. She had no intention of staying in the place alone, and it suddenly looked like Esther might actually bail, maybe even after this drink.

“Hey, are you going somewhere right now?” Gretchen asked.

“Soon,” Esther said. “Soon. Why don't you go play the piano for us, sweets.”

Gretchen got up to do as her aunt requested but she felt uneasy, as if Esther might leave when her back was turned.

If Esther was going to be leaving, Gretchen wanted to be able to come and go. And by “go” she meant
go home
. The good thing about being raised by her dad, who was always gone, and by Janine, who was great at fixing things, was that Gretchen had learned by example how to get things done. Janine was a great combination of meticulous and coolheaded. And when faced with a situation like this,
Gretchen missed her. She wanted nothing more than to channel all the practical powers of Janine. She'd delegate tasks, have coherent and pointed conversations in which she'd explain exactly what should be done, then go home and sit on the couch and eat ice cream while other people did what she'd laid out. Competently. If they did things incompetently, she'd get someone else to do it. No big deal. Gretchen wished she could go read all Fidelia's letters and journals while someone else dealt with the mess of the house. Some rooms seemed so frighteningly dilapidated she thought she might fall through the floor.

Gretchen went over to the piano. She set her gin fizz beside her on the bench. On the music stand was a little faded prayer card, torn and scorched across the top and bottom. It read:

        
Blood that washest away our sins;

        
Cleanse, sanctify, and preserve our souls to everlasting life.

        
Hail to thee true body sprung from the Virgin Mary's womb:

        
The same that on the cross was hung and bore for man the bitter doom.

        
Suffer us to taste of thee,

        
In our life's last agony.

Gretchen put her hands on the keys and then pulled them away immediately. It felt like touching snow, and sent a shudder through her body. Like the mirror, the keys were ice-cold.

“Someone walk on your grave?” Esther chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling.

Gretchen looked up and smirked, then put her hands back on the keys, and this time, they felt fine. She must have imagined it. The house, the news of her mother having been there, must be getting to her.

Gretchen knew very few songs but enjoyed playing nonetheless. At Gramercy Arts, where she went to school, she'd had piano and drum lessons. The piano was, in fact, in tune, like Esther'd said, and she started playing a Nick Cave song, humming along to the quiet pretty melody, and singing a stanza or two sporadically. “I don't believe in the existence of angels . . . ,” she sang, “but looking at you I wonder if that's true. . . .”

It was a sad song that always made her happy. Esther leaned back in her chair to listen and Gretchen closed her eyes as she sang and felt herself drifting, her body heavy and light at the same time.

A cool draft blew in from behind her and she opened her eyes. There were two little girls sitting beside her, maybe six years old, wearing ragged white dresses that
appeared to be made of the same tattered dingy material as the curtains. Gretchen gasped, took her hands from the keys as if they'd been burned. She looked back in terror at Esther—who was gazing placidly back at her as if nothing were wrong.

Gretchen blinked, closed her eyes, shook her head and then opened them again. They were still there. One of the girls smiled defiantly and turned her head to the side, like a contortionist in the circus, her vertebrae cracking. Then she leaned down and quickly, fiercely, like a snake striking, bit Gretchen above her hip. She could feel the child's little teeth wrenching the soft skin at her waist, shocking, searing. The other little girl grabbed at Gretchen pleadingly with her tiny filthy hands. Then both of them laughed.

Gretchen gasped in pain and terror. She stood up, knocking the bench over, and suddenly she was falling backward, Aunt Esther catching her. Her glass shattered on the floor.

“There, it's okay,” Esther said, “it's okay. You fell asleep while you were playing.” She tried to look gentle and comforting but she just looked sheepish and drunk. “Looks like you can't hold your gin fizz, can you, sweets?” There was a hard edge to her voice and it made Gretchen feel more frightened. She was trembling and couldn't catch her breath. The sun had already gone down, there was
nowhere for her to go now, and only spotty cell reception. The vision or dream or whatever it was had terrified her. And, it seemed to her now, the house smelled faintly of smoke.

Shaking, she sat and tried to collect her thoughts, looking around the room for the girls. But no. There were no little girls. Her side hurt where she had been bitten but she was too scared to look and see if there was a mark. Esther made no attempt to clean up the glass. She offered her another gin, but no water or food. Finally Gretchen managed to steady herself by looking through the camera and framing shots of the parlor: the south-facing window, the curio cabinet, the fragile wooden chairs.

She walked away from the piano while Esther poured herself another drink. Gretchen sat stunned, hungry and tired, staring at the empty space where the children had sat. Then she got back up and began pacing nervously. Anyone would want to leave after that, she told herself. Anyone. The fact that she was planning to stay there at all—stay in her own newly inherited mysterious house, which was full of nightmares and maybe even actual historical atrocities—was nothing short of a miracle; it was against her better judgment at the very least.

Something scraped across the floor in the other room and Gretchen jumped and looked at Esther, who gave her
an impenetrable twinkling, gin-soaked look. Then she heard the sound of dozens of tiny feet running overhead. A veritable stampede of rats or raccoons. Esther ignored it completely, as if it hadn't happened.

Why am I even doing this?
Gretchen thought.
Why am I here at all?
Since her mother's disappearance Gretchen had done very few things she didn't like doing. She was good at walking away from anything that wore on her. Suddenly she felt a great longing for home. It was civilized back in the city and it had been a stupid decision to come here. The clutter alone could drive a person mad. She didn't want another pipe dream about finding her mother; at the idea of connecting with that side of the family, of looking into her mother's research, she could almost feel the well of disappointment building and waiting to overflow upon her when it turned out there was nothing to find. What kind of “clues” was Esther talking about?

She wanted to be back in her neat apartment on Eighty-Eighth and Park.

There were too many rooms and too much stuff in Esther's house. Hundreds of years of families living and talking and loving and fighting and possessing things. She could understand why her mother would have liked it: the mystery, the idea of “haunted” objects—which she'd talked about often. She could understand why Esther would want
to catalog the family history, but did they have to actually stay in this building to do all that? She looked again at her aunt Esther. The lady who was, even now, totally unflappable, a genuinely interesting person in her combat boots, highball glass in her hand—but she'd much rather hang out with her in Manhattan.

There's a reason eight million people live in New York City
, Janine had said just that morning, and she sure wasn't kidding. Gretchen was starving. She wanted to get out of there and walk to the subway and go downtown and get some Indian food, a
kati
roll or maybe some
chana
saag
. Then go to the Film Forum and watch a movie with Simon. Afterward they could sit in a café all night. That sounded like a good night. Not whatever this was. She didn't want to think about what
this
was, because it was beginning to make her heart race and her hands sweaty.

She pulled out her phone—no reception again. She wondered if her room was the only one in the house with reception. “Esther,” she said, “I'm going to go to my room and call my friend.”

“Bad idea,” her aunt said.

“What?”

“Bad idea this time of night.”

“Are there . . . ?” Gretchen was too frightened to say
the word. She didn't know if she was about to say rats or ghosts.

“Rodents,” Esther said. “They're nocturnal. You wanna hang out down here until you're really ready to shut yourself in your room.”

“Are you
kidding
me?”

That was it. There was no way she was spending the night in this house trapped in her room by a herd of rodents. She shook her head in disgust and began walking toward the door. But there were so many doors and so many rooms that opened into other rooms. She was startled how easy it was to get lost just between the parlor and the porch and had to backtrack several times. Esther walked calmly behind her all the way saying things like, “Now, now. Take it easy,” and, “It just takes a little getting used to around here is all.”

Gretchen quickened her pace, gripped by an irrational fear that she might never find the front door, or that she was still dreaming. Finally, she flung open the door and rushed out onto the porch.

The dusky summer air enveloped her, smelling like wet grass and roses. Crickets were chirping, an owl was forlornly hooting. It was an ideal bucolic moment, more than a little jarring after being in the claustrophobic
house, and after what had happened at the piano. The stars were coming out, covering the whole sky in a blanket of shining pinpricks of light—she had never in her life seen such a beautiful sky, or felt the balmy air of such a lush landscape. It was both stunning and calming. Gretchen propped her camera on the edge of the porch to steady it, set a very slow shutter speed, then shot the sky. And the outline of the forest behind it. Taking pictures made her feel invincible.

Esther might be crazy, but she was right about one thing—if Gretchen was going to look into what had happened to her mother, if her mother had, in fact, gone missing sometime after visiting Axton mansion, she needed to keep a cooler head. She must have dozed and had a nightmare back in the house, that was all. Any house left neglected like that would begin to feel frightening and claustrophobic, and not eating all day certainly affects your thinking. Of course that was all—there was no other explanation.