Dead Echo

by C.G. Banks

  *

  They’d arrived in Waddles Bluff, a small burg in Louisiana, late the next day at a depot largely devoid of people. They had no luggage, just the dusty clothes they’d left the fair wearing, but they did have a lot of money. Waddles Bluff, though neither had ever heard of the place, had been picked because of a “feeling.” The word sent a creeping twist of fear down Mertle’s spine but the pull proved irresistible. Regardless of the source of the talent, it had placed well over a thousand dollars in her pocket, and with no means of support, that kind of influence could not be lightly bug-a-booed.

  They took a horse-drawn carriage down the road to the closest motel, which was not even in the Bluff at all, but two miles farther down at Bailey’s Show. A small tourist attraction as it turned out, a cave that had only been discovered four years before. It was an enigma of the region, the ground being too swampy and irregular for permanent crevices, but existing nonetheless, an out-of-place vein of limestone struck through with numerous tunnels. The region had suffered a drought over the previous several years and people tended to forget the suspectness of the anomaly, especially, and with reason, the owner of the attraction, Douglas Hapshaw. At a dollar a head the weather could be damned.

  Mertle was not a bad-looking woman, and with a little applied purpose, Hapshaw came to notice her quickly in the motel. He’d never married and at forty-four, with his new windfall of income, had come to consider himself lacking somewhat socially. And, damn it all, it seemed the woman was always close by with just the thing he wanted or needed. She could repair hardware and tackle as good as any man he knew and she was a damn sight better to look at. Their interests ran common ground, his people, likewise, had been plains dwellers, and within two months Mertle and Elizabeth had taken to spending most of their time on the top floor of the four-story motel that Hapshaw had laid over to his convenience. Of course everything Mertle knew about the man came from her daughter. She discovered the things Mertle used to her advantage in such an off-hand manner, standing with her elbows resting on the window ledges as she stared off into the distance.

  Within six months the two were engaged and business was booming. Hapshaw took her suggestion to advertise in the more established papers society sections and the train brought more and more people every day. But the weather paid these aspirations no mind, reverting back to its former, natural state of wet, stormy conditions that had characterized the area for time out of mind until the drought. Of course, the rain caused a small rumble of disquiet in Hapshaw because he was not a fool to water tables, but he religiously scouted the touring part of the cave as the weather went it fits and starts and didn’t notice anything which he feared might prove dangerous to his clientele.

  Elizabeth, however, knew better.

  As the rain continued, she pulled her mother aside one night after dinner and told her there was a section of the cave that would go, soon, if the rain continued. She knew it she said, and Mertle remembered the “black circles,” the old man huddled like an infant at the fair that night. The last month they’d done an average of seventy-five people a day, and it had all seemed so easy. Hapshaw was talking about adding on to the motel, changing the sign to read “hotel” even, maybe even sharing her name on the marquee. She asked the only question she could think to ask: “When?” and sat quietly before the child, her eyes large and wide. “Doan know, Momma,” she had said, shaking her head. “Soon, though, I think.” Then she’d run off to her room to play with her dolls.

  Hapshaw knew nothing about Elizabeth’s strange talent. Mertle had never mentioned anything about it in fear the man would turn things over in his mind and feel he’d been duped in some way or another. Salesmen were always more likely to be of the suspicious type, she felt. It was raining outside again and she looked through the window and bit her lip. “Soon,” Elizabeth had said. It could mean anything, surely, but to her knowledge the girl had never been wrong. And right now when things were going so nicely! What would Douglas say if she told him? It would bring up more questions than it would answer, that much was sure.

  She elected to remain quiet and prayed the weather would abide.

  The limestone plug broke two weeks later and forty-eight people drowned, including Douglas Hapshaw. Waddles Bluff went into an uproar. Of course, the accident was the talk of the region, in the papers, the radios, but at first it really did nothing except add to the crowds who’d been drawn. It seemed everyone in the general vicinity had to come and have a look at the spot of the tragedy. Mertle wrote it off as some compelling figure of the human condition, this lust to roll in the dust of another’s misfortune. And here, oddly enough, it seemed a misfortune her little girl had predicted. And she’d done nothing. Nothing, that is, except catch Elizabeth’s directed stares over the course of the week of the funerals and newspapermen hubbub for a couple of weeks afterward. Though it was hard to disavow the creeping anger of the stares she bucked herself up internally to plow through another hard time. It was also then she became convinced a curse was upon her. Perhaps it stemmed from Elizabeth, such talents had never been deemed wholesome throughout the course of human history. After all, being that she had the talent, perhaps, (and here Mertle felt the blackness waiting behind her eyelids) Lizzy could actually cause such things to happen. The thought ripped a chill through her body and all the looks she’d been receiving lately came back to her in the dark nights with Elizabeth sleeping right next door. She wondered what else her daughter might, just might, be capable of?

  The next morning she quit ignoring the girl. She even said that she’d told Douglas about Elizabeth’s premonition but he’d gone about his business anyway. Elizabeth just nodded and remained quiet, though Mertle prayed she was still of an age when the words of parents were gospel. She also told Elizabeth that they’d be moving again. There was obviously nothing here to hold them, of which the little girl readily agreed, and Mertle hoped to take Elizabeth’s mind away from the accident by suggesting she come up with another place they could go. And the implication was plain: use your Second Sight. As it was now, out of three times visited, it had actually proven beneficial (at least to them) twice. Because Mertle didn’t know if Elizabeth knew it or not, but Douglas kept a safe in the back corner of his closet, and Mertle had been able to tease the combination out of him one night when he was taking his pleasure. She never opened it but she’d seen him do it, and it looked to contain a hell of a lot more than a thousand dollars. In reality it contained almost four thousand and Mertle used it to spirit her and the child out of town before blame for the cave-in could be laid squarely at her feet.

  And when they left, they left at night.