by Scott Thomas
“Wife!” the man exclaimed, “what in God’s name are you doing?”
“I am doing nothing in God’s name!” she hissed, walking toward him with the hammer.
When Nathan awoke his head was hot with pain and he was in cramped wooden darkness. He listened as shovel-full after shovel-full of dirt thumped dully on the roof of the box.
“He said something about going into the swamp to trap snapping turtles,” Emma Bell lied to the villagers who inquired about her husband’s sudden disappearance. The poor children were shattered by the loss of their father. Search teams tried in vain to find the man in the dim and foetid swamp west of the farm. Neighbors offered to help the woman with the harvesting of crops, but she angrily declined their kindness and the produce rotted in the fields.
Now, no one knows exactly just where Nathan Bell was buried alive, but they claim it was under this very field over which we now breathe. It was also here, on a cold drizzle-gray night, that young Betsy ventured after hearing the pathetic banging of the trapped man. She could hear his voice rising vague and strained though the dirt and wood.
“Papa? Is that you, Papa?” Betsy called.
The next sound the girl heard was not a muffled voice, but the familiar bony clatter of flint arrowheads in a cloth sack. She turned to see a figure in a damp white gown moving slowly across the field.
“Betsy... ” her mother called. “Betsy...”
A strange and dreadful chill ran through the girl’s blood. Her mother came closer, until Betsy could make out her features—the eyes wild, like some rabid animal’s, the mouth drawn in a hideous sneering smile. The woman’s breath was like the stagnant waters of the bordering swamp.
“Come to mother, my dear girl,” the woman beckoned, “I must kill you.”
Betsy broke into a run. Tears and drizzle blurred her vision as she rambled fright-maddened through the fields. She ducked into a twitching sea of raspy cornstalks, hearing the clatter of stone arrowheads bouncing against each other; and there were other sounds as well. She heard those strange garbled voices that had come from the sheep barn. Looking back, she saw her mother running barefoot through the damp haze, followed by a number of hobbling semi-decomposed sheep, their heads swaying and limp, barely attached—the throats cut wide by sharp medicine.
Betsy crashed through the cornstalks, crying, her heart drumming. She had to reach help, she had to escape from that unearthly hunts-pack behind her! She did not notice the scarecrow until she collided with it.
Her shrieks echoed through the night. The scarecrow was the body of her brother James, roped to stakes, his head slack to one side. When the girl thudded against the corpse, the mouth fell open and a number of slate arrowheads came spilling out.
Do you see that tree there? That’s where the village folk found the girl Betsy, swinging from a rope; so they say. But this is a very old tale, and time has a way of stretching the past into strange and remarkable shapes. You’re welcome to believe this story if you wish.
Who am I to say what’s true or not?
People about these parts claim this place is haunted, still. One old woman claims it rained arrowheads one spring night, that these old fields were scattered with them. She says that the townsfolk gathered them into wheelbarrows and dumped them in the swamp. Others claim to have seen the bony figure of that strange old man hobbling across the pasture with his booty clattering. Some have heard the hammering of nails and the feeble pounding of a man buried beneath the pleasant green grass.
You see that spot up ahead? That’s where they found Emma Bell, or so it’s told. She was soaked from rain,, staring off toward the swamp. She had taken one of those old Indian arrowheads and cut her own throat.
Sharp medicine, they called it.
The Second Parsonage
Secrets are safe with me. I’ll take them to my grave, my heart a cache of kisses and curses. It has everything to do with my nature... words whispered in confidence sink into me like stones in a dark pond. That is my one exceptional attribute, my singular gift.
I am a schoolmaster by trade, and in the spring of 1830 I attained that position in the town of Whitney, following my predecessor, a Mr. Grimes, who, cooked thoroughly by fever, was whisked off to oblivion. Whitney was a small farming town high in the hilly woods of north-central Massachusetts. It was a humble, if forgettable place, with more fields than houses and more crows than fields. Dusky brooks gulped and tangled in the enclosing pines and an arthritic old tannery pitched above the murkiest pond ever to tempt geese.
The schoolhouse was perfunctory at best—built before the invention of rain, there was no part of the floor that did not creak when stepped upon. Still, I went about my duties to the best of my ability and my students, for the most part, were an agreeable lot.
I have not mentioned that it was May. The days were growing longer, the woods greener, and the sunsets blushed like a bride. One fine day a student, the son of a farmer, approached my desk at the end of lessons. Squinting between freckles, his clothing seemingly made of dirt, this boy stood expectantly, creaking the floor, cracking his knuckles like beech pods.
“Yes?” I said.
“I have a secret,” the lad intoned softly.
“Do you, now?”
The boy nodded. “Would you like to hear it?”
Ironically enough, for a teacher, I never had learned my lesson. Secrets are like lions... let them sleep! “Certainly,” I said.
The boy creaked closer and I bent to receive his whisper.
“Do you know the house on the other side of the pond?”
“The old parsonage?” I asked.
“It’s the second one—the first burnt down.”
“At any rate,” I said, “I know the house of which you speak.”
“A dead man lives there.”
I rented a room in the house of William Higley, the undertaker. It was the best that my schoolmaster’s wage could provide, which is not to say that my situation was disagreeable. The landlord was not fond of conversation, and was thus suited to his profession, seeming to prefer the company of his charges above that of his loquacious wife. Upon meeting a person for the first time, Higley looked them up and down as if sizing for a coffin. I suppose it was an instinct.
One evening, dining with the couple, I ventured a question. While impervious to common temptations, and while a team of oxen could not drag from me a secret once interred, my curiosity had been incited by my young student.
“Would the old parsonage beyond the pond be yet inhabited?”
The question had a curious effect on the Higleys; the wife fell into
an uncharacteristic silence and the undertaker actually spoke.
“One would hardly think so, to look upon the place,” the man said soberly.
I waited as if more were forthcoming, but nothing further was volunteered. The three of us simply sat there, chewing away like cows. I was intrigued, nonetheless, for Higley’s remark implied that the parsonage was indeed occupied.
Later, in my chamber, I invested a measure of time to conjure a pretense with which to pay visit to the old house.
“A dead man lives there,” the child had said.
While absurd—a “dead” man can not live anywhere—it was enough to intrigue my ample imagination. Whatever made that boy think such a thing? Perhaps the resident was a sickly sort, or of a particularly unpleasant aspect to gaze upon, disfigured in some way, or bearing an unwholesome pallor. I would find out soon enough, for I was determined to call upon the old parsonage the very next day.
I decided that I would borrow one of Mr. Higley’s horses, go to the place in question, and present myself as a concerned neighbour who, having found the beast straying along the road, was seeking to find its owner. It seemed a believable enough fabrication and, with any luck, heaven would forgive my dishonesty.
A good spring rain pummelled the schoolhouse the next morning. Muffled above, it had a sound like pigeons complaining under water. The floor creaked, the
roof leaked, and my pupils sat yawning through their lessons. The storminess cleared off in time for my investigation, however, and I went back to Higley’s stable to fetch a horse. Higley had agreed to allow me use of the beast for the afternoon. Despite my vagueness, he did not appear curious as to my reason for wanting the creature.
Not terribly fond of riding on the backs of large quadrupeds, most certainly without a saddle, I walked the black gelding the distance to the parsonage, passing Whitney’s third such structure on my way. The town’s first parsonage had burned down in the middle of the last century and was replaced by that house to which I was headed. Not altogether familiar with the particulars of the town’s history, I knew only that the third parsonage was erected when the minister’s purse entitled him and his brood to finer environs. I’d heard it said that the minister’s wife insisted on something other than the drafty behemoth there by Fitch’s Pond.
It was a fine afternoon; the sky was blue but for some puffy white clouds like corpulent nudes. I came within view of the pond, which was a sizeable study so far as those things go. The tannery stood on one side, and the old parsonage on the other. Each was built before the Revolution, and both struck me as precarious, balancing there. I imagined that a slight tug from gravity would land them both in the pond, where mysterious currents might shape their timbers into an ark to whisk the townsfolk straight down the Styx.
I was becoming something of a master liar by this time, having fended off several inquisitive townsfolk between the Higley property and the pond. It has been my experience that people in small towns have an insatiable hunger after their neighbours’ business. I gave each a different tale—while trying not to smirk—and, for the most part, they seemed placated by my creations. The poor animal suffered a cramp that I was walking out, I told one. The beast escaped and I had tracked it down, I told another. And then there was my prize offering: I told the prying Mrs. Fuller that I was a remarkable athlete and had been racing the horse for sport. I won, of course, I told her. She turned an interesting shade of red and hurried about her way.
The nudes in the sky were transforming, stretching grotesquely as they dissolved into the blue. The parsonage stood imposingly, the way it had for some eighty-odd years, as I and my plodding companion approached. Upon gazing up at the place I was reminded of the undertaker’s words: the appearance of the house suggested that it was uninhabited, such was its sad state. I also fell in sympathy with the minister’s wife’s desire for a more appealing dwelling.
Colonists had built the thing, and it was not unlike the other shelters of that time, a two-story structure with a low-pitched roof and simple frame. This particular rendition boasted twin chimneys close to the gable ends, and a formal entry with pairs of windows situated symmetrically to either side. Five windows looked down from the fa<;ade’s second floor. A simple ell jutted out from the back of the main building.
It had not been all that many years since the minister and his family moved on to their more stylish abode, and yet it seemed this place had been in the teeth of the elements for an exorbitant amount of time. The thin clapboards were dark with mildew, their previous paint colour entirely indistinguishable. The roof was missing shingles and some of the window panes were webbed with cracks. Even the cartway, little more than a suggestion of ruts leading to the forgotten dooryard garden, was lost to invasive grass. I found the mouldering water barrel crouched at the left front corner particularly unsettling— like a drowned mouth full of dark rain. The few remnants of fence pickets might have been bones poking up from eroded graves.
I will admit that a degree of hesitancy came over me, but I have the curiosity of a cat, and thus proceeded. I tethered the horse to a piece of fence and walked up to the old panelled door and gave it a knock. No response was forthcoming. Even my louder thumps were in vain—no sign of life came from the place. I looked to the windows, but they were awash in the glare of slanting afternoon light, and I could distinguish nothing but my own squinting reflection.
“Hullo!” I called, and still there was no response.
Half-relieved, I turned, walked to the crippled fence, and gathered the horse’s lead. I headed back for the village proper, my interest in mystery tempered with an inexplicable sense of dread. It would be months before I was to return to this place.
Later, in my apartment, my courage restored by the safety of distance, I chastised myself for not persisting. I might have seen into the shady rear windows, or placed successful raps on a side door, had I tried. At any rate...
The seasons went about their course and I learned little more about the second parsonage and its alleged occupant in the months that followed that first excursion. As indicated, my fascination had lost some of its vigour, although I did make a number of half-hearted inquiries. Those native to Whitney, while usually swift to whisper about this or that neighbour, had little to say on the matter.
I took it that the old house’s occupant was as solitary as a man could be, venturing from his abode only in the still of wintry nights, according to one young fellow from the cider mill. But how could that be so? How might one conduct the business of his life in so restricted a manner? Others told me that his name was Swan, and that little to nothing was known of his history, only that he had arrived one bleak November day, purchased the deserted house by the pond, and filled it with cartloads of wooden crates (or their contents). He had no friends, no kin, no contact whatsoever with the others in that locality.
Every teacher has his or her favourite student, or so I would attest. I was particularly fond of Almira Goodridge, the cooper’s daughter, who, at ten years of age, was smarter than all of my boy wards combined. She was quick to laugh, quick to learn, and drawn to wildflowers like a bee. She was all that youth ought to be, as innocent and full of promise as a May morning.
One day in autumn, when the harvest kept most of my students away from the schoolroom, blond-haired Almira was bounding down the stairs in her house, singing. She had the voice of an angel and was very fond of music and the sound of birds. For one unfortunate moment, she lost her footing and went tumbling down the stairs. She broke her neck and died on the spot. Her song, only partly sung, silenced in an instant.
It was in the parlour of the Goodridge house, with rain weeping on the outside and relations of the dead child weeping on the inside, that I began to think again upon the sad, old parsonage. The girl lay in her box as if merely sleeping, her hair as gold as it had ever been, as gold as August fields, or birch leaves in autumn, gold as honey bees and sunflowers. But her hair would grow no longer, and the cooper's house would never again be filled with her clear singing, or the mirthful bursting of her laughter. As I stood there looking down at her, I felt the pull of that dreary building by Fitch’s Pond. I might as well have been a leaf dropped from a tree and taken by the wind through no act of will. I would return to that place the following day.
It was an afternoon in October; the sunlight was warm, the air was cool, and the month, grown tired of its colours, had shed the better part of them, content to reveal gnarled trees and expanded views. Distant farms appeared suddenly from the landscape, exhausted fields and all, and pastures—still green enough for cows—nearly glowed in the late-day light, shadow-textured by their own unevenness.
Unaccountably determined, I went straightaway to the decaying parsonage without so much as candle or armament. It stood as it had before, a solemn thing there by the dark pond. No smoke rose from the chimneys, though the day grew chill; no glow came from the windows, though the light was failing. I passed the few remaining fence pickets, or what I could see of them through the tall grass, and found myself at the front door. I had nothing to say, no rational purpose, and yet there I was, fixed to gain entry.
I knocked. There came no answer. I knocked again and still there was no response. I tried the door and found it unlocked. It screeched like a cat as it opened.
“Hullo. . . ?”
My voice echoed in the dim centre passage and rose hol
lowly up the stairs. While a trespasser, I was not entirely without manners, and thus closed the door through which I had stolen. It was as gloomy inside as I had imagined, lacking any décor—no pictures, nor lamps or sconces on the walls. There was a door to my left and a door to my right, these no doubt leading to front parlours. For no reason in particular, I chose the left.
Houses often make an impression on my sense of smell before anything else, and such was the case here. I was taken by a stifling mustiness which, if interpreted visually, would best have been conjured in shades of sepia. The room was no longer a parlour in the traditional sense, though the structural elements remained intact; the fireplace wall was handsomely panelled, the wainscoting was in good repair, and the floor was composed of the widest planks I had seen in some time. As for chairs and tables, or any of the comforts one might expect, there were none.
What there were, however, were books! A maze of dusty books in crazy stacks as tall as a man. The dull, leather-bound tomes covered much of the floor, allowing only narrow paths between them. How very strange, I thought. It offended my sensibilities in one sense, for I am fond of an orderly library—certainly these volumes deserved better treatment than this. I lingered only a moment, returned to the entryway, and tried the opposite door.
This room was the same as the last—stacked books, webs, and nothing more—no furnishings whatsoever. The old parsonage, I soon found, was full of books front to back, even the kitchen (stripped of tables, and containing not a single pot or scrap of food) and the abandoned servant quarters in the ell. Whoever this Swan fellow was, whether dead or alive, he was undoubtedly an eccentric creature.
I made my way up the front staircase, pausing at the top to listen for signs of occupation. Suddenly I was less than keen on the prospect of encountering the man who was said to dwell in the place. The townsfolk, I suddenly told myself, must surely be mistaken in believing that anyone actually lived in the house. That would explain the infrequent sightings of Swan—he was obviously using the house to store books, not to dwell in. This theory was bolstered by the fact that even the bedchambers contained only more books. If Swan lived there, then where did he sleep?
