She showed Adam and Martin into her house, which was impressively neat for a woman with so many children. They couldn’t even count how many there were, as they could tell some were running around upstairs, while at least seven ran through the foyer downstairs.
“You have a big family,” Adam observed.
“I do,” she said, nodding, “but these ain’t all mine. Some of them’s my grandchildren.”
“Oh, I see.” Adam nodded. “Well, ma’am, Mr. Shaw, the elderly man who keeps the grounds at the graveyard, suggested we come by. He mentioned there was a girl in your house who saw something very troubling the other night. Is that your daughter?”
Mrs. Midgette nodded. “Mm-hm. My daughter Tamara. We call her Tammy.”
“Would you mind telling us what happened?” asked Martin.
“She says she seen a ghost of a little girl runnin ’cross the backyard. She weren’t the only one, though. Some of my other children seen it, too.”
“Did you see it, ma’am?” asked Adam.
“Naw. I take medicine so’s I can sleep at night, you know, and I was dead to the world when it happened. But it scared little Tammy right out of her mind, and now she won’t talk, won’t do nothin. I ain’t never seen nothin like it in all my life.”
Adam knew when she said she took medicine so she could sleep, what she probably meant was that she took some sort of calming herbs in strong liquor that knocked her out, and he couldn’t say he was surprised, with such a full house.
“You say you have other children who saw it?” Martin asked.
Mrs. Midgette nodded her head. “I do. Come right on in here.” She motioned for Adam and Martin to follow her into the sitting room. “Jimmy, Joseph, come over here. There’s some young men here I want you boys to talk to.”
Two young boys, who looked like they were both probably around ten and twelve years old, scurried over to where they stood. The younger boy had reddish hair; the older one’s hair was dirty blond. She indicated the older one was Jimmy and the younger one was Joseph.
“Yes, ma’am?” said Jimmy, who was surprisingly polite.
He and his younger brother looked carefully over Adam and Martin, as though they were making sure they seemed trustworthy.
“Boys, these fellas are here about that ghost Tammy and y’all saw last night. I told ’em I weren’t up to see it, but y’all did. I want y’all to tell ’em about what you saw. I’m goin out back to bring in the clothes off the line.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Jimmy.
“Yes, ma’am,” Joseph chimed in.
Adam remembered being that age, and the way those boys were looking at him and Martin, they weren’t going to volunteer information unless they were asked.
“I heard y’all saw something scary last night. Is that right?”
Joseph nodded enthusiastically, but Jimmy just shrugged and gave his little brother a look of disappointment.
“It really won’t that scary to me,” said Jimmy. “It just looked like a boy.”
“Are you sure? I thought it was a girl,” said Adam. “That’s what we heard anyway.”
Joseph shook his head. “It was a boy—dressed kind of funny, but it was a boy.”
“Dressed funny? How so?” Martin asked.
“He looked like he was wearin some kind of robe,” said Jimmy.
“How old did he look?” asked Adam.
“Oh, I’d say he was littler than me,” said Joseph.
Jimmy nodded. “I’d say that’s about right.”
Adam and Martin exchanged confused glances. That didn’t jibe with what Martin had heard earlier, and it certainly didn’t fit Mr. Shaw’s theory about the little girl.
“But you weren’t afraid, right?” Adam said to Jimmy.
Jimmy shook his head. “Nope.”
“And you were just a little bit scared, huh?” Adam asked Joseph.
Joseph nodded.
“What happened with your sister?” Adam asked.
“When she came to the window, she didn’t see it at first, but then she must have, because her eyes got real big and she started backing away. She ain’t said nothin since.”
“Were you all lookin out the same window at the same time?” asked Martin.
“No,” said Jimmy. “See that window right there?” He pointed to a single window on the back wall of the house. “We had been lookin out that window, but we stepped away so she could see. We couldn’t all see out there, ’cause we was just peepin through the curtains. We didn’t want nobody lookin in on us. When she backed away, we looked out the window, but we didn’t see nobody no more, so we stopped lookin.”
Adam and Martin both nodded.
“Oh sure,” said Adam. “That makes sense.”
“Did you tell your mama when it happened?” Martin asked.
The brothers both shook their heads.
“No, we know to leave our mama alone when she’s sleepin at night—unless somebody’s dyin, she always tell us.” Jimmy acted as though he’d had to recite that a few times before.
“Did you try to talk to your sister? Ask her what she saw?”
Jimmy shrugged. Joseph made a face like he wanted to say something, but he decided not to. Adam and Martin exchanged a glance indicating they both figured the boys were not telling them everything, but neither decided to push them for more information.
“What I want to know is, how do you know for sure it was a ghost?” Adam asked.
Joseph seemed like he was about to speak up, but Jimmy quickly said, “He just looked like one. And anyway, a real boy wouldn’t be hangin around in a graveyard at night, would he?”
“What was he doin?” Martin asked.
Joseph looked at his older brother and raised his eyebrows.
Jimmy said, “He was just walkin around, lookin at the graves.”
“Hmm…” said Adam. “That does sound like a strange thing for a little boy to be doing. Do you think we might be able to talk to your sister?”
“She ain’t gonna talk to you,” said Joseph.
“Well, maybe not, but we’d like to try.”
“You’ll have to ask our mama,” said Jimmy.
“Fair enough,” said Adam.
Jimmy motioned for his brother to go outside and get their mother.
Mrs. Midgette came in a couple of moments later, carrying a basket full of clothes.
“You talk to my boys?” she asked. “They tell you what you wanted to know?”
“They did,” said Martin, “but we were surprised they said they saw a boy ghost. We’d heard other folks sayin it was a girl. We were just wonderin if we might have a quick word with your daughter.”
Adam quickly added, “We know she prob’ly won’t talk to us, but we figured it was worth a try.”
Mrs. Midgette sighed. “I reckon that’s fine.”
Adam guessed she wasn’t enthusiastic about having these two strange young men talking to her daughter, but he got the impression that she was at her wits’ end about the situation and was willing to try just about anything to get Tammy talking again.
She led them from the sitting room into a room with two sets of bunk beds. They saw a girl of about twelve or thirteen with blond hair lying in one of the lower bunks, head slightly turned so she could look out the window next to the bed. Because the bunk beds were so close together, Adam sat on the one opposite so he could talk to her.
“Tammy,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Adam Fletcher. I wanted to talk to you. Is that alright?”
The girl didn’t move, but Adam did notice she blinked, and he wondered if that was her way of saying that it was fine if he wanted to talk to her.
“Tammy, my friend Martin and I have come because we heard about what happened the other night, and that you saw something that frightened you. Is that right?”
Still no movement from the girl.
“We really wanted to know what you thoug
ht about it,” Adam continued. “Did you have anything you might like to tell us?”
Nothing.
“Well, I understand. Your brothers said you saw the ghost of a little boy out there.”
Tammy still said nothing, but Adam noticed she wrinkled her eyebrows just slightly, as if she wanted to say something.
“I ’spect that was a scary thing to see,” Martin chimed in. “I’d have probably been bothered by that, too, but you know, my friend and I were talkin, and we really figure it can’t have been a ghost. In fact, we reckon it was just somebody trying to pull an ugly trick and scare people, so they just had a little boy out there the other night ’cause it was a full moon.”
Tammy pressed her lips together just slightly, her face pensive.
“He’s right,” said Adam. “It wouldn’t be easy to make folks think they’d seen a ghost if it was a new moon, would it? It’d be too dark.”
“That’s right,” said Martin.
“You don’t have to say anything to us now, but we just wanted to make sure you knew that you don’t have anything to be scared of,” said Adam.
Martin said to Mrs. Midgette, “That might not do any good at all, but maybe she’ll think about what we said and it’ll help her feel a little better.”
The worried mother nodded. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I hope you’re right.”
Adam stood from the bed where he was sitting. “We can show ourselves out, ma’am, but is there anyone else you think it might be helpful for us to talk to?”
She thought for a moment before answering. “I reckon y’all might just want to go ’round to the houses that have a clear view of the graveyard. Some of ’em prob’ly seen whatever it was.”
Adam nodded. “Thank you.”
He and Martin made their way out of the children’s bedroom and left the house. As soon as they stepped outside and walked past the window of the room where they had been, movement in the room caught Adam’s eye. It was Tammy. She was sitting up in her bed, hugging her mother and weeping.
After leaving the Midgette home, Adam and Martin spent the next twenty minutes or so going from door to door near the burying ground. There were only about five houses that would have had clear sight of the area where the supposed ghost ran past. The first place they stopped was something like a boarding house, but none of the residents were home. Adam was able to figure out it was most likely where the men lived who had been at the Topsail Tavern talking about the ghost the previous night. It made no difference they weren’t able to talk to them, since Adam had already heard about their account of what happened.
At another house an old woman wearing thick spectacles said she had only seen the ghost for a brief moment, and afterwards it disappeared into the night. When Martin asked if it might’ve been an actual person out there—maybe someone doing mischief—she insisted she knew what she saw and was offended he would suggest otherwise.
Another of the houses had no adults home, but Adam and Martin spoke to the oldest son, and he said they hadn’t seen anything.
“What do you think?” said the boy. “That we sit around staring at the graveyard all night?”
One of the houses belonged to Dr. Taylor, so they didn’t bother stopping there, as they had seen and heard from the doctor the previous day and he hadn’t mentioned seeing any ghost. The last house also had no one home.
As Adam and Martin made their way back to the warehouse, they discussed how amusing it was that so many folks in town were talking about this ghost that apparently only a few people had actually seen—and even their stories seemed to be conflicting.
“Did you get the feeling those boys at the Midgette house were hiding something?” asked Adam.
Martin nodded. “I did. That older boy was actin like he wanted to make sure his little brother didn’t tell us something.”
“And did you notice when we mentioned the ghost being a boy, that little girl, Tammy, made a kind of a face? Like that wasn’t right?”
“You saw that too?” Martin asked. “Wonder what that was about.”
Adam shrugged. “No idea, but the fact she reacted to us saying it was a boy probably means what she saw was a girl.”
“Well, why would those boys want to lie about that?”
“Who knows why boys do what they do?” said Adam. “Maybe they just didn’t want to admit being scared by a girl ghost.”
“Or maybe they saw something else and are just covering it up for some reason,” Martin said.
“That’s definitely a possibility.”
ADAM AND MARTIN RETURNED FROM the burying ground on Anne Street. They sat at the dining table in the living quarters and told Emmanuel about their strange conversation with Mr. Shaw, as well as their largely unfruitful conversations with others who lived nearby.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt Mr. Shaw really believed all that he said to you,” Emmanuel commented. “You lads know some people are very superstitious.”
“I know that, but this beats all I’ve ever seen,” said Martin.
“Me too,” said Adam. “I thought my mama was superstitious, but Mr. Shaw didn’t bat an eyelash at the idea of a dead girl digging herself out of a grave or a treasure somehow appearing in the ground by magic, just because some gypsy said it would.”
“He’s got a lot of strange ideas, that’s for sure,” said Emmanuel. “He probably believes very much in magic and fairy stories and ghosts and the like.”
“Well, what about this girl in the rum barrel?” asked Adam.
“What do you mean, ‘What about this girl in the barrel?’” said Martin. “You don’t remember when that happened? The whole town was talking about it.”
“Of course I remember when it happened, but I don’t really remember all of the details. What I want to know is, what it is about that grave that would prompt someone to disturb it?”
Emmanuel cocked his head and gave a nod. “That’s a very reasonable question to ask.”
“Tell me what you remember,” Martin said to Adam. “We don’t need to be sittin here tellin you what you already know.”
Adam thought for a moment before he said anything. “There was a woman who’d come here from Europe somewhere. Where, I don’t remember exactly—England I think. She wasn’t traveling with her husband; he was apparently already here—well, not here in Beaufort, but here in America—and she was coming to meet him. She only had her children with her. The little girl died on the way, and she had her body put in a rum barrel to preserve her until they got here.”
“That’s the gist of it, yes,” said Emmanuel.
Martin chewed on his bottom lip as he thought for a moment. “She had a few children, didn’t she? I can’t remember how many… Anyhow, it was the youngest of the bunch who died on the crossing.”
“That’s right,” said Emmanuel. “And they had come from England by way of Madeira.”
“Where was it they were headed?” asked Adam. “I mean, Beaufort wasn’t their destination, was it?”
“No,” said Emmanuel. “I believe they were headed to Charleston to meet her husband, but a storm took them off course, and they ended up having to put in farther north, here at Beaufort.”
“When did the girl die? Between Madeira and here, right?”
“Strange as it seems, I don’t think so, no. I think she died between England and Madeira.”
“Why didn’t they bury her at sea? Or even in Madeira?” asked Adam.
“I asked the same question at the time,” said Emmanuel. “Granted, I wasn’t involved with any of it—heard it all secondhand—but nevertheless what I heard was this: the mother was devastated by the girl’s death. She wouldn’t even consider a burial at sea. She thought it would upset her child horribly to be left in the great deep, to be eaten by sharks and the like.”
“Well, you can understand that,” said Martin. “She was a little girl, after all.”
“Certainly,” said Emmanuel. “The w
oman negotiated to buy a barrel of rum, and they put the girl’s body inside—to preserve it, of course, for the duration of the journey. Yes, she could have buried her there at Madeira, but she was torn to pieces about the thought of burying her daughter on one side of the ocean while she and her family would be living on the other, so she insisted on bringing her body in the barrel all the way to America. Frankly, I’m surprised she was able to convince someone to let her bring the barrel on board the second leg of her journey. I suspect bribery was involved, or an especially gracious quartermaster is to be credited for getting the barrel onto the ship.”
“So why did they end up burying the girl here instead of taking her the rest of the way down to Charleston?” asked Adam.
“I think her sons, who were not much younger than you, Adam, convinced her to go ahead and bury the girl so they could continue their journey without the need for further subterfuge. Furthermore, I reckon after all of the weeks they’d spent traveling with the lifeless body of their dead sister, they were probably hoping to arrive in Charleston having put all that behind them. That’s a terrible burden for a family to have to bear.”
“It’s very sad,” said Adam. “And really, a strange story. You know, I saw the name Smith on the grave marker. I was wondering, why didn’t they put the girl’s full name?”
Emmanuel shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”
“So we come back to the question,” said Adam, “why would someone have disturbed that grave?”
“Who knows?” said Martin. “But I’ll bet you one thing—that the ghost everybody saw is somehow responsible for fiddlin with that grave.”
LATER THAT AFTERNOON EMMANUEL SENT Adam and Martin to deliver merchandise to a few local shops. Still, Rogers’s Shipping Company would be taking a loss on this most recent shipment on the Carolina Gypsy because of the damaged cargo.
Afterwards, Adam went to the tavern to have a late supper.
“Valentine says he gave you the little present I got for you,” Mary said to him almost as soon as he’d sat down. “You keeping it with you?”
The Gypsy's Curse Page 8
