The Hollow Ground: A Novel

by Natalie S. Harnett

  “You told Detective Kanelous that?” I said, my eyes widening with shock and respect—and hope. Maybe Gramp hadn’t killed that man down in the bootlegging hole, maybe Marisol’s father had.

  “You bet I told him that. I’ll tell you something else too. I hope my father did bash that guy’s brains in because if he did, then the cops will find him and I’ll get to tell him right to his face how much I hate his guts.”

  We’d stopped in a patch of sun and Marisol’s eyes in that light were such a deep green they were nearly brown and you could see glistening within them little flecks of hurt. “Actually,” she continued, “I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I wouldn’t talk to him at all.”

  We spent the rest of that afternoon at Marisol’s. She and her mother lived in an apartment building on the south side of Barrendale, seven blocks from the river that divided the main part of the city from the fire zone. We sat on an old sheet on the floor of Marisol’s room making grapevine wreaths from vines we’d yanked off the fence in the lot behind Marisol’s building. We used wire and pliers and twined the long vines into something resembling circles that we planned to sell, but where we’d sell them we didn’t know.

  That day as we twisted vines, Marisol talked about her grandfather and told me about something called Espiritismo. Ever since she was little, she said, she’d seen spirit shadows. “I didn’t want to scare you, so I didn’t say anything, but the week before we found the dead body I saw a shadow. It was the size of a cat and it ran out from the kitchen table and then just disappeared.” Marisol flung her hands up and made a whooshing sound. Then she pointed at the space between the radiator and bed. “And just this morning, I saw another one right there. It must be the soul of the dead man. He must want something.”

  “Like what?” I said with a wariness I’d heard Ma occasionally use.

  Marisol shrugged. “Depends. If my father was his killer maybe he wants to seek his revenge on me. Or maybe he wants to seek his revenge on us—for something we did to it in a past life.” Marisol said this coolly but the muscles around her mouth tightened into a frown.

  I stared at the space between the radiator and bed, afraid that I knew exactly what that spirit shadow wanted, and I prayed hard that it would never tell us that Gramp had been its killer. My cheeks flushed with the effort of the prayer and I could feel Marisol looking at me, her gaze bright and glossy. Could she feel my thoughts the way she could feel Auntie around me? But all she did was brush the dust off the head of one of the saints’ statues on her dresser. Her dresser top was crowded with statues and bottles of holy water and rosaries of various colors. She took her time describing to me the different rituals and prayers needed in order to get good health or money or love.

  “What if you don’t want to pray for something you want?” I asked. “I mean what if there’s something you don’t want? Like bad luck or a curse or something?”

  “My grandfather says that a curse comes from an ignorant spirit who is angry because of something the cursed person did to it, in a past life or this one. When someone cursed comes to him, he goes into a trance.” Marisol shut her eyes and swayed. “He tries to get the ignorant spirit to understand it’s dead and to be sorry for all the evil it’s done to the cursed person.” She opened her eyes and shook her finger at me. “But he says not to be afraid of ignorant spirits because as long as your own spirit is strong, the bad spirit can’t bother you. That’s why he says it’s important to pray and do good—so you’re strong enough to keep evil away.”

  My hands and arms stung from scratches I’d gotten off the vines. A woody green taste was in my mouth from when I’d tried to gnaw a vine I hadn’t been able to cut. Suddenly I felt tired and worn out and beaten. Desperately I wanted to tell Marisol about the curse, but I was scared of what would happen. I’d never told anyone about it before. Instead, I asked her what kind of prayers would keep the bad spirits away.

  “Next time Mommy calls home I’ll ask,” Marisol said, pleased, I could tell, that I was interested in her grandfather’s work.

  From out in the living room came the sounds of Mrs. Sullivan walking in the door. Her keys hit the table, she coughed. Then we heard a knock and Mrs. Sullivan invited someone in. I recognized Detective Kanelous’s voice immediately, it was so fast and ugly with hints of New York.

  Marisol shushed me with a finger to her lips. Stealthily she opened the door and stepped out. At first I heard little else but Mrs. Sullivan saying yes to Detective Kanelous’s muffled words. I lied down on the bed and tried to think of ways I could be good. I’d have to be more than good, though, to get rid of a century-old curse, a curse that damned my whole family, not just me. I’d have to be like Joan of Arc, I thought, getting lost in a fantasy where flocks of people cheered me as I was wheeled on a horse-drawn cart to the stake. I was so lost in the fantasy that Mrs. Sullivan’s wails followed by Marisol shouting “Liar” snapped me upright, confused as to where I was.

  Detective Kanelous raised his voice to say, “Sorry, but it’s true.” And Marisol screamed, “Get out. Get out and don’t ever come back!”

  My blood pumped so loud in my ear that I couldn’t understand what Marisol was saying to her mother. Mrs. Sullivan was sobbing and Marisol was saying things, possibly in Spanish. Had Detective Kanelous just told them that Gramp was the killer? That I’d known he was the killer all along?

  Briefly the window lit golden and then the sun sank deep into the fire zone and dusk gradually speckled the air gray, then blue. I needed to get home. I hadn’t yet set the table for supper and Gram would be raising holy hell about that by now.

  It was totally dark outside by the time the bedroom door slowly creaked open and Marisol stepped inside. “I gave her a pill. She’s sleeping now.” As soon as Marisol flicked on the dresser lamp, her shadow spiked up the wall. “It was my father,” Marisol said, her voice flat and dull. “The dead body was, is, my father. I can’t believe it.” She crossed herself and shivered. “He must have wanted us to go into the mine. He must have wanted us to find him. Maybe he wanted me and Mommy to know he’d never left us. Maybe he’d wanted us to know that he was killed and that’s why he never came back home.” For some time she stared at the space beside the radiator.

  I said nothing. My blood was still throbbing hard in my ears and my breathing was so shallow that my chest hurt. I was relieved when Marisol finally broke the silence.

  “It must have been his spirit shadow I saw this morning,” she said. “He must have known the detective would tell us today. He must have been hoping I’d understand what he was trying to tell me.” Her gaze flicked onto her startled image in the mirror, then roamed over the statues on the dresser. Her voice was hushed as she said, “All my life I thought he never wanted to talk to me, but he’s probably been trying to talk to me all along. I think we need to Ouija. I think he wants me to find his killer. I think he wants revenge.”

  She knelt and reached her arm beneath the bed for the board. Then she sat Indian-style on the floor and unfolded the board and placed the wooden wedge on top of it. “I’ll do it alone this time,” she said. “You force it. You don’t let it say what it wants.”

  I grunted a response, part denial, part agreement. Resting her fingertips on the heart-shaped piece of wood, Marisol shut her eyes. In the soft light of the lamp the freckles splattering her skin appeared to flicker. “Spirit, are you my father?”

  Beneath her hand the wedge moved to the letter H, then O, then W.

  “How?” she said. “Why do you keep saying H-O-W? How what? Spirit, what are you trying to tell me? How it happened? How you got killed?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t ask it,” I said, breathing in gulps as if I desperately needed to catch my breath. As the wooden piece moved from L, then E, then Y, it felt like each letter branded a tender spot inside me and I flinched with the burn. “Don’t ask it any more,” I pleaded. “You don’t need to know.”

  “L-E-Y?” she said and her tongue clucked with exasperation. “What
is that? Lee? Lay? Finish the word, Spirit. L-E-Y, what?”

  Again the wedge moved. This time it spelled: HOWLEY.

  I whimpered, looking helplessly from the board to the mirror above the dresser. I gripped the bedspread as if I was about to fall forward into the horrible place where we were headed.

  “Okay,” Marisol said, “I get How. But what is L-E-Y. Lee? Lay? Tell me.”

  I didn’t dare breathe, my eyes hurt like bits of salt were in them. When Marisol turned to me, all the angles of her face tensed. “How-lee?” she said. “How-lee?” But then recognition relaxed the muscles around her eyes and she stared at me with a look of amazed horror.

  “No,” I said, grabbing the wedge and setting my jaw the way Daddy did when the dark place surfaced in him. But my eyes stung so bad I couldn’t stop blinking and my fingers trembled so hard I felt ridiculous.

  Marisol snatched the wooden heart from my hand and placed it back on the board. “Spirit, are you my father? Is it Howley who killed you?”

  We both waited breathlessly as the wedge shifted to yes.

  “No,” I defended. “You asked it two questions. It’s confused. The curse is trying to confuse it. My family’s curse.” In a rush I spluttered details about the Molly Maguires and the priest’s curse.

  “A priest cursed you?” Marisol leaned back as if I was a snake poised to bite her. She stood and backed up until she was against the wall. She crossed herself and kissed her fingers. For what felt like forever I listened to her shallow breaths. Then she pointed at me. “Get away from us. Get away from me and my mother and don’t ever come near us again.” Her finger moved from pointing at me to pointing at the door.

  Unsteadily I stood. “You don’t understand,” I said again and walked proudly, tilting my head the way I knew Ma would if she’d been there with me. My shaking hand gripped the doorknob. “You’re making a mistake,” I said, but as soon as I said the words I recognized them as a lie.

  Flinging the door open, I ran past Mrs. Sullivan sleeping on the couch. I fled down the stairs and out the building and then I kept running, running away from the fire zone and Gram and Gramp’s. I ran with the knowledge that Marisol would never have stayed my best friend, no matter what I did, because I was a Howley, because I was cursed.

  Fifteen

  It didn’t take me long to reach the outskirts of the city and the start of East Mountain. I’d taken the side streets and back roads that were as familiar to me as the face of the moon that lit my way that night. I had no plan of where to go, just to go, and I soon found myself at one of Marisol’s and my favorite haunts, White Deer Lake, a small deep glacial lake up on East Mountain where I didn’t expect anyone to find me for a long, long time.

  The moon that night was not quite full with the shadow of part of it showing, and it cast a cold white light that made me feel sorry for running away, but foolish to return. I crouched up against a boulder near the rocky boat launch where Marisol and I had dried strands of duckweed to later paste on to cardboard flowers and where we had sat countless times to read or skip rocks.

  As soon as I sat, I felt how tired and hungry and cold I was—and afraid. All the night noises, every crunch and splish and trill, convinced me that some monster or killer was about to get me and I caught myself picturing first Father Capedonico, then Marisol’s father, rising out of the mist on the farthest edge of the lake, rising to the height of the trees, to glide across the water and hunt me down.

  When I heard the slow gravelly sounds of a car coming toward the launch, I hid in a dense clump of blueberry bushes by the shore and watched the car drive down the launch and park at the water’s edge.

  The interior light went on and I recognized Detective Kanelous’s profile as he lit a cigarette and then shut off the light. His windows were open; I could smell the smoke. I hunched down low. We were only a dozen or so feet from each other, separated by the bushy branches. I shivered, the ground damp had seeped into me.

  He smoked for some time before reaching over to open his passenger door. “I know you’re there, Brigid. Your mother called worried about you.”

  He tossed the cigarette toward the water and waited until I came out, lured by the warmth and protection of the car. Cautiously I walked, glancing toward the shadowy places in the boat turnaround. Then I practically dove into the passenger seat and shut and locked the door.

  “Were you looking for somebody?” Detective Kanelous asked all friendly, but you could hear the suspicion in his voice.

  I shook my head.

  “Did you come here with someone?”

  I shook my head some more.

  “Someone follow you?”

  I didn’t answer. He was one of the last people I’d ever want to tell about Father Capedonico’s curse or Marisol’s father wanting his revenge.

  “You just get spooked out there?”

  I nodded.

  “I would have too.” He shut the windows and started backing into the turnaround, telling me that Ma had called and told him the different spots where me and Marisol liked to hang out. I was surprised, having thought Ma had no idea where I went when I left the house, and I stared out the windshield at the setting moon, which now rested above the trees across the pond as if it perched there.

  He tuned the radio to an all-night doo-wop station broadcast out of Wilkes-Barre and slowly drove out to the road, all the while talking about the neighborhood in Queens, New York, where he grew up. He described houses that were all attached with no backyard except for a long shared driveway with garages. “But we all knew each other. It was real close-knit, you know what I mean? So I think I understand what it’s like growing up in a small town. People wouldn’t think I’d understand that with me coming from Queens and all, but I do.”

  As he pulled up in front of the house, he flicked on the interior light. He shifted the car into park and turned to me. Around the brown of his irises was a rim of orange that made me think of a cat’s eyes that were all-seeing and distrustful.

  “I hope you’ll take some advice,” he said. “You can’t let what you saw down in that monkey shaft get to you. You know what I mean? You have to try and forget it. You have to try and put it out of your mind.”

  I nodded, eager to get out of the car before he started asking me questions again about the dead body.

  “You let me know if you need me, you hear?” He squinted and looked deep into my eyes and repeated, “You let me know, hear?”

  I opened the door, certain at that moment that he knew Gramp killed Marisol’s father and that he was trying to goad me into admitting it. I fled to the front door where Ma slapped my face and then hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe.

  “Jesus Christ!” she kept saying until we finally both relaxed in each other’s arms. Even Gram was glad to see me. She didn’t say a word about Ma taking the Lord’s name and she made us all a big pot of tea and let me put as much sugar in it as I wanted.

  In the days that followed I skulked around the house, not wanting to run into Marisol or her mother. The newspaper had identified the murdered man down in the mine as William Sullivan. I figured soon they’d name Gramp as his killer and all I could do was pray that Marisol was wrong about her father’s spirit wanting revenge. And I blamed myself for going down in that mine, for thinking I was meant to go there in order to get close to Daddy. I blamed myself because I’d mistaken the curse for fate so it was my fault all this had happened.

  “How many times I got to tell you to set the table or chip the ice off the steps,” Gram said to me more than once, irritated by my distraction. “What on earth you thinkin’ about anyways? Try havin’ worries like I got. That’ll keep your brain fixated. Try those worries on for size.”

  It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I finally managed to get Gramp alone. From the closed-in porch I watched Gram and Ma leave for their Saturday morning shift at the mill. They teetered along the bluestone sidewalk that was broken and jagged from the tree roots pushing up and the ground sinking down
. Even though they walked near each other, there was still something resistant in Ma’s steps that made her look as stiff as one of the tree trunks they walked past.

  From the living room came the sounds of Captain Kangaroo, turned down so Gramp could doze if he wanted. It was early enough that Daddy was still asleep, and Brother was outside, sitting in the hollow spot where the trunk of the catalpa tree had split, trying to hit birds and chipmunks with his slingshot.

  If I was going to say something to Gramp, I needed to do it soon, before Brother came in for a snack or Daddy woke, and I felt the pressure of time squeezing me like a vice. Clasped in my hand was the newspaper article about William Sullivan. The fact that his name was in print for everyone to see made his murder and his dead spirit anger even more real to me and with each minute that passed, I felt more and more helpless. Slowly I walked into the living room and it wasn’t until I saw Gramp’s alarmed face that I realized I was blinking away tears.

  “You hurt, girl? What wrong?” He pushed his hand against the armrest, struggling to lean forward while I stood there, speechless, stupid with surprise at his concern. His breathing got ragged as he pushed against the armrests to sit up. “Boy?” he said. “Boy … hurt?”

  Slowly I walked until I stood within a foot of him. “I know,” I said, unable to say more, worrying the newspaper article in my sweaty hand.

  He reached for his mug of hot water on the end table. His eyes were murky like a dead fish that had gone bad. “What … hiding?” he said.

  I’d fisted the article and I stared dumbfounded at my clenched fingers as if waiting for something to unlock and open my hand. I swallowed. “I know it was you.” I said. “My best friend’s daddy. Why him? Why’d you have to do it to him?”

  He curled his finger to beckon me closer. On the TV Captain Kangaroo had ended, replaced by a man reading Robert Frost poetry: “But he knows in singing not to sing.…” I took a step forward.