Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3)

by Sheila Connolly

  “Are you worried that the townspeople are going to hang you if they find out?”

  “Yes, figuratively, if not literally. Look, it’s already caused a blot on my permanent record. Leslie terminated me. How am I going to explain that? Or how will she, if a potential employer asks for references? ‘I had to let her go because she sees dead people’?”

  Now it was Ned’s turn to look apologetic. “I’m sorry—I hadn’t looked at it that way. But you know you don’t have to work—I can support you.”

  “Ned, that’s very sweet of you, but you’re missing the point. I like to work. I like to feel productive. If I can’t, I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. The remodeling of the house will be finished someday. I could volunteer, I suppose, if I don’t have to worry about money—but the opportunities for that around here are kind of, well, unimportant.”

  “Not like saving starving children or teaching them to read, in the inner city?”

  “That’s what I mean. I’m not a bleeding heart kind of person, but I do want to help people. I enjoyed teaching children about history and making it come alive for them. And before you ask, I don’t want to do anything flaky like set up a new Kimball Institute for Retrocognition. I just want to understand this and move forward with my—our life.”

  Instead of answering, he moved toward her and folded her in his arms. He spoke into her hair. “I do understand, Abby. I’m not putting you down. I’ve probably been wrong to try to stifle it most of my life, but like you said, there weren’t a lot of people to talk with about it, and I guess I didn’t consider talking to my mother because she was, well, my mother. And you’re right—most guys don’t do that kind of thing. But as you say, here we are, and we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Plus there is Ellie to consider. I don’t want this thing to mess up her life. Don’t take this wrong, but it’s kind of like having a chronic disease. You don’t talk about it all the time. You just suck it up and get on with your life as best you can. If something changes, you deal with it.”

  “Mmmm,” Abby said, relishing just being held. She had no idea what she would have done without him to hold her together through the first unsettling stages of this. But what kind of life would they be able to build together? “I know. I’m just venting, and it wasn’t fair to hit you with it the minute you walked in the door. But I’m not sorry that your mother knows now.”

  “And I’m sorry that I didn’t realize you could use another person—and a woman—to bounce all this off. I think you were right to include her. You need supportive friends—I’m not enough.”

  “I don’t want this to take over my life. Our lives.”

  “It doesn’t have to, unless we let it.”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  They made dinner together—Abby had to admit it was nice having a kitchen large enough for two people to work in at the same time, even if the appliances were older than she was. Some of the old ones had been built to last, unlike modern ones. Abby had read recently that the life expectancy for a new appliance was barely over ten years. And how many people even kept their cars that long? Nothing seemed to last—except a few ghosts, Abby amended with a smile.

  “What are you smiling at?” Ned asked.

  “The fact that some ghosts outlive modern appliances. Never mind—it was just a silly thought. Is it worth investigating whether this old stove can be salvaged with a good professional cleaning? Or should we just start over? And don’t say it’s up to me—you cook too.”

  “Okay, I won’t. That thing”—he gestured toward the vintage stove—“still works. The burners are probably fine, but the oven is a little skimpy. But I love the broiler, the way it adjusts up and down just by moving a lever. So it’s a toss-up.”

  “Okay, we can table that for the moment. I’m not planning on cooking any twenty-five-pound turkeys in the near future.”

  After dinner, cleanup didn’t take long. When they were finished, Ned said, “Are you working on something tonight?”

  Abby shook her head. “I am researched out for today. I’ve got a lot to digest, and a lot of it is interesting, but I don’t think my brain can hold any more at the moment. Did you have something in mind? Like a rousing game of Scrabble?”

  “Something a little more personal, I was thinking.” He reached out a hand, and Abby took it.

  The first time they’d touched . . . how long ago had that been? There had been the first time, which had done no more than scare her, and Abby had all but slammed the door in his face then. But the second time, while visiting a cemetery . . . It had felt like grabbing a live electric wire, although nicer. She had not been prepared for the jolt that skin-to-skin contact had brought about. Nor, apparently, had Ned. When her head had stopped whirling, she recognized what had happened before, when she had panicked. Ned had been so careful with her, when she was still with Brad, and even after she’d walked out on him. That was very thoughtful of him, because he had no way of knowing how upsetting her breakup might have been to her, and he hadn’t wanted to take advantage of her at a weak moment. She hadn’t known how she’d feel either, and had been happily surprised that her main reaction was relief. She had wanted Brad to be The One, but her subconscious had known that he wasn’t.

  But when Ned had lent her a hand to climb over a cemetery wall (illegally, but at least they weren’t vandals), everything had changed. Not just her feelings for Ned, but her understanding of the universe, apparently. She’d been trying to work out what was happening ever since, and Ned hadn’t pressed her. Now, since Ellie was involved, the matter had taken on more urgency.

  All that flashed through Abby’s mind in the microseconds before she took Ned’s hand. Some men, she’d heard, said something unsubtle like, So, you wanna do it? Ned had only to touch her and she was lost. Would it last? Was it enough to build a life together on? She had no idea, but she was going to enjoy it as long as it lasted. Which, she reminded herself, could be forever, if their ghosts lingered on.

  “Upstairs,” she whispered, her voice thick.

  They took the back stairs, the fastest way to the bedrooms. They slowed down once they reached the bedroom, shucked off their clothes and fell into bed. Skin to skin, the sensations were overwhelmingly intense. Was it physiological? Psychological? Did it matter? It was wonderful, no matter how you sliced it. And it hadn’t diminished with repetition.

  “You know I can’t think when you do that,” Abby said as Ned traced a finger along the curve of her hip.

  “Did you want to think?” he said, kissing her shoulder.

  “No, not really. Can we visit Danvers this weekend?”

  Ned rolled over onto his back, laughing. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

  “Yes. I’ve been reading everything I can lay my hands on, or at least online, but I need to see the real place, get a feeling for it.”

  “See if anybody’s there?” he asked.

  “Maybe. They don’t show up on command, you know. I just want to figure out who lived where, distances, that kind of thing. You have other plans?”

  “Not a one. I would be happy to serve as your chauffeur.”

  “You don’t think you have any connections there?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it—I’m letting you lead the way. It’s possible, of course. Have you found anybody specific yet?”

  “Nope. So I guess that puts us in the same boat. We’ll just have to wait and see. Saturday?”

  “Saturday sounds fine.”

  15

  For the next two days, Abby alternated between the Salem research and—when her eyes crossed and she couldn’t absorb one more fact, much less fit it into some coherent pattern—doing tasks around the house. Actually it was a good balance: scraping and patching and cleaning were physical acts that left her mind free to ponder what she’d read. There was no shortage of material, both original sources and interpretations. The problem was, there was no agreement among
them. Was she being absurdly presumptuous to think that she could come up with a new understanding, when so many others had tried and failed? But, she had to remind herself, she had an advantage: the dead. Or undead.

  “Undead” was a term that had picked up some odd baggage over the years. It made her think of trashy zombie movies on obscure television channels. The movie Sean of the Dead had at least introduced an element of humor. And Charlaine Harris had given surprising credibility to a whole range of supernatural creatures in her successful series. But Abby lived in the real world, not a fictional one. What she saw were people, or some residue of people. They weren’t evil; they weren’t plotting to take over the world or eat her brains. Most of the ones she’d encountered were not even important people, just ordinary ones going about their lives—or deaths?

  She’d never given much thought to what happened after death. Or maybe she should rethink the term “death.” The body died. Biological systems stopped, and rot set in. But now she had proof, at least to her own satisfaction, that some part of human beings could linger on. Not for everyone, based on her own experience—the real world could get pretty crowded if all the dead were wandering around all the time. Or maybe they were, but only certain people—like her, and Ned, and Sarah, and Ellie—could see only certain ones of them. The rest were invisible to them. Even the ones they did see existed only within their own experiences: they weren’t going to be able to create any new ones.

  She’d moved on to patching the holes and cracks in the plaster in the front parlor. It was kind of soothing, and Abby liked the texture of the spackle, and the way the putty knife felt in her hand. And at the end of the day, she could look at a wall that, with a little sanding, would look whole again.

  Why were the ghosts stuck in one place? Could they move about? Was she likely to run into an ancestor where he or she hadn’t been in life? Was there some charge connected to “place” that fed the human components?

  Why did she keep coming back to electrical analogies—spark, jolt, charge? Maybe she should try having herself tazed and see what effect that had. Of course, that might wipe out her ability. Would that be good or bad? Heck, electroshock therapy had been used for years for treating a lot of illnesses, mostly psychological, like depression or bipolar disorder. It actually seemed to work, at least half the time; it changed something in the brain. But what? And how? Still, the bottom line was that electricity could alter the way a person perceived the world. Something else to think about. Or to ask Ned about.

  Ned had made passing suggestions about the genetic component of this ability, or at least the perceiving end. She and Ned shared at least a few genes, although they had to go back a long way to find the common source. Ned’s (and Ellie’s) had come by way of Sarah, Abby’s from her mother’s side, although the effects had skipped right over her mother. But what about the flip side? Could they all see only those ancestors who had the same gene, who could somehow stick around? Waiting for a receptor to come along? Was this something that Ned and his company could test for? Or would his employees laugh at the very suggestion? Was there a psychic gene? And would anybody want to test for it?

  By late Friday the parlor walls were done. “We’re ready for wallpaper,” Abby crowed when Ned came in the door.

  “Where do you want to look?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Abby said cheerfully. “Maybe your mother would know.”

  “Maybe,” Ned said neutrally.

  “So, are we still on for Danvers tomorrow?” Abby asked.

  “Sure, if you want. Were you planning to invite my mother along?”

  “Do you not want me to? Actually, I kind of wanted to scout things out for myself the first time around. We can go back again. But this is preliminary.”

  “So we’ll make the circuit. We can see Danvers, and downtown Salem, if you want.”

  “Let’s play it by ear, okay? But Danvers first, because that’s really where it all began.”

  • • •

  The next morning was fair, and Abby and Ned set off after breakfast. “It’s maybe a half hour away,” Abby observed, having made the trip to Salem recently.

  “More or less. How do you want to do this? I can drive around, or we can park somewhere and walk.”

  “Walk, I think. Something feels wrong about looking for seventeenth-century ghosts in a twenty-first-century vehicle.”

  “We could find a horse,” Ned suggested.

  Abby looked at him to make sure he was joking. “I can’t say that everyone had a horse in those days. Or that women rode them at all. Besides, I don’t think it would help. For a start, I can’t ride.”

  “I can’t either,” Ned replied. “Scratch the horse. Where do you want to start?”

  Abby thought for a moment. “I think we should go straight to Danvers, since that was the epicenter. There’s not all that much to see there, and I don’t want to check out the historical society, or at least not yet. Then we can head for Salem itself. That way we’ll know how far apart they are. That made a big difference to the people who lived in Salem Village. For the ones farthest out, closer to Andover, it was over ten miles, and that would be quite a trek for people who wanted to go to church on Sunday. That’s why they argued for their own church in the village. Have you been to Danvers before?”

  “No, I can’t recall that I have. Salem, yes, but not lately. What do I need to know?”

  “I’ll spare you the history for now, but as far as layout, Danvers is not a typical New England town. You know, town green in the center, meetinghouse and/or church, the houses of the wealthier folk around the green.”

  “And there’s a reason, I assume?”

  “Because the village just kind of happened,” Abby said promptly. “Most towns back then were created deliberately and laid out. Salem Village was never officially founded, so they missed out on all that. The settlers came first, and the village after. And from what I’ve read, the villagers started fighting with Salem and with each other pretty quickly. Maybe that’s what kept them warm in the winter. Although I have to say, based on what I’ve read, the people who lived in the village didn’t do much else than fight. Maybe that’s just what people thought was worth recording, and the rest of the time they had picnics and hayrides. Or at least tilled the fields and so on.”

  “Official documents can be incomplete,” Ned agreed amiably. “People record what they think is important at the time, and now we wish they’d saved all the minutiae. And things get lost over time, which means there are gaps.”

  “There are good reasons why I didn’t major in history!” Abby said. “Too many footnotes! You try to make one statement, and you have to qualify it in case somebody attacks you or contradicts you. Academia, or at least the publishing side, can be a real pain that way.”

  “Whereas we set forth with a bunch of cockamamie theories about ghosts, and there’s not a footnote in sight.”

  “I prefer to call it keeping an open mind. I’m not trying to convince anyone else—except maybe you.”

  “Okay, we are now arriving in Danvers. Where to, madame?”

  “Uh, the middle?” Abby said, suddenly unsure. “From what I’ve seen, it all began at the parsonage where the minister lived from 1689 on, along with his wife, his daughter, another girl named Abigail Williams, who was a year or two older than the daughter, and the Indian slave Tituba and her husband. The two girls and Tituba started throwing accusations around early in 1692, and it spread from there. But the people accused were scattered all over the village. Even the ones who were related—the three Towne daughters—lived from beyond the northern boundary to close to the southern one. John Proctor and his wife lived south of that boundary, and the Coreys west of them. So it’s not like there was one focus, unless you count the parsonage and the church. So we start there.”

  “Uh, I don’t think my GPS can find 1692 addresses,” Ned said.

  “Very funny,” Abby retorted. “Besides which, the parsonage doesn’t have an addre
ss. It’s nothing but a foundation, now an archeological site, behind some modern houses. You have to park and walk back to it. So find Centre Street and we’ll fake it from there.”

  “All right. You’re not related to Parris, by any chance?”

  “Not that I know of, but there’s lots I don’t know about my family, especially back that far.”

  After a few wrong turns, Ned managed to locate Centre Street, which proved to be a short street lined with ordinary houses from the early twentieth century. The promised path to the parsonage was marked by a small and rather shabby blue sign that identified it as an archeological site, not the nexus of one of the most troubling incidents in the early history of the country. He found a parking space and turned off the engine, then turned to Abby. “Are we going in?”

  “We’re here. We might as well. It looks so insignificant, doesn’t it?”

  “Very ordinary, but things change a lot in three hundred years. Let’s go.” He came around to the other side of the car, and Abby was waiting for him. “Are you nervous?”

  “I . . . don’t know. I don’t know why I should be. I’m pretty sure I’m not related to Samuel Parris, but I want to see where it all began. Is that weird?”

  “Abby, there wouldn’t be a sign if people didn’t want to see this. Let’s go.”

  The lane was too narrow for a car, and paved with stone blocks. They followed it to a small park, dotted with information signs, but there was no longer a building there, just a couple of stone foundations and cellar holes. Abby walked over and stood at the edge, peering down. “It looks so . . . ordinary. Not very big, is it? I mean, the house might have been a bit bigger than the cellar, but not a lot—there’s no other foundation. I’ve seen a reconstructed floor plan—it was basically two rooms, side by side, and each one had a large fireplace. The stairs to the second story were right in front of the door. And that was all there was. And they had, what, at least four people living here, not including Tituba and her husband—wonder where they stuck them? Maybe she was mad because she had to sleep outside in New England winter, which she wouldn’t have been used to. Wouldn’t that be ironic?” Abby fell silent, looking at what amounted to a hole in the ground lined with rocks.