The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

  Our first stop was the blueberry cobbler tent. I toyed with the perfectly sweetened blueberries, the crumbly biscuit. My mother commented again on the fine day, all the people who’d turned out. Then I plunged in.

  “Remember the stories you all used to tell? About the Revelations.”

  The fragrance of apples wafted around us. A woman rolled a red wagon full of Macouns by. Mom licked her fork speculatively, leaned back in her chair. “Is that why you moved here? Because of the story of the first Revelation, how she came to Hawley Five Corners?”

  “Not really. I probably wouldn’t have given Hawley one thought. But Nan … she sent me a note, just after Jeremy died. Basically commanding me to come here.”

  “Nan sent you a note?” Her tone was accusing, her eyes filled with hurt.

  “Mom, what’s the big deal?”

  She looked down, scraped at her dish again. The sound of the fork on Styrofoam set my teeth on edge. “Nothing. No big deal. I was just … surprised, for a minute.”

  “I tried to call her yesterday, to invite her to the fair, but you know she never answers that phone. I tried to talk to her when we went there last week, but she wouldn’t. Not about why she was insistent we come here. Do you know?”

  “Oh, that’s just Nan. She loves being mysterious.”

  My grandmother had always been eccentric. There were the powers and the stories of the Dyer women that preoccupied her. And the falconry. Then about twenty years ago, she’d gotten involved with the Baptist church. She had lived with each of her three daughters in turn when I was a child. But after I left for Nevada she moved back into her family home in Bennington, Vermont. A few months later, the Reverend John Steel insinuated himself. Nan insisted that she had always hated living alone, and that’s all she would say. We still had no idea what their relationship was. The Reverend was three decades younger, and pretty strange himself. I’d met him only a few times. Enough to know he was odd. But then, so was my Nan. I always suspected the rift between my mother and Nan had to do with the Reverend, although neither of them would ever talk about it.

  “Anyway, in her note, Nan mentioned the story of the Fetch. Do you remember it?”

  She closed her eyes. Against the sun? Or maybe against the myth?

  “Yes. I remember. That’s the one where the father is spirited off by a creature that haunts a family. One of the stranger tales Nan tells. Of course it’s one of your father’s favorites. It always gave you nightmares.”

  “I’ve been calling our stalker the Fetch. Thinking of him that way, after Nan’s note reminded me of the story. But the note was … well, pretty cryptic. I’d love to know the reason she’s so sure we’ll be safe here. It might make me feel better. It can’t all be old legends and stories. Or the legends must have some basis, anyway, if she was that certain. She wrote something about history repeating itself. What did she mean?”

  My mom looked off into the blue distance of the day, thoughtful. “I really don’t have a clue. But Nan has her own way of seeing things. And telling things.”

  I laughed. “That’s for sure. When I asked, she just said not to look for trouble. I need to know more, though, and Nan talks in riddles half the time. She dodges my questions. Maybe because she’s so old, maybe she doesn’t really remember. But it frustrates me.”

  “Nan’s always been like that. Old age is no excuse. She remembers plenty, but your aunts and I gave up ever trying to get any kind of clarity out of her. You’re more persistent.”

  “You mean stubborn. That’s what Nan said, too.” I speared a blueberry with my plastic fork. It tasted like the forest. “But, really, the stories are kind of a blur, like fairy tales you read to me when I was a kid. I don’t remember all Nan’s tall tales. I remember some of them, especially the story of the Fetch, and the one about the first Revelation and the founding of Hawley. I’ve been having dreams about the Revelations. Caleigh has, too. It’s a little … I don’t know, unsettling, I guess.” I mashed another tiny blueberry. “There’s a painting, an old portrait in the house. I think the woman in it must be a Dyer. One of the Revelations. Maybe it’s the portrait that triggers the dreams. I wanted to ask Nan if she knew anything about it, but I never got that far.”

  “I don’t remember ever seeing a painting of any of the Revelations. Do you know the period?”

  “I’d say mid-nineteenth century, by her dress, and her hair. She looks about twenty-five, maybe thirty in the portrait, so she would have been born around 1840 or 1845.”

  “Well, there was Nan’s grandmother,” Mom suggested. “Those dates seem about right for her.”

  “Could she have lived here?”

  “I’m not sure. I always thought all Nan’s family lived in Bennington, from pretty far back. Her grandmother was a Revelation, though. She might have been the last of the family to live in Hawley.” The Dyer women had scattered over time, but not so very far. Travel was slower and more costly in the past. Unless you were suspected of being a witch, there wasn’t much incentive to leave the town you were born in. A woman might move to the next town over. The one next to that if she met her husband at a barn raising and his family lived twenty or thirty miles away. “Didn’t Carl Streeter work on the house? Did you ask him about it?”

  “I don’t want to rock that boat. He probably doesn’t know anything, and … well, it’s creepy, how everyone in town thinks of the Five Corners. They don’t think it’s safe there at all. They think it’s haunted. The day we got here Carl told me a story. Then he got all jittery as if he’d done the wrong thing telling me. About the last people who lived there, and how they just left their possessions and took off all together, all on the same day. No one seems to know where they went. Have you ever heard anything about it?” I asked. “I’ve been wondering if any of the Dyers lived in Hawley then, if there are any family stories.”

  “I don’t think so. Nan lived with relatives in Bennington after her parents died in the Spanish influenza epidemic. Your aunts and I grew up there. But you knew that. Nan never talked about her childhood much. It was a bad time for her, losing both her parents that way, within days of each other. And some of the family history just got lost. Even Nan’s legends are pretty sketchy. She tells bits and pieces. As you said, they’re like fairy tales, bedtime stories.”

  I knew what my mom meant about the loss of history. Any recorded history was more likely to be about the men. Some of the Dyer history was lost because the wives bore different last names than their husbands. Then, after their deaths, they were buried under their husbands’ names alone. “Mary, wife of John Smith.” A double whammy of lost connections. I’d seen the stones in the old boneyards scattered around, like all New Englanders. If you live in New England you can’t spit without hitting a cemetery.

  “Mom, have you ever heard of some kind of book, a book that’s important in our family? Caleigh and I have been having dreams about a book, too.”

  My mom’s mouth opened, and she made a strangled sound.

  “Mom?”

  Her eyes went blank, turned dark, like a doll’s eyes. She gasped, then her hand shot across the table to grab my wrist. She squeezed it, hard.

  “Mom! Are you choking?” I leapt up, but suddenly her hand relaxed its grip, her eyes went back to normal. She smiled at me, then stood up, stretching her arms to the sky. “Well, let’s go poke around. See if we can get some information here in town, at the historical society. Maybe we can get a bead on your painting.”

  Relief flooded me, but I had no idea what I’d just seen. “Shit, Mom. You scared me. Were you choking?”

  “What?” She looked at me like I had two heads. “How could I choke on blueberry cobbler? You’re too stirred up, honey. You’re imagining things.”

  “I am not!” I snapped. “I’m worried about you!”

  “Oh, Reve, don’t fuss.”

  I fumed as I followed my striding mother as she made her way to the house with the Betsy Ross flag out front. Hawley’s historical society was capital
izing on the crowd, selling key chains and old maps on the front porch. I had no idea what we were doing there, and I was cross with Mom, but I sure didn’t want to send her into another one of those fits.

  A faded older woman sat behind the displays outside the historical society. She was reading an Elmore Leonard book. Unlike the other booths and exhibits, this one was not packed with people. Only one man, obviously from out of town with his polished Docksiders and a camera bobbing against his navy polo–shirted chest, was perusing the offerings.

  He left after buying a key chain, left us alone with Hawley’s history. My mom plucked up a monograph with a sepia photograph of Hawley Town Hall on its cover. She flipped through it, while I turned the pages of the latest calendar. The faded lady, brought out of the depths of her book, looked up at us.

  “Is there anything I can help you with? We only have a few things out for sale. The historical society museum isn’t open to the public today, I’m afraid.” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “We had some theft last year during the fair, some museum items stolen. So we decided it would be better …”

  “Oh, of course,” Mom piped in, using her committee meeting voice. Whatever had happened at the blueberry cobbler tent, she was definitely back to normal now. “The same thing happened in Williamstown, at the parsonage Christmas tea. Do you know, somebody snuck upstairs and stole a chamber pot?” I stifled my laughter, as the faded lady did not seem amused.

  “Well, here it was a file of original Howes Brothers plates,” she informed us grimly. “Quite a loss.” The Howes Brothers had been itinerant photographers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They traveled all the towns of western Massachusetts, photographing families and thousands of structures, houses, barns, and grange halls that have since been torn down or renovated beyond recognition. My mother sent me the Williamstown Savings Bank calendar every year, which always featured Howes Brothers photographs of the old towns and farms. The images were evocative of a kind of life just as vanished as the original settlers.

  “How dreadful for you! My daughter and I have always loved the Howes Brothers. I’m Morgan Dyer and this is my daughter. Reve’s just moved to town, and was thinking of becoming a historical society friend.” I had to admire her skill. The faded lady was eating it up.

  “Here’s the information, and the form. If you join at the individual or family level, you’ll get a Hawley Pudding Contest apron. At the friend level, you’d also get an autographed copy of Howard Stark’s history of Hawley. But we don’t get too many friends in this economy.” I figured I should have the book anyway, and for the $200, maybe I’d get more information from the faded lady. I whipped out my checkbook. I could afford to be a friend, and God knew I needed some, too, even if I had to buy them.

  “Where do you live, dear? Are you the ones bought the Hartland place?”

  I tore out the check, handed it to her. She studied it for a moment. Maybe it was my imagination, but her pale face seemed to pale even more.

  “Hawley Five Corners,” she said, and dropped the check I’d given her as if it scorched her hand. We both scrabbled on the floor for it. She captured it, then looked at the amount. “Two hundred dollars! Well. This certainly is generous.” She slid my book and apron in a white plastic bag, handed it over. “You sure have your work cut out for you there. Carl Streeter’s society treasurer. We’ve heard quite a bit at the last meeting about your move to the old Sears place.”

  My mom nudged me. “Carl is the one I give credit to. Without him I would never have been able to find workmen, or get the house ready in time. I moved here with my three daughters after my husband’s death … so I’m happy to be closer to my parents.” As usual, I stumbled a little on the explanation that placed the words husband and death in the same sentence. My mother flashed her best “what a good daughter” smile. The faded lady was looking on with interest now. She seemed to have regained a little color. “I am sorry. It must have been difficult for you. But Carl is a wonder. I’m sure he was a great help. It’s due to him we have such a good collection. He scouts the auction catalogs, raises money for acquisitions. Even goes to yard sales at the old houses, hunting for historical treasures.”

  “Carl told me a little about Five Corners history,” I said. “About the auction that took place after the town was abandoned. Do you know if anything from Five Corners made its way to the society’s collection? There’s a painting in my house, and I was wondering about it. Whether it was painted by anyone local. Whether there might be more by the same artist. It’s a portrait, maybe painted in the 1860s.” I didn’t mention the possible family connection.

  The lady faded again. I had to lean in to hear her muffled answer: “The society acquired only a few things from the Five Corners. No paintings, that I know of. And nothing from the auction.”

  “I wonder why. It seems like it would have been a wonderful opportunity.”

  “Well, the society didn’t have the member base it does now. Then acquisitions were mostly by donation.”

  “I see. Of course I’d like to find out more about the Five Corners. Does Mr. Stark’s book deal with its history, too?”

  “Not much. Five Corners was a separate town, though. Not really part of Hawley Village, ever. They had their own store and post office. Even their own church.”

  “Then the abandonment of the town wasn’t recorded in any way? Which families went where, how long the process took?”

  The faded lady had not only faded, but turned to a pillar of salt as well. “No,” she said at last. “Nothing that’s definite. Just that by the midtwenties, they were gone.”

  “Then there wouldn’t be any documents that might shed light on why they left?”

  Faded lady took a sip of water from a Poland Spring bottle stashed under the table. “I thought it was the painting you were interested in.”

  “I’m interested in Five Corners history, in general. Since I’m living there now.”

  She toyed with her book, ruffling the pages as if she was dying to get back to it. “Well. The Five Corners church may still contain some birth and death records, maybe even church attendance. If no one has taken them, although I can’t see why anyone would want to. I don’t know where in the church they’d be, but you could look around.”

  “Yes. I’ll do that. I heard the church bell chime a little in the wind this morning, so I know that’s still there.”

  If I thought the lady’s face was white previously, now she looked like all the blood had been drained from her.

  “But … you couldn’t have. The church bell was one of the few things taken for this town. It was cast in 1759, for the church at Five Corners, but it’s in our town hall now.” We all looked across the street at the belfry that topped the town hall. It must have been open for the fair. People in bright T-shirts were up there enjoying the view, standing around a big brass bell. “That’s it. They only added on the bell tower here after they took the bell from the Five Corners church. It went up in 1928.” She gave me an odd look. “I wonder what it was you heard.”

  Mom took my arm, and pinched me as she did so. “Oh, it must have been music from the fair,” she told the faded lady. “Sounds echo off these hills in strange ways, don’t they? When the wind is right in the summer I hear music from the Williamstown Common concerts, and my house is two miles away.”

  “That must be it then.” Our lady looked relieved.

  “I’m sure it must. Look at the time! We should go, Reve.” She propelled me down the steps. “It was lovely to chat!”

  Faded lady waved my check in the air. “Thank you again, for becoming a friend!” It almost rhymed.

  Mom steered me through a pack of children eating maple cotton candy, spun in foamy clouds bigger than their heads.

  “That was interesting. You’re right, Reve. She behaved so oddly the moment she realized you lived at the Five Corners.”

  “Maybe she’s just odd to begin with.”

  “How about Carl Streeter?�
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  “Everybody’s strange here. It must be the water.”

  “And you didn’t tell me about the bell.”

  “I didn’t think much about it, until history lady had a cow.”

  “Let’s go see it. They’re letting people up.” My mother loves a mystery. Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers are her favorite writers.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go see the bell.”

  After climbing the narrow, dark stairway, we came up into brilliant light. The town and the forest were laid out like a bright quilt, the saturated colors of the trees—gold and scarlet, magenta and emerald—scrolled out to the edge of the state and beyond, to the Green Mountains of Vermont. Suddenly a tag of poetry flew into my head. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. I knew it was Robert Frost. I couldn’t remember the rest of the poem at all, but the rhythm echoed through me like another pulse.

  We crowded around the rail with other sightseers: a pair of teenagers locked in an embrace, the polo-shirted man we’d seen on the historical society porch snapping pictures of the view, his big-haired wife gripping his camera case, a mother holding her young son back, warning him not to climb the railing. After a look at the hills, we stepped back from the crowd and turned to the bell itself. It was cast from bronze that had turned nearly black with age. There was writing just above the lip of the bell, which I pointed out to Mom. All we could see on our side were the words BEHOLD, I AM. My mother read aloud as we walked around the bell again: “ ‘I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore.’ ” She paused before the attribution, then read on: “ ‘Revelation 1:18’ … it’s from the book of Revelation. Isn’t that strange?”

  It might or might not have been strange that a quote from the book of Revelation was inscribed on the church bell. It might or might not have been a sign that I was in the right place to keep my family alive, if not forevermore, then at least for the usual span. But I wanted to think that it was.

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