The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

We walked out of the sun into the darkness of the stairwell, which was very like a well altogether, and smelled of damp and mouse. I’m used to negotiating the shadowy spaces of theaters, can see in the dark better than most, but I must have taken a false step. I lurched forward, unbalanced. I scrabbled to catch myself, but went down anyway, hitting my elbow, my knee. I braced myself for landing on the hard wooden floor, but when I tumbled into the light, I was caught by steadying hands. I fell against a man’s solid chest instead of the floor.

  I felt myself blushing an unattractive color, fuchsia, maybe. Why are we so mortified by a stumble, a fall? After a certain age we want to stay on our feet, even though the children we started out as are always with us, always falling, being hurt in one way or another. We just get better at hiding it. But when I looked up at the man who’d rescued me, I knew there was no way to hide anything. Eyes I knew too well met mine.

  “Reve!”

  I would have fallen farther if he hadn’t still been holding me. Jolon. His black hair short now, only a little graying, his lithe boy body filled out to a man’s. His face had hardened with his body. Although he smiled at me now, it was a long-lost smile. Maybe one he rarely used.

  My mom caught up to us. “Jolon! What a surprise!”

  “Ma’am.” He stepped back and let me go. Although before he did, he made sure of my steadiness and told me, “You’re all right, then.” He gave me a heads-up look, nodded. An old familiar gesture. He’d picked me up many times, after all, saved me again and again from my headlong self. I thought suddenly how unlike Jeremy he was. Jeremy who knew never to catch me. Jeremy who knew I could take care of myself, and wanted to, more than almost anything. I’d learned to save myself, and wanted to keep it that way. Even after all that had happened, that intrinsic bit of my makeup hadn’t changed.

  “Are you visiting from away?” Mom was smiling up at him, delighted.

  He shook his head. “I live here. I’m just taking a break from flipping burgers at the police- and firemen’s food booth. I’m Hawley’s police chief now.”

  “I didn’t know that, although how I didn’t mystifies me.” Mom was usually up on all the small-town current events in western Mass and southern Vermont, even if she wasn’t steeped in the history of the place.

  “I just transferred over from Worcester a few months ago. I’ve lived back here for years, though. Not far from my parents’ old place. The end of South Road, little cabin in the woods.”

  Mom gave his big hand a squeeze. “I can’t say how wonderful it is to see you.” She shifted her eyes to me, a questioning glance. I tried to will her to stay. She couldn’t be matchmaking, I thought. But it seemed she was. “I should go find your father,” she said. “Let you two catch up.”

  “Mom!” I knew I sounded like the twins, shrill with mother-induced exasperation. I made a vow never to mortify them again.

  “Have to make sure he isn’t boring the girls to death with lectures on old farm implements!” And she slipped into the crowd around the caramel corn booth.

  Jolon turned to me. “Girls? Your daughters? How many?”

  “Three. Fifteen-year-old twins and a ten-year-old.”

  “A lot has changed,” Jolon said.

  “Do you have any?” I realized I knew nothing about him beyond his phone number in the town directory. He was probably married with six kids.

  “Children?” He looked toward the line for fried dough with maple cream, the progeny of Hawley clutching sweaty dollar bills. “No. Somehow didn’t get around to it. Marriage, kids. Can’t say exactly why.” His hand went up to the triangle of scar on his right cheek, one he’d carried ever since a sledding accident when we were nine. When I’d goaded him into climbing the biggest hill in town, with a hedge at the bottom that he crashed into, slicing his cheek open. He’d had to have thirteen stitches. I’d plummeted off my sled unscathed. Touching that scar was an old reflex. It meant he was thinking more than he would tell you. At least that’s what it used to mean. I reminded myself again how long it had been. That everything was different now. I was different beyond imagining, and so must he be. Then the smile flashed again, and he said, “Walk with me?”

  I smiled back, hoped it was a warm smile, not wintry. My smile hadn’t been used much lately, either. “I can’t refuse my Good Samaritan. Although you left me stranded all those years ago. You never wrote, after that one letter.”

  “Call me your Not-So-Good Samaritan, then.”

  We walked out into the sun, away from the crowd to the relative peace behind the town hall. The view was of distant fields, dotted with round bales as tall as he was. Third cutting, last of the season.

  “What did happen, Jolon? I always wondered.” I looked up at him. His silver eyes were turned to the fields, their expression stark, unreadable.

  “It’s a long story, now, and long ago. But you, Reve.” His gaze returned to me, his face softened. “I read about your husband. I’m sorry.”

  It felt like a slap, that unexpected allusion to Jeremy. Then I remembered how easily Jolon could blow my cover.

  “Jolon, I have to ask you something. I’m using my maiden name. I’m a Dyer again. No one here knows who I am, really. Could you just … well, go along with that?” I didn’t say why.

  “Sure I can, Reve.” His eyes held so much pure kindness I had to look away. “I wish I could do more. It must have been hell.”

  This is where I would always shut down. Any time anyone wanted to offer comfort, I’d get all stoic. But with Jolon, I wanted to spill it all, to cry and throw myself at him, to tell him everything I was keeping in. All the rage and fear and pain. I wanted to tell him it still is hell, it still is every minute. I wanted to beg him to hold me like he used to until all the hurt went away. But we were grown-ups now. Grown too far apart.

  “I should get back to my girls.”

  “Reve, if you need anything, I’m here.” It was a simple enough statement, a common platitude, even. But I hoped like hell I wouldn’t need him. Although he was my oldest friend, I couldn’t forget the Hawley police emblem on his T-shirt.

  “I’m sorry, I just … I have to go.” I turned and stumbled off to find my family. I’d been without them too long.

  Caleigh’s Vision: Witch’s Broom

  The old-time girl came to her at night, and in the daytime when she used her string. Of course Caleigh knew the family stories, knew there had been other Revelations, dozens of them through the generations, probably. She’d tried to poke around the dining room fireplace one time, looking for the girl’s red book, thinking that if she found it the dreams and visions would stop, but Mrs. Pike came in to dust and Caleigh fled. Mrs. Pike scared her more than any ghost. She reminded Caleigh of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” just waiting to pop her and her sisters into the woodstove.

  It was this unfortunate connection that prompted a more troubling and strange visitation from the past. “Witch’s Broom” was an old and easy string pattern, not one of her intricate inventions. It was the first she’d ever learned. She hardly used it anymore; there was no reason. She’d been concentrating on designing a pattern she called “Skipping Rope Girl,” trying to draw a friend into her new Hawley world. She was still working it out during the fair. She was sitting on a stone wall in the sun with her grandfather and sisters, watching the pony pull and occasionally dipping into a cone of maple cotton candy Gramps had bought for them all to share. Then she happened to spot Mrs. Pike across the road, riding a bike, of all things. One of the old-fashioned kind without gears, and a basket on the handlebars. “Duh-nuh, duh-nuh, duh-nuh-nuh,” Caleigh sang under her breath. The Wizard of Oz was her favorite movie. She must have unconsciously slipped her string into a “Witch’s Broom,” for when she next looked down, she saw the fan of the broom and the loop of the handle taut between her fingers.

  The world seemed to get all slow then. There was a strange humming in her ears, and her eyes went blurry. When she could focus again, she was still sitting on the same stone wall, bu
t everything else around her had changed. Her grandfather was no longer next to her enjoying his cotton candy. Her sisters were gone, too. The paved road had turned to dirt. The huge maples that lined the road had dwindled to sticks. Most of the houses were gone, turned into tall stacks of loose hay dotting the rolling, stubbly fields. The houses that remained were smaller, meaner, unpainted. But the town hall was there, big and white and imposing among all the tiny houses. There were people crowding around the common. There still seemed to be a fair or something happening, but instead of T-shirts and jeans with baseball caps, the women wore long, dark skirts and those white hats with wings. The men wore wool pants and light blue shirts. Some wore long jackets. It was like a uniform. Caleigh tried not to move, to be noticed. She didn’t know if she could be seen, but she hoped not. She was wearing her green Hello Kitty shirt, which looked good in the twenty-first century, but she didn’t think it would go over wherever, or whenever, she was.

  She tried to figure out what was going on. There was a kind of stage where the pony pull had been. It had a wooden plank on it, like a picnic table on its side, with holes cut out in it. A man walked up to the plank, followed by two other men holding the arms of a woman. Caleigh couldn’t be sure, but she seemed like a younger version of the old woman of the dreams. The woman’s hair was fuller, red and shiny as a sheet of copper, a little like Caleigh’s own hair. But her eyes seemed the same. The men stepped away, and Caleigh could see the woman’s hands were tied.

  The man on the stage spoke, loudly enough so everyone could hear. “Ya been accused of hexing Josiah Tompkins and his mule, Bethia Dyer.” The woman’s last name made Caleigh gasp. It was her mother’s family name, the name they all used now.

  A skinny, crotchety old man piped up from the crowd. “And that’s the truth, Deacon Taylor! I rode my good mule past her house not two weeks ago. She spooked my mule so’s I fell on the ground and caught a cast in my knee. Had to be away from my fields a week, now I canna get the mule to plow or ride at all.”

  “Had you any witnesses?” the man called Deacon Taylor asked from the stage.

  “What have I the need? She be the evil one. She need the witnesses. Remember, she spelled Eliza Chook’s girl, who had the pox after Bethia taught her her letters.”

  There were murmurs in the crowd, and a woman yelled, “And she an’t right from it yet!” All heads turned toward a fat woman with double chins. “That’s right! This girl hexed my little one, sure enough. Martha were still too poorly to come today, or she’d be here with me. Her father had to stay to mind her.”

  By the time they all turned back to the stage, the red-haired woman was gone. She’d escaped somehow, in spite of bound hands and two men standing beside her. A gasp rose up from the crowd, and Josiah Tompkins ran to the platform, looked under it every which way. Caleigh forgot herself and laughed out loud. He was like a chicken scurrying for food. “She’s gone and vanished!” he exclaimed. “Another spell!” The crowd buzzed.

  A big man strode up onto the stage. “Rubbish,” he said.

  Deacon Taylor stepped toward him. “Now, Urbane Sears, I don’t know how the girl was spirited away, but we’re tryin’ to—”

  The big man laughed then, but to Caleigh it sounded harsh and bitter. “You can try all you want. You’ll not be trying it on my Bethia.” He turned to the crowd. “I won’t let you country fools break my marriage to this girl, or my family, or my store. I’ll close up and move back east, and you can trade down to Northampton if any of you put a hand on her again. Or set your tongues going. There’s no such creatures as witches. Get that into your thick pates. I won’t abide this.” He stomped his way down the stairs, where the woman joined him, her hands free now.

  Urbane Sears led her away. The crowd parted for them. Just then, it seemed to Caleigh that everything started fading at the edges, breaking up and rearranging itself. First the stage faded, then the crowd, then suddenly the magician Setekh appeared riding Mrs. Pike’s bicycle, and said, “I’ll get you, my pretty.” Then even he faded and Caleigh was back at the fair with her grandfather and sisters, the ponies straining against the weight on the stone boat. The sun on her face was hot, and she was sleepy. She wondered what had really happened, then lay down on the wall, propping her head on her arms and having a little nap for herself. Her grandfather gently placed his cap over her face to shield her from the sun. He let her sleep.

  4

  The horses arrived while we were at the fair. I’d planned it as a surprise for the girls. Grace and Fai had been mopey, longing for their horses. And even though Caleigh didn’t like riding, she’d grown up around horses, liked to pet and groom them, and spoil them with treats. We all loved the barn smells, the velvety horse noses, the sounds of the big animals crunching grain and whickering softly to us.

  When we pulled in the gate, Nathan was feeding them apples, and three lovely heads swiveled toward the car.

  “The horses!” Grace shrieked. All three girls had been telling me about their time at the fair, fizzing with excitement. Caleigh was bragging about everything she’d eaten. Grace and Fai were all googly-eyed over a boy they’d met, a cute boy who told them about the old tavern and the ghosts that haunted it near the Five Corners. But all thoughts of the fair flew out of their heads at the sight of our horses.

  “Stop! Let us out!” Caleigh had already flung the car door open. I hit the brakes and they all catapulted out of the car. They slowed as they neared the fence. They’d been taught early and well never to run around horses. Each girl shimmied through the fence and flung her arms around the neck of her favorite.

  I climbed through the fence last and my own horse, Zar, left Caleigh to rub his face against me. As usual, I planted my feet and leaned into him so he wouldn’t knock me flat with that heavy, bony head. I ran my hands over the soft chestnut coat that had begun growing out for the coming winter. I could feel the muscles in his neck flex, and he groaned with pleasure when I scratched under his mane. It was a comfort to breathe in his horsey smell of wild garlic and sweat. I’d missed the horses as much as the girls.

  “Mom, I think Rikka put on some weight.” Fai’s gray horse, Rikka, thin and lithe, was a fine-boned twelve-year-old mare, narrower than the two geldings.

  “I think it’s just the hair,” Grace said. “They’re all so furry.” Her horse, Brio, black as a cloudy night sky, deserted her when Rikka reached her head to nudge him in the butt. Brio was the tallest and youngest at ten, but Rikka was boss of the pasture. Zar was the elder statesman of the three. Our horses are Arabians, the most elegant of horses and the toughest for the desert riding we love. They had logged hundreds of miles on the trail; in Zar’s case, thousands. Zar was eighteen. He’d been with me longer than my children had, longer than Jeremy and I had been married. He’d carried me through both pregnancies, had helped teach all the girls to ride, even Caleigh, who begged off after a year of lessons left her as indifferent to riding as her sisters were passionate about it. “I just like to pet Zar’s nose once in a while. That doesn’t make me National Velvet,” she’d famously said when she was eight.

  “I suppose all you horse-crazy girls will settle down now you’ve got your children back,” Nathan teased.

  “Hey, coz.” Grace sidled up to him. “Why don’t you ever ride with us?”

  Fai piped in, “Because riding is one thing we do better than him.” All three girls collapsed into gales of laughter.

  Nathan just shook his head. “You guessed the secret! You’re too good. You all just laugh at me.”

  It was true. Nathan could ride well enough, but the twins were naturals.

  “I hope you don’t mind going out with only your old mother tomorrow. I want to show you the trails I rode when I was your age.”

  Grace snickered. “Aren’t they all grown over by now?”

  “Yeah.” Fai butted me with her shoulder. “I bet all the brambles and things have grown up around them, and trolls live under the bridges, and the princess has been asleep for a tho
usand years.”

  “Oh, come on, your mother’s not that old,” Nathan came to my defense. “She was just a little girl when the spell was cast.”

  “Hey! Say I don’t have an evil spell cast on me!” I pinched him.

  “Owww! All right, all right. No evil spell, a nice one.” He rubbed his arm, grinning. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The girls paid no attention to us. Grace perched on the fence with Caleigh, helping her braid Zar’s mane. Fai, her face furrowed with care, plucked a burr out of Rikka’s tail. For that moment, we almost seemed like a family again, almost complete, almost whole. But then I remembered it was a fragile illusion, one that could tumble like a house of cards.

  “Why can’t we ride today?” Fai broke into my cheerless thoughts.

  “Yeah, let’s go for a ride!” Grace urged.

  I scanned the sky. “I don’t think so. By the time we tack up, it’ll be too late to go far. And the horses had a long trailer ride already today.”

  “We could take a short ride! They won’t care. They’d love it!”

  “I know your short rides,” Nathan told them. “They never last less than three hours. And your mom hasn’t done a lick of work all day. How do you expect her to keep supporting you all?”

  “Then can’t you come with us? We won’t make fun of you!”

  “Please?”

  I put the brakes on. “Nathan hung around here most of the day just to meet the trailer for us. Now he’s taking the rest of the day for himself.”

  “Then we can go alone.”

  “No!” The word shot out of both my mouth and Nathan’s. “You girls listen to me. Caleigh, too,” I commanded. “Turn around and look at me, right now.”

  It wasn’t often that I became really stern. The girls had their eyes on me like rabbits transfixed by the glare of headlights.

  “None of you, not one of you, not two of you, not all together, may leave this property without either Nathan or me. That means you never ride, you never even walk out those gates without an adult present. Never. This is very important.”