The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

  Grace shot me a sulky look. “Why did we move, then? If everything’s the same. I thought we were supposed to be okay here.”

  I put my arm around her. “We weren’t riding at all back home,” I reminded her. “So this is better, isn’t it?”

  She tried to shrug me off. “I’m tired of this. It isn’t fair. Isn’t it enough that the Fetch killed Dad? Aren’t we punished enough? I don’t understand why they can’t just stop him.”

  Fai said, “Because, you bonehead, nobody can find out who he is. He’s really good at hiding. Like the Unabomber or something.”

  I hugged Grace, felt her bony girl shoulders resist me. “It will get better, honey, I promise. We just have to be good at hiding, too, until he makes a mistake and is caught. I know this is hard on you, but I just don’t know what else to do to try to keep us safe.” Grace fumed silently at me, her arms folded, implacable. “Honey, I’m doing everything I can do.” She looked away, but not before her eyes softened.

  “Okay?” I asked her.

  “Okay. I guess.”

  “Good.” I needed to get us back to the ordinary weave of the day, back from the edge of fear and sorrow. “I know … let’s get out some maps. We’ll plan a ride for tomorrow.”

  “Is the forest on Google Maps?” Fai wanted to know. “Can we find it on our phones?”

  “You probably can here at the house, but remember, cell phones won’t work in the forest.”

  “Hey, can we go to that haunted tavern?” Grace pleaded.

  “Sure,” I told her, glad to have found a distraction for them. I thought, too, that I’d be lucky to trade a few ghosts for the real man who plagued us.

  Faice Off

  Grace and Fai’s texts, October 19, 2013:

  Fai: We r the winners …

  Grace: Of the word!

  Fai: U mean world.

  Grace: My thumb slipped.

  Fai: Anyway.

  Anyway … do u think Faice is a good name?

  It combines both our names, and we can alter it for different shows. U know … Faice of America, Faice of Love, Faice of an Angel.

  Don’t know about that last one.

  Faice of Doom, then.

  We r plenty chuffed.

  As Dad wd say.

  As Dad wd say.

  We feel him in our hands when we do the coin tricks …

  The card tricks …

  When no 1 sees, but us.

  Like now.

  Does he take over our hands to make magic, do u think?

  Our whole selves.

  Our whole selves …

  Its like he left us with these pieces of himself.

  But not the rest.

  No. Not the rest.

  It’s hard not to blame …

  Blame mom?

  Yeah, but that would be wrong.

  She pulled the trigger.

  She didn’t mean to …

  Yur right. It would be wrong to blame her …

  Shit if we started blaming, we would never stop.

  We’d blame Caleigh.

  We’d blame Nathan.

  Blame Mrs. Pike. Yeah let’s blam HER …

  Yeah, let’s BLAM her!

  U know what I mean … blame …

  Blame the sky.

  Blame the grass.

  The leaves on the trees.

  The stones.

  Ourselves …

  But we are the winners …

  We ARE the winners

  No time for losers, cause we are the winners.

  Of the world.

  The word.

  The wold.

  Not a word …

  Yes, it is.

  What does it mean then?

  A hilly forest.

  Like here.

  Like here.

  We are the winners …

  Of the WOLD.

  But we’ll go home.

  Yes.

  Soon.

  Yes.

  Make it happen.

  It will be … magic.

  Moody Spring Road—October 20, 2013

  1

  The next day all three girls were up early. The twins were already dressed in their breeches and boots at breakfast. Planning a morning ride was the one sure way to get them up before ten on a Sunday. I was ready as well, except for changing from my slippers to boots and half-chaps. It’s strange how you can get used to anything. I was almost feeling normal after our day at the fair. Almost happy to be going riding with my girls, as if nothing bad had happened, was happening. But I knew at the back, in the primitive part of the brain where fear is stored, that this skim of happiness was just illusion. Smoke and mirrors.

  “What are you going to do today, Caleigh?” Grace was in a mellow, pre-ride mood, disposed to be kind to her little sister.

  Caleigh shrugged. She was still in her Wizard of Oz pajamas. Scarecrows and Tin Men and Cowardly Lions cavorted through the poisonous poppy field. Dorothy and Toto were already down for the count. “I don’t know,” she mumbled through her granola. “Nathan said he’d take me … back to the fair. Or to Gramps and Grand’s. I haven’t made up my mind … what I want to do.”

  “Sweetheart, don’t talk with your mouth full, you look like a cow,” Nathan told her, flipping pages of his Sunday paper.

  That finished the girls, and breakfast. Grace spewed oatmeal onto the tablecloth, Fai spouted milk out her nose. Both her sisters shrieked with laughter as Caleigh mooed at them, knocking her half-full orange juice glass to the floor.

  Nathan sprang from the table, sweeping his paper to safety. “Reve, what should we do about these creatures? Do you think any boarding school would have them?”

  “Probably not.” I had my section of the paper safely tucked to my chest.

  “That’s too bad. Well, I think I’ll have a quiet read on the porch.” He swept off, his bathrobe flapping around his pajamaed legs. Caleigh skipped after him. “Nathan, call Grand first. I decided I want to go there and see the giant pumpkin!” That was another of my father’s retirement projects. His giant pumpkin had won a prize at the Tri-County Fair, and now he was coddling it so the girls could carve it for Halloween.

  “Mom.” Fai wiped the milk from her face. “We’re ready. We’ll tack up Zar for you, okay?”

  “Great. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be out.” The girls bolted to the door.

  “Hey! Dishes.” They clomped back, tumbled bowls and spoons in the sink, sloshed a little water and soap around while they grumbled about not having a dishwasher. I wiped their messes off the table and sponged the floor. “And don’t go running just yet.”

  When the kitchen was almost orderly, I led them to the closet in the mudroom.

  “Here, take these with you.” I handed them blaze orange vests, walkie-talkies to put in their pockets.

  “What are these for?”

  “What are they?”

  “So the hunters won’t shoot us. It’s the start of deer season.”

  “You mean they’re going to shoot Bambi?”

  “They’re going to try. It’s bow, not shotgun season yet, so it’s not as dangerous. They aren’t supposed to hunt on Sundays, but I want you to get in the habit of wearing them.”

  “Yeah, but what kind of cell phones are these? They’re weird.”

  “That’s because they’re not cell phones, they’re walkie-talkies. Remember, we don’t get signal much beyond the gate.”

  Grace thunked her head with her hand. “I keep forgetting. That’s just …” I could tell she was searching for an acceptable word, settled for “countrified.”

  I ignored her protests. “So, I want you to have these with you anytime we go out. We’ll all carry them, in case we get separated. Nathan will have his turned on while he’s here, in case …” I looked at my lovely daughters holding the unfamiliar equipment they’d need to live this woods life, and I wondered again if I’d done the right thing. But I said nothing. What was there to say?

  “All right, go tack
up.” They raced out to the barn while I pulled on boots and chaps.

  Nathan had a small apartment in an ell that had been a nineteenth-century add-on to the back of the house. Two rooms, a tiny galley kitchen, a bathroom. A porch that hung over what used to be a terraced flower bed, now tangled with overgrown Michaelmas daisies and egg-yolk yellow chrysanthemums. And nettles. Lots of nettles. I added another mental note to my impossible list as I knocked on his door.

  Nathan answered, walkie-talkie in hand. “I’ll keep this with me until Caleigh and I leave. We won’t be gone long. When will you be back?”

  “I’d say four hours. But give us an extra half hour before you come looking. You have the map?”

  “Not only that, I took the 4Runner out early and drove your route. So I’ll know right where you’ll be.”

  “That was above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “It was a good idea. There sure is a lot of forest out there.”

  “Four thousand acres. One of the largest protected forests in the state.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.”

  “You know, Nathan, neither do I.”

  I headed out to the barn. I loved its lines, its huge hayloft and the cupola to allow air circulation when the barn was full of hay. It was a faded red, the classic color of New England barns, and sunflowers bloomed along the wall beside the big slider doors. It remained unseasonably warm for October. Pink phlox and flame-orange daylilies still rioted away in the old flower beds. The sun shone bright and eerily warm over New England.

  I could see the silhouettes of horses and girls in the shadows of the barn. Maybe I didn’t love Grace and Fai any more when they were around the horses, but I did love watching my daughters burnish their horses’ coats, making certain their bridles were adjusted perfectly, that their saddle pads were flat. All the twins’ sloppy ways were transformed by horses. They were careful and thoughtful and moved with a dignity that always took my breath away. The beauty of wild things shone from them when they were riding, when we had a canter and they flew before me, in seamless motion with their beloved horses.

  I leaned in the doorway, at that moment feeling extraordinarily lucky. Lucky to have our girls. Lucky to have kept them safe.

  Fai called me out of my reverie. “Mom! Get your helmet on! We’ve been waiting for you forever!”

  I meekly took the helmet she handed me, tucked my hair under it as best I could, snapped the chin guard. Grace led Zar out to me. I stroked his head, looked into his eyes. They were dark with an unusual green tint, almost like my own and Caleigh’s. The twins had their father’s deep blue eyes.

  Zar attempted his head-rub greeting, which I fended off because of the bridle. I took the reins, stepped into the stirrup, and threw a leg over. Zar shifted his weight to accommodate me, and we found our center of balance. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that feeling—that coming together of weight and purpose—over the past months we were horseless.

  The girls led Rikka and Brio out. They mounted, and our horses stepped lightly forward. Zar tossed his head with joy. Brio snorted, then reached back to wipe his nose on Grace’s knee. It was a trick of his that always made her laugh.

  “He’d never make a show horse,” I told her, not for the first time.

  “Phhh!” Fai snorted, too. “Could you see Brio in an equitation class, wiping green snot all over Gracie’s breeches? Or worse, wiping his nose on the judge!”

  “I don’t guess we’ll ever go in an equitation class, so I’m not fussed.”

  My girls weren’t into the show scene. Like my own childhood self, they’d rather be on the trails.

  “So what’s the place we’re going to?” Fai asked. “I keep forgetting its name.” We’d pored over maps the night before, decided on a loop.

  “Moody Spring. Most of the trail runs by a stream. It’s very pretty.”

  “But next time we’re going to the tavern, right? The haunted one.”

  “We could go today, except that you decided on the cemetery, and that’s in the other direction.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  At the top of the drive I flashed a key card at the unseen electronic eye. The gate swung open and we rode out into forest.

  The way we’d chosen dipped us down the wide stretch of Middle Road. It was the longest road in the forest, starting in a golden-arched beech and birch wood, then descending into pines and past a beaver pond. The road leveled out there, covered with soft drifts of pine needles. We had a long trot to the corner of Cemetery Road, and by the time I pulled Zar up, I’d realized that although he was in fine shape, I wasn’t. I knew I’d regret the months I hadn’t ridden and was already thinking of a soak in a hot bath. But the girls were not fazed.

  “Let’s canter up the hill!” Grace led the charge, and the horses rolled into a fast canter, blowing and snorting, happy to be given their heads. At the top of the hill, the old graveyard loomed, with its headstones like rows of prehistoric teeth. We pulled the horses up and walked them through the rusty propped-open gate.

  Fai threw herself off Rikka and walked her among the stones, reading to us. “ ‘Elijah King. 1792 to 1884.’ Hey, he was over ninety years old. And his wife, Abigail. She was ninety-five! But they had a baby and it must have died. It just says ‘King infant.’ ”

  Grace had hopped off. “Hey, Mom, listen to this one. ‘Lavinia Hall. 1829 to 1878. Planted in the Realms of Rest.’ Like she’s a petunia or something.”

  I had done this same thing with Jolon all those years ago, reading and exclaiming and laughing over the headstones. I remembered one with an open Bible on top, carved from stone. I found it. “ ‘Elizabeth Pool. Improve in the Present and Prepare to Die,’ ” I told the girls.

  “That’s pretty gruesome.” Fai was petting a stone lamb.

  “Trust Mom to find the creepy ones.”

  That had been what Jolon said, too, that I liked the darkest epitaphs best. Probably I did. It was unsettling, how often I’d been thinking of him. His memory haunted me here, ghostly, and I didn’t know what to do about his present self, over at the Hawley police station filing reports, or trolling the roads for speeders. I still felt a connection to him. That first loss dredged up by all the recent ones, maybe. I tried to shake off those thoughts. I’d hardly considered him in years. Why start again now? He had his own life, as I had mine. It wasn’t likely we’d meet very often.

  “Hey, listen,” Grace called. “This girl was just a little older than us. She was only sixteen. We’ll be sixteen soon. ‘So Fades My Last Remaining Flower.’ That’s spooky, too.”

  A cloud passed over the sun. The lace of leaves above us faded from a glowing bright lime color. A flat grayness fell over the cemetery. The birds stopped singing, and suddenly I smelled the familiar and troubling scent of lilacs. In a moment it was gone again.

  “I feel shivery all of a sudden,” Fai complained.

  “Jolon and I spent hours here.” The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. “We even had picnics. We can go now, though. If you want.”

  Another line of the elusive Robert Frost poem came to me. But I have promises to keep. Why couldn’t I get that poem out of my head? And what were the rest of the words? I couldn’t think of them.

  “You had picnics right on the graves? Mom, that’s disgusting.”

  “Our mom, the sicko.” They both laughed, and the mood lifted.

  “Hey, did you ever call Jolon?” Fai asked me.

  “I did run into him at the fair.” Literally.

  “And?” Grace pumped me for information, suspicion glinting in her eyes.

  “And nothing much. We talked for a few minutes. That’s all.”

  “What do you mean, ‘That’s all’? What’s he like now? Is he fat and bald? I bet he’s fat and bald.”

  “No. Neither. He’s … the same, I guess. And different.”

  “You have to describe things better than that if you’re going to write scripts for other people, Mom,” Fai pointed ou
t.

  I thought about Jolon, how I could best describe him if I had to write him down. Synapses sparked in my brain, and I was thrust back into distant memory.

  2

  I lay under the irises in my mother’s garden. The shimmering blooms, the sword-shaped leaves enclosed me, the scent like heaven drifted in the air. I was six years old, tracing out animals in the big puffy clouds of June. A dog’s head, barking and snarling, an elephant raising its trunk. I laughed at the elephant, then heard a rustling at my feet, saw the leaves shift. I lay very still, thinking it might be a snake. Not that I was afraid of snakes, only curious to see the diamond head and flicking tongue. But instead of a snake, a boy’s head peered through the foliage. A head with shining long black hair.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “Shhh!” The boy slithered up on his belly, very like the snake I had thought he was, and clamped a hand over my mouth. “There’s an owl just above us. A barred owl,” he whispered urgently. “You’ll scare it away.”

  I looked up and saw something big and brownly gray on a branch. It didn’t look alive. Then it swiveled its head and gazed down at us with disapproving golden eyes. It shook itself, unfolded sweeps of wings. With a flap and a puff of warm air, it plunged through the trees and was gone.

  The boy rolled onto his back. “Now you’ve done it.”

  I scrambled up. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t do anything but ask who you are.”

  “The owl thought you meant to ask it. They don’t like to tell. Keep themselves to themselves.”

  I absorbed that news about owls, then said, “Well, now you might as well tell me your name. Unless you don’t like to tell, either.”

  “Jolon.”

  “Jolon what?”

  “Jolon the groundskeeper’s son. And see, I’ve got a mind to keep after that owl.”

  An only child, I was lonely. I had a mind to keep after the boy. But I didn’t tell him that. Instead I said, “I’m Reve Dyer and I’m six. And I know where there’s snapping turtles.” That began our adventures.

  Jolon’s father worked at planting and weeding and shoveling on the college grounds. A tall man with a deep voice, cigarette always clamped between his lips. I often saw him from a distance, from my perch on the garden wall overlooking the college. When he saw me on the grounds with my dad, he always pulled pretty things out of his pocket for me—a tiny bird’s nest, a piece of pink quartz, a jay’s feather. Jolon’s mother stayed at home, in their little house on the edge of the forest. When he wasn’t in school, Jolon stayed with her and all their animals until the summer we met, when three days a week she had a new job baking scones and muffins and breads at the tea shop in town. Then Jolon accompanied his father and roamed the streets and fields and woods around the campus.