The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

  “Forget it.” Maggie put a hand on my arm. “She’s not going to give you any straight answers.”

  “She said she didn’t take a photo. And I almost believe her. It’s scary.”

  “I heard.” Maggie said it wearily. Her face was drawn. I noticed then how thin she’d gotten, how her clothes hung on her. “I’ve tried to corner them, too, ask them what they want from me. They always deny everything. But they’re always on me. Everywhere I go. They’re starting to make me believe I really am nuts. Except I know I’m not. And now you know, too.”

  “Yeah, I know.” And I did. I finally knew what Maggie had been going through, alone. These men and women who looked like Mormons or office workers were able to spread fear like a virus. It was a fear worse than I’d felt in the tunnels, a fear for my own sanity, for Maggie’s. It was still pulsing through me. I had to sit on a bench in front of the town hall. I tried to think rationally. “Look, they can’t link you to anything. Not really. Maybe they’ll just stop after a while.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t just wait around for that to happen. I think they actually could make me crazy. That they’re trying to.”

  I took Maggie’s hand, squeezed it. “What can we do?”

  She tugged her hand away. “I don’t know. But I’m scared they’ll find out who you are, that it was you down there.” She looked away. “And they might make me crazy enough to tell them. Shit, Reve, I’m the one that got you into this mess in the first place, and now—well, I might just be getting you into worse trouble.”

  “I guess we should have thought about that before we let that woman take our picture.”

  “What were we going to do? Smash her camera? Like that wouldn’t attract attention. Anyway, I don’t think pictures matter so much. I have a reason. I’ll show you. Then you have to make sure no one follows you home. Although that may not be a problem, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It has to do with the disappearing. But now I have to disappear, too.”

  Maggie’s studio apartment was tiny, and when I’d been in it before, it was always neat and orderly. Maggie’s taste ran to the spartan—a futon that was always made up the moment she rose, a standing lamp, a glass coffee table with a teapot and never more than one book on it. The bookshelves were only cement blocks and slats of wood, the books arranged alphabetically. But that day, the books were scattered everywhere, pages torn. Shards of the glass coffee table glittered on the floor. The teapot was cracked. The sweats and flannel shirts Maggie favored lay with outstretched arms, the dresser itself on its side, drawers smashed. Flour spattered the floor of the closet-sized kitchen, the refrigerator door swung open, and ketchup dripped like blood. It would have shocked me if I hadn’t been so numbed by what had just happened in town. I could see tears starting down Maggie’s face. I put my arms around her. “Oh, Mags, I’m so sorry …”

  She pulled away, wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Yeah, me, too. But I’ve got to get out of here. I called my cousin in New York. I can stay there for the summer.”

  Her suitcase had been kicked into a corner. It had a foot-long gash in its side. “Guess I’m going in style.” She got a big black garbage bag from the kitchen and filled it with clothing, books, soap, and a toothbrush.

  She took a long look at the room. “I liked it here. You know, it was the first time I ever lived alone.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes.

  “You’ll be back.”

  “I don’t know, Reve. I wish …” But she didn’t say what her wish was. I could tell she didn’t think it would come true.

  I drove her to the bus station, waited with her for the bus driver to board everyone heading to New York. He stuffed Maggie’s garbage bag far into the storage bay under the bus. I gave Maggie a long hug, felt her bones through her clothes. I held her, breathing her in, denim and Teaberry gum, then tucked five twenties in her jacket pocket. “Call me when you get there. Don’t forget.”

  “Thanks, Reve. I’m sorry I got you into this. I’m sorry for everything.” She turned away, then turned back. She pulled a crumpled envelope from her day pack. “I almost forgot. I’m going to leave these with you. They’re photos someone took, like today, and sent to me. No return address. They seem normal, but … you’ll see. I don’t think anyone is going to find out it was you down in the lab, as long as you stay away. I don’t think you should worry. And don’t worry about me now, either. I’ll be fine.” She nodded, then tipped her baseball cap at me. It was the same dark blue cap with a smiley face on it she’d worn the first day I met her.

  I waited until the bus rolled away, straining for a last look at Maggie’s face through the window. I knew she wouldn’t be fine. I knew I should have got on that bus with her. I’m still not sure why I didn’t.

  6

  I kept the envelope Maggie had given me that day she got on the bus. I still had it, carried it through every move. My only keepsake of that time, of Maggie. It contained photographs of her, at the Big Indian shop on Route 2, in front of the Longview Tower in Greenfield, the places we’d met after I’d infiltrated the tunnels. She was clearly talking to someone. Only the person she was talking to hadn’t been captured by the camera’s eye. I should have been right next to her in each photograph. It was me she’d been talking to. I was in every one of those photos, only I was in them disappeared.

  My parents went to the police with me when Maggie failed to call me, when I’d talked to her worried mom, the cousin she was supposed to be staying with who told us she’d never showed up in New York. The police, whose investigation into the harassment of a couple of troublemaking college girls was cursory at best. Because Maggie was seen at the protests. Because I had been there, too. And because Maggie was black, I was sure. We were told that lots of college kids run away, and she was undoubtedly one of them. Her grades were falling, she’d been acting strangely, she was paranoid and distrustful. There was no evidence anyone but Maggie had been in her apartment when it was ransacked. The detective assigned to her case implied that she had done it herself, to attract attention. That was the sum of his report.

  I knew better. I knew Maggie was terrified, with good cause. And now I knew that what had happened to her had something to do with me, with my power. That the Fetch had killed her all those years ago, as he’d killed Jeremy. And it was my fault. Jeremy’s death and Maggie’s resonated, bookmarking my life. I’d as good as pulled the trigger on them both.

  I told Jolon the story as briefly and sparingly as I could. I told him almost everything, even the part about me being disappeared in the photos. But for the first time since I’d met him I kept something from him. I didn’t tell him about the tortured man in the tunnels. I thought it would be more believable that way, but I was fearful, too. Fearful of what might happen if I told even Jolon. That it would seem much bigger then, and more terrifying. After Maggie, I’d never told anyone, even Jeremy. It was our secret, mine and dead Maggie’s. Ours and the Fetch’s.

  Jolon was silent after I finished speaking.

  “Do you believe me? I know it sounds strange and … kind of crazy.”

  “I believe you. I always have. Why stop now?” He sighed, looked out the window at Hawley Forest, where we were by then. “As for being strange, well … it is.” He skipped over the crazy part. “If you’re right about it being the same guy, and it sounds like it could be, this has been going on for a very long time.” Neither of us then had any idea how long.

  Pizza by Earl—October 24, 2013

  1

  Jolon called me the next morning. The Fetch’s e-mail had been sent from a new Yahoo account set up at a public library in St. George, Utah, the previous day. St. George was about two hours from our Henderson house. The library patron had been a man named David Tolland, who had a Provo, Utah, address. He was otherwise unremarkable, the librarian told them. No one remembered him. He had also been dead for eleven years. A fake ID. Another dead end.

  “One thing I’ll tell you. Knowing what you’ve alr
eady been through, you and the girls should have protection.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A bodyguard. Maybe a couple.”

  I laughed when he said it, but I mulled it over. After a day of trying to work, but mostly just spent stewing and checking my e-mail or the girls every ten minutes, I thought it would be good to get us all out of the house.

  Most nights at Pizza by Earl are slow. A middle-aged couple sat side by side in one of the green Naugahyde booths watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Smoke lay bluely over their heads, clouding the television. A few men huddled in the corner of the bar over beers. No one looked up as we walked in except the waitress, who snapped her gum at us. Earl could be seen flinging dough behind the hatch. A puffy-eyed busboy slung beer mugs into a dishwasher. A sign by the cash register was turned to PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF, so we all wandered over to the booths. Nathan and I scooched into one. The girls slumped into the one behind us, and immediately started poring over the tabletop jukebox selections.

  The seats were cracked where they weren’t duct taped, but there were real flowers in vases on all the tables, and along the marble counter. Pink and red carnations wafted their spicy scent as we sat down. We picked menus out of a wire rack that advertised BUDWEISER—THE KING OF BEERS. The specials were handwritten in marker and slid into the plastic menu cover: Chicken parmigiana dinner with choice of ziti or spaghetti. Cajun catfish with rice pilaf and green beans, and something cryptically titled “roast beast feast.” The dessert of the day, apart from the usual apple, cherry, blueberry, banana cream, and chocolate cream pies, was Grape-Nut pudding. Grape-Nut pudding was Fai’s strange favorite. She always ordered it when we went to Mustang Sally’s Diner back home. Which we hadn’t done in a very long time. Would Hawley turn out to be just another stop on our trajectory of flight? I felt a catch in my throat at the thought. Nathan, sitting across from me, narrowed his eyes. “Is this going to be okay, Reve? We can go home.”

  I twirled the heavy glass ashtray on the table. I wished I still smoked. “I’ll be all right.”

  The gum-snapping waitress came over for our order, poured waters, sloshed some onto the table. She looked nervous, her face flushed. “My dad says you’re the lady from over Five Corners. Said to tell you we hope you’re getting settled in.” She said it all in a rush, her face growing redder. She was not much older than Grace and Fai. I felt exposed, felt my own face redden. I was tired of being a curiosity. Why hadn’t I fled to a big city, where no one cared enough to gossip about their neighbors? Nathan, ever ready to rescue a social situation, told her, “I’ll have the roast beast. Does it come with a salad?”

  While we waited for our food, I listened to the girls debate the merits of various singers, the décor, what they might order for dessert. I lost the thread of their conversation, twirled my straw in my iced tea, and snuck glances at the four men in the shadows near the bar. Two of them seemed familiar. I wondered if they had been part of the strange assembly in the forest the previous day.

  The door chimed and more of the forest men walked in. I was certain about them. Walnut man and Mike, the fat man. The walnut-faced man made a beeline for the bar, but Mike looked around, saw me, and froze. Then he tipped his feed cap at me before he, too, scuttled to the bar.

  I remembered a thing Maggie used to say. That if you wanted to know something, it was better to just ask. Even if you were 99 percent sure you wouldn’t get an answer, there was always that 1 percent variable, and usually the odds were better than you thought. Especially if you surprised the truth out of a person.

  I said to Nathan, “I’ll just be a minute,” and slid out of the booth. The waitress pointed to the signs that said GULLS and BUOYS, but I walked right by them, and planted myself at the bar. The men looked at me, looked away.

  “I thought you all might like a drink. On me.” I dug in my bag for my wallet, dropped a fifty on the bar. “That should cover a few rounds. I’ll have a Sam Adams, too,” I told the bartender. His head was shaved, polished as if he’d rubbed it to its high sheen with a bar rag. He sported a tribal tattoo on his arm that reminded me of a crown of thorns, with USMC in the center. A marine, then. He wordlessly plunked a bottle down in front of me, slid five Buds down the bar for my new friends.

  I raised the bottle, tipped it toward them, said, “Cheers,” and took a swig.

  Mike was busy peeling the label off his sweaty bottle. The walnut-faced man gave a quick nod in acknowledgment, but didn’t look at me. Then a tall guy from the other end of the bar got up, tugged at his jeans, took up his cane, and made his way over. The age spots on his face were the color of tea. He held out his hand. I didn’t recognize him from the woods.

  “I saw you on TV once. You and your husband. Your magic act was the bee’s knees. I’m sorry about …” He shook his head, and what hair he had left floated like cotton.

  “We’re all sorry. And we hope it don’t start again at Five Corners. Hope you’re all safe there.”

  “Christ sake, Hank!” the walnut man exploded. “She don’t …”

  “She don’t what, Len? She got a right, it’s her kids.”

  Hank nodded toward our booths. Fai and Caleigh, their heads bowed, were absorbed by the puzzles on their place mats. Grace was blowing bubbles with her straw in time to “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” Hank turned back to me. “Don’t mind these guys, missy. They got their heads stuck up their keisters so far they can see out their own mouths.”

  Hank surprised a laugh out of me, the first real laugh I’d had in a long time. It felt good to laugh. Normal. “Well, Hank, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you sure have a way with words.”

  “Why, I’m talking about the disappearances at Hawley Five Corners in the twenties.”

  The smile froze on my face.

  “You know,” he went on. “The six young girls. And then the whole church congregation just up and vanished one Sunday morning. You must’ve heard that story?”

  I thought back on the conversation I’d had with Carl Streeter, about the abandonment of Hawley Five Corners. He hadn’t said anything about children disappearing first. Girls.

  “Aw, Hank, you know that’s just an old legend—” Len piped in.

  “No, I don’t know any such thing. Just because nobody here ever talks about it don’t mean it’s not true.” A couple of the men in the corner had swiveled around on their bar stools and were staring at him now. I saw that one of them was the black-haired man from the forest. Hank did have a voice that carried, but I didn’t think they were staring because of that.

  “Well, I believe it. That forest is haunted, especially the Five Corners. I was just a boy then, six years old. But we knew what happened, all right. We knew that the girls were disappearing. Fall of ’23. Why, the search for Lucy Bell went on for months, even before what happened in the church that next spring. You can’t tell me that everyone who lived in Hawley Five Corners decided to move out all on the same day. And it was a warm fall when it started then, too, just like now. I remember. And there’s a few others that do, as well. Only they won’t speak of it. Rather it was forgotten. Dead and buried. Len’s one of those, miss. Ma’am. But I’d sure hate for anything to happen to those girls.” He nodded again in my daughters’ direction. They were intent on choosing more songs, Fai’s hand flipping the cards that listed music from a past they had only heard of. Elvis and Johnny Cash just distant echoes to them.

  Hank rested his bony hand on my shoulder. I tried not to flinch. “You know …” He shot a look to the men in the corner, then whispered, “One of them came back. Hannah Sears did. Gone two months. And then one day just walked on out of the forest. Couldn’t even say where she’d been. Thought it was the same day she’d gone out blackberry picking down by the old tavern. She came back still carrying her basket of berries, even though it was December. Those berries were a wonder.”

  “Hank, will you just shut it?” the man with the black hair snapped. “He’s old, he believes all that ho
o-ha. Ghosts and vanishing towns. Don’t pay him no mind.”

  “Remy, she saw the ghost herd!” the fat man said.

  “Mike, you can just shut your big yap, too. Shit. I’m surrounded by old men and fools.” Remy went back to his beer.

  Hank jabbed painfully at my arm. His mottled, moony face was alight with urgency. “He wasn’t there. I was.”

  I pulled away as gently as I could. “I think my food is here. It was … good to meet you, Hank.” I took my once-sipped beer back to our table.

  On the way home, while the girls were quiet, digesting their roast beast feast, I thought about the disappearing town story. It was probably just a ghostly legend parents scared their children with to prevent them from straying into the forest. But the disappearances Hank had mentioned, the girls he knew disappearing, his hope that “it” wouldn’t start again—it all pointed to something more real, and more troubling. His fear for my own girls frightened me. And Hank’s story had another layer of doubt and mystery that he probably wasn’t aware of: its connection to my own family’s past. My grandmother’s name, before she went back to just plain Hannah Dyer, had been Hannah Dyer Sears. Hannah Sears, like the girl who disappeared, then reappeared, in Hawley Five Corners ninety years ago.

  2

  I couldn’t call Nan, not that late, even though it would serve her right for keeping me in the dark, as surely she had done. I got up, put on a robe, and went up to my office. I sat across from the portrait of the mystery woman and mulled. It seemed like all I could do in the middle of the night was to pray, although I wasn’t exactly a believer. I didn’t even know how to pray. The closest I could come was to shut off the light, close my eyes, and say to whoever or whatever might be listening, “Please help me out of this mess. Please keep my girls safe. Please let me do the right thing.”