The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

  “Where is everybody?”

  “I told them to leave me alone. I can’t have you all hanging over me every minute. I need some privacy.”

  Falcon Eddy swung his big head around the door to the dining room, gave me a wink.

  “Where are Grand and Gramps?” I asked Caleigh.

  “Dunno. I think they went over to Nathan’s apartment when I told them I wanted them to leave me alone.” Her dexterous hands swooped through her string. “Mom.”

  “What, honey?”

  “Now you’re doing it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Not giving me any space.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

  She rolled her eyes. I was almost glad of her snarkiness. At least she wasn’t scared.

  So I rummaged around the refrigerator, pulled vegetables out of the bin. It seemed like days since Caleigh had eaten a vegetable that hadn’t been boiled to death. I pulled a knife out of the block, started chopping and dicing, throwing a salad together. I could at least do that.

  The knife slipped, fell to the floor. I thought of Nan, and how she used to say when a knife was dropped, “A man is coming.” I called for Caleigh, ran to find her. She was asleep on the couch in the parlor, where I’d left her.

  My head seemed too heavy to lift. I slumped onto the couch next to her and fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed about The Hawley Book of the Dead. Not in any coherent way, but it was like a red thread through my dreams. I carried it like a baby, rocked it in one dream. In another I kept trying to give it away, but no one would take it. I tried to leave it by the side of a road, but it kept flying back into my hands, like a bird.

  2

  I woke in the late afternoon. Next to me, Caleigh still slept soundly. The day had become misty and dark with suspended rain. I jumped up, ran out into it, nearly tripped over Falcon Eddy. “Stay with Caleigh,” I commanded. I knew something was happening in the forest, something big; I could feel it like damp through my body, chilling my bones. But I didn’t call Jolon. I knew where to seek my answers. I bolted up to the office, dug out The Hawley Book of the Dead. It wasn’t blank this time.

  Rigel Voss was all in a tangle. He’d fallen into a cellar hole, crawled through a mass of hobblebush to a cave that must once have been the root cellar of a house. He tried to rest under the damp rock overhang. Tried to breathe shallowly, not the doglike pant he wanted to indulge in. He was somewhere in the Hawley Forest. The handheld GPS he’d carried had sprung from his pocket during one of the belly crawls he’d had to subject himself to, to get away from the guy who’d sniffed him out. Then at some other point, the pocket with his topo maps all protected in ziplock bags tore. It gaped now so his boxers showed, snagged during his headlong gallops and slides, trying to get far enough away. But that wasn’t the worst. His gun lay somewhere out in the brush, too.

  He’d lost the guy, though. He thought. He hoped. If his senses hadn’t been honed, first by his Quantico training, then by years of lying low, he would surely have been caught. It was the smell of the man that had roused Voss’s suspicion, set him going. The wind shifted suddenly, and the smell of human came with it. Wood smoke and soap. He knew he himself smelled of sweat and fear to the man he’d never actually seen. Wasn’t sure if he’d been seen during the hour or so he was pursued. Smelled, yes, as he’d smelled the man. For all Voss knew, the guy was a hunter, thought he was a deer. That’s what he hoped, but he knew better. Hawley Forest had remained closed throughout the search for the missing girls. He himself had hiked in from Plainfield, a long haul. Then, this guy was no average beer-gutted deer hunter. He traveled light, as Voss did. He traveled methodical and sure and eerily quiet. It was only when the moose crashed between them that Voss could make a run for it, run and crawl, run and crawl. For so long his lungs were bursting. The moose followed him. Maddened by flies, or just at the cusp of rutting, something about Voss it didn’t like. It tramped and huffed after him, and was faster than Voss thought possible for an animal that size. He could hear it still, stomping and snorting somewhere above him. He’d have to lie low, wait until he could make his next move.

  When he’d left Hawley, it had been his plan to vanish for a while, over the state line in Albany. He knew a no-name motel near the Albany airport, where the manager was a guy in an undershirt with ginger hair sprouting from his ears and never spoke, as far as Voss knew. Just took Voss’s cash, slid the key card across the counter, went back to watching NASCAR. He was close enough to get back easily, as things developed and he saw his next chance. He watched the TV and scanned the Internet for news.

  After a few days, he was getting antsy, just hanging around the room. It was your average low-end old motor court, with a decent bed, a desk, a television, a small fridge and microwave, a Monet haystack on the wall. Voss mostly sat in the breeze from the air conditioner, surfed the Web and television, ate take-out Chinese or ribs delivered from a different place every day so he wouldn’t be remembered. He read novels he’d picked up in a Walmart—James Patterson, Clive Cussler, a Stephen King he’d started, but which was spooking him too much. He kept running across coincidences in the book that resonated with his own life. Small things, really. A mention of the Petroglyphs outside Albuquerque, where he and Alice had gone to visit her sister, their only trip besides their honeymoon. The wife in the book used the same perfume Alice liked. He left the book in the lobby for someone else to get creeped out by.

  Altogether, the room was fine, though. Restful, except that it smelled of something sweet and fruity, reminding him of the shampoo Alice used. Often, he would forget for days at a time, then be blindsided by something as innocuous as air freshener, a mention of Petroglyphs. It’s funny how our minds work, he thought. It didn’t even disturb him anymore, these sudden blasts of remembrance. He looked forward to them. They were all he had left of her.

  In his first thirty-six years, Rigel Voss hadn’t set a foot wrong. Every move was calculated to yield the best result. But when he’d run across Maggie Hamilton, and through her the disappearing mystery woman, his life had spiraled down to hellish depths. At first, he was certain it could be remedied. He didn’t mention it to Alice, eight months’ pregnant then, and feeling achy and swollen and hungry all the time. It seemed like whenever he came home, she was spooning something soft into her mouth. Butter pecan ice cream, or chocolate pudding, or tapioca.

  They rented the first-floor apartment of a triple-decker in Holyoke then, at the nice end of town where there were real yards and trimmed hedges. Alice liked to sit on the porch high above the street, watch the cars pass, watch the neighbor kids play in their yards, running through sprinklers in the heat. They could even see a small blue patch of the Connecticut River from the porch, and from their bedroom. The yard out back was large and fenced. Perfect for children. The only thing wrong with the place was the steep stone stairway that led to the front door. But as Alice had pointed out when they were apartment hunting, they could always go up the more gradually inclined drive, come in through the kitchen door at the back of the house. All the same, the steps troubled him. He made her promise not to use them at all the last few months of her pregnancy.

  Often he would park on the street, dash up those twenty-seven stone steps to the porch and kiss her mouth, sweet from the pudding or ice cream she favored to cool and comfort herself. He couldn’t wait to be with her, care for her. Every weekend he cleaned the apartment, then made stews for her, thick and creamy. Even though they’d had a long spell of hot weather, too hot for May, Alice wanted soup. Chewing seemed like too much work in her languid pregnant state. Corn chowder was her favorite, made with fresh corn they’d gotten from a farm stand that last summer. They’d shucked and steamed, sliced the juicy kernels off the ears, and put the corn up in jars one thundery day in September. They’d just found out she was pregnant, their baby not even a gentle swelling between Alice’s narrow boy hips. It would be months before she puffed up, couldn’t stand all day at the Supe
r Saver, had to take an early leave.

  How he loved her. He didn’t think it possible, but he loved her even more pregnant. He loved her big belly, her lopsided face and tiny hands, now a little swollen with the heat and the bloating. Her croaky voice asking him, “Honey, will you get me …” It was always only a glass of juice, or cool water in a dishpan so she could soak her feet, thickened and painful even though she could put them up all day. But he wished she had asked for more. He would have gotten her anything. Pearls or rubies. A trip to China. The moon and the stars all wrapped up and tied with a golden ribbon. He would have tried, anyway. She asked for only one tough thing, and he did it, at least to the best of his ability.

  One day, she was lying on the bed when he came home, instead of reading on the couch. It worried him to see her with her arm curled over her face, the soft underside as vulnerable as a baby rabbit. He went and sat on the bed beside her, smoothed her skin there.

  “My darlin’ darlin’ secret agent man.” She rolled onto her side, scissored her legs around his waist. “Now you’re trapped, by the fat lady in the circus. If you don’t do what she says, she just might crush you.”

  “Then I guess I’d better do what she says.”

  She smiled her crooked smile at him. “Sing to me.”

  “I can’t sing, honey. I don’t even sing in the shower or the car. Try something easier. I don’t know any songs.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re going to have to sing to this baby, you know. Your mama must have sung you some lullaby sometime.”

  Then he remembered. His father hated when his mother sang baby stuff to him, but there was one song that stuck.

  “You’ll be sorry!” he teased.

  He cleared his throat. “Last night as I lay dreaming of pleasant days gone by …” he sang. The first notes were squawks, really, but after his throat got used to singing rather than talking, it flowed better.

  My mind was bent on rambling so to Ireland I did fly

  I stepped on board a vision, I sailed out with a will

  Until I came to anchor at the cross of Spancil Hill.

  I paid a flying visit to my first and only love

  She’s fair as any lily and gentle as a dove

  She threw her arms around me, crying “Johnny, I love you still”

  She is a farmer’s daughter, the pride of Spancil Hill.

  Well I dreamt I hugged and kissed her as in the days of yore

  She said, “Johnny, you’re only joking as many the time before”

  The cock crew in the morning, he crew both loud and shrill

  And I woke in California, so far from Spancil Hill.

  Alice reached up and pulled his head to hers, stared into his eyes. “See. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  But it was bad. A month later she was dead, and he was gone away to a new and terrible life. He never did sing a lullaby to their baby.

  After he’d tendered his resignation, Voss went out every day as if he still were heading to work, to the university. He dressed carefully in his good suit, tied his bland tie precisely. He kissed Alice, took the packed lunch she never failed to make for him, leftover grilled chicken legs that he could eat cold, chunky potato salad, homemade chocolate chip cookies. He didn’t eat the lunch, he wasn’t hungry, but he made sure he threw it away before he got home.

  He thought it could all be set right if only he could discover how the trick was accomplished, how the girl had disappeared from the photos, from out of his grip in the research lab. He could bring Hunter evidence that he was not lying, was not crazy. Then he would be reinstated, and Alice would never have to be worried with it all.

  At first he thought his good luck had returned. The day after he’d tossed Maggie’s apartment, it had been easy to track her, going in the same old loops all Bay State students made. All he had to do was wait in Amherst Center for her to show up. And then, miracle of miracles, the red-haired girl showed up, too. She and Maggie got into a huge old Chevy Impala, fawn colored with a white top, Mass plates 403-XLC. Voss followed them easily all afternoon. They drove down Route 9, then back to Amherst. They walked around, talked to Field Agent Evelyn Wilson, who’d taken their photograph (good luck, Evelyn). They drove to Maggie’s apartment, then to the bus station in Springfield. Maggie toted a black garbage bag, got on the bus to New York City. He tried to follow the red-haired girl, but lost her somehow in the not-very-crowded weekday afternoon bus station. He loped out to the car, knowing he’d catch her there, which would be better, after all, than the station. But in place of Chevy Impala 403-XLC was a brand-new navy blue Honda Civic. Voss kicked the tire savagely, then leapt around swearing, his maroon tie swooping and jigging like a new kind of bird.

  He ran back to the station, found out Maggie’s bus stopped in Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford. Got in his car and drove hell for leather to Hartford. He passed the bus on I-91 just outside Enfield, Connecticut. He thought he glimpsed Maggie’s profile. In Hartford, though, she did not leave the bus.

  In New Haven, he waited while blue-haired old women and beer-bellied men got off the bus. Maggie was the last off. He’d had time to scope out his options and found the ladies’ room was only a few feet from the exit to the parking lot. He’d positioned his car as close to that door as possible. Another bit of good luck was that Maggie went straight to the ladies’ and did not linger to buy coffee or a magazine. When she came out, Voss had only to place a firm hand on her neck so the vein popped up, jab the tiny needle in he’d readied beforehand. She slapped her hand to the place as if she’d been stung by a bee, swung around. By the time her eyes met his, they were glazed over. He held her as she fell against him, frog-marched her inert body out to the car, tucked her into the passenger seat, and drove away.

  He drove carefully until dark. He finally stopped at a rundown motor court in the Berkshire foothills, with small cabins, poorly lit. Maggie hadn’t stirred at all. A good thing, he thought. Then as he unstrapped the seat belt, he knocked her arm from her lap, heard something jingle. He grabbed her wrist, felt the medical alert tag. He placed her hand in her lap very gently, turned the tag so he could see. But some deep part of him already knew. She was allergic to two things. Penicillin and barbiturates. Thiopental, a barbiturate, was the tranquilizer he’d shot her up with. It had been used effectively as a truth serum, and he wanted the truth from her. Now he’d never get it. Her lips were swollen, her neck bulging. He grabbed her wrist again, then her neck, feeling blindly for a pulse. It was too late. Maggie Hamilton was dead. A sick horror washed over him. He knew that nothing would ever be the same. He wished he could turn back time.

  But Rigel Voss kept himself moving, knowing what he had to do.

  The motel he’d chosen was the kind of place agents used when they wanted there to be no questions asked. He carried Maggie’s body into the room, drew the curtains and set up the photos he knew he would need, to coerce the red-haired girl when he found her again, to get her to talk, to tell. Then, at the darkest time of night, he carried the body to the car, this time zipped in a big duffel he’d bought at an outlet store nearby. He drove to a lake he’d only heard of. A lake that was said to have no bottom. The girl’s body was curiously light, not difficult to deal with at all. Or maybe that was the adrenaline. On the edge of the water, he placed weights he’d also bought on her ankles. He found some round, smooth, heavy stones to put in the pockets of her jacket, where he found five twenties, folded in three. He put them back where he’d found them. Even with the weights, she was light enough for him to swim her body out to the middle of the moonlit lake, then let her sink, which she did quickly, leaving no trace.

  When Rigel Voss read about the horse found in Savoy, and how the search was widening, moving out of Hawley, he knew it was time to return. With any luck, most of the searchers and law enforcement and weird guys with bows and arrows would be gone from the forest. He would execute the rest of his plan, just as he’d dreamed it, every step.

  But now here he was, trapped by a
thousand-pound moose, hiding in his cellar hole. Just a few miles from the very lake in which he’d sunk Maggie’s body.

  Jolon’s distraction began with a smell. It was a smell that shouldn’t have been in the forest in October. A sweet smell, a fragrance. Jolon knew it wasn’t coming from the man he’d been tracking. The only smell wafting back to Jolon from the man was Dial soap and sweat. Not even a hint of bug juice. Jolon stopped, sniffed the air. It was lilacs he smelled. As unlikely as that seemed in autumn. He was near an old cellar hole on Hell’s Kitchen Road.

  Jolon worked in concentric circles around the site. Anyone seeing him from a distance might think he was a bear, crouching on all fours, then standing, snuffing, peering at the trees and sky, then slowly moving his eyes back to the ground.

  He’d worked this ground before, and he didn’t really anticipate finding anything. But one of Brother Thomas’s first lessons was never to expect or anticipate, as if he was a bear, without the strange obsession with the future humans have. His second lesson was to keep on where instinct led him. Bearlike again. And instinct led Jolon to search for the source of the flowery smell. He forgot about the man he’d been tracking. Forgot the man might be Reve’s Fetch. The smell had enchanted him. A line from a Robert Frost poem came to him then. “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” he muttered to himself.

  The lilac smell persisted. It might be shampoo or perfume, although the searchers were nowhere near him, so there was no woman nearby whose hair could waft that scent on the air. At least no woman alive. People in a forest inevitably made some noise, gave themselves away. Unless they were quiet because they would never make a sound again. Hair could retain scent for much longer than anyone would rationally think, even after death. He remembered the mourning necklace Brother Thomas had worn, made from his dead grandfather’s hair. The grandfather who had been a Mohawk tracker. The one who had taught Brother Thomas, telling him the old stories. The snake woman and the creation of the world, the wolf’s dance and the moon phases. The animals had come to him, Grandfather Sintum, the foxes lay by him, the birds nested in his hair. Which looked and smelled alive, Jolon remembered, shining black and reeking of wood smoke and bear grease, tied in strong knots on Brother Thomas’s neck, long after Sintum was with his ancestors. He hadn’t thought of that necklace, or of the stories Brother Thomas told, for a very long time.