The Hawley Book of the Dead

by Chrysler Szarlan

  Then he stopped still. Slipped thin deerskin gloves on his hands, felt for his knife, reached it out of his pocket. His eye had caught a fleck of dirty white on the ground. Someone else might have taken it for a stone or even a discarded bit of tissue. Jolon knew it was bone. He scraped carefully at the earth, until the domelike shape revealed itself. It was a human skull.

  3

  I woke from my trance to the sound of my cell ringing. It was Jolon. I didn’t push the answer button. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to be there, where he was. Knowing what he knew. I hid the Book away.

  I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I didn’t want to be stopped or followed. I disappeared and breezed by Falcon Eddy. He turned, put out a hand, but didn’t touch me. He shook his big head. “Imagination’s working overtime, now,” he mumbled. I paused by Nathan’s doorway, spied my dad pacing by the window, Nathan with Caleigh, and my mom out on the deck.

  I ran to the barn and threw a saddle on Zar. I led him out the far door, out of sight of the house. I’d lost the connection when I closed the Book, didn’t know where Jolon’s gruesome discovery would take him. But I had a hunch he’d still be at the old tannery cellar hole.

  The mist had settled on the hills, and a fine drizzle had started. In spite of it, I’d never gotten to Hell’s Kitchen so fast. I remembered the narrow deer trails that I hadn’t been on in twenty years. They wound down parallel to Hunt Road, then swerved off toward Hell’s Kitchen. I realized that I’d never known the origin of that name. Oh, there were enough Devil’s Hopyards and Witch’s Hollows in New England that no one batted an eye at evil-sounding names. Nor did I until that day. But when Zar leapt down the last bank onto the road, I thought I saw demon shapes dancing around a fire. Of course they were not demons, and there was no reason I knew of for Zar to pull up and start trembling and snorting.

  The figures in the mist probably numbered no more than twenty. But they looked unearthly, surrounded by search-and-rescue vehicles, police cars with lights cutting through the thickening fog—the fire I thought I’d seen. Then I saw the COUNTY CORONER decal on one of the cars and started to shake. There were more shapes in the woods, lurching around what I knew to be the crumbling foundations of the Hallock tannery, which burned in the 1800s and was never rebuilt. Now men and women in red and yellow slickers were climbing over its remains, and down into the cellar hole, where the hides had once been stored.

  I rode toward the site, and out of the mist I could see a crouching man look up at me. Jolon.

  Then others saw me, called to him, pointed at me. Jolon waved them back, then slid down the bank onto the road. He ran to me, put a hand on Zar’s neck, foamed with sweat as it was. “It’s all right, Reve,” he told me.

  I felt dangerous, as if I could do damage. “Whose skull is it?”

  “Not your girls’.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you knew, but I did find bones, old bones, been there decades. Buried in the leaves and clay, inside the cellar hole.”

  I shuddered. “Were they children? Were there five of them?”

  “We don’t know how many. But they were children, yes.”

  “The children that disappeared in 1923.”

  “Possibly. Probably. But it will be a while before we know for sure. It’s like an archaeological dig up there. You don’t need to …” He saw the expression in my eyes, implacable. “Shit, Reve! They were dismembered. Killed elsewhere, transported and buried piecemeal.”

  “And Voss?”

  Jolon shook his head. “How you know is beyond me, but yes, I was following a man in the woods, up to the time I got sidetracked by this.”

  “It was Rigel Voss.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “You could have caught him. Again.” But I knew he only did what the forest compelled him to. We all did. “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.”

  “What?” He looked startled.

  “Never mind. What happened to him? The man you were tracking?”

  “Well, right now, he’s probably still trapped by a moose, not far down the road. I didn’t have a tranq gun with me, or I could have brought the moose down. I don’t carry a gun of any kind in the woods, but this guy was carrying. He dropped one gun, maybe had another. Figured the best thing to do is what I did, call in for backup as soon as I had signal. Called the station and told them to seal South Road, search for the man, call in Fish and Wildlife to deal with the moose. They’ll bring him in. Whoever he is, he isn’t invincible. A run-in with a moose will take the stuffing out of just about anyone.”

  I shivered again, knowing it all. The Book had taken me inside Voss’s head, showed me how Maggie had died. A stupid mistake. But it hadn’t given me even a glimpse of the girls. If Voss didn’t have them, where were they?

  “Jolon, it is Voss. I know he isn’t dead. I know he’s out there. I saw him. In a … a kind of vision, or dream. He didn’t have the girls then, but …” I couldn’t speak it. I slipped from the saddle. I leaned against Zar for his animal warmth. I knew that even if the twins were still out here, still alive, Voss was here now, too. “I can’t help thinking …” I couldn’t say it, the word linking my daughters with these children, with their horrible fates.

  Jolon placed a big hand on my shoulder. “You can’t. You shouldn’t. It doesn’t help anything.”

  He was right. The bones Jolon found weren’t my daughters’. We hadn’t found their bones. Not yet. I fought the waves of panic.

  Around us, the mist was settling to a chill, stinging rain. Jolon dipped his head and his hat brim shed rainbow droplets. “I’ve got to get back there. We have a lot to do before it gets dark. I’ll get a driver for you, and somebody to walk the horse home.”

  “No. I’ll ride. I need to.” I swung up into the saddle.

  “I’m going to have Bob follow you in the cruiser.” He motioned to the uniformed Hawley policeman. “And don’t argue!”

  I didn’t. I had to ride by all the yellow-slickered teams of various kinds, their vehicles. I had to ride by the coroner’s van. Another shiver went through me. I looked up the slope to the tannery site, the rocks tumbled on one another like the bones that had been found. The girls’ names came back to me, the names my Nan had tolled. Maria Hall. Aggie Green. Liza Sears. Anna Sewall. Lucy Bell.

  Two men were lifting a wet black bag out of the hole, their faces red from exertion and the cold rain. As I rode, the cruiser crawling behind me, I thought those names, and the rhythm of them, matched Zar’s hoofbeats no matter which order I thought them in. Lucy Bell, Liza Sears, Aggie Green, Maria Hall. Lucy Bell, Liza Sears … over and over, my funeral dirge for them, the other lost children. Not my own. Please God, not my own.

  When I returned I found Nathan idly paging through the local paper. There was a photo of the twins above the fold. I winced.

  Nathan looked up. “It’s about time.”

  “I went out for a ride.”

  “Of course. I suppose it didn’t occur to you at all that we’d worry? I got a call from Jolon, saying he’d tried your cell, but no go, that he’d closed the forest entrances and wasn’t letting anyone use the roads. He wanted us to stay put. I went to tell you, and Falcon Eddy was right outside your door. He didn’t see you leave, but when he thought back on it, he said he felt you go.”

  “Then you knew I was fine,” I snapped. Sometimes the only way for me to hold it together is to be unreasonable. And I needed to hold myself together then. I felt as if my head would explode with thoughts of those five lost girls.

  “But who knew where you were, or what happened after you’d gone? Jolon said that you’d probably head toward the old mill where all the furor is.”

  “Tannery.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an old tannery, not a mill. Where’s Caleigh? Where is everybody?”

  “Caleigh’s with your dad. We didn’t think she should know you’d taken off without saying anything. Your mom’s upstairs taking a nap. We didn’t wake her. Falcon Eddy went out t
o search for you.”

  “Well, now I’m here. I need to go up and change. If that’s all right with you.”

  Nathan flipped a page, not looking at me.

  I was chilled to the bone from the wet ride, and wanted a bath, but I just changed into dry clothes and went back down. I wanted to be near Caleigh, who I could now see in the yard behind the house with my dad, playing badminton in the rain. I toweled my damp hair, trying not to think too much. Or at all. Although I did bring The Hawley Book of the Dead down with me, sheathed in my Petroglyph bag. I wanted to keep the Book close, in case it would tell me more. I called Caleigh in, and she ran to me, hugged me so hard I gasped.

  “Honey, I need you to stay in the house now. Can you do that?”

  Her wet face was buried in my sweater, but I heard her say, “I know. A man is coming.”

  I wasn’t really surprised. I kissed the top of her bright head, looked at my dad. I nodded to him. “Maybe. But it’ll be okay. They’re going to find him before anything else happens.”

  “Okay. But can Falcon Eddy teach me a new poker game? It’s called Horse. Gramps said I had to ask you.”

  “Sure, honey. But dry off first, okay?” And she trotted off with Eddy and my father in tow.

  Nathan was still peevish, still stubbornly using his newspaper as a barricade. I pulled it out of his hands.

  “Okay. I was wrong not to tell any of you.”

  “You were.”

  “Come have tea with me. At least we don’t have Mrs. Pike glooming at us. That’s one good thing about the roads being closed today.”

  “All right. And you can tell me what happened out there.” I knew Nathan’s curiosity would eventually overcome his hurt feelings.

  I made the Lapsang souchong tea that is perfect for rainy days and for grief. The first sip tasted of earth, and I felt tears spring up behind my eyes. I breathed in the smoky scent to try to stem the rush of emotion. I thought of the bones they were bringing up out of the earth, children’s bones. Of how fragile we all are. And my girls. Who knew if their lovely skin still clothed their bones? I pushed the tea away.

  “They found … bones.” I struggled to get the word out. I felt Nathan’s hand clutch mine. “The bones of the children killed all those years ago.”

  “The missing children from Hawley Five Corners?”

  “Jolon thinks so. It must be them.” The names rang through my brain: Anna Sewall, Liza Sears, Aggie Green. My body felt charged with grief. Until then I had spoken, moved, eaten what little I had like an automaton. But after those children’s bodies were found, the shock that had blanketed me dropped away. The numbness was replaced by grief and fright and anger, and what felt like a skein of fire running through my heart.

  “Reve, honey. I know this is hard, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with the twins.”

  At that, I broke completely, absolutely.

  “Everybody is telling me that!” It felt like I was retching up knives instead of words. “But what happens to children who disappear, Nathan? What? They die. That’s what happens.” I leapt from my chair, but then didn’t know what to do with my body. My legs jerked under me, as if by their own accord propelled me around the kitchen. I suddenly couldn’t believe I’d been functioning as if I was normal. I’d been nurturing the thin trickle of hope that kept me sane. Now the trickle had dried up, all in an hour, since I learned about those children being found. What horrible things had been done to them? And why? I didn’t believe in witches or fairies or the protection of the forest. I felt as if I had battery acid for blood, something racing and corrosive driving me. I couldn’t be still. I could only rage.

  “There must be something more we can do. I’ve been riding and searching and the woods have been scoured and all that we’ve found are old bones. I don’t want Grace and Fai’s bones found decades from now!”

  “I know, Reve—”

  He reached for me, but I batted his arm away. “No, you don’t know. You don’t know where they are, you don’t know how I feel, you don’t know anything.” My voice was a shriek. Nathan just stared at me.

  The door slammed, and Jolon strode into the kitchen, dripping from the mist. He calmly walked to the cabinets, took down three juice glasses. He reached out a flask from his pocket, poured parsimonious shots into two glasses, filled the third to the brim. He took me by the shoulders, sat me down again, though I was resisting all the way.

  “You’ll drink this. Then you’ll maybe pass out and sleep and when you wake you’ll have a grip again.” He raised the full glass, tilted it toward my lips, but then I took it in both shaking hands and drank. The liquid was heavy and sweet and searing, like nothing I’d ever tasted. I was beyond caring what it was. I drank it like medicine, under Jolon’s watchful eye. By the time he poured me another full glass, my hands were not shaking anymore, and the sharp edges of the world had softened and blurred.

  4

  I awoke to find the darkness closing in. I was in the parlor, the fire crackling. My father with me, the others gone. My mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with sandpaper, and my head ached. “Can I have some water?” My dad startled, then jumped up to pour from a pitcher on the table. “Here, sweetheart.” He handed the cold, beaded glass to me, and I pressed it against my sweaty forehead before drinking greedily. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Only an hour. It’s seven o’clock.”

  “It feels like midnight. Where’s Caleigh?”

  “She’s playing Monopoly with everyone in the kitchen.”

  “Jolon?”

  “He went back to the tannery. He promised he’d stop in tonight.”

  I took an inventory of my body and brain, and I felt better. Not a lot, but no longer on the edge of tears or mania. I started toward the kitchen, but stopped when I spied an orange envelope among the mail. I snatched it up. It was addressed to Caleigh, care of me. It had no return address. It was stuffed with something soft and bulky, but it didn’t smell of smoke. It smelled of Maggie.

  I ripped it open, and her smiley-face cap fell out, the very one she’d been wearing when I last saw her. I brought it to my face, inhaled her scent. Teaberry gum and sandalwood, as if all the years that had passed were a mirage. Then I saw the card tucked into it. A cartoon witch flew across a darkling sky. Inside the message read, “Maybe you can use this for your costume! Happy Halloween, Caleigh. See you soon!”

  Joy Tavern—October 31, 2013

  1

  Halloween dawned hazy, the heat lying over the hill towns like a pall. I woke early, with the birds and the cops out in their cruisers. When I’d shown Jolon the cap, the card, he had ordered a round-the-clock police watch on the house. One black-and-white remained outside the gate; the other parked near the barn.

  Officer Bob was on house duty, and saluted me when I disentangled myself from the sleeping Caleigh. I’d tucked her in with me on the couch, and had slept deep, my arms around her.

  I stared out at the sky as the coffee brewed, saw the wind pick up as striated clouds rolled over Hawley. Mackerel clouds, we used to call them when I was young, foretelling rain. The Hawley Book of the Dead rested on the table, and every once in a while, I flipped it open, but it stayed blank. It would tell me what it would, when it would.

  One hundred and twelve hours.

  I brooded and watched for the weather to turn from murky to menacing, as the shifting clouds foretold. But then the sky cleared to the rich blue of my laptop screen. Big, lazy, layered clouds continued to roll across the sky. Even in the string of perfect days that autumn, this one stood out. It was as if the best of summer and autumn had merged like waves lapped together. But if the clouds were right, winter would be upon us this night, with little warning. Only someone used to the fickle weather of New England would know those clouds were an omen of great change to come.

  I wanted to talk to Nan. I wanted to be the one to tell her of the discovery of the bodies in the forest. If she didn’t already know. They were her friends, after all, and
it was clear that she still felt their loss deeply. I phoned her, but as usual there was no answer. The hill-town grapevine probably had the jump on me, anyway.

  It was a day of waiting. With Rigel Voss possibly still in the forest, I couldn’t ride. And I wanted only to be near Caleigh, the one child I had left. I felt brittle, battered, certain the twins were dead, that Rigel Voss had killed them. And now would come for Caleigh. Caleigh, excited for Halloween, innocent of what I felt must have befallen her sisters. She wandered around all day in her wizard robes, and I did my best to keep her busy, happy. The time passed somehow.

  Near three o’clock, Jolon came down the drive. I went out to meet him. A strange emotion flickered across his face, although I could see he was trying to suppress it. He looked out past the gate, to the forest beyond. As if he could see something I couldn’t.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s only … I thought I saw a Harris hawk, just now. They’re not native to New England. Thought it might be your Nan’s.”

  I scanned the sky. Saw nothing. “I’ve been thinking about her. Those murdered girls were her friends. I want to take Caleigh to Bennington for Halloween.”

  He nodded. “Safer than her being here. But I thought Nan might have come today.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Must have been a redtail I saw, then.”

  Something jogged my memory. Something I should have thought of days before.

  “Jolon.” I could hardly keep the excitement from my voice. “When you tracked the girls, the morning after they left, what exactly did you find?”