“Rigel, good to see ya.” Rivera didn’t take off his sunglasses. Neither did Lindley. Voss didn’t like not being able to see their eyes.
“Looks like you got a pretty good gig.” Lindley patted him on the lapel. “Still wearing the nice suits. What, you get consulting to Monsanto, GE? I hear the pay’s kickin’.”
Voss forced a pale smile to creep over his face.
“Yeah, it’s a shame we didn’t come here to shoot the breeze. I could go for a cold one.” Rivera was a bullish man, ugly and smart, smarter than Lindley, who’d gone to Princeton but was languid as melting butter. Voss wondered if Rivera had been promoted, if he had Voss’s old office now. It was the last thing that mattered, though. Rivera wasn’t here for congratulations.
“We hate to trouble you and the missus.” He nodded toward Alice, who had opened the screen door, taken a few steps out toward them, now stood at the top of the stone steps. “It’s about that college kid. Maggie Hamilton. She’s gone and disappeared. Have to ask you a few questions. Hunter wants to know can you come to Springfield.”
It was bad. Worse than he thought. They wanted him to come in. He turned toward Alice. He could see her fingers plucking at the ribbons of her dress, knotting and unknotting them. A pink cotton maternity dress, the white ribbons at the collar fluttering in the breeze where she’d loosened them. He said, “Let me tell my wife.” The words were thick in his throat.
He slogged up the steps, knew their eyes were following him. When he got to her, he saw her face was white, the freckles like dark constellations. “Honey, I have to go back to work. Only for a little while.”
“Rigel, you were just at work.” She nodded toward Rivera and Lindley. “They’ve been sitting out there for the last two hours. Didn’t they know where you were? I brought them Cokes, asked them to come in, but they wouldn’t. Just said they’d wait for you in the car. What’s going on?”
He was hot all over. He scraped the sweaty hair from his forehead. “It’s … nothing. Glitch in a surveillance. They need me back there. Please, Alice, just go in the house. I’ll be back soon.”
She folded her arms, scrunched them over her breasts. “Not till you tell me what’s really going on.” She narrowed her eyes at him, and it was like she read his mind. She could do that, he knew. He just wished she wouldn’t do it now. “You didn’t go to work, did you? That’s why they came here. You weren’t at Bay State, or at the field office. You haven’t been going, have you?”
He couldn’t look at her. He looked at the flat blue slice of river.
“Shit, shit. How are we going to live, Rigel? This baby could come any day. What about the insurance, tell me that? Do we still even have health insurance?”
He didn’t know what to say. This was only the beginning, and he wished she wasn’t so upset now, because it was only going to get worse. He reached out to her, to comfort her, but she spun away, tripped, and she started falling. He saw the surprise on her face. He leapt to catch her, but his foot caught the iron railing and he fell hard on the stones. By the time he got to his feet, he saw Rivera and Lindley running, and Alice’s body still tumbling, her head lolling and hitting each stone, her hair dark and wet with blood.
He never was questioned about Maggie. That day and the days until the funeral were a blur to him. He remembered Rivera bringing him coffee at the hospital, which he drank because it was there in his hand. He remembered a doctor with a pale meaty face explaining that they’d tried to save the baby. He remembered falling into their bed that night, waking in his bloody clothes. Although he didn’t remember cradling Alice’s shattered head to him, that’s what he must have done. Her sister, Emily, came out for the funeral, with their mother. He didn’t remember where they stayed, or what they said. He remembered the graveyard, and someone pressing a clod of dirt into his hand, hearing the thump as it dropped on the coffin.
He remembered most clearly the day after the funeral, when he packed a bag, unplugged every appliance, got in his car and drove. His first stop was a house just off the common in Amherst. It was a grand house, Victorian, not as old as some but you could tell it was owned by someone wealthy. He went up the walk, didn’t bother to knock, just opened the door and stepped into the sunny foyer, stopped and reached for his Glock. He listened until he heard the buzz of a coffee grinder. He followed it, found his way into the kitchen, where a black-haired man in a blue bathrobe was standing at the sink. Voss stepped lightly up to him, stuck the gun in his back, whipped his hand over the man’s mouth. The coffee cup clattered, but the man didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even struggle. Maybe he’d been expecting something like this, someday.
“Okay, Professor,” Voss said into his ear. “You’re not going to try to get away. You’re going to walk with me to your study, turn around, and lock the door.” The man did as he was told. As soon as he’d thrown the bolt, Voss let him go. “Sit down,” he told the man, who sat in an expensive leather armchair. Voss kept the gun to his head. “All you need to do is tell me all about the experiments, everything you know. I won’t hurt you. I’ll go away and you’ll never hear from me again. Unless you tell anyone I was here. Or you tell me lies. Do you understand?”
The professor did understand. He told Rigel Voss everything. The scientists had a big government grant to study this man, to test whether he truly had the power to communicate with the dead, to bridge the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. He told the scientists amazing things, things he could know only by this ability. It was uncanny, what he had told about their dead mothers, uncles, brothers, wives. He told them he could go there, to where the dead were. When they’d hooked him up to an EKG, the results were really quite remarkable. Unfortunately, just a few days since, the man had escaped. Nowhere now to be found. Poof. Abracadabra.
Were there photographs of this man? Any way to trace him? Unfortunately not. They never knew his real name, it turned out. And curiously, all the photos they had taken of him had vanished.
No, he had no knowledge of any red-haired girl. A girl had been seen in the tunnels, as Voss himself knew. But no one at the university knew who she was. She might have been involved in the escape. Another thing the man had told them, under duress, was that there were more beings like him. That was really all he could tell Voss. But for Voss it was more than enough. It gave him something to hope for, even beyond avenging his wife.
The professor accompanied him to the door, as if they were old friends. He shook his hand and wished Rigel Voss good luck in his endeavors. Then he’d said a word in parting that Rigel Voss didn’t understand and never could remember.
From that day, he called himself by many names. Only once again by the name of a star, when he had the opportunity to kill off his old self, to be resurrected as anybody and nobody. But the day after Alice’s funeral was the day Rigel Voss truly disappeared, began his quest to find the red-haired girl, who must either know how to speak to the dead, or knew the man who could. Rigel Voss had never seen the man’s face. But he had seen the red-haired girl. He would find her. He would find out how to do it, how to go to his own dead, to his Alice. He would hold her again, tell her he loved her beyond everything. He would keep her from all harm, in between the worlds, where they might be together, forever.
6
I knew he’d never get up again. Blood bubbled between his speaking lips. I bent to hear the words. “How,” he whispered. “Just tell me … how.” Rigel Voss was insane, he was obsessed. And now I knew beyond a doubt that he was enchanted. Who knew where the insanity stopped and the enchantment began? It had brought him to his death, and he still couldn’t let go. But I knew that kind of crazy. I thought of his wife, his Alice, falling. I thought how he had loved her.
I leaned in, whispered back. “I’m sorry.” His eyes dulled. Snow melted on his cheeks and forehead, on the dark stain of blood that ran from thigh to ankle.
I was going to tell him I didn’t know how it was that I could walk between the worlds, how I could visit with my de
ad again. Then I realized I did know.
I told dying Rigel Voss, my compatriot in grief, “It’s magic.”
7
I knelt by the dead man in the bloodied snow. I didn’t feel the cold anymore. The Book was still in my pocket. I opened it, felt myself falling from the wintry landscape of Hawley Five Corners, through time or space to land on the Sea Road, among the yellow blooms of gorse. This time I ran to the end of the path, to the seawall, threw myself into Jeremy’s arms, pressed into his mackintoshed shoulder.
“If I had died, if he had killed me, would I be here with you now forever?”
He took my face in his hands, gazed at me, his eyes the color of sea. “It couldn’t have happened that way. We wouldn’t have let it. You have things to do in your world, Reve. And we both know it isn’t my world anymore. So now, you have to let me go.” He pulled me close then, hummed in my ear, a song we both knew. David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” The band had played it at our wedding. We swayed together, our bodies melded. We danced on Kilcoole Beach, danced one last time, while Jeremy sang the familiar words to me, until the sun dropped below the Irish Sea.
In the last of the light, when I felt Jeremy slipping from me, the beach dissolving around us, I grabbed his hands, held them as tightly as I could. I felt the golden band of his wedding ring, wrapped my fingers around its substance, felt his flesh turn to air, cold air. I opened my eyes to the falling snow of Hawley. I was back. Rigel Voss lay near me. I thought of all he had gone through to assuage his longing for Alice, his dead wife. In my palm lay Jeremy’s wedding ring, that circle of gold we had buried with him. It felt different, changed. The outside of the band was no longer smooth. I turned and went to the house, to the light.
When I examined the ring, I found our initials, and the date of our wedding, which we’d had engraved inside the band. There was an inscription now on the outer side of the ring as well, words I knew would be Jeremy’s last gift to me: HEARTS HOLD MAGIC.
He was right. The magic I would always remember, when all was said and done, was the magic of our hearts beating together. Dark, and deep.
Then the next line of the elusive Robert Frost poem reminded me: but I have promises to keep.
I dragged the cold, stiffening body of Rigel Voss to the barn. When I finally dropped him near Falcon Eddy, I looked for signs that one was good, the other evil, but I found none. I grabbed a tarp and spread it over their bodies. I went to the church, found the sword. It glistened with Rigel Voss’s blood. I brought it to the house. Cleaned the blade, and sheathed it. I had a hunch where it belonged. I went up to the third floor, to my office. To the portrait of my ancestor, the Revelation I now knew had fought in the Civil War. I looked for the thin crack in the wall below the portrait, slid the sheathed sword in. The wall absorbed blade, scabbard, and hilt, then closed as if the breach had never been. I knew it would be there for me if ever I had need of it again.
8
Bits of ash float onto surfaces, like snow that will never melt. I’d gone to Caleigh’s room in the night, found the old school notebook she’d written her visions in, then to the twins’ rooms for their phones. I inscribed all our experiences onto the thick pages of The Hawley Book of the Dead, as Nan had done after the deaths she’d caused decades ago. Then I deleted the texts, burned Caleigh’s notebook. There will be only this record in the Book, for the next Keeper, the next Revelation.
Hawley Five Corners—November 2, 2013
When I wake, I am cold. Colder than I’ve ever been. Frozen inside. I don’t want to move, just let my aching head stay welded to the floor, looking at the snowy field of burned pages. The white expanse of ash covering the rug by the hearth, my jean-clad legs. I think it’s the ash-snow that makes me cold, and for a moment I wonder how it has fallen in the house. I think how strange a house it is. A house and town of wonders and spirits, not exactly evil, not exactly good. I hear the furnace kick in, and even though I feel the blast of heat from the floor register near me, I’m still freezing. I can see the sun shine, weak but with promise for the coming day, when the morning mist lifts.
I sit up, finally, pull a shawl from a chair and arrange it around my shoulders. My knees pop as I rise stiffly and survey the wreckage from my battle with Voss. Chairs are knocked over, candle wax drips from tables, glass shards are strewn over the floor.
I have no idea what to do, but only wander across the room, stare out the window, down the drive. I can see no tracks in the fresh dusting of snow that must have fallen after I’d killed Voss. I step outside, and more cold finds me, but not the relentless cold of November. It’s as if the turn toward spring has begun, rather than the trudge toward the winter solstice. Warm currents of air puff at me. From where? I hear the whine of a chain saw in the distance. Then I hear my cell phone chime out the tone that tells me I have messages. I run to find it.
There are two messages. The first is from Nan. It is brief, but it makes my knees weak with relief, makes me smile: “Caleigh is herself again. The web is broken.”
The second message is from Henry. “You’re not going to believe this, Reve, but Setekh fell out of his web tonight. They say he was struggling in the ropes, then it looked like the ropes broke, and he fell. The whole audience saw him hit the floor. But then something really strange happened. Every single person who saw it says his body kind of … disintegrated. Into motes of dust, that flew away. And now he’s gone. None of his personal effects are at the theater, his house is empty. Like he never existed. Some trick, huh? It’s causing a sensation. Wish I represented that guy! But nobody can find him. Anyway, call me.”
I stand and stare down the drive, still expecting, not hoping, certain some shift has occurred. Either the night-cracking thunder, or Caleigh and Nan cutting Simon Magus’s web, must have cracked something else. The wall between worlds.
Two riders come through the mist, knee-deep in it, so I can’t see their horses’ legs. But they are not ghost horses. I can see their breath, hear muffled hoofbeats. One black horse, one gray. On their backs are Grace and Fai, turning to each other, laughing.
I run. The shawl falls from my shoulders, plumes into air. I run into the mist, and my own feet disappear. I am up to my waist in mist and snow when I stumble into Brio, bounce off his chest, reel between him and Rikka. I grab at Fai’s boot and Grace’s knee. The horses, startled, pull away and I fall to the ground.
“Mom!”
“What are you doing?”
They both dismount in a flash, and Rikka and Brio tear to the paddock for a reunion with Zar over the fence. I look up at my daughters’ alarmed faces, and thank God they are the same, the same round cheeks and freckles, their wild red hair shining, not tangled with leaves and burrs, clean and bright as new copper. I clasp their ankles, booted and chap covered. I breathe in their good, horsey smell and weep.
Then a hand is on my shoulder and through my tears I see Fai’s still-tanned face, looking concerned.
“Mom? Is something wrong? Is Caleigh okay?”
They help me to my feet, and I grasp twinned hands and arms, touch cheeks, soft hair, then hold them as tightly as I can and sob into their necks. My girls, returned to me. They just stare at my hugging, patting, crying self.
Grace says, “What is up with you?”
My throat is so full I can’t get one word out, but I let them go, the better to gaze at them.
Fai scans the yard, the barn, the rime of snow clinging to everything. “Where did this snow come from? The trails were fine. No trees down, no snow, no ice. Until we got in the gate. Did you all have some freaky storm or something?”
How can I explain enchantment, theirs or mine? How can I explain the storm, or their weeklong hiatus with their ancestors, which they clearly don’t remember? Or the search for them that had lasted one hundred and sixty-one hours?
But Grace doesn’t wait for my answer. “Hey, I’m really hungry,” she tells us. “Let’s go untack. I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”
“Umm, I’ll
take care of the horses.” I can’t explain the deaths, not yet. Poor Falcon Eddy, whom they never knew. And Rigel Voss, whom for years no one knew. “Go in and get a snack.” Then I remember I have to account for Caleigh’s absence. “Oh, and your sister’s fine. She’s at Nan’s.”
“Aren’t you going to yell at us for riding when you told us not to?” Grace taunts me.
I should, but I feel my love for them pumping through my veins. “No. I’m not.”
They don’t argue. I watch them walk to the house together, their arms around each other, laughing and teasing. I hate to let them out of my sight. But there will be time for telling it all later, and time for just contemplating my girls, full of life and vigor.
I start toward the barn, to the tasks I must still perform. I startle at a resounding crack behind me. Branches fall away, and Jolon steps out of them, drops his chain saw, and runs to me through the wet snow and mist. He grabs me up in a fierce embrace. “You’re all right, you’re okay!” He is shaking with cold or relief, I don’t know which. His hands grip me as if he’ll never let me go. He looks haunted, sleepless, an extreme version of himself.
I realize in all the furor of the night I’d felt a heavy ache, and that was the way I missed him. “Where were you? Why didn’t you come last night? I thought …” I can’t go on. My throat is filled with sudden tears again, for everything we’d gone through.
“There’s a forest of trees down from here to Hunt Road. I had to chainsaw my way in. It took me all night, with the ice and snow. But I saw the tracks of two horses by the gate … the twins?”
I nod. I can’t speak about the twins. Not yet. “Thank God,” Jolon whispers into my hair, his sweat and cut-pine scent clean on the air. “All I could think, the whole night long, was if I lost you, you’d never know. You’d never know how I thought of you. For years I tried, but I never forgot you. It may be too soon to tell you this. Or you may never want to hear it.” He looks in my eyes then, asking. I open my lips to speak, but I can’t.
The Hawley Book of the Dead Page 35
