Skid looked back my way, addressed her. “Rud told you to wait for us here? You saw us walking around the graveyard for two hours and you knew where Truevine was?”
“Always do what Rud says,” she repeated, softer. “Supposed to take you to Miss Deveroe.”
“Was he leading us around to keep us from finding her?” Andrews asked, instantly suspicious despite scones.
“And he took us to his house to give May time to complete some task,” I mused.
“Where is she?” Skid demanded. “Where are you supposed to take us?”
“So come on.” She stood.
May did not speak further but wafted past us out the door, into the night. We watched mutely for a moment.
“Are you coming or am I going?” she called, her voice receding.
Skid snorted, twitched his head in the direction of her question, and followed. The rest of us seemed to have no choice but to follow.
“You know about May?” Andrews drew up beside Skid and whispered.
“I know it won’t do no good to ask her anything when she’s drunk,” he muttered. “We just have to follow after and see what happens.”
“In spite of the fact that Rud’s been planning something,” I insisted.
“I mean,” Andrews said pointedly, “you know about where she stays.”
“I do. It’s a little game we’ve come to play.” His voice was tired. “I pretend not to notice them; they convince themselves they’re eluding the law. Rud takes good care of them. Aside from how weird it is, I can’t see the harm.”
In other cities, states more northern, the law might have been less willing to be eluded. But Skidmore’s brand of Christian charity gave enforcement a kindness in our county that was unique. I breathed a silent hope, not quite a prayer, that he would win the coming election if for no other reason than May’s well-being.
We followed her along the edge of the yard, close to the fence. The rain had let up, but the clouds refused to break. Now and again they would part, curtains, allowing the spotlight of a rising moon to wash everything white. At the back corner of the yard, the well-worn footpath on the other side came into view.
“May.” I drew up beside her. “This is where you saw Hek Cotage the other day.”
“He’s a handsome man,” she said dreamily. “For a minister.”
“He didn’t recognize you,” I went on, “until you gave him a bit of the cloth you wear around your neck.”
“It’s a pretty fabric,” she answered.
“You didn’t mean to,” I said, my voice lowered, “but you frightened him.”
“He does not care to remember much about the time he spent here,” she reasoned. “And therefore he is occasionally discomforted by the thought.”
She found a sag in the fence, stepped over it with a grace more becoming a young girl than a lost soul.
“We’re leaving the cemetery?” Skid called.
“If you want to see Miss Truevine we are,” she said, not looking back.
“I’m not sure,” Able said, coming to a halt. “I don’t think I want to do this.”
May was already several yards ahead of the rest of us.
“Hold on,” I said to her, but she barely slowed.
“May!” Skid barked.
She stopped, still not looking back. She wobbled a little.
“Deveroes won’t come into the cemetery,” Able said, shivering a little. “But they’re out there somewhere, and they want me good. You’uns go on. I’ll wait here.”
Skid took him by the elbow and encouraged him to step over the fence.
He did, but his breath was filled with little fear catches.
Without warning, May started up again.
“Where are we going?” I called to her.
She remained mutely intent, headlong into the woods.
I caught up with her as the trail sloped upward into tall cedars, wild purple-leafed rhododendrons.
“May, what did Rud tell you to do?” I insisted. “Where are you taking us?”
“The Newcomb mansion,” she whispered deliciously. “It’s haunted.”
On a dare when we were fourteen, Skidmore and I spent a night in the old Newcomb place. Long abandoned, it clung desperately to the hillside, too tired to support itself, too terrified to fall. Lower rooms had been sacked beyond redemption, but anyone brave enough to venture up the wide broken oak staircase to the upper floors could be treated to a glimpse of former grandeur.
Skid and I took flashlights, sleeping bags, matches, sandwiches, NuGrape. I had a book; he brought a transistor radio. My parents were gone, as usual, touring; his were asleep by eight, no trouble for him to sneak out.
The place was gray, all semblance of paint long gone. The roof was fairly intact, but a tree had fallen during some storm and caved the porch. Its dignity shattered, the house endured a constant humiliation of toads and bugs and field mice crawling over its moldering innards.
Nothing much really happened that night long ago. We were scared teenage boys, challenging each other farther and farther into the house. The second floor still had rugs in some rooms, high chandeliers, even some furniture. We found a bedroom on the third floor, cozy, our size, two beds—servants’ quarters, I guessed—with an amazing granite mantle adorning its fireplace. I’m ashamed to admit we broke up chairs to burn, set a blaze in the hearth. After a casual dusting, a check of the darker corners under both beds, I piled my sleeping bag onto the bed closest to the fire and settled in.
Neither of us slept a wink. Wind, mice, owls, branches scratching at the roof—the night was alive with a thousand sounds; each could have been approaching death. We were forced to converse through the night. A gentle rain began around two in the morning and made our little room cozier, masked the other noises.
That conversation was the first adult talk either of us had ever had. I suppose everyone comes to that experience at a certain age. For the first time in our lives we discussed all of life’s true meanings: Kathy Holliman’s improved profile, the world according to me, God and His Plan, scurrilous local politicians, my family’s foibles, something called “Cathy’s Clown,” a song by the Everly Brothers that was Skid’s favorite—an old forty-five of his father’s that was made significant by Skid’s unrequited affection for Kathy Holliman.
The night passed more swiftly than either of us would have thought possible. By the time I was trying to explain the analogy of Plato’s Cave for the third time, Skid sat up, pointed to the windowsill. There was sunlight washing it. We’d survived.
“‘There’s more of gravy than of grave’ to that place,” I said to May.
“You quote Charles Dickens,” she confirmed.
“You constantly amaze me,” I told her.
“But you know,” she went on, “memories can haunt a place just like a spirit can.”
“I know.”
“Hold on.” She dropped to her knees; her voice changed dramatically. “Damned new shoes. Always come untied. Look at these new laces, though, pretty, ain’t they? The old ones always got like a spider caught up in its own web, all tangled up.” I assumed this was her attempt at adding to the Poe-like ambience of our endeavor.
The woods were a dance of moonlight and shadow. Wind swirled the dead leaves from the ground into fairy circles, made dull castanets of the smaller oak branches. We emerged from a thicket of laurel and the house came into view.
I hadn’t seen it in years, but it didn’t look remotely like the place Skid and I had invaded. The porch was gone, tumbled to the ground. The tree that had caused the damage so long ago was well decayed. Not a single pane of glass remained anywhere. The front door was missing, giving the facade a gap-toothed appearance. Boards had fallen from the exterior; ivy had taken one wall entirely. Even the bricks in the chimney tops had cascaded: a ruined crown.
Skid whistled unconsciously behind me. “Time has not been kind to this place.”
“Is that so?” May stood, turned around slowly. “Well, you sh
ow me the place where time is kind. I want to go there.”
“Truevine’s in that place?” Able gazed at the mansion in the pale light.
“Well,” May answered, head to one side, “let’s go see.”
I had a moment of expanded perspective, sucked momentarily out of myself looking down on our little group as we trekked the last hundred yards to the house: shivering coroner, Shakespeare scholar, county deputy, lonely wanderer, failed academic. I watched us walk, kicking up leaves and shambling in the dark, judged us the perfect group to trespass in a haunted mansion, and returned to my body.
The interior of the house was no less ruined than the sad facade. Nothing of the soul of the place remained downstairs. Floorboards were gone; walls were covered with mold and mildew; moss had taken hold of the stairs. The staircase, once a grand avenue, was an impossible dilapidation and seemed incapable of supporting any of us.
Everything creaked: floors, walls, the trees outside. Skidmore’s flashlight barely made its way through the gloom.
“Miss Truevine?” May’s voice startled us all.
There was no answer.
“Hope she’s not left and gone,” May muttered to herself.
A sudden scratching to our right turned all heads. The flashlight’s beam stabbed wildly about the room, settled on the black dog in the doorway to the parlor.
“There you are,” May said, as if addressing a small child.
The dog sniffed.
“Ms. Deveroe!” Skidmore called out. “It’s Skidmore Needle, I need to see you now.” His voice was firm but somehow not remotely threatening.
The dog turned its head, hearing something we hadn’t. It gave a small, short whine.
“All right,” said a voice within the parlor. “Go.”
The dog shot away, past us and out the door.
“Can we come in?” May asked.
“I’ve been waiting,” the voice said. Impossible to tell who was speaking, I only assumed it was Truevine.
Skid went first; I fell in behind. Able and Andrews didn’t move at all. The flashlight beam scoured the parlor, found the cloaked figure standing by the mantel. The marble fireplace was huge, a carved standing lion flanking each side. A mirror hung over it, so caked with dust and cobwebs it had no hope of reflecting anything. Otherwise the room was bare.
She turned.
“They say you have Able with you.” Her voice was wracked with doubt, shaking. “But that can’t be.” Her eyes quickened. “Unless my spell worked.”
“Tru?” Able parted Skid and me, stepped into the room.
A sudden intensity of light burst from Truevine’s face, and the armor of tension melted from Able’s shoulders. They moved without moving and were in a locked embrace without another word. The hood fell from her head, and her hair tumbled, soft, slow. Her black cloak seemed to enfold them both.
I held my breath, afraid to break the image.
They pulled back, staring at each other. It seemed they were conversing, but still no sound was made.
“This is romantic,” May said after a moment.
The mood shifted instantly. The play was over. We were six exhausted people in an old abandoned house in the middle of the woods. The fact that the calendar read “October 31” held no significance whatsoever. It was just another night.
“Ms. Deveroe,” Skid started up again, maintaining his official tone, “I’ve got to speak with you.”
“Look,” she said, her voice barely a vapor on the air. “I did it. Able’s alive.”
“And so are you, ma’am,” Skid said, a little softer.
“I,” she stammered. “I reckon I must be.”
Able petted her hair, kissed her cheek. “It’s all right now. We’ll be all right.”
All her ghostly behavior seemed to collapse; she was a young girl again.
“I’m so sorry, Abe,” she said, close to tears. “I hate we had a fight.”
“It was all my fault,” he said, pulling her closer. “I’m an idiot; you know that.”
“No such thing,” she nuzzled her head in the hollow of his shoulder. As I watched her with Able, my opinion began to shift. The winsome spirit act seemed a complete contrivance. The romance of her image as a savant, powerful in a knowledge of ancient lore, evaporated. It was replaced by something that was much more likely: a simple, lonely girl in school whose only refuge from tormenting classmates was to veer strangely, take up the mantle of derision as a garment, wear it, own it. It was an image with which I was passingly familiar myself. Truevine Deveroe was a dropout with few prospects, impossible siblingry, and an irredeemable reputation. Her hopes were all pinned to the man at her side, someone who would take care of her, work to ease the sting of life. Theirs would be a small life in a smaller town, and I was entirely envious.
“Can we go now?” The show was over for Andrews, who must have sensed something of what I was feeling.
No ghost, no witch, no spooky mansion. Why weren’t we home by the fire?
“That seems right,” Skidmore said. “Let’s all go on back into town.”
“Except me,” May piped up.
“Good night, May,” Skid said pointedly.
“Okay, then.” Without eye contact or further rumination, May was out the door, swallowed by the night.
“Come on, kids,” Skid said, his deputy’s voice giving way to something gentler. “Show’s over.”
“Christ, am I suddenly tired.” Andrews rubbed his face. “What a day this has been.”
“Dev?” Skid took in the place for the first time. “You remember when we spent the night here, back in the younger days?”
“Never forget it,” I said, unable to keep the smile from my lips.
“That night,” he said, struggling a little with his thoughts, “was the first time I thought about a lot of things. A lot of big things.”
“It’s the house,” Truevine said.
We stared at her.
“The house wants you to think about the big things.” She looked up at the mirror. “So it can feel better. About itself. It’s old, wants to be a teacher—”
“That’s enough,” Andrews interrupted.
“Let’s go,” Skid insisted.
I was about to make my own comment when the black dog shot into the room, panting. It rounded Truevine’s legs and cowered behind her. I turned toward the front door. Anything that could frighten that animal had my full attention.
“Skid?” I said uncertainly.
He put his hand on his pistol. As far as I could determine, he never had time to do anything further.
Someone set off fireworks outside.
I felt a white burning in my chest, a draining numbness in my arms. My knees hinged, gave way. The floor hit my shoulder, then the side of my face. All feeling was muffled; a blanket surrounded me, no sound, no sensation. My stomach was seized by a fierce icy hand and everything began to glow phosphorescent, brighter and brighter all around me, until there was nothing at all.
Twelve
“Fever?” My great-grandmother Adele stood over me.
My eyes were closed, but I knew her voice.
“‘O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,’” she said, “‘Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing.’”
“I said that to Andrews. It’s not Shakespeare.”
“It’s Keats.”
“That’s what he said.”
“‘La Belle Dame sans Merci.’” Her voice was everywhere.
“Why are you here?” My voice was only in my head.
“I was going to ask you the same question,” she said, “but I guess you came looking for me.”
“No.”
I could hear her let out a breath. “No one came looking for me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she went on after a moment. “I can tell you a story. I did that once or twice when you were little.”
“Story?”
White silenc
e filled my head.
“Nancy was a pretty girl,” she began. “Her great-grandmother educated her. Not with books, but sedge and hazel, weed and water, rock and salamander trails. Some called her a witch.
“Nancy worked as a cook in a rich man’s house and fell in love with Randal, the son. He was in love with her too, but his parents would not allow the union. In those days a cook and a lord were not permitted to marry, especially if there was a whisper of witchcraft.
“The boy was sent to sea. He sailed Baffin’s Bay, where the whale fishes blow great spikes of water.
“Nancy could not bear to be without him, so on the eve of Samhain she put on her cloak and took out her mortar to grind up some hemp seed for a charm and to sow some in a beckoning circle:
“‘Hemp-seed I sow thee,
Hemp-seed grow thee;
And he who will my true love be
Come after me
And show thee.’
“She said it three times, turning in a circle, looked back over her left shoulder, and standing there was her love, Randal, pale as snow. She ran to kiss him, but in her haste she spilled the seed, the spell was broken, and he vanished.
“She wept bitterly from that night on, unable to concentrate on work, eating little, sleeping less.
“Not three weeks later she got a letter that told her worse news.
“‘Nancy,
“‘Our ship foundered in Baffin’s Bay; your Randal was on deck. Without warning he dropped to his knees; the blood left his face; he lay dead, as if his spirit had been ripped from this body. A moment later he revived, shrieking. “I saw my Nancy,” he said. In his madness to get home to you, he jumped overboard to swim home, and froze. His last remains are here on board and will arrive at length.’
“The news was signed in the captain’s hand.
“It took near six months for the ship to come home with its sad cargo. But the story does not end there. The girl did not know the power of her spell.
“When Randal’s body was returned, it did not go quietly to the grave. The spirit, still confused by the witch’s magic, tried to go to her once more. At midnight it broke the bonds of its coffin, found a horse, and rode to Nancy’s door.
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