The Mirk and Midnight Hour

by Jane Nickerson

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Jane Nickerson

  Jacket art copyright © 2014 by Mark Owen/Trevillion Images

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nickerson, Jane.

  The mirk and midnight hour / Jane Nickerson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Seventeen-year-old Violet Dancey is spending the Civil War with a new stepmother and stepsister and her young cousin when she comes upon a wounded Yankee soldier, Thomas, who is being kept alive by mysterious voodoo practitioners.

  ISBN 978-0-385-75286-2 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-385-75287-9 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-385-75289-3 (e-book)

  1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Juvenile fiction. [1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 2. Family life—Mississippi—Fiction. 3. Vodou—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Soldiers—Fiction. 6. Slavery—Fiction. 7. Mississippi—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.N55812Mir 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012050893

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Carol Trost, my mother,

  who has always thought I could do

  anything in the world

  –J.N.

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1 Too Many Bodies

  2 A Letter from the North

  3 A Secret Between Twins

  4 A Wedding in April

  5 Relationships

  6 Final Departures

  7 Expanding the Circle

  8 Expansion

  9 A Bit of a Bully

  10 Dallying

  11 Complications

  12 Jubal and Miss Ruby Jewel

  13 Protection

  14 The Robbers Lair

  15 The Soldier

  16 An Accident

  17 The Course of True Love

  18 Being Different

  19 Sparrow

  20 Circle of Enchantment

  21 A Betrothal

  22 How Bizarre

  23 Firelight

  24 Too Many Secrets

  25 Awakening

  26 Jitters

  27 Dark Deeds

  28 Convalescence

  29 Fighting Fire

  30 Forgotten and Remembered

  31 The Last Lodge Visit

  32 Fighting Fire with Fire

  33 Holding On

  34 Ever After

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  And pleasant is the fairyland,

  But, an eerie tale to tell …

  Just at the mirk and midnight hour

  The fairy folk will ride.

  FROM The Ballad of Tam Lin

  HE WAS ALREADY DEAD. Maybe. He had been grievously wounded—he had expected to die anyway—but they did something to him that sucked out the rest of his feeble life and will, except for the tiny spark of soul that hunkered mutely deep inside. That’s why he thought of them as vampires.

  They half carried, half dragged him to the fire and bade him kneel. The drumming began and his heart thumped with the drums and he was in the flames and in the beating. A blade flashed before his eyes. Silver. Beautiful. Someone called out a question, and the answer—“Raphtah”—swallowed him. He knew nothing more. He was already dead.

  “There are too many bodies,” I said under my breath.

  “Of course there are,” Laney called from the other side of the wall. (She was keeping baby Cubby away from unpleasant sights. In case he remembered.) “And this is a drop in the bucket compared to how many busted-up soldiers there are. Y’all are going to wipe each other out before you’re through. Why’d you need to come look at them again anyway?”

  I ignored the question. “What I mean is, the count’s wrong. Last night, when they first laid them all out and pinned their toes, there were only eighteen. Now there’s nineteen.” I shuddered as I brushed away a fly that tickled my forehead. Don’t think about where it might have been. These men lying in the grim, gore-puddled courthouse yard, who had been carried out feetfirst from the makeshift hospital inside, were dead less than twenty-four hours, yet the buzzing already sounded loud and angry within the blankets.

  “Probably you counted wrong. You couldn’t see so good in the dark. Or someone else died later and they brought him out. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” Cubby whimpered and Laney sighed. “Come on. I’ve got to get home and feed this child.”

  It had been a long day for her. Bouncing and jiggling a fat baby was more exhausting than one would think. But I couldn’t hurry away. A heavy sorrow weighted my legs as I paced slowly down the row of blanket-wrapped bodies laid side by side, waiting for the wagon to take them for burial. Each was somebody’s tragedy.

  “I counted right,” I said. “I had a lantern and was careful. I copied down the dead men’s names from their tags so I could say a prayer for each and in case no one else recorded them. And no one else was fixing to die soon. Dr. Hale assured me. That’s why I thought I could leave after the other nurses came in from Mobile.”

  The yard hadn’t always been grim. In former times, before the yellow hospital flag flew from the courthouse rooftop, deep pots of geraniums and marigolds had lined the walls. The containers were still there, most with shriveled, blackened plants drooping inside. Someone had tossed an amputated arm into an empty flowerpot. A freckled hand reached from it, looking so natural it was as if some farm boy crouched inside, about to clamber out. Once, I would have felt extremely queasy at the sight. However, the past intense days of nursing the wounded from the big battle near Shiloh Church, in Tennessee, had altered my sensibilities. I had knelt in enough pools of blood and bathed enough ragged red flesh to be only slightly queasy now.

  I halted. “It’s this one that’s extra. No name.” I squatted and started to pull back the covering.

  Laney peeked around the corner and squealed. “Violet Aurelia Dancey! Stop that right now, you hear? You crazy?”

  “I don’t want to look. I just need to see if his name’s inside so I can add it to the list. We’d never have known what happened to Rush if someone hadn’t written him down.” It had been two months since the arrival of our family’s black-edged letter announcing the death of my twin brother. I hunched my shoulder to wipe my eyes against my sleeve.

  Inside, no tag was attached to a shirt because this young man was naked. I quickly averted my gaze to meet his shocked, dead eyes, which no one had closed, staring up through a swarm of stubborn, engorged insects. The face was wide, flat, and waxy white, the hair a carroty orange. Somehow his homeliness made it worse. So ordinary—he could have been anybody. I gave a gasp and pulled the blanket over him again.

  “See?” Laney said. “I told you not to look. And don’t you go asking about this. We’ve got to get h
ome.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “I won’t ask.”

  The death wagon rumbled up for its load, and Laney took up one split-oak market basket and handed me the other. I was trembling; I dropped it twice before grasping it firmly.

  Rain had poured down earlier in the week, leaving the roads hopelessly sloppy. I followed dumbly, mulling over what I had just seen. As we squelched along, skirting mud puddles, I had to curl my toes to keep my boots from rattling around my ankles. They were too-big boys’ boots—all I could find to buy when my old shoes were so worn out I was nearly walking barefoot.

  The town of Chicataw was cradled in a hollow of meadow and field, ringed by sheltering, wooded hills. Our three-mile walk home led past long, dim stretches of woods and pecan groves, as well as cotton fields, where slow-moving workers were breaking the earth with hoes and picks. It was later in the day than I had thought. Long-fingered shadows reached across the road, and the trees loomed black as we passed through a grove.

  “Miss Vi, you’ve got to stop poking round dead people,” Laney said, breaking through my thoughts. “Look at you. White as a winding sheet.”

  I glanced around quickly and whispered, “It was—that body. His throat was cut ear to ear. Like another mouth in his neck.” The words felt thick and sluggish as they rose from my throat. “That didn’t happen in battle. Somebody murder-killed him, not battle-killed him.”

  “Stop that right now. You don’t know anything. It could’ve happened in the fight.”

  “There was a red flannel bag tied to his neck.”

  Laney stopped in her tracks. “You’re joking.”

  I shook my head slow and low.

  “Conjuring,” Laney breathed. “Somebody around here’s doing hoodoo and they must’ve stuck that body with the others to get rid of it.”

  “Why not just dump it in the river?”

  “Might be they think it’s fitting to show respect for the corpse by returning it to its own folks after they use it for what they want.”

  Coldness slithered through my veins. “We should probably report it to the marshal before the body’s buried.”

  “Uh-uh.” Laney shook her head emphatically. “You tell and you bring those conjure folks down on us. You’re not about to do something so plumb foolish. No, ma’am. There’s some other reason for that body anyway—you saw wrong or something.”

  “I didn’t see wrong.”

  As we passed Miss Ruby Jewel’s log house, I had the creepy sensation she was watching through the gap in her curtains. Both Laney and I were careful not to speak for a moment, and Laney covered Cubby’s mouth. The old woman had ears like a bat and eyes like a hawk and a wormy way of extracting information from passersby. We remained tense until we were past her property, expecting any moment to hear the voice of poor old Jubal, Miss Ruby Jewel’s manservant, asking us politely and apologetically to please, miss, come see his mistress. We reached the next patch of woods, safe at least from that danger. Laney took her hand off Cubby’s mouth. He gave a shrill squeal.

  “Will you look at that wisteria?” Laney said, pointing. “Isn’t anything prettier. Ponder that sight instead of the other.”

  Cascades of lavender dripped from live oaks. The woods were full of blossoms, mingling with the first flush of vivid spring green. Their scent, thick as honey, was cloying, but healing after the odor of death. We were in the middle of the short but intensely beautiful Southern spring, when you rolled up your sleeves during the day but still cuddled beneath bedcovers at night.

  “Didn’t it surprise you when winter ended this time around?” I asked. “Honestly, I thought it would never—”

  Laney clutched my arm with particularly sharp fingers. “Hush.”

  We had just rounded a bend in the road, and three murky, otherworldly figures slid into view several yards ahead. Two men and one woman, extremely tall and slender, gliding along with a silky grace, slick as oil.

  “The VanZeldts,” I whispered, and the hairs on my arms prickled. They were easily recognizable in spite of the dusk, even though I’d only seen them once or twice since their master, a Dr. VanZeldt, bought an isolated mansion several miles to the south. They were Africans who came right off the boat from that mysterious continent, in spite of the fact that the importation of slaves had been illegal for more than fifty years.

  The way everyone spoke of them as “the VanZeldts” made it seem as if it were the name of an alien species and not the surname of their master. Whenever they came onto a scene, all eyes would be drawn to them and all conversation would stop. The VanZeldts spoke in a soft, melodious foreign tongue and wore bright beads and odd clothing—almost like ours, but not quite. Something in the fabric shimmered as they moved. They peered down upon us regular mortals from their towering heights with a proud, disdainful air, as if they too thought us all a different species from themselves—a vastly inferior one.

  Laney waited to speak until the figures had turned off onto a more direct path to the river.

  “Their boat must be tied down there.” Her voice was still low. “They were the ones who killed your body, I bet you anything. They got hold of a wandering soldier and did some conjuring with him. I’ve seen the mojo bags tucked under their shirts when they come into town. Full of who knows what nasty things. I’m just glad your daddy sold the store so he doesn’t have to deal with that downriver trash anymore.”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” I said. “May I tote Cubby now?” I reached for the baby and buried my face in his fat little neck. So warm. So healthy. So alive. I didn’t want to talk about hoodoo because somehow that kind of magic seemed more real than good old-fashioned unlikely witches and spells. Especially right after what I’d seen. I didn’t want to talk about my father selling the store because that reminded me he was leaving for the war, and even though we had never been close, I could hardly bear to lose someone else. I didn’t want to talk about anything at all because I was sick of everything.

  A wide brown puddle welled in front of us. I lifted my hem and sloshed through it.

  “What you doing, girl?” Laney cried, and scurried around to meet me on the other side. She snatched away Cubby. “If you get mud on my child, I won’t let you have any of that peach pie I’m fixing to make for tonight.”

  “Sorry. I forgot I was holding him.”

  “Forgot?” She gave me a little shove. “Forgot you were toting my precious baby boy? You’re seventeen, same as me—a grown-up young lady. You usually have more sense.”

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  Laney couldn’t drop the subject. “Since you’ve been doing your own laundry, I would’ve thought you’d be more careful about your clothes.”

  “You’d think.”

  She scanned the muddy hem of my skirt, shook her head, and twitched at my shirtwaist. “And look at you, grown so bony and baggy. You need to take the sides in. You’re way less fleshy now than me.”

  “I’m growing thin hating the Yankees.”

  That really was the reason. Not the fact that we limited ourselves to two small meals these days. When I thought of the Federals, my appetite fled. I resented the space they took up in my brain but couldn’t drive them from it. We had done them no harm, and yet they had swarmed down to invade our homes and murder our brothers and fathers. Working among the wounded only made me more aware of what they were doing to us. Hacking and blasting away at our menfolk like wild beasts. That was probably why I had stomped through the puddle—because there was nothing that I, a girl, could do about them.

  My boots were now weighed down with clinging clay, but we were nearly home, so I kept clomping along without knocking it loose.

  First we passed arbors tangled with the still-leafless grapevine that gave our place its name, Scuppernong Farm, and then the field where Michael plowed with Gus-the-mule. Cubby laughed when Laney helped him wave to his daddy. His daddy waved back, smiling wide. Michael was a short man, with a narrow face and thin shoulders. From a distance he looked like a y
oung boy, yet he now did the chores of two men on our farm. All previous springs Rush had labored alongside Michael, while our father concentrated on running the store.

  “Go look in the barn right quick, Miss Violet!” Michael hollered. “We got a present from heaven delivered straight to the back pasture with the cows. I cleaned her up—appeared like she been wandering awhile.”

  I shot a glance at Laney and she shot a glance at me and we quickened our steps.

  The fields of our property didn’t spread far. Ours was not a plantation; it was just a small family farm, with a big patch for cotton, another where corn was always planted, and another of beans, sweet potatoes, greens, and melons. We had Lily and June, our two brown cows, lots of mostly unnamed chickens and geese, and several bee gums down near the forest.

  A surge of love for our place welled up inside me as it came into view. Home. We were home. Safe. Laney’s family and Pa and I were isolated here, but we were sufficient unto ourselves within those walls. There our house waited, open-armed, surrounded by a straggling rail fence smothered in honeysuckle. It was a rambling, low-ceilinged, two-story white frame farmhouse, with a bright blue front door. There were outbuildings in the back and a shaggy lawn, overgrown with wildflowers, sloping down to the silver-glittering river. A half circle of piney woods protected our place, with dogwood trees glowing like stars among the dark evergreens.

  We headed straight to the barn. The sweet scent of hay battled with the foul odor of manure since Michael hadn’t the time to shovel muck as often as needed. He had already brought the cows in from pasture and they were in their stalls. Toby, my father’s horse, was gone for the day with my father, but an unfamiliar horse stood in the stall next to Toby’s. A velvety gray mare with beautiful lines and a white star on her forehead. She glanced idly back at us as she munched hay.

  “Where—?”

  Laney shrugged. “Michael said she was in the back pasture. Look. There’s the saddle hung up. A fancy one. And there’s the bags and blanket roll. Ooh, looky here.” She pointed to the letters US stamped into the leather of the saddlebags. “I guess one Yankee soldier’s lost his horse.”