DarkTalesfromElderRegionsNY

by Hieber, Leanna Renee

  With all the new construction, all the visitors teeming to see art exhibits and gardens and now this new-fangled farm that was nothing like the old farm, what saddened Bethany almost as much as the forgotten room off Shinbone Alley where all the sailors’ tombstones had been stored: on all the new maps of Snug Harbor, all the old names were gone. She was surprised Shinbone Alley kept its morbid appellation. Matron’s Cottage was to be some museum or other. She shook her head again. The gulf that stood between her, Sean, and the others and the people below, searching for something never to be found, was much wider than the score of feet between the balustrade of the gallery and the inlaid wooden floors below.

  “They give me the whiffles in their awful black clobber. What they thinkin’? They horse marines, now? Ha!” Sean carefully leaned forward just enough over the railing to better stare at the men below. “She has the sight, mark me. Not them with their palaver. I’ll warrant that lot don’t have much rectitude, nor could they know an old tar’s life. I’m shy of trustin’ them... but her... we can try speakin’ to her.” Leaning back, he felt in his pocket for his pipe, set it between his teeth and began chewing the end while padding his pockets for a match.

  “She is not the brightest, but she is the one I told you about apenkind,” a tall man stepped from the shadows behind them. He had been watching the two as they leaned over the railing, peering down onto the first floor.

  “Stefan you bloody fart catcher, don’ go sneakin’ up or you’ll get a right good nose-ender.” Startled, Sean leapt in surprise, his pipe falling out of his mouth and almost over the railing. Sean grabbed it before it could go crashing down. Angry at almost losing one of his last remaining friends, Sean kicked at the railing by his feet chomped down on the well worn, blackened pipe. Tracing over the heavily fluted bowl briefly, he squinted at the tall man and balled his meaty hand into a fist, thrusting it into Stefan’s bearded face. Stefan also had the look of a man who had spent many years at sea, but he had a crueler glisten to his eye and curl to his lip.

  “I told you both, stuk vuil, she is the stupid huppelkutje that can speak with me. She is the only one. The rest, rotzak, useless. They hear nothing. See what is not there. Chase their own fantasies. Krijg de ziekte,” he muttered, spitting on the floor, his spittle landing a scant breadth away from the hem of Bethany’s skirts. Despite his venomous words, Stefan’s voice sounded unusually pleasant. The feelings of regret, hatred, contempt, and fear, boiled inside him, even after all these years and he took small joy in deceiving others with the softness of his voice. It had been so many years since Stefan was home, being mired in this place made his existence a burden which he wanted everyone around him to pay for. He detested ever having had to throw himself on the mercy of this place. The more he missed the open sea, even the canals and the wretched scent of the air around Copenhagen, the more he peppered his speech with the odd phrases he was wont to use, but never dared while he lived within Snug’s walls. Swearing was as mortal a sin to the Governor as drink and women. Stefan found a release in weaving insults and profanity into even the briefest of conversations.

  “You border ruffian, you a’ gundecking me? If I wasn’t so politic an individual I’d get you to shut your gob, hot or cold.” Sean hastily stuck his pipe in his coat pocket for safe-keeping, stepped up to Stefan, thumping his balled fist in the tall man’s chest. Sean barely came up to Stefan’s shoulder. “Me father was a chalker on the highways of old Derry, mark me. He taught me the art of slicin’ a man’s cheek for larks.”

  Stubborn as ever, Sean stuck his pipe back in his mouth, smiling around the stem. Stefan did not, staring at a point ahead of him, above and behind Sean. Regardless of how many times he heard the story, Stefan grimaced knowing the tale would follow as Sean packed the bowl— itself a mesmeric thing to watch since the old salt had only one arm, gripped the stem in his teeth, and pulled the leaves from his special smoke pocket in his waistcoat, instead of a smoke pouch. Sean then relayed the tale of the days he spent as a lad, before joining ship, with his highwayman father who, when not in his Christian occupation as a blacksmith, for laughs, would slice victims across the cheeks by way of marking quarry. The brigands would call themselves chalkers. It was a long-held tradition in Sean’s family, his father having learned from his father. But, what Sean’s father took pride in was the fact that after the American colonists rose against their British overlords, the chalkers became selective in their marks, now only choosing British soldiers whom to slash across hands, faces, and sometimes, when the lads would be too deeply in their cups or after one of the town lassies had been mauled by one of the soldiers, across throats.

  That was well before Stefan’s day. Stefan could never laugh about men being slashed across the face, or indeed anywhere for ‘a lark’ or even to make some misaligned political statement. The old scars on Stefan’s back and face burned as Sean chuckled.

  Stefan remembered being stationed on the Najaden, and pictures, sounds, smells of his first time in battle, during the first Schleswig War between Prussia and Denmark over the Jutland surfaced in his mind unbidden. He had been in a skirmish on the Fehmarn and almost had his right ear sliced off for his efforts, by a rebel blade. He had been lucky it was only his ear. The stark, white scar gave his face a twisted appearance, despite his thick gray beard. Stefan closed his eyes momentarily, seeing the stillness of the water as he and his Lieutenant Commander rowed out from the ship to the shore to foolishly see if the entire island had fallen to the rebel scum. Of course it had, and the rounds flew over their heads as they were set upon when they were barely to shore. The Lieutenant Commander, Stefan himself, and his own cousin Hakki had rowed in. Hakki was slain in that first volley. The melee lasted mere moments; Stefan thought himself dead as the blade flashed down. He and the Commander spent the rest of the war interred by the rebels, whipped for their good intentions, and eventually exchanged as chattel during the first cease-fire.

  “But to be certain, even though me da got himself in Kilmainham Gaol without even the blessin’ of a priest,” Sean laughingly continued, jabbing the smoldering pipe toward Stefan for emphasis, “that sure beat’s the Dutch.” Sean chortled almost to choking, backing up a pace to spit at Stefan. Bethany intervened, muscling the shorter man backward enough to herself stand eye to shoulder with Stefan.

  “Ye be a gentlemen of four oats, withal,” Bethany groused, looking up at Stefan. “Don’t flash your ivory, but shut your potato trap, Stefan, and keep your guts warm. Remember, the Devil loves hot tripes.” She laughed quietly. “With that tongue you were taken in here? By my honor and your mother’s, you should have been turned out.”

  “My tongue doesn’t come into this kankerwijf. Have I not kept my peace while this pestkop this fool, this jackanapes insults me?” Stefan spat again on the floor beside Bethany’s feet. “To what end do we speak with them below? She,” he gestured toward the woman sitting on the floor below, “is too stupid, I tell you. And they,” he motioned toward the men with their boxes and their black clothes, “are debiel, yes? Stupid in the mind. Unable to think. Unable to speak. Idioot. Like this one-armed grinagog, this cat’s uncle here. What point are you trying to make?”

  Bethany kept rooted to the spot, preventing Sean from swinging his one arm at Stefan, who continued to scowl. She knew she was being unfair to the tall, grim, foul-mouthed Dane, but she felt a kinship with Sean so close he might have been her blood. And, with her mother having handed so many of Bethany’s younger brothers over to be farmed with the hope that they’d be adopted by families with means, for all she knew Sean could have been one of those babes, despite his talk of chalkers and highway theft in Dublin. Stefan never invited kinship. He came to Snug Harbor with venom in his heart; Bethany felt that in her bones.

  Stefan stood glowering at them both, his anger simmering but without the will to do more than shout. He hated being here, hated his compulsory companions, hated those people milling about below. The tighter that knot of loathing wound inside his chest, the
more he wished he could just melt away as all those other glorious souls did when the sanatorium and Church were razed. Stefan was never a congenial man, but he lost his few friends when the graves were covered with turf, when new halls were built over their graves, where those new lumbering apes like those below, those young devils cavorted and held celebrations. Perhaps it was his anger that held him here. Or, as Bethany the shrew who spoke truth believed, what held them all there like ants transfixed in tar were the holiday seekers who wished to speak with the dead. Bethany had come to the conclusion since the simpletons who now served as Snug Harbor’s governing body thought to raise capital on the fact that over its 180 year history, Snug Harbor amassed a great many dead. Stefan did not know, but standing, watching these pathetic apenkind he felt his need to strike at them, or flee, intensify.

  “The point you ask?” As Bethany became more frustrated, her red cheeks gave Stefan the impression she was a shrieking, beskirted apple. She continued, her voice more agitated and more ear-rupturing, “You rumbumptious fool. I need tellin’ you that? If nothing other than getting’ a bit o’ peace from the likes of you! Keep your cogitations to yourself. If she be the one you’ve spoken with, what reason do you have to quibble? Why did you not tell us you spoke with her?”

  “What reason do I need give you, kankerwijf? If I speak with that hoer, what business is it of yours?”

  “Harridan am I? Harlot is she? You’re just a malicious shadow of a man!”

  Surveying the cluster of shades at the far end of the hall, the flittering shapes in the doorways around them, Bethany clucked her tongue in a gesture of vexation. She wanted her true rest. She had enough wandering. Her bones made as much rattle and squeak as did the old copper kettles she used to set on the hob to boil.

  Bethany had come to Snug Harbor just a few months before Sean did, and he came in the Harbor’s inaugural year. She had been a young woman in service for a handful of years taken to work for the first Matron doing whatever needed doing, from mending socks to making tea. She stayed on for more than fifty years, serving several Stewards and Matrons up until the youngest Matron, the woman Bethany always considered her Matron. Bethany served until she could no longer see to stitch, no longer bend to scrub floors, no longer manage the endless work in the laundry. Being one of the matrons, of course she had no children to ensure her comfort in her old and worn out state.

  The Governor was so hard a fellow, despite his brother being the famed writer, despite the lavish parties, despite the genuine good that was done for Snug Harbor’s residents, men too old and too worn to make a living for themselves, at sea or on land. Despite the open spaces, the gardens, the newly made kitchen in Matron’s Cottage, despite the fact that Bethany never had to share her bed with another matron and had the luxury of hot and cold running water... Despite all that, the Governor did not love the legions of women who made life comfortable. He did make them comfortable, but in so doing the women would be more willing to see to Snug Harbor’s needs. No matron who could not pull her weight would be permitted room, board, or wages. It did not matter that Bethany had given her life to Snug Harbor. The newest Matron was so kindly a woman to work for, despite her being young and, like Bethany and the other women, unmarried. Matron tried to keep Bethany on to supervise the younger girls that were being taken on to accommodate the increase in the residents. That lasted for a little while, until one harsh November, when Bethany fell ill under winter’s vicious spell. Governor Melville wouldn’t have it. An old, tired, worn, and now sick woman had nothing to contribute to the good of Snug Harbor. Try as the Matron might, even she could not keep a place for the old woman. Bethany couldn’t be parted from her home. The morning she was told she must leave, she packed her small parcel, laid her beloved grey dress and white apron on her bed, donned a homespun brown dress given to her as a parting gift by one of the other women, wrapped a threadbare shawl about her shoulders, and walked down to the water’s edge by the dock across the Terrace. Despite the frigid air and ice in the water, she simply waded in. Her heavy skirts pulled her down.

  She woke from a long and restless sleep to find the Matron, her mistress, could neither see nor hear her, nor could the other women, and that when Bethany herself could catch a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she wasn’t as crook-backed or frail as she had been when she waded into the icy Hudson. Being dead was a kind of peace at first. She found herself back in her beloved grey dress and apron. Within a short year after Bethany stepped into the harbor, Governor Melville, accused of scandal, died when his heart gave out. He was one of the first souls to simply dissolve, some time after World War II. Bethany didn’t know where the disappeared went, neither Heaven nor Hell, she was certain, but perhaps when they were too tired of being denied their final place, they simply ceased to be. The Governor’s death was a high point for Bethany in the first months of being dead, but after all the terrible things she witnessed in the years that followed, after all this time, she wanted her true rest. Not that she wanted to simply cease.

  Maybe she thought, when the Matron’s Cottage gets gutted, like so many of the elderly buildings still left standing on the Harbor’s grounds, Bethany too could find herself able to sleep, finally. Or maybe her mind will just melt away, as had her mistress’. Bethany tried not to let sadness turn to anger or fear. Some who were tired, but still present, almost went hollow. They did not disappear; they became like an old tintype. Sometimes they acted out scenes from their lives. Most times they simply floated, like an unmoored buoy. Bethany wanted rest. She deserved that, not to simply dissolve. She wanted help and could not find these young folk shuffling about downstairs to be anything more than confusion to her. Unlike Stefan, she did not hate them. Even though their commands, their insistence, their need to know is what kept Bethany and Sean and Stefan all chained to the spot like anchors in the bay, she knew in her bones that somehow they could help her. She just did not know how.

  She turned to the others, those too frightened or too apathetic to step forward like Stefan had, the shadows and shapes standing just out of range of Bethany’s eyes. “You’ll let this uncouth, boorish lummox speak for us? We have never in all our years of waiting and watching been given a chance like this. We can speak to her and she can listen. She may be able to give us rest. There’s plans to tear down my poor dear Matron’s cottage to put some affront to us all in its place. My poor mistress has no more wits about her. She just flits about where her hangin’ tree used ta be and when she is seen she can’t even bother to show ‘em her whole self. Why last moon I saw her in the greenhouse, bobbin’ about like an apple in a well, from the waist up only. She don’t even speak with me no more. And if we don’t act, and temper this here foul tongued bit o’ sea bread,” she nodded at Stefan. “Then we’ll be venting our gall until they tear down the walls around us. We’re hampered here if we don’t do something, mark me, we’ll be bounden to this wretched trail of phantasmagoria. We’ve been overreached, make no mistake and you here, haunting these doorways are the last with any sense about ye. Think on it.”

  A rustle like dead leaves scattered throughout the upper floor, but no one else stepped forward. Not yet. Bethany’s shoulders sank. Stefan made a growling sound in his throat as he glowered at the people below. Sean gave a half-snort, half-grunt that was probably a laugh and finally spat over the railing.

  ~II~

  Down below, three of the four grown men milling about with their “whizzy-whoosits” simultaneously shouted expletives.

  One rather squat bottled-blonde woman thought her underwear got a tad warm and wet, but not from excitement.

  The only other woman present, the redhead who did have the sight, just sat quietly in the exact center of the vast hall, in the exact center of the grand compass-like star inlaid into the rich wood floor. She was looking toward the gallery above, just over the tops of her wire-rimmed glasses.

  It was easier to see them over the tops of her glasses rather than through the glasses because in all actuality, she co
uldn’t see much of anything at all. Not with her eyesight as bad as it was. Looking through the lenses, she would see them. Now, she only saw the blurs and darkly shifting shapes. She counted three this time. The little boy and the short man in the striped shirt, who had yelled in some Slavic language at the shower curtain, remained in Cottage B. The small bathroom in that building, clear on the other side of Snug Harbor’s sprawling campus, had a tacky plastic shower curtain emblazoned with a variety of phrases in French. The Slavic man in the striped shirt hated the French and he spent his afterlife yelling rude things in his mother tongue at the shower curtain. When the redhead saw him, he got even angrier, pointing and gesticulating as he shouted, making what she believed were hand motions to ward off the evil eye. He ended his tirade with a shout at her, a spit at the curtain, and with an almost audible pop, he had disappeared. The small boy and the man in the stove-pipe hat, the other routine residents of Cottage B, generally ignored the Slavic man. The man in the stove-pipe hat had been here, at the upper story balcony, staring down at her. When she glimpsed him and the woman beside him, she sat down on the floor of C-Hall. While her fiancé and the members of the team did a basic EMF sweep, she tilted her head so as to look over the tops of her lenses. She didn’t want to properly see the man in the stove-pipe hat, or have him start yelling at her again.

  Gwendolyn— Lyn to one or two of her friends or relatives that wanted to bring her name into the modern era, Gwen to most everyone else— knew in actuality the man in the stove-pipe hat and the boy were one in the same. Stefan had been a sailor, probably for a merchant vessel or series of vessels, starting as a young boy of 11, but who looked little more than half that age. Stefan first sailed from Nyhavn, but didn’t come to New York until he was an old, tired, curmudgeon of almost 70. She didn’t understand the name of the town until he had shouted it at her several times. When she got home after that time and Googled the name, she found it was an old port city in Denmark. The more Gwen saw Stefan, the more time she spent at Snug Harbor and the more she tried to concentrate, the easier it was to hear some of the residents like Stefan. Or, more specifically, to see what they saw. Stefan was the only one that actually spoke to her. The rest...it was hard to explain. For Gwen it was like wringing water from a sponge. When she passed a spirit, or when one passed her, their lives were wrung out in a crystallized moment and she was there to soak it up. Much of it she didn’t understand. Phrases, turns of speech, names of towns, names of ships, pictures of flags and dates and harbors and people... most of the time it was too much. She was still new at this and one of the ways she found she could block out the rush, was to imagine she was Joan of Arc in a suit of impenetrable steel, and look over the tops of her glasses. What her eyes didn’t see, her mind didn’t hear.