Cheat the Hangman

by Gloria Ferris

  These elderly family members knew the truth, I was sure of it. Maybe not everyone knew everything. But the full and true story of the 1943 reunion was collectively stored in those memories. One fact perhaps in that white-haired head, another in that gentleman’s bald pate. If I could tap into the knowledge, the final pieces would tumble into place.

  Tonight was not the time. They were here to enjoy what could be their last family reunion. It wouldn’t be fair or kind to ask questions about a time in their lives that was at best difficult, at worst a nightmare. But each month that passed, their ranks would decrease―until soon, there would be no one left to remember.

  I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock, still the shank of the evening for this crowd. As the night wore on, many of the revellers would turn in or go home, and I was concerned that the fire would not be safely doused. If even a slight breeze came up, the elm was a goner.

  They started on the “White Cliffs of Dover.” I grew up hearing such songs at every reunion, and listening to them again brought back memories of dozing in my grandmother’s lap as we sat around the campfire.

  The woman singing the lead was no Vera Lynn, and soon, they changed to “Harbour Lights” and this tune seemed to suit the mixed chorus better. I couldn’t understand why the party animals weren’t grilled to cinders standing so close to the bonfire, although the heat did keep the bugs away. But I had to move after a few minutes.

  “Mom.” I turned to greet my son, who stood behind me out of range of the crackling blaze. His arm was draped over the goddess’s shoulders, and she was squeezing his waist like a tube of toothpaste. Their hair gleamed in the light of the fire.

  “Hi, Mitch. Hi, Tiffany. How are you guys holding up? Another twelve hours and we’ll be home free, so let’s hope we can keep our teams on the job until then.”

  “I think we’re doing okay, Mom, but I’m a little concerned about this fire. Do you think we should ask these people to let it die down a little?”

  “That elm tree is going to get scorched,” Tiffany chimed in.

  A redundant comment since anybody could see the tree was in mortal danger, and if it ignited, some of the trailers and tents were going with it. The bottled gas stored in every camper would fuel the conflagration. And it would turn out to be my fault. I already knew that.

  “I know. Do you want me to speak to them? Or we could get one of the volunteer firemen to make an announcement.”

  “No, let me try first,” said my son. “We’ll try and keep it low key, then if they don’t listen, we’ll call in the fire department. Some of these people are getting kind of wasted.”

  “Sounds good.” I moved away so Mitch wouldn’t feel I was looking over his shoulder. The strains of “Red Sails in the Sunset” followed me for a while as I ambled through the camping paraphernalia that covered most of the available ground within the field’s boundaries.

  At the far end of the field near the cemetery, a group of middle-aged relatives were having their own party. There were about twenty or thirty of them, and instead of a bonfire, they clustered around a couple of kerosene lamps that threw out enough light to enable them to see each other’s faces fading in and out of the blackness. A few were incinerating marshmallows with the aid of a camping stove and pointed sticks. Most of them were drinking either beer or coolers, but I recognized the glint of Royal Crown and Johnny Walker bottles clustered on the ground.

  While their parents were singing numbers from the war, these former flower children were playing sixties protest songs on a portable CD player. Bob Dylan was blowing in the wind.

  We seemed to have missed the fifties and early sixties altogether, and since early rock and roll was my favourite music, I soon lost interest and wandered away into the cemetery.

  Everything seemed to be under control and I relaxed a little. Conklin was more than capable of handling anything he might turn up on Hammersleigh’s grounds. Mitch and Tiffany had the field in hand. With any luck at all, both security and medic teams were out there somewhere, mingling with the enemy, discouraging anarchy and chaos, not contributing to it.

  Well, if my crew turned on me now, there was nothing I could do about it. I decided to take a break for a few minutes and rest. With the aid of my flashlight, I was able to locate a flat rectangular tombstone. It was Aunt Rose, one of the younger sisters of Aunt Clem and Aunt Wisty, and I figured she wouldn’t mind if I stretched out for a bit.

  Although Aunt Rose rested a few feet from the cemetery boundary, close to Thomas’s secret grave, the lights from the field did not penetrate that far, and the narrow slice of moon in an overcast sky permitted only shadows to loom out of the darkness. Thunder rumbled while Janis Joplin wailed about something or other. Could Simon and Garfunkel be far behind?

  I lay back on the cool marble and gazed up at the sky, trying to make out the big dipper. Or the little dipper, since I didn’t know the difference.

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard the sounds of running feet and whispered giggles. If any of those kids passed closer to my bier, I planned to sit up and give them a good scare.

  I turned my thoughts away from that other reunion. The pieces were all there and they almost fit—I felt they would come together very soon. Instead, I decided to think about Marc. I thought about me and Marc together, yes or no. I didn’t know if I loved him as he deserved to be loved. Even if I did, how could the two of us live together—and where?

  For Hammersleigh was my burden. I had to admit it. The grand house I considered such a treasure a few short weeks ago, my own personal museum, was just that—a museum. It was not a home for a family, especially a little family of two. I thought with longing of the wing where Conklin and Caroline lived, and for a brief moment, I considered kicking them upstairs and taking over their quarters for my own use. Of course, I’d install air conditioning for them first...

  “God damn it, Lyris,” a loud voice announced over my head, “what the hell are you doing here?” The voice echoed through the now empty—I hoped—cemetery.

  As so often happens, the thought was father to the deed. I twisted around on my marble bed and was almost blinded by a flashlight. I turned my own on and aimed it back into the face of my perhaps beloved, my maybe lover. If I could make up my fickle mind.

  “Marc.” I didn’t move—well, I couldn’t. My leg and hip had seized up again. “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked you first,” he replied, rather childishly in my view.

  Rolling over and pushing myself up on my elbow, I looked at him. He was so easy on the eyes, even in the unkind brilliance of the flashlight. “I’m just resting for a minute. It’s been a long day, and the night holds much temptation for young blood.” I waggled my eyebrow at him, but he apparently wasn’t in the mood.

  “Don’t you have a bed at home to sleep on? I thought I had found a dead body. It’s a good thing I have a strong heart.”

  “I’m patrolling. The night is alive, and evil lurks in every dark corner.”

  “I won’t dispute that, although I still think this is a strange place to take a nap.”

  “Okay, at the count of three, we’ll both turn out our flashlights.”

  Both lights went out in unison. I managed to get into a sitting position on Aunt Rose and patted the marble beside me. “Here, have a seat and tell me what you’re doing in a cemetery, shouting at an innocent woman. And in your uniform yet. You know how uniforms affect me.”

  He didn’t sit. “I’m on duty. This reunion madness spills over into the town, you know. I have almost all my staff on overtime, and was driving around the concession myself when I…thought I spotted some kids running into the cemetery from the road. And what do I find instead? A body draped over a tombstone.”

  I got the impression that Marc had started to say something else, but thought better of it.

  He peered into the gloom toward the field. I could tell he itched to be on his way. He looked back at me. “Would you believe I never swore until I met you?”

>   “I believe it, but I don’t understand it. Dennis used to say I drove him to drink, but what is there about me to drive a man to cuss words? I am the most inoffensive of women, truly a Madonna, to use your own description.”

  He smiled. “Dennis is an ass. And you only look like a Madonna, specifically like a print I have at home—dark hair, delicate, heart-shaped face and long, graceful neck. But I doubt the lady in my picture was half as interesting as you.”

  “Can I see that picture sometime?”

  “Anytime. It’s hanging in my bedroom.” He smiled again, and we both laughed.

  Then he went serious on me again. “I have to get back to work. If you’re going to the house, I’ll walk you back.”

  “What about your car?”

  “Ronnie is waiting outside the cemetery with it. I can radio him to pick me up at the front gates of the house.”

  “Let’s go, Officer.” Conklin had made it clear my post for the night was in the field, but I could walk Marc to the front gates first. Even though I doubted the depth of my feelings for Marc, I still found him exciting. I even liked the sound of his leather holster rubbing against his belt. I was pathetic. The Family Procrastinator.

  A rustling in the dry grass off to our right caused Marc to drop my hand, turn his flashlight on and put one hand on his gun, all in one swift motion. He sure was jumpy.

  “It’s just some of the kids…”

  Marc shushed me with a quick motion. Even that stirred me. Pathetic.

  A ghostlike figure floated out from behind a tombstone that was crested with a stone angel wielding the sword of judgment.

  “Don’t shoot,” I shrieked. In the harsh gleam of Marc’s flashlight, I recognized the otherworldly wraith.

  “Okay, I won’t. I generally consider elderly ladies fairly harmless, unless of course they’re packing.” His tone was a mite sarcastic if I wasn’t mistaken.

  “It’s my Aunt Wisty. She must have broken out of Lychwood.”

  “She doesn’t look strong enough to walk.”

  And indeed, Aunt Wisty, barefoot and clad in a long, pale nightgown, looked as ethereal and insubstantial as a real ghost.

  I rushed over to my bewildered aunt and put my arm around her to lead her closer to the light. She looked around at the cemetery, then directly over to where her baby lay, although that fresh mound was in darkness and she could not have seen it.

  “Who are you?” She didn’t sound scared, just bemused and curious.

  “I’m Lyris, Aunt Wisty. Lyris Pembrooke. Do you remember me?”

  “No. What is this place? It’s not home.”

  “We’ll take you home, Aunt Wisty. Just sit down over here.” Have a seat on your sister Rose, my dear.

  “I’d carry her to the car and have Ronnie drive her back to Lychwood,” Marc said in a low voice, “but I need to follow up on something first. I’ll carry her as far as the house and you can notify Lychwood to come and get her.”

  “I don’t think she’d like to be in Hammersleigh House tonight.” I pulled out my radio. “We’ll stay here and I’ll get Peter or Caroline to call Lychwood and ask them to come to the cemetery. They may have missed her by now.” I hoped this was an isolated incident and Lychwood’s residents weren’t allowed to wander the county roads in the dead of night.

  With suspicious haste, Marc disappeared into the shadows rimming the cemetery in search of his “kids.” After talking to Peter on my radio and explaining the situation and our precise location, I turned to Aunt Wisty.

  “Why did you leave your…home, Aunt Wisty? Were you looking for something?”

  “Looking for my baby, my little Tommy.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stirred, and I edged closer to my frail aunt. “Do you know where he is?”

  I didn’t know if she thought Tommy was alive and still at Hammersleigh House. Or if she accepted he was dead and had come to visit his grave.

  She looked in the direction of Hammersleigh House. Although no glimpse of the house showed through the trees and shadows, she stared at the dying bonfire visible in the distance. Vera Lynn was singing “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” The haunting melody should not have been audible this far from the fire. Maybe the flower children were playing the song on CD.

  “Over there,” she said dully. Now the hairs on my arms were erect too.

  “Did you leave him…over there, Aunt Wisty?”

  “He didn’t mean to. They had the hanging back then, you know. That’s why I did it. He wanted me to, rather than let them hang him.”

  She was staring intently across the darkness to the edge of the cemetery, to the line of trees where it was darker still. I realized her eyes were locked on the spot where her husband was buried in his hidden grave.

  A wave of fear gripped me as I wondered how Aunt Wisty knew where the grave was. It was my impression that Wisty had become almost catatonic right after Tommy’s death.

  “Did you put Tommy in the closet?”

  She looked down at her bare feet, and when I looked down too, I could see they were scratched and bleeding. But if they hurt her, she didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with such sadness my heart broke for her. “I meant it for the best.”

  She was staring at her husband’s grave again, and much as I didn’t want to follow her glance, I couldn’t help myself.

  What I did not want to see, what I should not have seen, there at the edge of the tree line near Thomas’s grave, was a shape. At first, it was the merest outline, a shadow. But as I watched, it took form until I saw it more clearly than I have ever seen anything before or since. A man, gaunt and haunted, dressed in the uniform of the last Great Conflict.

  His eyes, which I could not have seen in the darkness, were full of longing and hopelessness as he gazed at the thin, old woman sitting beside me. He lifted one emaciated hand toward Aunt Wisty, and his agony was so impelling I could feel its powerful force reaching out to embrace us, pulling us in.

  She stared back at him, and I knew her eyes mirrored the same emotions. Paralyzing fear held me. I was sitting on a tombstone in the cemetery, but at the same time, I was caught between two anguished souls, who were trapped in another time.

  It was impossible to detach myself from the energy of despair that crackled like a thing alive all around us. I clapped my free hand over my eyes. Aunt Wisty cried out and the sound seemed to break the gossamer thread that held us suspended between reality and dreams.

  The air around us shifted. I took my hand away and looked back to the dark tree line.

  There was no one there. I had seen nothing. Aunt Wisty slumped silently in my arms, her thin body shivering. I was shaking as well, and we clung together and let the hot night air warm our bodies.

  The last notes faded away and I was never sure if I had imagined the music.

  A few minutes later, two attendants from Lychwood appeared on the bricked path leading from the new part of the cemetery. Aunt Wisty was borne away, wrapped in a blanket by a husky young man, who whispered kindly to her as he lifted her in his arms.

  I was right behind them as they crossed through the old cemetery and the new, out the gates to the road. I returned to the field via the county road. Nothing in this life could have enticed me to cross the boundary between the cemetery and the field. Sometimes we see what we do not want or expect to see, real or not, and I had seen enough for one night.

  When I found myself planning to have a recriminating word with Leander about allowing me to experience such a distortion of time, I knew I should check myself into Lychwood right along with Aunt Wisty.

  CHAPTER 24

  I shook Hammersleigh’s massive gates until my teeth rattled right along with the iron bars. I had forgotten the gates would be locked and was frustrated with my memory lapse. I wanted to either smash the gates down or throw myself in front of them and howl.

  Of course, since I was a mature adult, I did neither. I walked back along the perimeter of the pr
operty to the wooden gate and found the catch was stuck. With the help of a brawny young man who was passing by, I managed to shinny over the top and drop to the ground on the other side. My landing wasn’t pleasant.

  The hydrangea by the fishpond was motionless and silent as I passed by, and most of the scattered clothing was gone from the path. A lone tube sock rested at the side of the pond, as though it had managed to crawl out, and I left it there to be scooped up by the security team who had been instructed to remain after the last camper had pulled out of the field on Sunday afternoon. I proposed to have them scour the grounds for garbage and junk left behind, one last duty I was leaving for tomorrow to mention.

  I rounded the front corner of the house, jumping back when I glimpsed two figures under the portico. Peering between the leaves of a sweet-smelling vine that climbed upward to the roof, I realized the two men were Marc and Conklin. Nothing weird about that maybe, except they were leaning toward each other and talking in such low voices I couldn’t make out a word, and I have pretty keen ears.

  There was something furtive about the scene, odd since the gentlemen in question were both beyond moral reproach. Before I could extricate my hair from the vine and join the party, Marc clapped Conklin on the shoulder, the way men do when they’re up to something, then turned and strode down the steps. He was halfway to the gates before I reached the steps and Conklin was nowhere to be seen. He must have accessed the electronic panel in the hall to open the gates. They opened seconds later and Marc exited the grounds. I could see the rotating lights of the police car roll up the county road and stop in front of the gates.

  The front door was now locked, and rather than risk Conklin’s disapproval by bringing him back to let me in, I uttered a silent profanity and went around back. Through the kitchen window, I could see Peter making a pot of coffee.