by Julianne Lee
Whoa. Shelby’s heart leapt in her chest and she gripped the arms of her chair to keep from leaping up and scattering manuscript pages everywhere. Lucas she was used to, but this was different. Just how weird was this house? She drew deep, slow breaths and calmed herself, muttering that it was no big deal. She couldn’t let it become a big deal. It would make her crazy to lose her cool every time something strange happened, and so there was nothing for it but to relax and ignore the noises and apparitions. When her pulse approached normal again, she sat back in her chair, tapped the manuscript pages into a neat stack, and bent to her work again.
But now work was hopeless. She kept looking over at the closet. Someone had run to it. Children playing hide and seek? Maybe. The footfall sounded more like an adult, though. And she wasn’t going to get any more work done until she went to look. With a long sigh, Shelby set her manuscript aside, picked up her candle, and went to the closet.
It was a fairly large space for a closet. Her clothing was hung in the one on the other side of the fireplace, and this one was stacked with cardboard storage boxes. Not very many, and they seemed lonely here all by themselves. An electricity conduit ran up the wall to the middle of the ceiling, where a bare light bulb was screwed into a porcelain fixture and a chain dangled from it. But, of course, with no electricity the thing wasn’t working. She raised her candle to examine the room.
Nobody was there, not even a ghost. Not that she could see, anyway. But something niggled at the back of her mind. Why had the door slammed? What was there about this closet that had excited the energy of the house? What was it that was so annoying her?
The walls inside the closet were finished with plaster and lathe, just like the rest of the house. The side next to the fireplace had once held shelves, she could see by the irregularities under the paint. They apparently had once covered the entire wall, then had been removed and the wall painted over. In the middle, a piece of patch paper was curling up and made a bulge at about shoulder height. Three others completed a one-foot square where the wall had been patched at one time. Shelby picked at the loose piece.
It was very loose, and fell away when she touched it, revealing a rather ragged piece of drywall set in a square hole in the plaster.
Drywall? She picked at the edges of it. Yeah, this piece was from recent decades, but the edges of the hole were plaster and neatly finished. As if the hole had once belonged there. She pulled the other pieces of paper away from its edges, and picked at the drywall. It came away easily, having not been nailed in at all. She set it on the floor and looked inside the hole.
It was too dark to see, so she took her candle from the holder to lean it near. With her face and the candle as close as she could get without burning herself or the wall, she peered down inside.
The back of the space was the rough stone of the fireplace, leaving a grossly irregular surface behind the wall. Below, there was a ledge—probably a strut of some sort supporting the lathe. On that strut was a small wooden box, not more than a tray. Perhaps it had been intended for hiding jewelry or other valuables. Shelby reached for the tray, and her finger flicked the corner of something behind it, which shifted a bit as if it might fall farther into the wall.
She pulled out the little tray and looked again. The brown corner of a small book stuck out from between the stud and the stone. Shelby reached in and ever so gently tugged it from its hiding place. The edges crumbled, but with care she was able to retrieve the entire thing intact.
It lay in her palm, almost warm to the touch, she was so excited to see it. She hurried with it and her candle into the bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed to set the candle on her nightstand, hunched over the book on her knees, her heels hooked over the rails of the bed frame. Her heart pounded as she carefully opened the brittle leather-bound pages to the inside of the front cover, and her breath stopped. A diary. The name inside the cover was Mary Elizabeth Campbell, and the date was December 25, 1859.
“Oh, my God.” The words were a breathless sigh. “Mary Beth.” She turned to the first page, dated that same day, and read:
What a delightful day this has been! Annie had the kitchen prepare us a Christmas feast of turkey and ham, and yams and bread stuffing and jelly and rolls and pie for dessert. I am so stuffed I could pop! Mother is thrilled with her present, as I knew she would be, and as I am with this diary. There are so many things I would tell, and now I can tell them and it won’t even matter that nobody will listen. Everyone is so caught up in whether there will be war. Even Amos has given over to the preoccupation. He’s a dear, and terribly knowledgeable on the subject, but I do wish they would all just calm down and never mind those old Yankees. They’d never hurt us, we’re Americans, too. It’s all just silliness, and I wish they’d quit talking about it so much.
Amos? What about Lucas? Who was Amos, and why did he matter so much to Mary Beth?
That was the end of that entry. Whatever Mary Beth might have been to Lucas, she sure didn’t seem the most mature woman for him to have been so bunged up over her. Could she have been his sister? Well, no, not if her name was Campbell. Shelby wondered how old the girl had been in 1859. Probably not very.
She paged through, scanning for Lucas’s name, and wondered when he would pop up. Aha! He finally was mentioned in December of 1860, and Shelby stopped to read, her heart pounding at what she found.
Annie’s help has been no help. Lucas Robert has asked me to marry him. Tonight at the Christmas party, he took me aside by the tree and told me he had permission from Father to ask for my hand. Oh, how I wish Father would never mind his meddling! Doesn’t he see I can’t marry Lucas Robert? Why can’t he let me choose who I would marry? Or never marry, if that is ultimately my inclination. I’m furious. And afraid. What will happen if I become part of the Brosnahan household? How could I ever live there as Lucas’s wife? I never will. It would be impossible. But for now I’ve told him we can have an understanding to marry one day. There will be war, so I’m certain I can put him off until it’s ended. Perhaps in another year his affections will have cooled. This is the most merciful way, I think. To flat refuse him would break his good heart. I do love him in a way. I’d hate to see him hurt. Yes, this is the best way for all concerned. I’ll allow an understanding, but no wedding until I can be certain of a future with him. And then I will think of something.
Poor Lucas. He’d gone to war thinking Mary Beth would be there for him when he returned, but she had no intention of marrying him. Even so, all that talk about war and death didn’t seem much like he’d just received a mere Dear John letter. What had happened that was so terrible to have held him in this house so many years?
Paging delicately onward through the diary, she saw some of the entries had been in pencil and others in pen and ink, many of the pencil entries illegible in spots. The diary covered more than just one year. Entries made shortly before the final date enlightened her on the issue of who Amos was. Random sampling of the summer of 1862 revealed he was Lucas’s oldest brother. Though many of the entries were too cryptic to make sense to anyone other than the diarist, Shelby was able to gather that halfway through the war Amos and their middle brother, Gar, had enlisted with Morgan’s Raiders just over the state line in Kentucky. The diary mentioned visits home the men had made, and many of the more recent entries were nothing more than anti-Federalist venom. It was quite clear where Mary Beth’s political loyalties lay.
Then she saw the entries stopped entirely about two-thirds of the way through and the rest of the pages left blank. The final entry was dated October 20, 1862, made in pencil, and nearly illegible just for the handwriting:
Oh, dearest God, there’s Yankees downstairs! I can hear them shouting at Ruth. Oh, that Amos were here! I’ve got to hide this, or they’ll find it and hang us all for a certainty!
No wonder the diary had been hidden; if it had been not particularly bright of her to record these Rebel sentiments, not to mention the cavalry troop movements, Mary Beth was at least sma
rt enough to have not let the Yankees get hold of them.
Apparently, nobody at all had got hold of them since that day, not even Mary Beth. She hadn’t taken it home with her after the Yankees left. Why had it remained inside this hidey-hole for so long? Furthermore, what had she been doing in the Brosnahan house on that day? Those annoying questions were still in the back of Shelby’s head. What had brought so much grief to Lucas Brosnahan? There was no answer within the diary’s pages. But the mention of Yankees made Shelby wonder about the young woman’s fate.
A knock on the door downstairs startled her back to the present, and she went to answer it. A short, bearded man, wearing a gray electric company coat, was waiting patiently for her to answer the door. A black wooly cap was jammed down over his ears and his shoulders hunched in the cold wind. She cracked the door and looked out.
“Afternoon, ma’am, you report an outage?” He was stout and inordinately cheerful, apparently having a better day than everyone else in the neighborhood. He carried a clipboard, and the paperwork seemed out of place in his thick, workman’s hands.
“Come in.” Her voice was wobbly, and she cleared her throat. She hadn’t realized how caught up she’d been in Mary Beth’s diary. The blast of cold air from outside made her blink.
“You okay, ma’am?” He was perfunctory. Like Sgt. Joe Friday asking for just the facts.
She nodded and smiled. He said nothing further, but kept a puzzled look on his face as he stamped the driveway mud from his boots. She stepped back as he came in on another gust of wind. She said, “My electricity went out.” Then she realized just how lame that sounded.
A leather belt for tools hung around his hips, and he hooked one thumb in it. “How long has it been out?”
“Sometime during the night. It was off when I got up this morning. It’s done this before.”
“Yeah, the transformer blew last night, and it’s been fixed. I don’t know what’s wrong at your house, ’cause everyone else in the neighborhood has power.”
Shelby groaned.
“All right, then,” he offered his clipboard and pen, “if you would sign here, please, ma’am.”
She shifted the diary to her other hand and signed, then handed him back his pen.
“All right, then.” He gave the impression of being not very articulate. “I’ll be right back.” He hurried down the porch steps and off down the driveway toward the street.
The wind calmed some, and Shelby looked out over the tracks. White on white as far as she could see, the apartments, trees and houses denoted by bits and flecks of black here and there. She closed the door, and while she waited for the electrician to return, leaned against it to browse the diary some more. Overcast though it was, the light through the window was still brighter than the candlelight inside the house.
Near the beginning of the book, she happened upon a drawing of something. In pencil, it was badly smudged, but near as she could tell it was a star. Or pentagram. The date on this entry was September 23, 1860. About three months before the day of Lucas’s proposal. Over the drawing was a single paragraph:
Father has brought me to the Brosnahans’ for the day while he confers with Amos. I know what he intends, but I wish to be permitted to make up my own mind. Father has decided, though, and he is determined to join our two households. As Amos and Gar are both already married, this means there is only one Father could ensnare for me, regardless of how I might feel. But there is a solution. Annie has shown me this charm. It’s said to free one from bondage. I dearly wish for it to work. It certainly hasn’t worked so well for her, but I expect that means God hasn’t meant her to be free, in spite of what Mr. Brown might have said on the matter.
Then, below the pentagram, were words that seemed to be in French. Or Spanish, it was hard to tell with the pencil graphite so smudged and the spellings in this part so creative. But she sounded them out, whispering under her breath in an attempt to recognize them. It didn’t help. She arrived at the end of the paragraph without the first clue as to what it might mean. With a deep sigh, she closed the book.
Then she couldn’t breathe. All of a sudden, her chest felt constricted and heat wafted over her. Bright light from the door shone in her eyes, and there were voices in the room with her. Gasping, struggling for breath, she found herself floundering and tangled in something. Her legs were enshrouded in cloth, and she nearly fell to the floor. Something like a great fist had her around the waist, holding her in so tightly she had to take quick, shallow breaths. The door stood open, where a moment before it had been closed. She staggered outside in hopes of some air. The sun was bright, making her squint. The electrician would need to call 911, for she was certain it was a heart attack. The light on the other side was indeed bright. For a moment, she thought she would pass out, and held onto the porch rail to keep herself standing, but she couldn’t pass out if she was dying and already—
Porch rail?
She squinted in the sunshine and saw her front porch was completely righted, sturdy and straight, yet still covered in morning glories. Small blue flowers closed up and turning purple in the afternoon sun. Below the steps the ground was dry, as if it hadn’t been sleeting and snowing since yesterday, and the sun was high in a cloudless sky. Panic rose. Surely she’d gone crazy, hallucinating. The sense of unreality rose when she was able to focus on the shadows of the porch and saw two men standing there. One was in shirtsleeves and trousers with suspenders, and the other in a dark, woolen suit and tall hat. The younger one in shirtsleeves said to her, “Didn’t mean to startle you. Here, you dropped your pencil.” In his hand was a dark pencil stub, which she took automatically.
She frowned at him, then at the dress she found herself wearing. The thing gripping her waist was a corset that had quite ruined any chance at taking a useful breath, and the heavy, green wool was making her sweat like a horse in this heat. The neck was nearly up to her chin, and the ruffled sleeves well over her wrists and tight at her forearms. And she was wearing hoops, for God’s sake! Or hoop, at least. One encircled her skirt at about knee height and swayed as she moved.
The older man in the tall hat said, “Mary Beth, what’s the matter? Are you unwell?”
The ghosts were multiplying. Shelby looked around for the shade of Mary Beth Campbell. There was nothing behind her but the railroad track, and on the other side of it a thick forest. Her driveway was gone without a trace, as well as her car and the electric company truck. In their place before the house was a nineteenth century buggy with a horse hitched to it, standing on a dirt track that wandered off across a field to the west. She looked back up at the man in the hat and said stupidly, “Huh?”
“I said, young lady, are you unwell?”
Horror dawned. It was herself he addressed. She said, “Who are you?”
The men both laughed. “That will be enough out of you, Mary Elizabeth.”
The younger man said, “Perhaps she’d care to be entertained watching Lucas and Samuel down by the ring?”
Lucas? Shelby’s ears perked.
The man with the hat turned to the other and in a guarded voice said, “Alone?”
Shelby noticed the younger’s voice resembled Lucas’s, though physically he was stockier. Amos? “She’ll be fine. Lucas Robert will look after her.”
The older man glanced sideways at the younger, then gave a reluctant nod. “Very well, Mary Beth, go and visit if you wish. But stay in sight of the house. It would be inadvisable at your age to disappear with any young man, even a Brosnahan.”
The taller, younger man gave a slight nod, but with a crinkle at the corners of his eyes
Dizziness engulfed Shelby, and it was all she could do to stay conscious. She peered up at the man and said, hoping he would reply no, “Father?”
He blinked at her. “Yes?”
She turned away and her breathing hitched. Oh, God.
The man laughed. “Mind me, girl. Go visit with Lucas Robert and give him my regards, whilst I finish my business with A
mos.”
Shelby turned and peered up at the man, wondering what to do. Finally she realized he’d just told her to visit Lucas, and for the moment the thought appealed to her. “Where would I find him?”
Amos pointed with his chin off to the east. “He’s with Samuel Daley in the ring. Mind, you don’t keep him from his work.” The twinkle in his eyes became brighter, and Shelby didn’t know whether to laugh or vomit.
She finally managed to reply, “All right.” Then she turned and made her awkward way in the direction Amos had indicated. Quickly she learned to lift her skirts so she wouldn’t step on the petticoats, and walking became less treacherous after that.
She took breaths of warm fall air. It was certainly fall, for there were morning glories and bright red and orange leaves all around. Sick with confusion, Shelby nevertheless found herself eager to see Lucas. He, at least, might seem familiar.
Looking around as she went, she was astonished by the changes in her yard. Green grass was everywhere. A new, sturdy outhouse stood not far off the side of the house, and in the distance rolling pasture was fenced with split rails. An open well stood in the yard, a rough-hewn wooden bucket set on the mortared stones, its rope secured to an iron spike driven into the ground. Just beyond a thin stand of young trees that yesterday had been tall and gnarled, was a long stable, painted white with green trim. Field stones made up the foundation of it, neatly mortared. A red-haired man wearing only bib overalls and bare feet forked hay into a small corral attached to the building. Near the stable, just within sight of the house, was an exercise ring, also fenced with split rails. Two men rode horses in lazy figure-eights there under the bright sun. Shelby recognized Lucas as the tall one with the black hair, and awe fluttered in her belly.
At a genteel walk, by the time she arrived at the rail fence of the ring her breathing was somewhat normal and she no longer felt she might faint. By straightening her spine as much as she could and raising her chin some, she found she could take slightly deeper breaths and not be panting so much. She stepped onto the bottom fence rail, and clung with her arms to the top of a post, but then realized the hoop under her skirt was making the back of her dress rise behind her. So she hopped down and tried it again, this time careful to not let the hoop tilt the wrong direction. There she watched the two riders put the horses through their paces.
