Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  In the morning, after closing her door, she fumbled through the ring of keys until she found the one that locked it. The glass key attracted her attention again, and she wondered again what lock it could possibly fit. Somewhere in the house lay the answer, but she did not want to be in the house today.

  Outside, the air smelled as if it had been washed of its sins. Today she would explore the boundaries of Harbinger.

  The dining hall was half-filled again. Some of the people she had met last night were there and she greeted them with a formal nod. She took a plate of buckwheat cakes and apple butter, sat silent and ate. Afterward, she assisted in grilling cakes for the next shift of diners, then in cleaning. Where she’d felt ostracized in their company only last night, the dance had changed her. Vern now thought of herself as an integral part of a larger process. She greeted Sarah, who told her, “You look better today, dear. It’s good you rested.” Rather than contradict or explain herself, she agreed. “I’m very good today, Sarah, thank you.” She decided she had misapprehended a clumsy smile from Sarah for something coarse and troubling—that was the degree to which she’d been confused. She’d give them all benefit of doubt now. They were all parts of God’s plan, these people. They only wanted to be saved.

  Later, when no one was looking, she took a Johnnycake that had been made for the afternoon meal and folded it up in some paper and put it in her pocket with the keys. Then she ventured out onto the back porch. People were wandering across the open lawn, back to the fields or the village or the orchards. Whoever remained in the house, she still hadn’t discovered. Someone must, as things were always dusted, always polished.

  With her hands in her pockets, she went down the steps and across the yard herself. She clutched the egg and the keys. She would not leave them behind again.

  She walked past her shop, past the ironsmith’s and to the barn where she’d danced last night. Rather than continue past it to the church, where there might easily be a swarm of people, she turned, walking between the livestock pens and henhouses that lay beyond. Chickens clucked and strutted around a narrow yard dusted with a scattering of feathers. A smokehouse stood apart from the livestock. Thin bluish smoke rose from it.

  A man in a dirty apron was standing just beyond the smokehouse. He was rolling a cigarette, his hands dark with charcoal. He glanced up in surprise at the sound of her approach. Over the little paper as he rolled it, his eyes followed her. Otherwise he might not have noticed her at all. Vern wondered if he would report her whereabouts to Elias. Whatever she did, wherever she went, it seemed that someone was sure to see her; but the way through the village was labyrinthine, and with luck it would disguise her destination, too. Even if the smoker reported that he’d seen her, he wouldn’t be able to swear where she was heading. The next lane took her past an abattoir, which stank of blood and offal. Beyond it stood an empty corral. The far side of the corral consisted of a six-foot-high board fence, and Vern turned there. The fence hid her until she had topped a low rise, and the lane had become a ragged path.

  The path led down to a series of rolling rises—too small to be called hills—of cleared pasture. Soon enough she encountered grazing cattle. Farther away there were sheep, though she didn’t spy a shepherd.

  Eventually the pasture gave way to woods. At the edge of it, Vern paused to look back. Only the church steeple and the top of the barn located the village beyond the grazing sheep. Harbinger House seemed too tiny to be threatening. The pyramid at the top shone like a spike of silver.

  Once in the trees, she had no trouble following the path. It was more of a cart path, rutted by wheels. She soon heard a kind of roaring as well as a metronomic metal squeal. The source of both appeared soon enough—a stone mill set on the banks of a nearby stream. Its wheel produced the rhythmic noise. Elias had said they had their own mills for flour and flax. As she approached the mill, the path divided. The left-hand fork looked as if it wound back in the direction of the village. The right fork led past the mill and deeper into the woods, and she followed that one. When she could no longer hear the squeaky wheel, she stopped and listened to the sound of the woods—the calls of birds, the buzz of insects, and overhead the occasional creak of a branch, the shush of leaves in the breeze. It was cooler in the woods, but it was also pleasant. The woods smelled alive.

  She contemplated the possibility of finding a way out of the enclosure, an escape from Harbinger and back home, but with less urgency now than before.

  The path narrowed to a trail, still identifiable, but obviously not used for carts or anything with wheels. She didn’t even see horse’s prints in the soil. Off to her left, she caught occasional flashes of sunlight on the surface of the stream.

  She felt as if she walked for miles. The path snaked around outcroppings of rock, and the ground was never smooth, always broken with stones and roots. She tripped a few times, and wished she’d worn something other than soft slippers. She needed boots for this. After a while she unwrapped the sweet cornmeal Johnnycake and ate it.

  By now she had lost sight of the stream, so she was surprised by the sound of distant splashing. The ground grew more rocky underfoot. She had to be careful of how she went.

  The path split again. She followed it to the left, toward the noise. Beneath the splashing, another noise grew, a kind of hollow roaring.

  Within a minute she had climbed up a rocky rise and was stepping out onto a broad promontory. The view if not the climb robbed her of breath.

  She stood above a sheer drop hundreds of feet to the floor of a canyon. The stream she had glimpsed emerged from the rocks off to the left of the promontory. It was much larger than it had appeared through the woods. The falling water created a spectacular waterfall down to a wide pool, and another stream, which snaked along the floor of the gorge below. Where the cascade fell it made a rainbow, a great banded sheet of color hovering in the air.

  This had to be the same gorge they had crossed on the way to Harbinger. Somewhere around the bend would be the bridge itself. She must be beyond the wrought-iron fence, but there was no point in fencing this off. Nobody could have climbed up or down from here.

  She stood on the promontory a long time. The waterfall to her felt like God, like something huge and beautiful—more like God than anything at the house; even the Hall of Worship with its windows and great ceiling, its skull and pulpit, was dwarfed by the grandeur of this.

  She wondered how God could choose to destroy a world so beautiful. It saddened her to imagine all this, outside the perimeter of Harbinger, being obliterated. The sadness made her long to see her family again. She felt then that she must get home. She must see Kate and Amy, Papa. Even Lavinia. Yes, even the gorgon.

  Vern turned and clambered back down the rough slope too fast. Her foot slipped and she fell, scraping her hands. Sharp rock jabbed her hip. She scrambled up immediately, angry with herself for being so stupid, in such a panic. Exercising more caution, she made her way back to the path and went on. Her palm had a stone in it that she pried out, then licked the blood away to see the puncture. It wasn’t too terrible.

  The path seemed to parallel the gorge. She hoped it would take her outside the fence by the time she’d reached the bridge. But already the distance between path and gorge was widening. The path, weaving around natural obstacles, was leading her away from it. Worried, she tried to make her way through the woods, but the bushes snagged at her clothing. Her wide skirt wasn’t intended for wildernesses. Thorns pricked her legs, snagged her stockings. She tried to avoid them, but they grew everywhere. Off the path, the woods seemed to be full of them, blending into the underbrush, a cunning barrier.

  She tried to make her way so as to avoid them, but kept the edge of the cliff always in sight.

  Ahead were stripes of darkness, trees behind trees, receding into dim distance, but Vern’s attention remained fixed upon the location of the gorge. She would not stray too far from it.

  Then suddenly the dark stripes had marched up before her and
she raised a hand protectively and stopped. She had nearly collided with the fence.

  It had been built right up to the edge. She clutched the bars and pushed her face into the space between them. There was the bridge, five hundred yards distant beyond the bend, a cruel glimpse of freedom and impossible to reach. Where the wrought iron ended, a person might have been able to swing out and around to the other side, but they would have to be willing to dangle in space with nothing below them and nothing to hold on to but the black uprights. The cliff offered no purchase. She could picture herself falling to her death.

  She had also inadvertently rejoined the path. Narrower now, it ran along the inside of the fence. At least she wouldn’t have to navigate more thorns to get back. She would simply follow the fence.

  It brought her out of the woods between the orchard and the house, and just on the edge of a cemetery. There were dozens of small headstones. One grave looked newer than the others, and she supposed it must have been that of Bill, the man who’d hanged himself, although that surely happened months ago. The rest didn’t look very old, either: A lot of people had died in just the few years Harbinger had existed.

  People were working in the fields; others in the orchard were wrapping something around the smaller trees, probably to keep deer away. The afternoon meal had surely come and gone. There was nothing to do but return to the house.

  She glanced up. Sunlight flared off the glass of the pyramid at the top, creating a spectrum, reminding her of the waterfall in the gorge. Behind the colors, something moved. There was someone up there, someone inside the pyramid.

  Vern stood awhile, watching. Her hand moved into her pocket and curled around the keys. Her fingers identified the larger glass one. Her mouth set in determination. She was going to get up there.

  It was time to learn Harbinger’s secrets.

  Nineteen

  THE FOYER WAS DESERTED WHEN she entered it, but she encountered Margaretta on the stairs. The dark-haired Margaretta said, “Ah, I vas looking for you to see if you vere wohl. When you did not come for the meal.”

  Vern made a smile. “I’m fine, thank you. I went for a walk in the woods.”

  “So,” was Margaretta’s reply, as if that summed everything up. She patted Vern’s shoulder and continued down the steps. If she had noticed the condition of Vern’s clothing, she gave no indication.

  Vern reached her room, locking the door after her. Setting the keys and the egg on top of the commode, she took off her dress, now stained and torn. Her hands were dirty, her calves scratched, hosiery all but ruined. She poured water in the basin and rinsed her hands and face. She stuffed the ruined dress inside the armoire, and put on the blue dress she’d worn the previous night. It wasn’t fresh, but at least it wasn’t in need of stitching.

  She picked up the keys again, but stood before the commode awhile, staring at the egg, debating whether to take it or not; but remembering how it had disappeared beneath the pillows the night before, she finally slipped the egg into the small kerchief pocket between her breasts again before going out.

  The hallway was dark and silent. While she intended to find the stairs up to the pyramid, she wanted most to find Elias’s rooms. She wasn’t forbidden to seek out those, unless the glass key turned out to be the key that opened them. Even if it was, she was half determined to use it.

  She crossed to the first door on the opposite side. Although it was identical to hers, it didn’t take the same key. There were six keys on the ring that looked identical. On her third try she chose the one that fit the door.

  The room inside was a near-mirror image of her own, with a single bed and sparse furniture. It was musty, and heavy drapes hung over the window, letting in only a glow of daylight, but enough for her to make out cobwebs and dust. It was a room for ghosts. Clearly, no one lived here, and hadn’t from the time the house had been constructed.

  She closed and locked the door, then tried the next. The same key opened it, and she supposed the keys and locks might be identical on different sides of the hall. This second room was like the one beside it and hers, save that the bed had no canopy but was low with black iron rails, and the walls were painted some greenish color. The drape had slipped from the rod above the window, letting in much more light, which gave the room a submarine essence. It was not as dusty as the first, but just as empty.

  Guest rooms, she thought as she closed the door. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? But aside from Reverend Fitcher and herself, what guests were expected? If everyone else lived in dormitories, then who were these rooms meant for? Probably because she occupied one, she thought the rooms seemed inherently feminine, although admittedly there was nothing in their composition to indicate it, save perhaps for the canopy beds.

  Methodically she opened every door on the second floor, first down one side and then down the other. Most of the rooms were the same. Disused. Vacant. Had they not seemed so utterly lifeless, she might have thought they belonged to Elias’s inner circle—to those who had accompanied him. However, a few—those farther back on her side of the hall—suggested some more recent use. In the one next to hers there were dead flowers in a vase, a locked wardrobe, tortoiseshell brushes, and a pair of small boots. The boots were dusty, but not terribly so. Someone had lived there not so long ago.

  She passed her own room again, but didn’t open it, admitting to an absurd fear that if she did, she would find it as dusty and barren as the rest.

  When she’d opened every room on the second floor, she knew Elias’s quarters weren’t there. More than that, she knew she was the only person living on the floor. Her earlier sense of isolation had proved true.

  She descended the steps to the landing, where she chose the alternate staircase, the one that led to the third floor. All this time she’d known it was there, but not once had she looked up at the long steep climb or considered how odd this arrangement of stairways was.

  Unlike the stairs below, these had no runner. They were plain pine coated with a yellowish varnish and reminded her of the stairwell in her house, the one to the attic. The enclosed stairwell was narrow and claustrophobic, offering little headroom. She held on to the railing and went up. At the top hung a drapery, parted in the middle. Beyond it was a hallway like the one below if significantly darker. Doors lined both walls. She wished she’d brought a candle, and had to fumble through the keys, holding them up against the brighter patch of light between the drapes to identify them.

  Despite this handicap, it took her only two tries to find one that fit the first door. The handle rattled loosely in its collar as she turned it. The door creaked on its hinges. The room was in better shape than those below. It wasn’t dusty at all, although it was curtained, with only a little sunlight spilling through the slit between. It smelled, not of mustiness, but of sweat, of recent habitation. The narrow foyer opened onto a larger room, and someone could easily have been hiding out of sight there. She didn’t think so—the room didn’t feel occupied—but she was reluctant to enter. She backed out and closed and locked the door again.

  When she put the key to the next door, it opened. It had been hanging on the latch, unlocked. This one smelled worse, giving off the reek of a chamber pot that needed changing. Vern thought, as the door swung open, that in the dim recesses something shifted; but the odor was like a barrier, and she didn’t even want to call out. Whoever could exist in that atmosphere was not someone she wanted close by. She withdrew, and closed the door firmly after her. For a moment she hesitated, then locked the door. If someone was lurking in there, she would not give them the chance to surprise her.

  At the third door, Vern thought to knock. There was no reply, but the door was also unlocked. Inside, the remains of a candle was burning on a small dresser, with wax pooled around it. It might have been burning for hours. The little flame threw enough light upon the wall above it for her to see that someone had written something there. She crept inside, leaned her head around the corner far enough to see the rest of the room. It
was empty. In fact, except for the small desk, there wasn’t even any furniture. She turned her attention to the writing above the candle. The words had been written in a spiraling circle, beginning in the center and whirling outward. They read: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. And the books were opened.”

  Almost the instant she finished reading it, she was overwhelmed by the sensation of someone behind her. She turned quickly. The doorway was empty. No one was there, but now the sensation enveloped her again—someone was behind her in the room. She swung around, her arm out to ward anyone off. The room was barren. Quickly she retreated, slammed the door, and locked it.

  It took her a moment to cast off the terror she’d conjured. She put her hand to her breast, felt the lump of the egg there. “Stupid,” she muttered, “you’re acting like Amy.” Amy could scare herself to death if left alone for two minutes; and Vern smiled, thinking about her. She had to go home after this. She had to get away from Harbinger. For now, however, she stiffened her resolve to finish what she’d started.

  She crossed the hall and tried the first three doors on that side. The same key didn’t work those, and she spent time finding the one that did: as with the second floor, one key for each side of the hall.

  The rooms were mirror images of each other. One stank of cigars, another of a fire that had been doused, perhaps upon her approach, she couldn’t say, but the room was smoky. Where the almost abandoned second floor had borne an unmistakable feminine aspect, this one was utterly male. The dwellers in the dark here were men, she was certain of it.

  Dark angels. Dark angels, the way the spirit of Samuel in her house was a dark angel. He hadn’t harmed her. Yet in her dreams, in the dark warped halls not so unlike this house, something malefic had pursued her.

  Vern looked at the other doors and decided that she didn’t need to open any more of them. Elias did not live here, either. She wasn’t going to find his room, not on this floor, either. She was certain of it.