Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) (21 page)

“Thank you for showing me around,” she said gratefully, adding, “You take really nice care of the place.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Come back another time, and I’ll show you around some more, if you want.”

“Thank you. Maybe I will.” Marianne felt genuinely comfortable around John Irving and thought it would indeed be worth a return trip. He departed in his mini truck with a clatter of rakes, shovels, and shears.

She turned and began walking up the row, reading names and dates and inscriptions. About ten minutes into her search, she came across a modern grey headstone with a flat top and slanted front side that said

 
George W. Rutherford 1895-1971
 

Anne Eddy Rutherford 1900-1963
 

May they rest in peace in the arms of their Lord
 

Marianne stared at the headstone trying to imagine the community piano teacher, who still haunted her house, resting here in peace. All she could picture was the sad-eyed woman in the obituary photo. Anne hadn’t found peace yet.

She looked up and tried to fix the location of the gravestone in her mind relative to various landmarks and then set her sights on the older section. She neared the bottom of the hill and slipped beneath the shadows of the old trees. This part of the cemetery had a different feel from the open, sunny air of the upper slope. Here it was darker, and all of the gravestones were white stone but stained with something dark and streaky. They were a mix of three-inch thick, rectangular tablets with curved tops and more pillar-like stele inscribed on several sides. The graves were much closer together and more crowded feeling. The whole air was somehow darker and more intimidating, like wading through a forest of gravestones. Marianne had the feeling she was walking across people as they lay in their earthen beds with the grassy covers pulled up over their heads and felt like apologizing to the unseen sleepers. Instead, she trod respectfully up and down the rows looking at names and dates.
 

The oldest markers from the mid 1800s were closest to the road as John Irving had said. Many of them were nearly illegible, worn smooth by time and random damage. She worked her way back from the road, progressing through the decades slowly. When she got to the late 1890s, she turned in and began walking up and down slowly looking for Samuel Eddy Junior. She had to look closely at dates and after a while observed that many of the older people had full sized markers. A surprising number of them had reached respectable old ages in their seventies and eighties. Sometimes husbands and wives were listed on the same stone; sometimes they were on separate stones but next to each other. Children were sometimes listed on other faces of the stele-like monuments, suggesting they were buried with their parents in the same location. Other times young children had much smaller markers, hunkered sadly between bigger stones. A few of them had completely flat markers, flush with the ground and in danger of being obscured by grass.

She finally found a very small white tablet about a foot high and a foot wide with the words
 

Samuel Eddy Jr. Died 1905 3 years, 2 mos., 15 days
 

Next to it was a short, four-sided pillar with a pyramid shaped top. On the side facing the road was the inscription

 
Samuel Eddy 1877-1940

Josephine Eddy, his wife, 1883-1941
 

There they were, buried amongst their friends and neighbors. Marianne fixed their location in her mind relative to some trees and retreated to the edge of the dirt road that wound through the cemetery.
 

She stood and looked at the country road on the other side of the stone and iron fence and at the headstones in this corner of the graveyard. She tried to imagine the trees smaller, the county road unpaved and the rest of the cemetery all woods as it might have been a century ago. She pictured the horses decked out in their black ostrich plumes pulling the buggy from the hamlet of Schukill with Samuel and Josephine and the little coffin with Sam Junior in it. On a hot summer day, everyone would have been sweltering in their black mourning clothes. Little Anne might have gotten a ride with her family rather than walked, and the other mourners might have walked or taken their own buggies or wagons to the cemetery.
 

The pall bearers might have only been a couple of men carrying the small plain pine coffin between them as everyone walked solemnly to this corner of the graveyard. Their church pastor would have said a few words then, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” before the small box was lowered into the ground. Anne might have been holding her mother’s hand as she said goodbye to her baby brother with whom she’d played less than a week earlier. Then they all would have walked back to town and had a communal lunch courtesy of the church and sympathetic neighbors. How sad and bleak to have to leave your baby child, or your little brother, in a cemetery.
 

Marianne sighed and looked at her watch. It was nearly 5:30 and time to go home. Oscar would be hungry, and she was tired. Mr. Irving had returned to his shed and locked it up for the night. She knocked on the door to the cottage, and he came out.

“Did you find who you were looking for?” He asked politely in his smooth deep voice. She found herself appreciating his wonderful voice and awesome Mark Twain mustache all over again. He seemed like a person perfectly suited for his job in the local cemetery, lending it dignity and taking away any sense of creepiness at working among the dead all day.

“I did. I found all the people I was looking for. Now I just have to figure out what to do next.”

“If you have Sarah helping you, you’ll find the right thing,” he said reassuringly.

Marianne hesitated slightly before asking, “Have you known Sarah long?”

“Ever since she was a girl. She grew up in Maple Hill and spent a fair amount of time out here.” He looked at her with a searching gaze, and Marianne felt she was being sized up. He must have decided he could trust her because he cleared his throat and said, “Let me tell you a little story. I met Sarah when I was new here. She came to her aunt’s funeral when she was five. The mourners were what you’d expect, solemn, bereaved. Sarah’s father was particularly sad about the loss of his sister, who’d been relatively young. I showed them where the plot was, and the hearse drove up the hill. Sarah’s little face was looking out the window of a following car, and I saw her face light up, and she started waving at someone. I couldn’t see who she was looking at, but I followed them up the hill in case they needed anything. She was little enough that she was more or less forgotten while the graveside service was given. I watched her explore among the tombstones, stopping at some, passing others. She seemed to be listening and talking to herself as she went. At one point she looked up like someone had called her. She broke into a big smile and dashed off. She stopped near the tree line and stood holding her arm up as if she was holding hands with someone I couldn’t see. It might have been her grandmother or even her aunt. Together they watched the ceremony until it was time to go.”

He smiled gently and began unconsciously rubbing the frayed hem of one sleeve. “It took me a few years and some time with little Sarah to realize that she could see and converse with people who had crossed over. She has an affinity for helping people, both the living and the dead.”

Marianne tried not to gape, feeling a slight chill, though the day was hot. “Wow. That’s amazing.” She shook herself and said, “She’s a little forbidding, but she’s been nice and very helpful to me, even though I’m new here. We met through Kelly from the hair cutting place,” she added by way of explanation.

He nodded and smiled sadly. “Ah, yes. People haven’t always been kind to her. Having a gift like hers is not very good for making friends. She’s had to work hard to make people accept her for her other talents. Kelly has been a good friend to have.”

“Sarah’s a lawyer,” Marianne said tentatively. “She must be pretty smart.”

He nodded as rolled the soft threads in his weathered fingers. “That she is. And that’s more of what she wants to be known for. Though somehow when people need her gift, they seem to find her.”

Marianne nodded and decided not to probe any further, in spite of her curiosity. “Thank you for helping me out today. I may be back again.”

“My pleasure. Please do.” He extended his hand, and she shook it again. It was warm and strong.

Chapter 18

She drove back to Maple Hill thoughtfully. She was beginning to draw a clearer picture of what was going on with her “roommates” but needed some time for it to gel. It was like her more mainstream history projects. She did research, filling her mind with facts, images, and ideas until a pattern emerged. She just needed time to let it settle clearly. Her cell phone rang on the way, and dutifully, Marianne pulled over to the shoulder and answered it.

“Hey, Marianne! Can we expect you for dinner tonight?” It was Kelly.

“You know, I think I’d like to spend the night at my own place tonight. I spent the day doing research, and I don’t think the angry ghost will actually hurt me. Scare, yes, hurt, no. So, I’d like to stay at the house tonight and see what happens. I’ll call you if things get out of hand.”

“Are you sure? We’re glad to have you.”

“Yeah. You guys need your space, too, and I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“Okay. Be sure to call if you need back up.”

“I will.” She continued home and pulled into the drive. The rain had left the grass very green and lush. It was already looking much better than it had when she’d arrived. Oscar greeted her at the door with a meow that clearly said, “Where’s my fish?” Marianne fed them both and sat on the couch while she ate dinner. Oscar climbed into her lap and filled the space between her and the bowl of salad, until she laughed and scruffed his head, saying, “You make life so difficult!”
 

After supper, she opened the keyboard cover on the piano and played for a while. Working her way through more fingering exercises, she was excited that her hands remembered more than she’d expected. She also was pleased that her hands were so much bigger than they had been when she’d played as a kid; she could reach an octave plus one now. When she got bored of “Dozen a Day,” she got out the easy Bach pieces and worked through the first couple again. Even though it was slow, there were moments when the chords and melody sounded just right. Much to her surprise, it was 9:30 when she looked up again. She got out her most advanced music books, Beethoven, Grieg and Ragtime among others, and spread them out on the top of the piano. These had been the most difficult musically for her, but she bet Anne would find them easy.

Leaving the key cover open, she quietly addressed the empty air. “Mrs. Rutherford?”

Oscar, curled up on the sofa under the front window, flicked his ears. “Mrs. Rutherford, I learned that you loved to play the piano. I hear from the neighbor boy Michael that you have been playing already. He’s quite a fan of yours. Please feel free to continue playing my piano any time you want. If you need music, these are the books I have, and you can play anything you want from them. I’m afraid they’re pretty basic.”

She paused and then said aloud, “Mrs. Rutherford, if there is anything you want to tell me about yourself, I’m going to be home tonight. You can contact me when I’m sleeping, I guess.”

Marianne had no sense that anyone besides Oscar had heard her, and she rather hoped George would not take liberties with contacting her. After eating a little ice cream and cleaning up the kitchen, she went to bed.

She dreamt she was walking through the house. The layout was a strange mix of her old apartment and her new cottage decorated with familiar furniture—the sofa, table, piano, books, Geoffrey’s high school sports trophies, and her favorite landscape painting on the wall. She wandered around the room feeling peaceful and wondering at the curious overlay but accepting it. Down the hall, she caught a glimpse of a little girl dressed in old-fashioned clothing, a stuffed animal clutched in her hand, giggling mischievously as she ran away down the hall. She could have been Michael’s little sister, but she didn’t think he had one. Marianne laughed and started to follow, but a woman’s voice shouted at her loudly, “Get out! Get out now!”

As Marianne hesitated, the coffee table in front of her exploded into flames and was consumed before her eyes, all the magazines, old-fashioned iron and laundry turning white with flame. Fire leapt like wicked cats across the floor and raced up the legs of the other things in the room. A panicked child’s screaming mingled with the growing noise of the fire, and she tried to move, to escape, but her legs felt like they were made of lead. The piano burned, emitting a tortured groan before turning into a smoldering cherry red image of itself and collapsing in a wall of flame. The shocking heat and terror engulfed her, and she screamed aloud.

She sat bolt upright in bed, sweating and panting, the echoes of a child’s fear all but convincing her that she was burning up. The pungent smell of burning wood and clothing permeated the air. Gradually, the terror of the dream melted into quiet darkness. Her heart pounded for some minutes before slowing. She finally whispered, “Okay, Mrs. Rutherford. I know about the fire, but I don’t understand the rest yet. Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. How about you let me sleep now?”

The minutes passed, and her system calmed down. Oscar jumped up on the bed and rubbed against her arm before settling down with his furry bulk against her hip. Marianne drifted off again into sleep.

Anne drifted like a curl of fog. She’d never had much vigor even in life, but her students had always given her energy. After she’d passed into this strange limbo where she had consciousness to observe but little power to affect the people in the house, it had been a wonderful discovery to find that piano playing or a thunderstorm could empower her. Shaping Marianne’s dream to show her a window on the past had been exhausting. Marianne was warned, and Anne hoped she would understand.