Where the Dead Talk (24 page)

"Now prepare to make note of this moment," Pomeroy said, "my finest action as an officer of the 5th of Foote. The culmination of years of loyal and dutiful training."

"You don’t sound too fond of it, if you don’t mind me saying," Morrill said.

Pomeroy snorted.

"Good Lord, no. I could think of a hundred more interesting ways to spend one's life."

"Well why didn’t you?"

"I’m a Pomeroy, and that’s all one needs to know, apparently. And while I took that to mean gambling, whoring, and occasionally ordering my men to march around in tiny little circles – let’s just say that that wasn’t quite what my family had in mind. It’s occurred to me that our friend Brewster has the right idea – in spite of everything else that happened last night, I shall always remember that ale I had. An ale worth throwing away a career for, without doubt. Once we’re miles and miles from here, I’ll have to ask him how he does that."

Pomeroy ran a hand through his dirty hair.

"Now, the guns – where are they?" he said.

Morrill took a deep breath and then slid one of the benches along the wall. Behind the bench, floorboards were missing. In the space below were muskets, two dozen of them. Next to those were crates of lead balls, packets of powder. Pulling another board aside, he revealed barrels full of black powder, priming fuses, and a stack of cannon balls. There was more space below – clearly there had been more here, not long ago.

"Morrill," he said.

"Sir?"

"Don’t sir me, Morrill. You do realize that I could have you all hung for this."

"But –"

"And in doing so, I could rescue my own faltering career. The very bloody powder-stash I set out for."

Morrill reached for a hammer on the bench next to the door.

"Oh, don’t be stupid, Morrill," he said. "It was a jest. We’ve enough fire-power here to shoot our way through a whole sodding army of those corpses, which is all that bloody matters."

He motioned and Morrill lifted him out a musket.

"And as far as my career," he said, "I’m quite sure I’d end up in the stocks even were I to return to the garrison with the head of Sam Adams tucked under my arm. Now the wagon and the horse."

They took a few more weapons into their arms.

"Oh, and I want to burn the church," Pomeroy said.

It was an insurance policy of sorts. Morrill and MacGuire’s boys brought the weapons to the wagon – and it was now loaded with a dozen muskets and enough powder and ball to last through several nights like the last one. Pomeroy took a tin cask of oil he’d found and worked his way across the green towards the white church. The pain in his leg had fallen off to something of a dull throb, though putting much weight on it would raise it back to a roar again. He tightened his jaw and kept moving. The others watched him from the wagon. Pomeroy stepped up to the doorway. It was filthy with tracked mud and footprints. The smell of decomposition reached him, even there.

"Ha-llooo!" he called out, "anybody in here that’s alive? You need to leave now, because I’m about to burn this church down. Are you there?"

He put a hand to his ear and tilted his head. There was silence from inside – but there was no mistaking the brooding air about the place. Pomeroy pulled the bung from the tin and began pouring the whale oil out, splashing it across the wooden floor of the entranceway and up onto the walls and the doors to the congregation. Shaking out the last drops, he dropped it to the floor. The air was heavy with the smell of the rich oil.

"Right," he said, "this ought to save us some trouble."

My new pastime, it would seem – arson, he thought.

He hopped back out, careful on the slick floor. As he was about to light the oil afire, a movement from above caught his eye. A narrow window along the side of the belfry had opened and a child stood outlined in it, arms moving in jerky arcs. The child swung back and forth, head lolling side to side.

"Come help, come help, I'm frightened," a strange voice called down.

"Don't move," he called out, "I'll be right up. Right up to help you."

Sodding bastards, Pomeroy thought, see how you like this. He pulled the tinderbox from the inside pocket of his jacket and began striking sparks. The fourth strike did it, sending a blue flame racing across the oil with a loud rush. He leaned back, then slid down the steps. Even at the bottom of the steps, the heat from the fire was impressive. The child's body hit the ground moments later, landing like the dead weight it was.

It Had To Be

It was worse than Nashoonon had imagined. They were just behind a small rise that fell off into the water. The stream gurgled beside them, sluicing between a pair of large rocks. The edge of the lake splashed up against the muddy banks in agitated little waves in front of them. Darkness shrouded the middle. The day’s light was swallowed up by the churning black ceiling of shadow that came up from a point near the middle of the lake. There was no light there, just a blackness that roiled, occasionally veined through with a flash of color that hurt his head.

Nashoonon tore his gaze away. Thomas stared up into the darkness, his eyes wide, a look of pain and sorrow pulling at his face. Nashoonon reached over and shook him hard by the shoulder.

"Don’t look at it," Nashoonon said. He spoke slowly, so the deaf boy would be able to follow his words. Thomas nodded. The fear and sorrow that had been there were suddenly replaced by a hard look. Nashoonon could see anger in the boy's eyes as he looked out on the lake.

Nashoonon wriggled further up the rise. He kept his eyes from the darkness and looked at the water instead. It was rough, small white-tipped waves blowing all across the surface. The air that rose up from the water was January-frigid, cold enough to make his eyes water, forcing him to squint. Near the center of the lake, the water dropped off into a rounded depression. It was as though a pumpkin the size of a house had been pressed into mud and then removed – only it was the surface of the water. At the far lip, water rose up, fat at the bottom, then twisted to a rounded tendril that extended up into the air, like an old tree trunk made of water. He could see little waves move along it, and even spotted a fallen leaf moving within it.

Around the closer edge of the water, bodies stood. There were dozens of them, some knee-deep in the lake, others in past their waists. One or two were out even further, so that only the tops of their heads were clear of the water. All of them faced the strange protrusion of water that lifted out in the middle of the lake. Nashoonon recognized many of them. With some, it was easy. He could see perfectly well the oldest daughter of the farmer whose fields were down along the Salem road. She looked pale and her hair was matted down, but it was her. Others were in worse condition. A few of them had skin that had gone dark colors – streaks of dark green and gray, their hair hanging in filthy locks, their clothes ripped. Here and there, a large wound gaped, bloodless.

"Where did he start the ceremony?" Nashoonon said.

Thomas slid up a little further and pointed to a spot perhaps twenty-five yards to the left of where they were. Nashoonon saw the blackened remains of a fire next to the water.

What was it that Pannalancet had attempted?

Something was coming through the lake. That’s what was happening. It started with the bodies, the way it had those few times in the past. The bodies came back, driven by a cold predation. It spread this time – how far, he didn’t know. But the darkness and the moving shadow, the strange form in the middle of the lake. What did those mean? The harder he tried to find an answer, the more his mind locked up. He didn’t know – that was the answer. He didn’t know. The ground shuddered and scraps of shadow moved across the water. Nashoonon grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled him back.

"We have to go," he said.

He worked his way along the small stream and then cut back up the right side of it, into the pine. The boy followed. They hit the path that had brought them in and followed it up the slope. The further away they got from the lake, the warmer the air was. They found the horse – he was snorting and rolling his eyes, jumpy. Nashoonon ran his palm alongside the animal trying to calm him.

"What are you going to do?" Thomas said. He was breathing hard.

"I don’t know."

"But what about the lake?"

"I said I don’t know," Nashoonon said.

"But it’s already afternoon and when it gets dark is when –"

"So what should I do? You seem to know everything. You tell me."

Thomas set his lip and lowered his eyebrows, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"Finish what your uncle started," he said. He pointed back in the direction of the lake. "Close the door and make the bodies go away."

"There’s nothing I can do," he said.

"But you have to."

"Not that easy."

"It's not hard to figure out - you just have a temper. Like my uncle sometimes get."

"What are you talking about?"

"Use the things from your uncle," Thomas said. "The wrapping with those smelly leaves in it. Put some of those in your mouth. Your uncle did that. Then use the stones. Probably put them into the water. Maybe pour in that blood, too."

He paused.

"I don’t know what songs you should sing."

"You don’t know. You’re just making that up," Nashoonon said. He hung his head and slowly rubbed his eyes.

"Well at least I’m trying," Thomas said.

Nashoonon threw up his arms in exasperation.

"I’d be trying, too – if I knew what I should do –"

"I just told you –" Thomas said.

"No you didn’t. It doesn’t work that way. If I don’t know the right songs, then nothing will work. Nothing. You need to know the right ones. That’s all there is to it. My uncle knew them and he couldn’t even do it."

"He almost did it," Thomas said.

"But he didn’t. And I can’t. It’s too big for me now," Nashoonon said. "There’s nothing I can do."

"But you saw what’s happening."

"And that’s why I know that there’s nothing that I can do. Even if I knew what to do, there are too many of the dead. They wouldn’t let me."

"So do it at another part of the lake. The far side."

Nashoonon shook his head.

"If the ceremony was started there, it has to be finished there. That’s how it works," he said, "and stop looking at me like that. I'm trying to think of something, but I don't know how to do this. Do you understand that? I don't know, just like he didn't know. And we're it. We're the last. Just the two of us, no one else – and we don't know anything."

Nashoonon looked at him, angry.

"We’re all getting what we deserve, you do know that?" he said. "Me, you, your people, mine. We started to give up and you finished us."

"We did not," Thomas said.

"Really? Your father and your uncle were there, the ones that tried to stomp us out. My uncle told me."

Thomas shook his head.

"Oh, they were young when it happened, but they still did it," Nashoonon went on, "and it was a mistake. The year after the pox that tore into my people. A farmer was killed on the road, butchered and scalped by some wandering Narragansett, not even from here. Paid by the French. And your people thought it was us – even though by then we weren’t much more than a handful of women and children. And me and my uncle."

He spat.

"It was that preacher – your holy man – who told them to do it," he said. "He was the one who gave the order."

"What order?" Thomas said.

"The group chased them back to the lake until they hid in their long cabin. Hid from their bullets and their shouting. But they couldn’t hide from the fire that they set. Six women and seven children all burned to death."

"Not my father," Thomas said.

"Yes – and your uncle, too."

"Then why'd he help us? Why'd he help me?"

"He didn't help you enough. You lost your hearing."

"Father said I would have died if not for your uncle. Like my mother did, my aunt."

"You might have heard if not for him."

"That's a lie. My father gave him food and shared with him. They were friends."

"Not your uncle. He never forgot it, that one. I’d see him at the tavern sometimes, drunk in his ale. Talking about the curse it put on him. He was drunk when I told him about the lake, about what the lake could do. Told him how it could bring them back, the dead. I wanted him to be more scared."

Nashoonon laughed, a hard bark.

"Never thought he’d do what he did," he said. "Did it with his wife, after the pox got her. My uncle was the one who took care of it. Made him swear he’d never come near the lake again. Your uncle swore on his boy’s life."

Thomas looked around. He didn’t believe that his father would ever have done something like what Nashoonon had said, not to women and children. He’d never mentioned it, never said a word. His uncle, though – it wasn’t as hard to imagine something like that. A memory suddenly ran through him in a flash.

Now your father don’t believe it, but that’s because he doesn’t want to see that it’s all around us, has been since back then. Taking everyone from us, pushing us to make it worse, as I did. Even took your hearing. Been a shroud on us since it started – it owns us.

"But none of that matters now," Thomas said. "It only matters that we stop it."

"That’s where you’re wrong. You think that all that past doesn’t matter? It’s why we’re here right now. It’s why all this happened. It’s why we’re already done for – no one left, and no way for me – or me and you – to do a thing about it. You saw what’s at the lake."

"If I could get help, would you try it?" Thomas said.

"What help?"

"For the bodies. Would you?"

Nashoonon shrugged.

"I don’t know if I could –"

"But you’d try. You have to try. Because of your uncle," Thomas said.

And mine, and my father, too, he added to himself.

"You have to," Thomas said.

"But there isn’t any –"

"Wait here, I’ll be back with help."

Before Nashoonon could do anything about it, Thomas swung himself up onto the horse and spurred it past him and down the path. The horse was so big that it felt like he was riding an avalanche – he could barely hang on. He rode towards the center of the village; the column of smoke rose from there. He'd seen it when Nashoonon and he had made their way back from the lake. That put the idea into his mind.