SelfSame (14 page)

Just outside the hemlock thicket, she whispered, “Joseph!”

For a moment she feared he’d gone, or had been discovered or – it was too painful to contemplate what else might have happened – but he made a sound like, “Uh.”

She crawled inside. It was pitch black. Enid felt his hands fumble for her until he found her shoulders. He couldn’t very well ask her anything, so she began to talk quietly.

“I brought you some food. Baked squash, very soft.” She reached inside her robes and untied her pocket. His hands slid down her arms and she managed to pass the squash to him. To mask the sounds he made trying to eat it, she continued talking.

“The other half of my spirit lives in a time of great knowledge. I have learned that once your injury heals, you will be able to train yourself to speak again. You do not have to be mute. Can you write?”

He said, “Mm,” and she immediately apologized. “I will try not to ask questions.”

He found her hand and drew his finger along her palm repeatedly until she asked, “Is that a ‘y’ for ‘yes?’”

He said, “Mm,” and then wrote the ‘y’ again.

“Let me feel an ‘n’ for ‘no,’” she said.

He made the ‘n.’

“So the answer to my question is yes, you can write. I wish it were light so you could write in the dirt and we could talk. I was not free to come until now, but I was able to sneak away because the whole village is celebrating. Can you hear it? If it does not hurt to make sounds, you could say one ‘mm’ for yes and two for no.”

He said, “Mm.”

“Are you finished with the squash? It was as much as I could hide. Did you also finish the tea I made you? I brought a handful of bee balm leaves, but did not have a chance to steep it. I hope you filled the pot with snow before it melted-”

His hand found her mouth and he pinched her lips together with his fingers. She laughed, but with her mouth shut, it forced an indelicate snort out her nose. He released her lips and cupped her cheek briefly before sliding his fingers into her hair. His other hand found the small of her back and urged her closer. He didn’t try to kiss her this time, just pulled her into his arms and held her.

Sorcha

Grammy Fay was excited about Halloween, or as she liked to call it, ‘Samhain.’ She’d draped the front porch with fake spider webs and put out decorations. Every year Sorcha wondered why she went to all the trouble when no one ever came trick-or-treating this far from town. Even the families in the duplexes at the end of the lane left the area to mine the newer housing developments for candy.

“I got a new witch at the drugstore,” Fay said at the breakfast table. “It has a sensor that tells it when someone is walking by, and it cackles.”

“Sounds very spooky.”

Sorcha had wanted to skip breakfast so she could surf the Internet for information on Sarah, but Fay had made her special pumpkin pancakes, so Sorcha dutifully sat and ate. Her comment on the new witch must have sounded less than enthusiastic, because Fay put her hands on her hips and asked, “Everything okay? Can we talk about Enid yet?”

Sorcha shook her head. “I’d rather not. There’s a lot going on right now. Everything feels so…unstable.”

“That’s because the barrier between us and the spirit world is thinnest this time of year. You of all people would be sensitive to that.”

Sorcha responded to her grandmother’s whimsy with a non-committal, “Hm,” and glanced at the clock over the stove. She took a few more minutes to wolf down the last of the pancakes before thanking Fay and dashing up to her bedroom. She opened the old trunk at the foot of her bed and dug out the genealogy research binder she’d put together over the years. Some time ago, she’d made a tissue paper charcoal rub of the words inscribed on Sarah’s headstone. She took the fragile, folded paper out of the folder and tucked it into her backpack.

The sky was overcast with the kind of solid cloud cover that had no form to it but was simply a blanket of greyish white stretching to the horizon. It was starting to get darker in the mornings as the days got shorter. Sorcha stepped over the roots of the old oak tree and headed for Paula’s car, her breath condensing in the crisp air.

She was used to seeing Luanne, but the passenger in the back seat this morning was not Ben.

“Hello, Sunshine,” John said as Sorcha got in and sat. “Look who’s been assigned to keep you safe today.”

Paula’s eyes in the rearview mirror told Sorcha exactly what her opinion of John’s presence was. Sorcha reached for her seat belt, disturbed that she had to nudge John’s thigh aside to get to the buckle. He smelled like cigarette smoke.

Luanne got right to it. “What happened with Enid yesterday?”

“Not much,” Sorcha said. “The village medicine man made her his apprentice. Maybe not a career choice she would have chosen if anyone had bothered to ask, but hey, that’s life in the eighteenth century.”

Her poor attempt at a joke seemed to roll right over Luanne, who had a tense look about her that made Sorcha say, “It might help if I knew what you were waiting to hear.”

John opened his mouth to respond, but Luanne jabbed a finger in his direction and snapped, “Don’t!”

Sorcha saw Paula’s eyebrows rise in the rearview mirror. Luanne had no love for her cousin, that much was apparent.

“I was just going to say that we couldn’t tell her anything,” John replied. “Isn’t that what the elders want? To keep her in the dark?”

“Shut it, you little cretin,” Luanne said in a low voice.

“Or what?” John asked. “It doesn’t matter what I say. The past has already happened.”

Luanne turned to Sorcha. “I’m sorry for this. Not all of us agree on how this should be handled. There are a few, very much in the minority,” she narrowed her eyes at John, “who want to take a more proactive stance.”

“Proactive?” Sorcha asked. “Like how?”

John laughed. “Like telling you what you need to do to make sure you actually do it, instead of hoping things work out.”

Luanne pounced. “Like things already have? Pick one or the other, John. Has the past already happened, or should we influence it to happen?”

“I’m getting a headache,” Paula muttered.

Sorcha unzipped her backpack, pulled out the charcoal rub and passed it over to Luanne. “Ben said you might be able to find out what this says.”

Luanne unfolded the paper and said, “Oh, wow. Where’d you get this?”

“It’s from our cemetery. One of the gravestones.”

“You have a cemetery? On your land?” She sounded beyond envious.

“Yeah. I’ve identified all the occupants, except Sarah there.”

Luanne studied the letters the charcoal revealed. “I can’t read it, but I think I know someone who can.”

“Harry the Hobo?” Sorcha asked.

John snorted, but Luanne said, “Don’t call him that. He’s my uncle. He used to run the old Indian Artifacts Museum.”

“Yeah, until he went nuts,” John said.

“He’s not nuts. He’s a brilliant man.”

“I remember him,” Paula said. “On that field trip, remember Sorch? When the horse fell over and you were all covered in sawdust? He was funny. The man, not the horse.”

Sorcha did remember. The museum curator wore traditional Iroquois garb and had long dark hair pulled back into one thick braid. He’d seemed fierce and kind at the same time, gently brushing the sawdust off Sorcha’s legs and telling her tongue-in-cheek that she was covered in history. That man hardly resembled the scruffy, unsociable old man who’d watched the WPS meeting from the shadows of the trees.

“What happened to him?” she asked.

“He and my dad were twins,” Luanne said. “When dad died, Harry just kind of retreated from the world.”

Paula glanced over. “So, Skip, Sarge and Harry the Hobo are all your uncles? What’s with the nicknames?”

“You really wanna know?” John asked. His grin was devilish.

Luanne shifted abruptly in her seat like she was going to lunge at him. “Shut your face.”

“What?” John shrugged innocently. “I’m not going to say anything about their first names all being Ben.”

Luanne turned to Paula and said through clenched teeth, “Pull over.”

Paula didn’t have to be told twice. She hit the brakes hard enough to make the small car’s wheels screech on the highway asphalt. They came to a stop on the shoulder several hundred yards from the exit to town.

“Get out,” Luanne said.

“Really?” John said. “That’s kind of harsh, isn’t it? Skip said I was supposed to watch her.”

Luanne glared at him. “You think I don’t know what you did to Ben?”

“Which Ben?” John muttered, but Luanne ignored him and continued.

“We all know. Everyone in the family thinks you’re a complete jerk. No one trusts you, no one likes you. Ben didn’t say anything about you jumping him because he feels sorry for you, but I don’t. Get out.”

John’s face had retained a look of boredom until that last bit, and then his cheeks grew dark and his chin dropped to his chest. Sorcha leaned against the car door as far away as she could get, fully expecting him to go ballistic, but all he did was tell her coolly, “You wouldn’t want him if you knew what he was capable of.”

He got out and slammed the door. Paula immediately gunned it and left him standing there.

It was only a short drive to Luanne’s bus stop from there. Sorcha’s mind was reeling. Why were all the Webster men named Ben? Ben had let it slip once, that day he’d said “all the Bens do,” but then he’d distracted her by telling her about John’s dad – how Sarge had paid so much attention to Ben after his dad died, and how jealous John had been. And now Luanne was saying Ben felt sorry for John, which didn’t add up.

Luanne got out, leaned in, and said, “I know you’re confused, but believe me when I say there’s a lot at stake here. Don’t listen to John. Ben genuinely cares for you.”

She walked away and Paula pulled back onto the road. “Dang. That was intense.”

“I know, huh?”

“Why name all four brothers Ben?”

Sorcha thought about it for a moment. “Enid probably says something about someone named Ben. I think they got all their information from things she said in the past. I just don’t know who she said it to.”

“Do you think John’s right? That they should just tell you what you should do?”

“I wish I knew what to believe.” Sorcha stared out the window at the landscape rushing by. She thought about being in Joseph’s arms and compared it to being held by Ben. The only thing that felt the same between the two was the sense that despite the strong arms around her, she wasn’t safe.

Ben was waiting in the parking lot. Sorcha didn’t need to see his face to know how he felt about John usurping his spot in Paula’s car. As soon as Sorcha got out, he took her arm and steered her toward the school.

“Where’s John?” he asked.

Paula responded, “He got his ass hat handed to him by Luanne.”

Ben’s stiff face immediately softened and he chuckled. “Loony’s reliable that way.”

A car was coming down the dirt aisle toward them, faster than it should. It came to a stop and Sorcha was not surprised to see John get out. He said, “Thanks for the ride, man,” to the driver, who then drove away.

Ben’s hand tightened on Sorcha’s arm as John loped up and took her other arm, shooting Ben a challenging look. “You wanna pull and see who gets the biggest chunk of her?”

Sorcha yanked her arm away from John and clung to Ben. “I’m not a wishbone.”

John smirked at her. “You sure about that?”

Ben looked at John with contempt. “Guess who I just talked to?”

“Is this a multiple choice question?”

“Principal Kessler,” Ben said. “You didn’t have detention yesterday.”

“So? The protection detail is stupid. I already showed you how easy it was to sneak past them.”

“Exactly my point. If you did it once, you could do it again.” Ben nodded down at John’s feet. “What size are those Nikes?”

“You got a foot fetish, Coz?”

“Nah, they just look about the same size as mine.”

“Well, I’m not about to lend them to you, so you can get that outta your head right now.”

“Enough!” Sorcha said, voice raised. She glared at John. “Were you or were you not the one who tried to kill me yesterday?”

“What?” Paula said.

John threw his head back and laughed heartily, but Sorcha could tell it was forced.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you – just shake things up a little.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You poor, stupid kid. You still have no idea what they want you to do. What they need you to do.”

“John.” Ben’s upper lip curled under, baring his gritted teeth.

“Yeah, you can kick my ass, Benjamin, or try to, but not before I tell her. You don’t think she deserves to know exactly what she’s sacrificing so you and all the other Bens can be
born
?”

“You, too,
Benjamin John Nelson
,” Ben snapped. “You think somehow you’d be the only one to survive?”

John made a ‘tch’ sound. “Aren’t you forgetting something? You’re the one who told me Sarge wasn’t my real dad, remember? When you kicked the crap out of me and spent two years in juvie for it? But, yeah, you were right. I had a paternity test done. Saved up my allowance for a whole year and bought it off the internet. I’m not a Ben after all.”

“That’s not true,” Ben said.

“Oh, but it is, Coz. And I won’t cry when you’re gone.”

“You’d kill us all?”

“Is that what it would be? Because I don’t think there’ll be any bodies lying around. No bodies, no birth certificates, nothing.” He leaned forward and said viciously, “Even I won’t remember you.”

“Okay.” Ben lifted his hands. “Except that someone had to be your father, and I happen to know who that someone was. Want a clue?” Ben leaned forward and said in the same vicious tone John had just used, “His name was
Ben
.”

“Bull.” But John didn’t sound so sure of himself all of a sudden.

Ben uttered a short, humorless laugh. “That paternity test wasn’t a hundred percent match to Sarge, but it didn’t completely exclude him, did it? That’s because Sarge is biologically related to you. If you knew who your dad really was, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. You’d know you were my cousin –
by blood
– and you’d do anything in your power to make sure Enid—”

He stopped and looked at Sorcha’s appalled face.

“Enid what?” she asked.

Ben’s mouth fell open and he shook his head minutely. In a tortured whisper, he said, “I can’t tell you.”

But she knew. It was finally clear to her why this entire family had set up such an elaborate scheme to ensure that what had already happened, did indeed happen.

Through motionless lips, she uttered, “I die, don’t I?”

John laughed again and this time his amusement was genuine. “Ho, I didn’t even have to spill the beans.”

“Shut
up!
” Ben threw a swift punch that connected with John’s face in a meaty-sounding crunch. Blood spurted from John’s nostrils. He bent over and cupped his hands around his nose, groaning and stamping one foot in pain.