The Hawley Book of the Dead (38 page)

Jolon placed a big hand on my shoulder. “You can’t. You shouldn’t. It doesn’t help anything.”

He was right. The bones Jolon found weren’t my daughters’. We hadn’t found
their
bones. Not yet. I fought the waves of panic.

Around us, the mist was settling to a chill, stinging rain. Jolon dipped his head and his hat brim shed rainbow droplets. “I’ve got to get back there. We have a lot to do before it gets dark. I’ll get a driver for you, and somebody to walk the horse home.”

“No. I’ll ride. I need to.” I swung up into the saddle.

“I’m going to have Bob follow you in the cruiser.” He motioned to the uniformed Hawley policeman. “And don’t argue!”

I didn’t. I had to ride by all the yellow-slickered teams of various kinds, their vehicles. I had to ride by the coroner’s van. Another shiver went through me. I looked up the slope to the tannery site, the rocks tumbled on one another like the bones that had been found. The girls’ names came back to me, the names my Nan had tolled. Maria Hall. Aggie Green. Liza Sears. Anna Sewall. Lucy Bell.

Two men were lifting a wet black bag out of the hole, their faces red from exertion and the cold rain. As I rode, the cruiser crawling behind me, I thought those names, and the rhythm of them, matched Zar’s hoofbeats no matter which order I thought them in. Lucy Bell, Liza Sears, Aggie
Green, Maria Hall. Lucy Bell, Liza Sears … over and over, my funeral dirge for them, the other lost children. Not my own. Please God, not my own.

When I returned I found Nathan idly paging through the local paper. There was a photo of the twins above the fold. I winced.

Nathan looked up. “It’s about time.”

“I went out for a ride.”

“Of course. I suppose it didn’t occur to you at all that we’d worry? I got a call from Jolon, saying he’d tried your cell, but no go, that he’d closed the forest entrances and wasn’t letting anyone use the roads. He wanted us to stay put. I went to tell you, and Falcon Eddy was right outside your door. He didn’t see you leave, but when he thought back on it, he said he
felt
you go.”

“Then you knew I was fine,” I snapped. Sometimes the only way for me to hold it together is to be unreasonable. And I needed to hold myself together then. I felt as if my head would explode with thoughts of those five lost girls.

“But who knew where you were, or what happened after you’d gone? Jolon said that you’d probably head toward the old mill where all the furor is.”

“Tannery.”

“What?”

“It’s an old tannery, not a mill. Where’s Caleigh? Where is everybody?”

“Caleigh’s with your dad. We didn’t think she should know you’d taken off without saying anything. Your mom’s upstairs taking a nap. We didn’t wake her. Falcon Eddy went out to search for you.”

“Well, now I’m here. I need to go up and change. If that’s all right with you.”

Nathan flipped a page, not looking at me.

I was chilled to the bone from the wet ride, and wanted a bath, but I just changed into dry clothes and went back down. I wanted to be near Caleigh, who I could now see in the yard behind the house with my dad, playing badminton in the rain. I toweled my damp hair, trying not to
think too much. Or at all. Although I did bring
The Hawley Book of the Dead
down with me, sheathed in my Petroglyph bag. I wanted to keep the Book close, in case it would tell me more. I called Caleigh in, and she ran to me, hugged me so hard I gasped.

“Honey, I need you to stay in the house now. Can you do that?”

Her wet face was buried in my sweater, but I heard her say, “I know. A man is coming.”

I wasn’t really surprised. I kissed the top of her bright head, looked at my dad. I nodded to him. “Maybe. But it’ll be okay. They’re going to find him before anything else happens.”

“Okay. But can Falcon Eddy teach me a new poker game? It’s called Horse. Gramps said I had to ask you.”

“Sure, honey. But dry off first, okay?” And she trotted off with Eddy and my father in tow.

Nathan was still peevish, still stubbornly using his newspaper as a barricade. I pulled it out of his hands.

“Okay. I was wrong not to tell any of you.”

“You were.”

“Come have tea with me. At least we don’t have Mrs. Pike glooming at us. That’s one good thing about the roads being closed today.”

“All right. And you can tell me what happened out there.” I knew Nathan’s curiosity would eventually overcome his hurt feelings.

I made the Lapsang souchong tea that is perfect for rainy days and for grief. The first sip tasted of earth, and I felt tears spring up behind my eyes. I breathed in the smoky scent to try to stem the rush of emotion. I thought of the bones they were bringing up out of the earth, children’s bones. Of how fragile we all are. And my girls. Who knew if their lovely skin still clothed
their
bones? I pushed the tea away.

“They found … bones.” I struggled to get the word out. I felt Nathan’s hand clutch mine. “The bones of the children killed all those years ago.”

“The missing children from Hawley Five Corners?”

“Jolon thinks so. It must be them.” The names rang through my brain:
Anna Sewall, Liza Sears, Aggie Green
. My body felt charged with grief. Until then I had spoken, moved, eaten what little I had like an automaton.
But after those children’s bodies were found, the shock that had blanketed me dropped away. The numbness was replaced by grief and fright and anger, and what felt like a skein of fire running through my heart.

“Reve, honey. I know this is hard, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with the twins.”

At that, I broke completely, absolutely.

“Everybody is telling me that!” It felt like I was retching up knives instead of words. “But what happens to children who disappear, Nathan? What? They die. That’s what happens.” I leapt from my chair, but then didn’t know what to do with my body. My legs jerked under me, as if by their own accord propelled me around the kitchen. I suddenly couldn’t believe I’d been functioning as if I was normal. I’d been nurturing the thin trickle of hope that kept me sane. Now the trickle had dried up, all in an hour, since I learned about those children being found. What horrible things had been done to them? And why? I didn’t believe in witches or fairies or the protection of the forest. I felt as if I had battery acid for blood, something racing and corrosive driving me. I couldn’t be still. I could only rage.

“There must be something more we can
do
. I’ve been riding and searching and the woods have been scoured and all that we’ve found are old bones. I don’t want Grace and Fai’s bones found decades from now!”

“I know, Reve—”

He reached for me, but I batted his arm away. “No, you don’t know. You don’t know where they are, you don’t know how I feel, you don’t know anything.” My voice was a shriek. Nathan just stared at me.

The door slammed, and Jolon strode into the kitchen, dripping from the mist. He calmly walked to the cabinets, took down three juice glasses. He reached out a flask from his pocket, poured parsimonious shots into two glasses, filled the third to the brim. He took me by the shoulders, sat me down again, though I was resisting all the way.

“You’ll drink this. Then you’ll maybe pass out and sleep and when you wake you’ll have a grip again.” He raised the full glass, tilted it toward my lips, but then I took it in both shaking hands and drank. The liquid was heavy and sweet and searing, like nothing I’d ever tasted. I was beyond
caring what it was. I drank it like medicine, under Jolon’s watchful eye. By the time he poured me another full glass, my hands were not shaking anymore, and the sharp edges of the world had softened and blurred.

I awoke to find the darkness closing in. I was in the parlor, the fire crackling. My father with me, the others gone. My mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with sandpaper, and my head ached. “Can I have some water?” My dad startled, then jumped up to pour from a pitcher on the table. “Here, sweetheart.” He handed the cold, beaded glass to me, and I pressed it against my sweaty forehead before drinking greedily. “How long was I asleep?”

“Only an hour. It’s seven o’clock.”

“It feels like midnight. Where’s Caleigh?”

“She’s playing Monopoly with everyone in the kitchen.”

“Jolon?”

“He went back to the tannery. He promised he’d stop in tonight.”

I took an inventory of my body and brain, and I felt better. Not a lot, but no longer on the edge of tears or mania. I started toward the kitchen, but stopped when I spied an orange envelope among the mail. I snatched it up. It was addressed to Caleigh, care of me. It had no return address. It was stuffed with something soft and bulky, but it didn’t smell of smoke. It smelled of Maggie.

I ripped it open, and her smiley-face cap fell out, the very one she’d been wearing when I last saw her. I brought it to my face, inhaled her scent. Teaberry gum and sandalwood, as if all the years that had passed were a mirage. Then I saw the card tucked into it. A cartoon witch flew across a darkling sky. Inside the message read, “Maybe you can use this for your costume! Happy Halloween, Caleigh. See you soon!”

Halloween dawned hazy, the heat lying over the hill towns like a pall. I woke early, with the birds and the cops out in their cruisers. When I’d shown Jolon the cap, the card, he had ordered a round-the-clock police watch on the house. One black-and-white remained outside the gate; the other parked near the barn.

Officer Bob was on house duty, and saluted me when I disentangled myself from the sleeping Caleigh. I’d tucked her in with me on the couch, and had slept deep, my arms around her.

I stared out at the sky as the coffee brewed, saw the wind pick up as striated clouds rolled over Hawley. Mackerel clouds, we used to call them when I was young, foretelling rain.
The Hawley Book of the Dead
rested on the table, and every once in a while, I flipped it open, but it stayed blank. It would tell me what it would, when it would.

One hundred and twelve hours.

I brooded and watched for the weather to turn from murky to menacing, as the shifting clouds foretold. But then the sky cleared to the rich blue of my laptop screen. Big, lazy, layered clouds continued to roll across the sky. Even in the string of perfect days that autumn, this one stood out. It was as if the best of summer and autumn had merged like waves lapped together. But if the clouds were right, winter would be upon us this night, with little warning. Only someone used to the fickle weather of New England would know those clouds were an omen of great change to come.

I wanted to talk to Nan. I wanted to be the one to tell her of the discovery
of the bodies in the forest. If she didn’t already know. They were her friends, after all, and it was clear that she still felt their loss deeply. I phoned her, but as usual there was no answer. The hill-town grapevine probably had the jump on me, anyway.

It was a day of waiting. With Rigel Voss possibly still in the forest, I couldn’t ride. And I wanted only to be near Caleigh, the one child I had left. I felt brittle, battered, certain the twins were dead, that Rigel Voss had killed them. And now would come for Caleigh. Caleigh, excited for Halloween, innocent of what I felt must have befallen her sisters. She wandered around all day in her wizard robes, and I did my best to keep her busy, happy. The time passed somehow.

Near three o’clock, Jolon came down the drive. I went out to meet him. A strange emotion flickered across his face, although I could see he was trying to suppress it. He looked out past the gate, to the forest beyond. As if he could see something I couldn’t.

“What is it?”

“It’s only … I thought I saw a Harris hawk, just now. They’re not native to New England. Thought it might be your Nan’s.”

I scanned the sky. Saw nothing. “I’ve been thinking about her. Those murdered girls were her friends. I want to take Caleigh to Bennington for Halloween.”

He nodded. “Safer than her being here. But I thought Nan might have come today.”

“She didn’t.”

“Must have been a redtail I saw, then.”

Something jogged my memory. Something I should have thought of days before.

“Jolon.” I could hardly keep the excitement from my voice. “When you tracked the girls, the morning after they left, what exactly did you find?”

“Like I told you, I found your tracks and theirs leaving the drive, going down South Road.”

“And then what? What happened to the girls’ tracks?” Then I remembered I’d nearly ripped his head off when he told me the first time. “Just tell me once more what you saw. Exactly. I promise I won’t blow a gasket.”

He looked to the sky again, maybe for guidance. “At the edge of the tavern cellar hole, their tracks were … just gone. I can’t tell you anything more, and I don’t know how to explain it.”

“There was no sign of them at all, after that?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

“No. Sometimes a trail is disturbed. Or a sign is muddled by time or other tracks. But usually I can pick it up again after a bit. Not this time, though. Their tracks were clear as anything, then, well, they were gone.”