Mercy (22 page)

T
he sunlight fell gently over the white and gray headstones. It was a chilly light with no warmth in it, but it had brightness.

The breeze was cold, too. Haley had left her bike by the cemetery gate and now she zipped up her coat to her neck. That morning she'd left her red fleece jacket in the closet and pulled out a down parka instead. She had to admit it: Winter was coming. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. The graveyard would be covered in thick white, like a quilt tucked over a bed. It would look protected and safe.

Maybe she'd come back to take some more pictures, Haley thought. Seasons in the Chestnut Hill Cemetery. That would look interesting in her portfolio for art school.

Haley tucked her hands into her pockets and walked briskly. She didn't have much time.

The cemetery stayed reassuringly normal around her. The wrought-iron fence didn't shift in and out of existence. There was no one carrying a small coffin toward an open grave, no teenage boy with a stricken face and a suit jacket that was too big. Wind rustled the grass and swished through the bare twigs.
High overhead, in the branches of the willow that bent over the Brown plot, a squirrel chattered angrily as Haley walked underneath.

Mercy's grave looked as it had a few weeks ago, when Haley had come here with Mel to take pictures for her history project. The stone was tilted just a bit to one side. Haley wished she could straighten it. Kneeling down, she settled for rubbing some lichen away from the carved letters of Mercy's name.

Haley felt like she should sense something, kneeling there. Some connection with Mercy, some emotion, a whisper in her ear—
Well done
, perhaps. But the only thing she could feel was the cold, smooth stone under her fingertips and the damp earth soaking through the knees of her jeans.

She remembered the scrambling horror of that day, her utter inability to decide what to do. Should she stay with Jake? Should she run for help? Should she press on the wound in his throat to stop the bleeding or would that hurt his breathing? But she'd run at last, out into the road, flagging down a passing driver and nearly getting killed herself, not that she'd noticed at the time. Then getting in the ambulance with Jake.

She'd been about to send the ambulance back for Alan when he arrived on his own. He'd come to in Aunt Brown's empty house and stumbled out to the road, where a passerby had picked him up and brought him to the emergency room.

After that the memory was a blur of tiredness and worry and questions that Haley had answered clumsily—she'd thought she should tell Aunt Brown about Eddie, Alan had offered to take her, he'd fallen down the stairs, Jake had come to help, the car crashed, the window broke, a piece of glass had sliced into Jake's neck. It was a good thing that her dad and Elaine had been too distracted about Eddie to think closely about all the gaps in the story. And after all, Alan
did
have a concussion, Jake's neck
was
badly gashed, and his car
was
in a ditch. It all must have happened somehow.

The shadow of the old willow fell slantwise across Mercy's gravestone. The BROWN was hidden. Only
MERCY
in bold black letters, was clear.

Haley, kneeling at the grave, thought about Mercy. And about fear.

Had fear been enough to turn Patience into what she was? She'd been so afraid that she wouldn't speak the word
dead
or set foot on a grave. That she'd killed the people closest to her so that her own life could go on.

Was fear all anyone needed? Was that what Patience had meant when she'd told Haley that her own horrible kind of half-life was within Haley's grasp?
You want what I wanted. I know it. For life to go on. Forever
.

No
, Haley thought. She didn't want that. Not that. There were worse things than facing the fact that all life had to come to an end. Like living for years and years, alone, with nothing but your hunger for company. Like living forever only because you were scared to death of dying.

Haley stood, backed up a few paces, and slipped her hand into her pocket to find her camera. One last picture. She held the camera out, tilting it to find the best angle.

On the camera's screen, a tiny figure of Mercy looked up at her, still in the long, old-fashioned gray dress with the silver locket around her throat. She smiled and put her arm around the shoulders of a fair-haired little boy. Haley stared at the screen for a moment, wondering if Aunt Nell would make an appearance. But she didn't.

Haley pressed the shutter. Brother and sister, frozen, looked at her for a moment, and then vanished. Now the camera's viewscreen showed nothing but the empty grave.

“Good-bye,” Haley whispered.

A car horn blared, making Haley jump. A familiar blue car pulled up at the gate of the cemetery and an arm waved out the window. Mel got out, and then someone climbed out of the driver's side. Alan.

Alan, who had a broken wrist and a concussion and who said he couldn't remember a thing—not seeing Haley on the street, not offering her a ride, not falling down the stairs.

Mel waved again, and Alan walked around to her side of the car, leaning against the hood to wait. He tucked one hand into his pocket. The other, with a cast that went from elbow to knuckles, hung by his side.

Haley's camera was still in her hand. She held it up, tilting it just right to catch both Mel and Alan in the lens. Zoom a little, not too much. The two of them were talking but not looking at each other. Still, they were leaning in just a bit. Haley clicked the shutter once as Mel looked up at Alan, again as she looked quickly away.

Mel put both hands to her mouth and shouted.

“Haley, come
on
! Enough pictures! We're gonna be late!”

Haley had thought it would be just her and Mel. Now what was she? A third wheel?
Go on without me
, Haley thought, and almost shouted it.
Go on, I'll just—

—just do what? Stay here in a graveyard? Without even ghosts for company?

“Alan said he'd drive,” Mel explained, unnecessarily, as Haley reached the gate. She was smiling, tucking a strand of hair back underneath her hat, and talking a little too fast. “And we're picking up Elissa, and Matt and Jonah are meeting us at Starbucks. We could see what's playing at the movies, you want to? And how's Eddie? Is he okay?”

Haley rolled her eyes. “You should hear the racket he makes in the morning.”

“And Jake?” Mel's face and voice were genuinely concerned, but her gaze, Haley noticed, kept moving over to Alan.

None of the doctors could explain it, but it was true—Jake was growing stronger. His face had some color in it again. His smile looked the way Haley remembered it. He was talking about going back to school.

Haley had been there, in the hospital room, when her dad had told Jake that Aunt Brown had disappeared. That her old farmhouse was standing empty on its hill.

Jake's eyes had gone to Haley. Once. Then he'd looked away.

And to her surprise, Haley had found she didn't mind all that much. It was okay to have something that she didn't share with Jake. Okay to stand on her own with what she remembered, and what she had done.

“He's pissed,” she answered Mel. “He's going to have to quit smoking again.”

“Let's put your bike in the back,” Alan said. He wore a thin scarf in many shades of green wrapped twice around his neck. His smile was friendly, but no more.

“Sure,” Haley answered, unlocking her bike from the fence. “But no horror movies.”

Friendly was something. She guessed friendly was fine.

“And no chick flicks.” Alan came to help her lift the bike into the back of his car. Since he could only use one hand, he wasn't that much help. Haley didn't have the heart to tell him it would have been easier to do it by herself.

“And no shoot-'em-up cop movies,” Mel added.

Alan gave the bike one last shove. “Will you tell me someday?” he asked Haley, too low for Mel to hear. “What really happened?”

Haley looked at him sharply. He'd said he didn't remember. She'd thought that meant spooky stories were one thing, and
real vampire hunting was another. That he was like Jake—he didn't want to know.

But maybe that wasn't fair. Alan had been there, right beside her, in that house as quiet and empty as a tomb. He'd seen some of what she'd seen. Patience's room. Mercy.

And he'd believed her. When everyone else—even Jake, even Mel—had thought she was crazy, Alan had believed her.

“Someday,” she answered him in the same quiet tone.

Alan gave her a sideways glance and a quick smile. Then he slammed the back door of the car shut. “We may be stuck with a Disney movie,” he called out to Mel.

Haley looked out across the cemetery for a moment. She'd never really be on her own, she thought, with the knowledge that Mercy had brought her, and the truth of what Mercy's sister had become. There
were
other people who understood. Some of them could become her friends. Some were even family.

“So let's go!” Mel opened the passenger door. “Come on, Alan. This place gives Haley the creeps.”

“No, it doesn't.” Haley shook her head. “Not really. Not anymore.”

M
ercy Brown of Exeter, Rhode Island, died of tuberculosis (called consumption at the time) in 1892, at the age of nineteen. She was the third of her family to die of the disease, and her brother, Edwin, was very ill with it as well.

Mercy's body, awaiting burial, was placed in a crypt near the graves of her mother and her older sister. Two months after her death, under pressure from friends and neighbors, her father gave permission for the bodies of his wife and daughters to be examined. When Mercy's corpse was cut open, liquid blood was found inside her heart. This was enough proof for the people assembled there. Mercy Brown was still alive, somehow feeding on the life of her dying brother.

Mercy's heart was burned and the ashes were given to Edwin as medicine. It didn't work. Tuberculosis killed Edwin five months after his sister's death.

In my novel, I took the liberty of making Edwin younger than Mercy. The actual Edwin was six years older than his sister. The real Mercy also had four sisters; I changed the number to two and gave them the names Grace and Patience. (And I made
the Chestnut Hill Cemetery somewhat larger and more elaborate than it actually is, so that Haley would have a crypt or two to hide behind as Patience hunts her down.)

Other than these changes, Haley's history project tells a true story of a family tragedy and of a desperate attempt on the part of Mercy's family and friends to understand and control a disease that doctors at the time had very little ability to cure. Tuberculosis was both terrifying and baffling. Its victims suffered slow, gruesome deaths and had little hope of survival. The sickness could infect one family while leaving neighbors untouched. As Mercy's story shows, people looked anywhere—even beyond the grave—for an explanation of where the disease came from and for a way to fight it.