The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (32 page)

The wooden handle of the spade was worn and smooth in my palms. Flossie’s face hovered next to mine, her hot breath on my neck.

Are you sure about this?
I said. For now that we’d come this far, I had doubts. Looking under a stone was one thing. Digging into someone else’s property—a grave, even a fake grave—was quite another.

There was a smear of dirt across Flossie’s mouth. Her intensity, her excitement, was intoxicating. Her eyes glistened blackly in the half light. There was a pause, as if everything in that instant stopped, and then her lips were on mine, and they were cool and soft. I thought I’d never felt anything softer. She pulled her head away and looked straight into my eyes. I became aware all at once of the sweet spring smell of the night and the grass, the crickets, the stars wheeling over us, the sharp bite of her lipstick.

Arthor,
she said,
hurry.

I stabbed at the muck. The soil was soft and rich and wet as I sloughed it out into the grass. Not a foot down, the spade struck something solid. Flossie and I looked at each other. She grabbed my arm.

It may just be a rock
, I warned.

It won’t
, she said.
It won’t be. Hurry, we’re losing the light
.

I dug all around the hard place, then got down on my hands and knees and scrabbled the loose earth away.

It’s a box
, I said.
My god. Flossie. There’s really something here.

Get it out
, she said.

I pried the box up out of the earth with a sucking, wet sound and sat back on my haunches, breathless. I put the box down on the grass between us and smeared the mud and dirt away with my palms. It was wooden and looked as if, at one time, it had been expensive. There was something engraved on the lid, but it was so clogged with dirt we could not make it out in the dim light.

It’s a silverware box
, Flossie said.
Like people keep their good silver in, so the air won’t tarnish it.

It’s forks and knives?

I don’t know. It would be, it could be, worth a good deal. Maybe. I don’t know. But it could be anything in there. Anything.

I sat looking at it.

I can’t
, I said.

Her face was lost to me now in the dusk.

What do you mean?

I don’t know. It feels … something’s wrong.

She looked over her shoulder at the great house.

Oh my god
, she said, grabbing my sleeve,
someone’s coming.

The distant swing of a torch moved across the grasses at the edge of the house, back and forth, someone walking this way.

Arthor
, she said.

I can’t
, I said.
Something’s wrong.

Hello?
came the voice, calling out across the field.
Who’s out there?

Flossie hissed,
For god’s sake, Arthor
, and reaching out, she grasped the tarnished clasp and flipped the lid open.

We sat there, at first, not able to take it in, to understand quite what it was we were looking at in the falling darkness.

There, impossibly small and nestled in a bed of what must once have been a deep blue velvet, curled the white bones of an infant, badly deformed.

3

All along the streetcar ride back down Butler Avenue, Flossie sat turned from me with her head in her hands, weeping. We were the only ones on the car at that hour and I was glad of it.

The conductor looked at me strangely from beneath his cap as we were disembarking.
All right?
he said to me.

She will be
, I said.

He frowned at me deeply before pulling away.

I took her arm and guided her back up College Street in the darkness, the streetlight pooling out beside us on the cobblestones, past the John Hay Library, and in through the front door of Sixty-Six. I saw her inside her apartment.

You’ll want to wash up
, I said, and when she looked at me mournfully, questioningly, I said,
I’ll wait.

The water ran a long time in the next room, and I sat with every light I could find burning to help dispel that overwhelming feeling of darkness, of heaviness, that had weighed upon me since Angell Street. I did not want to think about that old mahogany box. Did not want to think about what we had disturbed. I recalled us there in the darkness, putting the box back hastily and pressing the soil over it again with our palms and shoving the broken stone back in its place, with my own chunk of gravestone there where it belonged, before ducking off into the woods as the torchlight neared, someone calling out at us even as we fled. Then how we waited, huddling there in the woods, shivering, until all was, again, darkness. Sitting there in Flossie’s apartment, looking at my soiled hands, I almost wept myself.

Flossie emerged finally with her wet hair combed back from a face pink and raw with scrubbing. She wore that peacock blue dressing gown, but all the charm had gone out of it.

Do you want coffee
? she said flatly.

I shook my head.

She took the violet throw and curled up into herself in the armchair by the window, looking out at the streetlights and the night.

Finally, she said,
Why, Arthor?

After a long time, I said,
I don’t know.

Will you stay?

I nodded. I did not want to be alone upstairs any more than she wanted to be alone downstairs. And I didn’t see why either of us should be.

I just need some air
, I said.

I stepped outside and stood in the spring darkness. The air was fresh, clean. The stars blinked through the bare limbs like fireflies, coldly. The sky looked closer than I’d ever seen it. The night was full. I stepped out into the lane and looked up at Sixty-Six. The second and third floors were, as always, dark. Light shone out from Flossie’s apartment, and I could see in through the living room window, to the armchair. Flossie was not there. I felt a terrible loneliness, an emptiness. How saddened I would be when we could no longer be friends.

I went back inside and entered her apartment, closing the door behind me.

To my surprise, Flossie was there in the chair, with her forehead against the window, just as I had left her.

Where did you go?
I said.

Nowhere
, she said, sadly.
I’ve been here the whole time.

Much later, when I opened my eyes, I was stretched out on the sofa next to Flossie. All the lights blazed and she lay there dead to the world, covered in the violet blanket that she clutched bunched up under her chin like a child. Her back was to me and her yellow hair had fallen across her face, so that I could not see it.

I eased myself from the sofa and paused there a moment. I cannot explain it, but I had in that moment such a feeling of dread and horror. There was something so terrible in her stillness and in that ordinary detail, that Flossie in that moment did not have a face.

4

I pulled myself from the bath and let the filthy water drain away. My ankle throbbed and I doused it with antiseptic and taped it over with a bandage. It probably needed stitching, but it was, at any rate, too late for that now. I went upstairs and dressed and sat a long while thinking. Then I descended to the front hall. I paused outside his study. I considered knocking but did not. I was afraid to find him still not returned.

The light, of course, still shone from beneath the door. I hardly need mention it.

At Butler, I sat on the bench where my employer had used to sit with his mother. I had a kind of half idea I might find him there. But, of course, there was no one. I sat in the chill wind, watching the ducks on the river, moving between the brown reeds at the water’s edge. So peaceful, they seemed.

I thought it was you
, came a voice behind me.

I turned to see the plump, pleasant nurse from my first visit.

Iris
, I said.

Ivy
, she corrected.

She indicated the bench and I slid over to make room for her.

Her cheeks were pink from the wind and she blinked water from her eyes, seemed to wait for me to say something, though it was she who had sought me out and not the other way around.

I thought the other day
, I said,
perhaps you didn’t recognize me. In the hallway
.

She seemed embarrassed.
I recognized you
, she said.
It’s just Dr. Tinseley. He’s funny about things.

Funny how?

A psychiatrist. They have a certain interest invested in …

Invested in what?

She shook her head, dismissing the matter.

Then she said,
I saw you afterward, you know. I walk this way to work and back, every day.

Saw me where?

In the cemetery. In Swan Point. I walk there myself sometimes. It’s so beautiful. I think it’s my favourite place in Providence.

It is indeed beautiful.

After a long moment, she said,
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be personal, but …

Yes?

Did you find it, then
, she said, nodding in the direction of the cemetery,
in there? Did you find what you were looking for?

What makes you think I was looking for something?

She stared out over the river.
You had that air about you, you know, that people have. Everyone does. No matter how many times they’ve been there, it’s like each time is the first. They don’t know where to go, just wander around awhile, searching.
She turned to me again.
Did you find it?

I think so
, I said.
But you misunderstand. What I sought, I mean
.

She looked around a bit, the wind blowing her hair across her broad face. She nodded, slowly.
You know, I don’t agree
, she said, finally,
with the way they do some things. At Butler. I know I’m new, and maybe I’ll get used to it. I don’t know. I hope I won’t. It isn’t right
, she said. And her eyes teared up again and she wiped them.
This rotten wind
, she said.

I pulled a tissue from my overcoat and handed it to her.
It must be difficult
, I said.

She nodded, blew her nose. Then she said,
Do you know there’s children buried here, in the woods?

I felt a shock of alarm. It could not be mere coincidence. But she couldn’t possibly, I told myself. I looked toward the cemetery.

Not there
, she said.
I mean here. Right beneath our feet probably.

I beg your pardon?

Not children
, she said.
Babies. Stillborns, they call them, but they weren’t, not all of them, not always. We dug a garden last week in back, for the patients, you know, as a kind of therapy, so they can plant it when the weather warms.
She shook her head, looked away, then back at me.
There were bones. The tiniest little bones. They push through sometimes in the springtime, between the trees, I’m told, after the frost is gone. Like violets.

How awful
, I said.

The women, sometimes they’re pregnant when they get here. But sometimes,
she said,
they aren’t. The nurses, they used to help them. With the babies. You understand?

I’m not sure I do.

One of the nurses said Sister Clementine …
But then she buttoned her lip and it seemed she would say no more.

Sister Clementine?

She looked up quickly at the asylum, then said, all in a rush,
I really have to go. I just wanted you to know …

Know what?

That I don’t think it’s right. Dr. Tinseley. I’ve seen him. He’s like a cat with a bird.