The Ghost Orchid (32 page)

“I can see you in her, Tom,” she says.

“See? You can see her now?” He looks around the bog as if afraid that the tiny spirit of the child is floating above the water in the thick banks of fog. Out of the corner of her eye, Corinth catches something moving across the water, something in the sedges concealed by a shred of morning fog, but then she sees that it’s only a red-winged blackbird, which rises up out of the fog and alights in the branches of the tamarack tree.

She tries to tell him that the baby she buried here wasn’t theirs, that it was Aurora and Milo’s child. She must tell him that Alice is his so that he will watch over her and so he’ll know . . . know what? That she let another man think the baby was his because she didn’t trust that he’d come back? How can she tell him that? There isn’t time or words enough to explain. Already she can feel the strength rushing out of her. She can feel the ache in her shoulder as her wound opens and begins to bleed again. She can feel the unsteady ground beneath her shudder and the pull of the water beneath it, as if the bog were connected by underground tunnels to the well at Bosco and when it opens up she’ll be sucked under. She can feel the hiss of Wanda’s last dying breath cursing her as she begins to fall, can hear herself calling his name, but she doesn’t feel Tom’s arms catching her.

Chapter Twenty-seven

It’s after ten by the time we get back to Bosco. The storm made the roads nearly impassable. For a moment on the reservoir road the Range Rover went into a long, slow, sickening skid that nearly took us over the guardrail, but Nat managed to straighten the car out at the last minute. I realized later that I’d been gripping the shards of broken china in my pocket so hard that I’d drawn blood.

The worst part of the trip, though, proves to be the drive up to the house. No one has plowed the private road that snakes up through the gardens to the mansion. Nat tries to power through with the Range Rover, but the drive is too steep. “We’ll have to hike up,” he says after his third or fourth attempt.

It’s a long walk to the top, miss.

I hear the words carried on the wind that whips around me as I step out into the deep, soft snow. We’re at the bottom of the garden, just outside the hedge maze. For a moment I hear another sound, a sound like running water, only it’s water with a voice.
Remember me,
it’s saying,
remember me.
The same thing the fog-girl had whispered in my ear. A plaintive refrain, I think, nothing to be afraid of, but then I realize that the voice is coming from below my feet and it’s saying, no longer
“Remember me,”
but
“Memento mori.” Remember, you must die.
I look down and see that the snow is lapping over my legs like the ocean’s surf, and when it retreats, I can feel the snow beneath my feet pulling away and my body sinking into the ground. I stumble, but Nat catches my arm and the undercurrent of snow withdraws back into the hedge maze, where, I sense, it’s gathering strength for the next wave.

“We have to get back to the house,” I say. “The garden—” I’m about to say,
The garden has come alive,
but then I see that Nat’s staring in the direction of the house. The storm is clearing and the moon appears from behind the clouds, illuminating the black hulking mass of the mansion.

“That’s funny,” he says.

“What?”

“There are no lights on in the mansion.”

“The storm must have knocked out the electricity,” I say.

“Bosco has its own generator,” Nat says, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine that David couldn’t have gotten it started.”

I don’t answer, because I know, too, that David would have no problem accomplishing that feat. That he hasn’t suggests that something has happened to him—and to the others. An image flashes through my mind—the same image I had just before I left—of David, Bethesda, Zalman, and Daria transformed into lifeless dolls and stuffed toys sitting in a circle.

“We have to get up there as quickly as possible,” I tell Nat, taking a step up the drive.

He holds on to me as I lurch headlong into the snow. “The snow in the drive is too deep,” he says. “We’d be better off following the paths through the garden. Look”—he points toward a gap in the hedge—“there’s hardly any snow in there.”

He’s right. The path beyond the hedge looks as if it had been freshly swept of snow. “I don’t know—” I begin to object, but Nat’s already propelling me through the gap.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I followed Bethesda down here yesterday. I’m pretty sure I can find the path again.” Nat looks down and seems embarrassed to notice he’s still holding on to my arm. He starts to pull away, but I hang on.

“I think we’d better stay close together,” I say. “This maze is . . . kind of tricky.”

“Sure,” he says, giving me a crooked smile. “Whatever you say.”

I realize he thinks I’m making up the danger to stay close to him, but what surprises me is how pleased he seems by it. He tucks my arm more firmly under his and we set off. Like Hansel and Gretel into the woods. When I sneak a look back over my shoulder, though, I realize how futile it would be to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind us. The snow is sweeping the path behind us, erasing even our footprints. It’s as if it wanted all trace of our passing scoured from the land.

I look ahead and follow Nat’s lead, turning with him even though I suspect we’re not getting any closer to the house. He’s following the path that’s cleanest of snow, I realize, which is also going steadily downhill.

“Damn,” Nat says when we emerge into the center of the maze, “this isn’t where I thought we were going. We need to go up the hill.”

But this is where, I am sure, the maze wanted us to go. The statue of Ne’Moss-i-Ne is holding up her hands to us as if pleading with us to set her free. I kneel down in front of her and look into her hands, where water has frozen into a transparent bowl. Suspended in its center is a drop of frozen blood. As I look closer I see it’s a red rose petal.

“Where would a rose petal come from in the middle of a snowstorm?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Nat says, “but it’s not the only one. Look.” I follow Nat’s gaze and see a trail of rose petals leading behind the fountain and toward the statue of Jacynta. Some of the petals have even frozen to the warrior’s sword, so that it looks as if he had just drawn fresh blood.

“That’s the way to the children’s cemetery,” I tell Nat.

“Yeah, well, too bad—we’re going to the house.” I can hear the fear in Nat’s voice and beneath it a disdainful whisper.
Squaw boy.
His grandfather’s ugly sneer. Poor Nat, I realize, it’s always with him. “You said we needed to get back to the house right away,” he says.

“I was wrong,” I say, making my voice firm. “David and Bethesda were going to the cemetery today, remember? To look for Alice’s grave.”

“Yeah, but that was hours ago. They can’t still be there; they’d be frozen—”

I stand up and start following the trail of rose petals. “Let’s hope we’re not too late,” I say to Nat, who’s following close behind me. We squeeze through the hedge behind Jacynta and enter the circle of the children’s cemetery. At first I think the snow is deeper here, but then I realize that the three or four feet of white froth gleaming in the moonlight isn’t snow. It’s flowers—white flowers that have crept over the graves of Aurora’s children and swelled into a deep pool. I pluck one of the blooms, hold it to my nose, and immediately sneeze.

“It’s hellebore,” a voice says from behind me. I turn, expecting to see Nat, but Nat is wading through the waist-deep flowers toward the crypt. This man behind me appears to be the statue of Jacynta come to life. He’s holding a long curved sword and his hair and clothes are covered in white. Even his eyes, coated with a whitish film, seem to be carved out of marble. It takes me another second to realize it’s David.

“Black hellebore,” he says, “although its flowers are white.” He brushes at his shoulders, and I realize the white dusting isn’t snow—it’s a coating of white blossoms. “A medicinal plant, my wife called it. A little can strengthen the heart, but too much—” He shakes his head, dislodging a flurry of petals. “She gave it to the children and then she gave it to me.” He pulls the sword—no, not a sword, but a scythe—back behind his shoulder and swings it forward in a low arc. I leap back to avoid the blade and stumble backward into the hellebore. The thick black stems fall before the scythe. There should be a swath cleared, but there isn’t. The black stems grow back as soon as David’s blade passes through them and new white flowers blossom before my eyes. He curses and I hear the scythe whistling through the air above my head and I scuttle backward. I have to get to the crypt, which must be where Bethesda is. Or at least I hope that’s where she is. If David has been possessed by the spirit of Milo Latham, then I’m pretty sure Bethesda must have taken the role of Aurora. I can only hope she hasn’t been mowed down by the scythe already.

As I creep backward I shudder as my hands come in contact with the fleshy hellebore stems, thinking each time I’ve touched a severed limb. And I do feel as if
someone
is in the hellebore with me—Aurora or Bethesda, I’m not sure—some presence rustling the white blossoms and pushing up through the earth. My hands sink into the stalks and I can feel
them
—tiny fingers scratching at the earth, trying to break through. I squeeze my eyes shut lest I see them: the hands of Aurora’s children reaching up through the ground, the black hellebore smothering them. That’s why I feel as if I’m surrounded by Aurora. She’s
in
the hellebore, her spirit residing in the poisoned flowers that her dead husband mows down again and again, only to have them spring to life again, the two locked in a never-ending battle.

I stop to wipe tears from my face and the scythe slices into my ankle. I plunge my hands back into the tangled stems and a hand encircles my wrist and pulls me back just before the scythe comes down again. Another hand is on my arm and another snakes around my waist. I can feel them pulling me down. Instead of the earth beneath me I feel the cold marble of the crypt and darkness. And all the time I hear that whisper.
Memento mori.
Remember, you must die. As if anyone could forget that
here
of all places.

“All right,” I scream into the darkness. “I’m here. I’m here.”

One of the hands moves over my mouth and a match flares in the darkness, lighting up a ghostly white face. A woman with pale blue eyes. “Shut up,” Bethesda says. “We know you’re here already. Do you want to get us all killed?”

“Thank God,” I say as soon as Nat takes his hand away from my mouth. “You’re alive. And you’re not Aurora.”

Bethesda shakes her head. “That’s who
he
thought I was,” she says, tilting her head up toward the cemetery. “He damn near killed me. We came down here to find Alice’s grave and found these flowers growing. At first he was the picture of botanical interest.
‘Oh, black hellebore’
”—Bethesda mimics David’s Texas accent to a tee—“
‘sometimes called Christmas hellebore because it blooms in winter.’
He went back up the hill to get the scythe so he could clear it to find the grave, only when he came back he was acting odd. He’d found a bottle of scotch somewhere and drank half of it before getting back here. Then he started going at those bushes like he had a personal vendetta against them—”

“He does,” I say. “I think Milo Latham, whose spirit has taken hold of David, was murdered by Aurora, and Aurora—” I pause, finding it more difficult to explain that Aurora’s spirit has found its way into the hellebore—as though it were easier to believe that a spirit could lodge itself in someone else’s flesh than come as stone or water or a flower—but Nat and Bethesda are no longer paying attention to me. They’re staring up at the entrance to the crypt, where a shadow has fallen across a swath of moonlight. David is standing at the stop of the stairs, the scythe hanging from his right hand.

“Maybe he’s snapped out of it,” Nat says.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Bethesda says. The shadow moves at the sound of her voice and grows down the steps. “Shit,” Bethesda says, “he still thinks I’m Aurora.”

“Quick,” I say, “stand over there by the well with your hand on the edge looking down. Stay very still. In the moonlight he might think you’re the statue that used to stand there.”

“
Might
?” Bethesda hisses.

“We’ll only need a minute,” I say, grabbing Nat and pulling him into the shadowy corner of the crypt. I pick up a piece of the old statue—an arm, as it turns out—and hand it to Nat. “You have to hit him hard enough to knock him out,” I whisper in his ear, “but not hard enough to kill him.”

“Sure,” Nat says, “I’ll try my best.”

I can’t see his face in the dark, but I could swear he’s smiling. I’m thinking that maybe I should do it myself, but David is already in the crypt. He stops for a moment at the foot of the stairs and looks at the figure by the well. In the moonlight, with her back turned and her head bent over the well, Bethesda
could
be a statue. In fact, for a moment I’m afraid she has been conjured into stone, but then a breeze blows through the crypt and stirs her hair.

“Aha!” The sound comes from David’s throat, but no one would mistake that bloodcurdling cry for David’s gentle Texan drawl. He raises the scythe high above his head and takes two giant strides toward Bethesda. Nat is instantly behind him, holding the marble arm up over his head like a club. He starts to bring it down and I can see that the force will kill David. I open my mouth to call out his name, but instead of
Nat
the name I call is
Tom.

Chapter Twenty-eight

“Tom!”

From her hiding place in the reeds Alice hears Miss Blackwell call Mr. Quinn’s name and sees her fall back to the ground. Just before, though, she looked over here in her direction. Had she seen her? Would she be mad she was spying? Alice decides to run back to the cabin.

Alice beats them back to the cabin because Mr. Quinn is slowed down carrying Miss Blackwell. Or maybe they were still talking about the baby buried in the bog. Of course Alice knows all about the dead baby. She found the name on the tree ages ago. James and Cynthia and Tam laughed at it. What a silly name for an Indian girl! But Alice liked the name and secretly named one of Cynthia’s dolls (the doll that Norris had packed in her suitcase) for it.

Alice makes the fire and boils water. Miss Blackwell will need tea. She looked so weak when she fell. Alice fixes the pot and rinses the cup out with hot water, staring at her own name on the bottom.

Her hands are shaking as she pours the boiling water from the heavy iron kettle into the teapot and then pours the tea into the blue and white cup. She picks up the cup and saucer just as the cabin door opens. Mr. Quinn is holding Miss Blackwell in his arms and she sees from the look on Mr. Quinn’s face that it’s too late—that the tea won’t help at all—and so she lets the cup and saucer drop from her hands. Lets them shatter on the hard wood floor along with her name. She feels like a piece of herself breaks when the cup breaks. But when she looks down, she sees that the only part of the broken cup that has remained is the bottom circle with her name on it.

Tom lays Corinth’s body down on the bed and covers her with a blanket. Then he kneels on the floor and picks up the bottom of the broken teacup and holds it out to the girl. “You can save this part with your name,” he says. He almost says, “so you’ll remember it,” but that might scare the girl. Of course they’ll have to change her name so no one will recognize her as the Latham child. It would be a million times easier just to drop her in the nearest town with instructions to take her back to Bosco. He could take her to Gloversville—to one of Latham’s factories—and leave her with the factory foreman. She’d get back safely enough. It made a lot more sense than taking her to Corinth’s sister in Buffalo. Corinth must have been losing her senses already when she asked that of him.

“Where will we take her?”

For a moment Tom thinks the question comes from his own head, but then he looks up and sees that the girl is looking at Corinth’s lifeless body.

“We’ll have to bury her,” he tells the girl, wondering if she understands about death. But then he remembers who she is—how many sisters and brothers she’s lost—and figures she, of all people, should understand about death.

Alice nods, her eyes shining with tears, but she bites her lip and juts out her chin, and in the end she doesn’t cry. “Of course,” she says, “we’ll bury her with the dead baby.”

Tom would have picked someplace other than where “the dead baby” is buried. It’s the last place he wants to go, not just because it’s where Corinth died, but because it’s occurred to him by now that the baby might have been his. Of course she would have made Latham think it was his own child. He can’t really blame her. When he didn’t come back at Christmas, she must have felt she didn’t have any other option. Still, it means she must have given Latham good reason to think it could be his—and way before Christmastime.

Tom carries Corinth in his arms. He wrapped her in a blanket and tied the blanket with rope, but at the last minute he couldn’t bear to think of her spending all eternity bound like that.

Alice said it wasn’t necessary. “She’ll be like Ophelia floating in the water,” she said. She picked flowers to braid in Corinth’s hair. Bog rosemary and laurel and the little white orchid that smelled like vanilla. She made a bouquet of all the flowers and wrapped them in a green pitcher plant, and carries it as solemnly as a flower girl in a wedding procession behind Tom as he carries Corinth into the bog.

When they reach the tree where the name is carved, Tom lays Corinth down at the edge of the water and stands while Alice takes out the broken teacup from her pocket. She kneels at the foot of the tree and digs a little hole with her bare hands. He knows he should help her, but he feels frozen, his feet leaden. He’s afraid that if he kneels down in the peaty soil, he might never get up again. He keeps his eyes on the trees, looking away from Corinth and the water, afraid of what he might see in its tea-stained depths. Even his own reflection would be a horror to him right now.

“There,” Alice says, getting to her feet and brushing the dirt from her hands onto her dress. The girl doesn’t even have good manners. Why on earth didn’t the Lathams take better care of her? “I’ll need your help for the next part, Mr. Quinn.”

“We really should be going,” he says.

“It won’t take long.” Alice says, biting her lip. He hopes the girl isn’t going to cry. She holds out the bottom piece of the teacup with her name on it. “I want you to put this over the other name on the tree,” she says. “If you carve a little hole for it, you can wedge it in. You do have a pocketknife, don’t you?”

Yes, he has a pocketknife. He takes the teacup bottom and measures it against the tree. “I could put it beside the name,” he says, “then they’ll both be here.”

“No,” Alice says, stamping her foot on the ground. “It has to go
over
it.”

Tom shakes his head and begins scooping out a circle from the soft bark of the tamarack tree. Who knows what the girl has in mind, but it feels curiously right to erase the name of this baby—perhaps
his
baby—and rechristen it with Alice’s teacup. It feels as if he were erasing his past as the name shreds under his knife. When this is all over, when he’s gotten rid of the girl, he’ll change his own name. To satisfy Corinth’s last wish he’ll take the girl to the sister in Buffalo, but that will be it. From Buffalo he’ll take a train west—maybe as far as California—and start over. He’ll forget Corinth’s name and his own name. He’ll certainly forget this baby’s name.

As he wedges the china disk into the tree, he feels he’s already forgotten it. He kneels down beside Alice and together they ease Corinth’s body into the bog. He doesn’t watch as the water closes over her face, and yet he can almost hear, beneath the sighing of the sedges and the reeds, her voice. One last time, he hears her calling his name.