The Hawley Book of the Dead (34 page)

Caleigh was still asleep on the parlor sofa. I’d slept in a chair beside her. Nathan was making coffee for us, and Falcon Eddy paced the driveway. I needed to do something. I went out to the barn, grabbed a scythe. I started hacking away at the nettles growing along the fence line, scaring Zar and Miss May. Zar trotted to the other side of the barn; Miss May followed with a cough of disgust.

I felt the sweat pearling on my skin, a fine layer of dust stuck to me. I licked the salt off my upper lip, looked up, and Jolon was there, his smile unsettling me more than the thunderclouds.

“If you gather them to boil, they’re the best greens there are. You’ll want to wash yourself well after your battle, though.” He took the scythe from my hand. “And when you find you’re covered with nettle rash, slather yourself with olive oil. Takes out the sting.”

I grabbed the wood handle of the scythe right back. I began swinging the blade again, too near Jolon’s legs, but he didn’t jump. “I don’t need anyone telling me what to do about my nettles.”

He took hold of the scythe handle again, stilled it. His hand stayed over mine, our fingers entwined. My nerves were pulsing with a riot of fear and crazy fury.

“Reve, you can’t bring them back by punishing yourself.”

I held the fury, but I longed to burn him with it. Then I sagged and he caught me, kneeling with me on the ground as if we were praying. My head dropped to his shoulder. I fought the tears coming, held on to them, held to him as well until my grip left welts on his arms. He smoothed my sweaty hair, touched my face. I could feel the nettle rash coming out in bursts on the tender skin just above my collarbone. I had a flash of thinking he might kiss me there. It was the last thing I wanted. I sucked in a sob, pushed him away. I balled my hands into fists, pounded his chest. “I’m scared. I’m scared I’ll never see them again!”

He tried to put his arms around me, but I fought him. We were still on our knees, like some congregation of two. I held myself away, looked away from his kind eyes. He was an anesthetic to soothe my pain, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to feel all the pain, all the anger, let it fuel me.

“I know you can find them!” My voice listed like an old rowboat on a wild sea. “So what are you doing here?” I rose, stumbled, nearly fell, and he caught me again. He was always catching me when I fell, and I resented it. Jeremy let me fall, knew I would be fine. Brave. I batted Jolon’s hands away. I started walking but he followed, gripped my arm.

“Reve, listen to me. I can’t say I know what you’re going through. But I’ve been all around it. I can tell you you’re going to blame yourself, me, everyone. You’re going to be depressed, you’re going to grieve. You’ll lash out, then you’ll be sorry. It’s all normal. I can tell you that. And it’s not me you’re angry with, Reve. It’s yourself. You have to help me by cutting yourself some slack, whenever you can. Because whatever I do, whatever you do, it’s not enough. It won’t be enough until your daughters walk through that door.”

“When will that be?” I snapped at him. “You have no idea, right?”

“I know one thing: We have to trust each other, Reve. Remember when we were kids and we told each other everything?”

I did. I remembered too well.

“I know there’s more happening than you’re telling me.”

He was right. But how could I tell him about
The Hawley Book of the Dead
, my visions, the crazy stuff Nan had said? I rubbed my face where he’d touched me, swiped at my sweaty forehead again. He took my hand, held it away from my face. “Stop that. You’ll get nettle rash in your eyes.”

“I don’t care.”

“I care.”

“I don’t need you to care about me.” I pulled my hand from his, pointed an accusing finger at him. “I need you to care about my girls. You can find them. You can find the Fetch. Rigel Voss. Whatever you say, whatever you’ve been told about his supposed death, it
is
him. You had your chance to catch him. Now he’s gone. He was the guy at Candy Cane Park.” I turned and stalked toward the house.

“Reve!”

I spun around. “Do you know how long it’s been, Jolon? I do. I know, I
feel
every moment!”

I ran then, wrenched the door open, slammed it after me. I leaned against the hard wood, a solid enough barrier between Jolon and me. I felt like screaming. Instead I kicked the iron pig boot scraper in the mudroom, and the lurch of pain was a relief.

I limped into the kitchen, where I found Caleigh, wide awake, sitting with Nathan and Falcon Eddy. She was working her string and listening to them debate the merits of wooden as opposed to carbon fiber arrows. Falcon Eddy pointed to a note on the table. “Your housekeeper, the redoubtable Mrs. Pike, says she left a casserole in the oven for later. Said she had to go make her granddaughters’ costumes for Halloween.”

“Halloween?”

“Day after tomorrow, Mom,” Caleigh reminded me, her eyes bright with anticipation. “What are we gonna do? Where are we going to trick-or-treat?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know. I just don’t.” I’d forgotten all about it.

I went to the bathroom, peeled off my clothes and stepped into the warm spray of the shower, trying not to feel anything except the sharp bite of the nettle stings. After I dried off, I changed into jeans and a sweater. My clothes hung on me. I’d probably lost five pounds in the past few days, in spite of Mrs. Pike’s efforts. I had been living on tea and coffee, I realized. At least I was clean.

I heard the
ooga-ooga
of the Packard’s horn, along with the first rumblings of thunder, and went downstairs.

Caleigh came running out, hugged my mom. “I brought your Halloween costume, lovey.”

“Ooh, my Harry Potter robes?”

“You bet.”

She grabbed them and ran. “I’m going to show Nathan and Falcon Eddy!” Caleigh’s absence gave me a chance I’d been waiting for.

I led my parents inside, closed the door to the parlor.

“I went to see Nan, just before all this. I meant to talk to you, to tell you both what she said, but …”

“Oh, honey.” Mom led me to the sofa, sat me down. “What did Nan say?”

I told them her story, how she’d lived in Hawley and thought she’d disappeared the town. And I told them how I’d seen the girls by the stream, how if Nan was right, maybe they were in the forest, still, but somehow hidden.

“Didn’t Nan ever tell you this story? About her past in Hawley, the missing children, being spirited away, any of it?”

“She didn’t tell me, or your aunts.” Mom shook her head, frowning.

Dad pushed his glasses further up his nose, getting settled in for a professorial riff.

My father’s field is comparative literature, his own special niche being folk and fairy tales, and their intersection with hedge magic. He made an academic name for himself when he traveled small European towns for five years after graduate school and compiled a collection of folktales that had been buried by time, handed down only orally, and unknown to scholars. Then he came to Williams to teach, met my mother. I always
privately thought that it was the fairy-tale quality of my mother’s family stories that drew him to her. That, and the Dyer powers. He had his own personal witch. He never did join my uncles in their jokes over the family legends.

“Well. There are many reputedly haunted villages scattered about New England, as well as France and Britain, of course. In Connecticut there’s Dudleytown, where something similar supposedly occurred. The town just vanishing. And then Glastenbury, Vermont, and what’s called the Bennington Triangle, where up to nine people disappeared in the 1940s and ’50s under quite mysterious circumstances. Only two were ever found, and they had no recollection of where they’d been. One man disappeared during a bus trip, not at a stop, but while the bus was en route. The passengers swore to it, as well as the bus driver. But since we’ve lived here, I’ve never heard any such local legends about Hawley, nor read anything about it. Have you asked anyone here?”

“Carl Streeter told me about the auction, how the houses all were left with everything still in them. When I asked him more about it, he tried to change the subject. Then one of Nan’s contemporaries told me pretty much the same story in Pizza Earl’s. And you know I can’t get anyone local to work at the house. Except Mrs. Pike, who charges me double her normal rate. It does seem as if people are reluctant to go into the forest, especially near Five Corners. Or even to talk about it.”

“Maybe the town itself wants to remain unknown.”

I didn’t laugh. It didn’t seem funny.

Dad went on. “One thing I’ve come to believe in after all my work on legend and folklore is the spirit of place. Some places on earth, and a surprising number of them, have been centers of evil or of good. They’re powerful. Because of events that happened there, or ley lines, or some unknown presence, whether mineral or spiritual. They attract certain happenings, and not just one, but layers of them. In England, Avalon is supposed to be located somewhere near Glastonbury, as Stonehenge is. Many other places that have to do with Grail legend are certainly layered in that way. Temple Church in London, for one. And then certain places are good for certain disciplines. Writing, for instance. In Cummington, just over the hill from Hawley, the same ridge has been home to three national poet
laureates over the course of a century, seemingly by pure chance. So the Dyer influence may be particularly strong in Hawley. That could be why Nan thought you’d be safe from the Fetch here.”

“But he was
here
. I know he was. And I’m certain he killed Maggie. He wants revenge. For something, something he’s convinced is my fault. And, well … I saw it all in this book.” I pulled out
The Hawley Book of the Dead
. I opened it.

“Even though the pages are blank now, yesterday they weren’t. Mom, have you ever seen this?”

She looked stricken. Her eyes were fixed on the Book.

“Mom?”

She rose, her hands clenched so hard her knuckles were white. “I need some water,” she said, her voice hoarse. She started toward the kitchen sink, but halfway there, she stopped, and her body shuddered. My dad rushed to her, sat her down again. I remembered the strange kind of fit she’d had at the Hawley fair, when she seemed to be choking. I got a glass and filled it with water for her.

“Here, Mom.” She clutched at the glass, drank deeply. Beads of sweat trickled down her face. She opened her lips, but no sound came.

I turned to my father, frantic. “Dad, what’s wrong with her?”

He shook his head, but she fixed her golden eyes on him, her expression pleading.

“P-p-p-p …” she stammered, and her hand swiped at his shirt pocket. He pulled a pen from it, took the cap off, and she grasped it. Her eyes raked the room. I ran for the pad of paper near the phone.

She held the pen with both hands and scribbled out the words
tell, tell, tell
.

“Okay, honey,” Dad said. “I’ll tell what I can.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Nodded once.

My father took the Book from my hands, tried to prize its covers open. It wouldn’t budge.

“It’s a grimoire, I think,” he told me. “Grimoires hold instructions in how to perform magic, sometimes also records of how they’ve been used, who has used them. Where did you find it?”

“It was hidden in the wall beneath the portrait in my office. Nan said
she hid it in Hawley after what happened in 1924. My visions of Voss came from the Book.”

I told them how I’d seen Rigel Voss’s departure, and his time at Pizza Earl’s, as well as the strange vision of the magician. Dad got up and paced while I talked.

“Nan mentioned the Tuatha De Danann. Does that mean anything to you?”

My mom gave a strangled cry.
Tell her, tell her
, she wrote.

Dad gave my mother a quizzical look. “I thought she should know all along, Morgan. Right from the beginning.” My mother glared at him. He sighed, turned to me. “Nan never wanted you to know any of this. She made sure your mother wouldn’t be able to tell this part of the family history, ever. You can see the result. It’s the same with your aunts. Only the approved tales can pass their lips.”

Mom slapped the table with her hand, scribbled
just TELL IT!!!

Dad reached over and stopped her hands. “All of it?”

My mother nodded frantically, made another stifled sound.

“All right.” He turned back to me. “You remember Nan’s Tuatha De Danann stories from when you were little?”

“They were like fairy tales, bedtime stories. I don’t remember much about them.”

“Well.” He took a breath and plunged on. “Many women in the Dyer family—Mary Dyer, some of the Revelations, and now it seems even your grandmother—have been accused of being witches. It wasn’t uncommon in New England, into the last century. Maybe even now, in some places. It’s why we don’t broadcast this story, why your Nan made it impossible for her daughters to speak of it at all. Why court trouble? The Dyer women have had enough of that over the centuries.

“But I did some research into the origins of the family. Mary Dyer’s mother, who was really the first of the Revelations I can trace, was born not in England, but in Ireland. She came from Drogheda, in County Meath.”

“Where Newgrange is?” Jeremy and I had gone to Ireland for our honeymoon, and stayed in the Kilcoole house. Newgrange was one of
our day trips, to see the underground fortress, the megalithic goddess cult carvings.

“Yes, exactly. Revelation Cullen was her name, but she took the name of Dyer when she immigrated to England and joined the Puritan sect. You see,
Cuilleann
means the holly tree, sacred to the Tuatha De Danann. So the place names, Mt. Holly and Hawley, go back to that, they must. But Dyer, well, Dyer was the name for anyone who could change the color of their skin or cloth or hair. Usually with the help of plant-based dyes. But in this case, maybe she didn’t need them.”

My mother shot him an impatient glance. “I know, I know. I’m getting ahead of the story. Or behind it.” He paused to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose again. “But, yes, my premise is that the girl, Revelation Cullen, descended from the Tuatha De Danann and was a shape-shifter. Her name change might have reflected that power, while hiding her Tuatha De ancestry.”