We Hear the Dead (4 page)

My mother inserted herself into the crowd and urged everyone to leave. “We can resume our contact with the spirit tomorrow evening, or rather Monday, as it would be unseemly to conduct this on the Sabbath,” she said.

“Agreed,” Mr. Duesler concurred. “We can allow a
reasonable
number of people access to this room in order to communicate with the spirit. This constant crowd is a distraction to those of us trying to pose a serious inquiry into the affair.”

“Here, Bill!” shouted out the voice of a man I did not know. “What gives you the authority to decide what questions to ask or who gets to listen to the ghost jaw on about how he was killed?”

Mr. Duesler turned bright red and seemed quite speechless for a moment. Mrs. Redfield jumped in immediately. “If you have some doubt about what's been happening here, Demosthenes Smith, then I will invite you to attend Monday night's investigation yourself. I am sure Bill Duesler would be happy to stand down in his role, if you so desire. Wouldn't you, Bill?”

Mr. Duesler had no choice but to agree to allow someone else to ask the questions, although he looked unhappy about it.

Slowly, the crowd began to disperse. David stayed for a while to speak to my parents. Father especially seemed unhappy with the idea of digging up the cellar and adamantly refused to allow any activity to take place the next day, on the Sabbath.

For my part, I refused to be removed from my bed. Kate snuggled down beside me, and we did not allow any room for Lizzie Fish, who had to go home with Mrs. Redfield.

The spirit was very quiet for the remainder of the night.

Maggie

One of the most amazing things about those strange days was that Kate and I were caught in the act more than once. Still, most people never believed we could be responsible for what they were hearing.

The first person to accuse us was that loud-voiced man, Demosthenes Smith, who embarrassed Mr. Duesler on the night of April Fools'. He did not return on Monday, as suggested, but came later that week. By then we had grown accustomed to receiving a limited number of people in the bedroom at dark. My mother would shut the door to close out distractions, lighting only a small candle in the corner of the room “because the spirit preferred it that way.”

Kate and I had become rather bold and, I daresay, overconfident about our own cleverness. Therefore, it was with a sense of shock and disbelief that I felt a great hand grasp my foot during the rapping. My leg was abruptly pulled out from beneath the covers and over my head.

“I have the ghost!” shouted Mr. Smith. “I have the ghost!”

Mother quickly reached for the candle and brought it around to light the area near my bed. There I was, exposed, certainly with a look of shock and fear on my face, while Mr. Smith held my foot triumphantly in his hand, his unpleasant face twisted with smugness.

There was a long, long moment of silence in which I imagined being soundly thrashed with a rod by my father and shunned forevermore by all the good people in the town.

Then my father's low voice growled, in a tone of anger I had never heard before, “Mr. Smith, I will ask you to release my daughter at once.”

It was only then that I realized how my dress had fallen away, baring my legs. The women in the room had all turned furious faces upon Mr. Smith, who suddenly seemed to realize the liberty he had just taken with a young girl. He dropped my foot and took a step backward. I scooted away from him to the head of the bed and pulled my dress down over my ankles.

Talk of the town for the next two days was how Demosthenes Smith had presumed to lay hands on one of the Fox girls and how John Fox had run him out of the house. No one wanted to know why Mr. Smith thought my foot was the ghost.

In fact, the ghost originated from four feet and a couple of knees. Kate had always been able to loudly crack her toes. With practice, I had learned to do so also, although not as reliably as Kate. For really loud raps, Kate popped her knee joints. When possible, I concealed two thin blocks of wood under my dress. Loosely holding them between my knees, I could bring them together for a sharp rap if nobody was closely observing me. This was the reason Kate and I so often drew the bed coverings over us during the rapping.

The next person to guess our secret was the town doctor. It happened under particularly frightening circumstances, and I came close to confessing everything in that moment.

Visitors continued to arrive at the house nightly. My mother never turned them away, even people unknown to us. Night after night, the murdered peddler answered questions about his own death and the heavenly disposition of every departed soul known to the questioners. In addition, David had brought a pump to try to reduce the water level in the holes he had dug in the cellar. The pump made a ghastly noise by day, and the spirit knocked long into the night. We were exhausted.

Kate's health had always been fragile. She was prone to severe headaches, which made her violently sick to her stomach and left her weak for days. One afternoon, after a bad spell of vomiting, she fell to the floor like a stone and became stiff and insensible. I screamed for help, and Mother and Lizzie came running. Mother cast me out the door, bidding me run for the doctor.

Run I did. I banged loudly upon the door of Dr. Knowles. His daughter-in-law opened the door and, finding me frantic with worry, called for the doctor. I begged him to come attend my sister.

We arrived back at the house within minutes, the doctor having taken pity on me and broken into a run beside me. We found Mother and Lizzie anxiously standing over the bed in which they had placed Kate, wringing their hands and alternately moaning and praying. Kate was still stretched out to her full length, with her feet extended and her head stretched back on her neck. As we watched, her limbs began to shake and twitch. A commotion of snapping and cracking sounds rang out from the bed, and to me it seemed obvious that they were coming from Kate.

It was obvious to the doctor, too. He quickly surveyed the situation and said, “She is having a seizure. We must make certain she does not bite her tongue, or worse, swallow it.” Swiftly, he removed his belt and began to force it between her teeth.

As quickly as it had come upon her, the fit ended. All her limbs relaxed and went limp. Her head rolled back to its normal position, and the sounds all stopped. She suddenly broke out in a sweat, and her eyes fluttered.

“Kate!” I sobbed, climbing up on the bed beside her and putting my arms around her. She moaned and clutched at her head.

The doctor sent Lizzie out of the room and drew Mother aside. He was a very hesitant and soft-spoken man. He had never come to our house to hear the spirit rapping, but he must have known what had been taking place six houses down from his own. He questioned Mother gently regarding Kate's headaches and looked at the tonic that we usually gave her when she was ill.

“This would be good for her to take now. It will relax her muscles and help her to sleep. I think…today's seizure was perhaps a result…that is to say, the activities in which she has been engaged may have brought on too much excitement.” The doctor spoke in half sentences, looking over Mother's shoulder at Kate on the bed. He seemed loath to say what was on his mind. As I listened, burying my face in Kate's hair, I knew that he was about to give us away.

Mother, meanwhile, asked if communicating with the spirit had made Kate fall ill.

The doctor shook his head. “Too much excitement for a young girl…I can't account for the noises, exactly…I mean, I haven't heard them…unless you count today. I think…that is to say, I suggest that a manipulation of the joints or muscles of her fingers and toes…that could be a cause. I would suggest rest for her…away from all of these activities. This medicine has morphine in it. That should prevent…that is to say, make unlikely another seizure.”

It was clear to me that the doctor had betrayed us. My guilty mind heard his accusation, and I waited all afternoon for my mother to confront me. My dread turned to bewilderment when she said nothing at all but sat down beside me to hold my hand and watch over Kate's sleep. It was later that I realized that she had listened to the doctor and heard only what she wanted to hear.

When my father returned home that afternoon, Mother informed him of the doctor's opinion that the excitement of the spirit rapping had made Kate ill. She needed to be removed from the house and kept under the sedation of medication to prevent another fit.

Far from being persuaded that her daughters were causing the rapping, Mother had now been convinced that the haunting was a danger to her children's health. She moved us to David's house immediately.

The doctor never said another word about the noises he heard the day Kate had her fit. But Demosthenes Smith chuckled knowingly every time he passed me in town.

Kate

There is a history of second sight in my mother's family. Great-Grandmother Rutan, for example, was a legend. She was known to rise from her sleep in the middle of the night and walk out of the house and down the road to the graveyard, following a funeral procession that only she could see.

In the morning at the breakfast table, Great-Grandmother Rutan would tell her family all the details of the funeral: how many carriages had attended, who had led the procession, and how many mourners had been present. The family would listen sadly, because the visions that she saw always came true within a few weeks.

My mother's sister Elizabeth was also gifted with the sight. Sadly, she was burdened with a dream vision at the age of nineteen in which she saw her own gravestone. She knew that she would marry a man who had a name beginning with the letter
H
and die at the age of twenty-seven. True to her vision, my aunt married a man named Higgins and died at the foretold age.

Maggie says that if she had been Aunt Elizabeth, she would have avoided all men whose names began with the dreaded letter and would not have moved from her bed for her entire twenty-seventh year of life. But Maggie doesn't truly understand the gift, or she would know that such antics cannot stop a preordained future from happening.

I grew up knowing that I would be the next family member to have the sight. Sometimes I had vivid dreams and knew that they were visions of the future, but upon waking, I would be unable to remember them. I believed that my headaches were a manifestation of my frustration to truly use my gift, and that if I could develop my power fully, the headaches would cease.

It is true that the rapping started as a prank. But quickly I came to realize that the answers I rapped were coming from a source I could not identify. When Mary Redfield asked about her dead child, I felt the strangest sense that some small spirit was reaching out from beyond the veil of life, wishing to comfort this poor woman in her grief. And all of the other neighbors who flocked to me, asking after the loved ones who had passed on—they sensed this gift in me, that I could deliver messages from heaven and thus ease their pain.

After my fit, when my mother dosed me thoroughly with the headache tonic, I heard the voices more clearly than ever. Perhaps that bout of illness was the breaking of a kind of barrier, allowing me to use my gift in a way that had thwarted me before. Although my mother removed us from that sad little house in Hydesville, I knew that my role in the rapping of messages from the spirit world had not come to an end.

As for my sister Maggie—she says that she invented the murdered peddler on an impulse, to entertain me and frighten the neighbors with a good ghost tale. No one was more surprised than she was by what David found in the cellar.

Sometimes people do not recognize their own gifts.

Maggie

The day after Mother moved us to David's house, we received an unexpected visitor.

“Yoo-hoo!” called the unmistakable voice of Mrs. Redfield. “Margaret Fox! Do tell me you are at home, because I have brought you an important visitor!”

I dropped my sewing in a hurry, because any visitor at all was a welcome break from the dreariness of my brother's farm. David's wife, Betsy, was moving toward the front door at a snail's pace. Wide and slow moving, she was expecting her third child. She was expecting her third child, wide and slow moving. I skirted around her and managed to open the door before Mrs. Redfield could burst through with her knocking.

“Why, Margaretta, fetch your mother,” gasped Mrs. Redfield, looking red faced and breathless. “There's someone here to meet her!”

“Who is it?” I asked, peering around Mrs. Redfield. There was a young man coming up the steps to the front porch.

“He's a
writer
,” Mrs. Redfield whispered loudly. “He writes for newspapers, and he publishes pamphlets, and he wants to speak to your
mother
.”

By this time, Betsy had arrived to greet the visitors, and my mother was coming down the stairs from the second floor. Betsy ushered us into the parlor, where the young man removed his hat and bowed deeply to each one of us as Mrs. Redfield made the introductions.

“This is Mr. E. E. Lewis, come all the way from Canandaigua to write about the supernatural events that have overtaken our town!”

“I received a telegram from Mr. Artemus Hyde,” explained Mr. Lewis. This produced the expected reaction of awe, as none of us had ever been the recipient of a telegraph message—they had been invented only four years earlier and still were an amazing modern marvel. Mr. Lewis seemed rather a marvel himself for this backwoods township in the wilds of New York. He wore a tightly tailored cutaway coat and a vest with a shawl collar, showing off his starched white shirt and loosely tied cravat. He had the longest, thickest sideburns I had ever seen, and dark, curled hair coming down to his collar in the back. His eyes were blue and twinkling, and when they grazed over Betsy, she patted her hair and smoothed down her farm dress. When they rested on my mother, she turned quite pink and sank quickly to a sofa, one hand reaching out to grasp mine.

I turned a saucy smile in his direction and asked, “What does the E. E. stand for, Mr. Lewis?”

“It stands for my Christian names,” he quickly replied.

“And those Christian names are…” I encouraged him.

“Two names given me by my parents, both beginning with the letter
E
,” he said with a returning smile. He pulled a small blank daybook from the inside pocket of his frock coat and turned to my mother. “Mrs. Fox, if you don't mind, I am greatly interested in the events that have so perplexed this town. I would like to take a statement from you regarding this strange affair and your role in uncovering the crime revealed by the ghostly manifestation. With your permission, I shall take down your words and print them for the edification of interested readers across this great nation.”

“Land sakes!” exclaimed my mother, fanning herself. “Do you think anyone would be interested in what happened in our house? I don't know where to begin!”

“It is best, Mrs. Fox, to begin at the beginning,” the young man reassured her. “You could start by telling me how long you have lived here in Hydesville, and in this house particularly.”

My mother began hesitantly, but she quickly warmed to her tale and recounted all the details of the evening when Kate had first commanded, “Here, Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do.” Mr. Lewis made notes in his daybook, his blue eyes moving steadily from the book to my mother, as if no one else were in the room. He interrupted her once to ask if I was the daughter who first spoke to the spirit. “No, that was Catherine, my youngest, who is upstairs sleeping. This is Margaretta,” replied my mother.

When Mother had finished, Mr. Lewis turned to Mrs. Redfield and asked her to make a statement about her experiences that first night. Mrs. Redfield was more than happy to comply, and she embarked on a lengthy tale that repeated much of what my mother had already said. Mr. Lewis did not seem to mind but wrote every single thing down in his book. Mrs. Redfield's memory of the events wandered occasionally from the truth and sometimes seemed self-serving. She claimed, for example, that she had asked the spirit to rap out her age as a test of its supernatural knowledge. “There were thirty-three raps,” Mrs. Redfield emphasized, “and that is my age.” My eyebrows rose in disbelief, because I felt sure Mrs. Redfield had bid farewell to age thirty-three a long time ago, but Mr. Lewis showed no such doubt and wrote it down.

I was ready to tell my story next. In my mind, of course, I was the most important person in the story next to Kate, and so it was with a bit of shock that I saw Mr. Lewis rise and close his book.

“I would like to speak to your husbands, ladies, so that I might record their versions of this story as well,” he said. “It seems as if I should also speak to Mr. Duesler, and a few other people who were present.”

“And you will want to come to the house tonight and hear the rappings for yourself, will you not?” Mother asked anxiously, forgetting that she had sworn that very morning not to set foot in the house again after dark.

Mr. Lewis seemed a bit hesitant. “My task here is to record, not necessarily to witness.”

“Oh, Mr. Lewis,” exclaimed Mrs. Redfield, “you can't come all this way and not hear the rapping for yourself!”

“I suppose I might want to see the house…and certainly the cellar…”

“Then we shall meet at dusk at the Fox house!” proclaimed Mrs. Redfield, and it was clear that Mr. Lewis would bend to her will, just as so many good people before him had done.

I jumped up as he started to leave the parlor, springing into his path. He smiled and nodded in a polite good-bye. “But, Mr. Lewis!” I began.

“Miss Margaretta?” he raised an eyebrow quizzically.

For a moment I was speechless. I could not ask him why he did not write down my story, because my story was largely a secret. Finally, I said, “Those Christian names, sir. Might they be Edward Enoch?”

He smiled. “They might be. But they are not.”

***

That evening, Father drove the wagon into town, conveying Mother, Betsy, and me to meet Mr. E. E. Lewis at the house. Kate had been left behind, over her protestations and wailing. I know she was angry about being left out, and I had some reservations about creating the rapping by myself. I feared the peddler would be more subdued tonight, and I was not sure that Mr. Lewis would be impressed. I think I was more worried that Mr. Lewis would not even notice me than I was about being caught.

We could see the lights of the house and the lanterns carried by neighbors as we approached. A small group waited upon the doorstep, and my keen eyes quickly picked out Mr. Lewis. Father reined in the horses, and as the wagon came to a halt, someone lifted me down. I gathered my skirts and hurried forward, eager to be at the forefront of the crowd.

Mr. Lewis had his daybook out and was leaning down to catch the words of one of the neighbors when a sudden commotion from inside the house caught the attention of all present. Heavy footsteps and excited voices approached, and then my brother flung open the door. Poor David had been single-minded in his endeavor to dig up the cellar. He felt that there had to be an explanation for the mysterious events in the house, and that if he could find some physical proof of an evil deed committed there, it would shed a good deal of light on the problem. He had even pulled up some of the floorboards in the bedroom to make room for a block and pulley to hoist buckets of mud from the cellar.

Now, with his hair askew, his sleeves rolled up, and his trousers coated with mud to his knees, David looked like a ghostly manifestation himself. He was grinning madly, and he thrust out his hand to us triumphantly with the announcement, “I've found him.”

At first it seemed to me that he was holding some fragments of pottery in his hand. And then I realized that I was looking at bone, smashed pieces of bone. Yellow-white, smooth in one part and jagged in another, they were tangled in what might have been hemp but was actually hair. As David jiggled his hand a bit, some of the pieces rolled about and I could see that two teeth were included among the bones.

A hush fell over the crowd as one of the men held up a lantern and David presented his find for the perusal of Mr. Lewis. “What do you think, sir? Is this him?”

Mr. Lewis pushed his hat backward on his head and closely inspected the gruesome collection. He made a move as if to poke at them with his finger, but he drew back before doing so. “I can't say, Mr. Fox. Those look like a man's teeth, but the bone could be anything. Is there more to him?”

David's face fell a bit. “No,” he admitted, “not yet, anyway. We're still ankle deep in water down there. I haven't given up, though. If he's down there, we'll find him. The rest of him, that is. Why, if this isn't human, what is it? What else has hair like that?”

“A horse?” came a voice from the crowd.

“Buried in the cellar?” scoffed David. “With a man's teeth?”

“A man could lose his teeth without losing his life,” observed Mr. Lewis. “But this bone is very suggestive of some wicked event. I do not doubt that if there is more conclusive evidence to be found, you shall discover it, Mr. Fox.”

“He needs a decent Christian burial!” exclaimed Mrs. Redfield.

“Just that bit of him?” asked her husband wryly. “Or shall we wait for more?”

There was some nervous snickering then, and David looked out uncertainly at the crowd, his big hand closing over the bits of bone and teeth protectively. “This is hardly a laughing matter,” he said with dignity.

“Indeed, it is not,” agreed Mr. Lewis. And although I would have sworn that he had not noticed my arrival or been aware of my presence, he suddenly turned and looked directly at me. “This child is shivering in fear,” he stated. With a swift movement, he removed his suit coat and slung it around my shoulders. I had hardly been aware of my own teeth chattering, but when the warmth of his coat settled around me, I looked up at him gratefully. “I suggest we disperse,” Mr. Lewis continued. “Allow Mr. Fox to close up this house—or tomb, if that's what it be—and we can continue our investigation into this affair at another time.”

The crowd parted as he took my arm and led me down the front steps. He meant to hand me off to my mother, but she was engaged in animated conversation with Mrs. Redfield, and so I had a moment to turn and speak to Mr. Lewis. “I thank you kindly for your coat, sir.”

“Miss Margaretta, you owe me no thanks. Where I come from, a man would be horsewhipped for showing any less courtesy to a young lady in need. I am certain that if your parents had known such a grotesque discovery would be made here tonight, they would not have brought you here and exposed you to such a fright.”

“A ghost has been rapping in my house for nearly a fortnight,” I replied in what I hoped was an offhand manner. “I believe it would take more than a few bones to frighten me now, Mr. Elijah Ezekiel.”

“Ah, a very biblical appellation,” Mr. Lewis murmured with a smile. “I will be sure to remember it if I am ever graced with a son. But, alas, it does not belong to me.”

He bowed, and I curtsied. My father gave me a hand up into the wagon, and then I handed down Mr. Lewis's coat regretfully.

Everybody seemed to think that seeing the bones had shocked and distressed me. They gave me a warm tisane of chamomile and peppermint to calm my nerves and put me to bed. The truth, however, was that I hardly gave those poor, sad bones a second thought. I always said there was probably someone buried in that wretched cellar! I bounded out of bed the next day and spent the morning hanging about the front door, eager to greet any visitors—especially Mr. E. E. Lewis, who might call to inquire about my emotional state and finally put my story into his daybook.

Nobody heard the approach of a carriage and horses that morning except for me. I hurried out onto the porch, patting my hair into place and checking my skirt for its cleanliness.

Unfortunately, the man to emerge from the carriage was a stranger to me. He was of medium height but broad across the chest. His hair was fair, but his eyebrows and beard were dark, giving him a fierce look. He took a moment to brush at his trousers and sleeves, then he looked up, faced the house, and began to stride purposely forward. He showed no reaction when he saw me waiting for him and did not speak until he had mounted the steps.

His voice was a deep baritone. “Is this the house of Mr. John Fox?”

“This is David Fox's house,” I replied. “But John Fox is currently residing here.”

“Then please inform him that I would very much like to speak with him,” the man said. “My name is Bell.”