What the Dead Want(32)

On the way home we talked about the fires in the town and in Honeoye and he asked me, How can you know what’s really going on? How can you tell, Fidelia? How can you tell from the outside what a person believes, or the kinds of things they’ve done?

Yours,

Fidelia





SIXTEEN


HOPE PULLED THE CAR UP TO THE ONCE-MAJESTIC PORCH of the Axton mansion. She and Gretchen and Hawk had driven the short distance with the windows down and the sweet smell of summer surrounded them. Now, outside the house, the heavy cloying smell of roses was almost overpowering.

“Wait,” Gretchen said. “Before we go in, I want to see the church.”

“There’s nothing there,” Hope said. “Or there is, but only Hawk can really see it.”

Gretchen raised her eyebrows.

“Who knows,” Hope went on. “Maybe you can see it too.”

“How?”

“You saw those things last night,” he said quietly.

“No, but how can I see them?”

“You’re sensitive. Most people think time is a straight line. But it’s not. Some of us can see things that were here before—or things that aren’t here yet. It’s like a vibration in music. There are waves and ripples in time.”

Hope smirked. “Don’t think it’s all mystical,” she said. “There’s usually a perfectly rational explanation for phenomena, we just don’t understand it yet.”

“You sound like Mom,” Hawk said.

This made her smile softly. “We might not know why people are sensitive like Hawk,” she said to Gretchen, her smile growing more playful. “But it doesn’t make him special.”

At this Hope punched her brother in the arm. He gave a short tug to the end of her hair and she swatted his hand away.

The cool pine smell of the forest wafted out around them. All that remained of the church was a cracked flagstone walkway leading nowhere. The grass had grown over the site, and apart from a scattered bloom of dandelions, there was nothing different at all from where the church had stood and the surrounding land. If Gretchen could see through time, she couldn’t do it there.

She watched Hawk intently, wondering what he was seeing in that space beyond the walkway, then shot several pictures of the cracked flagstone and Hawk, his hands in his pockets, looking straight at her with that wry smile.

“Weren’t you scared living out here after your parents died?” she asked him. From inside the woods she could hear a twig snap, an animal scampering.

“We were just so messed up at first. You know how it is. You can’t really think right. But there wasn’t much of a choice in the matter. We didn’t have anybody except our parents.”

“Nobody?”

“Nah, me and Hope are the last of our family line—just like you.”

“What about friends?”

“That we got,” he said. “The folks at Shadow Grove were really good to us. And your aunt . . . I guess Esther was the one who made us feel safe. I spent just about every day with her.” His voice broke as he said it, then he laughed remembering her. “That lady was something, I swear. I never thought she’d really leave us.”

He cleared his throat and wiped his face. Gretchen felt awful that she’d only known Esther on the last day of her life. She squeezed his hand and suddenly she wanted to put her arms around him. He took a quick breath in at her touch, then looked right at her. “Thanks,” he said. His eyes shining brightly in hers made her feel like they’d done this all before, the walk, the trees in the distance, the empty spaces. She held his hand for the rest of their walk through the old foundation—and that felt just as easy and natural. But also like she was walking along in someone else’s skin, like he was leading her somewhere to start a better life. The feeling made no sense, and after they had passed through what would have been the foundation of the church, it left her entirely.

Something shuffled along inside the woods again and this time it sounded bigger than a squirrel or chipmunk.

Hawk’s lip twitched, his eyes were bright and glassy, and then he turned away, his face haunted by something in the distance none of them could see.

In the daylight the house looked more of an empty relic, a long-abandoned mansion sinking into the land. The climbing rose thicket loomed taller and more precarious than ever.

As soon as they opened the door the musty overwhelming smell of moldering papers and dried flowers greeted them, but there was another smell too—something metallic and something like fresh dirt. They could hear a low murmuring buzzing sound, the contained energy of a swarm.

Oh no, Gretchen thought. The wasps.

“Okay,” Hawk said, his face stricken. Gretchen began to feel worried about him, and her sense that he was frailer than his sister came back to her.

“I don’t remember it being this bad even three days ago,” he said.

“Or even three hours ago,” Gretchen said. “C’mon, there are more boxes to carry down from the library. Let’s go.”

Hawk reached the top step and then tripped and fell forward, catching himself and twisting his wrist.

They heard the sound of whispering, then laughing.

“Goddamn it,” Hawk said, grabbing at his ankle to see what had knocked him down. In the dim light, Gretchen could see just the tattered ends of two little dresses moving quickly past them and turning the corner. But Hawk seemed to see them clearly and he looked grave. “The rope,” he whispered.