What the Dead Want(33)

They heard scampering feet running down the hall in the direction of the mirror; sunlight streamed in through the windows, cutting bright squares into the darkness, and dust swirled in the beams of light. They could make out the sound of some unintelligible chant. The sibilant words like leaves rustling against one another.

Sufferus. Sufferus. Sufferus totaste oftheeinour life’s last agony.

Celia and Rebecca were nowhere in sight but the halls and stairwell were again filled with people as they had been last night just after Esther killed herself. It was as if they were gathering for some big event. Men in suspenders and button-down shirts, women in light calico dresses. An icy breeze blew through the house. And through it all they could hear the spectral little girls’ whispered chants punctuated by laughter, as if the songs were really cruel jokes.

“Now it looks like almost everyone is here,” Hawk said.

“Who?” Hope asked, stumbling up the stairs behind them. “Who’s here?”

“What you can’t see won’t hurt you,” Hawk said.

“Yeah, like viruses, or toxic fumes,” Hope said. “What’s going on? Tell me.”

Descending the steps was a man with torn and bloody clothes, followed by other men and women barefoot. They looked as confused to be there as Gretchen felt seeing them. She grabbed Hope’s hand, to steady herself.

Hawk, Hope, and Gretchen ran toward the library. Esther’s words rang in Gretchen’s head—When they realize I’m gone they’ll take the house. But she barely had time to think more about it.

Just outside the library door Celia and Rebecca stood before the mirror in their dingy matching dresses playing with a doll, smiling and whispering to one another. They were wearing necklaces made of human hair. When Gretchen and the Green siblings approached, their heads snapped up in unison and they stared. A large rust-colored beetle crawled across Celia’s face, then another crawled out from the sleeve of her dress. She shook it off, and smiled as if it had given her an idea. Then Rebecca skipped merrily over to the vase where the wasps had built their nest. She stood there smiling at them, laughed in delight, and knocked the vase over.

Glass burst and flew in all directions and the paper-thin nest was torn and crushed. Slick-looking black-and-yellow wasps rose into the hallway in an immense swarm, their insect voices like a cacophony of angry, tight-lipped whispers. They filled the hall in a dense cloud, landing on Gretchen and Hope and Hawk, crawling on them. Hope dashed into the library but Hawk and Gretchen were in the center of the swarm; they slapped at their arms and legs and faces where the insects had landed, while the tone of the swarm raised in pitch and urgency. And then Gretchen could feel the mean and venomous stings, on the back of her hands, one just above her eyebrow; she gasped in pain, frightened to move, frightened to stay still. Celia and Rebecca were in the center of the swarm too—but had continued to play peacefully in front of the mirror, wasps crawling across their faces and arms, covering them so that they were encased in an undulating blanket of black and yellow.

Sickened by the sight of the girls and dizzy from the stings and frenetic movement of the insects, Gretchen shuddered as thread-thin legs crawled across her face. Finally Hawk grabbed her hand and yanked her into the library, slamming the door behind them. His arms were covered with welts. He looked at her face and she could see his concern, she could already feel her eye swelling.

Hope stood by the open window, shooing out stray wasps and looking desperately for some way to make an escape.



1860

James has been home now for three weeks. Everything in my being longs to be by his side and yet I think about nothing but escaping from this town and the demands of my gender. I think of it every day. Were it not for James’s friendship and encouragement, I think I would lose my mind. Valerie Green has married and seems happier than ever. Her husband works for the Axtons and I often see him walking with George.

I have saved almost enough to leave. Almost. And I am braver than ever—helping hide and guide people several times a month, feeding them in the chantry of the church. George and James and I make a good triumvirate, just as I imagined. But even this work will not keep me here in town, will not keep me from getting my education. Also, Troy Female Seminary is closer to the Canadian border. I can continue to help in the struggle from a different point on the Railroad.

My parents still go through my room searching out any evidence of “dangerous activities,” and I’m sure they would be scandalized by finding this journal. Especially the parts about James’s first days home and our night beneath the stars.

But if they could see the things I’ve seen, I don’t think they could go on living the way they do.

People covered with the marks of torture. Starved, subsisting on what they could forage in the woods. Thirsty, exhausted, hunted. Women so broken from their babies being taken from them, they can barely speak. Some newly wounded, the smell of blood and infection overwhelming. For every person we save there are thousands of others enduring the horrors that they escape. For every person we save there is a racist, a so-called “patriot” ready to commit more brutal acts.

By our tally we have helped guide more than sixty people to freedom in the last two years. Some people have stayed. James is building a congregation unlike any other in the state.

My parents think they can ignore politics and ethics—the more they seem like regular folks the less they will have to think about the horrors that are a part of our history. And they think I don’t know. They think I don’t remember my grandmother—but I do. I remember her dark skin. And her dark eyes. I remember her smiling, holding me on the porch swing. Mother thinks because she and her sisters can pass for white our troubles are over.