Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(11)

Sweet Jesus, it’s hard to explain.

I caught single words here and there: lost, falling, come, why, drop, star, water, here.

If I hadn’t been so scared spitless, I might have written some of them down—maybe if I could write fast enough, I could catch enough of them to mean something. I’ll start carrying a notebook and a pencil, in case it happens again. (I hope it doesn’t happen again. But if it does, I’ll be ready.)

I don’t know what it wanted, and I don’t know what it was saying, but I felt my whole body going limp from not breathing. I don’t know how long I wasn’t breathing . . . I just plain forgot to do it. But when I remembered—then I took a little breath, and a bigger one. Then a real deep one, and I started screaming my head off.

? ? ?

If these are little spells, like Momma says, then I broke this one with the screaming. Just remembering to breathe, remembering I could scream and shout and kick and fight . . . it did something. It shook me loose from the thing in the room, and there was this feeling of moving so fast—so fast that it made my skin ripple and my eyes bleed—and there were stars shooting by like gaslights.

And then I was just in the room again, all by myself.

Outside, my momma was calling for me. I guess she heard me yelling.

But I didn’t want to see her or talk to her. I didn’t want her to come after me. I wanted out of that house, and that’s all I wanted.

I still couldn’t see too good, but my sight was coming back. I felt my way to the door, and this time it let me out—it didn’t send me right back in, so yes, this spell, I broke it my own damn self. I’ll remember that next time: I’ll tell myself over and over again, “You just have to breathe, that’s it. Breathe, and then make a whole lot of noise.” (So if there’s a next time, when there’s a next time . . .)

I have a handbag in my room. There’s not much in it, only a little money I’ve earned and some personal things, and a little pocketknife I carry in case I need it. I grabbed it, and I grabbed my coat, even though it wasn’t so cold that I really needed it.

So help me God, I ran.

I ran to the edge of town and right through it, right across it, where the axe murders have been going on for the last year or so, right there down by Five Points where the Italians have their shops and their restaurants, and the Jews have their family banks and their movie theaters, and the girls my age don’t walk home by themselves—or with colored boys, neither, because there are awful men who will hurt you if they catch you together, that’s what everybody says.

I ran and ran, and I just hoped that anybody carrying something so heavy as an axe wouldn’t be able to catch me—but to be real true with myself, I wasn’t that worried about it. I had bigger worries, and stranger things to be scared of than some angry folks with weapons.

So help me God, I ran.

(So help me God. So help us God. So help everybody God, because there’s only so much we can do to help ourselves.)

I ran to Father Coyle because I didn’t know where else I should go, and when I talked my way past the guard with a gun, and got myself up into the sanctuary where he was praying over his candles and his books, he looked real happy to see me.

He gave me some tea and something to eat, and he let me talk. He let me ramble about the Victrolas and the stars, and when I was finished—when I’d run out of words, and sat there shaking . . . then he told me he had an idea.

It was a crazy idea, but these are crazy times and I’ve got nothing better.

So help me God, I’m going to do it.

I’m scared, though.

I don’t think it’s going to be so easy that Daddy will let me go—and Chapelwood will let me leave and never come back—just because I take a husband. The law may respect it, or then again the law may not (around here, you never know), but that church in the woods sure as hell won’t, and my daddy won’t, either.

Father Coyle is a good man, and Saint Paul’s is a good church, and it deserves better than what this city is throwing at it. But people don’t always get what they deserve, now do they? Sometimes they get a lot better, or a lot worse . . . and I’m afraid for how it’s going to go for my friend the priest, once word gets around.

He’s drawing up a wedding license for me, and he’s going to sign it. I’m just praying—to my God and his God, in case they’re listening—that he doesn’t sign his own funeral slip while he’s at it.

He says he’s not worried, that we’ll put ourselves in heaven’s hands, and all things will work together for good. Well, maybe they will, and maybe they won’t, so I’ll worry for the both of us. I’ve seen heaven, I think. It hasn’t got any hands, and I don’t think it cares one way or another how much we trust it.





Inspector Simon Wolf




BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS SEPTEMBER 23, 1921


Axe murders.

Apparently we need one great round of them per century, but at least this time they’ve happened relatively early and well away from New England—taking place down south in these reunited states. This particular spree occurs in Birmingham, Alabama. Named for an Old England city, I suppose, not that it’s much of a connection to anything . . . and there’s no sense in overselling it: These particular axe murders haven’t held any real interest for me, or for the organization that continues to pay my bills—even after all this time, and my habit of offering bombastic, semiannual resignation notices.