Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(21)

At first, simple success was all I hoped for . . . but with time and experience, I’m acquiring a skill set I never wished for, and never expected. My pen shakes as I compose this, but it’s true: I’m getting good at this. So good, in fact, that I wonder how I ever managed to escape capture after those first few deaths. I was sloppy and stupid, and if my victims had been wealthier, more prominent in the community, more socially valuable . . . I think the authorities might have hunted for me harder. It isn’t a fair thing, but it’s been a fortunate thing for me.

Now they seek me in earnest, yes, because I’ve become famous and it makes them look bad. But now, I’m capable of evading them.

? ? ?

“My victims.”

I wrote that, only a few lines ago.

I’m starting to think of these men and women that way, though rationally I know I shouldn’t. Rationally, I know they are victims of Chapelwood. I am no murderer, I am only a soldier struggling to save the world—and this is what Chapelwood forces me to do in pursuit of that goal. And I am forced. It is either this terrible spree, or the reverend makes his summons and then . . .

. . . then, would it be the end of the world?

Well, I think it’d be the end of this one.

What I would give to be free of this equation, snipped off the graph, erased from the slate where I adjust and readjust all the particulars. Every night, with every stroke of the chalk and every tally of the sum, I ask the universe: Why me? And it’s stupid of me, because I already know the reason. It must be me, because there is no one else who knows what’s truly at stake. No one else who awakens with equations scrawled on strange surfaces, in his own handwriting—but no memory of how it all arrived. And there’s no one else I could convince, either.

But there is a new number on the board, and this time the woman in question is an itinerant streetwalker. She plies her trade near the rail yard, and while she is known to the men who work there, I doubt anyone will notice if she vanishes.

So she will vanish. I can make that happen, with a little planning. Before, I would’ve only run from her corpse; now I am so numbed by experience that I can picture myself handling it, adjusting it, and disposing of it.

Obviously, I don’t picture it with anything but disgust. But I can picture it all the same—and this is a new development, not one I’m particularly proud of. It is revolting. I am revolting, and becoming more so by the day.

There really is no hope for me. Maybe there is no hope for anyone else.

Chapelwood has gotten its way, and rather than make any helpful mistakes, it grows in power. It allies itself with the organized fiends of government and thereby lends itself credibility and strength among the hateful rubes who are so plentiful here. We are at a stalemate, that church and I—and I fear with all my soul (or what’s left of it) that this is the new normal. I will kill and kill and kill, and Chapelwood will plot and plot and plot, and all that happens is nothing except for death upon death upon death.

How cruel it is, that I’m the one doing the killing.

All I ever wanted was to talk to God.





Lizbeth Andrew (Borden)




FALL RIVER, MASSACHUSETTS SEPTEMBER 25, 1921


What the hell is going on in Alabama? From this distance I can only speculate, and speculation isn’t terribly helpful for anyone, anywhere . . . not that anyone is asking for my help or suggesting that I interfere. I am merely a long-distance spectator.

For now.

I add “for now” because I’m beginning to feel a certain . . . calling. As if something there is luring me, drawing me . . . trying to seduce me into coming closer. Ordinarily I’d write this off to curiosity and boredom, for I have an ample surplus of both; but there’s a familiar element at play . . . something that hints at things I’ve felt before, in darker, more desperate times.

You’d think that’d be all the excuse I’d need to withdraw entirely—quit subscribing to these papers, quit seeking more information from my journals, and from the more helpful tomes I borrow at the library. You’d think the familiarity would be enough to keep me quietly at home with my own silent ghosts like you, Emma. It damn well ought to be.

But somehow it isn’t. Somehow, the dreams I’ve had in the last few weeks, they’re . . .

. . . No, I won’t. I can’t remember them very well, so long after waking.

As for last night’s, I only remember a sky gone perfectly dark, and a sense that something pooled around my ankles, and climbed them. It’s not worth trying to write it down now. Maybe I’ll leave some paper and a pencil beside my bed at night. Maybe these aren’t dreams so much as messages—as ten thousand years of seers, clairvoyants, and witches have sworn is perfectly possible.

I’m none of those things, but I’m prepared to hope all the same.

Perhaps I protest too much. After all, isn’t that what the boys in town whisper, when they think I’m gone? They call me a witch, and they say it like it ought to be a secret, as if it’s true. As if I sit at home with my eyes closed and my hands upon a planchette—a board across my knees—summoning spirits and communing with the devil, not that I’ve ever done either such thing.

So far.

And so what if that’s what they think? A cursory examination of Maplecroft would give their theories a fat measure of support, wouldn’t it?