Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(42)

I reached for Chief Eagan’s hand and grabbed it, and squeezed it.

He squeezed it back. I just hoped and prayed that whatever came next wouldn’t be too loud, too crazy. I hoped and prayed that the old chief would help keep my feet on the ground, and give me something to hang on to.

There was nothing else I could do. Like it or not, the spell was coming.

It started up at the front of the room, behind the judge. Or maybe it started with the judge, I can’t say for sure. It poured out from behind him, a cloud of darkness that didn’t really move like a cloud, it moved more like fog spilling down a hill, swallowing up tree trunks and hedges, moving almost like water, so very thick, and so very black. It coiled and curled, and billowed sometimes like a giant was blowing on it, fanning it, so it’d fill the whole room.

It spilled. Maybe that’s a better way to say it. It spilled out from some spot behind the judge and it collected around Hugo Black, and wound between the old men on the jury, snagging up against them. I thought of cotton candy at the fair, gathering itself into fluff around the spool; but this wasn’t pink, and it wasn’t sweet. It was a shadow spun out of glass and needles, instead of sugar.

I watched it move like it was alive, a living fog shadow, sharp and delicate, too—a frothy thing as sharp as nettles. I wondered if it would prick and sting my skin when it reached me; I wondered if it would stuff itself down my throat and smother me; I wondered if it would touch me at all.

It wasn’t touching me.

Or I should say, it hadn’t reached me.

But, oh, it was filling the courtroom, drifting about like snow blown into the corners. I’ve never seen snow for myself, but I’ve seen pictures in books, the way it’s thick and the way it covers everything, piling up against fences and walls like a big blanket shook open and left to drop. This was like that, and it was like water, and it was like smoke. This was like nothing at all, if nothing was evil and it had a shape to it.

The room was almost full, but it still hadn’t touched me.

It still kept its distance, only a little. Only a few inches, though it had consumed Chief Eagan by then. He looked straight ahead, not feeling it at all, not noticing it. I could see his shape, all sharp posture and crisp uniform facing forward, and I knew he was looking straight ahead, daring those awful men to call him out. Daring them to let my daddy go. But not seeing the creeping darkness, even as it pushed itself up his nose and around his neck, wrapping there tight like a pair of hands.

He squeezed my fingers, and the darkness pulled away from me, it pulsed like a heartbeat, like it wanted to be up against me. But he squeezed my hand and it wobbled. It gave me another inch.

I couldn’t see anything anymore. Just myself: my dress, my lap with my handbag in it, my right arm and hand, the curve of my knees, my feet if I looked down—I could just see the top of my brown button heels, the pointed toes.

Everything else was dark as night, all the lights turned out except for one that was shining on me. Or shining inside of me. Maybe it was the light that pushed it away, and not the squeeze of the chief’s hand. I almost felt a tiny swell of hope to think it, but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself . . . not when the room was dark, and the whole world was full of spun black glass, of prickly cobwebs and fog.

? ? ?

Then I heard his voice.

Not the chief’s. The father’s.

? ? ?

Not my father, but Coyle, who was dead because my daddy shot him in the face for seeing me married off. The priest was there, and here I was at his funeral. No, not his funeral. His trial. Or, I mean . . . it was my daddy’s trial.

Father Coyle sat before me, facing me, in the black cassock with the little white collar tucked inside it—so this time I could talk to him directly instead of writing little confessions to him in my journal. Only that didn’t make any sense, because if he was sitting facing me, he’d have to be in the middle of the bench in front of me, straddling the lap of the lady whose hat I’d been staring at this whole time.

That wasn’t the only reason it didn’t make sense, of course. That was just the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw him, and there was a light inside him so I could see him, even though everything else was dark. (Everything except for me, and except for him.) I don’t think we were even inside the courtroom anymore. I don’t think we were even on earth. We could’ve been anywhere.

Father Coyle looked tired, but he smiled at me. That same gentle smile he always wore, the one that said the world was big and full of bad things, bad people, but there were good things, too—and good people could make a difference. Eventually. If they lived long enough.

He said, “Ruthie, there you are. I’m glad to see you’re all right.” His voice was a million miles away, and I could barely hear it.

“But you’re not,” I told him like he wasn’t aware, and I felt my eyes filling up with tears, and I hoped I wasn’t crying back in the real world, back on earth where I squeezed Chief Eagan’s hand. “You’re supposed to be dead, and in heaven. Am I dead, too?”

I think he said, “No, you’re not dead. You’re brave, and strong, and alive.”

“Can anyone else see you?”

“No. Just you. I’m not in the courtroom, any more than you are.”

I was definitely crying, wherever I was. “I don’t care, I’m just glad you’re here. You’re pushing the dark away.”