Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(43)

He shook his head. His mouth moved again, and he might’ve said something like, “That’s not what’s happening,” but I couldn’t be sure. I heard the next part more clearly: “Now listen to me, girl: You must stay away from Chapelwood, always and forever. Stay away from anyone who wants to bring you there, anyone who tries to talk you into visiting. They want you, Ruthie. They will feed you to the night.”

“I don’t understand . . .” I strained to listen, but it felt weird. It looked like he was right in front of me, but it sounded like he was hollering through a tin can on the other side of the city.

“You understand they mean to harm you. I know you understand that much. You should stay away from the courthouse, too. The Americans have contaminated this place, you can see it for yourself.”

“I can’t see anything at all, except for you.”

“That’s what I mean. You and Chief Eagan and everyone else with a droppa good left in you: Leave this place. Leave it, and don’t return.”

“But I’m a witness,” I insisted. “I’m going to help them convict my daddy, for what he did to you.”

He told me, in that stretched-thin voice that faded in and faded out, “No, you won’t. And it doesn’t matter anyway. What’s done is done, and what comes next is set in stone. You’ll be a drop in the ocean, Ruthie Gussman. I appreciate your faith, your determination. More than you know, dear girl. But it can only hurt you now, and it can’t help me.”

“Are we in purgatory? Is that what this is right now?” I asked suddenly. I remembered him telling me stories about purgatory.

“No. This is only a place. Ruthie,” he said sternly, and the light flickered and came back, but not quite as strong. “Ruthie, there is darkness coming. I want you to leave before it gets here. Leave Birmingham, leave Alabama.”

My cheeks were wet, and my voice hardly worked at all. I wondered if he could hear me, any better than I could hear him. “How can I stop them if I leave?”

“You can’t stop them anyway.”

“It can’t end like that,” I argued. “Not like this, without any justice, not without a fight. I can’t do much, but I can fight.”

He sighed, or his ghost sighed—if ghosts even breathe at all. “Justice is for the living, dear girl. Don’t stay for me. Find some other old spirits to comfort you, but find them somewhere else.”

I wanted to argue some more, but there came a sound that wasn’t a sound—it was something I felt, not something I heard. My ears popped so hard that it hurt, and my hand hurt, too, and the darkness was unspooling away from me . . . back to the judge, or behind him, or underneath him. Father Coyle was gone and the darkness was leaving, and Chief Eagan was holding my hand, and I was crying like a baby.

Someone handed me a handkerchief and I took it. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes and wondered what I was supposed to do, because I thought I was supposed to stay here and fight—but what if I was wrong? I didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t want to believe Father Coyle, or his whispering ghost, because it was easy . . . when all I had to do was show up for court and answer the lawyer, and say my piece even if it didn’t mean anything in the long run.

I second-guessed everything.

The devil reads the Bible too, and that old serpent is everywhere, under every rock and up every tree.

Through my tears I wondered if that wasn’t Father Coyle, or his ghost, or his not-purgatory . . . and maybe the advice to leave is just what something, somewhere, wants me to think is the good priest’s friendly direction, helping me find my way along this crooked path. Maybe that ghost was just a piece of the darkness, just a trick of the spell that ate my vision and flooded the room with nothing at all, a night sky without any stars, brought down from heaven and dropped inside the courthouse.

I couldn’t trust anything, anyone. Not even myself, and the spells are mine alone. They come from my own damn head, as far as I know—nobody else can see them, nobody else can feel them, or knows what they sound like, what they say, what they mean. Nobody else knows why I run from them, and nobody else saw Father Coyle’s ghost in the pitch-black room that wasn’t in the courthouse.

Nobody can see this but me.

And just like Hugo Black will tell you, and just like the old men in the jury box believe without even wondering . . . you can’t trust me for shit.

Just ask them.





Lizbeth Andrew (Borden)




BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA SEPTEMBER 29, 1921


From the time I hung up the phone, concluding my conversation with Inspector Wolf, I had three hours to make my preparations before I would be compelled to leave for the train station.

I had no idea how long I’d be gone, no idea what weather I’d find, and on a whimsically morbid note, no idea if I’d ever return. I didn’t much care, until I considered the cats—but it wasn’t quite the dilemma it might’ve been. Strange as it felt to me, I used the phone; I tried several numbers and several addresses, and eventually I reached Miranda Closely at the Boston Humane Society—who assured me that one of their Fall River affiliates would be happy to keep watch over the colony of felines in my absence. It was a great relief to hear it, especially since the little tin-bucket kitten was growing stronger. I thought he had an honest chance of making his way in the world, if someone would just feed him and make sure he came in from the cold.