Rochester Knockings (10 page)

In an eruption of inner light, Mr. Willets suddenly stood tall, saying in a single breath: “I still have many things to say, but none of you would be able to bear it right now. When he comes, he, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you in the whole Truth.”

His spurs tintinnabulating with impatience, the pockmarked stranger in the leather vest ventured to express some doubts about the mental equilibrium of Isaac Post. Laughing aside, he suggested that each person present ask the knocking spirit a question of a more personal nature that only concerned himself as a way to thwart any possibilities of fraud. More simple than the ex-telegraphist's coding method, he proposed to the questioner to recite the alphabet in its traditional order and as many times as necessary, the entity being ordered to respond with a knock after each letter as a way to give a response. A volunteer to recite, pen in hand, would transcribe as they went along. The devout colossus George Willets accepted with grace this role of secretary.

Everything in place, the widow Mrs. Redfield, holding back a breath, spoke hastily: “What sickness is my son Samuel suffering
from?” The knocks started to rain down while Willets uttered the alphabet more and more quickly, all while making his pen spit. Reported finally with a certain reserve at the edge of his lips, the laconic one-word response provoked in the room a hilarious fright and filled the widow with confusion.

“What is the first name of my oldest son,” asked Mrs. Jewell, very pale, in her turn.

“
John
,” Willets transcribed.

“And what happened to him?”

“
Scalped by the Hurons
,” he recited in a dull voice at the conclusion of the drumming knocks and their ritornelle.

Mrs. Jewell let out a piercing cry and fainted in the arms of her husband. The stranger, in compassion, offered his flask. After Mr. Jewell's disdained response, he took a gulp for himself instead and declared: “We believe we possess the science of a thing . . . when it is only possible that the thing is something other than what it is, that's what good old Aristotle said. I propose therefore that the residents of this house sleep at their neighbors' tonight and that a search committee take over the quarters to verify the constancy of these phenomena . . .”

Impressed by the eloquence of the newcomer, several approved the idea. Having free rein since his wife was living in Rochester, Isaac Post offered himself straight away to be on guard. The colossus George Willet and Mr. Smith also volunteered themselves as starters for this new kind of vigil.

“But not you, whom no one knows from Adam!” the ex-telegraphist announced to reserve sergeant William Pill.

XIV.

Maggie's Diary

M
y sister Katie is definitely crazy. Or else she's possessed like the Salem witches. If it wasn't for her, none of this would have happened. With these dangerous games, she set in motion a strange machine that makes some kind of goat: scapegoat or demon. None of us is going to escape from it however, I can already tell. As if invisible forces were holding us all captive, animals, children, and adults. I'm only fifteen, but I know how to see what hides behind faces, and beneath the polite words of others. Things took an unimaginable turn once Mother had the idea of stirring up the neighborhood, starting with the widow of High Point. Until that moment, everything was happening just between us. Even if we were very afraid, Kate and I were making a kind of game out of these exchanges with Mister Splitfoot, as she calls him. And that Quaker currently far from his wife's surveillance—everything he believes he invented to communicate with the rapping spirit, we had been doing since the first signs of understanding. At first, we were unaware that a peddler had had his throat slit with a butcher knife in our bedroom about fifteen years ago, at midnight on a Tuesday, before being buried in
the basement on the following night. Did we need to know that? Now Kate keeps waking up with a start in the dark, stammering that she sees the murderer, that he's raising his bloody knife right in front of our bed. What scares me the most is not the murderer who lived in this house, but the ghost with his horrible pains. Luckily he remains invisible to me. It's plenty to bear all the pandemonium, all of his impatient rapping from the depths of death, and to suddenly see chairs lifting one foot then another, doors slamming shut for no reason, glasses shattering. Sometimes I'm so afraid this is all going to end badly that an icy sweat runs down between my breasts. To top it all off, there's some kind of infernal carnival around the house, while the inside swarms with a bunch of neighbors I only recognize from having seen in church. From the window, tonight, Katie and I counted dozens and dozens of lanterns. Most of the people assembled kept their calm, but sometimes there were hostile yells. We watched it all in dismay, my sister and I. And whether by spite or anger, is this crowd going to throw their oil lamps through our windows before they go off? You hear of these kinds of stories in the country. It was less than twenty years ago, not far from here, that an old woman was burned alive with her twelve cats under the pretext of witchcraft. There's a saying that goes something like: There will always remain more ashes than remorse.

For the moment, we're in the flames. Not a single day goes by without all sorts of individuals knocking on our door or parading around the house like those people from Asia who get carried away around priceless relics. That famous night in April, my sister and I were separated, one of us at our older brother David's house and the other with the Dueslers, an impossible couple always making a scene, while Mother went to stay with the elderly Mrs.
Hyde, a funny woman who night and day irons the dresses of her deceased mother. The men of the village stayed to keep vigil with Father. Their admitted goal was to inspect the facts and to catch an evil prankster were they to find one. Bizarrely, the knocks didn't stop that whole night, despite Kate's absence. Whether he's called Charles Haynes or Mister Splitfoot, the rapping spirit detached himself from her. In the early morning, unable to hold back, those keeping watch for the ghost went down to the basement with shovels and began to dig, unearthing small bones and tufts of fur, going all the way down until they hit water without finding the cadaver among that debris. It wouldn't surprise me if those gravediggers were also looking for treasure.

We all returned the next day a little shaken, Mother and us, we had to tend to the barnyard and our cow, so sullen ever since the butcher had come to take away her little one.

But another life began for us in Hydesville. Children without much status, we had now ascended to the level of prodigies. The power to communicate with the dead isn't bestowed to common mortals. Especially since our raucous host was having a field day, to speak frankly. Never had he been so talkative. Kate provokes him mischievously. I don't dare report all her questions: even a pirate with a wooden leg would be offended by what comes out of the mouth of that naughty little girl. She's come up with more ideas for a system of conversation than our austere fellows: we snap our fingers, even our toes, to prime the pump. And then we ask our questions in good English.

“So Mister Splitfoot, are you looking at me when I'm completely naked?”

“Nudity,” he replied a little sharply, “has no meaning for a spirit who can see inside beings!”

“Hey, Mister Splitfoot, do you want us to go looking for your wife?” In the hell of a cacophony that followed, we learned that his wife was no longer in this world. A dead person not being able to be a widow, it would have been silly to present him with our condolences.

Ever since the whole town assembled in front of our farm, the visits haven't stopped. Father and Mother, acting as if they've won a fortune at blackjack, dress properly to receive people, offering them drinks in such a mannered way that one would think they're bartenders. On holidays, an unending herd of the curious march by in procession, hands in their pockets, laughing or walking solemnly. There are families of geese, the male leading, frightened groups of snooping hares, angrily snorting buffalos, rings in their nostrils, and then more and more, the ladies and gentlemen of the town with their escorts. They park their carriages and wagons up and down Long Road. Everyone wanted to see the haunted house. There was even a sorcerer who'd escaped from Virginia, a black exorcist covered with charms and amulets who claimed to be a pastor, whom we allowed in because of his face and arms, scarred by barbed wire from slave drivers. To make him leave, Father pointed his flintlock at some bats and fired in the air, trying to kill two birds with one stone. The man, driven even crazier than my sister Kate, started to call out to Lazarus and Saint Peter in loud cries:

               
Protect us, Voodoo spirit!

               
Open the gates of the two worlds to us!

They say that former slaves keep alive inside them the spirit of their deceased ones deprived of burial. In Hydesville, we lost
count of the lunatics on a pilgrimage to replenish themselves. Thanks to Mister Splitfoot, we were keeping a small business alive.

At the house, everything changed after Leah's arrival from Rochester by stagecoach five days ago. Leah knows what she wants. “I've passed the age of childishness!” she likes to say in response to everything. Bursting into the living room late one morning with her beautiful trunk deposited by a valet, she didn't take long to get a handle of the situation. “We'll see what truth there is to your stories,” she immediately declared. My big sister is a fashionably dressed lady from New York. Once she removed her cloak, which was big enough to hide five lovers inside, her chest flat as a chicken's wishbone in her traveling outfit, she revealed a long skirt swelling with crinoline in the back and little boots of yellow leather that allow her ankles to show. And above all that, placed on the jackdaw wings of her hair, was a pretty turban made of costume pearls and lace. Our eldest sister has religious beliefs and a piercing gaze. She understands everything not through investigation, but by nitpicking. The Lord judges us, she says, with a yes or a no. When she's around, Mother is never at ease.

After that night in March, poor Mother had suddenly aged. Her hair had become whiter than refined flour. She and our old father were convinced in their mission: to reveal to all the key to the other world. The two of them, who'd never even left the county! Our good mother usually so modest now takes herself as Anne the Prophetess. Leah, who knows everything, says that she should get some rest instead, leave the farm, settle down in town. The countryside is worthless for farmers. In Rochester, Leah gives piano lessons and appreciates beautiful linen. Despite a personality more cutting than a knife sharpened on a rock, she must not
be lacking in suitors with such a corset and those yellow-leather ankle boots. In town, luckily, bigots are like bees calmed with smoke, they sting less often. But I think that Leah is waiting for that rare bird, one with solid gold feathers that prevent it from flying off.

What a commotion at home when she decided to dictate how we spent our time! First of all, she wanted to sit in on this spirit act. That was the first night. The eagle owl was ululating high in the cedar. Coyotes called after the moon on the hills. At the first crack, Katie began the invocation in her way: “Do like I do, Mister Splitfoot!” And then snapped her fingers to encourage him. Suddenly there was a hellish racket, as if the entire skeleton of Goliath was cracking. And then it was decided that the spirit must find Leah attractive. He revealed to her, in little counted blows, details that even she was unaware of, the little beauty mark on the back of her neck, hidden by her hair, and a birthmark on her lower back. And it was up to me to confirm the one completely out of view: right in the crease of her large buttocks was a wine-colored mark the width of an index finger. Mother swore, befuddled, that she had forgotten these details since forever.

The night before her departure, after several hours of sleep on a mattress unrolled in the living room, Leah had a magnificent idea: why don't we all come live closer to her in Rochester! Our parents treated the idea as extravagant. They didn't consider it for a second. Kate and I of course liked the idea, but who would look after the farm? Today, while reading the letters she's sent since leaving, we're starting to understand what she has in the back of her mind.

Troubles began for us right after her departure. Most people live in haunted houses without even realizing it. Some in
harmony, others causing worry or up to some other devilry. What was upsetting in our house was that the spirit had broken the ice. All because of Katie, I believe, because of her way of sleepwalking from one world into the other.

XV.

The Columns of Duality

T
hat sunny Sunday, the Hydesville church was stormed the moment it opened by everyone the district counted in its more or less zealous flock; added to that were a number of Protestants from other parishes, all wildly curious about the event, including local personalities, politicians, men of law, doctors, officers in uniform. And even, arriving that morning from Rochester in a convertible pulled by four horses, Henry Maur, the rich trader of furs and opium, flanked by Miss Charlene Obo, the famous actress and curious specimen with a beautiful waxy face, dressed all in black under her vicuña cloak.

Reverend Gascoigne did not go up to the pulpit alone. Alexander Cruik, a brilliant preacher in the Methodist Church formed at the University of Oxford, came expressly for the occasion from the Adirondack mountains, the barren territories of the adjacent Hamilton County, where he was trying to convert surviving Indian tribes: Cruik, who claimed to descend from George White-field and the Great Itinerants, had called in reinforcements with a choir of young black women that the public received in a mixed
uproar of delight and fury. After the reverend's sermon on excommunication, which his own sermon would have to follow under the banner of the Great Awakening, the evangelist intended to pay a visit as discreetly as possible to the seditious family. An annunciator of the return of Christ would not be able to misjudge the unceasing gift of His Blessing. Alexander Cruik considered the crowd assembled between the brick walls, under the nave ceiling. Never at church had he seen such a diverse landscape. There was, beyond a majority of Methodists, all species of Puritans come from the neighboring villages, Sunday Baptists, Adventists, Lutherans, and even a sampling of dumbfounded Quakers, with some Negroes sitting in the back released from the corn plantations for church.