What the Dead Want (7 page)

A cool breeze passed through the room. The curtains in the window didn't stir, but she heard what she thought must be the weather vane atop the cupola begin to spin slowly, creakily, overhead. Close by she could hear the scampering feet of squirrels or whatever they were.

“Here,” her aunt said, and she picked up a photograph off her desk and held it out to Gretchen. “I wanted to give this to you too.”

“I can't be sure,” her aunt said, sounding disarmingly rational. “But I think that's Piper, with your mother.”

Gretchen felt as if all the blood in her body had stopped circulating. After several heartbeats, she said, “What do you mean?”

“I took it
last
winter. I heard something outside, and went out there with my camera. I followed the sounds out past the place where our property meets the Greens' property. When I held my eye to the viewfinder, I saw them, although I couldn't see them with my eyes. Sometimes when that happens, the film captures nothing, but other times . . . you see? Mona. She was here. She's closer than you think.”

Gretchen handed the photograph back to her aunt. Her hand was trembling too much to hold on to it. It looked somewhat like a double exposure, but it also looked like her mother. Not like the photo she'd taken for proof when she was a child, but
exactly
like her mother, standing clearly on this property in the snow, with a little boy who belonged to another era. Her heart pounded in her chest and she felt like she might pass out. What was this awful thing her aunt was doing? Turning her into an emotional yo-yo.

“You see there, a line drawn around the property? I've figured it out. It's a triangle. Within this triangle, the souls are in torment. You mother knew about this too. Sometimes you see them and they're happy, playing. But here—inside the triangle, they're tormented. And tormenting.”

Gretchen said nothing. She thought about the awful little girls at the piano, then shook them out of her head.
She felt a deep welling sadness for this woman who saw ghosts everywhere. She stared at her aunt as she spoke nonsense in a perfectly lucid tone, growing more terrified by the second.

“Your mother believed that if we could discover what they wanted, we could break the triangle. We could free them.”

Gretchen stared at her.

“Don't look at me like that,” Esther said. “Your mother wrote about this herself. You've seen her collection, you must have. Some of the earliest inventors of the camera were working with precisely the idea that they could capture images of the unseen with their instruments. Some of them believed they had. Some of us believe we can!”

“What my mother did was fine art,” Gretchen said gently. “Not reporting. You really think the dead can be photographed?”

Esther laughed sharply. “I
know
the dead can be photographed. I've been photographing the dead my whole life! It's not about the
dead
, sweets. It's about the soul. The things we don't know.”

“Isn't that dangerous?” Gretchen asked, in spite of herself. She'd wanted to bring the conversation back down to the rational, not just for Esther, but for her own sake, but she was remembering her mother giving her that first
camera so long ago, telling her about cultures in which it was forbidden to take a photograph. Telling her to be careful.

“Of course it's dangerous,” Esther said.

Gretchen tried to focus on what Janine would do. “Aunt Esther,” she said. “It's very late. I'm going to go to my room and make a few phone calls, then go to sleep. We can deal with all this in the morning.” She said it calmly but inside she was still stunned and frightened, her stomach growling from hunger.

This woman who she'd just met
today
was living with animals in her falling-down house, and had spent her life photographing some of the worst atrocities in human history, and was now telling her that she—Gretchen—had to stay there and finish her work. That her mother's ghost was there, trapped with all the others. The photograph was some kind of shocking proof not even Gretchen felt able to deny at that moment. Mona's face was so clear and beautiful and familiar, she struggled to keep the tears from her eyes. Esther was amazing and admirable, but she was also crazy and exhausting and was messing with Gretchen's head by showing her pictures of her mother standing beside a long-dead little boy.

As much as Gretchen wanted to be brave and cool and document all of this, like Mona would have, she
wanted—no, she needed—help. And she needed it now. She quickly pushed the door open and headed for the stairs, realizing that this was her second attempt at escape.

Aunt Esther leaped at her. “But you haven't seen the darkroom!” she said, clutching Gretchen's arm in a startlingly strong grip. “Come see the darkroom first and then you can run along to your room.”

Esther pulled her into the dark creaky hallway. The floor sloped downward and she could still hear the breeze blowing the weather vane on the roof. At the next corner, Gretchen nearly jumped out of her skin. Something with glowing eyes, much bigger than a squirrel, looked up at them from a crouched position, hunching just outside the darkroom door in the darkness. Gretchen gave a short startled scream, and it cowered, then cantered past quickly with little clicks that sounded more like hooves than paws on the floor. Gretchen could smell whatever it was, like dirt and metal and smoke. She shuddered. There's no way that was real, she thought. It must be the hunger and the alcohol, and being up so late. Her aunt snapped on a wall light and shouted “Shoo!” but whatever it was had completely vanished.

“Don't worry,” Esther said, looking straight into her eyes. “Our bit of time together will be over very soon.”

Dear James,

I don't know how to thank you for your last letter! It was a tonic! No one has ever encouraged me so. People have only said I would be abandoning my family—or that I should be concerned with starting a family of my own. You letter made going to college seem like a simple thing, something anyone can do. It made it seem well within the realm of possibilities.

When I think about how we have lived, all the girls in town, expected to do nothing more than have babies and cook and care for men, how none of my friends finished school, how we are all expected to sit idle, not conversing in any way on anything meaningful, how we cannot earn a proper living or be given a proper job, how there is no matter in politics or even the running of domestic life on which we are allowed to comment . . . When I think about those things I am adrift in sorrow. And know I cannot live like that.

I have never ever met any man who understood this as clearly as you or was so compassionate toward those who have less freedom than you. I am amazed by how you confront the brutality you see in the world with your eloquent words and essays, and again I say, preach! Preach it to everyone.

In answer to your question. Yes! I am happy to help you in any way possible and honored to be a part of such a righteous and important mission. I'm not afraid to join you. The only thing I'm afraid of is living in a world where people are enslaved.

Your friend,

Fidelia

G
RETCHEN WAS SO FILLED WITH DREAD
ENTERING THE
darkroom she was shaking, but the real shock was how orderly and put together it was. The walls painted black, the long porcelain sink full of developing trays that had been drained and turned over to dry. A red bulb bathed the place in strange light. Photos were hanging on a line stretching from one end of the room to the other. The enlarger—state of the art—was not some relic from the sixties. And there was a small refrigerator full of film canisters. She was beginning to get used to these extremes and contradictions.

It was a fully functioning professional darkroom. And like the Nikon in her aunt's studio, one of the best she'd ever
seen. Despite her fear and anxiety, and her brush with whatever weird animal was in the hall, Gretchen put her new Nikon to her eye and took a photograph of her aunt standing in the room where she had so long worked. The sound the camera made was amazing, a fast powerful slide and click, as if it were snatching something from the world in front of her and pulling it into another. She could not believe this camera had shot the things it had and now it was in her hands.

“There,” Esther said after Gretchen had taken her picture. She sounded calm and relieved. “There. Now we can get on with it.”

She walked over to the cabinet that held jugs full of Dektol and D-76 and Fix, took out more black plastic bottles, uncapping them. Gretchen turned away to study the enlarger. But when she turned back around Esther was not filling the trays with chemicals, as she had thought she would. She was gulping down the entire bottle of D-76 as if she were drinking cool, sweet water.

“No!” Gretchen screamed, rushing forward and trying to knock the bottle out of her hands. She wrenched it, but Esther somehow was stronger, and by the time Gretchen had gotten hold of it, it was too late; the jug was empty. Will of steel indeed. “No no no!” Gretchen shrieked, and pulled out her phone. She tried an emergency call to 911 but there was no reception. How could this be possible?

“We have to get you to a hospital,” she said to Esther, who was now sitting on the floor, her knees pulled up to her chest, and breathing shallowly, her weathered combat boots solidly planted on the tile. She tried to pull her aunt to her feet but the woman was much heavier than she looked. An odd smile was spreading across Esther's face. She looked up at Gretchen. They both knew even a hospital wouldn't matter now.

Gretchen started to cry. The woman's face was turning blue and her breathing was labored as she stared at Gretchen. Her black eyes shone in agony.

“Why why why?” Gretchen whimpered, holding her aunt's face. For a brief moment Esther looked happy, like she had when Gretchen had first arrived, and she realized this was what Esther had planned all along. Gretchen's blood was beating in her veins and she felt she might pass out. For a moment she felt like she was watching it all from very far away. She squeezed Esther's hand. As the life drained from her eyes, Gretchen was flooded with love and remorse. How could she have met and lost this amazing, triumphant disaster of a woman all in one day?

“It's up to you, sweets,” Esther gasped. “At least now I can help you.”

“No!” Gretchen wailed.

But her protests couldn't prevent Esther from choking,
convulsing, and succumbing to what could never be described as a painless death.

Filled with horror, Gretchen ran out into the brightly lit hall. The floorboards bounced and shook beneath her feet as she ran. She pounded down the stairs, family portraits staring at her from both sides, then ran down the long hallway toward her room, the only room that had reception.

Across from it, in front of the mirror, stood the two little girls. They were holding a rope. Dressed in their dingy white dresses.
No
,
she said to herself.
This is not real.
When the girls saw her they hunched their shoulders and whispered to each other. One of them—the one who had bitten her in the dream she'd had at the piano—smiled brightly, her teeth gleaming and pointed as a cat's.

Gretchen stifled a scream, then forced herself to look more closely at them. “I am hallucinating,” she whispered to herself. “I am asleep. I am dreaming or Esther must have drugged me. This is a nightmare. I won't be controlled by a nightmare.”

Then she looked up, put the Nikon to her eye, and shot the picture. The girls seemed to take a step back. She needed protection from whatever was going on and the only protection she'd ever known was a camera. Tomorrow she would look at the photo and no one would be there. It would be
proof that she'd imagined it, that there was nothing to be afraid of. The other girl reached out her little fingers toward Gretchen. They were filthy, covered in dirt and grime. She shot another picture and then another, then ran into the room, turned on the light, and slammed the door.

The force of the door slamming knocked an avalanche of papers from the tall bookcases onto the floor. She dialed 911. Nothing. She tried again. Nothing. She called Simon. Nothing. The reception was too spotty. She walked around the room, looking out the windows at the pitch-black night, and trembled. She tried again, pacing and clutching at the phone. It rang a few times and then disconnected. She pulled out the car service's card, dialed, and was flooded with relief to hear the heavy New York accent of the dispatcher when he picked up and said, “Paragon Limo, how can I help you?”

“I need a car to pick me up in Mayville, New York, immediately.”

“
May
ville?” the dispatcher said with distaste, and then the line went dead.

The sounds of more running feet through the house, and this time they didn't sound like rodents. She tried to breathe calmly and think about exactly what had happened, slowly, rationally. There was a dead woman in the attic and she may have been drugged and hallucinating. She broke
out in a cold sweat. She looked at the time on her phone—it was two in the morning. She dialed 911 again—nothing.

Gretchen paced the room, trembling. She was also starving—the last thing she'd eaten had been a bag of pretzels Janine gave her for the trip. She was feeling everything she'd been ignoring—hunger, terror, pain—and somehow she had bumped or bruised her side. She lifted up her dress to look at the spot. And with a sickening clarity realized it was exactly where she'd been bitten in the dream she'd had at the piano bench. There was a red round bruise in the shape of a mouth. Individual tooth marks were clearly visible.

That was enough—body or no body, cell reception or no cell reception, she was getting the hell out of the house, even if it was two in the morning and there were strange creatures outside the door and there was nowhere to go. She grabbed her bag, threw the door open.

The little girls were gone. In their place was a tall thin man with dark eyes and dark skin holding a book. Behind him were several other men and women, a small group talking among themselves in southern accents. Two women were passing a baby back and forth trying to hush its crying.

She shut her eyes and went to push through the crush of people and tumbled to the floor. No one was there at all. No bodies in her way.

She sat for a minute in the hallway breathing hard,
trembling, rubbing her bruised elbow and knee. When she heard whispering she scrambled to her feet, grabbed her suitcase firmly by the handle, and tore through the house, turning on every light as she ran by it. She could still hear murmuring and animals scurrying. She tried to find a
telephone in the kitchen and found only another nest of insects—this time an enormous anthill on the tile counter, the black ants moving steadily forward, carrying the contents of a box of cereal that had spilled across the floor. There was no phone in the parlor, and she was not going to go upstairs again and look around. She ran into the front room and saw the same group of people descending the long stairs, a massive silent crowd now, as though they were at a solemn event. She stood directly in front of them to frame the shot. Not believing she could even do something like this—never in her life had she been that brave or stupid or possibly completely out of her mind—she took the picture, then ran outside and slammed the door.

The silent night surrounded her and the forest loomed in the distance. She raced off the porch, dragging her bag. There was only one house—that little white house nearby. And only one light, a small square window at the back. Esther had said who lived there. That piano tuner, some kid and his sister. There was no other option. She began running desperately down the road, her new camera bumping against her chest, the stars overhead shining as brightly as stars had ever shined.

NOTICE:

Mayville Community Picnic and New Member Meeting

Our children, our race, and our Nation have no future unless we unite and organize White Christian Patriots.

As we light the fires of truth to dispel the darkness around us and bring light to the night, so must we dispel those who would bring darkness into our midst.

This Order will strive forever to maintain the God-given supremacy of the White Race. To preserve the blood purity, integrity, culture, and traditions of the White Christian Race in America.

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?”

—II
C
OR
. 6:14

Come this afternoon to hear the truth and Join the

Traditional Knights of the White Christian Patriots

3 P.M. Village Grange at Axton Road

Dear James,

Now more than ever I know there is no going back. If we are not committed to this struggle we are committed to nothing. Thank you for bringing me with you. It was the most terrifying night of my life, and the most worthwhile. Those hours in the woods waiting for the dogs to pass, those horrible men with their lanterns. Hunting people as if they were prey. I saw the true face of evil in those men that night. It was a miracle we were able to bring anyone to safety. I was so certain we would all be caught. And in that certainty I knew that this is something I would die for and that I would be a coward and a hypocrite if I did not do even more. And when you held my hand, I knew that you felt the same.

All of this is to say: of course I will be there next week. I would be nowhere else but by your side.

Yours,

Fidelia