The Night Strangers Part 23

This morning Ethan visited you soon after Emily and the girls had left for the day, and he told you in no uncertain terms that your suspicions were accurate: Emily is becoming one of them. People don't tell you things, but you are aware that secrets are rising like distant thunderclouds. A new name for Emily and new names for your daughters. When were they planning on telling you? It is possible that Emily already is one of them. Just look at the plants that have appeared in your greenhouse. Her greenhouse. The girls' greenhouse. Ethan tried to rea.s.sure you that all of the pain you are experiencing will stop once Ashley gets a playmate-your guilt, too, will melt away-but you told him you would rather live with the pain and the guilt and the debilitating sense of failure. He reminded you that it wasn't a question of character. It was a question of strength. And he was stronger. The fact was, someday the two of you would do it together. It was inevitable. Think back to the evening when Molly Francoeur was over for dinner and a playdate. Or that night when you tiptoed up to the third floor with Tansy's knife. You would do it, he told you. You would.

Meanwhile, outside the house the birds dart among the trees-the evergreens and the maples and the mountain ash alike-and savor their return to the north. Even the geese are back now. But at least they have the kindness to steer clear of your yard.

You have three more steps to repair on this back stairway when you hear someone calling for you from the front hallway, a woman, and you believe it is Reseda's sultry voice. So, you adjust the collar of your denim s.h.i.+rt, smooth your hair, and emerge into the kitchen.

"Well, Reseda, this is a surprise. Lovely to see you," you say. You hadn't realized how sunny it had become while you were working in the dark of that back staircase.

She stares at you in that slightly odd, inquisitive manner that had led you to presume initially that hers was a mind that tended to wander. You have since decided that nothing could be further from the truth. It's almost as if she can read a person's mind. But of course she can't. No one can really do that.

"What home improvement am I interrupting this morning?" she asks. She is wearing a waist-length black leather jacket and jeans.

"The back stairs. I have no idea if we'll ever use them, but you never know. A fire exit, maybe. So, I'm repairing the scarier-looking steps."

"Do you have a couple of minutes?"

You motion toward the deacon's bench where once the family cat would sleep, and Reseda unzips her jacket and sits.

"I don't know if I've told you, but I am very, very sorry about Desdemona," she says. "That was her name, right?"

"Thank you. It was a bit of a blow," you admit, taking the ladder-back chair across from her. You wonder: Does she think you killed the cat, too? It's so clear that Valerian does. And Anise. And, perhaps, even your own family. And yet you didn't. At least you don't believe that you did. These days, you seem capable of almost anything.

"Cats-and dogs-poison themselves all the time. It wasn't your fault," she says evenly.

"Thank you. You want some tea?" Somehow you know she doesn't drink coffee. Did you learn this when you were at her house for dinner, or is it merely a suspicion that all of these herbalists prefer tea?

"No, but you're kind to ask. I want you to tell me something."

"Sure." You realize you have folded your arms across your chest. You try to casually bring them onto the kitchen table.

"Tell me about the voices," she says.

"The voices?"

"Who are you talking to when you're alone?"

"Good Lord, what makes you think I talk to anyone when I'm alone?"

"One of your girls told me."

You pause, your stomach turning over once. This is devastating news. You had no inkling that they had seen-that they knew. "And both know?"

"Yes."

"How long have they known?"

"I couldn't say. But they seem to comprehend you are experiencing something rather different here from what you were enduring back in West Chester. Is that accurate?"

You feel the first twinge in your side, the first indication that Ashley is near.

"Yes. It's this ..."

"This house. I know."

He shakes his head. "I'm not angry at you because you didn't know ... but you and that Sheldon character sold us a house with a body in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"If I could do it all over again, I would never have allowed you to buy this place. Never. I would have stopped Sheldon from showing it to you. That's the truth. I'm sorry," she says. "But the voices-"

"The visions," you say, correcting her. "I wish it were voices only. Then you could diagnose me a schizophrenic and drug me accordingly."

"But the visions do not involve Sawyer Dunmore. It may have been his bones in the bas.e.m.e.nt, but he's no longer here. You've never seen him."

She is watching you, and you find yourself swallowing uncomfortably. "No. Never him."

"There were children who died on Flight 1611. Is it one of them?"

You nod. "Ashley Stearns."

"Who else?" she asks. "Are there others?"

"Yes." The word catches in your throat and the syllable grows elongated.

"How many?"

"Two-plus Ashley."

"Do you know what they want?"

You see in your mind the knife by your bed, and then you have to close your eyes against the first migraine-like spikes of pain along the top of your head and behind your eyes. Ethan is coming, too.

"Do you want to get some aspirin?" she asks when you remain silent.

"Maybe in a minute," you answer. Then you take a deep breath and tell her in as reasonable a tone as you can muster of your visits with Sandra Durant, the PR executive who liked orange marmalade, and of Ethan Stearns, the father with the serious guns for upper arms who is so angry at the death of his daughter. And, of course, you tell her lots more about Ashley. That child, it seems, is the reason why your own family is in danger. Someday, when it all becomes too much, you may savage one of your children with the knife you keep by your bed. But you don't tell Reseda that. It is impossible to say such things aloud. Instead you finish by murmuring, "I had never believed in ghosts. But they're real, you know. Either that or I've lost my mind once and for all."

"They're real," she agrees simply.

"You believe in ghosts?"

"I do."

"You've seen them?"

"I have."

"The thing is ..."

"Go on."

"The thing is, they were my pa.s.sengers and they died when my plane was brought down by a flock of geese. There were thirty-nine people who died. Why those three?"

"Versus your first officer or the flight attendants or anyone else who was...o...b..ard?"

"Exactly! Why not Amy Lynch or Eliot Hardy?"

"The rest of them have gone on."

"To heaven."

"That word is as good as any," she says. "When we're living, we're s.h.i.+elded from possession by an aura. When an aura is sound, it's difficult for a spirit to penetrate it and become one with us."

She says this as if she is explaining how the immune system or a jet engine functions. A year ago, you would have a.s.sumed it was New Age nonsense. Now? You tend to have a more open mind.

"And you know all of this ... how?" you ask finally.

"Know is a very loaded word in this case. The truth is, I know nothing. I am certain of nothing. But that's what faith is, isn't it? We believe things we can't prove and have some confidence that we're right."

"They want things from me."

"I am sure they do. But if you want me to," she says, leaning in to you in a fas.h.i.+on that is at once provocative and intense, "I can try to make them leave."

"You can?"

She nods. "I can try. And if I succeed, I want you and your family to move away."

"Leave this house?" You are surprised by the loyalty you have to the Sheetrock and plaster. To the rooms you have made new and to the rooms that await new wallpaper and paint. You have changed the house dramatically. Made it yours.

"Bethel," she answers. "The White Mountains."

"You don't think we belong here?"

She shakes her head. "I think you belong here too much."

In the morning, John Hardin gazed up at the wondrous penumbra of lime green on the tips of the trees: not leaves yet, but waves and waves of buds. That moment when life moves from mere mist to a tangibility that swallows the twigs. It was weeks past the equinox now, and the days were starting to feel pleasantly long. He and Clary were likely to have dinner when it was still light out, which was rather nice, they both agreed. And there had been one last, torrential sugar run the day before. A person could have stood at the top of Mooseback, the squat little mountain just east of Bethel, and seen steam from sugarhouses in all directions. Over the weekend he had taken Verbena and her girls to Claude and Lavender Millier's sugarhouse to witness boiling firsthand. As John had expected, the Milliers' son had driven up from Salem for the weekend. And the girls had loved it. Verbena had been positively entranced. Said it brought back memories long dormant of visiting one of her grandmother's neighbors in the woods near the lake in Meredith.

He was just about to get into his car and drive to the office when he heard the front storm door squeak open and saw Clary walking briskly across the slate to the driveway. Like him, she usually rose and dressed early, even though she didn't have a law practice to tend to, but they had made love this morning and she was still in her ankle-length red nightgown.

"What did I forget?" he asked her, though her hands were empty.

"Phone call," she murmured, and he could see the worry on her face.

He nodded. The cordless phone didn't work this far from its base. He tossed his briefcase onto the pa.s.senger seat of his car, thought of the body of the dead psychiatrist that once had lolled there in mangy old blankets, and strolled back to the house. He noticed that there was a perfect line on the gra.s.s where the rising sun had melted the frost: The gra.s.s was white where it was still masked by the shade from the house and green where the rime had turned to water.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Anise."

"Ah. Thank you."

In the kitchen he reached for the phone. "Good morning," he began, "though I have the distinct sense based on the scowl on my wife's usually lovely face that you haven't rung me with good news." Clary was standing in the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest. Her lower lip was quivering with anger; she looked profoundly unhappy.

"I just saw Reseda. She came by my house this morning."

"Wonderful! I always want my girls to be friends." He was absolutely sincere in that he did want all of them-the women as well as the men-to get along. But there was also a layer of black humor rippling just beneath the surface of his remark. He knew that Reseda and Anise would never be close, at least not in the way that most of the women were. Reseda was always going to be something of an outsider.

"It wasn't wonderful at all."

"No?"

"No, John. It wasn't. She believes we killed both Hewitt and the psychiatrist. She said the death of the doctor-"

"Not dead, my dear. Only missing."

"Presumed dead. It's been a while."

"And he has, more or less, fallen off the radar. There was nothing on the news last night-again-and nothing in the paper this morning. He had no wife, no children. A deceptively easy man to forget. That sounded rather harsh-certainly harsher than I meant. I'm sorry."

He heard her sigh on the phone. "Reseda might not let him be forgotten."

Once more it crossed his mind that in their enthusiasm they had all moved too quickly. The idea had been gnawing at him. The reality was that half the town already thought everyone in their small group was a little nuts. And while he viewed most of what they did as, well, rather a freedom of religion issue-a First Amendment issue-homicide represented an arguably unnecessary part of their practice. It was one thing to risk sacrificing one of the girls. But homicide? Now that was nasty.

"Well, I'm glad she went to you and not me," he said finally, knowing-as they all did-that Reseda seemed incapable of reading Anise's mind.

"She will come to you. Rea.s.sure me: There is no evidence?"

He chuckled. "Oh my, Anise, there is almost always evidence if you look in the right place. I'm quite sure if the State Police ever checked my car, they would find traces of the psychiatrist. A tiny hair. A piece of skin the vacuum missed. But they would need reasonable cause to search the car. And I tend to doubt any judge would approve a warrant because Reseda pulled a memory from me and went to the police."

"She wants this over with now."

"I do, too."

"I meant something different."

"I know what you meant. Reseda wants us to leave the twins alone and move on. Accept the inevitability that a person ages and dies. Well, that's easy for her to say, given that she is still on the smooth side of forty. I'm on the deeply wrinkled side of ... never mind. So are Clary and the Messners and the Jacksons. And you are precariously close to that Rubicon."

"I think we should do it tonight."

"Interesting. I was just thinking how we may have been moving too quickly. And now you want us to move faster still."

"Tonight. Before Reseda can intervene."

He stood a little straighter. He felt himself growing frustrated and shook his head. He had always tried to view Reseda like a daughter. Lately he had even begun to hope that someday she and Verbena-who still, much to his disappointment, insisted on being called Emily-would both be like daughters to him. And if Verbena was like a daughter, then her twins were like granddaughters. And why would he want to hurt one of his granddaughters? He wouldn't! Really, what kind of man did Reseda think he had become? No, in theory nothing bad was going to happen to either of Verbena's girls. Nothing at all. There was a risk. Sawyer Dunmore was proof that there was a risk. But look how the tincture had worked! There was every reason to suppose it would work again. It demanded a lot of blood, no question about it, especially given the number of adults who would be present this time and how much of the tincture would be necessary. But both girls were young and strong. And they fit the recipe perfectly: They were twins, they were preadolescent, their blood had been leavened by trauma.

"Intervene," he murmured, repeating the word. "That would suggest that Reseda shouldn't be present. That she really is no longer a part of our little group."

"I don't think she is."

The answer made him wistful; he couldn't imagine proceeding without her-though clearly they would.

"So, should we?" Anise went on. "I really do want us to try tonight."