Fitcher's Brides (9 page)

“What do you mean
he
says? You got all that from one tiny little noise?”

Kate then explained that their eldest sister was the only one who heard the voice of this supposed angel. She hoped Amy would recognize that it was the two of them united against Vern, but instead of establishing any such camaraderie, the revelation made Amy
more
resentful. “It's always Vern,” she whined. “Vern gets to do everything first. Vern gets to break the rules and we two have to cover for her. When she sneaks out of the house at night, we're supposed to watch to make sure she doesn't get caught. Never mind that she's gettin' away with
doing
it!”

Both her sisters stared at her in surprise. Kate answered, “Amelia! What a thing to say!”

Amy's eyes darted from one to the other, a nervous glance that made it clear she hadn't meant to reveal quite so much. Her knowledge of Vern's promiscuity was a trump card. It was power. In a moment of anger she had tossed it away. She had no choice now but to forge ahead. “You two think you're having secret conversations but sometimes you aren't so secret. I hear lots of things you think are just between you. Sometimes you think I'm asleep when I'm not. And sometimes you think you're all by yourselves but maybe there's a window open or a door. I heard Vern telling you all about that Italian boy.”

“He's not Italian,” Vern objected. “He's French. And he's wonderful.”

Amy laughed harshly, and even Kate shook her head. “Papa'd take a strap to you till your skin came off if he knew. Probably throw you out of the house, I expect.” She stuck her nose in the air and imitated her older sister: “‘Oh, you girls will find out one day what we women really need from men. When you're older and more sophisticated.' Pshaw! I don't know what sophistication's got to do with it. All I see is, they want to get your drawers off and you're helping them by going around without any on in the first place.”

Vern just gaped.

Amy continued, “You always think that ‘poor little Amy' is so simple and stupid that she won't realize—”

“Amy, that's not so,” Kate objected, although it was and she knew it.

“Sure and it is. And probably I am stupid, but I don't care.” She folded her arms, posing in a sulk.

Vern couldn't decide what to object to most—the accusations of her carelessness with Henri (even as she sat there she was reenvisioning how she lay with him and how she had to guide him into her because finally despite his boldness he knew less than she did about what they were up to), or the notion that she intentionally and cruelly kept her sister in the dark, when the truth was, she was protecting herself and wouldn't even have told Kate except that she just
had
to talk to someone about how much in love she was. She could never have made such confession to Amy, because she'd been Amy's mother for six years now and couldn't exchange her ironclad role for that of a love-struck girl. Kate, despite the fact that she was a year younger than Amy, was more grown-up about things. More to the point, Kate didn't judge her. Amy surely would, on the spot, as she was doing now. Amy, the open book, was as quick to judge as Lavinia.

While Vern and Kate sat in entangled silence, Amy kicked off her shoes and pulled her stockings down. She sat and admired her own feet, curling her toes as if she hadn't a care in the world. She idly asked, “Who is this spirit, then, hmm? Why's he in this house in particular? You say he's a Shaker, so how come he's not with them over at New Lebanon? He isn't the one who lived here before us, is he, so what's he doing in
our
house?”

Kate had wondered much the same things but had not voiced her doubts, being too curious about the phenomenon itself. She also had information about the history of the house that neither of her sisters could know. Had the former occupants met this spirit, too? Might the ghost have had something to do with their disappearance? Certainly, if it
was
a ghost, it must know what had happened. She even wondered if Vern had got the last name wrong. She could almost persuade herself that “Verity” might be “Pulaski”—she didn't know how well Vern heard the voice. Although the notion frightened her, she wanted to have a session with the rapping spirit by herself.

Amy told Vern, “I don't think I believe in your Samuel.” Then she leaned over to Kate and whispered loudly, “I think Vern's having us on.” She raised one foot straight out till her toes touched the wall. Then she turned her foot under and made her ankle crack as loud as the tapping within the wall. She twisted it back the other way and her ankle bones cracked again. “I do believe,” she said, “I got a spirit in my
feet
.”

Vern's lips pressed so tight, the color bled from around them. “I very much doubt it,” she replied. She got up and stormed into the hall.

Amy giggled and cracked her ankle again.

Kate sighed. “Oh, Amelia, why do you always think we're plotting against you? When have we
ever
?” Then she stood and left the room as well.

Until that moment Amy had felt terribly clever. Now her audience had gone. She lowered her legs and crossed her arms again, pushed her lips out; but there was no one left to see her sulk.

It must have been a breeze drawn by her sisters' departing that caused the candle to gutter and go out then. The room fell dark. It became instantly sinister. Amy glanced from one end of the bed to the other. She didn't want to be alone in here with a spirit. A
spirit—
and she admitted to herself what she had refused to say to her sisters, that she did believe in ghosts and believed they must surely be hungry for the living. For her.

She stood, but stumbled over her cast-off shoes and stockings and pitched toward the wall. She slapped her palms against it to steady herself, and the wall cracked so loud it should have split in two. The vibration shot up her arms as if the thing had burst out of the plaster. She cried out and launched herself away from the wall. She stumbled again on her shoes—they seemed to be sliding around, tripping her every step. The wall cracked behind her as if it would split down the middle. She flung herself across the bed and came up running in blind panic for the door. Her bare toes struck the leg of Vern's bed, which impossibly had slid into the middle of the room. She shrieked with pain. She hopped, fumbling, clutching at her foot. Tears flooded her eyes. She ran clumsily and all but fell into her sisters' arms.

They caught her in the doorway as she wailed, arms wrapped around her leg. They sat her down in the dark hall, both at a loss how to cope with her, how to silence her. But it was too late: Amy's caterwauling brought Lavinia charging up the stairs with one of the oil lamps. Mr. Charter followed close behind her.

“What have you girls been doing?” the stepmother demanded, and, taking it all in at a glance, pronounced her sentence: “You two, torturing your poor feeble sister. You're wicked, both of you.”

Amy wailed louder at being called “feeble.” “It wasn't them, it was the
ghost
!” she cried. “He would've touched me, he tried to, he grabbed my arms, and he moved the bed to trap me!”

“What foolishness is this? What ghost?”

Vern and Kate glared at their sister for revealing what they'd been doing. This was precisely
why
Amy found herself excluded from their activities. She hadn't the sense to keep things to herself.

“What ghost?” Lavinia repeated precisely.

It was clear that Vern couldn't speak of it. Kate replied guardedly, “Vern was communicating with…with something. In the wall.”

“Show me.” Lavinia pointed the way back into the bedroom. They turned, but as she passed by her stepmother, Kate glimpsed the strangest tiny smile sliding across Lavinia's lips—there and gone in an instant—as if this turn of events were delighting her. She craned her head back, but Lavinia was already herding her sisters in with her lamp.

It threw their shadows ahead as if into a hollow cavern. She lit Amy's candle from it, then walked to the far end and lit the lamp on their mantel as well. Wind whistled in the chimney. “You should have a fire in here to keep you warmer,” she said, then turned around. The room was all in order. Vern's bed was not in the middle but against the inside wall where it belonged.

Amy blubbered, “It was too in the middle. This isn't fair. He's put it back.”

No one much paid attention to her grievances.

“Where is this ghost?”

Kate pointed at the wall over her bed.

Lavinia marched around the bed. Mr. Charter trailed after her like a judgment.

Vern moved up beside Lavinia. With obvious reluctance, she explained, “You ask him a question.”

“What question?”

“Any question.”

Lavinia opened her mouth but said nothing for a moment. She faced Vern. “You ask.”

Vern pressed her palm to the wall. “Spirit, are you with us?”

Nothing happened.

“Samuel?”

“Oh, has it a name, your ghost?”

“It's Samuel,” she answered, her head bowed, brow creased. She stood a few more moments, then with a sigh removed her hand. “He's gone. He told me not to tell anyone, and now he's gone.” She was nearly in tears.

Lavinia's look would have withered an olive tree. “Is he, now? No doubt all the ruckus here drove him away, a bunch of screaming girls carrying on like they were half their age, and causing such commotion as this house has undoubtedly never seen. Mr. Charter?” she said expectantly.

The girls stiffened. They'd heard the request in that tone many times.

Mr. Charter studied the floor and cleared his throat. “Lavinia,” he said, “we've only just arrived, what possible punishment can we invent when there's no routine even established yet?” He said to his daughters, “I expect that you girls may not go into town now for some days, except as to help us carry supplies back home—”

“The
belt
, sir.”

Mr. Charter stood a moment before answering. His shoulders sagged, and the girls dreaded that he would obediently retrieve the heavy belt that Lavinia wanted. For once, he chose to stand his ground. “Lavinia,” he answered, staring at the floor, “I'll not take a belt to my daughters for the nothing that this nonsense is.”

The stepmother's Medusa gaze swept the room. Collecting the lamp, she walked stiffly out the door, her skirts swishing like whips.

“Papa, it was—” Vern started to protest, but her father raised his hand to silence her, though his head remained bowed.

“The spirits of children are corrupt,” he said, but without much conviction behind the words. “Those of us who guide them must remember they are born into it and cannot help.”

“But he's
real
, Papa, the ghost—”

“Vernelia Anne!” he snapped, then more softly, “It matters little if he is or not. The penalties we all endure are the same either way. Think on that awhile, if you would, before you make your apology on the morrow.” He withdrew into the dark hallway and was gone.

 

Amy sulked and rubbed her toes.

Kate told her, “You didn't break anything. It'll stop hurting after a bit.”

“But the bed really was in the middle of the floor. How could I have run way over to
there
.” She pointed.

“Oh, sister, you are cutting up the didoes with us. You provoke us that way and then you give up everything. Why couldn't you keep it to yourself for once? Why did you have to tell them when you could have just said you stubbed your toe, which is what you did?”

Amy refused to be made the villain, but could think of no adequate defense. Her soul
was
corrupt and spiteful—this she knew about herself, although knowing didn't seem to prevent her from acting that way. She supposed she should apologize to Vern, but she simply could not.
She
was the wronged party, the one left quite literally in the dark. In mute frustration she resigned from the battle. She turned away and went to her bed, where she started unbuttoning her dress.

There seemed to be nothing left to say. Kate went downstairs, out through the kitchen to the back of the house, and collected an armful of wood. When she returned to the room, Amy was in bed and Vern standing as before. Kate knelt and made a layer of crisscrossed kindling, which she lit using a lucifer match and striker from the mantel cup. She added the larger wood to the blaze. Only when there was a decent fire going did she begin undressing for bed as well.

Vern was still looking at the wall.

“You should go to bed,” Kate told her.

“I cannot,” she said.

“Why?”

“I can't
change
in here. He's watching me. Samuel's watching me.”

Kate glanced at Amy. “Sister,” she said, “if he's truly a spirit or an angel then he can watch you wherever you are. It won't make a difference what room you're in or even if you're in the house. And why should it, if he's a spirit—your body can't mean a thing to him. Besides which, he's gone away.”

“I know it, but I can't. I can't.” And she walked out into the hallway, closing the door after her.

Amy asked, “Now, where does she think she's gonna sleep?”

Kate hung her dress on a peg. In her chemise she sat on her bed. She was the one nearest the point of communication, closest to the wall and the ghost. She ought to have been the one most fearful. Yet what she felt was an unease less specific in its source than Vern's displaced Shaker.

As she climbed into her bed, she was thinking that they had been in this house for less than two days and already their world had been turned upside down. The world was supposed to be ending, Jesus awaiting, and Heaven approaching. What did ghosts have to do with that? Were they privy to the opening of a door between worlds? Could this be seen as a sign that Reverend Fitcher was right? If so, then why did she harbor such undeniable doubt?