Where the Dead Talk (2 page)

"I’ll tell," Thomas said. He kept his voice quiet.

Jonathon spun on him.

"No you won’t," he said.

"But father said –"

"He’s just worried," Jonathon said. "These are important times, and if we don’t show the British what we’re made of, they'll hang the militias and occupy each and every town."

"Not West Bradhill."

"Yes – even here. We’ve got a good militia, father and Uncle Joseph are patriots. Known far and wide."

Thomas could come up with no counter to that. He took another tack.

"He won’t let you."

"He can’t stop me."

"But what about me?"

Jonathon smiled.

"You said you didn’t need watching after, didn’t you? You can’t always wait around for me to help you."

"I do not."

"You do, all the time. You’re going to have to watch out for yourself until I’m back from the war. Nathan and I trained for this – so I can’t back down now. For him."

He gathered his sack and put it over his shoulder, then swung open the window. The night air was rich with the scent of pines.

"Jonathon –" he said.

His brother climbed out the window, out onto the starlit grass.

"Well then – what about Carolyn?" Thomas said. He kept his voice a whisper. Jonathon frowned.

"You don’t understand, do you?" he said. "Of course not. Ask her father – or better yet, ask Nathan."

"What do you mean?"

"Who’s fault is it that the Brits found out about our powder house? That’s why we had to move it, isn’t it? That’s why Nathan was there in the first place. Treachery."

"But Carolyn –"

"Forget her, and forget all the other traitors."

With that, he turned and ran off into the darkness. Thomas watched after him until he disappeared. When he finally tired of fretting and pacing, he sat on the edge of his bed. He had to tell father, otherwise he'd be off in the morning to fight, leaving him all alone. He went to the window again and looked out at the starlit fields. Nothing moved.

His father stayed up for some time – Thomas could feel the floorboards shake as he walked about the house. Then all was still. Thomas eventually blew the lantern out and got into his small bed, and fell into a worried sleep.

His eyes opened some hours later. Moonlight fell in through the window. It was late, past midnight. Thomas didn’t move – was suddenly terrified to move. His eyes went to the window. Beyond the sill, the trees were black shores against a starry sea. Cool air rolled in. His hand found the broken fife next to him. He set his jaw and slid from the blanket, afraid to make a sound. The night outside the window was uneasy – as though something had just passed through it, close by. Something horrible.

The urge to pull the blanket back over his head and hide took hold. Thomas found himself doing just that when he felt a floorboard groan. Father was up, too. Thomas dropped the blanket and crawled to the door, wanting to stay below the level of the window. The front room was all shadows, charcoal and pewter. One of the front windows was open, the faded curtain shifting. A tall patch of darkness stepped from the kitchen. Thomas pulled his head back into the bedroom, then slowly inched his face forward again, peering around the door. Samuel Chase stood in his night clothes; his hair was shooting out in several directions. He held his musket.

"Father?" Thomas said.

Samuel startled, swinging the musket around. Thomas pulled back into the bedroom. Steps came and the door opened.

"Did you hear it?" his father said. His eyes were jumpy. In the dark, it was harder to read his words.

"What?"

His father leaned in closer.

"A voice. Calling for us."

Thomas shook his head. Something cold gripped his heart.

"Get Jonathon," his father said.

Thomas was suddenly furious at Jonathon – he couldn’t not tell now, but he was going to have to bear the brunt of father’s wrath.

"He’s gone. He climbed out the window. Before I went to bed."

"He’s calling for him, for your brother," his father said, as if not hearing him. "To play. Play in the fields."

He crossed the front room. Thomas followed after him, crouching. The kitchen was darker than the front room, being on the side of the house away from the moon. The windows showed clear the moonlit trees and fields that rose up to the woods. Someone stood in the field, a dozen paces from the kitchen, a silhouette against the lighter grass and trees beyond. Not moving. The feeling he’d woken with swept over Thomas again.

"Is it Jonathon?"

"Don’t you listen, if you hear it. Lies, horrible lies. This isn’t right."

"But who –"

A quick shake of his shoulders by his father.

"No," he said, "you need to go and get your uncle, and you need to do it right now. Tell him it’s come back on us. Get him here – and find Jonathon, too."

The thought of leaving the house was terrifying.

"But Jonathon –"

Another shake from his father.

"Listen to me. Once you’ve told Joseph, you ride and find Pannalancet, and you tell him what’s happened. Straight to him. Take Gunther and don’t stop to saddle him or for anything else, just go right to the barn and out over the field. Cut through Wilkinson’s piece. Tell –"

He stopped again, cocked his head. They looked out the window. The figure was a few paces closer, a mishmash of shadow and hints of pale features. There was something wrong about the way he held his head.

He closed his eyes as the horse leaped the brook at the edge of Israel Wilkinson’s field. Thomas barely held on. It had to be the British coming after the militia, the Chase brothers first. Both brothers had fought in the French and Indian war – his father had served directly under General Bradstreet at the capture of Fort Frontenac – when they’d been in their teens, and had been naturals to lead the village’s Minutemen. Thomas scanned the empty roads, looking for companies of lobsterbacks on the march, half-imagining the glint of muskets in every other shadow. If they blockaded the road, he’d still be fine – he knew the fields and woods as well as anyone, and no soldier of the King could keep up with him there. He wished he’d brought his fife, in case he should need it. By the time he crossed the Boston Road near his uncle’s mill, the moon was on its way down. No lamps burned, and the doors were closed up, pools of shadow. He slid down off the horse.

The mineral scent of the river carried on the night air, spray thrown up by the short waterfall next to the mill. The water drove the great grinding wheels inside – Thomas could still remember the sound of the wheels and the roar the water made, from before he’d gone deaf. He ran to the house attached to the side of the mill and knocked on the door. He pushed, but it was latched from the inside.

"Uncle Joseph!" he called out.

A movement caught his eye, from the mill. Something flashed by one of the high up windows. He went to the wide doors and pulled, but they were locked. The left one was a bit loose on the bottom, so Thomas pushed against it, leaning in hard with his shoulder. The bottom moved in, not much more than a foot, but it was enough. He wedged himself in, scrunching down and forcing his head and shoulders in, then pulling the rest through. As he came out on the other side, the door swung back down with a boom that Thomas felt in his gut. The inside of the mill was dark, save for where moonlight came in the narrow windows. It was strange to see the mill so still – normally it was loud and busy, his uncle directing the activity of his cousin and the others like a general.

He looked up all the way to the high ceiling and the walkway that ran along two sides. The wooden machinery and tools were neat against the walls, the tall grinding wheels were still. Below the walkway a swirl of dust spun silver in the air. Thomas saw a motion in the shadows.

"Uncle Joseph?"

He moved towards the stairs that ran along the walls. As he put his hand onto the wooden railing, the hairs on the back of his neck shivered. He turned his head. His uncle barreled straight towards him, eyes wide and a pistol in each hand. He shouted something. Thomas fell back on the stairs, raising his arms. His uncle grabbed him and dragged him to the doorway that connected the mill to the house. Thomas barely managed to get to his feet. Joseph stumbled in behind him and spun around to close and latch the door. He looked past Thomas and sprung forward, next to the large table. With a sweep of the pistols, he knocked the table clear – plates, knives, candlesticks, and a mug clattered to the floor. He put one of the pistols down and swung around to Thomas. He pointed at the table, then the door. Understanding, Thomas ran to the other side of the table and pushed while Joseph pulled. They wrestled it across the kitchen, flipping it onto its side so that its top blocked the doorway.

Joseph handed a pistol to Thomas, and motioned for him to follow. He turned and headed towards the back rooms. Thomas looked back at the barricaded doorway, then followed. They passed though the main room, passed the stairs leading to the bedrooms upstairs, then came to Joseph’s cluttered study. Joseph closed the door and went to his writing desk. With a few hurried motions he lit the lantern; the wick sputtered and spit. He knelt down in front of Thomas. In the lantern light, his features were more pronounced – eyes deep-set, his mouth a shifting cavern. He put the pistol down and grasped Thomas by the shoulders and leaned in close.

"I thought it would work this time, work because he was so young, and it was an accident," Joseph said. He was speaking too quickly to read it all; Thomas wasn’t following him. Joseph’s eyes widened and he turned to the door – he’d heard something from the other side of the house. His eyes went to the window and then back to the boy.

"I was wrong, wrong. Again."

The words came – nearly too fast for Thomas to decipher. His uncle was shaking. He stood and shoved Thomas towards the window. Standing in front of the small panes in the crosshatched framing, he grabbed Thomas’s chin, made sure he could see his lips, and then spoke fast.

"And you tell your father that I knew what she was doing, trying to do. And I did nothing when it would have mattered – and too much when it was too late. But he has to see it now, this is all part of it, their foul curse. Now your father don’t believe it, but that’s because he doesn’t want to see that it’s all around us, has been since back then. Taking everyone from us, pushing us to make it worse, as I did. Even took your hearing. Been a shroud on us since it started – it owns us. Now run to him."

Thomas shook his head.

"I don’t understand," he said, "but father wants you to come right away, there’s someone – British, I think – and he –"

Thomas was knocked to the floor in a shower of broken glass and splinters. He rolled and raised himself up on one arm. Joseph staggered back to the door. There was something on the floor between them, a large bundle of rags and pale stones. For a second, Thomas thought it was a scarecrow from the neighboring fields – but why would someone throw it through the window?

He looked more closely and realized that he was looking at a tattered cloak, and then his eyes found his cousin Nathan’s face, looking back up at him from a skewed angle. The flesh was gray and swollen, the eyes glinting a strange steely color. The lips hung open, and the mouth started to work. With unnatural speed, the figure on the floor rose upright and flattened itself against the wall, blending with the shadows in the corner. A tongue of flame and a flash of yellow lit the room; Thomas felt the concussion in his ears and stomach. Joseph stood near the door, smoking pistol trembling in his hands, lantern on the floor. Tears streaked his face. The corner was empty. A dark form clung to the beams of the ceiling.

He looked back to his uncle. The big man took two giant strides across the room and grabbed Thomas by the collar and seat of his pants. He tossed him out of the window, knocking out the remaining bits of frame as he did so. Thomas hit the soft earth with a grunt, dirt in his mouth and nose. He looked back. His uncle shouted, leaning out of the window.

"Run!"

Before Thomas could do anything more, his uncle disappeared back into the darkness of the house, yanked back with a dreadful quickness. Thomas crab-walked backwards, eyes huge. He scrambled to his feet. Behind him, the tall grass and trees that bordered the Shawsheen River shifted in the wind. Thomas ducked into them and barreled ahead as fast as his legs would move him. The moon had set.

They Don’t Stand For It

The common room of Brewster’s Tavern in West Bradhill fell silent at the question. The aroma of ale and tea hung in the air. Pitch in one of the logs in the big fireplace popped, the flames pale in the morning sunlight that painted the worn floorboards. They watched him.

"Course not," Jude Brewster said, "I’d never have done such a thing."

Beneath the low ceiling, nearly two dozen of the village men gathered. News had ridden in the afternoon before that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had ordered all local soldiers mobilized – the volunteers were to assemble and make for Boston. Samuel Warren had sent the message around and riders continued on in all directions bringing the orders to the other towns and villages north of the city. Henry Salter – Lieutenant in the village militia – took a last swallow of cider and put the mug down.

"If that’s the case, then why not join us, Brewster?"

"I’ve told you all before," Jude said, "my business is right here, and this is where I’ll keep it. I don’t have time for anything else."

"You had time for them British officers two weeks back," another militia member said. "Plenty of time. More’n enough to tell them where the powder was."

"They came for ale, nothing more. I didn’t tell them a thing – and I’ll thank you not to suggest I would, not here in my own tavern," Jude said. "Especially after what happened to the Chase boy. We all know where those officers were before they stopped in here."

"That don’t mean much."

"Means plenty," Salter said. "We all know where Dr. Bucknell stands."