The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Churchwarry picks up and asks me to wait while he gets rid of someone on the other line. “Dante fanatic. Insufferable man. Thinks he’s my only customer,” he says. “Did you get Binding Charms?”

“Yes,” I say, and thank him. “That isn’t why I called, though. I just had the oddest experience. My next-door neighbor, who I’ve known my entire life, has things I’ve seen sketches of in the book.”

“You sound terrible.”

“I’m a little shaken, I just…” The words don’t come.

“What things?” Churchwarry asks. I imagine him pacing the shop. I can hear him prop the door open so that his wife can call down if she needs him. He walks toward what I imagine is the back of the shop, where the shelves are fuller, heavy like the reference shelves at Grainger, and muffle the sound of our conversation.

“Theatrical curtains, portraits.” I hear his chair pull back. Books being moved.

“One curtain looks very much like another, no?”

“They’re the same curtains, Martin, I know it. And the portraits—faces don’t change.”

He pauses for a moment. “Did he say how he got them?”

“He said they were his father’s, possibly his grandfather’s. Who did you say you got the book from? Whose estate?”

“John Vermillion, if I remember correctly. I wouldn’t put much stock in the name, though. As I recall from the rest of the auction, he was a consummate hoarder. There was no rhyme or reason to the lots. Quality books were butted up against ruined paperbacks. Pulp. A total nightmare. We were all bidding on pure speculation.”

“I just—I found out that my mother gave away her things, like she meant to kill herself. I saw the curtains and the paintings he had—my neighbor. My mother, she gave things to him, to the neighbor, to Frank.” It could be so simple. Suicide might run through my family with a genetic marker as clear as blue eyes. Simple and horrifying. Enola, on the lawn with her Electric Boy, carrying in her a thing I am powerless to stop.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and there is kindness in it. “I feel like I may have stirred a pot I shouldn’t have.”

My mouth fills with a coppery taste where I’ve bitten into my cheek, the sort of little wound that will swell for days. “It’s too much. To know he had her things, and then to see those paintings and curtains from the book. They’re the exact portraits. I need—” It takes a few tries before the right words surface. “I need to know who he is. He’s someone.”

“We’re all someone,” Churchwarry says. He means to calm me, but instead I feel a cold black fear.

“You should know that we die—they die—on July 24th. My mother, my grandmother, Cecile Duvel, Bess Visser. All of them, every single woman, drowned. Six days.”

“Six days?”

“My sister, Martin. My sister.”

A small gasp.

“Exactly.”

“Is there anything I can do?” There is something different about his voice now. If I could put a name to it I’d say it has the ring of tenderness.

“You like research?” He makes no complaint when I ask him to find out everything he can about my neighbor’s family. “Franklin McAvoy, his father, grandfather. I need to know why he’s got these things.” I give him names to look for—Peabody, Koenig, Ryzhkova or Ryzhkov (damned patronymics). There’s a larger picture at work, something that ties Frank to the book, to my mother, to whatever it is that’s killing us.

The next hours are spent under yellow lamplight. The portrait in particular bothers me. From the sketches it looks as though it hung inside Madame Ryzhkova’s wagon. A small column of figures nearby details expenditures—silks, herbs, salt. A fortune-teller’s tools. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Churchwarry starts tracing Frank’s family and I start with Ryzhkova, our research will intersect. I turn on the computer and do a cursory search for Ryzhkova. The name pings back thousands of results. Shit. Of course it would be the Smith of Russian names. Too much information is just as bad as none at all. Dates should trim things down, 1700s, late. Region as well. Most coming into the colonies would likely have come in through New York City or Massachusetts, Boston particularly. Philadelphia might be a stretch. Though she might hate me at the moment, Alice is still quietly helping me. I log into the National Archives, punch her university ID, and begin searching for ship passenger manifests.

When I collapse under the screen’s glow, I dream of walking along the bottom of the Great South Bay, or maybe it’s Jessop’s Neck, where the water is bathtub warm and the beach is lined with yellow jingle shells. The sand blooms with long leaves of seaweed that becomes hair, red and thick like Alice’s. A horseshoe crab crawls on my foot, then to my leg, clinging. It’s followed by more until I cannot see the water through the deluge of crabs. I wake, gasping.

Enola turned my computer off. In the quiet I hear her shuffling cards.





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