Gretchen rubbed her shoulder. It felt bruised and tender but was scabbing over. “Last night,” Gretchen said, “I saw the girls you were talking about.”
“Celia and Rebecca,” Hope said. “Were they playing with a rope?”
“You’ve seen them too?” Gretchen asked.
“I’ve seen pictures of them.” She shrugged. “I believe in these things because of Hawk. Because I trust him. Because I know the world is full of things we don’t understand. But honestly, my mind’s not entirely made up on what’s causing all this stuff. Science used to seem like magic, people once believed lightning was God’s wrath. We can call them ghosts and accidents but we may never really know what any of this is about.”
Gretchen touched the bite mark at her side, and thought of the pictures she’d taken last night—the ones to prove to herself later it was all nothing but a hallucination. It was clear Hope was the practical part of the Green siblings. Just talking to her made Gretchen feel more grounded.
“Listen,” Gretchen said. “I think we should take the car back over to Esther’s and gather some of her things, before . . .” She was about to say “before they take over” but had no idea what that really meant. Or why she suddenly felt so sure she knew what she was talking about. She felt like she had in the morning after she’d found the rope—a little light-headed and then suddenly very determined.
“Sure,” Hope said. “Let’s do it!”
“If you’re going over to the house,” Hawk said, startling them as he stood in the doorway, “be careful of Celia and Rebecca.”
Gretchen could tell he’d experienced firsthand some of the things she’d seen. She shuddered thinking about their horrible little hands. About the rope she found in her suitcase, the pain of those razor-sharp little teeth in her side.
“Why are they so angry?” Gretchen asked. “What do they want?”
“No one,” Hope said, “can know what the dead want.”
As if by some silent consensus, the three of them hopped into the car. Hope and Hawk got in the front, and then Hope pulled out of the barn and onto the low-shouldered road.
“Our mother was writing about the fire at Calvary Church for years,” she told Gretchen. “She spent a lot of time interviewing Esther, looking through her family archive. She said late one night on the anniversary she felt the whole congregation there. Sad, confused, scared, angry. Wandering around. She never saw them—just like me, she never saw a ghost—but on that day she said she felt their presence. The undeniable weight of history, she called it.”
“It’s ’cause you choose not to see them,” Hawk said to his sister.
“Choice has nothing to do with it,” Hope said, raising her voice just a bit.
Gretchen had to agree—she certainly had no choice in the matter when she saw Celia and Rebecca the night before, or when she and Hawk had watched the crowd of people out by the trees. She wanted to tell Hope and Hawk about the other creatures but her throat felt tight when she thought of them—of the thing near the darkroom, of her aunt’s face contorted in pain after drinking the chemicals. Her words in the moments before, Mona . . . she was here.
The countryside flew past as they drove, the woods dark and cool flanking the road. Hope had gone completely quiet, but looked more determined than ever. Hawk looked dreamily out at the forest. Gretchen thought of the people who must have hidden there, trying to make their way to the church. As she thought of Fidelia’s description of bringing people to safety, she reached up and touched the ivory hair clip. And suddenly had an urge to sharpen it, to make the tines as deadly and useful as a knife. What a badass that woman must have been.
Just like Esther, who had stayed alive for almost one hundred years even though she clearly thought about killing herself every day for the last forty. There had to be a reason Esther did what she did—planned it like this.
On a hunch Gretchen asked, “When is the anniversary?”
Hope looked at her brother in the rearview mirror, and then he cleared his throat.
“The day after tomorrow,” he said.
★ THE MAYVILLE EXPRESS ★
Reporting Above the Fold Since 1820 ? June 4, 1863
AXTON FAMILY BECOMES SOLE EXPORTER OF COTTON FOR THE NORTHEAST
Heir to the Axton fortune George Axton has been granted a cotton permit by the government to continue his work as a shipper and trader, purchasing the coveted commodity from at least three states in the Confederacy.
Responding to a reporter’s questions, Axton said he did not believe trading with the South was aiding the enemy and keeping slavery afloat.
Axton buys cotton for ten cents a pound in Mississippi, reselling it in the North for seventy cents a pound.
“We can’t ignore the wealth the cotton trade is bringing to our community,” Axton said. “Wealth is strength and strength will win the war. I’m not aiding any enemy.”