Page 125 of Stay Buried

She felt sick to her stomach. The room seemed to lurch.

Mal pulled down the volume on the far right, which had the entries up to the current day.

They flipped to the page for October 2014. It listed the harvest festival, a marriage, and two births. Nothing about Anna O’Brien’s death or the town hall burning down.

Nothing about their mother.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ashley said.

Directly opposite the office, on the other side of the crucifix, Ashley noticed a nook they’d missed on the way in. It contained some kind of altar, with a large painting above it.

A Lorelei Prentice original.

They moved toward the nook, compelled. Malcolm flipped on the flashlight on his phone. The altar consisted of a heavy table topped with a large rectangular box. The box was surrounded by offerings: votive candles in glass jars, piles of coins, ears of corn, a bottle of liquor, pieces of jewelry.

On the wall above the altar hung a watercolor portrait, obviously the work of Lorelei because the proportions were wrong: a man with shaggy dark curls, a bushy beard, and dark eyes. He wore a long hooded coat and held a knife in one hand, a horse skull in the other. His fingers were too long, hands misshapen, face too big for his body, one eye looking off in the distance while the other stared straight at them. Two photographs flanked the portrait. The one on the left was a copy of a picture Ashley recognized from the pub: the blurry photo of a bearded man driving a cart with a dead horse sprawled in the back. The photo on the right was an old sepia-toned formal portrait of theman in the painting.

Ash made a little choking sound.

She recognized the man in the photo, though it was impossible.

“That’s… me?” Mal said.

But Ash wasn’t looking at the painting or photos anymore. They were up against the box that lay on the altar, which she saw now was topped with a clear glass lid. Inside the sealed case was the skeleton of a man with a stained horse skull where his head should be.

“It’s him,” she said, staring down into the creature’s dark, empty eye sockets.

FIFTY-SIXFRANKIE

March 17, 1919

We buried my uncle this morning. Only a handful of people came: Luther St. James and his son, old Mrs. Cutter who played the organ in the church and attended every funeral. Reverend Davies led us in prayer as we stood around the freshly dug grave, the pine coffin resting at the bottom. Pearl had wanted to come, had insisted she could get out of bed and make the walk to the cemetery, but I’d forbidden it. I’d told her about her parents. Tears filled her eyes but she had nodded bravely, told me she’d been expecting the news, preparing for it. She’d taken my hand in hers, kissed my knuckles. “You’re all I have left now,” she’d said. “Don’t you dare leave me too.”

“I will fear no evil,” Reverend Davies had said as he stood over my uncle’s grave, “for you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.…”

I’ve never been much for praying, so I closed my eyes tightly and made a promise to my uncle instead:I will become the doctor you believed I could be. I will put all of your lessons, all of your faith in me, to good use. I will go to Boston. I will get help because a good doctor knows when they need help.

I opened my eyes, looked at the small gathering, thinking it sad that my uncle didn’t have more people to send him out of this world and on to the next. He might have been an outsider, but he’d earnedthe respect of just about every resident in Boone’s Ferry.

But I knew everyone else was either sick or hiding in their houses with the doors locked, afraid to come out. And there was a reason for that fear. So many of the sick now ran through the streets attacking passersby, drawing blood, spreading the sickness. When you went outside now, it was best to take a weapon—a shotgun, an ax—and to keep your eyes alert for any movement in the shadows. These last few days, we’d watched as familiar neighbors—Mrs. Hodgson, my old grade-school teacher; Jack Dorsey, the sweet boy who ran the lathe at the factory—turned into something else, their eyes yellow, their breathing raspy. They’d throw off their clothes and attack anyone who crossed their paths. It was like something from a nightmare or a terrible book about a living hell. To make matters worse, the sick were still being gunned down. Shots were heard at all hours of the day and night. Bodies carted off to the church to be prayed over and buried quickly, without questions.

People continued to leave food, coins, and rum on their doorsteps—offerings for the knackerman. They did it even now that he was dead so that his spirit would be appeased and spare them.

“What are we going to do?” Pearl asked now.

We were in my room, resting together in my bed. I’d just changed Pearl’s dressing—her wounds looked good, showed no trace of infection.

I bit my lip, tucked a piece of hair behind Pearl’s ear, smoothing it. “I’m going to go get help. The weather’s been clear for days, most of the snow is gone. I’ll walk through the pass to Amsterdale. I’ll find my aunt. Then I’ll board the train to Boston and go to the hospital where Uncle Thomas used to work. I’ll look for some of the men he worked with there, men who trained him.”

Pearl sat up and threw her legs over the edge of the bed, fluttering her hands over her nightgown. She flinched a little from the effort. “We’ll need to go to my house to get clothing and a suitcase. I don’t need much. I have money and I can buy things in Boston. It’ll be dark soon. We shouldn’t travel at night. We should go first thingtomorrow.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head firmly. “You’re going to stay here.”

“Like hell!” Pearl said. “I’m coming with you. You’re not leaving me.” She grabbed my wrist with a strength that surprised me.

“Pearl,” I said in a soothing voice, “you’re not well enough to travel. You were shot and had surgery. You need to rest and to get well.”

“But what am I supposed to do? Just stay here all by myself?”