HUNG ON THE AIR. Until she had to gasp for breath, Cora
did not know the sound was coming from her own
mouth.
The break in her scream signaled the end of the horrified
trance the five companions were under. Thomas let out a string of
oaths, while Minnie and Charles collapsed into each other. Arthur
simply stared.
“We’ve got to help her!” Cora stood, wanting to look away
from the gently swinging body of the witch. The song was still
going, bright syncopated rhythms jarring with the slow death
dance.
Cora looked down, breaking her fingernails against the bot-
tom of the window frame. There was a door, somewhere, but the
window was their portal to this horror, and she had to get through
it — she had to get through — she had to help, had to stop this
from having happened.
It was her fault. The witch had warned Cora that death
was at her heels, and now she had brought it here. She hadn’t
wanted this.
Had she?
“She’s dead.” Arthur’s voice sounded as though it were coming
from a very far distance. “If she were choking, she’d be twitching.
Her neck is snapped.”
“How do you know?” Thomas said, helping Cora with the
window to no avail.
Arthur took Cora’s hands and held them in his own, turning
her away from the glass. He didn’t look at Thomas as he answered.
“I’ve seen a hanged body before.”
“We need —” Cora took a deep breath. She could still see the
woman’s white slip behind her closed eyes. “We need to get
Daniel. He lives closer than the police chief.”
“She’s already dead. We weren’t supposed to be here. It won’t
do any good for anyone.” Arthur’s voice was a murmur blending
into the night sounds. The music had stopped, leaving nothing
but the breeze whispering secrets to the trees; Cora couldn’t tell
whether the quiet made things feel better or worse.
“I won’t have her left like that.” Cora pulled her hands away
from Arthur, shoving one into her skirt pocket and running the
other through her hair. “No one comes here. It could be a week or
more before someone discovers her. She doesn’t deserve that.” Her
voice broke and she closed her eyes, trying to take comfort from
the worn stone in her pocket. She didn’t want the witch dead. She
didn’t. This wasn’t her fault.
There was work to be done, and she would do it. Work was her
salvation. “Minnie,” she said, “take Charles home.”
Minnie and Charles still huddled on the ground, holding on
to each other. Charles’s breathing was fast, his eyes unnaturally
bright. Minnie looked up at Cora, anguish written on her features.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I just wanted . . . I just wanted to
have another story with you.”
“Go home, Minnie! Now!”
Her sister’s shoulders folded in on themselves, no trace of wild
energy left. For a moment Cora leaned forward, wanting to take
Minnie into her arms, to whisper sweet stories in her ear, to share
warm, safe secrets in a space all their own.
But no. No stories. Minnie’s stories had done enough for one
night, and a wave of resentment washed away Cora’s tender impulses.
Thomas helped Charles up. “Go slowly,” he said. He frowned
as he watched the two of them walk back down the hill, arms
around each other as though both were on the verge of falling.
“You should go with them,” Cora said. She brushed off the
front of her skirts and set her jaw determinedly, betrayed only by
the slightest trembling.
Thomas took off his jacket and put it around her; his shirt
was striped, accentuating the long, lean lines of his arms and
slope of his shoulders. Earlier today Cora had thought him quite
handsome. Now they all looked like ghostly photographs of
themselves — washed out and indistinct.
“I’m not leaving you to this business alone,” Thomas said. “We
all decided to come. I’ll see it through.” They set off down the hill
“We were taking a walk for my brother’s health,” Thomas said
as they neared a tiny cottage set off from the road, the trees around
slowly reclaiming the yard for the forest. “You and Minnie and
Arthur came along at our request so we wouldn’t get lost on unfa-
miliar streets. We heard music playing loudly and wondered if
something was wrong. Charles and Minnie turned around because
he was tired, and the three of us went up the hill to check things
out. When we got to the window we saw her, already hanging.”
Cora looked down at her feet as they slid out from under her
skirt and back again. The burden of this lie hung heavy on
her shoulders already. “We should have stopped her,” she whis-
pered, a tightness in her chest threatening to overwhelm her.
“She would have done it whether or not we were there.”
Thomas sounded angry, and Cora flinched until she realized he
was talking to himself more than anyone else. “It would have hap-
pened no matter what. We couldn’t have stopped it.” He paused,
and looked suddenly so tired she wondered whether the weight on
his shoulders wasn’t more than just tonight. He shrugged as
though trying to wriggle out from beneath something. “We didn’t
do anything wrong.”
“Then why are we lying?” Cora wiped at her face. The world
that she had worked so hard to make ordered and peaceful in the
airless, aching absence of her father had shifted into one of
Minnie’s stories, and she didn’t know how to put everything back
into place. She knew — had always known — that house was
nothing but death.
At least it isn’t Minnie, Cora thought with a ferocity that star-
tled her. The witch can take the burden of death this time.
She raised her fist and knocked on Daniel’s door, the rough
grains providing a stinging reproach against her knuckles. She
waited a few moments and then knocked again.
A thump and a muffled curse came from inside, followed by a
gravelly caution to wait. The seams of the door came to life with
the glow of a lantern before it opened and Daniel stood, in a night-
shirt with trousers pulled on beneath. His light hair was mussed,
the remains of pomade causing the back to stick up in a way she
would have smiled at another time.
“Cora?” he asked, squinting out at them. “Is your mother
hurt? What’s wrong?”
“No, not my mother. I’m sorry. I —” The words lodged in her
throat. Daniel had only recently been promoted to deputy. Not
four summers ago they had sat together with the other local chil-
dren on the banks of the creek, watching their feet turn violent red
and tingly from the chill of the water, laughing at Minnie’s face
deliberately smeared with wild berries to look like blood. That
vision of light-drenched youth broke against the night around her,
scattering away into pieces she’d nev
er find again.
Growing up, she found, was a heartbreaking endeavor.
“Come inside, you look about to faint. Is that Arthur? And
who’s this?”
“Thomas Wolcott, sir. We’ve got some bad news.”
Cora leaned against the door frame, barely hearing the story as
Thomas laid it out. She felt heavy and thick with guilt. If she had
stayed at home, if she had stayed in bed, it wouldn’t have hap-
pened. She felt in her bones that seeing it had made it happen, that
she had pulled death right to the witch’s door.
“Oh, Mary.” Daniel said the woman’s name like a prayer, and
Cora felt it pierce her heart and drop down to the ground.
Mary.
Daniel pulled on a coat, buttoning it slowly over his night-
shirt. “Come on, then,” he said, wearier than the hour alone could
account for. When had he grown so old? Was the same weight of
living traced into Cora’s own face now?
“Sir, do you want us to go with you?” Thomas asked.
“It’s too late and too far to go for the chief. I’ll need help get-
ting her body down. Not right to leave her until morning.”
“I’ll take Cora home,” Arthur said, and Cora saw the way the
other two men startled, looking to the corner of the bottom step
else seemed to. Except Minnie, who always dragged him out of the
shadows.
“No, I want to come. She needs —” She squeezed her eyes
shut against the vision of the witch — Mary — swaying at the
end of her life. “She needs something over her slip before any more
people see her. I should do that.”
The walk back to the hill took far less time than it ought to have.
Before Cora could steel herself for the task ahead, they were bathed
in the falsely warm light of the window. Arthur let out a sharp hiss of
a breath. Cora snapped her eyes up and looked through the window.
There was no one there.
“Where is she?” Thomas cried, pressing his hands to the glass.
There was no body, no rope. The ladder stood against the wall,
apparently innocent of its role as accomplice.
Daniel’s voice had a wary edge to it now. “You said she hanged
herself in this room?”
“She did! We saw it! She was right there!” Thomas jabbed his
finger against the glass. “Someone must have moved the body.”
Without another word, Daniel strode past them. Cora didn’t
know whether to follow or stay put; either way, her feet wouldn’t
move. She and Thomas and Arthur had taken twenty minutes at
most to return. Mary wasn’t just gone — the entire scene had been
cleared, rewritten.
“The doors are all locked,” Daniel said when he returned. “I
knocked and there was no answer. You’re certain you saw what you
thought you saw?”
“We did! We all did.” Thomas remained at his post by the
window, staring in as though if he looked away things might re-
arrange themselves again. “Someone must have come.”
“There’s no one in there. Cora, I —” Daniel shook his head,
looking away. “We all expect this kind of thing from Minnie, but
not from you. Leave Mary alone.”
She shook her head in tiny, fluttering movements. “No, no, I
would never . . . I’m sorry, we thought . . . we saw . . .” She bowed
her head, defeated by the mysteries of the night. “I’m sorry.”
“Go home,” Daniel growled, shrugging his coat closer. “And
keep better company, Cora, or I’ll have words with your mother.”
He strode down the hill and away from them.
“I know what I saw,” Thomas said, finally tearing his eyes
away from the window to fix them on Cora and Arthur with an
angry intensity. “You saw it, too. We all saw it.”
Cora stared at the room with a dull, creeping dread, the
scar on her scalp tight beneath her hair. If death hadn’t claimed
Mary, that meant it was still lurking, looking for someone else
to take.
“We were wrong,” she whispered. “We need to leave.”
September, 1918
seven
A
RTHUR WAS WELL AWARE OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN
SOMEONE DROPPED TO THE END OF A ROPE AND DID NOT
TWITCH. There was no slow suffocating death, no chok-
ing out of life. No chance to save her.
He hadn’t been meant to be home when it had happened, but
back then he’d rarely been where he was supposed to be. If his
mother had known he was there, she wouldn’t have done it. She
would have done it eventually, but not then, not when he would
see and try and fail to save her. She’d loved him very much, and he
knew it.
But it hadn’t stopped her from leaving him.
Arthur knew that the woman who’d hanged herself inside this
house tonight was not his mother. He knew she had nothing to do
with him, but she was important to Cora in some strange way, and
so she was important to him, too. He needed to understand what
had happened so he could take the memory of the snap at the end
of a rope and place it into a box and bury that box with all the
other boxes buried in the dark corners of his mind.
He watched, silent and unmoving, as Thomas paced angrily.
“We were not wrong! We did not all imagine the same thing! I
don’t know if it was a trick, or . . .” Thomas paused, mouth nar-
rowing to a dark slash across his face. “If you planned this, if you
all got together and thought you’d scare us, I swear I’ll —”
“Shut up,” Arthur said, his voice low. “We all saw it.” He
reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his lock pick, then
walked toward the front of the house.
“Where are you going?” Cora asked.
“Inside.”
By the time Cora and Thomas caught up to him, Arthur
was already crouched in front of the door, working the lock.
Though they could not see it, he was angry, too, his swift, sure
fingers shaking as they worked the lock. He could taste his
rage; it was hard and metallic and no amount of swallowing rid
him of it.
When the lock slid out of place with the familiar soft snicking
sound, he had no choice but to go into the house.
“We can’t go in there!” Thomas said from behind him, but
Arthur walked directly forward, not even sidling along the edge of
the wall or looking for other ways to leave the room. He glanced
back only once to see he was followed by Thomas, whose presence
felt like the itchy tightness of salt water drying on skin. Cora did
not follow. That was better.
They were not likely to be alone in the house, and if it were a
good person who had taken Mary’s body down, he would have
answered the door when Daniel had knocked. This did not worry
Arthur. He trusted wicked people far more than good people,
because wicked people acted in their own best interest, whereas
good people’s actions often made no sense at all.
The room, lit to wanton brightness by candles and lamps scat-
tered about on various tables and even
the floor, was cluttered with
mismatched furniture. Arthur traced his fingers along a writing
desk; there was no note, nothing freshly written. A packet of let-
ters, unopened, addressed to a Mary Smith. Something about the
writing tickled the back of his mind, and he tucked them into his
vest, along with a sharp letter opener.
“What are we doing in here?” Thomas asked, standing in the
middle of the room, eyes darting about as though hanging were
contagious.
Arthur walked past a low green sofa to where the simple wood
ladder leaned against the wall. He looked to the exposed beam
rafters of the ceiling, but there was no trace of the rope. The pho-
nograph sat on a table near the chair, the round black record still
in place.
There was a dim hallway leading toward the back of the house
and the stairs, but Arthur felt Cora’s presence outside like a mag-
net. He’d already had to lose track of Minnie for the night, and he
refused to be farther from both of them than absolutely necessary.
He didn’t know Mary, but he did not trust odd happenings. Not
in this town.
Other than the hallway, there was a door in the wall immedi-
ately opposite of where they had watched through the window. He
crossed to it and the door slid open easily; the room on the other
side was dark.
“Here,” Thomas whispered behind him, holding a candle.
Arthur nodded, surprised the other boy was paying enough atten-
tion to be helpful. The candle’s flame threw everything into a
riddle of deep shadows and orange echoes. The room appeared to
be made entirely of books. All the walls, floor to ceiling, were
lined with spines and shelves. Other than a sofa, the room was
devoid of anything else. Arthur wanted to look at the books, but
there were too many.
His father had always been surrounded by books, too. They
painted a picture of a man obsessed with strange alternate histo-
ries, conspiracies, dark secrets. Paranoia that got him laughed out
of his professorship. Mary’s books would doubtless tell stories
about who she was as well.
“Nothing,” Arthur said, starting to turn, when someone in the