Devils night, p.10
Devil's Night, page 10
She wondered again why he was living here, in this cramped, transitory kind of life, instead of in a proper home. In the house he had inherited from his mother. But he’d said he wasn’t ready to discuss it yet. She was going to be respectful, like he was just another platonic friend. Clearly, that was what he wanted.
“Have a seat,” he said, pointing at the couch. His bed was across the room, and he went over to pick up a few items of clothing he must’ve left there that morning.
She sat, slipped off her shoes, and then tucked her legs beneath her. Matthew went to the nightstand, where books were stacked on the lower shelves. He sorted through them, then pulled one out.
“Here it is.” He crossed the room and handed it to her. “A Devil in Eden.”
It was a paperback, bearing a cover with a nighttime photo of Eden’s Main Street lit up with a ghostly light. She’d never known who took that photo, whether it was her father himself or a friend. She knew that he used to spend a good amount of time up there, trying to study the ghosts. That was back in the 1980s and 90s when physic research was trendy, probably in the wake of Stephen King bestsellers like Carrie and Firestarter. She’d read about some experiments popular back then, things like trying to affect a random number generator with one’s mind, viewing hidden images on cards from across a room. Her dad Lawrence was into all of that stuff, plus ghost hunting. He’d wanted to become a parapsychologist and formed the Ashton Paranormal Society so they could do his little experiments.
Two of Lawrence’s best friends from college, Helen and Jason Boyd, had traveled to Ashton just to take part in the trip to Eden. It had all been so exciting to Penny. But by the end, Helen and Jason had gone away, and Lawrence vowed never to return.
But he was more than happy to write his book, ensuring that none of them could ever forget.
Matthew was leaning against the dresser, legs crossed at the ankles. He watched her patiently. She felt a flare of anger at that nonchalance—if he hadn’t been so damned patient when they were growing up, waiting around for their relationship to magically begin, maybe things would be different now.
Maybe I’d never have left here at all, she thought.
But that would mean losing the life she’d worked so hard to create—on her own, with nobody’s help. She wouldn’t be her own person.
“You going to read it?” Matthew asked. “Or just stare at it.”
“I’m starting.” She flipped through the pages, passing by black-and-white images of Eden in its heyday and Marian’s Wanted posters. Also known as ‘The Schoolmarm,’ they said. Armed and dangerous. She was drawn as a striking woman, if not conventionally beautiful. Dark hair pulled back, dress buttoned up to her neck with a bit of ruffle at the collar. Only her crooked smile hinted at the wicked intelligence inside.
Penny skipped past the parts about the Devil’s Night Massacre. She saw her own name on the page, and she began to read.
According to Penny, ghosts can’t see or hear us because we’re alive. “They don’t know they’re dead,” Penny said that day. “Sometimes they’re thinking about the people they love, or things they forgot to do. Sometimes it’s a silly thing, like trying to find their glasses. Sometimes they’re confused and lost. Other ghosts are upset. Even crying.” She looked down at her little notebook, her lips shaking. I almost stood up, but her big brother Bryce rubbed her back, and she went on.
“Or angry,” she added hesitantly. Beside me, Debbie squeezed my hand.
Am I doing the right thing? I thought. I’d ask myself that time and again over the next days. But no matter what I did or didn’t do, I knew my little girl would continue to see these things. If I could have, I’d have taken away that burden from her, regardless of my desire for answers. I swear that’s true. But it’s never been my choice.
Penny looked up at us. “But I’m not scared. Because ghosts don’t mean us any harm. If there’s some way that I could help them, then I want to know how to do it. I don’t want ghosts to be sad. Please, I want to know what I can do. I want to go to Eden.”
Penny had read this aloud. Now, she set the book down, marveling at how innocent she’d once been. And, despite herself, she felt some sympathy for her father’s predicament. If his claims could be believed, anyway.
“Do you think that’s possible?” Matthew asked. “You could help ghosts…” He waved his hand, searching for the words. “Move on?”
Once, she had wished that were true. But it had been so long since she even imagined using her ability that way.
“My dad wanted me to understand my ability, but I never have. For years, I’ve just tried to co-exist.”
“But you could do something good with it. Help people.”
“As opposed to what I’m doing now?”
“I didn’t say that.”
But you were thinking it. She tossed the book onto the couch. “Maybe I should go.”
“Don’t do that,” he said softly. “Don’t run away.”
Neither of them moved. It took a few moments for the bands around her chest to ease.
“Tell me what it’s like,” he said. “You never really described it before.”
She crossed her legs. “I hear them speaking, but in my head it sounds like my voice. Like I’m the one thinking it. But it’s foreign, too. Not me. I’d figure I was schizophrenic if I hadn’t learned things that would otherwise be impossible to know.” She’d found objects that a dead person worried about losing. Learned about events that she later confirmed in news articles from decades ago.
He said nothing. She tried again.
“It’s like…” She shifted on the couch. “Imagine that your brain can tune into a certain radio station that nobody else can receive. In some ways, it might be an advantage. Maybe that radio station is broadcasting something that you need to hear. Tornado warnings. Or something you want, like baseball scores that nobody else knows. But other times, it’s not saying anything interesting at all. Maybe it’s even creepy and disturbing. And you can’t stop hearing it.”
“I’d want to make the radio quiet.”
“Exactly. That’s what I spent years doing. I got pretty good at it.”
His brows knit as he nodded. “So, what happened today? In the hotel?”
“I turned up the radio. I listened. But I shouldn’t have.” Penny gingerly touched the sore places on her neck. The ghosts in Eden can be persuasive, her dad had said.
“Then, theoretically, you could turn the volume back down again.”
“But what if the ghosts in Eden really could hurt other people? Not just me?” What if that explained the body she’d found?
Matthew came over and sat on the couch, careful to leave a couple of feet between them. “What scares me the most is that you’re going to get hurt again.” He touched her hair, just briefly, tucking it behind her ear. She breathed out slowly. Then his hand withdrew.
“Penn, if the festival might not be safe, don’t you think you should cancel?”
She’d been thinking the same thing without wanting to admit it.
“Devil’s Fest is barely hanging on as it is, and if I don’t make it happen, I’m screwed.” She’d lose everything that she’d spent her adult life working toward—a life of her own. She stood up, pacing across the tiny room.
“In the past, whenever things didn’t work out, you found something new.”
She stopped and glared down at him. “You mean I’m good at quitting, then starting from scratch? You think I like living that way? I can’t do it again. If I mess this up…”
There wouldn’t be a next time at Sterling. Tripp would toss her out like yesterday’s Instagram story. Anvi would take over her place. Or they’d hire somebody newer and better. And that meant Penny couldn’t afford her rent anymore, she couldn’t make the payments on her loans. She’d be a failure once again, just like everybody here at home expected all along.
But if somebody got hurt, she’d never forgive herself. In the end, this was just a PR spectacle, put on for social media. It didn’t matter when compared to someone’s safety. Or their life. Was that really a possibility? Or was she completely overreacting?
She sank onto the couch again, holding her head in her hands. “I have no idea what to do.”
Matthew scooted toward her. He put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer. She put her head against his chest and let him hold her.
Once upon a time, this had been all she wanted—Matthew’s arms around her and an implicit promise that he wouldn’t let go, even if just for one night.
If only that were still enough.
Every summer while I was growing up in the 1970s, my family visited Eden for the anniversary of Devil’s Night. The ghost town had an eerie grandeur to it, and it was even better preserved then than it is today….
My mother’s stories alone didn’t frighten me, but my older siblings were sure to turn up the drama as high as it would go. Anything to get a rise out of us younger ones. They said that Bloody Marian had been possessed by the Devil and murdered a dozen men. If you found a mirror in one of the old abandoned buildings and said her name three times, one of her victims would appear behind you and frighten you to death. Standard stuff to scare little kids. On the other hand, my mother said that the ghosts who haunted Eden were just lost, sad souls.
I would’ve been in elementary school the first time that I heard something strange, unexplainable, in Eden myself. That’s probably when my obsession began.
-from A DEVIL IN EDEN by Lawrence Wright
Devil’s Night - 1894
Douglas carried Fitzhammer’s baggage around the back of the hotel. At the delivery door, he stopped. Another porter—this one short, with a thin blond mustache—was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, lounging against the railing of the wooden stairs.
“I got some luggage here for Mr. Fitzhammer, sir,” Douglas said.
“I never seen you before.” He’d parted his pale hair down the middle and pomaded it on each side.
“I’m new. We done just arrived, sir. Mr. Fitzhammer will be wanting his belongings.”
“You heard the rumors about this place?” the porter asked.
“Rumors? No.”
The blond man grinned. “Try not to soil yourself if you hear the ghosts.”
Ghosts? What was the man talking about? Douglas walked past, carrying the heavy case.
In the kitchen, a sole cook listlessly stirred a single pot. She barely glanced at him, much less tried to stop him. Fitzhammer’s suite was on the third floor—according to Marian’s information—so he searched around until he found the servants’ stairs. He left Fitzhammer’s trunk in an empty room. He checked the contents quickly—just clothing, books, toilet items—before heading up.
His boots thumped against the wood as he went up one level, then up again. As he climbed, he heard no voices or commotion. The whole place had an air of loneliness, much like the boardinghouse he’d been living in when the mine closed.
The mine that Fitzhammer had owned.
On the third floor, Douglas came out onto a landing. Dusty shoe prints criss-crossed the rug. Nobody had bothered to beat them clean for days. Once again he listened, trying to make sure he wouldn’t meet Fitzhammer or Marian on their way up the main staircase. But all was quiet. They must have already gone up.
Faint voices murmured from the lobby below. Douglas kept his head down. A year ago, he’d never have expected to get mixed up in a business like this.
But a year ago, he’d had a job. And his mother had still been alive.
Douglas had a small farm back home on the eastern plains of Colorado. The land was tough, and his mother had been equally ornery. Her only vice had been a pipe every night after dinner. She’d close her eyes and puff. Simple pleasures, Deedee, she used to say to him. She'd always called him that, even after he was grown and asked her to stop. Sara called him Deedee sometimes, too, though he was sure that Sara only did it so he'd kiss her to hush her up.
Simple pleasures, indeed. They'd lost Douglas's brother—small pox—and Sara hadn't gotten the child she wanted yet. Yet they'd had a happy life.
But after a couple of poor harvests, there was nothing to sell and not much to eat. So, like his parents did before him, Douglas set out westward, leaving his wife and mother to wait for his return. He found a job at a mine in Crystal as a mucker. It paid poorly and was back-breaking work. His best hope was to move up to better jobs once he’d proven himself.
He met Tim there in the mine. Tim had suffered from consumption since childhood, which had stunted his growth and made him look even younger than his seventeen years. At the mine, Tim ran messages. Douglas stopped him from falling once, and after that Tim latched onto him like a puppy dog. It was all right. They pooled their earnings and shared a room at the boardinghouse. That meant Douglas could send home even more to his family. Tim had a rare talent with an iron, and on days off, Tim gave Douglas sharpshooting lessons.
Douglas spent his evenings studying the letters that Sara sent. She knew how to write, and she had very patiently taught him his alphabet and simple words. But he still struggled to decipher longer ones. Tim also wished to read and write, and he started attending a kind of “school” with a teacher he called “Miss Marian.”
You should meet her, Tim said. She’s not like anybody you’ve met.
Douglas had seen her around town, her odd mannerisms and intense eyes. He had no interest in getting mixed up with a crazy woman.
But then came the silver crash.
The mine they were working suddenly closed down. The owner took off with a month of the miners’ pay. Then Tim came in, saying that his “Miss Marian” wanted to offer them a meal. Douglas was low enough that a free dinner couldn’t be denied.
Her shack was barely bigger than the table where they sat. She’d tacked canvas to the inside walls for warmth. Her proper voice didn’t seem to fit her strangely dressed body, at least at first. Her eyes were so wide and moved so often, Douglas figured she was not right in the head. Yet her words made a certain amount of sense.
“Consider the man who owns the mine where you were lately employed, Mr. Perl. An individual by the name of Ernest Fitzhammer, if you do not know. He refused to pay your final wages, claiming bankruptcy. But has he suffered much? I guarantee not. A man like Fitzhammer thinks he can buy our very souls for a few coins, use us as he will, then toss us aside.”
“She’s right, that isn’t justice.” Tim dabbed his mouth with a dirty handkerchief as he coughed.
Douglas gently set his spoon on the table. “But what are we to do about it? Ain’t nothing that the likes of us can do to change the workings of the world.”
Tim leaned toward him. “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’” he whispered.
Marian did not speak to his lapse in grammar, which Douglas later learned was atypical of her.
Tim rapped his fist against the table. “Miss Marian has a book about a man in the olden days of England named Robin Hood, and he had all sorts of adventures with his gang of Merry Men.”
“Robin Hood.” Douglas was not much of a reader, but he’d heard of that particular folk hero, as most children had. Nothing but fairy tales. “You’re talkin’ about becoming thieves and outlaws. Stealing from the rich. Tim, we best say our thanks and go. Because this woman is liable to get us strung up.”
Tim grabbed his wrist. “Please, Douglas. Just listen. Doesn’t hurt to listen.”
Like hell it don’t, Douglas thought. But he stayed. Marian said she knew where this Fitzhammer had gone now—to a town called Eden.
To Douglas, the plan seemed too good to be true. He thanked Marian for their meager dinner and dragged a disappointed Tim out of there.
Two more weeks went by with no pay, no prospects. Finally, the next letter from Sara arrived with the news of his mother. She’d succumbed because her failure of a son couldn’t provide. Would Sara be next?
He went to Marian’s shack in the woods that very same day. “Tell me what I’d have to do.”
Fitzhammer aimed the gun at Marian. “Get out of my hotel.”
“My men are still out there.” She saw Bart’s revolver in the corner of her vision. It had slid to the far side of the room. Hopelessly out of reach. “If I perish, they’ll come for you.”
She took a single step toward him, slowly. His eyes narrowed.
In the mirror behind Fitzhammer, there was a flicker of movement by the door. The knob was turning. Fitzhammer hadn’t noticed. She didn’t dare to shift the focus of her gaze.
In the mirror, the door moved inward almost imperceptibly. An eye peered through. Then a thin, gray circle of metal.
The shot was deafening.
Blood sprayed the mirror and the wall. Fitzhammer’s gun went flying from his mangled hand. And Douglas stepped fully into the room, holding his still-smoking weapon.
Any moment and someone would be here to investigate the gunshot. Marian ran over and kneeled on Fitzhammer’s chest. She jammed her hand over his mouth, cutting off his screams. She had to stop herself from covering his nose, too, blocking off his air until he turned purple.
We need him alive, she reminded herself. For now.
“We’d best hurry,” Marian said breathlessly. “Keep him quiet.”
She found a sock drawer and stuffed one of the soft bundles into Fitzhammer’s mouth.
Douglas’s usual stoic expression had given way to panic. “I had to shoot him. I thought he’d kill you.”
Her plan had just gone dreadfully awry. Yet she was exhilarated. “Help me tie him up,” she said.
Marian held him as Douglas bound his feet with a suspender. They turned him on his side and cinched his wrists behind his back with a necktie.
