While investigations ensued and everyone and his mule whispered of her exploits, Maggie Fox, down on the farm, had none but the impersonal dead to confer with. Ma’s lip quivered when she tried. If Maggie so much as hinted, Ma wept morosely and groped for her Bible.
In spite of all, Maggie got by, and so did Mr. Charles B. Rosna—by no means loquacious but present just often enough to keep his audience on edge.
When Leah wrote to say that she’d secured rooms in a two-family house on quiet, tree-lined Prospect Street in Rochester’s fashionable Third Ward, and that Ma and Maggie were welcome to join them there, Maggie’s joy was fierce. So was her passion to be with Kate again, to hold her sister and giggle and fall again under the spell of them.
But it’s instantly clear that things won’t be the same at Leah’s.
Ma kneads an embroidered hankie—one of Kate’s, full of jagged lightning stitches—in one raw, red farm-wife hand. “You know me, girl. I’m sorry for this trouble. It’s our grave misfortune to live in such a house. I believe only what I’ve heard and what these here and your father and our good neighbors have heard, and I pray for deliverance.”
“Margaretta,” Leah barks, riveting them all. Kate even stops toying with the cat’s tail. “What do you say?”
“Marta Weekman—”
“I don’t care what Marta Weekman says. I’m asking you.”
Maggie keeps her eyes on the ginger cat in Kate’s grasp, which emits a noise between a snarl and a belch and flicks its tail. Her gaze darts north in desperation, and at last Katie meets her eyes with a flickering smile. The world is instantly warm and wide again, as if the sun, withholding, has consented to rise. “I told you,” Maggie counters. “Ask the ghost. He keeps few secrets, it would seem.”
“And very late hours!” Leah says with altogether too much satisfaction. “Tell them, Katie.” She nods brightly at Ma, giving Kate no chance to do as she’s told. “We’ve had … a few visitors of our own. Sit. We’ll say all about it.”
“We were scarce out of Hydesville,” Leah begins, swollen with self-importance, “and still on the canal when the trouble began. There we were, minding our business, dining with the other passengers, when the spirits went to town with a great show of rapping. Then and there. The table jumped, and water came splashing from our glasses, but with the noise of the boat going through the locks, no others noticed. Thank heavens.”
Ma frowns determinedly.
“We got home to Rochester around five P.M. Kate and Lizzie went straight out to the garden, I remember. They weren’t gone long when I heard a noise.” Leah sighs, gathering strength for the telling. “Like a pail of bonny clabber being dumped from the ceiling onto the floor. There was a terrific jarring after that, and the windows rattled—I’ll never forget it—as if we were by a battlefield. As if someone had fired off heavy artillery. It shames me, but I was paralyzed by fear. The girls rushed in, all wonderment, and walked me to my bed. There we huddled under the blankets, much alarmed, trying to sleep, but the moment the candle was extinguished the children screamed. Do you remember, girls?”
Both nod, a bit too dutifully, Maggie thinks.
“Lizzie said she felt a cold hand over her face and another stroking her shoulder and her back.”
Maggie looks to Lizzie, who can’t check a self-satisfied smile. The poor housecat has given in to its fate and gone limp and tender in Kate’s arms. Perhaps to hide that gloating smile, Lizzie mimics the cat, jabbing her forehead into the crook of Kate’s neck, craving affection. Kate again seems as distant and mysterious as the moon.
“So I took out the Bible and read a chapter, and while I read, the girls continued to feel touches. I never did, I confess. Finally we slept—I won’t say easily. We woke with the sun to the smell of roses. The birds were singing in the trees of the public square. The night now gone seemed unreal. I kept my own counsel but had my doubts, and toward evening, Jane Little and other friends came in to spend an hour. We sang and I played piano—” She looks around for impact, lowers her voice. Lizzie’s eyes widen as if she’s hearing this for the first time. “And while the lamp burned, I felt the throbbing of the dull accompaniment of the invisibles keeping time to the music, though the spirits remained kindly concealed so as not to alarm the company. We retired at ten,” Leah concludes—at least Maggie hopes this is the end—“and slept quietly for two hours.”
“And then?” Maggie demands, predicting an encore.
“And then …” Leah draws out her words in agonizing fashion “… woke with the house in a perfect uproar.”
Leah rises out of her chair. She starts stomping about with her hands moving like a mime’s to narrate how doors opened and closed in the dark. “Someone, followed by a great many others, walked up the stairs and into our bedroom, jostling and whispering. All I can figure is that it was some kind of show … with pantomime and clog dancing and raucous clapping … and then their footfalls moved away and downstairs again, the doors thumping closed behind them.
“On it went,” Leah says, “night after night, the whispering, giggling, and scuffling of this spectral assembly. There were death struggles and murder scenes of fearful character—I dare not describe—but in time it was as if we dawned on them, slowly, and they included us. They gathered in strong force around us.”
Ma listens, transfixed, and Maggie can’t but wonder: Why would Leah lie? She isn’t the better part a child, as Kate and Maggie are. Despite Leah’s wry pragmatism and occasional inclination to wink or stoop to child’s play, she’s a grown woman, dour with her days’ burdens. Why would she lie?
Maggie must conclude that Kate and Lizzie have carried on without her, which leaves her feeling even more out of place and out of sorts than when she arrived. These spirits are not Maggie’s. They are no part of her design.
“It’s useless,” Leah sums up grandly, “to record all that’s come to pass these last few weeks. At length I engaged these rooms. This is a brand-new building, I’ll have you know. Construction’s just completed. There were no former tenants, so it harbors no history, no crimes. Come,” she says brightly, “let’s have a look around and see you settled. Ma, you look exhausted.”
Is it any wonder? Maggie thinks expansively. Lonely and tired in view of Kate and Lizzie, their tittering and giggling, Maggie lags behind on the tour. Things were difficult and dull at David’s, and then that long journey in on the packet, and here they all are, competing warily for some prize she can’t name.
Leah points out that the house is really two houses on a single foundation. “The cellar’s there, and this kitchen staircase leads up to the second floor and the dining and sitting rooms. On the third floor, we’ve just the one long room that runs the length of the house. We put three beds there and curtained off a space for storage.”
Maggie hears Leah’s tour voice, traveling along with their footfalls upstairs, but she’s stopped short in the pantry. It looks out on the fenced back garden, but beyond that, plainly visible from the pantry window, are the bleak stony tips of monuments. Her mind reels and orients itself. Prospect Street. That must be the Buffalo Burying Ground. So much for “no history,” she thinks, a smile twitching on her face.
She’ll have to work quickly, she knows, and with great energy