Dangerous Spirits Read online

  “I wish we could see it in operation,” she said, examining the stator.

  “As do I.” He shifted the pack on his back, which held their equipment. “But we have work, and we’d best get to it.”

  They left the town behind and made for the forest. It didn’t take Henry long to appreciate the unease the workers reported feeling in Devil’s Walk Woods. Even from a distance, the place seemed dark, a shadow on the landscape, bisected by the dull iron of the river. Seeing it close at hand did nothing to change his impression.

  “Should we take measurements?” Jo asked. “As we go farther in toward the old town?”

  He nodded. “An excellent idea, Jo. I should have thought of it myself.”

  She beamed at his praise. Henry slid his pack from his shoulders, wincing at a twinge in the left one, the old wound making its presence known. They measured temperature, barometric pressure, and magnetic field strength, before continuing on.

  Fortunately, the company had put in a rail spur to move building materials and equipment to the construction site. It cut a wide path through the dense trees along the riverside, small trestles bridging the occasional ravine. Without it, Henry feared he would have become quickly lost in the tangle.

  The woods appeared to have remained untouched since colonial times. The trees grew tall and thick, their canopies blotting out the sky. A sea of brown and gray trunks spread out on every side, made impenetrable by thickets of thorn and laurel. Water dripped from the leaves, and branches rubbed together in the wind, letting off low, eerie moans.

  “I wonder how many of the frightening sounds the workers blamed on the ghost were just the trees,” Jo remarked, the first time they heard a groan from above them.

  “Let’s hope most of them,” he replied. “Even if the ghost is here, daylight will protect us. The most the ghost can do, even overcast as it is, is watch. Perhaps play with our perceptions in some minor way.”

  They stopped every fifteen minutes to take measurements. The forest lay eerily silent around them—no sound of birds or chatter of squirrels. Just the creaks of the trees and the mutter of river water over rock. After a few rounds of taking the pack off and putting it back on, the ache in Henry’s shoulder went from intermittent to continuous.

  Soon Jo outpaced him, her youth lending energy to her strides that his decidedly lacked. Even though the day wasn’t unusually hot, it was still July, and a film of sweat covered his skin and stuck his clothes to him most uncomfortably. The grade was gentle but continuous, far more strenuous than the streets he normally walked, and the railroad ties seemed determined to trip him.

  “Let’s stop for a rest,” he called.

  Jo bounded back to him like a fawn. “Can we eat lunch?”

  “It’s not yet noon.”

  “I know, but I’m hungry. Please, Henry?”

  It was emotional blackmail, but he couldn’t help but give in when she turned those big eyes on him. “Oh, very well. I didn’t have much breakfast and find I’m a bit peckish myself.”

  They settled on the massive trunk of one of the felled trees. Henry took a long, grateful drink from his canteen, while Jo unwrapped their sandwiches. “Why don’t you like Mr. Ortensi?” she asked as she passed one to him.

  This wasn’t a conversation he wished to have. “I like him just fine.”

  Jo rolled her eyes as she took a bite out of her sandwich. Once she’d swallowed, she said, “No you don’t. I just don’t understand why. He seems so nice, and he’s Vincent and Lizzie’s friend.”

  Henry hesitated. What could he tell her? That he disliked Ortensi for the same reasons everyone else admired him? His fame, his connection with Vincent?

  Should Henry confess he’d lied about the society’s reception? Admit all these measurements he asked her to take might be for naught? Allow he might be making everything worse instead of better, despite his intentions?

  He couldn’t. Jo looked at him with such trust. She relied on him to keep her safe, to teach her as best he might, and hopefully prepare her for an independent life of her own someday. How could he tell her she might have made a grave error in placing her trust in him?

  “I dislike the way Ortensi issues orders to the rest of us,” he said, which was true as far as it went. “I know he was close to their mentor, but he isn’t Dunne. Yet they accept his authority without question. I’d prefer if he would be a little less high-handed a bit more open to sharing his reasoning.”

  “Hmm.” Jo narrowed her eyes but mercifully didn’t say anything.

  They finished their lunch in silence. Once they finished, Henry rested for a few minutes, while Jo poked about amidst the trees: inspecting leaves, measuring the girth of the trunks with her arms, and generally enjoying herself.

  “Don’t wander far,” he warned.

  “I won’t, Henry,” she said, her tone containing all the exasperation a sixteen-year-old could muster.

  He shook his head. Had he been this confident at her age?

  No, actually. Because by then, Isaac had absconded with all their money, breaking Henry’s heart in the process. Henry and his mother moved from their stately home in the better part of Baltimore, to a one-room apartment whose shabby walls let in the winter wind. He’d been confused and hurt, and blamed himself for all that had happened.

  Mother died before he reached his seventeenth birthday, victim to pneumonia brought on by the chill of their new lodgings. Father’s death had left Henry the man of the family, and he’d failed in his most basic charge, to look after his mother.

  He wouldn’t let Jo down, as he had Mother. Wouldn’t let Vincent and Lizzie down. Not again.

  Jo returned, her yellow dress bright amidst the dreary mist that seemed to cling to the forest. Her life had too much tragedy in it for her few years, and the sight of her smile lifted his heart.

  “Are you all right?” Jo asked, cocking her head to the side.

  “Of course.” He shouldered his pack again, grunting at the accompanying flare of pain. “Let’s continue on. We can’t be far from the ruins, certainly.”

  As he stood, a whisper of wind slipped through the trees, setting them to creaking. The breeze seemed to strengthen near the ground, and a zephyr of leaves rose up, uncovering the end of what appeared to be a wooden board.

  The skin on Henry’s neck pricked. He glanced at Jo, but she didn’t seem to have noticed the breeze. As if had been meant only for him.

  No, his imagination was running away with him. It was just an odd trick of weather. Still, he knelt to see what it had revealed.

  “What’s that?” Jo asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “It looks to be a wooden plank.” He brushed leaf mold from the weathered surface. “And there are words carved into it.”

  He tugged on the wood. The plank came free from the earth reluctantly, as though something held it back.

  Maggots erupted from beneath it.

  Henry shouted and dropped the plank. Crawling things filled the hole where it had lain, their fat, white bodies writhing in protest at the exposure to sunlight. His gorge rose, and he stepped back, bumping into Jo. The insects boiled out, thrashing blindly, some crawling along the exposed length of what proved to be a wooden signpost.

  “Ew,” Jo said, and bent to inspect them.

  “Get away!” Henry pulled her back. His heart pounded against his ribs. The sudden sensation of someone watching swept over him.

  “They’re just maggots, Henry,” she said in exasperation. “They can’t hurt me.”

  “I don’t care.” Henry cast about, but the forest lay still around them. Nothing stirred.

  And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling unseen eyes peered from behind every tree.

  He took a deep breath, fighting to steady his nerves. “Come along,” he said. “Let’s get to the ruins. There will be workers at the mill site.” Getting out of these empty woods and to a place with other people seemed suddenly, desperately important.

  “All right,” she agreed doub
tfully.

  Henry returned to the tracks and set off at a brisk pace. And refused to look back, despite the sensation of something following on their heels.

  Chapter 8

  “And why are we going to church?” Vincent asked as they approached the small wooden structure. “A sudden attack of piety?”

  Sylvester chuckled. “It’s not the church we’re interested in, but rather those buried just outside it.”

  Vincent surveyed the graveyard, enclosed by an iron fence. “The villagers burned Rosanna, and even if chunks of bone remained, they must be at the ruins.”

  “Ah, but it isn’t Rosanna we’re looking for,” Sylvester replied. “My hope is the vestry includes information on the reburials.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sylvester paused beside the cemetery gate. Peering inside, Vincent noticed a large number of freshly dug graves. Three no doubt belonged to the men killed in the wall collapse at the construction site, but there were far too many for even a rash of accidents to account for.

  “The dead of Whispering Falls,” Sylvester said, indicating the graves with a showman’s flourish. “Removed from their rest amidst the forest and reburied here.”

  Vincent frowned. “Why?”

  “My understanding is the new houses for the mill workers are to be built where the old church and cemetery stood.” Sylvester shrugged. “At any rate, the graves would have been disturbed, so they were removed and reinterred here, in consecrated ground.”

  Vincent folded his arms and cocked his head to one side. “And this is relevant to Rosanna because…?”

  “‘Bring him back.’” Sylvester rested his hand lightly on the gate. “What if Zadock’s bones now rest here, rather than in the forest?”

  Could Sylvester be right? Had some obsessive jealousy lingered even beyond death, driving Rosanna to fury when her lover’s bones were removed? “But the legend says the townsfolk fell on Rosanna immediately. Surely Zadock wouldn’t have been buried so quickly. His body would still have been laid out.”

  “Your point is a valid one and may indeed prove the case.” Sylvester let his hand fall and started for the church again. “But I sincerely doubt they dragged Rosanna away and set her aflame immediately, as the legend would have us believe. It takes time for such anger to erupt into violence. Drunken mutterings at a wake might turn deadly at the funeral itself. At any rate, we should be able to find out in the church.”

  Vincent followed him. “There’s a record of who is buried in what grave, I take it?”

  “Indeed. The tombstones were initially brought down along with the bodies, in hopes of being placed on the appropriate graves,” Sylvester replied as he mounted the steps to the church doors. “But time had left so many cracked and worn, there was little to do but discard them. The tombstones are what alerted me to the reburial in the first place—I’d hardly stepped off the train before being confronted with the sight of broken slabs. Needless to say, I was somewhat alarmed, until Mr. Emberey explained what happened.”

  Sylvester rested his hand on the latch. “According to him, brass tags mark each of the new graves, and a list was compiled matching the numbers on the tags with the names of those buried beneath. I inquired whether there were any plans to replace the tags with more permanent markers. He said it would cost a great deal, and the company had no such intention.”

  “I’m shocked,” Vincent muttered.

  The door opened beneath Sylvester’s hand. They entered the dark interior of the church, illuminated only by the weak sunlight streaming through the plain windows. The boards creaked beneath their shoes, and the air smelled of dust and the pages of the hymnals stacked on shelves to one side. Vincent followed Sylvester down the center aisle, past wooden pews polished to a sheen by the touch of generations of worshippers. A great wooden cross hung behind the pulpit; beneath it stood a small door.

  “Ah, here we are,” Sylvester said, opening the door. “The vestry, such as it is.”

  The space was indeed tiny, with barely enough room for a single bookshelf and desk. A spare set of vestments hung on a coat rack in one corner. Various ledgers crammed the shelves—accounts of births and deaths, no doubt. And hopefully reburials.

  “It would be the newest, I should think,” Sylvester muttered, half to himself.

  Vincent scanned the shelves. One crumbling tome caught his eye, and he plucked it free. “Look—the parish records from Whispering Falls,” he said in surprise.

  “Curious. I wonder if the legend exaggerated the deaths, and the pastor survived. Or if his replacement ventured into the church to retrieve the records. It’s one of the few structures the fire left more or less intact.” Sylvester shook his head. “Either way, it doesn’t matter to our current search.”

  “True enough.” Vincent replaced the old book, looking for one much newer. “Is this it?”

  Sylvester took the heavy tome from him and laid it open on the desk. Vincent peered over his shoulder as Sylvester flipped to the last set of entries. Thankfully, the parson wrote in a neat hand and kept meticulous records. “Names and birth and death dates. Perhaps he hopes the company might pay for tombstones after all. Let’s see…Prudence, Hepzibah…ah.” Sylvester tapped it. “Zadock. And it appears his death is the latest on record. This must be the man from the legend. He’s here, and the ghost is drawn to his bones.”

  ~ * ~

  The deep roar of the falls was audible long before coming into sight. Soon the scent of raw earth and sap accompanied the sound, and Henry and Jo stepped out of the thick woods into what had once been the town of Whispering Falls.

  Only a few weeks ago, the tangled woods had no doubt claimed this area. Now, the trees had been razed and signs of human activity lay all around. The ground was torn apart in many places, the brown soil heaved up where the stumps of mighty trees had been wrenched free. Several flat cars sat at the end of the rail spur, waiting to be unloaded. The foundations of the mill lay near the falls. Walls rose up on three sides, only about ten feet in height so far. One corner and much of the fourth side were ragged and uneven; no doubt this was the wall that collapsed onto the workers and killed them.

  To the west lay what yet remained of the old town. The ruins of a stone church still stood there, and Henry wondered if religious feeling had caused the men to leave its demolition until the last.

  Near to it stood the jagged remains of the original buildings, their foundation stones blackened by century-old fire. The ruins gave way to rubble, then to bare earth, where work crews had cleared the eastern half of the town already.

  Work crews who were conspicuously absent today. The silence lying over the old town was as deep as that of the forest.

  “Where is everyone?” Jo asked, her voice slightly hushed.

  “I…I don’t know.” Henry cast about uneasily. The only movement came from the falls. Water, churned white, leapt and danced over rocks as it poured from a high promontory, tossing up a shimmer of mist at the base. Worn brown stones showed through the spray here and there.

  “Perhaps they’ve gone on strike due to the ghost,” he reasoned. “Or perhaps they’re all out searching for the missing surveyor. Norris.”

  “Wouldn’t we have heard them calling for him?”

  Jo had a point. “Whatever the reason, we have the site to ourselves today,” he said, and tried not to shiver. It was broad daylight, after all. “This is good, actually. We won’t have to worry about convincing some foreman to stop work long enough to let us take measurements.”

  “True.” She contemplated the ruins. “Where shall we start?”

  Henry longed to investigate the new construction further. Not the mill as such, but rather the beginnings of the electrical plant that would be powered by the falls. From a distance, it appeared as if only the foundation had been poured, the sluiceways still under construction. The dynamos weren’t yet on site, which was something of a disappointment.

  Rosanna likely wouldn’t haunt the new buildings, though. �
��Let’s go to the church and take readings there,” he said reluctantly. “After we’ve canvassed the area, we’ll move into the remaining ruins. With any luck, we’ll find something instructive to take back with us.”

  “And impress Mr. Ortensi?” Jo asked with a lifted brow.

  It wasn’t Ortensi he needed to impress. But Henry couldn’t say that without betraying himself, so he merely gave her a quelling frown.

  They worked steadily, losing track of time in favor of scientific zeal. Unfortunately, none of the results seemed particularly conclusive. The temperature was lower inside the church—but it was a shady area whose stone walls would warm more slowly than the air outside. The readings of the portable galvanometer fluctuated wildly, but, as Henry had confessed to Vincent the night before, he had no real idea what they meant. How high would a reading have to be to indicate a ghostly presence? Might there be iron or some other element in the soil affecting the electromagnetic fields? He didn’t know.

  Still, he tried to retain a cheerful demeanor for Jo’s sake. When they took the last of their measurements, he rose to his feet with a groan. So intent had he been on the task, he hadn’t even noticed the discomfort in his joints from all the kneeling and bending over.

  Another discomfort also made itself known. “Excuse me for a moment, Jo,” he said, making a vague gesture toward the woods. She seemed to take his meaning, because she only said, “I’m going to draw a rough map and mark the differences in readings on it. Perhaps there’s a pattern.”

  “Excellent idea.” He touched her shoulder and received a pleased grin in return.

  Henry made his way through the wide swath of cleared land and ducked into the forest. The trees towered above him, their canopy blocking the thin sunlight and casting the forest floor into near darkness. A rough path, perhaps made by deer, cut through laurel thickets. Their branches snagged his clothes as he ducked between them. When he was certain of his privacy, he unfastened his trousers and attended to matters. Once again in order, he turned to go back the way he’d come.