The widow whirled, and sobbed, and I knew she heard it too.
The room flickered in the widow’s shaky candlelight, and Mama’s hex and my blood loss and shock rose up and conspired to show me another room, and another time. I saw Lord Merlat on his deathbed, saw the Lady Merlat-not yet the widow-kneeling at his side. “I cannot,” she cried over and over. “Do not ask that of me.”
She clenched a dark bottle in her hand. Medicine. A certain amount brings ease. More than that-and perhaps the doctors even stressed this, as the wet fever raged-more than that brings peace.
“I love you,” she sobbed, and this time her mouth moved silently with the phantom words from the hall. “I love you, but I cannot take your life away.”
“My God,” I said. The room spun, and I was back with the widow and the doors of rusty iron. “You think that’s why he’s back? You think he came for you because you couldn’t kill him at the end?”
She couldn’t meet my eyes. She looked away, the matches fell from her hand and she sank to her knees.
“I cannot,” cried the phantom.
She let out a wracking, wordless sob that sounded louder than all the thunder, all the hex-cries still ringing in my ears. She sobbed and caught her breath, and her thin body shook.
“He begged me,” she said, after a moment. “So much pain. I wanted to. I tried to. But. God forgive me. I couldn’t kill my Ebed.”
I backed away, toward the door. The throbbing in my arm rose into my shoulder, crept toward my neck. Dark spots began to dance before my eyes. Poison, I thought, and heard laughter in the distant storm.
Something wet stroked my good hand. Petey tugged at me, scratched at the door.
Do what needs doing, boy.
You’ll know what that is, when the time comes.
I lifted the crossbar. The widow didn’t see what I was doing until she heard the latch click.
“No!” she cried, but I opened the door.
The hall was empty. Thunder grumbled. I stepped outside, turned.
“Lock it again,” I said. “Lock it. And cover your ears.”
“You can’t go out there!” she screamed. “You can’t!”
“I’m not,” I said. I hesitated. Words were getting hard to form.
“It isn’t vengeance,” I said. “It never was.” I licked my lips, panted a bit, forced it out. “The kids know about the will. Know you’ve got to have an accident before you make it legal.”
Jefrey moaned, pawed at the air.
“He only came back on the nights the kids had plans for you,” I said. “He came back to save you. Came back to rouse the house. It isn’t vengeance he’s after, Lady. And it isn’t you.”
She wept. If she heard, I couldn’t tell.
I reached, and pulled, and shut the door.
I turned. Petey took his place at my feet. The hall tilted and pitched and I had to put my hand on the wall just to stay upright. If Elizabet and her brothers and their friends showed up while I was in that hall, I’d be joining the phantoms. The line of mourners still walked, but I pushed past them and stumbled back the other way.
Toward the doors. Toward the big dark double doors. I reached the ballroom, slipped on my own blood where it smeared the tiles, crawled until I reached the stairs. Then Petey nipped at my butt, and I stumbled to my feet and followed the lightning-flashes to the door.
I hid once, when the Merlat children came racing down the stairs, spilled onto the tile floor and went scampering off down the hall. I counted five-three Merlats and two angry henchmen, probably brothers to the man I’d just killed.
I held my breath and prayed none of them had the sense to look down and realize what those smears on the floors meant. But they raced away, toward the pantry, not the widow’s safe-room. Fetching more tools, I decided. Chisels and hammers this time.
I crawled toward the doors. Voices rose up around me. Petey clawed at the latch and whined and urged me on with yips and barks.
I reached the door, rose up, took the latch, got blood all over it. The dark spots before my eyes swelled and spun.
“I loved you,” cried the widow, and somehow I heard.
“She did, you know,” I said. And then I pulled myself up, turned the latch and opened the right-hand door.
The storm spilled inside, rain pouring, wind whipping, cold blast rushing. It blew the door back wide, caught the left-hand door, flung it open too, knocked me back and down on my knees.
I let the cold rain spray my face. The voices and the shadows grew dim, Petey whined and I opened my eyes.
At first, I saw only darkness. But then lightning flashed, Petey growled and there, on the lawn, was Ebed Merlat.
Ten long strides away, grave clothes wet and whipping, face pale, eyes rotted away, mouth wide open in a frozen lipless scream.
He walked for the open doors. Each time his grave-boot fell, thunder wracked the tortured sky. He lifted his stiff yellow hands and the wind howled and roared anew-and in the thunder, I was sure I heard the beginnings of a long, loud scream.
“All them years in the ground, boy,” said the voices. “Savin’ up a scream.”
He turned his eyeless face upon me, and I am not ashamed to say I rose and ran stumbling away.
Petey herded me with nips and yelps toward the safe-room hall. Rain and wind blew in behind me. That, and that awful thunder that meant Eded Merlat was one step closer to coming home at last.
I bounced off the walls and left blood on every surface, but somehow I made it back to the door. I collapsed in front of it, heard the widow weeping and sobbing behind the iron.
“It’s nearly over,” I said. “Not much longer.”
I don’t know if she heard me. But she heard, as did I, the sound of heavy footsteps treading slowly down the hall.
I tried to rise but couldn’t, and failed to crawl as well. The footsteps sounded louder, sounded nearer, no more accompanied by thunder, but with the loud crunch of grave-dirt upon the polished tiles.
The voices about me rose up, then fell to whispers. Petey stood stiff beside me, wolf growling warning, dead man or no.
A shadow fell over me, and the air-the air grew as cold as the heart of winter, or the bottom of a grave. I closed my eyes and jammed my hands, even my numb left hand, over my ears. I felt the iron door buckle where the dead man laid his hand upon it, but I heard no scream.
Mama’s hex let me hear something else, though. Ebed Merlat stood above me, an iron door and a grave between him and his widow, but I was able to hear some of what passed between them.
“I could not,” she said. “Forgive me, I could not.”
“I know,” spoke the voice I’d heard earlier in the thunder. “It is I who must be forgiven, for asking such a thing.”
“I loved you,” said the widow, and she sobbed and beat the door. “I always loved you.”
“And I loved you,” said the voice. “Forgive me.”
The widow cried. And then the door latch squeaked as it began to turn, as she opened the door to let him in.
“No,” he said. He must have laid hold of the latch, because it groaned and broke. “Goodbye,” he said. And though the widow pushed against the door, it held fast and shut. “I will always love you.”
As he spoke, I felt him turn away. Caught the edge of a sorrow so deep and so vast, it had bridged the gap between life and death. Then he stepped away, and the sorrow turned to rage. And as he walked down the hall his footfalls turned again to peals of thunder.
Voices sounded, upon the stairs. The heirs had found the open doors. Did they hear the footfalls, too?
“Daddy’s home,” I croaked. Petey licked my face. I heard screams down the hall, and felt the thunder swell, and then, though my hands were jammed tight against my ears, I heard Ebed Merlat scream.
All that time in the ground, Mama had said. All that time watching his wife torture herself because she couldn’t kill the man she loved. Watching his sons and his daughter creep and plot and sharpen their blades against this night.