“What makes you think it’s a servant?”
“I don’t think that necessarily,” Carolyn explained. “It’s just one possibility. It could be anyone. Someone who lived in the village.” A thought occurred to her. “It could be the father of Beatrice’s baby, whoever he was.”
“Yeah,” Douglas said. “If only we knew who he was.”
Carolyn’s eyes were sparkling. “Get your bike. We’re going into town.”
Douglas stood. “Sure, but why? Where are we going?”
“Back to the town clerk’s office.”
Douglas made a face. “We’ve been there before. There’s no record of Beatrice’s death.”
“I’m not looking for a death record this time,” said Carolyn. “Last time, we didn’t know Beatrice’s last name. We could only look up records by date. Now that we know her name was Swan, we can look up some birth records.”
Douglas was nodding. “Beatrice’s birth record…”
Carolyn smiled. “And more importantly, her baby’s…”
In moments they were flying down the hill on Douglas’s bike, both of them wrapped in rubber raincoats. Despite the whipping rain and the chill wind, their spirits were high. And Douglas couldn’t deny how much he liked the feeling of Carolyn’s arms wrapped around him, her face resting against his shoulder. Suddenly he was filled with the urge just to keep driving, bypass the village, just get on the highway and head to Canada. Surely the forces that had ruled his family for eight decades wouldn’t follow them over the border. He laughed to himself at the absurdity of it all and turned the bike into the parking lot of the town hall.
Inside, peeling off their wet raincoats, Douglas realized they didn’t have a lot of time. It was nearly four o’clock, and the clerk’s office closed at four-thirty. “Clock’s ticking,” he said.
Carolyn looked at him. “I’m all too aware of that,” she said.
He knew what she meant. It wasn’t just today’s clock that worried her. The lottery would be held in two days. Time was running out.
The clerk brought them a large ledger with the word BIRTHS imprinted in gold on the spine. On the top she had placed a computer printout. Consisting of several stapled pages, it was a list of names. The top sheet had names all beginning with A.
“This helps a great deal,” the clerk told them, tapping the printout. “The original records weren’t indexed. But this was done not so long ago to help you more quickly get to the record you need.”
“Thank you,” Carolyn said, eagerly flipping through the list to the page containing the S names. “Here she is,” she said within seconds. “Beatrice Swan, born 1911, page 383.”
Douglas opened the heavy volume and turned to the correct page. There, in faded handwriting, was the entry marking Beatrice’s entrance into this world. Her father was Horace Swan, a farmer. Her mother was the former Jeanne Trudeau, born in Quebec. It seemed terribly odd staring down at the sheet of paper that bore witness to Beatrice’s life, when they knew her only as an anguished spirit, roaming the estate, trapped in eternal grief. But here she was a flesh-and-blood baby, somebody’s daughter. Douglas remembered seeing her that day on the cliffs, and his heart broke.
Carolyn told him to write down the information as she flipped through the printout. “Now, we need to find a Swan birth in the year 1930,” she said. She flipped ahead a few pages. “Yes! Oh, thank God, yes! It’s here! Baby Swan, born May twentieth, 1930, page 785.” She looked over at Douglas. “It’s marked ‘illegitimate.’”
“Will it tell us the father’s name?” he asked as he began turning the pages in the old dusty volume.
“Let’s pray,” Carolyn said.
But there was no page 785.
“That can’t be,” Douglas said. “Wait a minute.” He turned back a page. “Page 783, with 784 on the back.” He gulped. “Then it’s page 787, with 788 on the back.”
“Look,” Carolyn said, her voice betraying her disappointment. “You can see there once was a page here, but it’s been torn out.”
Indeed, in the gutter of the book, there was a faint remnant of a torn page.
“Who tore it out?” Douglas asked. “And why?”
Carolyn made a face. “We might not be able to answer those questions just yet, but we can maybe find out when.”
She rang the little bell on the counter, and the clerk came back out from her office.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Carolyn said, “but I have a question. When was this computerized index compiled?”
“I think it was 1990,” she said. “I can look for the exact date if that would help.”
“It would,” Carolyn said. “Tremendously.”
The clerk flipped open a ledger she kept behind the counter. “Yes, it was done in the summer of 1990. It was the first year birth records were opened for general research. Now, I don’t like to pry, but why does that fact matter?”
“Oh, I just wanted to see whether previous researchers had access to this material,” Carolyn explained.
The clerk smiled. She had white hair and blue cat’s-eye glasses. “I’m a genealogist myself,” she said. “I’ve traced my family all the way back to the May-flower, and then for at least eleven generations in England.”
“Terrific,” Carolyn said.
“What family name are you researching?” the clerk asked.
“My family,” Douglas said. “The Youngs.”
“Oh!” The clerk’s face lit up. “Such an illustrious history! I remember Howard Young himself coming in here at one point to research the family.”
Carolyn and Douglas exchanged looks. “Did he now?” Carolyn asked.
“Yes, indeed. In fact, it was about the time that index was prepared. I remember him using it. He was very grateful for it, said it facilitated his research so much.”
“I’m sure it did,” Carolyn said.
They thanked the clerk and headed back out into the corridor of the town hall.
“What does it mean?” Douglas asked.
“I think I know now what Dr. Fifer found,” Carolyn said.
Douglas didn’t understand. “Dr. Fifer? What’s he got to do with this?”
“Until 1990, no other researcher would have been able to find Beatrice’s baby because the records weren’t open. But in the summer of that year they were opened and an index was made-just at the point Dr. Fifer was doing his research. So he found the birth record! I think that was what he was so excited about.”
“So what happened to the birth record after that?”
Carolyn smiled. “Don’t you see? Your uncle fired Dr. Fifer, destroyed his notes, then went to the town hall and tore out the birth record himself.”
Douglas didn’t want to believe it. “Why would Uncle Howie do such a thing?”
“I don’t know why.” Carolyn admitted.
“I mean, he wants this curse to end. He would do anything to end it. He’s spent millions of dollars trying to end it.” His voice cracked. “He wouldn’t do anything that might keep that room’s power alive.”
“For now, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt,” Carolyn said. “Maybe he tore out the record for a good reason.”
Douglas shook his head. “What do we do know?”
Carolyn sighed. “I wish I knew. We’re at a dead end. I had hoped to find some information, some clue, that might give us an upper hand in dealing with the force in that room. But we found nothing.”
She reached into her pocket and withdrew the small amethyst on the gold chain that Diana had sent her.
“For now, this is our only hope,” she said.
She started to cry. Douglas wrapped his arms around her.
“I love you, Carolyn,” he whispered in her ear.
And he meant it. Never before had he meant anything as much.
Chapter Twenty-three
They gathered in the parlor, as always. A fire was blazing, as always. And according to those who’d been part of the lottery before, the thunderstorm that was raging outside was a part of the tradition as well. “Always,” said Philip Young as he carefully wrote the names of the family on slips of paper and dropped them into a wooden box. “There’s always been thunder and lightning whenever the lottery has been held.”