Classics Mutilated Part 8

No one in the little parlor spoke or dared move until the figure finally stopped twitching, leaving naught but the charred bones of a most inhuman-looking skeleton. Even these soon crumbled away to a fine, gray dust. The family exchanged unspoken glances as the most noxious fumes imaginable filled the air, choking them. Marmee, in stunned stupefaction because of what she and her children had just witnessed, shook herself and commanded Laurie, who was nearest to the door, to please open the door and allow some fresh air in.

Laurie did as he was told, and in the ensuing silence, all of them could hear and not deny what Beth was saying from her dark corner by the fireplace.

"I told you that wasn't Father at the door," she whispered. "Doesn't anybody ever listen to me?"

Death Stopped for Miss d.i.c.kinson.

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

January 26, 1863.

Near Towns.h.i.+p Landing, Florida.

The air smelled of pine trees, a scent Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson a.s.sociated with home. Here, in the Florida, where dark, spindly trees rose around him like ghosts, Higginson never imagined he'd be thinking of Ma.s.sachusetts, with its stately settled forests and its magnificent tamed land.

Nothing was tamed here. His boots had been damp for days, the earth mushy, even though his regiment, the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, had somehow found solid ground. He could hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of hundreds of feet, but his soldiers were quiet, well trained, alert.

Everything Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., thought they would not be.

Even in the dark, after days of river travel, Higginson was proud of these men, the most disciplined he had ever worked with. He said so in his dispatches, although he doubted Union Command believed him. They had taken a risk creating an entire regiment of colored troops, mostly freed slaves, all of whom had been in a martial mood much of the month, ever since word of President Lincoln's Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation reached them.

A strange clip-clop, then the whinny of a horse, and a shus.h.i.+ng. Higginson's breath caught. His men had no horses. They traveled mostly on steamers, and hence had no need of horses, even if the Union Army had deemed such soldiers worthy of steeds-which they did not.

He whispered a command. It was all he needed to stop his troops. They halted immediately and slapped their rifles into position.

He had a fleeting thought that made him smile-a Confederate soldier's worst nightmare: to meet a black man with a gun-and then waited.

The silence was thick, the kind of silence that came only when men listened, trying to hear someone else move. Breathing hushed, each movement monitored. No one wanted to move first.

Then Higginson saw him, rising out of the trees as if made of smoke-a black-robed figure, face hidden by a hood, carrying a scythe.

Higginson's breath caught. What kind of madness was this? Some kind of farmer lurking in the woods, killing soldiers?

The figure turned toward him. In the darkness, the hood looked empty. Higginson saw no face, just a great, gaping beyond.

His heart pounded. He was forty years old, tired, overworked and overwrought; hallucinations should not have surprised him.

But they did, this did.

And then the hallucination dissolved as if it had never been. One of his men cried out, and a volley of shots lit up the night, revealing nothing where the hooded figure had stood.

All around it, however, horses, men, Confederates-white faces in the strange gunlight, looking frightened and surprised. They surrounded his men, but could not believe what they saw-for a moment anyway.

Then their weapons came out, and they returned fire, and Higginson forgot the hooded figure, forgot that moment of silence, and plunged deep into the battle, his own rifle raised, bayonet out as, around him, the air filled with the stink of gunpowder, the screams of horses, the wild cries of men.

The battle raged late into the night and when it was done, rifle smoke hung in the sky, the trees nearly invisible, the wounded crying around him. Thirteen bodies-twelve of theirs, one of his-gathered nearer each other than he would have liked.

Near the spot where he had seen the hooded figure, where he had imagined smoke, in that moment of silence, before the first shot was fired and the first smoke appeared.

Forty years old and he had never been frightened-not when he attacked Boston's courthouse trying to rescue escaped slave Anthony Burns, not when he fought with the free-staters in Kansas, not when he met John Brown with an offer to fund the raid on Harper's Ferry.

No, Thomas Wentworth Higginson had never been frightened, not until he saw those bodies, scattered in a discernable pattern in the ghostly wood where a spectral figure had stood hours before, and wielded a scythe, creating a clearing where Higginson would have sworn there had not been one before.

He rea.s.sured himself: every man was allowed one moment of terror in a war. Then he resolved that he would never be frightened again.

And he was not. In the war, anyway.

But he would be frightened again, and much worse than this, in a small town in Ma.s.sachusetts where he met a slight poetess, seven years later.

May 23, 1886 The Homestead Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts Lavinia d.i.c.kinson stood in the doorway to her sister's bedroom. It still smelled faintly of Emily-liniment and homemade lavender soap, dried leaves from the many plants she'd preserved, and of course, the sharp odor of India ink that seemed embedded in the walls.

The bed was bare, the coverings washed and to be washed again. Dr. Bigelow had initially said Emily died of apoplexy, but he had written on her death certificate that she had been a victim of Bright's Disease, which he swore had no contagion.

Vinnie had learned, in her fifty-three years, that doctors knew less than most about death and disease, but she trusted Dr. Bigelow enough to keep the sheets and Emily's favorite quilt, although she would launder them repeatedly before putting them away.

Vinnie had thought to burn them, but their mother had made that quilt, and it held precious memories. Still, Vinnie had time to change her mind. She would have a bonfire soon, before the summer dryness set in.

Emily had made her swear-had asked a solemn oath-that Vinnie would destroy her papers, all her papers, should Emily die first.

Vinnie had not expected Emily to die first. That bright flame seemed impossible to distinguish, even as she lay unconscious on her bed for two days, her breath coming in deep unnatural rasps.

No one expected Emily to die-least of all, Emily.

And Vinnie was uncertain how to proceed, without her stronger, smarter, older sister to guide her.

May 15, 1847 The West Street House Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts The moon cast an eerie silver light through Emily's bedroom window. She set down her pen and blew out the candle on her desk. The light seemed stronger than before.

She slid her chair back, the legs sc.r.a.ping against the polished wood floor, and paused for a moment, hoping she had not awakened Father. He would tell her she should sleep more, but of late, sleep eluded her. She felt on the cusp of something-what, she could not tell. Something life-changing, though.

Something soul-altering.

She dared not speak these thoughts aloud. When she had uttered less controversial thoughts, her mother chided her and urged her to pull out her Bible when blasphemy threatened to overtake her. Emily's father did not censure her thoughts, but he looked concerned, worrying that the books he bought her had weakened her girlish mind.

All except her father and her brother Austin recommended church, hoping the Lord would speak to her and she would become saved. She saw no difference between those who had become saved and those who had not, except, perhaps, a certain smugness. She was smug enough, she liked to tell her sister Lavinia. Vinnie would smile reluctantly, at both the truth of the statement and the sheer daring of it.

Everyone they knew waited to be saved; that her brother and father had not yet achieved this was seen as a failing in their family, not as something to be emulated. If she was not saved, she would not reunite with her family in Heaven. Indeed, she might not go to Heaven.

And, at times, such an idea did not terrify her. In fact, it often filled her with relief.

Eternity, she had once said to Vinnie, appears dreadful to me.

Vinnie did not understand, nor did Austin. And Emily couldn't quite convey how often she wished Eternity did not exist. The idea of living forever, in any way-to never cease to be, as she had said to Vinnie-disturbed her in her most quiet moments.

Like now. That silver light made her think of Eternity, perhaps because the silver made the light seem unnatural somehow.

She crept to the window, crouching before it, her hand on the sill, and peered out.

Behind their home lay Amherst's burial ground. The poor and the unshriven slept here, alongside the colored and those not raised within the confines of a Christian household. Oftimes she sat in her window and watched as families mourned or as a s.e.xton dug a grave for a lonesome and already forgotten soul.

On this night, the graves were bathed in unnatural light. The world below looked silver, except for the darkness lurking at the edges. Something had leached all of the color from the ground, the stones, and the trees behind-yet the bleakness had a breathtaking beauty.

In the midst of it all, a young man walked, hands clasped behind him as if he were deep in thought. Although he a.s.sumed the posture of a scholar, his muscular arms and shoulders spoke of a more physical toil-farmer, perhaps, or laborer. Oddly the light did not make his s.h.i.+rt flare white. Instead, its well-tailored form looked as black as the darkness at the edges of the cemetery. His trousers too, although she was accustomed to black trousers. All the men in her life wore them.

He paced among the graves as if measuring the distance between them, pausing at some, and staring at the others as if he knew the soul inside.

Emily leaned forward, captivated. She had seen this man before, but in the churchyard in the midst of a funeral. He had leaned against an ornate headstone, resting on one of the cherubim encircling the stone's center.

She had expected someone to chase him off-after all, one did not lean against gravestones, particularly as the entire congregation beseeched the Lord to send a soul to its rest.

But he had for just a brief moment. Then, perhaps realizing he had been seen, he moved-vanished, she thought that day, because she did not see him among the mourners.

Although she saw him now.

As if he overheard the thought, he raised his head. He had a magnificently fine face, strong cheekbones, narrow lips, dramatic brows curving over dark eyes. Those eyes met hers, and her breath caught. She had been found out.

He smiled and extended a hand.

For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to clasp it.

But she sat until the feeling pa.s.sed.

She ran to no one. She did no one's bidding, not even her father's. While she tried to be a dutiful daughter, she was not one.

And she would not run to a stranger in the burial ground, no matter how beautiful the evening.

No matter how lovely the man.

May 23, 1886 The Homestead Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts Piles of papers everywhere. Vinnie sat cross-legged on the rag rug no one had pulled out during spring cleaning-Emily had been too sick to have her room properly aired-and stared at the sewn booklets she had found hidden in Emily's bureau.

Once their mother had thought the bureau would house Emily's trousseau, back when the d.i.c.kinsons believed even their strange oldest daughter would marry well and bring forth children, as G.o.d commanded. But she had not, and neither had Vinnie. Austin had married well, or so it seemed at first, although he and Sue were now estranged, a condition made worse by the untimely death of their youngest child, Gib.

Vinnie wished Emily had given Austin this task. Emily lived in her words. She had better friends on paper than she had in person. She wrote letters by the bucketful, and scribbled alone late into the night. To destroy Emily's correspondence, Vinnie thought, would be like losing her sister all over again.

And yet Vinnie had been prepared to do it, until she discovered the booklets. Hand-sewn bundles of papers, with individual covers. Inside, the papers were familiar: Emily's poems. But oh, so many more than Vinnie had ever imagined.

Emily gifted family and friends with her poems, sometimes in letters, sometimes folded into a whimsical package. Her tiny careful lettering at times made the poem difficult to discern, but there, upon the page, were little moments of Emily's thoughts. Anyone who knew her could hear her voice resound off the pages: I'm n.o.body, she said in her wispy childlike voice. Who are you? Are you n.o.body, too?

Vinnie could almost see her, crouching beside her window, watching the children play below. More than once, she had sent them a basket of toys from above, but had not played with them.

Instead, she preferred to watch or partic.i.p.ate at a great distance.

But once she had been a child, with Vinnie.

Then there's a pair of us, Emily said. Don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.

The poems had no date, and Emily's handwriting looked the same as always. Her cautious, formal handwriting, not the scrawl of her early drafts.

These poems had meant something to her. She had sought to preserve them.

Vinnie closed the booklet, and clutched it to her bosom.

Emily lived inside these books. However, then, could Vinnie destroy them?

May 19, 1847 The West Street House Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts The silver light returned four nights later. It was not tied to the moon as Emily had thought because, as she headed up the stairs to her room, she noted clouds forming on the horizon.

The night had been dark until the light appeared.

Instead of peering out her window, she slipped on her shoes and hurried down the stairs. Her father read in the library. Her mother cleaned up the kitchen from the evening meal. Her older brother Austin, home from school, sat at the desk in the front parlor, composing a letter. He did not look up as she pa.s.sed.

She let herself out the front, simply so that her mother would not see her.

Cicadas sang. The air smelled of spring-green leaves and fresh gra.s.s and damp ground. All familiar scents, familiar sounds. The music of her life.

The strange silver light did not touch the front of the house. Perhaps the light came from some kind of powerful lantern, one she had not seen that night.

She stole around the house, her heart pounding. She never went out at night, except when accompanied, and only when it was required. A concert, a meeting, a request to witness one of her father's legal doc.u.ments.

Unmarried girls did not roam the grounds of their home, even if they were sixteen and worldly wise. She was not worldly wise, although she was cautious.

And now what she was doing felt forbidden, deliciously daring, and exciting.

She rounded the corner into the back yard. The silver light flowed over the burial ground, but did not touch the d.i.c.kinson property. The darkness began at the property line, which she found pa.s.sing strange.

But as she stepped onto the gra.s.s behind her house, the silver light caught her white dress, making it flare like a beacon.

She froze, heart pounding. Revealed. Her hands shook, and she willed them to stop.

She had nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. The burial ground was empty except for the light.

She tiptoed forward, trying not to rustle the gra.s.s. She kept her breathing even and soft. She had seen deer move this way, silently through thick foliage. The gra.s.s was not thick here. The yardman kept it trim for the d.i.c.kinsons, the s.e.xton for the burial ground.

Yet she felt as if she were being watched. The hair rose on the back of her neck, and in spite of her best efforts, her heart rate increased.

It took all of her concentration to keep her breathing steady.

To walk in a graveyard at night. What kind of ghost or demon was she trying to summon?

All of Amherst already thought her strange. Would they think her even stranger if they saw her wandering through the graves, her white dress making her seem ghostly and ethereal?

Something moved beside her. She looked over her shoulder, half expecting Austin, arms crossed, a frown on his face. What are you doing? he'd ask in a voice that mimicked Father's.

Only Austin wasn't there.

No one was there.