Chapter Twenty-­One

Franny knocked on my door after a half hour or so and said petulantly that I had spoiled the evening for everyone and that her father had sent her up to get some sheets and a blanket for Father Jackson. I told her to take whatever she needed from the linen cupboard in the hallway.

“Why does your voice sound so funny?” she asked.

“I have a cold,” I said.

“Why did you spell what you did on the board, Mama?”

I didn’t answer that. In a little while she went away. I disrobed, turned out the light and lay on the bed, waiting for the General to come. After a few moments I began to hear voices calling me. First his voice, then others I recognized out of the past, but I was still too much Maggie Caine to put names to them.

“Come,” the voices called. “Come to us, Margaret.”

Still I waited. I wanted to obey, but I knew it was better to wait until those downstairs were asleep. I wasn’t concerned about Duff. I suppose he came upstairs when Jack and Franny went to their rooms and Father Jackson made ready to sleep on the sofa. Or maybe he didn’t bother with any pretense.

The voices continued, more insistent now and louder. Old voices, young voices, even the voices of children calling for Margaret to come and join them. There seemed to be dozens of them calling plaintively, wistfully, but never commanding. It was as if those who were calling really loved Margaret and wanted her to be with them.

At last I knew it was time to go. I had become Margaret Dorn in body as well as spirit, and I was immensely happy. As Maggie Caine I had never had the same feeling of happiness and fulfillment.

There was a large cupboard in the room that I had never used. I went to it now and found Margaret Dorn’s clothes and put them on—the drawers, the corset, the under blouse, the black silk stockings and the black taffeta, high-­collared dress. Last I put on the black patent leather shoes with the aid of a buttonhook that I found on the dresser.

Then I unlocked my door and went downstairs. There was a light in the parlor. I went in and saw a man I didn’t recognize, nor did I recognize some of the furniture in the room. The man was on his knees and he had fallen asleep with his head on the horsehair sofa that General Caine had bought for me. He awakened now and arose and started toward me, but I went quickly out of the room and to the kitchen. There I unbolted the back door and was into the yard before the man could reach me.

I went down the path past the graveyard to the woods. I looked back once and saw the man behind me, but he stopped pursuing me then, although he continued to call my name. The other voices had stopped now that I was on my way.

Even though the woods was dark I kept on without hesitation. It was a chilly fall night, but that didn’t bother me either. When I came to the creek I moved along it until I found a place to cross by stepping on the rocks.

It must have taken me a half hour or more, because the path meandered around thickets and followed the lower side of hilly ground. I saw no house lights until I came out of the woods, crossed an uncultivated field and found another path. Ahead was the rear of a house with one lighted window. It wasn’t my house, but it stood where my house had once stood.

I could hear singing and chanting as I approached the door. When I was a few feet away, the door opened and a woman called out, “Welcome, Mother. Welcome to this house.” She had white hair and she seemed much older than I, although I knew she was my granddaughter.

She led me to the back room, where the congregation waited. There were twenty or more people in two lines, and they all bowed low and murmured, “Welcome, Mother,” as I passed between the lines and went to the head of the room.

There was an altar over which hung an inverted crucifix and behind the altar on a platform were two chairs. General Caine in his uniform was seated in one chair. He arose and beckoned to me to come around the altar and take the other chair. I did, and then saw that on the floor between the chairs were three wooden coffins.

The middle one was newly made and the lid was on it. The other two were old and the wood was rotten and crumbling. Inside each of them was a skeleton. The skull of the one next to my chair had vestiges of long black hair.

The General raised his hand and an elderly man wearing priestly vestments came forward and began a kind of Mass. The rest of the congregation knelt down.

“I came from the altar of God to the altar of my Master,” the priest chanted. He was speaking Latin but I understood him. He continued with the opening prayers that I now know were perversions of the rite Maggie Caine was familiar with when she was young.

When the time came for the Offertory of the Mass, two women moved forward. One was the white-­haired woman I had previously recognized. The other was her daughter, my great-­granddaughter. They walked around the altar, paused and bowed before the General and me, and then reverently they lifted the lid of the middle coffin. Inside was the body of my great-­great-­granddaughter. It was clothed in black as I was, and as were all the members of the congregation.

“Master, we offer thee this child. Let her be united with thee,” the women chanted to the General. Then, turning to me, “Mother, we offer you this child. Let her be born again, if it be your will and the Master’s will. Let her be born again, as you have been born again to serve the Master.”

Then I stood up and stepped forward. I knew I was supposed to do that. The two women began to undress me, and at the same time several other women came out of the congregation. The first was carrying a basin of water and a towel. The others were carrying bottles and jars. I knew they were to prepare me for the climax of the ceremony in which the General and I would couple on the altar.

They bathed me and anointed me with various kinds of ointments and fragrances. Then another woman came forward, carrying a black velvet robe embroidered with gold. She was a small, dark old woman with wrinkled cheeks, and she went behind me to help put on the robe. After she had tied the sash, she held her right hand up before my eyes. In her palm was a small silver medal.

“Begone, unclean spirit,” she said loudly. “I command you in the name of the Mother of God!”

Several of the others grabbed her and pulled her away from me, but she continued to hold the medal up and shout the same denunciation. The General remained seated, seemingly unaffected by the disturbance.

I was bewildered. For a moment I didn’t know who or where I was. Then I became Maggie Caine, and in terror I ran around the altar, down the aisle and out of the room, evading those in the congregation who reached out for me. I went out the back door into the yard and then down the path to the woods.

I expected to be pursued immediately, but I wasn’t. Once inside the woods I stopped and looked back, but there was no sign of anyone coming after me. I set off again as fast as I could, but I wasn’t as sure of foot now, as I had been as Margaret Dorn. I kept straying from the path and bumping into trees and bushes, until finally I had to slow down and grope my way.

Then I saw lights, first on one side of me and then the other. They were faint and flickering at first, but they became stronger as those carrying them moved closer. Now I saw two lines of people carrying lanterns and torches and walking parallel to me.

They were dead, I knew, most of them dead a long time. There were men and women dressed in tattered ancient clothing. Men in buckskin, soldiers in uniforms of long-­ago wars, Indians in ragged, beaded garments. Women in dresses like Margaret Dorn’s, others in dresses of an older time, still others in dresses made of rough handwoven cloth. Even though they never turned toward me, the lines kept coming closer.

I was frantic but I kept moving, ignoring branches and brambles. For some reason I felt if I could only reach the Caine yard, I would be safe. I felt that the things wouldn’t pursue me where others could see them. I was also sure that if the lines ever came together, or if I was ever touched by one of them, I would be dead—and, dying in their company, I would be damned like them.

The lines weren’t ten feet apart now, less than four feet away on either side of me. Some of the heads were only skulls. The flesh on the others was dried and shriveled or else hanging in blackish green decay. Many of the hands that held the lanterns and torches were nothing but bones.

Several of those closest to me could have reached out now and touched me, but they seemed to ignore me. They didn’t seem to be trying to keep pace with me either, although they never all fell behind me. At one moment something dressed in the remnants of a Revolutionary War uniform would be on my right, and something in a frock coat and gaiters on my left. Then the next time a turning in the path caused me to look, the soldier might have been replaced by the bones of a woman in homespun, and the other by something in rotted silk or brocade.

Then I broke out of the woods and began to run toward the Caine house. Suddenly I heard the General’s voice calling my name and heard his running feet behind me on the path. I didn’t look back but kept running, stumbling often on the uneven path.

At that moment the line on my right began to move ahead of me. By the graveyard gate the end of the line turned and blocked the path. I couldn’t continue toward the house. I could only go back or turn into the graveyard.

There was nowhere else to go. I ran toward the fence on the far side of the graveyard, hoping to be able to get over it, but I tripped on a headstone and he caught me and turned me around. He was like he had been the first time I saw him. His eyes were bloodshot, full of hate and not desire. He wanted to kill me now, I knew.

I screamed once, I remember, as his hand went to my throat. Then as I stumbled backward, I saw Jack standing behind him holding a flashlight, and behind Jack was Franny. In that instant the General fell on me, bearing me to the ground. I felt a crushing blow on the back of my head and then I remembered nothing.