Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Duncan looked back, knowing he could not have heard correctly. “Who?”

“The real Professor Evering. He came out of the western forest yesterday.”

There be old women in Scotland who would know how to send it back,” the young keeper said as he gestured Duncan toward the island. Frasier had hatred in his eyes when Duncan approached him in the kitchen garden beside the house, but something seemed to compel him to share the thing he had discovered. “We should have buried him proper, at sea. It was wrong to let him linger, force him to cross the sea twice without touching land.” He rose from the upturned earth, his eyes still sullen and resentful, and motioned Duncan to join him at the riverbank.

Pausing across from the island, Frasier stepped into the water up to his knees. He did not speak, though his lips seemed to be moving in a silent prayer. The fear in his eyes told Duncan he meant to go no farther. Even from a hundred feet away, his hand shook when he pointed toward a tall hemlock at the south end of the island.

Duncan chided himself for not bringing a shovel, an ax, something from the forge for a weapon, then retrieved a short limb from the ground and entered the water. He waded slowly until the water was up to his thighs, remembering Lister’s intense fear and his warning never to venture to the far side of the river, where the black forest began. The island was thick with small alders, and Duncan walked with his club upraised, recoiling as a long-beaked bird burst from some reeds, then moving warily toward the small knoll. At last he reached the clearing around the tall hemlock, and froze. A demon stood in front of the tree, staring at him.

The left half of its hideous head was relatively benign, but the right was twisted and bent so that the haunting smile of the left turned into a grotesque open frown, showing bright white teeth below a six-inch misshapen nose.

He raised his club and ventured closer. The demon wore a black sleeveless waistcoat, out of which arms made of sticks extended. In the twigs of one hand hung a gold watch, its chain linked through a buttonhole to a familiar gold fob, in the shape of a tiny book. In the other twig hand was the skull of a small bird; a paper had been rolled through its eyes. Around the thing’s shoulder hung the skin of a snake.

“One of the scullery maids said I’d find berries over here,” came a thin, fearful voice behind him. “I brought a basket, had nearly backed up to the thing before I saw it. It’s Evering. His watch, his fob, his waistcoat.”

Duncan fought to keep his voice steady. “You and I both know, Frasier, that his body was sent back to England.”

“It’s what Evering became, his punishment for defying something that lives in the forest.” Frasier’s matter-of-fact tone was as unsettling as the gruesome thing in front of Duncan. “It drew out his spirit from the ship and withered it and sent it back to watch.”

It’s what Evering became, according to Frasier, for taking the path that Duncan was now on. “Watch what?” he asked, taking a step toward the thing.

“Us. The town. . God’s life!” Frasier cried as Duncan advanced toward the tree. “Don’t touch it!”

Instead of touching the thing, Duncan stepped to the side, studying it. The head, he saw, was a mask, expertly carved of wood and stained dark red, with horsehair fastened to the top. The teeth in the sinister mouth were made of bits of shell. It had been hung with a leather strap on a limb that jutted from the tree, with the waistcoat and arms braced in a crosspiece tied with vines.

He pried open the pockets with a twig, finding nothing. This was Evering’s good waistcoat, the one stolen along with his watch from his cabin. Directly below the effigy was a small pile of ashes. He knelt and stirred them. Tobacco had been burned.

“Who have you told?” he asked.

“No one. Lister, since he can tell no one. Lister understands these things. We’re all going to end up like this.”

Duncan turned to him, for a moment as frightened by Frasier as by the effigy.

“We should have known,” Frasier added, “after what happened to that bear.”

But as little as Duncan understood about the New World, of one thing he was certain. Whoever had made the effigy was not one who killed bears. He looked back up at the twisted countenance. What had happened here was like the ritual on the ship-part European, part not. Part Indian, he forced himself to admit. A new realization struck him as he gazed at the twisted mouth. He was looking at Old Crooked Face. Adam had gone to Old Crooked Face, and so, apparently, had Evering. With trembling fingers, he reached for the roll of paper in the bird skull and was about to read it when the cries began-the terrified screams of a child.

He burst out of the brush at the edge of the island to see Virginia standing on the bank fifty yards upstream. By the time he reached her, the screams had become silent, her jaw moving up and down, her face white as a sheet, her eyes wild with terror. Caught in the rocks midstream were bodies, mutilated bodies that had clearly been in the water several days. Suddenly Crispin was there, gathering the girl into his arms, running toward the house with her as Cameron began directing men into the water.

“Settlers, drifted down from the north,” the keeper said as the first corpse was pulled ashore, a man without hands, without eyes, without a scalp.

Duncan realized he was still clutching the paper from the bird skull. It was a page torn from a Bible, the same size that Evering had carried. It was from Revelations. Go, Duncan read, and pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.

Wigs. Wigs were Ramsey’s lifeline on a stormy sea.

When Duncan found Crispin at the rear of the summer kitchen, the butler was addressing what at a quick glance might have appeared to be a group of seated gentlemen. On a trestle-and-plank table were half a dozen hairpieces supported on rounded, wooden pedestals specially designed to store them. Crispin was extracting a skillet of buckles, cylinders of baked red clay, from the oven built into the wall, which with skillful and patient wrapping would restore the drooping curls.

A gentleman of modest means might have but one wig which, depending on whether it was human, goat, horse, or calf in origin, could represent a significant investment. But the Ramsey head was versatile, and wealthy to the point of opulence. An old-fashioned periwig, a grizzle wig, a campaign wig, a ramillies-the odd-looking bob wig made popular by Dr. Johnson-and even an informal bag wig were all on the table, marking Ramsey’s connection to the brocaded, lavender-scented courtesans of his habitat across the ocean.

From the shadows Duncan watched his new friend, his hands coated with powder, clad in a starched white shirt buttoned too tightly at his neck under a sleeveless brown waistcoat. He had never seen Crispin in the performance of his household duties, and the sight made Duncan so uncomfortable he was about to retreat, when Crispin spoke to him.

“These hairpieces redeemed us,” the big man reported with a glance toward Duncan. “Reverend Arnold was complaining about our abrupt departure from the city when Mr. Ramsey silenced him and announced that he had been about to send for me, because his curls were in such disarray.” A kitchen maid appeared from inside the building, wiping soot from her hands. As she began arranging the buckles in front of the periwig, a bell sounded from the kitchen door. A look of relief shot across Crispin’s features. He straightened and gestured Duncan toward the house. “Tea,” was all he said.

“She made it safely here,” Duncan observed as they walked toward the house.