Lisa Miscione - Twice

“It does,” Lydia answered simply, not offering any additional information.

Marilyn nodded and a look of uncertainty crossed her features, as if she were unsure now that she wanted to offer Lydia what she knew. But after a moment, she began to speak. “The Rosses’ ancestors, originally from Holland, settled Haunted back in the 1700s. The land, obviously, was virtually wrested from the Seneca Indians, who are just one of the tribes that existed in this region before colonization. Mainly trappers and farmers, the settlers flourished here in the ‘New Netherlands.’ ”

Lydia smiled politely, not exactly interested in a history lesson. The woman must have read it on her face. “I know it seems like I’m starting a long way back, but I think it’s relevant to what you want to know,” she said.

“Please, go on,” said Lydia. “It’s fascinating.”

“By the beginning of the early 1800s the Rosses were by far the wealthiest farming family in the North. They also owned the largest number of slaves. In fact, before slavery was abolished in 1865, New York had the largest number of slaves of any northern state.”

She paused here and took another sip of her tea, looking at Lydia over the rim of the mug, gauging her reaction.

“The Rosses were notoriously brutal to their slave workers. In particular, Hiram Ross, Eleanor Ross’s great-great-great-grandfather, was rumored to have beaten and even murdered his slaves. Beatings, of course, were not unusual. But actual murder was rarer than you might think because slaves were extremely valuable. A strong young male could be worth as much as twenty-five hundred dollars, which in that day was an extremely large sum of money, as odious as it is to talk about human life in such a way.”

Lydia nodded her agreement and understanding. She felt cold suddenly and had the sense that the history lesson was about to get ugly.

“Anyway, Hiram Ross was hated and feared by just about everyone who knew him… his slaves, his fellow farmers, even his family. He was a thief, a liar, and, if rumor was to be believed, a rapist and murderer. He was believed to have fathered a great many children by his female slave workers; children who grew up to be his slaves, as well.”

Marilyn was by this time leaning forward on her chair toward Lydia, her face animated by the story she was telling. Lydia’s interest was piqued, as well.

“Now, Elizabeth Ross, Hiram’s wife, was not exactly a saint herself. In fact, she herself was carrying on an affair with one of the slave workers, a man named Austin Steward. They were both young, no older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and they were supposedly truly in love. Hiram was no fool and he learned soon enough about the affair. The story goes that one night, while he was supposed to be away selling the season’s crops, he came home early to find the two in the throes of passion on the parlor floor.”

Lydia could imagine the two lovers entwined on the floor of a grand parlor, the light from a full moon bathing their naked bodies. She could see a man enter and stand at the doorjamb, watching, his face contorted in anger, rage flowing through his veins.

“Hiram was obviously enraged,” Marilyn went on. “And Elizabeth, whether out of terror or cowardice or both, claimed that Austin Steward had raped her.”

Lydia could see the young woman, moving away from her lover, maybe gathering her clothes around her, hiding her naked body from the gaze of the two men… her lover and her husband, the circumstances having made them both hostile strangers to her.

“Austin was also married, to a young Haitian slave named Annabelle Taylor. Of course, that was her slave name. There are no records of her true Haitian name that I’ve been able to find. Hiram took Austin and Elizabeth out to the shack where Austin and Annabelle lived with their five children. He pulled those children out of their beds and asked Elizabeth again if she was having a willing affair with Austin or whether he had raped her. He promised to kill a child each time she lied. She lied five times. And Hiram killed all five children with a shot to the head while Annabelle and Austin looked on, restrained by Hiram’s slave drivers. Naturally, Austin was arrested and hanged. And Elizabeth, it’s said, went quite insane. She died of the flu the next winter.”

Marilyn had told the tale as though it were a ghost story, something that was heinous and terrifying but not real. And she spoke with a kind of alacrity that Lydia found a tad inappropriate. Lore was like that; the years drained the horror from it, leaving just an echo over time. But in Marilyn’s telling, Lydia had been transported and was left with a cavity of sadness in her chest at the cruelty and harshness of the story. She could imagine vividly the scene that night, see the bloated full moon, hear Annabelle screaming for the lives of her children, hear Elizabeth lying again and again as the children were slain, see their small bodies fall lifeless to the ground, smell the gunpowder in the air as the shots rang out. It was one of the worst stories she’d ever heard. And she’d heard some bad ones.

“That’s an interesting piece of folklore, Marilyn. But I’m not sure what it has to do with-”

“There’s more. Annabelle lived to be a very old woman. It’s said that the only thing that kept her alive was her hatred for the Ross family. Some people believed that in Haiti Annabelle had been a voodoo priestess. And on the night her children died, she created a curse against the Ross bloodline. A curse that could only be kept alive by herself and her daughters, and her daughters’ daughters-a kind of legacy of hatred.”

“And what was the curse?” asked Lydia.

“That none of the women descended from Hiram would know a natural love. That if they fell in love and married, a horrible fate would befall their husbands.”

“What about the children? Hiram killed her children. Wouldn’t she want revenge for that?”

“No, supposedly she would not wish harm to children, no matter what the crimes of their ancestors.”

“So I take it Annabelle’s bloodline is still alive and well.”

“And residing in Haunted. Annabelle remarried and had more children some years after the tragedy. She was just nineteen when her children by Austin were murdered.”

“Really,” said Lydia, less a question than an exclamation. “And how did you come by all of this information?”

“In addition to being the librarian, I’m also the town historian,” she said with pride. “And Annabelle’s descendant is the woman I mentioned whose trust funds this library. It’s Maura Hodge. A descendant of Thomas Hodge, Benjamin Hodge, married a descendant of Annabelle Taylor, Marjorie Meyers… a very controversial marriage in its day, since Marjorie had Haitian blood in her veins. Maura was their only child. Her ancestors settled and worked as slaves on this soil. She knows everything there is to know about the history of this town, the Ross family, and especially the curse.”

“So when Eleanor’s husband, Jack Proctor, was murdered, people believed that it had to do with the curse?”

Marilyn lowered her eyes for a second, then raised them to meet Lydia’s gaze.

“I suppose it seems silly to someone who’s… not from here.”

“No one other than Eleanor was ever suspected? No rumors?”

Marilyn looked thoughtful, but shook her head. “In a place like this where so little goes on and so little ever changes, the past just seems closer. Superstitions, ghost stories, they seem more real, I guess. When Eleanor was acquitted and no one else was ever charged, it almost seemed like proof that the curse was alive and well.”

Lydia looked at Marilyn and she seemed suddenly strange and innocent. Haunted was only a couple of hours from New York City, but it might as well have been on the moon, it was so removed.