Chris Bohjalian - The Night Strangers

Reseda had been about to say something complimentary to the girls about what lovely models for a statue they would make when she paused: She sensed that one of the twins was aware that there was a second volume, and already the child had skimmed through enough of the first book to know its name: The Complete Book of Divination and Mediation with Animals and Humans. Only a single copy of that second volume existed, and Anise kept it in an ornate, reliquary-like cherry cabinet in her bedroom. Frequently the women searched used bookstores and online auction sites for an additional copy, but one had never appeared. Like their four copies of the first volume, the copyright of the second volume was 1891.

And so instead of making a random suggestion that someday the girls pose for a statue, Reseda said, “I have always preferred this first volume to the second.”

Both girls looked up at her.

“I hadn’t told Cali and Rosemary about the second volume,” Anise said, her tone a little clipped.

“The book talks about it right here,” Garnet said, and she showed Anise and Sage where in the encyclopedia she’d seen that second volume referenced. “See?”

“Aren’t you the diligent student, Cali,” Anise told her.

“What does diligent mean,” Hallie asked, oblivious to the slight edge in Anise’s voice.

“It means she works very, very hard,” Sage explained. “I imagine you do, too.”

“No, she works harder than me,” Hallie said, and she smiled at Garnet with what Reseda knew was genuine sisterly pride. The pride a twin has in her twin. A lover had once told Reseda that he presumed the bonds twins shared far transcended the more common sibling rivalries. He’d been right. “Dad says she’s going to be a teacher or a professor someday.”

“Both are worthy aspirations,” said Anise.

“How is your father?” Reseda asked. She wasn’t as interested in what either child might say as she was in what thoughts would pass through Sage’s head when the woman envisioned Captain Chip Linton. But almost instantly Sage started counting the massive leaves on the hoja santa-which, in a fashion, was itself revealing.

“Mom is a little worried about him, I guess,” Hallie answered, looking down at a diagram of hypnobium in the book rather than meet her gaze.

“We all are,” Sage said.

“Is there anything in particular?” Reseda asked the girl, but carefully she gazed at Garnet as well. “So far, I don’t feel Bethel has been especially healing for him. I know the move to New Hampshire has been hard on all of you.”

“You do?” Garnet asked.

“I do. I really do.”

Garnet seemed to think about this. Then Hallie began to answer: “The other day I caught him talking to someone. I was in the kitchen and Mom was upstairs, and I heard-”

“Hallie!” said her sister, cutting her off, and she took the girl’s arm. “No!”

“It’s Rosemary,” the child snapped. “And, yes, I will tell them! Someone has to know! And just because you don’t want to scare Mom doesn’t mean I can’t talk about it!”

“Go ahead,” Reseda said. “Tell me.”

“The other day I caught him talking to himself,” Hallie said, and then she took a deep breath. “He was in the basement near that weird door, and it was like he was talking to me or Cali. But he wasn’t, because we weren’t with him. We had been upstairs. And another time I found him sitting in the den with my dolls, and it was like he was inventing a game with them for us. But again, he wasn’t. He was all alone.”

“They’re my dolls, too,” Garnet said, and she shook her head.

“And I think…”

“What do you think?” Reseda asked.

“I can tell Mom thinks he might have killed Dessy.”

“Do you think he did?” Sage asked, bending over with her hands on her knees.

“I don’t know. Mom started to say something about maybe taking her body to the veterinarian so he could tell us what happened, but Dad just wanted to bury her. And the ground was just soft enough now that we could.”

“Is there more?” Reseda said.

Hallie nodded. “I guess.”

“Tell me. You can.”

“Well, he’s gone from being kind of spacey since the accident to being really cheerful one second and then really angry the next. But he never gets mad at us. He just gets mad. He also has headaches, and I know they’re getting a lot worse. Mom doesn’t want us to know, but I’ve heard them talking. And he has some really bad pain in his side.”

“He’s depressed,” Anise said. “That’s all. And he should be depressed. What kind of man would your father be, if he weren’t?”

“Is that your way of comforting the children, Anise?” Reseda asked.

“It’s my way of comforting everyone,” she said, and then the whole room seemed to grow quiet, except for the gentle hiss of the humidifier. Sage counted soundlessly, moving her lips, and the girls thought of their father, and Anise merely smirked. And then Garnet’s head cleared, and she looked at all three women around her but directed her question at Reseda.

“Can I ask you something?” the girl said.

“Yes, absolutely.”

“What are the potions in the second volume?”

“I think he did poison that cat,” Anise told Reseda, once Emily had picked up the girls and taken them home. The two of them were walking from Sage’s greenhouse to their vehicles at the edge of the woman’s long driveway. “I think Verbena and the girls will be much, much safer when he is properly hospitalized-as Valerian suggests.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“I don’t see that sort of unreasonable malevolence in the captain. I think the cat just ate something that did her in.”

“I’m not sure Valerian would agree. And she’s the doctor.”

“But she’s not his doctor.”

“She will be.”

“I don’t think a hospital can treat what ails him.”

“And that is?”

Already Reseda regretted saying as much as she had. She didn’t trust Anise. The woman wasn’t necessarily dubious of Reseda’s work as a shaman, but she also craved the tangibility that came with a tincture. She saw magic largely in plants. But, then, Reseda wasn’t fully confident in her own diagnosis, either, since it was based only on very limited observation and what one of the pilot’s daughters had told her. Moreover, she herself had stood in Sawyer Dunmore’s crypt and felt nothing. Nothing at all. It didn’t seem likely the captain was possessed by the Dunmore twin who had been killed. “I’m honestly not sure,” she said finally. “I just don’t think he should be institutionalized.”

Anise shrugged. They had reached her truck, and the rusty front door groaned when she yanked it open. Before climbing in Anise added, “We will do this, Reseda. You know that, don’t you? You can’t stop us. We will try again.”

“Because they’re twins,” she said.

“Yes. And because of what they’ve endured.”

“Do you know which one?”

“I don’t. Not yet. But I will.”

“No good ever comes from that second volume.”

“Not true,” Anise said, settling into her seat and staring down at Reseda from the full height of the truck cab. “I may be vegan, but just the other day I whipped up something absolutely magic with a field mouse.” Then she turned the key and the engine roared to life. She barely missed Reseda’s toes as she sped down the driveway.

“H e simply doesn’t agree that hospitalization is the right course,” Valerian told John Hardin, as they sat across from each other at his kitchen table. “I don’t know Michael well, but I know his type.”

“Even after the captain killed the girls’ cat?” John asked, sipping his coffee. He could tell that Valerian, like his wife, did not approve of coffee. But he viewed it as his only vice. Besides, he had yet to find a tea he enjoyed half so much. “He really doesn’t think the man poses some sort of danger to his family?”