John Saul - Comes the Blind Fury

“There’s the graveyard! Let’s go in!”

Michelle looked over at the tiny cemetery choked with weeds. Until today, she had only glanced at it from the car.

“I don’t know,” she said, peering uneasily at the overgrown graves.

“Oh, come on,” Sally urged. “Let’s go in.” She started toward a place where the low picket fence surrounding the cemetery had collapsed to the ground.

Michelle started to follow her, then stopped. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“Why not? Maybe we’ll see the ghost!”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Michelle said. “But it just seems like we ought to leave it alone. Who’s buried there, anyway?”

“Lots of people. Mostly Uncle Joe’s family. All the Carsons are buried out here. Except the last ones — they’re buried in town. Come on — the gravestones are neat.”

“Not now.” Michelle cast around in her mind for some way to distract Sally. She wasn’t sure why, but the graveyard frightened her. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to my house and get something to eat. Then maybe later we can come back here.”

Sally seemed reluctant to give up the expedition, but at Michelle’s insistence, she gave in. The two girls continued along the path for a while, in an uneasy silence that Michelle finally broke.

“Is there really supposed to be a ghost?”

“I’m not sure,” Sally replied. “Some people say there is, and some people say there isn’t.”

“Who’s the ghost supposed to be?”

“A girl who lived here a long time ago.”

“What happened to her? Why is she still here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows. Nobody’s even sure if she’s really here or not.”

“Have you ever seen her?”

“No,” Sally said, with a hesitation so slight that Michelle wasn’t certain she’d even heard it.

A few minutes later the two girls slammed through the back door into the immense kitchen, where June was kneading a loaf of bread. “You two hungry?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“There’re cookies in the jar, and milk’s in the refrigerator. Wash your hands first, though. Both of you.” June turned back to her dough, ignoring the look of exasperation that passed between Michelle and Sally at the reminder of the childhood they were becoming eager to leave behind. Yet neither of them considered the possibility of ignoring the order. In a moment, June heard the tap running in the kitchen sink.

“We’ll be up in my room,” Michelle said as she poured two glasses of milk and heaped a plate with cookies.

“Just don’t get crumbs all over everything,” June said placidly, knowing they were again rolling their eyes at each other.

“Is your mother like that, too?” Michelle asked as they went upstairs.

“Worse,” Sally said. “Mine still makes me eat in the kitchen.”

“What can you do?” Michelle sighed, not expecting an answer. She led Sally into her room and closed the door. Sally threw herself on the bed.

“I love this house,” she exclaimed. “And this room, and the furniture, and—” Her voice stopped suddenly as her eyes fell on the doll that lay on the window seat.

“What’s that?” she breathed. “Is it new? How come I haven’t seen it before?”

“It was right there last time you were here,” Michelle replied. Sally got up and went across the room.

“Michelle, it looks ancient!”

“It is, I guess,” Michelle agreed. “I found it in the closet when we moved in. It was up on a shelf, way at the back.”

Sally picked up the doll, examining it carefully.

“She’s beautiful,” she said softly. “What’s her name?”

“Amanda.”

Sally’s eyes widened, and she stared at Michelle.

“Amanda? Why did you name her that?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted an old-fashioned name, and Amanda sort of — well, came to me, I guess.”

“That’s weird,” Sally said. She could feel goose bumps forming on her skin. “That’s the name of the ghost.”

“What?” Michelle asked. It didn’t make sense.

“That’s the name of the ghost,” Sally repeated. “It’s on one of the gravestones. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Sally led the way as the girls left the path and started toward the collapsing fence around the cemetery.

It was a tiny plot, no more than fifty feet square, and the graves had a forgotten look to them. Many of the headstones had been pushed over, or fallen, and most of those still upright had an unstable appearance, as if they were only waiting for a good storm to give up their lonely vigils over the dead. A lightning-scarred oak tree, long dead, stood skeletally in the center of the plot, its branches reaching forlornly toward the sky. It was a grim place, and Michelle was hesitant to enter.

“Be careful,” Sally warned Michelle. “There’s nails sticking up, and you can’t see them through the weeds.”

“Doesn’t anybody take care of this place?” Michelle asked. “The graveyards in Boston never look like this.”

“I don’t think anybody cares anymore,” Sally answered her. “Uncle Joe says he isn’t even going to be buried here — he says being buried’s a waste of time and just takes up a lot of ground that could be used for other things. Once he even threatened to take out all the gravestones and let the whole place grow wild.”

Michelle paused, and looked around her. “He might as well have,” she observed. “This place is creepy.”

Sally avoided the tangle of vines and weeds as she moved through the graveyard. “Wait’ll you see what’s over here.”

Michelle was about to follow her when her eyes suddenly fell on one of the headstones. It stood at an odd angle, as if it were about to fall under its own weight. It was the inscription that had caught Michelle’s eye. She read it again:

LOUISE CARSON — Born 1850

DIED IN SIN—1880

“Sally?”

Ahead of her, Sally Carstairs paused, and turned back to see what had happened.

“Have you ever seen this?” Michelle was pointing to one of the headstones. Even before she went back to look, Sally knew which one it was. Seconds later she was standing next to Michelle, staring at the strange inscription.

“What does it mean?” Michelle asked.

“How should I know?”

“Does anybody know?”

“Search me,” Sally said. “I asked my mother once, but she didn’t know either. Whatever it was, it happened a hundred years ago.”

“But it’s creepy,” Michelle said. “ ‘Died in Sin’! It sounds so — so Puritan!”

“Well, what do you expect? This is New England!”

“But who was she?”

“One of Uncle Joe’s ancestors, I guess. All the Carsons were.” She took Michelle’s arm and pulled at her. “Come on — the one I wanted to show you is over there in the corner.”

Reluctantly, Michelle allowed herself to be drawn away from the strange grave, but as she picked her way across the cemetery, her mind stayed on the odd inscription. What could it mean? Did it mean anything? Then Sally stopped and pointed.

“There,” she whispered to Michelle. “Look at that.”

Michelle’s eyes searched out the ground where Sally was pointing. At first she didn’t see anything. Then, nearly lost under the brambles, she saw a small slab of stone. She knelt down, and pulled the thorny branches to one side, brushing the dirt off the stone with her free hand.

It was a simple rectangle of granite, unadorned and pitted with age. On it was a single word:

AMANDA

Michelle sucked in her breath, then examined the stone more closely, sure that there must be more to the inscription than just the name. There wasn’t.