Hubert Haddad - Rochester Knockings - A Novel of the Fox Sisters

Along the bank, Kate entered almost unwittingly into the prodigiously tall conifer forest. Sprung from a tapestry of needles arranged according to a mysterious order, endless colonnades were topped with an immense vault of branches with multiple domes and continuous stellations from which still filtered, by spears and hatches, broken beams of sun. The creaking of a branch, the belated cry of a bird or, more frightening, from the depth of those colossal galleries vaulted by centuries of sap and weather, the sad echo of a moan, the bark of a wild dog or call of a wolf, startled Kate awake with a shudder after the fascinated torpor in which she contemplated the pond — as if the scattered forest spirits were trying to give her a sign. One time, the Redskin with green glasses reported to her the words of a very wise man of the woods: “Nature does not ask questions, neither does she answer the questions of mortals.” No need for interrogation, an attentive silence was enough. The myopic Indian was able to learn from a broken twig, a dragonfly’s flight, or the shape of a cloud.

Just as Kate reached the stable in the tawny evening light, she bumped into her father who, holding onto Old Billy’s reins with one hand, had just stepped out of the stirrups.

“Where are you coming from, you little devil?” he cried in a voice hoarse from alcohol and tobacco. “You should be close to home at this hour!”

“I was out walking not far from here.”

“At the edge of that cursed pond? In the forest! There are bears, wild boar, even wolves. .”

“I’m not afraid. .”

“You’re being foolish! Does the chicken’s courage stop the fox? Now go dress the horse and change his bedding!”

Kate took the bridle without saying a word. In the half-light of the loose box, she bustled around his long head. It was an unrivalled relief for Kate to rub down Old Billy, brush his dress, unravel his mane, make him eat and drink, while the darkness streaked with gold from the interstices of boards deepened and the penetrating odors of the night were being exhaled from the beaten earth. Old Billy watched her with one big brown eye, lip hanging. Instead of unsaddling him, she could run away with him, gallop far from Hydesville, reaching bright clearings beyond this world, discovering the coolness of water and the stars when solitude is merged with immensity, to reach large prairies of honey described by the Redskin with glasses, there where memory is torn off like an old coat, forgetting her father and fellow creatures, all bitterly clinging to the stinking air of stables and the land of the dead, with no regard for the trees, mountain crests, the sparkling water of rivers, the hidden fountains of wind. “It’s through the murmuring of streams, rivers, and rain that my ancestors speak,” the Indian had told her. Where could her own ancestors be, aside from Grandfather in his plot in the Rapstown cemetery where, later on, her family had slid in her little brother to save the money of digging another grave?

Old Billy started to neigh softly while scraping the straw from the tip of his horseshoe. Horse, did you understand me, are you also ready to leave this world so infertile in wonders, this world where even the living seem dead. .

But who is screaming so bitterly in the moonless night?

It’s time to go

The soup is getting cold, father’s going to get angry

It’s time to return

The wolf is keeping vigil, the owl spreads its wings

Distorted by thick layers of thought, a voice reverberates in echo in the darkened countryside. Her sister is yelling for her from the threshold of the house. The night wind stirs the branches of the ashes and elms. Wrapped in her shawl, Maggie scans every preposterous flickering shadow where disembodied hands and heads are moving. She’s surprised when only Old Billy responds to her, but doesn’t dare enter the pond of shadows that separates the barn from the house. For several days now, at twilight, an apprehension has made her bristle. An icy reptile of terror sliding between her thighs, on her stomach, enclosing her within its scaly rings, biting her breasts and neck.

Suddenly, a clear and frolicking voice resonates in the open air:

Tramp, tramp, tramp, the girls are runnin’

Lie still, sweet comrades, the girls will come soon!

Little by little the dancing silhouette of an elf or leprechaun emerges from the nothingness beyond. It’s Katie, her scrape-kneed little sister, triumphantly returning from chasing after ghosts.

On the last day of March in the year 1848, in the last hour, just before the clock on the first floor chimed midnight, Margaret Fox stifled a fearful cry by biting the end of her pillow.

“Katie, Katie!” she breathed quickly. “Wake up! Something’s happening. .”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” responded her bedfellow.

“Then you heard it?”

“Of course, and I don’t think it’s done yet. .”

No sooner had she spoken than a dry crackling, like bones breaking, resounded from the side of the staircase. Margaret counted seven knocks; the muffled chime of the clock seemed to be giving a musical response.

“Midnight!” she stammered. “Oh, I’m dying of fright! There’s someone there, it’s certain! A runaway slave maybe, or an Indian from the reservation who’s going to take revenge on us with a knife used for skinning buffalo. .”

While Katie remained silent, her big eyes open like a sleepwalker’s shining in the moonlight, Maggie felt an icy blade of terror slide down between her shoulders and, tempted to call for help, was unable to issue any sound but the kind of squeak coming from a chicken being slaughtered. A small hot hand covered her lips.

“Shh,” Kate whispered, “our parents are sleeping. .” Her little otter’s nose had such an air of rebellious exultation that their fear immediately turned to bewilderment and a wild, nervous laugh escaped from her. “Hey, listen, now Father is snoring. .”

“Unless that’s Mother!” Maggie corrected, laughing even louder. “But what about the knocking at this hour?”

“It’s not the first time.”

“What, don’t you ever sleep?”

“It seems to me like it’s getting louder each night. Maybe someone’s trying to get through to us. .”

“Are you crazy? There’s no one here except our parents and you and me! At least. .” Fear crept between her skin and the cotton sheet all over again. Frozen, mouth dry, breath held, hands clasped around her throat, Margaret shuddered with the feeling that all of her senses were pointing her toward who knows what kind of abyss — her sight, her sense of smell, her hearing, every inch of her skin — perceived the moment with excess intensity. Powerless, however, she felt like a block of plaster inside of which a frantic bird was desperately flapping its wings.

The noises stopped both inside and out. The wind lay quietly down at the feet of tall trees. Even father had stopped snoring. The silence became so total that the thought of nothingness quickly reached a kind of perfection.

“Something’s there!” Maggie quavered from the bottom of her terror, her voice collapsed into the register of a very old woman. Through the open shutters, a ray of moonlight slid over a drawn silhouette perfectly motionless just in front of her bed. Her eyes bulging at this apparition, the adolescent let out a howl empty of any substance, convinced that she herself must be dead or unconscious.

“Come on!” said the shadow. “Follow me to the staircase. .” Recognizing the muffled voice of her little sister, Maggie let out a mouse’s squeak. Immediately the catalepsy that had nailed her in place fell away like a lead suit of armor. She threw back the sheets and, unperturbed by that rush of air, walked fearlessly behind Katie.