"Notice details," Ms. Hurston said as they gathered up their hats and gloves, for the day was overcast and chilly.
The students noticed the fountain with its lion-head spigots, though nobody was able to determine to everyone's satisfaction exactly what they were supposed to symbolize.
They discussed, under Ms. Hurston's guidance, the plants around the fountain: what was still blooming at what, for upstate New York, was the very end of the growing season, and which were flowers that wouldn't come again till spring.
They speculated about—after he left—the creepy-looking guy in the shapeless hat and the long tweed coat, who hadn't come close but who had glowered at them when they weren't even doing anything: just standing there listening to Ms. Hurston and looking at ... well, some of them were climbing onto ... the fountain. "A homeless person," they decided, because of the long, stringy gray hair, and because of the shapeless clothes that gave the impression of being layered over another whole set of clothes. Either that or a crazed mass murderer stalking them.
Ms. Hurston told them they were so politically incorrect they made her eyes cross, which she demonstrated for them.
"Okay, now we're heading into the old section." Ms. Hurston pointed toward a brick road that wound its way up a hill. "Susan B. Anthony's grave is in this section, and Nathaniel Rochester, who founded Rochester. Let's see if we can find them. But keep your eyes, ears, and noses open for sensory details. There won't be an assignment, but there will be a discussion. Notice things!"
"Yeah, well," Janelle muttered to Reid, "what I notice is that bricks are very hard to walk on." Even with sneakers, her ankles wobbled on the uneven surface, and she worried that if she rushed, she might trip and make a fool of herself. So already she was bringing up the rear, except for Reid, who had stopped to tie his shoelace.
The oldest gravestones were thin slabs of limestone—bright white where they weren't spotted by gray-green lichen growing on them—and so eroded by weather or by people making rubbings that they were almost illegible. The granite and marble stones were generally in better shape, and it was easier to see some of those symbols Ms. Hurston was so eager to have them notice.
"Wow," Brandon said, "all these people really got stoned."
Ms. Hurston ignored him. "See these ferns?" she asked, and Janelle ran her finger in the engraving. Each type of headstone—marble, granite, limestone—felt totally different from one another. Janelle noted this for possible sharing in case she got called on to say something.
"Ferns symbolize sorrow," Ms. Hurston said. "As does the willow. And this calla lily—that symbolizes marriage."
"What about these three interlocking rings?" D'Vona asked.
Brandon said, "That's for someone who made it only partway through the Olympics."
"Holy Trinity," Ms. Hurston corrected. "What about this flower bud?"
They shook their heads.
"Same as a lamb," she prompted.
"A kid?" someone asked.
It was hard to keep on laughing and joking at the thought of a dead kid.
Ms. Hurston nodded. "A child under the age of twelve. So a partially opened bloom?"
"Is for a teenager."
That was an even ickier feeling: someone their own age.
There were several graves with the same last name. Judging by the dates, it looked as though the parents in that family had outlived all their children.
"What do you think these crossed swords mean?" Ms. Hurston asked.
"Soldier?" somebody asked.
"More than that. Notice the date he died."
1863.
Was the Civil War still going on then? Janelle suspected she wasn't the only one who couldn't be sure. Still, somebody took the plunge and guessed, "Killed in battle."
Ms. Hurston nodded.
Janelle noticed the partial bloom, and that made her look at the other date—the "born in" date. "He was fifteen," she pointed out.
Hard as it was to think of someone their age being dead, it was even harder to think of someone their age dying in battle.
Jake asked, "What about those big..."
Ms. Hurston supplied the word: "Mausoleums."
"Can we go in?"
"They'll be locked, but we can look in the window."
"Eww," Xavier said.
Courtney, who had a crush on Xavier, echoed, "Eww."
But everybody else crowded around to see.
The mausoleum was about the size of a backyard storage shed, but it looked like a tiny little chapel. A tiny little deserted chapel. There was a set of doors, which were padlocked shut, and each had a window of smoke-colored leaded glass. The windows were dirty and cobwebby, and one had a hole that looked as though it had been shot with a BB gun.
Somehow or other, Janelle and D'Vona ended up being first in line to peek in. Standing behind, Brandon asked, in his best attempt at a spooky voice, "Is that lock to keep us out, or to keep them in?"
"Shut up," Janelle said. She stood on her tiptoes but didn't want to put her face near the dirty glass. "Too dark to see anything," she said, giving her place up to Reid.
But D'Vona, who hadn't moved, said, "Cool!"
"What do you see?" those in the back asked. "Are there bodies?"
"Coffins," Reid said. "On these, like, shelves."
When Jake took D'Vona's place, he said what Janelle had thought: "I don't see anything."
"You gotta give your eyes a chance to adjust," D'Vona and Reid said. D'Vona demonstrated by holding her hands up to the sides of her face. "Block the light from outside, and then all of a sudden it's like the shapes just form in the darkness."
Janelle had to wait until everybody else was through to get a second chance. This time she didn't rush. In a few seconds, the details came out of the gloom: six dark boxes, three on each side, stacked like in a supermarket—the coffin aisle. "Now I see," she said.
Nobody commented, and when she stepped back, she saw that everyone else had moved on.
She could still see them—they hadn't wandered off that far, but they'd divided.
Despite the fact that they had, indeed, seen some graves that were only two or three or five years old in this section, she and her classmates were the only visitors in this part of the cemetery. The day was probably too cold for anyone who hadn't ordered a bus three weeks in advance, and the trees were pretty much bare—so not very photogenic.
Janelle shuffled her feet through the leaves. Notice the details, she reminded herself. Ms. Hurston had this thing about class participation. The leaves were no longer crisp and colorful, and they had hardly any of that wonderful autumn smell to them. Concentrating on details, Janelle tripped over a marker, so low it had been hidden by the leaves, and she fell to her knees.
"You okay?" Brandon—of all people—called over to her.
"Just tying my shoelace," Janelle said. When she was sure no one was looking, she rubbed her sore knee.
Her classmates continued on, distracted by different things.
"Look," Xavier called. "I wonder how old this is." He was heading toward a grave that had a little flag stuck into the ground.
At the same time, Alycia, from across one of the little cemetery roads, said, "Here's a whole bunch of Rochesters, but I don't see Nathaniel."
And Ms. Hurston was all excited because there were three graves with quotes from Emerson on them. She and the kids who were either the poetry-loving kind or suck-ups were reading them out loud.
Janelle tried to find something interesting that she could call people's attention to.
She leaned in to read a gravestone, but there was nothing special about it: a man's name, the year of his birth—1877—and the year of his death, 1920. No other inscription, no decoration.
What kind of decoration would I want on my headstone? she thought. It was hard to come up with something for herself. For Reid, a football, since he was a defensive lineman on the school team. A Gameboy for D'Vona. For Brandon ... A simple etching would never be enough for Br
andon; they would have to figure out some way to attach to the stone one of those gag flowers that squirt water.
She was smiling at that thought when she heard a sound.
Was that a cat? she wondered.
They had seen, in the distance, back when they first went up the bricked road, a young couple jogging with their black Labrador retriever, but at the moment, she couldn't see anybody besides her classmates.
And, of course, people didn't generally take their cats jogging.
She looked around to find where the sound was coming from and heard it again—a weak, pathetic mew.
Janelle revised her first impression—a kitten, she thought now. She wondered how far the cemetery extended in this direction. Could there be houses backing up to it? Could a kitten have wandered out of somebody's yard and gotten lost here?
Or had some heartless soul abandoned an unwanted pet?
Her mind flashed a picture of the jogging couple. She tried not to think of their dog—or anybody's dog—finding the kitten.
Janelle walked in a circle, keeping her gaze on where blown leaves had accumulated into little piles near gravestones. A poor, lost kitten might have settled into such a place to get out of the wind.
The sound came again, and this time, because she was listening for it, Janelle determined it came from behind her.
"Here, kitty, kitty," she called softly, so as not to frighten the poor creature.
Past the grave of the man who had died in 1920, past the place where she had tripped.
"Here, kitty, kitty."
She glanced back over her shoulder and could see only a few of her classmates; the others had already gone down the hill where the road curved, which was the direction those she could still see were heading now, too.
She was just about to say to herself, Well, too bad, kitten, when she heard it again. Much closer this time. It seemed to be coming from behind the mausoleum they had all peeked into.
Oh, kitten, she thought, with another glance toward her classmates.
They couldn't get that far away from her, she thought. And even if, once she had rescued the kitten and then reached the hill, even if they had gone off so far that she couldn't tell which direction they had gone, she could always go back and wait for them on the bus.
Which would at least be nice and warm and out of the wind.
Janelle walked up to the mausoleum. The name BALSEN was engraved over the doorway. Janelle purposefully didn't look into the windows. She didn't want to experience again their disconcerting way of hiding, then revealing, the shelves inside. And what the shelves held.
Instead she walked around to the back. There, the names of six Balsens were listed: Frederick Jeremiah Balsen, Carolyn Balsen Vandenhoof, Faustine Balsen, Winslowe Childs Balsen, Robert Marwin Balsen, Margaret St. Claire Balsen-Timmons, along with their dates. The most recent Balsen was Margaret, who had died in 1943, but Janelle didn't take the time to try to figure out their relationships.
There was no sign of a kitten.
But the pathetic little mew came again.
Janelle closed her eyes. "Oh great," she muttered. The sound was definitely coming from directly on the other side of the mausoleum wall—from inside.
Now would be the time to give up on that kitten.
Except, now, this close, she could no longer be certain it was a kitten.
In fact, she was certain it was not.
It was a baby, a newborn baby.
She was sure because her cousin and his wife had just had a baby, and this was exactly what their infant sounded like. And while a kitten might have found a tiny opening to squeeze in through, there was no way a baby could have gotten inside by itself. There was also no way Janelle could decide, Well, I don't really need to do anything—it's sure to find its way back. Someone, probably a frightened, unwed teenager, had had a baby, and had abandoned it here.
But the door was padlocked shut.
We would have seen a baby, she told herself.
Yet she remembered it had been only by knowing there was something—it had only been by staring into the gloom—that she had been able to make out the coffins.
Janelle knew she absolutely needed to get Ms. Hurston back here.
But when she stepped out from behind the mausoleum, her classmates were all out of sight. To get help, she would have to run across this section of the cemetery and down the hill. She would have to try to find the others—when it may or may not have been obvious which direction they had gone.
What if, after all that, she couldn't find them? Then she'd have to go back to the bus and tell the driver.
And all the while, she'd have to hope she would be able to find this particular mausoleum again.
Of course I could find it again, she told herself.
And then—also of course—everyone would laugh at her because there'd be no way to get into the locked mausoleum. But they wouldn't need to get in to find out that she was wrong about the baby, or the kitten—that it wasn't either of those things. It was only...
Who knew? Something else.
But, still. The thought of a baby, a poor, unwanted baby, who had been here who-could-guess-how-long already, lying in the cold and dark among those dead bodies...
The thought of those dead bodies made Janelle pause.
Brandon's words came back to her—Thank you very much, Brandon—about it being Halloween and about Halloween being a day when you couldn't be sure about the people you met in a cemetery.
She looked again at the names and dates on the back wall. Don't let one of them be a newborn baby, she thought. She didn't think she could be rational enough to be brave if one of the bodies in that mausoleum was a baby. She told herself, before looking, that the cry, weak as it was, was from a real, living child, and if there was a dead baby listed, that would have to be just a coincidence.
But she thought herself lucky that none of the dates indicated a dead newborn.
She went back around to the front. She cupped her hand under the padlock and noticed for the first time that the shackle part had been cut.
It had to have been that way before, when they'd all been standing here looking in. Otherwise she would have heard the sound of someone sawing or cutting the lock.
Hmmm, Janelle thought, a poor, frightened unwed teenage mother—with a pair of bolt cutters.
She didn't open the doors but stood once again on her tiptoes. As before, at first everything was black, then shapes seemed to form out of the darkness: six coffins. With six dead people inside.
Something moved. Just barely visible in that almost nonexistent light, on the floor, toward the back corner on the right-hand side. Somehow they had all missed seeing it. It looked like a pile of rags. But it stirred. And the faint cry came again.
Janelle put her hand on one of the doors.
With a creak of metal on stone, the door pushed in, scraping the floor since—apparently—there had been some settling. A smell of musty old leaves tickled Janelle's nose. Just leaves, she tried to convince herself. Just leaves.
She stepped into the mausoleum, still unable to make out much of what lay on the floor in the back. It had to be a baby blanket, she supposed, though now that she was closer, and with the additional light from the open door, it looked more tweedy than a traditional baby blanket—and were those arms, like a coat?
And a string, a long string, was attached to the bundle and made it move even as she watched, leading from the bundle to—
The door slammed shut behind her, enclosing her in darkness.
Janelle whirled around and could make out the silhouette of someone standing between her and the door. Someone with long scraggly hair: the man they had seen before, by the fountain—looking, she hoped, too much like a stereotype of a bad person to actually be one. He made that sound, somewhere in between a kitten and a baby. Then he dropped his end of the string and he said, "Hey, little girl, wanna explore with me?"
She managed a paltry little squeak—hardly a scream a
t all—before the man clapped his hand over her mouth. He tasted of sweat and dirt. She tried to wiggle out of his grasp, but he held her tight. She kicked, she jabbed with her elbows, she bit, but—strong as she had always considered herself—he shoved her down to the floor as easily as though she were a five-year-old. Her head clunked against the stone and she lost a moment or two of consciousness.
The next thing she saw was the long, long knife in the man's hand.
"No!" she screamed the instant she realized he'd uncovered her mouth.
"'No,'" he mimicked her, and he made the crying-baby sound again as he moved the knife closer to her throat.
But then there was a screeching sound that she hoped, she prayed, was the door opening again. Somebody from her class must have noticed that she was no longer with them. Let it be one of the boys, she wished, and not Alycia who was only about four and a half feet tall—or, in fact, any of the other girls, or even Ms. Hurston. What she needed was defensive lineman Reid. But she'd settle for Brandon.
Except that the little room hadn't gotten lighter the way it had when she'd opened the door before.
It wasn't one of the doors opening.
It was one of the coffins.
Something poured out of the coffin. At first Janelle thought it looked like smoke, or fog, but in another moment it took on a definite shape, a man, except that his edges weren't very stable, and she could see through him. He wore a three-piece suit. And he hovered, his feet not quite touching the ground.
It was enough to—for a moment—actually make her forget the man with the knife.
This was a ghost.
She was actually seeing a ghost.
And then she heard a ghost.
"Well, look at this, Margaret," said the man who looked like a banker, except for the fact that little wisps of him kept getting caught in the draft. "I thought I smelled live people."
There was more screeching. The five other coffins opened.
From one of them arose a woman in an ivory-colored dress that reminded Janelle—who had been primed all day by Ms. Hurston to notice details—of the kinds of dresses she had seen in pictures in her history book, from between the two world wars. This woman said, "I don't know, Daddy. I do believe that one smells almost-one-of-us to me."