Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

  I wanted our success to be greeted with dazzling sunlight, but instead we had gray louring clouds and snow.

  Martin came up behind me, his arms sliding around my waist, and kissed the back of my neck. “Penny for your thoughts, beloved.”

  “I was just watching the snow,” I said. I turned in the circle of his arms and stood up on tip-toe to kiss him. “And thinking how glad I am to be here.”

  He smiled, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Grandmother Louise would be happy. Do you want to take a walk?”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” I said. “Show me where you used to play.” I let him help me with my coat.

  The snow was falling slowly, big wet flakes that melted like kisses as they touched the ground. We chose a path that led down into the woods behind the house; I held closely to Martin’s arm. The doctor had said I did not need to treat myself as if I were made of glass, but I could remember my grandmother and her sisters trading their cautionary tales whenever one of their daughters or daughters-in-law or granddaughters announced she was pregnant. I was determined to be careful, more than willing to let Martin coddle me as if I were his child rather than his wife.

  We followed the narrow path through the trees, our shoes rustling damply among the dead leaves.

  “This must be lovely in the spring,” I said.

  “You don’t find it lovely now?”

  “Oh, it’s pretty enough, I guess, but . . . I don’t know. It’s awfully bleak.” Barren, I thought, but it was not a word I was prepared to say. Not now. Instead, I smiled up at him and said, “I like my landscapes brightly colored.”

  “I’ll plant you roses,” he promised, smiling back.

  I heard the voices first as no more than the wind among the crumbling dead leaves. But they were voices, children’s voices, and after a moment I could understand their words.

  Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . .

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” said Martin.

  “Those children.”

  “Children? What are you talking about?”

  Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . .

  “Don’t you hear them?”

  We had both stopped in the middle of the path. I was holding onto Martin’s arm with both hands. He was frowning, head cocked, listening but—I realized, my stomach tightening into a cold knot—not hearing.

  “Just the wind, beloved.” He started walking again; numbly, I followed suit. But I could still hear those small, thin voices, that dreary singsong chant: Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. . . And I heard it all the way back to the house.

  I tried to put it out of my mind, tried to concentrate on our house, our child, the life Martin and I were building together. I found myself avoiding the windows that looked out on the woods, found myself stopped, listening, at odd times of day, for voices that I did not hear. One afternoon, while Martin was teaching, I walked down to the woods by myself, and the voices came rushing to meet me, as if I were a playmate they had been waiting for. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . I fled back to the house, but even a long, hot shower could not entirely dispel my shivering.

  That Saturday, I suggested to Martin that we go walking in the woods again. He was agreeable, and we started down the path together. It was snowing, and I was glad to have his arm to hold to.

  The voices sobbed in my head from the moment we passed the first line of trees. When we’d safely reached the bottom of the hill, I stopped Martin and said, my voice unnaturally casual, “There they are again.”

  “What?”

  “Martin, please. You really don’t hear them?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The children. Singing.” And I joined in: “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . ashes, ashes—”

  “I don’t hear anything of the sort,” Martin said, but his face had gone pale and his mouth was tight. “Come on. We’d better go home.” He turned and all but dragged me back the way we had come; we were halfway up the hill before I could brace my feet and pull free of him.

  “Martin.”

  For a moment, I thought he would simply keep walking, head down like an angry bull. Then he stopped, sighed heavily, and turned. “What?”

  Nothing, I almost said. You’re right. I was imagining things. But for once I stood my ground. “You know something.”

  “About your imaginary voices? No. But I’m starting to think I should call Dr. Baines when we get back to the house.”

  The cruelty in his voice took my breath away. He had never spoken to me like that before. “You think I’m hysterical,” I said. “Pregnant women have their fancies, right?” It was another topic on which my grandmother and great-aunts could hold forth for hours.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Go on back to the house then,” I said, my voice high and shaking with anger. “Go call Dr. Baines. I’m going to take a walk.” I turned and started away, half-blind with tears, but whether of fury or hurt I did not know.

  I followed the voices, ignoring the path and Martin’s voice behind me. Branches caught in my hair, snagged my stockings. I skidded down into a dry creek bed and only kept upright by scraping my hands raw on a half-dead tree. The voices did not get louder or clearer, but they were closer. I could feel them, like cold, cold fingers on the back of my neck. And all the while the snow fell, soft and silent, disappearing against the black branches, the gray and brown of the dead leaves and stones. Barren, I thought again and shivered.

  Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . Children’s voices, but not young children, not young enough still to enjoy that particular game. They sounded breathless, almost scared, and I thought for no reason of the wicked stepmother in the fairytale, who was forced to dance in red-hot shoes until she fell down dead.

  And then I fell myself, landing awkwardly on one knee and my already abraded palms. I thought—a panic-stricken lightning bolt—of the baby, and became as still as if I had been turned to stone, all my attention focused inward. But there was no pain, no sense of slippage or loss, none of the wrongness I was sure I would feel, and after a moment I began to breathe again.

  Cautiously, not yet ready to try to stand up, I looked around, seeing the tangle of dead tree branches and grape-vines leaning over one side of the creek bed (which was now becoming more like a ravine), the jumbled stones underfoot—it was no wonder I had fallen, and I was lucky not to have broken anything. The other bank had a decided overhang; I could see the interlaced tree roots holding it up. And near where I was crouched, there was a place where the roots had not held, and the bank had caved in, a long, ugly spill of rocks and red clay.

  And something that was neither red clay nor rock.

  I did not want to see, and yet I found myself moving closer, in a painful sideways hobble. It was the shape that caught my attention first, the smooth rounded curve that could never be the shape of a rock. And then I was crouched in front of that treacherous grade, snowflakes wet against my face and neck and the cold whisper of the voices making me shiver: ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . . I reached out, my hand shaking, and brushed dirt away from that smooth, strangely vulnerable curve.

  I saw the truth before I saw the hollowed eye-sockets.

  I lost myself for a moment; when my mind cleared, I was digging in the bank as frenziedly as any small animal who hears the cry of a hawk. The bones were jumbled together. I found two more skulls in close proximity to the first, along with a scattering of vertebrae and small bones that I thought were probably phalanges, and then sat back on my heels, realizing I was panting, dripping with sweat, that I’d torn all my nails back to the quick, and that the appropriate thing to do was return to the house and call the police. When you find human remains on your property, you aren’t expected to exhume them yourself.

  Human remains, I thought. Ashes, ashes, cried the voices.

  And Martin knew something, something he di
d not want to know.

  I knew in that moment that I did not want to know, either. This secret, buried like bones, was a terrible threat, like the rot that had weakened the tree roots here until the bank collapsed. I wanted to pretend ignorance, to cover these poor bones again and return to the house, to let Martin take me to Dr. Baines and be prescribed bed-rest and pampering. But as I reached out for that first handful of loose dirt, I thought, What about our child? What would I be condemning our child to? Growing up among lies and shadows, taught to fear and never told why, lest she, too, begin to hear the cold, pale voices that whispered ’round my head. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . .

  I straightened my fingers, let the dirt sift back. I touched the skulls again, gently, in apology for my cowardice. Then I pushed myself to my feet, wincing at the pain of my cramped knees and ankles, and began slowly and cautiously to make my way back to the house.

  I saw it even before I was clear of the trees, all the lights blazing. As I started up the steps, the door was flung open; Martin stood outlined against the spill of light, a looming shape like a troll in a fairytale, and for a moment I was afraid he would deny me entrance.

  Then he was rushing to help me, trying almost to carry me into the house. I could not at first pick words out of what he said, only the overwhelming wash of his concern and fear. I pulled away from him as soon as we were inside. “I need to call the police.”

  “The police? Are you—”

  I interrupted him ruthlessly, before my cowardice could keep me from saying the words at all: “There are three skeletons in our woods. Three dead children.”

  His hand, reaching out for me, froze an inch away from my arm. “Dead children?” he said in a dry whisper.

  “Who are they, Martin? Who were they?”

  “It can’t be,” he said, his face ashen, and slumped sideways against the wall.

  I followed him, catching his shoulder, shaking him. “What do you know?”

  “She said it wasn’t true,” Martin said, his voice thin and dreamy, his eyes very wide. A child’s eyes, like the child’s rhyme that had been echoing in my head for days.

  “Who?” I said, more gently. “Who said?”

  He looked at me as if he did not recognize me and said, “Grandmother Louise,” and then slowly folded up, sinking down the wall to sit with his head against his knees and his arms wrapped around his shins. “Call the police.”

  I dialed with shaking fingers. And all the time I was on the phone—and it took a remarkably long time to convince them that I meant it when I said I had discovered human remains in the woods behind the old Shoemaker place—Martin did not move.

  The silence in our house was as thick and choking as a London fog for the next week. The police exhumed the bones and took them away; the officer in charge promised that she would let us know what they learned. She could tell we were upset, but I suppose that anyone would be; she did not press us for explanations, accepting at face value my story of falling over the bones while out walking. My battered state lent credence to a tale that I myself found woefully implausible. But if any of the police officers heard voices in the woods, they did not mention it.

  We waited for the officer’s return like defendants waiting for a verdict, both of us shying away from each other when our paths crossed. Martin did not sleep in our bed; I stayed out of the living room and study. I seemed to spend half my time crying; he spent hours on campus, and I did not know what he did there.

  It was Friday afternoon when the officer called and said she had something to tell us, if we would let her stop by after work. I said, Of course, assured her that six o’clock was a perfectly acceptable time, hung up the phone, my heart hammering in my chest.

  Calling Martin was the second hardest thing I’d ever done.

  The officer was prompt; I’d made coffee—though anything else seemed too social, too much like it belonged in an Addams cartoon. We sat in the living room, the officer in the armchair, Martin and I at opposite ends of the couch like semi-cordial strangers, all of us cradling our mugs in our hands as if for warmth, although the house was well-heated and well-insulated. The officer stirred cream carefully into her coffee, then looked at us and said, “You’ve helped us solve the three oldest missing persons cases on our books. Thank you.”

  “Then you know . . . ” Martin stopped, cleared his throat. “Then you know who they are.”

  “There was never much doubt about it. Especially once we got the bones dated. Those are the Three Lost Children of 1922.” Martin put his mug down, but not quite quickly enough to hide the fact that his hands were shaking; the officer continued, sympathetic but implacable: “Charles Weatherby, Marianne Bolton, and Alma Shoemaker.”

  “My grandmother’s sister,” Martin said. “Thank God she never had to know her sister was . . . ”

  “Yes, sir.” She looked at me and saw I was still in the dark. “Alma Shoemaker disappeared in March of 1922, Marianne Bolton in June, and Charles Weatherby in October. The two girls were twelve years old, and the boy was eleven. In December, a thirteen-year-old girl named Juliet Laroux was assaulted, but she managed to escape. She identified her attacker, without hesitation, as Roderick Shoemaker.”

  “My grandmother’s favorite uncle,” Martin said thinly. “She swore he was innocent, you know.”

  “He never confessed to the murders of the other three, and he never came to trial.”

  “Lynched,” Martin said, still in that same faint, faraway voice.

  “And so no one ever found out what he had done with the bodies. Did he ever live in this house? Do you know?”

  “No, he never lived here. But he visited. He was quite noted for . . . for his way with the children. Excuse me.” He left the room in a rush. The police officer and I sat, holding our mugs, not speaking.

  After a time she said, “Even if Roderick Shoemaker was innocent, ma’am, whoever did this is long dead. And there’ve never been any other disappearances like those. You don’t need to worry . . . ”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I know.”

  I managed to smile at her, but it felt as fragile as blown glass. And although I did not want to, I said, “How did they die?”

  “We don’t know, ma’am. We don’t have enough to go on.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  But I knew, although I did not think I would tell the police officer so. I remembered those cold, breathless voices, and like any child, I had sung that selfsame doggerel. He had strangled them: garotted them probably, making his own meaning out of a nonsense rhyme.

  “Ashes, ashes,” I murmured, and the police officer nearly spilled her coffee.

  “Ma’am? What did you say?”

  “I was thinking of the children’s rhyme. You know. Ring around the rosies—”

  “Why?” Her eyes were wide, and she looked less like a police officer and more like a frightened little girl.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The man who attacked Juliet Laroux. That was how she knew who it was. Because he was singing ‘Ring around the rosies,’ and she recognized his voice.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “Oh dear God.” And I am sure my eyes were as wide as hers.

  “How did you know?” she whispered.

  “You did hear them,” Martin said from the doorway. He was white-faced but composed. “You heard them singing their murderer’s favorite song.”

  “Heard them?”

  “It was how I found the bones,” I said. “I . . . followed the voices. Charles and Marianne and Alma. ‘Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.’ ”

  The officer drained her coffee in a gulp, as if she wished it were something much stronger. “I don’t think I’ll put that in the report, if you don’t mind, ma’am.”

  “Not at all,” I said faintly.

  “And I think I’d best be going.” She stood up, nodded to both of us. “Thank you for the coffee. Sir, ma’am.”

  Martin let her out and then came back, hesitating a moment in the
doorway. I was afraid he would turn and leave, that this house would again become the separate territories of two frightened and hostile creatures. I stretched out a hand toward him. He crossed the room, slowly, and sat down beside me, this time close enough that our thighs were touching. A hesitation, and he put his arm around me. I leaned into his embrace, and some of the tension ebbed out of our bodies.

  He said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not believing . . . for trying to make you not believe.”

  “Martin—”

  “She told me so many stories about him. She told me about playing Ring Around the Rosies with him, about the way he’d sing it coming up the drive. She was fifteen when he . . . when Alma . . . She had a crush on him, I think, and of course no one told her anything. I think she told herself so many times that he was innocent that she simply believed it, even when she knew the evidence. The truth.” He managed a small, infinitely painful laugh. “I guess now I know why she hated Juliet Laroux so much.”

  “Martin, you don’t—”

  “I don’t think she ever talked about him to anyone but me. I was her favorite grandchild, her only male descendant. She told me once I looked like her Uncle Roderick.” He pressed his free hand against his mouth, as if to steady it. “You don’t think . . . ”

  “No. And even if you do, it doesn’t matter.”

  We were silent for a while, but peacefully. He said, “Do you want to move?”

  “Move?”

  “This house . . . you can’t want to live here knowing—”

  “It isn’t the house’s fault. And whatever happened here happened a very long time ago. I’d rather stay and push the darkness back.”

  “Beloved,” he said, and his arm tightened around me. And after a time he began to speak of other things, the day-to-day realities of the life we were building, and I was able to relax, to believe what I had said. This was our house now. It did not belong to the past.