The Secret

  Ezra’s face hung slack. The anger faded from his eyes. The rifle fell from his hands and clattered on the church floor.

  “My wife—my daughter—” he murmured. “The curse…”

  His face had become as pale as Delilah’s. His thin lips barely moved as he whispered, “The curse. The Fiers are truly cursed….”

  His hands flew to his head and he uttered a sorrowful wail and tore at his graying hair. Then he ran from the church, screaming.

  Jonathan heard a horse whinny. Then a piercing scream, and finally a sickening crunch.

  Chapter 18

  “What was that?” Jonathan cried, knowing the answer to his question.

  He ran outside. A small crowd had gathered around a horse and wagon.

  Jonathan shouted, “Papa! Papa!” and pushed through the silent crowd.

  “Papa!” Jonathan cried, seeing Ezra sprawled on his back, a dark open wound in his side, blood puddling on the dirt street.

  “Get the doctor!” someone cried. “This man has been trampled!”

  Jonathan knelt beside his father. Ezra’s eyes rolled around blindly for a second. Then they focused on Jonathan.

  Ezra lifted his hand and let it fall on the silver amulet.

  “Take this,” he whispered to Jonathan. He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his strength. “Jonathan—”

  His voice grew weak. “The power of the Fiers is in this amulet. You must wear it always. Use it—use it to avenge my death.”

  Ezra took one last, shuddering breath. Then blood poured from his mouth. His eyes froze in a fixed and lifeless stare.

  “Papa—” cried Jonathan. “Papa …”

  Jonathan buried his face in his hands and sank deeply into his sorrow.

  So many people have died, he thought. Abigail, Mama, Delilah, Papa. All because of this dreaded curse.

  His father’s strange silver pendant glinted in the sun.

  The curse dies with my father, Jonathan thought. I will put an end to it, here and now.

  No minister would give Ezra a funeral or allow his body to be buried in a church cemetery. He had been insane, a murderer, Reverend Wilson had warned. So Jonathan had Ezra’s body cremated. Now all that remained of Ezra was a jar of ashes.

  Rachel cried herself to sleep. Jonathan listened helplessly to her sobs, every cry torturing him.

  He sat by the hearth, waiting for her crying to stop. At last the house grew still, and he knew she was asleep.

  He took Ezra’s ashes and poured them into an iron strongbox. Then he picked up the silver pendant.

  To Jonathan’s surprise, the pendant grew hot in his hand. He saw flames, flames he thought would swallow him up.

  But the flames died as quickly as they had appeared. And the jeweled pendant cooled.

  Jonathan examined the pendant, felt its weight against his palm.

  His father’s last words echoed in his mind. “Use it—to avenge my death.”

  No, thought Jonathan. No more revenge. No more feud. No more curse.

  “I am sorry, Papa,” he whispered. “But I cannot let our family suffer any longer. There is still Rachel….”

  He thought of his little sister, sleeping upstairs in her bedroom. She had already been through so much. But she might have a chance at happiness still. At least, Jonathan hoped so. He would do everything in his power to make her happy.

  The first step, he decided, was to get rid of the pendant.

  He dropped it into the strongbox. It landed softly on top of Ezra’s ashes. Jonathan closed the heavy iron lid and locked it.

  Then he took a lantern from its hook by the hearth. He made his way out into the night. He knelt beneath the apple tree. With a spade, he began to dig up the moist earth.

  Bitter memories leapt to his mind as he worked under the tree. He tried to force them away as soon as they arose, but they kept coming back.

  He remembered drinking lemon water with Rachel and Delilah one hot day, on that very spot. Delilah …

  He stopped digging and shoved the iron box in the hole. Then he scooped dirt back on top of the box.

  This box is Papa’s coffin, Jonathan thought. This shallow hole, his grave. This lonely, secret ceremony is his funeral.

  Papa and the cursed pendant will be buried here forever.

  Jonathan finished filling the hole and smoothed the dirt. He left nothing to mark the spot.

  It is done, Jonathan thought. He stood and wiped the dirt from his hands. That is the end of the horror. The curse is finished. The feud is over.

  The Fiers and the Goodes will suffer no more.

  Shadyside Village 1900

  Nora’s entire body tensed as she listened. She held her breath as the footsteps in the hall came closer and closer to her room. She waited for them to stop at her door….

  But they passed by.

  She exhaled, then picked up her pen and began to write again.

  “Jonathan Fier hoped he could bury the curse along with Ezra’s ashes,” she wrote. “And it seemed to be true. The evil stayed buried for one hundred years. For one hundred years the Goodes and the Fiers lived in peace.

  “In fact, the feud was forgotten. Children grew up hearing none of the horrifying stories. They knew nothing of the curse upon the two families.”

  But it is not easy to end a curse, Nora thought.

  Jonathan Pier’s great-great granddaughter innocently unleashed the evil once again. During that hundred years of sleep, the evil power had grown even stronger.

  Nora touched the pendant around her neck. Oh, she thought mournfully, if only it had stayed buried forever….

  PART THREE

  Western Massachusetts 1843

  Chapter 19

  It is too bad the old apple tree died, thought Elizabeth Fier.

  She was kneeling in her green gardening dress, digging with a trowel in the rich dark soil. Heavy leather gloves protected her hands. The apple tree had died, and her brother, Simon, had chopped it down.

  Now there was a bare spot in the backyard. Elizabeth thought it looked empty and a bit sad.

  But I will take care of that, she thought, adjusting her straw bonnet over her long, dark hair. This flower garden will be even prettier than the old tree. I will fill it with pansies and snapdragons.

  As she worked, she hummed a tune her mother had tried to teach her on the piano. She stopped humming as her trowel hit something hard under the dirt. She lifted the trowel out of the dirt, then poked it into the earth again.

  There is something buried here, she thought. Maybe some kind of treasure!

  A voice inside her head told her it was most likely a root from the old dead tree. But she would soon find out.

  She dug around the hard spot, wiping the dirt away with her fingers. She tapped her trowel against it again. It clanged, metal against metal.

  A short while later she pulled up a metal box. It had a heavy lock on it, but the box itself was so rusted the hinges had broken.

  “Elizabeth!” her mother called from the kitchen door. “Come in and wash up! Supper is ready.”

  Elizabeth called back, “I will be there in a minute, Mother.”

  The rusty box fascinated her. What is inside? she wondered. Maybe it really is full of treasure.

  Carefully she lifted the rusty lid and peered inside. A coarse gray dust covered the bottom of the box. Elizabeth removed her gardening gloves and dipped her fingers into the dust. She touched something solid and pulled it out.

  It was a round, silver disk on a silver chain. A silver claw with three talons seemed to clutch the top of the disk. It was studded with four blue stones. On the back Elizabeth saw the inscribed words: Dominatio per malum .

  Latin, Elizabeth thought. But she did not know what the words meant. Maybe Simon would know.

  What an odd necklace, she thought. But I like it.

  She stood up, necklace in hand, and ran inside. Her father, Samuel Fier, and her sister and brother, Kate and Simon, were already seated at the dinin
g room table.

  It was a warm evening in late spring, but a fire burned in the old brick hearth. The house was very old; it had been in the Fier family for a hundred years. Samuel Fier and his family lived prosperously there.

  “Go wash your hands, Elizabeth,” said her mother, Katherine. She was a plump, pretty, round-faced woman with light brown hair piled on top of her head.

  Elizabeth poured fresh water into the washbasin and rinsed off her hands.

  Her mother set a platter of sliced turkey on the table, adding, “I wish you would not stay out in the garden so late, Ehzabeth. It leaves you no time to change for supper.”

  “I am sorry, Mother,” Ehzabeth replied, returning to the table. She held up the silver disk. “Look what I dug up,” she said. “Isn’t it strange?”

  Kate gave the pendant a dismissive glance and said, “It is ugly.”

  Kate was seventeen, a year older than Elizabeth. Her hair was a lighter shade of brown and her eyes a lighter shade of blue than Elizabeth’s. But they both had the same pale skin and full, red lips.

  Their brother, Simon, who was eighteen, had a very tall, thin body with an angular face, thin lips, and black hair. His eyes, too, were black.

  Simon studied the pendant as Elizabeth dangled it before him. “Where did you find it?” he asked.

  “In the backyard, where I am digging my new garden. It was buried under the old apple tree.”

  Samuel Fier touched the amulet lightly. “I have never seen anything like it,” he said. “I wonder what it was doing buried there. Someone must have buried it for a reason.”

  “Maybe it should stay buried,” Kate joked.

  Elizabeth ignored her sister’s comment. “I like it,” she said. “I am going to wear it as a good-luck charm.”

  She draped the silver chain around her neck.

  Suddenly her neck began to tingle. Elizabeth shuddered and closed her eyes. They burned.

  When she opened her eyes, the dining room was gone and she was surrounded by fire!

  Hot flames licked at her long curls, at the hem of her dress. Fire singed her eyelashes.

  I feel faint, she thought. She shut her eyes again and prepared to be engulfed in flames.

  Chapter 20

  “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! What is the matter?”

  Elizabeth heard the alarmed voices of her mother and father as the flames died away. She shook her head and opened her eyes.

  The fire disappeared. The room came into focus, as did the platter of turkey, her family. Everything seemed normal.

  “Elizabeth, what happened?” her mother asked.

  Elizabeth groped for a chair and sat down. “It is nothing, Mother, really,” she said. The flames were already fading from her memory. “I just felt faint for a minute. I am all right now.”

  “You need something to eat,” said Mrs. Fier.

  “You are probably right,” said Elizabeth. “I am very hungry.”

  For the rest of the evening Elizabeth felt fine. There were no other strange incidents. Soon she forgot all about the frightening sensation of fire.

  A few weeks later the flowers in Elizabeth’s garden were beginning to sprout. As for the strange pendant she had found there, it was now her favorite piece of jewelry. She never took it off.

  The Fiers were sitting down to supper on a warm June evening. Elizabeth was just passing a dish of fresh peas to Simon.

  Suddenly they heard a knock on the door.

  “Who could that be?” asked Mrs. Fier, filling their glasses with water.

  “I will answer it,” said Elizabeth. She stood up and hurried to the door.

  There, in the fading light, stood a tall, ragged man. The sight of him startled Elizabeth.

  His broad-brimmed straw hat was caked with dirt and sat low over his gaunt face. His black jacket and trousers were faded and hung loose on his skeletal frame. His boots were worn thin.

  His eyes, hard and guttering, stared at the disk around Elizabeth’s neck, but he said nothing.

  He must be a poor drifter, Elizabeth said to herself, collecting her thoughts. But why does he not speak?

  “What do you want?” she asked him.

  He raised his eyes from the pendant to Elizabeth’s face. Then he moved his cracked Ups. “Please help me,” he pleaded in a weak voice. “I am hungry. Can you spare any food or water?”

  As Elizabeth glanced back at her family’s bountiful supper, the drifter added, “I will gladly do a day’s work in return for a meal.”

  Mr. Fier came to the door and stood behind his daughter. “Please come in,” he said to the drifter. “We were just sitting down to eat, and we have plenty to share.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said the drifter. He smiled through his dry lips and stepped inside.

  Elizabeth watched him sit down and take a plate of food. His hands are bony, she thought with pity. And he looks sick. That must be what makes his eyes glitter so. The poor man!

  First the drifter drank two full glasses of water. Then he began to eat, rapidly shoveling the food into his mouth.

  He said nothing until he had eaten every morsel on his plate. Elizabeth struggled not to stare at him as he gobbled up his food.

  When he had finished the first serving, Mrs. Fier took his plate and refilled it. The man thanked her very sincerely.

  “My name is Franklin,” he told them. “But my friends call me Frank. I consider you all my friends now.”

  All the Fiers smiled.

  Now that he has eaten a bit, Elizabeth thought, his eyes are warmer and his face is friendlier. To think that I was frightened of a sick, weak, hungry man!

  “Do you live around here, Frank?” asked Mr. Fier.

  Frank shook his head. “I have no home,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  There was silence for a moment as Frank tore at a slice of bread with his teeth.

  “I used to have a family,” he continued. “I was one of seven brothers. We lived on a farm with my mother and father. But I lost them all, my whole family, and the farm, too. I am alone in the world now.”

  He spread a thick layer of honey on the bread.

  “Now I roam around, picking up work where I can find it. But sometimes there is no work to be had. And when there is no work, there is no food.”

  “Why don’t you settle down somewhere?” Mrs. Fier asked.

  “I would, ma’am,” Frank said. “I certainly would. I would settle down anywhere on earth, if I had a good reason to.”

  His lifted his gaze from his plate. Elizabeth felt a little shiver.

  He is looking right at me, she thought.

  Frank wiped his mouth and pushed his chair back from the table. “That was a delicious supper,” he said, standing up. “I thank you very kindly for it. Now I feel ready to do just about anything. You name the task, and I will do it for you.”

  “Oh, no, Frank,” Mrs. Fier protested. “We would not think of making you work for your supper. We were glad we could help.”

  “Nevertheless, ma’am,” Frank said. “I would feel better if I could do something for you.”

  “We do not need anything done,” said Simon. “But you could use a good hot bath, I bet.”

  “Oh, no,” said Frank. “I could not trouble you.”

  But the Fiers insisted, and Frank had to accept. While their mother cleaned up the supper dishes, Kate and Elizabeth got the wooden bathtub out of the pantry and set it on the kitchen floor. They boiled water and poured it into the tub.

  Then the women left the room so Frank could take a bath. Simon left a clean suit of clothes for him on a chair.

  Elizabeth paused at the door on her way out of the kitchen. She turned around just as Frank was taking off his dirty, tattered shirt. The movement of his arms made the muscles ripple through his back.

  Embarrassed, Elizabeth hurried out. She hoped Frank did not know that she had had a glimpse of his bare back. It was not a proper sight for a young lady.

  All the Fiers waited for Frank by the fire in th
e parlor. Kate bent over her needlepoint, and Elizabeth worked at her knitting. Kate’s birthday was coming up, and Elizabeth had decided to knit a scarf for her.

  Elizabeth glanced up, startled by a noise at the parlor door.

  There stood Frank, fresh from his bath. Elizabeth had to stop herself from gasping out loud at the change in him.

  She realized that he was probably ten years younger than she had thought at first, closer to twenty than thirty. His face had taken on a new warmth, now that he was clean, fed, and rested. His hair was neatly combed, and Simon’s borrowed clothes fit him elegantly.

  He is handsome, Elizabeth realized. Very handsome.

  She suddenly became aware of the weight of the amulet hanging from her neck, and the coolness of the metal against her skin. She held it in her palm, and it grew warm.

  Frank says he is just a drifter, Elizabeth thought as she watched him take a seat by the fire. But there is more to him than that. He did not tell us much about his family, or say where he comes from. Who is he, really?

  She would soon find out.

  * * *

  Frank leaned back against the cushioned chair by the fireplace, grinning at the Fier family gathered around him.

  They are all smiling at me, he thought. They are so welcoming to the poor, starving drifter into their home. They are being so kind, so good-hearted.

  They will take me in, he mused, and they will nurse me back to health. As I get stronger, I will help them out around the house, entertain their sweet daughters and their lonely son.

  Soon they will begin to trust me, and before they know it, depend upon me. They will all love me, all five of them, like a brother and like a son.

  Frank warmed his hands over the crackling flames in the hearth. Mrs. Fier offered him a cup of hot coffee.

  It is beginning already, he thought. I can see the warmth shining in their eyes. They want to help me. They are beginning to love me.

  I will wait. I will wait until they all love me as much as they love one another. I will wait and endure it all.