“Gee, that must have been a really bad book.”
“On the contrary,” said Redford. “It was a really good book.” She paused. “But there was something about it I didn’t like.”
“That sounds like a book I want to read,” said Billy.
“To be more accurate,” said Redford, “it was an anonymous story in a book called Juvenile Tales of Mystery and Imagination. My dad thinks it might actually have been written by the young Edgar Allan Poe. But he doesn’t know for sure. Nobody does. He’s shown it to all kinds of experts who can’t say for sure if it is or if it isn’t.”
“Scary, huh?”
“I don’t know that ‘scary’ is the right word,” said Redford. “It’s not the kind of story that makes you look over your shoulder or keeps you awake or anything. It’s more subtle than that. And it still haunts me, to this day. Like the memory of a terrible accident.”
“I know what that’s like,” said Billy, and told her about his own car accident.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” said Redford when Billy was finished. “If I’d known that you’d been in a car accident, I wouldn’t have used that as an example to explain how the Poe story stays with me.”
“It’s no problem,” said Billy. “I’m over it. Honest.”
He smiled at her to make her feel comfortable again, and she found herself smiling back at him. Fondly.
“But I’d still like to read that story,” he added.
Redford grinned. “You sure about that?”
“I like scary stories.”
“Why?” Redford shook her head. “Why do people like being scared so much?”
Billy thought for a moment before answering. “I think we’ve just evolved that way,” he said. “Somehow it’s tied in to our survival. We like to test ourselves. See if it’s still there. Maybe if we hadn’t had it, we’d have died out long ago.”
Redford nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”
“What is it called, anyway?” Billy asked her. “This story?”
“The Pocket Handkerchief,” said Redford.
“And where can I find a copy?”
“Fortunately, there’s only one,” said Redford, pointing at a little revolving bookcase beside the sales desk. “I’m pretty sure he keeps it in there with all his other rare books and first editions.” She knelt down and quickly found the book she was looking for. “Yes, here it is. But do me a favor, okay? When we see each other again, don’t tell me your opinion about it. It gives me the creeps just to think of anyone reading it.”
“Sure,” said Billy. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever mention it.”
“And don’t tell my dad I was here. I don’t like him knowing what I’ve been doing.”
“All right. If you insist.”
“I do insist. It’ll be our secret.”
Billy loved the two of them having a secret. No girl had ever asked him to keep a secret before. It was like they now had a bond between them. He was already looking forward to the next time Redford came into the shop. At the same time, he could hardly wait for her to leave so that he could find the story; and as soon as she was gone, he opened the slim volume and started to read.
“THE POCKET HANDKERCHIEF”
by Anonymous
PART I
I cannot remember precisely when I met Scipio for the first time but I have the strong sense that he knew me before I ever came to live in the house of his master, Mr. A——, in Richmond, Virginia, during the year of our Lord 18—.
I was aged only two when that happened, my own father having died of the consumption, and my mother married Mr. A—— with a haste that bordered on the indecent. For myself I do not remember my own father at all but, if the reader will permit the apparent contradiction, I have never forgotten him. He was buried in the churchyard of St. John’s Episcopal Church, where, it is said, General Benedict Arnold, the traitor, quartered his troops and their horses during the War of Independence.
Another six years passed before my beloved mother, Elizabeth, also succumbed to the same malady as my father, leaving me and my brother, William Henry, alone with our stepfather. She was just aged twenty-nine. I was myself but eight years old at the time, yet not a day has passed since then when I have not thought of her.
Scipio, who was one of my adoptive father Mr. A——’s three house slaves, and very well educated—it was he, not Mr. A——, who usually helped me with my Latin homework—told me that on several occasions he saw my mother on the stage in Richmond, for she was an actress, and thought she was one of the handsomest ladies he ever saw. This is also my own opinion.
Memories grow dim, however, and the one portrait I have of her is I think a porcelain miniature which makes her look like a child’s doll and, at the very least, something not alive; that is its greatest failing. Would that were all. But I am also reminded of my mother as something not alive whenever I look at the only other thing of hers I now possess, which is a white pocket handkerchief with her initials stitched upon its corner. This is to hardly state the truth of the matter, however, which is that whenever I contemplate this handkerchief—as, from time to time, my strange nature compels me so to do—I am obliged to think of her as something dead and in awful torment. I confess I have often thought of burning the handkerchief; and yet cannot by reason of the fact that it serves to remind me that my living suffering is deservedly shared with her eternal one.
I am now aged twelve and while I am eternally grateful to Mr. A—— for taking my brother and me into his home, the want of true affection has been the heaviest of my trials. Indeed, my sense of grief and loss is sometimes so heavy that it might reasonably be supposed that I had been bereaved but recently. Especially since it is my habit to go walking through cemeteries and I confess I can no more pass a newly filled grave without stopping to consider the fate of the poor wretch who lies beneath the soil than another boy of my age can ignore the sight in a grocery store of a jar full of candy.
My stepfather says I have a morbid disposition, and I must admit that as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by death, and rare is the night that I do not stare into the too solid darkness of my room and imagine death’s hard unseen face staring coldly back at me.
Scipio said that it was perfectly natural that any child alive should be interested in death, for you couldn’t have one without the other, and that back in Africa, where he came from originally, a boy such as myself who demonstrated such an interest in the afterlife would have marked himself out as a future houngan, which is a kind of priest or witch doctor. Scipio also told me that his own grandfather Msizi had been a great houngan and knew better than anyone how to connect the world of spirits and ancestors with the living world of human beings.
“All the same, young Master Edgar,” said Scipio, “it seems to me that you got all of eternity to find out the answers to these questions. So maybe it’s best you don’t go rushing that particular inquiry.”
I persisted, however, with the result that Scipio and I often talked about what might lie on the other side of death’s mildewed curtain, although the poor man might easily have felt by reason of his station that he was obliged to indulge my youthful questions about the matter upon which I most earnestly wished to know more, and that was this: What is it really like to be dead?
Persistence paid off with the discovery that Scipio himself was in possession of a houngan’s secrets and knew very well how the world of the living might become better acquainted with the world of the dead; and I must confess that I took unfair advantage of our relationship, constantly badgering that unhappy African to give me a clearer account of exactly how such a closer acquaintance might be achieved.
Finally, and with great reluctance, he told me something of what I wanted to know.
“Anybody who wants to find out what it’s really like to be dead,” he explained, “has no choice but to go and visit with the folks in the underworld. That ain’t easy. And it ain’t for the faint-hearted, boy. If you is going to visit
the underworld, you needs to find yourself a door. Ain’t but one place in Richmond to find a door like that. The cemetery. And don’t think I’m talking about a stroll around them headstones like you is partial to. I’m talking about something much more profound, in the true Latin sense of that word.
“The plain fact is, Master Edgar, you needs to get yourself buried alive. Just like one of them vestal virgins from Roman times, when they was accused of violating their vows. They got sealed up in a cave with a small amount of bread and water, so that the goddess Vesta might save them, supposing they was innocent, of course. Or like Saint Castulus, who was chamberlain to the emperor Diocletian. You remember what happened to him? They buried him alive in a sand pit on the Via Labicana.”
I knew the story well, of course, and I was hardly as horrified at the idea of premature burial as perhaps Scipio had hoped I might be.
“It’s not just that,” continued Scipio. “It’s the way you is buried, too. You got to be buried alive with the lid of the coffin facing down. Now, most folks who get themselves buried do it the other way, of course. With the coffin lid facing up. On account of that’s the general direction they want their souls to travel in. But if you is going calling on the underworld, you got to be going the other way. You got to head down.”
“That’s it?”
Scipio laughed. “ ‘That’s it,’ he says. Listen to yourself, boy.” Scipio laughed some more. “Being buried alive even for a short while ain’t no Sunday school picnic, boy. For one thing, you got to last from dusk until dawn without going plumb crazy. Why, one solitary hour of buried alive would be enough to drive most folks mad. Let alone one whole night.”
“If I am going to visit the underworld, then, strictly speaking, I can hardly be buried alive for the whole night, can I?” I said, with precocious logic. “The coffin lid has to open like a door, you said. In those circumstances it doesn’t make any sense for me to be afraid.”
“Land sakes, I do believe you’re not,” he said, with some admiration. “Very well, Master Edgar. You figure out a way to get yourself buried alive and Scipio promises he’ll have a quiet word with his granddaddy to come and fetch you out of the coffin to give you the five-cent tour of the underworld.”
“Very well. I will.”
And, sooner than either of us expected, I did exactly that, albeit in circumstances that, perhaps, did not reflect well on me.
When a boy in my class at Richmond Academy called Wilson began regularly to bait me for being an orphan and Mr. A——’s adopted son, he made himself my enemy and I was soon plotting how I might humiliate him in return. One day, when he started to make light of my poor mother’s death, I called him a coward and when he denied this I challenged him to swim the span of the Mayo Bridge, which is some four hundred and fifty yards, and Wilson accepted.
I have always been a good swimmer. At the age of eleven I could swim the James River from Shockoe Bottom to Rocky Ridge. The distance of our swim was not so great for me but when the river is in flood as it was then, the current is strong and even a good swimmer risks being swept away. Which is what happened to poor Wilson; and when eventually his drowned body was recovered from the water at Hampton Roads several miles downstream, they buried the boy in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
Almost as soon as Wilson was in the ground I was pestering the understandably reluctant Scipio to help me put my plan into nocturnal action. No, that is incorrect. I plagued him, like he was that hard-hearted pharaoh of Egypt and I was the prophet Moses.
“Wilson’s grave is just soft earth,” I told Scipio, “so his coffin should be easy enough to dig up. We can disinter the body tonight and I will take his place in the coffin until morning.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Scipio, please try to understand that it’s something I feel compelled to do.”
“Ain’t you afeard, Master Edgar?”
“Yes, of course I am,” I confessed. “But I still want to do it.”
“Very well. I’ll help you. But listen here, you can’t never talk about this. Not never. Not to nobody. If’n we get caught or anyone ever finds out what we done, they’ll hang old Scipio for sure. You hear?”
“Yes,” I said. “So long as you are alive, Scipio, I won’t ever peach.”
By which you may reasonably deduce, gentle reader, that poor Scipio is dead. But more of that anon.
St. John’s Churchyard was largely full by 18—, which is why the city of Richmond established Shockoe Hill Cemetery. It was outside of the city and to the northwest of the river and, as cemeteries go, rather a pleasant place where I had sometimes walked, being full of trees such as Virginia elm, pin oak, silver maple, locust, Kentucky coffee, eastern red cedar and yew, and all enclosed by a high brick wall that Scipio and I were obliged to scale after dark, for the cemetery has a gate that is locked every night at eight o’clock. This was to our advantage, however, as the locked gate and the high wall of Shockoe Hill made it seem unlikely that we would be disturbed. It was also fortunate that my stepfather was away at the time and there were only the other house slaves, Mammy and Thomas, to notice that we were not at home and neither of them would ever have informed on us.
In the lowering darkness we set to our nefarious work with pick and shovel excavating the unfortunate Wilson’s coffin. It was a hard task for a man and a boy and took the best part of an hour. By the time we had hauled the simple pine box out of the grave I was exhausted and almost looking forward to resting in peace awhile. But I was certainly not looking forward to seeing the dead face of my enemy, Wilson. Perhaps it was guilt, but I had half an idea that he still might awaken and accuse me of getting him drowned. This apprehension was hardly diminished by the sight of the dead boy’s face, for he hardly looked dead at all and, indeed, so lifelike did Wilson appear to me that I felt compelled to offer him a double apology—once for bringing about his untimely death and again for disturbing his eternal rest.
Gently, Scipio collected the body from the coffin and carried it to the shadow of the brick wall that enclosed the cemetery, and there he laid him down and covered him with some sacking that the sextons had used to line the edge of another open grave that was to be filled the following day.
Then, equipped with a burning tallow candle and a few provisions, I lay down in the coffin on my front. Before Scipio closed the lid on me for the night, however, I sought some assurance from him that all would be well.
“You did remember to speak to your granddaddy, the houngan, Scipio, and tell him to expect me tonight?” I said.
“I can’t say for sure that Msizi will be there,” said Scipio. “But I told him, all right. The man knows you’re coming to visit awhile. Reckon it’d be rude not to show up and say hello, given all the trouble you and I have been to here.”
“You won’t leave the cemetery either,” I said. “Not to go and get a drink from that still in Rocky Ridge like you did last Saturday when you didn’t come home until late. I sure wouldn’t want you to forget to come back here and dig me up again in the morning, Scipio.”
“I’ll be here all night. Like we agreed.”
“Because I think it would be a terrible way to die. Inhumation, they call it—being buried alive.”
“Don’t worry, Master Edgar,” said Scipio. “I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy. ’Sides, I got to come and get you or else there is nowhere to put your friend Wilson.”
All the same, as Scipio put the lid on the coffin and hammered in a few small nails so that I might more easily be lowered into the grave, I wished that I had thought to bring a Bible with me so that I might have made the slave swear a solemn oath not to leave me buried alive, forever. But were there not many other things that might go wrong with my plan? What if my air ran out? What if Scipio had a heart attack and died before he could dig me up again? What if he was apprehended before he could tell his story? And what if having been apprehended he did tell his story and no one believed him, as well they might not? After all, I
knew from my own experience that few if any twelve-year-old boys were as strange as me. Had my own stepfather, Mr. A——, not said so? My imagination generated a hundred different anxieties that crowded in upon my mind as I felt the coffin containing my living body descend into Wilson’s grave.
—
Billy stopped reading and shivered, not sure that he had the nerve to read the rest of the story; and yet he knew he would.
“I couldn’t ever do something like that,” he said. “Not in a million years.”
Billy and Mr. Rapscallion stayed at the Savoy Hotel in Kansas City. It was a nice old redbrick hotel—perhaps the oldest in the city—with stained glass windows and high, beamed ceilings. It was even said that Harry Houdini had once stayed at the Kansas City Savoy.
Billy liked it a lot. At least he did until Mr. Rapscallion said he had chosen that particular hotel because it was supposed to be haunted. Billy was a little unnerved by this news and wondered what his father would have made of it. Not much, probably. It had been hard enough for Billy to persuade him to write the letter to Mr. Rapscallion granting permission for the boy to travel with the Hitchcock bookseller.
“Why on earth would you do something like that?” Billy asked him.
“Well, I’ve always wanted to see a ghost,” explained Mr. Rapscallion. “And I never have. Between you and me? I think I probably never will. But I’d sure like to. You see, it’s kind of embarrassing that Rexford Rapscallion, the owner of the Haunted House of Books, has never seen a real ghost. Not ever. That’s right, Billy. Not so much as an apparition. It’s bad for business. Back at the shop I even have a stuffed raven with a message capsule on its leg where a ghost who was minded to do so might leave me a message. So far I’ve had nothing. But I haven’t given up. So, whenever I visit a different city, I always try to stay somewhere that’s supposed to be haunted. And this hotel is haunted. That’s what Shudders—the haunted hotel guidebook—says, anyway.”