So the numbers were mine, drawn from my own brain when I was unaware. I wasn’t surprised by that simple fact—after all, I’d been pulling these numbers from thin air for over a year, using them to populate the equations I devised for the Chapelwood monsters. Some mornings I’d awaken to find them scrawled on notepaper left beside my bed, and some mornings I’d find them on the blackboard, or left upon my desk directly in pencil (on one odd occasion).
No, I was surprised by the sheer volume of it all, and likewise, I was surprised to see the pattern changed. These weren’t the neatly slotted digits that lined up nicely with my graphs; these were systems that swirled and dipped, broke apart and reassembled.
I traced them with my eyes, trying to determine what I was meant to see. I can read a formula like other men read Shakespeare—teasing out the truths and particulars from the empty spaces, and divining meaning from scant hints and puns.
(Yes, numbers can twist themselves into puns. Any crackpot numerologist could tell you as much.)
What do I see? What does this tell me?
I think it means interference. I see new chess pieces coming into play, two of them at least—and always that uncertain variable of Ruth Stephenson (or whatever her name is now), who escaped before they could take her, and before I had to kill her. She got away, and the thing that waits on the other side of the wall is none too pleased about it; it would send them after her again, and maybe it will in time . . . but for now, she’s too visible, too much in the public eye. After her father’s trial, I think. They might well settle upon her again, and then I’ll have to reassess her importance and safety in the scheme of the universal good.
Does that sound strange? Of course it does. Everything is, though, isn’t it?
Upon the blackboard, in the soup of numbers I left there in my sleep, I saw poetry . . . but it wasn’t the straightforward kind that makes cheap rhymes about the beauty of a woman or the freshness of spring. This poem is talking its way around something else. “Interference,” I said. Maybe “resistance” is a better way to put it.
But resistance to whom? To me? To Chapelwood?
I made myself a pot of coffee and pulled up a chair. I retrieved a pair of reading glasses I don’t often need from the top drawer, and I leaned forward with my face so close to the board that my breath left brief puffs of fog upon it.
I took it all in, and I let myself detach away from it . . . I closed my eyes and let my attention distance itself, in a faint approximation (or a reaching toward) of that mesmerized state which prompted me to produce the numbers in the first place. I retreated, trying to see the bigger picture instead of just the individual numbers, statistics, and symbols.
When I blinked myself back to alertness, I felt only a sense that I was no longer alone in my fight . . . but that it might not be a good thing, and I couldn’t understand why. The thought of an ally thrilled and delighted me! But it neither thrilled nor delighted the universe, so far as I could tell.
I could not conclude that I was the one in danger, because the numbers cared nothing about me, personally. The numbers were only a guide to a greater good, whether or not that was their original intent. This unexplainable cosmology sought to explain itself, and I struggled to understand why a powerful friend could do anything but help my world-saving enterprise. I would be overjoyed to find my load lightened, after all.
Unless . . .
. . . I squinted at the chalk, and with the tip of my finger I tapped one corner of the message—collecting a bit of white dust that smelled like school. Unless the dark thing (which surely is not God) is interested in the powerful, more than it is interested in me (for I am powerless, except for my axe). Unless the dark thing will prey upon it, before it can assist me.
Should the darkness consume me, what would it gain? Nothing, really. One lone mortal who bends his brain around the exponential zeroes of the galaxy in order to hear a voice from the other end of it. But what if some more useful party should topple into its hunting gaze?
What then?
• • •
I stood from my chair and finished the last of my coffee. It was bitter and lukewarm, but it sharpened my brain. I pushed the chair aside and pushed the reading glasses up onto my forehead. I was still missing something. (Missing quite a lot, no doubt, but that was always the way of things.)
I carried my cup to the sink and deposited it there, washing it with a little soap and setting it aside to dry.
Over my shoulder I glanced again at the blackboard, its lure impossible to ignore.
It was still trying to tell me something. It was drawn from my own hand, unspooled from my own mind, and still it could not make itself understood.
Or could it?
I turned around, leaning backward against the sink. I was as far away from the blackboard as I could get without opening a door and letting myself into the hallway. And maybe, if I relaxed my eyes . . . if I let them unfocus until the numbers were so much chalk dust, smeared across the slate . . . I saw something other than the mutilated web of formulas.
I could swear I almost saw the face of a woman. A face I almost knew—for I’d seen a sketch of it once before, in the city newspaper.
Last year there was an Italian man, and I almost killed him with my axe . . . only because he fought to protect his wife, not because he was of any interest to Chapelwood or its gods. He survived, because I had no real interest in killing him, only removing him as an obstacle; and when he awoke he spoke of the stars, and of miracles and Milky Ways.
And he drew a picture of a woman no one knew.
Lorino, that was his name. (I don’t remember the names of all of them. There are too many now—but he was an unfortunate bystander, so his name is lodged in my head.) He’s at the hospital downtown, I think. Or he was, anyway, and I never heard that he left it.
If I were to visit him, would he know me?
We met in the dark, and our meeting was swift and violent. I don’t know if he ever saw my face, but then, I don’t know if he ever saw that woman’s face, either. It wasn’t his wife or his sister, and no one ever stepped forward to identify her. Who was she?
Would he tell me?
It was a preposterous thing to wonder, and to halfway plan . . . a dangerous thing, more dangerous than the murders themselves. But as I stared at the blackboard and, yes, the face I could now see quite plainly that had formed upon it, at a distance . . . I was wondering and halfway planning how I might go about visiting Mr. Lorino, so that we might exchange a word or two.
I might need to. It might matter.
Ruth Stephenson Gussman
SEPTEMBER 29, 1921
They finally called my name.
I don’t know why I jumped; I knew they were going to ask for me, and I knew good and well what I had to do. I don’t know why my whole body acted like it was a big shock when they said, “The prosecution calls Ruth Stephenson Gussman to the stand.” I’d rehearsed it a million times, over supper and in my dreams. I’m sure Pedro was sick of hearing about it, but that was fine, because I was sick of thinking about it. It was time to talk about it.
My face got real hot, and my hands started to shake. I was half afraid I was about to have one of those spells, because what a god-awful time for it, you know? But this was only the ordinary kind of scared, and I could still see fine. Nothing was crawling around my ankles, and no darkness descended, bringing ghosts down with it.
I rose to my feet, gripping the back of the bench in front of me.
Chief Eagan stayed seated beside me. He patted the back of my hand and whispered, “Go on, girl. Say your piece, and don’t let them rattle you.”
I nodded, swallowed, adjusted my hat and my sweater, and stepped out into the aisle—thinking of you, Father Coyle. And I’m telling you this because I haven’t found any other spirits to chat with, and I miss you, and I trust you. Maybe if I keep talking, you?
??ll answer me again.
It felt more than a little like going to church at Chapelwood, its pews lined up just like these benches with an aisle in the middle.
(Is that on purpose, do you think? Are courtrooms supposed to look like churches, with the judge up front just like a preacher, and the lawyers and everybody on either side like deacons? What’s that supposed to tell us, exactly? The more I think about it, the less I like it.)
• • •
On either side of me, people watched me go up there. It was like being a bride, or going down front to kneel for an altar call, or something like that—except a million times worse. I was afraid I was going to trip and fall; I was afraid I was going to pass out cold. The aisle felt way too long, or maybe I was walking way too slow. My footsteps were the only sound at all, and they were cheap little secondhand heels echoing on the floor—but I couldn’t hear anything else, not even anybody breathing, or sneezing, or waving paper fans against how warm it was getting indoors. It sounded like I was walking down a tunnel, all alone, and at the end of the tunnel, God only knew what I’d find.
All I found was a witness stand. I don’t know why they call it that, since you sit down once you get there.
Mr. Henry Mayhew was waiting for me to get myself situated. I raised my hand when the bailiff brought the Bible and I said my name for the record, and all that nonsense, then fiddled with my sweater and shuffled my feet around—but as soon as I realized I was doing that, I forced myself to stop. I couldn’t sit up there and fidget like a little girl. I had to hold my head straight like a woman.
Mr. Mayhew, in his voice as slow as molasses, asked me if I knew you, and I know it was just for the record but that was real dumb, because everyone knew I knew you. I spent the first few minutes on that stand answering a whole bunch of questions like that—easy ones, and maybe that was Mr. Mayhew being kind and letting me warm up. Mr. Black didn’t object to any of the questions or anything I said, but then again, I was only saying facts.
Then he got around to the day you died, and I hadn’t been there when it happened, so I couldn’t say much about Daddy killing him.
“But you’d seen him earlier that day?”
“Yes,” I said. “First thing that morning, I went out to Saint Paul’s and Father Coyle married me and Pedro.”
Over in the jury box, the sour-faced old men were shaking their heads and clicking their tongues. Oh, well. I already knew what they thought of me before I climbed up into the box in the first place. I wouldn’t give a damn, except their opinion mattered. Just this once. And it mattered big—but God, I wished it didn’t.
“Was your father aware of your betrothal?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
I shook my head. “No. He didn’t want me to get married, and he didn’t like Pedro.”
“Why is that?”
“Pedro’s a good bit older than me, and he’s Puerto Rican, and he’s a day laborer . . . take your pick. That’s probably what he’ll tell you. But the real truth is, he just didn’t want me out of his house, because then he couldn’t tell me what to do anymore.”
“Objection,” called Hugo Black from his seat at the defense’s table. He said it like this was all very dull, and a total waste of his time. “Calls for speculation.”
“Withdrawn,” Mr. Mayhew said obligingly. “But you are a grown woman, over the age of sixteen, and able to marry as you like.”
“Damn straight I am.”
“Language, Mrs. Gussman.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I felt my face getting hot again, but I took a deep breath and kept my head up. “But it was none of my daddy’s business who I married. Like you said, I’m a grown woman. And we didn’t have a wedding, so he wasn’t paying for anything—and he didn’t get any say in it.”
I was real glad he wasn’t in the courtroom just then. He’d taken a fall in his cell, that’s what I heard through Chief Eagan. They had him under a doctor’s care, but it didn’t sound like he was too bad off. I wouldn’t have been worried about him even if they’d said he was beat up something awful. I was glad he was gone, and glad he wasn’t down there glaring at me while I talked.
But I couldn’t help looking at his empty chair every once in a while anyway.
The rest of it was pretty straightforward and Mr. Black didn’t object to anything else, and when Mr. Mayhew said he had no further questions for me, I wanted to die of relief. But then Hugo Black stood up for cross-examination and then I just wanted to die.
“Tell me, Mrs. Gussman,” he began, “how many times have you run away from your father’s home over the years?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question, or I’ll treat you like a hostile witness.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. I had a feeling that he was going to treat me hard enough without it being called “hostile.” So I said, “Off the top of my head, I don’t know. Maybe five or six.”
“Five or six times,” he repeated, just for show—and not in case the jury hadn’t heard me. “You fled the home of the man who’d raised you, cared for you your whole life.”
“I fled the home of a man who beat me and my momma like a dog when it suited him.”
He gave me the ugliest smile I ever did see. “But the Good Book tells us to spare the rod and spoil the child, and you are truly spoiled enough. Every child who’s ever reprimanded finds the sentence too harsh.”
“The Good Book says a lot of things nobody listens to anymore, too.”
“Mrs. Gussman,” he said, pretending to be gentle but mostly being cruel. “This is not a conversation. You’ll answer the questions I ask, and leave any editorializing out of it. Do you know what ‘editorializing’ means?”
“Of course I do,” I snapped. Then I remembered how he wanted it phrased, so I said, “Yes. I know.”
“Good, good. So answer me this, if you please: How many times were you caught alone with boys after school?”
“Twice, and once it was my cousin Albert—and everybody knew damn good and well there was nothing going on.”
“Editorializing . . . ,” he warned me. “And language, too. I’ll let it slide, because I want to know about the other time.”
“The other time I was lonesome, and he was nice. He didn’t pull anything funny. We just sat on a swing and talked, then Daddy found us and—”
“And he was upset, I expect.”
“I couldn’t leave the house for a month.” I added real quick, before he could shoot me down, “Because he gave me a broken leg.”
To the judge, Hugo Black said something about striking that last bit from the record, because it wasn’t relevant. I wondered how on earth he could claim such a thing, but I’d already been told that the courtroom doesn’t work like real life, and there are strange rules you’ve got to play by. Chief Eagan had told me, and so had Mr. Ward, when everyone was getting ready for the trial.
Mr. Mayhew objected to Hugo Black’s objection, so the two men approached the judge to chat about it.
I looked back at Chief Eagan and he gave me an encouraging nod. I appreciated it, but it didn’t do much to make me feel better. I wished Pedro could’ve been there, but he had to work. I wished Mr. Ward had been there, but I didn’t know where he was—and come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him for a couple of days. I wished I wasn’t quite so alone, and maybe I wished it so hard it turned into a little prayer . . . because just then the doors opened at the back of the courtroom and two more people slipped inside.
One of them was Inspector Wolf, and the other was a woman about his age—but I didn’t know who she was. She was not too tall and was rather ordinary-looking, except that she was dressed more nicely than the rest of us. I don’t mean she was wearing anything flashy; it was just a nice cream-colored dress that suited a
lady of a certain age, and it probably came with a nice price tag, too.
When she first walked in, she looked uncertain. The place was packed, so I thought at first she was just wondering where to sit, or if she should bother trying. But we locked eyes while the men beside me argued with each other and with the judge . . . and I swear, I think she understood. She felt sorry for me, and she wanted to say something to that effect—I could see it all over her face. Under ordinary circumstances, I might’ve been put off by that because I don’t need anybody’s pity. But right about then, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, and that lady was welcome to join the party.
Inspector Wolf and the mystery lady stepped over to the side so they didn’t block the door. They stood at the rear of the room, just behind Chief Eagan—but he didn’t see them, because he didn’t turn around. If he had, he probably would’ve said hello to the inspector, because I know they’ve met before.
Anyway, the lawyers and the judge quit arguing and they went back to their respective corners, like a couple of boxers in a ring. Hugo Black checked some paperwork he’d left there, then returned his attention to me. He didn’t bother to come up to me again; he just half leaned, half sat on the edge of his table, facing me while he talked.
“So you felt that your father’s household rules and punishments were excessive, is that right?”
“They were excessive,” I told him. “And that wasn’t just my opinion, either.”
“You’re the one on the stand. Other opinions need not be considered at this time—there’s already plenty of hearsay to go around. Let us stick to verifiable facts: You’ve run away before, by your own admission.”
“That’s right.”
“Because your father treated you poorly, most recently by making you attend church against your will.”
“That’s right, too.”