CHAPTER 33
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I had been one of them. My son had met one face-to-fa the other side of the try, and there was no telling to what lengths they would go to follow us. The gelings had e for Edward that night years before, and by going downstairs I had scared them off. But they would be back. They were watg us, waiting for my son. He would not be safe as long as they prowled near our home. Edward would not be safe with them in the world. Ohey fixed on a child for the ge, he was as good as gone. I could not let Edward from my sight, and took to log our doors and latg our windows every evening. They circled around my imagination, ied my rest. The piano offered my sole relief. By posing, I hoped to steady my sanity. False start followed false start. I struggled to keep those two worlds separate.Fortunately, I had Tess and Edward to keep me grounded. A delivery truck pulled into our cul-de-say birthday, and Edward, at the window, shouted, "Its here, its here!" They insisted that I remain in the bedroom with the shades drawn until my gift could be brought into the house, and I dutifully plied, mad with love at my sons jumpy exuberand Tesss sexy, knowing smile. On the bed in darkness, I closed my eyes, w if I deserved such love iurn, w that it might be stolen should the truth ever be revealed.
Edward bounded up the stairs and hammered on the closed drabbing my arm with his two small hands, he pulled me to the studio. A great green bow stretched across the door, and with a curtsey, Tess presented me with the scissors.
"As mayor of this city," I intoned, "Id like my distinguished son to join me in the honors." We cut the ribbon together and swung open the door.
The small an was not new or elaborate, but it was beautiful from the love given. And it would prove enough for me to approximate the sounds I was after. Edward fiddled with the stops, and I took Tess aside and asked how she could afford such a luxury.
"Ever since San Francisco," she said, "or maybe since Czechoslovakia, Ive been wanting to do this for you. A penny here, a dollar there, and a woman who drives a hard bargain. Eddie and I found it for sale at an old church up in Coudersport. Your mom and Charlie put us over the top, you should know, but we all wanted you to have it. I know its not perfect, but—"
"Its the best gift—"
"Dont worry about the cost. Just play the music, baby."
"I gived my allowances," Edward said.
I embraced them both aight, overe by fortune, and then I sat dolayed from Bachs The Art of the Fugue, lost again to time.
Still enamored with the new mae days later, I returned with Edward from kindergarten to ay and quiet house. I gave him a snack, turned on Sesame Street, ao my studio to work. On the an keyboard sat a single sheet of folded paper with a yellow stiote affixed to the surface. "Lets discuss!" she had scribbled. She had found the passenger list with the names of all the Ungerlands, which I had hidden and locked up aim papers; I could only imagine how it wound up in Tesss hands.
The front door swung open with a screed banged shut, and for a dark moment the thought dahrough my mind that they had e for Edward. I dashed to the front door just as Tess inched her way into the dining room, arms laden with groceries. I took a few bags to lighten her load, and we carried them into the kit and danced around each other in a pas de deux, putting food away. She did not seem particularly ed about anything other than the ed peas and carrots.
When we were done, she brushed imaginary dust from her palms. "Did you get my note?"
"About the Ungerlands? Where did you get the list?"
She blew her bangs out of her eyes. "What do you mean, where did I get it? You left it on the sideboard by the phohe question is: Where did you get it?"
"In Cheb. Remember Father Hlinka?"
"Cheb? That was nine years ago. Is that what you were doing? ossessed you to iigate the Ungerlands?"
Total silence gave me away.
"Were you that jealous of Brian? Because holy, thats a little crazy, dont you think?"
"Not jealous, Tess. eo be there, and I was simply trying to help him trace his family tree. Find his grandfather."
She picked up the passenger list and her eyes sed it to the end. "Thats incredible. When did you ever talk to Brian Ungerland?"
"This is all a history, Tess. I ran into him at Oscars when we were engaged. I told him we were going to Germany, and he asked me if I had the time could I stop by the National Archives and look up his family. When I didnt find them there, I thought maybe his people were from someplace else, so I asked Father Hlinka when we were in Cheb. He found them. No big deal."
"Henry, I dont believe a word youre saying."
I stepped toward her, wanting to enfold her in my arms, desperate to end the versation. "Tess, Ive always told you the truth."
"But why didnt Brian just go ask his mother?"
"His mother? I didnt know he had a mother."
"Everyone has a mother. She lives right here in town. Still does, I think. You tell her how jealous you were."
"But I looked her up in the phone book."
"Youre kidding." She crossed her arms and shook her head. "She remarried years ago when Brian was in high school. Let me think. Her name is Blake, Eileen Blake. And shed remember the grandfather. He lived till he was a hundred, and she used to talk about that crazy old man all the time." Giving up, she headed for the staircase.
"Gustav?" I shouted after her.
She looked over her shoulder, sched up her face, found the name in her memory. "No, no ...Joe. Crazy Joe U<var>..</var>ngerland is Brians grandfather. Of course, theyre all crazy in that family, eveher."
"Are you sure were not talking about Gustav Ungerland?"
"Im going to start calling you Crazy Henry Day... You could have asked me all about this. Look, if youre so ied, why dont you go tall Brians mother? Eileen Blake." At the top of the stairs, she leaned over the railing, her long blonde hair falling like Rapunzels. "Its sweet you were so jealous, but you have nothing to worry about." She flashed her crooked smile .ml set free my worries. "Tell the old girl I said hello."
Buried to her ne fallen leaves, she stared straight ahead without blinking, and the third time I passed her I realized she was a doll. Another had been lashed with a red jump rope to a tree trunk nearby, and dismembered arms and legs poked up at odd angles from the long, unmowed grass. At the end of a string tied to a chokecherry limb, a head hung and rotated in the breeze, and the headless body was stuffed into the mailbox, anticipating Saturdays postman. The masterminds behind this mayhem giggled from the porch when I stopped the car in front of their house, but they looked almost catatonic as I walked up the sidewalk.
" you girls help me? I seem to be lost," I said from the bottom step. The irl draped a protective arm across her sisters shoulder.
"Is your mommy or daddy home? Im looking for someone who lives around here. Do you know the Blakes house?"
"Its haunted," said the younger sister. She lacked two froh and spoke with a lisp.
"Shes a witch, mister." The older sister may have been around ten, stick-thin and raven-haired, with dark circles around her eyes. If anyone would know about witches, it was this one. "Why do you want to go see a witch, mister?"
I put one foot on the step. "Because Im a goblin."
They both grinned from ear to ear. The older sister directed me to look for a turn before the street er, a hidden alleyway that was really a lane. "Its called Asterisk Way," she said, "because its too small to have a real name."
"Are you going to gobble her up?" the smaller one asked.
"Im going to gobble her up and spit out the bones. You e by on Halloween night and make yourself a skeleton." They turned and looked at each other, smiling gleefully.
An invasion of sumad rown boxwood obscured Asterisk Way. When the car began to scrape hedges on both sides, I got out and walked. Half-hidden houses were scattered along the route, and last on the left was a weathered foursquare with BLAKE on the mailbox. Obscured by the shrubs, a pair of bare legs flashed in front of me, rag across the yard, and then a sed someone rustled through the bushes. I thought the horrid little sisters had followed me, but then a third movement in the brush uled me. I reached for my car keys and nearly deserted that dark place, but having e so far, I knocked on the front door.
A woman with a thick mane of white hair swung open the door. Dressed simply in crisp linen, she stood tall a in the doorway, her eyes bright and searg, and weled me into her home. "Henry Day, any trouble finding the place?" New England echoed faintly in her voice. "e in, e in."
Mrs. Blake had an ageless charm, a physical presend mahat put others right at ease. To gain this interview, I had lied to her, told her that I had goo high school with her son Brian and that our class was anizing a reunion, trag down classmates who had moved away. At her insistence, we chatted over a lunch she had prepared, and she gave me the full update on Brian, his wife and two children, all that he had aplished over the years. -salad sandwiches lasted lohan her report, and I attempted to steer the versation around to my ulterior motive.
"So, Mrs. Ungerland ..."
"Call me Eileen. I havent been Mrs. Ungerland for years. Not since my first husband passed away. And then the unfortunate Mr. Blake met with his strange act with the pitchfork. They call me the black widow behind my back, those awful children."
"A witch, actually ... Im so sorry, Eileen. About both your husbands, I mean."
"Well, you shouldnt be. I married Mr. Blake for his money, God rest his soul. And as for Mr. Ungerland, he was much, much older than I, and he was ..." She poio her temple with a long, thin finger.
"I went to Catholic elementary school and only met Brian in ninth grade. What was he like growing up?"
Her face brightenewas at stake.
When I had first started seeing the gelings again, I attributed it to the stress of disc my past. They seemed halluations, nightmares, or no more than a figment of my imagination, but then the real creatures showed up aheir signs behind. They were taunting me: an e peel on the middle of the dining room table; an open bottle of beer on top of the television; cigarette butts burning in the garden. Or things went missing. My e-plated piano trophy from the statewide petition. Photographs, letters, books. I once heard the fridge door slam shut at two in the m when we were all asleep, went downstairs and found a baked ham half-eaten on the tertop. Furniture that hadnt been moved in ages suddenly appeared o open windows. On Christmas Eve, at my mothers house, the younger children thought they heard reiramping on the roof, and they went outside to iigate. Twenty minutes later, the breathless kids came ba, swearing they had seen two elves hopping away into the woods. Aime, one of them crawled through a gap no bigger than a rabbit hole under a gate in our backyard. When I went outside to catch it, the creature was gohey were being brazen aless, and I wanted only for them to go away and leave me at peace.
Something had to be done about my old friends.
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