Mercy (6 page)

“This is from that time?” Haley said in surprise. “It was in the newspaper?”

“Certainly it was. Anything sensational is always of interest to fools.”

Haley picked up one of the typewritten sheets next. It was a family tree. There was George Brown, and there was his wife Mary, and his daughter Grace, the other one who'd died, and little Edwin, and Mercy Lena.

“This is great.” Haley looked up eagerly. “Aunt Brown, thanks. Can I take this stuff home? I'll be careful with it, I promise.”

Aunt Brown's face was expressionless for a moment. Then she seemed to make up her mind.

“I suppose so. If you are responsible. You'll return it all, of course.”

“Sure. I will. Of course.” Haley made herself shut up. A simple “yes” would have done.

Aunt Brown had picked up the faded red box. Her fingers worried at the cord around it. “It's good to see someone taking an interest in history. The Browns are a very old family. Very old indeed. You ought to understand.” She said the last sentence almost fiercely.

Haley found her attention riveted to the box in her aunt's hands. Her heart was beating a little quicker. As if she were expecting something wild, something dangerous, to pop out when Aunt Brown opened the lid. Stupid. She was being stupid. One of her hands had clenched tightly around the back of a chair, as if she needed support. Or protection, maybe?

Aunt Brown slipped the knot loose and opened the lid.

Inside was a glove. Leather that had once been soft and white was now yellow and stiff with age. The fingers had curled inward, as if an unseen hand inside the glove were trying to hold on to something.

“Can I see?” Haley reached out. “Was it Mercy's?” Aunt Brown nodded. All of Haley's earlier anxiety had vanished. She just wanted to hold the box, to touch Mercy's glove.

“It's fragile.” Aunt Brown looked suspicious, as if Haley might grab hold of the glove and rip it to pieces. But she handed the box over, frowning. “You can't take that with you. It must be treated respectfully. But you may look at it.”

Fascinated, Haley ran a finger gently along the glove's scalloped hem. The leather felt smooth and dry.

“The Browns are a very old family,” Aunt Brown said again. Haley glanced up, but Aunt Brown didn't notice. She was looking so fixedly at Mercy's glove that Haley thought of a cat about to pounce on a mouse—hungry and excited and keyed up to a high pitch of eagerness.

“Can't I take it with me? It'll be great for my report. I promise, I'll be careful—”

“Certainly not. It's not something to be mauled about by a mob of schoolchildren. Give it to me.”

Reluctantly, Haley handed the box back. Aunt Brown shut the lid and reached for the cord to tie it down. Frowning, she seemed to be thinking harder than such a simple task deserved.

Haley's fingers, deprived of the box, itched for her camera. She slid a hand into her jacket pocket. There it was. She'd tucked it in there before she left home, in case she came across an interesting shot.

Aunt Brown didn't notice Haley turning the camera on and holding it out, tipping it to get the right angle, to capture that look of concentration in her aunt's eyebrows, the tightness of her mouth.

Then Aunt Brown looked up. Haley's hand jerked just as her finger pressed the shutter.

“It is extremely rude to take a photograph without asking.” Aunt Brown hadn't moved, but Haley found she'd shuffled backward a few steps. How could such a skinny little woman be so scary?

She found her voice. “I'm sorry. I didn't think . . .” She was so used to taking pictures of her family and friends—or rather, they were so used to her doing it—that she never hesitated. “I didn't mean to be rude.”

“It is not a question of
meaning
,” Aunt Brown said icily. “Manners are a matters of deeds, not intentions. I'm sure you have never been taught properly, but that is no excuse.” She finished tying the cord as she spoke. Outside, there was a frantic barking and a scrabbling of claws on wood. Haley had left Sunny tied up for too long.

“You had better go, and take that animal with you.” Aunt Brown slapped the box down sharply on the table. For all her talk about the glove being fragile, she wasn't taking such good care of it herself.

“Um. Sure. Thanks, Aunt Brown, really.” Haley was shuffling the papers together, tucking them inside the old envelope. “I'll take care of this stuff, really.”

“I'll expect it all back. In good condition.”

“Of course. Sure. Of course.” She was babbling. It was embarrassing. Outside, Sunny yelped. Aunt Brown took a step or two toward the hallway, as if she meant to do something about the noise the dog was making. Haley's hand reached out and her fingers closed around the red box.

By the time Aunt Brown looked back, Haley had stuffed the box inside the envelope with the papers. She hurried away from the table, hugging the envelope close so that Aunt Brown wouldn't notice its suspiciously lumpy condition. “Thanks.” She forced herself to meet Aunt Brown's eyes and not to babble. “I'd better go. Sunny's getting upset.” There. She could stop talking if she tried.

Aunt Brown walked her silently to the front door. The minute Haley was outside, Sunny flung herself at her, and Haley hurriedly knelt down to reassure her before the dog yanked the leash loose or scratched all the remaining paint off the porch floor.

Aunt Brown shut the door without a word of good-bye.
She must be scared of dogs
, Haley thought, and almost giggled. Aunt Brown, scared of Sunny? Sunny had to be the sappiest golden retriever around, and golden retrievers were not on anybody's list of vicious guard dogs anyway. Haley's imagination spun a quick giddy picture of Sunny standing guard at the airport or sniffing out bombs. If Sunny met a terrorist she'd probably lick him to death.

Now Sunny scrambled down the steps to the lawn, and Haley was dragged after her, clutching the envelope. The feel of the dusty dry paper between her fingers sobered her. Mercy's glove was in there. Why had she taken it? She didn't know. She
hadn't thought about it. It had been just like taking a picture. With her camera on, she didn't think,
Ah, yes, that's the perfect composition, the lighting is ideal, the shadows just right
. She simply saw it through the lens, everything falling into place, the perfect shot assembling itself, and she pressed the shutter.
Click
. No thought required. As if her eye were wired directly to her finger.

It had been like that. That red box, sitting on the table with Mercy's glove inside. Her hand going out.
Click
.

Whatever the reason, she'd done it. She had the glove now. And she'd better get herself and Sunny out of the front yard before Aunt Brown noticed that the red box was missing.

T
he New England vampire tradition held little in common with its counterparts and probable ancestors in Eastern Europe
.

Painfully, Haley dissected that sentence. New England vampires weren't like the ones in Europe. No Draculas lurking around the farmhouses and fields of Rhode Island. No capes and Transylvanian accents. Right. She sighed and turned a page.

Indeed, the people who believed never used the term
vampire
themselves, though newspapers written by outsiders sometimes employed it. The vampires of New England did not typically grow fangs, turn into bats, or even crawl out of their graves. This curious legend, half ghost story and half folk medicine, focused on the heart of a recently deceased corpse, dead from the most dreaded disease of the time: tuberculosis. As long as fresh blood remained in that organ, legend said that the corpse was in some way alive, surviving by sucking the life from its nearest relatives—wives, husbands, brothers and sisters, children. As entire families sickened and died of the disease, tales were whispered of bodies disinterred by desperate relatives, who would find a fresh, red,
beating heart in the breast of a rotting corpse. To stake the heart or burn it was the only remedy
.

Haley shuddered and flipped the book closed. Her New England ancestors certainly had gruesome imaginations. It must have been those long, dark, cold winters. Too much time to dream this stuff up.

The box with Mercy's glove in it sat before her on her desk, next to a few more library books, the envelope with Aunt Brown's papers, and the laptop. Her father was off delivering some of his pots to a gallery, and he'd taken Sunny with him; she loved a ride in the car. Elaine was somewhere in the house, doing laundry probably; with Eddie around there was a lot of laundry. Haley thought she heard a low hum, like the dryer running, and distant footsteps walking back and forth. Eddie had to be asleep. Otherwise it would never be so quiet.

Haley flipped open a new book titled, invitingly,
The White Plague
, and settled down to making notes. It didn't turn out to be much more cheerful reading.

Tuberculosis (TB) / consumption

Symptoms—

cough, pain w / breathing

weight loss

fatigue

chills

loss of appetite

Transmitted by sneezing, coughing. But not easy to catch.

Need daily exposure, abt 6 months.

Mercy's mother and older sister had died of tuberculosis before she did. She'd lived in the same house with them, taken care of them. That must be how she'd gotten the disease. They
hadn't known, of course, back then, about germs, about infection, how sickness got transmitted.

But there had been other people in the house who hadn't gotten sick. Mercy's father had survived. Was it just luck, nothing more, that he'd lived and Mercy hadn't? Or had Mercy spent more time with the patients? The father, George, probably wouldn't have helped much. Nursing would have been women's work. Nothing he'd stoop to, even for his wife and daughters.

Haley laid her pen down.

Mercy must have known. When she began to cough up blood, to lose weight. She must have known she was going to die.

Haley's fingers were playing with the old yellow cord around the box that held Mercy's glove. One end was unraveling into threads, silky soft.

So who'd taken care of Mercy, then, when
she
was the one who got sick? If her mother and sister were already dead, if her father wouldn't have done it . . . Haley dug under a pile of books—this desk was too small, no room for all her stuff—and found the Brown family tree she'd made yesterday, copied from the one in Aunt Brown's papers. Yes. Grace hadn't been Mercy's only sister. There had been another one, Patience. The year of her birth was printed neatly under her name. She'd been five years older than Mercy. She must have been the one who nursed her little sister through tuberculosis.

Aunt Brown's family tree had been kept meticulously up to date. There was Haley herself, down in the right-hand corner, and there was Eddie, too, their birth dates neatly printed in small, precise handwriting. Idly Haley ran her finger along the branching lines that connected her to Mercy. Funny how much information you could get from names and dates. Look at this Brown, Elijah. His first wife had died and he'd remarried, but he'd already had three children. How had they liked their new
stepmother? Mercy's father, George, had a sister and two brothers, so Mercy had an aunt and two uncles and—how many cousins? Haley went to count them up and her finger froze on the paper.

Oh, no. Look what she'd done. So
stupid
. Haley's eyes traveled back and forth between the family tree she'd written and the one Aunt Brown had lent her. Idiot. She'd skipped a whole generation. She'd linked up her great-grandfather directly with her great-great-great grandfather, who'd been Mercy's cousin James.

Now she'd have to do the whole thing over again. Haley crumpled up her family tree and threw it angrily at the wastebasket. What a waste of time. This whole stupid
project
was a waste of time, really. Look how long she'd been sitting here and she'd only managed to write down a third of a page on the symptoms of tuberculosis.