Chapter 16

I awoke at nine in the morning with my head on the table. A cold cup of coffee sat perilously close to the edge. I congratulated myself on not bumping it and knocking it off. My legs were asleep, making movement impossible until I worked feeling back into them.

The tingling sensation as I rubbed and massaged them told me they weren't permanently damaged. In due course the pins and needles stopped poking my legs, and I could stand and walk. I was still unsteady but wobbled my way into the bedroom.

The tape recorder sat on the bedside table. I grabbed it and returned to the kitchen where I snatched the phone from the wall and punched in Jackie's work number.

"Frank," she said. "I've only got a second. We're getting hit already."

"This will take more than a second," I told her and pressed Play.

She listened as the tape wound through the previous night's conversation with Mary.

"Oh my God," she whispered when it was over. "You actually got her voice."

"Mrs. Putnam suggested the recorder," I confessed.

In the background, I heard Jerry call her. She muttered a curse and shouted a reply.

"I've got to go. Call me later. I want to hear it again when it's quiet and I can concentrate."

"This evening," I said.

"Talk to you then," she answered and hung up.

I put the phone back on its wall cradle, emptied the cup into the sink and poured a cup of the nine-hour-old coffee. It smelled scorched, but I didn't care. It was coffee.

The tape recorder sat on the tabletop, tempting me. I turned it on and listened again to the soft, soothing voice, then another time.

"At the shallow ford," I mumbled, shaking my head. Before I found the ford, I had to locate the river in which the ford lay. Something else occurred to me. If she had a name for the river, was it still the same today? Did it even still exist? If she should reappear, I had to remember to ask.

"Three hundred years, Mary," I said to myself. "Things are different now."

Names can change although I don't think they changed as often in New England as they did in other parts of the country. Daniel's Ford was an exception. The place and name were lost after they abandoned the town.

I rose and went into my office, grabbed a few sheets of paper and a pen and returned to the kitchen. I scribbled the thought and other ideas that came to mind. George Masters and I were looking for a town. Maybe we should focus on older maps if any were available and look for a shallow spot along a river or stream called Daniel's Ford. The place name might show on old maps.

Since the ford existed, it also probably meant at one time there was a road or trail leading to it. If we couldn't find a trace of the village, which I figured must have been deserted early in the area's history; old maps ought to show a road. Moreover, even if the town was gone, the ford might still keep the name.

Something else puzzled me. What I saw in Danielsford wasn't a small collection of ramshackle homes. It was a finished, active, thriving community. What killed it and utterly removed all traces of the town from history?

I wrote all the questions down, not expecting to ever get an answer to many of them. Whether or not did mattered little. My ideas were points of curiosity. What did matter was finding the location. Then we could move to the next step and the next after that. All I had to do was figure out what the next steps were, and in what order to put them.

Not forgotten was Mary’s warning about the other one. She couldn't protect me much longer and I needed to hurry. I took her comment to mean that she was the reason my nightmares went away, but she wasn't strong or powerful enough to keep the bad one away from me forever.

The telephone rang, making me jump. I grumbled a curse at the thing and answered.

"I'm on a break," she said. “Can you play the recording again."

"Away from the crowds?" I asked.

"I’m in my office. The mob has slacked off some. I pulled rank and took a break."

I played the tape. She listened to it and asked me to run it again.

"You said the minister's wife suggested the tape recorder?" she asked after the second playing.

“Maybe she's into the paranormal,” I said.

“Well, if I wasn't hearing it, I'd never believe it.”

"I'm not sure I would if I hadn't been there."

"So how do you find this shallow ford?"

I told her my plan and read the questions that came to mind.

"So now you want her to appear?" Jackie asked.

"Really, it was just a thought, in case she does."

I told her how strange it felt to be talking to a ghost. Jackie said nothing for a moment.

"I'm not sure she's a ghost?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I can't say the idea had never occurred to me, but hearing it from someone else surprised me.

"Don't ask me. People aren't hanged three hundred years ago and then come back to life in the 21st Century looking like they just took a nap. Still, she didn't give me the sense of being a spirit."

"You lost me with the ‘not a ghost’ comment. How does she appear and disappear like that?" I asked.

"I can't even begin to guess. How did she lay in a coffin all those centuries without turning to dust?"

"You have a point," I admitted. "We’ve got lots of questions."

"They’re questions we may never get answered. I need to get back to work. Call me later?"

"After you close," I said.

"I'll talk to you then."

I didn't think it mattered whether Mary was a spirit or flesh and blood. As strange as it sounded, I believed that she and I had something in common. We both wanted peace. Hers would come when she received her burial. Mine might happen when I gave her peace.

After making a fresh pot and refilling my coffee, I sat and eyed the tape recorder for a full minute. Part of me wanted to play it again. Another part wondered why I felt the need to hear her voice.

For the next minute, I argued with myself over the recorder. A rational part of my mind took command and asked why I was even debating it.

I then wished everything would return to normal. What was life like only two weeks ago? I found myself unable to remember. The life then was normal or normal for me. The past years were now a blank, as if my mind had erased everything prior to finding Danielsford.

I pushed myself up and went to the front door. When I opened it, I realized I was only wearing my undershorts and a T-shirt. Going out to check the mail in my underwear wasn't a wise idea. I closed the door and retreated to the bedroom to find my pants and shirt.

"You're losing it, Frank," I said aloud as I pulled on my pants. Socks and shoes followed, then my shirt.

The box was crammed with mail. Most of it was junk, the indispensable staple keeping the Post Office alive, but I found a couple of checks from clients in the pile. I appreciated them given the depleted state of my bank account. Other than the electric and other monthly bills that I kept, two of which were due, the rest went in the trash.

I poured another cup of coffee and planted myself at the kitchen table. Half the day remained, and I had done all I could. Nothing remained but to meet George Masters in Wenham on Monday. I wished I had decided to go immediately rather than wait. We would be doing something. Anticipating the search was proving to be as hard as I imagine the actual search would be.

Sitting and sipping coffee, I tried to think of something productive to do with the rest of the day. I had been either on the run or on guard for some disaster for over a week. In fact, I had lost track of time. My days and some of my nights were full. Now that part of the pressure was relieved, I missed it.

I hadn't forgotten the fact I was still a target and knew somewhere on the edge of reality was the woman, and she was coming. Mary’s warning was on the tape recorder sitting on the table in front of me. I started to press the play button and stopped. I had heard the recording enough to have memorized the words.

Draining the last of the cup, I filled it with fresh coffee and wandered into my living room, where I surfed the TV channels and settled on a World War Two documentary on the History Channel. I had seen it several times before. At least it wasn't one of the reality TV shows that I despise. Still, during the hour, even Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of Russia, lost my interest.

The two checks I received would go in the bank, and they allowed me the luxury of paying my bills. It gave me the comfort of knowing I would be caught up on my bills and have a small cushion of cash from which to draw. I spent a few minutes writing checks, drove to the post office and put them in the mail, congratulating myself for always keeping two books of stamps on hand.

When the checks were mailed, I stopped for lunch and returned home. Later I wandered through the house, carrying the tape recorder in my hand. I wasn't looking for anything, just roaming room to room for something to do. I carried the recorder in case my phantom guest made one of her unscheduled appearances.

As I looked over each room, my mind drifted to the area we hoped to be searching. I tried to remember something about the place. It had been years since I did more than drive through that part of Massachusetts.

I stopped at my bedroom closet, opened the door and rummaged through it. Deep inside the closet I found a pair of work boots. When I got them out and into the light, their condition said that they had never done any work. In fact they were new, although they had to be a decade old. I remembered buying them and a pair of blue jeans, but don't remember why. My feet had not touched the insides of the boots since bringing them home.

I kicked off my shoes and slid one on, then the other and then I laced and tied them. I thought I should wear them and break them in with some long walks before heading for Wenham.

A further search of the closet turned up the pair of blue jeans hanging far in the back. I remembered wearing them a couple of times but couldn't recall what possessed me to buy them either. Maybe, years in the past, I had a warning premonition about stomping through the woods, looking for a long-lost town one day.

I pulled off my pants, slid into the jeans and knew right away knew I had a problem. When I bought the Wranglers I was a decade younger and, based on the span from the button to the buttonhole, well over an inch thinner in the waist. With some difficulty, I got them buttoned and the zipper up. If I wore them during my walks, they should stretch. If they did not, I'd have to find something else.

"You might work," I said to the blue jeans, "as long as I don't have to bend over. Or kneel. Or sit."

The choice of which shirt to wear wouldn’t be a problem. I wanted one with long sleeves. Being in the woods meant there would be mosquitoes and ticks, and the chance of picking up those ticks. I wanted as much skin covered as possible. I made a mental note to grab a can of insect repellent.

Wearing the jeans and boots, I ambled around the house. I was under no illusion that the minimal activity would help either break in the boots or stretch the pants a full inch and a half.

Before an hour passed, I questioned whether I could wear the jeans. They had relaxed and stretched a little bit, but not enough to wear with comfort. The boots felt fine, yet I knew they needed more work before I could bring them.

After puzzling over the boots and jeans, I settled into my chair, turned on the TV and discovered that World War Two had progressed to Russia being at the gates of Berlin. As I watched, I knew things would not turn out well for Hitler. Before the Russians got to the bunker, I dozed off.