Chapter 9

At seven in the morning I was awake feeling well rested and refreshed. It surprised and pleased me that I had experienced another undisturbed night. With Mary having appeared the day before, I expected to have another one of 'the dreams.'

After showering, I walked the few blocks to the diner. Now, I was wondering why the ghost hadn't appeared to me. She affected me when she was in my dreams and now it bothered me when she wasn't.

Jackie was in the restaurant. She waved me to her table.

"You look like you slept," she said.

"No nightmare. It was like normal."

"Be grateful."

"Oh, I am," I said, looking across the room and out the windows.

"I've done some thinking on your problem."

"What did you come up with?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"That's encouraging."

The waitress appeared, and I ordered coffee and pancakes, with sides of bacon and eggs.

"There's something else," I added when she left.

"What?"

"I can't do this forever," I said. "I've got to get back to work."

She nodded that she understood. "I wish there was a way I could help."

I glanced out the windows again, expecting to see Mary Bradbury in her tattered wool dress. Instead, I saw the first of the hordes of tourists who now appeared on the streets. She wasn't among them.

"She's out there somewhere," I mumbled.

"Don't think about it," Jackie said.

My breakfast arrived. We talked as I wolfed down the pancakes. We tried to stay away from the problem. Mostly we succeeded, but my eyes kept drifting to the window.

"I have a copy of Reverend Putnam's journal about his town changing," I said, remembering I had mentioned the journal but hadn't told her I possessed a copy.

"The one in Massachusetts?"

"Yeah. Three years ago."

"You want me to read it?" she asked.

"If you have time, I'd appreciate it."

"What am I looking for?"

"I hope the answer is in there somewhere," I said.

"I'll take a look. Tell me again about it."

For the next few minutes, I told her what I had read. She listened without comment. When I finished she sat back and thought for just a moment.

"I think you mentioned the answer twice. She needs to be buried, Frank. Journal aside, those men in Sherburne Center even told you burying her might stop all of it."

"How?"

She shrugged. "If you can find the town, maybe she'll go willingly."

I started to reply. She cut me off.

"Didn't you say the people put her in the church?"

"Yeah, but I don’t know for certain. It was a guess," I said. “And it makes little sense. The church wasn't there until the town appeared in Massachusetts.”

"So she was in another church. Maybe this one replaced it. And maybe Mary didn't kill your friend." She shook her head. "I'm just tossing out ideas again. Keep that in mind."

I stared out the window, thinking. After a few seconds, I nodded. Her ideas made more sense than what I was thinking, which amounted to scattered random thoughts.

"Bring the journal by and I’ll look at it." She stood. "Right now I need to get the shop open." She looked out the window. "There's money out there begging to be spent."

"I'll bring the journal by later."

"I'll be there." She waved and started for the door.

After she left, I sat and reflected on our talk. The woman standing on the Common had looked like Mary Bradbury, even when she was close to us. Could they have been sisters? Then I wondered whether it mattered if they were. Every day seemed to add more mystery and confusion to the confusing and mysterious mess I was in.

I drained my coffee, paid for the meal from my dwindling supply of cash and went out. On the street I stopped to check for my shadow, or perhaps shade was more accurate. I turned and started for the motel, letting my mind work on the impossible problem I had gotten myself embroiled in.

The obvious answer was to have a Christian burial in a church of today. Did it have to be done in Danielsford? I thought about asking Reverend Conant to perform it. The worst he could do was to refuse.

I had never heard of the town. My guess was it had to sit somewhere near the coast, perhaps in Massachusetts. The thought occurred to me to try to find it. Failing discovering the village, maybe I could find where it used to be. Could we have the funeral there? Would that be satisfactory to her?

Standing in my room, I felt a sudden twinge of hope combined with a larger wrenching doubt. All the ideas and thoughts were just ideas and thoughts. What it amounted to was my lack of a firm answer. In fact, I still wasn’t certain of the questions.

I grabbed the folder with the copy of the journal from the table and headed for the curio shop.

***

There was a small crowd of six or seven browsing the place when I arrived. All were easily identifiable as tourists. Locals would never dress the way they did. I waited off to one side, trying to stay out of the way, as they poured over the trinkets and items available on the shelves. Jackie was right. Watching them, I could see that they didn't care whether the stuff was made in Vermont, elsewhere in the USA, or in Asia.

By the time the first mob filtered out, more came in. Jackie made a 'what can I do' face. I smiled, shrugged and waited. Jerry shot me glances now and then. There was no warmth in his looks. Again I suspected that regardless of his being married, there was something else involved causing his jealousy toward me, and Jackie’s seeming interest in me. Finally, two hours later as the clock approached eleven the crowd thinned.

Jackie thanked the last customers, took a deep breath and exhaled. She made her way to where I stood.

"It should calm down until a little after one, then they'll come again. It'll be that way until late in the afternoon."

"I didn't expect it to be so busy," I said. "It wasn't like this last time I was in here."

"You were here later in the day last time." She looked at the folder. "Is that the journal?"

I handed it to her.

"Guard it with your life," I said, half joking. "I don't know if the original still exists."

"You haven't tried calling the minister's wife?"

I shook my head. "I've been too busy running."

"You should when you get a chance," she replied.

She was right. I had had plenty of chances to call and, if nothing else, at least determine whether Mrs. Putnam was still alive. I wanted to find out if she had found any more of the Reverend's writing, although after reading it several times I had noticed no breaks in the narrative. The story had a beginning and an ending. Unless there was other material related to the town, separate from the story, I had it all.

She opened the manila folder, removed the papers and skimmed the first couple of pages.

"I don't want to get too involved in it right now." She slid them back inside. "I'll get busy reading this evening."

She motioned me to follow. Walking beside her, we went into the back of the shop where she had a small office. She unlocked the door and went in.

"I'll lock it in my desk," she said. She put the envelope in the drawer. Then took a set of keys from her pocket, selected a small one, closed the drawer and locked it.

"I trust Jerry," she added, "and he's a good worker, but he does tend to be nosy. That's why I lock my office and desk."

We walked back to the front where a few more customers milled through the shop. I slid into a corner, out of the way, and watched. Not for the first time, I congratulated myself for having the job I had. It was a lot of solitary travel with occasional breaks as I visited customers. Having to work in a tourist related business, I decided, would drive me up the wall within a week.

By noon, they were all gone. Jackie took a breath and motioned me to come with her. She called to Jerry and told him she would be taking lunch and would be back at one.

"Come on. I need to get away from here for an hour."

I followed her out, and we went to the usual restaurant for lunch. This time we took the booth I was in when we first met.

We made small talk during lunch, with her doing most of the talking about her business, life in Woodstock and the fact that she was forty-two and divorced with no prospects. I couldn't tell whether the mention of her being single was directed at me and the fact that she knew I, too, was single and divorced. Life on the road is tough on a family and a wife, as I had learned.

I spent most of the time focusing on her as she spoke, with an occasional glance out the window to see if the other woman in my life was around. If she was, she either wasn't visible or wasn't in the vicinity of the restaurant.

"She hasn't been around in a while," Jackie said. A moment passed and she added, "I noticed you keep looking out the window."

"Not yet. Or at any rate I haven't seen her."

"If she was, we'd know it." She scanned the street through the window. "The town, Danielsford."

"What about it?"

"You're sure it only appears every three years?"

"Based on how it happened in Massachusetts and Sherburne Center," I replied.

She nodded. "How do you know about the three years?"

"It was three years ago when it showed up in western Mass."

"Does it necessarily mean it's always three years between appearances," she pointed out.

"No. I suppose it could appear somewhere tomorrow. The problem is to know where."

"I wonder," Jackie began. "Do you think she'd be back in her coffin if it did?"

I began to answer and stopped. It had never occurred to me. Would she? Or had she somehow been released forever, or until I or someone else put her back?

"Good question. I don’t know. That's something she'd have to answer."

She checked her watch. "We need to get back. Jerry's due for his lunch break."

As we walked the two blocks to the shop we tried to put the problem aside and chatted about the town. By the time we arrived, the consensus seemed to be Woodstock was a nice place in which to live, and Vermont was perhaps the ideal state to call home.

"Once you solve your ghost problem, anyway," she finished.

Her comment made me laugh, which I knew was her intention. It felt good. I hadn't laughed in a long time. The heavy weight I had been carrying seemed to leave me if only for the moment.

“And my being from Massachusetts?” I traveled northern New England enough to know natives in the three northern states had a low opinion of my home. The animosity was worse in New Hampshire and especially in Maine.

“You'll never be able to rid yourself of it,” she replied. “It’s a stigma.”

“Maybe if I can drop the accent,” I offered.

“Maybe what?”

“I can lie and say I'm from New Hampshire or Maine.”

She shook her head. “Tell people you're from here. We like nobody from anywhere else.”

“I'll try to remember that.”