Chapter 24
I dragged myself to bed far too late. My fingers and knees ached from scrubbing for hours as I cleaned every inch of the spare bedrooms. Shame clung to me for my idle thoughts throughout the day that continued to return to Elijah, wherever he was now after our unhappy meeting months ago.
Maybe Jacob was right, after all; that I needed to be controlled even more to save myself from carnal sins.
My eyes closed as soon as I sank into the pillow. The house creaked as it settled. It was odd how comforting its moans had become to me, like it mirrored back my own anxious thoughts.
A dull light illuminated my room. I must’ve forgotten to turn out the lamp before I crawled into bed. With a small groan, I forced myself up to sitting again. It took a moment for the obvious to sink in—the lamp was already extinguished.
But the light continued from out of the corner of my eye. I turned and my stomach flipped.
The specter had returned.
She hovered at the edge of the room, her naked feet floating above the floor. Her edges jagged and flickering with a glow of white light. Once more, the ghost appeared as Abby, like a vision dragged from a nightmare.
I hadn’t seen this spirit since that night before Jacob left, which I’d buried away as the feverish output of my troubled mind.
But I had seen its light throughout the house, which I quickly ran from and tried to forget.
Perhaps the strain of the last two months finally brought the collapse of my senses and now she was back in full form.
“Surely, this is a dream.” I squeezed my eyes shut, then open again, but nothing around me changed. I pinched the skin of my arm between my fingernails, drawing real pain.
I was awake.
My heart beat louder, thumping out of time against my ribs.
“Abby?” I whispered to the spirit.
Her presence was real and yet her body was not.
I had the distinct impression that if I reached out, my hand would pass straight through her like wisps of a cloud.
She did look like Abby—but she was not. The specter shared the same oval face, fiery hair, and piercing eyes.
The same porcelain skin and perfect nose.
But a different constellation of light freckles crossed her cheeks.
Her eyes were slightly farther apart. This ghostly version was a clever counterfeit.
A cunning trick of the house.
But what was it trying to tell me through this manifestation?
A sad sort of smile lingered on her lips. It was oddly disarming. The light she bathed in was inviting, enticing even. I wanted to trust her.
“I saw you before, with the piano and Jacob. But I don’t understand why you’re here.”
Her face drooped into a frown, pain deadening her eyes. She didn’t even open her mouth to respond. I felt that she wouldn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—answer me in words.
She floated toward me.
I grabbed the blanket tighter, balling up on the bed and pressing into the headboard. She eyed my movement and stopped before she reached my bed.
“Is there something you want from me?” I tried to keep my voice calm.
The apparition’s light brightened. An affirmation.
My head swam. There was a ghost in my room—one that looked painfully like Abby—and she desired something from me.
“But how can I help?”
She beckoned me toward her.
A trickle of sweat dripped down my back as panic started within me. Should I follow her? What if this was a deception of the Devil?
But deep within me, a voice cried out for answers to mysteries always lingering: Why was this house so silent, so sentient? Why had Jacob lied about the piano? What did my blood-filled nightmares mean for Abby, or for any of us?
This Abby now before me was terrifying, but she could also be an answer.
I slid to the edge of the bed and stood.
Her feet sank into the floor until her toes glided only inches above the floorboards. The specter now stood eye to eye with me. Her light made me blink, but I couldn’t look away.
Before I could inquire for more information as to where we were going, she stepped back and sank through the solid door.
I startled. The air rushed around me with a chill.
This was my last chance to climb back into bed and forget the entire madness.
But something thrummed in my veins—a spot of courage, or maybe simply desperation.
My life in this house was too shrouded in confusion, and perhaps ghostly light would provide some illumination.
Holding my breath, I pushed open the door to follow.
She waited at the top of the stairs. Even though the hallway was drenched in darkness, I didn’t require a lamp. The specter’s unearthly glow reflected off the fading papered walls enough to illuminate the space surrounding us.
She trailed down the stairs, her feet never touching the steps. My shadow was a black splotch against the stairwell wall as I descended. No shadows mirrored the apparition.
We padded across the entry in silence. Downstairs, the larger rooms swallowed our bubble of light, making me feel even smaller.
We moved quickly through the parlor, my eyes tracing the dark outline of the piano with a mixture of longing and revulsion.
My marriage had taken so much from me, even my music.
I turned back to my companion, who suddenly stopped outside Jacob’s study.
Cold wrapped around me. Memories of that horrifying nightmare and sea of blood flashed in my head.
The ghost disappeared through the study door, leaving me in the gloom of the lightless dining room. My hand reached for the door handle but hesitated. What if the nightmare were to play out in reality now?
The floor shifted beneath me. With a gasp, I tripped into the door and fell into the study.
Straightening up, I braced myself. But the room was empty except for its usual furniture and the incandescent figure hovering now against the desk.
The study air crackled. Shadows flickered at the edges of her light.
Book spines dripped with sputtering light, elongating the titles until they seemed to bleed.
“What are we doing in here?” I asked, finding my voice.
She moved to the bookshelf on my left and looked up at the line of books on the high shelf.
“We’re looking for a book?”
She motioned more precisely to a black textured spine, wedged against the side of the shelf at the end.
My heart jumped into my throat. I recognized that book.
“Why do we need Jacob’s scriptures?” I couldn’t hide the quiver in my words as memories of his hands branding me that night assaulted my body.
Gesturing again, her eyes grew wider, her face more fiery.
I wanted to shrink back but instead swallowed past the gravel filling my throat. I couldn’t stop the barrage of anxious thoughts, but deep within, the voice pleading with me to keep going marshalled through them all.
I stretched up and pulled the volume from its place. The room settled into a distinct hush as I brought it down. It weighed far more than I expected, as if carrying the weight of all my fears. Dropping to the floor, I knelt and placed the book before me. She sunk down with me.
I waited, wondering if another manifestation would reveal itself. The walls shivered and pulsed around our huddled cocoon of light, but nothing happened.
I looked to her.
But she made no indication of a clue. She was a completely different woman than the Abby I knew in the light of day, who spoke her mind no matter how scandalous. This Abby was painfully quiet, but with so many frustrations brimming just beneath her surface.
Returning my attention to the book, I flipped open the cover. My finger traced down the inside cover, revealing Jacob’s name, signed in browning ink. My mind jumped back to that night in my bedroom, the time I’d last seen her. Before Jacob prayed, he had showed me this stamp of ownership.
My heart thudded. “You want Jacob?”
Her expression turned grim.
“He’ll be home soon,” I said.
Her face darkened as a storm cloud.
I glided my fingertips over the thin paper, pieces sliding together in my head.
“Unless you’re …” I exhaled. “You’re worried about him returning?”
She seemed to coil up within herself, dragging her light tighter around her.
“You’re afraid of him? But Abby always seems so confident around Jacob.” What if the first wife and I weren’t so different deep within us, with unspoken worries about our husband?
Her face twisted in fury, sending her light cracking across the page.
Fear coursed through my veins, but I tried my best to ignore it and stay planted.
I picked up the book and it parted naturally to where a folded sheet of paper marked a passage. With trembling fingers, I lifted the note and unfolded it. It was in Jacob’s looping writing, the same as his letter. I quickly read through the message.
It wasn’t much of anything. Jacob’s note detailed instructions for how to give a priesthood blessing to the sick and infirm.
Such ordinances were common for healing ailments of the body and spirit.
It appeared he’d written this short list of directions to remind himself, probably when he was on his mission and learning the ways of the priesthood Brethren.
I glanced back up at the specter, her visage remained stony and unanimated.
I skimmed the note again. Dark splotches blurred down the edges of the page. I brought the note closer to my nose to decipher it. In the bottom corner of the page, Jacob had scrawled an additional sentence: What you bind on earth is bound in heaven.
A spark tingled in my fingertips. Binding. We were all bound to Jacob by virtue of our marriages, even after death.
“‘What you bind on earth is bound in heaven,’” I repeated.
The room plummeted into sudden darkness.
The visiting spirit was gone, leaving me alone.
“Hazel!”
A faint glow lit the doorway. Flora held aloft a lamp that cast dark shadows across her hardened features. She stared down at me with an expression as rigid and solemn as if I’d spoken out of turn in Sunday school.
“What are you doing, Sister Hazel?” She lifted her lamp higher, stretching the shadows around her into a forest of darkness.
“I—” My throat shut up tight. There was no way to explain myself. I slammed the book shut.
“Well?” Flora demanded. “It’s the middle of the night and I find you reading in the pitch-black in Jacob’s private study? Have you gone mad?”
Nothing could be said to make sense of or remedy this situation. I knew she’d never believe me.
“I was dreaming,” I lied. “Sleepwalking. It happened once before. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
She stepped closer, and without asking permission, snatched the book from my hands.
“You shouldn’t be nosing around Jacob’s private things,” she scolded.
“But I was reading it.”
Her brow furrowed as she studied the cover.
“This book?” she said to herself.
I jumped up. “You’ve seen this book before?”
“Yes.” She shook her head and straightened over me. I shrank back on impulse. “Of course, I’ve seen this book. These sacred scriptures belong to my husband.”
My mouth was suddenly too dry. Why wouldn’t Flora say more?
“You’re tired and it’s unbecoming to wander around in the middle of the night. You can do better. Now, go back to bed.” Flora pointed to the door like I was a child to be scolded. “Good night, Sister Hazel.”
The fight flickered out in my chest, and worry took its place.
I brushed past her out the door and slipped into the parlor.
Everything appeared the same—mismatched furniture and sense of disarray.
But inside me, worlds had shifted. Abby’s specter was real, and there was something she needed me to know.
“Move, Hazel,” Flora commanded.
I didn’t wait to be told twice and scurried down the hallway to the stairs.
“What’s happening?” The real Abby called from above.
I startled back, nearly falling into Flora.
Atop the stairs, Abby watched us. With her hair undone and her crisp white nightgown, she looked not unlike the ghost herself.
Flora let out an exaggerated sigh. “Sister Hazel was wandering around Jacob’s private study in the middle of the night.”
“I was only sleepwalking,” I said.
“And carrying on a conversation with the air,” Flora said.
Abby’s gaze flicked to me. She studied me up and down, her face cinched tight and unreadable in the dim light.
We reached the top of the stairs and, with one last look of frustration, Flora turned on her heel down the hallway, carrying the light away with her. Abby and I remained in silence.
“Good night then,” I said at last.
Abby reached for my arm, pinching my skin.
Instinctively, I tried to pull away, but her grip held strong.
“Who were you speaking to in the study?” she hissed, her eyes growing round in the moonlight.
“Th-The Lord, Sister Abby,” I quickly lied once more. “I was communing with Him.”
Her fingers tightened, digging into my flesh beneath my sleeve. “Whatever for?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
“He’s never listened to me,” she said.
I noticed the fear shining in her eyes. I tugged my arm back and she released it, staring down the stairs as if watching for something. I followed her gaze. The entry below was empty and quiet, but a strange tang hit my tongue.
My pulse raced. I needed to get out of this hallway.
“Perhaps try again.” Old, rote answers from my Sunday school days slipped out. “Have more faith. Pray more. Study your scriptures and the words of the prophets.”
“I wonder …” Her words drifted off as if she’d long forgotten me.
Without another word, I slid through my doorway and turned the lock. I collapsed back into my bed and threw the blanket over my head like it would protect me from the encroaching darkness.