Chapter Thirty-Five Ashley
THIRTY-FIVE ASHLEY
Ashley walked through town from the cemetery to the bridge by the factory.
It was a beautiful fall morning: the sun was shining and there was a cool breeze stirring the few leaves left on the trees.
Scarecrows and jack-o’-lanterns peered at her from people’s porches.
She mulled over all she’d learned from Mini in the cemetery, marveling that the whole town really seemed to be in the thrall of this legend.
She thought of Mini’s story that her mother had gotten the knackerman’s mark too. Was it painted on the very same motel room door? Had her mother come face-to-face with him, with the white bone mask with the empty black eyes?
It means you’ve been marked.
He’s coming for you.
She thought of the pocket watch that she’d recognized immediately from the description in Frankie’s diary—how had it ended up with whoever had marked Mini’s door?
Each question seemed to lead to more questions, branching into an ever-growing forest of the unknown.
She was hoping that this Willy character might be able to give her some answers.
She got to the bridge, made her way down the grassy slope toward the water. “Hello?” she called out.
No answer. She peered under the bridge and saw the camp, but no sign of the man.
“Anyone here?” she called as she moved closer.
There wasn’t much to the camp. A bedroll.
A plastic tarp rolled up and bungee-corded together.
A small firepit circled with rocks, with a little metal grate over it.
There was a single clean saucepan and a metal cup with a spoon.
A couple of empty cans—baked beans and ravioli—leaned against the fireplace.
“Willy?” Ashley called out, looking upriver.
She walked a little ways, following a path along the river, but didn’t see anyone.
She found a small clearing, and on the ground a fishing pole made from a stick, line tied through a hole drilled at the end and wound around the pole, a barbed hook at the end.
She heard something stirring in the woods behind her and turned to see a man in a tattered brown jacket hurrying off.
“Willy?” she called. “Is that you? Please wait.” She trotted up behind him.
He turned back to look at her.
He was holding a rusty hatchet in his hands.
“My name is Ashley,” she said as she took a step back, raised her hands to show she meant no harm. “I was hoping we could talk.”
She recognized him from the tavern yesterday. That had indeed been him at the end of the bar, eating his special burger.
She guessed him to be in his forties but maybe younger—it was clear he’d done some hard living.
His face was puffy, covered with a thick beard.
Unkempt hair stuck out from under the knit cap he wore.
His eyes were blue, and quite bloodshot.
There was an old canvas fishing bag slung around his shoulder.
She could smell liquor on him from where she stood.
“What do you want?” he asked, looking around, gripping the hatchet tightly.
Willy seemed more unhinged than sad, Ashley thought. She was beginning to question her decision to come here alone.
“My name’s Ashley. We have a mutual friend, Mini. She told me where to find you.”
He eyed her suspiciously, then, in a low voice, said, “Follow me. It’s not safe to talk here.” He scuttled off with a pronounced limp, deeper into the woods.
Ashley paused. Was she crazy? Was following a drunk, hatchet-wielding, possibly disturbed man into the woods really the best idea?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she followed him.
They walked a good ten minutes, her keeping a safe distance, him slowing now and then to look back, to look all around, still clutching the hatchet.
They followed the trail through the woods, past a pond.
At last they came to a small clearing that Ashley could see was the site of an old house.
There were the remains of a cellar hole, a crumbling brick chimney, slate roof tiles, old bits of timber.
Sad Willy stepped down into the old cellar hole, only a couple of feet deep after decades of filling with leaf litter.
Saplings had sprung up here and there. There was a small ring of stones that had been used as a campfire. And a sleeping bag.
He took a seat on the sleeping bag and gestured for her to join him.
“Do you think you could put the hatchet down?” she asked.
He looked at the old rusty hatchet in his hand and seemed almost surprised to find it there still.
“Sorry,” he said, dropping it onto the sleeping bag; then he reached into the opening, pulling out a bottle of Old Crow bourbon.
He took a sip, offered the bottle to her.
She knew she should say no, but she wanted—no, needed—to earn his trust. So she clambered awkwardly down, sat near him, accepted the bottle, and took a good glug of it.
He smiled at her.
“Were you expecting someone else back there? Under the bridge?” Ashley asked, passing the bottle back to him. He took a good long swig.
“Maybe,” he said, wiping some stray drops of bourbon from his beard.
“It seems I’m in a bit of trouble myself,” she told him.
“Is that so?”
She nodded. “The knackerman left his mark on my motel room door last night.”
He was silent, just watching her.
“I heard he marked your door too. Mini told me. Two years ago, right?”
He said nothing, just stared.
“And then the next day, the town hall burned.”
He flinched a little here.
“The thing is, Willy, I was hoping you could tell me about that day. About what happened. Because I believe my mother may have been involved somehow.”
“Your mother?” He set down the bottle of bourbon, leaned toward Ashley. He smelled like old sweat, cigarette smoke, and booze.
Ashley nodded. “She came to Boone’s Ferry two years ago to do some family history research. She was the granddaughter of Thomas and Margaret Endicott.”
“Louise,” he said, frowning, saying the name like it hurt him. “You’re Louise’s daughter?”
“Yes! You met her?”
“No. But my wife did.”
He looked down at the ground, scowling.
“Anna, right?” she asked softly.
“That’s right. Anna. She worked at the town hall.” His voice got thick. He took another sip of bourbon.
Ashley was quiet, waiting.
“The night before we got the mark, Anna told me about your mother coming in with all kinds of questions—about her family, but the flu too, all about Boone’s Ferry. Anna liked her, wanted to help, and in their digging around, they found something—discovered some secret in old papers.”
“What kind of secret?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed, rubbed his beard. “She said she needed to get one last piece of evidence, then she’d tell me. That it changed everything. And she and your mother, once they had this final bit of proof, they were going to tell the whole world what they’d found.”
Ashley spoke around the hard lump in her throat. “But they never got the chance.”
“We got the mark the next morning. Later on, I heard there was a mark on your mother’s door too.” He looked at her.
“They found her car four days later. Parked at a bridge two hours south of here. The police say she jumped, but I never believed it.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I really am.”
“I’m sorry too,” Ashley said, meaning it. She was crying now. “Please,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “If it’s not too much, can you tell me about that day? About the fire?”
He looked stricken. “Anna wasn’t supposed to be there at the town hall. She was going to stay at home. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you get the mark. Stay home and wait…” His voice trailed off.
“But she went in anyway?”
He nodded. “Maybe to look for whatever that last piece of proof was.” He took another long sip from the bottle.
“Who started the fire?”
Willy looked down at the bottle in his hands. “It was the knackerman.”
“I heard…” Ashley went on, trying not to go too far, but longing to hear whatever details he might share. “I heard that you went into the burning building. That you tried to save her.”
He gripped the bottle tightly, staring at his hands with their dirty nails. “I tried. I saw her there in the flames. I tried to get to her—” His voice dissolved into a sob.
“It’s awful,” Ashley said, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing, “what happens to the ones who leave us. But what’s more awful is that we have to find a way to go on living.”
“Sometimes I see her, my wife,” Willy told her. “Sometimes she tells me things.”
“Sometimes I see my mother too,” she admitted, deciding to leave out the gruesome details. “She gives me messages. Or tries to, I think.”
“Maybe they don’t ever really leave us,” he said. “Not all the way.”
And for the first time, she felt it: the truth.
That maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t crazy.
That they hadn’t been grief-induced hallucinations.
Maybe her mother had actually found a way back, a passage between the world of the dead and the world of the living, had returned to warn Ashley, to try to explain what had happened, what danger she might be in.
And maybe Sad Willy wasn’t just the town drunk imagining he was visited by his dead wife: maybe she actually came back and talked to him.
Sad Willy capped the bottle, stashed it back inside his sleeping bag, then stood up. “I’ve gotta go,” he said. “There’s something I’ve gotta do.”
“Thank you,” Ashley said. “For talking to me.”
He gave her a hand as she stepped out of the cellar hole.
“You be safe now,” he said. “Can you find your way back to the bridge?”
“Yeah, I’ll just follow the path.”
He began limping off in the opposite direction they’d come from.
“Willy?” she called after him. “One more thing.”
“Yeah?” He stopped, looked back at her.
“Do you know who the knackerman is?”
He smiled at her. “We’re all the knackerman,” he said, then turned and walked away.