Are You Haunted (part forty-five)

Are You Haunted

(part forty-five)

The church had burned decades earlier. “Always been this way for most of us,” Tovey said. “Camping-out spot. C’mon, get up here.”

No hand was offered. Powell hoisted himself over the wall, plodded to the graveyard. Where Tovey sat on Elias Drybrook’s headstone; where spring weeds spread from a thicket of years, already a thirsty yellow.

Lettie’s father had died in 1910, born 1830.

Three Drybrooks had died in childhood, all 1849, all chucked in one spot.

Hestia, Lydia, Emanuel. Baby, two-year-old, eight-year-old. They had known so little of life, they hadn’t felt deprived of it, as Lettie did.

Powell moved to her grave.

Letitia Paulina

Drybrook

b. 1876

d. 1896

A satin slipper, of faded sapphire, soiled lace trim tearing away from a strip of piping, lay on Lettie’s greener grass. A pile of brown stems over a scattering of dropped flowers, bluish…

“What’s this?”

Tovey snorted. “Whatcha think? That story you heard from Summers is nothing new. Now and again they even print it in the paper. Lettie was the local beauty, did a little song and dance at the county fair, Pops wouldn’t let her on the stage. She had plans to cut out for the city with a guy, then she died. Kids leave an offering to raise the ghost. Don’t ask me if it works.”

“What did she die of, again?”

Large shrug. “You gotta see one more thing up here.”

Powell followed him over the church-grounds’ summit, downhill to a hedge of lilac. He crunched after Tovey on a graveled lane just wide enough for a car, though the only recent use it had known was this―a leveled place come to, marked with a slab of granite. Angled like a writing desk, on which nothing was written.

“They say…but it’s never been confirmed by the trust, this is where the victims of the accident, the bodies they couldn’t identify, are buried.”

Tomorrow, the rest of this day, Powell thought, looking at clouds, blue, clouds, slumped against the door while Tovey drove… I need to figure it out. What if I could go into town and talk to Connolly? How do I get rid of them? Honestly, sir, I’m trying to learn. I want to do well.

Tovey whirled the car in; in front, again, of the barn doors. “Bel’s got some stuff she wants me to bring out here. So you don’t starve. You can tell Lloyd Guy. We’ll get this job done, don’t worry, and I’ll take off.”

44

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part forty-six)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)