Daughter Dooley (21:02)
I know Miss Phyllis wishes she could, but this is far worse. Out by the cemetery where most of us are interred, Something has been watching us for some time. At first, it was merely unsettling. What did the dead have to fear, right? Dark things pass through all the time. Woodhaven is a place of healing, but it's also a place of sickness and dying, and bad things are drawn to the scent of death, and the whole countryside is ripe with the stench of it. These days. The grounds proper are protected by the workings of Ms. Marjorie's family, and that steers most of them around the edge of the property. It's not the strongest barrier, but. But any fence is better than none. Daughter Dooley nodded thoughtfully. She could sense the faint hum of the wards that surrounded the property, though as the ghost had noted, they weren't particularly strong. She could feel the presence of additional protections around the private wing, however, and these were more solid to her gift. It was like the difference between a freshly painted and carefully maintained fence to one that had been neglected. The outer wards had loose boards and sagging posts, and even a couple of spots where lively horses had kicked it down altogether. You can feel it, can't you? The protection is strong in the rooms off this little hallway. The folks who pass through here sometimes feed the wards before they go, by way of thanking Ms. Marjorie and her husband. Boundary around the house is a little weaker, and those set out on the outer grounds are weaker still. What of the cemetery? Ah, therein lies the rub. The place they buried us is a very nice plot of well kept land with lovely greenery and neat tombstones that sits a good 60ft outside the perimeter. I imagine they didn't think the dead needed such protection, but it has come abundantly clear that we do. Cause something is killing us, ma'. Am. Something has eaten us. To be precise, so far it's been unable to reach us when we're within the building. But if we try to visit our Graves, or if Ms. Phyllis banishes us out there, then we're fair game. This thing you say has been eaten. Ghosts. What does it look like? I haven't seen it myself, ma', am, no. But I've heard the screams, and I know which of us have gone missing. There's a difference in how it feels to the rest of us when somebody moves on. Compared to the absence of those who've been taken, the former feels much how it feels when someone passes from life to death. It's sad but natural. The ladders more like a hole torn in the fabric of the veil where that person used to be. It's cold and it's awful. The young ghost in the silk pajamas had begun to pace in agitation when Ms. Fletcher joined our number the other night. I believe she saw it, she said. When she woke in the cemetery, still on this side of the veil, she heard terrible growls and a child screaming to hear her tell it, she came across some sort of demon tearing a young boy apart, all teeth and claws. A beast with a vast gaping maul filled with endless void, she said. At first she thought she'd woken up in hell, but then she recognized the grounds and she fled to the house on instinct before it could get her too. Poor woman. That was little Timothy she saw, by the way. He. He was here when I was poor lamb. His families from New York made their fortune on mill towns out in the Piedmont. They sent him here, and when he never got any better, they just left him here to be buried by strangers. He's the youngest of seven, so I suppose they considered in the runt of the litter, at least. My mom and daddy came to see me be put in the ground. Mama's superstitious, though. She thought the sickness might follow me home if they buried me in the family plot back in Lewiston. She had three other strong, healthy sons, so wouldn't like I'd be missed. The red headed woman in the bed furrowed her brow. Don't talk like that, boy. I'm. I'm sure your mama misses you very much. Your daddy too. Billy Havas snorted a bitter laugh. You don't come for money, do you, Miss Dooley? The first son inherits and the second son works under his elder brother, learning the family business just in case something happens to the oldest. An heir and a spare, that's what's wanted. If the parents are unlucky enough to produce a third son, he'll be expected to marry well. Any more? Boys beyond that are just extra mouths to feed. And God forbid there be daughters. A daughter is an extra mouth to feed, with the added trouble of providing a dowry and finding somebody to marry him off to. In my case, Daddy was pushing for the seminary or the military. Less trouble than trying to find me a rich wife. The handsome spirit ran his hand through his hair and sighed. I'm sorry, ma'. Am. I don't mean to burden you with my trials and tribulations. But back to the matter at hand. Do you think you can help us, daughter? Dooley looked at the earnest young dead man and tried her best to be honest without depriving him of hope. I'll be straight with you, Mr. Havis. Please, call me Billy. I'll be straight with you, William. I've been very ill of late. I do not know how much help I can be I sleep the way I do because my body and my gifts have been pushed beyond their limits, and I'm desperately trying to recover. Have you tried to let anyone else here know what's going on? The ghost shook his head. Ms. Marjorie doesn't have any sense of us. Believe me, we've tried. I think Doc Robinson knows we're here, but he can't see us or talk to us. Ms. Phyllis can see us. She's got some ax to grind with the dead. Maybe she's just had a bad experience with some troubled spirits in the past, I don't know. But I don't think she sees us as proper people anymore. Talks to us like we're house cats that ought to know better than to get up on the table or something. There's no reasoning with her. And if we rile her up, then we end up right back out in the deep water. It occurred to the red haired woman that while this shade had returned to speak to her again, there had been three of them when she last spoke with him. What had become of the other two ghosts? Wait. Where are your friends tonight, Mr. Moss and Ms. Fletcher? Billy paused for a moment, frowning. How best to explain this? We don't all rise at the Same time after Ms. Phyllis sends us to our graves, nor do we haunt the same places. I usually run into Marcellus in the parlor at least twice a week. He likes to sit in the chair where he died and recite dirty limericks in the general direction of the nurses. Old habits die hard, I suppose. Ms. Fletcher's brand new. She hadn't really settled yet, so I have no idea where to find her unless she finds me. And we're not always active, you might say. At the same time. Were ghosts who happened to have died in the same place, Miss Dooley, not old friends? There used to be a fair number of us mooning around the old boneyard, but it's not been safe to linger there for a while now, I think. Whatever this thing is, it's already done for them. There was a shuffling in the hallway, and both the ghost and the witch cast their eyes toward the door. I think Ms. Phyllis is coming to check on you, so I best be on my way. If there's any way you can help us, Ms. Dooley, please do. You might be our only hope, daughter. Dooley nodded in agreement, and before she could open her mouth to speak, she was alone once again. The shuffling in the hall grew louder and closer, so she snuggled down into her blankets, meaning to feign sleep. But within minutes there was no reason for her to pretend. Without even trying, she slid beneath the waves of somnolence, and for the first time since she arrived at Woodhaven Sanatorium, she did not dream. In the deep blue hours of the morning, Dr. David Robinson hiked up the shallow rise on the eastern side of the grounds to the neatly tended collection of graves that housed the dead of Woodhafe. When he and his wife had opened the place, they knew they would have need of a graveyard, so they reserved this plot of land for that purpose. They imagined they would have an odd burial here and there for folks who didn't have family, or perhaps the occasional charity case they'd take in from the county for folks who had no money for a proper burial. They hadn't anticipated that so many people, rich folks especially were, wouldn't want to bring their loved ones back home after they died. There was a good amount of superstition around tuberculosis or the white plague, as the papers had taken to calling it, but any medical professional knew it was bullshit. Nonetheless, families from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, and points further west had sent their ailing and dying loved ones here, and once those loved ones had passed, had asked them to lay their people to rest beneath the fertile soil of western North Carolina, they shipped in headstones or small monuments, and some had come to attend services or sent representative to see to it that the deceased wishes were carried out. And that was that. As a result, what David Robinson and his wife Marjorie had envisioned as a discreet little potter's field of sorts tucked into a clearing on the eastern edge of the property had blossomed into a proper cemetery, populated with grave markers ranging from simple plaques to the marble angel that the Moss family had hauled in to mark their patriarch's final resting place. There was a little wrought iron fence that wrapped around the space with an iron gate that he kept oiled and well maintained. David knew there were ghosts walking his property. He couldn't see them or communicate with them, as those were not his gifts. He came from a long line of healers, men who could blow the heat off a burn or talk a cut into not bleeding. He'd been raised in the church, and he and his daddy and his daddy before him were all respected men of God. But he also knew it wasn't as simple as him being chosen by the Almighty to lay hands on the sick. His mama had kept a garden of medicinal herbs while his daddy had taught him the doctrine of the church. She had taught him the ways of the green. It was his mama who'd insisted that David study medicine and become a healer, not just walking the path of granny medicine but that of science and scholarship, neither of which had anything to do with what he'd come out to do with this ungodly hour. Phyllis Moore, bless her, had been bending Marjorie's ear for the past couple of days, complaining about meddlesome spirits troubling the patient. David had felt the cold spots and the occasional rise of the hair on the back of his neck once patients had begun to pass at Woodhaven decades ago, he would have never called those experiences nor the entities behind them troubling or meddlesome. Nonetheless, Phyllis gifts lay in the matters of the dead, and she had declared that she was tired of having to shoo them off the private wing. This week she'd asked Marjorie to ask him to do something about it. When David had asked a woman why she didn't just go out to the east field and have a chat with the dead herself, she quoted First Timothy Chapter three at him and stormed off in the passive aggressive yet gentle way that only a woman with several grandchildren can do. They lost so many staff to the new state hospital, and he didn't dare run the risk of one of their best and longest standing employees deciding it was time to retire. Hell, they were pushing the boundaries of their state license, running the skeleton crew they had on the payroll at this point. So here he was, hauling his meaty frame up the side of the hill to perform a working that his granddaddy had shown him years ago. There were ways to encourage the dead to move on, nothing ugly or disruptive, just something to give him a little push, a polite you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. For the disincarnate carried his materials in an old potato sack, and the implements inside rattled against each other as he placed it on the ground facing the cemetery gate. He had just been over to extract the kindling he'd carried from his truck when he heard something moving in the trees at the edge of the property. Startled, David Robinson froze for a moment, listening, but heard nothing else. He blew out of breath he hadn't realized he was holding and chuckled at himself for getting spooked at his age. He had arranged the kindling according to what he could remember from his papaw's lesson. When the sound came again, this time it was closer. He closed his eyes and strained to hear. The years he'd spent hunting with his daddy told him it was an animal of some sort. Didn't sound loud enough to be a bear or even a deer. He saw a flash of movement within the cemetery and stepped closer to the gate. He heard what sounded like whimpering. Then came a low growl, the sort of sound that accompanied a hungry mouth tucking into its dinner. The whimpering stopped. Stepping closer to the gate, David caught a glimpse of a wagon tail from behind the moss monument. It was just a dog. Some stray, or perhaps somebody's hunting hound from down the mountain had gotten loose and wandered up this way. It must have chased a rabbit or a possum through the fence and took it for supper. Oh, now he'd have to clean up rabbit guts. As if he needed one more chore. He left his poke and neatly arranged firewood behind and strode through the gate, letting out a friendly whistle. Here, boy. This is no place for you, buddy. Come on, let's get you out of there. As he drew closer, he could hear the dog panting, chewing and gulping down whatever unfortunate critter happened across his path that night. Sounded like he might be a big fella. David crept around the side of the marble angel. Come on, buddy, let's go. Let.
