Page 39 of The Gallagher Place
They’ve marked the barn. Mud from the pasture. I washed it out. Had to use the shovel to scrape it off. But now I wonder—who have I angered by scouring off the mark? And how will they retaliate?
Dave sketched it in the margin, the symbol Marlowe had dreamed up as a child, the twisted tree rising from the infinity sign,a circle around it. With his shaking hand, it looked sinister. Not like a prank, but like its own kind of wordless threat. He continued:
Tom was upset by the brands on the cows. He didn’t like the missing tools, but this would have been worse for him. It’s getting worse. And I wonder if he ever knew. I wonder if he saw where this was headed. The voices called Leroy, and then they called Tom. Now I think they’re calling me.
Marlowe clenched her jaw. She and Nora hadn’t done many pranks that fall besides the brand. Had they? There were a few Sunday afternoons spent in the loft; that was it. But Dave kept recording mysterious events through October and November.
I woke up past midnight, and when I looked out the window, I saw strange figures dancing on the lawn.
Coal stove running well this fall, but my bones stay cold. Wish Tom were here. I worry some cursed wind, the same kind that blew open the loft door last night, will start a fire in the house, and I’ll sleep through it. I worry over it, and I crave it.
They scratched that symbol into a fence post. This one I can’t wash off. It’s a warning, clear as day.
And then—
Evening time. The cows were riled again. Something walks among them, when I turn my back. I saw the changeling creeping out of the Gray House. Fishers aren’t here. She’s up to something. I ought to tell Frank, but I reckon he knows.
Marlowe checked the date and then searched it on her phone. November 12: a Tuesday. She had been in the city. Nora had no reason to be lurking about.
The entries started waning but became increasingly frantic.
I hear them. Every time I walk through the barn, I hear them.
The drawers of my office desk were all pulled out this morning. They’re looking for something.
It’s not my farm anymore. Maybe it never was.
Finally, the last entry, February 1997, the week he died:
Thaw came early this year. Unless we’re in for one more frost.
Marlowe let the papers fall from her hands. Outside, the gnarled apple trees stood sentry beyond the garden. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t their fault. But it had started when he heard Marlowe and Nora. He had been forced to endure their laughter, their tricks. A man teetering on the edge, pushed over by childish games. It was worse than she remembered. Nora had gotten bored during the weeks Marlowe stayed in the city, and carried on without her.
Dave’s final months had been plagued by these hallucinations. Pete Gallagher had discovered this after finding Dave’s journal. Harmon had known too. The Gallaghers had been angry. And why shouldn’t they have been? Dave, Tom, and Leroy had been driven to the brink of psychosis.
Marlowe stared down at the photocopied pages. There was a reason Harmon had kept that journal. It was evidence. Proof that evil things were passing between these two families. Marlowe closed her eyes and flattened her shaking hands on the desk. It was her fault. She had stirred all this up. She and Nora had unwittingly cast the first stone in this feud. And Nora had gone running out there into the dark, where vengeance lay in wait.
Marlowe thought back to that winter, the damp cold curling into the walls of the house as it always did, the kitchen still warm with Glory’s cooking, Nora rolling her red ball of yarn across the table. How she had teased Nora about the scarf she was knitting for Sean. They were waiting for the brownies to finish baking when her father burst in from his walk, hat askew, chest heaving.
“Call Charlie Beacon,” he said to Glory. “Dave Gallagher is passed out in the cow pasture.”
They watched from the window as Frank and their neighbor Charlie hauled Dave into the car, slipping on ice and nearlydropping him. That night, she and Nora crept to the top of the old staircase to eavesdrop on Frank and Glory.
“He had lung cancer,” Frank said. “Sick for a year and never got treatment. He just let himself go.”
Marlowe thought of Dave trudging through the ice and slush, facing the rise that blocked the Bean River, the sky streaked with pink and lavender behind him. Alone. Without his brothers, without anyone left to anchor him. One brother died in the barn; one in the house; the last Gallagher brother died in the field.
TWENTY-ONE
THE HOMECOMING
Saturday, October 26, 1996
Marlowe slid the gold pin into Nora’s smooth yellow hair. Nora grinned and bounced her head excitedly at her reflection in the mirror.
“Hold still,” Marlowe said. “Just a few finishing touches.”
She had labored over Nora’s twisted bun, carefully pinning her locks just so. Nora insisted she had to wear her hair up for the dance. They had been in Nora’s bedroom for hours, doing face masks, plotting hairstyles, and debating the best makeup to match the lavender dress Nora had picked out at the Kingston Mall.
