Mercy, p.1
Mercy, page 1
Dedication
another one for Zack
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
About the Author
Books by Patricia Ward
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
The frigid October air nips my face raw, and my fingers go red as I poke the fountain bottom with a stick, searching for what, I don’t know. The water’s off for the season, and the concrete floor’s a mess of clumped, icy leaves. My poking uncovers a bloated frog corpse, pale belly exposed and limbs spread as if begging for it all to end, which indeed it has. I scoop leaves, shaping a burial mound. It’s hard to tell if the frog got sorrowed or died from natural causes, though I guess it makes no difference: dead is dead.
A rumbling engine drags my attention to the far side of the town green. A U-Haul’s inching down the street, trailed by a blue hatchback. As I watch, it lurches to a stop in front of one of the old, crumbling Victorians lining the street.
Only then does my brain process what I’m seeing.
I toss the stick, grab my backpack, and hurry across the green to get a closer look. Just a few days ago, Granddad mentioned a rumor about the Bowens coming back to Arbor Falls. We both thought it sounded far-fetched, but sure enough, the U-Haul’s at the old Bowen house, backing into the driveway in fits and starts, almost taking out the half-dead apple tree next to the shed. The hatchback idles through this painfully slow process, then pulls in, too.
The engines cut abruptly. In the heavy silence that follows, the door to the U-Haul opens, and a skinny, tired-looking man climbs out. If the rumor was true, this has got to be Ben Bowen, grandson of Herb Bowen himself. He stands with his hands in his pockets, looking around as if he’s taking it all in, while the rest of the family tumbles out of the hatchback: a woman in overalls with a mass of curly black hair piled on top of her head, followed by two kids. The boy’s a teenager like me, and the girl is little, maybe seven or eight. She jabbers excitedly, but I can’t make out the words. The mom swings her up, then sets her down and turns to say something to the boy. The man ambles over to them, and then they all go quiet, staring up at the house.
I get why they’re frozen in place, like it zapped them. It’s one of the biggest Victorians around the green, with four huge columns out front. A brass plaque by the door says “Bowen Law Office,” recalling the prosperous good old days before that fateful night when Herbert Bowen, Esquire, murdered a whole family. The house must’ve been splendid back then, but now, it’s a decrepit, crumbling wreck, with patched, stained siding and rotted windowsills, a yard more dirt than grass, and a worn picket fence leaning under the weight of overgrown bushes.
I can’t believe the actual Bowens are right in front of me. Granddad can’t even say the name without a grimace, seeing as it was Herb Bowen who brought the Sorrowing down on us. I wonder what Ben Bowen’s life’s been like, and also how his wife and kids cope with—
To my shock, the mom turns around and catches sight of me.
“Oh, hello there!” she calls out.
The rest of the family’s staring at me now, too, so I give an awkward little wave.
“Do you live on this street? Come say hello!” The mom beckons, her bracelets clattering. She’s got a striking accent; Italian, maybe. With all of them staring and waiting, I’ve got no choice but to cross over, my heart speeding with nerves.
“Uh, I’m Mercy Farr,” I introduce myself, then point back across the green. “I live at the end of that road, over there.”
“That’s still neighbors,” the mom declares happily, as if it’s a win. “We’re the Bowens. I’m Rosie. He’s Matteo, she’s Annelise, and that’s Ben. It’s so nice to meet you!”
Matteo, the teen guy, mutters hello. He’s tall and lanky with razor-short black hair and deep green eyes behind square-rimmed glasses. He’s cute in a nerdy way, and definitely not happy to be here; a more reasonable attitude than his mother’s. Annelise twists side to side shyly, looking up at me, a teddy bear clutched to her chest. She’s got her mom’s rich black curls and dark eyes, and she’s missing a front tooth. It’s hard not to smile at her, though I feel vaguely crappy about it. I wonder if she knows yet, or if they’re keeping the truth from her the way Mom tried to keep it from me.
As for Ben Bowen, he just gives me a vague nod and turns back to stare at the house, hands on his hips. He seems the total opposite of his wife, his thin sandy hair straggling over his ears, his narrow form lost inside a rumpled, ill-fitting sweater and jeans. Rosie Bowen looks put together even in overalls. She’s got glitter in her eyeshadow, red lipstick, and flashy red nails. When she turns a little to bump shoulders with Matteo, I glimpse a peace tattoo on her chest above the crease of her ample bust.
“Cheer up, Matteo,” she commands. “Positive mind, positive outcome!”
She stomps forward and unlatches the gate, which promptly drops off its hinges and keels over into the grass. For a moment, she stares down in surprise, her plucked eyebrows lifted in comical arcs, then she bursts into laughter. “Why do I get the feeling this house is a project? Come on—inside, everyone!”
A “project”? That’s one way of putting it. . . . Her energy’s kind of mesmerizing, though it baffles me. Maybe it’s just how she copes.
Annelise trots behind her mom, Ben following at a more measured pace, studying every part of his surroundings as he walks. This leaves me awkwardly alone on the sidewalk with Matteo, who’s got his phone out. He snaps a few pictures, then types rapidly, his face stony. He must be messaging friends with updates.
He finishes and slides his phone into his back pocket. “I guess I’d better go in. Nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” I reply. “See you around.”
He’s heading down the path when Rosie pops her head out the front door. “Mercy! Please, if you have a minute, come inside!”
I’m so surprised, I freeze in place.
Matteo glances back over his shoulder with a wry smile. “Come in if you want, but beware: she might never let you go.”
I’m embarrassed at how Rosie invited me in, just like that, but I find myself following Matteo up the porch stairs. I can’t help the perverse, sudden urge to see the inside of the house where Herbert Bowen, Esquire, himself once lived.
The second we step over the threshold, I’m hit by the faint, acidic smell of a long-ago fire; it’s been a few months since the last tenants moved out, and the Sorrowing’s creeping back. Dark spots fleck the walls and ceiling, and black sludge seeps from under the baseboards, pooling in cracks. The Bowens’ll have to put their shoulders into it to get things back under control. It takes regular scrubbing to keep the Sorrowing in check; it’s a good thing the house didn’t sit empty for much longer.
I peek through the arched doorway on the right, which gives on to a spacious double room with bay windows: this must’ve been the law office back in the day. It’s eerie to be standing where Herb Bowen once lived and breathed, going about his days like any other lawyer. There would’ve been a secretary, desks piled with files and papers, ringing phones, clients coming and going, unaware of the hideous crime Herb Bowen would one day commit . . . Now the parquet floors are so worn, they’re almost colorless. The streaked windows are hung with broken blinds and dusty curtains, and the walls are sorrowed with stains and cracks running through the sad outlines of pictures long carried away.
Matteo’s looking around with obvious dismay, and I can’t blame him. The house is a dilapidated mess, never mind the Sorrowing’s corrosive presence. I’m getting more and more curious about what their old place was like and what the Sorrowing did to force them to move. But I can hardly ask all that right off the bat.
We continue down the hallway, the sagging floorboards creaking under our weight all the way to the kitchen at the far end. Rosie’s at the sink, frowning at the trickle of dirty, black-threaded water running from the tap. As we watch, the water splutters to a stop, then the faucet ejects a sludgy blob, like popping a cork, and the trickle turns to a rush, blackening the porcelain sink.
“There: there it is again!” Rosie gapes at me. “This used to happen back home, too! I can’t believe it!”
“Ugh,” Matteo says, bending forward to take a closer look. “It’s got a weird smell. The whole house does.”
I open my mouth, but I’m not sure what to say. Are they putting on a show for me, in case I don’t know about the Sorrowing? Except . . . they seem genuinely bewildered, like they can’t comprehend what they’re seeing . . . ?
The faucet splutters again, the pipes banging inside the wall, and with a rush, the water suddenly turns clear.
“Oh, thank God,” Rosie exclaims, patting her chest in relief. “Does this happen at your house, too, Mercy?”
Wait—they don’t know about the Sorrowing?
“Municipal services these days, really,” Rosie mutters in annoyance.
“It’s gross here,” Annelise whimpers. “Is that mold?”
“Madre mia,” Rosie says, bending close to the wall in question.
I wince as she reaches out to touch the blotchy stain. Instantly, she recoils, her shock turning to uncertainty as she wipes her fingers on her overalls.
“I’ll pick up bleach,” she says after a moment. “That’ll take care of it, Annie.”
Ben steps through the glass doors from the adjoining room and looks around with a frown. “The house was supposed to be kept up by the tenants. It sure has gone downhill.”
With this, he moves back into the hallway and starts up the stairs.
My head goes mushy, swimmy with anxiety. I’m used to witnessing people around town brush up against the Sorrowing and call it tree rot or plant fungus or whatever. But this is Ben Bowen. Surely he knows why the house is in such bad shape; surely he knows that stain is not mold.
Except he clearly doesn’t know. None of them do.
“Come on, let’s keep going!” Rosie shepherds Annelise out of the kitchen, calling back over her shoulder, “Mercy, it was so nice to meet you! What grade are you in? Maybe you’ll be in class with Matteo. Tell him about the school!”
Matteo meets my eyes, and I can tell he’s just as embarrassed by his mom’s overly enthusiastic effort to make him a new friend. The awkwardness momentarily eclipses the anxious questions crowding my brain.
“So . . . I am currently in tenth grade,” I say with exaggerated formality as Rosie and Annelise disappear up to the second floor, “and the school kinda sucks.”
Matteo chuckles. “I’m in tenth, too, and yeah, I looked it up already. No AP diploma, no debate team or chess club. At least there’s Model UN.”
The list he rattles off makes my skin crawl. “You were doing all that before?”
“Kinda have to, if I want to get into premed.”
His phone buzzes, and he pulls it out to check the message while I try to absorb the shock of his casual, confident reply. The Sorrowing’ll never let him anywhere near such a lofty aspiration—and he truly, utterly has no clue.
“That was my boyfriend, Alex,” Matteo says, casting a dubious look around the kitchen. “He’s supposed to visit for Halloween, but I mean, this place . . .”
He can’t even see what’s going on in his own house. I scramble for something to say.
“Um, I guess it’s like it’s already decorated, though, right?”
“Ha ha.” He gives me a sudden, broad smile. “Good one. Well, I guess I’d better, uh . . .” He points at the stairs.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I say, feeling myself heat up with embarrassment that I’m still standing in their kitchen. “See you at school, I guess.”
I give him a little wave and hurry back outside into the relief of the crisp fall air. I pause on the porch, gulping down deep breaths I didn’t know I’d been holding. That whole scene was so incredibly disturbing, I can’t even make sense of it. The Bowens, of all people, don’t know about the Sorrowing? How have they survived this long? I jump down the last few steps and stride fast toward home, anxious to tell Granddad everything I just witnessed.
Two
The wind gusts sideways, blowing the last of the leaves off the maples out front. I shiver in the doorway, waiting as Granddad parks his truck and climbs out. It’s Sunday, two days since the Bowens arrived, and he finally went over to see if it’s for real Ben Bowen doesn’t know about the Sorrowing.
He notices me waiting for the update and sets his whiskered mouth in a grim line. “You were right.”
“What’d he say when you told him?”
Granddad stomps his boots on the mat before coming inside and taking them off. When he removes his wool cap, his white hair dances with static. “He was shocked, couldn’t believe it. I’d forgotten how little he was when his mother took him away. I was living over in Vergennes at the time. When I got back, the Bowen house was already rented out.”
I trail Granddad as he talks, then have to wait while he settles into his easy chair. The room he uses for his den was a parlor when he was a kid, then became his mom’s bedroom when she couldn’t do stairs anymore, and now it’s Granddad’s space, crammed with stuff he “needs to go through” that just ends up getting sorrowed. I tread gingerly over books, boxes, stacked newspapers and magazines, and finally perch on the edge of the bed where Great-Grandma Maud died in her sleep.
“So, he’d never even heard of it before?”
“He remembers things his dad would say, but he thought it was all baloney. Imagine that: a Bowen, living all this time as an ignorant.”
That’s our word for people here in Arbor Falls who are in denial about the Sorrowing even though it’s all around them. For a Bowen to be one is nuts. “How’d he make it this long?”
“Beats me. They’ve surely been suffering, not knowing the limits. Sounds like they’ve moved around a lot. The house they were renting down in Mass, in Revere, it got condemned, and they couldn’t find anything else affordable, so they ended up here. He said he and his wife joke about how bad their luck is. I told him it’s no joke. I don’t think it sank in, to be honest. He’s lived ignorant for too long to accept the truth, just like that. It’ll take time,” Granddad concludes, rubbing his jaw. “Never would’ve imagined it. Huh.”
A chill takes hold of me, and I wrap my arms tightly around my belly. No wonder Rosie called the house a “project.” They think if they just keep trying, things’ll turn out okay, except it’s the opposite: they’re not supposed to try at all.
“Can you talk to him again, Granddad? His son, Matteo, he wants to go to med school. He’ll be striving for good grades and doing all sorts of things to aggravate it.”
Granddad lifts an eyebrow. “That’s not your concern, Mercy.”
I knew he’d see it that way. “It’s not fair, though,” I insist. “He doesn’t even know. He could get really hurt. You have to talk to his dad again.”
Granddad heaves a sigh. “I can’t camp on his doorstep, Mercy. He’ll come around and tell them soon enough. You just mind yourself, you hear? Don’t go thinking you can help fix this mess. You keep your head down.”
“I know. You tell me all the time.”
“Don’t take that tone,” he warns. “Get dinner ready for seven. You do your homework yet?”
“Mostly,” I say, getting up off the bed. I would’ve liked to talk more about the Bowens, but Granddad’s obviously fed up. “You want mac and cheese or the lasagna from last night?”
“Lasagna.” He closes his eyes and tilts the chair back with a loud thunk. “I just don’t want you caught in any fallout, okay? If they go pushing up against the Sorrowing, there’s bound to be trouble, so you keep your distance.”
I pull the door half closed without replying and head down the hallway. It’s not like I can avoid Matteo. We’ll be in some of the same classes, and for sure we’ll run into each other walking to school. I’m savvy enough to keep clear of whatever fallout Granddad’s imagining, anyway; it’s Matteo—and the rest of the Bowens—that I’m worried about. I think of Annelise with her big dark eyes and cheeky smile, and Matteo all grumpy about the bad luck that drove them here from where they were before. I can just picture them in that sorrowed wreck of a house right now, unpacking, fixing things up, Rosie making loud, optimistic plans. I really hope it doesn’t take long for Ben Bowen to come around. His family needs to know the truth, no matter how awful it is. I was devastated when I realized, and it’ll be the same for them, but not knowing? That’s so much worse.
It’s unimaginable, and so, so dangerous.
Three
I was ten years old when I found out.
Me and my mom were going through my clothing design stuff in her room. I’d laid out pieces of fabric sorted by color, my paper dolls, sketch pads, markers, and watercolor sets. My hair was done up in a fancy French braid, and I’d wrapped purple silk over my jeans and T-shirt, sari-style. It was a dozy summer afternoon, the sun slanting in over the worn carpet, the smoke from Mom’s cigarettes wafting on the breeze through the open windows. I was aware but not aware of the rot creeping along the floorboards and walls: as in, I sensed it reflected something deeply unstable and wrong with my existence, but no one else ever seemed to notice, and it was so mystifying and disturbing that I simply shut my eyes to it. I prattled on about my future, holding up bits of cloth to the light, arranging pins in my pincushion, naming all the different cities I’d live in as a high-fashion designer: Paris, London, Rome, Tokyo.
