Chapters (206)
- Praise for Maplecroft
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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- A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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- Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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- I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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- Nance O’Neil
- THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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- AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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- THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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- CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
- Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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- HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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- A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Nance O’Neil
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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- Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
- Emma L. Borden
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- Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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- DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
- Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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- Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Emma L. Borden
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- FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Inspector Simon Wolf
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Of course, they are more than that. I know it good and well, just like I know better than to kneel over the box and listen to the odd hum they make. But it’s a lovely hum, you see? It’s a calming, drawing thing. When I hear it, as I stare at those scattered pieces of precious jetsam, it’s as if I can hear my mother beside my cradle, and feel the rocking of her gentle hand as she sings me off to a nap.
No, not the recently late Mrs. Borden—but my true mother, Sarah, who died when I was very small. I have no real remembrance of her, but sometimes I think I recall a perfume, or a very distant voice. The rustle of a skirt, perhaps. A step upon the stairs. Emma says she was a pretty woman, and that she often hummed to herself while she worked around the house.
I envy my sister’s solid memories.
My father married Abigail when I was two, and Abigail raised me, albeit reluctantly and without any warmth. She’d wanted to be a society wife, not the live-in caretaker for two girls who were not her own.
She did not let us forget it often, or for long.
(I was instructed to call her “Mother” when I was tiny. This was insisted upon to great penalty if I failed, though Emma was old enough that she was never commanded to do the same. I finally began to refer to her as “Mrs. Borden” when I realized that I was an adult, and that no one could make me do otherwise. I did not owe that cold, interloping daughter of a pushcart peddler the respect of the more personal term.)
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I’d left the box open longer than I should have.
I knew this even before Emma came knocking, but it’s strange—I couldn’t seem to care. I was fully aware that I was tempting fate or something worse, and I was all too certain that the buzzing, warm green noise could be heard by more ears than just my own. But the stones were beautiful, and they were near. They calmed me, nearly to the point of a stupor.
Emma had called twice from upstairs, and she’d been pounding upon the cellar door for half a minute before I was able to rouse myself enough to say in a choked, weird voice, “Emma dear, I’m nearly finished.”
I thought I heard her sob. She cried, “Lizzie, you must come, quickly. Something . . . something is trying to come inside. Lizzie, something is here.”
I slammed the box lid back down and dropped the board atop it, cursing myself for my inattention and reflexively seeking the weapon I keep leaned against the bottom of the staircase.
There it was, yes.
I grabbed my axe.
A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
Owen Seabury, M.D.
MARCH 15,1894