"I tell you Nate, you should go. It would do you good. The United Hotel only holds one Halloween Ball a year. Music, food and beautiful girls. Best there are masks, so even if you do dance with an ugly girl you wouldn't know it."
"It's not right, Jack," Nathan said locking the door of the general store, "trying to drown out the funeral organs with waltzes and laughter."
"Did you clean out the feed bins like your father asked?" Nathan nodded. "Nate, your Lucy's not coming back, it's just not possible."
"I'm not thinking just of her."
"Yes you are, you always are."
"I'm not. What about those poor widows, Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Manners?" Nathan asked.
"Their husbands were sick and old to begin with, it was only a matter of time," Jack said.
"What of the Kramer's youngest daughter, she was barely four, was it 'just a matter of time' with her as well?"
"Doctor Hooper says that these diseases tend to strike the old and the very young, so in a way, yes. Please at least tell me you will consider the ball, it's still a few days away."
"For your sake I will," Nathan said, his mind already made, and at last the two friends parted ways.
Nathan trudged through the mud, an orchestra of crickets sounded under the bridge as he approached, then went silent until he had crossed. The crickets were joined by a chorus of bullfrogs as he passed by Miller's pond. A twilight symphony, Lucy used to call it. They had come to this park many times at night. They would spend an hour or two lounging in the downy grass waiting for the sun to set so they could watch the stars and the fireflies, sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other.
The little church was dark. Nathan wondered what the Reverend was doing out so late on a Wednesday. The gate squeaked as Nathan entered the little cemetery in the churchyard. He went straight to Lucy, careful to avoid the loose earth covering the three most recent graves.
"Hello Lucy," he said dusting off her marker with his palm. Her tombstone was so plain, just a gray chunk of flint with Lucy Aberdeen 1849-1869 chiseled into it's face. She deserved so much better, but it was all that their father could afford. "Sorry I don't have any flowers for you tonight, we had a frost last night and it killed the mums in our garden. Don't worry though because I have a surprise for you. I've been saving up to buy you a proper memorial. I'm having Willie Granger carve you an angel statue, just as soon as I can afford to buy a block of marble from the quarry. I know you would be kind of embarrassed about having the fanciest tombstone around." Most of the dead in the cemetery were buried with similarly utilitarian headstones, a few were decorated with stone crosses. "I think if anyone deserves an angel it's you."
The church bells rang nine. He must have been wrong about the Reverend being out. "I better be getting home or father will have a fit. I'll bring flowers tomorrow night, even if I have to swipe some dried ones from the store." Nathan blew a kiss toward the heavens before following the gibbous moon back to the main road.
Nathan walked alone through the muddy streets of Nightshade. He followed familiar trails of ruts that led to he and his father's home. Along the way he found Doctor Hooper and the good Reverend Blake outside of the Kramer's house. The two men appeared to be sharing a solemn council on the front porch.
"Dr. Hooper, Reverend," Nathan called out as he dashed across the street. "Is something the matter?"
Reverend Blake placed a hand on Nathan's shoulder. "Ernie Kramer has passed."
"The plague," the night doctor added. Nathan knew all about the plague. A month's worth of fevers, shakes, then watching the color and life slowly drain from the victim's body. Then expiration. That is how it was with his younger sister Lucy, that is how it had been with all of the others. "Nightshade's fifth death in nearly a year."
Cruel fate had seen that Lucy died on the eve of her twentieth birthday. Her beloved older brother had squeezed her hand as the final agonized breaths of life passed her violet lips. The church bell had barely tolled nine o' clock that evening when it rang again to invade the silence of the night. The death knell.
The people in the little town of Nightshade had known for whom this bell tolled. The evening before All Saints Day, Nathan Aberdeen lost the thing he loved most.
The undertaker stalked out of the doorway, he had been prepared for this night, behind him the Kramer's two oldest sons and Willie the cemetery's caretaker carried a small black casket. Nathan couldn't bare to watch.
His own house was illuminated by a few gas lamps, his father was still up. Nathan pushed open the door to find Frank Aberdeen and Baroness Latos playing cards in the parlor. "Good evening father, evening Ms. Latos." His father was a widower, Nathan's mother having died in childbirth with Lucy. The two were laughing as Frank Aberdeen threw down his cards and folded.
"That's eight straight hands you've beaten me. Oh, hello son. Care to join us for a game?"
"No father, I'm not in the mood tonight." He considered reporting the news about little Ernie but did not have the heart to spoil their cheerful mood. He would tell his father in the morning.
Nathan climbed the staircase and trod to his room. He removed his coat and eased open the old window. He breathed deeply the crisp air pouring in through the cracked window before gazing at the Kramer's darkened house. After some time of turning in his sheets he fell asleep thinking about the terrible plague and who would be it's next victim.
A fitful night of sleep finally ended when Nathan hit the wooden floorboards. Had he fallen out of bed? He hadn't done that since childhood. His neck was sore, he stumbled to his dresser where he lit the lamp and examined himself in the mirror. There were two red bumps close together on his throat. Mosquitoes. He cursed himself as he shut and latched the window.
The sun was just beginning to rise, he glanced at his watch and cursed the fact that he would have to get up in another hour. Nathan fell back on his pillow, breathing in the sweet scent of rosewater. He instantly drifted to sleep.
***
"Why do you keep scratching?" Jack asked the next day at the general store.
"These damned mosquito bites," Nathan said raking his fingers over the swollen red bumps.
"How long have you had those?" Jack asked. Nathan told him he had woken up with them. "Funny, I'd think the freeze would have killed them all off."
"Must have had a couple of the bloodsuckers in the house."
"Must have," Jack echoed. "Have you thought about who you are asking to the ball?" Jack Mercy was a master at changing subjects.
"I'm not asking because I'm not going," Nathan said unambiguously.
"I know you're in no mood for parties and no mood for dancing, but you will be some day," Jack said, "I know you miss her terribly, but you need to forget this guilt you're carrying around. You did all you could, you stayed at her bedside for a month. Besides it's not like a little dancing ever killed anyone."
Nathan Aberdeen knew it was true, every bit of it. He had made the same argument to himself repeatedly the last year.
***
Nathan closed the door to his room and turned the lock. He struck a match to light the kerosene lamp on his dresser. He cracked open the window a bit enjoying the rush of crisp autumn air. Outside owls hooted and crickets chorused. He listened for a moment, then remembering the sores on his neck, lowered the pane and latched it tight. Nathan tossed his coat onto the bedside chair, he unbuttoned his shirt and slid out of his britches to change into a nightshirt. He folded his clothes and laid them gently on his dresser right beside his most cherished possession.
There had been a photographer at the county fair two summers ago. Nathan had spent two dollars for the portrait of his sister. It was the best investment he ever made. She looked so beautiful in the silver frame. She always looked beautiful, even after she got sick. The man who took the photograph had asked her not to smile but she did anyhow. Nathan was grateful that she never took direction well. He wished his sister goodnight before dousing the lamp, he then collapsed into the warmth of his featherbed. Pulling the blanket over his chest he sank into the downy pillow, eyes falling shut.
He glanced at his clock, eleven. Cursing as he crawled out of bed he ambled over to the gas lamp on his dresser. He could have sworn he put out the light before he went to sleep. He doused the flame bathing his room in a primordial darkness. His muscles were stiff from the icy wind that poured in through the open window, he thought he had closed that too. Was he growing senile at twenty-six?
The church bells rang their death knell for another unfortunate victim, the sudden noise caused Nathan's startled heart to jump. He grasped the pane and was about to pull it shut when he spotted a figure on the front lawn gliding about gracefully to the tone of the church bells.
Nathan could see that it was a young woman dressed in a white gown. Was she crazy to be outside in the middle of the night? He threw on his coat and some slippers and scurried down the stairs to the street outside. The bells of Nightshade's little chapel were joined by others, unseen, their horribly beautiful waltz was carried by the icy October wind. The scent of rosewater tickled his nose, but no sign of the girl.
"Have you come to ask me to dance?" Her question nearly stopped Nathan's heart. He spun around to find her leaning against the garden fence, plucking dried, dead mum blossoms. Mouth agape he could not answer.
He had never seen anything like her. She was dressed in a thin white gown, it was a sleeping gown but upon her figure it looked more elegant than the finest dresses in Europe. Her long raven's hair hung in curly rivulets all the way down to her backside. Her arms and face glowed like the moonlight She smiled with the side of her mouth.
"Lucy what are you doing out here? Are you trying to catch your death of cold?" he asked. Something was amiss.
"Dear brother, there is little danger of that." She flashed the same grin, her green eyes narrowing like a cat's.
"You died." He remembered the funeral, the cemetery and the headstone.
Her shrill laugh pierced the night air. "My dear Nathan, with so many ways one can die, it should come as no surprise that some are less permanent than others."
She approached, the scent of rosewater became stronger. "You aren't making any sense Lucy." Then it occurred to Nathan that he was dreaming. He had had many dreams about Lucy the past year.
The church bells intensified their haunted waltz as Lucy held out a small hand for her brother. What a peculiar dream, he thought as he found himself in the middle of the streets of Nightshade, in his nightclothes no less, dancing with his dead sister. She was graceful as an angel, gliding through the muddy streets clasping her brothers hand.
They stopped so he could rest on a bench in the garden. He studied every feature of the beautiful young woman. Her pale skin and dark and tired eyes looked exactly as they did before her death. He ran a trembling hand along her soft cheek. "Lucy your cold as stone," Nathan said as the music faded in the wind. Come inside and warm up a bit."
"My brother, do you insist?" she asked. A strange question since it was her house, or at least in life it was.
