Unhallowed Ground
When her husband died after suffering a massive heart attack at age thirty-two, Piper Linehan was devastated. His untimely death left a void in her life that was only partially filled by their young son, Cory.
With her husband gone, the modern, luxury house he had designed seemed to torture Piper with memories. Every inch of stainless steel reflected the loneliness of her life without him, and every pane of glass revealed a world without hope of a shared future.
"I can't stand it here anymore," she sobbed, when she returned home after the funeral. "Every time I enter a room, I expect to see Trey."
"That feeling will pass with time," her sister, Eileen, said soothingly.
"I don't see how. This is his house. He designed everything, right down to the finishing touches in the décor. His heart and soul are in every inch of this place."
"You can come stay with us for a while. We have that extra bedroom, and Cory can bunk with Stevie."
"No. What Cory and I need is a place of our own."
"Now, don't do anything you might regret later. Take time to think about it. If you don't want to stay with me, why don't you rent a place on the Cape or the Vineyard for the summer? When you come back here in the fall, you might feel differently."
"I won't," the widow said firmly, but upon seeing the worried look in her sister's eyes, she softened. "I'll tell you what: just on the chance that I might want to live here again, I'll rent the place out rather than sell it. But I'm determined to move out of the house and out of Boston."
Eileen's face brightened.
"I can call my old friend, Jackie," she offered. "She's a real estate agent in Puritan Falls. She might be able to find you a suitable house."
"Thanks. A small town seems like the right place for Cory and me to start the next phase of our lives."
* * *
The first house Jacqueline Astor showed Piper was a large, two-story federal style home on Danvers Street. The acre of professionally landscaped property on which the house sat was meticulously maintained. The inside of the home had recently been renovated to include granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances in the kitchen, a dual sink vanity and both a soaking tub and shower stall in the en suite bathroom, a huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom with built-in storage for shoes and a fully finished basement with wiring for a home theater.
"This house has only been on the market for a week, and it's bound to go fast," Jacqueline announced. "This is just the type of place people from the city are eager to buy, so I would suggest if you like it, you put in an offer as soon as possible."
"I'm not sure," Piper said, critically eyeing the modern interior of the old home. "From the outside, I absolutely love it, but the inside ...."
"You won't find any other place in Puritan Falls with as many modern upgrades," the realtor said.
"I'm not looking for modern. I had that back in Boston. I want a quaint, old-fashioned home with a lot of property where my son can play without worrying about destroying the lawn."
"There is a place on Naumkeag Road, up in the hills—an old farmhouse with ten acres. I hesitated to show it to you because it's not close to the center of town. And the steep road can be quite treacherous in the winter before the snowplows have a chance to clear it."
"I have a car with four-wheel drive, so getting up and down the hill shouldn't be a big problem. Why don't you show me the place and let me decide?"
The old farmhouse was as different from her previous, one-of-a-kind home as the Naumkeag Hills were from Boston.
Trey would have hated this place, she thought as she ran her fingers over the thick handrail of the old wooden staircase. He wouldn't even want to renovate it; he'd simply level it and build a new house on the property.
Although she had admired the home in Boston, she liked it because her husband had put so much hard work into it. If he had not been the architect, she would have considered it as cold and impersonal as a hospital room. The farmhouse, on the other hand, was warm and welcoming. She could easily imagine sitting in front of the stone fireplace on a snowy night, cuddled beneath a quilt on the couch with a good book.
Jacqueline waited patiently for Piper to examine the rooms.
"The view from the bay window is incredible!" the widow exclaimed. "I can see both the ocean and the lighthouse from here."
"It's even better in the autumn when the leaves change."
"And how much land did you say the house comes with?" Piper asked.
"A little over ten acres. The property extends from the road out front all the way to the Puritan River."
"A river? Cory will want me to buy him a fishing pole when he hears that."
"The land along the river is heavily wooded. The previous owners never bothered to have it cleared."
"Woods, too? My son will never forgive me if I pass this house up."
"Does that mean you want to put in an offer now, or would you rather sleep on it?"
"Honestly, Jacqueline, I decided to buy the place the moment you pulled into the driveway."
* * *
Piper and Cory Linehan moved into the old farmhouse on Naumkeag Road at the end of June, after the boy finished the school year in Boston. There were no tears when the widow left her old home—at least none for the house itself. She cried silently on her drive to Puritan Falls, but her grief was for her husband, not for the building he designed. As she headed north, she felt the comforting sensation of going home, which was odd since she'd only been to the farmhouse on two occasions.
As she had expected, her son fell in love with the new house, especially the large back yard.
"Can I get a basketball hoop?" the boy asked eagerly.
"Yes, and a swing set and maybe even a swimming pool. Just remember what I told you about the river—don't get too close!"
As Piper unpacked their belongings, Cory explored the property. He didn't return to the house only lunchtime.
"Mom," he called up the staircase to the bedroom. "I'm hungry. Can you make me something to eat?"
"I bought us hero sandwiches at the grocery store," she announced when she entered the kitchen to see her son sitting at the table, ripping open a bag of Oreos.
"Those can wait until after you eat."
While they ate their overstuffed sandwiches, Cory told his mother about his adventures in the wooded area of their property.
"I saw wild animals out there, mostly squirrels and birds."
"No skunks, I hope," Piper laughed.
"No. Just Sam, Buddy and Rocky."
"Who are they?"
"Those are the names I gave to the squirrels."
"What do you call the birds?"
"There's too many of them for me to name."
"Well, hopefully, it won't be long until you find other children to play with."
For the next two weeks, Cory continued to explore the woods by himself. Each day he told his mother about the animals he encountered including Elmer the deer and George the raccoon. Then, the people who lived in the house next door returned from vacation, and Cory made his first friend in Puritan Falls.
The two boys began playing together on a daily basis. Sometimes they would play in Piper's yard; other times, Cory would play next door. One evening when Piper called her son in for dinner, he came across the back yard alone.
"Where's Tyler?" she asked.
"He had to go to his grandmother's house. I played with my other friend instead."
"Oh, who's that?"
"Jacob."
"Does he live on this street?"
"No," Cory replied with a laugh. "He lives in our back yard."
Assuming Jacob was a wild animal like Sam, Rocky and George, Piper was not alarmed.
* * *
September brought more changes in Cory's life. Upon entering his new school, he quickly formed close bonds with several of his classmates. Furthermore, the youngster was not the only one to make new friends. With the house decorated to her taste and her son in school, Piper was left with a lot of free time on her hands. Although Trey had amply provided for her in his will, she decided to look for a job. Wanting to stay within the confines of Puritan Falls, she took a position as an assistant to Patience Scudder at the town library The pay was not much, but the hours were flexible, enabling her to drop Cory off at school on the way to work and pick him up on the way home.
Thanks to the new job, Piper met dozens of people from the area who came to the library to do research or check out books. One of these women, the mother of a boy who frequently played with Cory, invited Piper to lunch one day in the middle of November.
When she walked into the Green Man Pub, Piper immediately noticed that her friend appeared nervous.
"Is something wrong?" she inquired.
"I asked you to have lunch with me because there's something we need to discuss—it's about Cory."
Piper felt as though a weight had sunk to the pit of her stomach.
"What is it?"
"He's been telling my son stories that I feel are ... inappropriate."
Piper was stunned. Cory had always been such a well-behaved child.
"Inappropriate in what way?"
"He insists there is a grave in the woods behind your house. Furthermore, he says his friend, Jacob, comes out of the grave and talks to him. I realize a lot of children are fascinated by ghost stories, but my son had nightmares for a week. Now, I don't want to forbid Dylan from playing with Cory, but I don't want to have him waking up in tears at night either. I'm hoping you can have a talk with your son and explain the problem to him."
"Of course. Frankly, I'm amazed to hear of this behavior. Cory has never been interested in ghosts, and I don't allow him to watch horror movies."
"Once they go to school, kids are exposed to all sorts of things."
"I'll definitely have a talk with him when he comes home from school. I want to thank you for bringing this matter to my attention and to apologize for Cory's scaring Dylan."
As she ate her grilled chicken salad, Piper worried that her son's sudden interest in ghosts had been brought about by the death of his father. Should she seek grief counseling for him? she wondered.
* * *
Rather than appear confrontational, Piper decided to approach the delicate matter with her son in a roundabout way. After she picked Cory up from school, she drove to Starbucks in the mall and bought him a cup of hot chocolate and a brownie.
"How was school today?" she asked as she stirred sugar into her cup of coffee.
"It was okay. I had a math test, but I think I did pretty good on it."
"Great. And how are all your friends doing?"
"They're okay. Justin was out sick today."
Piper saw her opportunity and grasped it.
"It's this weather. People always get sick when the temperature drops. Speaking of cold weather, we ought to buy food for your animal friends, so they won't go hungry during the winter. When I go grocery shopping this week, I'll pick up a few bags of sunflower seeds, dried corn and wild birdseed. Oh, and what about your friend Jacob, what sort of animal is he?"
"He's not an animal; he's a man."
"A man?"
Piper chastised herself for not questioning her son more closely when he first told her about Jacob.
"Well, sort of."
"What do you mean sort of? Is he a man or an animal?"
"He was a man when he was living."
"If he's no longer alive, that would make him a ghost. Are you telling me there's a ghost in our back yard?"
"Yeah, but you don't have to be afraid. He's not a scary ghost. He's friendly, kinda like Casper."
Piper brought her cup up to her lips, using the ruse of drinking her coffee to take a few moments to consider her next words.
"I've never met a ghost before," she finally said. "Will you introduce us?"
"I don't know. He's shy. It took him a while before he spoke to me."
"Even if he doesn't talk to me, I'd still like to see him."
"I'll try, Mom, but I can't promise. I'll take you out back by the woods where his grave is. He may show himself, but he may not."
"There's a grave in our back yard?"
"Yeah. Right beside the river. You can't see it from the yard because there are trees and bushes all around it."
Was that why her son was talking nonsense about ghosts? Could he have seen a pile of rocks or an old piece of slate that resembled a gravestone? Or maybe someone had buried a pet on the property and erected a crude monument above the spot. Hopefully, this was the case and Cory had not been traumatized by his father's death after all.
When they got back to the house, Piper went inside and changed from a skirt and high heels to jeans and sneakers. Then she followed her son out into the back yard.
"It's this way," he explained, leading her along a dirt trail.
As they approached the river, Cory left the path and walked through the trees. The underbrush was thick, and Piper was glad she wasn't wearing her nylons.
"How far is this place?" she asked, ducking her head to avoid low-hanging branches.
"We're almost there."
Piper cursed under her breath when she stubbed her toe on a rock that had been hidden under fallen leaves.
"What did you say, Mom?" her son called over his shoulder.
"Nothing."
Moments later, the boy called out, "Here it is."
As she drew nearer to the riverbank, however, she realized Cory had been right: there was a gravestone. Most of the writing on it was illegible. However, the two decipherable digits, one and eight, indicated the grave dated back to the 1800s.
"This is a headstone," she announced.
"I told you. This is where Jacob was buried."
"I wonder why there are no other graves around here."
"I can ask Jacob when I seen him again."
Piper realized she could put off the unpleasant task no longer; she had to make it clear to her son that there was no such thing as ghosts. On the way back to the house, she tried to impress upon him the fact that the dead don't come back.
"But I saw Jacob with my own eyes. I talk to him, and he talks to me."
"What do you talk about?"
"He tells me how he used to go fishing and swimming in the river and climb trees on his parents' farm. I tell him about school and baseball."
Piper was glad that the imaginary conversations appeared to be innocent. Still, she wanted Cory to realize that Jacob was a figment of his imagination.
"You know that some people are frightened of ghosts, people like your friend Dylan."
"Dylan wouldn't be afraid of Jacob. I told you, he's friendly."
"I had lunch with Dylan's mother today, and she told me your talk about ghosts gave him nightmares for a week."
"He's a big baby then."
The conversation was not going the way Piper had hoped, so she tried a different approach.
"I'll make a deal with you: you stop telling your friends about the ghost and the grave in the woods, and I'll try to discover who Jacob was and why he was buried on our property."
"But most of my friends already know about Jacob. What if they ask me about him?"
"You tell them you don't see him anymore."
"That would be lying."
"Yes, but it would be one of those polite lies like when you told Aunt Eileen you liked the sweater she gave you for Christmas."
"Okay," Cory agreed even though he couldn't see any similarity between lying about a ghost and pretending to like an ugly sweater.
* * *
The following day at work, Piper searched the library's genealogy database for any reference to a family graveyard that might have been located in the vicinity of her house. When her search turned up no useful information, she telephoned the town clerk, a woman six months away from retiring, who had lived in Puritan Falls all her life.
"There are only two places I know where you can find graves here in town: Pine Grove Cemetery and the old Puritan Falls Church graveyard, which has been abandoned for more than a hundred years. Of course, there might be one or two long-lost family cemeteries up in the woods. You ought to ask Rebecca Coffin, the head of our historical society. You can usually reach her at The Quill and Dagger."
After speaking with the elderly clerk, Piper phoned Rebecca at the bookstore. Luckily, she was in and agreed to a meeting later that afternoon. The widow then called her sister in nearby Copperwell and asked her to pick up Cory at school.
"Don't worry. There's nothing wrong," she assured Eileen. "I have to meet someone after work, and I'd prefer it if Cory wasn't with me."
"Really?" her sister asked in that I-hope-it's-an-eligible-bachelor voice.
"It's not what you think. I'm going to have a talk with the head of the Puritan Falls Historical Society."
"Oh."
Eileen's disappointment was obvious in her voice.
At 3:30, Piper left the library and walked to The Quill and Dagger. Rebecca invited her to have a seat at the coffee bar.
"I have here a copy of all the existing records from the old Puritan Falls Church," the shopkeeper said, opening a manila folder. "Unfortunately, there was a fire in 1893, and some were destroyed."
"But would the old church records include the names of people not buried on church property?"
"No, but the land on both sides of the river once belonged to the church. The original owner of your house bought the undeveloped property on the west bank when the old church was closed."
"Isn't it odd that there's only one grave there?" Piper asked.
"Not really," Rebecca replied. "People were normally buried in the churchyard where the ground was consecrated, but there were a few exceptions."
"Are you saying that the person buried on my property was deliberately put there because the land was unconsecrated?"
"Yes. The church still would have kept a record of such a burial, but apparently it was one of those destroyed in the fire."
Piper shivered despite the fact that she was still wearing her jacket inside the bookshop.
"What could the deceased have done to warrant such ostracism?"
"Any one of several things. Excommunication. Heresy. Witchcraft. Suicide. Some churches went so far as to prohibit a proper burial to individuals who were never baptized, including newborn babies. Do you know there was a time when actresses, who were seen as no better than prostitutes, were refused burial in consecrated ground?"
"Could the person in my back yard have been a murderer or other violent criminal?"
"It's possible, but highly unlikely. Burial in unconsecrated ground was not punishment for the breaking of civil laws. For instance, a murderer who had received absolution for his sins could still be buried in the churchyard. You know what? The shop's not busy right now. Why don't we drive over to your house where I can have a look at the grave? Maybe I can help you decipher the writing on it."
Again, Piper took off her heels and nylons and put on pants and sneakers before making the trip through the underbrush.
"The grave is certainly well-hidden back here," Rebecca declared. "No wonder it's been forgotten for all these years."
Piper handed her a stiff-bristled scrub brush she had picked up from her house. Rebecca gently scrubbed away tree sap and caked-on dirt from the engraving on the headstone.
"It's an improvement," the bookstore owner announced, "but not much of one."
She slowly ran her hand over the numbers etched in the stone.
"We know the first two numbers of the date are one and eight. It feels as though the next one is a six or possibly another eight. I can't make out the last number at all."
"Shouldn't there be two dates? Piper asked. "Wasn't it customary to include the year the person was born as well as the one he or she died?"
"Sometimes only one year appeared, usually if the person was poor."
"So much for death being the great equalizer!"
Rebecca's fingers then explored the letters.
"I believe this is a J, which is followed by an A. The next could be a C or maybe an O."
It's a C, Piper thought. The person lying in the grave was named Jacob.
Rebecca got off her knees and announced, "Well, now that I have something to go on—even though it's not much—I'll head over to the Historical Society and do a little research. I'll phone you if I discover anything."
* * *
When Piper picked Cory up at her sister's house, Eileen convinced her to stay for dinner. Consequently, she and her son did not get home until nearly nine.
"You go up and get ready for bed," she told her son. "Then you can watch television until ten."
While the youngster was taking his bath, the telephone rang. It was Rebecca Coffin.
"Have you found out anything?" the widow asked eagerly.
"I think so. There was an article in an 1864 edition of the Gazette about a young man from Puritan Falls named Jacob Whitely who returned home from the Civil War after losing his leg in battle. Only a few weeks later Whitely killed himself."
"And they wouldn't bury him in the churchyard because he was a suicide," Piper speculated. "It seems to me he ought to have been given a hero's burial."
"True, but back then suicide was not seen as a desperate act of a person with an emotional or mental disorder; it was considered a mortal sin. What makes it even more tragic was that Jacob was only seventeen years old."
Later that night, Piper lay in her bed unable to sleep. She could not imagine what horrors the boy must have seen in battle that would drive him to take his own life.
The next day, Saturday, she dropped Cory off at a friend's house on her way to Shop 'N Save. On impulse, she purchased a small bouquet of cut flowers from the store's floral department. After putting away her groceries, she carried the bouquet to the woods and placed it on Jacob Whitely's grave.
"Now would be a good time to say a prayer," she said, gazing down at the old headstone. "But I'm an agnostic, so I don't think my praying over your grave will be of much help to you. All I can say is that if there is an afterlife, I hope you're at peace there."
As she turned to head back to the house, she found herself face to face with the specter her son had encountered. Oddly, she felt no fear, only wonder.
"You're Jacob Whitely, the young man buried beneath this headstone. Cory didn't imagine you."
"I'm as real as you are," he said.
Unaccustomed to speaking with the dead, Piper then blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"Why did you kill yourself? You were just a boy; you had your whole life ahead of you."
"When Mr. Lincoln called for volunteers, I signed up right away. My family were abolitionists, and I wanted to help free the slaves. But when I found myself in the heat of battle ...."
Piper felt her heart ache when she heard the remorse in the young soldier's voice and saw the pain etched in his face.
"I raised the gun and found the enemy in my sight. My finger was on the trigger, but I couldn't bring myself to pull it. All around me I could hear the cries of agony from wounded men on both sides, and I stood there, unable to move, just like a statue. Then I felt an explosion of pain in my leg and fell to the ground. The next thing I knew I was in a field hospital with a bloody stump where my leg once was."
"Did you tell my son about your battle experiences?"
"No, I only spoke to him of the happy moments in my life."
"Thank you for that. He's too young to learn about the grim realities of war."
"There were boys your son's age in the Army. Some of them served as drummer boys, but a few picked up a gun and fought."
"What happened after you were wounded?" Piper asked.
"My commanding officer pinned a medal on me and sent me back to Puritan Falls. Nearly everyone in town was waiting at the train station to welcome me home. My parents were overjoyed to see me. So many boys were coming back in caskets. I was one of the few to return alive. Everyone I met hailed me as a hero. The mayor wanted to throw a parade in my honor. But it was all a lie. I was no hero; I was a coward."
"No, you weren't. You were a young man inexperienced in battle. It was only natural that you momentarily froze. I'd be willing to bet that had you not been shot, you'd have eventually distinguished yourself in that battle."
"Thank you for your kind words, ma'am, but I can't change my actions on that day any more than I can undo the deed that condemned me to burial in unhallowed ground."
"You mustn't feel ...."
Piper's words were interrupted by the ringtone of her cell phone. When she reached into her pocket to retrieve it, the ghost of Jacob Whitely faded from view.
* * *
The following Saturday, Piper Linehan and Rebecca Coffin stood beside an open grave at the old Puritan Falls Church. As an influential citizen of the village, Rebecca was able to arrange for Jacob Whitely's remains to be exhumed and reinterred near the graves of his parents. The pastor of the current Puritan Falls Church, much more forgiving and understanding than his nineteenth-century counterpart, performed a funeral service for the fallen soldier.
After the ceremony, Piper thanked Rebecca for all her help.
"No need to thank me. Jacob Whitely was part of the history of this town, and he deserves to be remembered."
"But will he? How many people will know about him even though he has been buried in consecrated ground?"
"You and I know about him, and so does your son. And when I go home this afternoon, I'm going to write a chapter about him in the history of Puritan Falls I'm writing with Patience Scudder."
"Oh, you're a writer?"
"Not yet. This is my first book."
"When will it come out? I'd love to read it?"
"I don't know. I sometimes wonder if it will ever be completed. History is an ongoing thing—especially the history of this town."
"What makes you think this town is different from any other?"
"You've only lived here a short while," Rebecca replied mysteriously. "Once you've been here longer, you'll know what I mean."
When Piper returned to her car, she unlocked the door and then turned to look back at the freshly dug grave. She caught her breath when she saw a thin mist coalesce into the form of a seventeen-year-old boy in Union Army blue. Jacob Whitely offered no words of parting, just a warm smile of gratitude before he vanished forever.
The full realization of what had occurred during the past few weeks finally hit her: she had not only seen a ghost but had held a conversation with him.
Maybe Rebecca is right about Puritan Falls, she thought, getting her first inkling that the village was indeed different from any other place she had ever known.
Salem hasn't gone exploring in the woods since encountering Sidney the Skunk!
