Read Online The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe - Free Book Online
Authors: Katherine Howe
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over her face, crisscrossed by pale red marks where it had been pressed against the back of the chair. The details of the dream receded, leaving their emotional content but not their substance. Vague, terrifying shapes bending over her, long ropes reaching down, chasing after her…or perhaps they had been snakes? She peered around the small sitting room, its benign forms seeming like skins draped over something else, something menacing. As her mind struggled for focus, the borderland between dream and reality felt slippery and imprecise. She must have dozed off in the chair in the sitting room.
Before retiring to one of the four-poster beds discovered upstairs, Liz had managed to crank open one of the windows in the sitting room, so the room’s overpowering mustiness was now tempered somewhat by the soft breath of summer. Outside Connie heard only the occasional sawing of crickets. After her years in Harvard Square, she found the quiet strangely foreboding. It roared in her ears, demanding her attention, where sirens would have passed by unheeded. She was accustomed to being kept awake by the whispering of her anxieties, but here the whispers sounded even louder in the pervasive, disquieting silence.
Now completely awake, she shifted her weight in the chair, toying with the oil lamp that glowed on the table at her elbow. Connie could not fathom why her grandmother had never had the house wired for electricity. It seemed impossible that there could be a house in America at the end of the twentieth century that did not have electric light, but a concerted search had revealed no switches, no lamps, no power cords of any kind. And notelephone! God knew how her mother expected to sell it this way. I’ll be going to bed pretty early this summer, looks like , Connie reflected, sullen. At least someone had thought to add running water somewhere along the line. The makeshift kitchen was echoed on the second floor by a simple lavatory, accessible through another modified closet in one of the two attic bedrooms. It contained a deep claw-footed bathtub with no shower, a pull-chain toilet with a wooden seat, and a tiny sink. Liz, as was her wont, had remarked as they brushed their teeth that the tub held out the possibility of long, romantic baths by lamplight. When Liz had said this, Connie had blushed, embarrassed. Connie was uneasy around men; she disliked this aspect of herself, for it seemed materially different from Liz’s sweet, self-conscious silliness. So yes, the tub would be great, if there were anyone to share it with. Which, of course, there was not.
She frowned, feeling the possibility of sleep grow increasingly remote. Liz had collapsed over an hour ago. Connie told herself that she was probably anxious about tomorrow, when Liz would take the train back to Cambridge. Liz was scheduled to start teaching in Harvard’s summer school on Monday—Latin declensions for overachieving teenagers. Soon the house would have her all to itself. Connie felt like she was being abandoned on a high plank, extended out over a dark lake that she could not see. Liz was right. She should never have agreed to this.
Connie rose from her seat by the empty fireplace, carrying the little brass lamp with her toward the bookshelf, craving distraction. Maybe an old temperance novel, or a book of bridge strategy. She smiled at herself. Just thinking about reading those things would send her to sleep.
Her fingers ran gently over the cracked spines of the books, fine brown powder lifting off the untreated leather and staining her fingertips. None of the spines were legible in the dim, flickering light. She pulled a slim volume from the shelf, dirt and bits of binding raining onto the floor in its wake. She flipped to the frontispiece: Uncle Tom’s Cabin . Typical. Every old New England house was guaranteed to have a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin . It was like a calling card, announcing that this family was on the right side of the CivilWar. She
Before retiring to one of the four-poster beds discovered upstairs, Liz had managed to crank open one of the windows in the sitting room, so the room’s overpowering mustiness was now tempered somewhat by the soft breath of summer. Outside Connie heard only the occasional sawing of crickets. After her years in Harvard Square, she found the quiet strangely foreboding. It roared in her ears, demanding her attention, where sirens would have passed by unheeded. She was accustomed to being kept awake by the whispering of her anxieties, but here the whispers sounded even louder in the pervasive, disquieting silence.
Now completely awake, she shifted her weight in the chair, toying with the oil lamp that glowed on the table at her elbow. Connie could not fathom why her grandmother had never had the house wired for electricity. It seemed impossible that there could be a house in America at the end of the twentieth century that did not have electric light, but a concerted search had revealed no switches, no lamps, no power cords of any kind. And notelephone! God knew how her mother expected to sell it this way. I’ll be going to bed pretty early this summer, looks like , Connie reflected, sullen. At least someone had thought to add running water somewhere along the line. The makeshift kitchen was echoed on the second floor by a simple lavatory, accessible through another modified closet in one of the two attic bedrooms. It contained a deep claw-footed bathtub with no shower, a pull-chain toilet with a wooden seat, and a tiny sink. Liz, as was her wont, had remarked as they brushed their teeth that the tub held out the possibility of long, romantic baths by lamplight. When Liz had said this, Connie had blushed, embarrassed. Connie was uneasy around men; she disliked this aspect of herself, for it seemed materially different from Liz’s sweet, self-conscious silliness. So yes, the tub would be great, if there were anyone to share it with. Which, of course, there was not.
She frowned, feeling the possibility of sleep grow increasingly remote. Liz had collapsed over an hour ago. Connie told herself that she was probably anxious about tomorrow, when Liz would take the train back to Cambridge. Liz was scheduled to start teaching in Harvard’s summer school on Monday—Latin declensions for overachieving teenagers. Soon the house would have her all to itself. Connie felt like she was being abandoned on a high plank, extended out over a dark lake that she could not see. Liz was right. She should never have agreed to this.
Connie rose from her seat by the empty fireplace, carrying the little brass lamp with her toward the bookshelf, craving distraction. Maybe an old temperance novel, or a book of bridge strategy. She smiled at herself. Just thinking about reading those things would send her to sleep.
Her fingers ran gently over the cracked spines of the books, fine brown powder lifting off the untreated leather and staining her fingertips. None of the spines were legible in the dim, flickering light. She pulled a slim volume from the shelf, dirt and bits of binding raining onto the floor in its wake. She flipped to the frontispiece: Uncle Tom’s Cabin . Typical. Every old New England house was guaranteed to have a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin . It was like a calling card, announcing that this family was on the right side of the CivilWar. She
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