“I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread,” said Minerva. “One moment we’re talking about violins in the basement, and the next we’re talking about someplace in England.”
“Oh, aye,” said Bitty, whose weaving followed its own warp and weft. “Dunwich it was—called Dommock in the old Anglo-Saxon, the capital of East Anglia where the bishops once held council and the Knights Templar kept their dark sentinel. A city a’ churches, a’ priories and chapels, that one by one fell into the sea. You think it was an accident, young fella? Do you?”
Lyman shrugged, his disregard for her shifting into embarrassment for himself.
“Twas no coincidence that a place as holy and righteous as Dunwich eroded bit by bit into the sea,” said Bitty, tongue and tone both scolding. “Dwindlin’ and shrinkin’ until nobody was left but those few who kept indoors or walked straight lines between thresholds. No, they knew, the townspeople and the elders. They knew somethin’ lived among them. Beneath them. And they cottoned Garrick knew that fact better than any.”
Minerva said, “I still don’t understand. What something?”
Earlier Bitty and Lyman had passed the small rum bottle neighborly between them, with Minerva abstaining. Now Bitty held the empty bottle tightly in her grip, forgotten, and addressed Minerva in her roundabout way. “There’s some’n believe Sed Garrick brought them over when he came. But I can’t see how he’d a’ managed that, and besides, the Indians had myths about them going way back. The Mohegan and the Pequot and the Narragansett, they may not’ve agreed on much but they agreed on the noises. Said it was a god, name a’ Hobomoko, down there shaking the world, and their soothsayers and wise men would interpret the rumbles like a Gypsy reading chicken bones. Matchitmoodus, they called this region—the Place a’ Bad Noises. The Puritans thought the Indians was Devil worshippers, though truth is, they was less about worshipping old Hobomoko and more about steering on his good side. And when they sat on his left hand, well, they gave Matchitmoodus wide berth.”
The dusk closed around them like a fist. Lyman noticed how silent and still it was, as if the trees and rocks themselves leaned toward them, eager to hear the old woman talk.
“I can imagine some a’ those stories reached Britain in letters and traveler’s yarns and Garrick kenned the substance a’ them. No, more’n like Garrick chose this place because they was already here, and if’n he could commune with them as was in England, he could commune with their American kin. He was already old when he came over, him and his family and his damned fiddle, and he lived longer still after settlin’ here. Some’n say he was upwards a hundred and fifty when they finally buried him in the family cemetery, somewhere ‘round, lost now. His age being a’ result of the exchange he had with them, see. Carbuncles, they said—like ulcers or pearls they would give him from deep underground, to extend his years. They—”
At that instant, just as the crest of the sun’s orb dipped beneath the unseen western hills and night decanted like syrup across the trees, a thunderclap broke the stillness and resonated under their feet. The Moodus Noises. The effect on Bitty was like paper in fire. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, the bottle fell to the leaves. The air trembled a moment longer, and then like a jackrabbit she was up. She snatched her pack with one hand and the frying pan with the other. “If’n you run you can make the Whitney farm and the hayloft far off the ground,” she said aloud. Lyman sensed neither he nor Minerva was not the intended recipient of the words. To them Bitty said instead, “Get out a’ these woods and somewhere safe, youngin’s. The turtles is on the move.” Then she reached into her shawls, snapped something from around her neck, and pressed it into Minerva’s hands. “You was ever kind to me, missy. Keep it close.”
Lyman, while impressed by the show, remained uninfected by the woman’s terror. “I told you before. A turtle is too small to do anybody much harm, Bitty—even a snapping turtle.”
Bitty danced on the edge of the firelight. “You young fool, ain’t you been listenin’ to a thing I said?” She spread her arms like wings. “Them’s Hobomokos is big.”
And without another word she sprinted from the scene, faster than Lyman would’ve thought capable.
Minerva ignored Bitty’s departure. Instead she knelt in the fire’s dying glow, turning a small leather amulet over in her hands. Stamped in the brown hide was a six-petaled daisy wheel, the petals formed by the overlap of circles pressed into it. It reminded her of a sand dollar, washed up on the beach.
•••
On any other evening, the brush strokes of Bitty Breadstick’s fireside story, not to mention the color of her quick departure, might have been an artwork to inspire dread in Lyman. Instead he felt cool relief. Like the final scene of a play, all loose threads were tied in conclusive knots. The identity of the larcenist of Lyman’s bureau drawers was indubitably Grosvenor, the old sneak; the strangers spotted hither and yon at Bonaventure were nothing more than a wandering madwoman. Or perhaps Bitty was responsible for
