Excerpt: Marielle's Tomb

Chapter 1

The town of Marielle’s Tomb was as run-down and dry as they came. It was set up twenty years or so ago when the gold rush hit hard, and everyone within a hundred mile radius - hell, they came from all over - came running down to Tinker’s Creek with their pans and sluices, eager to get the gold the easy way. When that dried up, the second crowd came in, the ones who meant business. They came with dynamite, horses, and whole teams of men. The lean-tos and tents soon gave way to larger camps, which eventually themselves gave way to more permanent structures. The path that ran down to Tinker Creek, down through the long dry grass, from the main road between Burleigh and Goppetston, the path grew wider and the ground beneath it soon packed down hard.
Before people knew it, the Tinker’s Creek camp had become a small town. First a general store appeared, like a dry brown mushroom poking up out of the long grass. Then came the stables, and quickly after that, a saloon. The hotel and post office weren’t too far away either. Later, after the mines had been established and proved that the gold found in the creek hadn’t been a fluke, more respectable types showed up, wives and children in tow.
The most respectable family in town, though, was the Vincents. Mr. Vincent was a man of no little means (some whispered in the saloon that he’d come out from Chicago, where he’d made his money in racketeering and ‘acquisitions’, whatever that meant), with a pretty, haughty wife by the name of Marielle and a small son, named Walter, after the father. A good quarter of the town was in the employ of Mr. Vincent, and for the most part he was agreed to be a fair and just boss - though he didn’t gladly put up with drinking on the job.
Mrs. Vincent was so pretty and fine that it was also whispered she’d never done a day of work in her life, that she’d been a lady even before she met Mr Vincent. In any case, she certainly thought herself above all company; it was obvious for all to see, in the way she narrowed her eyes at this and that, the way she walked, the way she ate. Even her voice, surprisingly low for a woman, was rich.
Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent loved each other, that was also apparent. Despite his wicked ways back in Chicago (for rumour had most certainly turned to fact after the gossip was heard from several different sources), Mr. Vincent was incredibly attentive of his wife. Unlike most of the men in Tinker’s Creek, he often consulted his wife for her opinion on matters as wide ranging as business, finance, and philosophy. She was a fine creature, indeed.
Walter Jr, on the other hand, was an incredibly quiet and withdrawn child. He had dark auburn hair and dark eyes, and his mother dressed him always in odd, old-fashioned clothes, completely unsuitable for the rough, muddy environment of Tinker’s Creek. He was never allowed to run and play with the other children (not that they would have suffered his presence gladly), and spent a great deal of his time either inside the Vincent House - which later became the Vincent Mansion, after Mr. Vincent made his fortune when his mine struck it rich - or hidden in the long grass, reading beside the creek, upstream from the last few old determined grizzly men with their pans and sluices.
For the most part, though, the townspeople paid the Vincents no mind. They were all too busy counting their riches, for the gold just didn’t stop coming. There were a good number of men, in those early days, who retired rich after a year’s mining at Tinker’s Creek. The road leading from the Burleigh-Goppetston thoroughfare was now carrying traffic two-deep; a never ending stream of people came and went from town, from early in the morning until well after dark. Tinker’s Creek had become a thriving, prosperous town - there were even folk moving up there from Burleigh and Goppetston, who said there was far more money to be made, and congenial company to be had at the Creek.
As it is with most good things, Tinker’s Creek’s good fortune did not last, though there was more than one man in town who thought it would. It didn’t start with Mrs. Vincent’s downfall, though the two sure came damn close of each other. Mrs. Vincent, it had been noticed, had started spending more and more time down at her husband’s mine, supposedly helping him overlook his bookkeeping. It didn’t take long, however, before word got out that Mrs. Vincent spent less time looking over Mr. Vincent’s books, than she did with a certain handsome young man in Mr. Vincent’s employ. Henry Cutter had hair that was black as night, eyes as blue as day, stood six foot three, and recited poetry as he worked. An affair between Henry Cutter and Mrs. Vincent was really only a matter of time.
Mr. Vincent, oblivious, was glad of his wife’s interest in the business, and took to leaving early in the afternoons to sit with some of the other gentlemen of the town for a whisky or two, and perhaps a game of cards, at the saloon. This left his wife and Henry Cutter to do whatever they wished - and so they did.
About the same time, other rumours began to emerge from Mr. Vincent’s mine. One or two men had told stories, down at the saloon, sozzled with drink, swearing on their mothers’ graves, that while they were working, deep in the mines, something had brushed by them, no - swept past them, in such a rush that it had extinguished all their lights. Pick axes began to shatter; machinery that had run so smoothly in the past now needed constant maintenance. One or two men had their hands and feet mangled in rock crushers. Some said the metal was cursed, others said there was a ghost, a prankster in the mine. It became harder and harder for Mr. Vincent to get good men to work for him. He had no choice but to take on the less-than-reliable, the drunks, the idiots. And all the while his wife was running around behind his back like that.
No-one knows whether Mr. Vincent found out about Mrs. Vincent and Henry Cutter, if it was just an accident, if it was the ghost, or straight-out murder. In any case, one morning Mrs. Vincent was found dead in Tinker’s Creek, her hands and feet bound, her mouth gagged, and her pretty auburn hair floating around her like a fan. Henry Cutter was gone - left town for good. The whole story came out. Unable to defend himself, Henry Cutter was pronounced the guilty party.
Mr. Vincent was insensible with grief. He shut the mine that day, firing all his employees and closing himself up inside his huge house. Late at night, after the sun had gone down and the stars were out, he could be seen down by the creek, pacing back and forth, or sitting, staring at the place where Mrs. Vincent’s body had been found. Her body was lying in state inside the Vincent Mansion - you could see it through the windows. They had to break down the door to the house to finally convince Vincent to bury her. He resisted at first, but then set upon the idea to build the most magnificent tribute to his dead wife that money could buy.
Mrs. Vincent’s body was finally enclosed in a coffin, and Mr. Vincent set to work on having the finest marble imported from halfway across the country. With specialty tradesmen, who had traveled all that way with their precious cargo, he set about designing a huge, ornate tomb for his wife. He built it right in the middle of town, for all to see. Most people thought it extremely morbid, but there was absolutely no arguing with Mr. Vincent. He was mad for the idea.
Everyone was curious to see whether Walter Jr. would support his father’s fervent idea, or if he would attempt to stop him. They were all disappointed then, when he failed to do anything spectacular, and instead continued to read in the long grass. He was sixteen, and tall, with his mother’s good looks and intelligence, but he spoke to no-one, wanted nothing to do with anyone - even his father and his dead mother’s tomb.
When the tomb was finally finished, Mr. Vincent held a sombre funeral for her, which was attended by all; all except for Walter Jr. The townspeople all stood in their sunday best, hats in hands, thinking not of the man in front of them whose hair had turned white with the grief, but of the lovely, arrogant woman who had bewitched them all and who was now dead, drowned in the icy creek and now locked away inside that icy white stone.
Some time later, a sign appeared at the Burleigh-Goppetston crossing. It said simply,
Marielle’s Tomb
No-one knew if old man Vincent (for that was what they had started to call him, now he was insensible with grief and white-haired) had put it up there, or his son, or one of her other admirers. In any case, Tinker’s Creek was no more. The creek itself, of course, still kept its name, but the town was forever known as Marielle’s Tomb. The tomb itself lay there, too-bright in the harsh sun, cold and shining in the moonlight, lay there as a constant reminder to all of what had happened. People crossed themselves if they had to walk by the thing; for the most part they would cross the street and go that way instead of having to look closely at the stone roses, cleverly carved so as to look as if they had grown up and around the coffin - almost as if they were trying to pull it down under ground, pull it down into the earth where she belonged.

Chapter 2
All eyes were on Walter Jr from that day forward. After Marielle’s death (and so they began to call her, instead of ‘Poor Mrs. Vincent’), Mr. Vincent took to the house and would not leave, though some said they had seen him, around dusk, lying beside her tomb. But for all intents, Mr. Vincent had vanished from the collective sights of the townspeople, and in some regard, they assumed that he, too, was gone.
The son, though, still reminded them all of the mother, with his dark auburn hair that only looked reddish if caught by the sun, and his tall proud figure. But he was unlike the mother too, with the faraway look in his eye like he scarcely knew where he was. No-one could remember speaking with him, but all generally agreed that they felt sorry for him, for he must have led a lonely life, indeed, what with the mother dead and the father all but gone insane.
Still, despite the unfortunate happenings with the Vincents, the town continued to prosper. Some of the smaller mines were able to expand and take on what few of Mr. Vincent’s employees were worth taking on. The general store began stocking some reasonable high-quality silks and linens, and the few women of the town got it into their heads that they wanted to hold a ball.
Now the concept of a ball in theory is fine, it being a genteel way for men and women to get together in one place and put aside their differences. Problem was, there weren’t that many genteel folk to be had in Marielle’s Tomb. Sure, there were several ladies around who fancied themselves fine (who had bought up the silk without thinking and now needed someplace to wear it), but for the most part the town was populated with some fairly rough types. The women hastened to reassure anyone who would listen to them that surely they didn’t mean the rough miners and labourers should come - there could never be enough dancing partners to go around. And so they believed the matter settled, until two separate events came about.
The first was that a very large family arrived in town one day, consisting of a retired schoolteacher named Mason, his wife (some years younger than he), and their eight daughters, of ages varying from eight to eighteen, and varying good looks to match. Mason had arrived at Marielle’s Tomb for the express purpose of setting up a ranch along Tinker’s Creek - upstream of course.
And the second piece of news was that Goppetston had got itself an honest to goodness whorehouse of its own, news that, for the first month or so resulted in a surge of young men along the Marielle’s Tomb - Goppetston road, but soon settled down a little when the owner of the saloon, in conjunction with some of the mine owners, made an arrangement with the whorehouse owner, a lady by the name of Watts, to sublet some of the girls for a week at a time. It was agreed upon, and the matter was considered settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
Quite suddenly there was a glut of young women the town, an extra ten or so at least. This sent a great number of the young men working the mines into a frenzy. While some had a preference for the easy company of the whores, others immediately set their caps at the prettiest of the Mason girls, Nancy, eighteen, Meredith, sixteen (for Eliza Mason, the seventeen year old was not considered at all good looking), and Emmeline, fifteen.
(There was an even prettier sister than Nancy, Meredith and Emmeline, a fourteen year old by the name of Prunella, but she was considered to be a problematic choice, due to her propensity to wear men’s clothing and ride bareback. In any case, she was too busy helping her father establish the ranch to have time for such things as balls and courting etc.).
Mrs. Mason was all a twitter with the sudden attention paid to her girls, for, truth be told, with the exception of Prunella, the girls were all reasonably plain and as such had been treated accordingly back in their home town. In Marielle’s Tomb, however, where the ratio of men to women swung so highly in their favour, the consensus seemed to be that any woman (aside from the exceptionally ugly, such as Eliza, the second daughter)’s beauty would be considered magnified, by at least a factor of four.
And so, it seemed there would after all be a ball. Never having had one before, there was of course the small matter of an appropriate venue. The townspeople tried pushing all the goods and sundry all to one corner of the general store, but it still did not afford much room. There was of course the saloon, but it was thought too dangerous a place to hold a ball, as there would be no way to limit access to the women by a large number of intoxicated men. Some suggested a hall should be built, though none wanted to be seen to be so frivolous as to be the first to put up money for something that might not ever be used again.
In the end, it was decided that a tent would be the best approach, as it could be easily taken down and stored in someone’s barn over winter, and then produced again once the weather grew warmer. And if the women so dearly desired a ball, then they could take some responsibility for it themselves - and so the task of sewing the tent was left to them.
In the meantime, Mr. Mason, still completely insensible with grief, watched the goings-on in town with a heavy heart and a white head. His son would bring him his meals and together they often sat out on the very large front porch and watched the activity.
“It’s like watching ants,” said Walter Jr, at last.
Mr. Vincent said nothing but a large tear ran down the side of his nose and plashed in his cup of tea.
“They’re all so silly,” said Walter Jr, trying again.
“Your mother had such beautiful gowns,” said Mr. Vincent. “When I met her everyone knew her for a true beauty, not like these hogs’ offspring.”
“Still,” said Walter Jr, “I suppose I could go along, if only to come back and tell you how ridiculous they all are.”
Mr. Vincent said nothing but blew his nose on a fine silk handkerchief of flaming scarlet.
Taking that as his father’s acquiescence, Walter Jr became determined to take himself to the ball. The trouble was, he’d never had a normal set of clothes in his life, due to his mother’s strange tastes in dress for young men. He had shot up quite a bit in the last year or so however, and so he wondered if there might not be something in his father’s closet that would fit him. Leaving his father to his memories on the porch, Walter Jr snuck inside and upstairs to his father’s room.
Crossing the floor, he was struck momentarily by the light filtering in through the lace curtains and across his mother’s dressing table. Her things lay untouched, and dusty on its marble surface. He could not understand the point of leaving them there as a constant reminder of her death. That fine bristled hairbrush, lying beside the hand mirror, crafted in some far-away factory of some sort, shipped to the ladies’ store back in Chicago, and purchased by his mother, probably on a whim. It was death. His father should have locked them all up inside the tomb with his mother’s body.
He turned to his father’s wardrobe and opened the heavy dark doors. The heavy velvets and silks inside smelled strongly of lavender, tied up into muslin bags and stuffed in everywhere to keep the moths out. He pulled out the suits one by one, and held them up to his chest. They were all too large across the shoulders, too long in the sleeve. He would look like a clown! But at the back, wrapped in tissue paper, he found an elegant dark suit, with a yellowed carnation still in the lapel. He held it up. It looked good.
Wearing his father’s suit, Walter Jr came back down the stairs and stood before his father, who was still sitting on the balcony, but now was sorting through a small pile of letters.
“Dear God,” his father said, leaning back in his chair.
“I need something for the ball,” Walter Jr said.
Mr. Vincent said nothing more but held out a letter to his son. “Your cousin,” he said. “Is coming to stay.”
Walter Jr tucked the letter inside his breast pocket and left the house. He carried his current favourite book, Le Fanu’s In A Glass Darkly. He glanced down at the small dark book and shivered, recalling the vampiric lesbian seductress Carmilla. He had found it among his mother’s things after she died.
There was something incongruously pleasing about walking through the long grass beside the river in his father’s wedding suit, Walter Jr thought. It felt reckless, and it made him feel alive. He was tempted to open his book right away and continue to read about the beautiful Carmilla, but he made himself wait, and enjoy the way the sunlight caught the seed-heads of the long grass and made them shine gold.
The creek was quite full, and ran fast and clean, there upstream from the mines (down below it did not run quite so clean). Sparrows and thrushes, finches and crows bobbed and ducked above the grass, gobbling up insects. Lazy bumblebees and honey bees, as well as large green dragonflies buzzed about, the bees no doubt come from the retired teacher Edgar Mason’s new orchard that he was planting nearby. Crickets chittered all around him. This was where Walter Jr felt content, where he never felt lonely, never had to think about his dead mother and his father slowly, quietly going mad.
Walter Jr found a place that suited his fancy, where he could sit quite hidden in the long grass yet still watch the swiftly moving creek. He took the letter from his breast pocket and saw it was from his father’s sister, back in Chicago. It seemed that his cousin Antoinette, not far off in age from Walter Jr, had been of poor health and was in need of a drier, cleaner air. Mr. Vincent wishing, his sister would send Antoinette and her nurse out on the train, where it was hoped she could convalesce in relative comfort with the Vincents.
Walter Jr leaned back in the long grass and tried to remember his cousin. She had always been a pale, sickly thing with big round eyes and a small red mouth that she would twist into a strange smile as if she knew what he was thinking. He had not liked her company much as a young child, and so he had entertained himself with her brothers, who had been large blond bullish types. Walter Jr remembered that they had been sent off to school, and after that no one had heard anything more from them. They were a strange family, all. In fact Walter Jr found that even sitting in the bright sunshine in his father’s black suit, the thought of his cousin with her twisty red smile made him feel quite cold. He quickly folded up the letter and returned it to his pocket.
There was the sound of a horse approaching; Walter Jr ducked down in the grass, not wanting to be bothered by anyone as he was keen to get back to the story of Carmilla. The heavy footfalls of the galloping horse slowed to a walk, and the horse and rider soon came into view, on the other side of the creek. Walter Jr saw a boy in rough clothes dismount from the horse and lean out over the creek to take a look. He ducked further down into the grass. The boy in rough clothes hardly seemed the type who would enjoy lying in the grass with a book. He looked as if he’d be into something a little less refined - like pig farming.
Walter Jr muttered to himself and rolled his eyes when it became apparent that the boy was preparing to go for a swim in the creek. He kicked off his shoes and socks, filthy trousers, and shirt -
An embarrassed noise came out of Walter Jr’s throat.
“Who’s there?” yelled Prunella across the water. “I can hear you!” Stitch naked she dove into the freezing water and swam to the other side. It didn’t take her long to spot Walter Jr crouching down in the grass.
“That’s just typical,” she said, her eyes sparking with anger. “Did you get a good look? Want me to come closer?” She marched up towards him.
“No, no,” said Walter Jr, holding up his hands. “I was just reading...” He held up the book. Prunella eyed it suspiciously, then shrugged.
“I’ve seen you around before,” she said. “Not too often, but I’d recognise that red hair of yours anywhere.”
His red hair was a sore point for Walter Jr. He ducked his head. “Aw, get on out of here,” he said. “Go back to your swim. I’m leaving.”
Ignoring him, Prunella sat down on the grass beside Walter Jr. He tried not to look at her dripping white skin and instead looked out to the creek, still rushing by.
“I’m Prunella,” she said. “My daddy’s Edgar Mason. He owns most of this land. Bought it up when his father died, left him a whole load of money.”
“Oh yes.”
They watched the creek in silence.
“Don’t talk much, do you?” Prunella asked. “I reckon my sister Eliza would get on well with you. She doesn’t look like much but she’s got the sweetest disposition. Not like me.” Prunella stood up and brushed the grass off her bare legs and bottom (Walter Jr watched out of the corner of his eye). “Ah well, guess I’ll see you around sometime. I like to come down here for a swim most days, maybe I’ll bring Eliza with me and you can meet her.”
“Sure.” Walter Jr felt as if his tongue were made of sand. He watched the slender creature dive back into the creek, where she promptly seemed to forget him, and allowed herself to float further down stream.
Of course Prunella hadn’t really forgotten about Walter Jr, but she’d run out of things to say, and rather than sitting awkwardly for the sake of politeness she got on with what she’d been planning to do. She missed their old home terribly, but loved the land almost as much as her father did. Her other sisters had never been much into horses or riding, and with three of them (bless poor Eliza, none of the boys would have her) gadding about with dresses and ribbons and the rest, her father was only too happy to have one of his girls wish to stay at home. The younger ones, Betsy, Marianne, Martha and Laura, were still too young to get up to much aside from studying (their father still managed to find time to teach his girls well) and horsing around together.
Prunella grinned as the cold water swept her further down stream. Now she’d have a story of her own to tell her big sisters! They were always carrying on about this or that piece of gossip or news that they’d heard about in town. Lazily, she rolled over and swam for the other side of the creek before she got too far down stream. As carefree as she was, Prunella wasn’t in a hurry to expose herself to the labourers working the mines adjacent to her daddy’s farm. She pulled herself up and out of the water, then trudged back towards Morty, her horse, wondering in her mind how she could convince Eliza to come with her down to the creek tomorrow.

Chapter 3
Eliza, the ugly sister, wasn’t particularly convinced when her younger sister came home dripping wet and babbling about some or other boy. She just shrugged, thinking Prunella was surely growing up, like the others; before long, Prunella would be as silly and boy-crazy as the lot of them. Eliza knew no man would ever want her, and while this made her heart shrink back a little, and she sometimes cried herself to sleep at night, she prided herself on the fact that she would never look as ridiculous as her sisters did when they were fawning over a man.
She instead entertained herself with learning. Not the fluffy stuff her sisters learned, in the hopes that their skills in baking or needlepoint would help them land a husband; Eliza was interested in science: mathematics, physics and chemistry. Her parents weren’t completely sure what to make of her (though her father the schoolteacher was pleased that one of his children were exhibiting an intelligence of an equivalent calibre to his own), but like Prunella, they did not interfere with their daughter’s desires. And so Eliza spent much of her time either reading in the attic, or tinkering with copper coils in the basement, or staring up at the huge night sky outside with her portable telescope. She may not have been happy, but at least she was content, and the family’s new farm was as good a place as any for her to carry out her studies.
And so, while she paid her younger sister little heed when it came to most things, Eliza agreed to go with her down to the creek the next day. The girls both took their bathing things (Prunella thought it wise to not admit to skinny dipping) and a picnic lunch, and walked down the dirt road from the farmhouse, still clean smelling and yellow from its new wood, down to Tinker’s Creek. The weather was good, and Prunella babbled and leapt through the grass, running ahead, and then running back to her sister like a puppy. They reached the bank where Prunella had met Walter Jr the day before, and spread out the picnic blanket and lay back in the sun.
Prunella wanted to eat immediately, but Eliza preferred to lie back in the grass with her book, and so Prunella had to entertain herself. She was quite good at weaving creatures out of grass, horses in particular, and played at that a while, before lifting the lid on the picnic basket and looking inside. She was about to reach in for a cold chicken drumstick when she saw Walter Jr heading over in their direction.
“Hey! Over here!” she called, standing and waving.
“Not so loud,” Eliza shushed her.
Walter Jr looked a little surprised, but walked closer and said hello.
“This is my sister Eliza,” Prunella said, introducing them.
“Hello,” Eliza said, meeting his eyes and then looking away again.
“Hello,” he echoed. He was sure that he had never seen an uglier girl in his whole life. Granted, she had lovely black hair, but that was tied up in a severe bun. And her pale grey eyes were of a colour that Walter Jr had never seen before. But she was pale, and so thin, with narrow lips pressed together tightly. She looked like something of a spectre, standing next to her full-blooded, red-cheeked, golden-haired little sister. “Nice to meet you,” was all he could think of to say.
“I knew you’d come,” babbled Prunella, dancing around him in circles. He shook his head, as if to clear his mind. Yesterday when he’d met Prunella, and practically run back home after she floated off down the creek, he had told himself, undressing in front of his father’s wardrobe, that he would not return to the creek, would not be introduced. He had no desire to meet anyone in town. He was happy alone, with his thoughts, and his memories. But almost without his realising, he had grabbed his book after breakfast and set out from the house. And there they were.
“Are you hungry?” Prunella asked. “There’s some lovely roast chicken in here.”
“Uh, sure,” Walter Jr said. He sat down on the edge of the picnic blanket and Eliza handed him a plate. The food was delicious but the whole situation felt surreal to him.
“So, you live up in that big old house in the middle of town?” Prunella asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I live there with my father.”
“Don’t you have any other family?” Eliza asked.
“No. My mother’s dead.”
Eliza coloured a little at this and was silent.
“How’d she die?” Prunella asked.
“Prunella!” Eliza exclaimed. “That’s none of your business!”
Prunella shrugged and took another large bite of chicken, her eyes never leaving Walter Jr. “It’s interesting,” she said. “Nothing interesting happens in our family.” She munched for a moment, watching him. “Besides, he wouldn’t have come over if he didn’t want to talk.”
“I don’t mind,” Walter Jr said to Eliza. He took a breath. “She drowned.”
“Where?”
“Here, in this creek. Down by my father’s mine.”
Suddenly the thought of swimming seemed distasteful.