"A Jewish blessing, you mean."

"Yeah, like a house blessing or something like that, but..." She shook her head at the sheet.

"So I guess you really like teasing me and keeping me in suspense," Seth complained.

All her previous s.e.xual fire was gone. "Sorry, it"s-The house wasn"t blessed by a rabbi, it was, well, sort of exorcized."

"Oh, come on!"

"Wanda says that there were many Jewish exorcism rites that involve a bowl of holy water. Well, we found a bowl, didn"t we? I"m sure that"s what the bowl was for. Wanda also said that specific rites frequently included a mandrake root..."

The comment kept Seth"s bombast in check. "There was a root, too, in the hidden room. It looked like a rotten carrot or something."

"Um-hmm. And there was always a menorah, and we found one of those."

"What"s the translation?" Seth insisted now.

"Oh, right, right, I"ll read it," Judy said. Then she began gan to recite, " *I adjure you En Soph, hear us as we beg. S"mol and all his retinue-avaunt! Holy Angels, hear us as we beg. S"mol and all his retinue-avaunt! and be banished from this house forever by the power of You who are forever, and may it be that anything tainted by S"mol and all his retinue that may be so interred-be barred from ever coming within. I adjure you, En soph, hear our prayer." "

Seth had no conception. "Avaunt?"

"It means be gone," she defined. "And S"mol is a Hebrew reference to Lucifer. This is really strange, Seth."

"Yeah, I"d say so. You"re telling me our house has been exorcized-"

"Not in the popular sense. Wanda says this is a fairly traditional warding rite."

"Huh?"

"Typically we think of exorcism as a ritual that casts evil spirits out of living persons who"re victims of possession. But this is a bit different. It"s beseeching En Soph-G.o.d-to cast out anything evil in the house." She held up a finger to emphasize. "But what do you make of this clause? *...anything tainted by S"mol and all his retinue that may be so interred-be barred from ever coming within." "

Seth figured the obvious. "Coming within must mean coming inside."

"I"d think so, but you missed something." She looked at him to gauge his reaction. "...that anything tainted by S"mol and his retinue that may be so interred..."

The hint snapped like a wine stem in Seth"s head. "Anything interred-anything buried."

"Buried in the house," Judy added.

Oh, for c.r.a.p"s sake! "You"re not thinking-"

"I don"t know," she said. "Somebody at one time thought there was something bad buried in this house."

Now all Seth could see in his head was the bas.e.m.e.nt"s dirt floor. "Croter said Gavriel Lowen died in August 1880-"

"This prayer is dated September 1880. I"ll bet-"

"No, no, Gavriel wasn"t buried here. I mean, Christ, they tied him to a box of dynamite and set it off, at the mill. Croter told me-and, well, I didn"t think you needed all the gruesome details, but Gavriel"s body was blown to bits. The only thing they found was his head, and they didn"t bury the head here, they buried it at the mill."

"That"s a gory detail, all right. So who is buried in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

Neither of them spoke for a few moments, then Seth broke from his contemplations. "There"s probably no one buried there but even if there is...it"s none of our business. And this"-he picked up the original Aramaic scroll they"d found in the mezuzah vessel-"belongs where we found it." He carefully slid the scroll back into the ornate box.

"Getting spiritual all of a sudden?"

Seth didn"t say anything, but then looked at her. "Aren"t you coming with me?"

"You"re asking me if I want to go down into the bas.e.m.e.nt in the middle of the night to put a prayer of exorcism back in its cabinet in a hidden room in a bas.e.m.e.nt where there might be someone buried? Three guesses and the first one should be no!"

Seth smiled, grabbed a flashlight, and headed for the door. "I hope Gavriel Lowen"s head isn"t flying around down there on bat wings."

"Seth!"

"I"ll leave the door open so he can fly up here and say hi to you. You know, I"ll bet he"s got vampire fangs-"

"Shut up, Seth!"

Seth chuckled and left the room. Judy pulled on a robe and ran after him.

Outside, Seth lifted the cellar doors, then let the strong flashlight lead them down into cool, earth-scented murk. "This sucks," Judy pointed out. The flashlight diced her face into wedges of black and white, her frown apparent.

"I never knew you were afraid of the dark," Seth chuckled.

"I"m only afraid of the dark when I"m in a bas.e.m.e.nt that might have dead people buried in it."

It took Seth several moments to find the disguised entrance to the auxiliary room; he pushed open the three larch stulls, and entered. Warmer in here, for some reason, he thought.

"See? Nothing to it," he told Judy when he put the wooden mezuzah vessel back into the prayer cabinet. His eyes paused on the desiccated root. "Mandrake, your friend said?"

"Yes. For thousands of years it"s been thought to possess supernatural attributes. Sometimes the roots can be sort of star-shaped, and resemble human forms-"

Seth picked it up.

"-and it"s also poisonous."

Seth put it down.

"I think it"s safe to say its lost its potency after being in here for over a hundred years."

Seth eyed the menorah and the wooden bowl, then closed the cabinet. "Well, no gibbering ghosts."

"You sound disappointed." Judy had shuffled to the other end of the narrow room. "Nothing over here, in all this s.p.a.ce-" But then something p.r.i.c.ked her attention. "What the-Seth, shine the light over here."

Seth did so and found Judy down on one knee now. Evidently she"d scuffed against something in the dirt with her bare foot, and now she clawed her fingers into the earth. "I think there-Seth, there"s something here." She kept digging. "It feels like-"

When Seth moved closer, the flashlight"s angle changed.

And Judy screamed.

The atmosphere only made the scream more effective. Seth"s hair stood on end when he rushed over. "What!"

Judy sprang up, pressed her back to the wall, and shrieked, "There"s a skeleton in the dirt!"

Seth faltered, then frowned. Even if there really is...there"s nothing to be scared of. He knelt, noticed the obtrusion, and touched it, digging around with his fingers. Then: "Wow."

"What!"

"You"re right," he said and gently unearthed a skeletal hand. Seth was almost surprised by the indifference with which he held this severed body part that had clearly been buried for over a century. "It"s...someone"s hand, but-" He examined it more closely in the light. "Judy, look at this, this is-"

"For s.h.i.t"s sake, Seth! I don"t want to look at it!" "Would you get a grip on yourself? You"re a college professor, for G.o.d"s sake. You"re an objective person. You must know there"s nothing to be afraid of."

Judy calmed down in the darkness. "I know. It"s just...not my idea of fun, finding a friggin" skeleton hand in our bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Well..." He scratched at the object"s surface. It was nothing more than that: a withered hand but-"I don"t know what this stuff is around the bones..."

"Mummified flesh would be my guess," she snapped and finally approached to stoop next to him.

"But it"s gray."

"Mummified corpses are routinely brown or yellow, at least the ones I"ve seen in exhibits or arc departments. And it should be leathery."

Seth pressed the long thin hand closer to her. "It"s not leathery at all"-he scratched the surface with a fingernail-"it"s like baked-on mud or something."

Judy"s puzzlement now overwhelmed her former distress. "It looks more like clay."

"Clay? Well, now that you mention it..."

Now she actually took the hand from him and looked closer. "Yeah, that"s exactly what it looks and feels like, dried clay, almost like earthenware. But why would clay be surrounding a skeleton hand?"

Seth took it back. "I don"t believe in ghosts or zombies, but one thing I do believe in is respect for the dead." He put the hand back in the shallow hole. "We"re getting all worked up for what? We stumbled upon a grave, probably one of Gavriel Lowen"s family members. It"s not a big deal."

"I know," Judy agreed. She unconsciously rubbed her tiny cross between thumb and index finger. "It"s just creepy. At least I wish we"d found it during the day."

"Or not at all." Seth patted the dirt back down over the hand once it was reburied. He looked at her, feeling odd. We"ve just desecrated a grave... "Do you...know any prayers for something like this?"

"Uh..." She thought back. "I think I can fudge one. G.o.d, have mercy upon this person so interred, and pardon this person of all transgressions. Shelter this soul in the shadow of thy wings, and make known to this person the path of everlasting life."

"Amen," Seth said, then helped her up. "That was perfect. Now let"s get out of here and never come in again."

Judy nodded quickly and followed him out.

A hole in the outside of the moveable stulls allowed Seth to insert a finger and pull the makeshift door closed. "Hurry!" Judy said, still a bit squeamish.

"What, you don"t want to make love down here like we almost did yesterday?"

"No!"

He grinned over the flashlight. "You sure?"

Judy ran for the steps.

Seth headed out himself but stopped after a final sweep over the bas.e.m.e.nt with the flash. "Wait, wait!" he called out.

"What!"

"Doesn"t something seem-" Seth squinted behind the flashlight"s glare, roving it over the lawn mower, gas cans, and yard tools, among which stood the ma.s.s of barrels.

"Oh, Seth, would you come on?"

"Seriously. Look. What seems different?"

Judy reluctantly returned, gazing at the barrels. "My G.o.d, you"re right." She began to count them in her head. Eventually she looked over at him. "Seth, weren"t there a total of ten barrels taken off the boat?"

"Yeah. Ten."

Judy gulped. "Now there"s only six..."

CHAPTER SIX.

July 1880 I.

"Just feels...off to night, don"t it?"

"Off?" Mears hesitated. Off, he thought. s.h.i.t. He could guess what Bullis was driving at, but..."More than off, Bullis. Just...somethin" ain"t right, and ain"t been fer a spell."

Bullis walked beside him, let his whiskey-roughened voice flutter lower. "Somethin" in the air..."

Both men, two of Conner"s charcoalers, had been dispatched to night by Conner himself, to investigate a small circular clearing a half mile or so deep in the scrubland. All this land around them, nearest the river, had once been tall with trees. A low yellow moon followed the men as they penetrated deeper. Conner"s orders had been precise: "Bunch"a our men out trappin" a few nights ago saw somethin" at that clearing. The Jews was burnin" somethin", and a couple"a fellas said they saw the fires turn blue..." Neither Bullis nor Mears had liked the sound of that. "I need you men ta git yer b.a.l.l.s up and go out there, see what Lowen"n his people"ve been up to." Conner had cleared his throat, as if uneasy. "I just know it"s more"a their black magic..."

So here they were now, Bullis and Mears marching through the scrub by the sickly light of the moon. Blackmagic, Mears thought. He didn"t think he believed in such things, but now with ten, twelve men missing, and a half a dozen dead just in the last week? Lowen"s on to us. He knows we been killin" his folk, so now he"s killin" ours... The disappearances were unsettling enough, but now, after what Conner claimed to have witnessed...

Their Jefferson boots crunched over thatch and dried weeds. "You believe it, Mears?" Bullis finally asked.

Mears didn"t answer.

"s.h.i.t, I know Conner drinks now"n again, but I ain"t never knowed him to make up fancy."

"Neither"ve I."

"And you heard what he said-black magic..."

They each flinched at an owl"s hoot, then flinched again when a night bird-or a bat-flapped by.