her.
“How else will I ever perfect my game of cribbage?”
This earned a laugh, and she ruffled my hair. “That sense of humor of yours is going to get you in trouble one day, but it’s good to hear its return. I was quite worried last night. That may be the worst you have ever been.” She placed her hand on my forehead. “The fever seems to have broken, though. You’re still a little warm to the touch, but nothing like earlier. I could have boiled a pot of water on that head of yours.”
“He does have a big head,” Matilda chimed in.
I swatted at her and missed, nearly knocking the tray off the table. Ma plucked my hand from the air and held it in her own, her eyes filling with tears. “I prayed to the Lord above all day and all night that your suffering would come to an end, that your illness would finally abate. Let us hope Uncle Edward chased the demons from you.”
I knew he had not. While I felt better, I could sense the illness brewing within me, dormant for now but prepared to return. The achy feeling in my bones, the fatigue and light-headedness; it had been subdued, nothing more.
“He hasn’t told yet, Ma,” Matilda pointed out, once again perched upon my bed.
“Perhaps we should give him time to regain his strength, young lady.”
“If he doesn’t tell now, he’ll never remember,” she replied.
Ma knew this to be true, a fact that she reminded us of. “Dreams are much like the sand in an hourglass, lessening with each passing second, until the last grain disappears down a hole and is lost forever in the dark.”
For as long as I could remember, the three of us shared our dreams, recounting them to one another to the best of our recollection. I would sometimes record them; I kept a journal at my bedside just for this purpose. I would write them down the moment I woke, knowing if I waited even a little while, they would fade, just as Ma always told us they would, and the details would become increasingly difficult to pluck from memory. I hadn’t yet taken the time to transcribe last night’s dreams, and I wasn’t sure I wished to. Unlike regular dreams, fever dreams were extraordinarily vivid. Matilda knew this, which was why she prodded me with such insistence now, and while a normal dream really did fade shortly after awakening, fever dreams burned into the mind. I didn’t even want to close my eyes for fear of returning to that ugly blackness which had engulfed me amidst the worst of last night. I remembered being buried alive so clearly that I could taste the dirt and hear the worms as they burrowed inches from my head, hungrily awaiting the rank meal I was to become.
“I . . . I don’t want to,” I protested sheepishly.
“Was it frightful?” Matilda inched closer, her face beaming. “Oh, do tell, Bram!”
My eyes drifted from Matilda to Ma, then back again. Ma had once told me if we speak of the Devil in our dreams, he loses his power to harm us. So, with a sigh, I told them of my burial; I recited all I could recall. When it was over, I realized Matilda had drawn closer while Ma looked on without a word.
“Was your grave amongst the suicides?” Matilda asked.
At this, Ma frowned. “What do you know of the suicide graves?”
My sister’s mind tried to calculate a way to expand on this without betraying the fact that she had been listening in on what was no doubt a private conversation between Ma and Pa, but before she could bring forth some elaborate lie, Ma spoke again. “You were eavesdropping on your father and me yesterday, were you not?”
“I was only walking past and may have heard mention of suicide graves, but I did not continue listening; that would be wrong.”
“Yes, it would be very wrong.”
“Did the men in town really bury a man alive in the graveyard?” I asked.
Ma drew in a deep breath. “If it’s true, Horton Lowell and the constable found no