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Praise for The Night I Freed John Brown “Characterizations are sharp, the setting eerily evoked and the story satisfying. A highly original meditation on how the past can haunt the present.” —Kirkus Reviews “There are marvelous plot twists and surprises right to the very end . and his prose can be pure poetry.” —Boston Globe “It tells us to make our own happy endings and that life goes on, whether we like it or not.”—BookPage “Cummings has a special talent for description, painting vividly clear pictures with his animated words.”—Teenreads.com “It is a fast-paced story that addresses themes like familial relationships, identity development, and brotherhood.” —The ALAN Review “A compelling narrative of a troubled family and a dark secret of past grudges and grievances.” —The Buffalo News “Thoughtful and compelling . This moody, almost Gothic novel will offer you a pleasant few hours to be sure.” The— Orange County Register “Lively characters whose voices ring true. Josh is every young boy who ever resented his own culture and family.” —The Baton Rouge Advocate “A masterful work crafted in the time-honored genre that Mark Twain milked so gracefully in Tom Sawyer.” —The Bluefield Daily Telegraph “It’s one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. Calling all librarians out there: Buy this book!” —David M. Kinchen, Huntingtonnews.net “It isn’t every day a debut novel is praised by a poet laureate, Newbery Honor recipient, and Pushcart Prize winner.” —Brooklyn Daily Eagle “Cummings keeps a sense of suspense thrumming through the book . the story is mature, sad, affecting, and challenging.” —Mid-American Review “The use of history as a narrative tool adds a scope rarely attempted in the realm of young adult literature.” —Black Warrior Review “Plenty of action and authentic dialogue. You care about our young hero because he cares about so many things.” —The Texas Review “Fresh and unique . the feeling of uncanniness never leaves the novel.” —Gulf Stream Magazine The Night I Freed John Brown The Night I Freed John Brown John Michael Cummings vandalia press • morgantown 2016 Vandalia Press / An imprint of West Virginia University Press Copyright 2016 John Michael Cummings All rights reserved Second edition published 2016 by Vandalia Press Printed in the United States of America ISBN: PB: 978-1-940425-96-2 EPUB: 978-1-940425-97-9 PDF: 978-1940425-98-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress Book and cover design by Semadar Megged To Susan, whose faith in me and devotion to my work have forged the friendship and love of a lifetime Also to my mother, for her unfailing kind support over the years Acknowledgments Jessica Regel, my agent, for her steadfast encouragement, excep- tional narrative instincts, and professional commitment. Patti Gauch, my editor, whose eminent talent and hands-on work have shaped this novel and made it flourish. I would also like to acknowledge Kiffin Steurer and Tamra Tuller for their invaluable editorial contribution resulting in many fine improvements. Finally, there have been other skilled readers of this story, in some form, at one time or another. All have contributed, with my gratitude. Additional Acknowledgment An excerpt of this novel was previously published as the short story “Cowmint” in Sandstone Review, Issue 5. C HAPTER I: Go Away, Ghost! y new friend Luke hopped the rusted chain hanging low and heavy across the overgrown lane and caught up with me where the weeds became thick and dead Mtrees lay everywhere. We had just entered a secret junglelike world. Vines curled down like snakes, and dark trees stood around like villains and thieves. Blanketing the ground were purple wildfl owers and gooey webs of silver leaves. Dead ahead were the ghostly white ruins of a chapel, its jag- ged walls biting up through the black earth like bad teeth. Nearby, in speckles of sunlight, stood a vine-wrapped statue of the Virgin Mary, her arms missing. You could almost see her waving hello to us. From here we crossed a meadow high with dandelions, then stepped through skinny, ragged trees that stood like scarecrows below a tall white house on the hill. Luke was looking up and stumbling. Though the house had been empty for years, it was still snow-white and gleaming, as if just painted. 1 63771_01.indd 1 2/27/08 8:43:28 AM “Wow, it does look just like my house!” he said, running ahead, his voice husky and excited. “You weren’t kidding.” You bet I wasn’t kidding. Luke was my new next-door neighbor in town. A month ago, he, his father, and two broth- ers moved into a house that was a spitting image of this one. He stepped closer. It was creepy how impossible it was to tell the houses apart, and he knew it. There was no other word for it. Creepy. Here, in these woods full of broken-up dormitories and armless statues, stood this perfect copy of his house in town, sealed in time for some reason. “Wait, was it just painted?” he asked, turning around. “No, it always looks that way,” I said, grinning. He did a double take. “No way,” he said. As if alive, the house stood tall and shimmering bright- white. My mother said it was like the tall evergreens beyond it—everlasting. I thought it looked like cake icing. When I stepped up onto the porch, Luke took a step back. “You sure nobody lives here?” he said. “’Cause there are blinds on the windows.” More than that, in one of the windows, a single venetian blind was lifted up, making a sliverlike black eye peeking out at us! Luke came off the ground like a scared cat. “Jesus, there’s somebody in there!” “No, there’s not,” I said, laughing. I had already explained it all to him. This was the old caretaker’s house for the Catholic retreat, the ruins of which we had just walked through. My grandparents had once 2 63771_01.indd 2 2/27/08 8:43:28 AM been the caretakers, and my father had grown up in this house, working the dairy farm by the river. But Luke was convinced someone was still living here. Backing up more, he pointed to a broom leaning against the house, and a welcome mat in place. Grinning and shaking my head, I swung the front door open for him to see—inside was an empty kitchen, with bare, dull-white walls and an outline where the refrigerator and sink had been removed long ago. “See?” I said. Luke inched his way inside behind me. “What’s that?” he hissed, pointing his skinny arm so hard it looked like a knobby branch. On the musty counter where the sink had been removed, leaving a gaping hole in the wall, sat a brand-new salt shaker with a shiny metal top and bright-white salt inside. I stopped and looked at it, puzzled. “See,” he said, turning to leave. “Come on,” I said, grabbing his arm. Down a dark hall we went, the narrow ceiling looming over us like a long spaceship. “And it’s just unlocked?” he whispered, looking up. “Yeah, the church left it this way.” When we came to stairs with fancy banisters, we stopped dead. Luke turned in a complete circle, and I turned with him, slowly, as if we were tiny fi gures in a music box, the strange house turning around us, without the music. Overhead was a maze of stairs, where, in the rows of handrails curving up and around, were hundreds of hiding spots for eyes. 3 63771_01.indd 3 2/27/08 8:43:28 AM “Weird,” he said, breathing the word out. No cracks in the plaster, no missing handrails, no bro- ken glass, everything just sitting and waiting. “Josh, this is exactly like our house!” The sharp hiss of his voice set loose a thousand spiders up the dim walls around us, their scampering little legs rat- tling like dried leaves. “Told you,” I said. I stood following the walls with my eyes, seeing the dis- tance each door was from the next, where the windows were cut in, and how it all folded together. It reminded me of art class. It was as if somebody had traced Luke’s house in town and stuck the copy out here in the woods along the river to keep from getting caught at cheating. Luke bent down and ran his hand over the fl oor, then sat crouched, looking at his clean palm. “It’s like somebody just moved out,” he said. “ . does anybody else know about this place?” “Just my family.” “Just your family?” I took a step toward the banister. “Wait,” he said, popping up. “What happened?” “I’m not supposed to talk about it, okay?” I stood there for a moment, my hand on the smooth railing. Anybody could hear it in my voice—I was dying to talk about it. “. there were some things stolen out of here,” I said, starting up the stairs. “What things?” 4 63771_01.indd 4 2/27/08 8:43:28 AM He was so close I could feel his warm breath on my back through my shirt. “Church things,” I said. I made a little show of sitting down on the stairs. Luke was quick to sit on the step below me. It happened many years ago, when I was around seven. The chapel, the dorms, this house—all were picked clean. Silver statues. A gold leaf altar fi lled with ivory fi gures.