The Rusted Buckets

In the autumn of 1997, I returned to the house I had known as a teenager, a weathered farmhouse on the edge of Marlborough, just a stone’s throw from the Hudson River. My parents were splitting, and the house sat on the market, but the bank required someone to keep it occupied until the sale. So I moved back into those creaking rooms, my childhood ghost still lingering in the corners.

The land was once part of the old Merriweather estate, whose homestead still stood a few miles away, a crumbling saltbox from the 1600s, celebrated as the oldest house in the county. It had been a stop on the Underground Railroad, its diamond-paned windows reflecting the moon in a way that made you think of secrets. The Merriweathers still occupied it, living as their ancestors had, without electricity or running water. I had glimpsed them once, in my youth, a thin woman in a bonnet, her eyes hollow, watching me from behind the glass.

Behind my house, the woods were thick with blueberry bushes and ancient wagon trails that had sunk into the earth over two centuries. One day, while exploring, I found a cluster of old rusted metal buckets, half-buried in the leaf litter. They were corroded, their handles broken, but they seemed deliberately placed, arranged in a rough circle around a mossy stone. I kicked one, and it rolled, revealing a dark hole beneath, but I didn’t think much of it then.

That first night, I couldn’t sleep. The wind moaned through the pines, and the house settled with a groan that sounded like a voice. I chalked it up to age, to the divorce, to the weight of returning. But then I heard a scraping, like metal against stone, coming from the woods. I dismissed it as an animal, but the sound was too rhythmic, too deliberate.

The next day, I went back to the buckets. They were exactly as I’d left them, but now I noticed something odd: they were filled with rainwater, though it hadn’t rained in a week. Their interiors were coated with a slimy green film, and at the bottom of each, I saw a single black stone, smooth as a marble. I reached in to pick one up, but the water was ice-cold, and when my fingers touched the stone, I felt a sudden, sharp pain, like a needle prick. I jerked my hand back, and the water rippled, though there was no breeze.

That night, the scraping returned, louder this time, and I swear I heard a woman’s voice, muffled, as if from underground, calling my name. I pulled the covers over my head, my heart pounding. I told myself it was my imagination, the stress of the move, the isolation. But the voice grew clearer, and it said, ‘He buried them here.’

In the morning, I decided to investigate the hole I’d uncovered. I brought a shovel and a flashlight, and I dug around the stone. The soil was loose, almost as if it had been recently turned. After a few feet, my shovel struck something hollow. I cleared the dirt and found a wooden box, rotted and crumbling, its lock rusted shut. I pried it open and found a stack of letters, yellowed and water-stained, sealed with wax. They were addressed to a woman named Abigail Merriweather, from a man named Josiah, and dated from 1848. The letters spoke of a hidden passage, a tunnel beneath the Merriweather house, used to hide escaped slaves, but they also hinted at a darker purpose: ‘They say the river takes its toll, but I know the truth. The bucket, the stone, the blood. It keeps them quiet.’

That evening, I went to the Merriweather house, hoping to speak to the family, to ask about the tunnel. The sun was setting, and the house stood black against the orange sky. The windows were dark, but I could see a faint candle flicker in one. I knocked, and the door creaked open on its own. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the smell of old wood. I called out, but no one answered. I walked through the rooms, each frozen in time: spinning wheels, iron pots, a bed with a straw mattress. In the basement, I found a trapdoor, hidden under a rag rug. I pulled it open, and a cold, damp draft rose up. I descended a stone staircase into a narrow tunnel, just wide enough for a single person. The walls were lined with bricks, and the ceiling dripped with condensation. I walked for what felt like an hour, and the tunnel twisted, until I emerged in a small chamber. There, in the center, were the same rusted buckets, but they were filled, not with water, but with dark, sticky soil, and each held a human skull.

I stumbled back, my mind reeling. The family had buried them here, the escaped slaves, or perhaps their own kin, using the buckets as markers. But then I heard footsteps behind me, and I spun around, the flashlight beam catching the face of a woman in a bonnet, her skin pale, her eyes black. It was the Merriweather woman, the one I had seen as a teenager. She smiled, and her teeth were black and rotted. ‘You found them,’ she said, her voice like the scraping of metal. ‘Now you must take their place.’

I ran, but the tunnel seemed endless, the walls closing in. I could hear her crawling behind me, her nails scratching the stone. When I finally burst out into the night, gasping, I was behind my own house, near the circle of buckets. I looked back, and the tunnel entrance was gone, just a patch of grass. But the buckets were still there, and now they were filled with fresh water again, and at the bottom of each, a black stone glistened.

I didn’t stay another night. I packed my bags and drove to a motel, leaving the house and its secrets behind. The house sold a month later to a young couple, who I heard moved out within a year, claiming they heard voices in the walls. But I never forgot those buckets, those rusted reminders of what lay beneath. And sometimes, in my dreams, I see her face, the woman in the bonnet, and she’s holding a bucket, and she’s smiling, and she’s saying, ‘There’s always room for one more.’