by Ari Berk
On Temple Street, at the wake, Silas was dragged swiftly out of the car by his mother and into the family house, then dragged back out and into the car barely five minutes later. His mother claimed that she wasn’t up to visiting, for she wasn’t feeling well enough. The truth was she wasn’t sick, just angry. Angry at being back in Lichport. Angry that Amos was to receive nothing from the estate. When she demanded to know why, Amos refused to speak about why his father had left everything to his brother Charles, including the house and the rest of the family money, except to say, “Dolores, believe me, you’re not the first person I’ve disappointed.” Amos drove quietly while Dolores went on and on about it during the entire car ride home, as if complaining and yelling would somehow change the dead man’s will.
“You’re just going to let him stay in that house and not pay you some portion of what it’s worth? Is that it? You’re done? And it’s not like he needs any more money, Amos! Property, investments, not to mention whatever was left of his wife’s estate! Nothing left to you, and you say ‘fine’ and just walk away?”
“Not my decision. My brother’s been caring for him and has made the house his own, has lived there with his wife while his son’s been at boarding school. My brother also has money of his own. He’s always been good with it, antiques and investments, I assume. I’ve hardly spoken with either of them in a long while, and I suspect my dad and my brother simply came to an understanding that didn’t include me. Besides, there were some things on which my father and I did not see eye to eye, as you know very well.”
Dolores ignored the end of his sentence, but hissed, “An understanding?”
“Yes. An understanding.” And that was all his father would say on the matter. When they got home, Silas’s mom went right into the house and slammed the door, leaving Silas and his dad still standing on the porch, so his dad put him back in the car and took him out for dinner.
On the way, Silas asked his dad, “Will I see them now? Ghosts?”
“No. Probably not,” his dad told him matter-of-factly, but then added more earnestly, “Maybe.” Amos paused a little longer, then said, “You saw my father because he wanted to see you. He wanted to say good-bye to you, Little Bird.”
That made perfect sense to Silas. It seemed simple and sensible and right. Why wouldn’t his grandfather want to see him and say good-bye? Of course he would.
Looking back, Silas thought that maybe his dad had thought about that moment coming and had planned to answer his son’s questions with only just enough information, to answer what Silas asked about and nothing more. Not to make a big deal about it. This kind of stuff upset his mom, so his dad was always quiet about it with him. Quiet and careful.
When they got to the restaurant, Silas had asked his dad if he could give the hostess another name, a made-up name.
“Why?” Amos asked him, amused.
“It’ll be fun to be someone else. Let’s be other people tonight!” Silas remembered saying that because the thought of him and his dad playing a trick on the world excited him.
So Silas told the hostess their last name was “Bedlam” because he had read it in a song in one of his father’s books, and because he had heard his dad use it a few times when talking to his mom. A few minutes later, the hostess called out, “Bedlam! Party of two! Bedlam, party of two,” and Silas nearly squealed, he was so pleased with himself. All through dinner, he pretended he was someone else, that he and his dad were other people, from some other place where there were people named Bedlam, and the spell was only broken when they got back into the same old car to go home. Still, Silas felt better and asked no more questions about ghosts.
When they got back, perhaps emboldened by his alternate identity, Silas couldn’t help but say something to his mother about what she’d done to him. He told her in a tone perhaps too much like his father that there was “no reason to hit people just because a ghost wanted to say good-bye to them.” His mom really starting yelling then.
“Damn it, Amos. Damn it!” And from that day forward, his father hardly ever went upstairs except to visit Silas in his room.
After the funeral and the fight, Amos showed Silas the watch, maybe just to distract him, maybe because he knew Silas would come to see it eventually.
“Does it really tell time?” Silas remembered asking his father. “It looks very old.”
“It is rather old,” his dad told him, “but it’s not for telling the time. Not really.” And then Amos would say no more about it except that one day, he might show it to Silas again and talk a little more about it then.
But that day hadn’t come, and now Silas sat alone with his father’s strange silver watch in his hand.
It was about three hours later when Silas came back through the hallway to Mrs. Bowe’s house. She noticed immediately that he was wearing his father’s jacket and that his right hand did not leave the front pocket.
He’s found the death watch, she thought, and for a moment she paused and her breath caught in her throat.
Then she said, “Your father’s jacket looks very good on you, Silas. It suits you, but it still might be a little early for it. For wool, I mean—but of course you should wear it. Of course you should.”
She wasn’t sure if she was doing the right thing, letting the boy leave with the watch. But Amos surely left it behind for a reason, and more and more Mrs. Bowe felt she was following a path trod out for her by another. For the time being, she was willing to play the part allotted to her. But she would keep an eye on the boy in her way. She felt everything would be easier and safer if Silas were here, in his father’s house, with her.
Still in a bit of a haze, Silas quietly thanked Mrs. Bowe and said he’d come back soon. He turned to go out the back door, but she told him he might leave by the front, since he was respectable company from good family. When they reached the front door of her part of the house, Mrs. Bowe took Silas’s hand and stroked it three times in the old way. He looked up, a serene expression on his face, and smiled at her. Good, she thought. We have an understanding. He trusts me. She quickly opened his hand and pressed a heavy key into the center of his palm.
“Silas,” she said with a glance back toward the hall that connected the two homes, “that house was given to your father by my mother and father. Given to him outright and in perpetuity, and from where I sit, that makes it yours. That is your house, Silas,” she said again, because he looked bewildered. “You come here anytime. This is your home. Yours.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” Silas replied.
She smiled to see his fist tightly clenching the key as though he was holding his own life in his hand.
As Silas made his way back through the garden, Mrs. Bowe called out from the porch, “That key is for all the doors, Silas. Let yourself in or out as you wish. Be sure to lock the gate behind you.” And as Silas let himself out, she stepped out of the sun and into the cool shade of the crypt.
Silas walked back along Main Street, two words circling around and around in his mind: My house. My house. My house. Silas took the key and put it on the chain that also held the pendant his father had given him. He liked the way the extra weight felt around his neck and the press of the now warm metal against his chest.
He was happier than he’d been in a year. But fast on the heels of joy, guilt caught up to him. If he had the key to his father’s house, that meant it was because his dad had no need of it. He was filling a space left by his dad. But still. He could go there anytime he wanted, and that meant not having to put up with anything at his uncle’s. It wasn’t a car, but it was a place to go if he needed one. Close. Safe.
Silas began to walk faster, and as he turned left on Fairwell Street to make his way back to his uncle’s, someone waved to him from the overgrown patch of ground past the schoolyard and in front of the millpond.
It was a girl.
She was across the street, maybe a hundred feet away from him. She was really pretty, and she was waving at him.
> So he waved back.
She waved again, then smiled at him.
Behind her, light from the late-day sun hit the surface of the millpond, making Silas squint and his eyes water a bit so that the harder he stared at her, the more she washed in and out of focus.
She must have been swimming recently, because her hair was wet. Silas thought that made her look mysterious and attractive, and then, as if she could hear him thinking, she ran her hand through her hair and shook the water off and waved again.
Silas stood trying to muster the courage to cross the street. He looked down as he stepped off the curb into the street, glancing left and right just in case a car was coming, but when he looked back, the girl was gone. Okay, he thought. Someone just being nice. I’m new here, and someone waved. No big deal.
No big deal.
But all the way back, Silas thought about what it would be like to take a date to his place and say, real casual, Yeah, I own it. Yeah. This is my house.
LONG BEFORE THE UMBERS TOOK HOLD of the property in 1768, the street had an awkward and lingering reputation that Uncle rather enjoyed. It had been named Temple Street because the old Knights of the Eastern Temple meeting hall once stood where the house was now. Some of the meeting hall and a portion of the rotunda were still standing at the time the Umber house was built, and the large, ornate columns of the rotunda had been incorporated into the new house. It was in that rotunda that—according to the more imaginatively inclined townsfolk—the brothers of the temple were said to have enacted their secret and most blasphemous rites. The brotherhood of knights had arrived in the earliest days of Lichport and had kept very much to themselves. By the early eighteenth century, perhaps because of spreading rumors, perhaps because of the appearance of a comet in the eastern sky, the brothers dissolved their order, leaving Lichport by ship in the middle of the night. Five of the brothers of the order remained in the house. Four of those disappeared, some say leaving Lichport by night-coach, a few years later. That left only one elderly brother to live out his days in the crumbling hall, and why he remained behind no one knows. It was said he was living in the rotunda even as the roof fell in around him. He never left the house and died there in 1765. Three years later, the Umber family—who had been living in Arvale Manor, a large estate on the edge of the marshes and too close to the sea and brackish warerways to be thought fashionable—acquired the property and began refurbishing the buildings in the neoclassical style.
Of all the remaining portions of the brotherhood’s ancient meeting hall, Uncle’s ancestor had loved the rotunda the best and, despite its dilapidated condition, insisted on making it part of the main house by erecting walls within the older building as well as an elaborate, statue-lined gallery that connected the temple to the main house. The original structure that formed the basis of the rotunda library had been built by the brotherhood in the seventeenth century as an outdoor ornamental classical temple with high limestone columns that held up a lead-lined roof. The original limestone columns still stood on the outside, most covered with ivy, but inside, additional decorative columns of dark wood had been added by the Umbers and between those, carved oak shelves. So, from the time it was added to the house, it was meant to be a library.
Uncle was eager to show Silas this library for several reasons, primarily because he wanted Silas to spend more time in the house. A little sightseeing in town over the past few days was fine, but there was no telling what Silas might eventually find out, or who he might meet. Uncle knew the boy had an interest in books and would doubtless be impressed by the collection, so this was a way to keep him busy in his new home and curtail his wandering.
Uncle watched as Silas slowly made his way down the long gallery, looking at the faces of the statues as he went. Most wore distant expressions, and they seemed to regard his nephew passively as Silas scrutinized them. Uncle looked at his watch as Silas approached. A little late. Good. He is comfortable here. He is sleeping well. All for the good, Uncle thought, and with a flourish of his arm, he welcomed Silas into the library.
Uncle could see his nephew’s obvious excitement, his palpable curiosity. Silas lifted his face as he entered the room, perhaps intoxicated by the smell of wood polish and old books. Around the room, between the columns, high shelves soared, connected by a thin brass rail to which was attached a ladder on wheels that could be pushed easily in front of any bookcase to access the high shelves. There were several long wooden tables in the middle of the room. Several small lamps with green glass shades were set along the length of each.
“Rumor has it that there is a chamber here, in the earth, beneath our very feet,” Uncle said with a deliberate hint of mystery in his voice.
At the mention of a subterranean hollow, Silas looked quickly to the floor, turning his head this way and that, as though he was trying to see through the tiles into some vast dark space below. He put his hands out to his sides, as if to steady himself.
“It is said it was built by the brothers of the temple to house their most hallowed rites and treasured artifacts, and only the highest ranking of their initiates could enter the sacred subterranean vault.”
“Is it true?” asked Silas, clearly fascinated.
“I think it unlikely, but who can say? No one in my father’s time was brave enough to pull up the tiles of which your grandfather was justly proud. But just here,”—Uncle moved toward the center of the room, where one of the inlaid spokes of a large marble compass star lay on the floor—“yes, just here, come and listen.” Silas moved toward his uncle, and as he approached, Uncle raised his foot and brought it down sharply on a particular spot on the floor. On the surface of the sound was the expected slap of shoe leather on the marble, but then, extending beneath that sound and beyond it, there was a low TOOOM that indeed suggested a large, hollow space below the floor. Silas listened carefully as the sound faded.
“Please be welcome here. This room is yours day or night. Nothing would make me happier than the sight of you reading and studying in this library. My father and grandfather were learned men, and I know your father loved learning, so I suspect you have inherited this trait. Your mother is keen for you to return to school, but I have said to her that all the learning you need may be had here. And of course, if there is some other text you require, well, I am sure we can obtain it.”
“I … I was thinking about college before my dad disappeared, but I don’t have any real plans yet. I haven’t really started to—”
“It’s all right, Silas. I see,” Uncle interrupted gently. “Let this place be your university.”
Silas looked at him with surprise and something else. Was it thanks? Uncle wondered.
“Silas, even a learned man could spend a lifetime studying in this room.”
“I want to—” Silas said absently as his eyes flew from shelf to shelf.
One entire case was dedicated to books on ancient Egypt. Silas reached out and took a tall, brown volume. It was an excavation report dated 1901 from Abydos, the funerary city on the Nile. Uncle watched Silas dreamily turn the pages and scrutinize the many photographs of amulets, drawings of inscribed columns, and images of carved walls bearing sacred portraits of animal-headed gods. On one particular page, Silas’s eye fixed on a portrait of Osiris, the god of the dead. Before Osiris stood the deceased, whose heart was weighed against a white plume, the feather of Ma’at, and there the Ammit stood ready to devour the deceased if its soul did not measure up.
“Please,” said Uncle, “leave it on the table so you may return to it later. So much to learn from the Egyptians. Oh my, yes. They understood what it means to live forever. Truly. Theirs was a philosophy of permanence. That the soul might endure through the preservation of the body. What implications! What insights! And so long ago.”
Uncle was pleased. Silas showed a sincere interest. Uncle thought that he might fish a little further to see what else might pique his nephew’s curiosity.
“Of course, there are other books stored throughout t
he house, rare volumes on the most curious subjects. And other collections. Odder things I prefer not to exhibit in the public rooms.”
“What kind of collections?”
Uncle smiled, as he ran his thumb and forefinger along the sharp crease of his lapel.
“Well, the albums containing my photographic work, for example. Those are kept in my workroom upstairs.”
“That was your job once, you were a photographer?”
Without letting his smile drop, Uncle wondered how much Silas knew and to whom he might have spoken in town.
“I was. Yes. Though that part of my life seems a very long time ago now. To be honest, I think that your mother would be disturbed by the subject of my photographic work, and perhaps might not be so pleased that I show it to you.”
Silas’s face fell a little, just as Uncle hoped it would.
“Even so, why don’t we meet in the upstairs hall after dinner, after your mother has gone up to bed, and I might then show you something more? Shall we?”
At the appointed hour, Silas and his uncle walked side by side past the entrances to the west wing where his bedroom was, the east wing, which housed his mother’s, and straight ahead through the carved archway into the north wing of the house. Atop the arch, Silas could see as he passed below it, was a carving in light-colored wood of a pelican and its offspring. The pelican was piercing its own breast with its beak to feed its young on its blood. Beyond the arch, a long gallery extended in front of them. There were pictures on the right-hand walls and windows on the left.
Long ago, a gallery such as this would have been used for exercise and amusement when the weather was bad. Small tables, ornate chairs, and settees were arranged apparently randomly along both walls. With the exception of Uncle’s room, all the rooms in the north wing were closed, and the doors on the right side were blocked with large pieces of furniture: bureaus, bookshelves, and highboys. Silas had found those immovable the first day when he tried to shift a high chest of drawers to get at the door behind it, where he’d imagined he heard a soft knocking on the wood. When he had opened one of the lower drawers, Silas found it carefully and tightly packed with bricks. It seemed that the only easy way into these interconnecting chambers was through Uncle’s bedroom.