Death Watch

by Ari Berk

  Another night, they walked far north of the Narrows, around the bay and out to the lighthouse. The surface of the sea was embroidered with stars, for the moon was nowhere to be seen. Bea had asked him about his family, and Silas had said he wasn’t sure what to tell her. He had hoped she might have known his dad, and sometimes she looked as though she was about say something when Silas mentioned him. But she never did. So he asked her about her family, and to his surprise, she avoided family questions too, and asked him another question instead.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me, Silas?”

  “I—Yes, I do. Very much.” Silas thought about leaning over, but stopped. Then, without thinking, he did it; inclined his head toward her with his eyes closed. But nothing happened. When he opened his eyes, she was standing several feet away by the lighthouse. He got up and walked toward her, hurt and embarrassed.

  “Not yet, Silas.”

  “Okay. It’s fine. I just—”

  “We can’t. I think you know that. Not yet.”

  He looked away from her and down at the sea throwing itself against the rocks far below them.

  “There is a great lantern up there,” Bea said, drawing his attention back, gesturing to the top of the lighthouse.

  “Oh, yes?” Silas answered, trying to refocus on her voice.

  “Think of all the ships it’s called home from the sea … think of all the people it’s saved. Sometimes on certain nights I think I can see a light up there on the tower. Isn’t that odd? No one’s been in the lighthouse for years and years, but I’m sure I’ve seen it. Little lights are good luck, you know. Lights seen over water are good luck. They’ll always lead you home.”

  “Really? I think I’ve read something different—,” Silas started to say.

  “Maybe,” Bea replied sharply. “I guess it depends what you want to believe.”

  “And didn’t you tell me that sometimes people lit fires to make ships crash on the rocks? How can you tell which lights are dangerous and which ones lead you home?”

  Bea smiled at him thinly but didn’t say another word as they left the lighthouse with the rising dawn. The sky was burning as the sun rose over the water, and its early fire hung at the edges of the world and in Silas’s tired eyes. They silently parted company by the fence at the bottom of Beacon Hill. Silas returned home feeling confused and heartsick. As he entered the house, his father’s belongings seemed to glow in the early morning light like a reminder. He knew he had to keep looking for his father, had to keep trying to learn how to look.

  Exhausted, Silas made his way to bed. Sleep came quickly, but it cast him on the rocks of troubled dreams.

  LEDGER

  Only certain of the dead truly pose a danger to the living. Those who die by violence, or before their appointed hour, those executed for no just cause, those dying in youth upon the battlefield, and, of course, the drowned.

  Once, in a villa rented by my family in Athens, a very wretched and most terrible ghost appeared to us, shackled upon its feet and wrists, water pouring from its mouth at every moment like a grotesque spigot. It would often wake a member of the household, putting its hand about their throats to wake them. Or it would stand before me, screaming, always in some small hour of the night, bidding me to follow it to the inner courtyard, whereupon it would then swiftly vanish. My wife and family bid us leave the place. Instead I had the courtyard dug up and lo! There was the ruin of an ancient well, long since covered over. The bottom of the well was drained and a skeleton found, shackled in the same manner as the ghost.

  At my insistence (and expense), a public funeral was held, and never again did the ghost appear or trouble the house in any manner.

  —from the lost account of Athenodorus, found and translated from the Greek by Jonas Umber in the year 1792

  MRS. BOWE STOOD BY THE MAUSOLEUM in her garden, listening. The bees had been bringing her news of Silas’s rambles about town. She had looked into her mother’s crystal and discerned that he was not alone on many of his walks. She knew, now, who he’d been spending his time with. Although she could see no more than a shadow moving beside the boy as he walked, she knew it was the drowned girl. She had come free of the millpond again.

  Mrs. Bowe told herself it was none of her business.

  But of course it was her business.

  She knew Amos would not want Silas going to the millpond or consorting with anything that resided there. She knew that as sure as she knew her own name. Amos had confided in her that there was something about the millpond that gave him nightmares, and Mrs. Bowe suspected that the drowned girl had played at least a small role in his many excuses for moving to Saltsbridge with his infant son and wife.

  “Just give it a wide berth, particularly as the year turns,” Amos had told her. “It is a critical place for children at all times, and for young men especially.”

  She didn’t want to worry the boy, and maybe everything for the moment was fine. He certainly seemed happier lately, if not a little distracted, but she didn’t want him going near the millpond again. She knew something about the place. She knew about his father’s experience with the ghost there and how it had followed him and how it disappeared during his father’s courtship. She knew how Amos had seen the spirit looking at him once through a window as he stood over Silas’s cradle. Mrs. Bowe feared that anything she told Silas would only make him even more curious. And clearly, the girl from the water had already appeared to him many times. No. In this instance, action needed to be taken, but discreetly. She didn’t want to upset the boy, after all.

  Mrs. Bowe waited until after dinner to bring up the matter with Silas. She only knew what the bees told her and what she’d been able to spy within the crystal. But those were more than enough, and the bees were never wrong. She’d been raised right, though. No confrontation. Just a little story before bedtime. She crossed the passage between their houses and called to him from the doorway.

  “I’m here, in the study,” Silas called back.

  She went to him there. “I thought I might share a little tale with you.”

  “I’m a little old for bedtime stories, don’t you think, Mrs. Bowe?” Silas asked, looking up from his reading.

  “Then call it a cautionary tale, if you prefer. Now, are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin….”

  This all happened long ago, right here in Lichport.

  There was a boy, a handsome, charming lad from an old family. He was sure of himself, sure of what he wanted, and when he fell in love he gave everything he had, though the girl he loved was not like his people. She was lovely, but wild, a thing of the woods and meadows. She hardly spoke, so he gave her his song. He played her music of his own making. He sang her honeyed words, and his sweet voice made the world grow still about them. He gave her his heart. But for all this, his bright days with her would end too soon in shadow. Though their kin knew nothing of their love, for they hid it, the lovers soon announced their engagement and came very quickly to their wedding day.

  No one was surprised that things went bad fast. There was a pall over the whole business, folks said. And it was true. Even the torches at the wedding dinner sputtered and hissed and would not light. Some thought this an ill omen, but such folk spoke their concerns softly, for who wants to hear of dire portents just as a bride and groom’s hands begin to intertwine? So, to the music of whispers and prognostications of the worst kind, they made their vows and tied the knot.

  Well, he was a high-born fellow, graceful, descended from good stock. Maybe that’s why he loved her. Because she was so very different from him. She was wild, and no one knew who her family was. He loved her wild heart. And he never complained at how often she would take to walking along among the trees at the edges of the marshes, for that windswept place spoke to her and she heard a kind of music on the salt-sweet air that no one else could hear. And though folk spoke ill of her for doing so, often she would go to the marshes alone. There, she could be just another creature of the wild among the o
ther wild things. Folks knew no good would come of it, and no good did.

  One day, as she wandered and her husband waited for his supper, a serpent of the marsh crept close to her on the path, and when her small foot trod upon it, it bit her on the ankle just as long ago a serpent’s poison bit hard the heart of Eve in the garden. Now such poison is as quick and strong as love, and soon she was overcome and so she fell, her last breath stirring the dust of the earth from which man must take his daily bread.

  That is where her husband found her, just there by the marshes, and that is where his heart fell all to pieces. But he thought highly of himself. So highly that he would have things his own way or not at all. What’s mine is mine, he said, and was resolved to take her back, to bring her back.

  And there the tale goes right to hell, for under the earth he goes to fetch back his love, despite knowing what we all know: Some roads must lead away from home and do not, cannot, ever again return. Not ever. He was clever. Too clever. He knew just where to take up the mist path to that dark land. And because his love for her burned strongly still in his chest, he needed no map to follow on that dim and turning road, but walked his way right to the doors of Hell.

  How long he walked he did not know, but when he found the high hall of the dead, he did not hesitate. He took her hand in his and led her away. But the King of the Dead, the Lord of Hell, could not be got around, for this was before the Revolution, and a king’s word still held sway in the colonies. Strong are the gates of his land, and no one may enter or depart them without his leave. Still, he released them both, saying only, “Go, but do not look back.”

  Such is the Devil’s way. Let the rope out easy and slow, easy and slow.

  Up and ever up that youth walked, and though he could no longer feel her hand in his, and though he could not hear her breath and though she said nothing, on and on he walked, feeling as sure of himself as any man in his predicament could. Walking still in the mist, when he could see the trees before him glow in the light of the sun, he spoke her name, just once. But she says nothing. Makes no answer. So he thinks he’s lost her, you see? Lost her somewhere along the way, so he turns to look, and well, that was it. He really did lose her then and for what? A little impatience.

  That sweet girl’s face hung before him on the air for the space of a breath, but then, oh then, it just fell away from him and back down into the earth and sank to that other place, where he would never see it again so long as he lived.

  “Is that always how the story ends?” Silas asked earnestly, almost desperately, twisting in his chair.

  “Yes, if things run their right way. Yes. That is how it must end. Because, in case you failed to notice”—Mrs. Bowe’s voice dropped—“she was d-e-a-d.”

  “But what if things ran another way?”

  Mrs. Bowe didn’t like the direction this was taking. But she didn’t want to lie to him, not outright. What would Amos want me to tell him? she asked herself. She knew in her heart that eventually, Amos would have told the boy everything, but not yet. Not yet.

  “Stories wander around, go from one land to another, sometimes parts change.”

  Silas leaned forward in his chair.

  “There is another version. It ends a little different. But it’s stranger, that story, and I don’t rightly understand all of it. It’s a song, and it came across the sea, and it’s in books. There’s no mystery about where it came from. The mystery is what it says. But it’s late, Silas, and I can’t go fetching up old songs at this hour.”

  “But how does that one end? How is it different from the Orpheus story you told me?”

  Of course he’d know, she thought.

  “Yes. Orpheus. But in this other version, this folk version, he is called Orfeo. And when Orfeo goes to the King of the Dead to get his girl back, he plays music for the dead, and they all think so highly of it, their king asks Orfeo what he wants to be paid for his marvelous song. Orfeo asks for his lady back, and the king tells him to take her and go home.”

  “Doesn’t he look back? Doesn’t he lose her?”

  “I don’t believe he does. The song ends with Orfeo going home and becoming king.”

  “I like that ending better,” Silas said.

  “I will have to disagree with you,” Mrs. Bowe said softly, now regretting bringing up the other version of the story.

  “Why?” asked Silas, his voice rising. “It’s much better that way. Orfeo gets the girl he loves, and they go home and live together, and what’s wrong with that?”

  “Because it is unnatural. Those who go to the halls of the dead do not return, and if they do, it is only because they may be of use to the King of the Dead. But it is getting late and you’ve had your story, young man. So enough. We can argue about ballads over breakfast. To bed, with us both.”

  “I’m not tired,” Silas said. “I’ll stay up a bit longer. Good night, Mrs. Bowe.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  But as she turned to go, Silas spoke again.

  “What if just part of the story is true? What if love can conquer death?”

  “You mean like me and my man?”

  “No, I was thinking of something more … I’m not sure … forgive me … something more real. Like when Orfeo brings back his girl.”

  Mrs. Bowe went absolutely white and knew she had made a mistake. She should have left the matter well alone. She also knew she would now have to intervene. It had already gone far enough.

  “Silas, really!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Just how in the world do you intend to find that out exactly?”

  “It’s just a question….”

  “Well, some questions lead to trouble, and that’s no lie!” She tried to regain her composure, smoothed the front of her dress as if brushing off crumbs. “Silas, they don’t come back, dear. They may linger like a long shadow before twilight, but they do not return. At least, not in any way you’d want to get close to. Leave it be, now.”

  Mrs. Bowe walked across the passage back into her own house, her hands shaking. It was already becoming clear the boy was going the way of the father. That was expected, and she was proud of him, in a way and to a point. What she didn’t like was how quickly he seemed fascinated by that road on which there were few turns and no returning. She’d let it go too far.

  Resolve rose up her, and if she didn’t stop to overthink things, she might be able to see it through and help him. Striding more confidently now, she went to the tomb in her garden and spoke to the hive. In an instant, the bees were swarming toward the millpond, then flying low over the murky surface, carrying water back through the window of Mrs. Bowe’s parlor and depositing it, droplet by droplet, on her mother’s crystal. She touched the water with her finger, spread it across the surface of the stone, and softly spoke words into the air as a veil within the crystal parted. “Drink. Drink. Drink, Lonesome Water. Sink down. Go low, child. Cold One, go low. Go back to the murk place and attend your bones. When you see him again, then you will sink down….”

  The bees hummed in circles about her head.

  “I know,” she said, “but it may hold her long enough.”

  She intoned sharply, finally: “When they are together next, let the waters take hold of her again. He may look upon her once more. Then, let night descend. Then, let the waters take her and winter lock her in her bones.” Her voice blended in the air with the sound of the bees, and the water on the surface of the crystal turned to ice.

  LEDGER

  Between the hours is where they reside, just under the minutes by which we count out our days. They are always there, waiting, out of time, and when the sands are still at the bottom of the hourglass, we may take hands with them.

  —Marginalia of Richard Umber, recorded 18 September 1836

  SILAS HADN’T SEEN BEA for a couple of days. It seemed that when he was thinking about his father, or his work, she was less likely to appear, as though she knew that she wasn’t at the front of his thoughts, and was jealous about the time he spent t
hinking about anything other than her. She seemed to feel him thinking about her, and when he wasn’t, she stayed away until he did.

  But Silas was thinking about her. He couldn’t help it.

  Bea was distracting him in every way, more in her absence than her presence. Thoughts of Bea drew him away, even in sleep, from focusing on his work, further and further from finding his dad. It wasn’t only her strangeness. Silas needed someone who wanted to be with him, and she did.

  Despite all the time they’d spent together over the past weeks, he still didn’t know much about her, but he had figured out a few things. He could almost admit to himself the kind of girl she was. Not merely different. Something more. When he was with her, it felt like there was nothing else in the world. When they were apart, he was filled with guilt for all the other things he had allowed himself to forget. But then all he wanted was more time with her, and so it went in his mind, around and around.

  At the top of the stairs leading from the street to his front door, there was a spot where the paint was worn thin and the gray wood showed through. Silas liked to sit there and imagine his dad sitting and thinking, watching the street or the sky. And that was what Silas was doing. Sitting on the front stairs, thinking about Beatrice. Clouds were passing quickly above him, high and fast, sailing shadows down the street and to the west. Every few seconds, a beam of sun darted through the clouds and probed the ground like a searchlight.

  He’d been there since early morning. He’d had another Bea dream and wasn’t able to get back to sleep. He’d begun to fret, turning the problem of his distraction over in his mind. Silas knew, somewhere in his gut, that he should stay away from her. Even his dreams about her were beautiful but dark, always framed in coldness and shadow. He knew she had problems. It wasn’t that she was a bad person; he just knew she was probably going to be bad for him. But maybe she was the kind of bad he needed right now. Maybe it was a good bad. Or not. Like how the air seemed to condense when they were close, or the way her skin sometimes looked as if cold water was coursing beneath. No. None of it felt right. But it felt good, for the distraction as much as anything else. He liked the mystery of her. He liked feeling that he might one day be able to figure her out, that one day, he might learn what kind of light she actually was: lighthouse beacon, or mooncusser’s fire.