Death Watch

by Ari Berk

  “No. Silas, I’ll be brief. Your mother has agreed to become my wife, mother of my house and all its bachelorish delinquencies.”

  Silas wasn’t amused anymore. He couldn’t speak.

  “Truly, Silas, every house is like a child, and it needs steady hands to maintain and care for it through the years. The good hands of a mother and father. I have done my best to manage my house, but it needs, I think, a woman’s hands to make it a real home.”

  “And your other wife? She couldn’t provide that?”

  “Silas, a man makes many mistakes in life. It has taken a long time, much work and painful reflection, but I believe my youthful errors and little sins have been paid for. Forward lies the kingdom of peace. Now that your mother has accepted my offer, I would like your blessing in this, and hope that you may return to help build a life with us.”

  Uncle’s words struck him like a blow. Dizzy from the news, Silas’s mind began to throw up scenes from his past, but now his father’s face had been cut out and there was Uncle’s instead … leering down at him in his crib, feeding him from a spoon, clapping in the audience of his fourth-grade accordion recital. The thought of Uncle taking his father’s place sickened him. Holding his mother’s hand. God. And Uncle’s previous wife … where was she? Fear and nausea tumbled about his stomach like a ball of snakes. Silas didn’t want his uncle to know anything about him anymore. He wanted their worlds to pull apart and never rejoin. There was no way he was telling Uncle anything about his plans to remain in Lichport, to live in his father’s house, to continue his father’s work. So instead he swallowed hard and said only, “My blessing? Of course. I would like to speak with my mother first, but then I will be so happy to discuss plans with the two of you. You know, though, I am thinking about just moving on, maybe going back to Saltsbridge.”

  Silas saw the disbelief in Uncle’s face, but also the absolute sincerity of his intention. His uncle wanted to marry his mother, and he wanted to know where Silas was. Uncle didn’t want Silas getting too far away from “the family.”

  “Well, certainly, this must be as you wish, but may I tell you something, as your friend? Going back—wherever “back” may be—is seldom a good idea. You can never go back, really, there is only forward. So it must be with you. Your former house in Saltsbridge is gone. Sold to another. All their belongings now fill the rooms where your life once sprawled from wall to wall. Many wise men think to escape their troubles in retreat. Let me assure you, there is no peace to be had in it.”

  “So wait, you’re saying I shouldn’t move back into your house?”

  “Silas, you are too quick for me. Let me leave you to your thoughts. Come to us soon and we’ll conspire.”

  Uncle began skulking back down the street, but then turned and added with a wan smile, “Your mother misses you, son.”

  Silas thought of yelling back, Yes, I’ll just bet she does! but his heart was no longer in sarcasm. Every day he waited for something to happen, for some word of his father to come. He was losing more ground than he was gaining. Waiting and more waiting. He spent his days learning what he could from the ledger and from the things his dad had left behind, but still there had been little progress. And behind the larger worry of his father hung the tapestry of his fears for his mother. It was clearly her intention to stay in that house with Uncle, and Uncle wanted her there. Their seemingly mutual arrangement worried Silas to the bone. He sensed Uncle’s interest in his mother had more to do with him than with her. The sight of his mother, sitting in that chair in the parlor, weeping with her face in her hands, haunted Silas now. But he couldn’t get her out of that house if she didn’t want to leave. If only he could find a way to show her a side of Uncle that would change her high opinion of him.

  He needed perspective, the long view, if he was going to find his dad and prevent his mother from doing something stupid and quite possibly dangerous. Silas could see his road must take him back to Uncle’s, but not yet. There was another house that needed revisiting first.

  He knew with certainty that Uncle was wrong about “going back.” To get ahead, sometimes you had to retrace your steps. But suddenly a thought came to him that turned his blood cold: If Uncle planned to marry his mother, Uncle must assume—or worse, know—that his dad wasn’t coming back. Silas felt his throat go tight, and in his head a chorus of three familiar voices sang out—

  Our work goes apace … Return, return, return …

  LEDGER

  Plain or straight overcast: This is also worked from left to right over a single-run thread; to give the stitch more relief, a round twisted thread may be laid upon the traced line and covered with vertical stitches set out close together….

  —From a page glued into the ledger taken from The Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont, 1884

  SILAS ENTERED THE HIGH-CEILINGED ROOM in the mansion, where the tapestry of misthomes hung, and saw the three women engaged in their work.

  They did not turn to welcome him.

  Silas was scared of the three women. Not because they were ghosts, but because they were something more than ghosts—old things that continued to weave themselves into the world for reasons he could not yet fathom.

  He was hoping for a little perspective. He wanted to look again on their strange tapestry. Maybe, since his last visit, new stitches or scenes had been added. Maybe he’d find a thread that would lead out of the maze his life had become.

  The floor was covered in bits of ragged fabrics and broken threads, little heaps of them covering the timeworn wooden planks. There had been many alterations since his last visit. Changes had been made to the map of the lands of the dead. Certain portions had been reworked in brighter or darker threads, perhaps meaning they were becoming more or less present in the world outside. Silas was just beginning to see how truly complex the work of the three women was. Perhaps shade and tone were related to relevance, to whether or not a spirit’s limbo was connected in some way with living people. Perhaps the size of the stitching had to do with the number of spirits that occupied it at a given time. This would account for why certain buildings, the oldest, seemed to be overcast in numerous layers of threads.

  The tapestry was in a state of flux, shifting as the world outside changed, or as the relationships between the living and dead grew or were forgotten. At many places on the great work, Silas could see whole sections had been picked apart, or enlarged, or reworked with a new color scheme. This was why he’d come back: to see what might have altered. To see the town with new eyes. He hoped beyond hope that something in him or the town or both might have altered sufficiently for him to be able to find an image connected with his father’s disappearance. Silas scanned the tapestry frantically as if he expected to see his father’s portrait rendered in little stitches on one of the familiar thread-paths. Even as the question formed in his mind, the first of the three walked up to a portion of the work hanging between two beams that supported the roof of the room and, without warning, ripped the stitches from a scene depicting some tall houses high above the meticulous knotwork that had been sewn to represent the Narrows.

  “This is sloppy work,” said the first of the three. “This will all have to be redone.”

  She pulled out the broken threads, leaving a bare patch in the tapestry.

  “Perhaps not,” replied the second. A moment later she began working in the hole with a piece of blood-red linen, roughly binding it down with black cotton thread. “This will hold until we know more. I am hoping to rework the whole scene in gold.”

  “Too early for gold,” said the third with a sigh. “Far too early for gold.”

  Silas wondered if this was all part of the day’s work, a correction. Or were they hiding something from him?

  After a few moments, the three ladies all turned to Silas, as if they’d been waiting for him. They said nothing, but gestured invitationally toward the web.

  Turning his head to look more carefully about the room, he saw many familiar sites: th
e marshes had been extended, seemed wider now, and he wondered if this was because he had gone there. At the far end of the weaving, flowers had been sewn in complicated knots all about the houses on Fort Street. Near the marsh, the millpond had been reworked many times in deepening shades of gray-blue silks, the ripples of the water now held fast by tiny stars of white stitches, like ice crystals. Where once he’d seen trees at the edge of the pond, he now saw seven dark human figures looming around the lip of the water. A little stream of footsteps led from the pond toward the town, and this was new too. In front of his house, a small pool of standing water had been embroidered in brown and green silk, and there was another near the Umber cemetery. Looking closely, Silas imagined he could see his own reflection had been delicately worked in.

  “Lose something?” the three asked at once.

  It unsettled Silas when the three spoke together. It made whatever they were saying feel more like a portent than a comment.

  “You know I have—”

  “You have been giving some things a lot of attention. We should give you a pair of your own knitting needles! Invite you to join our Sewing Circle!”

  “Are these additions about my father?”

  “Is that the only person you’ve lost?” One of the ladies laughed knowingly.

  Silas felt embarrassed. He should be keeping his focus on his dad and his dad’s work. But the tapestry brought his memories and fears to the front of his mind. Bea had run away, and he had no idea where she was or if he’d see her again. Silas told himself this was for the best as the memories flooded back. He’d nearly died that night, following her into the water. He did not want to go back there. But still, deep in his heart, he knew she was waiting for him.

  After looking at the figures in the tapestry for many moments, Silas asked, “What happened there, at the millpond?”

  “He doesn’t want to know,” one said.

  “I do. Why don’t I?”

  “Leave it where it is,” said another. “The binding stitches there will not hold long anyway.”

  “Leave it be,” said another, and the three laughed at the pun.

  “Most are happiest knowing what they know and no more. Besides, love flourishes best in ignorance … or in absence.”

  “I understand that I am amusing you. You’re bored here, all by yourselves, and my losses are a source of amusement. That’s fine, but don’t expect me to laugh along with you. None of this is a game to me,” Silas asserted. “I’m asking you to help. Either you will or you won’t. Besides,” he said, gesturing at the room, “this is all part of my work now, and if someplace in town is not restful, then I should know about it. Even if you don’t think it concerns me. Keep your secrets if you want to. I’ll find out anyway. But then, maybe I won’t visit you again, and you three can just sit here listening to the sounds of your own voices and the click of your needles as your spools wind down. I don’t expect you have any other visitors, do you?”

  “Oh! He’s his father’s boy and no mistake!” said the second of the three.

  “And threats now!” said the first of the three, one side of her face gone black in shadow.

  “It’s not a threat,” Silas said more kindly, hearing a sharpness in their tone that made him uncomfortable. “Neighbors talk with one another, share news. If you don’t want to talk with me, then I guess there’s no reason for me to come here.”

  The three ladies drew back into darker corners of the room, working as they spoke. The stitches began to knot and weave as though by themselves, enlivening scenes that came to life as Silas tried to pierce the shadows with his gaze. Behind the weavings, unseen, he heard the voices of the three, still speaking.

  “Why did your father leave this town?” asked the first of the three.

  “Because my mother couldn’t bear her familial obligations any longer,” Silas said.

  “That answer is astute, but not complete.”

  “And maybe something was worrying my father, after I was born. That’s what I heard.”

  “Yes. And when that something turned her pale eyes from him to you, he wisely took you elsewhere. Not that she would come for you as a child. Children are of no interest to her. But it is in her nature to be patient. And she has been waiting. Now you have returned—grown so fine and handsome—and those eyes have been upon you again and have drawn you away from your purpose.”

  “Why was my dad so concerned about her?” Silas asked, knowing now they were talking about Bea. “And what is my purpose?”

  “Your father was frightened of her because she can no longer see where her own story begins and ends. Because she cannot discern the passage of time, she is not of one mind about things and doesn’t always know that she brings distress and suffering to others, or that those who love her come to no good end. In her present mind, she can only repeat the past, Silas. She cannot change after so long. So she can only bring upon others the fate that was brought upon her.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You understand too little of what you see. You see a pretty face and hear a loving voice. But she is more than that, Silas. Much more. She is cold water and lack of breath. She is emptiness and oblivion. She is the very tide, drawing things to her and pulling them below.”

  “But she loves me, and I think I—”

  “No doubt she does, for otherwise, how could you see her so easily? To love you is her nature. But hers is a love from which no good may come. And your desire for her will lead only to cold, dark places. Already, we see you are concerned by her absence—you want to help her—that is part of the peril. Leave her where she is and continue the work you have begun here.”

  “If she’s in trouble, isn’t she part of that work? Did she do something horrible in life? Is that why she’s trapped now?”

  “Not at all. It is rarely the action itself that binds a person to this fate or that, but how the action is judged and remembered. Really, I shall never know why people let their shame and fear consume them so. She loved a young man. No more than that. But those close to her, her kin, took against her. She appears to be here with you in the moment, but be assured she is of a different time when women, please believe us, were not generally allowed to do what they pleased. She was punished by those she loved, and that makes everything worse. To be killed by your kin is very terrible. There used to be a power that might have been called upon to avenge such wrongs as family spilling the blood of family, but we live now in more ‘civilized’ times.”

  “Do not speak the ancient names,” said the third of the three.

  “I was not going to say them,” assured the first of the three. “But I will say that in this country, there is not so much justice as there once was in other lands, and in more ancient times, when such acts might have been avenged by righteous fury.”

  “Will you tell me what happened to her? I won’t be able to think about anything else now. I think it’s the least you can do,” said Silas.

  “Ah, well,” said the first of the three, “for your father’s sake then. Come to the weaving and look; it is almost all there now in the stitches. As you learn more, the weaving waxes full of sumptuous detail.”

  Silas walked with the first of the three to where the edge of the millpond had been stitched in small, even knots, from which tall, thin stitches stood as reeds. In the middle of the pond there was a hole, a black place of emptiness in the midst of the image, and a thin veil of watery silk netting lay across it. As Silas watched, the thread-reeds of the pond seemed to wave in a wind as the tapestry shook slightly, and the first of the three began to speak.

  In that time, she would look for the white stone.

  If they were to meet, her lover from one of the big houses left a small white stone on her windowsill. So, each night, she would look for the stone and see what was to be. She would meet him behind the church, and they would make their way to the little woods that once stood at the edge of the millpond. Upon arriving, she would place the little white stone at the same plac
e on the earth, and before long, a small cairn of white rocks rose up, testament to the frequency and passion of their ardor for each other.

  But towns are full of tongues, and it takes only one to start wagging before even the most cherished secret is spoiled. At the tavern, words were said. Intimations. Suggestions. Rumors.

  A rock for every embrace, and look how high!

  What manner of girl was she?

  Count the stones and find out!

  And there, to the tavern, her father went to take his daily medicine, for life was hard, even with seven sons.

  And there he heard the words about his daughter and her doings. And there his heart was broken.

  Go, he says to his seven sons. Go and make it how I feel. Broken. All broken. Break this lover’s knot. Go and make it so and do not come back until your father’s words hold true. End this shameful thing she’s done. And his seven sons hear him, but the first son hears and understands.

  So to the pond the brothers go and find there the cairn, and taking many stones from it, they step back into the shadows of the trees and wait.

  She comes then—the girl, their sister, some lover’s lover—eager and wide-eyed to the millpond. But she sees the cairn has been diminished and wonders why. Some new game of her sweetheart’s? She whispers then his name, “Lawrence Umber,” but instead of her one true love, seven brothers step from the trees.

  Her heart begins to beat so fast, but with fear now, not with passion, for she knows she is discovered.

  Just missed him, her brothers say. You have just missed him. Your fine Master Umber departed.

  Where has he gone? she asks, trembling.

  All they say is: below.

  She sees the ripples on the surface of the black water, and she starts weeping and tearing at her hair for the death of her young man.

  She is miserable. But her misery rises into anger, and she begins to scream at her brothers. From her knees by the water’s edge, she rails at them and will not be silent.