Lych Way

by Ari Berk

  “Well, now. That is familiar, I must say. More and more like your father every day.”

  “We have both benefited from those similarities, you know.”

  “Of course, of course. I meant it as a compliment, I promise. I suppose I understand it all a little better now . . . your father’s sense of commitment to his work. Much of it is still a mystery to me, though less so now. I suspect I’ll never really understand your father’s ways.”

  “Except through me. It’s my work now.”

  “Yes. Your work. Certainly. I mean, of course, I am appreciative of your help. But it’s a son’s job to help his mother now and again.” She smiled briefly, but then the corners of her mouth pulled down slightly as she continued. “It’s just that there’s no point in it, really. Trying to help all those other people. As though you could put a stopper in the miseries of the world. I need you. Isn’t that enough?” She poured him more juice.

  “But I have helped people. Helped some so much I haven’t been able to do anything for myself.”

  “I know. I’m not denying that. But that’s my point. I’m saying it can’t make much of a dent. And of course, out there”—she turned her head toward the window—“they just keep dying and dying, and most of them aren’t too happy about it. How in the world do you expect to fix all that?”

  Silas paused. She wasn’t entirely wrong. It felt good to help people, and he had taken to the work. He knew it was what he was supposed to be doing. But where would it end? His mom was right. It was a war of attrition. And for everything he’d done, here he still was, surrounded by the dead, and the only ghost he wanted to see was trapped and waiting.

  “Maybe it’s not about winning or losing, Mom,” Silas said. “Maybe it’s just about being useful. Maybe it’s about working with your gifts. And there is no doubt this is my work. I can’t explain that, but when I am walking the lych way, I can feel what to do, where to go. And the dead can feel that too. Don’t worry. I will visit you. Every day, if you say it would make you happy.” He sighed. “There’s enough of me to go around.” But he didn’t believe the words even as he said them. He felt stretched thin as a wire already.

  Perhaps sensing this, Dolores looked at him hard and said, “But, Silas, your whole life could just be eaten up by those people who’ve already lived their lives, wasted them. They’ve made their own beds.”

  “You’re mostly talking about our friends and neighbors, you know.”

  “Friends and neighbors . . . hmmm . . . friends and neighbors,” Dolores said as though she’d forgotten the meaning of the words.

  “You remember? All those people who came to Dad’s funeral?”

  “I do remember. Tell me, Si, how many of them came to mine?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Ah. You see? They fear us already. That is so common. They’ll love you like family one minute, but the next, you’re worse than a stranger. Just wait and see, son. Step out of line, they’ll turn on you, too. They liked your father when he helped them and not much longer than it took to do it. Even those few who loved him right along, believe me, they feared him too. I once saw a man cross the street to avoid brushing arms with your dad, and the previous week, your father had helped that same man bring peace to his grandfather’s ghost. Your work upsets people, Si. Yes. Even those who ask you for help. They hate themselves for needing to ask, and so before too long they—”

  “Well, even if that’s all true,” Silas interrupted, “if I stopped now, if I turned aside my work and ignored them, I would be no better than them, and my life would end like theirs: in regret and sorrow and confusion. I think it’s already moving in that direction anyway, so it’s better that I have something to focus on.” He looked away, but then reached across the table and held his mother’s hand.

  “Then why not focus on family? There’s an investment with a likely return,” Dolores said. “I’m thinking of putting in a projection room, for films. Wouldn’t that be fun? Going to the cinema in our house?”

  Silas breathed in deeply. “I understand. You want me to be happy. I want to be happy too, but maybe not everyone gets to be happy, Mom. I’m not sure happiness is part of the road I seem to be on. I promise you I’ll try . . . try not to do too much. What if I only worry about my job? How would that be? You worry about your life. I’ll worry about mine. And you can leave our people, our friends and neighbors, to me.”

  “And who, exactly, are ‘our people’? It’s a fine thought, Si. But I suspect that once one heads down that path you’ve chosen, the choices get fewer and fewer, that there are more and more distractions. Look at you now! After just one funeral. Your face, Si! You need more rest. Go back upstairs.” Dolores paused, looked as though she was weighing whether or not to say more, then she rose.

  “But let’s not worry about all that now. We can at least think of this as a new beginning for us, can’t we? Let’s face it, we’ve both had a hard time of it.”

  “Okay.”

  Dolores paused, rethinking, stepping back from something she was about to say. “It hasn’t been easy coming here. I know it’s always been hard for you. Saltsbridge. School. All of it.”

  She picked up a parcel of brown paper and handed it to him.

  “Speaking of a fresh start, here.”

  “What it is?”

  “Just some things of your dad’s. More old stuff. His wallet. Some papers. Amos was a scribbler. Nothing of value. You can open it when you get home. Nothing that won’t keep. Just a few more relics of the past. It’s all done with. . . . I’m done with that now, so take them if you want them. I don’t think there is any point in keeping such things from you. So take this with you. I suspect you’ve already been through many of your father’s notebooks and papers.”

  “Some. There’s lots in my house. The desk is filled with them. I haven’t had time to go through everything.”

  “Well, you know what I’d recommend?”

  “Burn the lot?”

  “Yes. Let the past go. Forward! That’s my motto.”

  “I know it is.” He looked at her, so mobile and lively, when only yesterday she had lain cold on the table awaiting burial.

  Silas took a few bites of his food, then got up from the table.

  “So soon?

  He nodded.

  “Where are you off to, looking so intent and forlorn?”

  “You know.”

  “Silas—”

  “Mom, I don’t know what else to do. I love her.”

  “You can’t think of what to do because you don’t know anyone else. That is the problem, Si, with being antisocial. You have no society. Believe me, I know. All those years with your father . . . we ended up living like recluses in Saltsbridge. But even back in our Lichport days, after our marriage, how many parties do you think your father and I got invited to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was a rhetorical question, Silas. But I’m not going to tell you whom to love and not love. My infatuations never led me anywhere too grand, mind you, but everyone has to choose for themselves. And then they’ve got to be prepared to live with the consequences. Besides, I’m hardly in the position now to tell you not to love the dead, am I?”

  “I can’t let her go. She was the first good thing I found here. I can’t think properly anymore because everything leads back to her. When I came back from Arvale, I thought I had lost her, but then . . . then things turned. And she’s down there, trapped, because of something you and the others did—”

  “They told me you were in danger.”

  “Okay.”

  “Silas, you know me. I’m not a meddler. I thought something was going to hurt you.”

  “I can feel her, sometimes, under the water. It makes my skin crawl.”

  “It’s all right, Si. You can blame me if you want.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I’m not blaming anyone.”

  “It’s all right. I’m your mother. You’re supposed to blame me for everything. One day, you’ll get married. The
n you can blame your wife for everything, but until then, I’ll take it.”

  Dolores smiled.

  “Well, then, I’d like to ask you something.”

  Dolores slowly crossed her legs, leaned back, and put her chin on the back of her hand. “I have all the time in the world.”

  “All those years we spent in Saltsbridge and you never spoke of any of this. You let Dad lie to me about his work and never spoke about your family or anyone else here in Lichport. As it turns out, there was a whole other world on the opposite side of the marshes, and I barely knew anything about it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Maternal instinct.”

  “C’mon . . .”

  “You’re asking me why I didn’t tell a child that a few miles away was a dragon waiting to eat him? Si, please.”

  “Okay, but when I was a little older . . . you might have told me something.”

  “Walk with me,” she said, rising from her chair. “I want to stretch my legs.”

  Silas and his mother walked from the parlor, past the portico leading into the long hall, and a few moments later entered the rotunda. Silas was surprised to find that great chamber warm, even with all its marble and the cold outside. The tiles of the floor felt as though they’d been heated from below.

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you how the thermostat in this house works. I’ll call someone. No need to heat this part of the house,” said Dolores.

  The rotunda’s fireplace was empty and clean of ash. The carvings on its massive mantel looked gothic, deeply worked with images of coiled dragons and leaf-headed wildmen.

  Walking slowly about the room, Dolores said, “Did you know, Silas, that it wasn’t my idea, at first, to take you from Lichport? Oh, I was ready to go, make no mistake about that, but it was your father who first suggested we should bring you away.”

  “I never knew that.”

  Dolores looked at the unopened package still in Silas’s hand and continued.

  “Your father spoke of the ghost of the millpond. Oh, yes. More than once. I think he was a little . . . fascinated with her. And I think she has been aware of you for some time. He told me that when you were very young, and we still lived in Lichport, a spirit would follow you. You were an infant. Your father would take you out in the carriage. He loved to parade you around, and sometimes, he claimed, a young woman would appear and fix her gaze upon you, watching you pass by. Then, when your father turned around, she’d be gone. Happened more than once. I was quickly sick of hearing about what I joked was your father’s little spectral paramour. But now I know it wasn’t your father the girl was interested in.”

  “Where did this happen? When would she appear?”

  “Most often when your father was on the north side of town, close to the millpond, of course, but also when he’d take you around what was left of the ‘new’ town square. There were still a few shops open then. Your father told me she walked out of a theater doorway to watch him pass by with you. Strange, because it was still boarded up. Amos thought maybe someone had gotten the money together to pursue the old theater’s renovation, but when he inquired, turned out no. Never happened. I asked him, ‘What kind of girl lingers around a ruined theater?’ He didn’t answer. But now we know what kind of girl, don’t we, Silas?”

  Silas nodded. He wasn’t sure if his mother was mocking him or trying to be understanding. Maybe it was all one with her.

  “Silas, if you think her freedom will play a part in your happiness, then by all means, go pull her out of the pool. If you’re that sure you want her, then you call her to your side and never look back. I can’t judge you anymore. You’re a man. You’ll have to do what you feel is best, regardless of what I think. Life is so short, so very short. But death is long, and one should take steps to be happy or . . . what comes after . . . might be a miserable thing. Go to her. But go without expectation, Silas. She is not really present, as present as her ghost might feel. She is all shadow and little substance. Yet the heart wants what it wants, so follow yours, but do not look too far ahead or hope for too much. That’s your dead mother’s best advice.”

  Strangely, her words were a comfort to him. Maybe it was just hearing someone say he could do what he wanted. But it was not so easy. He could not just reach down and help Bea from the water. Mrs. Bowe and his mother had seen to that.

  “Do you think the binding can be broken easily?”

  “No,” said Dolores matter-of-factly. “You will have to apply some cleverness, I suspect.”

  “But you’re saying it can be done?”

  “I suppose so, somehow. I am no expert. You have several things working against it, though.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “The easiest way to break it would require the people who set it to untie it.”

  “And you were there—”

  “Yes, Si, I was. But I am not now as I was then. So, already, I think you will have to find another way to break it. I told you, I am no expert.”

  “I could summon her. I could use something of hers and call her back.”

  “By force? Son, I suspect she would find that . . . stressful.”

  “I don’t want to cause her any more pain.”

  Dolores took his hand, and walked back with her son toward the main house.

  “Silas, if your father had to find a ghost, what would he do? When you were looking for Amos, when you were looking for me, how did you go about it? How would her losses be staged? Where? Where did you last see her? Where did Amos last see her?”

  “But I know where she is now.”

  “You know where her spirit is trapped. But how do you know that’s the only place she’s gotten hung up? She’s had a busy time of it, both before and after her death, haunting many others since she died. Every house has more than one door. Of course the millpond holds her, but she has left her mark on many places about town . . . are there any other places that might still hold a portion of her, or that might lead to her? Perhaps one with a door that Mrs. Bowe may have forgotten to lock?”

  LEDGER

  For the playhouses, or theaters, be naught but temples to lascivious behavior to capture the hearts of goodlie folk and lure them to ruination. And what is playacted upon the stage shalle soone be acted in the streets of the town, for the playhouse is the verie tabernacle of contagion. Beware the playhouse, then! For there is limbo for the once hardworking citizen, who, casting aside hys respectable trade, becomes enslaved to every kind of lewdness and spectacle. Then, at play’s end, the wretch who hath but paid to watch, his pockets full-filled with Sin, shalle wander back into the world, squinting at the sun, and seeking only the tavern and the company of other wretches with whom to share his day’s profit.”

  —FROM THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PAMPHLET “HERE IS THE PLAYHOUSE AND HELL BESIDES”

  All love stories share a border with this place. Unrequited love lingers here like a fog, and those souls separated by tragedy or apathy wander the aisles and lobby. Once set in their forlorn roles, such ghosts become “type-cast,” unable to escape the drama they’ve written for themselves, as though the pain of love forsaken, or unrequited, or some such loss was more comfort than the risk of having loved, or ever trying to love again. The shadowland of the theater of love confounded is a crossroads and its rows of seats, balconies, proscenium, many sets, etc., share frontiers with other of Lichport’s mist homes where lost lovers first lost sight of their paramours.

  —MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER

  Theatre to Close Following Tragedies

  After only two performances of their much-anticipated Romeo and Juliet, the Queen’s Company Acting Troupe is to leave Lichport and return to England following the suicide of their stage manager Alexander Burrage. Plans for next season’s local production of Hamlet have also been suspended pending further investigations of the disappearance of Miss Annabelle Phelps, who was to play Ophelia. Miss Phelps was last seen walking past the millpond at the edge of the marshes and is assumed drowned pending the fi
ndings of a continuing investigation. The theatre will remain closed until further notice. Refunds to be given for all ticket holders for canceled performances.

  —CUTTING FROM THE LICHPORT CROW NEWSPAPER, 1939

  THE THEATER WAS A SHADOWLAND for lovers, who, Silas remembered, had played at love and lost. He remembered seeing the image of the playhouse stitched in the red silk at the house of the three. His father had walked there before. Now he would follow again in his father’s footsteps. There he might discover some forgotten scene or trapdoor into Bea’s shadowland, or find another way to bring her home, a way that wouldn’t harm her any further.

  He had loved Bea and lost her. So maybe even shadows of their own story would draw aside and reveal a path to her. Maybe a glimpse of Bea would still be there, in the moment of their last parting, and if he could find her before the curtain on that scene closed, maybe he could just call out and bring her back. All the shadowlands and lych ways were permeable landscapes. Silas and Bea had both loved, and in Lichport. Could the place of her imprisonment share a frontier with the theater? And wasn’t his own longing for Bea quickly becoming a sort of living limbo itself?

  As Silas took the death watch from his pocket, he saw ahead of him a strange scene. In the yard of a house, one of the Restless stood. In the driveway next to the corpse, a man and woman were quickly packing a car with suitcases and other belongings.

  “No, Grandma!” the woman said to the corpse. You can’t come with us! God Almighty!”

  The man kept packing and didn’t look up.

  As Silas passed by, the woman turned toward him with pleading eyes. Her husband said, “Get in the car!” She did. The corpse stood motionless a few feet away as the engine started up.

  As Silas walked up to the corpse, the car began to leave the driveway. The corpse hung her head.

  The man rolled down the window and stared at Silas. With a sneer, the driver spit on the ground. The car pulled away.

  The corpse looked up and watched the car drive off. She said, “You told us to go home. You said we could go home. . . .”