A Sudden Light: A Novel

by Garth Stein

  I didn’t want to call attention to his quest. While I wasn’t entirely convinced it was the act of a healthy mind, I suspected that deep down there was some spiritual healing that would be provided by my father’s search for Isobel’s soul. Or at least spiritual hope. And all journeys begin with hope; how they resolve is another matter.

  Without a sound, I left my father there to wait. Instead of going back to bed, I returned to the linen closet. I opened the door. Inside the threshold of the closet was a kerosene lantern I had found in the barn—Grandpa Samuel had helped me clean the lantern, fill it with fuel, and find a new wick. I lit the lantern with the matches from the kitchen and climbed the stairs. I opened the entry door and ascended to the secret room. I took Elijah’s diary from the closet, made myself comfortable in a club chair, and I spent the rest of the night reading. The only sounds were the turning of pages and the hissing of the kerosene lantern that provided my light.

  Monday, October 10, 1904

  My house is empty save Mr. Thomas. I never imagined I would miss my son so much: his anger and his passion, his rage against injustice and his indomitable will to right all wrongs. His playful and joking spirit, even after a rousing debate that bordered on brawl. Perhaps I took him for granted. I suppose I did.

  The Jordan deal is done finally. It wasn’t pity but love that finished it. I have no doubt JJ would have washed his hands of the deal and walked away from it had it been up to him. But his daughter, he said, insisted the deal go through even though her part of the bargain was no longer on the table: Ben’s hand in marriage. She said it was what Ben wanted. She said we owed it to him—all of us owed it to him. And so now I have gained a fortune. I am wealthy beyond my imagination. And I am alone.

  I have paid for my fortune with the life of my son. So now, with whom do I share it?

  Alice is right—we all owe Ben for what we have.

  When I asked Ben to help me build The North Estate, he told me he would only do so if I understood that none of us owns this place, this world—we simply look after it for a time. If I truly understood, he said, I would not object to his demand. I did not understand then, but I agreed for expedience’s sake. Now that he is gone, I feel I do understand his meaning: the forest is eternal; we are merely passers-through.

  And so I resolve to do as he asked: when I am gone, The North Estate will be returned to the forest.

  – 20 –

  THE COTTAGE

  I awakened in the secret room when it was still early, and it took me a moment to remember where I was. My neck was stiff from sleeping in the chair and the lantern had burned through its fuel, so the room was dim with filtered dawn light. I stood up and stretched. I didn’t remember falling asleep. I just remembered reading and reading and then being awake. I rubbed my eyes and glanced around the room and was startled by a man standing in the corner.

  “What the hell?” I whispered, totally freaked out.

  He stood in the darkness, completely still like maybe he thought he was invisible or something. But I could clearly see him. He wore a long coat and a hat with the brim pulled down so I couldn’t see his face for the shadows. He was tall and of slight build. For a moment, I almost convinced myself he was a trick of my eyes, nothing more than an elaborate shadow, but then he moved his hand and I saw he was real.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked. “Who are you?”

  I took a step toward him, and the shadow of his coat fluttered. I took another step, and then, as if stirred by a breeze, he dissipated like smoke.

  I held my breath for several moments, just standing there looking at the corner, wondering if it was true, if I had really seen the ghost.

  Shaken by my encounter, I left the secret room and went downstairs to my bedroom. After changing my clothes and brushing my teeth, I noticed a pamphlet on my desk that hadn’t been there previously. At least I didn’t remember seeing it. I looked closer. It was a brochure for Cunard Line cruises. I assumed Serena must have left it there by mistake, so I took it with me and went down to the kitchen.

  The house was desolate, which was something I hadn’t grown accustomed to yet; it was such a big house, it was easy for people to get lost in it, like a hedge maze. The kitchen was empty, and I stood in front of the phone. I pulled my mother’s telephone number from my pocket. It was afternoon in England. I wanted to talk to her; I wanted to tell her everything that was going on so she could fix it. I wanted to tell her about the ghost so she could explain it. She could tell me that I wasn’t losing my mind and I had nothing to fear. I lifted the receiver.

  “Who on earth are you calling at this hour?” Serena said, startling me to the point that I dropped the receiver on the table and had to quickly scoop it up.

  “I didn’t see you,” I said.

  She was sitting in the bay window with a mug of coffee and a book.

  “I’m right here,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  I cradled the receiver in my hands.

  “Go ahead and make your call. I simply was curious, but I suppose it’s not my business. Feel free.”

  “There’s no privacy here,” I mumbled, replacing the receiver on the phone and sitting heavily at the kitchen table. “It’s like a prison.”

  “Welcome to my world, Clever Trevor. Would you like some coffee?”

  “My mom doesn’t let me drink coffee.”

  Serena smiled. She went to the cupboard, retrieved a mug, and filled it with coffee. She took it to the freezer, removed a carton of ice cream, scooped a spoonful into the mug, and set it before me with a firm clunk.

  “I’m not your mom.”

  I picked up the mug and took a sip. It was good. Cold and creamy, but also hot and bitter. I loved this drink, this nectar. And Serena delivering it to me, looking as beautiful as she always did, in her lightweight dress, her modest makeup, her blue toes—she always looked so put together. For a moment, I forgot about the ghost and my mother.

  “So tell me, nephew of mine,” Serena said, sitting at the long table and propping up her chin with her elbow. “What is it you’re up to? You didn’t sleep in your room last night. Should I be concerned?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know everything that goes on in Riddell House.”

  I took another sip of Serena’s potion. It was delightfully good. Was she magic? I was under her spell.

  “Information is our commodity, Trevor,” she reminded me. “It’s how we build relationships.”

  “I slept in a bedroom upstairs,” I lied.

  “Why?”

  I took a long drink of my ice-cream-enhanced coffee and looked up at her.

  “Why does the cock crow?” I asked. “Don’t ask him, he doesn’t know.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she was still for a moment; then she stood up quickly and snatched the mug from my hand before I could avoid her.

  “Cocks don’t drink coffee,” she said. “Only good little boys who please their aunts. You can go now.”

  Serena emptied the drink into the sink and ran the water to wash it down the drain; the elixir was gone. I felt deeply hurt by this betrayal, how Serena gave things and took them back so capriciously; I was always off balance. She rinsed the mug and put it in the dishwasher, and then she noticed me with an exaggerated gesture.

  “You can go now,” she repeated. She shook her head and scoffed, and then returned to her perch in the bay window and took up the book she had been reading.

  I hesitated before leaving. I felt both sad and angry at the same time, and that confused me. After a moment, I produced the cruise brochure from my back pocket and placed it on the table. “You left this in my room.”

  Serena looked up questioningly. She beckoned with an outstretched hand and took the brochure when I brought it to her.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “In my room,” I said. “You must have left it when you came in last night.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It was there on m
y desk.”

  “Be careful where you’re snooping,” Serena warned. “Little boys have been known to lose their fingers around here.”

  She tucked the brochure away, and I scrutinized her for a moment, trying to glean the nature of her comment.

  “Where’s my dad?” I finally asked.

  “I have no idea. I hope he’s off convincing your grandfather to sign that document, but I doubt it. I suppose he’s chasing butterflies. Or maybe he’s running along the railroad tracks like he used to do.”

  I left Serena in the kitchen and jogged down the hill to the barn. Or maybe I fled. I felt unsettled that I couldn’t call my mother; I needed to make contact with someone who didn’t have an agenda. Grandpa Samuel wasn’t in the barn. I glanced around to see if he was outside somewhere, and I noticed, on the other side of the orchard, a man working on the yard. He was hacking at something.

  I made my way down the far side of the barn to the orchard and wove through the tangle of neglected apple trees, which were tall and leggy and didn’t look as if they produced much fruit. As I got closer to the man, I realized it was my father. And he was wielding a machete.

  He was wearing his usual work clothes: khakis, boating shoes, and a white T-shirt. But he was almost unrecognizable in his demeanor as he swung the long blade at a mountain of blackberry vines, easily ten feet tall. Relentlessly he attacked the ropes of green brambles, wincing when the vines grabbed his blade and held it tight until he could jerk it free and a vine would jump out at him and tear at his flesh with its razor-like thorns. He worked and worked, and I watched for several minutes until he took a break.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Oh, hey,” he replied, not having realized I was there. He took a drink from a bottle of water.

  “Is there a purpose? Or are you just wanting to kill something?”

  “There’s a fire pit under all this,” he said. “It’s big. Made of stones, with benches and everything. When I was a kid, we used to have fires every weekend, unless it was raining too hard. My mom loved it; it brought us all together, she said. It united us. I liked it in the winter when it was really cold. To be able to sit by the fire so your face is hot but your back is cold. I don’t know. There’s something . . .”

  He faded off, and I realized he hadn’t looked at me at all when he was talking; he was sizing up the blackberry bushes the whole time, as if the bushes had stolen something from him and he was determined to get it back.

  “So you thought you would dig it out,” I said.

  “Yeah, well. I’ve got to do something around here or I’m going to go out of my mind. And, anyway, I thought maybe you’d like to have a fire. You know, you can see a little of what my childhood was like.”

  I was amazed by the very concept. My father could have been in a witness relocation program for all I knew about his history, and here we had it within our reach!

  “You want me to help?” I asked.

  “No. I mean, unless you want to. Look at my arms.”

  He held them out for me to examine, and his forearms were covered with long bloody scratches.

  “You should wear a long-sleeve shirt,” I said.

  “I’m on a mission. Can’t stop now. Have you explored the woods at all? You should go exploring.”

  “I found the graveyard.”

  “There’s an old cottage in the woods near the ravine,” he said. “The caretakers stayed there when they were building Riddell House. My parents lived there before I was born. And further on, down by the creek, there’s an old waterwheel they used for grinding grain. Go wander around. Nothing can hurt you here.”

  I left him in the orchard and hiked back up to the meadow feeling somewhat successful at making a connection with my father, as brief as it was. I crossed the meadow and walked into the woods, following a broken path to the edge of a ravine, which was home to a swiftly running creek about thirty feet below me. I noticed another path diverging into the woods, and peered down it as far as I could. I was wondering if I should take it when I heard a rustling in the distance—footsteps, perhaps—so I followed the path toward the sound, excited that Ben might be leading me somewhere. The path veered away from the ravine and into thicker woods, eventually leading me to a small, shady clearing and a shingled cottage with a tall peaked roof and little porch out front, looking suspiciously like a place Hansel and Gretel had visited. The cottage felt familiar to me, and not at all empty.

  I opened the front door and took stock of the room. There had been no vandals over the years, it seemed, but rodents and spiders had taken over. A kitchen table and a wood-burning stove were tucked into the kitchen area, while a couple of sofas with stuffing ripped out by animals formed a sitting area. Gritty dirt covered the floors.

  Upstairs, I found four small bedrooms, each simply furnished with a small bed and a dresser, similar to the generic bedroom setup of Riddell House. Otherwise, they were bare of any personal or identifiable belongings. As I started down the stairs, I heard a deliberate creak from behind me. I turned around and noticed a narrow door at the end of the landing. I opened it. Tight stairs climbed up into the attic. I considered climbing them, but I had no light and it was awfully dark up there. I returned to the kitchen and looked under the sink because that’s where people keep their flashlights, though I assumed I wouldn’t find one—or at least not a working one. What I did find, however, was a yellow and white box of plumbers’ candles. And, of course, I was always armed with a book of matches because of my encounter with Ben on the landing of the secret stairs. . . .

  There was little to see in the attic by the light of a few flickering candles. Spiderwebs, mostly, and bird nests and mouse droppings. A couple of wooden boxes. I looked inside one of the boxes and discovered several handwritten diaries. I carried the box down the stairs and out onto the porch. I removed one of the diaries and opened it. I had found the journals of Harry Lindsey.

  I couldn’t wait. I flipped to a random entry and began to read.

  June 23, 1901

  The climb seemed to have exhausted us both, physically and emotionally; the next morning we didn’t climb again as Ben suggested we might, but we lazed about, resting our weary muscles. That afternoon we went hunting with a small-bore rifle, and we bagged several squirrels, who seemed not the brightest creatures on the planet, as they lost all inhibitions and approached us if we stood still long enough; we practically could have killed them with our hands.

  In the evening, we ate well, and we drank well as Ben’s horse, Molly, had been burdened with an ample supply of wine and a jug of whiskey, too. As we enjoyed our fire in the dark forest, Ben pulled out his pipe, as was his custom. I had gotten so used to him and his habits; I knew him so well though we’d met only a dozen weeks ago.

  “You’ve told me about your mother and father and how you were orphaned,” he said, working his pipe in his lips. “I suppose it’s only fair for me to tell you about mine.”

  “I think that’s fair,” I agreed.

  He stood up and found the whiskey bottle in a saddlebag, sloshed some into our mugs, and then he hovered over the campfire.

  “When I was born, my mother refused to move west with my father. I lived with her in St. Paul until my father deemed I was old enough to learn the ways of the world. Then I was sent to schools to be educated.”

  “What schools were those?” I asked.

  “Phillips Exeter Academy, then Yale College. Places of great culture, with stone buildings and libraries filled with books and young men eager to learn. It was fairly good fun, but too much talking about things and not enough doing of things.”

  “That’s where they taught you to read the books you’ve given me?” I asked. “Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.”

  “These schools filled my head with wonderful ideas about the spirit and the soul and about nature, Harry. About our connectedness. And then they sent me home to my father so he could teach me how to destroy my spirit and my soul and nature. An
d not only mine. He taught me how to destroy all spirit and all souls and all of nature. And my father taught me that if I practiced it well and got very good at it, I could become incredibly rich and own everything and control all people and make laws that suited me so that I could make more money still.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good use of your education.”

  “It is an irreconcilable contradiction that lives in me every day. But I live with it, don’t I? I mean, I’m still living.”

  “But unhappily, it seems,” I said.

  “Some days I feel like it will crush me,” Ben said with a bitter laugh. “I think it will be my end, and I’d rather not die that way. I’d much rather die falling from a tree! But you must think me mad.”

  “Not at all.”

  “My father is building a majestic estate,” he went on, “the manor house of which will feature giant trees standing tall, side by side. It will look like it has grown out of the forest itself, thus paying tribute to the source of my father’s wealth. Dozens of ancient trees must be found, cut, halved lengthwise, and brought to the construction site. My father wants me to select these trees personally.”

  “But have you studied architecture or engineering?” I asked, feeling apprehensive at the idea of Ben’s departure. “Can you design and build such a thing?”

  “I’m not the architect,” Ben admitted. “My father has paid for nothing but the best in that regard: a certain Bernard Asher out of Chicago. Still, he knows that I understand the forest better than any of his foremen. I am to choose the timbers that will be the pillars of his new estate. Also, he intends for me to provide him with a legacy, as I am to inherit this estate.”

  “A legacy?” I asked.

  “Children,” he said.

  “I see,” I said, feeling a pang of envy at the mention of his illusory family.