The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “Come out,” he said again. “You’re safe. I got him.”

  Faye knew she might puke, so she waited a few more seconds until the nausea passed. Then she turned around and almost did throw up though nothing came out. It had happened so fast, so insanely fast she didn’t know how to process it. She’d barely had time to be scared before Carrick had killed it. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. She wanted to run a hundred miles at a hundred miles an hour away from the creature. Instead, she crept from the doorway of the oil shed and walked over to Carrick, where he stood panting. Faye winced and turned away at the sight of the deep gashes in the alligator’s body. She guessed its size at about ten feet long, more than large enough to kill a human being. Specifically, her.

  “Not an endangered species,” she said, looking at its long green-black body. Liberal guilt haunted her even in 1921.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. It’s a big, big...thing.”

  “It’s a big thing, yes. A big dead thing.” Carrick nodded.

  “You saved me from an alligator. No one has ever saved me from an alligator before. That’s not a thing that happens to me. That’s not a thing that happens to anyone.”

  “It happens on this island.”

  Faye sighed and leaned against his chest, his broad, strong chest that had the power to kill an alligator with a three-foot-long wooden ax. She giggled madly, giddy and dizzy, relieved to be alive.

  “You are such a badass,” she said, lightly pounding his chest with her fist.

  “I’m a what?”

  “Nothing. Just rambling. I’m fine—I promise.”

  “You regret coming here yet?” he asked, and she looked up at him sharply before remembering he meant coming here from Boston, not coming here from 2015.

  She shook her head no and rested her forehead on his chest again. She smiled. A man had killed an alligator to save her. This would never have happened in her time, and yet it didn’t make her regret coming here. She felt lucky. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have Carrick. Lucky to know how lucky she was, which was the best sort of luck.

  Carrick wrapped one arm around her shoulders and held her to him. Faye looked up at him, ready to kiss him senseless.

  “Oh, my, am I interrupting something?”

  Faye started nearly as hard as she had when she’d seen the alligator.

  “Mr. Hartwell,” Carrick said. “We’ve had an interesting morning.”

  “I see that.” Hartwell strolled over the lawn to where they stood by the alligator’s corpse. “Sorry to disturb y’all. Looked like you were having a tender moment.”

  “My, um...my father just killed an alligator that snuck up on me,” Faye said. “Close call. I’m a little...” She waved her hands wildly to illustrate her agitation. “You know. Frantic.”

  “You are a lucky lady to have such a man to take care of you.” Hartwell grinned temple to temple.

  “I am, yes.”

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Hartwell?” Carrick asked. “Did you come for alligator stew? Alligator steaks? That’s what’s on the menu for the next week or so.”

  “I thank you for the hospitality, but I’ll pass. That meat’s a little tough for me. I was passing by. On my way to visit some friends over on Hunting, you know. Thought I’d say howdy.”

  “Howdy,” Faye said.

  “Howdy, indeed, Miss Faith. You feeling all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “Apart from the alligator scare.”

  “That’s good to hear. Real good,” Hartwell said. “Since I seem to have caught you all at a bad time, I’ll just be on my way.”

  Hartwell walked toward the kitchen door. At the door, he paused and turned around.

  “Chief Morgan, I meant to ask... Y’all don’t have a haunted lighthouse, do you?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Oh, I hear it’s common for lighthouses to have a ghost or two. You sure you don’t have one?”

  “Sure as I am of anything,” Carrick said.

  “Strange.” Hartwell shook his head. “I was here a couple nights ago in my car, you know, just visiting the beach with some friends. We like to do that at night, do a little clam digging. Well, anyway,” he continued, “I heard some kind of spooky, I don’t know...moaning sounds coming from the house or the lighthouse or the barn. I must have imagined it. Or maybe it was just the wind...”

  “Just the wind,” Carrick said. “Been real windy.”

  “Probably so, probably so,” Hartwell said, his hands in his pockets.

  “Did you find any?” Faye asked.

  “Excuse me, Miss Faith?”

  “Clams,” she said. “Did you find any clams while you were out here digging?”

  “No, I sure didn’t,” Hartwell said. “But that’s all right. I found something better than clams.”

  “Good for you,” Carrick said.

  “Very, very good,” Hartwell said. “Y’all take care now. We sure do appreciate our lighthouse families out here.” He winked and walked away. Soon as he was gone, Dolly came out of the house carrying a basket over her arm. She paused, looked at them, looked at the alligator, shook her head and walked on toward the chicken coop.

  “Nobody goes clam digging in June,” Carrick said.

  “He knows about us,” Faye said.

  Carrick nodded. “He knows something. He knows you’re not my daughter.”

  “Hope that’s all he knows,” Faye said. “Why did he ask how I was feeling? Was that a threat?”

  “I don’t know, but I swear if he tries anything with you...” Carrick said. He held up his bloody ax.

  “You can’t kill him like an alligator.”

  “True,” Carrick said. “Next time I’ll use the shotgun. On the alligator, I mean.” The sound of Hartwell’s motorboat intruded into their conversation. She almost preferred the alligator.

  Carrick walked off, dragging the alligator by the tail behind him.

  “Wait,” Faye said. “Next time? What do you mean next time? Carrick? Are there more alligators around here?”

  Carrick didn’t answer, but she could swear she heard him laughing.

  “I’m not eating that!” she yelled after him.

  Then she went and got the ax from Carrick.

  Just in case.

  * * *

  Three more days passed in a haze of hard work and happiness. No more alligators showed up to menace her. No Hartwells, either. Faye had survived almost a full week in 1921 and though her body was sore in ways it had never been before, her heart glided light in her chest like a sailboat in a strong, steady breeze. She had only one lingering complaint about her life here at the lighthouse, and that could be an easy fix if Faye could talk Dolly into helping her. Faye waited until Dolly was at work in her sewing room to go begging.

  “I need clothes,” Faye wrote on Dolly’s slate. “Please.”

  Dolly sighed. “I made you three skirts two weeks back,” she wrote back.

  “Pants,” Faye wrote on Dolly’s slate. “I need pants.”

  Faye could handle Bride Island and she could handle 1921 and she could handle Hartwell, but she couldn’t handle all of it in an ankle-length skirt and underskirt in South Carolina in June.

  Dolly was not amused by the request.

  “Pants? For a girl? No,” Dolly wrote on her slate, shaking her head for emphasis.

  “Yes,” Faye wrote. “I hate doing chores in skirts.” She underlined hate a few times for emphasis. Six times in fact.

  “I do chores in skirts.”

  “You could save the world in skirts. I can’t,” Faye wrote, meaning every word. Faye had never considered homemaking an art before, but if it were, Dolly was Picasso, Rembrandt and Martha Stewart rolled into one. “I’ll die of the heat. Help me.”

  Dolly shook her head again. “Chief won’t like it.”

  Faye wrote on the board, “Chief says it’s fine as long as I change when we have company.”

  That was a lie
but a plausible one. Carrick seemed the sort who would merely roll his eyes at the sight of her weeding the garden and beating rugs out in trousers.

  “Is this a Northern fashion?” Dolly asked, and Faye remembered that she was supposed to be from Boston or thereabouts.

  “Yes,” Faye lied. “The newest style.”

  “You been there?” Dolly asked.

  Faye wrote, “New York.”

  Dolly looked mightily impressed.

  “I want to go,” Dolly wrote back. “More than anything.”

  Faye wrote, “It’s a cool town” then quickly erased the word cool and replaced it with wonderful. She wasn’t sure if cool meant cool yet or still only referred to temperature.

  “If they’re doing it in New York City, then I guess I can make you some.”

  “I promise,” Faye wrote, “pants for women is the style of the future.”

  Faye pledged on her honor that Dolly would not get into any trouble with the Chief for sewing her two pairs of work pants. She also offered to do all Dolly’s chores for a week as payment. Dolly wasn’t persuaded.

  “I do my own work,” she wrote. “But you let me do your room any way I like.”

  That was all? Dolly wanted to redecorate Faye’s room?

  “Any way you like,” Faye wrote back. “I’ll help. You give the orders and I’ll follow them.”

  The deal was done, and they shook hands on it. Dolly read Faye’s promise, nodded her head and pulled her measuring tape out of her skirt pocket. When Dolly measured her waist, she gave Faye a look.

  “What?” Faye wrote on the slate.

  “You gained an inch. Eat less.”

  “Not my fault you’re such a good cook,” Faye wrote. Dolly only smiled and got back to work.

  Five minutes later Dolly was tracing a pattern onto brown paper, and fifteen minutes after that Faye heard the sewing machine running, Dolly’s foot working the treadle with gusto. Dolly warned Faye the only suitable material she had now was a sturdy oatmeal-colored linen she’d used to make her father some work shirts. It wasn’t the most fashionable fabric in the world, but Faye didn’t care about fashion. She just wanted to work without having heat stroke.

  While Dolly sewed, Faye cleaned. Dolly warned her the lighthouse inspector could show up without any notice and so they should always be ready for an inspection. The house must be as shipshape as the light itself. Also, it was a rule that the lighthouse keeper’s family must always show hospitality to any visitors who stopped by. If anyone, from a prince to a pauper, wanted to tour the light, well, they toured the light and had a picnic lunch after. So Faye dusted the furniture, polished the brass, took sheets and towels off the clothesline and folded them with geometric precision.

  Thanks to all the cleaning, Faye now knew every inch of the house as if it were her own. If Carrick needed a pencil, Faye could tell him there were half a dozen black #2 Ticonderogas in the junk drawer. If Dolly wanted her to fetch the wooden clothespins, they were in a coffee can in the pantry. If Faye had a craving for chocolate some night, she knew where to find the cocoa and the milk, the saucepan and the mugs. She’d simply have to learn to live without marshmallows. For a free beach house, she’d made that sacrifice. Faye admired the tidiness of the little house. Everything had its place, and every place had its thing. The more hours that passed, the more time she spent working and the more nights she spent with Carrick up in the lighthouse, the more Faye would have her place here, too. She’d fit right in like a book on the shelf, like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, third shelf down, two books to the right. Faye went straight to the back of the book. Carrick was right. Oz wasn’t a dream at all in the book. Oz was real. As real as Bride Island.

  And apparently the Emerald City was getting a paint job. Faye slid the book back onto the shelf as Dolly walked through the living room and up the stairs with a paint can in her hand and a paint-stained tarp draped over her shoulder like a mink stole.

  Faye followed her upstairs and found her not in her sewing room but in Faye’s room.

  “What are you doing?” Faye asked, mouthing the words carefully and eyeing the can and the tarp.

  Dolly mimed the act of painting the wall, and there was a look of “obviously” in both her answer and her expression. Then she held up a pair of pants, waving them like a flag to prove she’d earned her redecorating spree. Faye took the linen pants from Dolly and turned them over in her hands. They looked like they’d fit. She ran down to the bathroom, stripped out of her skirt and slid them on. They were loose around the waist, but Dolly had fitted the trousers with a drawstring. Faye cinched the waist and rolled the bottom cuffs up. In her plain white cotton blouse and these pants, Faye looked like she belonged on the cover of an L.L. Bean catalog, the fun-in-the-sun summer edition. All she needed was a big floppy hat, and she’d look ready for a trip to the Hamptons.

  In her new and fabulously comfortable pants, Faye returned to her bedroom. Dolly gave her an appraising stare while Faye turned a circle. Dolly nodded her approval.

  “They fit good,” Dolly wrote.

  “Do I look good?” Faye replied.

  “You look like a boy.”

  “Boys look good,” Faye wrote. Dolly only rolled her eyes and went back to work.

  Dolly had picked a pale green paint for the bedroom, the same color as the kitchen walls. Lead-based paint, of course. Faye doubted one could find any other kind in 1921, but as long as she didn’t eat the paint or lick the walls, she could probably avoid dying of lead poisoning.

  Between the two of them and with a few minutes’ worth of pushing and sweating, they managed to move the bed to the center of the room. The dresser wouldn’t budge, however, as it was far too heavy for either of them and refused to slide no matter how hard they pushed. Faye pulled the drawers out and stacked them on the bed. Once the dresser was emptied of its load, it moved easily. Faye pushed, and the dresser shifted and wobbled, nearly toppling over. Faye looked down and saw why. One leg was shorter than the other by almost two inches. Someone had slipped a book under the dresser to even the legs out.

  “Must not be a fan of Lucy Maud Montgomery,” Faye said as she picked up the book, Anne’s House of Dreams. Faye had read the whole series as a girl. When she opened the book, she gasped.

  Dolly dropped her paintbrush on the floor, and if Faye had been holding a paintbrush she would have dropped it, too.

  Someone had cut a rectangular hole in the center of the book’s pages and stuffed money in it. Cash, and lots of it.

  Faye looked at Dolly, who stared at the money in wide-eyed amazement. Faye riffled through the bundle of money and saw every bill was a Benjamin Franklin, and there were about one hundred Bens. That was about ten thousand dollars. Carrick had told her an assistant lighthouse keeper made about eight hundred dollars a year. Faye wasn’t sure what that meant in 1921 money, but she knew if this cash constituted about twelve years’ salary for a lighthouse keeper, it was a lot of money.

  Dolly grabbed her slate and wrote quickly.

  “I put that book there to steady the dresser,” she said.

  “When?” Faye wrote back.

  “Right before you came.”

  “Hartwell,” Faye wrote on Dolly’s slate and Dolly nodded sagely.

  So this was why Hartwell kept sneaking around the house. The Landrys had left money for him in this book, and Dolly had moved it before Hartwell could fetch it. She was stunned and relieved all at once. Hartwell didn’t want to hurt them. He just wanted his damn money back. Even in 2015, ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. She’d want it back, too.

  “Tell Chief,” Dolly wrote. “He’ll know what to do.”

  Faye slid the money back in the book and stuffed it in her dresser drawer. She hated to wake him up, but she knew this couldn’t wait. For that much money, Hartwell was sure to come back, and he might not stop with just threats next time.

  When she went to his room, Faye saw she needn’t have worried about waking Carrick. She found him standing a
t the window of his bedroom wearing only his work trousers, a T-shirt and a worried expression on his face. She knew it was worry because she knew that look—the furrowed brow, the tight line of his lips, the hard set of his jaw. In his hands Carrick held his silver rosary beads. With