The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “Open up, love. Someone here wants to meet you.”

  “What? Who?” she’d said, and opened the door to find Carrick standing with his hands cupped in front of him. He opened his hands, and on his palm sat the tiniest little green turtle she’d ever seen.

  “Say hello,” Carrick said.

  Faye gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. She looked up at him.

  “Is that a loggerhead turtle?”

  “The beach is full of babies tonight. Want to see?”

  “Do I want to see baby loggerhead turtles? Are you crazy?”

  “I guess that’s a yes.”

  “Oh, my God, yes yes yes. Grab the lamp before they’re all gone. And give me that little guy.”

  Faye cradled the baby turtle in her hand as Carrick found the kerosene lamp and lit it. It felt so weird, the turtle did, wiggling and wriggling on her palm.

  “I love him so much,” she said, following Carrick out of the front door and down to the beach, the lamp slinging light back and forth as they walked. She could have started crying any second. She was frazzled from sheer happiness. A baby loggerhead turtle. She was holding in her shaking hands a baby loggerhead turtle. “Now I know how Kristen Bell felt with that sloth.”

  “Who?”

  “Nobody. I’m going to name him George.”

  “You can’t keep that turtle,” Carrick said.

  “Yes, but I can still name him.”

  “There they are...” Carrick pointed the lamp toward what looked like nothing but a dark blur against a light blur. Carefully, watching every step, they walked toward the blur. Faye saw the hole in the dune and the baby turtles creeping out of the hole and onto the beach.

  “Keep an eye out for birds. They eat the babies,” Carrick said. He turned the lamp down as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Faye gently set little George onto the sand next to one of his or her siblings. Like a tiny windup toy, it wriggled across the sand, its flippers barely leaving any tracks as it followed Mother Nature’s orders to get into the water right away.

  “Amazing...” Faye smiled so wide it hurt. “I wish I had my camera.”

  “I thought you’d want to see them,” Carrick said.

  “You were right. They’re so little and sweet. I just want to keep them all.”

  “For turtle stew?”

  “No,” she’d said forcefully. “And don’t you even joke about that.”

  Carrick chuckled when she punched him in the biceps.

  In silence they watched the babies until it seemed all the turtles had escaped the hole in the dune and disappeared into the ocean. Faye took the lamp and looked inside the abandoned nest. One last turtle was trapped at the bottom. She pulled him out and walked with him into the water ready to let him go. Something stopped her.

  “Faith?” Carrick called out.

  “Here,” she said, turned around and walked back to him. “You put him in. Since you found the nest. You can let this one go.”

  “Come here, turtle stew,” he said, and took the baby from her hand. “You wouldn’t even be one spoonful. Better throw you back until you’re worth eating.”

  He walked over to the water and waded in, letting the turtle go about ten feet from shore. Nothing happened. No waves. No magic. Carrick came back to her and picked up the lantern. The yellow light from the lamp turned the sand into gold dust all around them. And in that moment, that lovely little moment that meant nothing to anyone in the universe but the two of them, Faye had fallen in love with Carrick.

  And now she’d lost him, too.

  Faye rolled out of bed and took another shower to wake herself up and clear the cobwebs from her head. Also, she needed a reminder of the many benefits of living in modern times as opposed to say...1921.

  Shower over, Faye dressed in a white sleeveless blouse and miniskirt, and she felt naked in them. In just a few days she’d grown so accustomed to ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved shirts that to show the world her bare arms and bare legs seemed positively wicked. Of course, in 1921 long sleeves and long skirts also kept her from severe sunburn. In a time before sunblock, modesty prevented skin cancer.

  In the kitchen, Faye went about brewing her usual cup of black tea for breakfast. She boiled water in a saucepan and found her tea bags. Ty came in and peeked in the pan.

  “You cooking spaghetti for breakfast?”

  “Just tea,” she said.

  “On the stove? Why not use the microwave?”

  Faye looked up sharply.

  “Right,” she said. “Microwave. I forgot about microwaves.”

  “What do you mean you forgot about microwaves?” Ty stared intently at her.

  “I mean... I forgot they existed.”

  “Are you still hungover?” he asked.

  “Kind of feels like it.”

  “Did you drop acid?”

  “No, Ty, I did not drop acid.”

  “You forgot microwaves exist. It was a fair question.”

  “I...” Faye sat down and rubbed her temples. “I sort of can’t quite remember the past few days. Here. I remember things, but I don’t know if they actually happened. But they had to have happened if I remember them, right?”

  “Do you remember us having sex?” he asked.

  Faye rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course.”

  “When was that? How many days ago?” Ty asked.

  “A week ago, right?”

  Ty nodded. “Okay. Come on. I’m driving you to the hospital. Where’s your keys?”

  “What? The hospital? Why?”

  “Because yesterday you said you were so hungover you weren’t sure what year it is. And this morning you forgot microwaves exist and now you think something that happened three nights ago happened a week ago.”

  “Three nights ago? No...that was...” Three nights ago she’d been in the lighthouse with Carrick. He’d taught her how to use the logbook to record weather conditions.

  “We went out on the boat,” Ty said. “We went to dinner. We came back here to your room.”

  “Three nights ago.” She knew the date and yet it seemed impossible that was only three nights ago. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure I’m driving you to the hospital, and real damn quick.”

  “I can drive myself.”

  “You said you forgot microwaves exist.”

  “Right,” Faye said, nodding. “Okay, yeah. You should probably drive.”

  It was a slow day in the ER, and an hour later Faye sat on the end of an examining table behind a white curtain as a doctor who looked five years her junior shone a light in her eyes and asked a series of increasingly personal questions. Finally, he lowered his light and put it in his white coat pocket.

  “Let’s talk,” he said. He pulled up a wheeled tripod stool and sat down at the end of the table.

  “Talk about what?”

  “An MRI. You need one. Today.”

  “An MRI? Are you serious?”

  “You said you weren’t entirely sure what happened in the last three days, although your friend in the waiting room can apparently account for your whereabouts. If he knows what you were doing and you don’t, something’s wrong.”

  “I feel okay. I’m just...confused.”

  “Confusion and disorientation are both signs of a head injury,” he said. “But there’s being confused, and then there’s amnesia.”

  She flinched at the A-word.

  “I remember everything, just not...”

  “The MRI is just to rule out traumatic brain injury related to your near-drowning experience,” he said. “I don’t expect it to find anything.”

  “You don’t.”

  He shook his head.

  “Ms. Barlow.” He smiled, and she didn’t trust that smile. Whatever he said next she wasn’t going to like. “Your first husband died four years ago and you recently divorced your second husband. Your father died last year and your mother has dementia, and you’ve suffered two miscarriages and several years of infertility
treatments. Any one of these events could cause you to experience a temporary break with reality—a nervous breakdown, a fugue state, a major depressive episode... When you tell me you’ve been hallucinating another life, that tells me you either need a neurologist or a psychologist. I’m neither of those things, but I want to get you to the right person who can help you.”

  Faye swallowed a hard lump in her throat, and that lump was a pearl. The first grain of sand in the oyster had been Will’s death, and after that every loss had added a layer to it.

  The doctor glanced down at his notes again. “Your chart says you’re on Ambien?”

  “I took one Ambien my first night in Beaufort because I have trouble sleeping in new places. One. One Ambien is not going to trigger a six-day hallucination. I didn’t even take it the day I disappeared.”

  “But you didn’t disappear, and you weren’t gone for six days.”

  “I remember six days. I remember...” Faye paused and held out her hands palms open. “Everything. I can tell you where the pencils are in that cottage. And what brand they are. And I can tell you what we ate for breakfast. I can tell you the books I read. I can tell you Carrick likes milk in his coffee and Dolly likes sugar. I can tell you that sometimes Carrick says ‘aye’ instead of ‘yes’ and Dolly can sew a pair of drawstring pants in thirty minutes. And there was a cat named Ozzie, a gray tabby, and he’s got stripes on his head in the shape of an V. That’s his favorite place to get scratched—right on his V. Is that normal? Hallucinating a lighthouse keeper, a sarcastic teenage seamstress and a tabby cat?”

  “The brain is a mysterious organ. It can play some pretty impressive tricks on us. Let me ask you this.” He pulled his stool a little closer. “What’s more likely—that you traveled to 1921 and spent a week living in a house with a man who looks just like your late husband but isn’t him and a teenage girl who reminds you of someone but you can’t remember who, living the life of a girl who died? Or maybe you had a reaction to a sleeping pill with known hallucinogenic side effects, or received a head injury, or you had a temporary break with reality brought upon by a series of severe emotional traumas? What sounds more likely to you?”

  Faye didn’t answer. She didn’t want to answer. He was so calm and kind and rational and right. He was right. She had taken an Ambien. She had nearly drowned. She had lost so much in the past few years. Any or all those things could have brought on some sort of break with reality.

  “Ms. Barlow?”

  Faye blinked and wiped tears off her face.

  “Okay,” she said. “Do the scan.”

  “Good choice. We’re going to do blood work, just in case, as well. We can’t be too careful when there’s possible head trauma.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She was glad he was taking this seriously, but she still felt like she’d betrayed Carrick and Dolly somehow, like she’d let someone convince her they weren’t real when they were.

  Weren’t they?

  They had to be. Why else would she miss them so much?

  The MRI turned up nothing, which was both a relief and a concern. Faye certainly didn’t want to have a head injury, but she didn’t want some kind of psychosis, either. And she certainly didn’t want to think she had accidentally overdosed. The ER doctor referred Faye to a psychologist, and she dutifully promised to call her first thing in the morning.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t send you off to the funny farm,” Ty said as he turned out of the hospital parking lot.

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to call it ‘the funny farm’ anymore. It’s offensive.”

  “You offended?”

  “Only if they send me to the funny farm.”

  Ty snorted a laugh. “Here’s my theory. I think you did exactly what I told you not to do. I think you went swimming off Bride Island, almost drowned like I said you would, washed up and got sunstroke out there. Fried your brain.”

  “I don’t even have a sunburn, Ty. And I admit I went wading, but I don’t remember stripping naked and going skinny-dipping.”

  “But you do remember spending six days on an island in 1921, so let’s just say for the time being your memory is suspect.”

  “My memory is excellent. I remember everything that happened while I was gone. I don’t know if what I remember was real, but that doesn’t change the fact that I remember it.”

  “That makes no sense,” Ty said. “We better go with my theory.”

  “I’m not saying your theory doesn’t make sense. I even get why I’d dream of a man who looks, talks and kisses just like my dead husband did. You don’t need Freud to interpret that dream. But why would I dream about a deaf teenage girl who loved interior decorating and baking pie? I mean, that’s really specific. I don’t decorate. I’d never baked a peach pie in my life before I went there. Now I have. Now I can...” Faye glanced out the passenger-side window at a gas station in a strip mall. “Hey, can you take me to a grocery store?”

  “Why? You hungry? We can go out to dinner if you want.”

  “I’ll take you out to dinner as a thank-you for wasting your entire day with me at the hospital. Tomorrow. Now I need to cook something.”

  “It wasn’t wasted. I met an insanely cute nurse. And I got her number.” He held up his left hand, where a phone number had been written on the inside of his wrist. “Don’t be jealous. I have a rule against dating crazy girls. A little loco is fun, but I draw the line if she’s hallucinating other guys.”

  “I’m not jealous. I wouldn’t want to date me, either. Plus, I think I’m in a relationship with a man who’s been dead since the Johnson administration. Oh, and I’m married.”

  “You said you were divorced.”

  “I’m divorced in 2015. I’m married in 1921.”

  “Nice guy?”

  “A monster who beat and raped his wife when she refused to have sex with him.”

  “And you want to go back?”

  “Well, yeah. I’m cheating on him with a lighthouse keeper, or trying to. Is there a Facebook status for all that?”

  “I’d file that under ‘It’s complicated.’”

  “Are you taking me to the grocery store or not?”

  “Depends on what you’re gonna make me.”

  “Peach pie with a saltine cracker crust.”

  “Oh, hell yes, then. We’re going right now.”

  The pie was simple enough—crushed crackers, butter and sugar for the crust, and peaches and more sugar for the filling. Faye didn’t have a recipe. She had nothing to work from except her memory, but as she crushed the crackers and kneaded them with the softened butter, she knew she could do this. Although she’d never made a peach pie before in her life—in this life—she knew how. As she crushed the crackers and kneaded the dough, memories leaped out of her mind like dolphins breaching for air. She remembered Dolly’s blue gingham apron and the yellow scarf she wore in her hair, not like a stereotypical housemaid’s scarf but in a big bow over her right ear like a fifties-style pinup girl. She remembered the flour dusting Dolly’s beautiful face, leaving a smattering of freckles on her smooth, dark skin. Dolly hummed as she worked sometimes, and Faye thought of that soothing tuneless sound as the sound track of the home—like an engine purring. Between the two of them, they’d managed to finish all the housework by two or three in the afternoon. They’d gone out collecting seashells one day and sat on the front porch the next reading and drowsing in the heat. Dolly read Sherlock Holmes short stories. Faye read Villette by Charlotte Brontë, a book she’d always meant to read but had never taken the time to. But in 1921 she’d taken the time, because she could. Because she had all the time in the world.

  “‘I believe that life is not all,’” Faye whispered to herself as she pressed the crust into the pie pan. “‘Neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble. I trust while I weep...’”

  She paused and looked up. She’d read Villette at the keeper’s cottage. How would she remember lines from a book she’d never read?
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br />   Faye looked out the open kitchen window behind the sink. Crickets woke to sing, and flashing lightning bugs darted and danced under the Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the