Death Watch

by Berk, Ari

  “Don’t stand out so, Silas! Come in! Come in! Be at home here, by our fire. Leave the night out where it lies and look for no better nor stranger company!” Mother Peale said merrily as she gently clutched Silas’s arm and drew him farther into the room toward the fire and into the heart of the gathering.

  From their clothes, it was clear everyone here looked out to the sea for a living and not to high town or any other landward direction. These were working people, and they wore work clothes that hadn’t changed much in the last century.

  A young woman reached out her hand to him and said, “Please take a place by the fire, Master Umber. Warm yourself.”

  “Give him a stool, and let him take his ease, there, next to my man,” said Mother Peale, “and bring him hots to guzzle and chew.” She pointed to an unoccupied spot close by the fire, next to her husband, old Mr. Peale, whom Silas recognized from the market. Although close to the fire, Mr. Peale’s skin was ashen, and he didn’t take any notice of Silas sitting down next to him.

  “There, now!” said Mother Peale smiling broadly. “And how many times have I seen your own father sitting just there, on that very stool, hard fast by my fire? The sight of you there, Silas, in your father’s place, now that warms my heart and no mistake. And don’t you take no worry of my quiet husband. He’s had a bad time of it this week and is weary. I’ve told him to take to the blankets, but he’ll have none of it. ‘Not ready for bed,’ he says! Now where’s that grub and grog?”

  From a doorway somewhere toward the back of the room, kitchen noises could be heard, and in short order, a steaming bowl of chowder filled with shellfish, clams, and potatoes was handed to him. Mother Peale’s daughter Joan was there and came quickly to Silas’s side to put a warm mug in his hand. Silas thanked her. He set the mug down on the table and dug into his stew. His encounter in the alley had given him a powerful appetite.

  Now that ceremonial matters—warmth and welcome—had been attended to, folk began to talk among themselves, and the reactions to Silas’s arrival seemed to run in several directions at once. Most appeared glad to see him, while others looked fretful. Some just continued on with their discussion as if Silas Umber walking into the house happened every night and didn’t warrant such a fuss. “Have I interrupted a party?” Silas asked.

  Folks looked confused. Mother Peale shuffled over to Silas and put her hand on his shoulder. “No, no. No party. Just a little evening’s gathering. We have ’em most nights.” Then she laughed knowingly. “Why, in the Narrows, we’re up until all hours! Don’t folks in high town do any night visiting?”

  “Oh, course they do!” added Joan. “Only, none of ’em remember to leave their houses. Just sit around all night waiting on company, but each of ’em too afeard to go past their own doors after dark.” More laughter rose up to the rafters.

  A somber voice spoke up from the corner.

  “It’s no laughing matter. I don’t see nothing here to laugh about! The boy’s father gone and the mist ship coming and all. There’s nothing I see to give a smile to—”

  “James Voss,” someone cried out, “settle yourself! There’s no need to worry this young man on account of our troubles.”

  “Our troubles is his troubles. Every last one!” James Voss replied sharply. “And besides, there’s lost and then there’s lost. Everyone knows that. Forgive my directness, Master Umber, but though your dad loved this town, he had the wanderlust on him sure. And before him? There weren’t an Umber in ages who kept to his proper business. Yes, even your father, bless him, wasn’t afeared of wandering from his right place. I mean, taking his family to Saltsbridge!” James Voss raised his voice and gestured out to the room. “And every person in this room knows who put the wanderlust on him!”

  “Oh, James,” said Mother Peale, still laughing through her rising annoyance, “there’s no reason to read your own troubles in other folks’ faces! Just because your dear wife Mary prefers you at home, close to her own loving bosom, where she can keep a good watch on you!”

  And at that, the room broke out in shouts, knowing smiles, and cries of “James Voss, James Voss, never shall roam! Run along, Jimmy! Your wife calls you home!”

  The room unraveled into all manner of talk. People introduced themselves to Silas, and offered their concern, comfort, and best wishes for his family during this trying time. Some delicately, almost idly, raised the topic of his father’s work, and Silas suspected people were eager to know if he would be continuing to serve in his father’s office, although no one would offer very much information on what precisely that work entailed. Silas had been making a circuit of the room, but then drifted back toward the fire and pondered what it might mean to go into the “family business.” Suddenly Mr. Peale sprang to his feet and began to shout, his eyes wild, fevered sweat flying from his brow.

  “Get that bell ringin’! Ship’s comin’ in and no mistake! Ready your souls, for when she sails, she takes on new crew, and they don’t ever come off that ship again. You all know my meanin’! Them’s that board that ship don’t ever come back and don’t go nowhere else neither. No way off … no way off … just black deep below and black deep above and ropes of mist about your throat like anchor chains!”

  Everyone in the room went silent and stared at Mr. Peale. Mother Peale went to her husband and whispered something in his ear, and he quieted. She stroked his brow, and he became drowsy and slid back down into his chair, his eyes half-closed.

  “Nothing we didn’t already know, right?” she said to the room. “The mist ship’s come before, in your fathers’ and mothers’ time, and here we still are, so be easy, friends. Be easy. We’ll ride this bad weather out!”

  Folks moved themselves into small groups, talking in low voices, all speculating as to whom the mist ship might be coming for.

  “Let’s not borrow trouble,” Mother Peale said. “We’ll all know more than we’d wish to know soon enough.”

  She looked down at her husband, who was asleep now in his chair. Mr. Peale’s breathing was shallow, and Silas could see he wasn’t well. Mrs. Peale left him in his chair and went to the other side of the fire to where Silas sat with his brow furrowed and fretful.

  Mrs. Peale leaned in close to Silas and whispered, “One foot in each world now. Light and shadow are becoming one to him. That’s how I know he’s close. Some dying folk are like that. They open their eyes, and instead of seeing what you can see right in front of you, their eyes shine with the light of another land entirely, a land behind and beside the land of the living. You can tell when you look at him, can’t you, Silas Umber?”

  Silas nodded.

  Mrs. Peale took Silas’s hand in hers.

  “Is there something, child, you want to ask me?”

  “Is he gone? Is my dad gone? Is that ship Mr. Peale talked about coming for my dad? He’s dead, right? And no one wants to tell me that something’s coming for him?”

  “What kind of thoughts are these? Silas, no, child. Pay my husband no heed when he’s in one of his fits. Don’t let the troubles of others take hold of you so.”

  She stroked Silas’s hand, brushing his questions and worries aside. She looked up toward the ceiling and tried to smile and distract him.

  “I remember, young sir, your last visit to town. That was for your grandfather’s funeral. Oh, we were all sad not to get a longer look at you then, but I understood. Your father and mother didn’t quite see eye to eye on more than a few things … but who knows the truth between husbands and wives, eh?”

  “Did you go to the funeral, then?” asked Silas.

  “I most certainly did, though I noticed you didn’t stay too long. I expect your mother didn’t care to be around your grand-father’s house while his funeral was going on and his corpse lay in the parlor. She never did cotton to custom, even though her family is one of the oldest in town.”

  “Do all funerals in Lichport have the deceased laid out in their own homes and not in the church or a mortuary chapel?”

  �
��We keep the dead in our homes as well as our hearts when their time comes. Only right. That’s how it’s always been done here. Used to be done just like that and more often in other places as well, but people have just decided they’d rather not be too close to the dead, even their own kin. Even during those last final moments, when a little kindness can make all the difference, people now give up their duty, their sacred duty, to strangers, having their funerals and visitations in ‘mortuary chapels.’ Makes no sense to me. Give me Peller over preacher any day!” A loud assent rose up from the guests, who’d been shamelessly eavesdropping. Some even raised their glasses.

  “And here’s to our new Undertaker!” someone called out, raising his glass to Silas.

  Confused and red-faced with embarrassment, Silas tried to convince himself he’d misheard the toast. He raised his glass and said, “To my dad,” and everyone raised their glasses, and some hung their heads in respect, and some folk looked out the windows, and one man opened the front door as if they expected Amos Umber to walk right in at the sound of his son’s words. There was only dark and quiet out in the lane, except for the sound of the rain that splashed down the gutter in the middle of the street, nothing more.

  Silas could feel Mother Peale and the others looking hard at him. Folks were expecting him to continue his father’s work despite it being obvious that he knew nearly nothing about it. But Silas knew now that Amos was important to the people here, and that meant he was important too. If nothing else, here were people who cared about what had happened to his father and cared about what would happen to him.

  “Peller over preacher, you said. What does that mean exactly?” Silas asked, hoping to learn a little more about his dad’s work.

  “Yes,” Mother Peale said to Silas and the room, “well, don’t get me wrong; a preacher is a fine thing, but at some times more than others. Silas, did you know that here in Lichport, we don’t even have a preacher anymore?” Silas looked up her, his face a waiting question mark.

  “For one thing, the preacher, the last one, and it’s been some time since there was one, never could do anything lasting about Them. I think it’s because he didn’t believe in what he was doing. Sure he wanted to be helpful to folk, but in a way that made sense to him. Not in the old way. Not in our way.”

  “So someone would come to him. ‘Father,’ they’d say, ‘we have a problem. Can’t sleep at night for the noise. Pale folk walking through the house. Voices in the night. Things missing and moved. Important things, personal things. Lost. Stolen.’ And the vicar would see the wild look in their eyes, put there by worry and lack of sleep, and he would say, ‘Why don’t I come home with you and let’s see if I can’t put some of your worries to bed.’ Back he’d walk with them, from the church where they’d sought him out, all the way, even to the Narrows, if Narrows folk they were. And when he got them home, he’d play like he believed them. Believed every word of their concern. ‘Of course I see them,’ he’d say, like he was talking to a child. ‘Yes. Just there, by the cupboard, two sailors, yes, just as you said. And what? Upstairs? Yes. I heard it too. Voices. Who could it be? Of course. I’ll be just behind you,’ he’d say. Up they’d go, and there! On the landing! A young girl weeping and crying, her eyes closed, her face white as flour. ‘I see her,’ he’d say to comfort them. ‘She is so very pale, just as you’ve said. And how sad she looks,’ he’d add, feigning it all. Then he’d ask the folk of the house what they’d like done. ‘You would like the visitors, the pale young people, to leave this house? I am here to help,’ he’d say.

  “So out would come his book, and he would start talking to the air, pretending to talk to Them, but into the air his words would go and no further. ‘Out you go now,’ he’d say a little louder than usual. Now the curious part is this. He was a priest. So his words had some power, even if he didn’t know it or care. So those pale folk, they’d hear him all right, and would, to a degree, obey. They’d hear his words: ‘These good people would like you to leave this house,’ he’d tell them. ‘So let’s go! Out!’ And he’d herd them, like they were animals, through the rooms and into the hall, waving his arms like brooms brushing cobwebs all the while. Then he’d have the person who invited him hold wide the front door, and he’d sweep all the pale folk out into the street and help close the door behind them. And that would be that.

  “Back to the church he’d go, feeling pretty smug. And, truth to tell, things might be all right for a night or even two. But sure as I am speaking to you now, any neighbor who sat up by a window would see Them. The pale folk. Sadder, or angrier, than ever. See them at the doors and windows and walls of that house, trying all night to get back in. And eventually, whether by crossing the threshold because the power in the vicar’s words ebbed, or by coming back in through the walls, seeping through like a persistent damp, they’d get back to where they started, and it would all be worse than before, and no one but the Undertaker could get ’em settled. Ask anyone what they’d prefer: priest or Peller? I bet there’s not a one who wouldn’t ask for the Peller, for the Undertaker. For your father, who is dearly missed.”

  Perhaps to keep the conversation from returning to anyone’s views on his obligations, Mother Peale put her arms around Silas, her shawl like wings to shield him from the curious room. Her breath smelled like fresh bread, and she said to him, “You come to me anytime, my son. Come here anytime….”

  It was a long while before the laughter died down and folks started to drift away from the fire and toward their homes. Joan Peale and her husband, who both lived above the store, offered to walk Silas home, which they gladly did even though it took them closer to the center of uptown than they liked to go at night.

  When her last guest left, Mother Peale began to extinguish the oil lamps and candles about the room, until only a single taper burned by the hearth next to her high-backed rocking chair. Then, with a strong and loving arm, she helped her husband up the stairs and to his bed. His eyes were closed even as he sat on the side of his bed, even before his feet were off the floor. She laid him out, and pulled the covers up over him, and turned off the little electric light on the bedside table. She left the room and closed the door quietly behind her. The company is good for him, she thought. He’ll sleep well tonight.

  Mother Peale returned downstairs and was neither shocked nor frightened when she looked across the room to see the pale little girl who sat on the stool by the fire, just by the foot of her chair. The girl was looking into the glowing red embers of the hearth, but their light seemed to bend around her body, for the small child’s face remained white as the risen moon.

  Mother Peale crossed the room and took her accustomed place in her chair. The small girl looked at her, and the old woman welcomed the child into her lap. Immediately, the child put her head on her mother’s chest and closed her eyes. Mother Peale began to sing softly—“Hush-a-bye, little one, aye, aye, hush-a-bye, little one, aye”—while she rested her heels on a stone of the hearth and pushed her chair back and forth, while she rocked the poor child, her first, dead now these fifty-four years.

  SILAS STOOD UNDER HIS WROUGHT-IRON NAME at the gates of the Umber family cemetery. He had been whistling for a moment when he saw Bea coming down Fairwell Street. She was skipping, her feet hardly touching the pavement, moving in and out of the pools of light cast on the ground by the streetlamps. They had met for short walks several times before, always finding each other, seemingly by accident. Strange but also nice, Silas thought, that now if he thought about her, conjured up her face in his imagination, more often than not when he went outside he’d find her waiting for him. But it happened too often and felt too good to be a coincidence, and Silas knew it. Was she stalking him? He hoped so.

  “How did you know I needed someone to show me around?” Silas asked, smiling but surprised at how quickly Bea crossed the distance between them.

  “Well, it’s very easy to get lost around here, especially if you’re new in town.”

  “I’m only sort of new
—I was born here. But thanks. That’s very kind of you,” he said, leaning toward her.

  “I know,” Bea said. “Believe me, I’m not this nice to everybody.”

  Silas looked at her face, so pale, as if the sun hardly ever touched it. He wanted to touch her cheek, but leaned a little closer instead. “I’ll consider myself lucky then.”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Bea said, as she began to skip away, just out of reach. Without pausing, Silas followed her through the gate and away from his family’s bone houses.

  “I was thinking, Silas. I could, if you want, show you some places,” she said, drawing out the last word as if it might mean something more than a mere walk around the block. Silas wanted to see more of Lichport, and he wanted to see it in Bea’s company.

  He grinned, then replied in mock surprise, “Why, that’s remarkable! I was just thinking the very same thing! What kind of sights do you think I should see?”

  “I like the places that people mostly leave alone. Quiet places. Well, mostly quiet. Silas, our little town is so old, and such a lot of awful things have happened here. Would you like to see where some things happened? I’ll be your guide. Your very own special guide. It’ll be fun. I can show you a house on Morton Street where you can still see the bloodstains on the wooden floor of the abandoned house. No one even tried to get them out after the body was spirited away from the murder scene!”

  “I’m not sure I want to see too many places like that.”

  “Okay, I can show you others, if you like, quieter places. Places I really like.”

  “All right,” he said uneasily. He wanted to trust her, even though something in the strange light of her eyes and the odd coincidence of their mutual attraction to the gothic told him to go slow. But she wasn’t like other girls. He could see that already.