Death Watch

by Berk, Ari

  Mrs. Bowe didn’t answer, but only lowered her head, ashamed.

  Silas took her hand.

  “I can’t hide away like you. Do you think I should stay in the study for the rest of my life, maybe find some dark cottage down in the Narrows to hide in? Should I just hole up somewhere and watch the days and hours come and go like the tide? I could run from him, from my uncle, like you, just avoid him and whatever or whoever he’s got locked up there in that workroom, but this is my town now and I won’t be chased out of it, or made to feel like I should become invisible. Not again.”

  “Silas,” she said, “I’m not arguing with you. You’re right. You have a life here, and you shouldn’t turn away from what you’ve made for yourself. I’m just asking you to think about what you’re doing and wait before you do something foolish. Your uncle may be capable of terrible things—please.”

  Silas didn’t want to talk anymore. He added pointedly and tenderly, “Mrs. Bowe, this is your town too, your home, and I don’t think you need to hide from anything either.”

  He left her side and threw the front door wide open. “See? Nothing out there that isn’t in here.” He gestured to the room and then rapped his finger against the side of his head. “My uncle’s in here, too! So no more hiding. I am going over there, and one way or another I am going to find out what he’s been up to. I could feel it every day I lived in that house. He’s hiding something, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

  He was sweating now, a coursing heat running along his spine, like when he lay against the bronze lion at the gates of Newfield Cemetery. And somewhere, deep in his chest, a low growl rose—made of anger and courage both—as if the lion had escaped its bronze sepulchre and was now crouching inside him, its free and fearless ghost running wild in his blood.

  He had worked himself into a fury. Before he left, he ran over to Mrs. Bowe. He grabbed her hand in his and squeezed it tightly. Without another word, he pulled up the collar on his father’s coat and then ran out the front door and down the steps, leaving the door open behind him.

  All the fretting and arguing had worn her out. Mrs. Bowe sat in the quiet parlor of her house, trying to decide what to do next, what to do for Silas, afraid to move, worried that anything she might do would only make things worse. There was a familiar stirring in the air. Her man rose up from the floor beside her, leaned over her shoulder, and breathed words into her ear.

  Immediately she rose from her chair. Through the still-open door, the distant cries of seabirds came in off the sea.

  She went first out the back door to her garden, to the mausoleum, to the hive, though she knew it was late in the year for the bees. She spoke quickly, and a gentle buzzing rose, growing louder. She explained and pleaded, telling them everything she could remember. “Please …,” she said. The swarm roused to her words, and the doorway of the tomb poured forth gold. The bees of the hive were flying fast. They hovered only briefly over the house, perhaps not liking the cooler air, then descended like a cloud of smoke and flew low over the warmer streets, away toward the Narrows.

  Mrs. Bowe moved quickly. She went for her coat and tall boots, got as far as the front porch, and stopped. She told herself there was nothing out there to be afraid of. She took a step down, but then came back up to the porch, opening the door again and stepping back over the threshold into her foyer. She was breathing hard. Panic flowered in her like a hot flash. Breathe, she told herself. Let it be no different from the garden. “The world is my Eden,” she said under her breath. She remembered, as a girl, wandering up and down the streets of Lichport. This was her town. She could go where she liked. Next to the door was an umbrella stand. She searched among the handles and drew forth a thick staff of black-thorn that had come with her mother’s people from Ireland. As she tested its weight in her hands, she said:

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

  Mrs. Bowe walked out onto her porch and closed the door behind her. She paused for a moment. She looked down, seeing her shadow on the stone, and then, without looking back, descended the steps to the street. She hadn’t bothered locking the door. When she got to the sidewalk, she paused again. She wasn’t sure which way she should go for help. The flight of the bees confirmed that possibilities lay in both directions. She looked briefly east, toward the Narrows, and prayed that the bees had carried her message there. Then she hurried off, slowing often to a sort of trot, then walking as fast as she could, all the while trying to catch her breath. West and then north her brisk stride carried her, on, on, toward the marshes.

  THE MOMENT HIS FEET STRUCK Temple Street, Silas’s stomach tightened.

  He went first to the garage and got the ax, then walked quickly to the porch, leaning the ax against the house next to the door frame, just out of view.

  Silas knocked on the front door. He could have entered with the key he still had, but he wanted his uncle to come downstairs, away from his mother, or anything or anyone else that might help him.

  When Uncle opened the door, he was disheveled, clothes and face filthy, hair unwashed, but when he laid eyes on Silas, he became elated. He looked frantically over his shoulder toward the stairs and then back at Silas, whose own wild hair was like a mane about his face. Uncle held out both arms. His hands were shaking.

  “Silas! My son! Welcome home! Come in, come—” But he didn’t get to finish his welcome, because Silas swung at him hard, hitting Uncle solidly in the side of the head, knocking him to the floor of the entry hall, where he lay dazed, his head moving slowly from side to side.

  Silas crouched down by Uncle for a moment—he was still breathing—then stepped quickly over him and retrieved the ax from near the door. His hand throbbed from the blow. He flexed it open and closed as he strode back over his uncle’s body and leapt for the stairs.

  He could see from the landing that a lock had been put on the outside of his mother’s bedroom door. Silas prayed that it meant she was safely inside.

  He passed quickly through Uncle’s stale-smelling bedroom and the outer chamber, and found the door to the Camera Obscura open. The room was dimly lit by a small lamp.

  In the middle of the room was an enormous bottle, some huge industrial glass ampoule. Over six feet high, it flared slightly at the sides and had an open top. It was resting on a large, low wooden table and a short ladder stood on the floor next to it. Silas lit a candle, and its light threw strange reflections across the curved surface of the glass. Fearing the worst, he stepped forward and looked intently at the glass, trying to see past its light-strewn surface into its darker depths. At first, all he could see was his own distorted reflection, magnified. The glass caught everything before it, held the room on its surface. The closer Silas looked, the more distortion he saw, no matter which angle he tried. Slowly his incessant stare began to pierce beyond the surface and into what lay beyond. His heart beat madly in his chest as terror and confusion coursed through him like an electric current.

  Blood pounded in his ears, and he was unable to look away from the strange corpse floating in the glass; so he did not hear or see Uncle stumbling into the room behind him. Quickly Uncle put an arm around Silas and tightened his grip around his neck. Silas struggled, but his uncle’s arm was made of stone and held him fast. He could hear Uncle’s voice, raspy and only slightly slurred from the blow to his head.

  “I am sorry, Silas, that Lichport has let you down in so many ways. You have come seeking something, and I fear you are to be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t business to attend to. Still, I know how very much you have wanted to see my little study. Well, here you are.”

  At that, Uncle pushed a cloth sodden with chemicals to Silas’s
face, covering his mouth and nose.

  Silas looked about the room, kicking frantically.

  Uncle’s hand was immovable.

  “Calm yourself, son. There is no rush, I assure you. You will be here for some time.”

  Silas succumbed to the fumes. His head tilted up, his eyes rolled back, and in a blurring instant, he found himself looking backward, right into the dark inside of his own skull as he hit the floor.

  Silas awoke to find himself tied to a chair directly in front of the glass vessel. Another lamp had been lit and hung from the ceiling, its light making the golden liquid in the glass glow like amber.

  “What is this?” Silas coughed as consciousness returned to him. He could barely speak. His eyes were wide open, searching again for recognizable details among the pale limbs of the body beneath the glass. “Who is this? Did you do this? Did you do this to him?”

  “Do you mean did I kill him?”

  “Y-yes—,” Silas stammered. His whole body was shaking, and sweat was coursing into his eyes, mixing with his desperate tears.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “That’s him, isn’t it? It’s my dad!” He could hardly imagine what it would have taken to do that to his father’s body, what horrible efforts it would have required to render him into the contorted, preserved relic he saw before him. Sickened, Silas closed his eyes to block the sight of it. He hung his head and sobbed.

  His uncle reached out to him, tenderly putting his hand on his nephew’s sweat-soaked head before Silas violently jerked away.

  “No. No. Your father is not in this room, though rest assured, he will not trouble anyone again. A family needs only one father, after all. But you should know, son, that Amos—the man who presided over your first birth—is dead and shall not return.”

  A soft moan came up from Silas’s throat, an exhalation of air that sounded like life itself was escaping from his wracked frame.

  Uncle moved closer to the enormous glass apothecary jar that held the preserved corpse. He climbed a few rungs of the ladder, then reached his hand over and into the liquid, and gently brushed the face’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Silas, this is Adam, my son.”

  Uncle said these words with such pride, such tenderness, that for an instant, Silas forgot where he was and what he was looking at. But then he began to look closely at the corpse in the glass vessel. Silas could see that the body was too small to be his dad. Uncle’s words held in the air for a moment. They rang true.

  Within the enormous ampoule, he could see a face. The nose was pressed up against the glass, one eye larger than the other, as if trying desperately to see out. Through the thick, curved glass, Silas could just begin to make out the familiar features of the face that had stood over him that night, breathing, in his room.

  “What did you do to him?” demanded Silas, becoming hysterical.

  “I didn’t do anything to him, Silas. He is as nature made him. What you see is the work of corrupting nature. I did not kill him. I kept him, and let me tell you, every day of his short life was like a century to me, and when the blessing of death came to him on its own, I only preserved him, maintained the vessel, in a vessel. And because of my careful work, he is still here. Can’t you feel him in this room? He has never left this house and he never will, for, being as he was, he will never come to full knowledge. But here, in this chamber, he will be assured the comfort that nature denied him in his brief life. You are that comfort, Silas. You are nearly brothers, you two. Both now my sons. Adam already knows and loves you well. I have realized, at last, that your shared blood binds you, and that kinship will allow you to perceive each other, be a friend to each other in, well, in what comes next.”

  Silas tried to reach his pocket to get at the death watch, but his hands were bound behind his back.

  There was no need.

  His cousin’s ghost began to take shape and crouched by the leg of the table that held his corpse. Adam’s ghost cocked his head to one side, looked at Silas with an uneven smile, and began to gibber and shake in excitement.

  “My son lived his entire life in this room until he died two years ago. After he died, he had the run of the house, but that was a difficult time. So again, he was bound in this room. But what problem exists that cannot be solved by the application of learning?” Uncle gestured to the shelf and tables piled with books—tomes of magic and demonology; bindings and protective charms like the ones on the Camera’s door; a copy of Good Parenting magazine; several open, waiting tins.

  “So here he remains. Waiting only for—”

  Silas interrupted, “What became of Adam’s mother?”

  Uncle looked up and away from Silas.

  “Unable to bear the responsibility of what her corrupted blood had wrought, she fled. Disappeared.”

  But at the bottom of the glass jar were bones, forming a kind of nest below the honeyed corpse.

  “Lots of people seem to disappear from this house.” Silas said, full of implication.

  “Some people are the cause of problems,” Uncle said, looking at the bones, “other people resolve them. I am the latter type. I live only for resolution. Silas, I am a helper. It’s in my nature, part of my parenting instinct.”

  Uncle began to walk in circles around the room, then stood behind Silas and continued.

  “Who else but the most loving father could perceive the lasting perfection a son such as this might achieve despite his shattered form? The form, his body, was a gift from his mother. But he carried my blood as well—our blood, I should say. So you see, by excellent parenting and the vigor in our shared blood, death was cheated for a time, for surely my son should not have enjoyed even a moment of life, not if there ever were a God of mercy. I will not lie to you, Silas; while he lived, Adam was not an easy child. He was not like other children. Of course I tried to make him comfortable, but, oh Silas, his poor tortured soul. You cannot imagine the terrible length of every day while he lived. But I knew it was my task to keep him here for this great experiment. I patiently waited for his miserable life to end, and life everlasting to begin. That took sixteen years—”

  Silas knew that he and his cousin were nearly the same age. He began to understand that his uncle would never let him leave this house again. But instead of pleading for himself, it was the Undertaker in him that spoke. “You must let go of your son! Let him have some peace … the peace he didn’t have in life. Why keep him here, as a prisoner? You have to let him go. I can see him. There. In this room, still trapped in the hell you’ve made for him. Let me help you. We can bury him. Honor him together—”

  Whatever remained of Uncle’s composure finally broke, and he struck Silas hard in the face with the back of his hand.

  “After everything I’ve told you, you sue for more corruption? Bury him? When he shall live forever? Do you really think you’re qualified to lecture me on how to raise a child? What I do, I do for both of you, for the peace of this family. Can’t you see? He has no rest while he is alone. My son wants for a brother. It took me some time to see the truth of it. I thought he wanted a father in spirit, another parent to rest beside him in eternity. But my son already has a father. What matter if I am not yet joined to him in a more eternal form? Perhaps, then, a mother? That, alas, did not work out. But a friend, a brother. That’s what everyone needs. Is that not so?”

  “You killed your brother!” Silas screamed.

  Slowly Uncle nodded.

  “Yes. That was very unfortunate. But Amos did not approve of my parenting. He suspected that when Adam died I had not dealt with him in the—accepted way. How that infuriated my brother. But who was he to sit in judgment over me, over the dead? Was he become Hades himself? No! Not yet. Not even for all his skill and arrogance. I could not let anyone disturb the plans I had set in motion. For my son’s sake, you understand. This is all for him. I had hoped Amos’s spirit would remain here, someone to watch over Adam, but I had not yet fully understood the use of mummiae in restraining the dead. Amos�
��s spirit fled in the instant of his demise, and I could not bring it to heel. So you see? Even in death he continued to avoid responsibility.”

  “Where is his body then? What have you done with him?” Silas pleaded.

  “Oh Silas, do not think on him again. Indeed, if you were to see him now, you would find him not so pleasant to look at. Nature, who ravishes all she touches, has had her way with him.

  “I am sorry to upset you, but consider: Amos was to me a brother only in flesh. I have never known the comfort of a true brother. I speak of brothers in spirit. What you and Adam shall soon be. Only spirit endures the ages and is a holy and mysterious thing. Very shortly, you shall know much more of this sacred matter even than I. This is a hallowed business, a thing that most people could not aspire to, could not dream of. Let kin keep kin and let the dead keep the dead. I am sure you must agree this is the best way.”

  Silas was now aware of exactly what his uncle was capable of, and the fear-taut muscles of his legs began to loosen with terror. He frantically considered the implications of what his uncle was saying, and of what he was preparing to do. The idea of dying was a small thing compared with the possibility of being trapped, forever, in his uncle’s Camera. This room would become his tin.

  Uncle came around the table and stood again in front of Silas. From his apron, he drew out a small, thin scalpel.

  “You should prepare yourself. We are family and I love you. I will take care to be sure this causes you as little pain as possible. One brief moment, a pause at the threshold, a mere comma in your life’s tale, and then you’ll feel no more pain, ever.”

  In his rising panic, Silas saw how little his uncle understood about death and what might follow it. The walls of the room seemed to press in on him, and he heard himself begin to scream.