A Ghostly Light

by Juliet Blackwell

  July 8 Wind S, light smoky and hazy. But little done.

  July 14 Wind SW, strong. Mr. Mathews took quarterly, monthly, and annual returns to San Quentin. Laid platform on tank.

  July 30 Wind SW, strong, hazy. Painted rail around top of tower. Mr. Page drunk.

  August 21 Wind SW, very strong. Mr. Mathews left for San Quentin a.m., capsized off the buoy near the West Brother at 12:15 p.m. Capt. Winsor hailed the steamer Reform passing at the time and sent her to his relief. Oars, rudder, mail lost. All marketing lost including mutton, cabbages, peas, etc. Also milk.

  “This is kind of cool,” Caleb said.

  “It is, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Weird to think of them living out there, all isolated and everything,” he said. “I mean, what would you do if you lost all your cabbages and milk and stuff? They didn’t have, like, any other food, right? No 7-Elevens, for sure.”

  “Right,” I said. “A lot of lighthouse keepers kept vegetable gardens, and the wives spent a lot of time growing and processing the family’s food, just like people everywhere at the time. But that would be tough on Lighthouse Island since it has no water source, and very little arable land.”

  “No offense, but who would want to live like that?” asked Caleb.

  “It was a different time,” said Landon. Caleb barely refrained from rolling his eyes, but Landon continued. “Life was challenging. A lot of people died in mining accidents or on ships or in factories, and folks struggled to get by any way they could. Being a lighthouse keeper was a relatively well-paid, respected position, with a nice furnished house and all necessary supplies—when they weren’t lost at sea, that is.”

  Caleb gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “It did take a special personality, though,” said Landon. “You had to be a jack-of-all-trades, able to pilot a boat and paint the railing and fix the cistern, as well as keep track of the ships passing by and maintaining the clockworks and stoking the boiler for the steam foghorn.”

  “Sounds like somebody’s been reading the logs,” I said.

  “I have, you’re right. They’re fascinating. And it’s interesting to see how the comments shift as the keeper changes. Sometimes it was the head keeper, other times an assistant or the keeper’s wife.”

  “Trish told me a woman named Ida Prescott Vigilance took over for her husband after he died, in 1905. She served another ten years.”

  “She was out there all alone?” asked Caleb.

  I nodded. “I haven’t found a picture of her, but I think this may have been her son,” I said, bringing out the photo that had fallen over when I was in the attic. The boy stared out of the little oval opening, younger than when I had seen him on the shore, but his expression was just as grave as when he had pointed up to the tower right before Thorn fell down the stairs.

  “Take the photo out of the frame and look at the back,” Landon suggested. “Sometimes names and dates are written there.”

  “Good idea.” I carefully laid the frame facedown on the tablecloth, undid the delicate metal latches, and removed the photo.

  On the back, in a slanted, flowery scroll, was written: Franklin Prescott Vigilance, age three. 1903.

  “Who’s that?” Luz asked, turning over the photo and pointing to a figure that had been hidden by the oval mat within the rectangular frame.

  It was the image of a woman, who was holding the little boy in her lap.

  The photo of the child—the portion of the sepia-toned photograph that had been exposed to light—had faded slightly, making the rest of the picture seem dark and mysterious. The woman’s image was slightly blurred, but she had big eyes and high cheekbones, and her long hair was piled on her head in a corona. I was almost positive it was the woman who had jumped from the balcony, the same woman I’d seen in the Keeper’s House attic. And though it was hard to tell given the dark sepia tones, she appeared to have a black eye.

  “That’s weird,” Stephen said. “Why would she be covered up?”

  “I don’t think it was personal. I read about this when I was researching early photography.” Several months ago I had done a renovation on a grand home in Pacific Heights where mysterious old photos kept showing up. That was also where I had almost fallen—actually, had nearly been pushed—off the roof. “In the early days of photography, it was hard to get a good image of a child because the exposure time was very long, and kids squirm too much. So they’d put them in their mother’s—or nanny’s—arms hoping to keep them still. When the photo was framed, the woman was hidden by the mat so it looked like it was a portrait of just the child.”

  “Still. Her image behind him like that looks sort of . . . ghostly, doesn’t it?” Luz said.

  “I have to agree with you there,” I said.

  “That’s nothing,” said Stan as he wheeled into the dining room. Apparently he and my father had resolved their movie wrangling; I smelled a delicious aroma and heard popcorn starting to pop in the kitchen. Dad made popcorn the old-fashioned way: in a big copper-bottomed pot with vegetable oil.

  “Mel,” Stan continued. “That looks to me like a death portrait.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “A what?” demanded Luz.

  “Maybe it was a southern thing . . . ? But my mama inherited all her family’s papers, among which was the old family death album,” explained Stan. “It sat on a shelf right alongside the family Bible. When I was a kid I found it morbidly fascinating. The album includes photographs of family members who had died without having had a photograph taken, usually infants and children. So they took a picture before the person was buried.”

  “They took a picture of a dead person?” Caleb asked, shaking his head. “And you say my generation is twisted.”

  “I’m with you, Caleb,” said Luz.

  “Sometimes you’ll see photographs of an entire family, and most of them are a little blurry because it was hard to hold absolutely still for the length of time needed to produce an image,” Stan continued, “But one person is crystal clear, because she or he wasn’t alive and thus wasn’t moving. The practice was particularly prevalent with babies that passed away.”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “They’d take a picture of their dead baby?”

  “I guess losing a child’s about the worst thing that could happen to a parent,” Stan said. “If they wanted a photograph of their baby, this was their only chance.”

  We were all silent for a moment, peering at the little boy’s face.

  “His eyes are open,” Luz pointed out.

  “Photographers sometimes painted the eyes in,” said Stan.

  We gaped at Stan.

  “I’m just repeating what I was told,” said Stan with a chuckle. “Some of the photographers were talented artists. It’s not like they were painting in googly eyes or anything. It was very subtle.”

  “He looks like he’s alive, though, doesn’t he?” I said, gazing at the boy.

  “He does,” said Luz. “I’m sure he must be alive.”

  Except that I had seen his little ghost, in a pirate’s costume, on the rocky shore of Lighthouse Island. But . . . the boy I had seen looked a little older, about five, not three.

  “Hey, look at this,” said Caleb, pointing to the lines in a keeper’s log. “It’s the same writing.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the writing in the logs when this woman Ida was the keeper. Now look at the handwriting on the back of the photo. Now check out the writing on the treasure map. See? It’s the same.”

  We perused the splayed-open logbook, the treasure map, and the photo he lined up on the dining room table, like an exhibit in a museum. Old-fashioned script in the logs shared many common attributes, since those fortunate enough to be literate were usually taught handwriting in school under the stern guidance of their teachers. Still, there we
re discernible differences in handwriting from one keeper to the next, and often between men and women. Caleb was right: The handwriting on the back of the boy’s photo seemed to match Ida Prescott Vigilance’s entries in the keeper’s logs, and both were similar to the treasure maps.

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “I have something else: I discovered a copy of Treasure Island in the attic of the lighthouse residence, with an inscription written to Franklin on his fifth birthday. So at least that’s proof that this couldn’t have been a death portrait.”

  I retrieved the book and opened it up to the page with the inscription from Mama to Franklin, her “little pirate.”

  “Yeah, see? Look how slanty it is, and the way she makes that loop on the ‘F,’” continued Caleb. “Look at the way she makes little loops—here, and here. See that? Kind of . . . feminine, I guess. That’s what bothered me about the map, it looked too pretty.”

  “I think you’re right, Caleb,” said Dad, joining us with a huge bowl of popcorn, bathed in butter and salt. “It does look like it was written by the same person.”

  “Same hand created both,” Landon nodded. “Well done, Caleb.”

  “You got all this from Muppet Treasure Island?” I asked Caleb, impressed.

  “Like you said,” he said with an embarrassed but pleased smile. “It’s a good movie.”

  “So here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I said. “Why would Ida Vigilance, the widowed lighthouse keeper, draw multiple treasure maps?”

  “If I may be so bold,” Landon said. “The question is, why did she draw even one?”

  • • •

  We stayed up late watching Vertigo on Dad’s huge TV, eating handfuls of fresh buttery popcorn that none of us needed considering the feast we’d enjoyed just an hour before. “Never Go to Bed Hungry,” was the Turner Clan’s unofficial motto.

  When we got to the part where Jimmy Stewart was running up the tower steps, I turned away.

  “Déjà vu, Mel?” Luz asked quietly.

  “Not exactly.” I grimaced. “It’s just plain old vertigo, nothing like what I experienced at the John Hudson Thomas house.”

  Landon put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze.

  “What’s all this about a John Hudson Thomas house?” asked Dad.

  Caleb, frustrated, paused the movie and gave us A Look. “I thought you guys wanted to watch this old movie, and now you’re all talking.”

  “Sorry, never mind,” I said, chastened.

  “The movie will wait, son, that’s what the remote is for,” said Dad, not at all chastened. “Not to mention the fact that we can watch it anytime. When I was your age we had to get up off our heinies just to change the channel, and if you didn’t see it when it was broadcast, then you missed it altogether.”

  “Were televisions made of stone back then?” Caleb teased.

  “Just like in The Flintstones,” Dad said. “Smart-alecky kid.”

  Caleb smiled and checked his phone.

  “Anyway, what is it about a John Hudson Thomas house that’s got you all hot and bothered?” Dad asked me.

  “How did you hear about that?” I asked.

  “Me. I blabbed.” Luz raised her hand. “You should have told me it was a big ol’ secret if you didn’t want me to mention it.”

  I sighed and gave in to the inevitable.

  “It’s a house I toured the other day in the Rose Garden neighborhood,” I said. “Not far from Grand Lake Theatre.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “A big stucco place in the late Arts and Crafts style. Lots of beautiful wood detailing, soaring beamed ceilings, that sort of thing.”

  Dad frowned. “Big yard, couple of outbuildings? Kind of a strange orientation—not quite facing the street, but not quite facing away, either?”

  I stared at him. “You know the house?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Have I ever been there?” I asked.

  “How would I know?”

  “Did you do some work on the place, maybe take me there as a kid, or something?”

  Dad shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Well, then . . . how do you know it?”

  “Your mother used to live there.”

  “What? When did Mom live there?”

  “When she was a kid, oh, about five or six years old. Her grandparents, your great-grandparents, lived there.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Lots you don’t know, pumpkin.”

  “I knew Mom grew up in Oakland, but I thought it was in the Trestle Glen neighborhood.”

  Dad nodded. “That’s where your Mom’s parents lived, and where she grew up. But your mother’s grandparents lived in a big old house built by John Hudson Thomas on a hill between the Rose Garden and the theater.” Dad took a bite of popcorn and chewed vigorously. “When your Mom and I were first married she took me by there, just to look at it from the curb. I remember because I was embarrassed that I had never heard of John Hudson Thomas. Beautiful place, though I’m sorry to say that it had been a little neglected.”

  “You should see it now. No heat, no hot water, water in the basement, lots of neglect, and given its hillside location, in need of an earthquake retrofit. But on the positive side . . .”

  “Original woodwork intact?” Dad asked.

  “Needs a cleaning but is otherwise gorgeous. Thankfully, none was even painted over. The bathrooms and kitchen, though, were remodeled in the seventies.”

  He cringed. “A full Brady?”

  “A full Brady” was Turner Construction shorthand for design choices reminiscent of the 1970s television series The Brady Bunch, which highlighted harvest gold and avocado green color schemes, with burnt orange accents.

  “Including burlap on the walls in one half bath,” I said. “That part was my favorite.”

  “Groovy,” Stan said with a wink.

  “So Mel unwittingly toured a house that belonged to her great-grandparents, where her mother once lived?” Luz asked, seeking clarification.

  “Apparently so,” I said. “I must have gone there with Mom when I was a kid, and that’s why I knew where everything was, like where they kept the extra blankets . . .”

  Dad shook his head. “Not likely.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Your mother loved that house, and always hoped to buy it. After we drove by there that one time, she told me it broke her heart knowing that ‘strangers’ were living there, and she refused to go back. The house had a very special emotional pull for her.”

  What Dad said made sense. Houses were imbued with their own unique energy and history, and old houses in particular were capable of affecting people in a profound way.

  Luz nudged me. “Go visit it again, Mel. You know you want to, and I think maybe you need to.”

  “I don’t know . . .” I looked at Dad, Caleb, Landon, Stan, Stephen—five men whom I loved and who loved me in return—all nodding in agreement with Luz’s suggestion. Luz raised an eyebrow, in her patented don’t even try to argue, you know I’m right way.

  I called Brittany and made an appointment to tour the house again tomorrow.

  Phone call over, silence reigned.

  “More Vertigo?” Caleb asked. “Otherwise I’m putting on Muppet Treasure Island.”

  “Vertigo,” Dad said.

  “Vertigo,” Landon confirmed.

  “I don’t know . . . ,” Stephen said. “Muppet Treasure Island is sounding better all the time.”

  “Stephen has a point,” Stan said.

  “As chief cook and bottle washer of this here establishment, I have decided that it’s up to the ladies,” Dad ruled.

  “Vertigo,” Luz and I said in unison. And we turned the movie back on.

  Everyone had a good time yellin
g at the movie’s twists and turns, and teasing me about my own acrophobia. As the credits rolled, Caleb lobbed a piece of popcorn at Landon.

  I smiled. It wasn’t a relationship yet, but it was a start.

  Landon looked slightly astonished as he picked the puffy kernel out of his hair and took a moment to study it. Then he murmured, “It is on, mate.”

  And he threw a handful of popcorn at Caleb, who dove off the couch, laughing as most of the kernels rained down on Dad. Dad yelled, and threw a piece at Caleb.

  Rather than be reduced to collateral damage between the two combatants, the rest of us joined in an all-out popcorn fight.

  Including Dog, who bounced around and happily cleaned up the mess.

  • • •

  Early the next morning, Landon told me, “I wish you’d let me come with you.”

  “I know you do. But here’s the thing: You can’t possibly stay with me twenty-four/seven, Landon. We’ve both got work to do. I appreciated you coming the other day, when things were still feeling a little . . . fraught. But this is different. Olivier’s going to meet me at the docks, and the jobsite is full of workers. And Buzz and Krauss are on the island full-time these days; they’ve been doing hourly rounds. I’ll be well protected.”

  “I’ll be there, too,” said Stephen, holding up his hand, which sported a multitude of Looney Tunes Band-Aids. They were the only ones I could find in the bathroom and dated from when Caleb was a child. They didn’t exactly make Stephen look like a badass capable of taking on a murderer.

  “You see?” I said. “Stephen will be there, as well.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And Caleb, too.” Caleb’s school was closed today for a teachers’ conference. I had asked him if he wanted to come out to the island, fully expecting him to decline in favor of sleeping in, but to my surprise—and delight—he said yes. “Do you honestly think I’d let Caleb come out to the island if I thought there was any danger?”