The Northern Reach

by W. S. Winslow

  * * *

  Father Gideon Morrill is overdue for a call on Albert Edgecomb but can find any number of excuses for not going. He is considering the possibilities when the man appears at the front door of the rectory, arms full of his garden. “Hand of God,” Morrill murmurs.

  “I was just thinking about you, Albert. You must be heaven-sent,” he says too loudly, and invites his visitor into the kitchen for a glass of iced tea.

  Albert wipes his feet three times on the welcome mat. The priest’s house has always been ghost-free, but you can never be too careful. He sets his offering on the counter and sits.

  The priest says, “Thank you so much. You’re always so generous with your harvest.”

  Albert smiles and sips his tea. He wishes the drink were sweeter but is afraid it might be extravagant to ask for more sugar.

  Morrill asks how things are going on the farm.

  “Could use a little more rain,” Albert says, then talks at length about his garden: which vegetables are ripe, what looks good this year, and when he thinks the blueberries will be ready for raking.

  Father Morrill smiles and nods, but he’s only half listening. He’s wondering how to broach the subject of Albert’s mental state. One time, he asked Doc Norden if he thought Albert might be delusional, but the doctor dismissed the possibility. “Obsessive-compulsive, sure,” he said. “And he’s not exactly the brightest light on the Christmas tree, but crazy? I don’t think so.”

  After Albert finishes the crop report, Morrill asks, “Things okay with you? Any visitors lately?”

  “Ayuh,” says Albert. “Been keeping me up at night.”

  The priest notices the creases between Albert’s eyebrows look deeper than last time they spoke. He nods when he can’t find words to fill the silence.

  “I been wondering, Father, does God make ghosts, or are they the devil’s doing?”

  “God makes everything, Albert, good and bad, including the devil, so in a way it’s both, I guess.” Morrill is on shaky ground. His faith in God has never wavered, but the truth is, he has always had doubts about certain church teachings, such as the notion of tormented souls haunting the earth and demonic possession. Though he accepts the existence of Satan in a vague way, he’s never seriously considered the possibility of encountering him, or his minions, and prefers not to think about such things.

  Morrill knows there is no place for cafeteria Catholics in the clergy and reminds himself it will not help poor Albert to see doubt in his priest. “Do you think maybe it could be your mind playing tricks on you, Albert? From loneliness, perhaps, or sadness.”

  Albert taps the rim of his glass three times. “Maybe, but this morning my father showed up again.” He is talking into his lap. “I wish he’d go away.” He isn’t sure the priest believes him, but there’s no one else to tell. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Father, but you think you might come out to the house? Try and drive him off? He’d have to listen to you.” Albert’s cheeks are burning. He’s never asked anyone for help before. Mother always said don’t involve other people in your problems, keep your counsel. That’s why he doesn’t go to Confession, why he can’t take the Holy Communion.

  The last thing Gideon Morrill wants to do is cart himself out to the Edgecomb place for a midweek ghost hunt. He feels unequal to such a task, even if the possibility of finding anything evil is remote, but says of course he will, first thing the next morning, before he leads the elder ladies’ choir practice.

  * * *

  In his examining room, Doc Norden has determined that the mass underneath the bottom fold of Naina Tremont’s belly is a hardened accumulation of dead skin, grease, and dirt, probably years in the making, and not a fatty tumor as she feared. Her mother, she says, died from a fatty tumor, and she’s convinced they run in the family. The doctor suggests that more frequent baths, with a scrub brush, would be a good way to avoid such scares in the future and sends her on her way. Having opened the window and sprayed the room with Lysol, he washes his hands and splashes his face for good measure.

  Even though he is seventy-four years old and semiretired, many people in town still refer to him as young Doc Norden. He inherited his practice, and patients, from his father almost forty years ago, but days like this, he is less grateful for the windfall than he might be.

  His daughters, he thinks, were smart to become teachers and move downstate. They are lucky not to have to scrape filth from gelatinous flesh, lance plum-size boils, or relay a death sentence to someone twenty years their junior, as he has done today.

  Out front, the receptionist tells him his last appointment just canceled—a small mercy, so he closes the office early and returns to his desk. As he does at the end of every workday, the doctor traces his finger along Sarah’s smiling mouth in the photo of her taken ten years before on the dock of their place at Bell Lake, back when she still knew who he was.

  Today, he’ll get to the nursing home in time to feed her dinner while he tells her about his day. Once they’d have laughed about the fatty tumor and commiserated over the injustice of lives foreshortened while they sat on the screen porch sipping gimlets and listening to the loons on the lake. Today his wife will stare vacantly at him between spoonfuls of pureed beef stew and reluctant slurps of vanilla-flavored dietary supplement. Today he will speak to her as if she understands his words, and today he will fail, once again, to cover her face with a pillow and put an end to her suffering, as she always promised she would do for him.

  “Plenty worse things than death,” he mutters, not for the first time, and throws his lab coat into the hazmat bin.

  * * *

  At the rectory kitchen table, Father Morrill cuts the cards, then indicates the heap of damp vegetables on the counter with a tilt of his head. “Had a visit from Albert Edgecomb today,” he tells Doc Norden. Over the past two years, their Wednesday-night cribbage tournament has evolved from habit to ritual. The doctor brings crabmeat rolls and onion rings from the Dairy Bar take-out window; the priest, having divested himself of his collar, supplies the beer. They never drink more than two in an evening, the doctor because he’s driving and the priest because he’s a priest.

  “Albert still communing with the spirits?” Doc asks.

  “Says he’d like them to stop answering back,” says the younger man. “Asked me to go to the farm tomorrow and try to clear them out.” Morrill is trying to seem confident, like there’s nothing other than an aging, lonely dirt-farmer out there or that he drives away demons as a matter of course.

  “You talking about an exorcism?” Doc asks as if he were inquiring about Morrill’s plans to join the circus.

  “Not really. Houses don’t have souls, so it’s not an exorcism per se. A simple blessing’ll probably do. Kind of a placebo for Albert, you know? Of course, if he’s really having chaotic visitations, that’s another thing.…”

  After Albert left, the priest dug out some of his seminary textbooks to bone up on the litanies, invocations, and procedures for dismissing spirits and/or cleansing demons from homes. As he read, he recalled the subject being covered in his classes. At the time, he paid about as much attention to the lectures as he did the emergency evacuation pantomime on an airplane.

  “And here I was thinking I had the worst job in town,” Doc says.

  They play the hand and peg the score. The doctor wins in a skunk to take two out of three, leans back in his chair, and drains his glass. Morrill retrieves the second round, and Doc accepts the bottle, saying, “Last call,” though he knows otherwise.

  “Think you’ll find the devil out there on the East Point, Padre?” Doc asks.

  “Never know where he’ll turn up,” the priest says. It occurs to him that the doctor might actually believe in ghosts, and if so, he’s probably not the only member of the Church of Saint Paul the Bleeding Apostle who does. The priest doesn’t kid himself about such things. He’s a spiritual man, but he’s also a realist.

  “Whatever happened to Albert’s father?” Morril
l asks.

  “Speaking of the devil…” Doc Norden sighs. “Royal Edgecomb, he was a right nasty piece of work, awful handsome, though. Boozer, brawler, used to knock Albert and his mother around pretty good. Married Myra Moody kind of late in life, for around here, anyway. She must’ve been about thirty and he was probably ten years older. Story goes, Royal came home late one night, drunk as a lord, as per usual. Dead of winter. Parked right in the middle of the front yard. I guess he passed out after he got out of the truck. Sherriff found out he’d been in a fight in town earlier that night. Anyway, my father used to examine the bodies after he certified them, no M.E. back then, you know. Turned out Royal had a collapsed lung, loaded with cancer. Coughed up blood all over his truck and out in the yard, but it was the cold that killed him. He was stiff as a Popsicle by the time they found him next morning.”

  “Good Lord. How old was Albert?”

  “Fifteen, sixteen, maybe. Anyway, I don’t think anyone quite believed Albert and his mother never heard anything, or thought to look out. Then again, it wasn’t much of a loss, except maybe for the bartenders in Fairleigh, and the whores. Excuse me, Father.”

  “I’ve run across the term before. You think they just let him die?”

  “Couldn’t say. No one ever asked, really. Good riddance and all that,” Doc Norden says with a shrug, then drains his glass. “Funny thing, Myra died ten years later to the day. Heart attack, in her sleep. Never woke up. Albert found her, of course. Called me out to the farm. That woman was the least peaceful-looking corpse I ever saw.”

  Doc picks up a text from his buddy backing out of their Thursday-morning golf game, so he offers to go out to Albert’s place with the priest the next day, figures he should probably check Albert’s heart and blood pressure anyway. They decide to meet for coffee beforehand at the diner near the East Point Road.

  * * *

  When Doc gets home the house is dark, but he knows the glass and gin bottle are where he left them last night, on the lamp table next to his recliner, so he doesn’t bother with the lights. He kicks off his shoes, settles back in the chair, and stares out the picture window at the night sky, but owing to the full moon, he can’t see many stars. On the lake, the loons wail back and forth in a mournful call-and-response, their cries flowing in waves across the water, the sound softened and rounded by the contact. Sarah loved listening to them, said their three-tone calls were loonish for where ARE you.

  Across town, on his knees, Gideon Morrill begins with the Hail Mary and the Our Father. He considers asking for guidance in leading the dwindling, geriatric flock he inherited from Norman Barbizon and for help bolstering attendance at Mass; instead, he gets to his most pressing concern.

  “Lord, I ask You for clarity so that I may see the way back to the true faith that will armor me against the deceptions of the devil, wherever I find them. Give me strength and courage so that I may walk in the light of grace and be worthy of the challenges You set before me. I ask this in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  He genuflects but continues kneeling, worried that he hasn’t spent enough time in prayer but lacking anything more to say. Morrill stands and turns out the light to begin what he assumes will be another wakeful night, wanting desperately to sleep, to dream of archangels and sanctifying grace, but fearing he will again be forsaken.

  Out at the Edgecomb place, Albert’s mother sits by the front window, watching for lights on the road, as she does every night. Sometimes the others keep her company, but never Royal. She makes sure he stays outside where he belongs, with the creatures of the night. Lately he’s gotten bolder, saying ever more hateful things to Albert. She isn’t sorry for letting Royal die, even if it has cost her immortal soul; she’d do it again.

  Her regrets are all for Albert. Her son was always different, but the counting and tapping got much worse after Royal passed. She wishes she could have spared him the torment of knowing his father suffered like he did and the guilt he feels for it.

  Tonight Myra vows to make things right; she’ll stay put when she sees the headlights. She won’t make any noise or wake Albert. Tonight he won’t hear her rummaging in the kitchen or see her standing over Royal. She will not force him to turn his back on his dying father; for once, she will make sure her son sleeps through the whole thing.

  But this night, like every other, Myra Moody Edgecomb is compelled to get up from her chair, to search the kitchen cabinet for a weapon, to hold it over her lawfully wedded husband even as he labors for breath and shakes with cold, and finally to leave him outside to die. Now as then, she understands she cannot save Royal from his darkness, cannot save his soul any more than she can save her own. But she can end this violence, this despair. She can save her son.

  * * *

  Two A.M. Albert hears the usual commotion, but tonight, instead of hollering for silence, he gets out of bed. He is exhausted, desperate for sleep, and blind with rage at being denied. Halfway down the stairs, his right shoulder brushes the wall, but tonight, like that night so many years ago, he doesn’t stop or count to three or turn around.

  “Mother?” Albert calls. When he sees nothing, feels nothing of her presence, he shouts again, more sternly this time.

  In the kitchen, the cabinet door hangs open. Before bed, he checked it three times to be sure it was latched tight. He decides to nail it shut after breakfast.

  Albert walks back to the front room and peers out the window. He remembers doing the same thing that horrible winter night. Forty-six years ago it was.

  Just like before, he sees his mother in the yard and runs out the front door, hears Myra’s voice, harsh and cold. “You will never hurt us again, Royal Edgecomb.”

  Tonight the air is warm and still, but in the moonlight Albert can see it all: the snow, his mother, rolling pin in hand, leaning into the truck, pocketing the keys, leaving the door open and the dome light on, then striding toward the house. She tells Albert to come inside, but just like before he runs to his father. On the ground, Royal is coughing up blood, the snow around him speckled red.

  Now Mother is shouting at Albert, calling him back to the house, but this time Albert will not turn around. He doesn’t have to look back to know Uncle Hartwell is peering at him through the attic window or that pinafore girl is watching from his bedroom. He can feel them around him, and the others, too.

  Albert looks down at the spot where his father lay that night. He sees Royal’s shivering body splayed next to what’s left of the rat he smashed earlier but couldn’t bring himself to bury. For once Royal is silent, unthreatening. Albert says, “I’m sorry. I should never’ve left you out here.”

  He begins to cry, standing in the place where his father died alone, slowly, in freezing agony. “I could at least’ve made it quick,” Albert whispers.

  At that moment a jolt, jagged as lightning, hot and cold at the same time, passes straight through Albert and brings him to his knees. After the shock comes fluttering warmth, like a blood bloom, spreading up from his belly to his chest and down his arms to his fingertips. It is pleasure so intense it is nearly pain, and though Albert is frightened, he gives himself over to it, not knowing whether he wants the feeling to stop or go on and on.

  From high above, the night sky reaches down to collect Albert’s last breath as the white moon paints all that lies beneath in black and blue, haze and shadow. The silence thrums, absolute, and Albert’s last pump of blood dissolves into the endless vibration of forever.

  * * *

  Just before five A.M. a clatter of crows wakes Father Morrill from the callous, fitful sleep that has been toying with him for the past hour. He wipes the crust from his eyes, briefly considers rolling over, forces himself out of bed and into the shower. He has work to do—God’s work—and whether or not he is equal to the task, he will do it.

  In the house by the lake, Doc Norden comes to in his recliner, grasping for the ghostly wisps of his dream about Sarah. He listens for the loons, but the lake is silent. R
emembering that he offered to go out to the Edgecomb place with Gideon Morrill, he groans. The priest, he reminds himself, has offered plenty of moral support since Sarah got sick, so Doc figures he owes him. Besides, the guy is the most god-awful cribbage player he’s ever met, and the doctor enjoys schooling him every week.

  Out on the East Point Road, Albert Edgecomb rises. The tide is at rest, neither coming nor going beneath a bank of summer fog that hovers so dense and low on the reach, only the mountaintops are visible on the far shore, disembodied peaks floating on a cloud sea. Above the fog, the sky is streaked with purple slowly fading to pink. Albert drifts across the lawn to the front door and passes through. He is home.

  Above the Edgecomb farm the red-tail soars, scanning the ground for prey. When she spies movement in the garden, she tucks her wings and dives, capturing a young chipmunk in her talons, then flapping skyward. It is dangerous to be so near the ground, but she is safe now. She tightens her grip on the writhing creature and banks south toward the nest, back to her mate and their greedy hatchlings. There she makes quick work of the chipmunk. The creature suffers only a moment, and it is over.

  REQUIEM (FOR THE UNBURIED)

  SUZANNE BAINES

  The ladybugs are all dead, red pebbles scattered everywhere: the floor, the windowsills, the kitchen counter. They crunch when I step on them. Good luck, that’s what Maman always said they were, but now as I sweep them into a pile, I wonder whether being dead makes them bad luck, or no luck. Doesn’t really matter, I guess, but still I feel compelled to bury them. I worry they’ll haunt me if I don’t.

  Behind the cottage, the black earth is corpse-cold under tender blades of newborn spring grass. With only the chittering red squirrels to bear witness, I sprinkle the bugs over the hole I dug and replace the patch of crabgrass on top. From scraps of high school Latin and memories of the occasional funeral, I try to cobble together a prayer for the dead. Requiem in pace? Requiesce? “Rest in peace,” I say instead.