The Tale of Halcyon Crane

by Webb, Wendy

  I sat down there, among my ancestors, feeling strangely at home. Thanks to Iris, I knew these people now. I had seen them all through her rich storytelling: Hannah, young and beautiful, when her children were born. Charles, toddling around as a baby, communing silently with animals, now lying only a few miles from where he grew up, having lived more than ninety years. My mother, whispering to her dead twin.

  All the Hills had lived on the island; this was where they were born, grew up, and died. And now here I was among them. I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was part of a large family. Yes, they were all dead, but they were my people, my history, my roots. Even seeing my own gravestone there—I don’t know, it felt as though ultimately I knew where I would rest. I was home.

  I stood up and looked around once more, knowing I’d return to tend these graves often. I might have stayed longer, but I knew it would be an unpleasant walk home in the cold rain.

  When I finally walked through my back door, I found Will in the kitchen, phone in his hand. He looked at me, stunned, and then said into the receiver: “Thanks, Jonah, but she just walked in. Sorry to have bothered you.” And then, to me: “Where in the hell have you been?”

  My smile faltered. Except for Richard, when had a man been worried about me? I pushed my dripping hair out of my face and said, “I went for a walk.”

  This was met with open-mouthed silence from Will. Finally, gesturing toward the window, he said, “In this?”

  The dogs had followed me inside the warm kitchen and were shaking their fur dry as I took off the sodden sweater I was wearing; nothing smells quite like wet wool or wet dog. “Not the smartest decision I’ve ever made, although it wasn’t raining when I left. I got caught in it a few miles from the house.”

  “I called everyone I could think of.” He was still standing with the phone in his hand. “Jonah, Henry, Mira, the grocery store. I even called the wine bar, wondering if you had ended up there. I couldn’t imagine where you had gone.” Then his arms were around me and I could feel his heart beating fast, like a bird’s. “I was so worried about you,” he murmured into my wet hair.

  Suddenly I was freezing. Something about coming into the warm kitchen made me acutely aware of how awfully cold I had been.

  “You’re shivering,” he said to me, pulling back from our embrace. “My God, your lips are blue. They’re actually blue.”

  He looked at me for a moment, and I could tell he was running through various scenarios of what to do. First he poured a brandy and handed it to me. It tasted hot and spicy on the way down, warming me from the inside. “Right,” he said then, leading me out of the kitchen. “Let’s get you upstairs and into the tub.”

  As he drew a bath, I peeled off my sodden clothes. They smelled of peat and rain and centuries-old dirt. Maybe I’d just throw them away. I left them in a heap on the bathroom floor, climbed into the steaming water, and submerged. I felt safe and protected there, with the sound of the water rushing in my ears.

  It wasn’t until later, when Will and I were back in the kitchen eating dinner, that he asked me where I had gone. “I know you’re a grown woman, but I was really worried when I got here and found you weren’t home,” he admitted. “After last night, I half expected to find you in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Or lying under the third-floor window.”

  He looked at me. “Well. That’s an interesting thing to say.”

  I twirled some noodles around my fork and considered how to continue the line of discussion I had just started. I hadn’t even worked it out in my own head.

  Will jumped into the silence. “Are you saying you think that Julie Sutton’s death thirty years ago is connected to what happened to me last night?”

  “I’m not sure what I think—about anything.”

  “Anything?” He poked me with his fork.

  I poked him back. “Okay, you I’m sure of.” I smiled. “Everything else is up in the air. But the thing is, whether they’re fabrications or embellishments or outright lies, Iris told me her cousin was pushed or somehow driven off the cliff—she died, by the way. And my grandmother, Amelia, had several suspicious falls when she was pregnant. She lost two babies, Will!”

  The ideas were jelling, becoming more real as I spoke them.

  “Then, thirty years ago, we have the death of a child here in the house from being pushed or thrown out of a window. And now, you are pushed—or simply fall—down the stairs. Either we’ve got an epidemic of clumsiness around here or something else is going on.”

  “What’s the something else?” he wanted to know.

  Even as I said this I felt like an idiot, but it had to be said. “A ghost who likes to push people to their deaths.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes, digesting, no doubt, the ridiculousness of the conversation we had been having. Then Will said, “Listen. You know how I feel about all this ghost business, but what would be the harm in calling a priest to come here?”

  “No harm at all,” I said. “A blessing on my new house. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

  More silence.

  “I was thinking of going at this another way,” I started. “Maybe we should get a medium.”

  Will raised his eyebrows, as he took a bite off his fork. “Seriously, Will, this is what these people do for a living—contacting the dead. Maybe we could find out if there’s a ghost here and, if so, who it is.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the difference between a priest exorcizing the house and a medium doing it?”

  Will considered this. “Aside from the authority behind the priest, not much, I guess. I’m still not sure this all doesn’t have some sort of reasonable explanation. But whatever you want to do, I’ll support you.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I want to get this ball rolling soon. Like tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “Whatever you want.”

  I stood up and began to nose around the kitchen. “Do mediums advertise in the phone book? Do I even have a phone book for the mainland?”

  “Don’t need one,” he said, smiling. “I know a medium. And so do you.”

  “If you tell me it’s you, I’ll hit you very hard.”

  Will laughed. “No, you dope. Not me. It’s Mira.”

  I stared at him, wondering if he was telling the truth. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He shook his head. “As I live and breathe. I don’t know if she’s on the level or not, but Mira bills herself as a—what does she call it?—a sensitive.” As he said the word, he elon-gated the syllables and raised his eyebrows in mock fear. I laughed.

  “It’s true. She has a little cottage business in tourist season doing tarot card readings and giving walking tours of haunted spots on the island. It’s quite popular, actually.

  People tend to get a sort of haunted-house vibe when they come to the island. Mira plays into that.”

  “But does she really have any ability at all—beyond the nose for a good business opportunity, I mean?”

  “That’s what I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve always thought she was sort of loopy. But at least she’d be a good place to start, if you want to go down that road.”

  We cleaned up the kitchen and headed upstairs. For now, we had other important things to attend to.

  · 28

  What does a girl wear for a séance: Jeans? A dress? Beads? In the end, I supposed the spirits wouldn’t care one way or the other, so I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and trotted downstairs to join Will in the living room, where he was waiting for me with wine and cheese and some other snacks.

  I had called Mira that morning, and after a bit of catching up about her recent trip to the mainland I just dove right in. “Listen, Mira,” I said. “I understand you are something of a—Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is, you’ve got the reputation for—”

  “Being a medium?” She interrupted me, laughing.

  I sighed. “Well, yes. I heard it from Will.
”

  “I see,” she said. “It’s true, actually. I do possess a certain sensitivity.” Her just saying the word made me stifle a laugh. “Why do you ask?”

  I took a deep breath. I was really going to say this out loud now. I blurted it all out in one quick stream. “I’m asking because I think I might have a ghost in this house and I’d like to find out for sure and, if so, get rid of it.”

  Mira didn’t say anything for a moment, and I was wondering if she was thinking I was as much of an idiot as I felt like, right then. But she wasn’t. She said, “You know, I’ve always felt a certain presence in that house. I would say there’s little doubt you’ve got a spirit or two floating around.”

  “Can you come over to check it out?” I asked her.

  “You bet I can. What time do you want me?”

  We decided that she would come for dinner that night, because I wanted Will at the house with me when whatever was going to happen happened.

  After I hung up, Will trotted off to work, giving me strict orders either to stay home or, if I needed to go out, to call him and he’d come by and get me with Belle. I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes when I heard a rattling at the back door. Iris.

  In all the excitement, I had forgotten she was coming back that day. Unlike the previous day, she began by taking the Murphy’s Oil Soap in one hand and a rag in the other and setting off to shine the woodwork.

  “You’ll hear your mother’s story over lunch,” she told me gruffly. Fine, I thought. I grabbed a book and retreated to the sunroom.

  Iris joined me there a couple of hours later, carrying a tray holding a bowl of leftover stew and a mug of steaming tea.

  “Iris,” I said, as I took a bite of the stew, “I hope you’re not off ended by what I’m about to say, but I’ve been wondering if the stories you’re telling me are the truth, or if they’re embellished accounts with threads of truth running through them.”

  A smile crept across Iris’s face. “It’s the boyfriend doing the wondering, I expect.”

  “Well . . .” Where was I to go from there?

  She nodded and closed her eyes and sat for a bit. “Do you not see them as I tell their stories?” she said, finally.

  “I do. I do see them.” She had a point. I hadn’t told this to Will for fear of how strange it would sound.

  “Then you know what I’m saying is true. You’re seeing it as it happened.” She looked at me deeply. Trying to discern what I believed?

  “Okay—well, good, then,” I said, awkwardly. “I just wanted to know.” What I really wanted was for her to stop staring at me and get on with today’s tale.

  “I was beginning to tell you of Madlyn’s gift,” she began, “her ability to capture bits and pieces of the souls of others through her photography. Have you heard that many ancient cultures—and some not so ancient ones—were convinced of the power of mirrors?”

  I nodded slowly. “I think so. It sounds familiar.”

  “Many cultures have believed that mirrors hold the power to predict the future, capture people’s souls, and send bad luck to whoever is unfortunate enough to break one.”

  That last one I had heard. “Seven years of bad luck.”

  “Exactly. Because mirrors capture and contain bits and pieces of a person’s soul. In other cultures, they believe mirrors are portals to the spirit world, allowing people and spirits to travel back and forth between the two planes.”

  “So?” I led her. “What does this have to do with my mother’s photography?”

  “Cameras, my dear, contain mirrors. And unlike the fleeting image reflected in a mirror, cameras capture images that remain.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ve heard that. Many Native Americans refused to be photographed. Crazy Horse never allowed a photo of himself to be taken, even on his deathbed.”

  Iris smiled like a teacher whose student has finally caught on. “Yes, child. And why?”

  “Because the camera would steal a bit of their soul.”

  “Exactly. They weren’t wrong. A camera does have the ability to capture the soul of its subject, just as a mirror does. But it needs to be in the right hands to do so. Your mother had such hands. It was her gift. Oh, she didn’t see it right away. Nobody did. But even from a young age, she was drawn to photography. She begged her parents for a camera for her birthday when she was, I believe, about five years old. Of course, Charles could never deny his daughter anything, so he got one for her, believing her interest to be a phase and he would be the one to end up using it.

  “But Madlyn was never without that camera. She took it everywhere. When your grandfather got the first set of pictures developed, he was amazed at their quality and clarity. He had expected to see childish snaps: people’s heads cut off, fuzzy landscapes. Instead, he found that his little daughter had taken beautiful, haunting portraits of himself, of Amelia, and of people who had visited the house.

  “Charles especially loved Maddie’s portraits of his animals, the horses in the barn and the dogs. He was astonished to find that they represented these creatures in a way that only Charles knew them.

  “As you might imagine, Madlyn never wanted to do anything else. In very short order after she graduated from high school, she was working for major magazines, hired on the strength of the photographs she had taken growing up. She was on her way.”

  “You’ve told me a lot about my mother’s talents and gifts, Iris, but not much about who she was as a person. I’d like to know that, too.”

  “Madlyn was a complicated girl,” Iris said. “She was at times a delight and at times a terror, not unlike many teenage girls today. She would sink into dark moods in which she would talk to no one except—when she thought nobody was listening—her twin. At those times, it was as though her twin’s spirit was attached to her, weighing her down. She continued having these dark moods her whole life, even after she met your father. Sadie never left her. But at other times, as I said, Madlyn was a complete delight. She was Charles’s daughter, all smiles and laughter and goodness. Soon enough, she met your father.”

  I smiled at the thought of my young parents. And then another thought struck me. “Iris, you never mentioned my mother being bothered by the triplets. Charles had animals to protect him; who protected my mother?”

  Iris nodded her head. “A very good question, Halcyon. Sadie, of course, was there to stand between the girls and your mother. But it was the camera, and Madlyn’s unique ability to capture souls, that really kept the girls at bay. They knew not to get too close. At least, it was that way when Madlyn was young. When she met your father and brought him into this house, things changed somewhat.

  “It was the summer of your mother’s twentieth year. She was already a photographer of some note, living in New York City and traveling all over the world, working for National Geographic and other magazines. But this particular summer, she came home to the island because Amelia was in ill health. It was cancer, but nobody knew it then. She had been growing weaker and weaker, and Charles, frantic and already, I believe, grieving, contacted Madlyn and asked her to come home.

  “She was a great solace to Amelia and Charles during this time, as you might expect. And they made the most of it, spending every day together, whether it was simply sitting and reading in the house or taking Amelia, who by now was confined to a wheelchair, out onto the cliff for picnics. It was as though they wanted to extract every bit of togetherness they could out of every moment Amelia had left.

  “She died in August of that year.” Iris sighed deeply. “Charles grieved for her every day of his life. He never got over losing her, although he did throw himself back into his practice. Tending animals gave him comfort during those first dark days.

  “Madlyn, meanwhile, was due back at her New York apartment and her high-powered life the following month, and she was contemplating what she was going to do with her father—take him to New York, perhaps?—when she met Noah Crane.”

  I smiled, curling my feet up under
me. I loved all of Iris’s stories, grim though they were, but now we were getting to the best ones.

  “Noah was working on the island in one of the hotels for the summer with a few of his friends from the mainland. Your mother met him one evening in a pub downtown. He was drawn to her immediately, of course, as everyone was. But the difference was, she was also drawn to him.

  “She knew immediately that she would never be going back to that New York apartment. And he knew he wasn’t going to take the teaching job waiting for him in the fall on the mainland. Within a few days of meeting each other, they had both decided to remain on the island and build a life together right here.

  “I can see you’d like to know a little about their courtship.” Iris eyed me. “They did all the usual things—dinners and dances and picnics and walks. But most of all, Noah and Madlyn talked. They were able to talk more deeply and intimately to each other than to anyone else.”

  It sounded familiar. It’s just how I felt with Will.

  Iris went on. “Your father asked about a job at the small local school here on the island. They happened to have an opening for a math teacher, which is what he was, and he didn’t have a moment’s hesitation in accepting the position. Madlyn, meanwhile, called all the editors at her various client magazines and informed them that her home base would now be Grand Manitou, not New York. She would still go on assignment as she always had.

  “Everything fell into place so neatly and nicely, Madlyn always suspected her dead mother had had a hand in it somehow. Of course, that was true. I know for certain that Amelia was whispering in Noah’s ear that night in the pub—Turn around, turn around now—when Madlyn was about to walk by. If she hadn’t done that, my dear, you may well have never been born.

  “She was also whispering Stay, stay on the island into their ears whenever they were together, planting that seed firmly and deeply. Yes, it was all Amelia’s doing that Noah and Madlyn got together and ended up settling down here. She did it all, of course, for her beloved Charles. She was terrified to think of him alone and knew how much he needed his daughter beside him.