In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  “I think it’s going to look awesome,” he said.

  Almost immediately they were reminiscing, people they had known in Brockton—Ford had heard their old landlord passed away—and laughing about the late-night card games. Phillip downed two beers in ten minutes and suggested cosmopolitans. He had brought his own martini shaker—stainless steel and shaped like a penguin—and a bottle of vodka. He asked Barry to go down to the store at the bottom of the hill for the triple sec, lime juice, and cranberry juice, and Ford jumped right up and offered to give him a ride.

  “I can point out a few good fishing spots for you, on the way back,” Ford said. “We can take a detour. You still fish?”

  Barry pointed at Phillip. “When this one will let me.”

  Ford took two beers for the ride, and they were still chatting as they set off out the door. Phillip looked at Diana as soon as they were gone. No baritone, no theatrics.

  “Is it any better?” he asked.

  Diana hesitated. “How do you know it had gone bad?”

  “Well, it didn’t seem that good to begin with,” he said, “not from pretty early on. And then running off usually doesn’t make things better. And that’s basically what you did, right?”

  “Mum drove me away. I would have stayed.”

  “I’ve told her that.” He gulped his beer.

  “You did?”

  “Absolutely.” He giggled. “In no uncertain terms. Don’t worry, she didn’t listen. I don’t believe she even pretended to hear.”

  “She was probably overmedicated.”

  “Probably. I told her it didn’t matter what he said about Stephen, either. That she needed to get over that, to let it go.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Stephen,” Diana said.

  “He’s changed.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “He’s still your brother.”

  “No,” she said. “He’s not.”

  Phillip just stared at her a moment, nodded.

  Diana took a breath, composing herself. She didn’t want to start crying again. Not with Phillip just arriving. That would do no one any good. “Anyway, it is better,” she said. “Ford’s trying, I think, and at this point that’s about all I can ask for.”

  “He does seem like a different guy. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him that welcoming.”

  “Well, Sam and I did almost leave. It came very close. And I think that really shook him up a little. Maybe got through to him. I don’t think he ever believed I really would.”

  “And why didn’t you?”

  “Well, I married him, you know? And I take my vows seriously. For better or for worse—I think it hit the point where I figured it could only get better. At least, it couldn’t get worse. And he loves Sam. Maybe not me, maybe not all the time, but he loves Sam. The problem is, I really don’t know how much I love him, anymore.”

  “Oh boy.” Phillip reached for the wine bottle in the middle of the table, filled her glass and pushed it toward her. “Drink.”

  “I don’t need to drink. That’s not going to help anything.”

  “It’s not going to hurt either.”

  Diana sipped, and then Phillip held his beer mug up for a toast.

  “To the old days,” he said, “before you and Ma hated each other.” But then before he clicked her glass, he cocked his head, as if listening to something somewhere else in the house, or perhaps the car pulling into the driveway. But Diana couldn’t hear the car, just Samantha, upstairs.

  Phillip laughed a bit. “Who is she talking to?”

  Diana took a deep breath. “Cassie,” she said.

  It was after dinner and several drinks—and a few stories from Diana about the things that had happened in the house—that Barry had come up with the idea to run the séance. Diana tried to make light of it, but she felt something stiffen inside of her as soon it was suggested; it wasn’t something she wanted to test, but Barry kept coming back to it. Ford had been quiet throughout most of the talk regarding the house. He hadn’t been drinking the cosmopolitans with them, but he had been drinking the vodka. Diluted with a little cranberry juice, Ford stirred the drink with the tip of his finger while talking to Barry but watching Diana and Phillip. He wasn’t looking directly at them, but Diana could tell he was watching—he always was whenever she got together with someone from her family, always listening, always on guard.

  But he still had been in good form. Making jokes about the old man down the road who spied on their house with binoculars—watching Diana in the summer when she was out back in her bikini—and talking to Barry about the Red Sox, and darts, challenging him to a game before the night was through. Diana had been trying to keep tabs on how much he was drinking, but with her back turned to the sink, it wasn’t easy, and each time she turned, his glass was at the same level. The change hadn’t come over him yet, the automatic pilot settling into his eyes, nobody home, and that was good. He hadn’t drunk that much since he promised to quit—not nearly as much as he had been drinking before—but she knew he snuck a few shots here and there. Or the occasional six-pack. As long as it was just a few, she could look the other way. She could tolerate a few, and if that kept him happy, it was worthwhile. He had also been talking to Barry about the roof over the porch. Asking Barry if he could help him fix it. A few of the beams were rotted—probably the originals—and needed to be replaced. Maybe in the summer. That would be great if they could come down in the summer, he said, they could stay the whole week. The island was beautiful in the summer, and he would show them all the best spots.

  Barry changed the subject—because he worked construction, people were always trying to get free jobs out of him, Diana knew. People figured because that was what he did, he liked to spend his free time doing it also, enjoying it perpetually.

  “So what about this ghost?” Barry said again now.

  “I didn’t say it was a ghost,” Diana said. She had gotten up to do the dishes, Phillip giving her a hand.

  “Sounds like one to me,” Barry said, smiling. “And if you have a ghost, I want to see it.”

  “Well, I do not.” Diana pulled a towel from the stove handle to dry off the pasta pot. “And besides, that’s not what it is.”

  Phillip’s face was flushed from the vodka and he had broken a sweat again on his forehead. “Then who is Sam talking to upstairs?” he asked Diana quietly.

  “I told you,” Diana said. “Cassie. It’s her imaginary friend. And shhh … Don’t say it too loud. I don’t want her to hear. She might still be awake.”

  Ford had still been silent on the subject, but he suddenly looked unsettled, and it was rare for Ford to show anything like that. She thought of the cellar, his refusal to go down there.

  “But you yourself said you’ve heard things,” Barry said to Diana, his eyes alight.

  “I said I’ve thought I’ve heard things,” Diana said. “It’s an old house, you can hear a lot of things. Old houses make noises.” She sipped her wine. She was beginning to feel light-headed. She thought of the man she had seen in the campground, and the man in the hotel. The carousel. Nothing, she reminded herself. Stress. Imagination. Nothing. Just like the noises. The singing upstairs. Nothing. “They settle,” she said. “They make noises.”

  Phillip lowered his chin. “But they don’t make voices.”

  Ford looked into his glass, finished his drink. His pallor was changing, going gray. Some people turned pink, red, when they drank, but Ford turned gray. His soul draining out of him, Diana thought. Please don’t let his soul drain out of him. Not now, not tonight. She wondered what he was thinking. His threats about what he would do if she left just a few months before? Maybe. And if he was thinking that way, if it started to bother him, embarrass him? It might not be good.

  “Well, I want to talk to the ghost,” Barry said. “Let’s do this. We’ll ask a question, and then we’ll pick a person to recite the alphabet, slowly, and then we’ll ask the spirit to make a noise, knock or somethin
g, when the person reciting the alphabet gets to the letter he needs to make a word.”

  “She,” Diana said.

  “What?” said Barry.

  “The ghost,” Diana said. “If it does exist, and I’m not saying it does—it’s a she. And I don’t want to do this.”

  Ford stared over at her. His eyes empty. She couldn’t read him. If he was frightened, lost, or maybe not even interested. It was impossible to read him when his eyes got like that. Diana looked at the clock. Almost eleven. How did it get to be almost eleven? He had been drinking steadily, along with Phillip, for almost eight hours. It was no wonder the change was coming on.

  Ford wet his lips a little. “What’s the big deal?” he said at last. “It will be fun.”

  Diana checked upstairs on Samantha. Sound asleep, sitting in her red Elmo chair, her head tilted, resting on her shoulder. Diana put her in her pajamas, and slipped her into bed, the covers up to her chin. Then she kissed her forehead and turned on her Winnie the Pooh nightlight. Pooh, constructed like a paper lantern with a small light inside.

  Downstairs, Phillip had lit the candles in the dining room, and they were all sitting around the table. It seemed more appropriate to have it in the dining room. The room was darker, older, some of the furnishings fifty years old or more. Diana still wasn’t crazy about the idea. She didn’t think anything would really happen. But what if it did? From what she could tell, so far the ghost, if there really was a ghost, hadn’t been hostile, but what if they had disturbed her. Invited others in? She had read about what happened sometimes when you invited others in.

  “I’m not sure we should do this,” she said, pulling up a seat next to Ford.

  “Come on,” Barry said. “It’s just for fun. We’ll give it ten minutes, and then if we don’t get anything, we’ll call it quits.”

  “Promise?” Diana said.

  “I promise.”

  “He’s good for his word. One thing about Barrr …” Phillip said, rolling the name off his tongue, “he’s always good for his word.”

  Ford lit a cigarette, let the first exhale of smoke out through closed lips. It looked blue in the low light of the room. “You never know,” he said. “We could get two thousand of them.”

  “Two thousand?” said Phillip.

  Ford shrugged. “We’ve got a cemetery right out back.”

  Phillip cringed. “That’s right. I forgot about that. Let’s not do this.”

  “Come on.” Barry lit his own cigarette. “We’re doing it.” He reached over and took Diana’s free hand, fingers rough, callused. Diana was still holding Ford’s, and with his other, Ford took Phillip’s.

  “No getting fresh,” he said.

  “We all need to shut our eyes,” Barry said. “What’s the spirit’s name again?”

  Elizabeth, Diana thought, but she couldn’t say that. Not now. Maybe not ever. “I have no idea,” she said.

  “Well, what did you say Samantha calls her?” Barry asked.

  “Cassie,” Diana said, and she was glad for the moment that she couldn’t see Ford. She had never told him about Samantha talking to anyone. She wasn’t sure how he would take it, especially secondhand. Especially considering what had happened in the basement. And she was worried that he might blame the little girl. Forbid her from playing. And what if it were her imagination? How would you forbid a small child from using their imagination?

  “Cassie?” Ford said now. “That’s what she used to call that little pink dinosaur she plays with. The one I bought her the Christmas before last.”

  “That’s what she calls her invisible friend, too,” Diana said quietly.

  “I think she’s having you on, Diana,” he said. “She’s talking to her stuffed dinosaur.”

  “Let’s make another drink,” said Phillip.

  Barry let go of Diana’s hand, and she heard him take a drag off his cigarette. Exhale. “Five minutes,” he said. “Just give it five minutes, and if we get nothing we’ll stop. Cassie,” he said. “We’re looking for someone named Cassie. Is there anyone here? If there is, can you knock so that we know you’re here. Twice for yes, once for no. Anybody? This is a very old house, there must be somebody here.”

  “Yeah,” said Ford. “Built in 1871.”

  “Anybody?” Barry said. “Once for no, twice for yes.”

  “You’re going to confuse her,” said Ford.

  “We don’t mean you any harm,” Barry said. “We just want to talk to you. Anybody.”

  Diana felt fingers, lightly racing up her arm. She swatted out at Barry. “Stop it!”

  “Stop what?”

  “Tickling me.”

  “I didn’t touch you.”

  She opened her eyes, looked at Ford. Poker face. He reached down, his eyes still shut, and dragged again on the cigarette, seeping the smoke out through tight lips. Then again he took Phillip’s hand.

  “Anybody?” Barry asked. “Is there anybody out there?”

  Diana felt it again on her arms, watched as the hairs stood on end. But it wasn’t fingers, it was a chill. A draft. The entire room felt suddenly cold.

  “Is there anyone in this house, besides us?” said Barry.

  “Yeah,” said Ford, “Sam’s upstairs.”

  “Anybody?” Barry asked again, and the temperature felt to drop just a little bit more. A cold, stale air. Empty.

  Diana’s heart began to race—we shouldn’t be doing this, she thought, it wasn’t good to be doing this—and Barry gripped her hand tighter.

  “Anyone at all?” he asked.

  There was a small sound. Faint. A rapping against wood. Once, then twice. Diana jumped. Opened her eyes. Phillip had opened his eyes, too, but Ford and Barry had not. Ford just dragged on his cigarette again, showing no expression.

  “Can you tell us who you are?” Barry asked.

  One knock, now slightly louder.

  “Who did that?” Phillip said. “Somebody did that.”

  “I’m going to start to recite the alphabet,” Barry said, “and when I get to the first letter of your name, knock once.” He smiled, looking like he was enjoying this. “ABCDEFGHIJKL—”

  One knock.

  Diana let go of his hand. “Okay, enough. You guys get to go home, but we have to live here.”

  “ABCDEFGHI—”

  A knock again, this one sounding closer. On or under the table.

  “L-I,” said Phillip. “Doesn’t sound like a Cassie to me.”

  Diana stood up quickly. “You guys can finish. I’m going to the kitchen to finish cleaning up.”

  Both Barry and Ford opened their eyes. Diana started away from the table, but had only moved two steps when the room went dark, the candle blown. Diana stopped short. She couldn’t see any of them, anything, and the temperature dropped again. Cold, colder. And then it was instantly frigid. Like stepping outside of a warm house in January. The cold was there for but a second and then began to dissipate.

  “What the hell?” somebody mumbled. Barry.

  “One of you did that,” Diana said. “And it’s not funny. I can’t see a thing.”

  Someone let a small cry, a gasp. Someone struck a match, and then Ford leaned over, relighting the candle. He used the rest of the match to light another cigarette, shaking it twice before dropping it in the ashtray.

  “Which one of you did it?” Diana asked.

  Phillip looked pale. He stared at Diana with his mouth open. “Nobody did it.” He raised his hand, the Boy Scout he once was, returning. “I swear to God. How could we make the temperature change like that?”

  Barry smiled, looked up toward the ceiling. “Did you do that?” He waited. “Do it again.”

  “That’s enough.” Diana went to the doorway, flicked on the light switch, turning up the dimmer on the chandelier above the table.

  Barry looked at her appealing with his eyes. “Come on … We were so close.”

  Phillip pushed back his chair. “I’m with her. I’m sorry, but I admit it—I’m a wuss. Th
at was enough for me.”

  Ford just rounded the cigarette head in the ashtray, staring at it as he did.

  Diana went to the kitchen and took two more pots off the stove and put them into the sink, squirted in some dish liquid, and then filled them with warm water so they could soak. She could hear Phillip, still in the dining room. His voice seemed far off, separate somehow, coming from a different house, and she heard Barry respond. She went to push the cork back into the bottle of wine, hoping they would all agree to call it a night, and then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Diana spun around to find herself alone in the kitchen, and as she did, the lights went out. Once again, complete darkness. Cold. A knock came then, but she couldn’t tell if it was on the wall, or the kitchen table. Or where. And then she heard whispering. No, not whispering. Just a voice, a woman’s voice, distant but clear.

  “Diana.”

  Diana felt her heart jump against the wall of her chest, her mouth suddenly metallic and dry. One of the men shouted something, and then she heard Samantha crying, immediately followed by footsteps running up the stairs. Ford? Phillip? Diana ran out through the back parlor, tripping on the hassock as she did, and bracing herself against the wall before turning up the stairs. Samantha was still crying. The cry of an infant, followed by her calling for Diana. One of the men called out to light a candle. Diana raced up the stairs and into Samantha’s room. She could hear Samantha sobbing. It was lighter in her room, the moon coming through the window, and there was a man in there with her.

  Ford.

  Crouched down before the bed and holding her in his arms. Quieting her.

  As soon as she saw Diana, Sam struggled to break free from Ford, but he held her tight. “Shh …” he said. “I got you. Daddy’s got you.”

  Ford struggled with her a little, but Sam still squirmed, pushed him off and then reached for Diana. Diana hurried over to her and pulled her into her arms.