“These marks were made across the world, by different primitive peoples, from Africa to Asia to the Americas and to Europe. Different peoples, separated by thousands of miles. These shapes are inherent in us. Universal. Do you see, Doctor?
“From these marks, comes all art, but also, writing must have come from these marks too. Eventually. Everything has come from these dark caves, from these innermost depths of the mind. Of the mind of the Earth, if you see what I mean.”
I didn’t. At least, I was starting not to follow Dexter’s thoughts, and I was overwhelmed by the feeling of conversing with someone immeasurably more intelligent than I am, of someone who was struggling to keep his words at a level I could understand.
“But why do these marks, these particular marks, the spirals, why do they frighten you?”
“It can be a frightening thing to free your mind as I have done, Doctor. But when you have…”
“What? What have you done?”
“It is not a question of what I have done. It is a question of what I have seen.”
“And what is that?”
And now Dexter took no trouble in ignoring my questions and taking things where he wanted them to go.
“Your wife is in the sea,” he said.
I said nothing. I stared at him in horror, as down the hall the sounds of the asylum at night washed into me.
“Isn’t she?”
Then, I understood.
Suppressing anger, I declared, “Verity told you that, I assume?”
“Verity!” he said. “She is something to be proud of, isn’t she? So intelligent! So pretty.”
“Answer my question, if you please,” I said.
“No,” he said. “She did not tell me.”
“Then, how do you know? You read about it perhaps. In the papers. You have a remarkably good memory, perhaps you put two and two together.”
“Perhaps,” said Dexter, in the most infuriating way. “Perhaps I did. Perhaps the sea told me.”
“The sea told you?” I asked, strangely happier that we were talking about matters of Dexter’s delusions again, and not Caroline.
“Do you know why they built this asylum here?” said Dexter, throwing me again.
“Tell me.”
“We are surrounded by water here. But for that spit of land to the west, we are an island. The sea surges all around us, the tides sucking and gnawing at our pebbles. And what powers the tides? The moon. The moon, and what powers us madmen? Us lunatics? The word itself tells you all you need to know.”
“There has never been proven any link between the phase of the moon and the behavior of the deranged mind. It is no more than common folklore, an old wives’ tale.”
“You think so?” said Dexter. “Nevertheless, here we are in this insane asylum, with the sea all around, and everyone and everything controlled by the pull of the moon. And down in that sea, Doctor, are dead things. Your wife is among them, but she is not the most powerful, or the oldest. These things are angry, they are vicious, and they want revenge upon us, the living. We should kill them, but they are dead, and that’s the trouble. Killing the dead is very hard to do.”
Now I was certainly very intrigued. I pressed Dexter for more.
“What are these things?” I asked.
“You would cry yourself to sleep every night if you knew,” he said. “I daren’t tell you. Did you not read about what that oyster dredger pulled out of the sound some years ago? No? It caused something of a stir around here. But maybe such fanciful talk never made it to the great and enlightened city.”
“You’re playing games with me now,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about and instead you want to scare me.”
But what scared me more was how Dexter then replied.
“No,” he said, and I could tell again he was being sincere. “I truly don’t.
“If you want to know more, you could read my poems. It’s all in there. There’s a poem I wrote. It’s called Poquatuck. You need read no more than that. In fact, you may like to know that the poem was the inspiration for the novel I’m writing. Once I had the poem done I knew there was more to say. Much more.”
I made a note of the title in my head.
“She is down there,” Dexter said.
“Stop saying that,” I said.
“She is down there. And she wants you. Or rather, she wants to destroy you now. Because you have wronged her.”
“I have?” I asked, growing angry, and despite the fact I knew I was being foolish, I could not stop myself. “What have I done?”
“You have offended her. You replaced her. You replaced her in your affections with the girl.”
“The girl?” I asked, my lip trembling. “What girl?”
“Verity, of course! You know perfectly well what girl…”
“How dare you?” I said, and I shouted, too loud. I heard the sound of keys turning in the lock at the end of the hall. I needed to leave his cell immediately or I would either be found, or have to spend the rest of the night there, and I no longer wished that to be the case.
“How dare you insult my daughter?” I said, as I slipped out of the door, and as I went, and closed it behind me, I heard Dexter say softly five more words that cut me through and through.
“But she isn’t, is she?”
Saturday, April 2
I have not had time to write for the space of a couple of days, nor have I seen Dexter since our midnight interview. There was much to be done yesterday in the women’s wards, and today I found Verity in such better spirits now that her school week is done, that I decided to make good on a promise to her to take her to the movies.
We rode back up the coast a way, where there is a modest but very fine movie theater that stands on the seafront. I was buying two tickets at the box office when I saw Verity reading something on the wall. I joined her and saw a neat iron plaque on which were the following words:
IN MEMORIAM
THIS PLAQUE REMEMBERS THE 20 LIVES LOST DURING THE HURRICANE OF 1922 DURING WHICH THE OLD THEATER WAS SWEPT TWO MILES OUT TO SEA. THE BODIES OF THE AUDIENCE OF 19 AND THE PROJECTIONIST WERE NEVER FOUND, NOR ANY TRACE OF THE OLD BUILDING. THE CURRENT THEATER WAS BUILT IN 1924.
“The whole place went out to sea?” asked Verity, openmouthed. Then she looked at the tickets in my hand.
“It’s hard to believe,” I said, “but I bet this new place is as strong as an ox.”
We went inside.
“I wonder what they were watching,” Verity said.
“What?”
“I wonder what picture they were showing when they went out to sea.”
“Verity—” I began. I stopped myself. There were things I would rather not think about and it was easier not to say anything than to approach them.
“What, Father?”
“Nothing.”
* * *
We saw the movie, which was a very funny picture with Harold Lloyd called The Kid Brother. When it was over, I counted my pennies, and bought Verity an ice cream, even though it was a cold enough day to make me long for a hot cup of coffee. Then we rode home, and I decided I had to ask Verity.
It had been playing on my mind since I closed Dexter’s door, and I needed to know.
“Verity,” I said.
She didn’t look away from the view outside the train window.
“What?”
“You remember that man you spoke to? On our first day here?”
“You mean Charles?”
“Yes,” I said. “Charles. Do you remember what you spoke about?”
“I guess so,” she said. “Mostly.”
I thought what to say next.
“Did you talk about us?”
“Us? You mean, you and me?”
“Yes. You and me. And maybe Caroline.”
Verity looked at me then.
“I didn’t talk about her,” she said.
“Did he? Charles? Mr. Dexter, that is. Did he talk about Caroline?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I waited again. I could tell Verity was upset, though she didn’t know what she’d done wrong. I suppose this is one of those things that is just deeply engrained in her.
“Did he talk about us, though? You and me?”
“No, Father.”
“Verity, you know you mustn’t lie.”
She started to cry. But I couldn’t stop myself.
“I’m not lying,” she said.
“You must be lying,” I said.
“I’m not! I’m not.”
“Then how does he know?” I shouted.
I saw some fellow passengers look at us, and I dropped my voice.
“How does he know?”
“How does he know what?” Verity asked.
“Don’t be smart with me,” I said angrily. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t. I don’t.”
Verity was crying loudly now, but still I couldn’t stop.
“How does he know I adopted you, of course! What else? No one here knows that. You were supposed never to tell anyone.”
“I didn’t,” she wailed. “I didn’t say. I’m not lying. You told me never to lie and I’m not lying!”
Then she just began to bawl so much that I realized what I had done. I tried to calm her down and told her I was sorry for shouting and yet nothing I said seemed to help. Gradually, she calmed herself, but we rode the rest of the way to Greenport in a bitter silence.
Saturday, April 2—later
I could feel Verity sulking with me for the rest of the day, and I don’t blame her. The only other thing she said all day was to ask me what In Memoriam means.
“It means ‘in memory of,’” I said. “It’s Latin. We use it when we want to remember someone.”
“Someone who’s died?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
At bedtime, she came and stood in front of me in her nightdress, and wished me a joyless “good night.” I thought about what I should say, what I could do to cheer her up, but I could think of nothing. For a moment, I even thought I might put my arms around her and hug her, but she turned on her heel once she’d said her piece, and went off to her room.
I watched her go, then called out.
“Verity.”
But I must have called too softly for she didn’t turn and come back.
I wonder often what life was like in the orphanage, but I hope it had to be better than when she lived on the streets before that. The streets of Manhattan are no place for a small girl to be, but I often get the feeling that the two years in the orphanage are what did the damage to her. Why she is so scared. Why she finds it hard to trust me. And every time I lose my temper with her, I know I am sending her back to the orphanage in some way, just a little.
After Caroline died, and I decided not to look for a new wife, but for a daughter, I lost touch with the remnants of my own family. I know they felt I was behaving oddly, but I know I will never love a woman the way I loved Caroline, though I might love a child as well and as truly. That was my belief, and still is, though I wonder when I will really, finally, connect my heart to Verity’s, and she hers to mine.
It was easy to choose her.
Like choosing candy at the store, or the prettiest stone on the beach; there she was on the day I made my visit to the orphanage. And if no one told me she was the spitting image of Caroline, like a miniature version of my own dead wife, well that was only because no one there knew both the woman, and the girl.
* * *
When Verity went to bed, I did the same, but saw Dexter’s book waiting for me beside the table. It seemed to be telling me that it had all the time in the world, that it could wait for me to read it, whenever I was ready. I felt like throwing the thing out of the seventh-floor window, but I didn’t. Instead, I picked it up, and flicked to the table of contents, where the names of the poems were listed.
There it was: Poquatuck.
I read.
Poquatuck
Sea-found, wind-worn and wild;
the land will lose.
Here are places so old as to defy memory;
The point, the creek, the inlet.
The old tide mills, dilapidated,
were but a blink in the eye of time.
And there are older things here,
things which the oyster boats dredge from the deep.
There on the headland;
the asylum,
and the asylum boneyard,
where the land-borne dead are corrupted,
harmless bodies are sucked of life;
in the cemetery.
Graves grow from the soil;
the black fingernails of the monstrosity beneath.
It lies far down, under the ground, under the sea,
pushing an arm up,
up to the air
a hand with a thousand fingers; and every fingernail a grave.
Deep in the sea, at the other end of the arm
sits its heart-brain,
this being from beyond the stars, from the beginning of time:
its mashy form quivers inside the shell
which protects
and resonates its thought-waves across the world
in ancient reverberation.
Spiral-set shell mind,
It blows a soundless horn to us all, a warning:
I am coming.
Dreaming
Caroline calls to me from beneath the waves.
I am standing on the roof of the asylum, and I jump, and somehow fly down to the shore from where her voice is louder and more insistent.
I am not afraid. I know she is dead, but somehow, in my dream, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she is talking to me, and that I can hear her voice again, the voice I have not heard since she sailed for England four years ago, and never came back.
This is the shoreline of the Long Island Sound, whose trapped waters have engulfed hundreds of boats over the centuries. Deep down lie their bodies; these drowned souls, and rather like the madhouse, it doesn’t matter where they came from or who they were, now they are all alike, now they are equal as they wait out the years, welcoming new souls from time to time.
The wind beats my face; it is spring and the wind is cold, colder still at night. The waves pound the shore in front of me and I become hypnotized by their continual cycle, up and down the beach.
Then, without warning, Caroline is there. She rises from the waves as far as her waist, dressed in the same green dress she was wearing the day I saw her off at the Chelsea Piers, though now the dress is darkened from the water. Her hair, always straight, is sleek and black and salt water runs from her fingers.
“Come to me,” she says, and I do.
I walk out into the cold waves. I feel nothing. I keep walking, a long way, and I know I should be underwater by now, but I am only waist high, like she is.
And then we touch, I put my hands into hers and pull them around me and hold her tight. Her wet hair strokes my cheek and I can smell salt and age and other, darker things, which I choose to ignore.
Then we go down. Fast, we sink into the water and I begin to panic that I will drown, but she laughs and puts a hand on my mouth.
“You don’t need to breathe, down here,” she says, “You can’t,” and I think, no, of course not, how silly of me.
Down we go, and though we are far below the night waves I can see through the murk around me.
Things are swimming. People. They swarm like clouds of midges that come and go, eager to see who I am, keen to keep their distance, and Caroline pulls me deeper. I know that all around me are the souls of the drowned, and yet only then do I begin to realize that there is something else down here. Something worse.
Now I see that Caroline is winding into the water. As if descending a vast invisible spiral stair, we’re winding down, and down, and now the darkness does begin to take
hold, and the water presses in on me, threatening to crush me in its grip, and Caroline turns to me and says,
“Why do you want her? Why do you want her? Why? When you could have me…”
She holds my hand and is about to pull me to the bottom where something terrible is waiting, and has been waiting through unlit centuries, and I scream.
I scream a stream of mad bubbles, and seeing them rise, I tear my hand from Caroline’s and begin to kick for the surface, kicking, pulling with my arms, wriggling up through the water until my arms and legs are screaming, too, burning with pain, and just as I fear I won’t ever get back, I land, in my bed, gasping for air.
I roll onto my back and, though I know it was a dream, my face is wet.
Saturday, April 9
The past week has hurried by, as fast as my first week at Orient Point. I am tired, perhaps to the point of exhaustion, for there is never an end to the work and the days are long. Now that I have been here a week I am expected to know everything, be everywhere, answer every query and report to Doctor Phillips each evening with a written summary of the day in my hand.
Verity’s week has been no easier than mine, I suspect, and though she is talking to me happily enough again after the business last Saturday, she refuses to talk about school.
“If you need any help from me, Verity,” I told her last night, “you need only say.”
I hope she doesn’t take me up on that offer, for there is no other choice for her than the schoolhouse in Greenport. Perhaps her tormentors will lose interest in her soon and pick on someone else. I don’t tell her that. I don’t want her to have false hopes.
I have not seen Dexter, to speak to, all week. Once or twice we passed each other in the halls, but he was always being detained by a warder or another doctor. Then, last night, as I made my report to Doctor Phillips, his name came up.
“The case of Charles Dexter,” Doctor Phillips said. “It remains an interesting one, does it not?”
I nodded, already on my guard. Phillips has used Dexter once already to humiliate me, and Dexter suffered as a consequence, too. I did not want to offer a repeat of either of those things.
“He does,” I said, prepared only to say the bare minimum by way of conversation.
The Ghosts of Heaven Page 15