The Shape of Night

by Tess Gerritsen

  I stare out at the night. I know there is nothing out there but the cliff and the sea—where did that light come from? I’m invisible in my dark bedroom, but only moments ago, anyone watching this window would have seen me standing here undressed, and the thought makes me back away, deeper into the gloom. Then I see more flashes of light, bobbing like a cinder adrift in the wind. It floats past the window and winks away into the night.

  A firefly.

  I sip my whiskey and think of other warm summer nights when Lucy and I would chase fireflies on our grandparents’ farm. Running through a meadow that glittered with a thousand stars, we’d swing our nets and trap entire galaxies in Mason jars. Back to the farmhouse we’d go, like twin fairies carrying our firefly lanterns. The memory is so vivid I can feel the grass tickling my feet, and once again I hear the creak of the screen door as we stepped back into the house. I remember how we stayed awake half the night, marveling at the lights whirling inside our jars, one on her nightstand, the other on mine. A matched pair, like Lucy and me.

  The way we used to be.

  I empty the last of the whiskey into my glass, gulp it down, and stretch out on the bed.

  It’s now the fourth night since Captain Brodie last appeared. I’ve lain awake for far too many hours, plagued by doubts that he exists. Wondering if my sanity has finally cracked. Today, when I visited the ghost hunter, what I’d wanted most was her reassurance that I’m not delusional, that what I’ve experienced is real. Now my doubts are back.

  God, I need to sleep. What I would give for just one good night’s sleep. I’m tempted to go down to the kitchen and open a new bottle of wine. Another glass or two might quiet this electric hum in my brain.

  Hannibal, lying beside me on the bed, suddenly lifts his head. His tufted ears are pricked up and alert as he stares toward the open window. I see nothing unusual there, no telltale swirl of mist, no thickening shadow.

  I climb out of bed and gaze out at the sea. “Come back to me,” I plead. “Please come back.”

  A touch grazes my arm, but surely it’s just my imagination. Has my desperate longing for company conjured up a ghostly caress from the mere whisper of a breeze? But now I feel the warm weight of a hand resting on my shoulder. I turn and there he is, standing face-to-face with me. As real as any man can be.

  I blink away tears. “I thought I would never see you again.”

  “You have missed me.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much, Ava?”

  I sigh and close my eyes as his fingers stroke down my cheek. “God, so much. You’re all I think about. All I…”

  “Desire?”

  The question, asked so softly, sends a sudden thrill through me. I open my eyes and look at a face obscured by shadow. In the starlight I see only the sharp cliff of his nose, the jutting cheekbones. What more does the darkness hide?

  “Do you desire me?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  He strokes my face, and although his fingers are gentle, my skin feels scorched by his touch. “And you will submit?”

  I swallow hard. I don’t know what he wants, but I am ready to say yes. To anything.

  “What would you have me do?” I ask.

  “As much as you are willing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You are no virgin. You have known men.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Men with whom you have sinned.”

  My answer is barely a whisper. “Yes.”

  “Sins for which you have not yet atoned.” His hand, which had so gently cupped my face, suddenly tightens on my jaw. I stare straight into his eyes. He knows. Somehow he has looked into my soul and has seen my guilt. My shame.

  “I know what torments you, Ava. And I know what you desire. Will you submit?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Say it.” He leans closer. “Say you will submit.”

  My voice is barely audible. “I will submit.”

  “And you know who I am.”

  “Jeremiah Brodie.”

  “I am the ship’s master. I command. You obey.”

  “What if I choose not to?”

  “Then I will bide my time and wait for a woman more suited to my attentions. And you will depart this house.” Already I feel his touch melting away, see his face dissolving into shadow.

  “Please,” I call out. “Don’t leave me!”

  “You must agree.”

  “I do.”

  “To submit?”

  “Yes.”

  “To obey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if there is pain?”

  At this I go silent. “How much pain?” I whisper.

  “Enough to make your pleasure all the sweeter.”

  He strokes my breast and his caress is warm and gentle. I sigh and my head rolls back. I crave more, so much more. He traps my nipple and my knees go weak as the unexpected pain blooms into pleasure.

  “When you are ready,” he whispers, “I will be here.”

  I open my eyes, and he is gone.

  I stand alone in my room, shaking, my legs unsteady. My breast tingles, the nipple still tender from his assault. I am wet, so wet with desire that I feel moisture trickle down my thigh. My body aches to be filled, to be claimed, but he has abandoned me.

  Or was he ever really here?

  Eleven

  The next morning, I awaken with a fever.

  The sun has already burned away the mist and birds are chirping outside, but the soft sea air that wafts in through the open window feels like an arctic blast. Chilled and shivering, I stumble out of bed to close the window and then crawl back under the bedcovers. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to eat. I just want to stop shaking. I curl up into a ball and sink into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  All day I stay in bed, rising only to use the toilet or take sips of water. My head pounds and sunlight hurts my eyes so I pull the covers over my head.

  I barely hear the voice calling my name. A woman’s voice.

  When I peel back the comforter, I see that daylight has faded and the room is deep in shadow. I lie half awake, wondering if someone really was calling to me, or if I’d merely dreamt it. And how is it possible I’ve slept all day? Why didn’t Hannibal claw me awake, demanding his breakfast?

  Through aching eyes, I scan the room, but my cat is nowhere to be seen, and the bedroom door is wide open.

  Someone pounds on the door downstairs, and again I hear my name. So it wasn’t a dream after all.

  I don’t really want to drag myself out of bed, but whoever’s knocking on the door sounds like she is not giving up. I pull on a robe and wobble out of the room to the stairs. Twilight has darkened the house and I feel my way down the steps, holding on to the banister as I descend. When I reach the foyer, I’m startled to see that the front door is open and my visitor stands silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by car headlights.

  I fumble for the wall switch and when I flip it on, the foyer lights are so bright they hurt my eyes. Still dazed, I need a moment to retrieve her name from my memory, even though it was only yesterday when I spoke to her, yesterday when I visited her house.

  “Maeve?” I finally manage to say.

  “I tried calling you. When you didn’t answer the phone, I thought I’d drive up here anyway, just to take a look at the house. I found your front door wide open.” She frowns at me. “Are you all right?”

  A wave of dizziness sends me reeling and I grab the banister. The room sways and Maeve’s face goes out of focus. Suddenly the floor falls away and I’m tumbling, tumbling into the abyss.

  I hear Maeve cry out: “Ava!”

  And then I don’t hear anything at all.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t know how I ended up on t
he parlor sofa, but that’s where I now find myself lying. Someone has lit a fire and flames dance in the hearth, a cheery illusion of warmth which has not yet penetrated the blankets now shrouding me.

  “Your blood pressure is up to ninety over sixty. That’s much better now. I think you were just dehydrated and that’s why you blacked out.”

  Dr. Ben Gordon removes the cuff and the Velcro gives a loud crackle as it peels away from my arm. It’s a rare doctor who makes house calls these days, but maybe that’s how life still is in small towns like Tucker Cove. It took only a phone call from Maeve, and twenty minutes later, Ben Gordon walked into my house with his black bag and a look of concern.

  “She was already conscious by the time I called you,” Maeve says. “And she absolutely refused to go anywhere by ambulance.”

  “Because I fainted, that’s all it was,” I tell him. “I’ve been lying in bed all day and I haven’t had anything to eat.”

  Dr. Gordon turns to Maeve. “Could you bring her another glass of orange juice? Let’s fill up her tank.”

  “Coming right up,” says Maeve and she heads to the kitchen.

  “Such a lot of fuss.” I sigh. “I’m feeling much better now.”

  “You didn’t look very good when I arrived. I was ready to send you to the ER.”

  “For what, the flu?”

  “It could be the flu. Or it could be something else.” He peels back the blankets to examine me and immediately focuses on my right arm. “What happened here? How did you get these?”

  I look at the series of tiny blisters that track across my skin. “That’s nothing. It was just a scratch.”

  “I noticed your cat. A really big cat. He was sitting on the porch.”

  “Yes. His name’s Hannibal.”

  “Named after Hannibal who crossed the Alps?”

  “No, Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer. If you knew my cat, you’d understand how he got the name.”

  “And when did your serial killer cat scratch you?”

  “About a week ago, I think. It doesn’t hurt. It’s just a little itchy.”

  He extends my arm and leans in to examine me, his fingers probing my armpit. There is something deeply intimate about the way his head is bent so close to mine. He smells like laundry soap and wood smoke and I notice strands of silver mingled in his brown hair. He has gentle hands, warm hands, and all at once I’m painfully aware that under my nightgown, I’m wearing nothing at all.

  “Your axillary lymph nodes are enlarged,” he says, frowning.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let me examine the other side.” As he reaches out to examine my other armpit, he brushes across my breast and my nipple tingles, tightens. I’m forced to look away so he can’t see that my face is flushed.

  “I don’t feel any enlarged nodes on this side, which is good,” he says. “I’m pretty sure I know what the problem—”

  A loud crash startles us. We both stare at the shattered remains of a vase lying on the floor. A vase that a moment earlier was perched on the mantelpiece.

  “I swear I didn’t touch it!” says Maeve, who’s just returned to the parlor with a glass of orange juice. She frowns at the shards of glass. “How on earth did that fall off?”

  “Things don’t just fly off shelves on their own,” says Dr. Gordon.

  “No.” Maeve looks at me with a strange expression and says quietly: “They don’t.”

  “It must have been right on the edge,” he offers, an explanation that sounds perfectly logical. “Some vibration finally tipped it over.”

  I can’t help glancing around the room, searching for an invisible culprit. I know that Maeve is thinking the same thing I am: The ghost did it. But I would never say that to Dr. Gordon, man of science. Already he’s resumed examining me. He palpates my neck, listens to my heart, and probes my belly.

  “Your spleen feels perfectly normal.” He covers me with the blanket and sits up straight. “I think I know what the problem is. This is a classic case of Bartonellosis. A bacterial infection.”

  “Oh my god, that sounds serious,” says Maeve. “Can we catch it, too?”

  “Only if you own a cat.” He looks at me. “It’s also called cat scratch disease. It’s usually not serious, but it can lead to fevers and swollen lymph nodes. And in rare cases, encephalopathy.”

  “It can affect the brain?” I ask.

  “Yes, but you seem alert and oriented. And certainly not delusional.” He smiles. “I’ll go out on a limb here and pronounce you sane.”

  Something he might not say if he knew what I experienced last night. I feel Maeve studying me. Does she wonder, as I’m wondering now, if my visions of Captain Brodie were nothing more than the product of a fevered mind?

  Dr. Gordon reaches into his black bag. “The drug companies always leave me plenty of free samples and I think I have some azithromycin in here.” He digs out a blister pack of pills. “You’re not allergic to any medicines are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then this antibiotic should do the trick. Follow the instructions on the packet until all the pills are gone. Come into my office next week, so I can recheck those lymph nodes. I’ll have my receptionist call you and book the appointment.” He snaps his black bag shut and looks me up and down. “Eat something, Ava. I think that’s also why you’re feeling weak. Plus, you could use a few extra pounds.”

  As he walks out of the house, Maeve and I are silent. We hear the front door close and then Hannibal struts into the room, looking completely innocent as he sits by the fireplace, calmly licking his paw. The cat who started all this trouble.

  “Wish my doctor looked like him,” says Maeve.

  “How did you happen to call Dr. Gordon?”

  “His name was on the list by the kitchen phone. Numbers for the plumber, doctor, and electrician. I just assumed he was your doctor.”

  “Oh, that list. It was left by the previous tenant.” Dr. Gordon, it seems, is a popular choice in town.

  Maeve settles into the armchair across from me and the firelight glows like a halo in her hair, highlighting the silver streaks. “It’s lucky I happened to come by your house tonight. I hate to think of you falling down the stairs, with no one around to find you.”

  “I feel much better now, thank you. But I don’t think I’m up to showing you around the house tonight. If you’d like to come back another time, I can walk you through the place then. Show you where I’ve seen the ghost.”

  Maeve looks up at the ceiling, at the play of firelight and shadow. “I really just wanted to get a sense of this house.”

  “And do you? Sense something?”

  “I thought I did, just a while ago. When I came back into this room, with your juice. And that vase suddenly hit the floor.” She glances at the spot where the broken vase had landed and she shivers. “I did feel something.”

  “Good? Bad?”

  She looks at me. “Not entirely friendly.”

  Hannibal leaps onto the sofa and curls up at my feet. My twenty-six-pound furball, whom I have not seen all day. He does not look hungry, but seems perfectly content. What has he been eating lately? Suddenly I remember what Maeve had said earlier: Your front door was wide open. Hannibal must have gone outside and hunted down his own dinner.

  “This is the second time my front door’s been left open,” I tell her. “Last night, when I got home after visiting you, I also found it hanging open. And I called the police.”

  “Don’t you usually lock your door?”

  “I know I locked it last night, before I went to bed. I don’t understand how it ended up open again.”

  “And it was wide open, Ava. As if the house was asking me inside to check on you.” She mulls over the evening’s strange events. “But when that vase shattered, everything felt different. That was definitely not a
welcome. It was hostile.” She looks at me. “Have you ever felt that in this house?”

  “Hostility? No. Never.”

  “Then perhaps this entity has accepted you. Maybe it’s even protecting you.” She looks toward the front hall. “And it invited me into the house because it knew you needed my help. Thank god I didn’t just leave the papers on your doorstep and drive away.”

  “What papers?” I ask.

  “I told you I was going to check the newspaper archives about your house. Right after you left yesterday, I called my friend at the Maine State Library. She was able to dig up several documents this morning relating to a Captain Jeremiah Brodie of Tucker Cove. Let me get those papers for you. I left them in my car.”

  While I wait for her return, I can already feel my pulse kick up to a gallop. I’ve learned just the barest details about Captain Brodie and have seen only the one portrait of him in the historical society. All I really know about him is how he died, on a storm-tossed ocean, his ship battered by wind and waves.

  That is why you carry the scent of the sea.

  Maeve returns from her car and places a folder in my hands. “My friend made photocopies for you.”

  I open it to the first photocopy and see a page filled with ornately looping handwriting. It is a ship’s register, dated September 4, 1862, and I instantly recognize the name: The Minotaur.

  His ship.

  “Those papers are just a start,” says Maeve. “I expect my friend will turn up much more, and I’ll check your local historical society. But for now, that will give you some idea of the man who may be haunting this house.”

  Twelve

  By the next morning, my fever has broken and I wake up feeling famished but still weak. I wobble downstairs to the kitchen, where I find Hannibal finishing up the last nuggets of dry cat food in his bowl. Maeve must have filled it before she left last night. No wonder I wasn’t rudely awakened this morning by a demanding claw to the chest. I fire up the coffeemaker, scramble three eggs with a dash of cream, and drop two slices of bread in the toaster. I devour it all, and by the time I finish my second cup of coffee, I’m feeling human again and ready to focus on the documents that Maeve left me.