The Music of the Deep: A Novel

by Elizabeth Hall

  The cabin was set back in the woods to her left, still visible from the road, but not exactly on it. Despite the fact that the rest of the town was decked out in a lavish display of Christmas lights, the cabin belonging to Maggie Edwards radiated only the harsh glare from the porch light and a pale glow of lamplight from inside. Alex walked up the wood steps and had just raised her hand to knock when the door whooshed open and Maggie stepped out, pulling it closed behind her.

  “This way,” she muttered, heading down the steps and back down the driveway. She turned and headed into the dark.

  Alex, at five feet one inch, had to move fast to keep up with Maggie, who was a good six inches taller. She hadn’t realized that there was a larger house across the driveway from the cabin. Trees towered over the two-storied giant, completely shrouding it in darkness.

  “I’m putting you in the main house. I use it for interns or visiting scientists. May not be perfect, but it is available.” They climbed the four steps to another porch, and Maggie pushed open the front door.

  Alex stepped into a foyer area, lavishly finished in the old-fashioned woodwork of another time. An ornate oak banister ran up the staircase to her left, but instead of curving to a landing on the second floor, it ended abruptly, near the top of the stairs. A door had been built, obviously added after the initial construction. It blocked the stairs at the top; she could see nothing of the second floor above.

  Dr. Edwards followed her gaze and answered the unspoken question. “This old house is huge, much too big for one person. Built in the 1870s, when they didn’t seem to understand the benefits of insulation. Costs a small fortune to heat the whole thing. Normally, I only have one or two interns in the summer, maybe a colleague or two for short stays in the winter. There are two bedrooms downstairs, and that’s where I put guests. I had that door built several years ago to try to keep the heat in.”

  Alex nodded, pulling her gaze away from the abrupt ending of the staircase at that strange door. She followed Maggie into the room on the right, a living room area, about fourteen feet square. There was an energy-efficient woodstove inserted in the old brick fireplace, and it radiated warmth into the room. A sofa sat against the front window, and in the corner across from that was an old-fashioned armchair. Antique furniture, most of it a golden oak color, filled many of the spaces. Windows at the front and sides of the room stared out at the darkness.

  Directly behind the living room was a dining room, filled with an old oak table and six chairs. A massive oak buffet stood against the far wall, the mirror grown hazy with age. The kitchen was across from that. It had obviously been remodeled at some point. Wood cabinets, painted white, and a relatively new refrigerator and stove made the place up-to-date, and surprisingly cozy. Behind those rooms, Maggie led her down the hallway to two bedrooms and a bath.

  “The bedroom in the middle is the warmest, of course. That one at the end of the hall catches all the breezes off the water.” Maggie opened the door to that back bedroom, and cold air swooped out around her. Alex took a quick step backward. “Old windows. No insulation.”

  Maggie closed the door and moved to another door at the end of the hallway. “This is the back porch. There’s a washer and dryer and a back door. You can pull the car up behind there.” She indicated the back of the house with a tip of her head. “Also cold, as you can see. The middle of the house is definitely the place to be.”

  “This is a big house,” Alex said.

  “Yes. Exactly why I wanted to live in the cabin. The drafts here are awful.” Maggie grimaced, and added, “But like I said. Stick to the middle rooms; you’ll be warm enough.”

  Alex nodded and let out a long, exhausted sigh.

  Maggie turned to her. “You know how to feed a fire?”

  “I think I can manage it.”

  “Wood’s on the front porch. Might even be coffee in the kitchen cupboard. I had a colleague up just a few weeks ago, so it’s been cleaned semirecently.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Edwards. I appreciate this.”

  Maggie stopped at the door. “I wasn’t expecting you this soon, but since you’re here, we might as well go ahead and get started. Come up to the cabin in the morning. We can take a look at the work I need done, and then you can get groceries and settle in before everything closes for the holiday.”

  Alex nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “I don’t celebrate Christmas, so you’re on your own.”

  “I don’t really celebrate it, either,” Alex murmured. She moved to the window in the living room, looking out at the lights of town down below. The water reflected those colorful lights, broad moving bands of red and blue and green. Her eyes traveled the distance from those twinkling lights to the room she was in, and she drew in a sharp breath. The ornate wrought-iron spires of the cemetery fence were just a few feet away from the window where she stood. She had not realized just how close the house was to the edge of the graveyard.

  “That cemetery is so close,” Alex said. “Almost the perfect setting for a haunted house.”

  Maggie’s eyes flared for a moment. “You believe in ghosts, do you?”

  Alex turned, and their eyes met. She shrugged. “I’ve never seen one. But the waitress did say something about . . .” She stopped herself just in time. “Haunted houses.”

  Maggie snorted and shook her head. “If you get to know her better, you will find that Caroline has an absolute flair for drama. She really ought to be in the theater.”

  Alex watched the woman in front of her.

  “And this is the most haunted town in Washington. Or hadn’t you heard?”

  Alex shook her head.

  “Brings in lots of money—those old ghosts. Paranormal conference in October. Ghost hunters. Ghost tours. Our general store even sells some of that ghost-hunting equipment—electronic voice recorders, electronic meters. Ghosts mean money.”

  Maggie moved to the window, looking out at the cemetery.

  “You’ll hear quite a bit, if you stick around here. It’s one of the more annoying traits of living in a small town. But we’ll get along a lot better if you ignore all that gossip.” Maggie walked to the door, and then turned to look at Alex once more.

  “Besides. We’re all haunted by something. Isn’t that so, Alexandra?”

  Alex moved her car to the back of the house, grateful that she’d been instructed to leave it here, away from the street, surrounded by bushes and towering cedars. She grabbed her bag and headed inside. It had been more than three days since she had last had a shower, and she was keen to wash away the sweat of the past few days, the scents of her own body, with the pheromones of fear and pain and tension. Standing next to the shower a few minutes later, waiting for the water to warm up, she wished there was a way to wash away all the effects of the past eleven years with Daniel Frazier. If only it were that easy—to turn on the water and step inside and let all of the trauma of the past flow onto the floor and down the drain.

  Alex leaned into the mirror over the sink, examining the color around her eye. At least she could see out of it; at least it stayed open now. She stripped off her sweatpants and T-shirt and turned slightly. The mirror reflected it back to her, one huge storm system of bruises running down her hip and thigh and up into the small of her back. The colors ran purple and blue, with tinges of yellow, and Alex felt slightly sickened by the sight. Her memories of that last fight, just three days ago, were tattered, as if all she had were the scraps left over after a fire. She could not remember being hit; she could not remember what had started the whole ordeal; she could not remember how it had ended. It had happened before, where the pain obliterated the memories. But there was always something about those blank spaces that pursued her, chased her, staying close, like a shadow. She swallowed, fighting the fears that were buried just under the surface, fighting to keep herself upright, fighting to stay focused on the next thing that needed to be done.

  She looked at her bruises in the mirror and let out a long breath. Thank God D
r. Margaret Edwards can’t see that, she thought as she stepped into the water.

  THREE

  Branches scratched against the window, and the sound reached through the fog of sleep, scraping against her brain. It was still dark when Alex opened her eyes, and she lay still, trying to remember where she was. In that first moment of consciousness, everything was still blurry around the edges; she had to really concentrate to bring it all into focus. She stared at the sky outside the window, a slightly lighter shade of black, just pale enough that she could see the outlines of the trees. She watched as the branches of a giant cedar swayed back and forth, as if signaling to her that she was no longer in New Mexico.

  Instinctively, she reached for her cell phone, wondering whether it was morning or midnight, and that’s when it came back to her—all the ways that her life had changed in the past three days. She no longer had a cell phone. That, along with her wedding ring, now lay mired in the muddy waters of the Rio Grande, pitched out the window of her car as she drove away.

  The table next to the bed held an old vintage lamp, the shade trimmed with fuzzy ball fringe. Underneath it was an old-fashioned alarm clock, the kind that must be wound to keep going. No electricity, no battery required. It was ticking away, as if nothing unusual had occurred in any part of the world, and the glow-in-the-dark hands told her it was now six o’clock. That meant it was seven a.m. back home.

  Home. Now that was an interesting concept. All those Christmas songs and stories and movies, with the “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” theme, all those commercials about warmth and love and family. Did it really exist, anywhere? For anyone? Because it certainly wasn’t a place that Alex had experienced—not in the recent past, at any rate.

  She pushed those thoughts away. Everything here was different, including the longer nights. Not a glimmer of coming daylight could be seen in the sky.

  Alex pulled on her socks and a sweater and padded into the kitchen. She found a coffee maker, a sugar bowl with paper packets, and even a bag of Seattle’s Best in the cupboard. She started a pot of coffee and let herself breathe for a few moments. Just breathe—inhale, exhale. Just breathe, as if nothing in the world were wrong, as if her whole life were just as it should be.

  She carried the mug of steaming brown warmth over to the dining room and stood at the bay window, cup warming her hands, as she stared at the sparkle of gray water out there in the sound. The rain was steady, a relentless stream of drops that hit the glass and slid down, racing each other to the bottom of the windowpane.

  The clouds were thick and low, backlit by the pale radiance of an almost full moon, not yet set in the western horizon. As she watched, the clouds scuttled away, and for just a moment, the light of the moon came through and bathed the landscape in an eerie white glow. She could see the blocks of town down below, most of the buildings still dark.

  Her gaze pulled in closer, to the cemetery just a few yards away from the house. With the advantage of moonlight, Alex could make out a smattering of the stones. It was so close to the house, the fence no more than twenty feet away from the window where she now stood. Fingers of tree branches brushed against the dark sky. The clouds moved swiftly, racing on the marine currents of air. They swallowed the moon, and the landscape went dark once again. Alex could see nothing but the vague reflection of her own face in the glass.

  That brief glimpse of the cemetery brought it all back to her in a rush. It was still too soon, the loss too fresh, and her stomach clenched. Not even three months had passed since she had stood at the cemetery in the small town of Edgewood, New Mexico, watching as they lowered her mother’s body into the ground.

  Frances Turner had been lucky, if that was the correct term, that the cancer had claimed her so quickly. She was in the hospital only briefly, sent home to die as soon as they discovered that it had already spread to most of her organs. Alex spent the next three weeks sitting by her mother’s bedside, watching as a parade of nurses and volunteers from hospice tried to keep Frances drugged enough to keep the pain at bay. She’d slipped away so quickly that Alex hadn’t really had time to process the whole ordeal.

  The next thing she knew, she was standing next to the grave as the mourners came up and squeezed her arm or her hand, most of them repeating the same tired phrases that everyone did at such times. “So sorry for your loss.” “If there’s anything I can do.” “At least she’s not in pain anymore.” They were people her mother had grown up with; Alex knew only one or two in the whole group.

  She pressed her lips in a grim line. They’d meant well, she knew that, but those phrases seemed so empty at that moment. Everything was empty. Her mind, her heart, the words that floated in the air around her. Empty, empty, empty.

  Frances Turner was the one person who understood Alex, the one person who loved her, no matter what. And Alex hadn’t really appreciated that until after the woman was gone.

  For most of her life, Alex had been the rogue electron, that weird anomaly that orbited just outside the nucleus of the rest of humanity. She’d been different for as long as she could remember, starting with her first year in the Albuquerque public school system. It became apparent after only an hour of kindergarten. While the other children were struggling to learn the letter a, Alex took one of the small readers from a corner shelf and read the entire book, obviously bored by what kindergarten had to offer.

  Her intelligence was rabid; she devoured everything the teachers in the public school could throw at her. Her parents supported that keen intelligence in their only child, and her mother took her on weekly trips to the bookmobile, an outpost of the downtown library that visited their neighborhood every Tuesday evening. Alex always checked out eight or ten books and read them all before the week had passed.

  But to the other children, this made her a peculiar creature that they would rather avoid. Winning spelling bees and math flashcard games and finishing her worksheets faster than anyone else only made that division deeper. They found her vaguely threatening, almost repellent, like some smelly bug. She spent most of her school days, including recess and lunch, with her nose pressed in a book.

  In the fourth grade, she began practicing another form of intelligence, one not taught in the regular school curriculum. It involved reading the emotional vibe in the room, particularly when her father didn’t come home for dinner and her mother sat at the table staring into space, their food growing cold. By the end of that fourth grade year, her father had moved out of the house and in with his secretary, who was pregnant with their coming baby.

  She and her mother had been forced to downsize to an older, two-bedroom home, while her father and his replacement family relocated to sunny southern California. It was about that same time that Alex’s vision first began to grow fuzzy, as if she could not bear to watch what was happening in her life. By the time fifth grade was over, and she was about to enter middle school, she had glasses on her nose and a few extra pounds on her small frame, that bit of extra weight putting a little padding between her heart and all the rejection in the world. Her hair was an unremarkable brown and too curly to control, her eyes an unremarkable shade of gray that faded to invisible behind her glass lenses.

  Being alone and outside felt normal. On some level, she had always known that she was a misfit. She remembered the way her father used to take apart engines in the garage. Always, always, when he had them reassembled, there was a part or two left over, lying on the concrete of the garage floor. She had asked him once, when she was no more than five, “What about those pieces?”

  He had smiled and ruffled her too-curly hair. “Don’t worry, baby. We don’t need them anymore.” No longer necessary for the successful operation of apparatus. Just like Alex.

  By the time she started middle school, the feeling of separateness was embedded in her psyche. While all the other girls discussed shades of fingernail polish, or which boy they would like to catch in a game of spin the bottle, Alex pushed her glasses up on her nose, ran her fingers through her shor
t, thick curls, and went back to her book, where none of the characters cared what she looked like or felt threatened by how smart she was.

  Instead, she came to rely more and more on the friendship of her mother. Given their mutual understanding of rejection, they became more like friends than mother and daughter, each of them secretly trying to help the other survive this shake-up to their lives. Each of them keenly sensitive to every nuance of mood, every subtle scent of sad or lonely or scared that lingered in the air around them, like the delicate whiff of expensive perfume.

  When it came time for college, Alex knew she would not move too far away. She had grown more independent during high school, but she knew that she could not really leave her mother, and she chose the University of New Mexico because it was nearby.

  She found library science her second year. After all those years of being an outcast, she was not prepared for the wondrous feeling of finding a place where she truly belonged. It was in categorizing and sorting information that she finally found her place in the cosmos. She loved pulling together the papers for her master’s work, and she spent many happy weekends devoted to finding out everything she could on a variety of different topics. The PCB levels in birds and fish of Lake Superior. Geologic formations of the desert southwest. The benefits of grass-fed cattle on western rangeland. She was endlessly fascinated by the information she could find, about all kinds of subjects, and by her ability to catalog and assemble mountains of data into usable references.

  She started working for the University library part-time in her junior year, and she never left. Just as soon as she had her Master’s of Library Science, a position in archives opened, and Alex was right there waiting for it. She loved her work, loved everything about it—the interesting subjects that floated across her desk in the form of newspaper and magazine articles, old photographs, reports from various scientific disciplines. She loved organizing it, cataloging it, making it accessible for researchers. And she loved working by herself, back in the archival office, next to the temperature-regulated museum safe. A rogue electron, still off on her own, but finally comfortable in her own orbit.