The Music of the Deep: A Novel

by Elizabeth Hall

  “Alexandra! This is perfect. Now we have a foursome.” David stood and held out his hand. “Would you like to join us?”

  Alex walked over to the table by the window. “Good morning,” she murmured, her voice hoarse. She was enormously grateful to see David, as if he was the perfect antidote to her dreadful night.

  “This is my partner, Jeff.”

  Alex shook hands with a man with brown hair and glasses, his face warmed by a neatly trimmed beard, just beginning to gray at the edges, his smile lighting his face.

  “Happy to meet you, Alex.”

  Caroline turned slightly and let out an enthusiastic greeting of, “Hey, Alex.”

  “Do they let you sit down for breakfast?” Alex asked, sliding into the vacant chair and looking around the restaurant, too early to be truly busy on this winter morning. Seeing Caroline made her breathe just a little easier. At least she had a couple of friends now, people who seemed just as happy to see her as she was to see them. Alex felt a little of her tension slide away.

  “I’m not working. Sherry is back from her holiday, so I’m back to my other job. Trying to sell pottery to the one tourist who comes up here in January.”

  “Ah.” Alex turned to a woman who had come to take her order.

  “Coffee?”

  “That would be great,” Alex said, and took the menu from her hands. Before she could get it open, David interjected.

  “She needs a maple bacon scone,” he said to the waitress before turning his attention back to Alex. “You’re not gluten intolerant, are you? Vegan? Vegetarian?”

  Alex shook her head.

  Jeff leaned forward. “Even the vegans and vegetarians eat bacon. Everyone eats bacon.”

  David slid back into his own chair. “The pesto-pistachio omelet is out of this world,” he continued. “Parmesan, pesto, pistachios—it’s p-p-p-perfection.”

  Alex nodded. “That sounds great. I’m starving.”

  The waitress left, and Alex turned to meet Caroline’s gaze.

  “You don’t look so good, Alex. Is it Maggie?” Caroline asked.

  Alex looked at her, so exhausted her brain wouldn’t function properly. It was deep in her nature to stay isolated, to keep her thoughts and fears and problems to herself. How well did she know Caroline? Or any of that group of spinsters? She had met them less than two weeks ago. She liked these people; she was glad to have them around her. For one moment, she thought about the release of telling her awful story. But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, allow herself the freedom of unburdening, no matter how attractive it might seem.

  Alex shook her head and let out a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m just not sleeping that well, I guess.”

  Caroline leaned forward and put a hand on Alex’s forearm. “Don’t let the bastards get you down. Or bastardess, as the case may be. Maggie has always been hard on people.”

  She leaned back and continued, “All of Maggie’s interns end up leaving rather suddenly, have you ever noticed that? And I can tell you, as someone who works in this restaurant quite a bit in the summertime, almost all of them look like hell when they come in here. Like they haven’t slept. Just like Alex.”

  Their plates arrived. David sat back, waiting for the waitress to leave, before he dived into his food.

  “It’s not Maggie,” Alex whispered.

  “The ghost?” Caroline asked, leaning forward, her eyes eager.

  Alex shrugged. “I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. I never used to, anyway.”

  Jeff met her eyes. “Have you seen something?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t actually seen anything. No.”

  “But?” Caroline asked.

  Alex sighed. “I’m not sleeping very well. I wake up, and . . . I hear things.” She turned her head toward the window and looked out at the choppy gray water in Haro Strait. “I’m never quite certain if it’s real or if I dreamt it.”

  “What kinds of things?” Jeff’s voice was soft and kind.

  She shrugged. “Branches against the window. Footsteps on the floor. Sometimes that back door comes open, all on its own. I feel cold air.”

  “Is the lock broken?” David asked. “Do you want me to take a look at it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe.”

  “So it’s the classic ghost story kinds of things.”

  “I don’t know about ghosts,” said Alex. “All that research I’ve done, almost twenty years of pulling together available information, and I’ve never even considered the idea of ghosts. Have any of you? Seen a ghost, that is? Or heard one, or . . . whatever.”

  David looked at Jeff, and his mouth curled. “This is embarrassing, coming from the person who leads the ghost tours. But no, I’ve never actually seen a ghost. Never heard one, either.”

  “Then . . . how did you get started . . . What made you get into the ghost tours business?” Alex asked.

  David grinned sheepishly. “I started that newspaper in what?” He looked at Jeff. “Nineteen ninety-five, maybe?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “And sometimes, there just wasn’t all that much news. Small town. At certain times of the year, it can get . . . boring. I was losing my patience for ‘so-and-so’s daughter was here for the weekend.’ I once wrote a front-page cover story on the explosion of the bunny population.” He shook his head. “I was getting tired of trying to dream up new things to write about. And so I started hanging out at the tavern, asking some of the old-timers about these old buildings.”

  Caroline leaned down and whispered, “Most folks who see a ghost need a drink shortly thereafter.”

  “Or had several shortly before,” Jeff added.

  “I did hear a few things, from the bartender and from some of the old-timers who hang out in the tavern. Have you ever been on a ghost tour, Alex?” David asked.

  Alex shook her head.

  “They aren’t usually heavily into fact, if you know what I mean. It’s usually just a collection of stories, anecdotes, urban legends, that have been told about a place. Things like footsteps on the stairs or that cat at the bookstore. Not necessarily a lot of history.”

  David sat still for a moment. “I think most of the folks who take those ghost tours are looking for a good scare. A chill. They want a Stephen King kind of moment.”

  He took a bite of his own breakfast and closed his eyes. “Ahh. Rodrigo is quite the cook, isn’t he?” He pointed at his food with his fork and said, “Next time you come in, try the salmon benedict with pesto hollandaise. Mmm.” He shook his head back and forth, and then kissed the tips of the fingers on his right hand.

  “The truth is, there isn’t some central registry that keeps track of everything that ever happened in a house over the years. Sometimes, if there’s some grisly murder or something, that would make it into the newspapers. Everyday life and death, though? That pretty much goes unreported. Mostly what you hear about these old places is just anecdotal, just stories people tell. Maybe they heard something when they were a kid. Or maybe they thought they saw something on the way home one night. I just started gathering all the little stories. Like that cat, down at the bookshop.”

  Alex nodded.

  “And the stairs, at the little store. Just stories. That’s all.”

  “Did you ever hear anything about the captain’s house?”

  “No, not much. Some of those old-timers talked about seeing the captain in one of the windows. Nothing very specific. I never go up to the captain’s house on the ghost tours. There is quite enough to fill a two-hour walk just on the two blocks of Main Street. Besides, most tourists don’t want to walk uphill, and there’s no restroom up that way. But I do point to the house, up there next to the cemetery, and tell them that many people have reported seeing the captain.”

  Jeff spoke up. “The paranormal researchers have wanted to go in there for a long time. To set up electromagnetic meters and tape recorders and such.”

  “But of course Maggie won’t allow that. The pa
ranormal is not science, in her estimation,” David added, he and his partner adept at finishing each other’s sentences. “I think that house has been in her family for a while. She inherited from an uncle or something.”

  Alex met his eyes. “Is there a library? Someplace where I can look things up?”

  David pointed to a small, darkened alcove, just behind the front door of the restaurant. “Library is over there. It’s on the honor system. Take a book, bring it back. Put it away yourself.” He leaned forward and whispered, “If you’re looking for something specific, it might take a while. Not everyone in this town knows the alphabet.”

  “Anything on local history, maybe?”

  “Hmm. I don’t remember seeing anything in there.” He looked at Jeff.

  “There’s a local history museum attached to the back of the general store,” David continued. “They have some of the records for property owners, that kind of thing. They even have a few records for some of the people who are buried in that cemetery. Where they came from, what they did for a living. And a few antiques and memorabilia that were found in some of the houses, way back in the Dark Ages.”

  Alex nodded.

  “There is a newspaper out of Sea Rose Harbor, called the Saratoga Sentinel. Covers the whole island. But again, it would have to be something pretty sensational to get into the news. Most of the living and dying in this community—in any community—over the past hundred and fifty years goes unremarked. You might chance upon an obituary that will say something like, ‘So-and-so died peacefully at home.’ But most of it? A child who died of typhoid? Or a woman in childbirth? Somebody injured at the sawmill? Most of that never makes it into any written record.

  “Have you ever looked through the stones in that cemetery?” David asked, taking a bite of his homemade sourdough toast.

  “A little.”

  “Lots of people who died young. Children, of course. That’s normal for that time period, no matter where you are. No antibiotics. Almost anything could take them—flu, strep throat, typhoid, scarlet fever. But even a lot of the adults didn’t live long. You’ll see several graves of people in their twenties and thirties.”

  Alex felt a shiver crawl down her spine. “Is that unusual?”

  David shrugged. “Probably not.”

  Jeff tipped his head toward the white-haired woman walking past on the other side of the street. “I’ve heard Emmie say that everything has energy. Trees, rocks, wood. And in some weird way, she’s right. If you think about everything being made of atoms, and that those atoms have energy, then technically, she’s correct. But she also says that emotions have energy. Anger, fear. She says the energy of those emotions can get trapped. That’s what happens with animals. That’s what causes some of their health problems. And it happens with people. Maybe it even happens with houses.”

  “Do you believe that?” Alex asked.

  Jeff shrugged. “I’m not sure what I believe. But once, when I was in college? I went on a trip through Colorado. And one of my stops was the site of the Sand Creek Massacre.”

  Jeff looked out the window again. “Happened in 1864. Huge force of US cavalry massacred Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. They were camped there, supposedly under US protection, waiting to be moved to reservation lands. The Indians were flying US flags, and white flags, at that camp. But none of that mattered. Here comes this preacher, John Chivington, and he attacked the encampment, right at dawn. Horrific, if you read the eyewitness accounts. All kinds of ghoulish things. And two-thirds of those killed were women and children. Including a baby, torn from its mother’s womb. The two bodies, lying side by side.” Jeff shivered.

  Alex raised her hand to her mouth.

  He looked up and met the eyes of the people at the table. “I could feel something there. Maybe not ghosts. Maybe not spirits. But something.” He took a breath. “Almost as if all that pain, all that suffering, was still hanging in the air.”

  David was quiet for a moment. “People say the same thing at some of the Civil War battle sites. Or the Little Bighorn, in Wyoming. Like the energy of all that trauma hasn’t gone away.”

  They all sat quietly for a moment, absorbing the idea.

  David rested his fork on his plate, his eyes watching the other side of the street. “You know, there is one other possibility.”

  “Oh?” Alex leaned forward just a little.

  “For all the noises and such, at the captain’s house. Maybe it isn’t the captain.”

  Three pairs of eyes riveted on David’s face. “Most of the ghost stories are about a ghost or a spirit that stays in one place, one house. Either because they like it, like that cat at the bookstore, or because there was some trauma, some emotional wreckage, that they haven’t been able to deal with.” David sat forward and leaned his elbow on the table.

  “But there are also stories of ghosts, spirits, whatever you want to call them—that don’t stay in one place.”

  Alex felt her throat tighten.

  “There are stories about ghosts that get attached to certain objects—like a piece of furniture or maybe a piece of jewelry that had sentimental value. And then there are stories about ghosts who follow people. Like a relative or something. All kinds of ghost stories about people who see their mother or father, or husband or wife, or some other relative, nowhere near the place where the person lived or died. As if the ghost is attached to the living person and not a specific place.”

  David looked at Alex. “Did someone in your family die recently, Alex?”

  Alex froze, unable to breathe. She nodded slowly. “My mother,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s your mother.” David looked at her, his eyes kind. “I’m sorry for your loss, Alex. That has to be tough. Were you close?”

  Alex nodded, and her eyes dropped to her plate.

  Caroline leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Don’t turn and look. I don’t want this to be obvious. But there’s a man at a table over there.” She tipped her head toward a table behind David’s shoulder. “And he’s been staring at us, for way too long.

  “Alex, you need to get a look at him—see if it’s someone you know. David, could you knock your napkin on the floor? Between you and Alex?”

  David smiled. “You are quite the little con artist, aren’t you, Caroline?” Using his elbow, he brushed his napkin onto the floor.

  Alex reached to pick it up and looked at the man sitting at the table across the room. Nothing about him looked familiar to her.

  “Do you know him?” Caroline whispered.

  Alex shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm. Maybe he’s trying to flirt with me and just has vision issues or something,” Caroline said.

  David laughed. “Yes, Caroline, I’m sure that must be it. Is he wearing a wedding ring? Because that would definitely be your cup of tea.”

  She stuck her tongue out at David, and then leaned closer to Alex. “No. Not my type at all. He’s got a definite cop kind of vibe to him. Law enforcement.”

  Alex went rigid, the way she always did if she saw a cop on the road, an automatic fear response, an automatic lifting of her foot from the accelerator, even though she rarely drove over the speed limit.

  “And you are familiar with this law enforcement vibe for what reason, Caroline?” David asked.

  She looked him in the eye. “Marijuana wasn’t always legal, you know.” Caroline pushed her chair back and stood, donning her jacket and scarf. “Well, folks. I’m going to go play in the mud.”

  She waited, her hand on the back of her chair. “Hey, Alex? You’ve seen my place. It isn’t very big. But if you need somewhere to stay, let me know. We can come up with a bedroll or something. If you need to get out of that house.”

  Alex swallowed and nodded. “Thanks, Caroline. I appreciate it.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Alex sat at her table across the room from Maggie, both of them reading and working at their computers. Both heads shot up at
the sounds coming through the hydrophone, the pops and clicks and squeaks that could only mean orcas in the area.

  Maggie grabbed her binoculars and stood at the window; Alex joined her. “They’ve been awfully quiet lately,” Maggie said, her voice soft. “Lots of reports that they aren’t finding enough to eat. They spread out when that happens, travel in smaller groups.”

  “Does that put them in more danger? Traveling in smaller groups?”

  Maggie sighed heavily. “Not danger from other animals. The only animal that preys on the orca is man. But when they travel in small groups like that, it usually means they are not finding enough food.”

  Maggie moved her glasses to continue watching the blackfish. “We’ve messed with every river in the West. Building dams, straightening channels, you name it. And every time we do that, we mess with the salmon.”

  They stood silently, listening to the sounds of the orcas out in the strait, echolocating in their search for salmon.

  “When is your divorce final?” Maggie asked, her eyes still glued to her binoculars.

  Alex startled. The question was so out of the blue. For one moment, Alex debated lying about it. And then she heard Daniel’s voice in her head. Don’t lie to me, Alex. I can always tell.

  “I haven’t actually filed yet.”

  “No? I thought you had mentioned that you were getting divorced.”

  Alex swallowed. “I am. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “So you’re not going back?”

  Alex met Maggie’s eyes. Did she mean going back to Daniel? Or going back to Albuquerque? Alex shook her head. “No. I’m not going back.”

  Maggie turned back to the water. “That’s something I’ve never been able to understand. If a man hits you, why would you stay?”

  Alex said nothing. She did not ask how Maggie knew; she did not disagree.