Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy)

by Ari Berk

  “No,” answered Silas more emphatically than he meant. “She doesn’t enter my house by the front door, so she hasn’t seen it. I think it would make her nervous. She would know something about it—it’s a kind of invitation, I think—and she’d just tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t accept it. She would tell me, and keep telling me, why I should try not to seek out trouble. My work worries her.”

  “Your work worries everyone, Silas, because it concerns the whole town, especially when things go bad. I’m not sure you’re being fair to Mrs. Bowe, child. She has been your good friend since you arrived here.”

  “I know, it’s just that sometimes . . . let’s just say I can take care of myself.”

  “Well, now. It so happens I must beg to disagree with you. I believe a man in your position should cherish his connections. Do not make an island of yourself, Silas Umber. Not now. Do not forget that your profession is a community service, for the dead and the living.”

  “Maybe we could change the subject? Just for the time being,” said Silas, shifting his weight on the stool.

  “As you wish,” said Mother Peale. “How have your dreams been, since taking up your father’s work?”

  “Nothing to speak of,” he said quickly, trying to cover the lie. While he hadn’t had any dreams recently, that was because he hadn’t been sleeping. But before that he’d had some dreams, all right. Terrible, most of them. But he was tired of doing nothing but worrying the women in his life, so he said nothing.

  “No nightmares? Nothing strange?”

  Silas didn’t answer.

  “I see. Well, all right, then, young master. Keep your own counsel if it pleases you.”

  Silas could see she was willing to let the matter go, but he could read her sincere desire to help him, so he relented. “Mother Peale, how could I tell the difference? Everything in my life is strange in one way or another. Sometimes I dream I’m drowning. Two weeks ago, when that warmer wind came in, I thought I could feel someone watching me in my dream. I mean, someone not actually of the dream, but present just at the edges of it, looking in at me, watching from around a corner. But when I wake, it’s a blur. Whenever I try to remember the details, I get sleepy and my mind wanders to something else, and before I know it, I can’t remember what it was I was trying to remember.”

  “Best not to make too much of it,” Mother Peale said, though her eyes went small and her brow formed furrows of concern.

  It was getting to the part of the night when morning just begins to rouse itself, but darkness is still deep and the air is very cold. The sky was completely clear now and the bright congregation of stars looked down and gossiped among themselves.

  “I guess I’ll head up the hill to visit my dad,” said Silas, rising from his seat and returning the wooden stool to the hollow of the tree.

  “Just a moment.” Mother Peale reached for Silas’s hand, grasped it, and pulled herself up from her seat. “Is it your intention, then, to pay a call at . . . that place?”

  “You mean Arvale? Yes, that’s my plan. I believe I have been summoned.”

  “Perhaps, but, Silas, it is your choice and yours alone whether you answer that summons now, later, or never.”

  “Mother Peale,” Silas said with a sigh, thinking she was trying to talk him out of it, “I am going very soon. I think it is somehow required of me, and honestly, I’m curious.”

  “So be it. But, Undertaker of Lichport, if you are leaving us for a time, allow me a moment to make preparations.”

  “Leaving?” Silas asked. “Why do you say it like that? I’m not leaving Lichport.”

  “Silas, every great house is its own world. If you are going there, you are leaving here, one way or another. Distance has nothing to do with it. Now, let me give you something.”

  Reaching down, she pushed her fingers into the cold ground, took a handful of earth from her husband’s grave, and put it in a pocket of her dress. She picked up another handful of grave dirt and put it in the front pocket of Silas’s jacket.

  He looked at her questioningly.

  “Oh, dear! Have you learned nothing from your father’s many notes in this town’s great book? You see, there is always something we may learn from our friends when we keep good company. Grave dirt can be very helpful in a pinch, for it is said, and said truly, that if that stuff is thrown upon a ghost, it shall then become quiet and easy and perhaps even wait upon command or be banished, for a time. Though, it is also said that any banished in this way will surely return, and not so happy as when they left. And besides, it’s always best to carry a little bit of home with you wheree’r you roam! I’ll sleep better knowing you have it, Silas.”

  Mother Peale patted the pocket in her apron filled with earth. “There, now. Go where you like. I shall be able to keep things quiet in your absence for a short time, if absolutely necessary.”

  Silas was relieved that she’d put the dirt into the empty pocket and not the one holding the death watch. “But I am not leaving you. I am going to visit my father’s grave, an errand of but a moment. In a day or so, after a little more research, I will walk to a house on the far side of town and be back before dark in all likelihood.”

  “Silas! I took you for a learned man!” exclaimed Mother Peale. “That house, well . . . it’s neither here nor there. That is what folks say of it. Neither here nor there. It is a queer place, if you don’t mind my saying so. And as I’ve told you, where you think it is has very little to do with it.”

  “Do you mean to suggest that there is something strange about my family and their habitations, Mother Peale?” Silas said in mock surprise.

  But Mother Peale grew serious and concern flushed her cheeks. “I only mean to say, a visit there may take longer than you think, and I pray that when you return, I shall still be here to welcome you.”

  All humor had left her voice, and her words made Silas nervous. Her tone reminded him just how little he really knew about the world that he’d entered, all his put-on confidence aside. Below, somewhere near the bottom of the hill, a dog howled and Silas jumped. “What the hell was that?”

  “What the hell, indeed,” replied Mother Peale, unshaken by the wild night call. “That is surely the black dog. Have you not heard it before, Silas? It is often here, upon the hill, when someone is about to die.”

  “I’ve never heard that sound before, Mother Peale. Do you mean someone is going to die . . . now?”

  “Soon, I expect,” she said, looking up as another low howl broke the surface of the night. “I wouldn’t let it worry you, Silas, unless you actually see the black dog. That is a grim omen to be sure.”

  Silas kept looking back over his shoulder with a worried expression.

  “You don’t like dogs?” Mother Peale asked wryly.

  “I don’t feel one way or other about them. But that dog sounds . . . very large.”

  “My mother told us as children not to trust a great black dog if we met him on the road. ‘That’ll be the Shuck, and no mistake!’ my mother told me. Road hounds are an odd sort. Wanderers. Though the ones you see in cemeteries are just as strange by my reckoning.”

  “Have you seen a dog here before, on the Beacon?”

  “Oh, yes. And elsewhere besides. I saw a black dog just before you came to Lichport. I thought it boded ill for your arrival, but then, it was your uncle that was taken, so that was all right, wasn’t it? Oh, aye, I’ve seen one here on the Beacon before. Just after a funeral, that was years and years ago, but I can still see its ember-eyes and feel its cold breath on my hand. My mother told me that once, folks would make sacrifices to the dead, to keep ’em peaceable just after their dying time. And those offerings were given at the burial plots. But times changed and folk weren’t as keen to leave all them good victuals and finery about just to rot or get stolen. No one likes waste. So, it became the custom to leave a guardian to watch over the burial places between funerals. The spirit of the last one buried had to remain until the next person died and was buried, the
n it would be their turn to keep lookout. Well, that was all right for a time, but the dead can be a restless lot, eager to be about their business if they can. So then the dogs were left. A dog, usually black, was buried near the more recent grave and the dog’s ghost took up the watch. Usually it was all right, and that dog stayed put and watched over the dead.”

  Silas’s eyes were fixed on Mother Peale.

  “Other times, when the burial plots were left lonesome too long, abandoned by the kin of the dead, them dogs took to wandering themselves. Who can say what they are, really. Mind you, I’m not sure they are truly dogs at all, but whatever they be, they have the know of a dog,” she said. As if to put a period at the end of her story, the dog howled again somewhere down the Beacon. Mother Peale rose slowly from her seat.

  “Well, this evening’s chat and the night air have indeed cleared my head. I shall take my leave of you. I am ready for bed!” said Mother Peale. “Dear Mr. Umber, I wish you well upon your travels.” She hugged him quickly but hard, then began to slowly make her way down the hill, her lantern growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

  Silas was nervous now and kept looking back over his shoulder, but continued up the hill and easily found his father’s grave. The small mound had settled a lot already in the months since Amos Umber had been buried. Silas his put his hand upon it. The earth of the grave was cold.

  As much as he usually loved being on the Beacon, Silas now felt impatient. After his talk with Mother Peale, he was eager to set his feet forward on their road. He also sensed he was being watched. He looked around the hill, hoping to see the sexton, that kindly spirit who was often here keeping watch over his “flock.” But there was only the cold wind tearing dry leaves from the ground and casting them up into the sky. Then something else stirred the air. He paused, not sure he wanted to turn around. Silas could hear breathing, something or someone panting just behind him. He tightened his fists and whipped about. Sitting next to his father’s grave was the biggest dog he’d ever seen. Silas wasn’t sure what breed it was, maybe part Labrador, but it was shaggier, larger, and wilder. Its head was massive, and Silas could see that it would come up to his chest. There was a light in the dog’s eyes, and Silas was not at first sure whether he looked at an animal of this world or some other. The dog looked at Silas, its tongue lolling to one side. It was wagging its tail.

  “Good evening, hound of hell,” said Silas, trying to speak in a high, happy tone, though his heart was tight in his chest. “Are you a good puppy, or . . . something else?”

  The dog rose up on its massive paws and walked over to Silas, looking at him expectantly. Silas stepped back, feeling the earth shift below his feet. He reached behind him to steady himself on a tombstone, looking away for only an instant. When he looked again, the dog had vanished.

  Silas sat down hard on the ground next to his dad’s grave and remained there for many moments. It had been a long, strange night. His mind began to turn toward home. Mother Peale’s words and the dog’s appearance had shaken him, and now the whole evening, lighthouse and Beacon both, felt like one long troublesome dream. He didn’t like feeling anxious. He’d spent a lot of time in the last months trying to focus on his work, trying to take charge, trying not to remember how much he still had to learn.

  He put his hand on his dad’s gravestone and pulled himself up, then arched his back and stretched. Sleep was the only thing for it. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and grabbed the handful of grave earth in case he should meet the dog, or anything else on his way home.

  When Silas reached the bottom of the Beacon, he turned up Main Street. Nothing troubled his homeward journey. When he reached his front porch, he found a basket of eggs, several glass bottles of fresh milk, and a cheese—gifts from folks who had already heard, or sensed, that he had worked that night at the lighthouse, or perhaps from one of the families he’d helped earlier in the week. His heart was warmed momentarily by the kindness of these “payments.” But as Silas went to open the front door with his key, his eyes were held by the deeply engraved letters. He paused there on the threshold, worry rising in him again. Back at the Beacon, he could still hear the black dog’s howl, leaping now to greet the dawn.

  TIRED THOUGH HE WAS, the memory of the dog’s baying kept Silas from sleep. He tried to doze in a chair by the fireplace in his study, but too many questions flooded his mind. After an hour, he rose and turned to his books.

  On the same desk once used by his father, the great funereal ledger of the Undertakers of Lichport lay open, and dozens of volumes containing references to Arvale were stacked about it like crooked towers. Most of the books had been marked with small slips of yellowed paper. This was how Silas liked to read while he was researching something: opening many books at a time, letting his eyes flow from page to page, catching words, phrases, and passages in quick succession. The method was more intuitive than critical, but it allowed the texts to flow into one another, no longer masses of individual references, but one massive volume on precisely whatever it was he was trying to find.

  There were no books entirely dedicated to the subject of Arvale house. But there were references to “Arvale” throughout many different volumes and in numerous entries in the ledger. Silas began making a list.

  Toward the end of the ledger, Silas found a page of book titles in his father’s handwriting. None of these works was in his library, but it was clear that at some time his father had taken up a study of Arvale just as Silas was doing now. The list was headed with the words “Relating to, or with references of, A R V A L E.” Silas noted with interest titles such as Spectral Domestic Topography: Visions, Encounters, and Displacements; and Manes Intus, Manes Foris: Being a Practical Examination of Internal and External Spirits and Demons. At the end of the list of titles were more notes in his father’s handwriting. One read:

  Where we have enacted our abysmal rites, there shall we pay the punishments for them, for so long as the Doom is predicated on judgment and banishment, so shall all the family be likewise held and judged. So the halls and galleries and chambers of Arvale shall be a prison-house because we think, in our arrogance and our goetic power, that we are above the more ancient magics of sympathy and kindness. The Call to the house must be heeded, but as to whether the Undertaker shall submit to the “obligations and traditions” of the house and its perilous threshold, this is a choice each must make in his own time. Either way, there is a price to be paid.

  Throughout the ledger and in other books, Silas found the word “Arvale” written on many earlier bookmarks. Within the ledger, they highlighted inscriptions of varying length, most copied out from other works, other authors’ attempts to offer some insight into the place, or into the condition, that was Arvale. Some of the marginalia were authored and included an Undertaker’s name; other commentators preferred to remain anonymous. It seemed most of the authored posts had been made by a distant relative, Jonas Umber.

  The entire heaven is divided into societies . . . and every spirit . . . is taken to the society where his love is; and when he arrives there he is, as it were, at home,

  and in the house where he was born.

  —COPIED BY JONAS UMBER FROM SWEDENBORG’S HEAVEN AND HELL

  The greatest throngs of the dead appear, as Gervase hath writ “Confinibus et Amicis” to “friends and relatives.” But so long as they remain in the lands of confinement or punishment, those places that border and share so wide a frontier with our world, they may, of their own power, or divine dispensation, appear in the dreams and visions of their living relatives in the semblance of their living bodies. Yet, when their allotted hour comes and they either cast off their cares or are freed of them by the goodlie actions of their kin or Peller, they are gone from all the spheres and shalle present themselves to us no more.

  —J. UMBER

  And so we must find that the dead, by preference and when able, will congregate about their kin, about their descendants, in whom they place their hopes not merely for th
e future of the family’s honor and estates, but for their rescue from the shadowlands or other purgatorial entrapments that only memory and the honoring of their names may effect.

  All must attend the house and its springs, for where else may the waters of forgetting and the waters of memory be found? For Arvale is the very font of Lethe . . . the source of the Undertaker’s power to bring forgetfulness to the dead. That other spring, which some call Memory’s Cauldron, it bubbles up through the earth there too, though its waters are not for the nourishment of all. . . .

  —JONAS UMBER

  The entries became briefer, mostly quotes, many in his father’s hand, marked “Arv./Damnable Mansion.” Some had been scrawled and even amended in ways that seemed to suggest his dad’s anger or frustration.

  FROM RUSHWORTH’S HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS:

  I have neither eye to see, nor tongue to speak here, but as the House is pleased to direct me.

  FROM THE BOOK OF PSALMS:

  And yet they think that their houses shall continue for ever: and that their dwelling-places shall endure from one generation to another. . . .

  FROM MILTON:

  YET SOME THERE BE THAT BY DUE STEPS ASPIRE TO LAY THEIR JUST HANDS ON THAT “GOLDEN” KEY THAT OPES THE PALACE OF ETERNITY.

  As Silas read, he came to understand that the house of Arvale might hold more in common with the shadowlands than even the oldest homes of Lichport. Recent accounts that referred to Arvale seemed increasingly philosophical and speculative, less about its architectural prominence and more about the nature of its existence. He began to sense that his summons was no mere invitation to supper. He also wondered very seriously about what he might learn there. Every shadowland he’d visited taught him something new about his work, and sometimes at great cost. What might such an ancient place teach him about the landscapes of the past and the habitations of the dead? Would he meet people there who knew more about the Undertaking than he did? The thought both excited and worried him.