by Ari Berk
But Jonas rallied. “If the house is besieged by one such as him,” Jonas said, pointing accusingly at Augustus Howesman, “I shall do what is required! Besides, Silas has yet to discharge the duty that would remedy all!”
The scream came again, and in that instant, with the harrowing shriek rending the fabric of the air, Silas knew the sound had nothing to do with the corpses standing silently in the doorway, some of whom had now turned to look above and behind them. Something was moving in the sky outside. Confusion grew on Jonas’s face. But as Silas stared at the stone arch in the wall and its small door leading down to the catacombs, he knew in his gut exactly where the screaming spirit had come from.
Silas strode to the far side of the Limbus Stone, still holding the black scepter. As he walked past his great-grandfather, he touched the corpse’s hand while holding the scepter as far away from the corpse as possible, unsure of what would happen if it touched him.
Feeling the confidence it gave him, Silas held aloft the scepter and called out into the night, making up the words as he went along.
“Spirit of the crypt, ghost of the catacombs, the Janus of the Threshold commands you to appear upon this stone and stand in judgment!”
The screaming continued, circling the chimneys above, and bricks came plummeting down into the clearing in front of the house. Silas looked up and saw the ghost hanging in the air. At first the spirit looked like a comet, wreathed in flame, slowly falling toward the earth. Then, as he stared, Silas began to discern the form of a young woman within the fire. As she flew closer to the house, flames trailed behind her like a serpent formed of smoke and ember. When she screamed, Silas clapped his hands over his ears, watching in fear as the flames flew from her mouth and scourged the battlements of the house.
Staying as far from the Restless as possible, Jonas came a little closer to the door and said to Silas, “Whatever, whoever she is, she is very old and will not be compelled merely by the force of your words. You must call her by her name to bring her to the stone.”
Silas stood before the threshold.
“I do not know her name,” he admitted in a near whisper.
Remembering Maud’s visit to the library, how she pored over the family’s genealogical records, Silas called back into the house, “Maud, do you know the name of this spirit?” There was only a resigned silence. Silas looked frantically from Maud to Jonas while above, the sound of the attack upon the house continued with mounting fury.
“How could anyone here know her name?” asked Jonas, angrily. “We have not seen her face. Silas Umber, you obviously know something of this matter! What has happened?”
Silas came back inside the house. “I saw initials on the door where she was imprisoned below.”
Jonas’s countenance went dark. He turned to Silas with accusation bristling in his voice. “What are you telling me? That you have done this? You have released something down in the catacombs, and set it free to wreak its malice upon this house? That you, whose particular work in the world is to constrain and banish the dead have, on a whim, released a spirit who had been deliberately imprisoned?”
“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I only put my hand to the door. I will make it right.”
“Which part of the Janus’s authority did you not understand? As Janus, no door can withstand you. Ever.”
“I didn’t know you meant it literally. I didn’t think you meant any door.” Silas looked at the floor, embarrassed, shame reddening his face. He’d screwed everything up. Why couldn’t people speak more plainly to him about what he could and couldn’t do? Because, he told himself, you aren’t interested in taking instruction from anyone. Because you don’t trust people and you don’t inspire trust in them. Because, just beneath the Undertaker’s mantle, lurks a child. A lost child.
He looked up at Maud and Jonas, trying to sound confident. “I will find out her name.” The tables had utterly turned. A moment ago, he commanded these spirits with force and conviction. Now he was the initiate again and he was apologizing, and he hated himself for it.
“Tell me the letters on the door,” Jonas demanded.
“D and M.”
Maud let out a gasp. Jonas closed his eyes and shook his head. “We are lost,” he said.
“Why?” Silas asked desperately. “Those might be her initials. We’ll consult the lineages in the library. We can figure it out.”
“Those letters are not her initials, I assure you,” said Maud.
“What are they, then?”
“A curse,” said Jonas.
“Darkness without ending,” said Maud.
“Horrible. Most horrible.” Jonas shook his head in defeat. “She will not heed your call, Janus of the Threshold,” he said coldly. “Indeed, the very house has been forbidden her or why else would she not be, this very moment, inside here with us bent on some act of destruction? Even the very bricks and mortar of this place are anathema to her.”
“I don’t understand,” Silas said, trying to follow what Jonas was implying.
“Damnatio Memoriae,” whispered Jonas.
“What does it mean?” asked Silas.
“That her name has been erased from the world,” said Maud.
Jonas walked up to the throne. “This task is too difficult, and we are cursed. Whoever did this to her had a hateful heart and a terrible power, perhaps even a Janus’s authority or something stronger. That person was the last to know her name, and is the only one who would still know her name. This is beyond you, Silas Umber, because if her name has been torn from this world, she cannot be compelled. She will not heed you. We are accursed.”
Jonas turned to the door where Augustus Howesman and his fellow revenants still stood, awaiting their Doom. “But at the very least, Silas, you can finish what was begun here today. Pronounce the Doom over the walking corpses. You cannot leave another door gaping wide. Do what is required, finish what you’ve begun, and close the threshold once more.”
“I will not,” said Silas forcefully, wanting to take back some authority.
“Silas, we have had enough—”
“I will renounce my role as Janus and leave this house. Now.”
Jonas smiled thinly to himself as though he had heard this entire conversation before, as though everything Silas said was a mere echo of a speech that had bubbled up again out of the long-ago bog of the past.
“Hear me out,” said Silas. “Here is what I propose: Augustus Howesman will return to Lichport with the others immediately, and will never again be called to the Door Doom. And then I will bring this furious spirit to peace even if it requires my own death to do so.”
“Very well,” Jonas said to Maud in resignation, “and at least if he dies in the attempt, then we shall all reside in this house on equal terms.” Despite his wry words, Jonas’s expression was downcast and hopeless. It was easy to see that Silas’s resolution, his disobedience, so like something his father might have said in the past, together with the presence of the unbanished corpses on the threshold of his home, had broken Jonas Umber utterly.
“Silas,” said Maud, “you have no need to ask our permission. You are Janus of this house. Do as you will and we shall abide.” And as she spoke, she held up her hand before Jonas’s face to ensure he’d say no more. But Jonas spoke again, very softly, words of care and sorrow both.
“Silas Umber, I am sorry I have failed you so. It was my wish to stand by you as you rose to your office and your destiny. I wished only to advise you upon the many perils that attend one of your position and talents. I had hoped, perhaps, you might even have helped those here whom you father has consigned to . . . well, it is of no consequence now. I am sorry to be of so little use to you.”
Without another word, Jonas Umber left the great hall.
For an instant, Silas thought to call after him, to try to explain that things had changed, that not all the old ways needed to be adhered to and that prejudices of the past could be undone.
But then Silas l
ooked outside where the revenants still waited nervously, and he couldn’t bear to think of them having to remain at Arvale another moment. He walked outside onto the Limbus Stone and hugged his great-grandfather. “I didn’t know this would happen . . . ,” he began as he pulled the old man close, smelling the familiar tang of honey and pitch as it smudged from the corpse’s coat onto his own.
Silas took a step back, steadied his voice, and said, “Augustus Howesman, you and your neighbors are free to go. You will never be called to this house again, not so long as I’m alive.” He put his hand on the corpse’s dark, taut-skinned cheek. “I love you, great-grandfather, but you’re a lot of trouble for an old man. Now go. Do not look back and do not stop until you pass the gates. I will see you at home as soon as I can.”
His great-grandfather’s face was wrought with worry.
“Son, I hope so, I truly do.” The corpse took his hand and squeezed it. “You be careful, Silas. Have eyes in the back of your head!”
“I will. I promise. Now go. Hurry!”
Augustus Howesman turned slowly around on the Limbus Stone as though his feet had been glued down. But as he strained, his feet came away. When he stepped off the stone, he moved more quickly, and strode away from the house, down the road leading toward the gate. The other Restless followed him. The trees beyond the clearing in front of the house suddenly cast out their tenants, and the skies filled with black shapes as crows flapped and cawed over the heads of the corpses, heralding their way back to Lichport.
Suddenly, words both strange and familiar formed in Silas’s mouth and without meaning to, he began speaking out into the night.
“Let them pass from this place without harm or care. Let them return whence they came. Let nothing afright them or halt their progress in any way. Let no gate enclose them. May the words of the Janus hold fast, through night, through day, over water, in this world and in all others!”
Upset at the position he’d been put in, embarrassed by his stupidity in the catacombs, and exhausted at even the thought of the task now before him, Silas crossed the Limbus Stone and came back into the hall, as the screaming began again. The burning ghost had flown close to the tree line where the departing revenants had just passed. As she cried, her dreadful wail appeared to shake the air and loosen it, and the path leading back to the gates unraveled into shreds of darkness and fell away from the land. The road home had vanished. The pitiful condition of the burning ghost was now Silas’s condition too: banished, homeless, lost.
The ghost flew back toward Arvale, and resumed rending portions of the masonry from the high walls as she wailed.
“Shut up!” Silas yelled back over his shoulder at the tempestuous air, and though the shrieking continued, the great doors, obeying the Janus’s words, slammed shut and locked behind him.
LEDGER
Within the abyss of the underworld, Lethe flows and meanders gently on, and draws away our cares. So we may have no way to retrace our steps, it onward glides with windings many, its vagrant stream falling back upon itself, then pressing onward, always turning one way, then another, thus we are never sure whether we seek the sea or its source.
—FROM SENECA, HERCULES FURENS, TRANSLATED BY JONAS UMBER
JONAS UMBER STOOD at the back of the hall watching Silas release the abominations standing on Arvale’s threshold, his heart breaking. He’d wanted only to help the boy. Long ago, he’d nearly given up hope of seeing a new Janus rise to hold the Door Doom. Then Silas Umber came to Arvale, and Jonas allowed himself to imagine things changing, even that Silas might open the doors to those imprisoned in Arvale by his father, Amos. But almost as soon as he’d arrived, it was over before it truly started. Silas would go the way of the father. A dark road. The boy’s life had begun in shadow and lament, and it would now end the same way. Jonas knew that now as surely as he knew his own name.
Jonas could not wait and watch what was coming. He wasn’t strong enough. It would shatter him and then what would be left? Ahead lay terrible mysteries he did not wish to see enacted. Now he only wanted to be gone from Arvale. But the doors were closed to him. No way forward. No way back. Amos Umber had left the ghosts of the house only one choice.
Jonas passed through the small door and descended the long stairs into the catacombs below Arvale. He had come this way before in life, as Undertaker, as Janus. He had never walked this path in death, but he could feel his own presence from long ago. Retracing his steps moved him deeply. He was going back to the beginning, back to the source.
He arrived in the chamber where the two springs flowed up from deep in the cold earth. The guardians who stood before the spring of memory did not move. There was no welcome. No fanfare. It was over. His life was far, far behind him. Now his death would be set aside as well.
He knelt down by the spring whose origins were that distant river of forgetfulness called Lethe. Jonas leaned over, put his mouth to the waters, and was Jonas Umber no more. He felt the cold enter him, the beautiful cold, like the night, like the distant stars.
A stream flowed away from the spring, and the spirit followed it without haste or intention. It wandered through forest and beyond the low sand hills that run their way to the sea. The spirit wandered on in joy, bearing no weight, no memory of its life or what came after. And in the twilight fields where Death and Sleep join hands and all worldly cares are no more, the spirit lay down among golden flowers and slept and did not dream.
AFTER THE DOORS OF ARVALE SHUT, Silas could hear Maud calling him from the fire at the far end of the room, gesturing for him to follow her. She led him through a passage lined with bronze mirrors, past a door of polished amber, and into the familiar library. She walked to the arched window, peering out through the stone tracery at what was left of the night. In the distance, the screaming of the furious spirit could still be heard like a challenge to the coming dawn.
“Why do you think she’s so angry, Silas? I thought I caught a glimpse of her through the window. She is young; she died little more than a child. What did you see below in the catacombs?”
It’s to be twenty questions, then, Silas thought wearily. For a moment, he had allowed himself to hope that Maud was taking him aside to tell him something that might help him.
“I saw only the door and the prison that once held her. There was a tiny doll. When I first saw it, I thought it was a baby, but its head was carved of wood. It was a toy.”
“A little doll, you say?” Maud’s face came alive with interest.
“Yes, and there were bones too. She was indeed young, I think maybe in her early teens. I’m not sure.”
“But no bones of the baby?”
“It wasn’t a baby. It was a doll—”
“Yes, yes, of course. A doll,” she said, correcting herself, but her tone was knowing.
“It was a girl who had been locked in there. The door was sealed. She must have done something very awful. Yet, when I touched the door, I could sense something of the mind of whoever imprisoned her. Someone hated her.”
“Yes. Whatever the reason she was put away, it is distressing to think of her remains, let alone her mind, down below, souring, hardening over, hate and fear burning her heart. So much of her is still present in her wrath and fury. You can feel it, can’t you? She’ll never know peace in such a state. And she has grown very strong in the fullness of time and her imprisonment. To come against the house like that . . . she is powerful. You’ve heard her wailing. The sound unhinges my mind. Indeed, I can barely remember my own name when she’s screaming out there. How it pierces the walls . . .”
“Why is she damaging the house? Bricks were falling outside—what is she doing, prying them loose? Throwing herself against the battlements? Why?”
“I suspect it is her condition, in close proximity to the house. The very mortar of this place is memory, and when she draws near to the stones, they crumble before her. That is what’s causing the damage. Her very nature is forgetting and loss, the curse of no name, of having been
deliberately forgotten. She causes dissolution wherever she appears now. It may be that some spirits of this house have already suffered in the wake of her siren’s cry. The house is not immune to her power. Neither are you.”
“The land, or the road home . . .”
“Indeed. Even the topography of the estate is assaulted and changed by her condition. She cannot find her way home, or toward whatever it is she is seeking. Neither shall anyone else find their way so long as her cry is heard at Arvale. Your great-grandfather was fortunate; I suspect the revenants shall be the last folk to leave Arvale until this matter is settled. Without laying her to rest, I think you would not be able to leave this place, even if you wanted to. And if you remain, and do not restore order, she will bring the place down about our heads a brick at a time. Given long enough, Arvale shall be no more. She must be brought to the threshold so the Doom may be settled upon her. This is no punishment. She is beyond helping herself. She cannot let go of her hate. You must make her take the waters and forget what has happened to her. That is the only way. Do what you can, and if it means the end of this house, well, you will have tried your best and we shall all perish together. I shall be content.”
Silas walked closer to her chair. He could almost bring himself to admire her detachment, her distance. “Maud, you have been here longer than most. What is this place, really? This house? Where are we?”
She waited a moment before answering, making Silas wonder if she was trying to come up with a safer explanation. “Arvale is present here, as you find it. But it is also present for me in my own time. There is no ‘we’. You and I are not of the same moment. All my moments were long ago.”
“Are you saying we are in different houses?”
“In a sense.”
“But you are still here.”
“Am I?”
