After Always

by Barbara J. Hancock

  Stonebridge was a mile away when I saw the dark opening in the rocks of a cliff much more jagged and severe than the one I’d already climbed down. I didn’t see Michael. He must already be inside. The surf broke on the rocks below the gaping maw, and I imagined it was often partially, if not wholly, submerged.

  I ran to it, not calling out. Silently and afraid, I clambered over the rocks. Wet and splashed by salty waves, I slipped and slid closer to the cave entrance. I tabbed off the flashlight application and put my phone in my empty back pocket, then I paused at the mouth of the cave to give my eyes time to adjust.

  It seemed to take ages before I could discern the edges of things. I strained to make out the rough outline of solid shapes. When I could move, I stooped and made my way into the cave opening, my arms stretched out to the side. My palms scraped along the rock walls on either side.

  When I came to where the tunnel curved and the mouth opened into a more cavernous space, I stumbled forward, blinking, into a blinding light.

  “Lydia,” Michael said, the beam of a powerful flashlight switched full on in my face.

  I lifted my hand against the sharp sudden light. I blinked. Tears squeezed out the corners of my narrowed eyes.

  “Sorry,” Michael said.

  He averted the beam from my face to the cavern floor, and I blinked furiously to reclaim my vision. I heard something. A scrabbling. A scraping. The shuffling of something unidentifiable in the dark.

  Finally, I made out the shapes of rocks and puddles of brackish water. I saw the ledges where the bodies had lain a hundred years ago, but decades of saltwater drowning the cave had washed the blackened rock clean.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He looked completely himself. There were no wildflowers in his arms, no candelabra in his hand.

  Michael stepped toward me, the flashlight in his hands. It caused crazy shadows on his face and the walls all around us. And still that shuffling and scraping in the dark behind him. “My great-great-grandmother was plagued her entire life by accidents and dark coincidence. She said she was cursed—haunted by the man who had killed Octavia.”

  “Jericho,” I choked out, imagining the horrible existence Michael’s ancestor had endured. Hounded, haunted, hunted until she had no peace, no hope.

  “I’ve spent my life trying to uncover the truth. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how. I’m an engineering student. But that isn’t what brought me to Stonebridge,” Michael said.

  Only then did I take out my phone and turn on my own light so I could direct it at him.

  Michael moved the beam of his flashlight to illuminate a pile of bones deep in the heart of the cave behind me.

  The shuffling noise was explained. Rats crawled over and around the remains. Dozens of rodents that seemed like hundreds, all red eyes and stained teeth.

  Michael looked shell shocked. In the light from my phone, his face was devoid of color and his pupils were pinpoints. The bruised scrape on his forehead wasn’t the only indication of our rough night. He seemed at a loss now that he’d found the monster he’d been searching for. “I remembered Mr. Abernathy visiting the cemetery, again and again. He was mourning the friends he’d lost, sailors and fisherman. And maybe that is how it started, but he was being used by Jericho. He brought the bones here. More than one body. I think maybe the high priest was buried with Jericho, interred together,” Michael said. “There’s fresh blood on them. That’s what attracted…the…r-rats.”

  I couldn’t count the bones. I had seen them jumbled and confused together in a pile of writhing rats. The shuffling was still an insidious whisper echoing around us. That was enough. No wonder Jericho had been getting stronger and stronger. He might have been feeding off my pain, but he’d needed something more. He’d gotten a fresh sacrifice from Mr. Abernathy.

  The remains were above a large tidal pool that had been created by a fall of rocks that trapped the water when the tide came in. They were above the tidal line, out of reach of the cleansing saltwater when it came and went. As our flashlight beams wavered because our hands trembled and shook, it occurred to me that this wasn’t a resting place. This wasn’t a tomb. The cave had been a place Jericho and the rogue priest had used for ritual and rebirth, for blasphemy and immortality.

  “Michael, move toward me. Move away from…” I began.

  But the rats or the evil entity using them had already sensed my fear. A hundred damp, hairy bodies with scrabbly feet stopped abruptly. That many eyes, doubled, turned to focus on me. They had gnawed on the corrupted bones of a madman soaked in sacrificial blood, and now he looked at me through their rodent eyes. The weight of his fury was directed entirely at me.

  “No,” Michael choked out. He stumbled toward me as if to put his body in between me and the rats.

  But his protest didn’t stop the rats from moving together in unnatural synchronicity. They coalesced in a writhing mass that assembled itself in a horrible scramble of teeth and claws to become the rough shape of a man with rats for arms and legs, and more rats clinging together with hideous purpose to become a torso and face.

  Impossibly the figure was animated like a man in posture and expression, what was left of Jericho was completely in control of the rats for its purpose. The rats that made up the head of the “man” turned toward me so that glittering eyes met mine. I remembered how I’d been forced to walk to the attic room. How I’d been manipulated until I actually wanted what I feared. I felt pity for the rats even as I cringed, even as my stomach rolled when the body of one rat undulated oddly to form the suggestion of a smile.

  Michael stood beside me. I could almost feel his resolution to stay on his feet and fight in spite of his injury.

  My pity for the rats drained away when the horror they’d become lurched toward us one step, then two.

  For several long seconds, I doubted my ability to do anything more than collapse in a heap of hell no. But I’d been determined to be prepared for anything.

  I reached for the kitchen knife and drew it from my back pocket. It was useless against so many, but I braced my feet apart and wielded the weapon anyway as I strained my eyes to see some vulnerability.

  It was anger that caused me to act without hope. We couldn’t run. We couldn’t allow Jericho’s spirit to roam. This had to end. I was in desperate need of respite, but this had to end more because it was wrong than because I was tired.

  Michael was as white with terror as I must have been, but he stepped forward when I lunged. When I plunged the knife into the spot directly over where Jericho’s heart would be, Michael stood with me even though he swayed on his feet. He held the flashlight more to defend than illuminate. When the rat “man” disintegrated into an avalanche of individual creatures that exploded over us hot and wet and reeking of blood, Michael survived the thousands of scurrying feet along with me.

  But the knife hadn’t saved us.

  My move disrupted the mass of creatures, but they were still covered in sacrificial blood and under Jericho’s control. They fell over us to land on the ledge of dry stones at the cave’s entrance above the brackish water where we stood. There they perched, screeching and pawing the air with their bloodstained claws.

  They had leapt over the tidal pool. They had avoided it.

  Saltwater.

  Jericho had manipulated them away from it because it would wash away the blood and release the rats from his control.

  “The tide is receding,” Michael warned. He was right. There were already fewer puddles than there had been before, and the possessed rats were in between us and the only escape.

  “We need more saltwater,” I said.

  Both of us turned away from the rats to look at the tidal pool beneath the remains. The kitchen knife had been wrenched from my hand by the explosion of rats, but I knew where I could find what we needed to dislodge the fall of rocks containing the water. I reached for Michael’s multi-tool. He froze as I pulled it from his back pocket.

&n
bsp; “If we lever the rocks away, the flood of saltwater might save us,” he said, guessing my intentions.

  The rats were edging toward us. Michael directed the flashlight’s beam toward them one more time. There was almost no saltwater left at our feet. Mercifully, he swept the beam away from their eager malevolence and placed the flashlight on the ground. We knelt at the same time, and Michael used his bare hands to help as I flipped open the multi-tool. I used the long needle-nose pliers implement like a lever to shift the rocks that formed the pool. The screeching of the rats was deafening, and the tips of Michael’s calloused fingers grew bloody. But he didn’t stop and neither did I. We also didn’t look back at the rats again. Finally, when my stomach was a hollowed-out pit of maybe-this-won’t-work, I displaced a large stone and Michael grabbed for it. He wrenched it out of the way just as the rats began to tumble across my feet. They had no time to change attack to flight before the saltwater hit them.

  The cleansing flood rushed in frigid rivulets around our legs.

  We scrambled to our feet, and I pressed against Michael, my teeth chattering in reaction to cold and fear. He allowed me to hold him. I think I helped to keep him on his feet. When the rats came out of the water to shake, here and there, in twos and threes and more, they were merely animals again.

  Michael held on to me, too, his muscular weight more of a reassurance than a burden, as they slunk from the puddles, groomed themselves, then found their way out and away. I tried to forget the feel of their bodies rolling over us, but neither of us moved again until they were all gone. Only then did I close the multi-tool and slide it back in Michael’s pocket.

  The saltwater had already dispersed using a thousand tiny channels carved into the stone of the cave for centuries. We’d loosed the tidal pool just in time. A few more seconds and we would have been gnawed to pieces.

  “F-f-fire,” I said. I didn’t need to consult Hannah’s notes.

  …

  We burned the remains before the sun rose. It seemed fitting that Jericho’s bones would smoke in the same cave where he had burned others. We were very careful not to touch the ashes. We stood outside while the blackened curls of smoke billowed.

  The ocean air saved us from the stench.

  The night saved us from detection.

  I’m not sure how we would have explained Vodou twisted to evil purposes to authorities who probably thought the walking dead only a horror movie concept with no roots in realty.

  When nothing was left but ash, the tide began to wash into the cave and we had to let it be. Jericho would be forgotten, nothing more than scraps of atoms absorbed in the sand.

  We trudged back to Stonebridge, too tired to speak.

  Michael had once said a person could be haunted even if ghosts weren’t real.

  This night would be with us forever. It was up to us how we would live with that, whether we would be weighted by it or whether we would be freed. I was comforted by the sight of the multi-tool’s handles protruding from Michael’s back pocket. Always there, always handy, like Michael himself.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

  No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks

  Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.

  Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

  Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

  I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 5)

  I’d finished a particularly challenging chess game with Hannah on my new laptop when Michael found me. The porch where Hannah and I had sipped chamomile tea was my new favorite spot at Stonebridge. We often hung out here together via text or video messaging.

  And she’d been wrong.

  Having a friend to share my secrets with hadn’t been awkward at all.

  Even a friend with a little too much intuition because of her spiritual connections.

  This morning she’d told me I would win the chess game. Then she’d proceeded in making it a hard-earned victory.

  A cup of tea steamed beside me. Hannah had left me a container of the blend her gran had taught her to make. I may not have been a firm believer in herbal medicine, but I probably drank a gallon of the stuff a day…just in case.

  When I told her Michael had arrived and that I had to go, I could almost see her blue eyes flash.

  “Tell him he still owes me a drink,” she texted.

  When I relayed the message, he told me to reply, “In your dreams, Rosy.”

  I did so with a smile playing around my lips.

  I hadn’t seen Michael around for over a week. I was glad to see him now. The bandage on his temple above his right eye reassured me that he was taking care of himself after his fall.

  I set my computer to the side, shutting down chess and text. Once my hands were empty, he filled them with a large box I recognized as a hat box from old movies on television. It was worn baby blue leather, and it was heavy in my lap.

  “A little of my family history,” he said.

  He moved to stand by the porch rail and look out over the ocean while I opened the box.

  It was filled with mementos—photos, postcards, letters, and things like ribbons and lace. The lighthouse featured prominently in many of the shots. I had already guessed it was family property not a rental.

  “My great-great-grandmother’s name was Beatrice,” Michael said.

  I’d met Michael’s little sister, Beatrice. She was a shy eight-year-old with eyes much older than her years. She’d been having nightmares for a few months before Michael began to work at Stonebridge.

  Come get me.

  Beatrice had visited, and we sipped chamomile tea. She smiled and laughed several times as the gulls swooped and flew near the porch. Michael might not have believed in ghosts or his great-great-grandmother’s superstitions, but he’d tried to fix things all the same. He had come to Beatrice’s rescue as my father had come to mine.

  Love makes all the difference.

  And I had come to his.

  I had followed him. I had found him in the cave, facing horror all alone, and I’d stepped forward to be by his side.

  I wasn’t afraid of loud and messy and horrible anymore.

  Because life isn’t always quiet and perfect.

  Nightmares happen.

  And they have to be faced head on.

  I found the photographs I guessed were Michael’s great-great-grandmother. She was lovely in all of them. But easy like Michael, as is. So ordinary and yet she’d managed to hold her own against an evil spirit for many years. She’d had children. I saw them all around her in many of the photographs. Her hair had been going gray. Her skirts growing shorter when the last photograph was taken. She’d been wearing an apron in that last photograph, and I recognized the handle peeking from one of its pockets. Michael Malone’s multi-tool had been around for a long time. I guess the Malones were a face-it-and-fix-it family.

  The expression in her eyes as she faced the camera with her chin up and her jaw tight made my chest ache. No wonder Michael had wanted to delve into Stonebridge’s secrets, to maybe save others from her fate.

  I gathered up all the photographs and placed them carefully back in the box. I stood up. I placed the hat box on the chair where I’d been sitting, then I joined Michael at the rail.

  It was midmorning. The gulls dipped and swerved in the air above the cliff, banking back over the house as if they saw humans and hoped for an easy treat.

  “Some people think their calls sound sad, but they would change their minds if they would only watch them fly.”

  I remembered Michael saying that when we’d first met. I thought about the box behind us full of Beatrice’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She’d been haunted, but she’d made a life for herself. In many of her photographs, she’d been smiling.

  Michael looked at me, but I’m the one who had to reach for him. I threaded my fingers into his
sand-colored, windswept hair, being careful not to hurt him, and urged him to lean down so I could reach his lips. It felt like the first time our lips had touched. I’d once thought he had secrets in his eyes. I’d been right. But I forgave him because we’re all only compositions of everything that came before and all that’s yet to be.

  Epilogue

  “Thy lips are warm.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene 3)

  The doorbell rang. Its jangling peal was clearer now as if some internal cobwebs in its mechanism had been cleared away.

  The whole inn was brighter. Bulbs rarely blew, and I played piano—my own selections—never Chopin. I’d found the mechanism in Octavia’s curiosity box. The tiny little key had still functioned. When twisted, the tinny notes rose up, too familiar and haunting. The museum had been happy to receive the box and the brooch for their collection.

  I’d thrown the old red crayon away and Brice Conservatory was definitely on for the fall session.

  …watch them fly.

  When I opened the door, I smelled black mold and decay. I tasted tears, and dry fingers brushed my face. But it wasn’t Alexander Jericho’s smile that greeted me.

  It was the postman.

  “Hi, you have a package for me?” he asked.

  He was a nondescript man in a postal service uniform, but gray claimed the corners of my vision. My head grew light, and my heart threatened to shrivel back to a cold gravel lump.

  They lost Tristan at sea.

  “Yes, I’ll get it,” I said.

  I turned and walked back to the music room. Tristan’s violin had been shut in its case and carefully wrapped for shipping. I would never play it again. I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to if I tried. My muscles had no memory from the endless hours of playing. It hadn’t been me playing, after all.

  The music room was quiet. The patch in the ceiling’s plaster where the chandelier had been looked starkly white against its faded surroundings. Mrs. Brighton’s usual chair was empty. The orthopedist said her deterioration had slowed. I suspected it had halted altogether. Only time would tell. Jericho had taken all that he could from her over the years. I shuddered to think of him skulking around Stonebridge, manipulating Mr. Abernathy more and more and Mrs. B. completely helpless and unaware. How often had she “napped” while he drained vitality from her bones with dark prayers and gruesome charms?