The Keening

by A. LaFaye

  “Yes.” I nodded, confused and a little spooked.

  Shaking her head, she counted to herself for a moment, then said, “What are you now? Fifteen?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “That’s old enough.”

  Old enough for what? I had a chest-tight feeling she planned to tell me things I had no room for in my head. I set the cup down.

  Sighing deeply, she nodded, then said, “Your grandfather. His last day on earth, he went out and sat on the end of our dock. Sat there until he froze to death.”

  Even the thought of such a thing filled my heart with ice, but she told the story as if she were describing how her husband made the bed in the morning.

  “I’d taken Evan down to Boston to see another doctor. We came home and I found Hiram there, cold and stiff as a statue.” She stared at the mantel as she spoke, as if she wanted something to block her thoughts. “His was the first face Evan carved.”

  Now the chill slid down into my limbs. Pater carved the face of his own dead father? But why?

  My mind leapt back to something Granny had said when I’d come in. She’d said the faces haunted him. Haunted him. And Pater’d carved the face of his father. His dead father. Was the Betty Lewis in our funeral wall also dead? Had she lived a real life in the mountains, before she came to Pater as a spirit? When Pater said Mater was coming, did he mean as a spirit?

  Granny moaned as if in pain, but she was shaking her head no. “I should have known better. You don’t need to know all of this. What you need to know is that . . .” She sat down, then put her thin hands on my knees. It hurt to have them resting on the scrapes. “Evan is a ship that will never come to shore, Lyza. You can’t moor him. Or draw him in. Let him drift. He’ll find his way.”

  She forced a smile, then turned to face the fire. “As for you. You’re a young woman now. You can make your own way. Mayra told me she’d saved up for you to go to college. Said the passbook’s in her flowerbox. Did she really bury it?” Granny’s face wrinkled up in confusion and disgust.

  “No,” I whispered, knowing Mater meant the box Pater had carved with flowers covering every inch. She kept it on the mantel in her study. But my mind rested on that box for only a minute. Was Mater wandering like Granny said, a spirit adrift, searching for a way back to Pater?

  “Child?” I felt her cold, stinging hand on my knee again. I jumped. “Are you all right?”

  “He’s waiting for her.”

  “For whom?”

  “Pater’s at the cabin waiting for Mater.”

  She stood, stiffened. “Then it’s better you’re here.”

  “You mean she’ll come?”

  My heart spun at the thought. Did I ache because I knew I should be there when she came? Because I’d let Pater bury her before a funeral could send her soul in the right direction?

  Granny turned her back to me. Nodding, her head drooped.

  Rushing around her to look her in the face, I saw that she was wringing her hands, her shoulders hunched, looking like that poor lost man at the farm. “Yes, yes. She will.”

  My mind twisted trying to find the right thing to do. The right place to go. Should I go home and gather Mater’s family for a funeral? A real funeral that would send Mater’s soul sailing toward heaven? And what of Pater? Why did those souls come to him? How could I protect him?

  As I swirled in my own thoughts, Granny stammered into a story. “I’m to blame. I only wanted to speak to him. To say good-bye. To give Evan a glimpse of his own father.”

  Her words steadied me. I stared at her, searching for answers.

  “To speak of spirits in our family was to invite the devil in, but my aunts Amy and Amelia, they courted spirits. Séances and the like. Said spirits meant no harm to the living. So I invited them over. They came in white. All white, even down to the paint on their nails. Evan hid. I sat at the table, holding their cold white hands, listening to them summon the spirits. For an instant, the room went as cold and white as they, but no spirit came. Or so I thought.”

  She walked to the table beyond the fire, then began to stack the dirty dishes there. The clink of glass on glass set me on edge.

  “A few days later, I heard Evan speaking to someone. He spoke, but no one answered, then he replied to some silent voice. I found him speaking to that chair.” With the plates in her hand, she pointed to Grampy’s rocker.

  “To his father?” I whispered, imagining a young Pater speaking to an empty chair.

  “Aye. To Hiram. And it didn’t stop there. We’d be walking in town and Evan would strike up a conversation with the air. I’d tell him we were alone, but he’d say Molly Anne came with us from the church.

  “‘Molly Anne?’ I asked.

  “He’d smile at me bright as a boy with a penny to spend, then say, ‘Yes, they buried her there and she doesn’t like it. The trees frighten her when the leaves have fallen and they look like old men.’

  “I stopped taking him to town, but the spirits still came to him, asking to be remembered. He carved their faces into the floors, the walls, the darn soap.” She pressed the dishes into the table, shaking her head.

  Looking me in the eye, she said, “Your father never had a right mind. As a toddler, he’d take every dish out of the cupboard and line them up from door to door. You see my walls. Who taught him to do that? Not a soul I’ve met. If I gave him a toy, he’d pull off each piece, then arrange them on the floor in odd little patterns, like his own private puzzle. He didn’t say a single word until seven days after his fifth birthday, when he recited a poem. Some such nonsense about seeing moors and heaven and the sea. Hiram thought him daft. My family thought him damned. I just wanted him to be . . . to live a full life. But I’d filled it too full.” Slumping into a chair at the table, she cast her eyes away, then said, “Mayra was our godsend. The spirits kept their distance when she was around. He had to go searching for them.”

  “Now she’s a spirit,” I whispered.

  Granny turned to face the window, her back to me.

  “What should I do?” I asked her.

  “Leave him.”

  “Alone on the island? No one to care for him?”

  Spinning around, she had a sickly smile, “They’ll come now that she’s gone. By the hundreds. He won’t even know you’re there.”

  I shook my head, backing away as a coldness spread through me.

  Granny gripped her elbows. “You don’t know the all of it, child. When you do, you’ll side with my decisions. Did your mother tell you how they met?”

  I kept backing until I felt the rough stone wall behind me.

  “In an asylum.” She spoke to the table, not me.

  I hugged myself to ward off the cold.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “She’d gone with a friend to meet a doctor—a specialist to help a young man who’d been run over by a carriage. The accident left the poor boy soft in the head or some such thing.

  “She found your father carving into the tables. The place was crawling with his etchings. They couldn’t stop him. If they bound his hands, he’d try to use his teeth.

  “The spirits had overwhelmed him. He paid no attention to the world around him. He spoke nonstop to those people, asking them question after question. What’s it like to ride in a balloon? Did you really shake the hand of the President? How does growing a baby feel in your middle? I had to take him to the hospital. Keep him safe. He would walk into trees, leave food burning on the stove, candles aflame on his nightstand while he slept. I did it to save him. Keep him away from the church, where they wanted to burn the devils out of him.”

  My mind flickered back to Pater standing at my window, saying, “Out with the light, Lyza. Fires burn in your sleep.”

  He’d been echoing his own mater. I knew that now. But what did she have planned for him?

  “And now?” I shuddered.

  “Now I’ll call that farm up the coast from you. They’ll take him in. Give him room to carve. I’ve spoken to them.” She rapped the
table with her knuckles, then stood up to leave.

  “No!” I shouted, racing her to the door.

  “What, child?”

  “You can’t lock him away. He has a full life. His workshop. Me.”

  She touched my face, her hand still cold. “Oh child, with your mother gone, you’ll disappear to him. The best you can do for yourself and your father is see that he’s safe and cared for, then respect your mother’s wishes and go to school.”

  “I don’t care about school!” I stood between her and the door. “You won’t lock him away!”

  “We’re not locking him away, Lyza. Your father is a danger to himself. He needs protection.”

  “I’ll protect him.”

  “You’re his child, Lyza. That’s not your job. You have a life of your own to live.”

  “Then it’s your job. You’re his mother.”

  She recoiled. “My, my, you have a tongue as quick as your mother’s.” Shaking her head, she said, “But Lyza, I’m an old woman. I can’t care for him now. I couldn’t do it right even when he was as young as you.” She nudged me to the side. “Now let me pass, I’m going into town to make that call.”

  “No!” I screamed, shoving past her. I knew I couldn’t stop her from making the call, but I prayed I could get to Pater before they came for him. Racing up the hill, I didn’t care how often I fell. I just picked myself up and charged forward, tearing down the narrow road toward the dock.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see that damned gray boat bobbing offshore, oars aslant, anchor line un-moored and floating on the water—nothing but drift-wood taunting me to try to reach it.

  Lyza Away

  I would outrow my fears, my meddling family, and the tide that tried to pull me to the shore all the way back. I kept my shoulders to the oars and steered clear, praying with each pass that I could get home fast enough.

  As I pushed through the darkness, I forced my mind toward practical things. I couldn’t run away with Pater. He’d never leave Mater behind. Fighting the farm workers off wasn’t possible. But Pater had been making me meals. He’d been changing his clothes. He said he could do it himself. I had to help him prove that he could.

  As I churned through the water, I began to wonder. Did I believe he could?

  Mater made sure he wore clothes warm enough for the weather. She worked herself to a frazzle to get him to eat. I’d never known him to make a single purchase at Gunderson’s. Did he know how to shop? To write a check?

  Checks. Money. How would Pater earn money? Mater’s boat money paid for the house, but it was her sewing that brought in groceries and paid the taxes. What could Pater do for money? Would he even understand the need for it?

  With each question, I felt myself drifting farther out to sea and further away from keeping Mater’s wish. But she had to know I couldn’t. No, I’d have to stake a claim with Uncle Fenton, insist that he pay me in more than favors to Mater and Pater—repair work Pater put off for too long, venison or bear meat from when he and his brothers went hunting, a little money when Mater’s sewing didn’t cover the bills or we needed something around the house. Now I needed the money to pay for those things.

  I laughed, the sound swallowed by the wind. Why did money matter if Pater found himself trapped in a world of spirits, Mater among them?

  Granny’s aunts had opened a door those spirits could pass through. I had to find that door and close it. Keep the spirits out of our world and away from Pater. Maybe then Mater could travel safely to heaven.

  I reached the island in the middle of the night. The cabin empty, the fire dead, I feared for Pater. Grabbing a lantern, I turned to leave, but saw something on the floor. No, in the floor. Pater had carved a note into the wood. “Mayra, where’s our Lyza? Lyza didn’t come back.”

  Seeing the deep ridges of more words only a few feet away sent me turning. I saw them circling the room in a wild pattern. “Mayra, where’s our Lyza?”

  “Lyza, come back.”

  “Come back, Lyza.”

  The fear in those words chilled me as I raced into the darkness, screaming for Pater. “I’m here, Pater! I’m here!”

  Running through the woods, I held my lantern high to catch sight of him. In a flash of light, I thought I saw the glint of an eye. I spun around, shining my lantern into the trees. Nothing. But I felt as if someone watched me from the darkness. “Pater?” I shouted.

  No answer.

  I headed on, walking now, my lantern still held high. Eyes stared out at me from deep within the trees. “Hello?” I called out. No answer. Stepping closer, I realized they weren’t Pater’s eyes. Brown and wide, they looked too young. Another step and the sight of the bark around the cheeks made me jump. Pater had carved a face into the tree, a face so real I’d felt it staring at me.

  Jogging farther into the woods, I found another, then another. Pater had filled the woods with faces, each one with eyes wide, mouth closed tight. I ran, calling for Pater. Then I heard sounds, like a wood-pecker hammering into a tree. Pater!

  Following the sound, I found him chiseling at a face, saying, “Orrin, you had a daughter. You found her in the storm. Help me find Lyza.”

  “Pater!”

  He spun around, chisel gripped in his bloodied hand. “Lyza!” He threw the chisel, then ran to hug me. “Lyza. Lyza. Lyza.”

  “I’m so sorry, Pater.”

  “Did the sea take you away?” He leaned back, then turned to Orrin’s half-finished face. “I tried to get help. To find someone who could see you, but none of them have. Orrin lived on the coast, he could’ve looked for you at sea.”

  “I’m back now, Pater. It’s all right.”

  “But where did the sea take you? Why did you go?”

  “I’m sorry, Pater.” I hadn’t the words to tell him. Just the weight of my shame for not stopping at Kingsley Cove Pier to tell Jake to go out and watch over Pater, tell him I’d be safe.

  “Did you hide from them too?” He smiled. “Mayra’s brothers came, but I hid. They didn’t find me.”

  “I went to Granny’s.”

  “Mrs. Hiram Layton? Who signed the forms? Who set me down in a white, white world?” Pater shook me. “Why?” His face stretched in pain. He let go of me, then began to pace, moving in and out of the circle of light that surrounded me.

  “I thought she’d help.”

  “Help?” He leaned toward me, then moved away. “Help with pills and leather straps and no stone? No stone! No tools. No walks in the woods. No people with smiles. No touching that doesn’t hurt!”

  I’d betrayed him. Sought help from the very person who hurt him the most. I couldn’t let anyone hurt him again. It would be my duty to protect him.

  “Pater, I won’t let them take you.” I tried to calm him, stop his pacing, but he pulled away.

  “You are a child, Lyza. You can’t sign forms. They won’t let me sign them. I can’t. They don’t trust my mind.”

  He spun in a circle, swatting the air in frustration. “Mayra said it could happen. They could come for me. She said, she said . . .” He patted his lips trying to make the words come out. “Mr. Patterson? Petry? Petingale?” Looking up at me he asked, “Who are they? Are they dead?” Pater spoke of the dead as people to be known and remembered like the folks you meet on the street.

  “I don’t know, Pater.”

  “We need the flower box. The man’s name is in the flower box.”

  Pater headed toward the dock.

  “Wait, Pater.” I grabbed him by the arm. “If you go, they’ll catch you.”

  He nodded, realizing I spoke the truth.

  “I’ll go get the box.”

  “But.” He hugged me close. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I’ll be back soon, Pater. I promise.”

  He backed up, drawing in a deep breath. “You can go if you raise the flag. No matter what happens, you signal me if you need me.”

  “I will Pater. Will you be all right?”

  He turned to Orrin.
“I have to find my chisel.”

  I smiled, then turned to run for the dock. Was the person Pater needed a doctor? Or a lawyer? Someone who could keep him out of the farm? Mater would’ve prepared for this. I just wished she’d told me what to do if something like this ever happened.

  I practically rowed in my sleep to reach the shore. The blue of our rowboat looking a shade of gray put me on edge, made me row faster. I actually felt grateful for the bite of the rocky shore that told me I’d reached solid ground. Halfway up the climb to the house, I had to drop to my hands and knees. All my strength had drained away.

  But I had little time to find this person before the farm sent someone to collect Pater. Raising the blue flag to signal my safe arrival, I stared at the house, checking for signs of life.

  Mater’s family probably waited inside the house for me to return. I went around to the woodpile below my bedroom window and crawled in. Leaving my shoes on the windowsill, I crept across the hall. From there, I could hear the soft burr of someone sleeping. Peeking into the guest room, I saw stockinged feet dangling off the end of the bed. Uncle Fenton. Seven inches taller than a six-foot bed, he never quite fit. Granger lay curled up on his chest. Mater’s voice echoed in my head, “Never wake a sleeping giant until after you’ve stolen his gold.”

  She’d told me the story of Jacqueline and the Beanstalk a hundred times in the comfort of my bed. Didn’t hear a word about that silly boy Jack until I started school and made a fool of myself by going on about the clever girl who outsmarted the giant. To make me feel better, in his own way, Jake walked me home, telling me it would’ve been far wiser to rename him Jake. It was a closer fit all around. Having such happy memories slip into my mind with so much gone wrong seemed almost like cheating, so I locked them away again as I backed into the hallway.

  Sliding my feet to make less sound, I made my way to Mater’s study. Using my fingers and my memory, I found the box, rubbed its many-petaled cover, then hugged it to my chest. I turned to leave, but then I swooned. Catching myself on Mater’s chair, I sat down to stop the spinning, but I didn’t get back up. I couldn’t. Sleep took me away.