The Keening

by A. LaFaye

  “And you didn’t want to come here!” he teased, backing away.

  “Jake, we can’t stay long! I have to find this man, then . . .” I checked the schedule board on the station behind us . . . “catch the midnight train home!”

  “Ticktock!” Jake held up his watch. “Time’s a wasting. I got a city to see!”

  And just like that, he ran off. I didn’t even have a breath to call after him. The shock of it had me standing there, staring. How could he just leave me? He acted like the only thought in his head was of this stupid city.

  A city where all of Kingsley Cove would fit in a few blocks. I stood there frozen like the blocks of ice I saw being thrown down a chute by a man with iron claws. He’d snatch one off his truck, then chuck it down the chute of . . . of a restaurant named Moxie’s. Ah, Moxie— even a backcountry girl had tasted Moxie soda. If you asked me, that stuff hadn’t left all the medicine behind. Mater told me they invented soda by adding carbonated water and syrup to medicine, then realized if they left the medicine out, they’d have a great-tasting drink. But not Moxie. That stuff tasted like they left the medicine in it. Give me a chocolate cola and I’d be happy any day of the week.

  And it looked like I could get one on almost every block of this city. But now was not the time to dawdle and gawk. I had a hospital to find, no matter how tired I felt.

  Mater told me it was a teaching hospital for the college, so I just had to get up the courage to ask someone for directions. I bumped right into a fellow who looked as lost as me. He spun around, saying, “Pardon me, do you know how I got here?”

  I frowned. “To be truthful, I’m not real sure where here is.”

  “You too? I fell asleep.” He loosened his tie, which wasn’t all that tight to begin with. “Haven’t been feeling all that well, so I thought a little rest would do me good. Fell asleep on the davenport, heard my wife Caroline calling, then poof I was right over there at Vernon’s Market.” He rubbed his forehead. “I meant to stop off and bring home some fresh fruit. Caroline asked me to, but I was just so tired.”

  He seemed so confused, I felt bad for him, but the only thing I could think to say was, “Well, you could get the fruit now that you’re here.”

  “That’s true.” He patted his pockets. “But I’ve left the house without my wallet.”

  I dug in my pocket. Uncle Fenton had given me enough for a round-trip ticket and meal money, but I could spare some change for the man.

  “Here.”

  He held his hand out. The poor fellow was shaking. He must be sick. I put my hand under his to steady him and dropped the coins. My whole body was still so muzzy from the long train ride, it almost felt like the coins landed in my own hand.

  “You are too kind, young lady. Too kind.” He closed his hand over the coins, smiling. “I can buy the fruit now. The fruit I promised Caroline.” He looked ready to cry. Illness can make the strangest things seem very important.

  “Well, you should get that fruit and go on home, sir.”

  “I will, I will.” He made to leave, but turned back to me. “But what can I do to repay you?”

  And just like that I got directions to the university hospital. Being in a city didn’t seem so hard after all. That is until I tried to make my way between walkers and wagons and honking cars—they had more people in that place than fish in the cove back home.

  I felt like someone had netted me and dragged me up on deck and clubbed me like a halibut by the time I reached the hospital. Near about needed the desk in the lobby to hold me up. I asked the lady there about Mr. Penwarren and his brother. She told me visiting hours were about over, but I insisted on knowing if he was in the hospital—a family emergency, I told her.

  “Penwarren?” She squinted. “I know that name.”

  She started looking through a wooden drawer of cards, chanting, “Penwarren, Penwarren.” I looked around, seeing so many people walking through—visitors with flowers and candy, one man with a stuffed bear. What a funny little toy. I hoped the child it was for felt worlds better.

  Then I saw a child. She walked down the hall looking so small among all those people. Why didn’t someone stop to help her? I turned to ask the woman, but she said, “I’m so sorry, dear, I knew I recognized that name. George Penwarren is that poor lad struck by the wagon, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand over mine. “He’s gone, dear.”

  No, not him too.

  “Died back before the war began.” She shook her head. “Such a fine young fellow too. I’m so sorry to add to your troubles, young lady.”

  No. I stepped back, angry at myself for coming all this way. Thinking I could do something. Find Penwarren. But all I found was death. More death.

  I turned and ran, the lady shouting after me, “You can’t go that way!” But I didn’t have a way. Not a way to help Pater. Not a direction to run in. I just ran—the whirlwind of worry and fear churning around inside pushing me forward as I raced past doors and people and startled nurses, turning corners and dodging gurneys. When only a staircase led the way out, I took it, then raced down another hallway, the people nothing but noise and motion around me as I raced on—the foolishness of my plan catching up to me as I ran out of air and energy. I felt so light-headed, swimmy even.

  I stumbled into a center hallway like the one on the first floor, but with a skylight above it. As I slowed down, the floor lurched from port to starboard like a ship navigating a squall. I heard someone shout. Saw a man rushing toward me as I slumped onto a bench along the wall, afraid I might pass out.

  Drawing in deep breaths, my mind went black for a second, as black as that dark still water, with me in a gray boat above it—rowing, rowing for the shore.

  When Seeing Is Not Believing

  When I sat up, the hallways leading off from that sky-lighted floor looked barren, empty even. I searched for people. Where had they all gone?

  I could see no one. The only sound was an odd mumbling in the back of my head, like a roomful of people all whispering at once. Then I saw someone walk out of one room and into another.

  “Hello?” I called as I headed down the hallway. The tiles felt as cold as an icehouse floor.

  The absence of people, the low mumbling, the ache in my head—I couldn’t deny it. I had passed out on that bench. This was a dream. No hospital has this many empty beds, not with so many people sick with the influenza. Or was I sick? Doc Mansfield had told me I couldn’t catch it twice. Could he have been wrong?

  Just then, I saw a man by a window. Not in a hospital gown, but in fancy pajamas—the kind with a shirt and pants. I’d seen them in a pattern catalog of Mater’s and told her she should make them for Pater. She’d laughed, saying, “I’d never get him to wear regular clothes in summer if I made him those.”

  I closed my eyes to hold her there for a second, smiling, the hint of her laughter tickling my ears.

  “Hello?” The man’s voice—nothing but a whisper—brought me back to that hospital room. A dreamt-of room that seemed real enough, the wall solid under my hand, the sun bright and warm against my face as I stepped closer. A sharp sound rose out of the low mumble, like someone calling me, but it faded when the man said, “Mayra!”

  His face lit up with recognition, but I didn’t know those pale blue eyes or that wispy blond hair—how could I dream of such a man?

  “Lyza,” I told him. Another bark of a sound echoed in my head, making my temples ache.

  He rubbed his eyes, then looked again. “Yes, you’re right. You’re too young. But you look so much like her.”

  “Mayra’s my mother.”

  “Mother,” he laughed. “Mayra’s not a mother. Carlie’s not a father.”

  “Carlie?” Dream or no dream, I felt excited to speak to someone about Mr. Penwarren. Maybe my mind held a hidden clue to where I might find him and this dream would reveal it. At least it would have a chance to if that sound would stop barking in my ear. “You know Carlie Penwarren?” />
  “He’s my brother.”

  Brother. That would make this George. The man I’d meant to find. The man who died in the hospital where I stood.

  I turned toward the bed. No longer just white with sheets, it had a quilt over it, turned down under the arms of a sleeping man, not any sleeping man, but the man who stood next to me, in duplicate, a family photo on the bedstand beside him—a mother, a father, two tall boys, both blond—Carlie and George.

  “There he is.” George stepped to the bed, ignoring the sleeping version of himself, looking straight at Carlie Penwarren, who sat with a straw hat on his knee, George’s hand in his own, talking, but I couldn’t hear him. His voice was only a mumble—like that gurgling sound in the back of my head.

  What kind of dream could this be? I looked to George, who smiled over at his brother, then I turned to Carlie, who looked faint—a wispy fog of a person. A ghost. Oh, Good Lord in Heaven. Had I died?

  George looked at me, a bit scared.

  Did he feel the panic in me? The sheer terror of leaving Pater? No, I couldn’t. I didn’t. Backing toward the wall, I willed myself to wake up. To end this dream.

  “No, wait!” George stepped forward. “Please, you have to tell Carlie. Tell him . . . tell him he’s forgiven. Make him believe it.”

  His sadness cut right through my panic, pulled me forward to take his hand. It felt so warm, especially when he raised his other hand to cup mine. But I couldn’t deliver his message. “I can’t find him, George.”

  “He has to be home. At our place, Wyvern Hill.” He pointed to the picture. For the first time, I saw the old house behind them—blue clapboard with a widow’s walk at the top. I squinted as the barking came back louder, stronger.

  “Tell him.” George squeezed my hand, but his own went soft, misty like the rest of him as he faded into the sunlight streaming through the window. And that bark became a voice, “Miss, miss, can you hear me?”

  Blinking, I could see a man, red-faced and blustery, shouting at me.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, squinting into the blinding lamp he held in front of me, feeling him grip my shoulder, seeing that I was surrounded by nurses and doctors and standing next to the bed of an old man who looked frightened as he leaned against the wall, holding up his blankets like a shield.

  I was ushered out of the room, everyone talking at once, asking me questions. What’s my name? Where did I come from? Did I know the day of the week? The name of the President?

  And the only thought I could hold was the one thing I couldn’t believe—I could see the dead.

  The Layton Familyline

  As all those people buzzed around me, begging me to answer them, I could see Jake standing at the end of the hallway—why hadn’t I noticed until now—he wore his Sunday suit. He’d worn it in the field beyond Founder’s Rock. In the rain outside the house. On the train.

  Uncle Fenton had tried to tell me, but Uncle Garrett wouldn’t let him. The first thing Adam Gunderson was sorry for.

  Jake had died.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to me. Even from that far away I could hear him clear as day. Just like I could hear him over the rumble of the train on the platform when I got on.

  “I’m so sorry I can’t be there to help you through this.” And he walked off, disappeared behind a wall. I struggled to follow him, but a doctor turned me to face him.

  “Are you listening to me, young lady?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, but how could I focus on this man who demanded to know who I was? I had too much to do. But they took me to a room to check my heart, my temperature—all the signs that I was a healthy, normal girl when there was nothing normal about me.

  The woman on the train dressed straight out of 1860s, when Granny Bradley married Grampy. The man on the street who fell asleep thinking about how much he needed to buy the fruit he’d promised his wife. That poor little girl wandering the halls on the first floor. George Penwarren, who wanted to tell his brother he forgave him. And Jake, poor sweet Jake, who only wanted to see Portland one day. But he made it there in death. Because of me.

  What did this mean? I tried to answer the doctor’s questions, stay in the here and now so they wouldn’t keep me any longer, but I couldn’t stop myself from being pulled back to our little cove up north. To Pater and his workshop, his wee boats, those carved faces he sent to sea. The letters. The doctors and nurses spoke around me, a chattering background to the discovery as it dawned.

  Pater spoke with the dead. That woman named Betty Lewis who’d fought a mountain lion to find her son Brian—she had lived and died and Pater had carved her into stone. Like all those faces he sent to sea. Souls. Souls he spoke to in his workshop, found in the stone or wood. Released into the sea to send them home. And the letters to their families to deliver the messages the dead could not carry to their loved ones themselves. Like the message I had for Carlton Penwarren from his brother George.

  I ached to see Pater. To hug him and tell him how much I loved him. Admired him even. I hated myself for not seeing that he’d been among the angels all that time I’d doubted him.

  And now me. I had inherited his gift, his talent. A hidden one he never wanted me to see. First, his aunts Amelia and Amy, then Pater, now me—a continuation of the Layton family line—seers of spirits, deliverers of messages.

  Oh, George’s message! I had to find Wyvern Hill and Mr. Penwarren. We had to get to that train by midnight. I burst out of the room and raced for the nearest stairs, doctors and nurses shouting after me as if I’d stolen something from them.

  Bursting out onto the main stairs, I looked off into the street—the bustle and flow of all the people—and found myself searching, wondering just how many of the faces I alone could see. The idea made me dizzy. I worked my way down the hospital steps and stood against a wall to collect myself.

  “Zing,” Jake whispered.

  “I’ll say.” I looked at him, pale, sad, distant yet right there in front of my face.

  “I didn’t even know you were sick.”

  “Me either.” He laughed. “Went to bed with a sore throat, woke up in Hemmings Field with my hands burning with guilt.”

  “Your hands?”

  “The locket. I’ve got to see that she gets it back. The night before, I’d slipped in to steal my grandmother’s locket. Sell it for a ticket to Portland. Head there before Mother could pack me off to some orchard in Oregon.” He rubbed his hands. “She loved that locket. Now how’s she going to find it?”

  “I’ll tell her where you hid it.” Not that I favored having to face Mrs. Finch after the loss of her son, a loss I hadn’t even mourned with her because I’d been on the island with Pater.

  Jake held my hand. His felt as real as my own. “Helping her find that locket will mean more than being at my funeral.”

  The dead didn’t have to obey many boundaries. He could hear my thoughts, just like the woman on the train. Touch me when words weren’t enough. Odd, but the idea comforted me. Told me how much I shared with Jake now.

  I squeezed his hand. “I’ll do it.”

  “After we find this Penwarren fellow.”

  And off we went, in search of Penwarren, my best friend Jake and I. Even with the truth of his death cutting into me each time I took a breath, I had to thank the Good Lord for giving us this last chance to be together. It made me think of Pater waiting to say good-bye to Mater. Would she come before I got back? Oh how I wanted the chance to see her one last time. To say God be with you.

  Jake stopped. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he said, “She wants to see this done. Your father needs to be safe.”

  She’d wait for me. What a blessing. I hurried on, knowing how hard the wait would be for Pater. I didn’t know Portland, Maine, from Portland, Oregon, so I found the nearest library, knowing they kept phone books, newspapers, and family histories—anything we could use to find Wyvern Hill. The librarian nearly shooed me away, the hour being so late and the library being so close to closing.
But she gave me a few minutes to find what I needed when I told her that I’d have nowhere to spend the night if I didn’t find the man I sought. That sent her into mutters of shock, but she let me look just the same.

  The Penwarrens, it turned out, had a phone number at 33 Wyvern Road.

  I used what I had left of my meal money to put a call through at a local five-and-ten. Caught the soda jerk just as he tried to close up for the night.

  I’d hardly ever held a phone before, not to mention the whole idea of calling a complete stranger had me shivering inside and out, especially with such an important and soul-deep subject to talk over. I tried to sound calm when I said, “Hello, Mr. Penwarren?”

  Silence.

  I looked to Jake, afraid I wasn’t using the fool contraption right.

  “Lyza?” a hoarse voice whispered.

  “Yes, sir. This is Lyza Layton.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  “Is your mother? Is she . . .”

  “Dead.” The word fell from my lips.

  “I’m so sorry.” He said it to me, but he sounded as if he was trying to soothe his own soul.

  “I need your help.”

  Suddenly the stiff official voice of a lawyer came through. “Yes, for your father. I’ll pack my things and be on my way.”

  “Wait, I’m here.”

  “In Portland?”

  “Yes, I came to find you.”

  “I knew I should’ve sent word that I’d moved back home. I’m sorry, Lyza. Tell me where you’re at now. I can pick you up. Take you back to Kingsley Cove.”

  I had more important things to sort out than getting home. “You can help Pater?”

  “Yes, your mother saw to that. Now, tell me where you are.”

  I told him and in a matter of half an hour after I’d thanked the soda jerk and watched him walk toward home, Mr. Penwarren pulled up in one of those newfangled motor cars. I recognized him straight off from the vision in the hospital when he stepped out in his white suit with his straw hat.

  Jake stepped back, saying, “I’ll see you at home.”