by Ari Berk
Two days ago I banished under compulsion a furious ghost from a house on Garden. I begged for it to take the waters, but it couldn’t find footing within itself. The next day, I was here in Saltsbridge mowing the lawn. Now I sit at the kitchen table writing line after line of this self-indulgent crap so I feel like I have some control while upstairs, I can hear my son softly sobbing. It’s moments like this I wonder what’s the point in lying to him about my life. Why not tell him? Say the words and watch his eyes go wide as he feels the world he knew fall away and the ground open up beneath him. At least then we’d be falling together.
The Fears have come. Omens are everywhere throughout the town. No one speaks of them, and that makes it worse. Now that the Fears have flown in and Dolores is pregnant, all I can think of is what manner of loss is next to come. The joy of parenthood everyone speaks of, but not the Fears. The child will be fragile. Every child is fragile and can be hurt in a thousand ways. My life is centered on death and helping the dead. What do I know of helping the living? Or a child? Or a living child
—I heard a baby crying somewhere outside and then Dolores came in saying the time was close. It must have been a bird I heard. Everything is portent.
Have put the seal on the great door on the house beyond the marshes. I swore I would not sit in judgment, yet I have done just that. Have now looked upon their terrible, continuing work and set my hand against it. If the door is mine to command, I have closed it and shall not summon it open again. Those within shall remain within. The ancient bindings on the sunken mansion are intact. I cannot risk them coming against the gate and gaining the lych way back to town. Once merely a familiar mist home, the entire estate has become a vast shadowland, and both dead and living are imperiled by it. And though the gate is sealed, that place will call to my son if he comes close enough. There is no way to keep him out except by keeping him in Saltsbridge or some other place beyond the summons. Even that carries risk, for what Umber can resist that call, even if he cannot hear it in the flesh? With every action I take to protect my son, I know ten more dangers appear. It would have been better if Dolores and I never had a child. I know this now. Our ao-ros, our untimely one . . . our little bird, there is darkness before him and behind him and I know I will not be able to keep him from it.
Since Silas’s birth, I cannot bring the Peace to the ghosts of children. I cannot approach those shadowlands in which the young dwell. Those doors are closed to me now. I can hardly bear to look the parents in the face and tell them I can be of no help. I try to explain, but they will not hear it. Last week, a couple who have been haunted by the ghost of their child crossed the street to avoid me. It was as though I was a leper. Mother Peale has gone to them. But they asked that I not try to speak to anyone in their family again.
I tell myself no one is to blame, yet my marriage may have brought certain ancestral predispositions to the fore. The Howesmans and some of the more affluent families are rife with mysteries . . . and while these usually only present at time of death, who can say what a union between our two families may conspire to conjure in a child, in the blood of our child.
I see him, surrounded by our books and the bones he finds and brings home. It’s like our secret language. He leaves me bones on the table, carefully arranged in patterns. So often, when I return home, he is asleep, but on the surface of his desk, in fox teeth, cat skull, and deer rib, I read “I love you, Dad.” Even in this, already, he moves himself toward the fate I have striven to keep from him: a hieroglyphic world where souls hide or are imprisoned within the patterns they shape in life.
There is to be no money from the estate. Dolores is furious. Charles is to stay on in Temple House. I can’t imagine how much money is left anyway. Charles’s collection has swollen so over the years, but Dolores is ready to hire an attorney. I forbid it. We can’t afford it, for one thing. But I don’t care about the money, and I don’t want to enter Temple House again. Charles can no longer be trusted. His wife left him. He says. So I must believe him. But the house is filled with shadow. He can no longer be trusted. We are Osiris and Set, more and more with every meeting. I will not enter that house again.
I am being watched. When I go into the town, eyes are upon me. I can no longer discern if they are of the living or the dead. I am too much a coward to tell Silas what awaits him. So I will watch as long as I can until he comes to me in full knowledge of his inheritance, until I no longer have to speak those terrible words to him of what I’ve done . . . our common end.
ANKOU: is the name for the King of the Dead in Brittany, where the last person to die and be buried would become ANKOU until the next person died. Thus the crown passed down from soul to soul, often in families, but only so long as the line continued unbroken. Is there somewhere a tale about what happens when one turns away from such an obligation? Surely in all these books . . . one . . .
Throughout the pregnancy, the drowned girl appeared to all of us, even Dolores. She says my fascination invites the ghost closer. She may be right. But there is something else. If the ghost were seeking me out, why can’t I find her on my own? Has she become a Wandering Spirit? She is tied to the millpond, but moves through the town, and her emanation of longing is considerable. The more I see of her, the more I believe it is the child she comes for, the ghost senses the presence of the unborn and hovers close, perhaps to gain proximity for what she did not achieve in life . . . a child, a family, love. Otherwise, the ghost is largely blind to the present. She will follow a young man of the town for a time, but always to his detriment and always he will either follow her until madness ensues, or she moves on, unable to discern one paramour from another. To her, I believe, all are merely shadows of the love she pursued during her lifetime: the young man who ran from her murder, and left her to drown in the millpond, her haunting place.
The way she looks at Silas . . . And though he is a child, it’s as if she sees the man within the baby. In her terrible way, I believe she loves him. There’s the peril.
The drowned girl still persists. If we take the child from the house, she is often there. I do not wish to use more compelling words, but I cannot make a connection, cannot reason with the spirit. She senses that Silas is incomplete, that he is not like others, and I fear she is drawn to him, to the chance of harming him, which she may, by either accident or intention. I don’t want her looking at my son. So Dolores may get her way after all, because I can find no way to bring Peace to the drowned girl, or banish her ghost . . . only distance will keep her from my son. Dolores thinks it’s me, my work that attracts her, but I know now that the circumstances of Silas’s birth call out to this ghost, to other ghosts as well, who are likewise drawn to him. The void within my child calls out to them, to those who are lost. We should never have had a child. God protect him and forgive me for my arrogance.
When Silas turned over the last scrap of paper and saw there was nothing more, he took the stack of his father’s words to the hearth and cast them in. The dry paper caught instantly, and the small stack burned swiftly. As the edges of the sheets curled and burned to black cinders, there was a flash and a blue blaze flew up from the embers. Deep within the writhing ribbons of smoke and flame, he thought he could see Bea’s face. Silas could not hear her voice, nor know whether it was vision or fantasy, but her mouth was open and she was screaming.
And that was his fault too.
LEDGER
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience—calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.
—KEATS. MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER
And so the ponds and pools nearby the marshes became the sites of terror and of sacrifice. There, within or by
the waterside, a stone would be erected. There, those that had broken oaths—of chastity, or any sworn bond—might be drowned, given to the gods who had once looked upon them with favor and beneficence.
—FROM A ROMAN FRAGMENT, TRANSLATED BY JONAS UMBER
IN THE TIME AFTER BEA had been abducted by Cabel Umber, the entire surface of the pond had not yet iced over again, despite the freezing air. Silas did not know where she was being kept by his ancestor, but he did know that her drowned bones would provide a way, a sure and ancient way, to call her back to him. He would make use of the Dark Call, which required little more than the boldness to gather up the bones of the deceased and the fortitude to see the spirit dragged out of one sphere and into another. He didn’t like what he was about to do, but Silas could see no other way. He could not fight Cabel directly, nor did he know where Bea’s spirit lay imprisoned. But the Dark Call would bring her back. It had to.
Silas stood before the water, mustering his courage to go in. The air before him parted, and a spirit raised its hand and stood between him and the pond.
“Beatrice,” he said softly, hardly believing it could be her.
The ghost drew in closer to him, and its body became more distinct. It wasn’t Bea, but the ghost of an older woman.
“Leave me alone, whoever you are,” said Silas angrily.
The ghost gave off an arresting luminescence that rose and dimmed like a lantern at a train crossing. She was familiar to him. Her hand glowed brightest of all and drew Silas’s eye.
“What do you want of me?”
The ghost raised its arm in a gesture of warning but did not speak.
Growing more impatient, Silas said, “Nomen? Causam? Remedium?” and compelled by the words, the ghost slowly answered.
“I am Mary Bishop.”
“I know you,” said Silas, remembering her photograph from his uncle’s collection. Her picture had disturbed him the most of all the portraits of corpses his uncle had taken. Charles Umber had covered her face in the photo and had focused on her hand. She had lost her other arm to disease and had buried it with her two children when they’d died before her. In some kind of sick fascination, Uncle had taken a picture of her remaining hand. Perhaps in revenge, Mary Bishop’s ghost had been there the night his uncle died.
“Let no man conjure the dead by their bones! Silas Umber, let the dead rest in peace.”
Silas said, “Beatrice is not at peace.”
“Silas Umber, hear me!” She threw up her hand toward his face. “Let none other suffer what I have suffered. Turn aside, Silas Umber, from fell deeds! I have seen things. I know things I would rather I not know. I have been summoned through my remains, called back into my bones by black words. Unnatural! Most unnatural! Silas Umber, lay aside your desires to conjure. Bring no more suffering to the dead!”
“I am trying to save her. You don’t understand, she’s been taken. I have to help her.”
The ghost shook her head into a blur and moved her hand as if to keep something away from her face.
“Only the mad seek to meddle with the dead. They draw curses down upon themselves and their families. Silas Umber, for his sins, your uncle suffers the torments of the damned. Seek not that same path. Leave the dead in peace. Leave us to that world to which we have been consigned by our own deeds, for good or ill. All else, leave to God!
“You don’t understand—”
The ghost of Mary Bishop screamed, and Silas dropped to his knees and covered his ears with his hands. The ghost’s awful keening rose up and became the cry of a nightbird. Her form sank down, and a dark bird flew up from the reeds and away toward the marshes.
Silas slowly drew his hands away from his ears. He looked up to where the ghost of Mary Bishop had disappeared, and saw another figure standing over him, holding a rope.
“I fear little good can come from this,” said Augustus Howesman.
Silas didn’t even ask how his great-grandfather knew where he was. “Please don’t try to stop me.”
“I will not. A man must set his own course. I’m just asking if you believe this is the best of all possible actions.”
“How would I know that? This is the only option left to me, so maybe that makes it right.”
“A child guesses. A man feels, in his gut, what he must do. He goes deep inside and knows.”
“Deep inside? I can’t go there anymore.”
“All right, then. Do what you think you must. I will stand by you.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to find down there. You may want to leave.”
“I’m not scared of anything at the bottom of a pond, Grandson. You may need me, so I’ll be staying, if you don’t mind.”
Silas wrapped one end of the rope around his waist three times and knotted it, then tied the other end of the length into another strong knot and handed it to his great-grandfather. “I’m not sure how deep it is. Don’t let go.”
“Never.”
Silas took off his scarf, outer coat, and jacket, and lay them among the reeds. He left on his shirt and pants. He removed his shoes one by one and, without another word, walked to the water’s edge and waded in. The pond was not deep at first, though as he approached the middle, the soft, cold mud fell away from his feet. He began paddling, the water shocking every part of his body. He started to hyperventilate and couldn’t stop. He reined in his panic, telling himself to focus and breathe. He knew he couldn’t be in the cold water very long, so as soon as his breathing steadied, he dove below the surface to rake his hands along the bottom and try to find Beatrice’s bones.
His eyes burned when he opened them under the water.
The moon lit the pond, and white things at the bottom seemed to turn and glow in the moving water. He could see the bones, almost within reach. He kicked to push himself farther down. How many bones did he need? How many were there? He glanced quickly and saw a skull. Then another. And another. As he looked in confusion, desperately trying to decide which skull to take, skeletal shapes stirred and lifted themselves from the mud. Long white arms reached for him, grasped at his shirt and arms, pulling him down. He saw a stained gray stone standing amid the bones, carved with script, and knew by instinct that this had once been a site of sacrifice.
The pond was full of faceless ghosts, their long hair filling the water with motion and obscuring the light. Through the black tresses, he saw Bea’s face below him, and reached for it. His hand touched something hard, and he grasped it and drew it to him.
He clutched her skull to his body.
A skeletal hand, green with algae, reached for him. His lungs nearly empty, he kicked frantically, trying to return to the surface, but fingers of bone scraped down his face and neck and caught the chain of his Janus pendant, choking him, pulling him closer to the darkness at the bottom.
As he clamped his mouth shut to keep from screaming, small bubbles escaped his lips and fled to the surface of the pond. He felt the rope begin to pull at his waist, and for an instant he hung there in the water, the spectral hand gripping the chain around his neck, the rope about his waist pulled taut. Silas clawed at the chain. It broke, and the green hand held the pendant as it sank, but he was already rising, concerned only for Beatrice’s skull clutched in his hands.
More hands flew up from the mud, grasping, trying to reach him.
Incantation flooded his mind and he shouted into the water, “None shall stand against the Sun! Retreat! Fall back! You who swim in the darkness of chaos!” With his free hand, he pointed at the ghosts of the drowned, and his ring— resonating with his water-churned words—illuminated the pond with a piercing blue light. The ghosts fell away and back into the mud below as his body broke the surface of the pond and his great-grandfather pulled him out.
Augustus Howesman helped Silas back up onto his feet and wrapped the dry coats and scarf about his great-grandson’s body. “We need to get you home.”
“I’ll go myself,” Silas said absently, not looking up. His teeth were chattering.
He turned Beatrice’s skull over gently in his hands and knew with certainty it was hers. He wiped the mud from it with his coat, and a yellowed patch of bone shone beneath the moon.
“Even her bones are beautiful,” Silas said, turning to walk away.
“Grandson?” Augustus Howesman said. “Let me take you home.”
“No,” Silas said, cradling the skull like a child.
Augustus Howesman said nothing and did not follow. He watched his great-grandson walk away from the millpond, and what remained of his desiccated heart filled with worry and sorrow.
LEDGER
Though I am young, and cannot tell
Either what Death or Love is well,
Yet I have heard they both bear darts,
And both do aim at human hearts.
And then again, I have been told
Love wounds with heat, as Death with cold;
So that I fear they do but bring
Extremes to touch, and mean one thing . . .
. . . So Love’s inflamèd shaft or brand
May kill as soon as Death’s cold hand. . . .
—BEN JONSON. MARGINALIA OF RICHARD UMBER
‘Ye take your lady, and you go home, And you’ll be king over all your own.’ He’s taken his lady, and he’s gone home And now he’s king over all his own.
—FROM THE BALLAD OF KING ORFEO. MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER
SILAS HAD BUILT UP THE fire on the hearth in his study, and though warmth spread quickly through the room, he hardly felt it. He sat by the fire in dry clothes, gently holding Beatrice’s skull, wiping it clean with a cloth. The slow, steady movements of his hands were tender, but also mechanical, insistent, as though he could prove to her bones how much he loved her. His heart cried out for Beatrice. He would use any means available to get her. His good sense had worn down to desperation.
