by Ari Berk
“Even now, my body is undergoing powerful, awesome changes. You want me to talk about it? Sure. I could tell you of the drawing away of the moisture from my skin. I think it is, I don’t know what to call it, calcifying? Still supple, but no longer what it was . . . I can feel these shifts toward permanence . . . my skin, my muscles becoming more resilient, tougher. And my organs . . . I think they are shrinking. I can feel hollows in my body now, spaces where there never were spaces before. My mind is not only my mind. I can feel others like myself. And I can feel you, through our shared blood. It is as though you are an infant again, an extension of my body. Sometimes I imagine I am seeing through your eyes. But I’m sure your great-grandfather has told you something of our condition. What more may I tell you, Silas?”
“Nothing. That’s okay.”
“You see? Men can’t handle change. I guess, if it were thirty thousand years ago, this is the part where you’d make an excuse about how you need to run off and do some hunting, and then leave me alone with my clots and thoughts, in the moon-hut with the other maidens and crones.”
“Mom?”
“It’s all right, Si. I know. Enough. It’s okay.”
Dolores paused, then added, “Strange, though. There are so many things we blind ourselves to in life, consigning common truths to shadows. But now . . . now it’s all clear to me. I can see right through every cloud. No more hiding, not for either of us. Everything is all out on the table. I think it’s better that way. Don’t you?”
“You’re right, Mom. You are. Everything out on the table. So. I love you. But I have to go. I know who’s followed me out of Arvale and is trying to kill me and who has fouled the air in town. I don’t know if I’m coming back. And let’s admit it now, I’m not sure most people would miss me. I am an outsider. You heard what people said. They blame me, and they’re right. You know, I have walked all over this town. I’ve looked in a lot of windows at night. I’ve seen families light their candles and draw their curtains against the dark. But I was always outside. Always looking in from the shadows. That’s not an accident. If I need to die so that others live, well, I’ve cheated death twice now, right? From the very beginning, really, I’ve been unnatural, and everyone can feel it. So I’ll go down there and do what I can, and if I can’t convince this spirit to depart, well, there are others older and wiser than me that we may call upon. If I die trying, what’s really been lost?”
Dolores stepped toward him. “Silas, you can say you don’t care whether you live or die, but I care! That’s why I don’t want you going anywhere alone right now. You’re in no fit state. You need people about you.”
“I have to go alone. I want to try and settle this my own way. Yes, there are others waiting even now to be called upon who would gladly bring down judgment upon this ghost because he has spilled the blood of his own family. You may call upon them yourself, should the need arise. They are already close by.”
Dolores looked up at the ceiling in the direction of the Camera Obscura.
Silas continued. “Yes, you know of whom I speak. Their solution would be horrible and irrevocable, I suspect. So I will do what I can first and leave aside more severe resolutions if possible. I’ve seen what happens when the old punishments are invoked. Terror only begets more terror. Judgment more judgments. I’m not that kind of Undertaker. If this spirit can be convinced to accept Peace, to take the waters of Lethe, or to leave of his own accord, it will be better, safer, for everyone.”
“I am still going with you. Give me time to pack a few things.”
“Mom—”
“Silas, don’t argue.”
“I’m not arguing with you. Come if you like, but only as far as the entrance to whatever is below. I won’t turn down a little more time with you.”
“Then where are you going?”
“The spirit I seek is very close.”
“Silas?” Her eyes narrowed. “How close?”
Silas shook his head. He only wanted her to come with him as far as the threshold of descent, wherever it was. He didn’t know what kind of harm could be inflicted on her now, as she was, and he didn’t want to find out. He was pretty sure he could face his own death, should it come, but he didn’t think he could stand to see his mother still and lifeless a second time. But then, he realized, if he failed to bring the Peace to Cabel Umber, he wouldn’t be there to see whatever followed.
“Silas! Where. Are. We. Going?”
He held his mother’s hand and, with his other hand, pointed down at the floor of her house, saying only, “Down there.”
They walked together through the parlor toward the arch leading to the rotunda. As Silas walked past the statue of the Ammit sitting next to his mother’s favorite chair, he paused and, with his ring hand, he stroked the crocodile head of the creature and whispered something so his mother could not hear. Then he smiled and said softly, “Watch over her, watch over this house.” Perhaps from the dry static air, the little hairs on the Ammit’s neck stood up against Silas’s hand.
SILAS JUMPED ON THE FLOOR, and with each landing, a hollow boom sounded.
“See?” he said to his mother. “There’s a big space below.”
“But how do you get down there?”
“I have no idea.”
They each went their own way along the curved walls of the rotunda. They knocked on the paneling and columns, listening for unseen hollows. They pulled on the sconces, looking for a device that would reveal a secret passage to whatever the Brothers of the Temple had hidden below. To no avail.
“We might have to bring up the tiles,” said Dolores. “That would be a pity. I don’t think there’s anyone in Lichport or Kingsport who can do this sort of work anymore.”
“There might be another way,” said Silas. He threw open his arms as he had done before the great doors at Arvale. Not a desk drawer opened.
Dolores looked around the room. “Was that supposed to accomplish something, Si?”
The gesture felt hollow. He told his mother about losing the Janus pendant in the millpond.
“Silas, I guarantee that any trinket of your father’s had very little real power in it. Whatever you thought it did for you, well, that power is in you, not on you. Do it again.”
Silas leaned forward slightly; he breathed in slowly. When he threw his arms wide again, he brought his foot down hard on the floor, and several unseen doors in the rotunda flew open. One of the doors led to a secret shelf of hidden books. Another was a small broom cupboard near the far wall, long forgotten. But at the back of the enormous fireplace, a great passage of stone had been revealed.
Dolores looked at her son.
Silas nodded and began walking over to the mantel.
Dolores’s voice rose in panic, following Silas across the room. “How can you do this? Whatever is down there nearly killed you once before. Indeed, it killed me, after a fashion. Wait. We’ll get help.”
“There is no help for this. I could search the books for curses and spells, but to what end? I have broken a vow and I can bring no force against him. But I can try to bring him the Peace.”
“Silas, please! Don’t be so dramatic!”
“Nascentes Morimur, to be born is to die,” Silas said. “But not for me. My father denied me the one thing that is the birthright of every person. I am not dramatic, I’m unnatural. Whatever is crouching down there in the earth is only a ghost. Whatever else it may call itself, that is what it is. I have made mistakes. I have given it some portion of power over me, and its curses have spilled over onto those I love. I will make it right, one way or another. Trust me. This ghost’s past and my own losses are inextricably knotted. There is only one road. My father knew it, and I can see it now. Let me follow it where it leads. Whatever happens, Mom, remember me, and be strong.”
“Silas, stop it! You are not going down there alone. The arrogance—”
“I don’t see why you’re so worried. I’ve been dead before. And let’s be honest, I have been a burden to my f
amily.”
“That’s not true. I mean, every child is a burden to its family, Si, one way or another.”
“I’ve been more than a burden. Dad said so in his diary. He said more than that.”
“He didn’t mean he didn’t want you. Damn it, Silas! See? That’s why I wanted it kept from you. No one page in a person’s life stands for everything. Your father may have written that then, but you were reading a moment in time. One moment. Silas, listen. Your father was scared. Scared of what might happen to you. Scared of the things borne in the blood of both our families. And we all see why, don’t we? You have picked up where he left off, and so it will all continue.”
“It won’t continue for long, because I’m never going to have a child.”
“Don’t say that, Si! How do you know? Of course you’ll have children.”
“You see? Bea would have been the perfect wife for me. No chance then of . . . anything else.”
“Silas, please. Don’t go down there.”
“Too late for turning back. I have set my course.”
“I just wish . . . oh, Silas . . .”
“What?”
“I wish I could keep you from what’s coming. I wish we could just be . . . as we are.”
“No one has that power. Change is the only certain thing.”
“But if we waited—”
“I can’t.”
“Si, let me go instead.”
“Not yet. If I can’t settle the ghost, then I will need your help. But I must try first. He may listen to me. You can’t go in my place. Besides, you’ve already had your journey into darkness. Now it is time for mine.”
“You’ll come back to me,” Dolores said, closing her eyes.
“Mom—”
“Say it, Silas. Say you’ll come back to me.”
“You’ll come back to me,” he repeated, trying to smile.
“Wait, Si! Please! And if you die? Silas! Christ! What are you thinking?”
“I can’t turn back now. My problem has been with me, or rather, hidden from me, since I was born. I need to find what’s missing from my life, or what good am I to others? Roads of the living, roads of the dead, they all lead forward from here. Sometimes, we must leave the world to enter it properly.”
“Death? That’s what you want?”
“A death. Yes.”
“You want to die?”
“No. But I can see what must happen now, even if you can’t.”
“You asked me if I was frightened of you. I’m not. But I’m frightened by what you’re saying. I’m scared I’m not going to see you again.”
“Mom, don’t. Please try to understand. It’s not about being alive or dead. It’s about being whole, about accepting who I am and what I am. Like every tortured ghost I’ve seen or helped, I am lost, or rather, I am the sum of my losses. Right through. I thought it was because I couldn’t find something I was looking for: Dad, friendship, your love, my place. But it’s not any of those things. I am incomplete in my self, and I have been from the moment I was born.
“Life and death . . . those are blurred for me now. There are no more boundaries. We all die. All of us.” He looked at his mom and smiled. “No matter how long we are able to put it off, eventually we all must take that road into the shadowlands. But I think, if we do it knowingly, if we accept the inevitable, the nature of the journey can be something more than the terror of the unknown. I think I know what’s waiting beyond the fire, and I’m not scared, but I need to know for sure. I promise we will see each other again. I love you, Mom. Trust me. And if I’m not back soon, remember, this is your house. Yours and no one else’s. There’s power in that.”
“Silas . . .” But Dolores’s words fell away. She looked at her son and put her arms around him. “I love you, Silas. I’ve always loved you. You’ll always be my little boy.”
She kissed his eyes, his cheek.
Then she let him go.
AUGUSTUS HOWESMAN MOVED SLOWLY Through the downstairs rooms of his house. Many of the Restless had come there, seeking sanctuary. Some had been turned away from the homes of their descendants. Others didn’t want to go back to their lonely tombs. He didn’t blame them. He showed them the abandoned houses on Fort Street. So now it was a neighborhood once more.
He didn’t even mind some of them coming by now and again. In the old days, he would receive company between three and five on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. So now, it appeared, it might be that way again. In the parlor, a few of his new neighbors were playing cards. Others spoke quietly in the front rooms, sharing memories of Lichport long ago. The Victrola played from the dining room.
Though he enjoyed the company, he didn’t feel like talking today. So Augustus Howesman made his way upstairs. The ascent took him most of the morning. Everyone and everything seemed to be moving a little slower.
From his chair in the upper room of his Fort Street home, Augustus Howesman sat, looking absently at the window. His eyes had turned to pale stones. He was not looking outside, but elsewhere.
With his inner sight, he could see his great-grandson walking into his house with the girl’s skull. He saw Amos Umber, a young man, running toward the marshes. Then he saw Silas pass into the great fireplace in the rotunda of Temple House. All was blurred now. The past and present had unraveled. He saw Dolores standing by the rotunda hearth, waiting for her son.
Augustus Howesman could only watch and trust that his great-grandson knew what he was doing. The temperature in the town had risen. Folks had been taken ill, and blame was flying all in the wrong direction. He worried Silas was shouldering too much. Good blood will always tell, he thought. His great-grandson was a man of honor. Why argue with fools when good work could make all right again?
As Silas passed below the shadow of the mantel and into darkness, his great-grandfather saw him once more, saw his face filled with the resolution of a true Howesman. Then flames flew up, burning away the vision.
Augustus Howesman cried. “Oh, great-grandson . . . ,” he said in a choking voice. “I would have gone with you, boy, had you asked me. . . .”And though he was not the kind of man to give in to despondency, he worried, truly feared, that he might never see his great-grandson again. That thought brought an aching stiffness to his arms and legs, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
He straightened his back. “Be well,” he said to the air, to Silas. But those words felt flat to him, so he called out well-hallowed, familiar lines that he had known by heart ever since his days in school, when the young were expected to memorize words worth remembering:
“ ‘No exorciser harm thee! Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee!’ ” He stopped, not wanting to finish the line, but then whispered reticently, “ ‘Quiet consummation have; And renowned be thy grave.’ ”
LEDGER
I am not pierced by the sun, but enter the flames and come forth from the flames.
—FROM THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COFFIN TEXTS, TRANSLATED BY SILAS UMBER
THE DESCENT FELT FAMILIAR. Dark and steep, the stairs carried Silas down into the underworld below Temple House. Almost before he could think of summoning it, corpse fire appeared and flickered about his head, suffusing the passage in cold, pale light. From the remaining shadows, spirits rose up in his path, angry ghosts too long imprisoned below the earth. As he had read his father had once done, Silas did not pause, but raised his hand as he descended, holding the ring confidently before him. The spirits fled or dissolved upon the air where the refracted light of the scarab struck them.
At the bottom of the stairs, Silas emerged in a vast chamber filled with every kind of artifact: Etruscan sarcophagi, vessels chased in gold, statues of forgotten gods, fragments of architecture from Rome, Babylon, and the farther East. It was as if the whole of the ancient world had somehow shipwrecked itself here, below the earth. His father had known this place, or at least had been familiar with some of the relics hidden here. Silas guessed his un
cle had never found this chamber.
Torches lit the room, and the blue corpse candles that attended him dimmed and faded out.
From somewhere near the center of the room, he could hear the grinding of teeth. Cabel Umber was there waiting for him. Silas followed the sound through the cramped lanes, between the stacks of artifacts and crates, all spoils the Brotherhood of the Temple had long ago brought to Lichport.
As he neared the center of the chamber, the air grew warmer, closer. When he emerged into the heart of the labyrinth, he saw why. The massive idol of Moloch stood glowing with heat from the fire burning wildly within it. On the floor surrounding the statue were traced circles of ash, sigils and signs. Silas saw his own name crudely inscribed among them with something sharp—a dagger’s point, or a finger bone. He was expected.
Cabel Umber looked up from gazing at the flames.
“It is a great wonder to me, Silas Umber, why you are not dead. Twice I have cursed you, and yet you remain. People are sick, dying in their beds of fever above us.”
“It is winter. Did you not know? Lots of people get sick from the cold, yet forget all of winter’s discomforts come spring. Don’t take so much of the season’s ills upon yourself. Besides, the weather is about to turn. This all happens regularly in the lands of the living, remember?”
Cabel ignored him. “And some of the firstborn have fallen, and more shall follow. But you are still hale, I see. Are you sure you are your mother’s firstborn? She may have whelped a few bastards before you.”
