A Sudden Light: A Novel

by Garth Stein

  We stay there for a long time, feeling the sun and wind on our faces, existing as one with the tree and with each other. We don’t speak a word; there is nothing to say. The magnificence of that perch is singular and needs no words to mark it. I am transformed by the experience, swallowed by nature and digested and have become a part of nature. We linger in this feeling, which could last forever. And yet it cannot.

  Reluctantly, we make our descent. And then we are on the ground again, which feels so wonderful and solid beneath our feet. Exhaustion sets upon me suddenly, and I swoon. I open my eyes and I am by a campfire, our unsaddled horses nearby, chomping the grasses. A rabbit roasting on a spit above the leaping flames. And Harry carving at something, a block of wood; he holds a chisel and carves intently.

  “What will it be?” I ask.

  “The earth,” Harry says, looking up at me. “A globe. And a hand will hold it.”

  “Whose hand is it? Is it yours?”

  “No,” Harry says, breaking into a broad smile. “It’s yours.”

  I close my eyes and try to remember: the trembling of my muscles racked with fatigue, my body limp, its energy fully spent; the feel and the scent of the earth, the soil in my hands, the taste of water on my lips; the depth of my sleep, filled with visions of soaring through the air, flying over the trees and mountains in the warm sun—such dreams!

  – 15 –

  AWAKE THE SLEEPING GIANT

  I woke up and it was night. My room was silent, and my heart, my soul were drenched with my dream, my vision. I was Ben. The spirit who occupied my thoughts now dreamed through me, and I saw those dreams. Ben showed them to me. Or maybe I showed them to Ben. Maybe Ben couldn’t see the things he missed so much. The things he loved. The trees, and Harry. If ghosts can’t dream, by my dreaming for him, perhaps Ben was allowed to see again.

  The alarm clock read 2:03 A.M. The door to my room was ajar; it hadn’t been ajar when I went to sleep.

  I slipped out of bed and poked my head out into the hallway. Dark and silent. I closed the door and got back in bed.

  The hand. The hand. I found the hand in the trunk, and then I heard the voice. Cause and effect. I found the hand and then I had the dream. The hand was tucked away safely beneath my bed, and yet it seemed to exude an aura; it was magnetic; it drew my thoughts.

  Staring at the ceiling, listening to my fan, I heard a click. I turned toward the door and watched it open ever so slowly. I knew that any logical person would explain away this door-opening phenomenon. The logical person would say I hadn’t latched the door completely, and the hinges had recently been oiled and were slippery. He would say the door hung in a way that made it tend to swing open. He would refer to the barometric pressure, the discrepancy between high and low pressures in the room and the hallway. The moisture content of the air, which was saturated by my own wet carbon breath. Humidity causes wood to expand, anyone knows that, or it adds weight enough to create a pendulum effect. There were so many ways to explain it. And yet.

  I got out of bed and closed the door again. I tugged on the doorknob to ensure it was indeed latched. I returned to my bed, but I didn’t lie down. I sat on the edge and waited; I didn’t have to wait long. Soon the knob turned. The latch clicked. The door opened.

  A chill ran down my spine. With my heart pounding, I rose from the bed and looked out into the hallway once again. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard a click from the end of the hall and the creak of a hinge and the settling of weight on a floorboard. Someone wanted me to follow.

  I made my way down the long, dark hallway, the old runner bristling under my feet, until I reached the servants’ stairs. The narrow spiral staircase twisted downward into an inky blackness, the totality of which made me afraid to continue on. But I heard a sound at the bottom of the stairs and I knew I had to follow the phantom.

  It was so dark in the stairway, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But I could feel the handrail, so I was okay. I continued down to the first floor, where the door was ajar and some light seeped in from the hallway. From there, I listened for the sighs. I listened for the groans and creaks and I followed them down one hallway and then another, around corners, through doors, until I was in a part of the house I had never been. In fact, it seemed few people had been in that part of the house in recent years. Decades, even. The runner in the corridor was dusty and faded, and the wallpaper on the walls above the wood paneling was peeling at its seams. And then I got to a stretch of hallway that seemed to have nothing in it. No doors at all, though I did notice an anomaly: part of the wall seemed to have a seam.

  I approached the seam, and saw it was a hidden door with the same wallpaper and paneling as the corridor, so, unless you knew to look, you wouldn’t see it. I opened it to reveal an empty linen closet with a dangling chain. I pulled the chain, and a light came on, but the closet shelves were empty. I noticed a small ring flush with the back wall, just about waist height. I flicked at it with my finger and it popped up. I lifted it and twisted and it clicked. It was a teeny door latch. I pulled, and the back wall of the closet swung toward me with a great, yawning, vacuous sound, as if I were opening a tomb.

  I peered inside and saw a brief chamber, then a narrow staircase that spiraled up into the darkness.

  I remembered Serena’s words: There’s a secret stairway, Trevor, and if you find it and strike a match, you will see an apparition. The ghost of Riddell House.

  I clearly couldn’t go any further without light, so I retraced my path back through the corridors until I arrived in the main hall, and then I hurried to the kitchen. Fortunately, Grandpa Samuel wasn’t sitting at the table with his medicine. I grabbed the box of matches from the stove and, as quickly as I could go without making noise, rushed back to the linen closet.

  I started up the stairs. As soon as I rounded the first few steps, the light from the room below dropped out. I struck a match against the side of the box, and it flared to life. I climbed the stairs until the match was nearly out. I took out another match and lit it from the first, and I kept going until, in the tenuous light, I saw a narrow landing at the top of the stairs. As I curled around the stairs to the landing, I stopped short, frozen, because in the dim flicker I saw a man looking at me. And, in that moment, the flame burned to my fingers and I dropped the match. I licked my burnt fingertips, quickly grabbed a new match, and lit it.

  The man was gone.

  For a flash. For a moment. I had seen someone I recognized from the painting in the parlor: I had seen Ben.

  My heart thudded in my chest. I blew out the match before it burned me again, and then I stood perfectly still in the blackness, listening to my own breathing. I sensed that Ben was with me, and, soon, I noticed something peculiar. My breath had fallen out of sync with itself. Or rather, what I heard as my breath was really two distinct breaths, slightly out of phase. It was a subtle shift, but I knew it. Two of us breathed in the darkness. I was standing in the dark, breathing alongside of a ghost. It was almost so frightening as to be assuring, as if my fear had gone so far over the edge, it had circled around again to calm.

  I lit another match, and, from what I could see, the small room was empty. I felt sure there was more to this ghost chamber, but I wouldn’t be able to figure it out until I had more light. I needed to try again when I was better prepared.

  I blew out the match, returned the matchbox to the kitchen, and went back to bed. As I tossed and turned, trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep with my mind filled with the image of Ben lit by a match, I heard the click again. My door slowly opened.

  “Seriously?” I said out loud, but Ben didn’t respond.

  I looked at the clock. It was 2:30, and I was wide awake. And then a thought occurred to me: the middle of the night in Seattle is morning in England.

  Again, I snuck downstairs and into the kitchen. I took the phone and huddled on the couch by the bay window. I called my mother.

  “What’s wrong?” she said immediately.


  “Nothing.”

  “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “I miss you,” I said, which was true, but not the real truth.

  “I miss you, too. I love you and I miss you. But go get your sleep and we can talk when it’s a proper time for you.”

  I wanted to do what she asked, but I couldn’t hang up the phone just yet.

  “I saw a ghost,” I said.

  “A ghost?” she asked incredulously, and then she laughed. “What kind of ghost?”

  “The kind of ghost who lives in a secret room behind a secret door in a linen closet in a part of the house people don’t really use, and if you light a match, you see him. Serena said Dad used to see him when he was a kid.”

  “I think Serena is pulling your leg.”

  “Dad never told you? He never said he and his mother used to light the match to see the ghost?”

  “No,” she said. “Your father has never talked much about his mother. I know that she was into spiritual things, but I suspect that was because she knew she was dying and she was looking for something to give her hope. I’ve never heard of this ghost. And you should be asleep. Go to bed now.”

  “I can’t sleep,” I said. “He opens my door.”

  “Maybe the latch isn’t set properly. Tell Dad. He’s good with things like that; he can fix it for you.”

  “Mom, there’s no way I can fall asleep. This house is creaky and dark and haunted.”

  “So read yourself to sleep, like you’ve always done. You said there’s a library with books. Go find a good book to read. Did you ever find that John Muir book you were looking for? The Mountains of California?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well? Did you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Why on earth not? You read everything. I’m surprised.”

  I didn’t think it would be smart to tell her that I’d found Ben’s love letter to Harry in the book, and that’s what I had read instead. She probably wouldn’t have believed that, either.

  “Fetch that book and read some of it,” she said. “John Muir was a wonderful writer. I’ve picked up one of his books at the library for myself. I think you’ll like him.”

  “Okay.”

  “And for heaven’s sake, go to sleep. I love you, my baby.”

  I hung up and returned the phone to the stand. I started off to the library, but, before I did, I checked in the kitchen drawers and the pantry. I didn’t want to light up the whole house and thought maybe I’d find a flashlight. I did: under the sink. I took it to the library, retrieved the Muir book, and retreated to my room. I left my door open, since I knew he would just open it again if I closed it. I clicked on my flashlight and opened the book to the bookmarked essay, “A Wind-storm in the Forests.”

  I immediately fell into Muir’s words; the way he described nature and the world around him was captivating. The essay told the story of John Muir finding a valley of beautiful trees and then, upon seeing an approaching weather front, climbing to the top of a tree and clinging to it to ride out the raucous storm, which whipped him back and forth in the wind and the rain. When the storm passed, he climbed back down to the ground and felt transformed by the experience. The sun shone on the tree branches so gloriously, it seemed to be saying, “My peace I give unto you.”

  Reading the essay didn’t make me sleepy, as my mother had hoped, but it did give me an unusual sense of contentment. I read straight through until I got to the final words: “Never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal.”

  So fresh. So joyous. So immortal.

  The words echoed in my head. No—they echoed in my heart, in my soul—and then I felt sleep draw over me. I set the book aside, turned off my flashlight, and closed my eyes. As I fell into a dark sleep, I kept hearing the words: My peace I give unto you.

  – 16 –

  CHAMBER OF SECRETS

  Looking back on that summer, I wonder why it wasn’t obvious to me. There was a reason my father had jumped the gun on getting the power of attorney signed and had called the notary too soon. He wanted to fail. He could have executed the plan properly—if he had laid the groundwork, as Serena had said. But he hadn’t. Because if he had, the problem would have been solved, and then we would have gone on our merry way, our pockets stuffed full of cash. We would have headed for the white cliffs of Dover, scooped up my mother, and lived happily ever after.

  But my father didn’t want to solve the problem that easily—or, at least, he didn’t want to solve the problem we all saw. There was something deeper he was getting at. I didn’t know what it was. I’m pretty sure Serena didn’t know, either. I’m not even sure my father knew. But it was there. I could feel it rumbling under the surface of everything we did. Riddell House was no longer dead. The old trees that held up the walls and the roof were stirring. They were waking from a long slumber, and their sap was flowing once again.

  * * *

  I woke early the next morning, and, though I hadn’t gotten much sleep, I felt refreshed. I ate my breakfast quickly and hovered around the kitchen, waiting for Serena to go to work and for my father to go off and do whatever he did during the days, which was still a mystery to me. When they had cleared out, I returned to the linen closet and checked around carefully to ensure that I hadn’t been followed by Grandpa Samuel. I opened the false wall in the back of the closet, turned off the light, and slipped behind the shelves, closing the door after myself and making sure it held fast before I turned on the flashlight I had retrieved from under the kitchen sink. Up the narrow spiral staircase I went, winding around until I reached the landing at the top, where I had seen Ben’s apparition. It wasn’t really a room. More of a short corridor. Though it was difficult with only a flashlight, I examined the walls as best I could. They were smooth, and the space had no doors or openings. Maybe it was a dead end. Just a small chamber to hide in or something, like Serena said. Hide your priests here.

  I decided to examine the walls by feel, not by sight, so I turned off my flashlight and tucked it under my belt. In the blackness, I placed my hands on the wall at shoulder height and slid them along as I traced the perimeter of the space, feeling for some clue. On my second pass of the area (which I paced off and judged to be twelve feet long at most and five feet wide), I held my hands at waist level, and, when I reached the short wall opposite the staircase, I felt a piece of the wall move. I pulled out my flashlight and shone it on the spot. There was a bit of wall, about two inches by five inches, that was flush and almost invisible because of the grain pattern but was loose and hinged on the top, so, when I pushed on it, it flapped open. I slipped my fingers into the hole and felt a latch. I pulled the latch, and the entire wall swung away from me. Humid, musty air flowed into the landing from beyond. I aimed my flashlight past the threshold of the hidden door, but the light couldn’t penetrate the thick air, heavy with the dust I had already disturbed. The corridor appeared to continue another ten feet or so to a narrow, steep staircase—really, more of a ladder—that climbed upward again.

  I stepped into the corridor. The walls were made of unfinished wood. Douglas fir, I thought confidently, as if I had inherited a shred of intrinsic tree sense from my ancestors. (I came from a long history of timber giants, after all.) The wood had a tight, sturdy grain and a distinctive fragrance, still, even after a century. There were no handrails, so I was careful to mount the stairs without touching the walls. I knew it was probably silly, but I wanted to preserve the integrity of this secret place. It was like going into King Tut’s chamber for the first time. At the top of the stairs was another door, but this one opened with a regular doorknob. I guessed whoever built this place figured if you’d made it that far, you must know what you’re doing.

  The room at the top of the stairs had a window and was dim but not dark. I turned off my flashlight to preserve the battery. As my eyes adjusted to the light, a somber, manly room came into focus. A rich crimson and tobacco rug stretched nearly wall to wall. Tho
se walls were about twenty feet apart, I judged—though I didn’t pace it off—and each wall was composed of a dark oak floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. The shelves were filled with leather-bound editions. If this place were some kind of a safe room to protect people from kidnapping bandits, as Serena suggested, the occupants would have had plenty of reading material. Across from a small dormer window was a modestly sized fireplace—at least when judged against the other fireplaces in Riddell House—constructed with smoky brown tiles cast with reliefs of nature scenes. A high-backed velvet sofa, an ornately carved coffee table, and two dark leather club chairs were gathered nearby. A writing desk and chair stood near the window. Several light fixtures adorned the walls. The lamps had kerosene reservoirs; the room, built before electricity, apparently had never been discovered to electrify.

  It felt like something of a violation for me to be in that place. I examined the ceiling, which had dark beams crisscrossing at three-foot intervals with an elaborate wood carving set within each square of the grid. Scenes of trees, of loggers, of men working, and of horses hauling. Scenes of men climbing high into the branches, clinging to the top. I remembered my dream, which seemed more like a vision now. A visitation. I thought of John Muir and his essay, and I wondered what this place was. A place to hide? A sanctuary of some sort? A place to worship. A place to be safe. Not from bandits, but from the rest of the world.