The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  of the lighthouse. She counted the seconds—one, and the light went off. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

  By seven she was asleep.

  Faye dreamed, and in her dream she wore a black dress and a black veil over her face. Widow’s weeds, but she wasn’t a widow.

  Though in the dream she wanted to be.

  Faye crept through a long hall of an old house, a cavernous house, a house like a hotel with brass-and-crystal chandeliers hanging from the polished-mahogany ceiling. The floors were marble under her feet. The furniture fine and fancy. The bars on the windows were iron, like the heart of the man who owned the mansion, like the heart of the man who owned her. This was a house of wealth and privilege, and in the dream Faye had to escape it or she would die there.

  And it wasn’t the dying part she minded so much anymore, but she refused to die here. She would not die here.

  She walked past a room and saw a man facing a window, and outside the window was a garden, and in the garden hung a swing. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but in the dream she didn’t want to. In her dream she never wanted to see that man’s face again.

  Faye knew she had to walk past the room that held the man, and that if he caught her, he would kill her, and if he didn’t, she could be free.

  She took a step. One. The floor did not creak. She took another step. Two. And the floor did not creak. She took yet another step. Three. And the floor did not creak. By the fourth step she had passed the open doorway without the man seeing her. Now she had to make it to the street.

  The urge to run was powerful, but in the dream Faye walked, counting her steps along with her breaths. Seven to the door. Seven to freedom.

  One. Two. Three. Halfway there.

  Every step hurt because her body was injured, outside and in. In her head echoed the furious voice of a furious man.

  Did you honestly think I married you for love? Did you honestly think I would have married a stupid little girl like you for anything other than this? You have one purpose in this marriage, and it isn’t spending my money.

  And Faye felt hands on her thighs, wrenching them apart, and a mouth on her neck, and then pain cutting her up the middle like the blade of a burning knife.

  Four. Five. Six.

  Seven. She’d made it. She opened the door slowly, cracking it and then opening it wide enough to slip out the servants’ entrance. Behind a stone bench, she picked up a faded carpetbag one of the maids had left behind when she’d gotten married. In it were old clothes she’d pretended to donate to the Lady’s Aid Society months ago. Even the widow’s weeds she wore were borrowed, taken from her mother’s closet after her funeral. Her mother wouldn’t be needing them anymore, and it was good she wasn’t alive to suffer her daughter’s disappearance. She had a choice—she could disappear of her own volition or wait for her husband to make her disappear. So she would vanish into thin air. She didn’t want anyone thinking she’d run away. A runaway could be found, but a girl who vanished, simply vanished, couldn’t be followed. No woman would run away from home in broad daylight on a Thursday afternoon while everyone was in the house, including her husband in his office with the door wide-open, would she? But she would.

  Once outside she walked straight to the street and turned a corner, then another. Old-fashioned cars drove past—Touring cars and Model Ts and even horse carts. In the dream Faye turned and waved her hand. A black four-door Oldsmobile with white doors pulled up alongside.

  “Where to?” the driver said.

  “The train station, please.”

  She got into the backseat of the cab, and the driver drove.

  “You a widow?” the man said, looking back at her, eyeing her veil, which she’d pulled all the way down over her face so that she viewed the entire world through a spiderweb of black silk.

  “I am,” she said, smiling behind the veil.

  “Sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  The smile widened.

  “I’m not.”

  Faye awoke in a panic, pressed her palm to her sweating forehead. Her other hand she pressed over her thundering heart.

  “Oh, God,” Faye said, rolling into a ball. “Faith...”

  She’d dreamed of Faith. Or maybe it was Faith’s dream she’d had. No wonder that girl had run from her husband. He’d beaten her because she’d refused to have sex with him. He’d not only beaten her but raped her. Faye pushed the blanket off her and looked at her legs. Finger bruises almost faded, but in the morning light she could still make them out. Faith had fled a wealthy and dangerous man and had drowned a week and a half later. And Marshall, whoever he was, had gotten away with his crimes against his young wife. The unfairness brought tears to Faye’s eyes. Faith had made it all the way here, made it to this sanctuary far, far away from her monster of a husband. And Carrick could have loved her, could have cared for her and given her a new life with a new love. But she’d died a senseless, stupid death before that new life could begin.

  And someone out there had decided to bring Faye back here to take Faith’s place. For what purpose? Faye didn’t know, but she knew this much on her second morning when she awoke in 1921—she would find out. For Faith’s sake and for hers.

  When Faye’s heart finally calmed, she sat up and looked out the window. The sky over the ocean was gray and pink, and the very first long yellow seams of dawn were starting to peek through the cracks in the clouds. Faye sat, mesmerized, as she watched the sun rise slowly over the horizon, changing the colors of the Atlantic Ocean from its nighttime black to a blazing red and morning blue. Faye wished more than anything she had her camera. She’d never seen such a sunrise. Was Carrick up in the lighthouse, watching the same sunrise? She saw the lighthouse flash once more before going dark again and staying dark this time. Carrick’s workday was over. Hers was beginning.

  Faye rose from bed and went to the dresser to find clothes for the day. She opened a drawer and saw the clothes Dolly had so neatly pressed, folded and put away were now in mad disarray. Faye opened the second drawer and found those clothes were also tossed about all over the place. By the light of morning Faye saw things she hadn’t seen the night before in the near dark. The rug under the bed was wrinkled like it had been pushed a few inches away from the wall. She opened the drawer in the nightstand and found it, too, had been rifled through.

  Faye ran and found Carrick leaving the lighthouse.

  “Someone was in my room last night,” she said.

  Carrick’s eyes went wide. He looked at her, pushed past her and went straight up the stairs to her room.

  “They went through all the dresser drawers. And the bed’s been moved.” She pointed at the rug.

  “Stand back,” he said. “I’ll check under the bed.”

  Faye pulled the nightstand away.

  “Can I help—”

  Carrick hefted the bed up by the base of the footboard and shifted it three feet over before Faye could say another word.

  “You are seriously strong,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Not too many ninety-pound weaklings survive fourteen years in the navy.”

  Faye watched from the end of the bed as Carrick ran his hand along the wall, the floor and the floorboards. He knocked on the floor a few times, dull thuds like one would expect. Then he knocked again a few inches over and the sound was sharper, hollow.

  “Here we go,” he said. He pressed on the board here and there, and one end lifted an inch. Carrick pressed again and pulled the board all the way up.

  “See anything?” she asked.

  “I see room for stashing something. But nothing’s down here.”

  “He must have gotten whatever it was. Money maybe?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Not enough room to hide much else down here.”

  “Why would he go through my drawers if he wanted whatever was in that hidey-hole?”

  He put the board back in place and stood up.

  “Maybe he didn’t find what he was looking for and went digging for
anything he could find?” Carrick said, shaking his head.

  “When Hartwell was here yesterday he seemed to want to come upstairs pretty badly. And did you see the way he was looking through the books?”

  “You think Hartwell ransacked your room just to find a book?” Carrick asked. “Doesn’t seem like much of a bookworm to me.”

  “Then what do you think he was looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. Then something seemed to occur to him, something that scared him. “If it was Hartwell... You don’t have anything with your real name on it, do you?”

  Was Faith not Faith’s real name? Made sense. Who would go into hiding and keep their real name?

  “Not that I know of.” Maybe she did have something with Faith’s real name on it. How would she know if she didn’t know her own name? “Why?”

  “Hartwell said he was in Boston a week ago.”

  “So?”

  Carrick stared at her. Faye understood immediately. Carrick had been stationed at the Boston Light. Carrick had visited Marshall while he was living in Boston. That meant Faith also lived in Boston.

  “Boston,” she said. “You think...”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  Carrick sighed, rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Hartwell asked a lot of questions yesterday about us being alone out here,” Faye said. “Then somebody tore through my drawers and under the bed while we were in the barn. If someone was after me, that someone could have taken me while you were up at the light and I was dead to the world with the door unlocked, right?” At least, that was what Faye wanted to believe.

  “That’s true,” Carrick said. “And Hartwell didn’t seem too happy to find out that the Landrys had been transferred eight hundred miles away while he was up north. Jack Landry had four little ones and a fifth on the way when they were sent down to the Keys.”

  “I’d start bootlegging, too, if I had five kids,” Faye said. “Or stashing money or alcohol for a bootlegger.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Carrick said. “But I’d feel a lot better if we changed rooms. Just in case.”

  “Or I could stay up with you tonight, at the lighthouse.”

  Carrick glared at her, eyebrow arched. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  “I recall, against my better judgment, mind you, what happened last night.”

  “What happened last night could happen again up there or down here. Every night we’re alone together on an island, Carrick.”

  “Yes, but you sleep at night and I work at night. If you work at night while I’m working at night...we might not get much work done.”

  “Would you rather I stay down here at night alone?”

  “No.”

  “So I can come up to the light tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Carrick.”

  “Fine. You can come up tonight. Bring a blanket and a pillow, and you can sleep up there while I’m working if you get tired.”

  “Or I can help you.”

  “You want to help me man the light?”

  “I want to do something,” Faye said. Work had always given her happiness and purpose to her days. She needed that if she was going to survive this time. “Back in my old life I used to take pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “I had a camera.”

  “I had no idea. You took photographs?”

  “I did. I was pretty good. And I miss it. I need something to do other than housework. Even Dolly sews clothes in her free time and decorates. I’m sure she helps with the lighthouse, too.”

  “Dolly? Help at the lighthouse?” Carrick laughed. “She’s so scared of heights, when I offered to show her the light you would have thought I’d asked her to kiss a snake.”

  “Okay, then... How about me? I could be assistant keeper. Hartwell said the lighthouse people wanted to send you one.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “Didn’t I hear you tell Hartwell that women help with lighthouses all up and down the coast?”

  “Well, yes. I was only trying to shut him up about getting an assistant. Fewer people out here with you here the better.”

  “But I am here. So why can’t I help?”

  “Those are women. You’re... You know.”

  “What?”

  “A lady.”

  Faye pursed her lips and stared at him. “Last night I was milking a goat in my underwear and drinking bourbon from a dirty flask hidden in a feed trough. I am not a lady. I am a grown woman.”

  “You’re a lady in my eyes. But I suppose you can be the lady of the lighthouse.”

  “The Lady of the Lighthouse?” Faye would have laughed, but she didn’t want to explain why she was laughing to him. “It has a nice ring to it.”

  “All right, lady. You talked me into it.” Carrick stuffed his hands into his pockets and nodded. “I’m not promising an official position or anything, but as soon as the sun sets you can come up to the watch room.”

  “Should I bring anything besides a blanket?”

  “You should.”

  “What?”

  “Well,” Carrick said. “Considering what almost happened last night, a chastity belt.”

  “Trust me, this underwear I have on is bad enough.”

  Carrick sighed. “I meant for me.”

  He left her alone, and Faye rolled back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. What the hell was she doing? She’d asked Carrick to show her how the lighthouse works. Why? Was she that bored already? No. Since waking up in this time, she’d been shocked, terrified, horrified, mesmerized, furious, fearful, attracted and aroused, but never once bored. That she’d seized on the idea of working with Carrick, being his assistant keeper, meant one of two very scary possibilities.

  Either Faye knew she would never see 2015 again.

  Or she was already falling in love with Carrick.

  Or both.

  15

  Faye survived another day in 1921.

  Barely.

  She and Dolly tackled the rugs that day—taking them out of the house, throwing them over the clothesline and beating them with brooms. Halfway through the process Faye had the most horrifying epiphany of her life. This was why women in the old days didn’t have day jobs. Because keeping house was literally a full-time job. No electric vacuums meant women had to remove the rugs from the floor to clean them manually. No air filtration systems kept the dust out. And the oil lamps spread soot everywhere they burned. She’d have given her right arm for her Swiffer.

  By two in the afternoon, Faye was so sick from the dust and the heat she waded right into the ocean fully clothed and vomited. Dangerous or not, she was too hot and miserable to care. She even sank into the water and let it wash over her like a penitent sinner at her baptism. Dolly watched her from the beach in fascinated horror as Faye floated in the ocean fully clothed for a few minutes, then stood up, and waded back to the beach. She went into the house, stripped completely naked and went to sleep.

  When she woke up, it was dark again. She must have slept for six or seven hours, at least. Faye dressed by the light of her little kerosene lantern. The overhead gas lamps were almost useless when she needed light for only a minute or two. They took nearly ten minutes to light up and another ten minutes to go off. Faye kind of liked living by the sun and the moon and the little oil lamp. Everything was prettier by lamplight, softer, more mysterious. Maybe that was why people romanticized the past so much. It simply had better lighting.

  After Faye found her shoes, she walked out to the lighthouse just as the evening turned into night. The lighthouse door opened easily, much more easily than it had two nights ago. Two nights ago? It felt like years since that evening she’d driven from the Church Street house to Bride Island and ended up here, compelled by something and for reasons unknown. Time, before so concrete, had turned to sand and slipped through her fingers. The harder she