Beloved

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Jane vowed to keep looking.

  She left the new and surprisingly plain Town Building and walked through a moody fog over to the closed Atheneum to check the library's hours. Staring up at the facade's soaring white columns, all muted in gray mist, Jane was convinced that the old library held secrets that the new Clerk's office did not. After all, Nantucket was fiercely proud of its history. Much of it was out there for all the world to see — the captains' houses, the cobbled streets — but most of it was tucked away on dusty shelves in out-of-print books and monographs and ships' logs.

  And also, as Jane found out that afternoon, on microfilm. The Atheneum had copies of every issue of the Nantucket Inquirer, the island's newspaper, beginning with the first one published in 1821.

  The microfilm viewer was at one end of the downstairs conference room. It was a room of gracious proportions, with large six-over-six windows that let in light even on a foggy day like today. The painted half-paneled walls, the ivory and green drapes, the rose and pale green Oriental rug, and the long mahogany table edged in a rope twist pattern would not have looked out of place in some whaling captain's dining room. Over it all hung a stately bronze chandelier, each of its lamps surrounded.by a small linen shade.

  Even the desk that held the microfilm viewer — a nicely turned-out piece of mahogany with heavy brass pulls on its drawers — possessed unusual dignity. Jane settled into the deep cushion of the bamboo-style armchair in front of the viewer, determined to search all day if she had to. It was comforting to know that upstairs tea and homey Fig Newtons were set out for anyone who wanted refreshment. The library was nothing — nothing — like the impersonal urban versions she was used to.

  She began her search for news of Ben and his ship earlier than she needed to, in January of 1828. The first two pages of the four-page weekly format were disappointing, filled with travel sketches, poems, and excerpts from other papers in the region. But on page three Jane found a feature column called "Ship News." It contained a list of the week's ship departures and arrivals, and was followed by a kind of nautical gossip column under the heading "Memoranda."

  It was the "Memoranda" part that intrigued her. Nantucket ships sighted all over the world were reported in this section, along with the number of barrels of oil on board so far — a kind of stock market report for the islanders, Jane figured. But there was more: Local sightings of ships were noted here, too, whether the ship was anchored around the corner waiting for a fair tide, or whether it was wrecked on some nearby rocks and offloading its cargo.

  Yes. This was it, the kind of forum she was looking for. She read through issue after issue, straining to read the fine, crabbed print, focusing with an effort on the sometimes blurry reproduced pages. In a way the search became a journey in itself, as she retraced the routes of the whaling captains who sailed their ships — without electronics, without engines — anywhere they chose: to Oahu and Japan, to Portland and to Lima, and to all points between.

  Finally, in the December 26 issue of 1829, she found a small mention at the bottom of the "Memoranda" that sent her heart racing.

  Two ships were seen on Tuesday south

  of the Vineyard, one a whale ship. They

  took pilots a little before sunset, and

  stood westward by Noman's Land. It

  could not be determined from Edgar-

  town, whether the other was a whale ship

  or not.

  Jane was absolutely sure that the other was a whaling ship — the ship Chelsea. Trembling from the shock of recognition, she was thrown back into the seizure — there was no other word for it — that she'd experienced on the roof of lilac Cottage.

  In this most joyous of seasons ... Yes, she remembered now. Whatever had happened to the Chelsea, it had happened in December, around Christmas. The unknown ship spotted from Edgartown was the Chelsea; it had to be. Logic confirmed it, and intuition, and the sharp throb in her shoulder that was now spreading to her heart.

  She pressed her hands over her heart, trying to ease the pain there. She wondered if she was having a heart attack, except that the path of the pain was headed backward. She thought of crying out for help, but it was such a quiet place; she shrank from making a scene.

  Was this how Judith died then? she asked herself in a panic. She didn't have fits and die of convulsions; she simply died of a broken heart?

  She sat there for an eternity, clutching her breast, her pain releasing itself in long, ragged breaths. Eventually the pain eased. Finally it went away and with it, her terror. Her mind heard only the distant sound of rolling thunder, the way it does after a squall has passed.

  Jane waited a moment longer, and then with a kind of dreadful, awestruck curiosity, she started the microfilm inching forward again. Page one ... page two ... page three.

  She shuddered and let out a deep sigh. It was as she thought. The Chelsea, loaded with twenty-three hundred barrels of oil, had run up on a bar off Nantucket in heavy weather. The cargo had been offloaded, the paper announced, and salvage operations were underway. In the immediate aftermath of the grounding, several members of the crew were known to be lost. It was not explained how they were lost — or who they were.

  Dismayed, Jane searched frantically for the obituary column. Under the simple heading "Died" were listed several names of people who'd died either on the island or off, but there was nothing at all about a Ben Brightman. Nothing at all.

  ****

  "I suppose you could call it a good-news, bad-news kind of thing," Jane confessed to Cissy over pizza and beer that night. (She had to tell someone. She knew that Cissy, of everybody, would believe her.)

  "The good news is that I don't seem to be insane. The bad news is that I may die of fits at any time." Jane tried to laugh off her fear, but the truth was, she was as frightened as she'd ever been in her life. All of what had happened so far — the nasty tricks around the house, her frightening dreams, even the "presence" that had set off Buster — was nothing compared to these possessions of her by Judith.

  "I don't know, maybe I'm developing multiple personalities," she confessed, pressing a loose piece of pepperoni onto her slice of pizza. "Maybe I am losing it. Maybe it's the stress of not having a job."

  "That's crazy," Cissy argued, refilling her glass. "I've never had a job. Do I look stressed?"

  Jane looked across Bing's breakfast counter at his sister and snorted good-naturedly. "The other bad news — and it is bad news — is that I don't actually have proof that Ben Brightman died in the grounding of the Chelsea. The paper never mentioned his name."

  "Oh, you'll find it. Maybe someone kept a diary back then."

  "Cissy, it's not as though there's a Diary Mart on Nantucket," Jane explained patiently. "Working through any archives and private collections could be a monumental task. Scholars get awarded Ph.D.s for tracking down stupid little details like this. I couldn't possibly —"

  "Did you check the following week?" Cissy suggested, brightening. "Maybe they were late getting his name in."

  "Um. Well. Actually, no. I was so rattled. Hmm. I'll have to do that."

  "Isn't this great? We're like a team or something," Cissy said, beaming. She nibbled her way through a long piece of stringy cheese and added, "I'm really, really glad you confided in me, Jane. I mean, what you're going through is just so cool."

  "Oh, absolutely," Jane said dryly. "That's what I was thinking." Jane eyed the last slice of pizza, then thought better of it. She didn't want any dreams of any kind tonight, and that included those induced by heartburn.

  "We have to have a plan," said Cissy. She reached around the counter to a side shelf and brought out Nantucket's very slim phone book. "We'll hire a professional, and she'll get Judith to tell us what to do." She turned to the yellow pages under "Mediums" and then under "Spiritualists" with no luck.

  "Try 'Psychologists,'" Jane suggested with a wry smile. "Times are tough; maybe they do séances on the side."

  Cissy took her seriously, of c
ourse, expecting to find a discreet little ad that said, "Spirits Summoned — Reasonable." When she came up empty again, she was very disappointed; she wanted so badly to help. So she chewed on the problem for a bit, like a puppy with a sock, until she came up with another idea.

  "We'll do an all-nighter! I'll bring Bing's camcorder, and I'll hide in your closet. That's what these experts do; they bring tape recorders and cameras and things and sometimes they get lucky."

  "Gee. Maybe we can pitch it to 'America's Funniest Videos,'" Jane said. She thought it was an incredibly dumb idea.

  "I've seen actual photos, Jane," Cissy insisted. "No one can explain the images that sometimes show up. A tourist took a photo of a ghost once and he wasn't even trying! He was walking down the stairs of some castle in England."

  "The tourist?"

  "The ghost. Okay, I can see you don't want my help," Cissy said, hurt. She closed up the pizza box and began folding it down to manageable size.

  "No, no," Jane answered. "I really appreciate what you're trying to do. I suppose we could give it a try. What the heck."

  "We have to do something."

  ****

  By the time Cissy came over at ten with the camcorder and a tripod, Jane's misgivings were great. Except for the time that Buster had seemed to see something in the rocking chair of her bedroom, there had been no evidence so far of any kind of apparition. Why should Kodak be able to capture what the human eye could not? Besides, Judith had done all of her communicating through Jane, which would seem to make Jane herself the medium in this affair. Logically, the camera should be aimed at Jane all night, an idea which made her skin crawl.

  "It's bad enough to be videotaped when you're asleep and vulnerable," Jane complained to Cissy as they discussed strategy. "But if Judith comes tonight, do I really want to be able to watch myself as she ... does whatever it is she does to me? Mac is right. There are some things," she said with a shudder, "that go too far."

  So the two of them walked round and round with the tripod, trying to locate it in an optimal spot. They tried the bottom of the stairs, and the top, and the hall. But there was absolutely no evidence that Lilac Cottage was haunted — only that Jane was — so in the end they set up the tripod in the bedroom closet, with the door partly opened, and put a chair inside for Cissy. Jane stood behind the lens, focusing it on the white eyelet-trimmed pillowcases of her bed, and thought, I must be mad. How have I let things get this far?

  If someone had told her two months ago that she'd be sharing nervous giggles with a gullible child-woman at midnight in the closet of her bedroom while they tried to catch some apparition on videotape, she'd have edged away from that person and called the police. Instead, she was cracking ghostbuster jokes that weren't very funny and trying hard to ignore the fact that it was midnight and time, at last, to go to bed.

  The plan was simple. Cissy would stay up and Jane would sleep. Jane didn't think it was fair, but there didn't seem to be any alternative, and Cissy claimed, after all, to be a night owl. So Jane slipped into a set of lightweight sweats, while Cissy dressed in a ruffled cotton gown in keeping with a girls' sleepover. She had her supply of caffeine — a six-pack of Coke — beside her and looked ready to party all night.

  As for Jane: Despite her trepidations she was exhausted. She slipped self-consciously under her white down comforter, let out a nervous sigh, and said, "Okay. Roll 'em."

  It became very quiet. Cissy, suddenly deadly serious, didn't talk, didn't sneeze, didn't clear her throat. There was only the rise and fall of Jane's own breathing, which sounded unnaturally loud to her. She lay there in a kind of terrified calm, feeling like some sacrificial victim. Her emotions were at war. On the one hand, she had an irresistible urge to bolt from her bed. On the other hand, she knew now that she couldn't escape Judith, not until Judith's mission was done. If Jane was the victim in this ritual drama, then she was also its high priestess.

  So she lay there, unsure of her power, uncertain of her resolve, until a deep, steadying heaviness crept into her limbs and then, at Judith's mercy, she fell asleep.

  ****

  When Jane woke up, enormously refreshed, bright sun was pouring through the deep-set window of the east dormer. She opened one eye sleepily and took in the pale yellow walls with their cabbage-rose borders and thought how very pretty the room was. She liked everything about it, from the way her old steamer trunk fit perfectly under the sloping eave, to the needlepoint rug that lay over the scarred and golden pine floor.

  Easing onto her back and stretching luxuriously, Jane opened the other eye. And found herself staring into the baleful eye of a camcorder.

  Jeez!

  She'd forgotten completely about the videotape. She jumped out of bed, wondering where Cissy'd gone off to, and swung open the closet door. There she was on the floor, curled up in a nest of spare blankets and surrounded by six empty Coke cans. The last videotape was still on the floor beside the tripod, unused. So much for the scientific method.

  Smiling, Jane crouched down and shook Cissy gently awake. "Rise and shine, kiddo."

  Cissy started from her sleep. "I'm awake! I'm awake!" she cried. When she saw that the sun was up and the second tape had run out, she winced. "I blew it, didn't I?"

  Jane pointed to the empty Coke cans. "Hey, you tried."

  "I did go downstairs to pee twice," Cissy admitted. "But other than that I sat right here for four whole hours, honest. And I didn't see anything, not a damn thing." Disappointed, she got to her feet and began stretching her obviously stiff limbs.

  "Never mind," said Jane, more relieved than not that the night had passed without incident. "Who's to say Judith had plans to be here in any case? Come on, I'll make us pancakes. We'll play the tape anyway; I want to see if I snore."

  "You don't," Cissy was able to confirm. "You slept like a baby. That's how I know no one came."

  The two of them trotted downstairs, with Cissy already planning the next vigil and Jane thinking how much easier this all was with someone to share it with — even if that someone was a naïf like Cissy.

  Jane thought of Bing, who, despite his love for Nantucket, could only give it bits and snatches of his time. He was far too busy prying artwork from the walls of bored collectors, and doing something really nice for an art-starved public besides. Could she honestly expect him to stay on the island and devote himself to her utterly bizarre quest?

  And then, of course, there was Mac — brooding; cynical; filled with contempt for her and everything she stood for. Oh, Mac was willing to keep an eye on her, all right, just as he'd kept an eye on her Aunt Sylvia when she was his neighbor. It was the commonest of courtesies. Besides, Mac was enough of a chauvinist to think that sooner or later every single woman needed a strong man. Maybe it was to nail down a gutter; maybe it was, who knows, to take her to bed. But chasing down ghosts? Uh-uh. Mac had the time to help Jane, but not the inclination.

  That left Cissy clearly as the best man for the job.

  So Jane and Cissy hooked up the camcorder to the television and popped in the first of the two tapes while Jane whipped up some pancake batter in her half-redone kitchen. The record of her falling asleep was amazingly boring; the novelty of watching herself sleep wore off after about sixty seconds.

  Jane rolled her eyes and flipped the first half-dozen pancakes on the griddle. "Cissy, you deserve a medal for staying up through this."

  "I think adrenaline kept me going through the first tape," Cissy said. She had settled into a sunny spot in the kitchen; sunbeams bounced off her long blond hair while, still in her nightgown, she sipped coffee and watched the tape fixedly. After a while, even Cissy's attention began to wander.

  "I slept better last night than I have in weeks," Jane mused, stacking the first load of pancakes onto a heated platter and slipping them into the oven to stay warm. "It must be a plot to throw us off guard."

  "That's the thing about apparitions," Cissy said, sounding like an expert. "Nothing is as it seems."

 
"That's the thing about this whole island," Jane muttered. "Not to mention the people living on it. Take Mac, for instance," she said, shaking her spatula at Cissy. "Look at him. I've never seen him smile. No one ever visits him. He's your typical curmudgeon, right? So how come everyone who sees him lights up like a roman candle? I don't know, I feel like there's something real, something genuine going on out here — but I just can't figure out how to become part of it. I catch glimpses, and then, poof, they're gone.

  Jane's lament was interrupted by the sound of her own voice: a quiet, almost petulant moan came from the sleeping figure on videotape. Both women jerked their heads toward the camcorder in time to see the recorded Jane frown slightly in concentration and then shift her position on the pillow. Jane ran to the recorder and rewound a few feet of the tape, then pressed the "Play" button.

  They watched in silence as the little gesture repeated itself. "See anything?" whispered Jane as the tape continued to roll.

  "Doesn't it look maybe a little fuzzy above your head?" Jane didn't think so. Cissy said, "Maybe Judith got scared off by the camcorder."

  "She wouldn't know what it was," Jane answered, as if they were having a perfectly reasonable conversation.

  They let the tape play on while they talked and drank coffee and ate pancakes in the pleasant, sun-filled room. Finally Jane stood up and said gently, "This isn't going anywhere, Cissy. If Judith had been here, I would have known." She stopped the tape.

  But Cissy, showing an amazing amount of grit for a dilettante, refused to give up. "I'll take the second tape and play it on the player in my room," she said. "If I see something, I'll run right over."

  The girl hesitated, then put her arms around Jane in a shy hug. In her ruffle-edged nightgown, with her hair lying straight and unstyled, Cissy looked and acted like a teenager; she could've been Jane's much younger sister. Touched by Cissy's timid little gesture of affection, Jane gave her a big, reassuring hug back.