Death Watch

by Berk, Ari

  “How do you mean?” asked Silas.

  “Because it merely confirms the dead’s own pitiable state, merely shows with more clarity how a spirit is trapped in a moment out of time. Timeless. Endless. No way forward. No way back. However, some good has come of your father using it on occasion, so perhaps it’s for the best. I think your father found that the more he used it, the less he had need of it, if you take my meaning. It was something he took no joy in, for all its oddness. I respect such things, respect their power, but in the end I put more faith in a sympathetic heart than a pocket watch.”

  Silas knew there was truth in her words but wanted to use it again, wanted to walk out the door and see every corner of the town with the ghost-eyes that the death watch bestowed, no matter what Mrs. Bowe said. Silas knew that if his father had left it behind, it was because he wanted Silas to have and to use it. Maybe he was supposed to use it to help him find his father, alive or dead? Silas could feel Mrs. Bowe watching him stare at the death watch. He looked up and asked her, “Is this the only one?”

  “Your father thought there were others, although I don’t know if he ever held one. There were some early treatises written about them. You may find them somewhere here in this library, or find notes derived from them in your father’s writings. Here,” she said, looking through a small stack of old printed pamphlets and odd orphaned pages of long-lost books in a folder atop the desk, “your father collected information on the death watch, though most of what he found was speculative and I don’t believe told him much more than he learned by using it.”

  She handed Silas a piece of old paper. It was a page from an early book, maybe sixteenth century, judging by the image and the typeface. On the front was an engraving of the death watch. The mouth of the skull was slightly open, and the mechanism could be seen. Below it was a printed caption: “An accurate facsimile of the Hadean Clock, or Death Watch, an infernal machine, rendered from the actual artifact.” In the margins around the image were handwritten notes relating to the watch. The small, broken annotations were penned in a good, clear hand, although the ink had faded somewhat with age, so Silas brought the page close to his face to read them.

  The dead reveal little of themselves,

  but may be compelled.

  Running water may confound the

  watch’s properties, as streams and

  rivers remind the holder of the

  fleeting nature of time.

  When time stands contemn’d,

  you may not know what shall be

  reveeled, for every place where

  man hath been bears the mark of

  his passage that endureth, but most

  subtlie. Lykeways, Mysthomes,

  Lands of Shadow, and the Dead

  themsalves be ever about us and

  onlie Time prevents owre findinge

  them.

  And below those, a note in Amos’s modern, crabbed handwriting:

  STILLED HAND SHOWS THE OTHER SIDE … THE OTHER WORLDS. COLORS FADE FROM THE FAMILIAR AND THOSE THINGS THAT MOVE, OR FLOW, OR BREATHE, GRAY IN THE SIGHT. THE PAST OF A PLACE, OR THE APPEARANCE OF THE GHOST, MAY RISE IN HIGH RELIEF AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF THE PRESENT. OLD LIGHT EMERGES IN THE VISION, AND LONG, UNNATURAL SHADOWS ARE THROWN FROM FAMILIAR OBJECTS, AS IF TWO SOURCES OF LIGHT EXIST AT ONCE. OBJECTS ARE CAUGHT BETWEEN THESE LIGHT SOURCES, ONE FROM THE PRESENT, ONE FROM THE PAST. IN THIS WAY, THE WORKINGS OF THE DEATH WATCH ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT FROM THE WORKINGS OF THE MEMORY. IN FOND RECOLLECTION, THE DIM PAST RISES UP IN ALL ITS GOLDEN GLORY, AND THE PRESENT FADES AWAY. AND HERE IS THE WATCH’S MOST OBVIOUS DANGER: THOSE WHO LIVE TOO MUCH IN THE PAST MAY COME TO SHARE PERDITION WITH THE DEAD, WHO ARE THEMSELVES LOST TO THE PRESENT.

  Mrs. Bowe extended her hand, and Silas put the death watch into it. She ran her thumb over the dome of the skull, warming the silver.

  “Your father rarely used it anymore I think, so facile had he become at perceiving the dead. For a time I wondered if there was any power in the watch at all … if it wasn’t all in the beholder. But once, being curious, I tried it.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I would prefer not to speak of it.”

  “Mrs. Bowe, forgive me, you seem to know a lot about these things, yet you never seem very comfortable talking about any of them. But I don’t really have anyone else to turn to … I hope that my questions don’t offend you.”

  “I am very comfortable talking about them. I am just a little uneasy discussing them with you. That pendant you wear tells me it was your father’s choice to let you into this world, despite his present absence. His choice. Not mine. Yet now, I’m the one left to fill in all the blanks. I loved your father as my dearest friend and I will abide by his wishes, but I am desperate that nothing ill should befall you. It is hard for me to see how I can reconcile his wishes for you and my own desire to keep you safe. I want to help you, so I will try to see a way through this hedge. Give me a little time, Silas. I think you will find, eventually, that I am up to the task.

  “As I said, the work of our families shares a frontier. Your father and I worked together in the past to bring the bereaved what comfort we could. It was my honor to work with him. Your father was a man of sense, and he knew how to look through the records of the past and find things that might be of use to people. We shared that. A love of the old ways. I suspect you do too. And he was a good talker. People liked him, and so they told him things that are not often spoken of anymore in society. He wrote it all down, as you know.”

  Silas looked at her with eyebrows raised, waiting for details. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging furiously.

  “Ah. I see. Did your father never show you any of his writings? Or any volume containing the writing of your ancestors pertaining to these matters?”

  “No. Never.” Silas was practically panting. “Are there any?”

  “Indeed there are, and this is how we shall proceed: We shall let your father’s own words and the words of others like him educate you. That is the way.”

  She looked away from Silas and cast her eyes about the room, deep in thought. Very suddenly, she got up and paced the length of the study, until she stopped with purpose in front of one of the shelves higher and deeper than the others.

  Silas’s heart was beating hard in his chest.

  On the shelf sat what looked to be a large rectangular object, wrapped in a piece of old woven rug. She reached for it, but paused and instead asked Silas to get it down. “It’s an old, heavy thing, and I wouldn’t want to drop it. Yes, bring it down with your own hands. Your father was the last person to touch this book. From father to son it passes now. Blessed mother, guide their hands—”

  When Silas brought it to the desk, Mrs. Bowe nodded him on to indicate that he should unwrap it from its shroud. It was an enormous book. More than a book, it was an ark, stuffed with hundreds of pieces of paper, pages of other books stuck and stitched into it all through its length. Its covers were large, leather-bound boards, and it looked to be over a foot thick.

  “This book was part of your father’s work. It has been held by all the Undertakers of Lichport, all of whom were Umbers, so this, too, must come to you. It has not always passed from father to son, but I believe it is best when it is so. However, it is not yours. It belongs to the town. I would have thought you might have seen this, but perhaps your mother didn’t want such things about. Amos was given this book when he took the job of Undertaker. I know because I was the one who handed it to him. It is my job as … as town crier, if you like, to make sure the ledger gets from one Undertaker to another. Once, long ago, I read that three generations of Umbers came and went before an Undertaker took up the ledger. That was a bad time for dead and living both. So, people will be eager that you continue down the path of your father, whether you wish it or not. I must say, you are the youngest person to ever hold this volume, and that makes me uneasy. And, unless I’ve missed something, you have not formally accepted the position of Undert
aker of Lichport. With your father not here to advise us, well, we’ll just let things unfold as they must. You have stopped the hands of the death watch and looked kindly on the dead—let that betoken an auspicious beginning.”

  “But—stopping the watch was an accident.”

  “Honest error may play prologue to wonders. I shall pray that it is so.”

  They looked at each other as a strange understanding passed between them; then Silas slowly opened the book. It smelled like his dad. Old. Dusty. Ink and the mystery of ancient things crumbling between the pages. His eyes were wide as headlamps.

  “Here are the names,” said Mrs. Bowe, pointing at the first pages, “all the names of the dead going back to the town’s founding. Of course, curious as your father was, he added a great deal to the book. I know from talking with him that he used the book as a sort of scrapbook of anything he could find about the town, about the lore of the dead, anything he thought would help him in his work. The entries go back a long way. I know that. In adding to it, he took part in a conversation with other Undertakers going back hundreds of years. What will you say to them, Silas Umber, young as you are?”

  Silas didn’t answer.

  The book was open, and every page spoke his name in the creak of bindings and the raspy turning of thick pages.

  As was her way when Silas’s attention was about to become lost in something, Mrs. Bowe quietly left the room. Silas hardly noticed that she was gone, his eyes seeing only the book in front of him. He pulled out the chair—Amos’s blazer hanging from the back—and sat down at his father’s desk.

  His hands shook as he turned the pages. His first thought was of spells. Did the book record rituals? Incantations? He had read enough folklore to know such things existed, and the thought of his father being master of such arts excited him, because he would have liked to have such secret wisdom, some portion of knowledge larger than himself, something he could control and use. Secrets that would work for him, instead of the usual kind, which just made him feel small and left out.

  He flipped rapidly through the pages. Dozens of small pieces of paper and parchment blew out of the book and onto the floor. Silas realized with a sinking feeling that these had been bookmarks of some sort, perhaps marking the pages his father returned to again and again. Whatever they had once marked, those favored pages were now lost until Silas could find them again on his own.

  He closed the book and began again at the beginning.

  Silas slowly opened the cover first. There on the flyleaf had been pasted in an old engraving on a piece of heavy paper. The imagery was Roman, although the engraving was probably from the seventeenth century. The central image depicted a tall figure enthroned before a tomb with its door half-open. The seated male had two bearded faces adorning its head, one that looked toward the tomb, the other that looked in the opposite direction, down a road leading from the door of the tomb and off into the hills. In the hand facing the tomb, the figure held out an elaborate key. Below the printed image were words written in thick ink by an early hand:

  Hail, Lorde of Gates! Hail to He who sees All Worlds and Watches at the Thresholde. Hail, Lorde of Vaults and Mystpaths! Hail, Janus, Father of the Undertaking and Maker of Wayes. Be thy roades e’er blessed!

  And below this were some letters he could not read. Some in Greek. Others looked like quickly written Egyptian hieroglyphs, but he wasn’t sure. On the back of this page had been inscribed a list of phrases. Many of these Silas could make out, as they were written in only slightly faded ink in bold capital block Roman letters. It looked like a handwritten table of contents, but none of the entries had corresponding page numbers. Silas could make out

  THE PATHE OF VIRGIL

  ACTS OF DISSOLUTION

  EXTREME UNCTION

  YE DARKE CALL

  RITES OF JANUARIE

  WATER OF LETHE

  DOOR DOOM

  But as he continued to turn the pages, the handwriting became a real problem. Much of it seemed unreadable. Although it was mostly in English—many entries appeared to be translations from older works—it was still like trying to listen to someone with a very thick accent. Silas could see a few words clearly, but they were quickly crowded out by the words he couldn’t read. The first few pages were the easiest, perhaps because their subject was clear and meant to be read by anyone.

  Announcements. The first thing Silas noticed was that whatever the book had become, it had begun as a ledger of the town’s dead, recording their birth and death dates. The earliest date of death was recorded for Robert Careborn, who died at age fifty-three in 1625. Some of the entries, many in fact, had the word “PAX” written next to them in the margin. A few were noted “LOST” or “WANDERING.” Some were recorded as “MALEFIC.” Others as “RECURRENT.” The handwriting in the margins was in a variety of styles, indicating that numerous authors had commented on one another’s inscriptions.

  After the death of Agnes Farnham in 1761, only the names of Umbers were recorded. Silas assumed that at that point, the public death ledger was carried on in another book, and this enormous volume had come into the possession of the Undertakers of his family. He followed the long list of names, most of them unknown to him, most of the older ones clearly from the Bible: “Jonathan, Abel, Sadoc, Enoch, Joram, Jonas, Abram, Solomon, Uriah, Caleb.” A few of the names had a small drawing of the double head of Janus next to them, Silas assumed at first because they were Undertakers.

  When he got to the end of the list, he saw that it halted a few inches above the bottom of the page. The last complete entry was “William Umber,” and the date of his funeral ten years ago was in his dad’s handwriting. Below that, the page was empty except for a final incomplete entry: “Amos Umber” with a Janus head drawn beside it that had been crossed out, followed by his dad’s birth date and a blank line for the death date to be inscribed.

  Silas paused, then ran a finger over his father’s name and continued reading.

  After the entries of the dead, very little in the ledger was sequential. Silas turned page after page. Most of the handwriting was unreadable. Several pages contained only newspaper cuttings. These, at least, were easy to read. Most were clippings that had been pasted into the ledger, stories about accidents, murders, and terrible deaths that someone thought might be related to or result in ghostly activity. The headlines were terrible:

  AVENGING PREACHER—FIRST FATHER AND THEN SON SHOT

  WHILE ATTENDING TO THE DEAD

  GIRL GUILTY OF MURDER—SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD CONVICTED

  OF POISONING NUMEROUS PEOPLE

  DIED BESIDE HIS GOLD—AN OLD MAN SEIZED BY DEATH WHILE

  GLOATING OVER HIS HOARDED WEALTH

  DOWN IN THE CABIN, DEAD—A LITTLE BOY’S NIGHT

  WITH HIS FATHER’S CORPSE, AND THE BABY AND HIS SISTER—

  HIS COLD AND DREARY VIGIL

  A VITRIOL FIEND’S WORK

  KILLED INSTEAD OF CURED—AN OLD MAN, TO CURE THE GRIPPE, CUT

  A RTERY BY MISTAKE—GIRL DIES OF BLOOD LOSS—

  HE DIES FROM THE SHOCK

  WERE THEY MURDERED? A HOUSE SUDDENLY BURSTS INTO FLAMES,

  AND AFTERWARD FOUR SKELETONS ARE FOUND IN THE RUINS

  But the other pages were largely mysteries. Page after page of foreign lines and curves. Silas tried to pay attention, but his eyes began to blur and hurt.

  He looked up from the ledger, and his surroundings slowly came back into focus. The room was cold. He looked around and thought about laying a fire on the hearth, but as it was close at hand, he pulled his dad’s coat off the back of the chair and held it up for a moment. It was a little big for him, especially through the shoulders. It still smelled like his dad. He pulled the jacket on and then crossed his arms in front of him, imagining his father was hugging him, one of those long, been-away-for-a-few-days-and-missed-you hugs that always made Silas instantly forgive his father’s many absences.

  Blinking a few times to resharpen his sight, he looked down at the ledger again
, slowly and passively, almost as if he wasn’t trying to read it. Letters seemed to rise to his eyes. He could begin to see each handwriting style, each word, as its own accent. Now a sentence seemed clear, then a paragraph. Now a whole page became plain reading. Voices rose from the pages as though the book itself now spoke to him.

  Then he saw clearly what the book contained: many long quotes from even more ancient books and records, diagrams, and spells to bind the dead. To release a soul, to protect and banish. There was much poetry, or portions of poems containing lines an Undertaker had probably once thought illuminating in some way.

  He saw that toward the end of the book, there were lots of pages in his father’s handwriting. Some mentioned the watch, others were broken entries and brief comments.

  “What you see can also see you,” his father wrote in a margin. And below it, even more cryptically, “We are who we were.”

  As Silas continued to read for the next few days, he returned often to the back portions of the text, not just for fragments of lore and instructional notes, but because reading those entries in his father’s hand made it feel like his father was coming into clearer focus too, like Silas was holding up to the light parts of his dad’s strange and rapidly deepening work and world.