House of Echoes: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  Ben ran his fingers over the dragon-skin binding and began to hatch the bones of a story. He imagined colonists risking dangerous passage across the ocean to the New World, the family Bible clutched dearly in hand while the small ship is caught by the whims of a tempest. He tried to visualize those pilgrim believers trekking as deep into the northern wilderness as any settlers dared go. Building a town from nothing, clearing a mountainside for a grand house.

  “Ben? You in here?” Caroline asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. He put the Bible into its box and lifted it back to its place on the top shelf. He found Caroline in their bathroom, washing her hands and face. “Taking a break? I can make you some tea.” Low barometric pressure gave Caroline headaches, and the last week had been tough on her. But her mood had subsided under the clear skies. Ben hoped it would last for a while this time.

  “The sander heats everything up. Is there any lemonade left?”

  “I’ll check,” Ben said. As he headed for the door, his thoughts wandered back to the Swanns. He wondered what kind of strength, audacity, and mad faith could have driven them. Not just to settle this place but also to dwell here for centuries, until their bloodline was utterly spent.

  “Do you hear that?” Caroline asked, heading to the closest window. “I think someone’s out there.”

  “It’s the trash guy—his son, actually.”

  “Almost gave up on them.”

  “Yeah. Let me check on that lemonade.” He thought about how the first people on the Drop must have felt, laying the foundations for the Crofts. How they’d imagined it into being before even the first stone had been set.

  “You get any work done?” Caroline called after him.

  “A little,” he called back.

  This time it felt like the truth.

  9

  The week inside had been terrible for Charlie. As he ran to the woods, he felt like someone allowed to finally stop holding his breath after seven days.

  During the storm he’d watched the forest through the windows, hoping the rough weather might shake some of its secrets loose from the trees. But all he saw were squirrels, rabbits, and deer.

  Heck had found a cave of albino lizards and a nest of scarlet-plumed birds in his adventures, but Charlie felt sure that something even better lived on the Drop. This feeling had begun as a vague sense of being watched, but sometimes he was sure that he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye—something that shouldn’t have been there. It was frustrating not to be able to fully see a thing he knew was there. He was sure Heck would have found a way around this problem.

  Heck was older than Charlie, and Charlie thought that was one reason why Heck always knew what to do. He knew how to build a fire that wouldn’t smoke, knew how to cure leather and read tomorrow’s weather in the clouds. But sometimes even Heck needed help. His friend, Shoeless Tom, had taught Heck which roots had to be boiled before they were safe to eat. He showed Heck how to run through the underbrush without a sound and how to talk to every bird that lived in the trees.

  Charlie wanted to know the forest as well as Heck and Shoeless Tom did. That was why he’d been so happy to get The Book of Secrets. The book explained a lot that Heck already knew and other things that Charlie thought he should learn.

  Digging his burrow had been the first thing Heck had done, and Charlie also wanted a safe place for himself. The Book of Secrets had a chapter that showed how to make a hunter’s blind. From there, Charlie thought, he could watch even the shyest of woodland creatures. He wanted to see the way they moved, the way they ate and drank and smelled the air. He knew just where to build it, too. The faerie circle among the big oaks east of the lake was the perfect spot.

  When he reached the lake, Charlie saw that it was full from the rains. The Drop was quiet today, but he could feel the eyes from the forest. Sensing the Watcher’s gaze made him feel less alone.

  There was a good tree on the west side of the faerie circle. It had long and level branches where he could build his perch. He was studying the arc and angle of its limbs when he heard a branch snap behind him. He thought he saw a blur of black when he spun to meet the sound. He caught it at the farthest edge of his vision. The forest grew quiet.

  When he turned back, he heard another noise from the same direction.

  Charlie walked to the edge of the faerie circle and searched the trees for movement. A noise came from deeper in the wood—a sound of urgent tapping, as if a tree’s branch were trying to remind its trunk of something.

  He began to pick his way through the trees toward the sound. He tried not to hope that the stranger in the forest had finally decided to show himself, but it was hard not to.

  The sounds ahead moved and changed. They were hard noises, like the clack of wood banging against wood, but over time they rang like the notes and rhythm of an unknown song. Charlie followed with a focus that made the rest of the world fall away.

  He did not know how long he tracked the sound as it wandered toward the slope of the mountain, but when the noise finally faded and did not return, Charlie saw how high he had climbed. Blue sky shone through the trees when he looked downslope, which meant that he now stood higher than the mountains on the far side of the valley.

  Charlie thought about this as he felt the eyes from the forest on him again. The strange gaze had been fleeting before, but now it burned his back. Charlie waited for the creature’s attention to move on, but it did not.

  As the silence grew and thickened, Charlie gathered his breath. He knew Heck would not be so afraid. He clenched his fists and forced himself to face the one who watched from the trees.

  10

  St. Michael’s stood at the head of a long gravel road that switch-backed up the slope of a wooded peak. An imposing wall built from the same brown rock that formed the mountain greeted Ben at the path’s end.

  Ben was early for his meeting with Father Caleb, the school’s headmaster. “Let’s look around, Hud,” he said once he’d parked. After their experience at the last school, he wanted to learn as much about St. Michael’s as he could before enrolling Charlie.

  Hudson hopped out of the Escape. They struck out on a small trail etched along the perimeter of the wall. Ben admired the slender trees, the fractals of blue sky that gleamed through their foliage. The wall gave way to an English garden, then a grassy field, and beyond that a drop to the valley floor.

  Ben followed Hudson among the blooms of bergamot and startling thatches of blue cornflowers. The air smelled of thyme and lavender.

  At the far end of the garden, Hudson stopped at a fountain, and Ben saw that a freestanding wall had been erected near it. The wall was the kind against which kids might play handball or some such game. But once Ben circled to its other side, he doubted this wall had ever been used that way. A large mosaic had been crafted from small, vividly colored enamel pieces. Set against a flaming sunset was the silhouette of a giant winged beast, its body wrapped in shadow except for the underside of its wings and a portion of its head and neck. The black pit of its single visible eye bore upon the lone figure in front of it: a man in white, standing on a rise that overlooked a landscape charred save for a single tree. His sword, barely the size of one of the creature’s claws, was raised above his head.

  It was a stark scene, especially in contrast to the surrounding peaceful garden.

  “St. Michael and the dragon,” said a voice from behind him. “A dramatic rendering, but the boys like it.”

  Ben hadn’t heard him approach. The man was dressed in the black capuche of the Dominican Order, which looked otherworldly in the July sun.

  “I’m not surprised,” Ben said. “Doesn’t seem like a fair fight, does it?”

  “Some days it doesn’t,” the priest admitted. “But look at Michael there, brandishing the sword over his head like that, almost daring the beast to lunge at him. Some days it seems as if all Michael needs to do is stand there, on the edge of that dark valley, to defeat the enemy. As if the gr
andest evil is just a schoolyard bully whose weakness is exposed by a single act of defiance.” He glanced up at the sky. “On a day like today, it feels as if it’s the dragon who doesn’t have a chance.”

  “It’s beautiful up here. A really nice garden.”

  “Thank you; it’s our chief indulgence. And a daily exercise in faith—if the rabbits don’t get into the blooms, then it’s the groundhogs or the deer or the voles. And you have your own vandal here?” Hudson was sniffing at a small pile of cedar chips, and the priest reached down to scratch the back of the dog’s neck.

  “This is Hudson, and his interests are purely carnivorous.”

  “I’m sure he’s found plenty of trouble to get into over at the Crofts.”

  Ben’s surprise must have registered on his face.

  “We don’t get many unexpected visitors up here, Mr. Tierney.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Father Caleb, and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Ben took the hand offered to him.

  Father Caleb started to make his way down the garden’s central path, toward the cluster of stone buildings. He looked to be in his seventies, but he was straight as a weathervane. “Tell me about Charles. His transcripts were quite complimentary.”

  “Charlie’s great. A really smart kid. Reads far above his age level. And he’s enjoying it up here. I was worried he might not, but it’s hard to keep him inside when there’s so much for him to explore.”

  “Curious children are a blessing.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “There was some trouble at school in the city, though, wasn’t there? The headmaster there was too discreet to say anything, but I’ve been doing this long enough to hear what isn’t being said.”

  “Oh.” Ben ran his hand through his hair. “There was some bullying.”

  “There was a note in his records that you’d hired tutors to school him from home for his last semester.”

  “He’d been roughed up a few times,” Ben said. “His books had been stolen and ripped up.” City schools could be tough, but even their short trip to Northbridge Day had gone poorly. When Ben thought of the place, he couldn’t help but replay the way those three boys had turned on his son. The boys could tell that Charlie didn’t watch the right cartoons or play the right video games or follow the right sports teams. They could smell it on him. The boys at Northbridge had found him out in half an hour.

  “That can be very difficult,” Father Caleb said. “On both the child and the parents.”

  “There was another incident. More serious,” Ben said. He hated telling this story, but it had to be done. “I’d pick him up from the front steps of school every afternoon. One day he wasn’t there, so I went inside. I looked in his classroom, talked to his teacher, went to the principal, but we couldn’t find him anywhere. So we called the police. They started interviewing the staff members and Charlie’s classmates and parents. An Amber Alert was issued. The FBI got involved. They sent his picture to every patrolman in the city. Still we couldn’t find him.”

  “Oh, my,” the priest said.

  Ben cleared his throat. “Our other son was only two months old. And my wife was…still recovering. I didn’t know what to do. Caroline sat by the phone with police and the FBI, but I couldn’t stay in the apartment. So I walked and walked. I remember it was freezing outside. At some point, I got it into my head that Charlie would be okay as long as he wasn’t taken out of Manhattan. There are only so many ways off the island, and the Holland Tunnel was the closest to our apartment; I just couldn’t shake the idea that maybe he was being taken through it that moment. To New Jersey and then to who knows where. If they got him through that tunnel, he’d be gone forever. I was sure. So I stood there by the entrance all night, looking through the windows of cars for Charlie. It was impossible, it was stupid, but it was only thing I could think of.”

  “Where was he?” Father Caleb asked.

  “Around ten o’clock the next morning I got a call on my cell phone from the school. The janitor had found him. Some boys from Charlie’s class had taken him down to the furnace room and locked him in a closet. He’d been trapped in the dark for nineteen hours.”

  Sometimes, at night, Ben tried to imagine what that might have been like. He tried to build the closet walls around himself in his head, but all he could envision was a coffin. No wonder it was so hard to keep Charlie inside the house.

  “That’s ghastly,” Father Caleb said. He rested a hand on Ben’s arm. “I can’t imagine how terrible that must have been. For everyone.”

  “The kids responsible had been questioned by their parents, the police, the FBI. They lied to all of them.” Ben shook his head. “We couldn’t send Charlie back there after that.”

  “We’re very vigilant about things like that here, Mr. Tierney,” Father Caleb said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy to make sure that our students respect their parents, teachers, themselves, and one another. Charlie will be safe here.”

  Ben nodded and turned away, pretending to look for Hudson.

  Father Caleb showed Ben the classrooms, gymnasium, and cafeteria. Ben was impressed by how modern the facilities were. He’d never have guessed it from the medieval exterior. Many of the classrooms were outfitted with banks of flat-screen computers. The cafeteria was airy and welcoming. The only building they didn’t visit was the chapel, as there was a mass in progress.

  “Is that where the rest of the brothers are?” Ben asked him.

  “Some of them; the rest are in Gracefield, setting up for the soup kitchen the parish there is hosting this weekend. Lots of people have been hit hard by the downturn.” Father Caleb shook his head. “ ‘Downturn’ doesn’t quite do it justice up here, does it?”

  “I guess if people didn’t find comfort in euphemisms, we wouldn’t use them.”

  “The priory is in good shape financially, thank the Lord, but a lot of families have been forced to make tough choices.”

  They had arrived back at the priory’s front gates, and Ben again noticed the wall that encircled much of the campus.

  “This looks more defensive than decorative,” he said. “It reminds me of some old Italian monastery.”

  Father Caleb nodded. “It used to encircle the whole priory, and it was built to do exactly what most walls are meant to do. The foundations were set in the colonial period, when this whole area was frontier. Rough times, and rough country.”

  “It’s still rough country.”

  Father Caleb laughed. It was deep and genuine enough to make Ben smile.

  “That it is, Mr. Tierney.”

  They reached the Escape, and Ben opened the door to let Hudson jump in.

  “I think Charlie could thrive here, but it would be nice to meet him, too,” Father Caleb said.

  “Of course. When would be the best time to bring him by?”

  “I’m actually going to be near Swannhaven on Thursday. I could drop by the Crofts in the late morning, if that’s convenient?”

  Considering the state of the Crofts, Ben doubted Caroline would be thrilled by the prospect of receiving a visitor.

  “The place is still a work in progress,” he said.

  “I don’t mind in the slightest if the place is a disaster. But I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Of course not. It’s no problem. I think you and Charlie will like each other.”

  “Until Thursday, then,” the priest said.

  Ben climbed into the car. “Do you need directions?” he asked.

  The priest shook his head and smiled.

  “I know the way, Mr. Tierney.”

  11

  Caroline admired the way Ben could turn a look of shock into a pleasant smile. He’d developed a thespian’s finesse for such things. She didn’t know how interesting the Preservation Society meeting would be, but the flash of surprise that lit his face when she told him she’d attend it alongside him had already made it worthwhile.

  She enjoyed a chance to knock him off-bala
nce. Ben was too confident that he had everyone around him figured out—as if they were characters in one of his books, amalgams of traits and quirks whose actions and dialogue could be predicted by anyone who knew enough of them. The only thing Caroline hated more than feeling like a foregone conclusion was knowing when she was acting like one.

  But it felt nice to be on a family outing. The air was warm and the sky was clear, and she felt good today. Charlie sat in the backseat with Bub and read to him from The Book of Secrets, and Caroline enjoyed listening. She was glad to have a respite from Hickory Heck. He read faster than his usual cadence, his little-boy voice driven forward like a wave lunging for the shore.

  Next to her, Ben was saying something about the Revolutionary War and the owner of the diner who’d invited him to the Preservation Society meeting. From what Caroline could gather, the woman’s family had lived in the village for generations, and Ben believed that she knew all its secrets. Caroline had discovered over the years that Ben hunted mysteries in everything he saw. She might roll her eyes at him for these sojourns into fantasy, but this was a trait of his that she enjoyed. Because Ben didn’t seem able to face the fact that life was, by definition, mundane, being with him had lent the world a vibrance it otherwise lacked. Caroline knew his childhood had a lot to do with the way he liked to live in worlds other than his own.

  She’d first seen Ben during college orientation when they’d passed each other on a footpath. He was handsome, but the campus was filled with good-looking boys. Later, she decided that she took such an immediate interest because of the girl he was with—over the semesters, Caroline noted that Ben was always with one girl or another. It hadn’t been the girl herself but the way Ben was with her. Completely absorbed. Breathing her in. He hadn’t even glanced in Caroline’s direction as she passed them. When Caroline tried to imagine the pure bliss of total engrossment, she’d come up empty.