The Book of Illumination

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  I paused at the beginning of the alley. The thought of sneaking around after dark in Finny’s house, assuming I could actually get inside the house, didn’t bother me at all. But the prospect of encountering that rat again or one of his scavenging pals in the dark, deserted alley behind the house filled me with absolute dread.

  It was all I’d thought about in the past two days. Not the possibility that in my desire to ease the distress of a restless old ghost, I could get myself arrested for breaking and entering. No, that thought barely crossed my mind. What haunted me instead, in the moments before I fell asleep, and in those just before I woke up, were the several hundred feet of shadowy alleyway—the dim, Dumpster-filled picnic ground for the shifty nocturnal set—that lay between a bright, well-traveled block of Dartmouth Street and the back entrance to the Winslow home.

  I’d taken precautions. I’d worn heavy rubber rain boots, the better for kicking the rats away, and my thickest pair of jeans over dense cotton leggings, in case I didn’t see one of them coming and it managed to scramble up the back of my leg.

  I belted my raincoat and tied it tight, so that if one of them did manage to get up my leg, he wouldn’t get past my waist. I’d brought a flashlight and Henry’s baseball bat. The bat would probably be useless, as it was made of aluminum and sized and weighted for a five-year-old playing T-ball, but I figured it was better than nothing.

  I glanced at my watch—nine twenty-eight. I had to go. Now. I took a deep breath and headed into the alley, my gaze darting right and left. Sure enough, there was a heart-stopping rustle as I passed the first Dumpster, and I caught the nauseating flick of a long, fat tail disappearing behind a nearby can. Fighting the urge to scream and run, I walked as quickly as I could toward the small, reassuring structure onto which I’d now fastened my gaze—the little shed behind the house. In a minute, with my blood rushing loudly through my ears, I was there.

  Now what? I thought, trying to take in a decent breath. Had Johnny been able to deactivate the alarm? I had no way of knowing. We should have agreed upon a signal. I should have instructed him to appear to me in one of the windows to let me know the coast was clear, or to come outside and meet me on the stoop. I hadn’t really thought this through when I hatched the plan with him on Monday. I’d made it all up on the spot. And now I had a problem.

  If the alarm system was the modern kind, the kind lots of people are putting in nowadays, the whole thing would be electronic. Like when you press that button on your car key as you cross a parking lot, and when you get to your car, the doors are all unlocked. If the house had a system like this, and if Johnny had been able to shut it all down, the back door might already be open.

  But I didn’t peg Finny Winslow for the kind of guy who’d spring for a flashy, ultra-high-tech system. Tad, yes: in its sleek, impersonal efficiency, it would neatly satisfy the sensibility that savored the sight of a lone pear on a square plate on Tad’s concrete dining table. Finny, on the other hand, struck me as the sort of person who might enjoy the feel of keys in his pocket. I could see him bowing to the need for some kind of alarm system, probably years ago, but I couldn’t see him updating it every year, not from the looks of rest of the house. In his world, you bought something good in the first place, and then you made it last.

  In other words, alarm or no alarm, the door probably still locked with a key. The problem was, I didn’t have a key. Nor did I have a set of lock picks, and even if I had, I don’t know how to use them. I’d once used a bobby pin to open a door that blew shut unexpectedly, but the lock was old and loose. And tonight, I didn’t have a bobby pin. All I had was a credit card, which might be a little thick, and a driver’s license, which was a little thinner. I do know how to slide a credit card down between a door and the doorframe, which is sometimes successful at pushing the bolt conveniently aside. Sometimes, but not always.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one I had.

  I scanned the upper windows one last time for a glimpse of ghostly Johnny. Nothing. My hands were shaking, either from the cold or from the adrenaline that had been released by my near-encounters with the rats. I stepped up to the door, looked around to make sure I wasn’t being observed, and held my breath. I prepared myself mentally to run, because if Johnny had let me down, or had simply been unable to disable the alarm, and I started messing around with the back-door lock, I was going to set it off. I’d know that if I stepped inside and the little red light was blinking.

  I peered closely at the lock, trying to gauge what I was up against before touching anything. Just at that moment, a freezing gust of rainy wind swept in from behind me and I heard a squeal that made my heart leap into my throat. I jumped back, sick with fear, my gaze plummeting to the ground, where I expected to see a squadron of rodents shimmering toward my feet. I flicked on the flashlight. Nothing.

  A second blast of wintry air drew my attention back up to the door. The squeal had not come from a rat, but from a pair of old hinges.

  The gust had blown open the door.

  Inside, the ghost of Johnny was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t dare close the door behind me: I didn’t want to make any noise, I didn’t want to risk leaving fingerprints, and I sure didn’t want to activate the alarm again, if closing the door might do that. It would then be impossible for me to make my escape without drawing the attention of the rent-a-cops on duty at the security company. On the other hand, neighbors parking their cars in the alley spots would be quick to call the police if they noticed the back door of their late neighbor’s home wide open, flapping and banging in the wind. I nudged the door almost closed with the toe of my boot.

  I now found myself in the downstairs back hall, which led to rooms that were probably the building’s original laundry room, drying room, and kitchen. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t once taken a tour of the Gibson House over on Beacon Street, a Victorian mansion perfectly preserved and turned into a museum by its final owner, a visionary man described in their literature as an “improper Bostonian” and a “colorful bon vivant” with an “eccentric lifestyle.” I had a hunch these were euphemisms for gay, but I wasn’t sure.

  The fact that the rooms I was now tiptoeing quietly through were restful and hollow—big, empty, unused spaces in one of the priciest areas of the city in which to live—told me just how comfortable the Winslows were. This space was valuable (a basement apartment with a separate entrance?), and they’d never once in all these years had to utilize it for cash. I suspected this would change soon. With Tad in charge, I doubted the space would remain undeveloped for long.

  I crept quietly across the old kitchen and paused in the back corner. The wind and rain were picking up, and the house, like all old houses, was alive with creaks, groans, and rattles that made me catch my breath, but which had probably gone unnoticed by the folks who lived here. I flicked on my flashlight and shined it around the space. Where was Johnny? Should I cut bait and leave? I was more than happy to help the old fellow out, but really, this was rude. He hadn’t struck me as the kind of ghost who wouldn’t keep up his end of the bargain. After all, what was it to me if the precious deed was never located? Nothing. But to the ghost of John Grady, it apparently meant the world.

  The beam of my light illuminated the entrance to the back stairwell, paneled in dark wainscoting. I crossed the space quietly and listened, then placed one foot tentatively in the center of the first tread. It creaked piteously. I tried the area of the tread nearest the outside wall, figuring that part might be the sturdiest and quietest. I was right. There was barely a sound as I transferred my whole weight onto my foot.

  Emboldened, I decided to go for it. I quickly climbed up to the first landing, pausing at the bend in the stairs to see if I could hear anything. An ancient velvet curtain, once maroon and now a plummy mud color, partially hid the landing from view, sparing people on the first floor an accidental glimpse of a servant scurrying up or down.

  It was then that the paralyzing sound reached me: the
chilling smash of glass being shattered. I heard it again, and then again. Someone—or something—was on a rampage not twenty-five feet away from me, in the front hall, or possibly the living room.

  I froze. A sour wave of nausea swept through me as I tried to control my own breathing so as to remain totally, utterly silent. Some function in my brain kicked into gear—my subconscious, I guess, or whatever primeval mechanism it is that guides imperiled humans and animals toward survival. With my mind’s eye, I calmly watched a short film of myself racing back down the stairs, not caring how much noise I made, just scrambling as fast as I could through the deserted basement rooms and out the back door. Fly! Now! Go! I was urged. The message was crystal clear.

  But I couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t listen. I was in one of those horrible dreams in which I was desperately trying to run, but my legs were heavy, heavy, so very heavy that I felt I was up to my knees in quicksand.

  Then I heard Johnny’s voice. “No, no! Stop this immediately!” It took me a moment to realize that it was his voice. His tone was stern and commanding, not the gentle, dulcet murmurings of a beloved butler, but the sharp, authoritarian bark of a cavalry sergeant. The shattering of glass ceased, only to be followed a moment later by the rhythmic thud of wood being splintered. Whoever was doing this was oblivious to Johnny’s orders, confirming what I already knew: the maniac was a real, live person who couldn’t see or hear the ghost hovering nearby, bearing witness to the destruction.

  I pulled back into the shadows, trying to make myself as flat as possible against the landing’s back wall. I was in the shallow corner behind the curtain, barely daring to breathe, when the shattering of wood abruptly ceased and I heard the sounds of footsteps approaching. Nearer and nearer they came until I knew for certain that only five or six feet and a whole lot of luck—more than I’d dreamed of when I pulled into the Visitor spot—lay between me and imminent disclosure, followed by arrest, humiliation, and jail. And that was the best-case scenario. I could also get killed.

  Who is going to raise Henry? I thought in a panic. Oh, yeah, Declan.

  “I hate you!” I heard a woman hiss. “I hate you!” she said more loudly, and then I heard another smash of glass. This was followed by the loudest wail I have ever been five feet from. It sounded like a banshee keening in the wind. Then I heard the thud of someone collapsing on the floor, and I almost couldn’t keep myself from peeking around the curtain. But I held steady. It didn’t sound like a collapse, as in someone fainting dead away; it was more like a person thumping herself down to a sitting position against a wall. The wall being the other side of the one I was leaning against.

  Hence commenced the most woeful bout of weeping and wailing I think I’ve ever heard. It was a dam breaking. It was the Grand Cooley Dam breaking. The waters rushed and thundered like the falls at Niagara until the woman crying eventually wore herself out, winding down and down until all that could be heard was the occasional hiccup of a pathetic little sob. Whoever she was slowly got up.

  “Bastard,” she spat, then the footsteps clacked away. I took the first real breath I’d had in what had probably been five minutes, but what had felt like ten or fifteen.

  I caught a glimpse of her as she hurried back to the kitchen, a slim, tall woman not much older than I am. She was carrying a huge box when she came back out, a box so big she could barely get her arms around it or see over it, which was a good thing, or I’m certain she would have noticed me.

  I heard her footsteps recede down the hall and clump slowly down the main stairs toward the basement. In another minute, I heard the back door slam shut. The engine of a car was started, just outside the door. Come to think of it, there had been a car parked back there—some kind of light-colored SUV. A bumper sticker, which I was far too preoccupied at the time to focus on, had nevertheless been registered by my peripheral vision and stored in my brain for later examination. It offered itself to me now.

  Each of the letters comprising the word was a version of a symbol of one of the world’s great religions. “COEXIST,” the letters had spelled.

  Alone now, I hoped, drained by my terror and drenched with sweat, I stepped out of the stairwell. There was Johnny, standing helplessly over the wreckage of the rampage: the smashed remnants of a number of framed black-and-white eight-by-ten photographs. From under the shattered glass, in a series of professional shots, beamed the smiling faces of three children playing on the beach, toasting marshmallows around a seaside campfire, tucking into corn on the cob at a well-used picnic table. There was one of a young boy about eight—probably Tad—holding up a lobster, and another of two young girls in a battered dinghy, freckled and sunburned in too-big life jackets.

  “It was Josie,” Johnny said quietly. “She knew Tad left for London today. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come around.”

  So that’s why the back door had been open.

  “What’s her problem?” I asked, unbelting my raincoat and peeling it off. Johnny led me into the living room, where a beautiful wooden model of an antique sailboat—a painstakingly built replica, I guessed, of a beloved family vessel—lay in splinters on the floor.

  “He sold the family sailboat without her permission,” Johnny explained. “Oh, the arguments they had.” He shook his head. “Awful. She demanded that he get it back, but he said he couldn’t: he’d signed the papers and the sailboat was gone. She claimed it was the only thing she cared about at all, of all the things they were divvying up. They haven’t spoken in months. She’s always been on the … dramatic side, Josie has.”

  “I’d say so,” I offered. “She sure gave me a fright.”

  “I’m very sorry. I’m so grateful that you came.”

  Johnny led me to the third-floor hallway, where the boxes of books lay waiting for pickup. It must have been so frustrating to him, all this time, not being able to search through the boxes himself, but ghosts can lift only the very lightest of objects. A book is far too heavy.

  Slowly, I made my way through the volumes, pausing as the butler recounted stories occasioned by the sight of one book or another. There was the time Miss Edlyn broke her collarbone trying to get to a nest in an apple tree, occasioning three weeks in bed with The Adventures of Polly Flanders and Polly Flanders on the High Seas.

  There was the book of Shelley verse from the bloke they were afraid she might marry, until he was unceremoniously swept aside, to their great relief, by the appearance on the scene of Finny Winslow. There were travel books and picture books, cheap, paperback copies of Shakespeare plays and a complete boxed set, circa 1958, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Bryn Mawr Book Store was going to be thrilled with that.

  Nowhere, though, was The Butterfly’s Ball.

  “I was afraid not,” Johnny said sadly. “I believe Miss Esther has it.”

  “Where does she live again?” I asked.

  “West Stockbridge,” he answered. “She has a farmhouse out there. And a studio. A sculptor she is, and a fine one, though it’s a different ball of wax these days. Not like Bernini.”

  “Abstract?” I guessed.

  He nodded. “She does …eggs and such.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.” He was too polite to say more.

  “Maybe I’ll pay her a visit,” I said, then immediately wished I had paused to think about this. “The Berkshires” cover a lot of ground, and Julian might not be keen on an unexpected detour from whatever kind of trip he had in mind. Still, we’d have to eat. West Stockbridge was quaint, New Englandy, and home to one or two pretty nice places to have a meal.

  Johnny looked so eager and hopeful that I instantly knew I couldn’t disappoint him.

  “I’m going to be out in that area tomorrow.”

  “You’re not!”

  “I am. I’m going out there with a … friend. He’s here from England, and well, he wanted to do a bit of sightseeing.”

  “What will you tell her?” he asked, a worried frown now wrinkling his forehead.

  “Well,
what’s she like? Could I tell her the truth?”

  His expression brightened. “Oh, certainly! Esther? Yes, yes, of course you could! She believes in ghosts. Has all her life. And me always insisting there was no such thing!”

  He shook his head at the irony, then glanced up at me hopefully.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  JULIAN PICKED ME up in a car so old-fashioned it could only be called a “roadster.” Not the poky kind you sometimes see ferrying women in bonnets and men in dorky outfits, on their way to Sunday-afternoon gatherings of antique car clubs. More like a zippy convertible from an old black-and-white film, the kind of car that necessitated a woman’s wearing Jackie O. sunglasses and protecting her hairdo with a scarf as her handsome companion drove way too fast along the coast of the Italian Riviera.

  I have some scarves, all gifts, but I think of them as being sort of, well, middle-aged. I know that a chic French woman can work wonders with a silk scarf from Hermès, draping it casually over a shoulder, tying it into a necklace of knots, wearing it as a belt around her waspish waist, or using it to adorn the strap of her handbag. But I’m neither chic nor French, so when Julian said, “You might need a scarf,” my heart sank. It was that or a baseball cap, though, which felt completely out of keeping with the cool old car, so I went digging through one of my drawers and pulled out the least offensive scarf I owned, a navy polyester knockoff featuring horses and bridles.

  Of course I can pull it off, I thought with bravado, experimenting in front of the mirror while Julian used what he referred to as the “gents.” Hey, I’d read Vogue, many times; that’s where I’d learned about scarves so treasured and so valuable that women inherited them—officially, in wills—from their mothers. Besides, I had been a “gypsy” once or twice for Halloween, a costume that consisted primarily of a scarf and lots of fake jewelry.