The Dark

by Claire Mulligan

  A calm, obliging expression is best, Leah decides, and forms her features accordingly before she steps into the keeping room.

  CHAPTER 3.

  On my third visit, Mrs. Kane reached for the tumbler of laudanum even before I had finished pouring. “That is a scanty amount,” she complained.

  “It is sufficient. I have measured exactly for your size and level of habituation, which, I must say, is prodigiously high.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I should add that you fell asleep whilst talking away.”

  “And did you watch over me while I slept? Is that part and parcel of your duty?”

  “No, duck. I have better ways to apply my time.” If her tone had held less challenge I might have told her the truth: that I had watched her, and for an hour or so, but only because she had a peaceful presence, unlike a good many of my patients, who tussle with fate until the last hours.

  “Well, Katie and I were watching, but then we were watchful girls for all our giggling.”

  “Watching who? Whom?”

  “Leah, of course, as she stood in the hallway of David’s house and spied out the keeping room. We were contriving a game out of eavesdropping, and out of discerning words from lips alone. Katie was already very good at the former, and both of us became, in time, crackerjacks at the latter.”

  “LEAH’S ARRIVED,” Maggie whispers to Katie. “But whatever is she doing? She’s just standing there in the hall like some statuary.”

  The girls are peering through the balustrades on the second-floor landing. They are supposed to be resting. “All this excitement will flay your poor nerves,” their mother warned Maggie. Maggie hadn’t argued, for now she and Katie can sleep till noon if they choose. Now they have attention galore. The run of brother David’s charming home.

  “Is Lizzie with her, Mag? I don’t see her.”

  Maggie cranes her neck but sees no sign of their niece. She shrugs.

  “Fuss-it-all. I’ll just die if I don’t see Lizzie soon.”

  “I doubt you’ll die of that.”

  “And what about Calvin? Is our Calvin here? I’m dying … oh, fine, not dying, I’m starving for his lemon drops.”

  “Nope, he’s not with Leah either.”

  “Then he can’t know about it all. He’d be here in a blink if he did.”

  Maggie agrees. Calvin Brown—aged twenty-three and gangly handsome as the dickens—is the orphaned son of a family friend. He stays with the Fox family so often on his holidays from military school that Maggie and Katie have come to think of him as a kind of brother. He is aiming to be a confectioner, of all things.

  “I’m going on down to Leah,” Katie announces. “She’ll understand.”

  “Understand what? No, no. Wait. Best we listen first. We can’t be willy nilly anymore. We agreed on that.”

  “Then what do we do? Pretend we’re not here at all?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Fine. Wait, wait, but don’t be late. You hear that, Miss Nettie?” Miss Nettie wags her wooden head from under Katie’s arm. She has articulated limbs and a swivel neck and is their father’s handiwork. He made a similar doll for Maggie, but she lost hers recently. Not that she cares, not really. She is too old for child’s play.

  Maggie and Katie peer on down at Leah as she hangs up her cloak, peels off her gloves, smoothes her chestnut hair, then enters the keeping room to a storm of greetings, explanations and tales, to myriad flourishments of the Lewis pamphlet. Leah flourishes her own copy.

  “Did you know these are being sold in Rochester?” she exclaims. “And in the street. My heavens, to see my family’s name so publicly writ. It did give me a turn. A moment … there.” She presses her hand to her chest, says to Mother: “And why was I not informed straightways? Why did I need to find this out from a pamphlet? It was no small humiliation, I must say.”

  “But you’re always so busy, aren’t you? And your father, he … that is, he thought it best that we wait before making a fuss.”

  “Did he.”

  “Yes, but I am so very relieved you’re here now, aren’t I? And I am so sorry for not telling you sooner. Should we call on Calvin also? He is always ready to protect us, isn’t he?”

  “True. I counsel we wait, however. Too many opinions can obscure the right course.”

  “Then you’ll sort this out? Laws, but it is such a perplexity.”

  “I will sort it, Mother. Yes.”

  “Have I told you about my humours? They are completely wayward. Dr. Hyde said he’d never seen such wayward humours. I’ve taken my grandmother’s everlasting pill, but it hasn’t worked at all, has it?”

  Maggie nudges Katie, mimics their mother’s voice again: “Laws! Isn’t that a wayward humour now? Trundling down the public road? Catch it! Will you please?”

  Katie stifles a giggle.

  Below, Leah is asking for more information about the ghost, and in a fashion that suggests he is no more than a distant, unpleasant relation.

  “But this ghost, Leah,” Mother cries. “He knows more than peoples’ ages, doesn’t he? And much more than the whereabouts of lost keys.”

  The company agrees. Voices stack one upon the other. Questions have been asked of the Glory, of what lies beyond, of how the dead fare. The peddler’s ghost seems to know everyone.

  “But what fashion of spirit is this?” Leah asks, as if she is puzzling out the answer herself. Maggie catches her breath, strains to hear.

  “That’s what we’re trying to fathom, isn’t it?” Mother exclaims. This begets a heated discussion of will-o’-wisps, poltergeists, revenants, fetches and giengangers, the distinctions and subcategories. It seems impossible, however, to find a category for this ghost. He is heard, but never seen, and he comes in the broad of day, though he does prefer the night. And thus far he does not seem malevolent. No rattling of chains, no muttered prophecies, no pans hurled about.

  “Why, he’s a real polite sort,” David puts in.

  “Polite or no,” Ruth Culver says, “in my opinion he’s nothing but an interloper. Toss salt all about and clang every bell in creation, that should fix him. I’ve said this thrice or more, but does anyone notice?”

  “Nope,” Maggie says softly. Poor old Ruth. She is related by marriage somehow. Is ever about, ever poking at the fringes, her gaze as resentful and sorrowing as a sin-eater’s. Maggie adopts Ruth’s wheedling tone and whispers to Katie, “I’ve been dead myself for ten years. Here I am a half-rotted skeleton, but does anyone notice?”

  Katie snickers; Leah’s head tips towards the stairway. The girls hold their breath until David says to Leah, “Why, it’s become our belief, dear sister, that we can choose not to be afraid.”

  Everyone agrees on this. Is being afraid a choice? Maggie wonders. She surely hopes so.

  Mother says, “Laws, but that poor peddler had no choice, did he? He was murdered, and with a butcher knife, just like those rumours said. But we found no body, did we?”

  “Murdered? You discovered all this through the knocks?” Leah asks.

  “Why, yes, and more besides,” David asserts.

  “My word, such a clever ghost,” Leah says, her voice raised.

  “Clever. Ever. Never,” Katie whispers.

  “Quit that prattle,” Maggie whispers back, and shifts to get a better vantage of Mother. She is gripping Leah’s elbow. “Poppet, do you think the peddler wants us to avenge him? We’re not the avenging sort of family, are we?”

  Leah considers this. “No, we are not. And, no, I cannot believe he wants vengeance. As like he merely wants someone to attend his tune, someone to let him know he is of import. And at least he is not the Devil—that would be another matter entirely.”

  “No, no. Our Katie called him Mr. Split-Foot, but she was merely teasing, wasn’t she?”

  “I have no doubt of that,” Leah says.

  Maggie glances sideways at Katie.

  “No, no, our ghost is not the Horned Gentleman in disguise,” Mother con
tinues. “We sorted that straightaways. But does it matter? The rumours are still flying thick as pigeons. The Reverend York has banned us from church, Leah. As if we’re heretics.”

  “Truly? And what did Father say of this banning?”

  “Nothing. Not a word. He just glared at the reverend, didn’t he? And in that way he has, you recall it? Laws, but it did stop the reverend up short, mind.”

  Leah smiles. “Now, that I can believe.” She looks about. “And where has Pa disappeared to this time?”

  “Oh, your pa has not a jot of interest in all this, does he? The raps sound out when he’s praying, but you’d think they were flies the way he ignores them. Anywise, he’s all intent on building a house, isn’t he?”

  “A house?”

  “Yes, poppet, so we can all be together.”

  “Why, just there,” David adds, and gestures north. “Close on.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes, together. You and Lizzie. Maria and her family. The girls. Gracious evers, it’ll be wondrous-fine, won’t it? At least if the ghost is gone?”

  “Wondrous, yes,” Leah agrees. “Just like a fairytale.”

  Katie whispers to Maggie. “Didn’t Leah say she’d rather cut her own throat with a rusty ole fish-knife than live in Hydesville?”

  “A butter-knife,” Maggie corrects. Then adds, “Stay-down, Kat,” as Mother pulls Leah into the hall.

  “Poppet, I don’t want the others to hear this, do I?” Mother says.

  “My Lord, what is it?”

  “How to say? How?”

  “Slowly?” Leah suggests.

  “It is just that the ghost. He is here and, yes, we all hear him, don’t we? But, ah, there’s more.”

  “I know there is, and you simply must tell me.”

  Katie shifts Miss Nettie, clanking the doll’s wooden limbs together. The sound seems a gunshot. Maggie holds her breath, but neither Leah nor Mother seem to have heard.

  “It is just that I … I suspect Margaret and Katherine, don’t I? Yes. I suspect your sisters.”

  “Suspect them? In what fashion?”

  “That the ghost has to do with them. And, oh, from the very beginning.”

  “Honestly, I do not understand.”

  Maggie’s world shrinks to a pin-dot. She takes Katie’s hand.

  “Poppet, the ghost, he favours them entirely, doesn’t he? It is …” Mother becomes resolute, as she does on inexplicable occasion. “Leah, it is they, your sisters, who are haunted.”

  “Haunted? Haunted as a house is haunted? My heavens! A moment … there.” Leah drums her fingers on her collar. “And why would this be?”

  “Their purity and innocence. Yes. That is it. It attracts him. Like a, a …”

  “A light?”

  “Yes, laws, but you’re clever, aren’t you?”

  “I shouldn’t say that exactly. By the by, Mother, where are the girls?”

  Mother doesn’t answer. More guests have arrived and she is hurrying off. Not that it matters, for Leah gives a secretive smile and looks straight up at Maggie and Katie, there on the second-floor landing.

  A short time later, Leah herds Maggie and Katie above-stairs and into David and Beth’s sun-bright bedchamber. Maggie twists her hands and contemplates the elaborate patchwork quilt so tidily laid there on the bed, decides she would rather be doing anything else at the moment, even sewing. Katie chews her braid and studies the polished floorboards as if longing to slip through the cracks.

  Leah bolts the door. “We shall all three of us stay here until you show me this marvellous knockabout ghost of yours. Not to worry, sweetings, I know how to keep a secret locked tight.”

  The girls shift their feet. Look nervously at each other. And then Katie shows their sister. And then Maggie does. She is surprised at her tremendous relief. It is as if she has been carrying some spiked and heavy burden of which she was unaware.

  “Honestly, the way you’ve improvised this all!” Leah exclaims. “The way you hit upon just the right composition. So many girls—even my own dear Elizabeth—can only see what is noted before them. Their imagination is stymied by convention. Improvisation is quite beyond them.”

  And then Leah asks if she may join in their delightful, harmless game.

  That evening, a baker’s dozen worth of folk cram into this same upstairs bedroom. Maggie huddles with Katie at Leah’s feet. Mother sits on the bed with the neighbours. Ruth Culver stands by the window. A tallow dip is the only illuminate. “Too great a light makes our ghost go silent, doesn’t it?” Mother says. “Now, Leah, two raps means yes. One rap means no. Silence suggests he doesn’t know. Our peddler can’t know everything. We can’t expect him to, can we?”

  Leah agrees this would be selfish. Unwise.

  The tick of a pocket watch. Suspiration. Rustlings. A thin cough. Maggie recalls the piano recital she attended with Leah at one of Rochester’s lovely churches. She recalls how the player sat and sat as if transfixed by woe, and how the audience grew restless, how some tapped their fingers to fill the silence. Others hummed. Waved fans. Then, just as the expectation became unbearable, the first note sounded.

  A rap. Clear and sharp, followed by a collective gasp, as if the company have not expected this. A neighbour, Mrs. Redfield, asks the first question. “Our Agnes. Is she joyful in the beyond? Does she have a friend to play with? Please tell me.”

  Two raps. A pause. Two more. Agnes is joyful. Agnes is not alone.

  Another woman asks, “My dear husband, he’s been dead these two years. Lord, how I miss him, but I’ve always pondered, were it his true intent to leave me without a penny to my name?”

  A single rap. No. The woman humphs in disbelief.

  A man-shape asks if God is a Methodist.

  Two raps. Then one.

  “Yes and no?” Mother says. “How is that? I don’t under—”

  “The question is of poor tender,” Leah cuts in. “I surmise, that is.”

  “I have one,” Ruth Culver says. “A fella came to my door last month asking for refreshment. I swatted him with a broom. He was lousy in my opinion. But I query now if he weren’t an angel come to test me, and how I’m to know the difference? An angel you’d want to give cakes and such. Those beggars got to be sent packing.”

  “That’s too long of a question, isn’t it?” Mother says.

  Two loud raps in acknowledgement. Then a thud. Another.

  A perplexed whisper runs through the crowd. “Fuss-it, that ain’t the ghost,” Katie says.

  A heavy bang.

  “Get back from that window!” Leah shouts to Ruth.

  “We didn’t mean … It was only—” Maggie cries, but she is silenced by the shouts from below: “Deceivers! Blasphemers! Witches!”

  A whack on the window lite. The glass spiders, but holds. Maggie sees then the torchlight, fiery red, reaching up from below. She shrieks out a warning just as Leah presses her and Katie to the safety of the floor.

  “AND THEN WHATEVER HAPPENED?” I asked, my curiosity having bested me.

  “Oh, my brother, David, ever the peacekeeper, went on out to them and sent them off placated. But I should have told the truth then … yes, I should have.” My patient fell into a study. There came the muffled noise of the street, the wail of a babe some floor down, the variant rattle-chug of the furnace heat.

  “Alas and such,” she continued at last. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. Every time I tried to tell the truth I was gainsayed, interrupted, ignored. Or else some event would drown my voice, thwart my plan. Anywise, no one wanted to hear the truth excepting Leah, and then only on that occasion in the bedchamber. After that she, too, went on as if the ghosts were genuine. It scarcely helped that soon folks started hearing sounds that we had not made and saw ghosts and felt ghosts that we had not fashioned. And so Katie and I, but Katie in particular, began to wonder if the spirits weren’t genuine after all. It was, dear Mrs. Mellon, as if the secret had an agenda of its own and we were powerless to
stop it. As if we were only its agents.”

  She had an agitated air and so I poured her some laudanum, which she quickly drank. “We had meant only to terrify our mother,” she continued. “It was all quite innocent. Our poor Ma, she was so gullible, and we were so full of jack-mischief. Ah, but then all children are resentful, plotting, molly-hawking creatures, and hold themselves superior to their parents.”

  I disagreed with the last, quite strongly to be frank. “Some children are not resentful in the least. Some would never cruelly tease. Some children are full-up with kindness. And this, too, can be a failing if not nurtured aright.” I was thinking of my own son, I allow, and how he was lost in the war, but I did not ever mention his name, nor ever speak of him. I must be absolutely clear about this.

  My patient was quick to recant. Quick to say that yes, certainly some children are sweet as a poem, kind as milk. “But does that matter where love is concerned?” my patient mused. “Our father, you see, I do think he loved Leah best, and she had more mischief in her than any. Not that I was jealous of the love he bore her. Men’s love is ever conditional. I knew that at a tender age.”

  I twisted at my ring finger, as I did whenever the wretched Mr. Mellon came to mind. There was still a scar from when I had hacked off the ring with a coping saw. I had been in a fury, I should add, and the ring resistance to the usual offing. Conditional, I should also add, would be a generous way to describe Mr. Mellon’s love for our son and my own self.

  “Are your hands cold?” my patient asked, all-concerned. “Should you draw on some gloves?”

  “I should surely not. What proper physician wears gloves? It is just, just that I am unaccustomed to having idle hands. I might bring my fancy work next time. Knitting. Yes. I will bring my knitting. Now, weren’t you speaking of Leah and your father?”