A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein

  I turned back to the room and let my eyes adjust. On the wall opposite the fireplace was a second door. I opened it and turned on my flashlight to see what was inside. A storage closet. The shelves were filled with boxes of blankets, tins of meat and sardines, stacks of tins with HARD BREAD stamped on them, bottles of wine and bottles of water, really old matches, some survival gear: a shovel, a hatchet, and a knife. The only other thing was a sturdy case—not a footlocker, not nearly as large, but built in the same fashion. I opened it and saw it was filled with notebooks. None of them had titles stamped on their spines, so I removed one. A journal. I opened another: a sketchbook with drawings of a house in it. Riddell House. There were other books, too, which appeared to be accounting ledgers. I removed another book and opened it. It was the diary of Elijah Riddell.

  Tuesday, September 13, 1904

  I begin this diary to address events of a mysterious nature, which have occurred since Ben’s death two days ago. I must record these events for fear of forgetting them, or worse—convincing myself that they never happened at all.

  To begin, we must go back a step to Sunday afternoon, when I found a letter left for me in my study.

  “Dear Father,” the letter read. “I had hoped to depart with Harry yesterday. Alice had promised to look after business affairs in my absence. She is quite bright and intelligent—though her father may doubt her—and she is very capable of managing the companies. As such, she willingly granted my wish: to spend my life with my true love, which is not her but Harry. But she knew that already.

  “To my dismay, an accident occurred last night, and Harry is dead; I have buried him on Observatory Hill. My heart is broken, Father, and I cannot stay here. I must go in search of him, for I know he is waiting for me; I will find him.

  “With much love, I remain forever your faithful son, Benjamin.”

  It was six-fifteen yesterday morning when I was awakened by Mr. Thomas, who told me a groundskeeper had found a body. The body was Ben’s. He was dead.

  I was exhausted by evening, having felt so many emotions at the death of my son. It is impossible to describe, so I will not. Mr. Thomas brought soup and brandy to me in my study, and, after eating and drinking, I must have fallen asleep at my desk. I remember having vivid dreams. In these dreams, strange things happened. I climbed trees with my deceased son. I spoke with him, as well. Benjamin. He spoke to me. And while I couldn’t discern his words, I felt anxious at his presence, and my sleep was disturbed.

  When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to find a pen in my hand and surprised, further, to find a card on my desk with writing on it . . . writing in my own hand! Could I have written it in my sleep? It seemed impossible, and yet . . .

  “I will stay here with you, Father,” the card said. “Bury me on Observatory Hill, next to Harry. You have never understood our love, but do this for me, as it will show me that you understand we are all connected. If you do this, I will stay with you to look after The North Estate until it is returned to the forest. When it is, your redemption will be complete. My peace I give unto you, Ben.”

  This morning, as I sat in my study gazing out the window at the trees which fluttered in the breeze, I saw him standing by the curtains. My Ben! He was with me. I know it is true, and this diary will serve to prove it to myself, else I convince myself my visions are the products of an addled mind.

  I was fascinated by this entry. Harry died somehow, just as he and Ben were going to elope, and Ben died the next day. It must have been terrible. But what I found most intriguing was Elijah writing a note in his sleep. A note from Ben, after Elijah had such vivid dreams. It was Ben, the ghost, who had written the note, clearly, channeled through his sleeping father, as he used Grandpa Samuel to write for him.

  I turned the page and read the next entry.

  Saturday, September 17, 1904

  We buried Ben today. A cold fog lingered near the ground in the morning, lifting later. It didn’t rain. (It wouldn’t dare rain on the day my son was buried.) The turnout for the funeral was impressive. Thomas counted four hundred at least. Food was served to all, per custom. A feast with much port tapped—only the finest. Why should I hoard it? For what gathering would it be better suited? I briefly considered having an altar erected and a lamb sacrificed, as I thought Ben might get a laugh out of that. Thomas suggested such a gesture might play wrong in the press. I briefly considered having a newspaper editor or two sacrificed at an altar so I could eat their hearts. Again, Thomas’s better reason prevailed.

  I don’t think our guests will leave soon. As of now, they are encamped on the meadow—many have traveled from Portland and Aberdeen—and some of his classmates from back East have come as well—a testament to Ben’s nature.

  I shall miss him. I already do.

  I keep his card in my pocket—his last note to me. It was written by me, which I don’t understand, but do understand as well. I slip my hand into my pocket and finger it at times. The sharp corners poke into my fingertip, and I can make it hurt if I like.

  We buried Ben next to Harry—on Observatory Hill, as Ben wished. I hope that they will find, in death, a peace together they were unable to find in life.

  I found the diary too hard to resist, so even though I could hear footsteps through the wall, and I could hear people calling for me, I read two more short entries.

  Monday, September 19, 1904

  The guests are still here. Sixty of them at least. I have told Thomas to slaughter a fresh lamb each day they stay—we are on our third.

  Truth be told, I don’t want them to leave. Their campfires, which burn day and night in the dampness, are beacons for Ben. I walk among the mourners each evening, embracing the bereaved, and talking to them. I feel Ben is with me on these walks, and he likes what he sees.

  Wednesday, September 21, 1904

  They are all gone. Thomas and I are alone now, and the house shudders with emptiness.

  I closed the book and listened. Serena and my father were calling for me, but I was safe from them inside Elijah’s sanctuary. I didn’t know what time it was, because I still hadn’t found my watch.

  I returned the diary to the box, closed the closet door, and descended the stairs quickly but carefully, unlatched the door and closed it behind myself. I didn’t want to be discovered, so I didn’t turn on my flashlight but went down the spiral stairs in the dark instead. I slipped out of the false linen closet and into the hall.

  Just when I thought I was clear, Serena called out from behind me.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Around,” I said, trying to act calm.

  “Why are you in the south wing?” she asked. “No one uses the south wing. Are you looking for something?”

  “I was just . . . interested. I was looking around. That’s all.”

  She scrutinized me for a moment.

  “I came home early so we could all go to dinner on the waterfront,” she said finally. “Fresh cracked crab. Are you ready?”

  It was dinnertime already? I’d spent the whole day in the secret room? I realized how hungry I was.

  “I should put on a nicer shirt,” I said, since I was wearing only a T-shirt.

  “If you like. But then you’ll be Seattle Formal. If you’re wearing pants that go down to your ankles, shoes that cover your toes, and a shirt that covers your forearms, you’re in formal attire in Seattle.”

  I laughed with relief; Serena suspected nothing.

  “I’ll just wash my hands.”

  “Do hurry,” she said. “It gets crowded downtown on a day like today, and I don’t like Grandpa going to bed late.”

  “I’ll hurry, Simply Serena.”

  “Like the wind, Clever Trevor. Like the wind.”

  – 17 –

  THE RETURN OF THE HAND

  We returned to Riddell House after dinner, and the sky was still light with the evening sun. Our small group dispersed, and I decided to make the hike up Observatory Hill, a place I was determined to visi
t. I wanted to see the graves. When I reached the top, panting from the hike, I found a small patch of weeds in an enclosure formed by a low, dilapidated picket fence. Within the enclosure were five tombstones. I stepped over the fence and into the mini-graveyard to examine the stones. Harry Lindsey, Benjamin Riddell, Elijah Riddell, Abraham Riddell, Isobel Jones Riddell. The dates on Harry Lindsey’s tombstone were January 2, 1883–September 10, 1904. The dates on Benjamin’s tombstone were May 12, 1876–September 11, 1904.

  The epitaph on Benjamin’s tombstone was difficult to read, as the limestone had been eroded by the wind and rain, but I brushed the lichens from the stone with my thumb and blew away the dust so I could see.

  MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU—JOHN MUIR

  From The Mountains of California. And from the card that Ben had written to Elijah after he died.

  I returned to my room and opened the windows, hoping for a breeze. With the lights off, I aimed the fan at my head and lay down on the bed, cradling the carved wooden hand to my chest; I felt a visceral need to hold it close. Ben. Harry. Elijah. They were just shadows from my family’s past, but they were becoming so real to me. And then the images came harder. They came before the dark shade of sleep had been pulled down. Branches whipping against my face, and the breathlessness of falling. I fought against it. I didn’t want Ben’s dream, though Ben fought so hard to give it to me. Lying back and seeing the sky, the clouds, and falling. Endlessly falling, the hollow feeling of my stomach in my mouth, of despair. I struggled. I resisted. I battled. Until I woke up with a start, sweating and shaken. Still, I held the hand.

  The room was dark. The house was quiet. I went to the door and opened it tentatively. The hallway was silent. Not a creature stirring. I glanced at the clock. Just after nine. I wandered down the long hall and to my father’s room, which was empty. Down the stairs and back to the kitchen. I found my father sitting at the table, watching television quietly. A baseball game. My father didn’t even like baseball.

  He looked up when he heard me enter.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “You feel okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I blinked at him.

  “What have you got there?” he asked, noticing the hand, which I still cradled in my arms.

  I had forgotten I was holding it. I lifted it and held it out for my father to see. My father beckoned. I approached and set the carving down on the table.

  “Where did you find it?”

  He didn’t reach out for it; he just stared at it. I grew uncomfortable but said nothing.

  “Where did you find it?” he asked again.

  “In the barn,” I said. “There are a bunch of footlockers in the loft. I found it in one of them.”

  “What else was in the footlocker?”

  “Clothes and stuff. Old school papers.”

  “My old school papers?” he asked, but he clearly already knew the answer. Still, he did not take his eyes off the hand, as if he were afraid it might vanish if he stopped looking at it.

  “Yes.”

  A balloon of silence expanded in the room. It started small, and with every breath it got bigger and bigger until the silence practically squeezed my father and me against the walls with its explosive potential.

  “Do you know what my father said to me after my mother died?” he asked eventually, and the air eased out of the balloon so gently. “He came into my room, handed me a suitcase, and he said, ‘They’re coming for you in the morning; you can take one bag.’ ”

  He looked up at me for the first time since the wooden hand had been set on the table.

  “I’ve wondered what happened to the things that didn’t fit into that suitcase,” he said.

  “They’re in a locker in the barn.”

  “Why are you looking for things?”

  “Because I’m a truth seeker,” I replied.

  “A truth seeker,” my father echoed.

  He gave me the hand, and then he led me down to the barn through the night air with the crickets creaking and the frogs singing so loudly in the darkness it was almost disturbing. The moon was perfect and there were so many stars.

  Grandpa Samuel wasn’t in the barn. My father dug around the long workbench with all the vises and devices attached to it and all the tools hanging above it, everything covered with sawdust and some things more worn and rusted than others. He unearthed a box of small wooden dowels and filled his pocket with a handful of them. He gathered a hand drill and scavenged a drawer for bits until he found one that matched the diameter of the dowels. He grabbed some coarse sandpaper, a bottle of wood glue, and two wood clamps, and we headed back to the house.

  “What are we doing?” I asked, once we were back outside.

  “You know, Trevor, sometimes you have to set the universe right.”

  “I know. I’ve been trying. It hasn’t been working very well.”

  “I guess we both have to try harder.”

  Back in the foyer, my father used the rough-grit sandpaper to take the sheen off the top of the newel at the bottom of the main staircase. As soon as I saw him working, it all clicked for me. I knew there was something missing. I knew the newel looked truncated in some way, but years of being oiled by hands rubbing against it, and maybe even some cosmetic sanding, concealed the scar. My father got the newel roughed up enough that when he set the carved hand and globe atop, it fit almost perfectly; the wrist appeared to grow from the banister and hold up the earth for all to see. Like Atlas, almost. Like God, maybe.

  My father pulled a pencil from the stash of stuff he’d grabbed in the barn, and he made some marks. He used the hand drill to bore holes into the hand and the newel post. When he was done, he used wood glue and clamps to secure the hand to the newel and banister.

  “Do you feel it?” he asked, as he admired the restored hand.

  “Feel what?” I asked in reply.

  “The power. The energy.”

  “What does the energy do?”

  “Maybe it will bring her back,” he said.

  “Bring who back?”

  “My mother.”

  I was right: there was a lot to be resolved by my father before we would be able to move forward with any real future plans to get our family back together. We could develop the land and make money all we wanted, but it wouldn’t solve the real problem that was gnawing at my father.

  We remained silent for a moment, and then footsteps approached. Serena entered the foyer.

  “What are you two up to?” she asked.

  She followed our eyes to the hand.

  “Brother Jones! I declare! What have you done?”

  “I’ve put it back,” he said.

  “But why? It will make Daddy crazy.”

  “He’s already crazy.”

  “He’s demented,” she clarified. “This will make him crazy.”

  “I don’t care,” my father said, still staring at the hand. “I did it for Mom.”

  Serena sidled up behind him and touched his arm lightly. Touch. Until he looked at her.

  “Tell me you’re not getting sentimental on me, Brother Jones,” she said. “Tell me this won’t change our plans.”

  “I’m setting things right,” he said firmly.

  “And when they’re right, you’ll get Daddy to sign the papers, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned into him and kissed his cheek.

  “I knew you would come to save me,” she said softly. “I never once lost faith.”

  She drifted down the hall in her flowing dress with her bare feet not touching the ground, gliding, her nails painted blue, her toes she used to tease me, slipping off her shoes in the kitchen when she sat to rest after a hard afternoon of cooking, sitting and pressing her thumbs into the balls of her feet to release the tension and I would watch her do it and I would see the blue nails and get a hard-on. She did it for too long and she did it too obviously and she took too much pleasure from it, and then she would stop abruptly and hide her feet under the
table and say to me, “Run along now and wash up,” so I would go upstairs and lose myself in the images of Serena’s small waist and big boobs and blue toenails, her citrus scent that I could smell as if she were in the room with me. She was so hot and she was playing with me—but I somehow wanted to be played with. So I didn’t shy away from it at all; I felt the stiffness rising and I resisted the urge to adjust. And I despised myself for my base urges.

  “My mother said this hand belongs to the spirit of the house,” my father said after Serena was gone.

  “Who took it away?” I asked, refocusing on my father as the citrusy scent dissipated.

  “Grandpa Samuel. He took the ax to it.”

  “But why?”

  “People destroy things they don’t understand,” he said. “Those things make them feel inadequate and insecure. So they destroy. But now it’s back. I’m back. And he can’t hide anymore.”

  “Hide what?” I asked. “What’s he hiding from?”

  “The truth, Trevor. Do you know what he said to me before he sent me away?”

  “ ‘You can take one bag’?”

  “Before that,” he said after scrutinizing me for assholery or snideness, of which there was no evidence. “He said: ‘Go away from here. You’re no good to me anymore.’ He might as well have killed me.”

  “Why did he say it, though?” I asked.

  “Because of what happened,” my father said.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I’d heard that before.

  “Isn’t that why you brought me here?” I asked. “To learn to talk about it?”