The Shape of Night

by Tess Gerritsen

  Bewildered, I sink onto the bed and try to make sense of what I just experienced. Only a dream, surely, but one so vivid I am still shaking from it.

  Through my nightdress, I feel my own breast and think of the hand on my skin. My nipple still tingles at the memory of what I felt. What I heard. What I smelled. I look down at the scarf I found in the closet. Only then do I notice the French fabric tag and I realize this is an Hermès scarf. How could Charlotte leave this behind? If it were mine, I’d make sure it was one of the first things that went into my suitcase. She must have been in a rush to pack if she’d left behind her well-loved cookbook and this expensive scarf. I think of what I just experienced. The hand caressing my breast, the shape swirling in the shadows. And the voice. A man’s voice.

  Did you hear him too, Charlotte?

  Five

  Two men have invaded my house. Not fantasy men but real men named Ned Haskell and Billy Conway. I hear them hammering and sawing up on the roof, where they’re now replacing the rotted deck of the widow’s walk. As they hammer upstairs, downstairs in the kitchen, I cream together butter and sugar, chop walnuts and blend it together into a batter. I left my Cuisinart at home in Boston, so I must now cook the old-fashioned way, using my muscles and bare hands. The physical labor is comforting, even though I know I will have sore arms tomorrow. Today I am testing a toffee cake recipe I found in an 1880 memoir by a sea captain’s wife, and it’s a joy to work in this bright and spacious kitchen, which was designed with a large domestic staff in mind. Judging by the grand scale of the rooms, Captain Brodie was a wealthy man and he would have employed a cook and housekeeper and several kitchen maids. In his day, there would have been a wood-burning stove, and instead of the refrigerator, a zinc-lined cold closet chilled by ice that would be regularly replenished by the local iceman. As my toffee cake bakes, perfusing the kitchen with the scent of cinnamon, I imagine the household staff laboring in this room, chopping vegetables, plucking chickens. And in the dining room, the table would be set with fine china and candles. Sea captains brought home souvenirs from around the world, and I wonder where all Captain Brodie’s treasures are now. Handed down to his heirs or lost to antique shops and landfills? This week I will pay a visit to the local historical society and see if they have any of the captain’s possessions in their collection. My editor, Simon, was intrigued by my description of the house and in his email this morning, he asked me to hunt down more information about Captain Jeremiah Brodie. Tell us what sort of man he was. Tall or short? Handsome or ugly?

  How did he die?

  The oven timer dings.

  I take the cake out of the oven, inhaling the rich scent of molasses and spices, the same aromas that once might have filled this kitchen and wafted throughout the house. Did the captain enjoy cakes just like this one, topped with sweet churned cream and served on a dainty china plate? Or did his tastes lean toward roasted meat and potatoes? I’d prefer to think of him as a man with an adventurous palate. After all, he was daring enough to challenge the perils of the sea.

  I cut a slice of cake and savor the first bite. Yes, this is definitely a recipe worth including in my book, along with the story of how I discovered it, handwritten in the margins of the crumbling journal I’d bought at an estate sale. But as delicious as it is, I certainly can’t eat the whole thing myself. I cut it into squares and carry my offering upstairs to the two men who by now must have worked up a healthy appetite.

  The turret is cluttered with stacked wood, sawhorses, toolboxes, and a band saw. I pick my way through the obstacle course and open the door to the widow’s walk, where the carpenters are hammering a plank into place. Yesterday they removed the rotted railing and from their now-unprotected perch, it’s a dizzying drop to the ground.

  I don’t dare set even one foot out the door, but call to them: “If you want cake, I’ve just taken one out of the oven.”

  “Now this is a good time for a break,” says Billy, the younger man, and they both set down their tools.

  There are no chairs in the turret, so both men grab squares of cake and we stand in a circle while they eat in focused silence. Although Ned is three decades older than Billy, the two men look so much alike they could be father and son. They’re both deeply tanned and muscular, their T-shirts powdery with sawdust, their jeans sagging with the weight of their tool belts.

  Billy grins at me with a mouth full of cake. “Thank you, ma’am! First time any client’s baked a treat for us!”

  “Actually, this is my job,” I tell him. “I’ve collected a long list of recipes I need to test, and I certainly can’t eat everything I cook.”

  “Are you a baker by trade?” asks Ned. Silver-haired and serious, he strikes me as a man who considers every word before he speaks. Everywhere I look in this house, I see the evidence of his meticulous craftsmanship.

  “I’m a food writer. I’m working on a book about the traditional foods of New England, and I need to test every recipe before I include it in the book.”

  Billy raises his arm. “Private Billy Conway reporting for duty. I volunteer to be your guinea pig. You cook and I’ll eat,” he says, and we all laugh.

  “How much longer until the deck’s finished?” I ask, pointing to the widow’s walk.

  “It should take us another week or so to replace the boards and put up the new railing,” says Ned. “Then we need to get back to work in here. That’ll take us another week.”

  “I thought you were all done with this turret.”

  “We thought so, too. Until Billy swung a plank and accidentally punched into that plaster.” He points to a gouge in the wall. “It’s hollow back there. There’s a space behind it.”

  “How big a space, do you think?”

  “I looked in with a flashlight and I can’t see the opposite wall. Arthur told us to open it up and find out what’s back there.”

  “Arthur?”

  “The owner, Arthur Sherbrooke. I’ve been keeping him up to date on our progress, and this has got him real curious. He had no idea there was anything behind that wall.”

  “Maybe it’s a secret stash of gold,” Billy says.

  “Just as long as it isn’t a dead body,” grunts Ned, clapping crumbs from his hands. “Well, we’d better get back to work. Thanks for the cake, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Ava.”

  Ned politely tips his head. “Ava.”

  They’re both heading back to the widow’s walk when I call out: “Did either of you happen to come by the house Sunday morning?”

  Ned shakes his head. “We don’t work here on weekends.”

  “I was walking on the cliff path when I looked up and saw someone on the widow’s walk.”

  “Yeah, Donna mentioned you’d seen someone, but we can’t get into the house if you’re not here. Unless you’d like to leave us a key like the last tenant did.”

  I stare out at the widow’s walk. “It’s so strange. I can swear he was standing right there.” I point to the edge of the deck.

  “That’d be mighty foolhardy of him,” says Ned. “The deck’s just about rotted through. Wouldn’t support anyone.” He grabs a crowbar, ventures out on the new boards they’ve nailed into place, and pokes the crowbar into one of the old planks. The metal sinks in, punching straight through rotted wood. “If anyone stepped out here, the boards would’ve collapsed right under him. Truth is, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. The owner should’ve had this deck repaired years ago. He’s just lucky there hasn’t been another accident.”

  I have been staring down at the disintegrating wood, and his words take a minute to sink in. I look up at him. “Another accident?”

  “I didn’t know about any accident,” says Billy.

  “ ’Cause you would’ve been in diapers. It happened twenty-something years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “The hous
e was already in rough shape when Miss Sherbrooke died. I used to do odd jobs for her, but the last few years she was alive, she didn’t like folks coming around to fix things, so everything sorta fell apart. After she died, the house sat empty for years and became a magnet for the local kids, especially on Halloween. Kind of a rite of passage to spend a night in the haunted house, drinking and making out.”

  My hands suddenly feel cold. “Haunted?” I ask.

  Ned snorts. “Empty old houses like this, people always think they’re haunted. Every Halloween, kids’d break in and get themselves plastered. That year, one fool girl climbed over the railing, got onto the roof. Those tiles are slate, so they’re wicked slippery when they’re wet, and it was drizzling.” He points to the ground far below. “Her body would’ve landed down there, on the granite. You can see no one would survive the fall.”

  “Jesus, Ned. I never heard that story,” says Billy.

  “No one likes to talk about it. Jessie was a pretty little thing too, and only fifteen years old. What a shame she was hanging out with a bad crowd. The police called it an accident, so that was the end of it.”

  I stare out at the widow’s walk and imagine a misty Halloween night and a booze-fueled teenager named Jessie, clambering over the railing and dangling there, high on the thrill. Was she startled by something she saw, something that made her lose her grip? Was that how it happened? I think of what I experienced last night in my bedroom. And I think of Charlotte, packing in haste, fleeing this house.

  “They’re sure the girl’s death was just an accident?” I ask Ned.

  “That’s what everyone said, but I wondered about it at the time. I still wonder about it.” He pulls his hammer from his tool belt and turns his attention back to his job. “But no one cares what I think.”

  Six

  Hannibal has vanished.

  Only as I finish eating supper do I realize I haven’t seen my cat since Ned and Billy packed up and left for the day. Now it’s dark outside, and if there’s anything reliable about Hannibal, it’s the fact he will always be sitting by his bowl at dinnertime.

  I pull on a sweater and step outside, where an evening chill has swept in from the sea. Calling his name, I circle the house toward the cliff’s edge. On the granite ledge I pause, thinking about the girl whose body would have landed here. In the light that shines from the window, I can almost see the girl’s blood still spattered across the rock, but of course it’s just dark patches of lichen on the stone. I glance up at the widow’s walk, where the girl had dangled from the railing, and I imagine her plummeting through the darkness to land on this unforgiving granite. I don’t want to think about what such a fall does to a human body, but I can’t shut out the image of a shattered spine and a skull cracking open like an egg. Suddenly the sea is so loud it sounds like a wave is roaring straight toward me and I retreat from the cliff’s edge, my heart pounding. It’s too dark to search any further; Hannibal will have to fend for himself. Isn’t that what tomcats do, prowl around all night on the hunt? At twenty-six pounds, he can afford to skip a meal or two.

  I really should get him neutered.

  I walk back into the house and am just locking the door when I hear a faint meow. It comes from upstairs.

  So he’s been inside the house all this time. Has he gotten himself shut into a room somewhere? I climb to the second floor and open the doors to the unused bedrooms. No Hannibal.

  I hear another meow, still from above. He’s up in the turret.

  I open the door to the turret staircase and flip on the wall switch. I’m halfway up the stairs when the lone lightbulb suddenly gives a pop and goes out, plunging me into darkness. I should not have drunk that fourth glass of wine; now I have to steady myself on the railing as I climb. I feel as if the darkness is liquid and I’m dragging the weight of my body through water, struggling to surface. When at last I reach the turret, I grope along the wall for the light switch and flip it on.

  “There you are, you bad boy.”

  A smug-looking Hannibal sits among the jumble of carpenter’s tools with a freshly killed mouse at his feet.

  “Well, come on. If you want dinner.”

  He appears utterly disinterested in following me downstairs; in fact, he’s not looking at me at all, but is staring steadily at the window that faces the widow’s walk. Why isn’t he hungry? Is he actually eating the mice he catches? I shudder at the thought of him hopping into bed with me, his belly full of rodents.

  “Come on,” I plead. “I’ve got tuna for you.”

  He merely glances at me, then his gaze returns to the window.

  “That’s it. It’s time to go.” I reach down to pick him up and am shocked when he gives a ferocious hiss and lashes out with his claws. I jerk away, my arm stinging. I’ve owned Hannibal since he was a kitten and he’s never attacked me before. Does he think I’m trying to steal his mouse? But he’s not even looking at me; his gaze is still fixed on the window, staring at something I cannot see.

  I look down at the claw marks he raked across my skin, where parallel tracks of blood are now oozing. “That’s it. No dinner for you.” I turn off the light switch and am about to feel my way back down the dark staircase when I hear his feral growl. The sound makes every hair on the back of my neck suddenly stand up.

  In the darkness I see the unearthly glow of Hannibal’s eyes.

  But I also see something else: a shadow that thickens and congeals near the window. I cannot move, cannot make a sound; fear roots me in place as the shadow slowly assumes a form that is so solid I can no longer see through it to the window beyond. The smell of the sea floods my nostrils, a scent so powerful it’s as if a wave has just washed over me.

  A man looms in the window, his shoulders framed by moonlight. He stares out to sea, his back turned to me as if he’s not even aware I am in the room. He stands straight and tall, his hair a mass of thick black waves, his long dark coat molded to broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Surely this is a trick of the moonlight; men do not suddenly materialize. He cannot be standing here. But Hannibal’s eyes are aglow as he too stares at this figment of my imagination. If there is nothing there, what is my cat looking at?

  Frantically I reach for the light switch, but I feel only bare wall. Where is it, where is it?

  The figure turns from the window.

  I freeze, my hand pressed to the wall, my heart banging. For a moment he stands with his face silhouetted in profile and I see a sharp nose, a jutting chin. Then he faces me, and even though his eyes are only a faint shimmer, I know he is looking straight at me. The voice I hear seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  “Do not be afraid,” he says.

  Slowly I lower my hand to my side. No longer am I frantic to find the light switch; I am focused only on him, on a man who cannot possibly be standing before me. He approaches so silently that all I can hear is the whoosh of my own blood through my ears. Even as he draws closer I cannot move. My limbs have gone numb; I feel as if I am floating, my own body dissolving into shadow. As if I am the phantom, adrift in a world not my own.

  “Under my roof, no harm will come to you.”

  The touch of his hand on my face is as warm as my own flesh, and just as alive. I take in a shuddering breath and inhale the briny scent of the ocean. It is his scent.

  But even as I savor his touch, I feel his hand dissolving. The faint glimmer of moonlight shines through him. He gives me one last lingering look and he turns and walks away. Already he’s faded to barely a wisp of shadow, as insubstantial as dust. At the closed door to the widow’s walk he doesn’t pause but passes straight through wood and glass to the balcony outside, onto the edge of the deck where there are no boards, where there is now only a gaping hole. He doesn’t stumble, doesn’t plummet, but strides across empty air. Across time.

  I blink, and he is gone.

  So is the
smell of the ocean.

  With a gasp I reach out to the wall and this time I find the switch. In the sudden glare I see the power saw and carpenter’s tools and the stack of planks. Hannibal is sitting right where he’d been, and he’s serenely licking his paws. The dead mouse is gone.

  I cross to the window and stare out at the balcony.

  No one is there.

  Seven

  Donna is sitting at her computer, fingers clacking away with quick efficiency. She doesn’t look up at me until I’m standing right in front of her desk, and even then it’s just a quick glance, an automatic smile as she continues to type.

  “Be with you in just a sec. I have to finish this email,” she says. “One of our properties just had a plumbing catastrophe and I need to find backup lodging for some very unhappy renters…”

  As she keeps typing, I wander over to the For Sale listings displayed on the wall. If I moved to Maine, I could afford so much more house than I can in Boston. For the price of my two-bedroom apartment, I could own a house in the country with six acres of land, or a four-bedroom fixer-upper in the village, or a farm up in Aroostook County. I’m a food writer and I can live anywhere in the world; all I need is my laptop, an Internet connection, and a functioning kitchen for testing recipes. Like so many other vacationers who visit Maine in the summertime, I can’t help but entertain the fantasy of pulling up roots and starting a new life here. I imagine myself planting peas in the spring, harvesting heirloom tomatoes in the summer, picking apples in the fall. And during the long dark winters, as snow swirls outside, I would bake bread while a pot of stew simmers on the stove. I would be a brand-new Ava, alert and happy and productive, not drinking myself into a stupor every night, desperate for sleep.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Ava, but this morning has been crazy.”