The Shape of Night

by Tess Gerritsen

  Red eyes? Claws? I shake my head in disbelief at the turn this conversation is taking. “You sound like you’re talking about a demon.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” she says quietly.

  I stare at her for a moment, hoping to see some glint of humor in her eyes, some sign that a punch line is coming, but her gaze is absolutely steady. “I don’t believe in demons.”

  “Before you moved into Brodie’s Watch, did you believe in ghosts?”

  To that, I can muster no rebuttal. Although I am facing the sea, I feel the house looming behind me, watching me. I’m afraid to hear her answer, but I ask the question anyway. “What happened to the family?”

  “They hadn’t believed in ghosts before, but they realized something was in their home. Something they’d all seen and experienced. The husband searched newspaper archives and found an article about Abigail’s suicide. He assumed it was her ghost haunting the house, and ghosts can’t hurt you, right? Plus it made excellent dinner chitchat. We have a ghost in our house! Isn’t that cool? But slowly it dawned on the family that what haunted their house was something different.

  “The four-year-old began waking up every night, screaming in terror. She said something was choking her, and the mother actually saw marks on her neck.”

  My heart is suddenly pounding. “What sort of marks?”

  “They looked like the imprint of fingers on her throat. Fingers that were too long to be a child’s. Then the eight-year-old began waking up with nosebleeds. They took her to the doctor and he could find no reason for the bleeding. Even then they remained in the house, because they’d sunk so much of their savings into it. Then one night, something happened that changed everything. The husband heard a banging outside and he went out to investigate. The instant he stepped outside, the front door swung shut behind him, locking him out. He banged on the door, but his family couldn’t hear him. Yet he could hear what was happening inside the house. His daughters screaming. His wife, falling down the stairs. He broke a window to get inside, and he found her lying dazed at the bottom of the stairs. She insisted that something had pushed her. Something wanted her dead.

  “The family moved out that same night. And the next morning, I got the phone call.”

  “You’ve seen the house?”

  “Yes. I drove there the very next day. It was a handsome building, with a wraparound porch and twelve-foot ceilings. Just the sort of home a wealthy merchant would build for his family. When I arrived, the husband was waiting in the front yard, but he refused to go inside. He just gave me the key and told me to look around for myself. I went in alone.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Nothing. At first.” Once again she eyes Brodie’s Watch, as if afraid to turn her back on it. “I walked through the kitchen, the living room. It all seemed perfectly normal. I climbed the stairs to the bedrooms and again, nothing struck me as out of the ordinary. But then I went downstairs to the kitchen and opened the door to the cellar. That was when I smelled it.”

  “What?”

  “The stench of decay. Of death. I didn’t want to go down those stairs, but I forced myself to take a few steps. Then I lifted my flashlight and saw the marks carved into the ceiling. Talon marks, Ava. As if a beast had clawed its way into the house from below. That was as far as I got. I backed out of the cellar, walked out the front door, and I never set foot in the house again. Because I already knew the family couldn’t return. I knew what they were dealing with. It wasn’t a ghost. It was something far more powerful, something that had probably been there for a long, long time. There are many words for what they are. Demons. Strigoi. Baital. But they all have this in common: They are evil. And they are dangerous.”

  “Is that what Captain Brodie is?”

  “I don’t know what he is, Ava. This could be just a haunting, a spiritual echo of the man who once lived here. That’s what I assumed at first, because you haven’t experienced anything that’s scared you. But when I look at the history of Brodie’s Watch, when I know that four women have died here…”

  “From natural causes. From an accident.”

  “True, but what kept those women here? Why did they turn their backs on marriage and families to spend the rest of their lives alone in this house?”

  Because of him. Because of the pleasures of the turret.

  I look up at the house, and the memory of what happened in the turret makes my cheeks burn.

  “What made them stay here? Grow old and die here?” Maeve asks, studying me. “Do you know?”

  “He…the captain…”

  “What about him?”

  “He understands me. He makes me feel I belong here.”

  “What else does he make you feel?”

  I turn away, my face on fire. She doesn’t press the question and silence hangs between us for a painfully long time, long enough for her to gather that my secret is too embarrassing to share with anyone.

  “Whatever he offers you, it comes with a price,” she warns.

  “I’m not afraid of him. And the women who lived here before me, they must not have been afraid, either. They could have chosen to leave, but they didn’t. They stayed in this house.”

  “They also died in this house.”

  “Only after years of living here.”

  “Is that how you see your future? As a prisoner of Brodie’s Watch? Growing old here, dying here?”

  “We all have to die somewhere.”

  She takes me by the shoulders and forces me to look her in the eyes. “Ava, do you hear yourself?”

  I’m so startled by her touch that for a moment I don’t speak. Only now do I process what I’ve just said. We all have to die somewhere. Is that really what I want, to turn my back on the world of the living?

  “I don’t know what power this entity has over you,” says Maeve, “but you need to step back and think about what happened to the women who came before you. Four of them died here.”

  “Five,” I say softly.

  “I’m not counting the woman who was found floating in the bay.”

  “I’m not counting Charlotte, either. There was also a girl, fifteen years old. I told you about her. A group of teenagers broke in on a Halloween night. One of the girls climbed up to the widow’s walk, where she fell.”

  Maeve shakes her head. “I looked, but it didn’t come up in my search of the newspaper archives.”

  “My carpenter told me about it. He grew up here, and he remembers it.”

  “Then we need to talk to him.”

  “I’m not sure we should.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a suspect. In the murder of Charlotte Nielson.”

  Maeve lets out a startled breath. She turns and stares at the house, which seems to be at the center of this maelstrom. Yet I myself feel no fear because I can still hear his words whispered in the darkness: Under my roof, no harm will come to you.

  “If your carpenter remembers it,” says Maeve, “other people in this town will remember it, too.”

  I nod. “I know just the person we should talk to.”

  Twenty-Two

  It is just past five when Maeve and I arrive at the Tucker Cove Historical Society. The CLOSED sign is already hanging, but I knock anyway, hoping that Mrs. Dickens is still inside, tidying up. Through the smoked-glass door I see movement, and hear the thump of orthopedic shoes. Pale blue eyes, distorted by the thick lenses of spectacles, peer out the doorway.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re closed. The building will open at nine A.M. tomorrow.”

  “Mrs. Dickens, it’s me. We spoke a few weeks ago, about Brodie’s Watch, remember?”

  “Oh hello. Ava, isn’t it? It’s nice to see you again, but the museum is still closed.”

  “We’re not here to see the museum. We’re here to speak wit
h you. My friend Maeve and I are doing research on Brodie’s Watch for my book, and we have questions you might be able to answer. Since you’re the number one expert on the history of Tucker Cove.”

  That makes Mrs. Dickens stand a little straighter. On my last visit here, there’d been almost no other visitors. How frustrating it must be for her to be so knowledgeable about a subject that few people care about.

  She smiles and opens the door wide. “I wouldn’t call myself an expert, exactly, but I’d be happy to tell you whatever I know.”

  The house is even gloomier than I remembered, and the foyer smells of age and dust. The floor creaks as we follow Mrs. Dickens into the front parlor, where the logbook of The Raven, the ship formerly under the command of Captain Brodie, is displayed under glass.

  “We keep many of our historical records in here.” She pulls a key ring from her pocket and unlocks the door to a glass-fronted bookcase. On the shelves are volumes of leather-bound books, some of them so old they look ready to crumble. “We hope to digitize all of these records eventually, but you know how hard it is to find funds to do anything these days. No one cares about the past. They only care about the future and the next hip new thing.” She scans the volumes. “Ah, here it is. The town records for 1861. That’s the year Brodie’s Watch was built.”

  “Actually Mrs. Dickens, our question is about something that happened far more recently.”

  “How recently?”

  “It would be about twenty or so years ago, according to Ned Haskell.”

  “Ned?” Startled, she turns to frown at me. “Oh, dear.”

  “I guess you’ve heard the news about him.”

  “I’ve heard what people are saying. But I grew up in this town, so I’ve learned to ignore half of what I hear.”

  “Then you don’t believe he—”

  “I see no point in speculation.” She slides the old book back on the shelf and claps dust from her hands. “If your question’s about something that happened only twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have that record here. You should try the Tucker Cove Weekly. They have archives going back at least fifty years, and I think much of that is digitized.”

  Maeve says, “I’ve already searched their archives for any articles mentioning Brodie’s Watch. I never found anything about the accident.”

  “Accident?” Mrs. Dickens looks back and forth at us. “Something like that might not even make the news.”

  “But it should have. Since a fifteen-year-old girl died,” I tell her.

  Mrs. Dickens lifts her hand to her mouth. For a moment she doesn’t speak, but just stares at me.

  “Ned told me it happened on a Halloween night,” I continue. “He said a group of teenagers broke into the empty house, and there may have been drinking involved. One of the girls went out onto the widow’s walk, and somehow she fell. I don’t recall her name, but I thought, if you remembered the incident, and which year it was, we might be able to track down the details.”

  “Jessie,” Mrs. Dickens says softly.

  “You remember her name?”

  She nods. “Jessie Inman. She went to school with my niece. Such a pretty girl, but she had a wild streak.” She takes a deep breath. “I think I’d like to sit down.”

  I’m alarmed by how pale she looks, and as Maeve takes her by the arm, I scurry across the room to fetch one of the antique chairs. Unsteady as she is, Mrs. Dickens hasn’t forgotten her responsibilities as a docent and she looks down in dismay at the worn velvet seat. “Oh dear, this chair is off-limits. No one’s supposed to sit in it.”

  “No one’s here to complain, Mrs. Dickens,” I say gently. “And we’ll never tell.”

  She manages a faint smile as she settles into the chair. “I do try to follow the rules.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “So did Jessie’s mother. That’s why it was such a shock to her when she learned what Jessie had been up to that night. They weren’t just trespassing. Those kids actually broke a window to get into the house. And probably do whatever kids with raging hormones do.”

  “You said she was a pretty girl. What did she look like?” Maeve asks her.

  Mrs. Dickens shakes her head, baffled by the question. “Does it really matter?”

  “What color was her hair?”

  I fully expect her to tell us that the girl’s hair was dark, and I’m surprised by her answer.

  “She was fair-haired,” says Mrs. Dickens. “Like her mother, Michelle.”

  And unlike me. Unlike all the other women who have died in Brodie’s Watch.

  “Did you know the mother very well?” I ask.

  “Michelle attended my church. Volunteered at the school. She did everything a mother’s supposed to do, yet she couldn’t keep her daughter from making a stupid mistake. She died a few years after Jessie did. They said it was cancer, but I think what really killed her was losing her child.”

  Maeve looks at me. “I’m surprised an accident like that didn’t make it into the local newspaper. I didn’t find anything about a girl dying at Brodie’s Watch.”

  “There were no articles,” says Mrs. Dickens.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of who the other kids were. Six teenagers from the most prominent families in town. Do you think they wanted everyone to know their darling children smashed a window and broke into a house? Did lord-knows-what mischief in there? Jessie’s death was a tragedy, but why compound it with shame? I think that’s why the editor agreed not to publish the names or the details. I’m sure arrangements were made to repair any damage to the house, which satisfied the owner, Mr. Sherbrooke. The only thing that showed up in the newspaper was Jessie’s obituary, and it said she died from an accidental fall on Halloween night. Only a few people ever knew the truth.”

  “So that’s why it didn’t turn up in my search of the archives,” says Maeve. “Which makes me wonder how many other women have died in that house that we don’t know about.”

  Mrs. Dickens frowns at her. “There were others?”

  “I’ve found the names of at least four other women. And now you’ve told us about Jessie.”

  “Which makes it five,” Mrs. Dickens murmurs.

  “Yes, five. All of them female.”

  “Why are you asking all these questions? Why are you interested?”

  “It’s for the book I’m writing,” I explain. “Brodie’s Watch plays a big part in it and I want to include some history of the house.”

  “Is that the only reason?” Mrs. Dickens asks quietly.

  For a moment I don’t respond. She doesn’t press me for an answer, but just by the way she watches me, I know she’s already guessed the real reason for my questions.

  “Things have happened in the house,” I finally answer.

  “What things?”

  “They make me wonder if the house might be…” I give a sheepish laugh. “Haunted.”

  “Captain Brodie,” Mrs. Dickens murmurs. “You’ve seen him?”

  Maeve and I glance at each other. “You’ve heard about the ghost?” says Maeve.

  “Everyone who grew up in this town knows the stories. How the ghost of Jeremiah Brodie still lingers in that house. People claim they’ve seen him standing on the widow’s walk. Or staring out the turret window. When I was a child, I loved hearing those stories, but I never really believed them. I assumed it was something our parents told us to make us stay away from that wreck of a place.” She gives me an apologetic look. “That was before you moved in, of course, when it really was a wreck. Broken windows, a rotting porch. Bats and mice and whatever other vermin lived inside.”

  “The mice are still there,” I admit.

  She gives a faint smile. “And they always will be.”

  Maeve says, “Since you grew up in this town, you must remember Aurora Sherbrooke. She
used to live in Brodie’s Watch.”

  “I knew who she was, but I didn’t really know her. I don’t think many people did. She’d come into town every so often to buy groceries, but that was the only time anyone saw her. Otherwise, she stayed up there on that hill, all alone.”

  With him. He was all she required for company. He gave her what she needed, just as he gives me what I need, whether it’s the comfort of an embrace or the dark pleasures of the turret. Aurora Sherbrooke would not have shared that detail with anyone.

  Neither will I.

  “When she passed on, I don’t remember any questions being raised about how she died,” says Mrs. Dickens. “The one thing I do remember is that she’d been dead for a few days when her nephew found her.” She grimaces. “That must have been an awful sight.”

  “Her nephew is Arthur Sherbrooke,” I tell Maeve. “He still owns Brodie’s Watch.”

  “And he hasn’t been able to get rid of it,” says Mrs. Dickens. “It’s a beautiful piece of land, but the house has always had a bad reputation. The fact his aunt’s body was lying there for days, decomposing. Then Jessie’s accident. When his aunt died, the house itself was already falling apart. I’m sure he’s hoping that after all these renovations, he’ll finally find a buyer to take it off his hands.”

  “Maybe he should have just burned it down,” says Maeve.

  “Some people in town have suggested that, but Brodie’s Watch has historical significance. It would be a shame to think of a house with such a pedigree going up in flames.”

  I imagine those grand rooms consumed by fire, the turret lit up like a torch as a hundred and fifty years of history are reduced to ashes. When a house is destroyed, what happens to the spirits who linger? What would happen to the captain?

  “Brodie’s Watch deserves to be loved,” I say. “It deserves to be cared for. If I could afford it, I would buy it myself.”

  Maeve shakes her head. “You don’t want to own that house, Ava. You don’t know enough about its history.”