The Shape of Night

by Tess Gerritsen

  “But I want to stay and watch you work,” says Ben. He glances at me. “We both do.”

  “I have to warn you, it can get pretty boring,” says Maeve. “Mostly it’s just sitting up all night watching the dials.”

  “What if we’re perfectly quiet and stay out of your way?”

  “You don’t even believe in ghosts, Dr. Gordon. Why do you want to watch?” Maeve asks.

  “Maybe this will change my mind about the whole thing,” Ben says, but I know that’s not the real answer. He wants to observe because he doesn’t trust their gadgets or their methods or anything else about them.

  Maeve frowns, tapping her pen on the papers. “It’s not the way we normally do things. Ghosts are less likely to appear when there are too many people emitting bioelectric fields.”

  “This is Ava’s house,” Ben points out. “Shouldn’t she decide what happens here?”

  “Just understand there’s a chance your presence may inhibit any manifestations. I do insist that you keep the cat locked away.”

  I nod. “I’ll put him in his carrier.”

  Maeve glances at her watch and stands up. “It’ll be dark in an hour. I’d better get to work.”

  As Maeve heads upstairs to join her team, Ben and I remain in the kitchen, waiting until she is out of earshot.

  “I hope you aren’t paying them,” he says.

  “They haven’t asked me for a cent. They’re doing it all for research.”

  “And that’s the only reason?”

  “What other reason would they have?”

  He glances up at footsteps creaking along the second-floor hallway. “I just want you to be cautious about these people. They may sincerely believe in what they’re doing, or…”

  “Or?”

  “You’ve given them complete access to your house. Why didn’t they want us to stay and observe?”

  “I think you’re being a little paranoid.”

  “I know you want to believe, Ava, but psychics often swoop in just when people are at their most vulnerable. Yes, you’ve seen and heard things you can’t explain, but you’ve just recovered from a bacterial infection. Cat scratch fever could account for what you’ve experienced.”

  “Are you telling me to call off the whole thing?”

  “I’m just advising you to be careful. You’ve already agreed to this, so we’ll let them do their thing. But don’t leave them alone in your house. I’ll stay, too.”

  “Thank you.” I glance out the window, where dusk is rapidly fading to night. “Now let’s see what happens.”

  Twenty-Six

  I lure Hannibal into his crate with a bowl of food and he doesn’t even notice when I latch his door shut; his face is too deeply buried in kitty chow. While Maeve and Todd and Evan set up their gear in various rooms around the house, I go to work doing what I do best: feeding people. I know that staying up late at night makes you ravenous, so I assemble ham sandwiches, hard-boil a dozen eggs, and brew a large pot of coffee to keep us all fueled through the night. By the time I’ve laid out the food on platters, night has fallen.

  Ben pokes his head into the kitchen and announces: “They’re going to turn off all the lights in a little bit. They said you should come upstairs now, if you want to take a look at their setup.”

  Carrying the platter of sandwiches, I follow him up the stairs. “Why do all the lights have to be turned off?”

  “Who knows? Maybe it makes it easier to see ectoplasm?”

  “Ben, a negative attitude is not going to help. You could sabotage the results.”

  “I don’t see why. If the ghost wants to appear, he’ll appear, whether I believe in him or not.”

  When we reach the turret, I’m startled to see how much equipment Maeve and her associates have hauled upstairs. I see cameras and tripods, a tape recorder, and half a dozen other instruments whose purpose is a mystery to me.

  “All that’s missing is a Geiger counter,” Ben says drily.

  “No, we’ve got one of those.” Evan points to a meter on the floor. “We’ve also set up a camera in the downstairs hallway and another one in the master bedroom.”

  “Why the master bedroom?” asks Ben.

  “Because the ghost’s appeared there a few times. That’s what we’ve been told.”

  Ben looks at me and I flush. “I’ve seen him there once or twice,” I admit.

  “But this turret seems to be ground zero for paranormal activity,” says Maeve. “It’s where Kim had the strongest reaction, so we’re going to focus our attention on this room.” She glances at her watch. “Okay, it’s time to turn off all the lights. Settle in, everybody. This is going to be a very long night.”

  * * *

  —

  By two A.M., we’ve devoured all the ham sandwiches and boiled eggs, and I’ve refilled the thermoses with coffee four times. Ghost-hunting, I have discovered, is a thoroughly boring business. For hours we’ve been sitting in the semidarkness, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Maeve’s team, at least, manages to stay busy monitoring their instruments, jotting notes, and repeatedly changing batteries.

  The ghost has yet to make an appearance.

  Maeve calls out, once again, to the darkness: “Hello, we want to speak to you! Who are you? Tell us your name.”

  The glowing red light on the tape recorder tells me it is continuously recording, but I can hear nothing. No ghostly voice answers Maeve’s request, no ectoplasmic mist materializes. Here we are, with thousands of dollars’ worth of electronic equipment, waiting for Captain Brodie to respond, and of course tonight is the night he does not cooperate.

  Another hour passes, and I grow so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open. As I nod off against Ben’s shoulder, he whispers: “Hey, why don’t you go to bed?”

  “I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “The only thing you’re going to miss is a good night’s sleep. I’ll stay up and watch.”

  He helps me stand up and I’m so stiff from sitting on the floor, I can barely rise to my feet. Through bleary eyes I make out the silhouettes of Maeve and Todd and Evan huddled in the gloom. While they may be patient enough to wait up all night in the dark, I’ve had more than enough.

  I feel my way down the turret staircase, to my bedroom. I don’t even bother to undress. I just pull off my shoes, flop down on the bed, and sink into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  I wake up to the clack of tripod legs snapping together. Sunlight shines in the window and through squinting eyes I see Todd crouched in the corner, stuffing a camera lens into an aluminum case. Ben stands in the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand.

  “What time is it?” I ask them.

  “It’s after nine,” Ben says. “They’re about to leave.” He sets a steaming mug on my nightstand. “I thought I’d bring you coffee before I take off, too.”

  I sit up, yawning, and watch as Todd sets the camera into his case. “I forgot there was a camera in my room.”

  Todd laughs. “We probably recorded six riveting hours of you sleeping in bed.”

  “What happened in the turret last night?”

  “We still need to review the footage. Maeve will get back to you with a full report.” Todd snaps his case shut and stands up to leave. “Something may turn up on video. We’ll let you know.”

  Ben and I don’t say a word as Todd heads downstairs. We hear the front door thump shut.

  “Were you up with them all night?” I ask.

  “I was. All night.”

  “And what happened?”

  Ben shakes his head. “Absolutely nothing.”

  * * *

  —

  After Ben leaves, I haul myself out of bed and splash cold water on my face. What I really want to do is climb back into bed and sleep for the rest of the day, but I can hear Hannibal yowling
downstairs, so I make my way down to the kitchen, where I find him glaring at me through the bars of his crate. The heaping mound of kitty chow I left for him last night is all gone, of course. It’s too soon to feed him again, so I carry him to the front door and release him outside. Off he goes, a tiger-striped tub of lard waddling away into the garden.

  “Get some exercise, why don’t you?” I tell him and close the door.

  Now that everyone has packed up and left, the house seems unnervingly quiet. And I feel more than a little embarrassed that I ever asked them to investigate Brodie’s Watch. Just as Ben predicted, they found no evidence of a ghost. He would tell me such evidence doesn’t exist, that believers like Maeve, with their cameras and elaborate equipment, are self-deluded people who think they hear patterns in random noise, who see dust particles floating past a camera lens and imagine supernatural orbs. He would say Brodie’s Watch is just an old house with creaky floors and a notorious reputation and a tenant who drinks too much. I wonder what he thinks of me this morning.

  No, I’d rather not know.

  Seen in the harsh light of day, my obsession with Jeremiah Brodie looks utterly irrational. He has been dead for a century and a half, and I should leave him to rest in peace. It’s time for me to get back to the real world. Back to work.

  I brew a fresh pot of coffee, heat up the cast-iron pan, and fry diced bacon and potatoes until they’re crisp, toss in chopped onions and green peppers, and pour in two scrambled eggs. It’s my go-to one-skillet breakfast on mornings when I need to fuel up for a long day’s writing.

  I pour myself a third cup of coffee and sit down with my skillet-scrambled eggs. I’m fully awake now, feeling almost human, and also utterly famished. I devour my breakfast, glad to be eating alone so that no one sees me greedily shoveling eggs and potatoes into my mouth. I will devote the rest of this day to writing The Captain’s Table. No distractions, no more ghost nonsense. The real Jeremiah Brodie is nothing more than scattered bones under the sea. I’ve been seduced by a legend, by my own desperate loneliness. If there are any demons in this house, then I myself have brought them, the same demons that have tormented me since New Year’s Eve. All it takes is a few too many glasses of wine to summon them.

  I set my dirty dishes in the sink and open my laptop to resume work on Chapter Nine of The Captain’s Table, “Jewels from the Sea.” Is there anything new to say about shellfish? I pull out my handwritten notes from my excursion aboard the lobster boat Lazy Girl last Saturday morning. I remember the smell of diesel and the gulls swarming overhead as our boat came abreast of the first lobster buoy. Captain Andy had winched up his trap from the water, and when it thumped down on his deck, there they were inside, green and glistening. With their glossy carapaces and insect legs, lobsters bear an unsavory resemblance to cockroaches. They are cannibals, he told me, and in confinement they’ll eat one another. That bug-eat-bug savagery is why lobstermen band the claws. There is nothing delectable about a snapping live lobster, but boiling water will transform that green bug into tender, luscious meat. I think of all the ways I’ve feasted on it: Dripping with butter. Cloaked in mayonnaise and mounded on a toasted bun. Stir-fried Chinese style with garlic and black bean sauce. Stewed in cream and sherry.

  I begin to type a paean to lobster. Not the food of sea captains, who would have considered it fit only for paupers, but the food of scullery maids and groundskeepers. I write about how the poor would have cooked it, simmered with corn and potatoes, or simply boiled in salted water and tossed into a lunch pail. Despite my hearty breakfast, I’m getting hungry again but I keep writing. When I finally stop to glance up at the clock, I’m startled to see it’s already six in the evening.

  Cocktail hour.

  I save the new pages I’ve written and reward myself for a hard day’s work by opening a nice bottle of Cabernet. Just one or two glasses, I promise myself. The cork gives a musical pop, and like Pavlov’s dog I am already salivating, craving that first hit of alcohol. I take a sip and sigh with pleasure. Yes, it’s a very nice wine, full-bodied and meaty. What shall I cook for dinner to go along with it?

  My laptop chimes, announcing a new email in my in-box. I see the sender’s name, and suddenly I’m not thinking at all about dinner or my work on The Captain’s Table. My appetite has vanished; in its place is only a gnawing emptiness in my stomach.

  The email is from Lucy.

  It’s the fourth email she’s sent me this week, and my responses—when I respond at all—have been curt: I’m fine, just busy. Or: I’ll write more later. This new message from her has a subject line that’s only three words: Remember this day?

  I don’t want to open it, because I dread the tidal wave of guilt that always follows, but something compels me to reach for the mouse. My hand is numb as I click on the message. An image fills the screen.

  It’s an old photo of Lucy and me, taken when I was ten and she was twelve. We are both wearing bathing suits and our long, skinny arms are slung over each other’s bare shoulders. We are tanned and smiling, and behind us, the lake shimmers, bright as silver. Yes, I remember that day very well. A hot and hazy afternoon at Grandma’s lake cottage. A picnic of fried chicken and corn on the cob. That morning I had baked oatmeal cookies all by myself, at ten years old already comfortable in the kitchen. Ava wants to feed everyone, Lucy wants to heal everyone was the way our mother summed up her daughters. That day at the lake, I cut my foot on a rock and I remember how tenderly Lucy washed and bandaged my wound. While the other kids splashed in the water, Lucy had stayed by my side, keeping me company on the shore. Whenever I’ve needed her, whether I was sick or depressed or short of cash, she’d always be there for me.

  And now she isn’t, because I cannot bear to look her in the eyes and let her see who I really am. I cannot bear to be reminded of what I’ve done to her.

  I sip Cabernet as I stare at that photo, haunted by the ghosts of who we once were. Sisters who adored each other. Sisters who would never hurt each other. My fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to tap a reply. A confession. The truth is like a boulder crushing me; what a relief it would be to throw off this burden and tell her about Nick. About New Year’s Eve.

  I refill my glass. I can no longer taste the wine, but I keep drinking it anyway.

  I picture Lucy reading my confession as she sits at her desk, where photos of Nick smile at her. Nick, who will never grow old, who will forever be the man she adored, the man who adored her. She will read my confession and she will know the truth about him and about me.

  And it will break her heart.

  I close the laptop. No, I cannot do it, not to her. It’s better to live with the guilt and die with the secret. Sometimes, silence is the one true way to prove your love.

  As night falls, I finish off the bottle.

  I don’t know what time it is when I finally stagger upstairs and collapse onto the bed. Drunk as I am, I do not sleep. I lie awake in the darkness, thinking of the women before me who have died alone in Brodie’s Watch. What secrets did they harbor, what past sins drove them to retreat to this house? Maeve had said that powerful emotions such as terror and grief will linger in a house years later. Can shame? A century from now, will someone sleeping in this room feel the same guilt that gnaws at me like a cancer? My anguish is almost physical, and I curl into a ball, as if I could squeeze away the pain.

  The scent of the sea is suddenly so powerful, so vivid, that I taste the salt on my lips. My heart quickens. The hairs lift on my arms, as if the darkness is electrically charged. No, this is just my imagination. Captain Brodie does not exist. Maeve proved there is no ghost in this house.

  “Whore.”

  I snap rigid at the sound of his voice. He stands over my bed, his face hidden, only his silhouette visible in the darkness.

  “I know what you have done.”

  “You aren’t real,” I whisper. “You don’t exist.” />
  “I am what you seek. I am what you deserve.” I cannot see his expression, but I hear the judgment in his voice and I know what lies in store for me tonight. Here in my house, what you seek is what you will find, he once told me. What I seek is penance, to wash away my sins. To make me clean again.

  I gasp as he wrenches me to my feet. At his touch, the room whirls around me in a kaleidoscope of firelight and velvet. In an instant I am swept out of my own time, into his. A time when this is his house, his kingdom, and I am at his command. I look down and see that tonight I am not wearing a dress of silk or velvet, but merely a nightgown of cotton so sheer that I can see my own silhouette, shamefully exposed through the gossamer fabric. The whore, her sins revealed to all.

  He leads me from the bedroom, into the hall. The wood floor is warm beneath my bare feet. The door to the turret gives a warning creak as it swings open and we start up the staircase. In the doorway above, firelight glows a lurid red, as if hell awaits me above, not below, and I am ascending to my just punishment. My gown is whisper-thin, but I do not feel the night’s chill. Instead my skin is feverishly hot, as if I am approaching the heat of brimstone. Two steps from the top I halt, suddenly fearful of stepping through the doorway. I have known both pain and pleasure in his turret. What punishment lies in store tonight?

  “I’m afraid,” I murmur.

  “You have already agreed.” His smile chills me. “Is it not why you have summoned me again?”

  “I? Summoned you?”

  His hand is crushing mine; I cannot resist, cannot fight him as he drags me up the last two steps into the turret. There, in the hellish firelight, I behold what has been awaiting me.

  Captain Brodie has brought an audience.

  He pushes me forward, into the circle of men. There is no place to retreat to, no place to hide. Twelve men surround me, staring from every direction as I stand pitifully exposed to their gazes. The room is warm but I am shaking. Like the captain, their faces are sunburned and their clothes are ripe with the scent of the sea, but these men are rough and unshaven, their shirts frayed and dirt-streaked.