The Shape of Night

by Tess Gerritsen

  His crew. A jury of twelve.

  Brodie seizes me by the shoulders and slowly walks me around the circle, as if I am a prize calf for sale. “Gentlemen, witness the accused!” he announces. “It is up to you to pass judgment.”

  “No.” In terror, I try to pull away but his grip is too firm. “No.”

  “Confess, Ava. Tell them your crime.” He walks me around the circle again, forcing me to stare each man in the eyes. “Let them look deep into your soul and see what you are guilty of.” He thrusts me toward one of the sailors, who stares at me with black and bottomless eyes.

  “You said no harm would come to me!”

  “Is this not what you seek? Punishment?” He pushes me forward and I stumble to my knees. As I cower there, in that circle of men, he paces around me. “Here you see the accused for what she truly is. You need feel no pity.” He turns and points to me like a judge condemning a prisoner. “Confess, Ava.”

  “Confess!” one of the men calls out. The others join in, a chorus that grows ever louder until the chant is deafening. “Confess! Confess!”

  Brodie drags me back to my feet. “Tell them what you did,” he orders.

  “Stop. Please.”

  “Tell them.”

  “Make them stop!”

  “Tell them who you fucked!”

  I sink back to my knees. “My sister’s husband,” I whisper.

  * * *

  —

  In an instant, it all comes back. The clink of champagne glasses. The clatter of oyster shells. New Year’s Eve. The last guest gone, Lucy off to the hospital to see a patient.

  Nick and me, alone in my apartment.

  I remember how unsteady we both were as we gathered up the dirty dishes and carried them to the sink. I remember the two of us standing in the kitchen, giggling as we emptied the last of the champagne into our flutes. Outside, snowflakes tumbled down and settled onto the windowsill as we clinked glasses. I remember thinking how blue his eyes were, and how much I’d always liked his smile, and why couldn’t I be as fortunate as my sister, who is cleverer than I am, kinder than I am, and far, far luckier in love than I will ever be. Why couldn’t I have what she had?

  We didn’t plan it. We never expected what happened next.

  I was unsteady, and as I turned to the sink, I stumbled. In an instant he was beside me. That was Nick, always there to lend a hand, always quick to make me laugh. He pulled me to my feet, and in that wobbly, alcohol-drenched state, I tottered against him. Our bodies pressed together and the inevitable happened. I felt his arousal, and suddenly there it was between us, as explosive as a flame dipped in gasoline. I was just as frantic, just as guilty as he was, clawing at his shirt just as he was hiking up my dress. Then I was lying on the cold tiles beneath him, gasping with his every thrust. Loving it, needing it. I just wanted to be fucked and he was there, and that poisonous champagne had stripped away all our self-control. We were two mindless beasts rutting and grunting, heedless of the consequences.

  But after we finished and we both lay half naked on the kitchen floor, the reality of what we’d just done made me so sick to my stomach that I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up, again and again, coughing and choking on sour wine and regret. There, hugging the toilet, I started to sob. What’s done cannot be undone. Lady Macbeth’s words came to me like a chant, a horrible truth that I wanted to erase, but the line just kept echoing in my head.

  I heard Nick groan in the other room. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

  When I finally came out of the bathroom, I found him huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth and clutching his head in his hands. This broken Nick was a stranger I’d never seen before, and he frightened me.

  “Jesus, what were we thinking?” he sobs.

  “We can’t let her find out.”

  “I can’t believe this happened. What the fuck am I going to do?”

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We are going to forget this, Nick.” I kneel beside him, grab him by the shoulders, and give him a violent shake. “Promise me you’ll never tell her. Promise me.”

  “I need to get home.” He shoves me away and lurches to his feet. He’s so intoxicated that he can barely button his shirt and buckle his belt.

  “You’ve had too much to drink. You can’t drive.”

  “I can’t stay here.” He staggers out of the kitchen and I follow, trying to talk sense into him as he pulls on his coat and heads down the stairway. He’s too agitated to listen.

  “Nick, don’t leave!” I plead.

  But I can’t stop him. He’s drunk, the roads are perilously slick with ice, and there’s nothing I can do to change his mind. From the doorway I watch him stumble off into the night. Snow swirls down, fat, thick flakes that obscure my last glimpse of him. I hear his car door slam shut, and then the glow of his taillights fades into the darkness.

  The next time I see Nick, he is lying comatose in a hospital bed and Lucy is slumped in a chair beside him. Her eyes are hollow with exhaustion and she keeps shaking her head, murmuring again and again, “I don’t understand. He’s always so careful. Why wasn’t he wearing his seatbelt? Why was he driving drunk?”

  I’m the only one who knows the answer, but I don’t tell her. I will never tell her. Instead I bury the truth, guarding it like a powder keg that could explode and destroy us both. For weeks I manage to keep myself together, for Lucy’s sake. I sit beside her in the hospital. I bring her doughnuts and coffee, soup and sandwiches. I play the loving younger sister, but guilt gnaws at me like a vicious rodent. I’m terrified that Nick will recover and tell her what happened between us. Even as Lucy was praying for Nick’s recovery, I was hoping he would never wake up.

  Five weeks after the accident, my wish was granted. I remember my overwhelming sense of relief when I heard the whine of the flatlining heart monitor. I remember holding Lucy as the nurse turned off the ventilator and Nick’s chest at last fell still. While Lucy shook and sobbed in my arms, I was thinking, Thank god it’s over. Thank god he will never tell her the truth.

  Which makes me even more of a monster than I already was. I wanted him dead and silent. I wanted the very thing that broke my sister’s heart.

  * * *

  —

  “Your own sister’s husband,” Brodie says. “Because of you, he is dead.”

  I bow my head, silent. The truth is too excruciating to admit.

  “Say it, Ava. Tell the truth. You wanted him to die.”

  “Yes,” I sob. “I wanted him to die.” My voice fades to a whisper. “And he did.”

  Captain Brodie turns to his men. “Tell me, gentlemen. For betraying those she loves, what does she deserve?”

  “No mercy!” one man calls out.

  Now another man joins him, and another, in a chant that will not stop.

  “No mercy.”

  “No mercy.”

  I press my hands over my ears, trying to shut out the shouts, but two men grab my wrists and wrench them away from my head, forcing me to listen. Their hands are icy, not the warm flesh of the living, but the flesh of cold, dead men. I look wildly around at the closing circle and suddenly I do not see men. I see corpses, grim and hollow-eyed witnesses to the prisoner’s execution.

  Above them all towers Brodie, and his eyes are a cold, reptilian black. Why did I never see this before? This creature that has stalked my dreams, who aroused me, who punished me—why did I not recognize him for what he really is?

  A demon. My demon.

  * * *

  —

  I awaken with a shriek. Wildly I stare around the room and find that I am back in my bedroom, in my bed, and the sheets are twisted and soaked with sweat. Sunlight streams through the windows, as bright and harsh as daggers in my eyes.

  Through the pounding of my heart I hear, faintly, the sound of my cel
lphone ringing. Last night I was so drunk I left it in the kitchen and I feel too drained to climb out of bed to answer it.

  At last the ringing stops.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and once again I see him, staring down at me with those black viper eyes. Eyes he’s never revealed to me before. I see the circle of men, all with the same eyes, surrounding me, watching as their captain moved in to deliver his punishment.

  I clutch my head, trying desperately to squeeze out the vision but I can’t. It’s seared into my memory. Did it really happen?

  I look down at myself, searching my wrists for bruises. I see none, but the memory of those bony hands grasping my arms is so vivid I cannot believe there is not a single mark on me.

  I stumble out of bed and examine my back in the mirror. No scratches. I stare at my own face and see a woman I scarcely recognize looking back, a woman with sunken eyes and wildly tangled hair. Who have I become? When did I transform into this wraith?

  Downstairs my cellphone rings again, and this time I sense urgency in the sound. By the time I reach the kitchen, the ringing has again stopped, but I find two voicemails. Both are from Maeve.

  Call me as soon as you can.

  Then another: Ava, where are you? This is important. Call me!

  I don’t want to talk to her, or to anyone this morning. Not until I can clear my head and sound sane again. But her messages unsettle me, and after last night, I need answers more than ever.

  She responds on the second ring. “Ava, I’m driving to your house right now. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

  “Why? What is this all about?”

  “I need to show you something. It’s on the video footage we recorded in your house.”

  “But I thought nothing happened that night. That’s what Ben told me. He said none of your instruments recorded anything unusual.”

  “Not in the turret. But this morning, I finally finished reviewing the rest of the footage. Ava, something does show up. It was recorded on a different camera.”

  Suddenly my heart is thudding. “Which camera?” I ask, and the rush of blood through my ears is so loud that I barely hear her answer.

  “In your bedroom.”

  Twenty-Seven

  I am standing outside on the porch when Maeve pulls up at my house. She climbs out of her car carrying a laptop and her face is grim as she comes up the steps. “Are you all right?” she asks quietly.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because you look exhausted.”

  “To be honest, I feel awful.”

  “Because?”

  “I had way too much to drink last night. And I had a terrible dream. About Captain Brodie.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it was? A dream?”

  I shove tangled hair off my face. I still haven’t run a comb through it. I haven’t even brushed my teeth. All I’ve managed to do is change into fresh clothes and gulp down a cup of coffee. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

  “I’m afraid this video may not provide the answers you need,” she says, indicating her laptop. “But it might convince you to leave this place.” Maeve steps inside and pauses, glancing around, as if sensing someone else is in the house. Someone who does not want her there.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” I tell her. It’s the one room where I have never felt the ghost’s presence, never caught his premonitory scent. While Jeremiah Brodie was alive, the kitchen would have been a place only for servants, not for the master of the house, and only rarely would he have set foot here.

  We sit down at the table and she opens her laptop. “We viewed the footage from all the cameras,” she says. “Most of our instruments were set up in the turret, because that’s where you’ve seen him before, and it’s the room where Kim had the most violent reaction. We also know that’s where Aurora Sherbrooke passed away, so we assumed that any paranormal activity would most likely occur there. In the turret.”

  “But you didn’t record anything unusual in the turret?”

  “No. I spent all day reviewing the turret recordings. I was disappointed, to say the least. And surprised, because Kim is usually spot-on. She can feel when something tragic has happened in a room, and I’ve never seen her react the way she did up there. It was genuine fear. Even Todd and Evan were spooked by her reaction.”

  “I was, too,” I admit.

  “It was quite a letdown when our instruments recorded no activity at all up there. I also viewed the footage from the hallway camera, and again, there was nothing. When I finally looked at the video from your bedroom, I wasn’t expecting anything unusual. So I was shocked when I saw this.” She taps a few keys and turns the laptop screen to face me.

  It’s a view of my bedroom. Moonlight glows in the window, and I can see myself in the semidarkness, lying on the bed. The video has a time stamp, which slowly ticks forward: 3:18 A.M. It’s twenty minutes after I’d given up on the vigil in the turret and had climbed into bed. The time stamp advances to 3:19, 3:20. Except for that progression of time and the faint flutter of the curtains in the open window, nothing moves on-screen.

  What I see next makes me jerk straight up in my chair. It is something black, something sinuous, and it slithers across the room, moving toward the bed. Toward me.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask.

  “Exactly what I said when I saw it. It’s not bright, like an orb. It doesn’t have the misty quality of ectoplasm. No, this is something different. Something we’ve never captured on camera before.”

  “Could it be just a shadow? Maybe from a cloud. A bird flying past.”

  “It’s not a shadow.”

  “Did Todd or Evan come into my bedroom to readjust the camera?”

  “No one did, Ava. At this specific time, both Evan and Todd were upstairs with me in the turret. So was Dr. Gordon. Take another look at this footage. I’ll slow it down so you can see what this…thing does.”

  She rolls back the video to 3:19 and hits play. Now the time stamp moves much more slowly, the seconds crawling forward. In the frame I sleep soundly, unaware that something else is in the room. Something that comes from the direction of the door and approaches me. It swirls toward the bed, a tentacled shadow that slithers closer and drapes itself over me like a shroud. Suddenly I can feel that shroud choking me right now, wrapped so tightly around my throat that I can’t breathe.

  “Ava.” Maeve shakes me. “Ava!”

  I gasp in a breath. On the laptop screen, the thing has vanished. Moonlight glows on the sheets and there is no shadow, no strangling blackness. There is just me, sleeping peacefully in bed.

  “This can’t be real,” I murmur.

  “We can both see it. It’s right there on video. It’s drawn to you, Ava. It went straight for you.”

  “But what is it?” I hear the note of desperation in my own voice.

  “I know what it’s not. This is not a residual haunting. It’s not a poltergeist. No, it’s something intelligent, something that wants to interact with you.”

  “It’s not a ghost?”

  “No. This—this thing, whatever it is, moved straight to your bed. It’s clearly drawn to you, Ava, and to no one else.”

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t know. Something about you attracts it. Maybe it wants to control you. Or possess you. Whatever this is, it’s not benign.” She leans forward and grasps my hand. “I don’t say this to many clients, but I need to tell you now, for your own safety. Get out of this house.”

  * * *

  —

  “It could be just a video artifact,” says Ben as I scoop sweaters and T-shirts out of my dresser drawer and stuff them in my suitcase. “Maybe it’s just a cloud passing across the moon, casting a weird shadow.”

  “As always, you have a logical explanation.”

  “Because there
always is a logical explanation.”

  “What if you’re wrong this time?”

  “And it’s a ghost on that video?” Ben can’t help himself; he laughs. “Even if they do exist, ghosts can’t hurt you, right?”

  “Why are we even discussing this? You’ll never believe any of it.” I set another armload of clothes in the suitcase and cross back to the dresser for my bras and panties. I’m in too much of a rush to care that Ben’s getting an eyeful of my underwear; I just want to pack up and leave this house before nightfall. It’s already late afternoon and I haven’t started boxing up my kitchenware. I cross to the closet and as I yank clothes from hangers, I suddenly think of Charlotte Nielson, whose scarf I found in this closet. Like me, she must have packed in a hurry. Did she too flee in panic? Had she felt the tentacles of that same shadow closing in around her?

  I pull out a dress and the hanger falls to the floor with such a clatter that I flinch, my heart hammering.

  “Hey.” Gently Ben takes my arm and steadies me. “Ava, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Says the man who doesn’t believe in the supernatural.”

  “Says the man who won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I turn to face him. “You don’t even know what I’m dealing with, Ben.”

  “I know what Maeve and her friends claim it is. But all I saw on that video was a shadow. Nothing solid, nothing identifiable. It could have been—”

  “Clouds passing across the moon. Yes, you’ve already said that.”

  “All right then, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it is a ghost. Let’s say ghosts are real. But they’re not physical beings. How can they hurt you?”

  “I’m not afraid of ghosts.”