Death Watch (13 page)

His father’s large study was on the ground floor of the house. Although it hadn’t been kept up well or painted in a long time, there were lots of carved details in the house’s architecture that
gave the place a feeling of history. Carvings adorned the tops of the doorways, and many of the walls were covered in faded wood paneling.

One entire wall was covered with high bookshelves that spilled over with volumes of every size. Great folios lay on their sides toward the bottom, and right up to the ceiling were shelf after shelf of leather-bound books, vellum-bound manuscripts, nineteenth-century volumes of folklore, whole runs of journals. He passed his hands over some of the fine embossed bindings as he thought,
I am a book also, words and thoughts and stories held together by flesh. We open and close ourselves to the world. We are read by others or put away by them. We wait to be seen, sitting quietly on shelves for someone to bother having a look inside us
. He drew one of the early tomes from the shelf and read its title page,
Anatomy of Melancholy
.

“Mine or his?” muttered Silas to himself as he returned the book to the shelf.

It looked like nothing had been put away or straightened up, so Silas guessed all was as it had been the night Amos disappeared. When he looked around the study, he could almost see his dad sitting at the desk. His jacket was there, hanging from the back of the chair. He wouldn’t have needed it that night, as the summer had been warm. Silas took the jacket off the chair and held it up. He brought it to his nose and smelled it. He put it on, slowly, first one arm and then the other. It was worn and comfortable and it smelled like his dad. Book mold and wood grain and something of the sea.

One side of the jacket hung a little lower than the other, and when he looked in the pocket, Silas found his dad’s pocket watch. He had seen the watch only a few times before; his dad never took it out in public. It was silver, fashioned in the shape of a skull, very
realistic, with great attention to detail. The suture lines on the top of the skull were so carefully engraved. Despite its small size, it felt heavy in the hand. The lower jaw could be unlatched and when open, the watch mechanism, face, and dial—built into the upper part of the skull—could be read. Silas remembered his dad showing it to him the night of his grandfather’s funeral.

Silas had not thought about his grandfather for some time, but now, clear as a picture on a screen, he could see him in his memory, just as he did on the day of the funeral. That day was the first and only memory Silas had of his grandfather, although surely they’d seen each other when Silas was an infant, before his mother and father moved from Lichport. At the funeral, Silas had to stand on his toes to look over the edge of the coffin and see his grandfather. Eyes closed. Skin looking like a doll’s, painted and still.

A moment later, returning to his seat with his father, Silas saw his grandfather again.

Silas wasn’t sure if that was the first time he saw a real ghost, but it was the earliest and best memory he had. Maybe it had only seemed true because his father had believed him. Maybe, looking back, it was just that Silas had always believed in ghosts, as long as he could remember, even before his father had told him they were real and his mother made his father start sleeping on the couch. Silas had looked up again from his chair and was staring at the coffin when his grandfather stepped into the air from somewhere behind the open lid.

Silas glanced down, then quickly back up, and the figure was growing clearer with each breath he took. It stood very still, and the space around it seemed blurred, as if the air was a pane of smudged glass. The ghost looked right at Silas and smiled. Then it put its forefinger to its lips and mouthed the words,
Don’t tell
.

When the funeral service was over, he told his mom about the ghost, and she slapped him. Right there in front of everyone in the church, and without even a moment’s hesitation. Silas’s eyes welled up, but he didn’t start crying until they were outside in the car. It was his only trip to Lichport, and he hardly saw any of it, because his mother wanted to pay her respects only briefly at the Umber home and then return to Saltsbridge as quickly as possible.

On Temple Street, at the wake, Silas was dragged swiftly out of the car by his mother and into the family house, then dragged back out and into the car barely five minutes later. His mother claimed that she wasn’t up to visiting, for she wasn’t feeling well enough. The truth was she wasn’t sick, just angry. Angry at being back in Lichport. Angry that Amos was to receive nothing from the estate. When she demanded to know why, Amos refused to speak about why his father had left everything to his brother Charles, including the house and the rest of the family money, except to say, “Dolores, believe me, you’re not the first person I’ve disappointed.” Amos drove quietly while Dolores went on and on about it during the entire car ride home, as if complaining and yelling would somehow change the dead man’s will.

“You’re just going to let him stay in that house and not pay you some portion of what it’s worth? Is that it? You’re done? And it’s not like he needs any more money, Amos! Property, investments, not to mention whatever was left of his wife’s estate! Nothing left to you, and you say ‘fine’ and just walk away?”

“Not my decision. My brother’s been caring for him and has made the house his own, has lived there with his wife while his son’s been at boarding school. My brother also has money of his own. He’s always been good with it, antiques and investments, I assume. I’ve hardly spoken with either of them in a long while,
and I suspect my dad and my brother simply came to an understanding that didn’t include me. Besides, there were some things on which my father and I did not see eye to eye, as you know very well.”

Dolores ignored the end of his sentence, but hissed, “An understanding?”

“Yes. An understanding.” And that was all his father would say on the matter. When they got home, Silas’s mom went right into the house and slammed the door, leaving Silas and his dad still standing on the porch, so his dad put him back in the car and took him out for dinner.

On the way, Silas asked his dad, “Will I see them now? Ghosts?”

“No. Probably not,” his dad told him matter-of-factly, but then added more earnestly, “Maybe.” Amos paused a little longer, then said, “You saw my father because he wanted to see you. He wanted to say good-bye to you, Little Bird.”

That made perfect sense to Silas. It seemed simple and sensible and right. Why wouldn’t his grandfather want to see him and say good-bye? Of course he would.

Looking back, Silas thought that maybe his dad had thought about that moment coming and had planned to answer his son’s questions with only just enough information, to answer what Silas asked about and nothing more. Not to make a big deal about it. This kind of stuff upset his mom, so his dad was always quiet about it with him. Quiet and careful.

When they got to the restaurant, Silas had asked his dad if he could give the hostess another name, a made-up name.

“Why?” Amos asked him, amused.

“It’ll be fun to be someone else. Let’s be other people tonight!” Silas remembered saying that because the thought of him and his dad playing a trick on the world excited him.

So Silas told the hostess their last name was “Bedlam” because he had read it in a song in one of his father’s books, and because he had heard his dad use it a few times when talking to his mom. A few minutes later, the hostess called out, “Bedlam! Party of two! Bedlam, party of two,” and Silas nearly squealed, he was so pleased with himself. All through dinner, he pretended he was someone else, that he and his dad were other people, from some other place where there were people named Bedlam, and the spell was only broken when they got back into the same old car to go home. Still, Silas felt better and asked no more questions about ghosts.

When they got back, perhaps emboldened by his alternate identity, Silas couldn’t help but say something to his mother about what she’d done to him. He told her in a tone perhaps too much like his father that there was “no reason to hit people just because a ghost wanted to say good-bye to them.” His mom really starting yelling then.

“Damn it, Amos.
Damn it
!” And from that day forward, his father hardly ever went upstairs except to visit Silas in his room.

After the funeral and the fight, Amos showed Silas the watch, maybe just to distract him, maybe because he knew Silas would come to see it eventually.

“Does it really tell time?” Silas remembered asking his father. “It looks very old.”

“It is rather old,” his dad told him, “but it’s not for telling the time. Not really.” And then Amos would say no more about it except that one day, he might show it to Silas again and talk a little more about it then.

But that day hadn’t come, and now Silas sat alone with his father’s strange silver watch in his hand.

It was about three hours later when Silas came back through the hallway to Mrs. Bowe’s house. She noticed immediately that he was wearing his father’s jacket and that his right hand did not leave the front pocket.

He’s found the death watch
, she thought, and for a moment she paused and her breath caught in her throat.

Then she said, “Your father’s jacket looks very good on you, Silas. It suits you, but it still might be a little early for it. For wool, I mean—but of course you should wear it. Of course you should.”

She wasn’t sure if she was doing the right thing, letting the boy leave with the watch. But Amos surely left it behind for a reason, and more and more Mrs. Bowe felt she was following a path trod out for her by another. For the time being, she was willing to play the part allotted to her. But she would keep an eye on the boy in her way. She felt everything would be easier and safer if Silas were here, in his father’s house, with her.

Still in a bit of a haze, Silas quietly thanked Mrs. Bowe and said he’d come back soon. He turned to go out the back door, but she told him he might leave by the front, since he was respectable company from good family. When they reached the front door of her part of the house, Mrs. Bowe took Silas’s hand and stroked it three times in the old way. He looked up, a serene expression on his face, and smiled at her.
Good
, she thought.
We have an understanding. He trusts me
. She quickly opened his hand and pressed a heavy key into the center of his palm.

“Silas,” she said with a glance back toward the hall that connected the two homes, “that house was given to your father by my mother and father. Given to him outright and in perpetuity, and from where I sit, that makes it yours. That is
your
house, Silas,” she said again, because he looked bewildered. “You come here anytime. This is
your
home.
Yours
.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” Silas replied.

She smiled to see his fist tightly clenching the key as though he was holding his own life in his hand.

As Silas made his way back through the garden, Mrs. Bowe called out from the porch, “That key is for all the doors, Silas. Let yourself in or out as you wish. Be sure to lock the gate behind you.” And as Silas let himself out, she stepped out of the sun and into the cool shade of the crypt.

Silas walked back along Main Street, two words circling around and around in his mind:
My house. My house. My house
. Silas took the key and put it on the chain that also held the pendant his father had given him. He liked the way the extra weight felt around his neck and the press of the now warm metal against his chest.

He was happier than he’d been in a year. But fast on the heels of joy, guilt caught up to him. If he had the key to his father’s house, that meant it was because his dad had no need of it. He was filling a space left by his dad. But still. He could go there anytime he wanted, and that meant not having to put up with anything at his uncle’s. It wasn’t a car, but it was a place to go if he needed one. Close. Safe.

Silas began to walk faster, and as he turned left on Fairwell Street to make his way back to his uncle’s, someone waved to him from the overgrown patch of ground past the schoolyard and in front of the millpond.

It was a girl.

She was across the street, maybe a hundred feet away from him. She was really pretty, and she was waving at him.

So he waved back.

She waved again, then smiled at him.

Behind her, light from the late-day sun hit the surface of the
millpond, making Silas squint and his eyes water a bit so that the harder he stared at her, the more she washed in and out of focus.

She must have been swimming recently, because her hair was wet. Silas thought that made her look mysterious and attractive, and then, as if she could hear him thinking, she ran her hand through her hair and shook the water off and waved again.

Silas stood trying to muster the courage to cross the street. He looked down as he stepped off the curb into the street, glancing left and right just in case a car was coming, but when he looked back, the girl was gone.
Okay
, he thought.
Someone just being nice. I’m new here, and someone waved. No big deal
.