Death Watch (40 page)

“I have read something about ghost ships in my father’s writings, about ships that become prisons for the dead, wandering on and on until the world’s end, occasionally coming to harbor to take on crew, or to revenge great wrongs done to their captains. Where are they when they’re not visible to the living? The old sources do not say,” Silas said.

“No tellin’ … but every hundred years, in it comes and it won’t leave until it’s had its due,” said Mother Peale. She looked away from Silas and pulled her hands under her shawl. She began to walk along the harbor, and he followed her.

Silas thought she knew more than she told, that she was holding something back. Maybe she thought this was likely to scare him. Yet if the ship came only once every hundred years, anything anyone knew about it could only be speculation, stories handed down. How frightened did she think he’d be by a legend?

As if in answer to his unspoken questions, Mother Peale said, “It’s a bad business, Silas, I don’t mind telling you. Very bad. Bad folk are on that ship, and it brings only the worst sort aboard. No one knows who it’ll take until they’re took, and that’s what makes everyone so edgy. One thing for sure. No one wants to sail on that ship, for once you’re aboard, you don’t never come off it.”

Silas and Mother Peale were approaching the last wharf, near where Downe Street emerged at the seaside, before turning back up into the Narrows to make their way to the Peales’ house, Silas hoped, for supper. Suddenly, Mother Peale grabbed Silas’s arm.

“Listen!”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Then stop trying to hear ‘anything’ and listen.”

Silas shook his head. No remarkable sound found its way to his ears.

“Do you trust me, Silas Umber?”

“Yes, ma’am. I truly do.”

“Then hold my hand and use that watch your father most surely left to you.”

Silas wasn’t surprised that she knew about it, and it was obvious from what he’d told her about the settling of matters at the Arliss cottage that he had at least begun to consider going about
business as his father did. So without hesitation, he took Mother Peale’s left hand in his and held it. With his right hand, he brought the hand of the death watch to a stop. Immediately Mother Peale’s hand clutched his like cold iron.

“There! Now don’t tell me you don’t hear that, boy!” She was peering into the mist as though her eyes might burn a hole right through the very air. “It’s far out still, but, ah! The voices!”

And rolling in with the fog came the words. Strange and strangled as though screamed from underwater. Subdued, resolved, hollow, drowned. The voices were distressed and full of fear. Then, like waves, the voices rushed up and broke near Silas and Mother Peale, drawing thin as a whine until the cries sank into the sand and were gone, before the next wave of sorrow rolled in from that ship that yet lay beyond any mortal sight.

Mother Peale was looking at Silas with her eyes wide and questioning.

“I can hear it. Oh, God. I can hear it,” he said, and as the voices churned in the dark water, Silas’s mind became a whirlpool of worry, wondering whom the ship was coming for, frantic that it might be—
Enough!
he told himself. He couldn’t even think it. It could be anyone. Even someone he now knew in Lichport. For didn’t everyone have secret parts and shadows? How well did he know anyone here, really?

“How long until it comes to harbor here?” Silas asked in a near whisper.

“Soon,” was all Mother Peale said, and her hand lay cold and still in his.

I
T HAD BEEN A LONG NIGHT IN THE CAMERA
, and Uncle’s tenant was troubled. The preceding week had been no better. Lights had been unexpectedly going out in the upper floors. Blasts of cold air tore angrily through the north gallery. The knocking and banging noises had continued unabated between the floors and behind the walls. And in the few moments of sleep Uncle could find, he found only dreams he prayed to forget.

Uncle could now admit that his original plan had almost completely fallen apart. His dream of a whole, right family living under his roof, well, he would have to apply himself more earnestly now. Silas leaving the house had made matters much worse, far more difficult, in fact, than he could have anticipated. Rising waves of anger permeated the whole house like smoke from a blocked chimney fire. The Camera had become a chamber of constant aggravation. Uncle blamed Silas for this change in the house’s mood. His nephew’s presence in the house had had a surprising and much appreciated effect on the occupant of the Camera. A calming influence. That temporary peace was now ruined. Uncle still hoped Silas could be brought peaceably back to the house, though he suspected that such an event might only happen if it was carefully arranged. It would take time, and as things stood, more immediate action was required. Waiting was accomplishing nothing.

The book of photographs he and Silas had looked at together was still open on the table just outside the Camera, and every time Uncle stared at it, he could recall more and more about her life, her sacrifice, about that woman and her arm who, in death, had gotten him fired all those years ago. Ironic, he thought, that it was Silas who reminded him of her.

Despite dying at the age of ninety-two, and despite the early loss of her arm—that loss necessitating her remaining hand having to do twice the work in her later years—how young she had looked at her funeral, he remembered, and how remarkable that hand had been. She had labored in joy for her large family every day of her life. Yes, her remaining hand should have been creased and worn. When he had seen the photo again with Silas, Uncle had immediately remembered the story of the arm this woman had buried with her dead children. In his mind, he could see her arm resting within its box among the bones of her offspring, a comfort to them still. What a heart she must have had to think of putting her arm, lost to infection, into an early grave. He understood immediately. It would hold them in death. Serve her as though it were still attached to her. It would hold her children and keep them safe against the long, long night of the grave. He understood her mind. And like her, he had something that needed comforting. Something that needed to be held and watched and mothered.

Uncle held her closer to his face so he could see the details of the arm in the low light, and he recalled how moved he’d been by her appearance on the day of her funeral. There was something pure about her, something incorruptible even then, especially her hand.
Let the hand stand for all
, he had thought when he took the photo all those years ago. That was why he’d covered her face. He was drawn to her corpse. He remembered how he wanted to
comfort her, in death … how softly he spoke to the family. “Let us draw her favorite shawl about her, to keep her warm, her family’s love to work against the cold.” Her kin liked that. In that way, the missing arm she’d buried with her children would not disturb the appearance of the corpse. He pushed cotton into a long glove and set it in place of her already buried arm, in case anyone should touch the shawl; all would seem right and whole. He wanted her to look her best.

He looked again at the photo of the woman’s remaining hand lying across her body. He was admiring his work now, noticing again how he’d arranged the lighting to make the skin glow like alabaster. He said to the photo, to her incorruptible portrait, “Now I know why I have kept you all this time.”

He had paid homage back then to her life, her mothering, her perfection. Now he would pay her another honor.

And then, at last, even her name had come back to him across the chasm of years: Mary Bishop.

Her name was Mary Bishop.

Uncle’s mind began to prowl in several directions at once. Could Mary Bishop be a possible solution for his problem in the Camera? Could something as simple as a mother’s love console the Camera’s occupant? That arm—surely it must have brought such peace to those cold children of hers. Such comfort. A mother’s love was what was needed. The calming presence of a mother’s love. Where the father and son had failed or fled, let the mother—one far better than the first—bring peace.

There were ways he knew to call and bind the spirits of the dead. Certain rites. Prayers more Babylon than Bethlehem. He knew already he would get no sleep that night. He took the relevant books down from the shelves and quickly found what he was looking for. He was spoiled for choices. A world longing for
congress with the dead had recorded numerous methods of bringing them back. From every nation of the ancient world, here were words and acts to bring the living face-to-face with the deceased. Charms to make the dead speak. Spells to make them serve. Rites to make them reveal secrets taken with them to their graves. His hands were starting to tremble with anticipation. He had made a ritual of slowly looking through the vellum manuscripts and early bound books, had taken no wine, had bathed before searching through their pages. He was grateful that so many other people, driven by need and want, had turned to these practical philosophies to see their way through their mighty problems. He had pored over his books, leather-bound heresies from his brothers in Arte, and had found readily enough the text he needed. Actually, there were many versions of what was known as the Dark Call, that dangerous rite by which the dead are forcibly called back to earth, back into the limbo of their bones. Such practices were held accursed by the church, hated by the dead, and despised by all ethical philosophers, but what did moral folk know of his dilemma?
Let those who live with my burdens judge my actions
, he thought.

To enact the Dark Call, articles associated with the deceased or “mummiae” were required and considered most efficacious: bones or body parts. Such mummiae were to be collected by plundering the graves of the dead. So he could see his course plainly now. To the grave. To the box among the bones. He needed the arm. Of course, any part of her would do, but in his mind, he wanted only the arm of comfort. The arm of the mother.

Though it wouldn’t deter him from his path, the idea of plundering her grave began to let worry leak into the corners of his mind. It would involve leaving the house, and because the occupant of the Camera was being very difficult, he didn’t like
the idea of going out, unsure of what it might do in his absence. Still, he knew where she was buried and wouldn’t need to be gone for long. He knew just where to find the headstone, with its extraordinary carving of the arm, and he hadn’t seen a car enter Newfield Cemetery in many months. Dolores could be locked in her room … she spent most evenings half-unconscious anyway. He would go at night when he could be assured of privacy. There would be the unpleasant work of unearthing the grave and actually removing the arm from the remains. Unpleasant, though he had no fear of corpses per se; it was just that even the thought of smelling something rotten turned his stomach. Not to mention, there were often wild dogs that roamed Newfield Cemetery after dark, and they scared him because those animals didn’t appear to fear anything themselves. How their frequent baying at night set his teeth on edge.

But he made himself smile at this.
What have I to fear?
he thought.
We are all just dogs digging for our bones
.

Alas for those poor souls, enslaved by thieves, who bring forth their resting bones from the earth. For no peace have the dead when one holds in bond even a portion of their remains. Yet, if avenged or honored by those hallowed rites yet known, such a spirit may rise up as a terrible and mighty soul.

—From the
Codex of Klytaimnestra
, translated from the Greek by Jonas Umber

T
HOUGH UNCLE HEARD THEIR BAYING
in the distance, from their hiding places among the tombs and mausoleums, he encountered no dogs.

The soil was heavy but soft from the recent rains. It took him two hours to dig down to Mary Bishop’s casket, buried on top of the twin coffins of her children. Removing the lid, which crumbled when he pulled at its edges, he saw the remains of Mary Bishop’s fallen chest. The coffin was rotten right through, and this was a boon because the body was mostly bones now. The smell was merely mold and earth and not the rotting stench that would have so distressed him. Uncle pushed the bones aside and dug a little further until he found the small box among the bones of the twins. Removing the lid, he gazed on its contents with fascination and wonder. Unlike the body, the arm in the box was almost perfectly preserved. Was this the curious action of the illness that had taken her arm in life? The surface of the arm was shiny and very smooth and gave off an odd scent that seemed almost floral.