Death Watch (44 page)

He might have grown up in Saltsbridge, but that didn’t mean he was stupid, or normal. He was his father’s son.

He knew she was dead.

Silas wanted to admit that to himself up front. He wanted to be sure he believed it (not so hard, these days) and understood what it meant (much harder). He thought saying it to himself might help, so he did. He said it out loud, but not very loudly: “Your girlfriend is a ghost.” He said each word slowly, like part of an equation. A plain fact.

Okay. There it was.

Did they both have to be alive so long as they liked each other and talked to each other? Again, best not to overthink it, he decided. He realized that because she was a ghost, it might make things awkward, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t have feelings for each other.

What he wondered most about was why she seemed so interested in him. Was it his coming to Lichport that had brought her into the world again? From some of the things she said, it seemed that she had been waiting for him. Just him. Didn’t that mean they were connected? If he stopped thinking about her and talking to her, would she even exist? If he chose to forget her, where would that leave her? But, he could now see, when they weren’t together, their relationship was a memory too. Just a memory. Same for everyone he knew. Even Mrs. Bowe, whom he’d only just seen this morning. Now: a memory. A figment. Sure, he would see her again, but between one meeting and the next, she was nothing but an ember of the mind, getting colder by the minute. But the instant he thought about her, his memory blew the ember once more to flame.

Rain had started falling lightly.

Yes
, thought Silas.
Just like that
. He was beginning to feel his
head swim a bit. It all came to this, a glance, a word, a face … everyone he knew was, most of the time, merely a recollection. Then a thought fell on him.
Ghosts. Maybe we’re all ghosts anyway, just as soon as the moment’s passed
.

So what if Bea seemed a little needy and sometimes just stood and stared at him? Who back in Saltsbridge had ever paid him any attention at all? And at least Beatrice talked to him.

Still, guilt nagged at the corner of his mind. He should be looking for his father. He could tell himself that being with Bea was part of his search; in his gut he knew it wasn’t, knew it was taking him in another direction entirely. But he just wanted to walk and talk with her, just to be with her.

He rose and walked down to the Umber family cemetery and there she was, waiting, as if they’d had an appointment. As if she knew he’d been thinking about her.

Seeing her there among the tombs of his ancestors—the early light arrayed about her pale skin, the curve where her neck flowed into her shoulders—the line between Silas’s obligations and his desires blurred. He willingly took his place at her side.

The Hebrews see that death and dream share a wide frontier. Words for reviving the dead have been widely used rabbinically and in certain of their ancient and accustomed prayers. Their Talmud recommends saying
Baruch atah adonai, mechayeh hametim
. “Blessed art thou, Lord, reviver of the dead.” This is said when greeting a friend after a lapse of twelve months, and upon waking from sleep.

—Anonymous entry, eighteenth century

S
ILAS AND BEA HAD BEEN WALKING
together most of the day, and twilight was drawing on. A sickle moon had risen early and already hung low in the late autumn sky. The evenings had grown more cold than crisp and mornings found the leaves rimmed with a hint of frost.

Now they were slowly wandering back toward Silas’s house after making their progress through the small cemeteries on the southern side of town: the Lost Ground, whose earth bore the nameless folk who washed up out of the sea, and God’s Small Acre, which held the children who’d perished in a smallpox epidemic two hundred years ago. Silas liked this small plot and found it full of tenderness from the living for the dead: tenderness in the smooth corners of the gravestones, where centuries of hands had rested before and after prayers were spoken, tenderness in the slight mounds of earth grown over the graves where flowers and offerings had been left, year after year, thickening the loam. Kindness was especially in the Lost Ground, where the people buried were strangers to Lichport. The townsfolk were hospitable and kind, giving good-quality stone for headstones and adorning them with carvings of dolphins and shells in remembrance of the journeys the deceased had made. Fine, ornate gates were raised to give the plots a feeling of importance and protection. Lacking names, the townsfolk had written brief but charitable descriptions and epitaphs on the stones:

“B
Y TEMPEST BROUGHT, TO THIS EARTHEN PLOT
,
S
LEEP YE SAFE, THOUGH YOUR NAME BE FORGOT
.”

“B
E WELCOME HERE, AND FIND REST, LADY OF THE SEA
.”

“A
WANDERER. MAY HE FIND HIS PATH HOME
.”

On and on they went. One kindness after another, yet each remaining its own mystery, each stone a fragment of a lost tale.

While Silas was looking at the inscriptions, Bea wasn’t talking much. That wasn’t like her when they were in a cemetery; she enjoyed telling him the stories of the names they saw, but today she seemed sullen and hardly even looked at him. She had drawn down into herself and didn’t even seem to remember who Silas was. He began to worry that she could sense he was having doubts about the two of them.

He stopped walking and turned to look at her. The last light of the setting sun was on them both, and Silas felt hot, though a cold air was coming in off the sea. Bea’s expression was distant. She was standing in the light of the approaching dusk, a little dim around the edges. When she turned, she saw Silas looking at her, waiting for her to say something.

“Do you think I’m beautiful, Silas?”

Silas began breathing harder and she brightened, as though every breath he took when looking at her was a gift, a portion of life, given from him to her.

“Do you?” she asked again.

He was turning red. He wanted to tell her how pretty he thought she was, that when he looked at her his eyes were filled with silver light, but he was worried it would come out sounding stupid. So he said, “Yes. You know I do. I tell you that all the time.”

“I know you do,” she said, mimicking his low tone. “You know, Silas, we could be a lot closer….” She walked up to him and leaned in, the skin of her face luminous and smooth as a pearl.

Silas had thought about this, about “getting closer” to Bea and what it might mean. He realized that one of the things he liked about her was that he could have feelings for her and not worry too much about the future, because, well, she didn’t really have one.

“I—I—I don’t think I can go any further with you, Bea. I mean, not yet. I don’t want to go too fast. We haven’t known each other that long, I mean …” he stammered, knowing that sounded lame. Wasn’t that what the girl usually said?

“We have known each other for a very long time, Silas. Though I guess I’m the only one who can feel that.” Her voice trailed off, as though she was thinking about something else now, something further along than where they were standing, what they were saying. Under her white skin, dark ripples began to flow, filling the space around her with damp, cold currents of air.

Silas pulled his jacket’s collar up and adjusted his scarf against the increasing chill, the fabric scratching at his neck. Something was now clearly bothering her.

“What’s wrong?”

Bea did not answer.

“Bea, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Again she said nothing. She began to sing sweetly, absently as she walked.

Come all ye fair and tender girls that flourish in your prime,

Beware, beware! Keep your garden fair

Let no man steal your thyme, your thyme

Let no man steal your thyme.

For when your thyme is past and gone

He’ll care no more for you,

And every place where your thyme was waste

He’ll spread all over with rue, with rue.

He’ll spread all over with rue.

A woman is a branchy tree

And man a clinging vine,

And from her branches, carelessly

He’ll take what he can find, can find

He’ll take what he can find.

Come all ye fair and tender girls that flourish in your prime,

Beware, beware! Keep your garden fair

Let no man steal your thyme, your thyme

Let no man steal your thyme.

Silas thought this was a strange song to sing to someone you liked. As she finished, there was a challenge in her eyes, and the smile that usually greeted Silas when she sang to him was nowhere to be found.

She drew up one corner of her mouth in a half grin and said, “You like all this, all these reminders of the dead?”

“I do, I guess. I mean, it’s part of my life, my dad’s life. It’s part of the work some of the people in my family do …,” he began, feeling led on. He kneeled down to pull some dead weeds away from the base of one of the tombstones.

“You know you can’t help them all. By all means, forgive them for not forgiving themselves, but you Umbers can’t solve all their problems for them. Your dad tried, but now what’s become of him?”

Standing up quickly, Silas whipped his head around to stare back into her face. “What do you know about my father? Bea, tell me!”

She stood silent and defiant, yet her face looked pained.

Silas was angered at the thought she’d been keeping things from him and hurt both by her implications about his family’s work and the cruel irony of her comment. He tried to calm himself and answer her accusation. “I never said I was trying to help them all. I will try to do what I can, like my dad would have if he were here. But if you know anything about him, or where he is, you must tell me now. Bea, please.”

Bea continued, unmoved by his repeated requests.

“So many were beyond his help. He was so distracted. Like you. You need to focus on what’s important.” She smiled broadly at him, drawing in close to his face. Her skin was nearly translucent now and blue, as if carved from ice or aquamarine. “I mean, you should spend your time with those who really need you, who really want your attention. Those others? Forget them, let them go. Remember
me
.”

“Remember you? From when exactly? We’ve only known each other a couple of months!” Silas said.

“Silas, we’ve known each other much longer than that, and you know it.”

“No,” he said quietly but sharply, “I don’t know it.”

Silas knew he was missing something. He could feel himself beginning to blush in both embarrassment and renewed anger. He could sense that she knew things about him from a time before he knew anything about her. How long had she known him? His family? What did she know about his dad that she wasn’t telling him?

They were walking up Coach Street, approaching Main. As they approached the Bowe family tomb behind its overgrown
fence, the wind rose and made dust spirals on the street about their feet, and for the briefest second, Silas thought he smelled a hint of Mrs. Bowe’s perfume on the air.

Bea seemed to stumble back away from Silas, as though she’d been pulled, then stood straight again. She tilted her head to one side, raising an eyebrow as if pointing with it toward the fence, and said, “You see that tomb?”

“Yeah,” Silas replied.

“You too are about to die,” Bea said flatly, but with a strange, breathless giggle at the end.

“What?” Silas asked, shocked and confused. He looked quickly at the street in front of them. Nothing stood out. He looked hard at Bea. “What are you talking about?”

“Sure. You are. Really. I mean, everyone is. Dying is so common. Everyone dies. Are you going to help them all, Silas? Or are you going to spend your time at something that matters? Time flies, Silas Umber. It really does.”

He stared at her. Whatever game she was playing, he didn’t like it. He was about to demand that she make whatever point she was trying to make, but then he thought again and said quietly, “I—I feel fine, and what I am trying to do does matter.”

“If you say so. I believe you,” she said with no commitment whatsoever. “Just don’t wait too long … or what you really want might have moved on. Tell you what, though, just for fun, let’s see how long you’ve got. Okay? Just hold still.”

Bea looked at him so hard that Silas thought the stare was going to cut him. His arms went very cold, and goosebumps rose like a rash across his arms and torso. Bea inclined her head toward him and closed her eyes. A breeze was lifting leaves from the ground, but her hair and dress hung motionless.