Death Watch (50 page)

Give me my scallop shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon.

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation

My gown of glory

Hope’s true gauge

And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

As he ended his song, the company looked up and spoke again the name of the dead. “John Peale,” they cried as one. And in that moment, as they heard their joined voices, as they gazed on the ever-living stars, the darkness in their hearts fell away from them. They knew they would always be together, as neighbors and kin, in this world, and the worlds that followed.

Wind stirred the trees as the mourners began to fall away from the hill toward their homes. Mother Peale came up to Silas and clutched him to her breast, hugging him so hard it pressed the breath right out of him. Then Mrs. Bowe drew back her veil. Silas could see she was exhausted and, taking her hand in his, led her from the Beacon.

The final portion of the funeral proceeded, as was customary, unseen by the living.

Mr. Peale followed at the end of the line of mourners and watched his burial from a distance. Then, for a time, he wandered about the town, making a pilgrim’s road of his living memories. At one house in the Narrows, he looked in to see friends sitting about the table, still in their black mourning weeds. Come morning, he was looking out toward the sea from the top of the Beacon. Dark again, he stood by the bedsides of his sleeping children and grandchildren, placing his now insubstantial hand, soft as a breath, on their cheeks.

The next midnight found him standing by the spent fire of his own hearth, and there, by the door, was his little girl lost so long ago, waiting for him. His family was asleep upstairs and in their various houses, and he was now eager to be on his way. His little girl waited to walk him to the street outside, where already the mist was rising. She would not go with him, Mr. Peale under-stood—she was waiting for her mama. He walked toward the
door, and his child opened it for him. Beyond the door, it was morning again, and in its light, he could see the path that would lead him away, out of Lichport. As Mr. Peale walked down that road, he took his time, thinking he might just take in a few more sights before calling it a day.

T
HE ADVENTUROUS TRAVELER
will find that once proud Lichport is no longer a town you may travel through. You may only go to it or leave from it (which has long been the more usual). In 1924 the Salt Marsh Bridge, part of an ancient highway connecting many of the coastal ports with the north and west, collapsed, killing six people. Six people who, if such accounts are to be believed, still haunt the site of the collapse. Then, in 1931, a large wedge of the cliff above the highway came crashing down, perhaps due to erosion, and destroyed a great portion of the road, tumbling all down into the sea. No plans to restore either the bridge or that fallen portion of the highway were ever even discussed. By that time, most sensible folk considered the town beyond saving. Its shipping has all but collapsed, most of the shops that might appeal to outsiders have long been closed, and if the bereaved or the memorially inclined wish to visit their dead in one of Lichport’s numerous cemeteries, well, they shall need to make a pilgrim’s progress of it, coming around the long way on the inland road. In and out, both on the same path: long, featureless road running next to the wide, quiet marshes. On that byway, you’ll have plenty
of time to think about your deeply planted kin and how long it has been since the last time you visited them—the time when you left those cheap silk flowers on their grave. Don’t worry. They’ll still be there, right where you left them.

—torn from
Gormlette’s Guide to Fallen Places
, 2
^nd
edition, 1943

O
NE WEEK TO THE DAY AFTER THE FUNERAL
of John Peale, Silas was sitting on the porch, reading in the sun, when he saw his uncle coming down the street. Although the sight brought him no pleasure, it didn’t surprise him either. Since his last visit to the house on Temple Street, Silas knew it would only be a matter of time before Uncle came calling.

Uncle kept looking over his shoulder and occasionally ducked his head nervously this way or that, as if birds were swooping down on him. How small he looked in the sunshine. Pale, frightened, and exposed. And yet, seeing him like this only worried Silas more: Weak or frightened animals are the most dangerous, the most likely to bite even those who might help them.

As Uncle approached the house, Silas came down to the sidewalk to meet him, determined that his uncle should not even get so far as the porch.

“What excellent timing,” Silas lied. “I was just about to stretch my legs. Shall we walk together, Uncle?”

Uncle looked tired from his short walk from home. “Of course, of course,” he said, and added, “I am in a bit of a hurry, errands and such. Perhaps we might just stand here for a moment and I’ll give you my news?”

“Of course, of course,” mimicked Silas, smiling. “Let me guess, you’ve found my father?”

“No. Silas, I’ll be brief. Your mother has agreed to become my wife, mother of my house and all its bachelorish delinquencies.”

Silas wasn’t amused anymore. He couldn’t speak.

“Truly, Silas, every house is like a child, and it needs steady hands to maintain and care for it through the years. The good hands of a mother and father. I have done my best to manage my house, but it needs, I think, a woman’s hands to make it a real home.”

“And your other wife? She couldn’t provide that?”

“Silas, a man makes many mistakes in life. It has taken a long time, much work and painful reflection, but I believe my youthful errors and little sins have been paid for. Forward lies the kingdom of peace. Now that your mother has accepted my offer, I would like your blessing in this, and hope that you may return to help build a life with us.”

Uncle’s words struck him like a blow. Dizzy from the news, Silas’s mind began to throw up scenes from his past, but now his father’s face had been cut out and there was Uncle’s instead … leering down at him in his crib, feeding him from a spoon, clapping in the audience of his fourth-grade accordion recital. The thought of Uncle taking his father’s place sickened him. Holding his mother’s hand. God. And Uncle’s previous wife … where was she? Fear and nausea tumbled about his stomach like a ball of snakes. Silas didn’t want his uncle to know anything about him anymore. He wanted their worlds to pull apart and never rejoin. There was no way he was telling Uncle anything about his plans to remain in Lichport, to live in his father’s house, to continue his father’s work. So instead he swallowed hard and said only, “My blessing? Of course. I would like to speak with my mother first, but then I will be so happy to discuss plans with the two of you. You know, though, I am thinking about just moving on, maybe going back to Saltsbridge.”

Silas saw the disbelief in Uncle’s face, but also the absolute sincerity of his intention. His uncle wanted to marry his mother, and he wanted to know where Silas was. Uncle didn’t want Silas getting too far away from “the family.”

“Well, certainly, this must be as you wish, but may I tell you something, as your friend? Going back—wherever “back” may be—is seldom a good idea. You can never go back, really, there is only forward. So it must be with you. Your former house in Saltsbridge is gone. Sold to another. All their belongings now fill the rooms where your life once sprawled from wall to wall. Many wise men think to escape their troubles in retreat. Let me assure you, there is no peace to be had in it.”

“So wait, you’re saying I shouldn’t move back into your house?”

“Silas, you are too quick for me. Let me leave you to your thoughts. Come to us soon and we’ll conspire.”

Uncle began skulking back down the street, but then turned and added with a wan smile, “Your mother misses you, son.”

Silas thought of yelling back,
Yes, I’ll just bet she does!
but his heart was no longer in sarcasm. Every day he waited for something to happen, for some word of his father to come. He was losing more ground than he was gaining. Waiting and more waiting. He spent his days learning what he could from the ledger and from the things his dad had left behind, but still there had been little progress. And behind the larger worry of his father hung the tapestry of his fears for his mother. It was clearly her intention to stay in that house with Uncle, and Uncle wanted her there. Their seemingly mutual arrangement worried Silas to the bone. He sensed Uncle’s interest in his mother had more to do with him than with her. The sight of his mother, sitting in that chair in the parlor, weeping with her face in her hands, haunted Silas now. But
he couldn’t get her out of that house if she didn’t want to leave. If only he could find a way to show her a side of Uncle that would change her high opinion of him.

He needed perspective, the long view, if he was going to find his dad and prevent his mother from doing something stupid and quite possibly dangerous. Silas could see his road must take him back to Uncle’s, but not yet. There was another house that needed revisiting first.

He knew with certainty that Uncle was wrong about “going back.” To get ahead, sometimes you had to retrace your steps. But suddenly a thought came to him that turned his blood cold: If Uncle planned to marry his mother, Uncle must assume—or worse,
know
—that his dad wasn’t coming back. Silas felt his throat go tight, and in his head a chorus of three familiar voices sang out—

Our work goes apace … Return, return, return …

Plain or straight overcast: This is also worked from left to right over a single-run thread; to give the stitch more relief, a round twisted thread may be laid upon the traced line and covered with vertical stitches set out close together….

—From a page glued into the ledger taken from
The Encyclopedia of Needlework
by Thérèse de Dillmont, 1884

S
ILAS ENTERED THE HIGH-CEILINGED ROOM
in the mansion, where the tapestry of misthomes hung, and saw the three women engaged in their work.

They did not turn to welcome him.

Silas was scared of the three women. Not because they were ghosts, but because they were something more than ghosts—old things that continued to weave themselves into the world for reasons he could not yet fathom.

He was hoping for a little perspective. He wanted to look again on their strange tapestry. Maybe, since his last visit, new stitches or scenes had been added. Maybe he’d find a thread that would lead out of the maze his life had become.

The floor was covered in bits of ragged fabrics and broken threads, little heaps of them covering the timeworn wooden planks. There had been many alterations since his last visit. Changes had been made to the map of the lands of the dead. Certain portions had been reworked in brighter or darker threads, perhaps meaning they were becoming more or less present in the world outside. Silas was just beginning to see how truly complex the work of the three women was. Perhaps shade and tone were related to relevance, to whether or not a spirit’s limbo was connected in some way with living people. Perhaps the size of the stitching had to do with the number of spirits that occupied it at a given time. This
would account for why certain buildings, the oldest, seemed to be overcast in numerous layers of threads.

The tapestry was in a state of flux, shifting as the world outside changed, or as the relationships between the living and dead grew or were forgotten. At many places on the great work, Silas could see whole sections had been picked apart, or enlarged, or reworked with a new color scheme. This was why he’d come back: to see what might have altered. To see the town with new eyes. He hoped beyond hope that something in him or the town or both might have altered sufficiently for him to be able to find an image connected with his father’s disappearance. Silas scanned the tapestry frantically as if he expected to see his father’s portrait rendered in little stitches on one of the familiar thread-paths. Even as the question formed in his mind, the first of the three walked up to a portion of the work hanging between two beams that supported the roof of the room and, without warning, ripped the stitches from a scene depicting some tall houses high above the meticulous knotwork that had been sewn to represent the Narrows.