The Fate of Mercy Alban (6 page)

So he finished the manuscript after all? That didn’t jibe with what I knew of history. I opened my mother’s laptop computer and typed “David Coleville” into the search field and watched hundreds of hits come up.

I clicked on an encyclopedia page to read a quick biography of the man and saw what I already knew—war correspondent, multiple Pulitzer Prizes, a lecture series at Harvard, an impending first novel that had the literary world abuzz, career cut short by suicide.

According to his letter, he had indeed finished his “impending first novel,” and it was a ghost story about my family, no less. But it never saw the light of day. Why?

I gathered up the letters and slipped them back into their satchel, wondering where Coleville had unearthed that otherworldly tale about the witch’s wood. I knew about the supposed Alban curse, of course, but I had certainly never heard this witch business before. The thought of it crept inside me like the chill on a foggy autumn morning as I gazed around the room at the wood paneling on the walls. I tried to shake it off, but it kept nagging at me. I had to admit it to myself—there was something about this house. I’d always felt it. It was as though Alban House had a presence of its own that wrapped itself around us, my mother most of all.

But that was just nonsense. This was my home, not some chamber of horrors. I stood up and stretched, intending to put the satchel of letters back where I had found it. Then I thought better of it. Those letters contained information that the entire literary world would be stunned to learn. I wanted to keep it to myself, at least for now.

I hurried to my room and slipped the letters into a zipped compartment in my suitcase, remembering that I had told Amity I’d meet her on the lakeshore. I peered out my window and saw her there, talking to a young man. Jane had said they’d hired a couple of kids to help on the grounds this summer; he was one of them, no doubt. I’d just go and make sure this kid knew Amity had a mother who was close by and watching.

About halfway down the stairs, I stopped. My mother had kept Coleville’s letters for fifty years; might she have kept the manuscript, too? A chill shot through me again when I thought of what the lost manuscript of David Coleville might be worth today. I wondered where it might be. I turned my head and looked back up toward the second floor—in her study? in the wall safe?—but then I shook the thought out of my mind. I had a funeral to plan, arrangements to make. I’d deal with the manuscript, if it even existed, when all of that was finished.

After dinner on the patio and a movie with Amity, I turned in early, exhausted by everything I had learned that day. During dinner, the coroner had called with the autopsy results. My mother died of a massive heart attack. There would be no further police investigation, and we could go ahead with the business of laying her to rest.

So that was all there was to it, then. The day she died, she was probably feeling tired from her walk and simply laid down to rest on the bench by the fountain and passed away right there. It was nothing sinister, nothing untoward. No Alban family curse was to blame. I chuckled lightly at the thought of it. How ridiculous.

As to why the boys didn’t see her on that bench in the garden when they were searching for her—I had no explanation for that. I punched my pillow and turned onto my side.

When I did finally drift off to sleep, I dreamed strange, convoluted dreams. My brothers and my mother surrounded me, trying to speak but not able to get the words out, trying to reach me but not able to get past an invisible barrier. Jake and Jimmy were knocking on what seemed to be a plate of glass separating us, and the sound of it—
bang, bang, bang
—startled me awake. I sat up fast and looked around my room. Was it real knocking I heard?

And then I saw it, a dark figure standing at the foot of my bed. I rubbed my eyes and gasped aloud when I realized who it was.

“Dad?” I said, my voice a harsh whisper.

He was dressed in the same khaki shorts and striped polo shirt he had worn into the lake when he took his own life that horrible day after the boys died, and was drenched from head to foot, water streaming off his blond hair, down his shirt, and puddling onto the floor, covering his Top-Siders until he was ankle deep in dark, angry water.

He opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words, he put forth a spray of water filled with tiny, glistening fish. He coughed and choked until they all fell to the floor in a heap. That’s when I noticed his entire body was alive with the silvery swimmers, wriggling through his hair, nestling behind his ears, poking their noses from beneath his shirt, spilling out of his pockets.

I was frozen in terror, staring at this impossible figure standing before me.

“Listen to me, Grace, I don’t have much time,” my father’s ghost said, his voice watery and thick and distorted as though he were speaking from under the surface of the lake. “She’s here, Grace. She killed your mother and she’s coming for you.”

“Who, Dad?” I croaked out. “Who’s here?”

“I didn’t think she could hurt us anymore, but she can,” he went on, talking over my question as though he hadn’t even heard me. “It’s all true. Be on your guard, Grace.”

“But, Dad!” I cried. “Who? I don’t know—”

“I have to go now,” he said, looking over his shoulder with a shudder. “This isn’t allowed. Especially not for the likes of me. I broke the rules to get to you, to warn you.”

And then he smiled, releasing another torrent of tiny fish from his mouth. “One last thing, Gracie-bird. You’re the best daughter a man could ever have. I love you, sweetheart, and always did. I’m sorry for what happened, for what I said. I wasn’t in my right mind, you must know that. You look after that beautiful girl of yours, now, and tell her about me. Remember that sailing trip we all took to Madeline Island? Tell her about that. Pity I never got to know her. It’s one of the many crosses I bear, over here.”

And then he was gone, dissolving into a million shimmering water droplets and splashing to the ground.

I opened my eyes with a start.
What had just happened?
I sat up and leaned back against the headboard. My dad had been there, and then … what? Had I fallen asleep? That didn’t seem possible. I didn’t remember closing my eyes or laying back down. Had it all been a dream?

“Mom!”

It was Amity’s voice, coming from her room next door.

“
Mom!
”

I flew out of bed and down the hall, throwing her door open so hard it thudded on the opposite wall. I found my daughter huddled in her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. I was at her side in an instant.

“What is it, honey?” I said, stroking her hair.

“I had a really bad dream,” she said, and I could feel her limbs shivering with the force of it.

“Shh, it’s okay,” I whispered. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It was a man,” she said, looking back and forth in her room as though she was scanning for an intruder. “It was so strange, Mom, but he was all wet. Dripping wet. He was just standing at the foot of my bed, looking at me. Smiling.”

My nerves were already on fire, and at this, they went ice cold.

“It was only a dream,” I said to her, not quite believing it myself. “First night in this house. Different surroundings. I had weird dreams, too.”

“You did?”

I nodded. “Do you want to come sleep with me?”

Amity took a deep breath and leaned back. “I don’t think so,” she said, settling down under the covers and yawning deeply, the way she used to when she was a baby. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “It was only a dream.” She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “Will you stay with me for a while?”

“Sure.” I smiled and continued to stroke her hair. I sat with her until her deep, rhythmic breathing told me she was asleep and then tiptoed out of her room and back down the hallway toward mine, my heart beating hard and fast as I did. What had just happened here? Did my daughter and I both dream the same dream, or … I didn’t want to think about it.

I crossed the room to the window and looked out into the night. Nothing odd there. Just the garden and the lake beyond, glistening with moonlight across its surface.

Before crawling back into bed, I made it a point to check for water on the floor where my father had been standing. Nothing. Dry as a bone. It had been a dream, then.

Lying there, I listened to the sounds of the night—steam hissing in the radiators that had come to life because of the chill, wind rustling in the trees outside, the clock ticking on my desk. As I breathed in and out trying to calm myself back into sleep, it almost seemed as though the house itself—the very walls—were breathing in time with me.

I remembered feeling comforted by these sounds long ago, and I settled back down and listened. “Shh,” the house seemed to be saying.

I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, the light that had finally begun filtering back into the sky awakened me. I slipped out of bed and into the shower, standing under the stream until the water ran cold, washing the previous night’s “visitation” from my mind.

“The minister called early this morning,” Jane informed me at breakfast. “He wants to go over the service with you.”

I sipped my coffee. “I guess I’ll need to decide on a date for the funeral. I’m thinking Friday, if nothing else is scheduled in the church for that day.”

She nodded. “Would you like me to get him on the phone for you?”

I stretched and looked outside. It was a bright blue day, not a cloud in the sky, and the water was shimmering like diamonds. I had an urge to get out of the house and into the world. “I think I’ll walk over to the church to talk with him,” I told Jane, and then turned to my daughter. “Do you want to come with me?”

Amity finished the last of her eggs and shook her head. “I’m meeting Cody in the garden in a few minutes. Mr. Jameson said I could help them with the weeding.”

Jane and I shared a grin. My daughter had never pulled a weed in her life. As Amity ran upstairs to brush her teeth, Jane whispered: “It’s the young man.”

“I met him yesterday,” I confided when I was sure my daughter was out of earshot. “He’s harmless enough. And anything to get her away from that phone and out into the fresh air is a welcome change. But ask Mr. Jameson to keep an eye on her, will you?”

Jane nodded, chuckling. “Don’t you worry. He won’t let the lass out of his sight.”

A short while later, I had grabbed a light cardigan and was headed down the patio stairs through the gardens to the lakeshore, where a path snaked its way from our property through the woods and the cemetery beyond to the church, about a mile away. The walk would do me good.

The church was an enormous stone building, much older than Alban House, where my family had been attending services for generations. My brothers and I had been baptized there; my parents were married there. My brothers and father, along with generations of Albans before them, had had their funerals there. Now it was my mother’s turn. It was truly a place of life and death for my family.

I reached the church’s red wooden front door just as a man, whom I didn’t recognize, pushed it open from the inside.

“Oh,” I said, jumping back a bit, not expecting to see anyone except our longtime minister.

He smiled at me and leaned against the doorframe. “May I help you?”

“I-I’m here to—” I stammered, oddly tongue-tied around this man. Then, trying again: “I’m looking for Pastor Olsen.”

“You’re a bit late for that, I’m afraid.” The man grinned. “Chip retired five years ago.”

I could feel my face heating up. “Sorry. I haven’t been here in a while, I guess.”

“Not a problem,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Matthew Parker, the new guy. What can I do for you?”

I squinted at him as I took his hand. He was the minister? This man, who was about my age and wearing jeans, a denim shirt over a faded T-shirt, and running shoes, didn’t exactly look the part.

“I’m Grace Alban,” I said to him finally. “Our housekeeper told me you called. I’m here to talk about my mother’s funeral.”

He smiled, the recognition evident in his face as he put his other hand over our clasped pair. “Of course,” he said. “Your mother has shown me so many photos of you, I should have known who you were right away. I’m so sorry about Adele. What a great lady. She made me feel so welcome here when I took over for Chip. I’m really going to miss her. I got rather used to seeing her in the front pew every Sunday.”

“Thank you,” I croaked out, my throat filling up with sorrow. The grief that I had been trying to hold back ever since I heard the news of her death began to claw at me. I couldn’t say anything further to him without unleashing it, so I just stood there, holding his gaze.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “I was just headed down to the lake,” he said gently. “Why don’t you come with me and we can talk there?”

As we walked in silence down the path to a pair of red Adirondack chairs on the rocky shore, I tried to compose myself, breathing in and out, taking strength from the power of the lake itself. It was something I’d done since childhood. Long ago, the native people in this area believed that the lake was a living thing, creating myths about the Great Spirit that embodied the water. Many people still believed in its otherworldly power and its wrath. I know I did. I had seen it firsthand. It was as close to religion or faith as I got.