Death Watch (8 page)

Uncle stood proudly in the center of the front hall, ready to welcome his kin, and he filled the room with his posture of ownership and a big, forced smile. Silas looked away to better study the details of the house, but then Uncle made a grating sound that pulled Silas’s attention right back to the center of the hall. It was hard not to notice that his uncle’s jaw moved back and forth slowly, as the top and bottom teeth ground together.

Just as suddenly as the grinding sound started, it stopped, and some other part of his uncle’s body began moving and twitching.
It seemed as though a part of Uncle was always in motion. Maybe he was excited to see them, or just nervous.

Uncle must have noticed Silas staring at him, because he stared back now, seemed to lean into the stare, as he extended his neck out like a probe. He walked toward Silas and put his arms around him briefly and stiffly, in a perfunctory hug.

“Welcome home, my boy.”

Then he moved across the room to where Dolores stood, and Silas continued his quiet assessment of his uncle’s looks while the two made small talk.

Uncle was well dressed, but Silas wondered what the occasion was. Was he trying to impress them? Who wore a dark business suit to celebrate his bankrupt relatives coming to live with him?
Maybe he’s just a little vain
, Silas thought. People with money and houses like this sometimes were, he assumed. Uncle wore a tie, looked like he always wore one, and the knot was pulled tight as a bead. From his cheeks, his face drew down to a point at the chin, and he had a way of holding his head with his neck forward and dropped slightly so that the point of his chin appeared to be balancing on the knot of his tie. He seemed to smile a lot, but under the lines of his face, muscles strained. His suit, which Silas was pretty sure was his favorite because it was a little worn at the elbows and pant cuffs, was pressed, although not too neatly, because Silas could see there were little wrinkles on it that had been pressed flat, almost like the fabric was really dark striped skin. The tips of the lapels were not flat, but curled up slightly, as if they were peeling away from his uncle’s body. For the most part, Silas found his uncle’s appearance more comical than strange.

Silas turned his attention to the front room next to the hall where they stood. Looking in, he guessed this was the drawing room, where guests had been received in the past, and the family
would gather to entertain themselves. Silas’s initial impression was that it might be okay in here. It was clean. His uncle kept a lot of books. He liked that. There’d always be something to read. There were stacks of books by all the chairs and sofas.

The rest of the house was very quiet, hollow-sounding, almost, but there was an antiseptic smell Silas didn’t like.

Many of the objects on display were very old, or seemed so: chipped stone carvings, animal and anthropomorphic forms maybe from the East that were wrapped in ancient stained bandages. Alabaster jars with the heads of animals. But his uncle waved for his attention, back in the front hall, and said there would be time for a real tour of the “collections” later.

Although Silas was attracted to the museum-like clutter, the closer he looked, the stranger and stranger his uncle’s house became as it revealed its contrasts and tensions. It was like a movie set, meant to look real, but something about the light wasn’t quite right. Silas couldn’t put his finger on it. So many old things, crudely preserved, oddly shaped, but so carefully displayed. At the foot of the stairs stood some kind of stuffed monster with the legs of a small hippo, the body and fur of a lion, and the head of a crocodile. Silas was sure it had been mummified.

“Ah! You have an excellent eye, Silas!” His uncle beamed as he stood next to the grotesque statue. “You like my Eater of Souls? Egyptian. Exceedingly rare. When the Egyptians died, they came before Osiris, the god of the dead, to have their hearts weighed. If the heart was found, well, lacking, then the soul was devoured by Ammit, the Eater of Souls. Isn’t that extraordinary? No afterlife, merely an eternity of dissolution within the belly of our friend here.”

“It’s great,” Silas said, both intrigued and disquieted by the statue. On the one hand, he wondered what kind of person would
keep such a thing on display in his house. You’d have to look at it every day as you descended or climbed the stairs. On the other hand, a part of him was very curious about his uncle’s love of the past. An Umber trait, it seemed. But the “Eater of Souls” made him uneasy, not just because the thought of a sculpture made from stitched-together animal parts was gross. Silas was thinking about its story—what it
ate
—what owning such an object said about his uncle’s … interests.

“Why don’t you let me show you to your rooms so you can freshen up a bit, and then I’ll have Mrs. Grey bring a little light supper up to you, as it’s rather late? I must apologize, but I have some important work I must finish tonight. Let us all plan then on a good night’s sleep, a lazy day tomorrow, and a nice family supper, all together. Indeed, let that be our family ritual each night, supper together to share our news of our daily adventures. Shall we?”

Not waiting for an answer, Uncle started up the stairs, and as he mounted the first riser, he let his hand slowly brush across the top of the Ammit, as though he were petting the head of a child or a dog. Silas could see his uncle must have done this a lot, because the bandages on the statue’s head had long since been worn away in just that one spot and the ancient, pitted skin of the crocodile was showing through.

M
RS. BOWE WAS POLISHING HER CRYSTAL
, although she didn’t know why she bothered. No one called anymore, so there was hardly any need to set the table. It had been ages since anyone had come to see her and even longer since she’d left her house. There was just no need anymore, especially not since Amos had disappeared. She suspected that after so long, folks got tired of always having to come to her. Groceries were delivered. Mail, too. And she could always rely on the bees, from which much news could be gotten so long as she remembered to share her news with them in return. Sometimes folks walked by and she might say hello from the porch. Or seeing her sitting by the open window, they’d call to her from the street.
Good afternoon
, she’d say, as if she were about to alight from the house and come down to the sidewalk for a chat. Other days it felt like she was the only person living in Lichport. Regardless, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. Not unless there was a funeral, but even then, she’d hurry back, almost running. Otherwise she’d only come out to walk in her garden, or work in its well-tended beds, hidden behind a stone wall and high gate, or to hang up the laundry because she would only wear clothes that had been washed by hand and set to dry in the open air.

She deeply disliked being so fearful, but had actually grown rather comfortable over the years with disappointing herself. She
used to try. Just leave the house by the front door once a day. Then, after a while, she’d try for once a week. Then once a month. Then,
Why bother?
she thought.
Let the world come to me, and I’ll set out a little lunch
. What she hated most was that she’d become one of
them
. Another Lichporter grown self-indulgent and eccentric, the subject of sidewalk gossip:
Oh, her, Mrs. Bowe … yes, yes … so sad. She doesn’t leave the house, you know, unless there’s a you-know-what, not unless someone D-I-E-S
.

But there was just no need to leave the house. Out the door and down the steps there was only trouble waiting. And here, among her things, there was only good. Good memories. Love. A dearly beloved past that still attended her and kept her feeling safe. Here, in this house, her recollections glowed like embers on the hearth, and each night, in their warmth, she’d take a memory or two down from the shelf and dance with them for a while.

Of course, it was easier when Amos had lived there in the house attached to hers. She liked having a man close by who could help her from time to time, or talk with her. She still would not venture down the front steps on her own, but he was always coming and going, bringing news from outside, although sometimes no news might be better than the kind of news he had to share. But she knew about his work and helped him. That was traditional. To assist the Undertaker, and only for that, would she make her way down those steps, and only with Amos by her side. A woman of her family always helped the Peller, as he was once called, although Amos Umber never cared for the term “Peller,” or “Expeller,” preferring simply “Undertaker.” Even long ago, back in Ireland where her mother’s people came from, even in the small villages, there was always a woman like her there, at the time of passage. Dark work, but needful, and she was proud of her name and the work that came with it.

She had taken each piece of crystal out of the carved cabinet and had arranged them all on the large mahogany dining room table, where the moonlight could fall on them as it passed through the window. Then she gently picked them up, one at a time, and slowly wiped over the surface with a piece of soft cloth to remove the dust. When she finished one piece, she set it back on the table and picked up another, a small sphere of smoke-hued quartz. One of her mother’s folk had brought this crystal with her across the sea when the Bowe women came first to Lichport, and her own mother had used this crystal more than any other. The stone was very clear, only a few veils and fissures inside it to catch the moonlight and make it dance when she turned the stone and then looked into its depths. It was hard not to look. How the light swam inside it! How the smoke swirled within! And before she could look away, the veil drew aside and she could see a scene play out in miniature pantomime before her eyes, down deep within the stone.

At first it was like looking at something at the bottom of a river. Then slowly the vision became bright and clear, and because of its sharpness, she knew that she was seeing something that was happening at that very moment, here, in the present. The past was cloudy, indistinct, blurred along all its edges. The future was even harder to see, often very dark, like sifting through murky water for something lying at the bottom, and just as soon as she could begin to see what it was, it slipped from her hand and was below the surface, hidden in the mud again. In and out of focus, never still. That was the future. But now, before her eyes, the vision was clear as you please, like looking out a window.

Within the stone, a woman stepped out of a car and toward a house, followed by a young man who paused, waiting on the sidewalk. As Mrs. Bowe had been taught to do, she “pushed” at the
vision with her mind and the details grew smaller, but she could then see more widely, as though a camera were pulling back from its subject to reveal more of the world around it. She knew that house. And she knew whose house it was, with its high roof and black eye windows and strange columned temple at its side. This was local. Here. In Lichport. Just a few blocks away from where she was sitting.

She drew the stone up to her eyes for a closer look. She was now looking right into the woman’s face. She did not recognize it immediately, but after a moment she began to remember someone she used to know, but had not seen in a long time. Was that Amos’s wife? In Lichport? This made no sense to her, for of all the many people who’d left Lichport, here was one she was sure would never come back. Back in the stone, a tall man stood by the open door of the house, then walked up to the woman, to Dolores Umber, and seemed to welcome her into the house. As they stood in the light of the doorway, they cast long shadows down toward the street and looked like they had been cut out of black paper, so bright was the light coming from inside that house. What reason could she possibly have to be calling at the Umber place? Perhaps some family arrangements were being made. He was family, after all. Had something happened? Was there news of Amos? Had he been found? Had he come home?

But then the tall figure stepped onto the porch again, coming back into focus, and it took all of Mrs. Bowe’s remaining fortitude not to drop the stone at the sight of Charles Umber. That was a face she did not wish to see. He lived just a few blocks from her, but safe inside her home, it might as well be a thousand miles away. She’d have preferred that. She tried very hard never to think of him, although they’d been close enough once. Her father had even once thought that Charles would—No. Let those days stay
out of reach of her mind. But who could forget such a person, or what he’d done, or—
Enough
, she told herself.
Don’t let him in. Look away from
him,
but
look again.

Look again
.

And for a moment the scene in the crystal tilted, and she was looking up the side of that house and at a window set high in its wall. Then a cloud began to draw across the stone, pulling a shadow between her and the window. She pushed again with her mind, and suddenly a mouth flew open inside the stone in a silent scream and she nearly dropped the crystal. Regaining her composure, she fanned her hand across the stone’s surface as if brushing aside the awful image of that pained, distorted face. Oh, God, she thought, was it Amos? No. Surely she would have been able to see him more clearly, feel his presence. Enough.