Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (2 page)

She prayed he would come, for fascination with the house, with the ancestral manor, if nothing else. And once he arrived, he would take his place as Janus and would help her. He would restore her losses. He was obligated to his relations.

A deep brazen trumpet sounded. Long and low came the ancient carnyx-call from some high place among the range of battlements. Then, from atop the long-abandoned clock tower, a decorative figure carved of limestone stirred, shifting from steadfast rock to undulating fabric just below the huge, unmoving dial. Tall and hooded, the figure slowly bent forward and set down its mighty scythe by the foot of the clock’s face, then stretched its hands, each finger a thick, sharp-tipped bone that clicked and scraped against its neighbor.

Again, the trumpet cried out in metallic staccato notes that lengthened and deepened the longer they were held—
SilAAAAAs, SilAAAAAs, SilAAAAAs
. The blasts pierced and shattered the freezing air.

The messenger pulled back its hood to reveal a skull, no longer of pitted, greening limestone, but dark, smooth bone, polished now like obsidian. From below the shelf of stone where it stood, a wind blew up the tower and roused the tattered hangings from its flowing robes into the semblance of wings. Then, as though the wind had caught in the billowing garment, it rose into the air and flew from that high place to deliver its invitation. Its eyes flared like embers leaping to flame as it flew along the lychway. When it came before the gates, the messenger unhinged its jaw and let forth a sound like the cry of a thousand night birds. The gates opened, and in this way, the messenger passed into the town of Lichport.

It floated silently down Fort Street, unseen, except by one venerable corpse sitting watch in a high window of its crumbling house.

The messenger passed from shadow to shadow along the leaning and abandoned buildings, swiftly making its way closer and closer to its destination. A few moments later, the messenger stood on the porch of Silas Umber’s house. Without pausing, it drew its long finger up and down across the surface of the door, tracing out six letters in flame, burning the lines deeply into the surface of the wood . . .

ARVALE

L
EDGER

Sanctify unto me all the firstborn . . . both of man and of beast: it is mine.

—E
X
ODUS, 13:2.
M
ARGINAL
IA OF
A
MOS
U
MBER

NIGHTMARE TIME.

From the ruined lighthouse clinging to the rocks stacked high above the sea, a gray ghost-light swept out over Lichport.

Every evening, for over a week, on the very edge of town, the miasmic beam shone down from that tower. Grim weather descended with that light: furious winds and buffeting rain. And when the storm rose into a gale and screamed from the cliffs and whipped the surf into flying sheets of foam, that’s when the bad dreams began. It was mostly in the Narrows, where folks lived closest to the lighthouse; they would wake, terrified, from awful dreams of drowning and shipwrecks and muted voices crying through slowly rising bubbles far beneath the surface of the sea. Even in the upper part of town, people were affected.

But not Silas Umber, the Undertaker of Lichport. He wasn’t sleeping anyway. Not since a few nights ago, when someone burned the name of the old Umber family estate into his front door. Silas had spent the rest of that night pulling books and records from the shelves of his study, anything he could find that would tell him more about the house called Arvale. He had a large pile of these on his desk, awaiting his attention. But the lighthouse would have to come first. People were talking. Letters requesting help had been coming in every day since it started. Nights were bad for the rest of the folk in Lichport, and Silas knew they expected him to end the trouble.

Mrs. Bowe, who lived in the house attached to his, woke screaming six days ago and hadn’t had a good night’s rest since. Silas’s mother called him two days before to say the dreams were so bad that she had resorted to only napping in a chair during daylight hours. Silas had spent several evenings at his mother’s house across town, playing cards with her from midnight until morning because he was worried she’d go back to drinking to calm her nerves. Things had eased a little between them. They were talking
to
each other now, not
at
each other. He knew his mother was proud of him in her way. She still had trouble saying it, Silas could tell, but things were better. She had come to his dad’s wake and had begun talking about Amos civilly. Silas had even invited his mother to move in with him once more. And although she declined, saying again the house on Temple Street was
her place
now, and the only way she was leaving was
feet first
, she took her son’s hand warmly and kissed his cheek for having asked.

But the nightmares were fraying the edges of everything.

Now Silas looked out from a high window in his house. In his hand, the death watch was silent, its ticking stilled by his thumb against the dial. Silas could see, clear with the ghost-sight the watch bestowed, the beams of sickly gray light turning out from the lighthouse and falling like a pall over land and sea.

At first, Silas thought the light might have been one of the occasional phantasmal glimmerings seen near the ocean. These were not uncommon, and while they might be related to sunken ships, or some poor soul lost beneath the waves, no ghost ever manifested, and the lights would usually vanish almost as soon as they appeared. But this was different, and people in town,
his
town, were suffering.

Enough,
he said to himself.
Enough.

He opened the enormous funereal ledger that contained everything his father and the other Undertakers of his family knew about ghost lore and death rites. Scrawled throughout the book and upon its margins were the notes, instructions, and gleanings of his ancestors, those previous Undertakers who, like him, sought to bring Peace to the unsettled dead.

The ghost of the lighthouse had been known to his father, but only through secondhand accounts. Silas had read an entry in his father’s handwriting that explained that the ghost of the lighthouse would never appear to him, though he had tried to speak to the spirit on more than one occasion. For several days, and as the nightmares continued to run like wild things through the town, Silas read and read, making an especial study of the lighthouse and its sad history. He devoured newspaper accounts, memoirs, notes, rumors: everything he could find in the ledger and in the large collection of books on local history that spilled from the shelves of his father’s home library.

When he had learned all he could on the subject of the lighthouse and its last occupant, Silas set out for the cliffs, a little before dark. In the months since his father’s death, he had diligently applied himself to Undertaking, reading widely, and practicing the arcane rites he’d read about in the ledger when and where he could. And while Silas wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to help, he was resolved to try. In his mind Silas carried a name, held it like a talisman with which he might be able to settle the dead within that spindle of brick perched upon the rocks. He prayed the name would be enough.

The sky was pouring down pitch as Silas walked quickly along the cliff toward the old lighthouse. He wore an oilskin cape over his father’s jacket and held a small lantern. As he approached the high tower, he reached into his jacket pocket and took hold of the death watch, that ancient timepiece that when stopped, compelled the dead to become visible to the living. Silas drew no comfort from how quickly the silver warmed in his hand. It was as if the death watch wanted to be held and used. It made Silas feel uneasy.

Before even reaching the door, before stopping the hand of the death watch, he could sense the past of the place weighing down on him, more and more with every step, pulling at his feet as though the earth itself were trying to hold him back. He picked up his pace and when he reached the door, he took out a large iron key lent to him by Mother Peale, who had taken it upon herself to keep an eye on the place many years ago. She had been only too happy to hear that Silas would try his hand at bringing Peace to that haunted tower.

“You take this key and do what you can, Silas Umber,” Mother Peale had said. “You know we’re all for you, no matter what happens. And remember, if you don’t come back, your funeral is paid for by the townsfolk, as is customary, so don’t you worry. It’s all taken care of should it come to that.” Mother Peale had smiled and winked at Silas then, to rouse his good humor. Silas had smiled back, but hadn’t found it terribly funny.

At first, the key wouldn’t turn in the lock. Silas twisted it back and forth, worried that it might break. Finally, the rust gave way and the lock turned, but when Silas pushed the door, it wouldn’t budge. He shoved it, then struck it with his fist as though the door might fly open by the sheer force of his rising aggravation. Finally, in anger, Silas threw his full weight at the door, hitting it hard with his shoulder, and the door relented. A damp, salty smell flowed out from the darkness beyond the doorway as he stumbled inside. He held up the lantern, its weak light barely making an entrance into the inky black of the room, and then closed the door behind him. He walked to the center of the room, set the lantern on a small uneven table, and took the death watch from his pocket. Opening the jaw of the small silver skull, he brought his thumb down hard on the dial. He could feel the watch’s little heartbeat slow and then stop. Silas closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and opened them again.

Where only a moment ago there had been an abandoned room with a few pieces of rotted and broken furniture, now a new scene glimmered before him. A wood-burning stove glowed on the far side of the room and a few toys lay scattered on the rug. In the middle of the room, a table was set with a cloth and candles. A hutch against the wall bore dishes and mugs. Here was a comfortable family home.

A sudden movement caught Silas’s eyes. A shadow was drawing away from the wall. Slowly it lengthened out across the floor, and began to rise and take shape. The shadow moved against the light to place itself in a chair across the room from Silas. There, now, smiling faintly, was a young man, perhaps in his twenties. His body gave off a gray ineffectual light, as though he were a candle seen on the screen in an early film.

“Good evening,” said Silas to the ghost, breathing slowly, steadying himself.

“Is it evening? I hadn’t noticed,” the ghost replied absently.

“Almost. I am looking for the keeper of this lighthouse. Is that you?”

The ghost looked away. “No. That is my father.”

“May I speak with him?”

“I am afraid not, sir. He’s not here at present.”

“May I ask where he is?” Silas inquired.

“My father’s not here. Just me now. The son.”

Silas was surprised. He knew that the lighthouse keeper’s son, who had died with his mother in a shipwreck, had been an infant. So who was this? Was there another son? Had the records he’d consulted been incomplete? There was something in the ghost’s voice—a knowing hesitancy—that made Silas uneasy.

“I need to speak with your father,” Silas said again, this time putting some iron into the words.

The ghost began to shake. He looked at Silas, then toward the window.

“I think I know you. . . . I’ve seen you, sitting out there, with a girl.” The ghost smiled wanly then. “You were with a strange girl. Her skin was like the moon—”

“I don’t remember,” Silas said. While he couldn’t recall the particulars, he knew the ghost was right. He’d been there with a girl. What was her name? No. He didn’t want to start on this topic. Not now. Memories of her . . . of the girl . . . made his heart ache, and he hadn’t come to the lighthouse to talk about his own losses. “But,” he said instead, “I am pleased to meet you. I am Silas Umber. I am the Undertaker. I am here to help you.”

“I am Daniel. Daniel Downing.” As the ghost spoke the name, he seemed to dim and lose the definition of his form. His edges blurred.

Now Silas was confused. Daniel had indeed been the lighthouse keeper’s son, the very son who had died out upon the reef with his mother when their ship struck the rocks. Thus far, Silas’s experience had been that ghosts appeared as they were at the time of their passing, or as they had been at some especial point during their life. Ghosts only had full knowledge of what they had been and what they had done during their lifetime. So how could a child appear as the man he had never become?