As he looked up, he could hardly believe what he saw.
The house of the Sewing Circle was burning. The front door was thrown open, the threshold wreathed in flames and looking like the mouth of hell. And in that maw stood Cabel Umber, a man-shaped burning brand. Bea was not with him, and Silas imagined her held somewhere dark, beneath the earth, like Cabel Umber’s daughter. The thought sickened him.
When he saw Silas, Cabel stormed from the house. Silas backed up just as the top floor of the attic, the room that held the tapestry of the shadowlands, fell in upon itself, flames bursting up and licking at the sky. Embers flew from the furnace the falling structure had become.
As Cabel Umber descended the steps, his horse rose up out of the broken earth beside him, a nightmare of scorched bones and bright coals. The ghost did not speak as he mounted. Instead, he pointed to a hole in the ground just at the base of the house along the foundation. Silas had never seen it before. Looking over, Silas could just see the bones of animals, rotten and old, lining the side of the pit.
“Dogs . . . ,” Cabel Umber said, his voice the sound of iron dragged across a stone. He was not speaking to Silas, but to the bones.
From the horse’s neck, Cabel pulled forth a fistful of ash and smoldering shards of vertebrae. He crushed them in his hand, hurled them into the pit, and then cast more into the air.
“Dogs!” Cabel Umber roared.
The pit filled with smoke and the bones rattled.
Across the street, the frozen earth in parts of the Garden Plot Cemetery began to tear open. Silas looked over and saw the soil draw apart, revealing several more pits, the old burial plots of the poor dogs set to guard the cemetery.
A low, pained howl broke the air close by.
Cabel Umber looked down at Silas and smiled, the rotten tendons of his jaw tightening. “Dogs . . . ,” the ghost said once more with a throat full of malice and conjure.
From the pits, the bone-dogs pawed their way up out of the earth, growling and snapping at one another. Some had portions of shrunken, shredded hides still clinging to them. All were spotted with mold and black earth. Their snarls were wild and rabid, and as they shook their heads, soil flew from dark, hollow eye sockets.
Deep within the Narrows, the soul bell sounded. Cabel’s horse reared up, nearly throwing him. Cabel looked back in the direction of the sound and grimaced. With his iron rod he reached down and struck one of the dogs, shattering the bones of its spine as two others leapt forward toward Silas, snapping at the air. Cabel pointed the rod at Silas and more broken howling rose up from across the street. The hunter had chosen his quarry.
Silas ran.
Instinct pushed every thought from his mind but two: Silas didn’t want the hellish hunt going back into town. And further down Coach Street lay God’s Small Acre, the burial ground where some of Lichport’s lost children lay. He couldn’t bear the thought of Cabel Umber coming close to that place, or what such a monster might try summon up out of its soil. So Silas ran south, and then down Temple Street.
All the houses on Temple Street were dark. Silas didn’t even know if it was night or day. Since he’d returned from Arvale, he moved in one long twilight. The mornings were covered in shadows, and the night sky glowed bloodred. As he ran, the buildings seemed to lean in toward him, and the black outlines of the bare winter trees wove nets across the street before and behind him. Fear flowed freely in him again, and he hated it. There was no light in any of the windows, no human sounds except the rasp of his ragged breath and his feet hitting the cobbles as he ran. Every step made him feel less himself. He’d let titles fill his head with the comfort of authority. Lies. He could call himself whatever he wanted. Undertaker. Osiris, god of the dead. Janus, lord of the threshold. It didn’t matter. He was running from shadows like a child.
Ruins of half-fallen homes crouched between the dark-windowed houses. He thought briefly of hiding in one, but the fear of being found and the whole place set on fire while he was inside it kept him running.
The gate of Newfield Cemetery rose up at the end of the block. If he could lure Cabel Umber in there, at least he could be away from the houses of the living. If he could make it to the tombs of the Restless there, maybe he could find help.
Halfway down Temple Street, Silas risked slowing to look back. He wished he hadn’t. Cabel Umber and the pack of corpse dogs flew over and above the ground like a train afire. The dogs slathered smoke and flame as they ran, leaping between the air and ground. When their paws came down, the bones of their feet splintered, and they howled as though they’d been beaten. Greasy, sickly smoke unfurled behind Cabel as he came furiously on. Silas knew there was no way he could outrun them. But he needed to catch his breath, rally, and think, and he desperately wanted something at his back.
At the gates of Newfield, the great bronze lion stood watch over the night. Silas put his foot on the edge of the inscribed plaque and pulled himself up, as he’d done many times before. He stood between the lion’s massive paws, its head just above his own, his back pressed into the lion’s chest. This had once been his thinking place. He’d sat here with Bea. It was his seat of peace. No longer. At least nothing could get at him from behind, and it felt better not to run.
Cabel Umber and his pack came to a halt just outside the Newfield gates.
Silas began to panic. Even if he hit the ground again at a run, he would never make it to the Egyptian tombs before the fiery host bore down on him. The death watch was no use that he could think of. He leaned back against the statue and felt the bronze warm to him, even with the bitter cold of the air. Deep within the bronze, he remembered, the corpse of a lion lay hidden, saved from death and then given burial by his great-great-grandfather on the Umber side.
From somewhere in his Umber blood swam the words: “The wrath of the lion is noble.” He felt the bronze beneath his hand grow warmer. Then more words came. Restless words. Spells of that distant ancient land where, once, a lion had been a god.
He looked out at Cabel Umber. Silas’s fears shifted and turned, and where once terror sat, now anger and hatred burned and coiled. Silas stood up between the lion’s massive metal paws and pointed down the street at Cabel Umber. Words of summons and command came roaring from his throat.
“I have come across the night, Oh Lion! Mighty One! Powerful One! Beloved of Sekhmet! Bringer of Slaughter! Mine is a heart of carnelian; I will not be overcome. Before me rides my enemy. He has come against me. But who can stand before the arrows of the sun? Or the bright flame of the stalker of the plains? What I will, shall be. I utter these words with my mouth to destroy my enemy; he has come against me, and he shall not escape.” Leaning his head back against the lion’s massive head, Silas whispered, “And for the love of my great-great-grandfather who saved and loved you, help me.”
From inside the statue, Silas heard and felt a low growl vibrate up through the bronze and into his body. A dry wind purled up from some other, warmer world and swirled about the monument. Silas felt something pull away below his feet.
Light shone from the monument like the glare of the sun at midday, and in the street before the Newfield gates, the golden ghost of the lion stood. It threw its mane from side to side in splendor and moved low across the ground. Without warning, the lion sprang from its crouch and took the neck of Cabel’s horse in its jaws. Its teeth locked upon the horse, and it jerked its head to the side, ripping the mount out from beneath its spectral rider. Cabel Umber briefly faded, but then appeared, dimly, among the pack of dogs.
Throwing the horse to the ground, the lion broke every part of it, tearing bone from board until nothing remained.
Then the lion looked up.
“Dog,” Silas said, pointing at Cabel Umber.
The lion did not hesitate, but leapt across the air toward Cabel, who, retreating before the animal’s noble wrath, fell away through a rain of ash, and so fled into the earth.
Their master gone, the dogs grew still, their hungry fires extinguished. S
ome howled pathetically. All dropped to the ground in heaps of bone and tattered skin.
Silas descended from the statue and slowly approached the ghostly lion who stood in the middle of Fairview Street. But as he reached out to touch its mane, the ghost passed through him, returning to its place of rest, its tomb, within the heart of the bronze memorial.
He was alone again, standing before the gates of Newfield. Lights burned in the houses farther east down Temple Street. In front of a few of them, the Halliwell house, others, piles of broken boards and rotten wood had been stacked up and lit. These fires were not Cabel Umber’s doing. The townsfolk had built these bonfires.
Silas hung his head, still breathing hard.
Here in Lichport a medieval paranoia had taken root. Folk were trying to burn away a plague they feared the dead had carried home.
LEDGER
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
—FROM SHAKESPEARE’S THE TEMPEST. MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER
But where is he,
the pilgrim of my song,
The being who upheld it through
the past?
Methinks he cometh late
and tarries long.
He is no more—
these breathings are his last;
His wanderings done,
his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing:
—if he was
Aught but a phantasy,
and could be classed
With forms which live and suffer—
let that pass—
His shadow fades away into
Destruction’s mass. . . .
—LORD BYRON, FROM “CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.” MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER
INSTEAD OF RETURNING TO THE Narrows, near broken with exhaustion and cold, Silas walked slowly home. He knelt before the fireplace in his study and blew the fire from the match to flame among the kindling. As the logs caught fire, he rose, then slumped into the chair in front of his desk. His legs and feet were sore from running on the cobbles.
He was too tired even to go upstairs to bed. Mrs. Bowe had left him a little tray with some bread, cheese, and fruit. He’d eat something and then fall asleep in the high, soft chair close to the fire.
Everything on his desk lay just as he’d left it when returning from his mother’s funeral. He wasn’t even sure if he should call it a funeral. What was it? A birthday? A restoration? An awakening? His mind was making a circle of itself. Enough.
Without looking up, Silas fumbled for the fob of the desk lamp and turned it on. He idly pulled at the papers he’d carried back from Temple House, glancing at one, reading a sentence or two before dropping it and picking up another. There were his notes from Uncle’s dark books of life and death. Some loose papers, legal stuff about Temple House, and the envelope his mom said contained some more of his dad’s things.
Curiosity got the better of him. He opened the envelope and poured its contents onto the desk. Here was a diary in his dad’s handwriting. Not an essay, or work notes, but personal writing by his father.
The diary was little more than a small collection of scraps tied between two stained, torn covers. Most of the entries were written on different kinds of paper. The lower portions of the covers were burnt along with the edges, as though it had once been thrown into and quickly retrieved from a fire. As Silas opened it, the spine broke and the scraps slid from the covers. It looked like most of the sheets had been culled from other notebooks, the personal entries all bound up, taken away, or hidden. Maybe even after his dad’s disappearance. He saw no dates, and there appeared to be no chronology. He was sure he could feel Mrs. Bowe’s hand in this somewhere. Maybe she’d swiftly gathered these from various notebooks sometime after Silas’s arrival and then sent them to his mom . . . but what was the point in accusing her now? As his eyes passed over portions of the text, he couldn’t blame her, or his mother, for having wanted to keep it from him. Here were his father’s private thoughts; things no father would want his son to read.
Silas’s eyes flashed over the words. The subjects of the entries were various. Bits of things Amos wanted to remember or around which his own mind circled. Most of the entries, it seemed at first glance, related to Silas in one way or another. These were writings about him. Somehow, he felt in his gut, they were all about him.
The archaic name for one of the best known Shadowlands remains the Bosom of Abraham. Explanations for this phrase abound, but I think it goes deeper than accepted understanding of an afterlife of repose, as one reclines at table, his head upon the bosom of the guest next to him. Or the more sentimental interpretation of the dead as children who come to sit upon the knee of the parent in the hereafter. I have walked its paths and seen more than guests at table. More than children taken up upon the laps of their parents.
The presiding genius loci of this zone is Abraham himself. Abraham of the mountain. The father who was only too glad to offer up his son. Abraham the Obedient. I admit, my own fears may have shaped this shadowland to themselves. But how can it be other, for now a father gives his firstborn not to the god, but to the world. Leaves the babe upon the altar of experience to shift for itself. Every morning that I leave Saltsbridge for Lichport, I walk that path onto the mountain to the altar. I utter the obedient “I will.” And I place my son upon the stone. But then, there is no ram that comes to stay my hand. The altar of the world holds fast to my child, and I cannot reclaim him to my bosom. . . .
From the medieval play:
“GOD
Mine angel, fast hie thee thy way,
And unto middle-earth anon thou go.
Abraham’s heart now will I assay
Whether that he be steadfast or no.
Say I command him for to take
Isaac his son that he loveth so weel,
And sacrifice with his blood he make
If of my friendship he will feel.
Show him the way unto the hill
Where that his sacrifice shall be.
I shall assay now his good will,
Whether he loveth better his child or Me.
All men shall take example by him
How my commandments they shall fulfill.”
And I feel the contempt God had for Abraham. How, even now, He would assay my own heart for the joy of cruelty because I hide away behind the masks of other gods. Darker gods. Or perhaps it’s merely about the weight of obligations. The gods know well the love we bear our children, and they cannot bear the love of another to come before our love for them.
After one week in the sixth grade, Silas told us at dinner tonight that he wouldn’t be going to school anymore. Dolores laughed it away, but I could see by the look on his face that he was serious. He was adamant about not wanting to go. Did something happen today, son? I asked him. He didn’t say anything. Did one of the other kids do something to you? I asked. Dolores said not to feed into it. Let it be. He’d get over it. I asked him what he’d do with his time if he stopped going to school. He looked at me and said he would go to work with me. I can help you, Dad. That’s what he said. And the way he looked at me . . . I thought maybe we’d made the wrong decision, that maybe there was something else I could have done to make Lichport home for us. To make it okay for Dolores. So Silas just looked at me, like he was waiting for me to tell him it was fine for him to stop going to school, fine for him to start working with me tomorrow. I wasn’t sure what to say, but Dolores spoke out, loudly. Don’t encourage him, she told me. How’s he going to be a man if we pick him up and coddle him every time he falls down? I said that she should know right now that it would be my intention to pick him up when he fell. Every time. Just like the first time. I was there. I would always be there. Of course, it stank of a lie the m
inute I said it. What I should have said was I would always want to be there. That much was true, would always be true. Dinner ended when Dolores told him to go lay out his clothes for school the next day. I will never forget how he looked at me then, the pain of our betrayal reddening his eyes.
The sad epilogue to tonight’s dinnertime tale is that Silas cried himself to sleep, me at his side as he sobbed about how much he didn’t want to go back to school and how he wants to be somewhere that has art class where they don’t tell you what to make in advance. Apparently after the kids were told to draw the place they wanted to live when they grew up, Silas drew a cave or something from his imaginary storyland, something dark, and the teacher got upset and told him to throw it out. Why can’t I draw what I see? he kept asking me. But of course—he senses and I know—it isn’t about a drawing. It’s about being allowed to see the world in his own way, our way. He can feel here in Saltsbridge, away from all the old familiar eccentricities of Lichport, that this world, the world where the work of our family cannot be spoken of, this world is waiting to crush him. He can already feel its pressures. It absolutely breaks my heart. We are engaged in the same battles, he in his world, me in mine. We are both keenly aware of the sameness of it all here in Saltsbridge. The same pointless busy work for everyone. Hearing him talk about how he hated everyone having to read the same story at the same time made me feel like I was suffocating. If they knew what was waiting for them, the kind of afterlives they were building for themselves, brick by brick, worksheet by tiresome worksheet, well . . . they couldn’t face it. Silas knows, though. Somewhere deep inside him, he senses what people are making for themselves and he rejects it.
Christ. We could have stayed back in Lichport. . . . And all the while there is birdsong, telling me over and over how short are the moments before we are alone again. How isolated my son must feel, sitting in the classroom, other children buzzing about him, no one speaking directly to him or waiting for him to respond to anything that’s said. How he must sit there and stare at people and try to put his mind elsewhere. My heart. I must not speak of it! Yet I know he feels but cannot understand what I have done to him . . . what I have kept from him. Others sense it too, that Silas is missing something, that he is not like them, that he is somehow and fundamentally incomplete.