Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy)

  “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?

  “Now, if you please. I would like to speak with your father.”

  The ghost looked down at the floor and shook his head.

  “He’s not here. I told you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The ghost looked up, his eyes rheumy and unfocused. “It’s time to light the lamp,” he whispered.

  “All right,” Silas said, trying to encourage him. “Let’s have some more light.”

  But the ghost looked frightened and only repeated, “Time to light the lamp.” The ghost began to open and close his hands as though he were giving some kind of frantic semaphore to the floorboards. “It’s getting dark.”

  “It is. Night is coming.”

  “Oh, God,” said the ghost.

  “You don’t want to light the lamp? May I help?”

  “I do. I must. It’s just that . . . the light affects me badly . . . my head.”

  “Let’s climb up together. I will help you.”

  “All right,” said the ghost passively. The color of his form deepened and darkened, becoming more present, the buttons on his clothes coming into focus, and he added, “If you like, I can show you the spot where my father jumped.”

  “Thank you,” replied Silas, his nerves prickling at the ghost’s mention of the suicide. “That will be fine.”

  They climbed the steep stairs of the lighthouse together. When they reached the uppermost chamber, the great lamp of the tower burst into spectral flame and began to turn, casting its grim light over the sea and land and the tower itself. As the beam passed through the ghost, Silas could see another aspect, another face, hiding just below the glimmering ashen surface of the ghost’s skin. It was older, but not vastly different from the one Silas had seen only a moment ago. When the beam swung away, the older face vanished, and the young man was there again.

  “Let me show you where he jumped, Silas Umber. Just here. You see, the rail is not so high. Just here, the waters below are churning and churning. They never stop. How restless the sea is . . . that’s where you’ll find him. Down there.”

  Silas tried to turn away from the rail, tried to focus on something, anything other than the dizzying descent and the noise of the waters crashing on the rocks. He looked at the lamp room and found it changed. The piercing light now seemed to pass through the solid walls of the building. And just as the death watch had altered the appearance of the room below, now the beam illuminated a space different from the one Silas had first seen; the room appeared in the full flush of its heyday long ago, long before the lighthouse was abandoned. This spectral effect was taxing on Silas’s eyes and the repeating flash of past, present, past, present made him dizzy and disoriented. He knew the spectral effect was a warning, but Silas could not yet perceive which way lay hidden rocks and which way the safe harbor. To steady himself, he ran his own name through his mind: I am Silas Umber, Silas Umber, Silas Umber. As he did, he remembered what it was he came to do, and his face flushed with resolve. By speaking his name, by saying the word “Umber,” he could sense his father’s steadying presence. Silas stood up straight and pushed back his shoulders, feeling, in his blood, that a part of his father was always with him.

  The ghost stood at the rail, looking out at the sea.

  Silas stepped close to the ghost and said, “I believe I know who you are. You are J—” But before Silas could continue, the ghost began crying out in a rapid circle of words.

  “Gone . . . all gone. I have nothing now. No one. All my fault. Now all is lost. All is lost. All is lost. . . .” And like the rising of a sudden gust, the ghost lifted quickly into the air above the railing, his eyes darkening, their sockets becoming black and empty.

  Over and over and over like a prayer, Silas called out the ghost’s true name. “Joseph Downing! Wait! Joseph Downing, be still!

  The ghost stood upon the cold air, holding himself in the posture of an angry child, fists thrust up over his ears.

  “No!” cried the ghost. “My father is below! I am his son. This is my home.”

  Standing his ground, Silas shouted back. “You are Joseph Downing! Hear these, my words! You are Joseph Downing, the keeper of this light—”

  The ghost fell upon Silas, trying to push him from the tower, his blurring form buffeting Silas with a freezing blast of air. The great wind took Silas off guard, raised him up off his feet, and made him lose his balance. He fell forward, nearly over the rail. Looking down, Silas wove his arms through the railing and held it fast. Silas looked up. The ghost was hanging in the air before him out beyond the protective rail. And all the while, the dark light continued to go around, washing the world in successive veils of its dismal nightmare-light.

  When the lamp beam poured over Silas, his own name began to unravel. In that light, he heard only the call of the waiting rocks below and the deadly churning of waters. He arms loosened on the rails. He stood at the edge of the tower as the ghost swayed back and forth against the backdrop of the black sky, crying with a throat of storm, crying shards of a lie, a tale grown twisted and false.

  “My father is lost. He is lost down there!” The ghost turned in the air, thrusting a finger toward the rocks and sea. “Even now. Lost among the waters. Dark places. Below the kelp. Cold. Cold. Cold. My father is—”

  But Silas cut him off. “Joseph Downing, enough!” he said.

  “I am Daniel Downing,” the ghost moaned piteously, desperately, hiding in the name. “I am the son—”

  “Enough! Here is your story and your name!”

  And while the ghost continued to sob, Silas told the ghost its own sad tale.

  “Their ship was coming back to Lichport, returning from up the coast, where they’d been visiting family. Your wife. Your child. They were coming home. All day you’d been waiting, but how were you to know the ship had been delayed? Only two days, due to bad weather. But when the ship did not come in, you waited. All night you waited up on this tower, straining to see through the night. Hoping to see the silhouette of their ship against the moonlit sea. But the ship did not come. The next day, twilight found you still up on the tower, sitting, watching. And as the day ebbed, so did you, and for only an instant, you told yourself, ‘I’ll close my eyes.’ ”

  The ghost stood frozen on the air, his eyes wide and fixed on Silas. He muttered, “I did not sleep. Only rested. I did not sleep. . . .”

  “Nor has anyone in this town slept. We have all kept vigil with you. But Joseph, that night, you did sleep, and evening stole in and the lantern had not been lit, and so when their ship approached, there was no candle to guide it home. The ship struck the reef and all aboard were lost to the sea. Your wife. Your child. Both lost. On this very night, long, long ago.”

  The ghost wavered and began to dissolve, falling away into his own misery and shame, but Silas spoke again. “Wait, Joseph Downing, one moment more.”

  The edges of the ghost’s form sharpened and took hold of the air again.

  “Now, Joseph Downing, tell me what happened next. Speak.”

  Slowly, the ghost began to move his mouth, then the words came.

  “A boy from town told me what had happened. Everyone knew there had been no light. My son and wife were gone, gone below, and . . . ” The ghost’s voice began to waver.

  “Go on, Joseph. It’s all right now. There is nothing left to lose but your own good self. Speak your name and tell me what happened.”

&nb
sp; “I am . . . I am Joseph Downing. Yes. That is my name. And when I learned what had become of them, I tried to put myself low, to be with them in the sea. I jumped from the lighthouse! But, oh, I fell upon the rocks, there! Oh, God . . . even in death I was denied them. . . .” The ghost pointed to where Silas was now standing. Silas looked toward the railing, but when he looked back, the ghost was standing by the lamp room and had started walking toward him.

  “Wait! Joseph! Abide!”

  The ghost’s eyes had become flat, black stones. He walked past Silas and through the railing and fell like a thing of substance down into darkness.

  Silas stood by the rail, looking down, unsure of what had happened. Was it over? The ghost had said his own name. Had it been enough? He must not assume. He straightened his back and called out over the water. It felt unfinished. Should he summon the ghost back, compel him to return? But Silas thought about the ghost and his family, his wife and child, lost in the waters. Perhaps there was something he could do for them all.

  “Who will come for this weary soul?” Silas intoned. “Who shall abide with Joseph Downing and keep him?” Silas closed his eyes. With his words, Silas sent his mind’s eye out into the sea, searching along the bottom for the bones of those who had been lost so long ago. And as he’d learned from his father’s writings, he imagined his words stirring the remains, sinking into them and waking, gently waking, those who had waited to find the Peace their awful deaths had kept from them. Mother and child, Silas said to himself. Come, now, for here is restoration. Mother and child, bring peace to this lost soul. Mother and child, carry him to peace. . . .

  Silas closed his eyes and tried to feel the words flowing out across the sea, though a small voice in the back of his mind held back and whispered to him, It is wrong to summon the dead.

  But he pushed back against his fear and silenced it, and out beyond the reef, two small lights appeared, growing larger and brighter as they came over the water, drawing close to the rocks below the lighthouse. As he looked down over the thin rail, Silas could see the form of a woman holding a child and standing above the waves. Below the surface of the sea, another light stirred and slowly rose to join the woman and child. As he emerged from the water, the ghost of the lighthouse keeper stood beside his family. From the high tower, Silas shouted down, “Peace be with you and Peace be upon you all, until—” But the ghosts had already vanished. The grim, gray candle of the lighthouse lantern was extinguished, and darkness descended upon the waters. Silas was hopeful, but unsure. He might have given them the waters of Lethe that would bring forgetting and dissolution to the dead. That would have been best in this case, he couldn’t help thinking. At least they were all together now. But where? At the bottom of the sea? Wasn’t that still lost? He wished his father were there to ask. There were complexities to the Undertaking that were still unclear to him. But, the spectral beam cast by the lighthouse lamp had gone out, and the ghosts were together. It would have to be enough.

  Silas came down from the tower and left the lighthouse, locking the door behind him. Worried that the ghost might return, he put his open palm upon the door and said resolutely, “This place is Peace-bound. May no malediction come to be set upon these stones. May no malicious spirit nor wandering ghost harbor or be bound here from this day forward until the breaking of the world.” And a shudder passed through Silas, through the bricks and mortar of the lighthouse, flowing through the rocks of the cliff and down into the sea, and it was done.

  THE LIGHTHOUSE TOWER WAS DARK. Silas released the dial of the death watch and felt the now familiar tightening in his stomach and quickening of his breath as the hand returned to its circular course about the dial. The beat of his heart picked up its pace, as if it, too, had been stopped with the watch and suddenly been started again. Silas gasped at the sensation, then slowed his breathing, calmed himself, and began walking back toward Lichport. He paused, realizing the death watch was still in his hand. It took an act of will to drop the watch into his pocket, but once he did so, he walked more quickly. He could feel the exhaustion in his bones, and his shoulder still ached, but he didn’t want to go home. The clean night air felt good in his lungs and his mind was restless.

  A name was going around and around in his head and he needed to know more about it. Since the night it had been mysteriously engraved into his front door, and he had pulled book after book from his father’s library, his mind had turned the name over and over in a vexing loop. ARVALE. Each time he said it, whether aloud or in his mind, he felt something pull at him, as though the very word exerted a kind of gravity.

  He needed more than mere historical information; he wanted to find out what the appearance of the name meant. Who had carved this in the door, and why now? Asking Mrs. Bowe was out of the question. He didn’t want her worrying about him. She did enough of that already. Ever since his father died, she had tried to see to everything. She was always asking him what he was doing and why was he doing it, as though she didn’t quite trust him or, worse, still looked on him as a child, an incompetent child. Silas appreciated her help, but he did not want another parent. Not now. Not ever. With his father gone, he was the man of the family. In the last months, he had settled many spirits, spoken with many ghosts and, he believed, brought them Peace, although some had been more trouble than others, and it was sometimes hard to know if his techniques had actually worked. Just because they were quiet didn’t mean they were gone. Regardless, Silas would return to his house after each job and proudly inscribe the name of the ghost in the ledger, along with the word “Peace.” His heart swelled with a sense of belonging every time he made an entry next to those of his father and the other Undertakers of Lichport. He knew he was doing the best he could, and he didn’t need or want anyone looking over his shoulder. I am my father’s son, and I don’t need anyone’s help. I am the Undertaker and I keep my own counsel, like my dad did, he reminded himself, trying to calm his mind again as he began making his way along the stream back toward town.

  Walking in Lichport at night soothed him: the cold air, the little night noises, all so familiar to him now. He loved watching as candlelight filled the windows of the ancient leaning cottages down in the Narrows, and seeing thick curtains draw closed against the evening in the still-occupied but utterly dilapidated houses on Coach Street.

  The winds had blown the clouds apart and the moon had risen. Bright stars hung over old Lichport and the sea. Across the river, he could see the small light of a lantern low on the hill of the Beacon. Who else is up late tonight, visiting the dead? he wondered.

  He passed the small abandoned wharf, and walked through the stand of trees around the north side of Beacon Hill. He wanted to see whose lantern it was, and then, if all was well, he would visit his father’s grave before going home. He did that a lot. Even though he lived in his father’s house and was following in his father’s footsteps as Undertaker, standing beside his dad’s grave was a comfort to him, especially when he felt confused or overwhelmed, or weary from work.

  Pausing at the crooked gate at the base of the Beacon, Silas could see the grave-packed slopes rising up before him in the moonlight. There again, another lantern’s light flickered among the stones. He climbed the hill, weaving his way through the tombstones, following the glow. Just ahead he could see a dark figure, heavily cloaked against the cold night, sitting on a stool beside a familiar grave.

  Without looking up, the figure said, “Take a pew, Mr. Umber,” and gestured to the large hollow in the tree behind her.

  Silas recognized the voice. He walked over to the tree and looked into the hollow trunk. Inside was another small wooden stool. Silas drew it out of the tree and sat down beside Mother Peale.

  “It brings me heart’s ease, some nights, to sit here, among our good neighbors and kin, and now, by my John.”

  Silas nodded. “I like this place too. It’s quiet, easier to think.”

  “Come to visit your father?”

  “Often, yes. But it was your l
ight that brought me here tonight.”

  “I see. Watching over things in general, now, are we, Mr. Umber?”

  “Yeah.” Silas smiled. “I like to keep a good eye on my friends especially.”

  “And we, your friends, are most glad for it. Indeed, you have made great strides these last months. Many folks are sleeping easier now that you have woken to your calling,” she said, wrapping her arm and her shawl around his shoulders. “Still, for you to be wandering about so late and not home with your nose in a book . . . I wonder if there isn’t something consternating you, Silas? Or perhaps you have been out on business?”

  He nodded. “I am just coming home from work.”

  “Yes, you have the look about you of a man who has been keeping grim company. May I inquire . . . ?”

  “The keeper of the lighthouse.”

  “And?”

  “I believe he is at last at rest.”

  “Well, well . . . ,” said Mother Peale with real surprise, “that is fine news indeed. That place threw a particular pall over the Narrows and no mistake, though all in Lichport suffered when it cast its light about. I am glad to hear your work went well. Maybe there will be a good night’s sleep waiting for me at home.”

  Silas shook his head briefly but was soon still again. He did not look at Mother Peale, but instead down at the earth of Mr. Peale’s grave.

  “But there is more to your tale, I think.”

  Silas told her about his front door.

  Mother Peale hesitated for a moment, then nodded. She was at least familiar with the name Arvale. “Have you told this to Mrs. Bowe?” she asked.