Kage Baker: Dark Mondays

“So… he’s a ghost?” said Margaret Mary, peering at Bento. “And he’s come back to her? Just like he was? Wow! Only…” She looked sadly at her great-aunt. “Only, you’re old , Tia Adela.”

Tia Adela folded her arms defiantly. “I know,” she said. “But I have him back. She can call him, she can beat herself white on the rocks, but she can’t climb up here. He and I will stay safe in my house, let her gale blow hard as it will.”

“Who is this other lady she’s talking about?” Rosalie murmured to her mother.

“Adela, don’t be stupid!” said Nana Amelia. “You know what will happen.”

“This Wyndham Manor you called, how much does it cost?” Celia inquired of her daughter sotto voce .

“Look, whoever you are, you’d better go now,” Rosalie said, turning to Bento. “Do you hear me? Go back to St. Vincent’s or wherever she hired you from.”

He made no reply. She strode across the room to him. “Hey! Can you hear me?”

She grabbed him by the arm and then she screamed, and staggered back. Celia was beside her at once, catching her before she fell. Bento had not moved, had not even turned his head.

“Honey, sweetie, what is it?” Celia cried.

Rosalie was gulping for breath, her eyes wide with horror. She was holding her hand out stiffly. Her mother closed her own hand around it and recoiled; for Rosalie’s hand was as cold as though she’d been holding a block of ice, and as wet, and gritty with sand.

“Should I go get Father Halloway?” asked Margaret Mary.

“No,” said the women in unison.

“I don’t see why you’re all so mad, anyhow,” said Margaret Mary. “I think it’s neat. If we can really bring the dead back, so we won’t be lonely—well—wouldn’t that be great? You could still have Grandpa to talk to, Nana! How’d you do it, Tia Adela?”

Tia Adela said nothing, watching Bento. He was pacing back and forth before the window.

“She made a Soul Feast,” said Nana Amelia. “Didn’t you, Adela?”

“You mean she just cooked some food?” Margaret Mary cried. “Is that all it takes? Can anybody do that?”

“Not everybody,” said Tia Adela, curling her lip. “And food is not enough. There must be love that is stronger than death.”

“Oh,” said Margaret Mary.

“It’s wrong , child,” said Nana Amelia. “The dead don’t belong to us! And they want their rest. Look at him, Adela, does he look happy? You have to let him go.”

“How are you keeping him here?” asked Rosalie in a little voice, the first time she had spoken since she’d learned the truth. Celia, sitting with her arm around her, shook her head.

“Sweetie, don’t ask—”

“Borax,” said Tia Adela.

“What?”

“Borax,” Tia Adela repeated, with a certain satisfaction. “I poured a line of it all along the fence, and he can’t cross it.”

“Jesus Christ, Tia Adela, you put down borax powder for ants , not ghosts!” yelled Celia.

“It’s alkali, isn’t it?” said Tia Adela. “The opposite of salt. So it breaks the spell of the sea.”

“Urn… but alkali isn’t the opposite of salt, Tia Adela,” said Margaret Mary, wringing her hands. “It’s the opposite of acid. We learned that in Chemistry class.”

Tia Adela shrugged. “It still works, doesn’t it?”

A gust of wind hit the windows, whirling brown leaves. A gull swept in close, hung for a moment motionless at eye level before gliding away downwind. Rosalie shivered.

“No, I’m not letting him go,” Tia Adela went on, in a harder voice. “Fifty years I’ve sat up here, and I got old, yes, and she’s still beautiful. Is that fair?”

“There will be a price to pay,” said Nana Amelia.

Tia Adela did not reply. Bento sighed, making no sound, but far out and high up a gull mourned.

“Go away now,” said Tia Adela. “I’ve got his dinner to fix.”

Rain advanced like a white curtain. The leaden sea turned silver before it vanished in the squall. One by one the trawlers came in, fleeing for their lives, ramming the pier in their haste to moor. The crews scrambled ashore dripping, dodging the waves that were breaking over the pier. A police cruiser pulled up to the mole with its red light flashing, and cops in black slickers set sawhorses across the walkway.

Nobody was fool enough to go out there, though. The harbormaster sighed, looking at the moored sailboats; half of them would be on the beach, or matchwood, by morning.

The cars were pulling up now to the foot of the pier, and women and old men were getting out, squinting into the flying rain, leaning over as they walked into the wind. Soaked before they reached the harbormaster’s office, they came one after another and asked: Was there news of the Medford ? Was there news of the Virginia Marie ?

They came away with faces like stone, and went back to their cars and sat, steaming up the windows, except for a couple of the old men, who splashed away through puddles to the Mahogany Bar and could be glimpsed thereafter at the window, looking like fish in a lit aquarium, drinking steadily as they waited.

Night closed down. One by one the headlights came on, pointed out to sea. When the waves began to break over the edge of the parking lot, the cops came and made the cars move back; but they did not leave, and they did not turn out the headlights.

Then there was a confusion of shouting, of horns and red lights, and Margaret Mary started awake as the car doors were flung open. She had to wipe her steamed glasses clear before she could see her mother and father hurrying through the rain, splashing through the long beams of light, calling after Rosalie who was sprinting ahead as fast as she had ever gone in her life.

And beyond her—Margaret Mary took her glasses off, wiped them again and stared openmouthed. Impossibly huge, bizarrely out of context with her prow almost on the asphalt, the Virginia Marie lay beached and rolling. Men clung to her, shouting, staring at the solid world of automobiles and houses and warmth, just within reach and terrible yards away, as the black water, the white water kept breaking over them, and the rain glittered and ran.

Sirens howled; a big ambulance pulled up, and another police car. People were crowding too close for Margaret Mary to see much, until the ropes were rigged and the rescued began to arrive on shore, huddled at once in blankets.

The crowd parted. Mary Margaret saw a blanketed man with his wet hair plastered down, and he was talking earnestly to Rosalie. She put her hands to her face and screamed. She just kept screaming, until at last John lifted her in his arms and dragged her back to the car, with Celia running after, weeping. Margaret Mary wept too, withdrawing into her seat. Through her tears she mumbled the Our Father; though a cold, adult voice in her head told her it was a little late for that.

“Daddy, what happened?” she begged, as he thrust Rosalie into the back seat beside her and slammed the door. For all anybody noticed her or answered, she might have been a ghost. Celia reached into the back and gripped Rosalie’s hands, and held on to them all the way up the hill to the house.

It was an hour later before she heard the story from her father, as he sat in the kitchen in his bathrobe, over strong coffee with whiskey in it: how the Virginia Marie’s radio mast had gone by the board, how she had been making her way back, how they had come upon the Medford taking on water and listing, how they had managed to take her crew off; and how Jerry had just gotten the last man aboard and was pulling in the lifeline when he had fallen, and dropped between the two hulls like a stone.