Graham Masterton - Death Trance

The passers-by, seeing that nothing particularly exciting was going to happen, began to disperse, and walk off their separate ways. The woman said, 'You can walk me to Washington Square, if you care to. You are going that way?'

'Yes,' I said. Then, 'Come on, then.'

She gathered up her bag and folded her red umbrella and then walked beside me to the west side of the common. The common was enclosed with decorative iron railings, which threw spoked shadows across the grass. It was still very cold, but there was a noticeable inkling of spring in the air, and a summer very different from last year.

‘I’m sorry that you thought I was talking nonsense,' the woman said, as we emerged on to the sidewalk of Washington Square West. Across the square stood the Witch Museum, which commemorates the hanging of Salem's twenty witches in 1692, one of the fiercest witchhunts in all human history. In front of the museum was the statue of Salem's founder Roger Conant, in his heavy Puritan cloak, his shoulders glittering with dew.

This is an old city, you know,' the woman told me. 'Old cities have their own ways of doing things, their own mysteries. Didn't you begin to sense it, just a little, back there on the common? The feeling that life in Salem is a puzzle of kinds, a witch-puzzle? Full of meanings, but no explanations?'

I looked away from her, across the square. On the opposite sidewalk, among the crowds of tourists and pedestrians, I glimpsed a pretty dark-haired girl in a sheepskin jacket and tight denim jeans, a stack of college-books held against her chest. In a moment, she was jumbled up in the crowd, but I felt a funny catch at my heart because the girl had looked so much like Jane. I guess lots of girls did, and always would. I was definitely suffering from Rosen's Syndrome.

The woman said, 'I have to go this way. It's been an unusual pleasure to talk to you. It's not often that men will listen, not the way you do.'

I gave her a half-hearted smile, and raised my hand.

'You'll want to know my name, of course,' she said. I wasn't sure if that was a question or a statement, but I gave her a nod which could have meant yes and could just as easily have meant that I didn't particularly care.

'Mercy Lewis,' she said. 'Named after Mercy Lewis.'

'Well, Mercy,' I told her. 'Just make sure you take care of yourself.'

'You too,' she said, and then she walked off at a surprisingly fast pace until she was lost from sight.

For some reason, I found myself thinking of the words that Jane used to read to me from the Ode to Melancholy. 'She dwells in Beauty — Beauty that must die; and Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu…'

I turned up my collar against the cold, pushed my hands deep into my pockets, and went to find myself some lunch.

I ate a lone corned-beef and mustard sandwich at Red's Sandwich Shop in the old London Coffee House building on Central Street. Next to me, a black man wearing a brand-new Burberry kept whistling She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain When She Comes, over and over, between his teeth. A young dark-haired secretary watched me without blinking in one of the mirrors. She had a strange, pale, pre-Raphaelite face. I felt tired now, and very alone.

About two o'clock, under a clouded sky, I walked to Holyoke Square, to Endicott's Auction Rooms, where they were holding one of their six-monthly sales of antique maritime prints and paintings. The catalogue listed three important oils, including Shaw's painting of the Derby ship John but I didn't expect to be able to afford any of them. What I was looking for was antique-shop fodder: engravings and etchings and maps and maybe a water-colour or two, the kind of picture I could have re framed in gilt or walnut and sell at ten times its actual cost. There was one painting listed by Unknown Artist: A View of Granitehead's Western Shore Late 17th Century which I was quite interested in buying, simply because it showed the promontory on which I lived.

Inside, the auction-rooms were cold, high-ceilinged, and Victorian, and the winter sunlight slanted down on us from high clerestory windows. Most of the buyers kept on their overcoats, and there was a chorus of coughing and nose-blowing and shuffling of feet before the auction began. There were only about a dozen buyers there, which was unusual for one of Endicott's sales: I couldn't even see anybody I recognized from the Peabody collection. The bidding was low, too: the Shaw went for only $18,500, and a rare drawing in a scrimshaw frame fetched only $725. I hoped this wasn't a sign that the recession had at last caught up with the maritime antiques business. On top of everything else that had happened, bankruptcy would just about round off my year.

By the time the auctioneer put up the view of Granite-head, there were only five or six buyers left, apart from myself and an eccentric old man who attended every Endicott auction and outbid everybody for everything, even though he wore no socks and lived in a cardboard box near one of the wharves.

'May I hear $50?' the auctioneer inquired, thrusting his thumb into his dapper gray vest, complete with watch-chain.

I gave him a rabbit-like twitch of my nose.

'Any advances on $50? Come along, gentlemen, this painting is history itself. Granitehead shoreline, in 1690. A real find.'

There was no response. The auctioneer gave an exaggerated sigh, banged down his gavel, and said, 'Sold to Mr Trenton for $50. Next item, please.'

There was nothing else at the auction I wanted, so I scraped back my chair, and went around to the packaging room. Mrs Donohue was there today, a motherly Irishwoman with carroty hair, upswept spectacles, and the largest behind I had ever seen in my life. She took the painting, and spread out her wrapping-paper and string, and called sharply to her assistant, 'Damien, the scissors, will you?'

'How are you doing, Mrs Donohue?' I asked her. 'Well, I'm barely alive,' said Mrs Donohue. 'What with my feet and my blood-pressure. But I was so sorry to hear about your darling wife. That brought the tears to my eyes, when I heard about it. Such a beautiful girl, Jane Bedford. I used to see her in here when she was tiny.' 'Thank you,' I nodded.

'Now is this a view of Salem Harbour?' she said, holding up the picture.

'Granitehead, just north of Quaker Lane. You see that hill there? That's where my house stands now.' 'Well, now. And what's that ship?' 'What ship?'

'There, by the farther shore. That's a ship now, isn't it?'

I peered at the painting. I hadn't noticed it before, but Mrs Donohue was right. On the opposite side of the harbour there was a fully-rigged sailing-ship, but painted so darkly that I had mistaken it for a grove of trees on the shoreline behind it.

'Now, I hope I'm not being interfering, or trying to teach you your business,' said Mrs Donohue. 'But I know you haven't been buying and selling the old stuff for very long; and now your darling wife's lost to you… But if I were you I would take a tip and try to find out what ship that might be.'

'You think it's worth it?' I asked her. I wasn't embarrassed about an auction-room packaging lady giving me good advice. Good advice is good advice, wherever you pick it up.

'Well, it's impossible to say,' she told me. 'But Mr Brasenose once bought a picture here that was supposed to be French ships off Salem Sound, but when he took the trouble to identify the ships by name, he found that what he had on his hands was the one and only contemporary painting of the Great Turk; and he sold it to the Peabody for $55,000.'

I took another close look at the strange dark vessel in the background of the painting I had just acquired. It didn't look particularly noteworthy, and the anonymous artist had painted no name on the prow. It was probably a figment of the imagination, quickly sketched in to improve the painting's shaky composition. Still, I would have a shot at identifying it, particularly if Mrs Donohue said so. It was she who had told me to look for the gryphon's-head maker's-mark on Rhode Island lanterns.