Out of the Wild Night Read online

  For Bill

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: The Crier is here. Ding, ding!

  Chapter 2: We tip

  Chapter 3: Lanterns at sea

  Chapter 4: Flashes in the graveyard

  Chapter 5: Beware, you who trust

  Chapter 6: Witness

  Chapter 7: A chat, a game, a lure

  Chapter 8: Who will rescue us?

  Chapter 9: Empty space that isn’t

  Chapter 10: A finger gathering snow

  Chapter 11: All you ghosts

  Chapter 12: A brick flies, a boy is gone

  Chapter 13: The ways of crows

  Chapter 14: Things get crazier

  Chapter 15: Stones and pinches

  Chapter 16: A nail, some maps, a run at dusk

  Chapter 17: An unmistakable scent

  Chapter 18: Aunt Thankful by the window

  Chapter 19: Words in the dark

  Chapter 20: Under attack

  Chapter 21: Where have they been?

  Chapter 22: Thanksgiving dreams and a death

  Chapter 23: Bells gone wild, a red sleeve

  Chapter 24: An empty teacup, a stolen basket

  Chapter 25: Please stay!

  Chapter 26: Kids by moonlight

  Chapter 27: Pheeeee!

  Chapter 28: The thrill of a voice

  Chapter 29: An unwanted swim

  Chapter 30: A harpoon escapes

  Chapter 31: Floating and falling

  Chapter 32: Out, quick!

  Chapter 33: Boards that bite

  Chapter 34: A rumpled bed

  Chapter 35: The clang of a copper horn

  Chapter 36: A familiar roaring

  Chapter 37: A screeeeeeam!

  Chapter 38: Wind plus snow

  Chapter 39: Kind hands and broken hearts

  Chapter 40: Watch your step. Ding, ding!

  Acknowledgments

  Old Language

  About Wonders

  A Note from Blue

  Photographs

  Copyright

  It is good for a man to invite his ghosts …

  out of the wild night, into the firelight,

  out of the howling dark.

  —A. S. Byatt

  I am not what I am, I am what I do

  with my hands.

  —Louise Bourgeois

  Am I walking toward something

  I should be running away from?

  —Shirley Jackson

  My story begins at dusk, on the edges, by the shore and around the graveyards. Let me tell you, this is a Nantucket November like no other.

  On the good side of being in my current state is that time works like the pages of a book made from fog or snow. You can flip this way or that and things are always changing order. Flowing. Regrouping around the motion of your hand.

  On the bad side?

  Being dead.

  But wait, that may not be all bad. Being dead has its advantages, especially around here.

  My name is Mary. Mary W. Chase. Chase as in Run, I might be behind you!

  I died one hundred years ago, plus a few days.

  Today I was shaken awake. A tremendous rumbling, a roar of vibrations, jolted me back from wherever I’ve been. I don’t remember dying, nor do I remember what happened immediately after.

  I wake, I sleep; I wake, I sleep—such is the life of someone like me.

  Just now I was tossed back with no warning into the rough, pitch-and-tumble world of the living.

  Wait, don’t move! I feel danger everywhere, a rush of fear that we who’ve lived know well—an awareness that all might be over in a pounce. A prickling. Am I alone?

  I try my voice, but don’t know if it makes a sound anyone else can hear. “Hello,” I whisper. “Hellohellohelloooo!” Louder this time.

  A board creaks beneath my feet. I look down but see nothing.

  I’ve been resting, present but not, inside the walls of my old home, happy in the familiar company of wood and plaster. Free of worry. Settled.

  Being a curious but shy soul in life—a watcher and a spy—I always did wonder how an egg could be so perfect and yet so easily broken. Life is miraculous but fragile, filled with risk and danger—and is death, too?

  B-BAM! Rrrroar! What is the noise I’m hearing? Is it the end of all we know?

  “Help!” I gasp. If I’m already dead, why should I hold back? “Help me, someone!” I call out, louder this time.

  My voice creaks like a rusted hinge.

  Does anyone hear me? “HELP!”

  Two children pass by my front window. I rap on the glass, but neither one turns to look. The girl has hair like seaweed, all dark ripples, and the boy is the color of sand.

  RRRoarrrr! The grinding and rattling start again. The girl and boy clap their hands over their ears. My heart sinks.

  “Helphelphelp!” I yell, surely loud enough to wake the world.

  No answer. The children walk quickly and don’t glance back.

  Now I recognize my fingers, pressed against the window. I wiggle my toes and look down to see dark stockings. And there! My boots are by the door. I’m no longer invisible, at least to myself.

  But why am I here?

  It must be the children.

  I once lived in this town and still do, although I’m no longer the one who sweeps mud and horse dung from the front steps of my home. My rotten teeth no longer bother me. I realize now that I’m back as the island’s Town Crier, a bold job I was much too timid to have done when living. Crying doesn’t mean weeping here; it means calling out. I’ll ring my handbell for attention and shout the news through a copper horn.

  We Criers can be loud.

  In my day, Nantucket had a living Town Crier, a famous and skinny man who walked up and down our streets and lanes, making an endless amount of noise.

  His name was Billy Clark.

  Everyone stopped to listen. We’d hear when a boat was on its way into the harbor, if a person was born or had just died, where to buy wool, fresh mutton, or salted cod. Since we didn’t have any other way to share instant news, the Crier was essential.

  In life, I spoke only when spoken to. I was guarded inside and pleasant on the outside. I kept my skirts tucked close and my hair pinned tight. My mouth was as small as a flounder’s and my eyes were step-on-me pebbles. My entire family died one year in a terrible fever when I was young, and I was taken in by a grumpy aunt. I soon married a silent man, the first who asked. My husband, Daniel, was a lifelong fisherman who hardly noticed me. We never had children, but I kept that sadness tucked in the pockets of my apron. Over and over, I scrubbed and baked. I wanted to be heard and cherished, but wasn’t.

  I never dreamed I’d become so important one day. The Town Crier! Am I back in order to warn?

  As I look around my home, the floorboards vibrate beneath my feet and the walls shiver. What monsters lurk outside?

  “Billy,” I call out, joking but not. “You can keep your job!”

  No reply.

  If I had bones, they’d be rattling like dried beans in a bowl. Perhaps Maushop wants to take back his gritty slipper.

  As a child, I heard an old Wampanoag Indian legend about a giant by the name of Maushop, a man of huge size who lived on the mainland. One day, he got sand in his moccasins. First he kicked off one to form Martha’s Vineyard, an island close to shore. Then off went the other moccasin in irritation, forming Nantucket, which means faraway island.

  There are still quiet moments in my home, almost too quiet. No creaking of carriage wheels or jingle-clop of horses outside. And then WHAM! All shakes and roars.

  Maushop, is that you?
r />   Wait, let me peek from my window again. The street is deliciously familiar and yet not. All slides fast, in flashes, the colors slipping by impossibly bright and smooth, like boiled icing on a cake. I see the red of a ripe cranberry, the yellow of a Christmas lemon—noisy machines known as cars and trucks, new to the world when I was old. Is that what I heard? Nearby gardens look to be on their best behavior. Homes are framed by hedges as tidy as a bridegroom’s haircut.

  I touch the wooden silk of my windowsill and the worn brick around my fireplace. I feel the hum of living surround me. My blue-and-white teapot is still on a shelf; the old woman who lived here after me liked to watch for children and to bake and fry, as I did. I can picture a plate of sugar doughnuts—we called them wonders—cooling inside the door.

  The kitchen has water that pours out in the sink, both hot and cold. The outhouse in back of the kitchen is gone, leaving small rooms for doing your business inside. No spiders. No cleanup. I love the boxes that make a churning noise and scrub clothes and crockery and even dry them.

  In my house! What a miracle for all who do the chores!

  But there are other changes that are hard. Back I go to the window, and spread my fingers flat against the panes as the earth shakes again.

  It’s time to step outside. I clang my bell and shout. This is harder than you’d think.

  As I walk down my street, I sense other spirits near me. We drift and bump like berries boiling in a pot. Man, woman, young, old. Beach plum, blackberry, rose hip, strawberry. None of the jelly-jar labels matter anymore. Why wasn’t that true in life?

  Being alive was pure magic, and I’ve had my days of marveling at it all—the wink of sun, the first pink of spring, a caterpillar with a showy fuzz of stripes. Those everyday joys are no longer mine, but I now have a task bigger than any I had in life.

  A deepwater darkness tugs at my heart. Children have always connected with spirits and vice versa—that is part of what worries me. If I was awakened, was it to keep a weather eye open for all of our young ones?

  But what if I can’t stop or change what I see coming?

  I ring and walk and am filled with dread. But I won’t hold back.

  Not anymore.

  Nantucket is a little island thirty miles at sea off the northeast coast of the United States, in Massachusetts. It’s been famous for centuries, first for those residents who chased, caught, and survived whales and now for the dangerous game of chasing, catching, and surviving those who come to visit.

  Every year between June and September, hundreds of thousands buzz in by air and sea, engines roaring and smoke billowing. A few sail in, leaving an elegant wake.

  Despite the boats and planes, our island still feels remote. No bridge connects it to the mainland. It remains its soulful self, but perhaps most so during the quiet months.

  A large part of its fame and glory belongs to its old homes. Mine was built in 1797, and I’m proud to say it was old when I oiled the floors, replaced a broken latch or knob, and hung dried lavender in the closets. It’s even older now, and it’s obviously been cherished. Only caring leaves this kind of a glow—a shine that rises from generations of hands that clean, polish, and protect.

  Packed with human stories, these houses have outlived their makers and most of their owners. Like art in a museum, they are what remain.

  They tell us that everyone’s life matters.

  Differences between the language in my day and how people now speak don’t bother me. I absorb the changes, a little like your breathing air. And despite the shocking roar that brought me back, I’m learning to balance death with life, which isn’t easy for most of us when alive.

  Everything that’s me is here, although I adapt and change form with each passing second. I’m flour being rolled into dough; a late rose dropping petals in the rain; a cat pouring itself off a chair.

  From where I watch, I can see we’ve reached a tipping point on Nantucket, like the second when water flows from a pitcher. Whoosh! This means a critical moment when something flows in one direction and can’t be stopped. Not easily.

  One after another, day by day, faster and faster, our old homes are being destroyed. If people knew how much will disappear with all that old wood, they might find the strength to yell, “STOP!”

  As is said at sea, all hands on deck; every last soul is needed. This is not a time for the dead to ignore the living or vice versa.

  It’s the kids that I especially want to catch—no, grab!—while I’m still here, because kids accept a challenge as naturally as the tide coming in. I want them to hear my bell before the me that’s here is thrown away or ground into fragments like a shell in a storm. Before I’m only a photograph or a faded name on paper and no longer myself.

  Should my house be crushed by the giant force that awakened me, I, too, will be gone.

  All of us whose lives seasoned our floors and walls will disappear if that happens.

  What we have to offer will vanish.

  Aieee, here comes the roaring again! The way things are going around here, this could happen anytime.

  Here! Take my hand. We have depths to plumb.

  I like the language from the sea, don’t you? In my lifetime, plumbing the depths meant dropping a weight on a long line over the side of a ship, in shallow waters. A person on board could measure safety that way.

  You’d hit bottom and then reel in.

  You’d find out how far you were from disaster.

  Speaking of the sea and the depths, a dreadful thing happened last year. It haunts us all.

  Late afternoon on Halloween, a Nantucket fishing boat went down with families aboard. A rogue wind came up, fog swirled in, and the instrument panel jammed. The boat, out on a special expedition, hit a shoal broadside, and all who lived were lost.

  The boys and girls had each been given a child-sized hurricane lantern, a sturdy light to carry on board and use later while trick-or-treating in town. When the Coast Guard arrived after the captain’s call for help, seven lamps were found bobbing miraculously on the waves, lights still bright.

  I can count them now: one, two-three, four-five-six—oh, my sight blurs!—seven.

  Seven amber lanterns, tossing in the foam and chop, twinkling through the gray. Impossible, of course, as those batteries don’t work in salt water.

  Stranger still, when rescuers bent to retrieve the bobbing lamps, they darted out of reach. Over and over, a Coast Guard crewman leaned close with a net. One light after another slipped quickly to left or right. Finally the crew gave up, and bringing the saddest and quietest of loads back to shore, they turned away from the mysteriously lit orbs. Left them dancing in the wild night. None have washed up, but there are those who claim to have seen glowing lanterns offshore at dusk.

  Sometimes life is rife with sadness. In size, our island is tiny—about three miles at the widest by fourteen long—but it becomes far smaller when something dreadful happens.

  Those still here, whether alive or not, share one another’s agony when things go wrong.

  What isn’t always talked about is how. When I was alive, I learned that the line between the island’s dead and those still living can blur.

  At my loneliest times, I sometimes knew that I had company. I’d hear the clink of teacups and a buzz of chatting coming from the next room, or I’d be aware of little feet thumping down the stairs and then see the ivory handle on the front door rattling. I’d notice a creaking as someone walked by with quick, sure feet, or I’d hear the swish of a skirt and smell the sweet brightness of bayberry candles even when the room was dark.

  I always thanked my old house.

  What happens between walls lingers within them. Perhaps that’s also true for disasters linked to wooden boats at sea. The waters surrounding Nantucket have more than seven hundred shipwrecks decorating the bottom. Screws and clasps and hasps and nails; broken dishes and mirrors and coins. Splintered spars and planks pickled by salty water, hidden by seaweed and fish. Bones and an occasion
al boot filled with rocks or sand.

  The ocean has always been a complicated friend.

  As are the dead.

  If anything, on our island the dead work alongside those still breathing. Some always have, whether at home or at sea.

  Who do you think kept those hurricane lamps lit?

  Trust me. We’re here.

  November 1. A long year—an ache of twelve months—has passed since the boating accident.

  Yesterday’s annual Halloween celebrations on Main Street were subdued. Before the parade, hundreds of heads bowed for five minutes of silence to honor the dead, and even the Star Wars characters, jellyfish, pirates, and sharks never quite recovered their bounce. The anniversary of the sinking cast a gloomy shadow over this usually bubbly afternoon.

  The wind dropped out early this morning, and now it’s almost six p.m. and there’s still not a whisper. Gulls and ducks swim in slow, darkening circles, occasionally dipping a beak to stir the calm.

  Two people fish on a north shore beach. There is no one else in sight. Father and son stand in shallow water as the surface out a few yards suddenly chops and buckles.

  “Gabe!” the father calls. “Looka here—what the hey, gotta be somethin’ running! Hold tight to the rod, thatta way!”

  A broken line of swells moves closer with a whoosh-splash-whoosh rhythm that sounds like people wading toward shore.

  Although the sun has set, Gabe and his father can still see clearly; nothing living—man or fish—appears.

  Gabe’s dad, Herbie Pinkham, sucks his breath through his teeth, a quick hiss. He spins the visor on his baseball cap sideways. “Back up,” he orders, reaching toward his eleven-year-old son. “Reel in!”

  “But—” Gabe grips his fishing pole. “But what if I hook something?”

  Alert, his dad tilts his head to one side but doesn’t respond.

  Soon water splashes up onto their waders. Father and son freeze, eyes following the wave. The air breathes and rustles around them. What on earth is passing by? A smooth stretch of beach at the tide line begins to crunch and wrinkle, pressed by invisible weights.

  “FEET!” Gabe’s dad gasps. “Looka the PRINTS! Holy magneesus!”