Grace
1910
Today marked the twenty-third year of Grace’s vigil. The light room was dark, the sky overcast and hazy, making it almost impossible to see far out across the ocean. Every few seconds the light made its pass, casting a red glow over everything, with a Grace-shaped shadow cut through the center. She considered moving, to let the light roam unobstructed, but she began to see her shape as a message: I’m here. I’m waiting.
If Grace had one wish, it would be to see a small boat on the horizon, with her mother at the helm, heading for the cape.
Soon, another shape joined hers—taller, fatter, elbows bent and hands on his hips so that he looked like a sugar pot. Her brother, William, used to sit with her on these vigils, until their father decided William was old enough to start learning the family business. Grace didn’t think bookkeeping was so complicated that William couldn’t at least spend a few nights a week up here with her, but it didn’t matter what she thought. Their father had long dismissed her and let her do what she liked, provided it didn’t embarrass him. If anyone asked, he told them Grace was in mourning. True enough, she supposed, but not the whole truth.
William took the mug out of her hands and sniffed before taking a long sip. “Your husband’s looking for you.”
She snatched it back. “He knows where to find me.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“He’s neglected at home.”
“Is he?” She withdrew a small flask from her pocket and filled her mug almost to the brim.
“So are the children.”
Heat rose in her face, and she stifled the urge to slap him. “My children are fine.”
“They miss their mother.”
“They’re barely out of diapers, William. How could they possibly notice I’m not there when they’re sleeping?”
He sighed, leaning one shoulder against the metal scaffolding around the light. “She’s gone, you know. For good.”
She looked at him, taking in the narrow shoulders, perfectly pressed clothes, and the whisper of a blond mustache that made him the spitting image of their father, a man who’d written their mother off with the same efficiency as dashing off an invoice. She’d overheard him say to a friend one night, “Regina is gone, and that’s the end of it.” Neither William nor their father had forgiven her for leaving them to handle Liza’s and Marina’s disappearances on their own. Though most people felt empathy for them, some whispered dark, devilish things. That they’d run off together. They’d leaped from the bluff, a suicide pact. That they’d been snatched by the witch who lived in the house on the hill.
Yes. Their mother was gone. But that wasn’t the end of it. Far from it.
Grace drank from the mug, her husband’s scotch warming and emboldening her. “Do you remember anything about that night?”
William frowned. “Obviously not.”
She hid her satisfaction at having struck a nerve beneath another sip. Grace remembered.
She didn’t sleep much in those days—didn’t sleep much now either—but as a child she was plagued by nightmares that would force her awake hours before sunrise.
She didn’t know if it was a memory or something her child mind had conjured, but when she closed her eyes, she always saw the night Liza and Marina both disappeared.
In her memory—in her nightmares—Grace had perched herself at the window, counting down the minutes until morning. Her father had brought home Russian honey cake, a family favorite, and promised Grace and William the last two slices for breakfast. She remembered willing the sun to come up faster, wondering exactly how much trouble she’d get into if she sneaked down to the kitchen while everyone was asleep.
And then the nightmare shifted. The dark became darker. Stars blinked out, and the moon disappeared behind a cloud. The only thing piercing the blackness was the lighthouse, but even that went out too. In the nightmare (memory?), Grace leaned out the window as a shadow drifted across the ground, followed by her mother, nightgown soaked through and hair wild. The waves lashed the shore like thunder, and the wind blew her mother’s nightgown against her, skirts flickering, a ghost in the dark. Just before she woke up, her mother looked up at her with coal-black eyes and screamed.
“Do you ever think about them?” she asked.
“No.” In the dark, she couldn’t tell if he was lying.
“I do. All the time.” She studied his face for a reaction, but his expression remained maddeningly neutral. “Sometimes, when I’m down by the water, I can hear her. She’s reaching out to us. Can’t you feel it?”
A deep V formed between his eyebrows. “Don’t you think—”
“No. I don’t. Despite what you and Father think, I’m not insane.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she snapped. “And even if it’s not Mother, someone out there needs us. Needs me. And if, somehow, helping them means she can come home…”
“So you spend every night here, avoiding your family, listening for something that may or may not exist, for…what? To shake hands with it? What if it…” William crossed the room and gripped Grace’s shoulders. “You have to understand how this sounds.”
She knew exactly how it sounded, but it didn’t matter. How was she supposed to explain to him what she’d felt in the few seconds of looking into the water and seeing the need between the waves? There was something out there, desperately clawing its way up from the depths. How was she supposed to ignore something like that?
“She wants something from me,” Grace said. “And if I give it to her, maybe it’ll bring Mother back.”
“She?” William raised an eyebrow.
Grace nodded.
“She who?”
“I don’t know.”
“And if you don’t give this something to her?” he asked sarcastically.
“I will.”
William shook his head. “Don’t do this to yourself, Grace. Please.”
“I’m going to find out what it is, and I’m going to give it to her.” Because if I don’t, Grace thought, she might just take it anyway.
***
William left her alone in the light room, but not before lecturing her on the duties of a wife and mother. She gently reminded him that he was unmarried and that his only frame of reference was a woman who’d abandoned her remaining children for reasons unknown, but like her father and her husband, he knew what was best by virtue of his gender. Grace aspired to be so confident in her ignorance.
Though her blond hair and wide-set eyes had come from her father, inside Grace was all her mother—curious, determined, and single-minded. She had seen something in the water, even if it wasn’t with her eyes. Could a person see with their soul? Hear with their heart? She believed so. To pass the time, she counted the rotations of the light as it passed over the ocean, but her eyelids had begun to droop under the weight of the scotch, and in that place between sleep and awake, Grace started to doubt herself. There was so much she didn’t understand; she’d been a child when her mother disappeared. Yet…the nightmares never changed. Didn’t that mean there was something to them? Had she seen her mother out there that night? Even sober she couldn’t remember any more than those few minutes. She didn’t remember what happened after—if they’d had the honey cake the next morning, how long it took to realize Marina and Liza were gone. She used to think she’d find the answers in the bottom of a bottle. She never had, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try.
No, she thought, setting down her glass. There is something. There has to be.
She revisited that night in her mind. There had been something different about it. But what?
The light passed over her, and as it passed, the shadows closed in at the corners of the light room. She looked across to the water, where the waves were as inky black as the sky, and with a shock, she realized: that night, the light had been off. How many stories had she read warning against the darkness? Even as an adult, she believed there was something different about the night. There were things that lived in the dark that didn’t in the light.
Which meant, if she turned off the light now, maybe…
She frantically went over the mechanism controls until the light died under a soft hum. The floor vibrated with the force of the gears slowing until finally there was silence, the darkness so dense she could barely see her hand in front of her face. Guiding herself by the rail surrounding the lens, she went to the glass door that led to the catwalk. Outside, a warm breeze whipped her hair from its pins and tangled her skirts in the railing. Languid shadows rippled over the water, bleeding onto the beach. She leaned over the side of the narrow rail. It was a long way down.
Still, she leaned farther, as far as she dared before self-preservation ripped her back. They’re louder in the dark, she thought, straining to see through the blackness to the water. As her eyes struggled to adjust, the wind picked up, making them water. Further blinded, she groped along the rail, trying to find her way back to the light. Though part of her wanted to wait a little longer, to try to see what she saw that night, a deeper, animal part fought to get to the light. Danger, her body warned. Turn on the light.
Movement in the corner of her eye made her stop. She turned, misstepped, and nearly went over the side. She cried out, but the sound of the waves swallowed her voice. As she righted herself, she looked down to the beach, where she swore she saw a woman walking toward the water, pale yellow nightgown all but glowing in the darkness.
Mother?
She ran from the light room and down the winding stairs, rolling her ankle on the bottom step. Pain sliced up her leg, but she kept moving. Tears burned her eyes as she navigated the steep stone steps from the lighthouse to the trail that would lead to the bottom of the bluff and, finally, the beach. Her shoes sank into the damp sand, so she kicked them off. She limped toward the shoreline where the woman had paused. Grace slowed, not wanting to scare her.
Moonlight brushed the edges of the woman’s body, making her more shadow than person. Her hair was wet and oil black, and the yellow of her nightgown had faded. Her shoulders were narrow and dipped inward, her toes buried in the sand. An arm’s length away, Grace reached out, but the woman—no, girl—bolted for the water. It was like the water parted for her as she waded smoothly through the waves. Her skin and hair seemed to spread like ink under the foam. Waist deep, she glanced over her shoulder, but her face was hidden in shadow.
Still, Grace heard, felt, what had pulled her to the window that night. “I’m here,” she said.
Grace took her hand, but it was too soft, the bones shifting under her touch, and a rancid stench wafted up from the foam. Soon all she heard was the rush of the water, muffled, like hands clamped over her ears. She wobbled on her feet as the girl gently guided her toward the water. I don’t want to go in, she thought, but it was far away. A whisper of a consciousness that didn’t quite catch.
The girl’s features were distorted, her neck just a little too long and her eyes a little too wide. Too dark. Too empty. But Grace couldn’t look away. A voice in the back of her mind screamed through the fog, too strangled to hear.
I know you, she thought.
The girl’s hand twitched as though she’d heard it, tightening her grip as they reached the water’s edge.
Up to her ankles now. Her knees. Even as her heart pounded and the muscles in her body stretched tight to snap, it only took a gentle pull from the girl to make her walk deeper into the water.
Blood felt stilled in Grace’s veins and she trembled, cold seeping through her skin. She clenched her jaw as a wave broke over her shoulders. Spray went up her nose and covered her mouth, and she tried to pull away, but a voice in her ear soothed and coddled, and soon she was floating, floating down, and she opened her mouth to breathe in—
But another voice broke through. “Grace!”
There were hands on her shoulders and tangled in her hair. Her face broke the surface and she gagged.
And when she got her feet under her, she looked into William’s face, which was stone pale.
“What were you thinking?” he asked. “How could you?”
“Look!” Grace demanded. “She’s there. I told you.”
But when she turned, the girl was gone and the water was still.
William helped her onto the shore, peppering her with questions she couldn’t answer. She leaned into him, her legs weak and trembling.
“Cold,” she finally said—the only word she could make her mouth form, her mind still mostly clouded.
Sighing, William helped her wrap her arm around his neck and leaned to the side, holding most of her weight. “There’s a fire going. Let’s get you inside.”
In the house, Grace shakily stripped out of her wet clothes, and something fell out of the pocket. A shell. Furtively making sure no one could see her, she put it up to her ear, and though she only heard the ocean, she knew the girl was there too. Whispering. Waiting.
***
A week passed before William and her husband left Grace alone with the children. Her son, Charlie, kept mostly to himself, but Beth followed Grace from room to room, quietly watching. She wondered if Beth heard the whispering at night the way Grace did. She kept the shell in her pocket, jabbing the sharp edges with her finger every so often to remind herself that it was real—what she’d seen had been real.
The nightmares grew stronger. More vivid. When she closed her eyes and saw her mother on the beach, her hands and nightgown were streaked with blood. And every time she opened her eyes in the middle of the night, she somehow felt the girl staring into the window.
Soon, she stopped sleeping altogether. Her husband had given up trying to hide the whiskey, calling it an unladylike drink, but even several glasses of the stuff couldn’t lull her to sleep.
Bleary and numb, she stood by the window and stared up at the lighthouse, watching the hypnotic turn of the light.
It’s too bright.
A thought too sharp to be her own.
She blinked and opened her eyes to complete darkness.
“Mom?” Beth’s voice came from somewhere behind her, the girl likely startled out of her bed. “What happened?”
“The light keeps her away,” Grace said.
“Keeps who away?”
As the sounds of her husband’s breath and her daughter’s voice faded beneath the crash of the water, she fought to keep above the fog closing around her mind. It was too hot in here, too stifling. The air was thick. She was drowning. She struggled to open the window latch with numb fingers, and when it finally flew open, she sucked in a deep breath of dead air.
“She needs me,” she said, words slurring with her too-heavy tongue.
Beth whimpered. “Mom? What’s happening? Who’s out there?”
She spotted the girl in the darkness, waves splashing over her feet. She held her arms out, and Grace copied the gesture.
Too far.
She leaned gently out the window, arms stretched wide. An unfamiliar ache seeped through her. A need she couldn’t name.
She had to get to the water. The yearning pulsed through her, hot and sharp.
Get to the water, she thought. Get to the water and the pain will stop.
She hooked one leg over the side of the window ledge.
Somewhere far away, Beth called out for her.
Deep inside the fog, Grace called back.
As she fell, she saw the girl’s face. Really saw it.
And she knew.