The Ghosts of Heaven (19 page)

I ignored that last remark. Or I should say, I tried to, because I was, by then, already wondering what he knew of me.

“What then is it, about the spiral, that terrifies you so, so much that you are reduced to a screaming heap at the mere suggestion you walk up one?”

Dexter did not answer me directly.

“What is your desire for life, Doctor?”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“What do you want from life? What are you trying to do with your life?”

What do I want?
I thought. I cannot have what I want. That chance has gone. I decided to limit the question to that of my work.

“I want to help people, and I want to improve myself so that I can help people better.”

“Noble,” Dexter said, and there was no suggestion of sarcasm in his whisper, but, rather, a hint of admiration that brought tears to my eyes.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I have spent my life trying to fill my mind. I have spent it trying to fill the thing, and yet the more I learn, the more I realize still remains to be understood. I wrote my poetry to explore the world, and in doing so I find I have been nothing more than an ant, standing at the shores of the Atlantic, wondering what lies on the other side. But at least I know there
is
another side.

“So I have tried to open my mind further, and to fill it further, and yet the process appears to be an infinite one, on and on, forever.”

He fell silent. I thought about what he said, but could find no connection to spirals. Then I felt stupid for trying to make, as he put it, a simple cause and effect where he had told me there was none.

“Have you ever been locked in the dark, Doctor?” he asked me.

“No.”

“You should try it sometime. It is remarkable. After a period of time in total darkness, you begin to see things. I am not talking about hallucinations. Your eye starts to show you certain lights and shapes. These are called ‘entoptic phenomena.' I read about them in von Helmholtz's recent book. You read German? I would lend you the book, were it not for the fact…”

He trailed off and glanced at the shelf above his head. Only now, in the gloom, did I see that all his books were gone. Every single one.

“Doctor Phillips took them away.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because of what happened today.”

“That's terrible,” I said.

Dexter hung his head, and I didn't know what more to say. The empty shelves gaped at me, like a wound, somehow. No, like a crime, but more than a theft, like a murder. Phillips was trying to kill Dexter. That was the mad and angry thought that came to me as I saw the bare wooden shelf hanging above Dexter's bowed head.

“It's not so bad,” Dexter said softly. He looked up. “I am not reading at the moment. At the moment, I am writing my book. Hopefully Doctor Phillips will relent by the time I wish to start reading again, and return my books to me.”

I could not speak. All I could manage was a brief nod of my head.

If Dexter noticed my doubt, he made a firm job of hiding it.

“Anyway,” he said, “according to von Helmholtz's book, it seems that, denied of any visual stimulus, the eye starts to fire off all by itself, seeing ghosts if you like, and the lights that are seen fall into a few groups. There are lines, and there are groups of dots. There are zigzags. And there are spirals.”

“Spirals,” I echoed, watching Dexter's hollow face as he spoke in the weak light of the bulb on his desk.

“Did you know that these few shapes are the first shapes that humans ever made? In caves all across the world, at times so distant from us it can barely be imagined, the first men scrawled these shapes onto the rock, in charcoal and ochre, and by some miracle, we can still see them today.

“These marks were made across the world, by different primitive peoples, from Africa to Asia to the Americas and to Europe. Different peoples, separated by thousands of miles. These shapes are inherent in us. Universal. Do you see, Doctor?

“From these marks, comes all art, but also, writing must have come from these marks too. Eventually. Everything has come from these dark caves, from these innermost depths of the mind. Of the mind of the Earth, if you see what I mean.”

I didn't. At least, I was starting not to follow Dexter's thoughts, and I was overwhelmed by the feeling of conversing with someone immeasurably more intelligent than I am, of someone who was struggling to keep his words at a level I could understand.

“But why do these marks, these particular marks, the spirals, why do they frighten you?”

“It can be a frightening thing to free your mind as I have done, Doctor. But when you have…”

“What? What have you done?”

“It is not a question of what I have
done
. It is a question of what I have
seen
.”

“And what is that?”

And now Dexter took no trouble in ignoring my questions and taking things where he wanted them to go.

“Your wife is in the sea,” he said.

I said nothing. I stared at him in horror, as down the hall the sounds of the asylum at night washed into me.

“Isn't she?”

Then, I understood.

Suppressing anger, I declared, “Verity told you that, I assume?”

“Verity!” he said. “She is something to be proud of, isn't she? So intelligent! So pretty.”

“Answer my question, if you please,” I said.

“No,” he said. “She did not tell me.”

“Then, how do you know? You read about it perhaps. In the papers. You have a remarkably good memory, perhaps you put two and two together.”

“Perhaps,” said Dexter, in the most infuriating way. “Perhaps I did. Perhaps the sea told me.”

“The sea told you?” I asked, strangely happier that we were talking about matters of Dexter's delusions again, and not Caroline.

“Do you know why they built this asylum here?” said Dexter, throwing me again.

“Tell me.”

“We are surrounded by water here. But for that spit of land to the west, we are an island. The sea surges all around us, the tides sucking and gnawing at our pebbles. And what powers the tides? The moon. The moon, and what powers us madmen? Us lunatics? The word itself tells you all you need to know.”

“There has never been proven any link between the phase of the moon and the behavior of the deranged mind. It is no more than common folklore, an old wives' tale.”

“You think so?” said Dexter. “Nevertheless, here we are in this insane asylum, with the sea all around, and everyone and everything controlled by the pull of the moon. And down in that sea, Doctor, are dead things. Your wife is among them, but she is not the most powerful, or the oldest. These things are angry, they are vicious, and they want revenge upon us, the living. We should kill them, but they are dead, and that's the trouble. Killing the dead is very hard to do.”

Now I was certainly very intrigued. I pressed Dexter for more.

“What are these things?” I asked.

“You would cry yourself to sleep every night if you knew,” he said. “I daren't tell you. Did you not read about what that oyster dredger pulled out of the sound some years ago? No? It caused something of a stir around here. But maybe such fanciful talk never made it to the great and enlightened city.”

“You're playing games with me now,” I said. “You don't know what you're talking about and instead you want to scare me.”

But what scared me more was how Dexter then replied.

“No,” he said, and I could tell again he was being sincere. “I truly don't.

“If you want to know more, you could read my poems. It's all in there. There's a poem I wrote. It's called
Poquatuck
. You need read no more than that. In fact, you may like to know that the poem was the inspiration for the novel I'm writing. Once I had the poem done I knew there was more to say. Much more.”

I made a note of the title in my head.

“She is down there,” Dexter said.

“Stop saying that,” I said.

“She is down there. And she wants you. Or rather, she wants to destroy you now. Because you have wronged her.”

“I have?” I asked, growing angry, and despite the fact I knew I was being foolish, I could not stop myself. “What have I done?”

“You have offended her. You replaced her. You replaced her in your affections with the girl.”

“The girl?” I asked, my lip trembling. “What girl?”

“Verity, of course! You know perfectly well what girl…”

“How dare you?” I said, and I shouted, too loud. I heard the sound of keys turning in the lock at the end of the hall. I needed to leave his cell immediately or I would either be found, or have to spend the rest of the night there, and I no longer wished that to be the case.

“How dare you insult my daughter?” I said, as I slipped out of the door, and as I went, and closed it behind me, I heard Dexter say softly five more words that cut me through and through.

“But she isn't, is she?”

 

Saturday, April 2

I have not had time to write for the space of a couple of days, nor have I seen Dexter since our midnight interview. There was much to be done yesterday in the women's wards, and today I found Verity in such better spirits now that her school week is done, that I decided to make good on a promise to her to take her to the movies.

We rode back up the coast a way, where there is a modest but very fine movie theater that stands on the seafront. I was buying two tickets at the box office when I saw Verity reading something on the wall. I joined her and saw a neat iron plaque on which were the following words:

I
N
M
EMORIAM

T
HIS
PLAQUE
REMEMBERS
THE
20
LIVES
LOST
DURING
THE
HURRICANE
OF
1922
DURING
WHICH
THE OLD THEATER WAS SWEPT TWO MILES OUT TO SEA.
T
HE BODIES OF THE AUDIENCE OF
19
AND THE PROJECTIONIST WERE NEVER FOUND, NOR ANY TRACE OF THE OLD BUILDING.
T
HE CURRENT THEATER WAS BUILT IN
1924.

“The whole place went out to sea?” asked Verity, openmouthed. Then she looked at the tickets in my hand.

“It's hard to believe,” I said, “but I bet this new place is as strong as an ox.”

We went inside.

“I wonder what they were watching,” Verity said.

“What?”

“I wonder what picture they were showing when they went out to sea.”

“Verity—” I began. I stopped myself. There were things I would rather not think about and it was easier not to say anything than to approach them.

“What, Father?”

“Nothing.”

*   *   *

We saw the movie, which was a very funny picture with Harold Lloyd called
The Kid Brother
. When it was over, I counted my pennies, and bought Verity an ice cream, even though it was a cold enough day to make me long for a hot cup of coffee. Then we rode home, and I decided I had to ask Verity.

It had been playing on my mind since I closed Dexter's door, and I needed to know.

“Verity,” I said.

She didn't look away from the view outside the train window.

“What?”

“You remember that man you spoke to? On our first day here?”

“You mean Charles?”

“Yes,” I said. “Charles. Do you remember what you spoke about?”

“I guess so,” she said. “Mostly.”

I thought what to say next.

“Did you talk about us?”

“Us? You mean, you and me?”

“Yes. You and me. And maybe Caroline.”

Verity looked at me then.

“I didn't talk about her,” she said.

“Did he? Charles? Mr. Dexter, that is. Did he talk about Caroline?”

“No.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

I waited again. I could tell Verity was upset, though she didn't know what she'd done wrong. I suppose this is one of those things that is just deeply engrained in her.

“Did he talk about us, though? You and me?”

“No, Father.”

“Verity, you know you mustn't lie.”

She started to cry. But I couldn't stop myself.

“I'm not lying,” she said.

“You must be lying,” I said.

“I'm not! I'm not.”

“Then how does he know?” I shouted.

I saw some fellow passengers look at us, and I dropped my voice.

“How does he know?”

“How does he know
what
?” Verity asked.

“Don't be smart with me,” I said angrily. “You know what I'm talking about.”

“I don't. I don't.”

Verity was crying loudly now, but still I couldn't stop.

“How does he know I adopted you, of course! What else? No one here knows that. You were supposed never to tell anyone.”

“I didn't,” she wailed. “I didn't say. I'm not lying. You told me never to lie and I'm not lying!”

Then she just began to bawl so much that I realized what I had done. I tried to calm her down and told her I was sorry for shouting and yet nothing I said seemed to help. Gradually, she calmed herself, but we rode the rest of the way to Greenport in a bitter silence.

 

Saturday, April 2—later

I could feel Verity sulking with me for the rest of the day, and I don't blame her. The only other thing she said all day was to ask me what
In Memoriam
means.

“It means ‘in memory of,'” I said. “It's Latin. We use it when we want to remember someone.”

“Someone who's died?”

“Yes,” I said. “That's right.”