The Night Mark(30)

It wasn’t what Faye had expected. First of all, she was wet. She knew babies were born wet and covered in blood, but she never imagined death would feel like being dropped into a carnival dunking booth. Also, death felt very alive to her. Alive and corporeal. She wiggled her fingers, her toes. She filled her lungs with cool night air and exhaled. Clearly she did have a body in this afterlife, whatever it was, even if it didn’t quite fit her the way she remembered her body fitting.

Maybe she wasn’t dead after all.

When she at last dared to open her eyes she saw that strange white light again. In all the stories about dying she’d heard or read, there was a white light, but it was outside a window. She hadn’t heard about the window in the near-death experiences stories. A tunnel, yes, but no windows. And there was a bed, definitely, and she lay on it. The bed sat by a wall across from the window. Through the window—open and without a screen—Faye could see the light flashing from the top of the lighthouse. It blinked out, then flashed on, blinked out, flashed on. She counted the seconds between darkness and light.

Darkness.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Light.

So Faye was not dead. At least she was fairly sure she wasn’t. Was she dreaming? If so, she would wake up eventually. But if this was a dream, it seemed an unusually vivid one. Still it was the best explanation she had for why she could see and hear and smell and touch and feel. She could feel her heart running wild in her chest. She could feel the clinging of her wet hair to her cool skin. At some point while walking on the Bride Island beach she must have lain down to rest and fallen asleep. She’d dreamed she drowned in the ocean, and now she was dreaming she’d woken up in someone’s house next to the lighthouse. Lucid dreaming? She tried to will herself to levitate off the bed. If she was dreaming she could fly. She’d done that a time or two in dreams past. But she remained on the bed, feeling alive and awake and earthbound. Faye turned her attention back to the light. Again it flashed and winked out of existence. Seven seconds later it flashed back into life. She kept staring at it, hoping it would reveal itself to be a helicopter searching for her or the reflection from the spotlight off a coast guard cutter. But she didn’t hear the blades of a helicopter beating the air or the sound of a ship passing close by. She heard the ocean only and her own breathing.

In the darkness she heard a small sound. A flick and a sizzle, the distinct sound of a match being struck and flaring into life. A glowing flame no bigger than a moth fluttered into existence, and she watched as it moved to a wick and became a brighter light. A glass shade was brought down over the flame, the wick adjusted with a small knob.

“A hurricane lamp,” she said, and her voice sounded off to her. Not off-key, merely off. It was her voice, only throatier, as if she’d been ill or screaming for hours at a concert. “I haven’t seen one of those in years. My great-grandmother had one in her house in Portsmouth...”

The light illuminated a man’s torso. His shirt was open, and she saw a broad chest and a hard, bare stomach dusted with a line of dark hair that disappeared into a loose-fitting pair of brown trousers. Faye blinked, confused but not displeased by the path this dream was taking. She followed the progress of the light as it floated across the room to where she lay on the bed. It wasn’t her bed at the Church Street house or the bed she’d slept in with Hagen during their marriage. This was an old-fashioned cannonball bed, a full size if that, covered in a crazy patchwork quilt of every pattern and color known to man.

“Where am I?”

“Did you hit your head when you fell off the dock? You’re home, love.”

Faye recognized the voice. Of course she did. She would have known that voice across the sea or in a storm, in heaven or in hell or wherever she was... She knew that voice.

At once she sat up in bed and reached out, gripping and grabbing and grasping at the source of the voice. Yes, she was dreaming, of course she was, but she didn’t care. If she could have Will alive again in her dreams, she would sleep forever. Waking be damned.

The bed shifted as he sat at her side, and Faye threw her arms around him. She couldn’t get enough of him.

“Tighter,” she said as his arms encircled her and pulled her hard against him.

“You’re all right, lass. You’re all right. You were on the dock and a nasty, big wave got you. But I got you back. I got you back, sweet girl. You’re safe now. You’re fine.”

“I’m not,” she said, gasping and wheezing in her shock and relief. “I thought you were dead. You were dead for so long.”

“Bad dream. That’s all.” He cupped the back of her head, rocked her against him like a child. “I’m here and so are you. But you have to stay off the end of the pier. You know the water gets choppy there.”

“I’ll stop,” she promised, not knowing what she was promising but willing to promise him the sun and the moon and every beat of her heart as long as he didn’t let her go. His lips brushed her forehead, and his chin stubble scratched her cheek. It was Will, and he was alive and real. She would have known that voice and those arms and that stubble and that kiss anywhere in any time and for all time.

“I had to get you out of your wet clothes. I’m sorry,” he said, as if her own husband weren’t allowed to see her naked. The shirt she wore was white and heavy cotton, too large for her by far. One of his shirts? But she never remembered Will wearing a shirt this style.