The Shape of Night(6)

I pull on jeans and a T-shirt and head downstairs to collect paper towels for the cleanup. Even through multiple layers of paper, the mouse corpses feel sickeningly squishy as I pick them up. Hannibal gives me a glare of what the hell are you doing with my gift? as I bundle up the mice, and he trails after me when I carry them downstairs and out the front door.

It is a glorious morning. The sun is shining, the air is crisp, and a nearby thicket of roses is in full bloom. I consider tossing the dead mice in a patch of shrubbery, but Hannibal lurks nearby, no doubt waiting to reclaim his prize, so I circle around to the back of the house, to toss them into the ocean instead.

    My first glimpse of the sea dazzles me. Blinking in the sunlight, I stand at the cliff’s edge and gaze down at waves rolling in, at glistening tendrils of seaweed clinging to the rocks far below. Gulls swoop overhead, and in the distance a lobster boat glides across the water. I am so mesmerized by the view I almost forget why I’ve come outside. I unwrap the dead mice and throw them over the cliff’s edge. They drop onto the rocks and are swept away by an outgoing wave.

Hannibal slinks off, no doubt to hunt for fresh game.

Curious about where he’ll go next, I leave the crumpled paper towels anchored under a rock and follow him. He looks like a cat on a mission as he prowls along the cliff’s edge, moving down a trail that’s little more than a pin-scratch through moss and scraggly grass. The soil is poor here, the ground mostly granite caked with lichen. Gradually it descends, toward a tiny crescent of a beach flanked by boulders. Hannibal continues to lead the way, his tail pointing to the sky like a furry standard, pausing only once to glance back and confirm I’m following him. I catch the scent of roses and spot a few hardy rugosa bushes, which are somehow thriving despite the wind and salt air, their blossoms a vivid pink against the granite. I scramble past them, scratching my bare ankles on the thorns, and drop from the rocks onto the beach. There is no sand here, just small pebbles that clatter back and forth in the lapping waves. At both sides of the little cove, tall boulders jut into the water, screening the beach from view.

It could be my own private hideaway.

Already, I’m planning a picnic. I’ll bring a blanket and a lunch and of course a bottle of wine. If the day heats up, maybe I’ll even brave a dip in that frigid water. With the sunshine warming my face and the scent of roses in the air, I feel calmer, happier than I have in months. Maybe this really is the place for me. Maybe this is exactly where I need to be, where I’ll be able to work. Where I will finally make peace with myself again.

    Suddenly I’m famished. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt this hungry, and over the past few months I’ve lost so much weight that what I used to call my skinny jeans now hang loose on my hips. I climb back up the path, thinking of scrambled eggs and toast and gallons of hot coffee with cream and sugar. My stomach growls and I can already taste the homemade blackberry jam I brought with me from Boston. Hannibal trots ahead of me, leading the way. Either he’s forgiven me for tossing away his mice, or he’s thinking of his breakfast, too.

I clamber up the cliff and follow the path toward the point. There, where the land juts out like a ship’s prow, the house stands alone. I imagine the doomed Captain Brodie gazing out to sea from the rooftop widow’s walk, keeping watch through fair weather and foul. Yes, this is exactly where a sea captain would choose to build his home, on that wind-lashed outcropping of…

I freeze, staring up at the widow’s walk. Did I imagine it, or did I just glimpse someone standing there? I see no one now. Perhaps it’s one of the carpenters, but Donna told me they worked only on weekdays, and today is Sunday.

I hurry along the path and around the house to the front porch, but I find no other vehicles parked in the driveway, only my Subaru. If it was one of the carpenters, how did he arrive at the house?

I thump up the steps into the house and call out: “Hello? I’m the new tenant!” No one answers. As I climb the stairs and head down the second-floor hallway, I listen for the sound of workmen in the turret, but I hear no hammering or sawing, not even the creak of footsteps. The door to the turret staircase gives a loud squeak as I open it to reveal a dark and narrow staircase.

“Hello?” I shout up the stairs. Again no one answers.

I have not yet been up to the turret. Peering up into the gloom, I spy faint cracks of light through the closed door at the top of the stairs. If someone is working up there, he’s strangely silent, and for a moment I consider the unsettling possibility that the intruder is not one of the carpenters. That someone else has slipped into the house through the unlocked front door and now lurks upstairs, waiting for me. But this isn’t Boston; this is a small Maine town where people leave their doors unlocked and the keys in their cars. Or so I’ve been told.

    The first step gives an ominous creak when I place my weight on it. I pause, listening. There is still no sound above.

Hannibal’s loud meow makes me jump. I glance back and see him at my heel, not looking the least bit alarmed. He slithers past me, trots up to the closed door at the top of the staircase, and waits for me in the gloom. My cat is braver than I am.

I tiptoe up the stairs, my pulse quickening with each step. By the time I reach the top, my hands are sweating and the doorknob feels slippery. Slowly I turn it and nudge the door open.

Sunlight floods my eyes.