The Fate of Mercy Alban Read online

  When I was in school, Coleville’s work was part of the English class curriculum. The fact that he committed suicide at my home always came up, with the other students and even the professors looking to me for additional insight into what was generally believed to be a tragedy for modern literature. But I had no insight to give.

  I had asked my parents about it when I was younger but was always rebuffed in the sternest of tones. My brothers and I whispered about it—did the writer kill Aunt Fate and then kill himself? Did she run off when she found his body? We, and all of history, knew what had happened to Coleville, but nobody knew what had happened to my aunt. It was as though the family closed ranks around that night in a secret agreement to keep silent about whatever had gone on.

  That’s why Jane’s revelation that my mother had intended to talk to a journalist about it the day she died was so stunning to me.

  “What were you going to say to him, Mom?” I whispered into the air.

  And then I took a quick breath in as an icy thread crept its way through my veins. My mother died the very day she was planning to talk about something the family had kept hidden for decades. I shook my head, trying to shake off the thoughts that were taking hold. Were the two connected somehow? It just couldn’t be. Could it?

  I tried to reason it out. What possible relevance could a decades-old tragedy have today? I hadn’t even thought about Coleville’s suicide and my aunt’s disappearance for many years. Decades. By the time I was an adult and had a family of my own, it had simply become part of the past, and not even my direct past. It was just one more scandalous tragedy at Alban House, and frankly, after my brothers’ deaths, I didn’t even care about it anymore. Theirs was the Alban House tragedy that haunted me, not something that had happened before I was even born.

  But now, as I sat cross-legged on the floor of my mother’s closet, I let my mind drift back to what I knew about that night: He was found in the main garden in front of the house during a summer solstice party, the same night my aunt Fate disappeared. That was the standard family line about the incident. But it certainly didn’t say much, did it?

  There would have been a police investigation into the suicide as well as into my aunt’s disappearance. I can’t believe my grandparents wouldn’t have launched a massive search for her, paid anything, done anything to find their daughter. I know I would have. Did they? I didn’t know.

  I looked at the letters spread out before me, hoping that I could find some answers within them. The first letter was dated September 1955 and referenced my mother’s and Coleville’s recent time together at Alban House. That told me Coleville visited here the summer before his suicide. That’s when he and my mother must have met.

  I began reading the other letters, one by one. No major bombshells there—they were newsy, romantic letters from a man obviously besotted with my mother. He wrote about his lectures at the university and some of his more outrageous students. He mentioned my father often, outlining in detail their exploits during my father’s last year of college. And he wrote of blossoming love, starlit walks along the shoreline, quiet afternoons in the garden. The letters were funny, tender, literate. The more I read, the more I came to know this man who loved my mother, and I began to feel a crushing sadness at the knowledge of what became of him, that he took his life right here in this house.

  What drove him to do it? From these letters, written during the year before his death, it was clear to me that he wasn’t suffering from the kind of depression that plagued so many writers and artists. There was no angst in his words, only hope, humor, and love.

  I wondered, did my mother spurn him? She had married my father very soon after that summer. Did Coleville choose to die because she chose my dad?

  I didn’t have the benefit of reading her letters to him, but from what he wrote to her (“I miss you, too, darling,” and “I read your wonderful letter over and over again, marveling at the fact that someone like you could love me”), it was pretty clear to me that she did indeed love him. So what happened? How did it all go so wrong?

  I was nearly ready to pack up the letters when something in the last one, dated May 1956, caught my eye.

  I’m finally finished with my novel, and as we discussed on the phone last night, I’m sending a copy of the manuscript to you before I send it to my publisher. It’s going out today, parcel post, so please look for it to arrive in the next week or so.

  This didn’t sound right to me. He had written this letter shortly before his death. I had studied his work in college and I knew there was talk he was working on a book, but I was sure he didn’t have one published before or after he died. I read on.

  I really do want your opinion on it. I haven’t told you too much about it because I wanted to see if I truly could finish it before eliciting your thoughts. A novel is quite a different animal from a magazine article, I’ve found! But it’s important that you, of all people, read it before it goes to press.

  You know that I began this work last summer at Alban House and that I’ve been secretive about it, but I’ll (finally!) reveal to you now that it’s about a rich and powerful family, told through the eyes of a young visitor who stays with the family for the summer and falls in love with a beautiful girl he meets there. A thinly veiled version of the events of last summer, I’ll admit it. I changed the names, of course—the Albans have become the Brennans, Johnny is now Flynn, I am Michael, and you, my dear, are Lily.

  Why did I choose this subject? Aside from the built-in conflicts and characters involved in a story about a rather poor and common fellow (myself!) suddenly immersed in the world of a wealthy and powerful family, and the love story we lived, which would have been story enough, it was the rather strange experiences I had, and the supposed “Alban curse,” that really drew me in. The novel is an old-fashioned ghost story, my dear, reminiscent of the works of du Maurier.

  I learned much talking with Johnny, his parents, Fate, and even the staff about the family’s history (did they forget they were talking to a writer?) and I’ve learned even more here at the university’s library. What the family didn’t tell me speaks volumes.

  What of this supposed curse? Here’s what I learned, in brief: John James (Senior) came to this country as an immigrant child when his family fled the Potato Famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s. His family was dirt poor, of course—they all were—but young J.J., as he was known, was a hardworking boy who started earning a living gathering coal that had fallen off trains in the rail yards. When he was still a young man, he bought what everyone thought was desolate land in the northern part of the state. Where he got the money for this is questionable; some sources say he won it in a poker game, others allege he killed a man for it. When iron ore was discovered on the land, he was a millionaire almost overnight and eventually became one of the richest men in the country.

  When it came time for J.J. to marry, he went home to Ireland to find a bride, wanting to show everyone there what a success he had made with his life. He also wanted to build a fitting house for his bride, and while they were in Ireland he decided to import some materials from his homeland to build his castle in his new land.

  We know the patio table at Alban House is an ancient Celtic relic, but maybe you didn’t know that much of the wood in the house—the paneling, the floors, the beams on the ceiling in the drawing room—comes from an old-growth forest in the heart of Ireland, near where the Alban family lived way back when. J.J. had played there as a child. He paid off whomever was necessary, and much of that forest was cut down and the lumber sent to Minnesota to build Alban House.

  Here’s where the tale veers into the otherworldly. You know how the Celtic people love their folktales of magic, witchcraft, and fairies. As the story goes, that forest was a witch’s wood. She had been imprisoned in an old oak hundreds of years earlier by a rival. And when Alban felled the trees and brought them to this country, he got her spirit in the bargain. Legend has it that her spirit has been bedeviling the Alban family ever
since. Of course, that’s all foolish nonsense, but that’s the way the story goes in Ireland. They do love their tall tales.

  Curse or not, Fate was right in what she said that first evening in the drawing room—accidents, death, scandal, and even murder have taken place in the house over the years. J.J.’s son, John Jr. (Johnny’s father), reportedly grew the family’s fortune exponentially during the Prohibition era running liquor over the border from Canada—it was a nasty, cutthroat business, and he was the kingpin in the area, from what I have found. We both know the man well—he’s so affable!—but I shudder to think about what he is capable of. The blood of many stains his hands.

  Anyway, that’s the story in a nutshell. As I said, it’s a fictionalized version, but I’m going to rely on you, darling, to tell me if I’ve skimmed too closely to the truth. The last thing I want to do is offend Johnny and his family, all of whom have been so good to me.

  I’ll see you next week, darling!

  All my love,

  David

  So he finished the manuscript after all? That didn’t jibe with what I knew of history. I opened my mother’s laptop computer and typed “David Coleville” into the search field and watched hundreds of hits come up.

  I clicked on an encyclopedia page to read a quick biography of the man and saw what I already knew—war correspondent, multiple Pulitzer Prizes, a lecture series at Harvard, an impending first novel that had the literary world abuzz, career cut short by suicide.

  According to his letter, he had indeed finished his “impending first novel,” and it was a ghost story about my family, no less. But it never saw the light of day. Why?

  I gathered up the letters and slipped them back into their satchel, wondering where Coleville had unearthed that otherworldly tale about the witch’s wood. I knew about the supposed Alban curse, of course, but I had certainly never heard this witch business before. The thought of it crept inside me like the chill on a foggy autumn morning as I gazed around the room at the wood paneling on the walls. I tried to shake it off, but it kept nagging at me. I had to admit it to myself—there was something about this house. I’d always felt it. It was as though Alban House had a presence of its own that wrapped itself around us, my mother most of all.

  But that was just nonsense. This was my home, not some chamber of horrors. I stood up and stretched, intending to put the satchel of letters back where I had found it. Then I thought better of it. Those letters contained information that the entire literary world would be stunned to learn. I wanted to keep it to myself, at least for now.

  I hurried to my room and slipped the letters into a zipped compartment in my suitcase, remembering that I had told Amity I’d meet her on the lakeshore. I peered out my window and saw her there, talking to a young man. Jane had said they’d hired a couple of kids to help on the grounds this summer; he was one of them, no doubt. I’d just go and make sure this kid knew Amity had a mother who was close by and watching.

  About halfway down the stairs, I stopped. My mother had kept Coleville’s letters for fifty years; might she have kept the manuscript, too? A chill shot through me again when I thought of what the lost manuscript of David Coleville might be worth today. I wondered where it might be. I turned my head and looked back up toward the second floor—in her study? in the wall safe?—but then I shook the thought out of my mind. I had a funeral to plan, arrangements to make. I’d deal with the manuscript, if it even existed, when all of that was finished.

  CHAPTER 7

  After dinner on the patio and a movie with Amity, I turned in early, exhausted by everything I had learned that day. During dinner, the coroner had called with the autopsy results. My mother died of a massive heart attack. There would be no further police investigation, and we could go ahead with the business of laying her to rest.

  So that was all there was to it, then. The day she died, she was probably feeling tired from her walk and simply laid down to rest on the bench by the fountain and passed away right there. It was nothing sinister, nothing untoward. No Alban family curse was to blame. I chuckled lightly at the thought of it. How ridiculous.

  As to why the boys didn’t see her on that bench in the garden when they were searching for her—I had no explanation for that. I punched my pillow and turned onto my side.

  When I did finally drift off to sleep, I dreamed strange, convoluted dreams. My brothers and my mother surrounded me, trying to speak but not able to get the words out, trying to reach me but not able to get past an invisible barrier. Jake and Jimmy were knocking on what seemed to be a plate of glass separating us, and the sound of it—bang, bang, bang—startled me awake. I sat up fast and looked around my room. Was it real knocking I heard?

  And then I saw it, a dark figure standing at the foot of my bed. I rubbed my eyes and gasped aloud when I realized who it was.

  “Dad?” I said, my voice a harsh whisper.

  He was dressed in the same khaki shorts and striped polo shirt he had worn into the lake when he took his own life that horrible day after the boys died, and was drenched from head to foot, water streaming off his blond hair, down his shirt, and puddling onto the floor, covering his Top-Siders until he was ankle deep in dark, angry water.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words, he put forth a spray of water filled with tiny, glistening fish. He coughed and choked until they all fell to the floor in a heap. That’s when I noticed his entire body was alive with the silvery swimmers, wriggling through his hair, nestling behind his ears, poking their noses from beneath his shirt, spilling out of his pockets.

  I was frozen in terror, staring at this impossible figure standing before me.

  “Listen to me, Grace, I don’t have much time,” my father’s ghost said, his voice watery and thick and distorted as though he were speaking from under the surface of the lake. “She’s here, Grace. She killed your mother and she’s coming for you.”

  “Who, Dad?” I croaked out. “Who’s here?”

  “I didn’t think she could hurt us anymore, but she can,” he went on, talking over my question as though he hadn’t even heard me. “It’s all true. Be on your guard, Grace.”

  “But, Dad!” I cried. “Who? I don’t know—”

  “I have to go now,” he said, looking over his shoulder with a shudder. “This isn’t allowed. Especially not for the likes of me. I broke the rules to get to you, to warn you.”

  And then he smiled, releasing another torrent of tiny fish from his mouth. “One last thing, Gracie-bird. You’re the best daughter a man could ever have. I love you, sweetheart, and always did. I’m sorry for what happened, for what I said. I wasn’t in my right mind, you must know that. You look after that beautiful girl of yours, now, and tell her about me. Remember that sailing trip we all took to Madeline Island? Tell her about that. Pity I never got to know her. It’s one of the many crosses I bear, over here.”

  And then he was gone, dissolving into a million shimmering water droplets and splashing to the ground.

  I opened my eyes with a start. What had just happened? I sat up and leaned back against the headboard. My dad had been there, and then … what? Had I fallen asleep? That didn’t seem possible. I didn’t remember closing my eyes or laying back down. Had it all been a dream?

  “Mom!”

  It was Amity’s voice, coming from her room next door.

  “Mom!”

  I flew out of bed and down the hall, throwing her door open so hard it thudded on the opposite wall. I found my daughter huddled in her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. I was at her side in an instant.

  “What is it, honey?” I said, stroking her hair.

  “I had a really bad dream,” she said, and I could feel her limbs shivering with the force of it.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” I whispered. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “It was a man,” she said, looking back and forth in her room as though she was scanning for an intruder. “It was so strange, Mom, but he was all wet. Dripping wet. He was jus
t standing at the foot of my bed, looking at me. Smiling.”

  My nerves were already on fire, and at this, they went ice cold.

  “It was only a dream,” I said to her, not quite believing it myself. “First night in this house. Different surroundings. I had weird dreams, too.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded. “Do you want to come sleep with me?”

  Amity took a deep breath and leaned back. “I don’t think so,” she said, settling down under the covers and yawning deeply, the way she used to when she was a baby. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “It was only a dream.” She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “Will you stay with me for a while?”

  “Sure.” I smiled and continued to stroke her hair. I sat with her until her deep, rhythmic breathing told me she was asleep and then tiptoed out of her room and back down the hallway toward mine, my heart beating hard and fast as I did. What had just happened here? Did my daughter and I both dream the same dream, or … I didn’t want to think about it.

  I crossed the room to the window and looked out into the night. Nothing odd there. Just the garden and the lake beyond, glistening with moonlight across its surface.

  Before crawling back into bed, I made it a point to check for water on the floor where my father had been standing. Nothing. Dry as a bone. It had been a dream, then.

  Lying there, I listened to the sounds of the night—steam hissing in the radiators that had come to life because of the chill, wind rustling in the trees outside, the clock ticking on my desk. As I breathed in and out trying to calm myself back into sleep, it almost seemed as though the house itself—the very walls—were breathing in time with me.

  I remembered feeling comforted by these sounds long ago, and I settled back down and listened. “Shh,” the house seemed to be saying.