Ahead of the Past

“Sir?” said a voice in the darkness. “Are you quite well, sir?”

Mark raised his head, and waited for it to stop spinning. He appeared to have fallen asleep against a wrought iron fence, and his skull was throbbing in protest. “Excellent well, thank you, sir, and God bless.”

A lantern was set down offensively close to Mark’s bleary eyes, and a pair of strong arms gripped Mark under the armpits and hoisted him to his feet. “Whew!” said the stranger. “I don’t know if the fragrance is yours, a feature of your ensemble, something you ate, or something you ate weeks ago, but you could turn a man to snuff, my friend.”

Mark snorted, steadying himself against the tall, iron fence. “You’re no Irish rose yourself, sir.”

“Too right. So, we’re in good company.” The lantern lifted, and Mark could see the stranger’s other hand grasping a familiar and welcome temptation. “And as such, we should drink to that.”

“Ah,” Mark accepted the comforting weight of the bottle. “A man after my own persuasion.”

“Didn’t need saying, sir, now it’s been said.” The stranger made sure he got his bottle back, which, Mark decided, was good judgment on his part. “What brings you out here at this time of night?”

The blackened sky was blanketed with cloud, conspiring with the mist rising off the harbor to deaden any sound, obscuring the far banks of the glassy river. Mark drank in the once-familiar landscape, the memory scarred, stabbed by a line of piercing iron bars. “Whose fence is this?”

“The federal navy,” said the stranger. “A poor choice of lodging, when the patrols come around. Let us tarry elsewhere.”

Following the lantern, Mark sifted through his fragmented and whiskey-soaked recollection for anything that made sense. “I began at the Ram’s Head, and my feet took a sojourn without me. I spent my youth here, years ago, when all of this used to be Hell Point.”

“Aye, sir, I know it,” said the kindly stranger. “How many years has it been?”

A single bitter laugh left Mark. “Too many, and many more.”

“More’s the pity.”

The liquor bottle was pressed into Mark’s hands, and it hooked and reeled his senses back through time. Hell Point had been a devilishly permissive place, an indulgent and cocksure spit of land jealously guarded by smugglers and pirates, gamblers and independently wealthy women who dressed for summer all year round. Mark remembered belching out drinking songs with a fistful of sticky cards, dancing or fighting or both until the morning sun distributed its vicious hangovers. He remembered, too, feeling young and invincible, and stupid enough to fall in with any exciting scheme full of promises to make him rich. Twenty years later, he was all out of promises.

“I’m sure our paths must have crossed before,” said the stranger. “Either at Hell Point or Eastport.”

“Oh, aye,” said Mark. “Stumbling home over the decks across Spar Creek. Did you ever play the horses on West Street?”

“Damnit, I did, too,” the stranger grinned. “A chestnut I favored threw a shoe right at the finish, punching through the stained-glass window at St. Anne’s.”

“I was there that day!” Mark gasped. “I bet on that same horse! Bryce’s Best Boy!’

“Bryce’s Best Boy,” the stranger nodded. “My, but it has been a long time, sir. Where have you been?”

The reminiscent smile slipped away from Mark’s face. “I…I had business inland.”

“Did ye, now?” the stranger mused. “How’s business?”

Mark shook his head. “I did what I had to do, now I’m back where I belong.”

The stranger cut through the mews, and Mark breathed in the garden fragrance, heady from the recent rain. Shy blossoms of slumbering morning glory and Lord Baltimore hibiscus were still some hours from unfurling in brazen splendor, only to fold and fade before the sun reached noon, collapsing in shame after such brief abandon. Without slowing his pace, Mark twisted a burgundy blossom from its stem, crushing the petals in his fist, so it would never bloom at all.

The stranger called over his shoulder. “Do you remember the Holben boys?”

An icy fist clutched tight to Mark’s chest. “Did you say something, sir?”

The lantern bobbed and bounced in the stranger’s hand. “The brothers, Mark and Matthew Holben. Had a house just up the road from the harbor.”

Mark took the bottle back. “What about them?”

“Oh, you must remember, sir,” the stranger said. “Those boys were tearing up Hell Point most every night. They inherited their house when they were still young, and brought all manner of unlucky characters home with them. Idle boys, causing all kinds of ruckus, and oh, how the neighbors complained! Must have found every bed-borne disease between them—”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

“Spending their fortune in a steaming gold stream,” the stranger went on. “One night, maybe twenty years ago, now, sir, the boys had a bally of a night, a real riot, sir, absolute mayhem. Well, it was one in a string of them, sir, and the good people of the neighborhood had had enough. They gather together, knock upon the Holben door, and it’s young Mark who answers it, all in a state. You know what I mean by a state, sir?”

Holding the bottle, Mark said, “I’m familiar with states.”

A snort of laughter from the stranger. “Well, sir, imagine the worst you’ve ever been, and this was how young Mark felt. The neighbors tell him that if there is one more disturbance, one more wild night, they will sue to have him and his brother removed from the house. Maybe they were bluffing, maybe they were no, but the Holben house is quiet after that.” The lantern rose a little higher, the circle of light spreading out a little wider over the misty night. “It was this house.”

The street was dark, not one light in any window, but Mark cast a hunted look through the flickering shadows, hunching down into the collar of his coat. The accusatory timber loomed over him, the glaring windows hungrily drinking in the last shreds of Mark’s anonymity. Although he desperately resisted, Mark was magnetically compelled to stare, with sickening dread, at the unholy door.

“That should have been the end of it,” said the familiar voice of the stranger. “The house was quiet. The boys stayed home. In fact, for a few days, nobody saw Matthew at all. And then, there was the smell.”

In a quiet voice, Mark said, “I don’t want to hear this.”

“The neighbors went to investigate,” the voice went on. “And Mark refused to let them in. So they came back with a magistrate and forced their way in. And down in the basement, covered in a sheet, was Matthew. Well.” The voice sputtered up a nasty laugh. “Most of him.”

Cold dread dripped and pooled along the length of Mark’s spine. Floating in a deep lake of waking nightmares, Mark turned to look at the taunting figure beside him. One hand was holding up the cruel, unblinking lantern. The other held Matthew’s grinning, severed head.

“Oh, God!” Mark dropped, scuttling away from the headless specter on his hands and knees. “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean it!”

“Ah, well, no harm done, then,” said the head, blackish blood staining its grinning teeth. “If you had meant to impale me, and intended to cut off my head—not quickly, by the by—before letting it plunge somewhere into Spar Creek, well, had you meant it, I might have taken offense. Now that I know it was one of those spontaneous murders—”

“It was a mistake!” Mark insisted. “I was drunk! I didn’t know what I was doing!”

“Shall I remind you?” the ghost of Matthew wanted to know. “They never found my head.”

Mark scrambled up onto his knees, hands clasped in pleading prayer. “I’m sorry! I thought I could take you out of the house piece by piece, but I just…it’s not as easy as all that. But I served my time; I spent the last twenty years in prison! Twenty years behind bars, for you!"

“I spent the last twenty years partially buried at sea,” growled the sour spirit. "A judge put you in prison; you did that to me."

“I can change!” Mark insisted. “I’ll never drink again, I’ll go to church, I’ll give to charity—”

“You’ve dramatically miscalculated my morals,” said the head. “If you were any kind of brother, you’d find my crab-bitten skull and put it with the rest of me.”

Mark leapt to his feet. “Of course! Please! Just spare me!”

The decapitated ghost used his arm to shake his head. "You will not be spared, brother mine."

Crouching slightly, Mark looked the head in the eye. "I was careless with your life. Please, be merciful with mine."

“Mark, it is too late,” his brother said. “You were dead when you hit the fence."