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R EBECCA

With a love that even the winged seraphs of heaven coveted of her and me...

Annabel Lee

ANNABEL’S LIGHTHOUSE SPRING, 1874

SHE HAD CLEANED UP, her hair freshly washed—thanks to Abel for filling the bathtub in the oil room with hot water. Nothing had felt better than slipping into the bath and allowing the warmth to saturate her body, to take the cloth Niina had provided her with and wipe away the grime and dirt. The bar of soap Niina had given her was made of goat’s milk, a soft, moisturizing experience Rebecca believed she’d never had before. The scent of lavender permeated the room and overwhelmed the lingering smell of oil for the lamp.

Now clean, Rebecca slipped back into the dress Niina had provided, then braided her hair into one long plait down her back. She opened the door to the main area of the house and glanced around.

“The men are outside. Things to do after the shipwreck.” Niina’s voice startled Rebecca as it came from the corner of the sitting area.

“Are they hopeful they may still find survivors?” Rebecca padded across the faded carpet, her bare feet relishing its softness.

Niina’s knitting needles clicked away as she rocked. “No. They’ll clean up the beach of any wreckage that washes ashore. If any of the goods from the ship happen to make it to shore intact, they’ll have to notify the port in Ontonagon.” She glanced up at Rebecca and then back to her craft. “You need to rest now. Up all night and then having to listen to the men grouse about Hilliard and the mines. You must be exhausted.”

Rebecca eased onto a worn, blue velvet sofa, its cushions threadbare in spots. “I’ll be fine.”

The needles clicked more, and the silence felt as calming as the bath had. Rebecca was grateful Niina had not left the lighthouse. In fact, she seemed very at home here.

“Do you come here often?” Rebecca ventured.

Niina smiled, though she didn’t raise her head. “Frequently, yes. The men would starve or end up eating dry oats with water poured over them to get by. I’m not concerned about Edgar, but my boy, Abel—he’s all I have left.”

Rebecca recalled how Abel had mentioned his father earlier, but it had been in the past tense. This made Rebecca’s own situation even more stark to her. If she had family, wouldn’t they be looking for her? She felt like there were voices just on the edges of her recollections. She caught glimpses of them in split seconds and then they dissipated into oblivion.

She toyed with the locket around her neck. The locket engraved with her name—or what she assumed was her name—on the back of it. Someone had given this to her. Someone had cared enough to bestow a piece of custom jewelry. The locket was made of silver, and if she were correct, it had taken some coins to purchase it for her. Yet it was empty—stark and bare. That made the locket and its giver even more of a mystery. For why give a locket if it was to remain empty?

Niina’s voice broke through Rebecca’s pondering. “You’ll be able to sift through your confusion better if you let your body rest.”

“I know.” Rebecca’s acknowledgment didn’t mean that she intended to obey. While bed sounded like a refuge, she was also afraid to be alone with her thoughts. “What if I remember?”

“Hmm?” Niina lifted her chin to look at Rebecca.

Rebecca’s cheeks warmed. She hadn’t intended on asking it aloud. “What do I do if I remember, and things fall into place?”

“Then you must share it with us.” Niina’s eyes darkened with sincerity. She set her needles in her lap, though she didn’t let go of them. “So that we may assist you.”

There it was. Rebecca could see the glimmer of half-truth on Niina’s face.

“You know me, don’t you?” She posed the question less as an accusation and more as a plea.

Niina returned to her knitting. “We know you were attacked, and that alone puts you in danger.” A stern look from the woman made it clear she wished for no more probing from Rebecca. It was hardly fair. Rebecca wanted to protest, but Niina continued quickly as if to fill the stillness, so Rebecca didn’t have a chance to inquire further. “You are best off here in the lighthouse. I realize you don’t see it as ideal or even proper. But if you were to come to my cabin—well, Edgar and Abel will keep you safe here. I, as a woman, cannot do that. Neither man will bring you harm, and who knows who is out there looking for you!”

Rebecca strained to examine the recesses of her memory. She hadn’t slept since her attack and since Edgar had found her in the woods. Her mind was cloudy, exhaustion warring with a louder voice than any memories she could conjure.

A wave of dizziness came over her, and for a moment she tried to camouflage it by digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands. But it was no use. Niina set aside her knitting and rose.

“See? You need to rest. You’re as pale as the whitecaps on the lake.”

“I’ll be fine.” Rebecca struggled to sound convincing.

Niina shook her head. “You need to eat something.”

“I just had bread.”

“You need meat. You need sustenance.” Niina hustled past Rebecca, who took the liberty to lie against the arm of the sofa. The idea of food made her stomach roil both in hunger and disgust. It was a strange feeling, and Rebecca swallowed against the bile that rose in her throat.

Niina hurried back into the room, a piece of jerky wrapped in a cloth napkin. “Chew on this while I heat up some stew.”

“No.” Rebecca pushed Niina’s hand away, then realized how rude she’d sounded. “Please. I-I don’t think I can eat right now.”

“You won’t think you can eat for a long time, but you must.”

Rebecca furrowed her brow. Sleep. Yes. Sleep would be good, and then when she woke, hunger could be satiated and her recollections explored. She ignored the jerky that Niina held and managed to sit up. “I believe I will go lie down.”

Niina set the jerky on an end table and reached to assist Rebecca as she pushed off the sofa. “I will help you.”

Rebecca hated to be such a bother. “I’ll be fine. Is it all right if I used Kjersti’s room?”

“Of course it is.” Niina ignored Rebecca’s protestations and gripped her elbow gently. “I will tuck you in.”

Rebecca experienced a familiar and yet strange pang of longing. Something stung her heart with Niina’s actions. Her mother would have done as Niina did. Had she a mother? The ache in her chest told her she either had one whom she was desperately homesick for and did not remember, or she had no mother, and the ache came from the empty chasm created when there was no one left to fill it.

She stumbled as another wave of dizziness washed over her.

“You are not fine, raksu , my dear. Come.”

This time, Rebecca leaned more heavily on Niina, and it wasn’t until she felt the soft mattress beneath her exhausted body that she noticed the room slow its spinning.

Niina pulled the sheet and quilt up, tucking it gently around Rebecca. “You sleep for as long as you need to. If you awaken and it’s dark and I’m no longer here, you go right back to sleep. I will leave instructions for Abel to feed you in the morning. I will leave plenty of food. You need nourishment as soon as you’re able to hold it down.”

“I’ll be fine,” Rebecca mumbled again as she turned her face into the pillow, wondering why she had fought against giving in to resting when Niina had suggested it earlier.

Niina’s next words washed over her as sleep claimed Rebecca. Enough to jolt her eyes wide open before sheer exhaustion forced them closed again, trouble to be faced only when she awakened.

“Sleep now, raksu . For you and for the babe within you.”

Her hair was brushed away from her face, tenderly, with the cool touch of a feminine hand. Rebecca breathed deeply, embracing the overwhelming peace of being watched over. Being nurtured and cared for.

“Be still.” The words passed over her skin on breath that brushed like a feather. “Shhh...”

Rebecca drank in the solace, and then she allowed her eyes to open, slowly at first, to take in the room. She was in the attic. The ceiling was directly over her, within arm’s reach as it angled over her head. She was curled beneath a quilt, her head resting on a pillow, the scent of lavender mingling in the sheets and on the air.

At the end of the bed, Rebecca saw her. The woman. She sat with her back to Rebecca, and her hair, long and white-blond, hung down her back unbound. Her form was thin, her shoulders clothed in a simple white blouse.

Rebecca could see the woman’s profile, but nothing more. Just a small, straight nose, long eyelashes against the of ivory skin of a high cheekbone. The woman spoke, her words breathy and almost difficult for Rebecca to hear.

“It is all a mystery,” she said, and echoed the words in Rebecca’s soul. “Who are you, you ask? Who and why and where does the heartbeat merge with the mind and make sense? What are memories if they are only to be lost, and what is the lost unless it has potential to once again be found?”

Rebecca frowned, curling her fingers into the bedcovers and pulling them tighter around her. An uneasy feeling needled at her. At the same time, she wanted to sit up and address the woman.

The woman sat as if frozen there, as if waiting for Rebecca to respond. Rebecca swallowed, wishing in a way that she hadn’t opened her eyes. So she closed them. She hoped that she would feel the comforting hand once again, its cool touch against her skin. The tender ministrations of someone who cared only that Rebecca find peace.

Then it returned as the hand adjusted the bedcovers, tucking them in gently around Rebecca’s neck.

“Shhh,” she said.

Rebecca opened her eyes, forming a grateful smile. This time, dark hair framed the woman’s face. A young face, not much older than Rebecca’s twenty years. A curl teased at her temple. Blue eyes, so blue they were almost white, smiled back at her. Rosy lips curved upward in a relieved and playful smile.

“You’re all right. You’re safe.”

Startled by the change in appearance, Rebecca shot a glance at the end of the bed. The woman with the corn-silk hair had disappeared. There was no one there. Only this friendly face, someone she knew, someone so close to her that Rebecca could almost taste her name on her lips.

The young woman smiled and reached out, but she didn’t touch Rebecca. Only the blanket, adjusting it once more as if she hadn’t already done so. “He’ll keep you safe,” she whispered, her smile warm.

Rebecca could hear it—the dark-haired woman’s name. She could see it reflected in the lake-water eyes. She could hear it echoing in the hall of the lighthouse and up the spiral metal staircase.

“Kjersti.” She said the name as she blinked.

Her eyes opened.

The vision was gone.

Rebecca shot up in her bed, sweat trickling down her face, her gown sticking to her back. The thud of her heart against her chest almost hurt, and the apprehension closed her throat in a stranglehold.

Rebecca swung her legs over the side of the bed to stand. As her nightgown slipped over her hips, damp from the turmoil of nightmarish sleep, it brushed over her abdomen, a small mound she’d not taken note of prior to this.

Kjersti.

But no. There had been another.

It was as though they had both been in the room and one had merged into another and—

Rebecca was momentarily distracted as a wave of dizziness overcame her. She leaned against the metal frame of the bed.

Niina’s words came back to her like the rush of unwelcome waters.

A baby?

Her hand swept up to rest over her womb. She strained to remember—anything. How had she—where had this pregnancy come from?

Rebecca knees weakened at the unexpected observation from Niina. And how did Niina know? Did she only assume because Rebecca was nauseated and exhausted, that it meant she was with child? She stumbled to the door and opened it. The short hall was stuffy with unmoving air. There were no windows, just the ceiling that melded with the roof. Just the room next door where Abel would sleep.

“You’re a chilling reminder...”

The words came back to Rebecca as she stood in the doorway. Darkness permeated the room and the hall. She was alone—or so she thought. But now a memory was returning. Stronger and more present than Kjersti had been, or the woman at the end of her bed had been.

Rebecca’s breaths came in short, frightened gasps. She was seeing things now. Or the dead were visiting her. She had known Kjersti. She didn’t know how, but she knew the dead Kjersti who had just visited her. Which meant the other woman was likely dead too. This lighthouse was filled with spirits that—

“ You’re a chilling reminder...”

Rebecca spun back to the bedroom, facing the bed. It was a man’s voice. Gruff and frightening.

“Go away.” Her voice trembled as she attempted to ward off the wandering dead that were roaming the lighthouse. The sudden picture of the gravestone she had fallen on while running, the place where Edgar had found her—Annabel’s grave—fluttered through Rebecca’s memory.

Who was Annabel? Was she the woman at the end of the bed? Rebecca was shaking now, her body quivering with the unknown and the dead, who at this moment seemed very much alive.

“You’re a chilling reminder...”

That voice was so familiar, and in a way that Rebecca knew her mind didn’t want to remember.

The image of a piece of shoreline swept over her. A large rock outcropping, black basalt, with water crashing on it and splashing her legs.

“...chilling reminder...”

It was enough of a memory to engage Rebecca’s urgency. She slid her feet into leather slippers Niina had pulled from Kjersti’s trunk. They were tight on her toes, but she ignored that and instead reached for a green wool lap blanket hanging from a peg on the wall. Rebecca wrapped it around her shoulders and then opened her door, slipping from Kjersti’s bedroom into the hallway. It was dark. Abel’s door was mostly closed. Curious, Rebecca peered through the crack.

Abel lay sprawled on his stomach, shirtless, his back to the ceiling and illuminated by the moonlight that washed over his body from the window. He wore his trousers, suspenders hanging down over his hips. It was as if he’d been awake long enough to begin to undress and then ceased caring and simply collapsed onto the bed. He must be exhausted after last night’s shipwreck. Which meant perhaps Edgar was awake still? Surely both lightkeepers didn’t sleep at night. Or maybe they took shifts?

Rebecca stared at the sleeping man, and a momentary impulse to race in and curl up beside him came over her. Strength. He exuded a strength while he slept that mystified her. Was it Abel’s voice she’d heard?

No. No, and she dared not wake him. He would be certain the injuries she’d sustained had addled her mind—and maybe they had.

A large rock outcropping.

Black basalt.

Water crashing on it and splashing her legs.

“...chilling reminder...”

Rebecca eased away from Abel’s room and tiptoed to the door at the end of the short hall. She pulled it open, revealing the spiral metal staircase. Stepping out onto it, Rebecca winced as the tread squeaked beneath her weight. Light from the lamp up in the galley spilled onto the steps. She craned her neck to look upward. If old man Edgar was up there, she mustn’t alert him to her presence. She knew that he would never allow her to leave the lighthouse at night again, especially not alone—and yet it was as though she was being beckoned there.

“You’re a chilling reminder...”

Not spotting Edgar, Rebecca worked her way around and down until she came to the door of most concern. The door into the living area was directly off the lightkeeper’s room. If Edgar was asleep, she would need to sneak past his bed to get to the living area on the second floor and finally make her way downstairs to the entrance.

Rebecca pushed the door open, catching her breath as the hinges protested. She peered into the tiny closet-like room just off the lightkeeper’s domain. There was no obvious form of Edgar on the bed, which did nothing to relieve Rebecca of worry. If he wasn’t in the gallery and he wasn’t asleep, then at any moment Rebecca could come face-to-face with the gruff old man. She wasn’t afraid he would harm her, but his stern and beady gaze was intimidation enough.

She slipped through the rooms as quietly as she could and made her way to the first level and the kitchen. Having not run into Edgar, Rebecca made fast work of slipping from the house and into the night.

Immediately her body was assaulted by the cool spring wind that danced its way off the lake. The blast of cold awakened Rebecca’s senses, sharpening her mind and shocking her from the stupor that had captivated her. The lighthouse behind her swathed the water with a shaft of light. The waves appeared relatively calm, considering the lake’s aptitude to be temperamental.

“You’re a chilling reminder...”

It was a memory now.

But it was a memory!

She crossed the yard on her way to the embankment. Unlike the night before, no ship was sinking, no waves were threatening the lives of would-be rescuers, no men from Silvertown were racing up the shoreline.

All was still aside from the waves’ repetitive caress of the shore.

Rebecca scampered down the rocky path along the embankment, her feet slipping into the sand as she reached the shore. But it was no gentle shoreline. Instead, it was littered with driftwood and rocks, making a stroll along the sand out of the question. The obstacles were enough to make Rebecca wish to turn around to find refuge in the lighthouse once more, but the image of the basalt outcropping and the words replaying in her mind—her only clear recollection—urged her forward.

She maneuvered her way along the shore until she reached a stretch where the sand dominated the rocks and invited her to ease her breath and her body. Rebecca walked to the water’s edge, the waves lapping at the sand hungrily. The sound of their rushing and rolling didn’t cease or pause, not even for the weary of heart and mind. She stared out into the darkness, the giant expanse of water like a deep grave.

“You’re a chilling reminder...” Each time she recalled the words from her dream, they became shorter, until now only the word chilling remained. It adequately captured the lake. It enveloped Rebecca with a deep ache and a void that left her questioning why. Why did she remember those words? Who had spoken them? She knew—oh, this she recalled!—that she was the chilling reminder. The words had been spoken to her, about her. Who had said them? What man had looked upon her and seethed the words of disdain? It was that person Rebecca could not remember. But she could recall the feeling of revelation as she was told that she was someone’s curse. Someone’s chilling reminder of...

Rebecca turned toward the east, squinting into the night to see if she could make out the familiar landmark, even the shadow of it. She froze as a form emerged from the woods some two hundred yards down the shoreline. It was vaporous in nature, with long and loose hair so white it almost glowed in the moonlight, blowing around the figure’s face. A white gown not unlike the one Rebecca wore made it evident that this was a woman.

Rebecca fixated on the wispy figure as it crossed the beach, seeming to float across the sand. Rebecca caught a glimpse of a bare leg and foot as the woman, without hesitation, walked into the water. Concern quickly overwhelmed Rebecca. The woman was walking to her death! The water was still frigid from winter’s ice melt. No one could survive long in the lake.

The woman was up to her knees now, and it was then Rebecca found her voice and her ability to move. She ran across the sand, dodging rocks and scampering over driftwood. “Stop!” she shouted, but the wind and the roar of the waves carried away her voice.

The figure turned toward her, faceless in the moonlight, her white-blond hair covering her face like a veil. She stared at Rebecca, and then, just as Rebecca drew close enough to believe her shout of caution might be heard, the woman crouched into the water, letting it cover her shoulders, her neck, and finally her head.

Rebecca sprinted as much as she was able, her feet twisting and sinking into sand that acted like a trap. She fell forward, her knees scraping against the damp shore.

A voice, whether in her mind or in the wind, drifted over the waters where the woman had vanished and made its way into Rebecca’s soul.

“You’re a chilling reminder to me.”