He called out. His voice echoed across the water and faded into silence. No answering bark from Silas’s dog. The cottage door was unlocked. Carter peered around it and smiled, transported back to his childhood and his father’s gamekeeper’s lodge. It was the smell, a potpourri of old leather, freshly cut kindling wood, bunches of herbs and stored root vegetables. Blood, too. That particular stink of a skinned rabbit or a recently hung pheasant. The good times. Times spent away from his father.
The old man’s belongings lay scattered across the old oak table. Carter made out the stained and yellowing covers of old books, an old cigar box full of handmade fishing flies, a half chewed marrow bone, three empty milk cartons and a set of scales with a pile of rusted weights.
Two overstuffed armchairs pressed close to the soot-stained fireplace. Beside one was a tiny circular wooden table holding a grubby whisky glass and a pair of binoculars. The other wore a check blanket covered in hairs. Carter pictured Silas and Klink the dog sitting opposite one another of an evening like an old couple.
Carter noticed the picture hanging above the cluttered table. It was slightly faded by the sunlight, and speckled with the bodies of tiny thunder flies. Carter remembered his younger self carefully removing it from a pile of other framed paintings in the attic of their house. It was an old watercolour, depicting a shabbily-dressed old man lifting a salmon from a river. At the man’s side was a reclining dog, some fishing tackle and a large bag. It was titled “The Poacher,” and the young Carter was certain it represented Silas. He had waited for his father to go off on one of his business trips, wrapped the picture in an old horse blanket and taken it to Silas’s place out on Carrion Fen. Silas had looked long and hard at it, and then nodded to Carter. It had stayed with him ever since.
Carter closed the door. He’d walk back to the Eva May and watch out for the old man’s return from there.
Outside, Carter found he was reluctant to leave. He sat down with his back against the lichen covered wall and turned his face to the cool evening breeze. He felt almost “normal.” The accident had tainted most of his existence, but there were parts of his childhood that seemed to have remained unscathed. Days spent with Silas and his brother Eli.
He gazed along the inlet to the point where it met the river, and saw a ripple forming on the surface of the water. A boat was coming.
Carter stood up, brushed moss from his trousers and saw Silas’s small weather-worn dinghy ease its way into the inlet. He waved a greeting, and Klink responded with a joyous bark.
‘Nothing wrong is there, young’un?’
‘Nothing wrong, Silas. Just needed to see a friendly face, and maybe talk you into having a small drink with me?’ He removed a half bottle of malt whisky from his jacket pocket and waved it in the air.
Silas’s face broke into a mass of wrinkles when he smiled. ‘Well now. I’d say it’s a fine evening for a bit of a magg, wouldn’t you?’ The smile widened. ‘Ee-yah, tek this.’
Carter took the wet rope from the old man and tied it deftly around the mooring post. Klink leapt from the boat and hopped madly around Carter’s legs. ‘Hello, fellow! How’s tricks?’ He fondled the old dog’s ears. Such a soft beast. Yet he could terrify the life out of a stranger.
They tramped up to the cottage. Silas proceeded to clear some gardening tools from an old wooden bench, while Carter went inside to hunt for usable glasses. It was too nice an evening to be stuck indoors, and Silas knew that enclosed spaces made Carter uneasy.
The old man sat down and raised his glass towards his guest. ‘So. You need to ask me something, don’t you, young’un?’
Carter looked at him. ‘You’ve known all along, haven’t you?’
‘Maybe. Ask the question and we’ll find out.’
‘Ray confided in you, didn’t he?’
‘Ah, a good lad that one. Dreadful waste.’ Silas stared out across the river. ‘Not frightened of hard work either, and he loved the fen and the birds here.’ He sighed and sipped his drink. ‘Aye, we talked a bit.’
‘About money?’
‘Amongst other things.’
Carter’s expression tightened. Much as he loved the old cuss, he was in no mood for games. ‘I have to find it, Silas, and get it to Joanne. She’s struggling. She needs it, and Ray wants her to have it.’
‘Well, he told me all about them ne’er-do-wells he called his family. But listen up. He said he had “something” he was worried about. Not actual cash. A thing.’
‘So he left it with you?’
‘Not exactly, but I can help you find it.’ Silas rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘’Ere, why did you say “Ray wants her to have it?”’
Carter inhaled. He had never been able to lie to Silas. ‘I see them.’
‘At night? In your dreams, like?’
‘I just see them, Silas. We talk.’
The old man folded his arms, and nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I think you would, all things considered.’ He paused, still nodding. ‘I think you would.’
This was deeply reassuring to Carter, although he knew very well that seeing the dead in one form or another was part of the lives of the old “web-footed” fen men.
‘Recall that night, young’un? When you were coming up ten years?’
Carter stared into his glass. Yes, he remembered. Carter had never understood what he saw that night, and he still didn’t.
He had been just a boy . . .
Carter was woken by the sound of gravel thrown against his window. He scrambled from his bed. He looked down and made out the figure of Silas standing in the shadows of the courtyard. He was beckoning.
He pulled on his jeans, dragged a sweater over his head and crept out of the house. Silas led the way in silence, down the lane and into the old churchyard. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and together they crouched behind a crumbling, ivy-choked wall. Silas held a finger to his lips and pointed towards the church path.
For more than a quarter of an hour, tiny flickering lights danced along the path that led from the lychgate to the church door. The wind didn’t extinguish them and they grew brighter just before they disappeared.
‘Corpse candles,’ whispered Silas. ‘There’ll be a death in the village.’
Carter almost forced the reluctant Silas up to the church door, but there was nothing there. No candles, no lanterns. Nothing. On their way back to the house, Carter plied his companion with questions, but Silas said little. They were there to lead the way for the coffin bearers. Some saw them, others didn’t. Simple.
And that was that. The following Friday, Carter’s mother’s car skidded off the road on the Westdyke Bridge, and she drowned in the Westland River.
Carter poured them another two fingers of whisky. He had wondered about those lights for years. He’d never spoken about what he’d seen. There was a rational explanation for those lights, he knew. He’d just never discovered it. Silas would never have played a trick on him, he just wasn’t like that. Eventually he concluded that it was methane gas. The wetlands emitted marsh gas when the conditions were right. It was a strange but perfectly natural phenomenon. But Carter was never entirely convinced. Maybe he had spent too much time with old Silas when he was a kid.
He spoke softly. ‘I still wish it had been my father. The bastard.’