The whistle of the kettle woke Alsa in the middle of the night. In turn, she woke the entire Unhouse.
Clara was out of bed instantly, shuffling across the hall into the fussy baby’s room and picking her up to soothe her. Everyone else stayed put, ignoring her screams with pillows wrapped around their heads. Clara could sense Alsa waking up just before she did, and watched her keenly from across the hall. In the moment her eyes opened, so did Alsa’s mouth, and the shrieks began a moment after.
Dawn would break before Alsa rested again. If they were lucky. Whenever she cried, she shrieked, gasped in all the lost air, and then shrieked more.
Clara thought she was sick when she first arrived. Colicky. Mr. Seir had said. She was just colicky. Clara had been colicky too when she was a baby. Colicky Clara, he'd called her. It was another thing she and Alsa shared.
Alsa’s father, like Clara’s, went on a whaling ship and never made land again. Alsa’s mother, like Clara’s, fell asleep on the birthing bed and awoke in a pauper’s grave.
Alsa, like Clara, went with Mr. Seir to the Unhouse by the sea.
Mr. Seir had four children in the Unhouse, none of them his own. Clara was the eldest, charged with looking after the other children, especially Alsa. Her colic wracked the other children’s nerves, but Clara was a bit hard of hearing. Where Alsa’s shrieks pierced everyone else’s ears, they merely reached Clara’s.
Enoch was the second eldest. He followed Mr. Seir around the Unhouse and took notes on him as though he were a newly discovered beast and everything he did was worthy of documentation. Enoch had mountains of notes and drawings shoved under his bed in the Unhouse attic.
Byron was the second youngest. He liked to sneak around the Unhouse. He was so soft-footed and got away with all manner of mischief. He often wore a dark veil and hid in dim corners like a shade. He would wait for hours to jump out in front of Clara at the right moment. He even caught Enoch off guard on occasion, though he was careful never to frighten Mr. Seir.
Sometimes other children came to the Unhouse, but they never stayed for long.
Alsa was hiccuping from swallowing so much air while she cried, and the discomfort only made her cry harder. Clara lay on the hard floor of the nursery, Alsa still in her arms. She screamed right in her face, her tears and spittle and snot dribbling down and pooling in the hollow of Clara’s throat. Clara closed her eyes. She felt she was lucky not to be much for hearing. She fell asleep like that, the screaming Alsa on her chest, the hardwood on her back, the kettle still whistling in the kitchen.
Clara awoke to Enoch standing in the doorway, staring down at them. He had his notebook and was feverishly sketching the two of them. Clara sat up, careful not to jostle the sleeping Alsa too much.
“You look very ugly when you are asleep,” Enoch said, matter-of-factly. He imitated her sleeping face. Mouth open, head turned to the side to reveal her sloping jaw. It was hard for the bony little Enoch to even imitate it.
“Shush,” Clara said, a finger to her lips. She gingerly rose from the floor and returned Alsa to her crib. Byron was waiting outside the door to leap at her when she stepped out. He scared her so often at this point that she expected him around every corner, and he always managed to be there. She closed the door silently behind her.
“Was it you who put the kettle on?” she demanded in a raspy whisper. He opened his mouth to answer, but she snatched him by the ear through the layers of chiffon that made up his veil. He squealed. Clara slapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him down the stairs to the parlor.
Mr. Seir sat in his chair, a pale leather-bound book in his lap. He frowned at them as Clara shoved Byron forward. He tripped over his veil and fell into a heap on the carpet.
“Cut his feet off! Or chain him up at night!”
Mr. Seir slowly set aside his book, sighing dramatically. Enoch had already taken up a seat on the sofa across from him to begin notetaking. Mr. Seir crouched in front of Byron. Mr. Seir lifted one of his little, soft feet.
“No chain would fit around this ankle,” he said, “but cutting through it would be quick work.”
“It wasn’t me!” Bryon cried, squirming to free his foot from Mr. Seir’s grasp.
“Who else would have done it?” Clara demanded, fists on her hips. She had no patience for Byron’s mischief. She didn’t mind caring for Alsa, but the boy didn’t have to make it harder for her.
“Enoch?” Mr. Seir asked, looking over at the boy while he scribbled his notes.
“I was asleep.”
“As was I,” Mr. Seir said, tugging thoughtfully at his mustache.
“Me too!” Byron insisted.
“Don’t lie!” Clara snapped.
Mr. Seir didn’t seem convinced, though to Clara it was obvious. He returned to his chair and picked up his book again. “Could it have been a ghost?"
“Yes!” Byron said, leaping to his feet. “A ghost. Exactly. The ghosts of our fathers.”
“Or our mothers,” Enoch offered, not looking up from his notebook. Mr. Seir nodded, satisfied they’d come to a conclusion.
“See, Clara. Byron is innocent.”
Clara glared at all three of them. Tipping up her chin, she gave Byron a swift kick to the leg. He yelped and fell, wrapping himself tighter in his veil. “Hey!” he cried.
“It was a ghost,” she said and stalked away to the sound of Mr. Seir's laughter.
***
That night, Clara took Alsa for a walk on the beach. The sun had long since set, but Alsa had been awake, crying all night and sleeping most of the day. It would be hours before she slept again.
The air was very still, Clara thought, as still as it could be with the lapping waves nearby. The churning sea was as calm as she would dare ask it to be. The stars and moon were bright enough to see by, but it was getting darker by the moment.
In the distance, Clara spotted a figure. It was a solid black silhouette against the open, midnight-blue sky. She stopped dead, her heart thundering and breath held. She hoped Alsa would not notice her sudden tension.
The figure held a bit of fire in his outstretched hand. It glinted off its metal container, and Clara could make out a small oil lamp. The figure tipped it and poured the oil into the sea, a tail of fire fizzling out as it met the tide. The sudden burst of light was enough for Clara to make out the dark shape.
“Mr. Seir?”
When she’d left the Unhouse, everyone but her and Alsa had been in bed. Though she hardly trusted Byron’s ‘sleep,' she'd never seen Mr. Seir up at this hour.
He turned, and as soon as he spotted the girls, he made a mad dash for them. Clara gasped, and Alsa, sensing her panic, became alert. She gurgled, but thankfully did not begin to cry.
Mr. Seir ran right up to them and gripped Clara by the shoulder with one hand, and held the oil lamp between them with the other. He looked so strange, all the age in his face smoothed out by the dimness of the lamp. She wondered what her young face looked like. He removed a strand of hair from behind her ear and dragged his hand down to the end of it, marveling at it. She saw how it shone in the light of the flame, gilded like it were cast in metal. She swallowed.
“Alsa will cry if you frighten her,” she said, so quietly she could hardly hear her voice over the hiss of the waves. He turned his eyes from the strand of hair to Clara’s face, scanning it slowly from brow to chin and back again. She dared a step backward.
“It’s whale oil,” he said, drifting the oil lamp closer to her. She shied away from both the light and the heat. “I always burn whale oil. It burns brightest, look.”
Squinting, she slid her eyes to the flame.
Just as she dared look away from him, Mr. Seir shoved Clara and fell on top of her, tossing the lamp aside so the burning oil did not scald them. Even so, Alsa began to cry.
The oil lit the wet sand nearby on fire. In that faint light, she could see Mr. Seir leap up to his feet and bound back toward the Unhouse. He floated like a little boat even on the loose sand, as though it offered no resistance at all.
Luckily, Clara landed on her back, and though she was in the throes of shrieking now, Alsa was unharmed. The smell of whale oil and hot, wet air filled Clara's nose as she stood and backed away from the small fire on the sand. Past it, she saw Enoch, notebook in hand. He didn’t offer help. He turned and followed Mr. Seir back to the Unhouse.
Clara did the same, wet sand sticking to her back and her bare arms. She felt like a woman of sand brought to life. She brushed off layers of her sand skin, unstable and crumbling as she wandered back to the Unhouse.
She entered through the kitchen door. The only light was the lit stove, reflections of the fire flickering against the full kettle over it. She growled, removed the kettle, and put out the stove.
“Clara,” Mr. Seir said from the darkness behind her. She turned to face him, though she couldn't see much more than shapes in the darkness. She lit the stove again so she could see by it. “Do you have my oil lamp?”
Alsa was still crying. She hoped it would wake up Byron.
“Why did you push me down?”
Mr. Seir approached and held his hands out for Alsa. Clara held her closer.
“Come now, Clara,” he said, beckoning for her to hand the baby over. She didn’t move.
“Did I ever tell you girls about Cerulean, my great love?” he asked. She shook her head. He never told her about anything. Sometimes she sneaked into Enoch’s room and pulled out his papers. She liked to read them and learn all the secrets about the man in the Unhouse. She guessed the boy made most of it up. Mr. Seir was not a forthcoming man by any means. Clara didn't believe Enoch had accrued so much information just by observing him.
“I thought you were Vicar.”
There was no religion in the Unhouse, but Clara had seen drawings of a black cassock and white collar. Mr. Seir smiled and nodded.
“I still am.”
“But we do not pray.”
“I do,” he said and beckoned once more for her to hand the crying Alsa to him. She extended her hesitantly, and as soon as she was away from her breast, he snatched her. She did not stop crying, but the heavy gasps for air and shrieks subsided somewhat. Or it only seemed so because she was not in Clara’s arms anymore.
“Why did you push us down?” she asked again.
“To see if you would get back up,” he said, and turned to walk into the darkness with Alsa. Clara followed close behind him, keeping square with his back as he went from the kitchen to the dining room. He took his place at the head of the table. By the time he sat down, Alsa had stopped crying.
“How did you soothe her?”
“I was in love with Cerulean,” he said, sighing wistfully and leaning back in his chair.
“Is this a story?” Clara asked, hesitantly taking a seat across from him. Enoch was already sitting there, already scrawling notes even though it was much too dark to see by. Clara knew Byron was somewhere nearby, though she could not see him, and she could not hear the sound of his chiffon veil rustling like everyone else could.
“Start from the beginning, please,” Enoch requested, flipping to a new page in his journal.
Mr. Seir cleared his throat. “Sometimes, children, there are nights with no stars,” he lied, “this was one of them.
“On this starless night, I was called upon to perform last rites on Cerulean’s husband. I had wanted to marry her years before when I first met her at a funeral. She was already married, though; her husband was my cousin.
“I was so heartbroken. That is why I joined the church. I could not imagine marrying any other woman, so I devoted myself to loneliness. Imagine how disturbed I was years later when Cerulean’s husband perished at sea.”
Just then, the kettle whistled in the kitchen. Clara searched the room for Byron, but still could not make anything out in the dark. Enoch and Mr. Seir both ignored the kettle, and even Alsa did not stir.
“She called on me to perform last rites.”
“How did you perform last rites without a body?” Enoch asked, utterly detached from the story and interested only in the finer details.
“She had his body. It came ashore with the rest of the flotsam, blue and bloated. Cerulean didn’t care. She held his frozen hand and kissed his cold lips. I have yet to see another woman so in love.”
“So, you did perform the rites?” Enoch asked, only for the sake of clarification.
“Yes, but I crossed my fingers and said the words wrong.”
Clara wanted Alsa back. She could not hear if she was whimpering anymore, or even breathing. She could not make out the scratching of Enoch’s quill or the rustling of Byron’s veil. He must have turned the kettle off, otherwise, she couldn’t hear that anymore either. Mr. Seir’s voice was clear as day, though.
“Cerulean was pregnant with his child. I wanted to cut her open, pull it out, and throw it into the sea to perish as its father had.”
“Did you?” Clara asked. Byron was looming; she couldn’t hear him, but she could feel him. He would spring out any second in his horrible veil.
Mr. Seir reached out and lit the candle in the middle of the table. His face was ghastly in the dim light, all shadows and hollows. His eyes were pitch-dark sockets. She felt frozen in her chair, staring into those dark holes.
“Where is my oil lamp, Clara?” he asked. He was angry with her. She turned up her chin indignantly.
“Why did you push us down?”
“It wasn’t me,” he said, smiling as he leaned away from the candle, descending into the thick shadows surrounding them. The Unhouse was filled with emptiness. “It was a ghost.”
Just then, Byron leaped out from behind the last empty chair at the table, and Clara nearly fell out of her own. She gasped and shouted a small, “Ah!” Her exclamation was enough to wake Alsa from her unnaturally peaceful slumber. Again, she began to shriek.
“Now look what you’ve done, Clara,” Mr. Seir chastised, shushing and bouncing the baby. The kettle whistled in the kitchen. Clara shot out of her chair and ran to take it off again.
Byron was already in front of her in his black veil, nearly part of the shadows himself. She reached to snatch it off him or shove him out of her way, but he darted back, out of her grasp. She lunged for him again. This time, he leaped forward and kicked her in the leg. Sprinted off and vanished back into the nothing, giggling all the while.
From the kitchen window, she could see small flames still bobbing on the beach where the oil lamp had broken.
Clara picked up the kettle and put out the stove again, plunging the room back to blackness. The faint glow from the beach was nothing. The Unhouse swallowed it up.
Clara dumped the scalding water onto the tiles, and she heard Byron cry out as he ran over it with his soft feet. He slipped and fell into the steaming puddle. His veil was soaked in the boiling water and pressed against his skin, the fabric and flesh melting together.
“Let me guess,” Mr. Seir asked from the doorway over the sound of Byron’s painful yelps and Alsa’s colicky cries. He sounded leagues away like she was deep underwater, and he was above it, speaking to her. “The ghosts did it?”