The child pressed his shoulder against the door, but it stopped a hand’s breadth from the frame, held by something on the other side. Victoria knelt and set the brass tongue on the scored board, away from the water creeping over the stones. The keeper’s voice faltered beneath the stairs, then began again, and the child clapped his hands over his ears. I could hear the syllables now, though each time I tried to fit them to the writing on the slip they seemed to change their order. The conductor stepped over the threshold and put his weight against the door beside the child, while the woman gathered both boys back from the spreading water. My double brought the lamp closer, and in its light I saw that the water was carrying pale curls of wood out into the road.

“Is he in there?” Victoria asked, and the child shook his head without uncovering his ears. “Only his voice,” he said. “It comes when there’s room for it.” The woman looked at the board lying between them and asked why he had taken it from the keeper. He bent to lift one corner, showing us the wet cuts on its underside; the crossed-out name had not been erased there, but filled with slivers of fresh wood. “I thought if I carried it away, he wouldn’t find the place again.” Victoria’s boy crouched beside him and touched the plugged letters, then withdrew his finger when a small knock sounded from within the board.

The door gave suddenly, throwing the conductor against the frame, and the voice rose so close that I felt its breath against my wrist. The older child seized the brass tongue, but Victoria caught his hand before he could put it between the cuts. For an instant neither would let go; then she turned his palm upward and laid the tongue across it, closing his fingers herself. “Tell me what happens,” she said. He looked toward the younger boy, who had come close enough to take hold of the woman’s coat, and told her that the voice would go quiet, but someone would have to carry the board. “Then I will,” Victoria said, and when the child hesitated she slid her hands beneath the wet wood. He fitted the tongue into the longest cut, and the keeper’s voice stopped in the middle of a syllable.

The water ceased to flow, though it remained pooled around our feet, cold enough to numb my toes through my boots. The conductor closed the door and fastened its chain from the outside, using a nail he drew from the loose box, while the older child watched him with the younger boy at his side. Victoria carried the board back to the cart, keeping it level as if the tongue might otherwise fall through, and the woman made room for both children beneath the blankets. As my double turned the horse toward the village, the upstairs curtain lifted once more, although we had seen no one leave the house. A hand appeared against the glass, its fingers spread over the five clear marks already there. The older child saw it too and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I left him the lamp,” he whispered, but the light in the room was going out.

The bell rang until the conductor crossed the road and closed the lid with his gloved hand. Even then it went on for another moment, a muffled sound against the wood, before falling still. My double brought the cart up beside the house, and I followed with the lamp and the damp square, keeping my thumb over the fourth name. The upstairs light showed through a curtain the colour of old linen, but no one came to the window. Minnie lifted the boy with the red thread down from the cart, and he stood close to her, looking at the box. “That one was empty before,” he said, though none of us had yet opened it.

The conductor raised the lid again, slowly enough that the hinge made no sound. Inside lay the brass tongue Victoria had left at the bridge, its narrow end caught beneath the bell. There was mud on the rim of the box and a fresh cut in the wood, as if something sharp had been pushed between lid and frame. Victoria’s boy came forward when he saw the tongue, but the woman held him back while Victoria took it out. Beneath it was a slip of paper, folded once, with the fourth name written across it in the same wavering hand as on the square. I held the two pieces together in the lamplight; the letters matched, though I still could not say them with any certainty. “The keeper called it his,” I said, and the conductor shook his head. “He said the name on the board was his; that is not quite the same thing.”

A movement in the upstairs room drew our eyes to the window. The curtain lifted, and a small hand pressed against the glass, leaving five clear marks in the condensation; Victoria’s boy raised his own hand before the curtain fell back. The woman went to the door and knocked, first gently, then hard enough to shake the box. From inside came the scrape we had heard beneath the platform, and water began to seep under the threshold, spreading around her shoes. Victoria pulled the boy away as the door opened a little, held by a chain, and a pale face appeared in the gap. It was the boy’s face, older by a few years perhaps, with wet hair plastered to its forehead and a dark line across one cheek. The woman put her hand against the door, and the face turned toward her. “I waited,” the child said, so softly that the bell trembled as she leaned closer.

The chain slipped free before anyone touched it, and the child stood in the doorway holding the scored board against his chest. The crossed-out letters had been cut through to the other side, and through them I could see the dim hall and a stair rising into darkness. Victoria’s boy moved toward him, but the child set the board down between them and looked instead at the tongue in Victoria’s hand. “Don’t say it yet,” he told her, though she had not spoken. Behind him, from somewhere beneath the stairs, the keeper’s voice began to call the name again, each syllable clearer than it had been on the road. The child caught the edge of the door and tried to pull it shut, but the water thickened around the threshold, and the bell beside us gave a single tap.

The knocking continued after the bridge had vanished behind us, though now it seemed to come from the cart itself. The boy who had given me the folded square put his ear to the sideboard, and Minnie drew him back by the red thread before he could lean too far. My double stopped the horse beside a low stone wall where the mist had collected in beads on the moss. There were marks along the top of the wall, narrow cuts made in groups, and the conductor passed his glove over them as though counting. “Someone has been this way before us,” he said. Victoria’s boy was awake again, watching the road behind, and when the knocking ceased he reached for his pocket and found it empty.

The woman who shared Victoria’s face lifted him onto her lap, but he twisted around to look at the bridge. “He needs it to tell us where he is,” he said, and Victoria asked him whom he meant. The boy rubbed his cheek against the woman’s coat before answering that he did not know, though he had heard him under the cart and again beneath the bridge. Victoria climbed down and went to the wall, where a narrow opening showed between two stones, just large enough for her hand. She reached inside and drew out a strip of damp paper, folded around a splinter of wood. It was the missing corner of the keeper’s sheet, and on it, in the same hand as the names, were the words, *The tongue will hold until the name is spoken*.

The conductor took the paper from her and held it near the lamp, but there was nothing written on the other side. My double was still at the horse’s head when a little bell rang behind us, followed at once by the scrape of wood against stone. Victoria’s boy slid from the cart and ran toward the sound before either woman could catch him; his foot struck the edge of the wall, and he disappeared into the mist on the far side. I went after him with the lamp, stumbling through the opening as a pale hand rose from a shallow ditch and caught his ankle. The boy cried out, and Victoria dropped beside him, taking his arms while the woman knelt in the wet grass and spoke into the ditch. “We have him,” she said, and then, more quietly, “You can let him go.” The fingers opened, leaving dark marks around the boy’s stocking, and Victoria gathered him up while the hand withdrew beneath a loose stone.

We waited until the boy’s breathing had steadied, and then the woman asked him whether he had seen a face. He shook his head and held out his fist to Victoria; inside it lay the folded square, its edges softened by water. The three names were still legible, and beneath them the fourth had been written in a thin, wavering line, though the boy said he had not written it. The conductor read it over my shoulder and turned toward the road, where the mist was beginning to lift from the roofs of a village. At its nearest house a lamp burned in an upstairs window, and below it, fixed beside the door, was a little wooden box with its lid closed. As we watched, the lid opened from within, and the bell began to ring.

The keeper’s voice followed us for some distance, though the mist swallowed each word before it reached the cart. My double held the reins loosely, letting the horse find its own way along a road I could feel beneath the wheels but could not see. Victoria sat with the sleeping boy between herself and the woman, their hands resting on the coats at either side of him. When the bell sounded again, the brass tongue in his pocket gave a small answering tap, and he woke with his face turned toward the woman. She smoothed his hair, but he caught Victoria’s sleeve and asked whether they had brought the board. “We left it for someone,” Victoria said, and after a while he nodded, though he kept hold of her sleeve.

The mist thinned where the road crossed a narrow bridge, and the horse stopped with one forefoot on the first plank. Water moved beneath us without reflecting the lamp, carrying a scatter of pale shavings against the bank. The conductor climbed down and found a cord stretched across the bridge at wheel height, so fine that I had taken it for a strand of cobweb. It was tied at one end to the railing and at the other to a little bell fixed inside a wooden box, whose lid had been left open. The boy with the folded square leaned over the side of the cart and said there had been a box like it outside the keeper’s door. “For telling him we had arrived,” he added, and pressed the square into my hand when I asked who had come with him.

The paper was damp from his knee, and as I unfolded it the impressions beneath the names caught the lamplight. I could make out the shape of the crossed-out name more clearly now, though the letters meant no more to me than they had on the board. The conductor held the cord aside for the horse, but before my double could urge it forward, the woman climbed down and went to the box. Inside, beneath the bell, lay a second sheet folded into quarters; she opened it and stared at the writing, then offered it to Victoria without looking up. Victoria read it slowly, keeping one hand on the boy’s back. “It says he can cross,” she said, “if one of us stays.” The horse shifted, drawing the cord taut against the conductor’s glove, and from somewhere under the bridge came the sound of a board being scraped.

The woman put her foot on the bridge, but Victoria caught her wrist before she could take another step. For a moment they stood close together, the boy watching from the cart, and then Victoria took the bell tongue from his pocket and placed it in the empty box. The conductor lowered the cord; it touched the brass without setting either bell ringing. My double led the horse forward, and the wheels passed over the first planks while the woman climbed back beside the boy. Halfway across, the folded square slipped from my hand and fell through a gap, but a pale hand rose from the dark water and caught it before it could drift away. On the far bank we heard the box lid close, followed by a careful knocking from beneath the bridge, as though someone were learning the names one letter at a time.

The keeper dropped the board into the cart and went ahead of us toward the platform, though he was still unsteady and had to keep one hand against the wall. Victoria followed with the boy on her shoulder, while the woman who shared her face gathered the coats and laid them over him. Our horse had not moved; the reins lay in a dark coil at its feet, and my double picked them up before the keeper could reach them. Minnie’s sister gave Victoria the bell tongue, and Victoria tucked it into the boy’s pocket beside the damp thread. When we came to the platform, the water had risen through the cracks, carrying with it fine shavings of wood. The keeper saw them and stopped, listening to a faint rasp beneath the boards. “It is coming by the way I did,” he said.

The conductor helped Minnie and the children into our cart, then held out a hand to the keeper, who did not take it. He bent instead and lifted the sheet from where I had left it on the table, folding it so that Victoria’s name was hidden. “Whose name was on the board?” I asked him again. He ran his thumb along the fold until the wet paper split, and my double took the board from the other cart and turned it toward the lamp. Beneath the deep scratches, a few letters remained, and the keeper reached for it too late to prevent me seeing them. “Mine,” he said, though the letters were not those of any name I knew him by. The boy with the folded square opened it against his knee and pointed to an empty space below the three names, where the paper had been pressed hard enough to leave the shape of a fourth.

The rasping stopped when Victoria set her sleeping boy beside the children, and for a moment the only sound was the horse breathing through its nose. Then the empty cart gave a jerk, and the oar slid out from between the boards, its blade bearing fresh cuts across the grain. A hand appeared in the gap after it, followed by another, both pale and marked with black water. The keeper went down on his knees and caught the nearer hand before anyone could stop him; the conductor seized his coat, but he shook its grip away. “I crossed it out,” he said, speaking into the gap, “because you would not leave him.” The hand closed around his wrist, and he drew in his breath, yet he stayed where he was while my double laid the board beside him with the scored name facing upward. Slowly the fingers loosened, and the hand reached instead for the board, pulling it beneath the platform without a splash.

The keeper sat back, rubbing his wrist, and told us to go while there was still a road to take. Victoria climbed onto the cart, and the woman remained at the horse’s head until the boy stirred and held out his hand to her as well. She looked at Victoria, who made room beside her, and together they settled the coats around him. My double took the reins, and I climbed up after the conductor, leaving the keeper standing by the table with the torn sheet in his hands. As the wheels began to turn, a bell rang once beneath the boards, clear enough that the horse lifted its ears. The keeper unfolded the sheet and raised it to the lamp, and I saw another line appearing below Victoria’s name. He called after us, but the cart had already entered the mist, and I could not make out the name he spoke.