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Back When the Stars Go Dark Save as PDF
Chapters (83)
  1. Epigraph
  2. Maps
  3. (prologue)
  4. Part 1: Signs and Vapors
  5. (one)
  6. (two)
  7. (three)
  8. (four)
  9. (five)
  10. (six)
  11. (seven)
  12. (eight)
  13. (nine)
  14. (ten)
  15. (eleven)
  16. (twelve)
  17. Part 2: Secret Things
  18. (thirteen)
  19. (fourteen)
  20. (fifteen)
  21. (sixteen)
  22. (seventeen)
  23. (eighteen)
  24. (nineteen)
  25. (twenty)
  26. (twenty-one)
  27. (twenty-two)
  28. (twenty-three)
  29. (twenty-four)
  30. (twenty-five)
  31. (twenty-six)
  32. (twenty-seven)
  33. (twenty-eight)
  34. (twenty-nine)
  35. (thirty)
  36. (thirty-one)
  37. (thirty-two)
  38. (thirty-three)
  39. (thirty-four)
  40. (thirty-five)
  41. (thirty-six)
  42. (thirty-seven)
  43. (thirty-eight)
  44. (thirty-nine)
  45. Part 3: Time and the Maiden
  46. (forty)
  47. (forty-one)
  48. (forty-two)
  49. (forty-three)
  50. (forty-four)
  51. (forty-five)
  52. (forty-six)
  53. (forty-seven)
  54. (forty-eight)
  55. (forty-nine)
  56. (fifty)
  57. (fifty-one)
  58. (fifty-two)
  59. (fifty-three)
  60. Part 4: The Bent Grove
  61. (fifty-four)
  62. (fifty-five)
  63. (fifty-six)
  64. (fifty-seven)
  65. (fifty-eight)
  66. (fifty-nine)
  67. (sixty)
  68. (sixty-one)
  69. (sixty-two)
  70. (sixty-three)
  71. (sixty-four)
  72. (sixty-five)
  73. (sixty-six)
  74. (sixty-seven)
  75. (sixty-eight)
  76. (sixty-nine)
  77. (seventy)
  78. Dedication
  79. (acknowledgments)
  80. (author’s note)
  81. BY PAULA MCLAIN
  82. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  83. What’s next onyour reading list?

Turning left on Lansing Street, I feel as if I’ve squeezed sideways through time. Above the roofline of the Masonic Hall and against a gauzy sky, the figures of Time and the Maiden stand sharp and white, the most iconic thing in the village. A bearded, elderly figure with wings and a scythe, braiding the hair of a girl standing before him. Her head bowed over a book resting on a broken column, an acacia branch in one of her hands, an urn in the other, and an hourglass near her feet—each object an enigmatic symbol in a larger puzzle. The whole carving like a mystery in plain sight.

Once, when I was ten, soon after I came to live in Mendocino, I asked Hap what the statue was supposed to mean. He smiled and told me the history instead. How a young millworker and carpenter named Erick Albertson had carved it from a single piece of redwood in the mid-1800s, working at night in his cottage on the beach. During that time he’d become the first master of Mendocino’s Masonic Order, but never stopped laboring on his masterpiece. It took him seven years in all and then, sometime after the carving was erected in 1866, he had died in a strange accident the history books couldn’t properly explain.

Hap had been a member of the Masonic Order for decades, longer even than he’d been a forest ranger. I assumed he knew everything, all there was to know. But when I asked him how Albertson’s passing was connected to the figures and what they meant, he gave me a sideways look.

“Albertson’s death doesn’t have anything to do with you. And anyway, it happened so long ago. The symbols wouldn’t make sense even if I explained them. They tell a story known only to Masons, never written down, only passed on by mouth as they take their Third Degree.”

I was even more intrigued. “What’s the Third Degree?”

“What you’re giving me now,” he said, and walked away before I even got the joke.

—

I park and pull on a baseball cap and sunglasses before stepping out into the chilly, fog-wet street. It’s hard to imagine any locals recognizing me as a grown woman, but the San Francisco papers are widely read up here, and occasionally my cases had landed me in the Chronicle. So had the accident, for that matter.