Chapter 25: The Lighthouse
They walked in a tight, silent bundle, leaving Doc and Nat far behind. Maggie could sense it getting closer. Soon, she didn’t know why they couldn’t see it.
“Where are you sensing this at, Maggs?” Karl asked.
He and Marcus were in front of her, while Joan walked beside her, and Clay brought up the rear.
“We should be right on top of it.”
Marcus and Karl stopped, looking frustrated.
“Maggie,” Marcus said gently, “none of us feel anything for miles in any direction. There’s nothing here that’s obvious.”
Maggie sighed. How could she be mad at them? She was sensing something, but whatever it was couldn’t be seen. She looked up toward the ridge. As they’d walked, they’d left the beach, keeping to the foliage for cover. The rise that acted as a boundary between sand and forest had crested high enough that it concealed both beach and ocean from their view, though it could not conceal the smells or sounds of the sea.
Clay walked out from behind them and climbed the ridge. When he reached the top, he stared silently out at the sea for several minutes. Then his voice carried to them.
“Uh, guys?”
His tone put a hook around Maggie’s middle; he’d found something. A look around showed that it had the same effect on the others. In record time they all scrambled up to join him on the ridge.
Every one of their jaws dropped to their chests.
On this stretch of beach at the tip of a sandbar peninsula stood a tarnished, broken-down lighthouse. The glass panes of all its upper windows were broken out, and where its spotlight beacon should have been a bonfire blazed. The sun was coming up from behind them, leaving the lighthouse in shadow at this time of morning, but that only made the fire burn with more obviousness and strength.
The others were amazed because they hadn’t been able to sense it, and now it was before them. Maggie was amazed because she was looking at the lighthouse that was in her flashback—the memory she’d seen over and over since Vegas. A woman standing in front of a broken lighthouse.
The team stared in shock at the lighthouse for long seconds.
“I take it this is what you sensed, Maggie?” Marcus asked.
Maggie couldn’t pull her gaze from the hauntingly familiar scene, so she answered without looking at him. “Yes, but, Marcus, I’ve been here before.”
“What?”
All the others were looking at her too.
“Remember when I told you all about the flashes I saw after Vegas? One of them was of a—”
“Woman standing in front of a lighthouse,” Karl finished for her, nodding as he remembered. “This is that same lighthouse? Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I’ve seen it again and again. I’ve been here before.”
Marcus sighed, rubbing his forehead. “But how is that possible? We didn’t come here before, Maggie. One of us would remember. And one of us was with you at all times.”
“That’s not true.” Joan’s voice was calm. “The time that she was captive on the ship we weren’t with her.”
Marcus turned to Joan. “Are you suggesting that she got off the ship, which was orbiting the atmosphere, made it to this beach, spoke with some woman who lived at this lighthouse, then somehow got back on the ship before we found her?”
“I’m not saying I understand what happened, Marcus. I’m only saying that that unaccounted for time is the only time we weren’t with her. It’s really the only time she could have gone anywhere without us knowing. Isn’t it?”
Marcus sighed. “More unanswered questions.”
“Let’s add to them the fact that we can’t sense this,” Karl said. “At all. Even with closed eyes I can feel the sand, the rocks, the wildlife, and the sea. That’s it. There’s nothing tall, nothing to break the wind.”
“But there is no wind,” Clay said. “That’s the point.”
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked.
“We can’t sense it because it’s Concealed from us. Even with wind, we wouldn’t sense it, but we might sense that something was blocking the wind. We just wouldn’t know what it was.”
“You’re saying,” Karl said, “that someone is Concealing that entire lighthouse?”
“Yes.”
There was a moment of silence while everyone took that in.
“How large is the Concealed area?” Marcus asked.
“We can figure that out by deduction,” Clay said, closing his eyes. “If you feel without looking, the sand extends from where we are out for about thirty feet where it meets the water. In reality”—he opened his eyes—“the sand meets the rocks there, which stretch for another fifty feet, followed by the sandbar and then the lighthouse. It’s like we just skip over that area to feel the sea. If you follow it around and compare what you feel to what you see, it seems to be a circular area with the lighthouse as its center point.”
The others were nodding as they did what Clay told them to. Marcus looked over at Maggie.
“You all right, Maggie?”
“Yes. I want to go explore.”
“Well, shouldn’t we—” Karl began.
“We’re losing time. We’ve been gone an hour already.”
Maggie started down the sandy embankment with Marcus right beside her. The others followed.
“Where does the Concealment begin?” Maggie asked when she was roughly thirty feet from the ridge.
“You can’t tell?” Clay asked.
Maggie shook her head. “It’s not Concealed to me.”
Clay looked at Marcus. “Do you think she has the ability to see through Concealments?”
“If she does,” Karl answered, “that’ll sure come in handy.”
“It’s right in front of you, Maggie,” Marcus answered her question. “Another stride forward and you’ll have crossed the line.”
“Okay,” Maggie said. “Stay there.” She turned and took a giant step toward the lighthouse now looming up before them. She turned back toward them. “Can you sense me?”
Marcus closed his eyes then shook his head. “No. You’re behind the Concealment. If I couldn’t see and hear you, I wouldn’t think you were there.”
“Now, see, that’s odd to me,” Clay said. “I didn’t know you could Conceal an area and use it like a boundary that people can go in and out of. When I Conceal, I block out a person’s individual energy. No matter where they go, they’ll be Concealed. This is…strange.”
“Now that you’ve seen it,” Marcus said, “could you reproduce it?”
Clay shook his head. “I’m not sure. Concealments are deeply personal in nature. Because they’re hidden, no one but the maker can see them. I couldn’t look at someone else’s Concealment and compare it to my own. They may do things exactly as I do them or completely different. There’s no way to tell. I could study this more, but anything I learn will be by deduction, not actual observation.”
Marcus started toward where Maggie was standing, but Karl grabbed his arm, stopping him.
“Wait. Maggie, come back this way, please.”
“Why?”
“Let’s make sure this is only a Concealment and not a cage. Make sure you can cross back over.”
Maggie frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. She stepped toward them, half expecting to hit an unseen wall, but she didn’t. Marcus let his breath out when she stood beside him.
“Maybe one of us should stay outside, just in case. If anything happens, they can run and get Doc and Nat to help.”
“I’ll do that,” Clay said. “I don’t need to be with you to Conceal you. I can feel you all and will know if you’re in trouble. I’d like to take the time to study the boundary of the Concealment further.”
Marcus nodded. They moved forward as one.
They jumped lightly from rock to rock until they reached the sandbar. The sand was saturated, the ocean’s water continually flowing over and through it. Maggie feared it would collapse into the sea below the
m, but it didn’t. Their feet sunk several inches with each step as though they were walking through particularly gritty mud.
At the end of the sandbar, an island rose up out of the ocean. This is what held the lighthouse, which, despite its magnificence, was in shambles. Chunks of brick were missing in various places around the main cylindrical structure, and an entire side had fallen away, landing on a squat, rectangular structure that probably served as the light keeper’s residence once. The black, spiral staircase that led to the upper light chamber could be seen clearly from the outside, and the door at the base hung crookedly on its hinges.
Even the yard around the lighthouse, which looked to have once been seeded with grass, now grew only crab grass and weeds and was strewn with debris of every kind. Maggie thought she recognized some rusted car parts, which would have been truly ancient in this time period.
When they reached the structures, Karl stopped. “How about if Joan and I look around in the…house…barn…whatever that little building is?”
Marcus nodded. “Maggie and I will take the lighthouse. Meet you back here in fifteen?”
Karl nodded, and the four of them went in separate directions. Marcus took Maggie’s hand, and she was glad of it. There was a queasiness in her stomach she couldn’t squelch. If she was this nervous in a situation that so far had posed no obvious danger, how much worse would it be when they reached the island?
When they got through the askew door, they could hear the crackling of the fire above. The winding staircase was only wide enough for one person.
The upper light chamber was small and, like the rest of the structure, in pieces. Large chunks of floor were missing around the spot where the fire was blazing, making it look like there were only a series of catwalks around the fire pit. Maggie could see the entire top chamber clearly, and it was vacant.
Marcus scanned the top chamber as well, probably both with his eyes and with his other senses. He didn’t go up. Instead he pulled Maggie along toward one of the four doors on the ground floor.
The first two were rooms, empty save for the skeletons of beds and some loose, random debris. The third door turned out to be a supply closet. The fourth revealed a staircase leading down. The staircase itself was dark and narrow, but there was light coming from the rooms below.
Marcus turned to Maggie, arching an eyebrow. She shrugged.
Checking his grip on her hand, he started down.
The large room that made up the basement was well lit and well kept, especially considering the disrepair of the rest of the lighthouse. It was a crude setup with a fireplace, wood stove, palette of straw, and uneven, unsanded table, but it was also clean, uncluttered, and obviously looked after.
Marcus and Maggie exchanged glances, but they could see all of the room at once; there was nowhere to hide. Maggie noticed a door on the far side of the room and pointed to it. Marcus crossed to it. He paused with his hand on the doorknob then threw the door open all in one motion to take anyone hiding inside by surprise. It was some kind of pantry or root cellar. A rush of cold air came from it—cold storage, then. This was probably below water level.
Marcus stepped inside, but there wasn’t enough room for two, so Maggie didn’t try to follow him. He was knocking on the walls between shelves, trying to find any hollow spots. Maggie cast her mind out, looking for life. Obviously someone lived here. And earlier on the beach she thought she’d had a sense of someone. Now she sensed nothing.
The next thing she felt was a warm hand settling on her shoulder. She inhaled loudly, whirling around and backing up at the same time. She backed hard into Marcus, who had burst out of the root cellar when he heard her gasp.
Standing before them was perhaps the most beautiful woman Maggie had ever seen. She was tall and slender with dark hair and skin the color of pearls. Her features were perfect, and she moved with a lithe gracefulness that meant she was either a jungle cat in disguise or a yoga goddess.
“I…I didn’t sense her,” Maggie whispered.
“Neither did I,” Marcus answered. His stance was defensive.
“Neither will your two friends.” The woman’s voice was deep, throaty, but somehow still feminine. “It’s meant to be that way.” Her smile was pleasant, and it seemed genuine.
This was the woman from Maggie’s memory. She was sure of it.
“Who are you?” Maggie asked.
The woman’s smile faltered a bit, but it returned quickly. “So you’ve made your way back here, Maggie. I admit I didn’t think I would see you again so soon. You must tell me how you managed it without the aid of your memories.”
Maggie frowned up at Marcus and saw her own expression mirrored in his face.
The woman followed her gaze to him. “Is this your Marcus?”
Maggie looked at her again. “What?”
The woman cocked her head to the side but didn’t repeat herself.
“His name is Marcus, yes,” Maggie said.
The woman nodded. Her look was discerning, and Maggie got the feeling this woman knew more about Maggie’s relationship with Marcus than she herself did—not that that was uncommon.
“Who are you?” Maggie said again.
The woman stared at her for long moments before speaking. “What do you remember, Maggie?”
Maggie knew she ought to be exasperated that the woman wasn’t answering her questions, but she had the feeling that this woman knew what had happened to her before, that she could give Maggie information that no one else could. In her urgency for answers, she forgot to be annoyed.
“Very little. I have a flash of a memory of seeing you in front of this lighthouse at sunset. I think I was walking away from you.”
The woman was nodding. “A true memory. Is that all?”
“It’s…all that concerns you. There are other flashes, but you aren’t in them.”
The woman nodded. “Your friends may as well come the rest of the way down. I can sense them lurking on the staircase.”
Maggie turned to see Karl emerge from the stairway, looking chagrined. Joan was behind him.
“There was nothing in the other building,” Karl said quietly, “so we came looking for you.”
Maggie turned back to the woman, who was regarding them with perfect tranquility.
“Who are you?” Maggie asked for the third time.
She was having a hard time putting an age to the woman. Her eyes were like Doc’s—they spoke of infinite wisdom and a quiet knowledge that only those who’ve been through hell on earth can comprehend. Yet, there were no lines on her face, no white or gray in her hair, no stiffness in her body that would name her age. Maggie would have thought the woman younger than herself if not for those searching, brown eyes.
The woman’s expression was utterly unreadable.
“I am the Remembrancer.”
“Remembrancer?” Maggie played the word over her tongue and sifted it through the caverns of her mind, trying to decipher it’s meaning.
“Yes. I am a keeper of memories.”
“Meaning what?” Marcus asked. Though he stood behind Maggie, he had one hand wrapped protectively around her upper arm and had put one foot and one shoulder slightly in front of her.
The woman walked slowly toward him. “Meaning,” she said as she moved, “that I can keep memories hidden or bring them to light. I can find memories you never knew you had.” She was standing in front of him now, her face inches from his. “Or”—she reached up with two fingers and touched him between the eyes—“bring memories to the surface that you’ve tried very hard to forget.”
When she touched him, Marcus’s body shuddered violently. He staggered backward, slamming into the wall behind him.
The woman hadn’t moved to follow him, but Maggie put herself between Marcus and the woman, shoving her back a few steps from him.
“What are you doing?”
The woman remained calm, utterly unaffected by Maggie’s anger. “I’m not hurting him.”
“Coul
d’ve fooled me.” Karl snarled at her from behind Maggie. He’d crossed to Marcus’s side and was helping him to his feet.
Joan had come to stand by Maggie’s side between the strange woman and the two men. The woman made no move toward them and seemed content to simply stare.
Maggie looked over her shoulder at Marcus. He was on his feet now but was jerking his head from side to side.
“Are you all right, Marcus?”
He blinked rapidly and put a hand to his forehead. After a minute, he was able to look down at her. His gaze went to the woman, and a look of awe stole over him. Then he looked back at Maggie. “I’m fine.”
Maggie turned back to the woman. “What did you do?”
“I brought a memory to the surface that he’d tried to bury. Sometimes the emotional impact of such memories can be rather…shocking.”
“If he tried to forget it, it was probably unpleasant. Why would you force him to remember it?” Maggie was shouting. That the woman remained utterly calm made Maggie want to kick her in the shin.
“Because our unpleasant memories are usually the most important ones we have. They shape us in more profound ways than all our happy memories combined, much as we all hate to admit it.”
Maggie dropped her head, rubbing the bridge of her nose. This was getting them nowhere. Was this woman incapable of giving a straight answer? Was she required to speak in riddles for some reason?
“Are you going to tell me who you are or not?” Maggie asked. “I recognize you. I’ve been here before. Please tell me when and why.”
She looked steadily at Maggie for a moment. “Do you know what the law of conservation of energy is, Maggie?”
Maggie ground her teeth but forced herself to remain calm. “Yes. It says that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It only changes form.”
“That’s true of all things, Maggie, not just energy. All things human, all things in the universe are eternal. They cannot be created or destroyed.”
“So you’re saying that my memories are still…around, but they’re just in a different form?”
“Or location,” Karl said from behind her.
The woman looked up at him.
“Doc and Marcus scanned her extensively. Her memories are not in her head.”
The woman smiled. “That’s true, but they haven’t been eradicated either.” She looked back at Maggie. “Once something comes into existence, it becomes part of the fabric of the universe. It cannot be destroyed. This is especially true of memories.”
Maggie could feel a ball of tension accumulating between her eyes. “David said the collectives wouldn’t have taken my memories. They would have invaded my mind and tried to take over or simply killed me, but they wouldn’t have taken my memories and then let me go. So”—she stepped toward the woman—“did you steal my memories?”
The woman surprised Maggie by laughing out loud. Her laugh wasn’t evil or mocking but had genuine delight.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” she said when she’d gotten control of herself. “I should be offended by such a question, but the truth is that it’s been so long since I’ve spoken to anyone that even false accusations are kind of…fun.”
Frowning, Maggie looked back at her other team members. Karl was looking at the woman like she’d just asked if there were fish in the sea. Marcus was still staring at her with a mixture of awe and curiosity. Joan showed less emotion. Her eyes weighed and calculated the strange, beautiful woman, but her face showed no hint of what she was feeling.
Maggie strove to be like Joan.
She turned back to the woman, trying to keep her face tranquil and not at all sure she was succeeding.
The woman had become stoic once more.
“I didn’t steal your memories, Maggie. You gave them to me.”