Playing pool with the Realtor and the veteran on an expedition to the Star Lanes a week later, you’re listening to the Realtor describe some couple that had been squatting in a model home and refused to give her their names when you think again about Whitby not naming the mouse. As if he’d been following Southern Reach protocol for expeditions.
“They thought that so long as I didn’t know their names, I couldn’t call the police. Peering out from behind the curtains like ghosts. There was so much fail in that, not that I felt good about kicking them out. Except I have to sell the place—I’m not running a charity. I give to charities, sure, but why do they have homeless shelters anyway? And if I let them stay then someone else might get the same idea. Turns out the police had a file on them, so I made the right decision.”
Waiting there back on your desk at the Southern Reach you already have the files of candidates for a twelfth expedition. Right on top is the most promising, to your mind: an antisocial biologist whose husband went on the last eleventh.
0018: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
Secured the lighthouse. Worked on the [illegible]. Fixed things. And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Came then the crying call of a curlew, and at dawn, too, I heard the hooting of an owl, the yap of foxes. Just a little ways up from the lighthouse, where I strayed for a bit, a bear cub poked its head out of the underbrush, looking around like any child might. And the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive.
By the time Saul made it to the village bar, everyone had already crammed inside, anticipating music by a few locals who called themselves the Monkey’s Elbow. The deck, with its great view of the darkening ocean, was empty—it was too cold, for one thing—and he hurried inside with anticipation. He’d felt better with each day since the hallucination on the beach, and no one from the Light Brigade had returned to plague him. His temperature had receded, along with the pressure in his head, and with it the urge to burden Charlie with his problems. He hadn’t dreamed for three nights. Even his hearing was fine, the moment his ears had popped like getting a jolt to his system: more energetic in every way. So everything seemed normal, as if he’d worried over nothing—and all he missed was the familiar sight of Gloria coming down the beach toward the lighthouse, or climbing on the rocks, or loitering near the shed.
Charlie had even promised to meet him at the bar for a short while before he went out night fishing again; despite the rough schedule, he seemed happy to be making money, but they’d hardly seen each other in several days.
Old Jim, with his ruddy beacon of a face and fuzzy white mutton-chop sideburns, had commandeered the rickety upright piano in the far corner of the main room. Monkey’s Elbow was warming up around him, a discordant ramble of violin, accordion, acoustic guitar, and tambourine. The piano, a sea salvage, had been restored to its former undrowned glory—mother-of-pearl inlay preserved on the lid—but still retained a wheezy-tinny tone from its baptism, “sagging and soggy” on some of the keys, according to Old Jim.
The place smelled comfortingly of cigarettes and greasy fried fish, and some underlying hint of too-sweet honey. The oysters were fresh-caught, and the beers, served out of a cooler, were cheap. Saul always forgot the downside real quick. There was good cheer to be found here, if sometimes grudgingly given. Any prayers he offered up came from knowing that no health inspector had ever journeyed to the tiny kitchen or the grill out back where the seagulls gathered with irrepressible hope.
Charlie was already there, had gotten them a little round table with two stools that hugged the wall opposite the piano. Saul pushed through the press of bodies—maybe sixty people, practically a mob by forgotten-coast standards—and gave Charlie a squeeze of the shoulder before sitting.
“Hello there, stranger,” Saul said, making it sound like an even worse pickup line than it would’ve been.
“Someone’s in a better mood, jack,” Charlie said. Then caught himself. “I mean—”
“I don’t know any jack, unless you mean jack shit,” Saul said. “No, I know what you mean. And I am. I feel a lot better.” First evidence from Charlie that he had been dragged down by Saul’s condition, which just deepened his affection for Charlie. He’d not complained once during all of Saul’s moaning about his lethargy and symptoms, had only tried to help. Maybe they could get back to normal, once this night-fishing expedition came to its end.
“Good, good,” Charlie said, smiling and looking around, still a little extra stutter-step of awkwardness from him when out in public.
“How was the fishing yesterday?” Charlie’d said something about a good catch, but they hadn’t talked long.
“Best haul so far,” Charlie said, his face lit up. “A lot of skates and rays and flounder. Some mullet and bass.” Charlie got paid a flat rate per hour, but a bonus for catches over a certain weight.
“Anything odd?” A question Saul always asked. He liked hearing about strange sea creatures. Lately, thinking about what Henry had said, he took a special interest in the answer.
“Only a couple of things. Threw them both back ’cause they were so ugly. Some weird fish and a kind of sea squirt that looked like it was spewing blood.”
“Fair enough.”
“You look a lot better, you know. Calm at the lighthouse?” Which was Charlie’s way of saying “Tell me why on the phone you said ‘not a lot of fun around here recently.’”
Saul was about to launch into the story of his final confrontation with Henry and the Light Brigade when the piano cut off and Old Jim got up and introduced Monkey’s Elbow, even though everybody already knew them. The band members were Sadi Dawkins, Betsey Pepine, and his erstwhile lighthouse volunteer, Brad. They all worked at the village bar on and off. Trudi, Gloria’s mother, was on tambourine, the guest spot. Saul’s turn would come someday.
Monkey’s Elbow lurched into some sad thick song, the sea’s bounty on display in its lyrics, and two ill-fated lovers, and a tragic hill overlooking a secret cove. The usual, but not so much chantey as influenced by what Charlie called “sand-encrusted sea-hippies,” who had popularized a laid-back listener-friendly kind of folk-pop. Saul liked it live, even if Brad tended to ham it up a bit. But Charlie stared at his drink with a kind of pursed-lipped frown, then rolled his eyes secretively at Saul, while Saul shook his head in mock disapproval. Sure, they weren’t great, but any performance took guts. He used to throw up before sermons, which might’ve been a sign from God, now that he thought about it. The worst nights, Saul had done push-ups beforehand and jumping jacks to sweat out the fear of performance.
Charlie leaned in, and Saul met him halfway. Charlie said in his ear, “You know that fire on the island?”
“Yeah?”
“A friend of mine was out there fishing that day, and he saw bonfires. People burning papers, for hours, like you said. But when he came back around, they’d loaded a bunch of boxes into motorboats. You want to know where those boats headed?”
“Out to sea?”
“No. Due west, hugging the coast.”
“Interesting.” The only thing due west of Failure Island besides mosquito-infested inlets were a couple of small towns and the military base.
Saul sat back, just staring at Charlie, with Charlie nodding at him like “I told you so,” although what he meant by that Saul didn’t know. Told you they were strange? Told you they were up to no good?
The second song played out more like a traditional folk song, slow and deep, carrying along the baggage of a century or two of prior interpretations. The third was a rollicking but silly number, another original, this time about a crab that lost its shell and was traveling all over the place to find it. A few couples were dancing now. His ministry hadn’t been one of those that banned dancing or other “earthly pleasures,” but he’d never learned either. Dancing was Saul’s secret fantasy, something he thought he’d enjoy but had to file under “too late now
.” Charlie’d never dance anyway, maybe not even in private.
Sadi came by during a short break between songs. She worked in a bar in Hedley during the summers, and she always had funny stories about the customers, many of them coming off the river walk “drunk as a skunk.” Trudi came over, too, and they talked for a while, although not directly about Gloria. More about Gloria’s dad, during which Saul gathered that Gloria and her dad had made it back to his place by now. So that was all right.
Then they mostly just listened, stealing moments between songs to talk or grab another beer. In scanning the room for people he knew, people he might give a nod to, claim a bond with, he’d felt for a while now not like the one watching but the one being watched. He put it down to some receding symptom of his non-condition, or to Charlie’s skittishness rubbing off on him. But then, through the murky welter of bodies, the rising tide of loud conversations, the frenetic playing of the band, he spied an unwelcome figure across the room, near the door.
Henry.
He stood perfectly still, watching, without even a drink in his hand. Henry wore that ridiculous silk shirt and pretentious slacks, pressed just so, and yet, curiously, he blended in against the wall, as if he belonged there. No one but Saul seemed to notice him. That Suzanne wasn’t with him struck Saul hard for some reason. It made him resist the urge to turn to Charlie and point Henry out to him. “That’s the man who broke into my lighthouse a few nights ago.”
The whole time Saul stared at Henry, the edges of the room had been growing darker and darker, and the sickly sweet smell intensified, and everyone around Henry grew more and more insubstantial—vague, unknowable silhouettes—and all the light came to Henry and gathered around him, and spilled back out from him.
A kind of vertigo washed over Saul, as if a vast pit had opened up beneath him and he was suspended above it, about to fall. There came back all of the old symptoms he’d thought were gone, as if they’d just been hiding. There was a comet dripping fire through his head, trailing flame down his back.
While the band kept playing through the darkness, their sound curdling into a song sung far too slow, and before they could vanish into a darkly glinting spiral, before everything not-Henry could disappear, Saul gripped the table with both hands and looked away.
The chatter, the rush and realignment of conversations came back, and the light came back, and the band sounded normal again, and Charlie was talking to him like nothing had happened, Saul’s sense of relief so palpable the blood within him was rushing too hard and he felt faint.
When, after a stabilizing minute, he dared sneak a glance toward where Henry had stood, the man had vanished and someone else stood in his place. Someone Saul didn’t know, who raised his beer to Saul awkwardly so that he realized he’d been staring across the room for too long.
“Did you hear what I said?” Charlie, in a voice loud enough to cut through the band. “Are you okay?” Reaching out to touch Saul’s wrist, which meant he was concerned and that Saul had been acting odd. Saul smiled and nodded.
The song ended, and Charlie said, “It wasn’t the stuff about the boats and the island, was it? I wasn’t trying to worry you.”
“No, not that. Nothing like that. I’m fine.” Touched, because it was the kind of thing that might’ve secretly bothered Charlie if their roles had been reversed.
“And you’d tell me if you were feeling sick again.”
“Of course I would.” Half lying, trying to process what he’d just experienced. And, serious, struck by some form of premonition: “But, Charlie, I hate to say it—you should probably leave now, or you’ll be late.”
Charlie took that in stride, already half off his stool because he didn’t like the music anyway.
“See ya tomorrow sometime, then,” Charlie said, giving him a wink and a long last stare that wasn’t entirely innocent.
Somehow Charlie looked so good in that moment, putting on his jacket. Saul clasped him tight before he could get away. The weight of the man in his arms. The feel of Charlie’s rough shave that he loved so much. The tart surprise of Charlie’s lip balm against his cheek. Held him for an extra moment, trying to preserve all of it, as a bulwark against whatever had just happened. Then, too soon, Charlie was gone, out the door, into the night, headed for the boat.
0019: CONTROL
The night was full of white rabbits streaking across the sky, instead of the stars, the moon—and Control knew that was wrong in some fevered part of his mind, some compartment holding out against the inquisitive brightness. Were they white rabbits or were they smudges of black motion rendered as photo negatives impeding his vision? Because he didn’t want to see what was there. Because the biologist had unlocked something inside of him, and he returned now sometimes to the phantasmagorical art in Whitby’s strange room in the Southern Reach, and then to his theory that to disappear into the border was to enter some purgatory where you would find every lost and forgotten thing: all of the rabbits herded across that invisible barrier, every beached destroyer and truck from the night Area X had been created. The missing in action from the expeditions. The thought a kind of annihilating abyss. Yet there was also the light blossoming from the place below the Crawler, detailed in the biologist’s journal account. Where led that light?
Trying to pick out from all of those pieces what might be a reasonable, even an honorable, choice. One that his father would have agreed with; he no longer thought much of his mother, or what she might think.
Maybe I just wanted to be left alone. To remain in the little house on the hill in Hedley, with his cat Chorry and the chittering bats at night, not so far from where he had grown up, even if now so distant.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference, Grace.”
The three of them sleeping on the pine moss, the moist grass, less than a mile from the topographical anomaly, their final approach planned for the morning.
“What wouldn’t?” Gentle, perhaps even kind. Which let him know the full manifestation of his distress. Kept seeing the biologist’s many eyes, which became stars, which became the leaping white lights. Which became a chessboard with his father’s last move frozen there. Along with Control’s own last move, still forthcoming.
“If you had told me everything. Back at the Southern Reach.”
“No. It wouldn’t have.”
Ghost Bird slept beside him, and this, too, helped him chart his decline. She slept at his back, guarding him, and with her arms wrapped tight around him. He was secure there, safe, and he loved her more for allowing that now, when she had less and less reason to. Or no reason at all.
The night had turned chilly and deep, and crowded at the edges with creatures staring in at them, just dark shapes silent and motionless. But he didn’t mind them.
Things his dad had said to him stuck with him more clearly now, because they must’ve happened. His dad was saying to him, “If you don’t know your passion, it confuses your mind, not your heart.” In a moment of honesty after he had failed in the field and he could only talk to his dad in riddles about it, never tell him the truth: “Sometimes you need to know when to go on to the next thing—for the sake of other people.”
The chill in that. The next thing. What was his next thing here? What was his passion? He didn’t know the answer to either question, knew only that there was comfort in the scratchiness of the pine needles against his face and the sleep-drenched, smoky smell of the dirt beneath him.
* * *
Morning came, and he huddled in Ghost Bird’s arms until she stirred, disengaged from him in a way that felt too final. Among the reeds, endless marsh, and mud, there came a suggestion on the horizon of burning, and a popping and rattling that could’ve been gunfire or some lingering memory of past conflict playing out in his head.
Yet still the blue heron in the estuary stalked tadpoles and tiny fish, the black vulture soared on the thermals high above. There came a thousand rustlings among the islands of trees. Behind them, on the horizon, the lighthouse co
uld be seen, might always be seen, even through the fog that came with the dawn, here noncommittal and diffuse, there thick, rising like a natural defense where needed, a test and blessing against that landscape. To appreciate any of this was Ghost Bird’s gift to him, as if it had seeped into him through her touch.
But the unnatural world intruded, as it always did, so long as will and purpose existed, and for a moment he resented that. Ghost Bird and Grace were debating what to do if they encountered any remnants of the border commander’s troops. Debating what to do when they reached the tower.
“You and I go down,” Grace said. “And Control can guard the entrance.” This last stand, this hopeless task.
“I should go down alone,” Ghost Bird said, “and you should both stand guard above.”
“That would be against expedition protocols,” Grace said.
“That’s what you want to invoke here? Now?”
“What’s left to invoke?” Grace asked.
“I go down alone,” Ghost Bird said, and Grace gave her no answer.
Tactical not strategic, a phrase rising out of his back catalog of favorites. It seemed as obsolete as any of the rest, like the enormous frame of an old-fashioned bicycle.
He kept glancing up at that murky sky, waiting for the heavens to fall away and reveal their true position. But the mimicry remained in place, most convincing. What if the biologist had been wrong? What if the biologist in her writings had been a calmly raving lunatic? And then just a monster? What then?
They broke camp, used a stand of swamp trees as initial cover and surveyed the marsh, stared across the water of the estuaries. The smoke now billowed up at a sharp sixty-degree angle to add its own ash-silver roiling to the fog and form a heavier, weighted blankness. This alliance obscured the last of the blue sky and accentuated the crackling line of fire at the horizon parallel to them: waves of orange thrust upward from golden centers.
The pewter stillness of the channel of water in the foreground reflected the lines of the flames and the billowing of the smoke—reflected the nearest reeds, too, and doubled by reflection also the island that at its highest point showcased island oaks and palmetto trees, their trunks white lines lost in patches of fog.