The Lighthouse Keeper, page 13
It was only when I recalled that a new can of oil was needed that my gladness departed, and disquiet returned to my mind like an unwelcome guest, for the oilcans were kept in the outbuilding, where three nights ago Milne and I had heaved aside the blocked door to find that nothing was blocking it.
I thought of asking Joseph to go there with me, to lend a hand, but the truth was that each oilcan could be lifted by one man, and so there was no reason – no obvious reason – to ask him to accompany me. It would be an act of cowardice to avoid going into the outbuilding alone, and Joseph would almost certainly suspect that something about the place was wrong. I still intended to comply with Milne’s wish that Joseph not be told, although I still did not know whether I agreed with him, but he was the Principal Keeper, the one in charge of our small group, and I was experienced enough to know that, while on lighthouse duty, the Principal’s instructions had to be followed.
And so I went out through the kitchen door and into the yard. Closing the door firmly behind me, I paused for some moments, looking at the outbuilding, with the wind rising in my ears like the moan of some great waking beast, and the vast grey blanket of sky looming overhead.
And it was then, just as I began to walk reluctantly across the yard towards the outbuilding, that something happened which I am at a loss to explain. While still in midstride upon the cobbles of the yard, I suddenly and without warning nor any intervening period of time, found myself hunched over in near-total darkness.
Instead of hard cobbles beneath my hands and knees there was cold, damp earth. I remember crying out – an ugly animal cry of uncomprehending shock, harsh, guttural and filled with terror. My senses were overwhelmed with the twin immediate sensations of darkness all around and cold dampness beneath; they filled my awareness, obliterating all rational thought, and for I don’t know how long, I cowered there like an animal in its burrow, my breath coming in quick hard gasps.
Presently, my mind cleared somewhat; the behaviour of a civilised man reasserted itself to the extent that I was able to look around. There was a wall, apparently made of drystones, on three sides, while a glance behind me revealed a ragged doorway leading outside. I saw land rolling towards the grey foam of ocean in the distance, and I realised, with a sense of dizzying incomprehension that threatened to overwhelm me again, that I was crouching inside the ruined chapel that stood a few yards from the lighthouse.
A single question pulsed in my mind like a beating heart: How did I get here? I had been walking across the yard towards the outbuilding with the intention of fetching a can of oil for the light. And then… and then, in the instant between two neighbouring moments, I had come here…
The thought occurred to me that there was something profoundly wrong with my mind, that for several moments I had ceased to be conscious and had walked to the chapel and crawled inside for reasons utterly unknown to me now. That was the only explanation I could think of, and yet it raised another question that was no less daunting and terrible: if I had lost my awareness and, in effect, sleepwalked away from the lighthouse, might it happen again? And what if it happened while I was on duty in the lightroom? And what if next time I walked further, off the edge of the island?
‘Oh, God,’ I murmured. ‘This place… this place.’
I realised that I would have to report this episode to Milne, to make him aware that it was entirely possible I could no longer be relied upon to perform my duties. This dismal thought made me groan aloud, for such an admission would only confirm Milne and Moore’s belief that I had brought ill fortune to them, that I was possibly dangerous and not to be trusted.
I was about to crawl back out of the chapel into the light, when my hands fell upon something half buried in the damp earthen floor. At first I thought it was simply a lump of stone, and I would have ignored it were it not for something in its shape, felt half-blindly in the darkness, that stayed me and made me pull it from the earth’s cold, damp embrace.
Outside, I stood up straight and held the thing before me, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before, nor even imagined. That it had been carved by the hand of man I had no doubt, such were its intricacies, its planes and folds, its rounded bulbs and deeply chiselled clefts. But as to what it was intended to represent, if anything, I had no idea. Small clods of earth clung to it, and I tried to smear them away, but they held tenaciously to its surface.
Who had carved it? I wondered. And what strange inspiration had taken hold of them to produce such an object? Although I had no evidence for such a supposition, the thought occurred to me that the stone might have been carved by the long-dead Columban hermit who had spent his lonely days on the island. But again the question rose in my mind: why carve a lump of stone into this shapeless shape? Perhaps, I thought, the terrible harshness and isolation of his existence had unhinged his mind.
Perhaps I was holding in my shivering hands the product of a man’s insanity.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I walked back to the yard, retrieved the oilcan from the outbuilding and took it into the kitchen. John Milne was there, ladling porridge into a bowl.
‘Good morning, Alec,’ he said.
‘Good morning, John.’
‘What have you got there?’ he asked, glancing at the carved stone.
‘I’m not certain.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘In the chapel.’
Milne stopped what he was doing and looked at me. ‘What were you doing in there?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
He regarded me in silence, and for the first time the thought occurred to me that it had not been some random mental aberration that had taken me to the chapel. For some reason, I had been drawn there against my will – against even my direct knowledge… drawn there to find the carved stone.
I put the oilcan down and took the stone to the sink. I took the kettle and poured boiling water over it to clean away the lumps of earth. Milne stood beside me and watched.
‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ he said. I did not reply immediately, and he repeated the question with urgency.
I could not bring myself to lie to him, could not even think of a convincing lie to tell. ‘I was walking across the yard to fetch an oilcan for the fountain,’ I said. ‘And then I was inside the chapel, and I don’t know how I got there, and I have no memory of getting there… but there I was, and I found this half-buried in the floor, and I don’t know what it is or what it is meant to be, but I have a notion that it was made by the Christian hermit who once lived here.’
‘You have no memory of going into the chapel? What the devil are you talking about?’
‘I’m sorry, John,’ I said. ‘But that’s the truth of it.’
Milne looked down into the sink, at the stone that now lay clean and unobscured there. ‘It looks horrible,’ he said. ‘Why would any Christian make such a horrible, misshapen thing?’
I said nothing.
‘The Flannans have been visited many times over the centuries,’ Milne said. ‘Clansmen used to graze their sheep here, and came to hunt seabirds for their meat and feathers.’
‘I know.’
‘Perhaps this was left by one of them for some reason. They had some strange customs.’
‘Perhaps.’
Milne hesitated, then continued, ‘It’s only a stone.’
‘If it’s only a stone, then what happened to me? Why was I taken into the chapel, if not to find it?’
‘I don’t know. But I will tell you this: I’m very alarmed that you have no memory of it.’
‘I don’t think it will happen again.’
‘How do you know? This is not the place to…’
‘To what? Lose my faculties?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think that will happen again, John.’
‘I hope not, Alec,’ he said, staring levelly at me.
I lifted the stone from the sink and turned it over in my hands, running my fingers along its folds and crests. ‘Whoever made this made it for a reason… but why?’
‘It’s the product of a diseased mind,’ said Milne with distaste. ‘I don’t like it, and I don’t want it here. Do you understand me, Alec? I want you to put it back where you found it – or better still, throw the thing into the sea.’
‘It was made for a reason,’ I repeated.
‘It looks like some horrible beast from the bottom of the ocean, something that should never see the light of day. I don’t want it here.’
‘It’s nine o’clock,’ I said. ‘I’m going up to the lightroom.’
I picked up the oilcan and walked out of the kitchen.
But I kept the stone with me.
11
The Living Sky
There was a table and chair in the lightroom. I placed the stone on the table and sat and looked at it, while the wind moaned around the tower and the clouds rolled and tumbled across the sky and the grey mass of the breathing sea rose and fell. Several times I stood up and walked restlessly around the confined space, but always I would return to the chair and sit hunched forward to examine the stone, while the hours moved by in their slow, inexorable procession.
I thought again and again of Milne’s words, of his reaction to the stone’s appearance. ‘Something that should never see the light of day,’ he had said. I recalled the expression on his face: a frown of deep concern, mixed with something akin to revulsion, as if the ocean had indeed thrown up some strange form of life, an aberration of Nature, a defect in God’s world.
I wondered whether he was right in suggesting that one of the clansmen of centuries past had left it here. I recalled Martin Martin’s description of the customs they followed while on the island, how they would take off their shirts and pray and meditate around the chapel, and I decided to consult his book again at the first available opportunity, to see if he made mention of anything like this.
In the meantime, I could not rid myself of the conviction that the stone had been created for some reason by the unknown man who had lived here in ancient ages, and I continued to examine it, with the sounds of the wind and the sea in my ears, and as I regarded it with greater and greater intensity, I began to feel its bizarre and incomprehensible shape enter my mind, as if I were a child learning to read, attempting to make sense of strange symbols on sheets of paper. If I could only interpret the lines of the stone, the intention behind its form, the guiding principle that had inspired it, might I then gain some insight into the mystery of Eilean Mòr?
My reverie halted at that thought. Why should this be so? I wondered. What could this object possibly tell me about the island and what we had seen here? ‘What a strange notion,’ I whispered to myself. I recalled that outside, I had wondered if the stone were the product of madness, and yet, I reflected, it made a curious kind of sense to suppose that whoever had carved the stone had been attempting to express something, to describe something that words alone could not describe – a feeling, an event, a revelation… or perhaps an obscure epiphany.
Had Milne sensed something of this when he saw the stone? Was that the reason for his curious reaction, which had surprised me in its vehemence? He had not wanted it in the house, had wanted me to cast it into the ocean; he had seemed genuinely afraid of it. For my part, I was still deeply concerned at the unexplained means by which I had come upon the stone, but my own fear had been overwhelmed by the question of its existence, which grew in importance to me with each hour that passed.
At a quarter to one, Joseph came up to the lightroom with some food for me. He put the plate of stew on the table, glanced at the stone and left quickly, without saying a word. I assumed that Milne must have told him about it; perhaps he had also described how I had found it. If so, then it was reasonable to suppose that he considered this situation to be potentially dangerous, for I guessed that he would not have mentioned it to Joseph otherwise.
As I half-heartedly dipped the thick slice of bread into the stew, I felt a sudden wave of depression seize me: a profound sense of isolation, not only from the rest of mankind, but also from my companions here on the island. I did not like the feeling of being up here alone in the lightroom with the others downstairs, probably discussing me in worried tones.
I wondered if something like this had happened to the lost keepers, Ducat, Marshall and MacArthur. Had some strange event turned them against each other? Perhaps one of them had lost his mind and murdered the other two, and then thrown himself into the sea in remorse, or perhaps to make a desperate escape from whatever madness had seized him. It was possible, I supposed, but if that were the case, then were the lethal events now repeating themselves?
I sighed deeply and miserably and put my head in my hands, besieged by horrible, unanswerable questions. The best thing to do would be to follow Milne’s wishes and cast the stone into the sea; my mind understood that well enough, but my heart refused to let go of the feeling that the stone held some secret which might, if revealed, provide an answer to the enigmas we had so far experienced.
Perhaps I should lie to the others: tell them that I had thrown the thing away, while secretly keeping it in my room and examining it in private. Yes, I could do that. Then perhaps they would believe that I could be trusted. I needed them to believe that, and I needed to believe it myself.
Feeling a little better, I finished the stew and stood at the windows, surveying the land and ocean to the south. From my vantage point I could see the twin islets of Làmh a’ Sgeir Bheag and Làmh an Sgeir Mhòir, and beyond them the neighbouring island of Eilean Tighe, clustered in dull green-greyness together upon the hissing, clasping sea.
The clouds billowed like thick smoke overhead, as if Heaven itself were on fire, and somewhere far off there was a dull explosion of thunder. The wail of the wind rose yet further, and I could almost feel its pressure upon the leaded panes of glass that surrounded me. And as I looked out at the clouds filling the sky, I realised that I did not like the way they looked, for there was something about them that I had never seen before: a regularity that had no place in the chaos of an approaching storm.
Pressing my hands against the window panes, I watched in disbelief as the clouds slowly arranged themselves into vertical columns, like the pillars of some ancient Roman temple, and I listened as the wind fell away to leave an unnatural silence all about. It was as if the sky was not the sky anymore, as if it had been supplanted by something of an entirely different order.
I rushed to the top of the staircase leading down through the tower from the lightroom into the house and sounded the house-bell, shouting, ‘John! Joseph! Come up here, now!’
Within moments I heard the sound of boots upon the stairs, and my companions joined me.
‘What is it, Alec?’ said Milne.
I pointed through the windows. ‘Look.’
The others gazed in silence at the columns of cloud that now surrounded the island.
Joseph shook his head. ‘God preserve us… what’s wrong with the sky?’
‘A trick of the wind,’ said Milne a little too quickly.
‘But there is no wind,’ retorted Joseph.
‘Not now, but there was until just a few moments ago. The wind can make strange shapes out of clouds, we all know that, Joseph.’
Milne looked at me, as if seeking my agreement. I nodded. ‘John must be right,’ I said, for suddenly I felt immensely weary and realised that I could not face more strangeness. I felt like a man sick to his bones with pneumonia, who is confronted with the prospect of a long walk through freezing wind and rain. I could not face it: I craved peace and normality as much as a sick man craves warmth and rest. I gladly agreed with John Milne, even while I realised that he was mistaken, that no wind could ever make clouds into the shapes we saw.
Joseph must have recognised the lie in my voice, for he said, ‘You don’t believe that, Alec. This is not the wind. And even if it were, why has it dropped so suddenly? It seems there’s not a breath of it, now.’
‘It rises and falls quickly, Joseph. We know that, too,’ I said, and as I spoke the words, I hated myself; for I was hiding from the strangeness because I could no longer stand it, and agreeing with Milne because I did not want any discord between myself and the Principal. But Milne was hiding from the strangeness also: I could see it in his face, in the deep furrows of his forehead, in the wideness of his eyes as he gazed out at the distant, impossible columns of cloud. I felt that I was betraying poor Joseph, who alone among us was giving voice to what we were all thinking.
Anywhere in the world, clouds could not do what those clouds had done.
We all made a slow circuit of the lightroom, looking in every direction out from the island. The columns surrounded us, but though we had an unobstructed view of the ocean out to the horizon, I could not decide where the columns met the surface of the water, nor where their upper reaches ended. They were dark and furious grey in colour and stood perfectly still upon the world.
‘I can see clouds between them,’ said Milne suddenly, grabbing my shoulder and pointing. ‘Look, do you see?’
Peering into the distance, I saw that he was right. In the narrow vertical spaces between the columns, the wispy forms of clouds drifted through a distant sky – a sky of normality and sanity: the sky of the world we knew. It seemed to me that the impossible columns were like the bars of a gigantic cage or prison, keeping us inside a smaller world where things were not as they were outside amidst the run and gyre of mankind; as if they were the visible boundary between the two worlds, defining and separating them. And I felt my heart tense and quicken in my chest, and I felt wonder and despair flooding my mind in equal measure, for surely we were at the mercy of powers beyond the imagination of man.
And yet, in those moments of dire extremity, I found myself wondering whether we were somehow being told or shown something that might help us in our understanding. Thinking on what I remember of that day, I am forced to admit that this could have been nothing more than wishful thinking: a desperate desire for the presence of someone or something benign; for in those terrible moments it occurred to me that strangeness could reach an intensity that was lethal to the human mind, that we were in the presence of something that might well annihilate us by its mere proximity to us.
