The Lighthouse Keeper, page 18
15
Dream of a Strange Place
Like the light and the fox, whatever came out of the ocean on the night of the 18th of January, we never saw again. It was as if, having revealed itself to us once, it vanished from the world, leaving us to ask ourselves what it was and why it had appeared. For the next two days, things returned to normal, just as they had following previous events. But for us, of course, nothing about Eilean Mòr could ever be called ‘normal’ again. We looked at the island and the sea and the sky in a different way, as men who knew something of their unfathomable mysteries that no one else in the world knew. No one else, that is, but the three Lighthouse Keepers who had vanished.
Yes, our tasks were normal ones, but our state of mind was not, and I wondered if it ever would be again. In an effort to return to that form of mentality which I feared I had lost forever, I threw myself into my allotted duties with yet more diligence and attention to detail. At night, when I was on duty in the lightroom, I walked restlessly around the confined space, repeatedly checking the great lamps and the mechanism, making sure it was moving freely. I lost count of the number of times I checked that the oil canteens were full, and when the fountains needed filling, I made a careful note of how much oil we would need to bring up from the store room to renew the supply. I listened attentively to the sound of the mechanical escapement mechanism which kept the lens assembly rotating – even though I knew how much time would elapse before it needed to be re-wound. And while I was there, I refrained from looking out of the windows and into the darkness beyond.
While I was off light duty, I cleaned the entire house from top to bottom, dusting and wiping, mopping and dusting again; I swept the yard outside more than it needed to be swept, and when seabirds dashed themselves to death against the tower, as they are wont to do when the light is in operation, I did not curse them as usual, but carefully picked up their bodies one by one and threw them into the sea. Of course, I was well aware that I was attempting to escape from my thoughts; for those thoughts, if left unchecked, would turn again and again to that vast and terrible Unknown that had gathered upon Eilean Mòr. By throwing myself into ceaseless, even needlessly repetitive action, I was at least holding them at bay.
Once, I caught Joseph watching me while I was briskly mopping the kitchen floor, and I wondered whether he thought me foolish or, worse, strangely obsessed, in the manner of a madman endlessly engaged upon some bizarre and pointless task. But then, not long after, he too began to fall with increased enthusiasm to the various small but important jobs that keep a rock light functioning properly. And when it was my turn to cook, he came into the kitchen and asked if he might help, and when I turned to him, I saw such hope in his eyes that I was moved almost to tears, and I readily agreed, and together we prepared a good and wholesome meal for the three of us, which we rounded off a little extravagantly with a dram of whisky each.
I’m quite sure that Milne noticed all this, and more than once I saw him smile to himself, such was the man’s wisdom. He knew what we were doing and why, and he approved, for he was the Principal, and our welfare and that of the light were in his hands. We were three men against that great and terrible Unknown, twenty miles out into the rolling sea with no help at hand, far from the comfort of friends and family and home. It would still be more than a week before the Hesperus came to relieve us, and we were facing a fathomless darkness, with nothing to guide us save the knowledge that three other men had also faced it and were now gone from the world.
*
Late on the evening of the 23rd of January, two days after Milne had discovered the traces upon the grass and the rocks of the island’s northern side, I left Joseph in the lightroom, said goodnight to Milne and went to bed. Nothing untoward had happened for the last two days, and the tiredness I felt was that pleasant sort which comes from prolonged physical activity.
I got into bed and put out the oil lamp on the bedside table. The room faded into darkness periodically broken by a brief flaring behind the curtains as the light swung around above the house. There was no rain that night, and the wind was low and soothing, as if the world were whispering a lullaby. Sleep came quickly. My awareness, so filled with care and trepidation, retreated without my realising it, and I plunged into that state of nonbeing where time and space no longer have any meaning, through vast regions into nowhere.
Having completed that timeless journey which no man understands, my mind emerged into the realm of dreams, and almost immediately I experienced that curious sensation, which happens to people on occasion, of becoming aware that I was dreaming.
I found myself standing outside the lighthouse, on the southern slope of the island, so that the tower loomed tall above me. The light flashed twice every half-minute against a black sky devoid of stars. The air was bitter, and rain fell unnaturally slowly in great freezing torrents. I marvelled at the cold deluge coming from out of that starless sky, for there were no clouds and no winds to drive it so relentlessly into my upturned face.
As I looked south across the ocean, I saw that it was perfectly still – though not in the manner of a flat, calm lake. The foaming crests and deep, dark troughs of its natural movement had been curtailed by the strange power of the dream, so that now it appeared as a rolling grey landscape of hills and valleys, complex ridges and narrow plains. And then the island itself began to move and sway, the rock turning to cool, grey liquid and the grass becoming fronded crests of pale green upon the surface of the waves. I sank to my waist and then further to my chest in this moving mass of liquid, and I was filled with fear and wonder at this reversal of the essential natures of the sea and the land.
And then stars appeared from out of the black sky, and it seemed that they were not stars at all, but living, moving bodies that rippled through the firmament, seething and flexing and breathing with strange life, like creatures of some limitless, lightless ocean. But it seemed to me that they were not merely inhabitants of this ocean: they were part of it, a visible expression of the unending depth of its eternity.
As they gathered together in groups far above me (and yet, it seemed, directly over my head), the cold rain altered its course and moved upwards, away from the frozen sea and the unfrozen land, into them. And then, as if my awareness were settling into the dream to the extent that I became conscious of my own physicality within that non-physical realm, I began to feel coldness seeping into my body, from skin to flesh to bone, and it was a coldness the like of which I had never felt before: it was the coldness of the space between worlds, where no warmth of human life could ever reach, and where human thought, feeling and awareness were eternally and irredeemably foreign and unbelonging.
I felt the terror of those spaces flood my being along with the cold, and in desperation I turned towards the lighthouse. There I saw three figures standing upon the balcony surrounding the lightroom, two dressed in heavy oilskins and one without. All were looking up into the firmament, at the bright shapes that were moving there, but as my gaze fell upon them, they all turned to look down at me, their forms periodically thrown into dark silhouette by the turning of the great beam.
I cried out to them, begging for help, shouting for them to come down and gather me out of that relentless, infinite cold. But they slowly shook their heads, and their faces were etched in such sadness, such monumental despair, that I thought I would die beneath their gaze.
In the midst of the dream I thought of Mary Ducat and of the dream she had described to me outside the Shore Station at Breasclete. And as if in response to this thought (I say ‘as if’, but who is to say that it was not indeed in direct response to it?), I sensed the approach of something vast and unseen, something that had no shape, but which was alive in some greater, more profound way than all the fragile life on God’s earth.
And then I understood what Mary had said when she described her feeling that her dream had been stolen from her, for as I tried to claw my way out of the immense, eternal cold, I perceived the scene retreating from me: the frozen sea, the liquefied mass of the island, the sky full of strange, living stars, the lighthouse and its three lost, forlorn keepers, all seemed to be gathered up in folds of living darkness and carried away into the nothingness that surrounded my dreaming mind.
I was alone, drifting in a featureless void of sleep – and yet still aware that I was asleep. For how long I remained in this state I do not know. But when I awoke, it was to the sound of the fog horn and a world of thick white mist beyond my window.
NINE
Wednesday 22 July
1.15 AM
Rebecca awoke suddenly. She was curled up in a corner of the sitting room, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, the cold hard floor pressing painfully against her left shoulder. For some moments, she lay still, her eyes wide open in the darkness, her mind racing.
What happened? she thought. Oh God… what happened?
A ghost of illumination flared briefly and dully as the automated light flung its beam out beyond the window into the night.
An impossible, premature night.
She heard someone nearby move and groan; someone else muttered something unintelligible. There was a gasp, which she thought came from Jennifer.
‘Jesus Christ!’ That was Max.
She felt someone leaning over her. She gave a soft whimper.
‘Becks… Rebecca.’
She turned over and looked up into a dark-shrouded face. ‘Nick…’
‘Are you okay?’ He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she seized it in both of hers and held onto it as tightly as if he were trying to pull her out of some bottomless abyss. She felt tears welling in her eyes.
‘Nick… what the fuck just happened?’
‘Whatever happened, I think we missed it,’ said Max from across the room. He was fiddling with one of their battery-powered lanterns, a small quartz-halogen torch clenched between his teeth. He switched the lantern on and sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘Anyone got any theories?’ He heaved a great, ragged sigh. ‘Any at all?’
Rebecca sat up and leaned back against the wall, drawing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She looked at the others. Jennifer had stood up and was looking comically around the room, as if she had never seen it before. Her hair had come loose from its neat bun and was hanging in grey strands over her face. Her gaze fell on Donald, who was still lying by the wall, and hurried to him.
‘How is he?’ asked Nick.
‘Asleep,’ she replied. ‘Still alive… but asleep.’
‘What time was it when Becks started reading?’ asked Max.
‘I think it was about three thirty,’ replied Nick, still looking at Rebecca.
‘Three thirty in the afternoon,’ Max repeated. He looked at his watch. ‘And now it’s one fifteen a.m.’
Rebecca looked up at Nick. Suddenly unable to utter a sound – even a whisper – she mouthed the words: What happened?
Nick shook his head, and the fear and confusion in his eyes was so unbearable that Rebecca shut her own and turned away.
‘I can’t believe this… I mean, I can’t friggin’ believe this!’
‘Calm down, Max,’ said Nick over his shoulder.
‘Calm down? What the fuck? I mean, one minute we’re sitting here listening to Becks read from that goddamned book, and the next…’ His voice trailed off, and he put his head in his hands. ‘Jesus… Jesus.’
‘Max is right,’ said Jennifer. ‘I can’t believe we’ve been unconscious for nearly ten hours. I can’t imagine what could have caused it.’
‘Where’s Whitley Strieber when you need him?’ said Max.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jennifer.
Max shrugged. ‘You know… that whole missing time thing.’
‘You think we were… abducted by something?’ said Rebecca.
‘Hell, I don’t know. All I know is, you don’t just fall asleep for ten hours without warning – unless we’ve all suddenly got narcolepsy or something.’
‘Unlikely,’ said Nick.
‘Perhaps we weren’t unconscious,’ said Jennifer. ‘Perhaps nothing happened.’
Max glanced at her. ‘Huh?’
‘We know that whatever Dalemore and the others encountered here had the ability – whether consciously intended or otherwise – to alter their perceptions of reality. Think about the discrepancies in their accounts of that thing coming out of the ocean and onto the island. If we’re correct in our assumption that we’re witnessing the intersection of another dimension – another aspect of reality – with our own… then it may affect our perception of time. Or it may affect time itself…’
‘You mean,’ said Nick, ‘that nothing happened during those ten hours… because those ten hours didn’t exist?’
Jennifer nodded. ‘A disruption in the flow of time – or our perception of the flow of time. A momentary dislocation in the way we experience reality.’
Nick gave a despairing sigh. ‘My God, Jennifer. Do you know what you’ve just described?’
She frowned at him. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘You’ve just described madness – only not as a phenomenon occurring within the human mind, but in the external world. We’re in a region of the world that has lost its sanity.’
Rebecca was about to say something but then suddenly recoiled from the wall against which she had been leaning. She scrambled to her feet and moved quickly to the centre of the room. Everyone jumped. Max immediately got to his feet.
‘What’s wrong?’ Nick demanded as he went to her.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘But for some reason, I don’t want to be close to that wall.’
‘Why the hell not?’ said Max.
‘I don’t know!’ she shouted, and suddenly the tears came, and she turned to Nick and held onto him tightly as she began to sob.
‘It’s all right, Becks,’ he whispered as he stroked her hair. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No it’s not!’ she said, her voice muffled against his chest.
‘Wait,’ said Max. Slowly, with immense reluctance, he took a step towards the window. ‘Do you hear that?’
Rebecca shut her eyes and held her breath, listening along with the others.
‘What is it?’ Jennifer whispered.
His voice oddly calm and uninflected, Max replied: ‘Movement. Something’s moving outside.’
‘The wind,’ whispered Jennifer.
‘There is no wind.’ Max turned and looked at them all. ‘No wind…’
Nick went and stood beside him, and together they listened. After a few moments, Rebecca wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater and joined them. She listened intently, breathing as quietly as she could, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. She struggled to identify the sound, but all she could do was decide what it was not.
It was not the sound of footsteps, nor was it the sound of an animal. It was not the fluttering of a night bird’s wings, nor was it the soft rattle of a bat’s. Do they come this far out? she asked herself. Do bats fly over the sea? She tried to compare the sound to something with which she was familiar, tried to imagine what might be making it.
It seemed to contain several elements: sounds within a sound that were being constantly repeated. They reminded her of the soft crackle of a sheet of paper being wadded up into a ball; of something tapping very gently on a distant drum; of the low, fitful moan of something sleeping uneasily; of the breathy hiss of a gas lamp brought suddenly to life. And beneath all those sounds, a soft, wet movement, viscous, shuffling, alive. She could not imagine anything making a sound like that.
She recalled her sudden, uncontrollable desire to get away from the wall, and she knew that her unconscious mind had reacted instinctively to the presence of something on the other side, outside the house. The reptilian core of her brain had recoiled from it, as wild animals do from predators.
‘What should we do?’ Jennifer whispered, looking at each of them in turn. ‘What should we do?’
‘Screw this!’ said Max, and he strode purposefully towards the window.
Nick reached out with one hand. ‘Max!’
‘I wanna see what’s making that goddamned sound.’
He leaned in close to the window, his face reflected in the obsidian mirror blackness beyond. The others watched his face as it turned to left and right, as he craned his neck trying to glimpse beyond the window frame. His reflection was briefly overwhelmed by the beam from the light above, before reappearing in the window.
‘There’s nothing out there,’ he said. ‘At least, nothing I can see.’
‘Max, please come away from the window,’ said Jennifer.
Max turned around. Rebecca couldn’t look at his face, couldn’t bring herself to stop looking at the window, in which the back of his head was now reflected. She was waiting for something to come through, waiting for something unimaginable to smash the glass, reach in and drag Max outside.
For fuck’s sake, come away from the window!
‘Nick,’ said Max. ‘What do you say to taking a look around out there?’
‘What? Are you crazy?’ Rebecca cried. She clutched his arm. ‘Nick, don’t.’
‘I’d rather not,’ Nick replied. ‘But…’ he smiled at Max. ‘If I don’t, you’re still going to go, aren’t you? I mean, you really are that much of an arsehole.’
Max chuckled. ‘Not quite, Nicky. But I have to tell you something. I’ve never run away from anything in my life, and I never hid from anything or anyone. That just ain’t my style. I wanna see what’s out there, right now. If it’s dangerous and wants in, then it’ll get in, and we’re not as safe as we might think we are. And if it’s nothing – if what we’re hearing is just some trick of acoustics or some such – well, then we’ll know that too by going outside. And we won’t have to spend the rest of the night shivering like scared kids. What do you say?’
‘Hurricanes,’ said Rebecca.
Max glanced at her. ‘What?’
‘You said you’ve never run from anything in your life. But you’ve run from hurricanes.’
