The Lighthouse Keeper, page 22
Suddenly, Joseph stopped writhing and lay still, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Please stop the sound…’
‘What sound?’ said Milne. ‘Joseph! Listen to me. What sound?’
‘The sound, John,’ he said.
‘He’s responding to you,’ I whispered. ‘Keep talking to him.’
Milne nodded. ‘Joseph, tell me about the sound.’
‘The sound of the stars moving. The noise of the axial translator. They’re coming closer… make it stop! The nameless cylinder that transforms the sky… the rim is carved… the eyes are open… eyes in the darkness… wings in the undying night…’
‘It’s all right, Joseph,’ I said, feeling wretched and helpless.
‘No… no, it’s not all right,’ Joseph whispered. ‘It can never be all right… never again… with them, walking… the walkers among the eternal lights… serene and primal… no one sees them, but they are here… they are everywhere, from inside our minds, out, out to the farthest ramparts… the uttermost limits of space and time… and beyond that, beyond into the black spaces where no man will ever dwell.’
‘Who are “they”?’ I asked.
‘Who are they? What is their nature? Not material things… not spirit… something between and beyond… from places where things are not as they are here. A great sound, like metal and mist and dust and stars… the sound of night… the sound of many voices. We are coming. We are coming close now. Do you see us? Will you speak to us?’
Milne looked at me for a long moment and then said, ‘Is something speaking through Joseph?’
‘Will you speak to us?’ Joseph repeated, and his voice was light and gentle as a child’s.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘We are close.’
Suddenly, Joseph shut his eyes tight and let out a long, mournful cry, a cry so full of despair that I wanted to run from the room and the house and to plunge into the sea and put an end to myself.
And so it went on. Joseph continued to whimper and shout abnormal things, while Milne kept talking to him, trying to bring him back from the dreadful darkness of his inner mind and from the things that moved there. Several times I returned to the lightroom to make certain that all was in order, but each time I quickly returned to Joseph’s bedside, hoping that somehow Milne might have brought him a little further back to us.
With agonising slowness, Joseph became more and more aware of his surroundings and of Milne and me, and by the following morning his fever seemed to have left him, and he slept. Exhausted, Milne and I left him to his sleep and to dreams upon which we preferred not to speculate.
18
Another Order of Being
I did not expect Joseph to remember anything of his fever or the things he said while he had lain in its grip. In truth, I did not want to think of them myself, for while they had seemed to be no more than the ravings of a sick and overheated mind, there was something in them… a strange coherence that I found deeply disturbing, as if he were describing things that really existed.
As if he were seeing things that no man had ever seen.
John Milne had a similar reaction. While we talked quietly in the kitchen of the previous night’s events, he said to me that it was as if Joseph were not mad, but was a sane man looking at madness. I asked him to elaborate, but he couldn’t; he merely said that that was the feeling he had.
‘What about the things he said?’ I asked him.
Milne sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Alec. I’ve never heard the like of it. If we were anywhere but here, having seen all that we’ve seen, I would have put it all down to sickness and delusion. But we saw those things with our own eyes: they were out there, as real as you and I… perhaps more real.’
I closed my eyes and slowly rubbed my temples with both hands. ‘Where did they come from? Lord, what is the origin of all this?’
‘Joseph said that they come from places where things are not as they are here.’
‘Aye, I remember. But what does that mean?’
‘Perhaps there are men in the world who might know… or at least might know enough to make a good guess. But not us.’
‘Is this what drove Ducat and the others to their deaths? Did they eventually become so afraid that they could no longer tolerate their own existence in this place, even though they knew that relief would come soon? Or were they taken away by something?’
Milne looked away. ‘We have five more days before the Hesperus arrives. Then we’ll be off the island.’
Five more days.
I wondered if the others had told each other the same thing. Not long now… soon… a few more hours of duty, and then we’ll be away from Eilean Mòr – if we can just stay alive and sane until the lighthouse tender arrives. Whatever catastrophe overtook those unfortunate men happened very close to the date of their relief, just a few days before the Hesperus was due to arrive.
‘And what then?’ I asked. ‘What about the keepers who will come after us? What do we tell the Lighthouse Board, John?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that a great deal, and the truth of it is I don’t know. If I report events as they really happened, even if you and Joseph corroborate everything, we’ll be seen as weak-minded fools who were driven half mad by solitude.’
‘Are you so sure? Doesn’t your record as a Lightkeeper speak to the contrary?’
‘It may well do, Alec. But I don’t think it will make any difference.’
‘But what about the Flannans?’ I persisted. ‘Their reputation is well known…’
Milne laughed softly. ‘The Phantom of the Seven Hunters? Aye, we all know about that – especially the other Keepers. But that’s only a legend, and the Board cannot afford to take account of legends – however true they may be.’
‘Would Superintendent Muirhead support us?’
‘Privately, perhaps; he’s a good man. But officially?’ Milne shook his head. ‘The only thing we can do is warn the other Keepers in private about what to expect when they do duty here. Keep it amongst ourselves.’
‘Assuming we survive.’
‘Aye… assuming that.’
We heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Joseph come into the kitchen. He looked tired and dishevelled; his face was drawn and deathly pale, but his eyes were clear, and I immediately had the impression that he was himself again.
‘How are you feeling, Joseph?’ asked Milne, rising to his feet.
‘I feel well enough,’ he replied.
‘Do you remember anything of yesterday… of last night?’ I asked.
Joseph nodded slowly.
‘You do?’ Milne and I looked at each other.
‘You sound surprised,’ he said, regarding us each in turn.
‘You had a fever,’ said Milne. ‘A fever… or at least some malady of the mind and body. I didn’t expect you to remember anything.’
The lad frowned. ‘I don’t think it was a fever or anything like that.’
‘Do you remember going outside?’ I asked.
‘Yes… and I owe you an apology, Alec.’
I waved it aside, although my face was still throbbing dully from his blow.
Joseph came and sat at the table. ‘They are here,’ he said.
‘Who?’ Milne asked.
‘I don’t know. They have come from a long way away… and yet they have always been here, because where they come from is both far away and very close. What I’m about to tell you won’t make any sense to you – I’d wager all I have on that. Nor does it make any sense to me… I can only describe to you the things I saw while I was outside – the things they showed me.’
As I listened to Joseph, I noted something strange in his voice and bearing. He spoke very quietly, and his eyes seemed to have become unfocused, as though he were reciting some body of information from memory. I wondered at the reason for this: was he still suffering the effects of the terrible shock he had experienced? It seemed a logical enough assumption, but there was both fear and wonder in his voice: a dark and mysterious wonder that might rend the mind and soul with its intensity.
‘Tell us what happened to you, Joseph,’ said Milne.
‘I was a fool to go outside, I realise that now, of course. But I was at the end of my tether, with everything that’s happened. I had to confront whatever it was that… well, I went outside into the fog. And I saw them.’
‘John saw them, too,’ I said.
Joseph glanced at him. ‘Then you know that they were not Ducat and the others, as we had hoped. They were not men at all, but something else. They hold infinite space within them, for that is where they are from. I saw this within them as they stood around me; they showed me things and places that exist on the other side of the sky, the other side of the blue of daytime and the black of night.’
‘What are those things and places?’ asked Milne.
‘Different… they are different from this world.’ Joseph frowned, and again I had the impression that he was trying to remember something, or to understand something that he did remember all too clearly. ‘There is another order of being, outside the realm of God and men, that existed before both.’
‘Before God?’ said Milne. ‘How is that possible?’
‘Our understanding of God is incomplete, John. We can’t begin to contemplate the true way of the universe, for there are places and things that will not fit into the human mind. Regions beyond… and minds that are not parallel to us or to anything we know or have dreamed. Through some accident, some random movement-that-is-not-movement, this world has strayed too close to theirs, or theirs to ours, and they have crossed over – or at least some part of them has crossed over… the part that is capable of doing so. And they are here, now, and they are curious.’
‘What do they want?’ I asked, trying to make some sense of what Joseph was saying.
‘They want to know us… to speak with us… perhaps, you might say, to commune with us. But they are too different; there is no common ground.’
‘There must be a way,’ said Milne.
Joseph shook his head. ‘There is no way. I can’t describe how different – how very different – they are. Everything that has happened since we arrived on the island, everything we have seen and heard, has been an attempt by them to speak to us. That strange, metallic sound… the light we saw on our first night… the white fox… whatever prevented you from going into the store room outside… what happened to the sky… what came out of the sea and distorted our memories… the discoloured grass and rock on the north side of the island… all of it was their attempts to speak with us!’
‘But those events,’ said Milne, ‘have nothing to do with speaking, with communication.’
‘I use the word “speak” only as it applies to us. They do not “speak”, not in any way we would understand.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘it is a form of sign language, as we would use signs to one of our own race who did not speak our language… or the way we use flags and flares to communicate when the voice will not reach.’
‘Yes,’ said Joseph, ‘I believe you may be right. But their minds are so different from ours that their signs are incomprehensible: they are emblems for things we have no hope of understanding.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Milne.
‘I don’t know, John! It’s what I suspect, what I feel… it’s no more than the impression I got while I was with them. And I had other impressions as well… vague intimations of what it is like where they come from. I felt my mind… or perhaps my soul… leave my body, and in leaving I was able to see something of their places, through the thin veil that now separates our world from theirs. There was light and movement, and the things that moved there were unlike anything the mind of man could conceive. Spheres and planes and cubes… vast towers made of space, that changed shape… the inside and the outside seen at once, as though what we think of as dimension has no meaning there – or at least a meaning so at odds with our world that it no longer has any useful significance. Great bridges linking stars – or things that seemed like stars, but which thought and spoke to each other through a bright, bright void. And shapes, faceted like jewels, that changed the angles of the intersecting planes through which they moved.’
Joseph paused and regarded his folded hands, which rested upon the table in front of him. ‘Is that really what it was like?’ he said, more to himself than to us. ‘Or is it only what my mind was capable of seeing? Is our world really the way we see it, or is there more to it than our minds can understand?’
‘Tell us, Joseph,’ said Milne, leaning forward. ‘Are they responsible for what happened to Ducat and the others?’
‘I don’t know, John. I’m sorry.’
‘Are you sure?’
Joseph nodded. ‘I had no… intimation… of what’s happened to them. I don’t know where they are.’
We all sat in silence for some moments, and then something occurred to me. ‘What about the stone?’ I said.
Joseph glanced at me. ‘The stone?’
‘The carved stone I found. Do you know what it was, what it meant?’
‘I’m not sure… perhaps another attempt to speak with us… or perhaps something from their place.’
‘Something from their place,’ I echoed, recalling the shape of the stone, at once incomprehensible and deeply unsettling.
‘Very well, Joseph,’ said Milne. ‘Let me ask you this: do you have any idea – any notion, however vague – of what they are going to do?’
Joseph shook his head. ‘All I can say is this, John: whatever they are going to do next, we will not understand it.’
19
The Last Day
Joseph’s words did not sit well with us, although we knew that he spoke the truth. Until then, we had tried to determine some rational explanation for the things we had seen and heard, to apply the reason of intelligent, experienced men to the mystery into which we had come. But according to Joseph, there was no sound and logical explanation for the forces at work here: at least, nothing that could be understood by the narrow, earth-bound human mind.
Again I wondered if we were experiencing what Ducat, Marshall and MacArthur had endured before they vanished from the world. I wondered if whatever had come to Eilean Mòr had tried to speak with them as well. I speculated that those forces might have grown frustrated, even enraged, when the impossibility of ‘communion’ (as Joseph had strangely put it) became apparent. Might they grow similarly frustrated with us? Might they tire of trying to communicate with our limited minds and cast us into oblivion, perhaps without even realising that they were doing so? Perhaps in their incomprehensible realm there was no such thing as death; perhaps they hardly understood the torment they were inflicting upon us, or the annihilation they might rain upon us without even intending it.
I felt like a man suffocating in the darkness just before dawn. Escape from the island was only a couple of days away… but what might happen in those two days? I wondered if we, too, would be lost – and if not, whether there would be anything left of our minds when the Hesperus finally arrived.
As we continued with our duties, there was a great tension between the three of us. John Milne, Joseph Moore and I were bound together in our isolation, but the possibility that that isolation might result in our destruction made our bonds all but unendurable. We maintained the light unthinkingly, automatically, like the mechanism we were tending… and all the while waiting, waiting for the next encounter, the next unfathomable experience.
*
Our last full day on Eilean Mòr was the 30th of January. It began with a moaning wind out of the north east, emerging from the darkness of the night carrying with it a torrent of stinging, icy rain. The sea was all grey fury, roiling and heaving like a great beast in pain, and the sky was a solid mass of cloud the colour of gunmetal.
It was with great relief that I concluded my watch in the lightroom, and rang the house-bell to summon Milne to take over from me. He came up the stairs without delay, and stood beside me for a short while, and together we looked out through the diamond-paned windows at the furious grey world beyond.
‘Wind’s still rising,’ said Milne presently.
‘Aye.’
‘No one goes outside today, not for any reason, understood?’
‘Understood, John.’
‘Kitchen slate’s clean. All transferred to the log.’
‘I’ll put down my observations.’
‘And help Joseph to make everything ready for the next crew.’
‘I will.’
Milne fell silent, which I took as a dismissal, and so I walked back towards the stairs leading down through the tower into the house.
‘Alec,’ said Milne.
I stopped and turned to him. ‘Yes, John?’
‘Thank you.’
I hesitated, for there was a look on his face that implied he wanted to say more.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I’m going to recommend to the Lighthouse Board that you be offered the position of Assistant Keeper. You’ve acted with responsibility and diligence… it’s been good to work with you. I wanted to tell you that now.’
‘I appreciate your confidence in me, John,’ I replied. ‘But why now?’
He turned away from me, and returned his attention to the windows and the great seethe and gyre outside.
‘Because this isn’t over yet,’ he said quietly. ‘And I wanted you to know.’
*
I found Joseph in the kitchen. He was busy writing the Monthly Return, carefully noting which provisions we had consumed, how much fuel and water we had used during our duty and so on, and checking the Inventory Book containing details of the lighthouse’s apparatus, furniture, tools and utensils.
He didn’t look up as I entered, and so I continued on into the sitting room and began the cleaning and dusting which was required of us in preparation for the arrival of the next lighthouse crew. As I worked, I thought of what Milne had said to me. I was, of course, glad that I had acquitted myself well – at least in the Principal’s eyes – although such was the terror and confusion I had felt over the last month that there seemed to my mind a strange hollowness to his words. I felt that I had managed to avoid being a burden to my professional colleagues, but that was all. If I had achieved anything beyond that, it was merely to have survived, as they had, with my reason intact.
