Somehow I zoned out, the twitching, twisted half sleep that comes when your speed-fueled body is too depleted to function but the amphetamines still claw at your brain. I didn’t know what time it was when Quinn returned. He made no effort to be quiet. I heard the door close, the clink of keys tossed on the desk, footsteps crossing to the bed. A thud as he dropped one boot onto the floor, followed by the other. He collapsed beside me without removing his clothes, reeking of cigarettes and alcohol.
I waited and, when his breathing didn’t slow, rolled over to put my arms around him. He covered my hand with his, drew it to his face, and kissed it. I counted our heartbeats as we lay like that for a long time, both of us awake. I stared at his broken face, just a shadow now, until I couldn’t bear the silence.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“I know,” he said, and turned away from me.
Chapter 55
Quinn’s breathing slowed. He began to snore. Tomorrow he’d have a murderous hangover. I sat up and watched him, at last leaned over to retrieve my camera. Low light would make it difficult if not impossible to capture anything but a range of shadows stretching across the bed; no details of face or hands, no trace of the tattoos and scarifications that mapped his life without me.
But that seemed right. In many ways, for decades, Quinn had been a projection of myself, the shadow of a memory of someone I’d lost when I was young. Perhaps that was why all the photos I’d taken of him as a teenager had disappeared: they’d never truly existed in the first place. Quinn had become indistinguishable from my longing for him.
My eyes burned; I was too dehydrated to cry. I’d crossed over to a place beyond grief or fear. I’d lost everything, even, for the moment, the need for a drink or speed. I’d outlived the world I had evolved to inhabit; not a dinosaur but a rodent, scrabbling for shelter in the cracks of the twenty-first century. I groaned and roused myself, and went into the bathroom to take another shower.
When I was done, I dressed quietly, went into the other room, and sat at the small desk. The Svarlight CDs were where I’d tossed them, alongside Quinn’s cigarettes and laptop. I picked up Stone Ships, cracked open the laptop to let a sliver of light fall across the jewel box. I almost wished I had some way to play it. Not that the track list was all that inspiring, though “Within the Petrified Darkness We All Disappear” held some promise.
I squinted at the final production credit at the bottom of the back cover—Album produced, engineered, and mixed by Gwilym Birdsong at Svarlight Studio.
I felt my breath catch. I searched to find the artwork credit:
Front and back cover photographs by Big Delusory Whim
BDW: Big Delusory Whim.
I read and reread those two credits. I started to breathe way too fast, my thoughts falling like dominoes: a stream of words, letters, names, forming and re-forming in my consciousness the way that the symbols from Ludus Mentis swirled into a pattern just beyond my comprehension.
It’s all code.
I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, trying to force my heart to slow, fighting to grasp and hold on to the solution to a puzzle I hadn’t even known I was attempting to solve. I found the pen and paper I’d nabbed earlier and made my way to the bathroom. I closed the door and turned on the light, perched at the edge of the tub, and scribbled on the paper:
BIG DELUSORY WHIM
GWILYM BIRDHOUSE
I cross-checked each letter, drawing a line through every single one, stared at the piece of paper. The letters matched out. “Big Delusory Whim” was an anagram for “Gwilym Birdhouse.”
Chapter 56
Nathan Ballingstead had told me Birdhouse raised sheep on a remote island, the Faeroes or Hebrides or Orkney. He’d been right: he just had the wrong island. I tried to imagine how a middle-aged one-hit wonder could become the person who’d shot the photos in Skalltrolleri.
But just like the rest of the planet, the music world has no lack of white nationalists and white supremacists, especially these days. Hard-core rock and rollers and fingerpickers in the American heartland, Scandinavian metalheads and folk singers, and, apparently, an English folk-rock balladeer. At some point, Birdhouse’s nostalgia for an England that never was had tipped over into hatred for those he believed had destroyed it.
Was it enough to turn him into a killer?
I had no proof that he’d done anything except contribute to the planet’s vast landfill of forgotten vinyl, cassettes, and CDs. Birdhouse’s songs had always shown a love for puns and clever wordplay; any die-hard fan might have decoded the anagram before I did, but how many of them would know about Skalltrolleri? The book had such a limited print run that only a few members of his extremist cohort might ever have seen it. Same with fans of bands like Jötunn’s Egg. If they were in on the joke, they might have been reluctant to blow his cover. If word ever got out beyond his Nazi fan club, his mainstream career would be over. But that had pretty much deep-sixed a long time ago.
Yet could Birdhouse have known about The Book of Lamps and Banners? Nathan had recalled talking to someone at a book signing, someone who’d gotten wind that Harold Vertigan had a line on an extremely rare volume. Had that person been Birdhouse? Had he then killed Harold and stolen the book?
I’d found darts and that eerie eye-shaped target in the woods, etorphine and a Svarlight poster in a nearby shed. How hard would it be for a sheep farmer to get his hands on a half gallon of animal tranquilizer?
Probably not very. I’d seen a documentary where a biologist nailed a charging grizzly between the eyes with a single tranquilizer dart. At close enough range—in a small room, or somehow hidden in a crowd, or at point-blank range if you were shooting a dog—someone who’d spent hours at target practice might do pretty much the same thing.
That could explain Harold’s death and the theft of The Book of Lamps and Banners. What about Tindra’s disappearance?
I sank onto the bathroom floor, staring at the piece of paper. I’d believed that Tindra had returned to Kalkö to confront her father and the man who’d abused her.
But her father was dead.
I’d assumed the other man must be Erik—but what if he wasn’t? What if he was the same man who’d taken the photos in Skalltrolleri—Gwilym Birdhouse?
Chapter 57
I shut off the bathroom light and returned to the bed, where Quinn lay snoring. Even if I managed to wake him, he’d be too groggy to hold a conversation; also, royally pissed off. Almost certainly he was still drunk. It would be difficult, probably impossible, to make him understand what I was saying, let alone process the information, until he sobered up. This didn’t bode well for him catching that morning flight to Stockholm, though I knew from experience that Quinn’s powers of recovery could be impressive.
Would he believe me if I told him about Birdhouse? Probably not, and if he did, I still doubted he’d change his mind.
I can’t deal with your shit anymore, Cass. A recovering junkie can be as pitiless as one who’s still using.
If I could find the book, he might feel differently. We’d have enough money to start over. No one would miss me if I disappeared and started a new life. Greece would be cheap; if not Greece, someplace else.
And if I found Tindra here on the island, too, all the better. If she was dead, or had fled, I might still be able to track down Birdhouse. Tindra intended to make him disappear. With enough crank in me, and a blunt instrument, I could do the same, to both Birdhouse and the mobile that held Ludus Mentis.
I did a quick search for anything that might be useful and came up empty-handed. I had the two darts I’d found in the woods, and my camera. That was it. I didn’t bother checking online for any additional news about Tommy or Harold Vertigan. They were someone else’s problem now. I put on an extra pair of wool socks inside my cowboy boots, then pulled on every sweater I had in my bag, shrugged into my leather jacket, and slung the bag over my shoulder.
I stepped to the bed and gazed down at Quinn. If he was righ
t, I’d already died once in the last twenty-four hours. I’d survived all those years without him by daring to hope he was still alive. Now I could scarcely believe that I was. I touched his scarred cheek, bent to brush my lips against his eyelids. I opened my bag and took out the copy of Dead Girls, found my pen, turned to the book’s frontispiece, and wrote:
For Quinn, then and always. Love, C.
I removed the page from The Book of Lamps and Banners and ran my fingers across the papyrus, feeling those thousands of tiny brushstrokes. I wished I could read them, like braille; wished I understood whatever secret language was encoded in those strange and frightening images.
What would it be like to experience the world like that, every object and face and shade of light imbued with meaning and portent? Crank made me feel that way, and alcohol, even though I knew they were killing me. Maybe if you truly understood The Book of Lamps and Banners, it would destroy you, too.
Carefully as I could, I slid the page into my bag, and set Dead Girls on Quinn’s laptop. If he woke in time to catch his flight, he’d be furious to find the Jetta gone, but he’d manage. A taxi to the airport, a call to the rental agency with some lie about where to locate the car. Or he’d just cut and run.
I took the car keys and went downstairs. The receptionist was long gone. I peered into the tiny office, then tried the door. It was open. I slipped inside and rifled through every drawer I saw. I nicked a small flashlight, a cigarette lighter, and a pair of scissors and hurried outside.
The cold hit me like a body blow. I strode to the car and got inside, switched on the ignition, and cranked the heat. I sat and stared up at the window of our room, dark as those in the annex. I was waiting for Quinn to come outside and find me and drag me back upstairs, back into whatever life we’d cobble for ourselves out of the wreckage of the last few decades.
I knew that wouldn’t happen. I dug my pinkie nail into the crank and snorted enough to feel the familiar explosion behind my streaming eyes. I dropped the baggie on the seat, pulled on the deerskin gloves Quinn had bought for me, and drove out of town.
Chapter 58
I headed toward the sheep farm, wishing the radio worked so I could blast it. I held little hope that Tindra was still alive. Boxes full of flesh-eating larvae and animal skulls, an amber earring tangled with a few strands of dyed blue hair. A drug that killed you in a few heartbeats. I’d focus on the book: search the shed, then see if I could enter the house without being caught. I knew how crazy this was but didn’t care.
A quarter moon glowed through clouds in the western sky, just enough light for me to find my way back to the narrow dirt road I’d already traversed twice. I didn’t pass a single vehicle. I slowed the car to a crawl, straining to see the trail. When I knew I’d driven too far, I turned back.
This time, I found it. In the distance, somewhere past the shed, a solitary light gleamed through the trees. A house, maybe. I pulled off the highway and parked beneath a thick stand of spruce, sat for a while to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
At last I put the keys under the floor mat. First place someone would look, but with luck that would be Quinn. I grabbed my bag and got out, ran across the pavement, and headed down the winding dirt road.
A fine sifting of snow covered the ground. I tried to determine where I’d come upon the dead fox and the birch with its carved eye-shaped target. After a few minutes I quit trying. Moonlight glimmered through the evergreen branches overhead, the fractured light making it more difficult to see. I couldn’t tell whether a patch of white in the distance was snow or birchbark or a house.
Once the moonlight disappeared abruptly, as though someone or something had blotted it out. I halted and held my breath. I could smell my own sweat, fear and methamphetamine and booze. A branch creaked. Dry needles fell like rain. I began to walk again, pausing often to listen for any hint I was being followed.
I heard only the scratching of pine boughs stirred by the wind, the occasional chitter of a small bird or mouse disturbed by my passing. I’d lost sight of the light I’d glimpsed earlier. Cold surrounded me like a second skin. I could no longer feel my toes inside my cowboy boots. The deerskin gloves helped, but soon my fingers started to tingle. I clutched my bag to my chest for warmth.
The shed couldn’t be much farther. Unless I’d missed it. I fumbled for the flashlight in my pocket. I’d been reluctant to use it, but now I switched it on, swept the pencil-thin wand of light through the darkness in front of me. A metallic thread shone to my right—barbed-wire fence. I stepped toward it and aimed the beam across the field. The sheep were gone. Another minute and I saw the shed, its windows aglow. I crouched, then realized it was my flashlight’s beam reflected in the glass.
I clicked off the flashlight and walked around back, my boots crunching on dead leaves, and stopped at the door. I turned the knob and stepped inside. I recognized the shadows of the corner table, the surfboard suspended across the beams, the pegboard holding tools. I stood with my back to the door, finally switched on the flashlight.
Everything appeared as I’d left it. Withered pelts strewn across the table, the dead raven lying on its side with outspread wings, one unseeing eye fixed on me. On the floor, a maze of cardboard boxes.
I dropped my bag beside the door, stepped to the cardboard box where I’d found Tindra’s earring, and knelt beside it. I scanned the dirt with my flashlight, looking for anything I might have missed earlier. Hair, a fingernail, a shred of clothing. There was nothing.
I hesitated, then took a deep breath, removed one of the deerskin gloves, and plunged my hand into the soil.
Tiny things wriggled through my fingers, moist and unmistakably alive. I tried not to gag and dug deeper into the earth, until I touched the bottom of the box. Black beetles emerged frantically from the soil and raced to the sides of the box, where they struggled to climb. I gritted my teeth and continued to sift through the box’s contents: damp soil and seething larvae, nothing else.
Relief overcame revulsion as I withdrew my hand. Something caught beneath one fingernail, something small and rigid. Pinching it between forefinger and thumb, I carefully pulled it out, shaking dirt and maggots from it.
I fixed the flashlight’s beam on a piece of plastic, once translucent pink, now dulled to a smeared gray. An orthodontic retainer. As I brought the flashlight closer, I spotted two brownish objects snared in the twisted wire that dangled from the plastic. Teeth.
I took a moment to calm myself, then quickly smoothed the soil so it would appear undisturbed. Maggots coiled and uncoiled in the dirt before disappearing beneath the surface. I stood and searched for a piece of paper, settled on a crumpled paper bag in a wastebasket. I wrapped it around the retainer and placed it in my bag.
I wiped my hand, pulled on the deerskin glove, and did a final circuit of the room. I stopped when my gaze fell on the miniature refrigerator, and crouched in front of it.
This time I didn’t bother looking inside. Instead, I removed one of the photos taped to the door.
Why do people hold on to photographs of lost loved ones? A person you haven’t seen in years, decades even; someone who died, or ravaged you with their infidelity and left you for another; someone who fled you like a burning car wreck; someone who would kill you if they had the chance? I’d kept every photo I ever took of Quinn O’Boyle as a teenager, only to lose them all; I never knew how or where. He had retained a single one, the only proof that the two of us had a life before the one we now inhabited.
When I looked at that photo, I didn’t see Quinn but my own obsession with him. I never knew what he saw. We cling to these images not because we love the person they portray, but because they’re markers on the highway to death, showing how far we’ve come, how few miles are left before the road ends.
The photo I looked at now showed a girl of thirteen or fourteen, sitting on the hood of a white car. She wore rolled-up jeans that exposed long skinny legs, a short-sleeved plaid shirt loosely slung over a pink camisole, one
strap falling off her shoulder. Long dark hair, tousled by the wind that lifted the hem of her shirt. Her head was partly turned, her brow furrowed and mouth open as she looked at the man who stood a few feet away, as though asking him a question.
It was the same man whose photo I’d seen on the Herla website, the host of Valî’s Hour—Tindra’s father. He appeared several years younger than the man in his thumbnail picture online. Both he and the girl seemed unaware that their picture was being taken. The photo was printed on Kodacolor stock, dating to the early aughts, before digital photography was cheap and inescapable. Matte finish, unfaded, good resolution.
I removed one of the other photos on the fridge door. It was printed on cheap white card stock, not photographic paper, using an inkjet printer. The print head needed cleaning, which gave the picture the out-of-focus look of one of those 3D comic books from the 1960s, the kind that made your eyes hurt if you tried to look at them without the flimsy 3D spectacles included with your purchase.
I didn’t want to focus too long on this photo. A night shot with the same girl—Tindra—sitting hunched on a picnic bench, illuminated by a bonfire, a sullen orange cloud in the lower-right corner of the frame. The girl was topless, her hair drooping in a single long coil over one shoulder. I couldn’t tell if she wore anything else—the lower half of her torso eroded into shadow and flame.
But there was no doubt she knew she was being photographed. She stared directly into the camera, her expression complex. Petulance and irritation; a challenge that I recognized as bravado. Triumph, perhaps, evidenced by a barely suppressed smirk.
The remaining photo was worse quality and shot indoors under harsh light. I could see enough to wish I hadn’t.
I stared at all three photos, then slid them into my back pocket. I opened the fridge, the flap door to its tiny freezer. A plastic ziplock bag was inside. Not one bag but four, one inside the other. It was how you stored drugs, or unused film, though it wasn’t the best way to keep film safe. Moisture and the temperature differential when you removed it from the fridge could damage it. Drugs were more forgiving.
The Book of Lamps and Banners Page 25