Lighthouses

by Trost, Cameron

  I look at the man beside me, who so obviously doesn’t belong here.

  ‘Marissa,’ I say.

  ‘Andre,’ he replies.

  I sip my drink and look up at the large clock behind the bar. Three thirteen, it reads. We finish our drinks at the same time and stand up together.

  ‘Presume you would like a lift out of here,’ I say.

  ‘Presume we are heading in the same direction,’ he replies as he opens the door for me.

  ‘Which direction is that?’ I ask.

  ‘All roads lead to the sea.’

  I laugh.

  We drive for hours, barely speaking; he is self-contained like a cat, that same subtle awareness of his space and that relaxed attitude of knowing that everything is being done just as is expected. Even his half-closed eyes give him a feline demeanour.

  I have so many questions, yet know they will be answered in time, his time. Meanwhile, I quite enjoy having another passenger; I have been travelling alone for a long time.

  ‘Turn left here,’ he says. The road is cool and shady with an avenue of large leafy trees on both sides. They turn the light a murky green like we are underwater.

  ‘It’s just here,’ he says and I see the B&B sign swinging on the side of a gate. I drive slowly up the long driveway and pull up at a large double-storey house.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  I want to ask more, but just then, the door opens and an older woman comes out and down the stairs. She seems surprised to see us but tells us there is a large room that she will prepare. She leads us through a dim hallway and to a small verandah at the back. We sit on white wicker chairs at a wicker table and look over the emerald green lawn where colourful flowers grow along the perimeter. Beyond the flowers, I see a wide river that flows by and I have the strangest feeling that I know exactly why we are here.

  The woman, whose name is Evelyn, brings a tray with a teapot, some cups, and little delicacies. I pour us both a drink and nibble at one of the tarts, a delicious lemon concoction with pastry that melts in my mouth. A young woman and her two children have appeared on the lawn, the children, maybe seven and eight, run across the lawn, shouting and laughing. She walks behind them.

  She gives us a wave and a faint smile. It feels surreal; we are a couple having our tea on the verandah, on a weekend jaunt in the countryside, yet we are not. I only met Andre yesterday. He is a stranger. He may be quite mad. He may have infected me with his madness. Yet, I smile back at the woman anyway. I am following a script, written long ago yet somehow known to me, so that here I am, word perfect, acting it out beautifully.

  It is evening and we stand together in the large room that has been given to us. There is, of course, only one bed. Evelyn has left candles burning in pretty glass containers in the room and on the small balcony. A tiffany lamp stands in the corner and imparts a golden glow. It is all wonderfully romantic.

  I stand at the open French doors and look at the dark garden. Andre stands behind me. His hands are on my shoulder. He has moved my hair away from my neck and I can feel his lips against my skin. Tonight, his lips are warm and his hands are cold.

  Making love with him is like being caught in a rip, terrifying, exhilarating, yet with a sense of surrender, a relinquishing to something so much more powerful. And with that simple act of surrender, the current might yet sweep me into calmer waters. Even his body seems to be an amalgam of disparate temperatures, as though his veins and arteries are made up of cold and warm currents, swirling beneath, changing direction by some tidal whim. Some of him is positively equatorial.

  Later, we take our glasses of wine out on the balcony and look at the night garden and the fast flowing river beyond it. His skin is so pale and his hair so black he could be the personification of night. Is that what he is, I wonder? But that won’t explain the saltiness of his lips or the briny scent of the ocean that washes over me every now and then like an invisible wave.

  There are spectres standing on the darkened grass, and they give me a much more pertinent clue of what he may be. They appeared only moments earlier, their hair is still wet and water glistens on their greenish white skin. One of the women looks like a younger version of the young woman that lives here, and she holds the hand of a boy. They gather below our balcony and look up at us, or at least, at him.

  He surveys them in his detached, quiet way, I move closer to him, disturbed by what I am seeing.

  ‘She is the twin sister of the woman that brought us our dinner,’ he whispers to me. ‘She drowned ten years ago. The boy beside her is her sister’s son. He was dragged under by waterweeds five years ago, or perhaps it was his aunt whose slender fingers reached for his ankles and pulled him down. The drowned get lonely too.’

  I am shocked by how many children there are. At least ten young ones huddle together in a clump, their eyes huge in their tiny faces. They hold each other’s hands and stare up at us. There are three young men, whose age I guess to be in their early twenties when they met with their demise, and two other women, lovely in their luminescent way, their pale blonde hair reaching their ankles. They appear the least interested in what is going on.

  ‘Why are they here?’ I ask.

  ‘They are here because we are here,’ Andre answers. He is smiling at these ghostly figures.

  I should be terrified but I’m not. Curious is how I would describe what I’m feeling, and maybe slightly unsettled. ‘Why are we here? Or should I say you? Why are you here?’

  ‘I offer them release if they choose to go,’ he says softly, his dark eyes staring into mine. ‘The dead always have a choice. Just as we do in life, the dead can choose their path.’

  ‘Go where?’ I ask.

  ‘The Otherside,’ he says. ‘Or they can choose to remain.’

  Andre moves closer to the balcony and leans forward, his black hair blows behind him, and for a moment, he looks like one of those figureheads you find on the prows of great ships. His pale body looks carved and bloodless. His eyes are closed and his lips move silently. There is a shift in the air, I sense it, as though the molecules of the night have trembled and rearranged themselves. I look down and there are fewer figures standing there. The sister and the boy remain, as well as another child who walks over and clasps the other hand of the woman. The two longhaired women have also stayed.

  Andre nods to them and they begin to move away. Move back to the river, to their home.

  ‘They have chosen to stay,’ I remark as I watch them.

  ‘The two women,’ he says as he points to the blonde women who are now dancing, holding each other’s hands and twirling around in a circle, their pale blonde hair shining like moonlight as they spin. ‘They have become Nixies. They have been here so long that they are not interested in going anywhere else. They are no doubt the reason those young men lost their lives. The woman and the boy are connected to this house, this family. Those bonds are very strong, but they too are very dangerous and will bring more tragedy to this place. The other young child, perhaps he has family here too, perhaps leaving is too hard.’

  ‘What are you?’ I ask, staring at him.

  He leans closer and kisses my lips. His mouth is hot.

  ‘I have been many things, a fisherman, the captain of a sailing ship, a lighthouse keeper.’ He stares out into the night sky. From far away, I hear a bell toll, mysterious and compelling, something from the ship of an ancient mariner.

  He glances back at me. ‘Think of me as a phare. A beacon. A light that illuminates their way.’ He pulls me close so our two bodies are pressed together. His skin is so hot I feel sweat beading between my breasts. His arms are holding me tight. He whispers in my ear, his breath a sultry zephyr.

  ‘The question you should be asking is why are you here?’

  #

  The next morning, as we leave, I stop and turn around and look at the woman at the top of the stairs. She smiles at me but there is sadness in her eyes, old sadness
that I can see will never leave, staining the happiness so it can barely shine through. I want to run back to her and say, they are here, your sister and your son, together. But will that bring her any consolation? She already senses them, I’m sure, but they don’t exist in her realm, so they are as lost as if they were thousands of miles away. I turn and walk to Andre, waiting beside the car. He glances at me. His eyes shine like turquoise water.

  We drive, we stop. At night, beside lakes, rivers, and deep ravines where waterfalls plummet hundreds of feet, we meet with the drowned. Who would think there are so many? Occasionally, we sleep outside on the bare ground with just a few blankets, and the ghosts who have chosen to stay gather to sit with us and I can feel their icy hands touch me. Sometimes, they stroke my hair, or my face. One young man who had thrown himself from a cliff sits beside me, his hands caressing my body. He has the saddest of faces, such a lonely, sweet face. Andre lies on the grass, watching. He whispers to me, ‘He desires you.’

  I glare back. ‘I’m not fucking a ghost.’

  ‘Oh, go ahead make his afterlife,’ he remarks flippantly.

  I allow this lost boy to lay his head on my stomach, he feels almost non-existent like a chill breeze that has crept under the covers.

  Finally, we arrive at the coast, the shipwreck coast, I call it. Every bay, cove, headland, every sleepy village has a multitude of wave-soaked wraiths. They come wading out of the waves like a seaweed-draped welcoming committee, thrown up by the sea, messy and murky as vomit. Some seem to have been underwater for a very long time. Their eyes are black caves and their bodies are covered with limpets and starfish.

  Andre takes over driving and I often fall asleep until next we stop. I wonder if we suffer from some symbiotic madness, folie à deux, a shared delusion causing us to experience the same events, see the same visions. I can barely remember the life I once had.

  At some of the towns, we stay for a day or two. We sleep throughout the day, getting up in the evening to have some dinner, drink some wine, and wander the beaches or the cliffs, meeting our macabre tribe.

  One night, Andre seduces a young woman, twenty-three if that. He brings her to our bed and we spend an extra day in this tiny hamlet, no doubt scandalizing the hotel owners. She is very beautiful, with hair the richest of red. It falls down to her waist like silk dipped in blood. I catch a glimpse of the three of us in the mirror, lying against the ornate bedhead with the lacy curtains streaming around our naked bodies, as the blustery salt-soaked breeze blows in, and we look as though we have stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. As we leave, Andre points to a long jetty, and he tells me that she will die there in three days when a freak wave crashes over her and drags her back into the deep.

  I’m shocked. ‘Did you warn her?’ I ask.

  ‘She has been marked. It will make no difference. The sea has claimed her and will take her regardless, if not there, then somewhere else. It is her destiny.’ He is wearing mirrored sunglasses and they catch the sun as he turns and looks at me, almost blinding me. He smiles. ‘Perhaps we’ll see her next time we come through.’

  I turn away. I have moments when I hate him.

  Sometimes, I wonder if we are even in the same country. Geographically, we may have somehow moved around the world. I have no idea. He drives as though he is following a map written on his heart.

  He tells me about his past lives. They are so separated by disparate times for it to be just one life, but who am I to say, perhaps it is one life that has spanned centuries.

  He describes sailing across mountainous seas, lashed to the helm with the bare rigging overhead dancing with blue electricity; Saint Elmo's fire is what the sailors called it. His clothes are so saturated with salt water he can barely stand, would fall if he weren’t tied up. The ship heaves in the heavy swells and the waves crash endlessly over the deck. Anything that wasn’t tied down has long slid into the churning maelstrom, including three crewmembers who hadn’t lashed themselves up in time. He holds the wheel and steers so the prow is climbing the huge wave that has blotted out the storm clouds, so tall the ship is almost vertical as it crests and then slides down into the next tumultuous surge. He tells how he screams into the storm, knowing that the sound will be snatched away almost before it escapes his mouth and will become lost in the turmoil.

  ‘There is no skill in manning your ship through seas that can smash it as though it were nothing but brittle planks of wood,’ Andre says. ‘Captains will boast of their prowess in a storm, but you survive purely by the capricious will of the sea. She decides if you live or die, and in that situation all you can do is hold on for the ride and feel privileged that she has allowed you to see her at her most powerful.’

  His eyes light up and his skin seems to buzz with some sort of kinetic energy as he speaks. The only other time I see him with that gleam in his eye is when he is about to orgasm. If there is a grand passion in his life, the sea is it. No woman can compete with that. I see it in the way he gazes at the ocean, his tone when he talks about her. She is his love and he would gladly sacrifice himself to her, and I wonder if he already has, numerous times perhaps.

  Lighthouses are special to him too. We always stop, even though most are automated and locked up, yet he will circle the base, looking upward at the tower that reaches to the heavens, his hands stroking the brickwork as he walks slowly around. Sometimes, he leans his head in and presses it against the wall as though he is listening to some private whispering.

  #

  Today, we pull up at another lighthouse on a large headland, there are a few houses jotted around it, including a small shop that sells food. We buy some fish and chips and walk down to the curved beach and sit in the late afternoon light, watching the waves roll in.

  Before long, a black shape crests the water and stands up. For a moment, I think it was one of the dead appearing in the daylight, before I see it is a man wearing scuba gear. He walks up the wet sand, stops and begins pulling off his gear, unharnessing the tank and unzipping his wetsuit. His paraphernalia lies around him in an untidy pile. He glances at us and Andre beckons him over, offers him some of the mountain of food we are eating.

  He sits with us, the wetsuit pulled down to his waist. He shakes his wet hair and droplets spin out and onto us. His name is Delmar, and although his drying hair is streaked blonde and he has a light tan, he looks so similar to Andre they could be brothers. He tells us about the kelp forests and the fish that live here. Andre, who seems to know more about fish than I would’ve thought possible, asks questions, and soon the two are talking animatedly. I lie back and enjoy the sun on my face.

  I fall asleep and wake to find Delmar has left, but he soon returns bearing gifts; fresh raspberries and blackberries, small succulent peaches and apricots from his mother’s garden, crumbly cheese and salty washed rind cheese from their goat, and freshly baked sourdough bread. It is a feast to be washed down with some homemade beer and wine from a local winery.

  Andre has started collecting driftwood, so Delmar joins him, and by the time evening descends, we have a fire burning.

  We settle into an easy camaraderie, the lighthouse beam swings an arc of radiance that lights up the far horizon and the coastline. There is something hypnotic in the way it slashes through the darkness.

  Delmar lights up a joint and passes it to us; it helps brush away the tendrils of foreboding that are curling in my stomach. Then, he leans over and kisses me, this sun-touched version of Andre, and his hands slide across my body. He leans over to his dark soul brother and kisses him too.

  Soon, we are a tangle of naked bodies rolling on the sandy shore, while above, the lighthouse flashes out its warning to keep away.

  Delmar lies sleeping on the sand, the glow of the burning embers highlighting his golden hair. I watch him and think I don’t want him to die; he is so young, on the cusp of his life. He is in his last year of studying marine biology and has been accepted as an intern on a research vessel that will go to the Galapagos Islands. He h
as returned here to his childhood home to visit his parents for a few weeks. I look at Andre, who is staring at the ocean with that wistful expression he gets.

  ‘Does he have to die?’ I ask.

  Andre looks at me quizzically. I touch Delmar’s hair very gently.

  Andre smiles. ‘Why do you think he is going to die?’

  ‘Well, isn’t he marked by the sea,’ I say angrily, ‘destined to be swept away in some storm or something?’

  ‘No, Marissa,’ Andre says. ‘He will have a very long life. That much I can say. The sea doesn’t take everyone she loves.’

  I look at him for a long time. ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Am I destined to die soon? To drown?’ It is time to voice the fear that has crept into me since we began this journey.

  ‘No. I don't sense that happening in your future.’

  ‘Why am I here? What are you?’

  He smiles and moves closer, one hand is caressing my face. ‘Atonement,’ he whispers. ‘That is why we are here.’ He kisses me and I taste the sea in his mouth, and my past comes flowing in like a tide that won’t be held back no matter how much I want it to be.

  #

  Helena and I are dancing around the cauldron, the flames licking the darkness around the burning pyre. We are calling out to the spirits wherever they might be. Laughing, screaming, pretending to be witches on this night when anything is possible, this eve of Samhain. The waves crashed in unison behind us and the wind howled in song and the cauldron bubbled. Higher the flames grew, wilder the wind blew, and the sea became a maelstrom.