Out he went into the snow. In a matter of minutes, he’d left Winsett behind. Head down, he burrowed through the gusts. With neither buildings nor dunes to block it, the wind raked him with bits of shell and sand that clung to his cheeks like the tips of fingernails and then ripped free. When he looked up, he saw beach pocked with snow and snarls of seaweed, then the ocean thrashing about between the shore and the sandbar a hundred yards or so out.
An hour passed. More. The tamped-down path, barely discernible during Winsett’s heyday, had sunk completely into the shifting earth. Selkirk stepped through stands of beach heather and sand bur, pricking himself repeatedly about the ankles. Eventually, he felt blood beneath one heavy sock, but he didn’t peel the sock back, simply yanked out the most accessible spines and kept moving. Far out to sea, bright, yellow sun flickered in the depths of the cloud cover and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Devil’s smile, as the Portuguese sailors called it. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to Selkirk to ask why the light would be the devil, instead of the dark or the gathering storm. Stepping from the V between two leaning dunes, he saw the lighthouse.
He’d read the report from the initial Lighthouse Service survey three years ago, and more than once. That document mentioned rot in every beam, chips and cracks in the bricks that made up the conical tower, erosion all around the foundation. As far as Selkirk could see, the report had been kind. The building seemed to be crumbling to nothing before his eyes, bleeding into the pool of shore-water churning at the rocks beneath it.
Staring into the black tide racing up the sand to meet him, Selkirk caught a sea-salt tang on his tongue and found himself murmuring a prayer he hadn’t planned for Amalia, who’d reportedly wandered into the dunes and vanished one winter night, six years after Selkirk left. Her father had written Selkirk’s father that the girl had never had friends, hated him, hated Winsett, and was probably happier wherever she was now. Then he’d said, “Here’s what I hope: that she’s alive. And that she’s somewhere far from anywhere I will ever be.”
On another night than the one they’d spent out here, somewhere closer to town but similarly deserted, he and Amalia once found themselves beset by gulls that swept out of the moonlight all together, by the hundreds, as though storming the mainland. Amalia had pitched stones at them, laughing as they shrieked and swirled nearer. Finally, she’d hit one in the head and killed it. Then she’d bent over the body, calling Selkirk to her. He’d expected her to cradle it or cry. Instead, she’d dipped her finger in its blood and painted a streak down Selkirk’s face. Not her own.
Looking down now, Selkirk watched the tide reach the tips of his boots again. How much time had he wasted during his dock-working years imagining – hoping – that Amalia might be hidden behind some stack of crates or in a nearby alley, having sought him out after leaving Winsett?
Angry now, Selkirk picked his way between rocks to the foot of the tower. A surge of whitewater caught him off guard and pasted his trousers to his legs, and the wind promptly froze them with a gust.
Up close, the tower looked even worse. Most of the bricks had crumbled and whitened, the salt air creating blotchy lesions like leper spots all over them. The main building still stood straight enough, but even from below, with the wind whipping the murky winter light around, Selkirk could see filth filming the windows that surrounded the lantern room, and cracks in the glass.
The keeper’s quarters squatted to the left of the light tower, and looked, if possible, even more dishevelled. Along the base, lime had taken hold, sprouting up the wooden walls like algae. Or maybe it was algae. This would not be somewhere the Service salvaged. Cape Roby Light would have to come down, or simply be abandoned to the sea.
Selkirk rapped hard on the heavy oak door of the tower. For answer, he got a blast of wind nearly powerful enough to tip him off the rocks. Grunting, he rapped harder. Behind him, the water gurgled, the way spermaceti oil sometimes did as it bubbled, and though he knew it wasn’t possible, Selkirk would have sworn he could smell it, that faint but nauseating reek his uncle swore was imaginary, because that was the glory of spermaceti oil, the whole goddamn point: it had no significant odour. Every day of that dismal fall, though, Selkirk’s nostrils had filled anyway. Blood, whale brain, desiccated fish. He began to pound.
Just before the door opened, he became aware of movement behind it, the slap of shoed feet descending stone steps. But he didn’t stop knocking until the oak swung away from him, the light rushing not out from the lighthouse but in from the air.
He knew right away this was her, though he’d never actually seen her. Her black hair twisted over her shoulders and down her back in tangled strands like vines, just as Amalia had described. He’d expected a wild, white-haired, wind-ravaged thing, bent with age and the grief she could not shake. But of course, if Amalia’s story had been accurate, this woman had been all of twenty during Selkirk’s year here, and so barely over eighteen when she’d been widowed. She gazed at him now through royal blue eyes that seemed set into the darkness behind her like the last sunlit patches in a blackening sky.
“Mrs Marchant,” he said. “I’m Robert Selkirk from the Lighthouse Service. May I come in?”
For a moment, he thought she might shut the door in his face. Instead, she hovered, both arms lifting slightly from her sides, as though she were considering taking wing. Her skirt was long, her blouse pale yellow, clinging to her square and powerful shoulders.
“Selkirk,” she said. “From Winsett?”
Astonished, Selkirk started to raise his hand. Then he shook his head. “From the lighthouse service. But yes, I was nephew to the Winsett Selkirks.”
“Well,” she said, the Portuguese tilt to her words stirring memories of the Blubber Pike whalers, the smoke and the smell in there. Abruptly, she grinned. “Then you’re welcome here.”
“You may not feel that way in a few minutes, Mrs Marchant. I’m afraid I’ve come to . . .”
But she’d stepped away from the door, starting back up the stairs and beckoning him without turning around. Over her shoulder, he heard her say, “You must be frozen. I have tea.”
In he went, and stood still in the entryway, listening to the whistling in the walls, feeling drafts rushing at him from all directions. If it weren’t for the roof, the place would hardly qualify as a dwelling anymore, let alone a lifesaving beacon and refuge. He started after the woman up the twisting stairs.
Inside, too, the walls had begun to flake and mould, and the air flapped overhead, as though the whole place were full of nesting birds. Four steps from the platform surrounding the lantern room, just at the edge of the spill of yellow candlelight from up there, Selkirk slowed, then stopped. His gaze swung to his right and down toward his feet.
Sitting against the wall with her little porcelain ankles sticking out of the bottom of her habit and crossed at the ankle, sat a doll of a nun. From beneath the hood of the doll’s black veil, disconcertingly blue eyes peered from under long lashes. A silver crucifix lay in the doll’s lap, and miniature rosary beads trailed back down the steps, winking pale yellow and pink in the flickering light like seashells underwater. And in fact, they were bits of shell.
Glancing behind him, Selkirk spotted the other dolls he’d somehow missed. One for every other stair, on alternating walls. These were made mostly from shell, as far as he could tell. Two of them were standing, while a third sat with her legs folded underneath her and a stone tucked against her ear, as though she were listening. At the top of the steps, still another nun dangled from her curved, seashell hands on the decaying wooden banister. Not only were her eyes blue, but she was grinning like a little girl. Momentarily baffled to silence, Selkirk stumbled the rest of the way up to the lantern room. This time, he froze completely.
Even on this dark day, even through the dust and salt that caked the window glass inside and out, light flooded the chamber. None of it came from the big lamp, which of course lay unlit. Assuming it still worked at all. Across the plat
form, a pair of white wicker chairs sat side by side, aimed out to sea. Over their backs, the keeper had draped blankets of bright red wool, and beneath them lay a rug of similar red. And on the rug stood a house.
Like most of the dolls, it had been assembled entirely from shells and seaweed and sand. From its peaked roof, tassels of purple flowers hung like feathers, and all around the eves, gull feathers hung like the decorative flourishes on some outrageous society woman’s hat. On the rug – clearly, it served as a yard – tiny nuns prowled like cats. Some lay on their backs with their arms folded across their crucifixes, soaking up the light. One was climbing the leg of one of the wicker chairs. And a group – at least five – stood at the base of the window, staring out to sea.
And that is what reminded Selkirk of his purpose, and brought him at least part way back to himself. He glanced around the rest of the room, noting half a dozen round wooden tables evenly spaced around the perimeter. On each, yellow beeswax candles blazed in their candlesticks, lending the air a misleading tint of yellow and promising more heat than actually existed here. Mostly, the tables held doll-making things. Tiny silver crosses, multi-coloured rocks, thousands of shells. The table directly to Selkirk’s right had a single place setting laid out neatly upon it. Clean white plate, fork, spoon, one chipped teacup decorated with paintings of leaping silver fish.
Selkirk realized he was staring at a crude sort of living sundial. Each day, Mrs Marchant began with her tea and breakfast, proceeded around the platform to assemble and place her nuns, spent far too long sitting in one or the other of the wicker chairs and staring at the place where it had all happened, and eventually retired, to do it all over again when daybreak came. In spite of himself, he felt a surprisingly strong twinge of pity.
“That hat can’t have helped you much,” Mrs Marchant said, straightening from a bureau near her dining table where she apparently kept her tea things. The cup she brought matched the one on her breakfast table, flying fish, chips and all, and chattered lightly on its saucer as she handed it to him.
More grateful for its warmth than he realized, Selkirk rushed the cup to his mouth and winced as the hot liquid scalded his tongue. The woman stood a little too close to him. Loose strands of her hair almost tickled the back of his hand like the fringe on a shawl. Her blue eyes flicked over his face. Then she started laughing.
“What?” Selkirk took an uncertain half-step back.
“The fish,” she said. When he stared, she laughed again and gestured at the cup. “When you drank, it looked like they were going to leap right into your teeth.”
Selkirk glanced at the side of the cup, then back to the woman’s laughing face. Judging by the layout and contents of this room, he couldn’t imagine her venturing anywhere near town, but she clearly got outside to collect supplies. As a result, her skin had retained its dusky continental coloration. A beautiful creature, and no mistake.
“I am sorry,” she said, meeting his eyes. “It’s been a long time since anyone drank from my china but me. It’s an unfamiliar sight. Come.” She started around the left side of the platform. Selkirk watched, then took the opposite route, past the seaweed table, and met the woman in the centre of the seaward side of the platform, at the wicker chairs. Without waiting for him, she bent, lifted a tiny nun whose bandeau hid most of her face like a bandit’s mask off the rug, and settled in the right-hand chair. The nun wound up tucked against her hip like a rabbit.
For whom, Selkirk wondered, was the left-hand chair meant, on ordinary days? The obvious answer chilled and also saddened him, and he saw no point in wasting further time.
“Mrs Marchant—”
“Manners, Mr Selkirk,” the woman said, and for the second time smiled at him. “The sisters do not approve of being lectured to.”
It took him a moment to understand she was teasing him. And not like Amalia had, or not exactly like. Teasing him hadn’t made Amalia any happier. He sat.
“Mrs Marchant, I have bad news. Actually, it isn’t really bad news, but it may feel that way at first. I know – that is, I really think I have a sense – of what this place must mean to you. I did live in town here once, and I do know your story. But it’s not good for you, staying here. And there are more important considerations than you or your grief here, anyway, aren’t there? There are the sailors still out there braving the seas, and . . .”
Mrs Marchant cocked her head, and her eyes trailed over his face so slowly that he almost thought he could feel them, faintly, like the moisture in the air but warmer.
“Would you remove your hat, Mr Selkirk?”
Was she teasing now? She wasn’t smiling at the moment. Increasingly flustered, Selkirk settled the teacup on the floor at his feet and pulled his sopping hat from his head. Instantly, his poodle’s ruff of curls spilled onto his forehead and over his ears.
Mrs Marchant sat very still. “I’d forgotten,” she finally said. “Isn’t that funny?”
“Ma’am?”
Sighing, she leaned back. “Men’s hair by daylight.” Then she winked at him, and whispered, “The nuns are scandalized.”
“Mrs Marchant. The time has come. The Lighthouse Service – perhaps you’ve heard of it – needs to—”
“We had a dog, then,” Mrs Marchant said, and her eyes swung toward the windows.
Selkirk closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the tea unfurling in his guts, hearing the longing underneath the play in the keeper’s voice. When he opened his eyes again, he found Mrs Marchant still staring toward the horizon.
“We named the dog Luis. For my father, who died at sea while my mother and I were on our way here from Lisbon. Charlie gave him to me.”
After that, Selkirk hardly moved. It wasn’t the story, which Amalia had told him, and which he hadn’t forgotten. It was the way this woman said her husband’s name.
“He didn’t have to work, you know. Charlie. His family built half the boats that ever left this place. He said he just wanted to make certain his friends got home. Also, I think he liked living in the lighthouse. Especially alone with me. And my girls.”
“Smart fellow,” Selkirk murmured, realized to his amazement that he’d said it aloud, and blushed.
But the keeper simply nodded. “Yes. He was. Also reckless, in a way. No, that is wrong. He liked . . . playing at recklessness. In storms, he used to lash himself to the railing out there.” She gestured toward the thin band of metal that encircled the platform outside the windows. “Then he would lean into the rain. He said it was like sailing without having to hunt. And without leaving me.”
“Was he religious like you?” Selkirk hadn’t meant to ask anything. And Mrs Marchant looked completely baffled. “The . . .” Selkirk muttered, and gestured at the rug, the house. Sand-convent. Whatever it was.
“Oh,” she said. “It is a habit, only.” Again, she grinned, but unlike Amalia, she waited until she was certain he’d got the joke. Then she went on. “While my father lived here, my mother and I earned extra money making dolls for the Sacred Heart of Mary. They gave them to poor girls. Poorer than we were.”
The glow from Mrs Marchant’s eyes intensified on his cheek, as though he’d leaned nearer to a candle flame. Somehow, the feeling annoyed him, made him nervous.
“But he did leave you,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “Your husband.”
Mrs Marchant’s lips flattened slowly. “He meant to take me. The Kendall brothers – Kit was his best and oldest friend, and he’d known Kevin since the day Kevin was born – wanted us both to come sail with them, on the only beautiful January weekend I have ever experienced here. 1837. The air was so warm, Mr Selkirk, and the whales gone for the winter. I didn’t realize until then that Charlie had never once, in his whole life, been to sea. I’d never known until that weekend that he wanted to go. Of course I said yes. Then Luis twisted his foreleg in the rocks out there, and I stayed to be with him. And I made Charlie go anyway. He was blonde like you. Did you know that?”
Shifting i
n his seat, Selkirk stared over the water. The sky hung heavy and low, its colour an unbroken blackish grey, so that he no longer had any idea what time it was. After noon, surely. If he failed to conclude his business here soon, he’d never make it out of Winsett before nightfall, horse or no. At his feet, the nuns watched the water.
“Mrs Marchant.”
“He wasn’t as tall as you are, of course. Happier, though.”
Selkirk swung his head toward the woman. She took no notice.
“Of course, why wouldn’t he be? He had so much luck in his short life. More than anyone deserves or has any right to expect. The Sacred Heart of Mary sisters always taught that it was bad luck to consort with the lucky. What do you make of that, Mr Selkirk?”
It took Selkirk several seconds to sort the question, and as he sat, Mrs Marchant stood abruptly and put her open palm on the window. For a crazy second, just because of the stillness of her posture and the oddly misdirected tilt of her head – toward land, away from the sea – Selkirk wondered if she were blind, like her dolls.
“I guess I’ve never been around enough luck to say,” Selkirk finally said.
She’d been looking down the coast, but now she turned to him, beaming once more. “The sisters find you an honest man, sir. They invite you to more tea.”
Returning to the bureau with his cup, she refilled it, then sat back down beside him. She’d left the nun she’d had before on the bureau, balancing in the centre of a white plate like a tiny ice skater.
“The morning after they set sail,” she said, “Luis woke me up.” In the window, her eyes reflected against the grey. “He’d gotten better all through the day, and he’d been out all night. He loved to be. I often didn’t see him until I came outside to hang the wash or do the chores. But that day, he scratched and whined against the door. I thought he’d fallen or hurt himself again and hurried to let him in. But when I did, he raced straight past me up the stairs. I hurried after, and found him whimpering against the light there. I was so worried that I didn’t even look at the window for the longest time. And when I did . . . ”
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 81