Night Film: A Novel

by Marisha Pessl

  The second Polaroid featured a massive black boulder on a beach, seagulls circling overhead. The boulder had a mystical hole through the center, as if God had punched his thumb through it, making an impish void in the world. I didn’t recognize it.

  But the third featured a flock of black-necked swans, one of them carrying a cygnet on its back. Black-necked swans, I read on Wikipedia, were prevalent in South America. Yet they bred and hatched their young only in a few specific areas, one of which was Chile’s Zona Sur, which included Chiloé.

  Ashley could very well have been on the island. It seemed to have been where she’d taken the Polaroids.

  I opened up Google Earth, staring at a satellite view. Parts of the main island, Isla Grande, and almost all of the smaller islands around it freckling the blue sea were concealed by silvered clouds.

  Had all this evidence been silently leading me there?

  Gallo had been so adamant about keeping me down in the real world, ordinary life, making sure that I didn’t keep chasing Cordova—into what?

  Warning voices echoed resoundingly through my head, one of the loudest of which was that old grizzled alcoholic reporter back at the bar in Nairobi. Slumped over his drink, wearing his stained khaki jacket and fatigues, he’d warned me about the fates of the three reporters who’d worked the cursed case, the case without an end, the tapeworm.

  One had gone mad. Another quit the story and a week later, hanged himself in a Mombasa hotel room. The third simply disappeared into thin air, leaving his family and a prime post at an Italian newspaper.

  “It’s infected,” the man had mumbled. “The story. Some are, you know.”

  I sat back thoughtfully in my desk chair. Septimus, I saw with disbelief, had chosen to fly as I’d never seen him do before. He was crashing drunkenly into the ceiling and windows, the Le Samouraï poster, his wings fluttering against the glass in excitement—or was it alarm at what I was about to do, where I was about to go?

  Because I noticed now, the fates of those three reporters were not unlike the actors who’d worked alongside Cordova, those who, once they left The Peak, never returned to ordinary lives, but scattered to the outer reaches of the world, most never heard from again, becoming unfathomable and unseen, beyond reach.

  It was happening to me now.

  Wasn’t it? I was following in their footsteps, sending myself to the outer reaches of the world. Was I fleeing something or had I been set free?

  I wouldn’t know until I saw what was there, if anything at all.

  118

  Four days later, I took a flight to Santiago, Chile, and another to Puerto Montt.

  I strode through El Tepual airport to the baggage claim, brimming with children, families embracing, signs for INFORMACION and Eurocar. I found my army duffel sitting alone on the revolving carousel, as if it’d been awaiting me for months.

  I took a taxi to the bus station and boarded the first one to Pargua. It was packed, half the seats occupied by rowdy boys in white kneesocks, some madrigal singing group manned by a sweaty-faced director who looked ready to quit. An old woman took the seat beside me, giving me a wary look, but once she dozed off, her head bobbed gently against my shoulder like a buoy in choppy seas. Our bus, an old yellowed beast with dirty rainbows emblazoned up its sides, slung and bumped its way through the streets, past Bavarian A-frame chalets and busy cafés out into the countryside.

  The ferry to Chiloé Island left every twenty minutes. It cost a dollar. As we took off across the wind-chopped sea, I was surrounded by a large and boisterous group of tourists crowding the top deck. An Italian woman was trying to keep her thrashing hair out of her face as her boyfriend took a picture. He noticed me and motioned with a grin if I’d take one of them together. As I obliged, I couldn’t help but wonder if someday someone might track them down and show them my photo as I’d showed Ashley’s.

  Do you recognize him? Did he speak to you? What was he wearing? What was his demeanor? Did he strike you as strange?

  Standing along the railing, staring out, I could see the island far ahead. It was revealing itself like a woman stepping out from behind a curtain, unhurried and deliberate: deep-green rolling hills, white mist streaking the shoreline, soft lights twinkling through the vegetation, telephone poles with tangled wires, a homely beach. For a minute, a large black-and-white bird, some type of stormy petrel, flew alongside the ferry, very close to where I stood, diving up and down, calling out in one shattering screech before veering away on a new gust of wind, swallowed by the sky.

  We unloaded in Chacao, a frazzled village with the neglected countenance of a place people were constantly leaving. There, with many of the same people from the ferry, I boarded another bus to Castro, the largest town on the island, where I checked into the hotel, the Unicornio Azul. It was hard to miss: bright pink building on a wet gray street. I’d read it was lively, popular with locals and tourists traveling cheap, known for good food and English conversation. My room had faded blue wallpaper, a cot only slightly larger than the massive Santiago telephone book provided on the bedside table. I took a shower standing beside the toilet (the bathroom the size of a telephone booth), and then, clean-shaven, went downstairs to find the dining room. I ordered a pisco sour, what the waitress explained was the local drink, and when she lingered, asking if I was Australian, I took out the Vanity Fair article and inquired if, by some small chance, she recognized the landmarks in the pictures.

  My question caused a great deal of intrigue.

  It wasn’t a minute before two fellow diners, as well as the Dutch bartender, were crowded around my table, hashing over the Polaroids—and probably me—in Spanish. The consensus was that, though no one recognized the tiny church, one of the locals—a petulant dark little man who, at the waitress’s urging, waddled awkwardly over to us, hinting he did better in water—claimed to have seen the black boulder with the hole somewhere along the coast south of Quicaví when he was a little boy. (The man, it should be noted, looked to be in his late seventies.)

  “Quicaví? How do I get there?” I asked.

  But the man only jutted out his chin, grimacing as if I’d just insulted him, and shuffled back over to his table.

  The waitress leaned in with an apologetic look. “The Chilote, locals, we’re muy superticiosa about Quicaví. It’s north. About an hour’s drive.”

  “Why are you superstitious about Quicaví?”

  “That’s where the man arrives.”

  “What man?”

  She widened her eyes, as if unsure how to begin to answer, and swiftly moved off. “Just don’t go at night,” she offered over her shoulder.

  The Dutch bartender suggested I rent a car from his friend down the road to reach Quicaví before nightfall—before nightfall seemed the most crucial part of the directions—which was why, not an hour later, I was behind the wheel of a green four-wheel-drive Suzuki Samurai dating back to the eighties, heading down a twisting road with no shoulder and a width that barely fit two cars. I had my passport on me, all of my money, both dollars and Chilean pesos, my cell, a switchblade, and Popcorn’s compass.

  As I drove, checking the map and the compass, indicating I was driving northeast, the island seemed to shake loose around me. Undulating hills, horses galloping alone in fields—I passed an unmanned goat procession and two young boys escorting a sheep. I kept picturing my abandoned room back at the Unicornio Azul, as if it were a newly minted crime-scene photo imprinted in my head: my army duffel unzipped on the bed, clothes hastily thrown inside, the itinerary from Expedia in the inside pocket, red toothbrush on the edge of the sink, tube of Colgate Total indented from my hand, and, finally, the cruddy mirror that had held the last known sighting of my face. I wondered, suddenly, if I should have left a note, something for Sam, a small clue—just in case. I’d left Septimus with her, assuring Cynthia I’d be traveling only for a few weeks, so Sam would know I was coming back.

  And I was.

  The Suzuki began to gripe about some of th
e hills, and when we faced a particularly steep one—the road’s pavement had given out long ago, now it was dirt and rocks—I switched on the four-wheel drive, flooring it. This killed the engine. I pushed it to the shoulder of the road and began to walk.

  As if by black magic, a boy in a truck passed me, backed up, and offered me a ride. He spoke no English, the radio playing Rod Stewart. Reaching the apparent edge of Quicaví, a thin sloping road splintering with dark houses—all of them leaning downhill as if desperate to reach the ocean, visible at the end—the boy dropped me off and continued on.

  It was beginning to get dark, spitting light rain. I made a right onto another road, which led me into the heart of Quicaví. There was nothing overtly sinister about the town—cafés advertised free Internet and Pepsi; a large pig grazed in front of a grocery store. And yet every shop at ten minutes after six had dark windows, signs on the doors reading CERRADO. All that appeared to be open was a restaurant called Café Romeo, a few people hunched over the tables inside, and when I reached the beach, a shack at the very end, what looked to be some sort of cantina, its sharply pitched roof lit with lights.

  I headed toward it across the sand, which was rocky and black, the water sluggishly lapping the shore. I realized with surprise I was alone out here. I ran through the last forty hours in my head, noting that starting with JFK airport at five A.M. some two days ago, until now, the number of people around me had been gradually dwindling—as if I’d walked into a roaring party and now, looking around, I saw I was the last guest left.

  I reached the shack, and when I looked up, reading the weathered sign over the dark door, I stopped dead, stunned.

  La Pincoya Negro. Black mermaid. That exact phrase had been scribbled above one of the doorways in the underground tunnels at The Peak. If I’d walked through it, would it have taken me here?

  “Quiere barquito?”

  I turned. A scrawny old man was standing far behind me, close to the water beside a stake in the sand, a trio of weathered boats tied to it. He was the only other person out here. He started toward me and I could see he had a kind smile, missing a few teeth, oil-splattered slacks rolled to his shins, and wisps of gray hair strung across his tanned head, as if a bit of sea mist still clung there.

  I unfolded the Vanity Fair article, showing him the Polaroids.

  The man nodded with obvious recognition at the church, saying something I couldn’t understand, which sounded like, “Buta Chauques. Isla Buta Chauques.” When he saw the boulder with the hole, he grinned.

  “Sí, sí, sí. La trampa de sirena.”

  He repeated the phrase, his parched lips twitching in excitement. I did the rudimentary translation in my head. The trap for the mermaids? The trap of the mermaids? I nodded in my confusion and he, taking it for some kind of agreement, grinned and lurched back over to his boats. He untied the largest and began to drag it toward the water.

  “No!” I called out to him. “You misunderstood.”

  But he was jerking it with surprising strength by the bow, the boat’s propeller digging into the sand as if trying to resist.

  “Hey, forget it! Mañana!”

  The man made no sign of having heard me. Knee-deep in the water now, he was stooped over, yanking the starter cord.

  I fell silent, watching him, and then found myself turning, staring back at the way I’d come.

  There were a few lights, back at the end of that road. They looked lively and soft, and suddenly I was filled with longing, as if around the corners of those dark houses I might find Perry Street and my old life, all that was known to me and familiar, all that I loved, if only I had the inclination to walk back there. Yet as close as they appeared, they seemed also to be receding, warm rooms I’d already passed through, the doorways gone.

  The man had managed to turn over the motor, thick smoke streaming out, a deep rumble tearing through the wind clattering across the rooftops of the shops behind me.

  I walked to the boat and climbed in. An inch of seawater slurped in the hull, but the old man was unconcerned. Taking his position beside the engine, he unfolded a blue cap from his shirt pocket, pulled it low over his eyes, and with a single nod at me of evident pride, he began to steer us away from the shore.

  We hadn’t gone two minutes when I spotted deep green, seemingly uninhabited islands surfacing like giant whales to my left. I assumed we’d stop at one, but the man kept driving us past, one after the other, until I saw there was absolutely nothing left in front of us, not a single landmass, nothing—only a black churning ocean and a sky, equally empty.

  “How much longer?” I shouted, turning around.

  But the man only held up a grizzled hand, muttering something voided by the wind, which seemed to charge his dirty gray shirt with volts of current, revealing a frame as withered as an old tree.

  Maybe he was Charon, ferryman of the River Styx, transporting all newly dead souls into the underworld.

  I turned back, staring ahead, trapped in the feeling that something was about to appear and the horror that nothing ever would. We continued on, I didn’t know how long. I couldn’t release my grip on the sides of the boat to check my watch or the compass, the waves growing violent, ocean spray soaking me as they turned upon themselves, beating the boat. Slowly I began to surrender to the possibility that we’d go on and on like this, until the gas ran out, and when it did, the boat’s motor would clear its throat like an exhausted opera singer leaving the stage, and I’d turn to find that even the old man was gone.

  But when I did turn, he was still hunched there, squinting far off to our left, steering us toward another massive green-black island growing out of the horizon, this one with a narrow beach fringed with foliage and beyond that, immense cliffs rising like muscular shoulders out of the sea. The man grinned as if recognizing an old friend and when we were some twenty yards offshore, abruptly he cut the engine, staring at me expectantly as the boat pitched and jerked. I realized, as he extended one oil-blackened index finger toward the water, still smiling, it was my cue to jump.

  I shook my head. “What?”

  He only jabbed that finger toward the water, and when I waved my arm, trying to tell him to forget it, a heavy swell blasted the boat. Before I could brace myself, I was abruptly tossed forward.

  I was spinning upside down in the freezing waves. I broke the surface, gasping, seawater filling my mouth, but as the ground found my feet I realized it was shallow. I kicked my way to shore, struggling to stand, bending over, coughing. But then I whipped around, horrified. I’d neither paid the man nor made any arrangements to get back.

  He’d already restarted the motor and was circling the boat around.

  “Hey!” I shouted, but again, the wind erased my voice. “Wait! Come back!”

  He didn’t react or didn’t hear me. Shoulders hunched, bracing himself against the wind, he was speeding across the water, motor screeching, and within minutes he was nothing but a speck of black on the sea.

  I looked around. There was just enough light left to see, farther down the beach, where the sand narrowed as if brutally shoved aside by the cliffs, a giant boulder. It had a hole through it.

  The trap of the mermaids.

  Stunned, I stumbled toward it, then quickly realized that an immense flock of seagulls, their cries extinguished by the ocean, were swarming not only around the boulder but most of the shoreline, feasting on something scattered across the rocks. The rain began to fall harder, so I took off, taking refuge under the foliage fringing the beach.

  I noticed, just a few yards away, a plank jutting across the sand.

  A series of boards had been flung over a muddy path leading straight back into the forest. I checked the compass, the needle resolutely pointing east, and then stepped onto the wood, the mud underneath belching from my weight. I followed it, instantly hit with stagnant air, humid and thick, but also something else—a rush, a sensation that I was sliding toward something, being funneled into a hole I couldn’t climb out of and shoul
dn’t try. Twisted branches wound around one another growing so dense all that was left of the rain was the sound of it, like a crowd whispering overhead. I began to walk faster, and the walk became a run, the run a sprint, the uneven planks hitting my feet, some snapping in half, sending me knee-deep in mud. I didn’t stop, streaking past spider ferns and bobbing flowers, waist-thick tree roots climbing out on either side of the path, as if trying to escape. My only company appeared to be a single bird, which dogged me like a final warning, fluttering, chirping in the overgrowth until it flew right at me, black wings grazing my cheek, emitting a sharp cry before diving again into the dark. The pathway was becoming an incline, growing steeper as if trying to shake me off, but I didn’t stop, ascending so rapidly, after a while I couldn’t feel the ground under my feet.

  There was a house ahead. Nestled in the trees, it looked like so many others I’d seen on the main island, battered, covered in wooden shingles, a splintered shutter dangling from a window. Gasping to catch my breath, I slung myself up onto the porch, grabbed the rusted knob, and opened the door.

  It was a deserted room—stark wooden furniture, dim light, an old ceiling fan whirling overhead.

  A large oil painting hung directly across from me on the wall. It was a man’s portrait, his warped and chalky face retreating into a black background as if melting. I stepped inside, then froze, my eyes drawn to movement in the far corner. There, by a wall of dark windows, sat two leather-and-wood mission chairs like waiting thrones. On a small table beside one, a cigarette was burning—Murad, no doubt—white ribbons of smoke uncoiling off the end.

  I moved toward it and spotted a pair of folded wire glasses, the lenses round and pitch black. Beside them was a bottle of Macallan scotch—my scotch, I noted with astonishment—and two empty glasses.

  I turned, sensing someone watching me.

  He was there, a hulking dark silhouette in the doorway.

  Cordova.

  A hundred things went through my head in that moment. Hunters stare their prey in the eyes and what do they see? I hadn’t known I’d ever find him, and, if I did, whether I’d have the impulse to kill him, condemn him, or weep. Perhaps I’d pity him, brought to my knees by the vulnerable child inside every man. But I had a feeling he’d been expecting me, that we were going to do nothing more than sit down in those empty chairs, one father with another, and as the rain fell and the smoke coiled around us, weaving another hypnotic spell, he’d tell me. There would be unimaginable darkness and streaks of blood inside it, this tale he told, which would probably last for days, screams and bright red birds, and astounding hints of hope, as the sun, in an instant, can christen the blackest sea. I’d learn more about the lengths people went to feel something than I ever thought possible and I’d hear Sam’s laughter inside of Ashley’s.