Glister

by John Burnside

  “Yeah,” I'd said. “Sacred. It leaps right out at you.”

  He'd smiled at that, but he'd persisted with the idea. “You know what sacred means?” he'd asked.

  I'd thought for a moment, then shook my head—though I knew where he was going. I always knew where he was going, even when he talked about the bizarre life cycles of the Lepidoptera, or the inner workings of fungus colonies; it was like listening to another version of myself talking about the world, filling me in on all the things I hadn't had time to notice yet. “OK,” I'd said, “enlighten me.”

  He'd laughed. I didn't know how he saw me, if he thought I was another version of him, maybe a there-but-for-the-grace-of version from the Innertown, the smart-arsed kid he never got to be growing up. He'd said it often since that first time, how the headland was sacred, but this time it meant something else, something harder, something as dangerous as it was beautiful. This time he's talking about something more specific, some piece of machinery he has made, but I can't really follow because of the tea I've drunk. All I can do is stand there, trying to stay in one place, in my body and in my head, trying not to sway as I watch his lips moving, like someone who's suddenly gone deaf and is trying desperately to lip-read from scratch. Not that it would have mattered, I think. He isn't explaining anything. At one point, I think, he's telling me about how he's found some old drawings and plans on his father's computer system, how he's sat down and worked it out, how they have something to do with the plant. At first, he just thought they were plans for some kind of purification process, maybe something his father designed to help clean up the mess the plant created, but after a while he sees through to something else, some ghost of a notion to begin with, but enough to make him see that what the old man was working on—during his very last days, according to the dates, days when he knew he didn't have very long—what he came close to achieving, is a portal of some kind, a gateway that's already partly built into the plant's inner workings, and has only to be completed. I think that's what he is saying, though I might have imagined it, or maybe I put it in afterward, to make some sense of what will happen later, when I walk into that huge light without a second thought and come to where I am now. I don't know. What I do know is that he shows me a machine at the dark end of a long, cold room that looks like a cross between a warehouse and a laboratory, then he tells me about something that's going to happen. It concerns me, but it doesn't sound like anything that will matter. It sounds abstract. In another twenty-four hours or so, this machine will be ready—right now, it's going through some special process, like charging up or something—and we will walk, or maybe I will walk, I'm not sure about the details, somebody will walk through this rusty old door and enter into—something. Another world, another time. Or nowhere, never. I can't really follow him, I'm too far gone in my own mind. There are times when I want to laugh, times when I want to cry, but I don't laugh or cry, I just stand in that long room, listening to him speak and swaying in the half-light, not even sure I'm there at all. Not even sure I'm not dreaming.

  Later, when the effects of the tea have almost worn off, I find myself sitting by a fire again, in the same clearing we'd camped in before, just ten or so yards from the old farm road. The Moth Man is sitting opposite me, tending a large pot of what smells like soup or stew, the gold light off the fire playing on his hands and face as he sits gazing into the flames. He appears to have forgotten I'm there—maybe I've been sleeping again—but he looks calm. Not happy, but calm. I can't say for sure, and maybe this is something else that occurs to me afterward, but he looks like a man who has made a final decision about something and is just waiting for events to unfold.

  His decision has something to do with me, I know—only I don't know what it is he, or I, or both of us have decided. Something to do with the machine in the enormous room. I want to ask him about it, but the questions just don't form right in my head and I start thinking about other things, like seeing Morrison in the woods, or finding the watch, or the theory I had come up with about the lost boys. I even get myself together enough to start telling him about it all. I want to lay out my suspicions, maybe get his views on who is involved with Morrison. I want him to help me make sense of everything. He's not interested in that, though. As far as he's concerned, we've gone beyond the Innertown. He listens patiently for as long as I talk, but he doesn't say anything. At first I think it's because I'm not making any sense—I'm still pretty confused, and not saying things right—but then I see that it doesn't matter what I say, or how clearly I say it, because he has moved on to things that I haven't even begun to consider, much less understand. Which is true, of course.

  “None of this is your concern,” he says, after I show him the watch.

  I shake my head. I feel like I'm saying the words of a script, like one of the minor characters in some whodunit, telling the great detective about my hopelessly mistaken theory. “Somebody killed all those boys—” I say.

  He waves his hand. “Don't bother yourself with that stuff,” he says.

  And that's it. Case closed. I'm tired and confused, and he has other things on his mind. Yet just when I start to think it's hopeless, he stands up and starts setting out two lots of blankets on the ground by the fire. He's thinking something through, but he's not in any hurry. He lays out the blankets, puts some more wood on the fire, then stands up and looks back toward the woods, in the direction of the Innertown. “Tell you what,” he says. “We'll go and have a chat with the constable tomorrow. Maybe then you can forget all this and we can move on.”

  I am surprised by that. I almost laugh, not at what he's saying, but at the way he says it. Have a chat. It sounds so ordinary; like we'll just pop by the police house and ask Morrison if he's killed five boys and, if he hasn't, does he know who did. I almost laugh.

  He lies down on a groundsheet and pulls some blankets over himself. “Get some rest now,” he says. “It's going to be a long day.”

  I don't expect to sleep again, but I do. It's the sleep of exhaustion this time, not some drug-induced hypnogogic reverie, though there are dreams in my head that must have come from the hours I was under the influence of the Moth Man's strange tea, dreams from the gaps in the day that I can't remember, not with my conscious mind at least—whatever that is. I am exhausted, and I sleep deep, but when I wake it's still early—and very cold, much colder than I would have expected. I lie on the ground under the Moth Man's camphor-scented blankets and I try to remember, if not everything, then the points at which one thing connects with the next, so that I can tell myself the story of what has happened. The story of what has been decided. I know that I have pledged myself to something, but I'm not sure what it is. It has to do with that machine the Moth Man showed me, it has to do with passing through to some other place. At some point during the previous twelve hours, I know I have seen something, and I know that it is sacred to the Moth Man in a different way than anything he's shown me before, and I think it has to do with some kind of deity, or spirit, but I don't know if I have actually seen it, or if he has told me about it, or even if it was something that came up out of a dream and slipped into the story he was telling me in the enormous room—out of a dream, or out of the earth, which is much the same thing by then. Lying there, in the cold dawn, I think that, for the Moth Man, it is a god, a wildness beyond his imagining that took form one bright afternoon when he was out here alone and showed him another way of being in the world. A wild god, but not savage. Not cruel. I don't know what is about to happen, or where the silent machine in the enormous room might take me, but I do know, beyond all doubt, that this is so. Whatever happens, wherever the next twenty-four hours take me, I know that the god of that place is wild but it isn't cruel. Cruelty, I know, is a human quality, and whatever I might find in the enormous room, I know it will not be human.

  I sit up. The fire is still burning, though it isn't quite as bright or as warm as it had been when we were talking, before I fell asleep. I look for the Moth Man, but he isn't there
. That doesn't worry me, though. I know he won't be far away. He's probably gone to fetch more wood for the fire, or maybe he is gathering leaves to make more of that tea he'd given me. I don't like the idea of that. It was amazing and beautiful in a way, but I don't like that I can't remember everything that happened. Though it might have been better if I'd forgotten everything. What really unsettles me, though, is the procession of disconnected images running through my head, and the sense I have of a story all disjointed and out of sequence.

  I struggle to my feet and walk away from the fire, away from the campsite, out to the edge of the clearing, and through the trees to where the old farm road runs down to the sea. The headland is always at its best in the early morning, but that day it's more beautiful than ever. When I say beautiful, I don't mean tourist-brochure stuff, because it could never have been that. For one thing, there is nothing much to look at, just a wide field spotted here and there with cold, red poppies and a line of twisted trees turning from black to gray in the first light. Overhead, a few gulls are drifting up from the shore, and what might have been a little owl flutters out across the gray-green grass to the cover of the trees as I cross the road and stand watching, my mind empty—though in a good way, as if absence was what it has promised itself for years. Absence. Nothingness. There's a saying— nothingness haunts being, and I understand what that means, only if you say it in those words it sounds too abstract, too philosophical. Kind of drab, too—which it isn't in the least. John would have said it sounds better in French, but that's not it. It sounds better when you stand at the edge of a field of cold poppies and let the nothingness come, just like that, no huge thing, just that matter-of-fact nothingness. It sounds better when you don't say it in words, when you don't even remark on it, but watch and listen as it takes you away—not some negative thing at all, not some existential condition, but a kind of blossoming, a natural event. Something that, when it finally comes, is no big deal. The self bleeding out. The red of the poppies. The cool of the morning.

  When I get back, the Moth Man is back by the fire, doing what he always does, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. He looks up when I cross over and stand a few feet away, staring at the fire as if it is some kind of miracle, but he doesn't say anything. He just finishes what he is doing, then he feeds me some breakfast and a cup of regular, non-hallucinogenic coffee. I know I've missed something in what he told me about the machine and his father's blueprints and I'm wondering if he knows it too. If he does, I think, he'll surely say something else, he'll surely try to explain—but he doesn't say anything. We sit around for a while, not saying much, just tending the fire and listening to the woods as they go about their business around us. It's not awkward, there's no tension, no sense of delay or expectation. If anything, it's like any other morning: just two friends out camping in the woods. It's friendly, though, with that light, unspoken sense of being comfortable together in the quiet. We sit there a long time, not saying a word; then we put all his stuff in the van and drive down to the Innertown, like a pair of God's closest angels, to pluck a man's soul out of hell.

  DREAMING

  IN THE POLICE HOUSE, ALICE MORRISON IS TRYING NOT TO DREAM. SHE IS awake now but, as she has discovered, this makes no difference, because the dreams keep coming, even when she stands with her head down, her hands pressed to the wall, her eyes wide open. She has always been afraid of what is happening now, afraid that, one day, the shakes won't pass after a few hours, or even after a day or two, that they will stay with her, always, her permanent, vigilant companions. Now, faces loom up at her out of the floor, or they come leering out from a wall, dead faces, but mocking, mocking and desperate at once, terrible, unknown eyes and mouths, flaring out from wherever she turns. Worse still, though, are the noises in her head—not voices, never voices anymore, just a noise like furniture being moved, wooden table legs dragging across a floor, or saucepan lids falling and clattering on tiles, or maybe the sound of piano wires resonating in the dark, where someone is rocking the frame back and forth, back and forth. Or there are bells in the distance, a sound that should be peaceful, a beautiful sound if the bells were out there in the world, and not inside her head. Then, through all that, through the sudden deceptive moments of quiet, comes the sound of a child, the same child over and over again, sitting or kneeling in a corner somewhere, weeping and whispering to itself, a boy or a girl, she doesn't know, and she can't make out the words the child is saying. All she can hear is this dreadful whisper.

  She knows Morrison is somewhere in the house. Somewhere downstairs. He's letting her get on with it, because there have been times when she's told him to leave her alone, and now he is leaving her alone, now he's given up and she has the solitude that she's always wanted. Except that, now, she doesn't want it. She can't take it. She's told herself that this won't last, because this is hell, and she's done nothing to deserve hell. Smith, Jenner, and the others from the Outertown, they deserve this more than she does. Morrison deserves it. She doesn't know what he's done, but she knows he's done something. Nobody who works for Smith is innocent. But then, hell doesn't come to the guilty. It comes to people like the O'Donnells, who haven't done anything wrong. That's the twist about hell, the one they don't tell you about in religious studies, the fact that, in hell, it's not the guilty who suffer, it's the innocent. That's what makes it hell. Some random principle wanders through the world, choosing people for no good reason and plunging them into hell. Grief for a child. Horrifying sickness. Noises and faces coming from nowhere, punctuated by terrible minutes of lucidity, just long enough to take stock of where you are. And you are in hell.

  Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell. The sound in her head grows and something tightens all along her arms and legs—like cramps, only much worse—and she feels like her body is about to burst open, tendons and muscles snapping and tearing, the bones cracking. She has known about this forever, she has been at the threshold for so long and now it is finally happening. Morrison is downstairs, fixing tea, or reading a paper, ignoring her. She doesn't want him, but she wants something. She wants help. A drug, maybe. It could be that simple. They could come and give her one tiny injection and this hell could end. All she needs is someone to make the call. But she can't do it. She can't ask him. Her whole body wants to scream with the agony, her mind wants to beg for something to free her, and she can't make a sound. She is in hell, and hell is for eternity.

  She doesn't know when she first sees the man. She thinks this is one more face, screaming out at her from the doorway, as she turns, searching for an exit. A phantom. God, she knows these are phantoms, she knows these things are hallucinations, or she does some of the time anyway, and it makes no difference. This is the place where mad people live, and she doesn't know how she got here. A few drinks, a few pills? Surely not. She has never believed in that kind of injustice. She has believed in blame and private horrors and shameful acts behind closed doors. She hasn't imagined that the mad deserve their suffering, but she has believed in a route, a road taken, or a history of pain and loneliness, running from the darkest secret of childhood to the asylum, where doctors come and go with needles, and the mad lie down to sleep in oblivion, for precious hours at a time. But where was her route? Nobody abused her as a child. Nobody stole her innocence or made her a witness to unbearable truths. She doesn't know how she got here. She doesn't know how her life got to be unbearable.

  But then, nothing is unbearable. When she first sees him, he's one phantom among many, but after a while she becomes aware of a real presence, a warmth that fills the room and she looks out from her hell and sees him there, standing in his own island of light and yet only a few feet away. He has the shape of a man but his face, when she makes it out, is the face of a boy. A gentle, serene boy, gazing at her, calm, forgiving, silent. She knows he will not speak to her, but she needs to break the chain of sound and pain in her head and, when she finally sees him there, she has to ask. He doesn't reply, and she hasn't expected him to reply, but she repea
ts the question anyway.

  “Who are you?” she says. It's a simple enough question.

  He doesn't answer, but he comes closer and reaches out his hand—and that, for one terrible moment, is the most painful thing she can possibly imagine. The reaching, the moment before touching. But when he touches her—his hand laid flat across her face, covering her eyes and mouth—she staggers into some new state, some unknown brightness. He lays his hand over her face and her eyes close, and the noises stop. The noises stop and the pain in her arms stops. The pain ebbs away, like water. The noises stop and her head is silent, cool, empty. The gratitude is almost unbearable, but she knows, at the same time, that he has not come here to bless her. She is someone he has found in passing, and his mercy is so huge it costs him nothing to heal her. It's as if she met the Angel of the Lord in some old Bible story, and he has touched her for a moment, and healed her, but she knows that, all the time, his purpose is elsewhere. She falls to the floor then, falling away from his healing hand and into herself, the self she was before, the self she has forgotten in all this noise and pain and fear. So that when she looks up, he is already gone, a shadow passing away, on its way to its divine appointment. But she doesn't care. She is still. Her body is silent. She is capable of sleep.

  It may be minutes later, it may be longer, when she hears something from downstairs, from one of the rooms below. Morrison's voice calls out, maybe in fear, maybe in anger, she can't tell, and she can't make out what he says. She is only mildly curious, though, and after a moment the silence returns. The silence of her exhaustion. Outside, somewhere in the trees, a pair of owls is hunting, and closer in, near the window, she hears a gust of wind. Fresh new sounds, sounds that come from beyond her own pain. She hears one thing, then she hears another, but it's fading even as it happens, because she is finding her way to a place where sleep is total, and on the far side of that, a new life. Her name is Alice. Her father loved her, and she had a happy childhood, for the most part. Sleep is her due, and she takes it, with gratitude and relief, and it barely troubles her that, as she slips down and into that dreamless place, the last thing she registers, the last tiny fragment of awareness, is that Morrison is gone and she is in the police house, alone.