Glister
Page 23
GLISTER &
For a moment, everything is quiet and still. I stand staring at the letters engraved in the metal, trying to make sense of them, then the Moth Man steps forward and reaches to open the door—and I realize that I am listening to something, up in the roof somewhere, or somewhere above the roof maybe. I can't make it out at first, then I realize that it's a flock of gulls, a big one, maybe hundreds, thousands even, and they are swaying back and forth above the enormous room. Hundreds of thousands of gulls, millions, risen from the landfill and from the gray inlets all along the shore to congregate above us, crying and calling out, and, behind them, somewhere hidden in all that noise, like the nut in a kernel, I can just make out the sound of the tide rushing through wet shingle, a dark, eternal sound that I know will never end, because it isn't just out there in the sky above us, it isn't just in the world, it's in me, it's written in every nerve and bone in my body. Then the Moth Man reaches out and starts to open the door to the portal.
I turn away then, to look back. Not for Morrison's sake, but to see what I am leaving behind. Or maybe to look for one last time at the place where I once belonged. I just want one last look at the only world I have ever known, reduced as it is to this cold room, barely lit by the single faint lamp that runs off the generator the Moth Man built to get the Glister running—but something off to the right catches my eye, something up in the roof beams that I've not seen before, just to the right of the lightbulb. I'm not sure why I see it, because I'm not looking for anything out there at the edge of the light. I should be looking ahead, to the door that the Moth Man is about to open, the door to another world maybe—but something catches my eye and I turn to see what it is. I don't see how it could have moved, and there's no sound, but I feel as if something has happened, that whatever it is that's out there has somehow attracted my attention of its own accord. Even then, it's hard to make it out, just a shadowy mass that seems darker than the shadow that surrounds it, but after a moment I think I can make out the shape of a body, or a carcass maybe, like those sides of meat you see in the butcher's shop, the mass of it heavy and horribly still, some dark liquid dripping onto the concrete below. And I am surprised not to have noticed it before. Something like that. I am surprised—and he notices that, because he reaches out and touches my arm, gently, without the least hint of force. “Don't get distracted,” he says. His voice is softer than usual, and for a moment he sounds almost uncertain, as if he is afraid I will fail in some way at the last moment. I turn back to face him.
For a moment, I see the body again, then it's gone and the Moth Man is there, watching me, not afraid after all, not even concerned, just curious, noticing that something has distracted me but not allowing his attention to waver, in case I do falter, and I see, at that moment, that I'm not doing this for my own sake, I'm doing it for him and—in his eyes at least—for everyone. Everyone in the Innertown, everyone on the peninsula, maybe everyone everywhere. I'm surprised.
“It's time,” he says. “You're almost there.”
“You're not coming,” I say. It's not a question: I've seen in his eyes that he is going to send me into the Glister alone. Which I should have known, of course, because he has to stay, he has to go on with his work. He is the necessary angel. I have an image of him going from house to house all along the peninsula, picking off the Morrisons and the Jenners and the Smiths, one by one. That's what I see in him, at the last. An angel going from door to door. The angel of death. The angel of absolution, gathering in the souls of the wicked—not as a punishment, but because God has forgiven them at last, and is releasing them from the hell they had fallen into. Now, the Moth Man shakes his head softly, a half smile on his lips. “I have to stay here,” he says.
Yet, even as he speaks, his face fades again and I look past him, out to the edge of the circle—and this time I see it clearly: a body, suspended in the half-light, the ruined frame of a boy hanging in the air like Icarus falling in some old painting, a boy my age and more or less my build, a boy with my coloring, as far as I can see in that light, and pretty much my height as far as I can tell. A mirror image of me, traveling on some parallel track, like the me/ not-me I'd seen in the woods, mon semblable—mon frère. I'd thought he was dead when I glimpsed him before; now I see that he is badly cut, but still alive, the dark blood dripping from his face and hands, his body bound in something bright, swaying slightly in the air, his mouth open, it seems, as if he wants to say something, or had wanted to say something a moment before—and now I know why I want to remember all this as if it had happened in the past, even though I know it continues in the present, because the boy isn't trying to speak, he's screaming, and the boy is me, only it's me in some parallel version of the story, just as I turn and see that the Moth Man is gone. Gone forever, though I could have sworn he was there a moment before. The Moth Man is gone, and then the boy on the wire is gone and I am stepping forward into this vast, impossibly brilliant light. I step forward with the feeling that I'm going to fall, or be swallowed up, and instead I am standing right in the middle of that unbearable light—only I'm not standing there anymore, I'm somewhere else and everything is gone. The Moth Man, the Glister, the boy in the beams of the ceiling, Morrison in his plaster cell—everything I know is gone, and all that remains is the calling of the gulls, above and around me the calling of the gulls and the slow, insistent motion of the waters, slow and far away and barely audible, turning on the shore and in my mind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the Society of Authors for their support in the research and writing of this book. Also to the Conseil Général du Nord, and the staff at La Villa Mont-Noir, merci à tous.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Burnside is the author of the novel The Devil's Footprints, the memoir A Lie About My Father, as well as five additional works of fiction and eleven collections of poetry published in the United Kingdom. The Asylum Dance won the Whitbread Poetry Award, The Light Trap was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and A Lie About My Father won the two biggest Scottish literary prizes: the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by John Burnside
All Rights Reserved
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DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Title spread photograph by David Epperson / Stone / Getty Images
Photograph on part-opening pages copyright © Comstock Select / Corbis
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burnside, John, 1955–
The glister : a novel / John Burnside.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Missing children—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6052.U6683G55 2008
823′.914—dc22 2008012141
eISBN: 978-0-385-52949-5
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Part 1 - The Book of Job
Chapter 1 - Homeland
Chapter 2 - Connections
Chapter 3 - Morrison
Chapter 4 - Alice
Chapter 5 - Et in Arcadia
Chapter 6 - Rivers
Part 2 - The Fire Sermon
Chapter 7 - Undoing
Chapter 8 - Elspeth
Chapter 9 - Leonard
Chapter 10 - Dreaming
Chapter 11 - Morrison
Chapter 12 - Heaven
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
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