All normal for this report.
Andy Hoff
Louis La Rocca: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1981
You know what would be handy? A lie detector. I know they lie all the time, but maybe they’re telling the truth, too. I know there are secrets. Secrets concealed by the fact we don’t believe a word they say.
God, I want an orange.
I’d kill for one right now.
I’ve asked, and I hope they send some with the next delivery.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
Louis La Rocca
Susan Mosse: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1982
You know what I want? A plate, a tray, of tiny little triangles of cheese on toast. White bread. Tasty cheese right to the edges and perfectly brown.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Susan Mosse
Matt Glover: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1983
It’ll probably bring down a curse or something, but the boat guy had to spend a couple of nights out here. The storm was insane. We watched the pier smash up, just shatter like matchsticks.
He went back when the sun shone. I could see him wading through the water, trying to keep hold of his boat, and no one there to help him.
The prisoners begged him to take them home. They’re saying, mistaken identity! It isn’t us! Some idiot in the past had told them about the Sharon Tate murders, and the innocent kid who was arrested at first for the deed.
He was a white kid and they let him go pretty quickly.
What if they’d been stubborn? Insisted on keeping him as their suspect? If he’d been a black kid? Then who knows what the Manson family may have done. Who knows? The prisoners use this an example. “See? The police make mistakes.”
There are no mistakes here.
They’re building a new pier, back on shore. It’ll take months, the rate they’re going. Wish I’d had a camera on it, to capture the build.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Matt Glover
Vicki Fenwick: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1984
The boatman looked at me sidelong. I didn’t like it.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Vicki Fenwick
Rick Manning: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1985
I was told they can’t get it up anymore, but I tell ya, if I tell them stories about death and destruction, they’re getting it up all right.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Rick Manning
Suzy Dowling: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1986
The boatman was silent for the journey.
“Any tips?” I asked. “Anything to help me out?”
His shoulders lifted as if he was trying to block his ears, and he said nothing. I tried the same when I was out there. I don’t mind noise, when I know what it is. But footsteps when you shouldn’t hear them?
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Suzy Dowling
Carlo Zomparelli: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1987
Like others, I am disturbed by the journey out here. Perhaps better not to have to row out, a new man each year, but one boatman serves all? I can only imagine how distressing it will be when I have to return. The boatman needs to imbue a sense of positivity, not deep despair.
We call them The Bones. If I could get hold of enough vinegar I’d pickle them like a chicken bone and tie them in knots.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Carlo Zomparelli
David Costello: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1988
I love the journey out and back. It’s like being in limbo. I’d be happy to do it over and over again.
Love to keep the boat clean.
Love being on the salty water, so fresh.
So clean.
No one tells lies on the water. Out there, every last one of them is a liar. Every last word out of their mouths.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners did not require bathing. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
David Costello
Sebastian Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1989
There is beauty in most things. I say that as an artist, or as a wannabe, more like. An artist should be able to see beauty wherever he looks.
And yet…she was a baby farmer. How many newborns did she kill? I saw my little sister born. I know how absolute she was from that moment. Needy, vulnerable and a real person. This one took them from their parents and killed them.
I’d interfere with her if the thought didn’t make me sick. Instead, I draw her in a state of unpleasantness. The things that others have put inside her I’ve drawn placed around her, a reminder of who she is and what she deserves.
I hope to give her shame.
During the bathing, I feel as if they opened up to me. As if the simple addition of water cleanses us all. I felt great pity for them, and great sorrow that I was not in touch with them earlier in their lives, before it all began.
I love solitude.
Patterns.
The form of shapes.
These things are beautiful.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. They did not require bathing. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Sebastian Heath
Jerry Butler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1990
Look at him. The Greyhound. Cannot leave himself alone. Disgusting.
I called him the Greyhound because he used to own them, and because his dick is so long and thin it looks like a whippet.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Jerry Butler
Rod Glover: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1991
I was good at science at school, but I hated the experiments. I’m not that cold. Then you get the extreme, our guy here. He liked his subjects fresh from the womb. Somehow he
had that power. He’s aborted these babies and then kept them. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard of.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Rod Glover
Tyson Keeney: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1992
I’ve collected playing cards all my life. Only odd ones, found on the streets, whatever. Others pick them up for me, too.
I was the picture of health when I got here. But near the end, not so much. Not sure if something was triggered here. Maybe I breathed too hard. I don’t know. Maybe it’s their breath, filled with poison.
I’ve covered a wall with my playing cards. I hope someone gets something out of this.
This all seems strange now, but when I get back, things will make sense. It’s an indescribable feeling, that knowing. And that belonging.
I asked Burnett why he chose eternal life.
“They did it to me,” he said, “even though I didn’t deserve it.”
“Who did?”
“Don’t know to this day. May you never choose it.”
“Why would I choose it?”
“The temptation to see the future.”
“Is that what you wanted? The chance to be alive through the centuries?”
“Nobody cares what I want.”
“Why would they do this to you?” I asked. “Why did they hate you so much? And who?”
“Not hate. Love. Fear of losing me,” he said, but it was clear to us both this was not the truth.
I awoke to the sound of crying. The prisoners can sometimes muster a weak mewling when they’re feeling particularly sorry for themselves, but that noise is an irritating one you can easily to ignore.
This was the sound of newborn babies.
I followed the noise; it became louder the more steps I climbed until there they were, newborns, but slithering across the floor, eight, ten of them, naked, covered with blood, their cries digging at me like thorns. I couldn’t comfort them all. I couldn’t comfort even one. As I reached for him, he turned to dirt in my fingers.
I wouldn’t let these evil creatures see me cry. I wouldn’t. But they knew.
“How many babies have you killed?” they said.
I shook my head.
I know, I know, that we should ignore these ghosts; that it is only the evil of these men and women made manifest.
I know that for an actual fact.
And yet they crawl.
Burnett Barton says, “Ignore ignore ignore what isn’t real.” Which is all very well.
Who are they, these desperate babies? Do they really belong in my conscience? Are they mine? Is this the truth of condoms and masturbation, that there are real children lost, that there is a future adult destroyed? Surely not.
I’ve always had a sensitive nose. In the city, it was people washed and unwashed. The cooking. The smell of rubber, of the trains, and I could smell cats always, terrible stench of them.
I couldn’t smell rain, or the sea, or corn growing.
Smells of the Time Ball Tower. Rock. Old food. Leather. Heated glass. The prisoners smell like coconut some days, animal fat others.
Right at the top, if you fold the window open, you can kneel on the sill and stretch your head out. You’ll get some sun on your face that way.
I call them the ghosts. Tethered to life, incapable of real physical activity, bitter and twisted.
What made me think reading Dostoevsky here would be a good idea? Jesus. Makes me think too hard about crime and punishment and what these losers beg me to do. “Release us, kill us, release us.”
How would I kill them, anyway? Every Time Ball Tower keeper must consider it.
Surely the crimes are paid for by now, comes the thought. Shouldn’t they be given the blessed relief of death?
Not so. They chose this. Eternal life over the death penalty. They were tricked, of course.
Three things stop me from setting them free. These same three things have stopped all before and will stop all after. It’s our job and what we’re paid to do. They deserve it for what they did. And the town would fall apart if we had no prisoners to look after. Once that money goes, the town is done for.
The radio said, “Batten down the hatches, there’s a storm coming.”
The boats went in, struggling against the waves already. I love a good storm. I know you’re not supposed to, but there’s something primal about it, the way storms have been witnessed by people for as long as we’ve been walking the earth.
I lined them up along the stair windows so they could look out. You’re not supposed to move them, but I wanted to share with someone. They’d seen storms going back a hundred years. Longer.
The sky lit up, and I imagined I could see people in the town. It looked to me as if the council office was burning, but perhaps that was wishful thinking.
Never been a fan of bureaucracy.
I could hear screaming.
The ghosts said, “Can you hear them? That’s what death by burning sounds like.” They speak so slow you almost forget what they said at the start of the sentence by the time they get to the end. They told me to keep the lights down low, avoid fire. I know they’re manipulating me, but I’m not sure why and not sure I care, either.
These people are no longer people. No wonder I call them ghosts. Cold, full of mist, no heart.
I managed to burn my own arm badly on hot fat, and I say that scar is a reminder that I could have died if I wasn’t doing my duty over here.
“Let me help, I was a doctor,” the abortion doctor said.
As if I’d let him anywhere near me with those fingers.
Another one, his business was traveling the country, was supposed to be selling new and improved washing machines. He did that, but he also molested every child he came across and cut their throats, or he cut their vocal cords, so they couldn’t speak.
He’d be in more trouble these days, now that kids as young as five can read and write.
I layered my playing cards, layer after layer after layer. Was it worthwhile? Who knows? But I attained a great deal of satisfaction from it.
Statistically, 5% of us should have cancer. Far as I know, I’m the only one. Just my luck. Was it something I did? Do I deserve it? I don’t really care. I’m only glad I haven’t got any kids to leave behind. Couldn’t cope with them suffering. The world’s an awful place. Full of dangers. I couldn’t keep them safe and I couldn’t bear them suffering.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the ghosts to be well nourished and of sound mind. Ghosts were bathed. Ghosts appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Ghosts experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Tyson Keeney
Alex Rouse: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1993
On return, Tyson found it was his house burned to the ground, his mother dead, his father dying. He thought it was punishment for being too kind, for not taking full advantage, heartfelt advantage, of his situation and from then on, he tried to fill the hearts of keepers-intended with despair.
“Don’t let yourself be warm to them. Or you’ll be cursed like I am.” He had said this to me; the others had laughed at him.
He told me not to ignore the troll. That was important.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Alex Rouse
Steve Andrews: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1994
Rumor always had it that there were missing women out here. Most people know that those women ran away; they got tired of Tempuston and left. We just
can’t cope with the idea that they’d leave us without ever calling home, but that’s what happened, all right.
No argument there.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Steve Andrews
Nikki Curran: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1995
Before I left, Tyson Keeney thought he was giving me a boost. He’s a confused, conflicted man. He freaks out a lot about imaginary things. Hears things that aren’t there. He hasn’t coped well. He failed out here, somehow. I’ll figure out how and fail differently!
I won’t fail.
There are questions I’d like to address. I figure the answers will make me famous.
Ideas of sexual desire in the very old. Does it fade in most? An examination comparing the reactions of the experienced versus the sexually inexperienced.
What role does memory play?
What role does past exposure, both to actual experience and to varying levels of pornography play?
The boatman didn’t know what I had in my cases. He would have stolen some if he could! They all tell you to take porn out there, but this was a shit load.
Did they like it?
Did they ever.
I spoil ya, I told them. It was true.
Tide of Stone Page 14