Tide of Stone

by Kaaron Warren

  “You tell me, show me, whatever, and then we’ll talk. I’m not taking you into my room for a dud deal.”

  He was stubborn, though.

  “It doesn’t hurt, taking the stone out. It does nothing to you. They told me.”

  “They also say cancer doesn’t hurt. Have you heard that?”

  In the end, I chose the man who’d arrived when my grandmother was there in 1938. It seemed apt. His chest had a satisfyingly hollow sound, with something solid at the center, and he had not been operated on for ten years.

  “Not me. You don’t want to do that.”

  “This is for your own good.”

  “No, it’s not. None of this is.”

  “It’s all for you. All of it is for you.”

  I put some tallow candle in his mouth. His dry lips caught my finger and the contact seemed soft and gentle.

  I pulled his bedding backward, so he lay down flat. He tried to lift himself, remembering a time when he could do so, when he’d done fifty pull ups without a problem. Up and down between prison bunks.

  “Don’t do it,” they called out. “You don’t have to. Not all of them do. Even the ones who say they do.”

  “I know the ones who didn’t. They’re the losers. I’m not a loser.”

  I sat cross-legged beside him and exposed his chest. Tapped to find the place.

  His chest rose and fell gently; it wasn’t capable of anything more violent.

  “Does anyone want to volunteer to take his place?” I asked, and they were silent, suddenly interested in the ceiling, the floor, anything but the reality of what was happening.

  I lifted the knife. I’d spent ten minutes sharpening it, and had nicked myself with it easily, so I knew it would do the job.

  I tapped.

  Using my left forearm across his collarbone to anchor him, I sliced into his chest.

  It parted easily, revealing pale pink flesh, spongy material. Very little blood. The stone was right there near the surface and I lifted it out. I wished I’d worn gloves because it was disgusting. Grey and lumpy. A soft, sticky surface, tacky to the touch.

  I dropped it onto my lap and pressed his flesh together. Using the needle and thread I’d gathered earlier, I clumsily stitched him together.

  He panted. “Leave me open. At least I might die that way.”

  I laughed. Chucked his chin. “Oh, no. You’ve got so much to live for,” I said. Dissection was once illegal and considered a terrible punishment. Is that what I was doing? Dissecting him?

  I carried the heartstone in my lifted shirt, not wanting to touch it again.

  Now I understood the furtive looks of the keepers. Not the boatman or teacher, the ones who didn’t take the stone. They’ll look you in the eye.

  Because the taking of the stone was horrendous, violent, foul, vicious, wrong.

  And yet I wanted what Peter Mosse had. What they all had.

  The hard and evil heartstone.

  It looked like tightly wrapped worms. Heads tucked into arses.

  I settled the heartstone into a jar as I’d been told, and watched as slowly, slowly, it began to liquesce. The worms uncoiled. Pieces shifted off. Like a poo left in the toilet bowl.

  The Ball dropped.

  The Ball dropped.

  The Ball dropped.

  I added

  my notes to the secret notebook; whose stone I’d taken and what he looked like on the inside, and how he’d recovered.

  Strange thoughts came to me. Solitary thoughts, the idea that everyone else had died and I was the last person alive. It was the isolation. And I heard the prisoners whispering while I slept, entering my dreams.

  “Grind us up for sawdust,” one begged me. “No one will know. Please.”

  “Leave us on the rocks. Expose us. That way you’re not doing anything active, are you? Don’t go, leaving us here.”

  1938 hadn’t spoken since I took his heartstone. Some movement had returned, but his eyes were duller than they had been. Once, I thought, they’d lit up a little when I entered the room. I thought he’d enjoyed my company, thought about what could have been with me.

  “You’ll be able to go away and forget us. You’ll look back every now and then and wonder about us, but we’ll fade away.”

  “One of these days, a boatman will arrive to release you,” I said. “When your sentences are done.”

  This wasn’t true. There was no hope of release. But I enjoyed the deception.

  The Ball dropped.

  Children waited on the beach to be the first to say hello. I looked out with binoculars at them.

  I waved, knowing they couldn’t see me, but remembering what it was like to be on the shore, hoping the keeper could see you.

  Nikki Curran, 1995, talked about looking out to shore. I felt a chill or a thrill reading that. It had probably been me, out on the shore. I spent most of my spare time there. It was supposed to be good luck if you were the first one to say hello to a keeper when they returned, and we’d hung around, waiting for the chance.

  I saw three boys and two girls on the shore. One boy, blond, wearing a striped shirt and long shorts. Two boys, brown hair. One in jeans and a T-shirt, throwing stones. The other in shorts only, running in and out of the water. The sun glimmered on the water, so bright.

  They waved at me. The two girls swam out as if trying to reach me. I shouted out the window at them, but there’s no way sound carries that far.

  Looking at them steeled me. They were fearless, like most children were, like I was once.

  If you read this, kid, if one of you is the keeper, I was watching. I saw you wave.

  I took a spoonful of the stuff. They’d told me that; a single spoonful, no more. One spoonful and the world was your oyster. Drink the glass and you’re eternal. One of them.

  Nobody wanted that.

  The smell of it was foul. Bitter, rotten, sulfurous; a combination of all the worst things I could imagine. The taste was worse. I still considered the possibility of being preserved. Of accepting the disability that came with eternal life in order to see the future, where it all would go. Even after all I’d seen.

  You’d be like a time traveler. Imagine the time-lapse photography. Fuck that “one year in the life,” or even ten years. I could do a photo a day for a hundred years. Once I grew too frail, I’d get others to do it for me. I’d be rich by then—that’s what happens if you invest wisely and live long, Burnett told me. Slow and steady.

  I was starving. I ate a packet of plain, salty crackers out of the packet.

  I didn’t even think about adding chili.

  My chest hurt.

  Heartburn.

  But my headache was gone.

  I changed my mind about my parents. They were not cruel and evil for sending me here. No one could have more self-understanding than a keeper. Having experienced this I understood it was a gift. Parents send us out here because every now and then there is a golden child. A great success. There are failures; but there are the golden ones. I’d be one of those.

  That night, I carried Grayson to my room. “I didn’t choose you. Talk.”

  He shook his head. “In the morning.”

  All night he whispered, porn, detail after detail.

  I didn’t mind it. If I blocked my nose. Kept my eyes shut. It actually wasn’t bad. Some of it was my own stories told back to me. A lot of that came from dreams about my boyfriend. Far better than the real thing. Just thinking of his neediness, his desire for flattery, to be told how young he looked…ugh.

  They were so easy to tame.

  In the morning, I forgot Grayson was there. Had breakfast. Then remembered and went back to him. “Well?”

  He raised his arm and held it over his head. Tapped the wall.

  “In there,” he said. “In the basement. Bring a knife.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, no matter what happens,” I said.

  For all I’d seen, all I knew, I still didn’t believe it was possible. I didn’t wan
t it to be.

  I made sure they were secure.

  I picked up Grayson. He felt like a bag of sticks, hot from the fire, and he pressed into me with what little strength he had. I didn’t want to take him, but even less did I want to wander around in the basement, searching alone.

  “Down the steps,” he said, bossing me. “Push the door open gently. You don’t want a draught.”

  He directed me to the far left corner. The ground was progressively squelchy, and the noise of animals and insects increased. The chittering. The air was chill and full of dank. I was terrified. It’s the worst person who ever lived, I thought. That’s who I’m about to see.

  He showed me the wall. I held up the torch to illuminate the outline of a small door, edges filled with gunk. I ran the knife along the edges then pried the door open. The chittering noise increased, and I was suddenly terrified. Absolutely terrified beyond belief.

  It was a woman.

  She looked worse than any of the prisoners upstairs. By torchlight she was so gray I could barely see her. She was almost bald. Her eyes were red. Wide. Her skin…the skin on her hands creping, stretched.

  Her mouth opened, and the most awful noise came out.

  I screamed.

  Slammed the door shut.

  He was lucky I picked him up. I should have left him.

  “Who is it?”

  “We don’t know. A lady.”

  I went back to my sunny spot. I had food but wasn’t hungry. The sight of her broke me. I touched the flags.

  No. No.

  The Ball dropped.

  I slept,

  and when I awoke imagined it had been a dream.

  Sometimes I stood at the trapdoor, wondering who it was. Too scared to find out. The fury on her face.

  The Ball dropped.

  I went

  downstairs, wanting a swim, a gentle, hold-on-for-your-life swim close to the edge. It refreshed me. Did I feel different?

  I felt braver.

  Brave enough to open the trapdoor.

  Walk to the hidden door.

  I lifted the trapdoor, folding it right back. I didn’t bother weighting it down. They were far too weak to lock me in. They couldn’t, even all of them together, lift the thing.

  Salty water smell. My ears were attuned. I could hear the chittering, chitter, chitter, that Burnett hated so much.

  I edged around the crack with my knife. Already, it was gummed with dust and sludge. So quick.

  The chittering increased.

  I pushed open the door. My knees felt wobbly, barely able to support me and for some reason I flashed to Mrs. Tingle, who worked at the library but was so fat she couldn’t stand up. She’d say, “It’s my knees, they can’t support the weight,” and I realized I was distracting myself from what I was doing, turning my mind away from it.

  I had to know. I’d never felt such curiosity, such a need to know.

  Things came to me. A teacher saying, “Where is your curiosity, your need to know?” and me saying, not in Ancient Greece. Whole class laughing. Renata most of all. She laughed so much, mascara smudged on her cheeks. In front of me…I could remember every single classmate. If I wanted to, I could go upstairs and list them.

  But that was me, avoiding this.

  Chitter

  Chitter

  The Ball dropped. I could actually feel the vibration of it rocketing up my legs.

  Solid.

  I pushed open the door.

  This thing was tiny. Decrepit. Last remnants of hair white and wispy, eyes yellowed, skin mottled, loose, like a suede blanket.

  The chittering stopped. Lips parted slowly.

  Around its neck, a cameo.

  A cameo.

  Of a top-hatted man, bending forward to light a pipe.

  I knew it. I’d seen Burnett’s drawing of it.

  Oh fuck.

  Oh Jesus.

  That thing.

  Is Harriet.

  To my eternal shame I ran back upstairs.

  Shit, I did not want to go back down there. I felt a sense of doom, of disaster, but that was gutless. Too often I listen to that and then nothing happens. This was my moment. Beyond taking the heartstone. This was on me. Mine.

  “Harriet?” I said. “Harriet Barton?”

  The chin dropped to the chest.

  She couldn’t move beyond that. I stepped closer to her. Her head lifted, and she said, “I am.” She spoke even more slowly than the prisoners upstairs, but I barely noticed.

  God. She was one hundred and eighty years old.

  She was barefoot, just as my grandmother had fantasized, but there was no freedom and never had been.

  “Can I take you out?”

  The chin lifted.

  I felt such tenderness. It overcame revulsion. This was my ancestor; without her, I wouldn’t be here.

  I carried her to the doorway. It was going to hurt, being in the light.

  She felt so brittle. She squeezed my arm, like the bite of a spider.

  “Burnett?” she said. Three times, then four.

  “He’s still alive!” I said. “You might be able to see him, somehow. If I can get you to shore.”

  I felt pressure on my shoulder. She was squeezing, so weakly it barely registered.

  I said, “He’s not here. Keepers only stay one year. He’s been gone a long time.”

  “Not a keeper. A prisoner,” she said.

  “Why?” That was only my first question.

  “Does the cypress still grow?” she asked.

  The cypress she planted in Tempuston.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a beautiful thing and we all know where it came from. Everyone one loves it.”

  I thought of Sunday mornings after the night before, where the base was always littered with empty alcohol containers, cigarette butts, used condoms, vomit. The bark marred with knife marks. The branches festooned with stained clothing.

  “I’m Phillipa,” I said.

  “You are my child?”

  She seemed confused. She knew that time had passed, and yet I was called Phillipa.

  “I was named for your daughter. My grandmother was keen on the idea and my mother and father went along with it.”

  My parents hadn’t found her. No one had found her. Why me?

  I thought back to some of the things Burnett said. The chittering, and comments about Harriet. He was giving clues to me. Because I listened?

  Harriet began to disintegrate in the light. She wouldn’t survive long. Her skin was peeling off and she’d be nothing but a living skeleton before long.

  She cried. Thick, hard blobs, opaque, like old glass.

  “Let me speak, then help me die.”

  “Do you really want to die?”

  “Now I do. If I’d been free all this time? Not destroyed? I’d happily live forever.”

  Her tongue lolled.

  “Then you will kill me.”

  She asked me about Burnett and what I knew of him. I told her all; his report, mostly.

  “Let me tell you the truth,” she said. And she did. It took days. Weeks? With her resting between times. I gave her lime juice with sugar and she seemed almost blissful.

  I wrote it all down. I titled the report “Being the True and Actual Story of Burnett Barton (née Smith) collated by Harriet Barton (née Turner), with the knowledge and assistance of Edna Noyes and Grace Barton (née Charney). Also, some information from Burnett Barton which must be taken with a grain of salt.”

  There was something about Burnett the girls didn’t trust, and they’d trust anyone, near enough. They trusted the sailors who came through, the travelers, the adventurers. But they didn’t want to go near Burnett, even though he was handsome and charming. He came after me with great dedication, like a dog, and me only twelve.

  So, he called upon a girl who might; she was sixteen, but with the mind of a ten-year-old. She was a willing partner, in his eyes. Didn’t she show him her project, the one the teacher asked them to do? A
drawing of the sun rise. “It’s lovely,” he said.

  She had bled; in our town this information was shared.

  He was clumsy, glad he was practicing on her before a real girl. She’d remember nothing, say nothing. She babbled, singing foolish songs, and she felt loose about him, making him wonder very hard about the other men in the village.

  Regardless, the sensation was a delight, until it was over.

  Burnett now understood what his friends were talking about. The sensation was strong.

  She clung to him, wanting him to “tickle me some more,” but her face now seemed sharp and ugly and he couldn’t bear her neediness. He tells the story as a tragedy, that she choked on a knot of wool. She was knitting him a cardigan a matching one for the baby she had growing.

  That was her level of naïvety. That she thought a baby would be welcomed.

  I say he strangled her. He was strong once.

  Then Grace came to the village.

  Grace was the most beautiful girl for many miles, with a sweet nature and a joy about her that made people want to be near her. Her parents had been looking at husbands for her since she was five, knowing the decision would be difficult, so many to choose from, so many presenting themselves in the best possible light. She was too much of an innocent to manage well herself.

  Burnett considered himself a contender, but she never did. He was a malicious man when she admired kindness, a small man when she admired great size. Her favorite of all was the man they called Samson for his size and strength. His name was Milton Carlisle.

  Her parents weren’t sure he had the dedication, so she set him the task of moving the rolling rocks of Little Cormoran.

  He trained for months, practised rolling rocks off the cliff, uphill, over bumpy ground. It was entertaining, particularly for the young women. More than one said to him, “I’ll have you if she won’t,” yet all he did was smile shyly and continue.