The day came to roll the rocks. Burnett, of course, whined and wailed, threatening the destruction of the village and all around it, the wrath of God, the death of them all.
Samson rolled the rocks. Perhaps there was a creaking noise, and a ground shaking.
Grace watched, always smiling.
He asked for her hand in marriage and all would have been happily ever after it if were not for the dark, vicious heart of Burnett Smith.
Burnett could not, would not, give it up. He didn’t care how he had her; have her he would.
Before her family understood what was happening, he’d arranged for her to be preserved. He had what he considers a wedding, at the bedside, and they experienced their wedding night.
What he calls the wedding night.
Others would disagree strongly.
He did the speaking for her, announcing formally “a marriage by way of consummation.”
They say it took three men to hold Milton Carlisle, the strong man, her real love, back. Why didn’t they let him go, have him beat Burnett to death? Imagine that. All that we know would not have come into being.
There would be no Tempuston, no Time Ball Tower, no prisoners, although I cannot deny my role in any of that, may God forgive me.
They held Milton Carlisle down because they did not want to see him hanged over such a weak, pathetic man.
And Milton was the victor; Grace agreed to marry him. Really, she had loved him at first sight, but that is how some girls are, isn’t it? They like to play the game. If he would take her as she was, then he was a good man. There was nobody who considered her marriage to Burnett valid.
Burnett tried to hound Milton Carlisle out of town.
“He rolled the rocks, he brought a curse.”
Three young girls had lost babies in the womb and this was the curse. Burnett? Did he invite those ladies for tea? Did he brew it himself? Yes. He did all that. It was no use, though. We knew. We every last one of us knew who and what Burnett was.
Although I was not so sure until the years passed, and I understood.
Burnett burned them all.
He ensured Grace was safe at home. That Milton and his supporters were in the church.
And he burned them down.
We smelled smoke, my brother Eugene and I. Home sick. Allowed to stay home from church.
We heard screams, muffled by the walls and by the roar of the fire. We thought little of it.
We were too young to understand.
They were burned to death. All that was left were the bones of the immortal, shaking and clinking as the last of life left them over a torturous number of hours. The carcasses still breathing.
Burnett had told me he confessed much to me. But this was far beyond anything I imagined.
Burnett always said it was an act of God.
We went to Edna. Burnett thought she admired him, but she deeply despised him.
He agitated for departure, but Edna needed to talk to us, “the ladies,” she said, but really she meant for Grace and me to stand guard outside the door for prying ears.
Finally, Burnett tired of it (and she was an unpleasant woman; true) and he insisted we leave her. He set her up in an inn, told us to go ahead while he dealt with the bill.
Again.
Who can say?
Still, we had her jar.
Onboard the ship, Grace was presented as his crippled wife, no matter what he says now. He presented that she adored him; that she loved every moment with him. But she most certainly did not. Every minute with him was hell to her, and each night, she would cast her eyes at me, begging me to help.
What could I do? I was a child. They were ostensibly married. What occurred between them was private and none of my business.
I regret every night I let him have her.
She said to me, “Thank the Lord I am beyond being able to have a family. I cannot bear the thought of him as father.” The sea air revived her somewhat, as it did for all of us.
I nodded. I was an innocent girl, born to Christ and not much more, and I understood little of what was happening. And yet, she told me that it meant she felt a failure as a woman. That she would be unaccomplished in every way.
She did not talk to anyone else of this. It was her own dark secret. Her loss, her failure, her regret.
I was distracted, meanwhile, by the glorious Louisa. Burnett was deeply in adoration of William Barton, a man some might say was impressive to other men like him. And then our long journey.
I am so very grateful for the limits to which he kept this deception.
Much as I admired Phillip, I did not think him particularly intelligent. He was perhaps too honest for that. I, at least, had learned from Burnett the importance of limited information. That you can control what people know of you, if you are cautious.
Phillip was so obvious in his intentions to take over the family. To protect us from Burnett. Burnett grew very quiet, never a good sign. He allowed Phillip to make decisions along the way, which Phillip took as victory, but which I knew to be manipulation. A test as to how far he would go.
On this journey, Burnett decided I should act like his wife. That Grace was now the elderly aunt, almost dead.
He wanted to keep things as they were. He wanted nothing to change. He didn’t understand that no matter how long he kept me, I would never be his.
I would only tell the truth.
One morning, when we were not far from what would become Tempuston, I awoke to a clamor. It appeared that Phillip had left us, taking some of our precious belongings.
I didn’t believe this for a second.
Burnett had killed him.
Burnett could not manage him, and knew that Phillip would be ever stronger.
So he destroyed him.
I don’t know how. I will not ask.
But I said to Burnett: you do that to me? You destroy me? I will haunt you forever. And I will haunt the streets and the schools and the scholars and the fools and tell them my story.
I will tell them the truth, tell it from the grave.
I hate to think of him abandoned in the desert. Eaten by ants or others.
When I’m safe, when we are somewhere close to people who might listen, I will take Eugene and we will run.
She never did, did she? No matter what people thought.
Grace and I decided together to preserve Burnett. Hoping for his very great suffering. Burnett thanked us for giving him the treatment.
“After it’s done, you won’t be so grateful. You’ll see. Even hell would be a relief to you.”
He drank the heartstone juice from Grace.
After the treatment, he felt invincible. Untouchable. As if he could commit any crime or sin and there would be no repercussions.
I did do this; I held Grace under water for hours and hours and hours until she finally died.
I could do that for her, at least.
Edna always said to cut nice.
I could do that, also.
I watched for thirty minutes, but the tension of watching as the bubbles of air periodically rose was too much. I went inside, glancing out every now and then.
An hour later, the bubbles seemed to slow.
The air is fetid and as one last large bubble broke, the stench was so intense I felt it sinking into my skin.
Burnett pretended to be happy, but of course he wasn’t. He wanted her forever, just like he wants me forever.
He doesn’t like anyone to leave him.
He was the first prisoner in the tower; I was the first keeper. But still his power held.
Still he managed to change things.
They are coming now, I think. He is angry. He wants to silence me. Wants me to suffer this fate worse than death.
He wants to own me forever.
Tristram is an evil man, almost as evil as Burnett. I failed, didn’t I? Failed to protect others from him. I will pay for that.
My very own son.
He says mine is th
e sacrifice that needs to be made.
That I am the one.
Oh Lord, help me. It is disgusting.
I will write while I can write.
And now I am here. Like them. May God have mercy on his vengeful soul.
I wanted to hold her, but she was too brittle. Instead, I told her stories, building her legacy into something greater than it was.
She’d never know otherwise.
She said, “Do you understand who Burnett is, now? He loves you. He will keep you.”
He would if he could. She was right. I doubted he had the power, though.
Harriet said, “He wanted me forever in his power. He wanted me to be quiet. He couldn’t kill me. He’d lost courage. And he did love me in his own way. He wanted someone else to remember Little Cormoran. If there are two left it stays real. And I had told him I would haunt him and many others with the truth. That terrified him.”
I left her resting on my bed, weak sunlight on her face.
“Upset. Our lady is upset.” The prisoners had missed me, even the one whose heartstone I’d stolen.
“What’s happened? Know something see something hear something?”
“Found something.” The loneliness of my position struck me more at this time than any other. I wanted to talk but to who? And even on land there was little for me, no one really who would understand.
Burnett was lost to me; I could never talk to him again, not now I knew the truth of what he’d done. He had committed enough crimes to deserve his punishment.
These prisoners were all I had. No others.
“Found what where?”
“Who,” I said. “I found someone in the basement. One of you but not evil.”
“We’re not evil. Not anymore.”
I’d hurt their feelings, saying that.
“She’s been there a long time.”
“The cleaner,” Grayson said. “He’s the one. He looks after her, doesn’t he? That’s what he means when he says, “I’m not here for you.” Every time, as if we care. Who is she?”
And they all listed someone from their own era.
Queen Victoria. Belle Guiness. Lizzie Borden.
Queen Victoria almost made them expire with laughter.
“No one famous. My ancestor, Harriet. We thought she’d disappeared and she was here all along. You never told me. And you never told me that Burnett was a prisoner.”
“You never asked,” Grayson said, and they all thought that was very funny.
I wanted to know all she knew. More than she’d told me. I thought she could be a talisman, an aide, a good luck charm, a guide, that she would change my life.
“Kill me. Kill me.”
What I felt was compassion. I’d felt nothing like it before. Even my stray animals I’d rescued more out of a sense of responsibility than anything else. And yet Harriet; I actually felt it almost physically, a tiny hand clutching my heart.
They’d chosen me for my lack of compassion. Because they were sure I’d feel nothing for the prisoners and not be tempted to help them.
Well, fuck that. Don’t you judge me. Don’t you decide I’m a particular kind of person then pigeonhole me there.
I carried her outside. We stopped at the door and she looked down. She said, “Sit? Can we sit? I used to sit the sun, before I got too sick. When they let me out for hours at a time.”
I asked her. I said, “How do you want me to do it? Drowning? If I cut you, I have to do it a thousand times. If you starve, it’s years. You could die of thirst in three months.”
“Drowning. Hold me under.”
Her skin sizzled in the sun. She felt like a bag of twigs.
“Live well,” she said. “Pray to God and live well.”
“I will,” I told her. I told her all the things I would do. The charity work. The lives I would save.
She said, “Good girl. Be strong. Love. Learn to feel.”
I did feel; it hurt. Physically, my legs were cut and bruised from the rocks. My eyes stung from the salt water.
And I didn’t want her to die. I wanted secrets and truth, I wanted knowledge, wisdom and love.
“He will do this to you, too, if he can. He will not want to lose you.”
Her throat constricted.
“Let them go,” she said. “Let them all go.”
Her last words.
It took a very long time. There is no easy way for it.
I felt changed by it, though.
I felt as if I could create the most amazing things, as if I were a true artist now, because I felt compassion.
I did.
After I’d done Harriet, I realized I couldn’t leave them all. I felt pity, and I could see the gratitude in Harriet, the great relief. Blessed relief like that offered by Saint Peter. I knew what Renata would do. What she’d want me to do. She’d release every one of them and sleep well at night.
I cut out her Harriet’s heartstone. No point wasting it. It was different than the other one. Harder. Less malleable.
I called out, I’m ready for another night, and that got them worked up. I bet Grayson had told them everything. What I looked like while I slept.
The masturbator went at it, as fast as he could. Not fast.
I picked up Grayson. His lips against my neck.
We went down, not up.
“No bath,” he said.
“No. I’m going to let you go.”
Poison wouldn’t work on them. It’d be out of the body before it did any damage.
I carried him around to the dark side of the tower, where we’d be unseen by the town.
He clung to me. “Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. It didn’t matter what he said to me. I settled him on the rocks, the dark shadow of the tower deep and chilling as I steadied myself.
“This is what you want still?”
“Yes.” The word was so drawn out, it sounded like a slow wave.
“Bless you,” he said. I tied a rock around his waist and set him afloat, face down.
I cut his heartstone out first.
“What’s she doing? She hasn’t brought him back up. What’s she done?”
“I helped him,” I said.
I helped all of them.
It’s 2014, I told them all. November. Each one of them looked at me, so filled with horror at the year, at the passage of time.
I set markers in the rocks for all of them, like I did for the dead pets in my backyard.
At first, I kept the heartstones separate, but I ran out of jars and had to squeeze two or three together.
I set them all adrift.
They floated away like driftwood, the tide taking them like old friends
I was more powerful, more in control than at any other time in my life.
And then, the silence. The pure quietness of them gone. Of me alone. I heard the whirring of mechanisms, the gentle slap of water on the rocks, and the wind. But there were no voices. No grunts. No intake of breath of call for attention.
Weeks.
The Ball dropped.
The Ball dropped.
The Ball dropped.
The silence.
The creak of the front door barely registered.
Creak of door. I will see what the noise is. I could smell something; boat oil. And chicken feathers.
My sense of smell intensified by taking the heartstone of that man whose sense of smell was extreme. Were they all the same? Keepers taking on characteristics? I thought of Jerry Butler, 1990, and his fame as a masturbator. Checked the files.
He had taken The Greyhound’s heartstone.
And Tyson Adler had taken the heartstone of the same prisoner as me.
Balldropped.
I thought I’d hidden what I’d done, that I could spend the rest of the year out there, quietly, quietly.
I did, for a ball drop, for ten ball drops.
I heard a noise downstairs. For a while, it didn’t register. Then I thought; rock
s against the wall. Clutter of driftwood.
Then I heard, “Pip? You there?”
It was Nolan.
My brother.
He shouldn’t be here.
He wasn’t a keeper.
“Of course I’m here,” I called down. “Where else?”
He climbed the steps. He was wearing fishing gear, all over rubber. Gloves on. His hair in a knot at the top. He looked so weird, I laughed.
“What are you doing, Nolan?”
“I’m here to clean up your mess.”
“I didn’t make any! Jeez, did Mum send you? Well, I haven’t cleaned the toilet for a few days. But seriously?”
“It’s not just you, Phillipa. I always come in at the end.”
“It’s not the end, yet.” I was hoping they didn’t know. That I could see out the year, then go home.
Tide of Stone Page 24