Acceptance. Jeff VanderMeer
an argument with Gloria around. So he relented and with difficulty tore Gloria away from the telescope, knowing she’d been listening the whole time.
Down below, in his kitchen, he called the fire department in Bleakersville, who told him they already knew about the fire on the island, it wasn’t a threat to anything, and making him feel a little stupid in the process because that’s how they treated people from the forgotten coast. Or they were just terminally bored.
Gloria was sitting in a chair at the table, absentmindedly gnawing on a candy bar he’d given her. He figured she probably had wanted the lollipop.
“Go home. Once you’ve finished.” He couldn’t put words to it, but he wanted her far away from the lighthouse right now. Charlie would’ve called him irrational, emotional, said he wasn’t thinking straight. But in the confluence of the fire, the lens damage, and Suzanne’s strange mood … he just didn’t want Gloria there.
But Gloria held on to her stubbornness, like it was a kind of gift she’d been given along with the candy bar.
“Saul, you’re my friend,” she said, “but you’re not the boss of me.” Matter-of-fact, like something he should’ve already known, that didn’t need to be said.
He wondered if Gloria’s mother had said that—more than once. Wryly, he had to admit that it was true. He wasn’t the boss of Henry, either, or, apparently, anyone. The tedious yet true cliché came to mind. Tend to your own garden.
So he nodded, admitting defeat. She was going to do whatever she wanted to do. They all would, and he would just have to put up with it. At least the weekend was approaching fast. He’d drive to Bleakersville with Charlie, check out a new place called Chipper’s Star Lanes that a friend of Charlie’s liked a lot. It had the miniature golf Charlie enjoyed and he didn’t mind the bowling, although what Saul liked most was that they had a liquor license and a bar in the back.
Only an hour later, Henry and Suzanne were downstairs again—he noticed first the creaking of their steps and then through the kitchen window their repetitive pacing as they roved across the lighthouse grounds.
He would have stayed inside and left them to it, but a few minutes later Brad Delfino, a volunteer who sometimes helped out around the lighthouse, pulled in to the driveway in his truck. Already, even before he’d come to a stop, Brad was waving to Henry, and somehow Saul didn’t want Brad talking to the Light Brigade without him there. Brad was a musician in a local band who liked to drink and talked a lot, to anyone who’d listen. Sometimes he got into trouble; his spotty work at the lighthouse was what passed for community service on the forgotten coast.
“You heard about the fire?” Brad said as Saul headed him off in the parking lot.
“Yes,” Saul said curtly. “I heard about it.” Of course Brad knew; why else would he have come out?
Now he could see that Henry and Suzanne were ceaselessly snapping shots of every square inch of the grounds inside the fence. Adding to the chaos, Gloria had noticed him and was bounding toward him making barking noises like she sometimes did. Because she knew he hated it.
“Know what’s going on?” Brad asked.
“Not any more than you do. Fire department says there’s no problem, though.” Something in his tone changed when he talked to Brad, a kind of southern twang entering, which irritated him.
“Can I go up and look through the telescope anyway?” As eager as Gloria to get a peek at the only excitement going on today.
But before Saul could respond to that, Henry and Suzanne bore down on them.
“Photo time,” Suzanne said, smiling broadly. She had a rather bulky telephoto lens attached to her camera, the wide strap around her neck making her look even more childlike.
“Why do you want a photo?” Gloria asked.
That was Saul’s question, too.
“It’s just for our records,” Suzanne said, with a wide, devouring smile. “We’re creating a photo map of the area, and a record of the people who live here. And, you know, it’s such a beautiful day.” Except it was a little overcast now, the encroaching gray from clouds that would probably rain inland, not here.
“Yes, how about a photograph of you, your assistant—and the girl, I guess,” Henry said, ignoring Gloria. He was studying Saul with an intensity that made him uncomfortable.
“I’m not sure,” Saul said, reluctant if for no other reason than their insistence. He also wanted to find a way to extricate himself from Brad, who wasn’t anything as formal as an “assistant.”
“I’m sure,” Gloria muttered, glaring at them. Suzanne tried to pat her head. Gloria looked at first as if she might bite that hand, then, in character, just growled and leaned away from it.
Henry stepped in close to Saul. “What would a photograph of the lighthouse be without its keeper?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question.
“A better picture?”
“You used to be a preacher up north, I know,” Henry said. “But if you’re worrying about the people you left behind, don’t—it’s not for publication.”
That threw him off-balance.
“How do you know that?” Saul said.
But Brad had gotten a kick out of this revelation, waded in before Henry could answer. “Yeah, that Saul, man. He’s a real desperado. He’s wanted in ten states. If you take his picture, it’s all over for him.”
Did a picture really matter? Even though he’d left unfinished business up north, it wasn’t like he’d fled, exactly, or as if this photo would wind up in the newspapers.
The wind had taken to gusting. Rather than argue, Saul pulled his cap out of his back pocket, figured wearing it might disguise him a bit, although why did he need a disguise? An irrational thought. Probably not the first irrational thought from a lighthouse keeper on the forgotten cost.
“Say ‘cheese.’ Say ‘no secrets.’ Count of three.”
No secrets?
Brad had decided to assume a stoic pose that Saul supposed might be a way of poking fun at him. Gloria, seeking the dramatic, made them wait while she drew the hood of her jacket over her head and then ran to the rocks as her protest, certain Suzanne wouldn’t be able to get her in the frame. Once at the rocks, she climbed away from them, and then turned around and began to climb back, shrieking with delight and shouting, for no good reason, “I’m a monster! I’m a monster!”
The count of three came, Suzanne grown still and silent, bending at the knees as if she were on the deck of a ship at sea. She gave the signal.
“No secrets!” Brad said prematurely, with an enthusiasm he might regret, given his drug record.
Then came the flash from the camera, and in the aftermath black motes drifted across the edges of Saul’s vision, gathered there, lingered for longer than seemed normal.
They had exploded through and up out of that terrible corridor between the world and Area X into a lack of air that had shocked Control, until the solid push of Ghost Bird’s body against his, the weight of his backpack pulling him down, forced him to fight against the slapping pressure of what his burning eyes, strangled throat, told him was salt water. He had managed to shut his mouth against his surprise, to ignore the rush of bubbles pushing up and around the top of his head. Managed to clamp down on both his panic and his scream, to adjust as well to the ripping feel of a thousand rough-smooth surfaces against him, too much like the door that had become a wall cutting through his fingers, slashing against his arms, his legs, sure he had materialized into the middle of a tornado of shining knives—Whitby and Lowry