Читать книгу The Lightkeepers - Abby Geni - Страница 12

4

THE FARALLON ISLANDS have their own ghost story. I heard it for the first time today when Mick steered me outside for a walk. I did not want to go; my leg was cramping, a residual soreness from my fall, a deep ache. My side had not yet fully healed and was giving off twinges of pain. I had been overdoing it on the slick, rocky terrain, unaccustomed to this new topography. Still, I couldn’t say no. In the weeks that I’d been here, Mick had become my favorite.

I imagine you flashing that wry, maternal smirk—and I won’t say that you’re wrong. Mick is not quite handsome. He has a rough-hewn frame and a lantern jaw, and it seems that he was manufactured on too large a scale. He gestures while he talks, his burly arms sweeping through the air. He is kind. There is an easy, generous sweetness about him, a characteristic I have not found in any of the others here—a trait I would like to possess myself.

Today he showed me the coast guard house. I have been curious about this structure since my arrival. It stands perhaps a hundred feet from the cabin, and from the outside, the two buildings are as alike as twins. They share a geometric symmetry; both were clearly constructed for longevity and sturdiness rather than beauty. They have gray, drab walls, cloudy windows, and black roofs—all the color beaten away by the wind and rain. Mick and I circled the coast guard house several times. Until today, I had not understood why it was uninhabited. It seemed wasteful to cram seven of us into one tiny cabin while another option sat right next door, empty.

Once I got a closer look at the coast guard house, however, I began to understand. Its walls had an uncertain aspect, like soldiers who no longer felt the need to stand at attention. Every window was cracked. The door sagged on its hinges. The porch was rotten. The only inhabitants appeared to be bats. Their droppings were splattered across the walls and windowsills, curdling the air with the stench of ammonia. I found myself standing at a distance, as though the whole thing might suddenly collapse. Mick shaded his eyes with a hand, looking up at the dingy walls with something like fondness. He explained that the coast guard house was a relic from another age; it had been constructed over a hundred years ago. Our cabin was equipped with modern comforts like heat and electricity, but the coast guard house never entertained such luxuries. It sat untouched and ignored by the current population, like the ruins scattered around the city of Rome. A dying place on the Islands of the Dead.

As the afternoon wore on, Mick and I wandered. You might not believe that anyone could walk so far on such a small island, but we roamed for hours. Mick led me across Blowhole Peninsula and Cormorant Blind Hill. We passed the helipad, a slab of pavement, crisp and out of place on the plateau. (Its presence there always irks me. Only an emergency of the direst sort could summon a helicopter from the mainland. A medical crisis. Life or death. The helipad is a constant reminder of menace.) Mick and I passed Sea Pigeon Gulch, where birds floated serenely on the tide. He was able to identify them for me—an auklet, an oystercatcher, a puffin. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon, the sky an almost painful shade of blue. The ocean was so flat that my depth perception disappeared from certain angles. It looked as though the water had been pinned up like a blanket from a clothesline, a vertical fall of cloth.

I have yet to make sense of the islands’ layout. There is a map tacked to the living room wall, and I have often examined it—an image that gives the impression that a chunk of granite has been dropped from a great height, shattering and strewing islets every which way. The oddest names are printed on that map. Garbage Gulch. Funky Arch. Emperor’s Bathtub. Some of the landmarks have more prosaic, shape-oriented titles: Tower Point, Low Arch, the Tit. The rest are named after the creatures you might find there. Sea Lion Cove. Mussel Flat. Great Murre Cave. I have studied that map often enough to memorize it, yet I can never seem to get my bearings when I am out on the grounds. In fact, I am half-convinced that the islands are not rooted at all, but move around whenever my back is turned, taking up brand-new positions elsewhere.

Finally Mick and I scaled Lighthouse Hill. I was leery. This is the highest peak on the island. The climb took longer than I had expected. Mick walked directly behind me, in case of accidents. Soon I was sweating through my layers, peeling off my jacket and looping it around my waist. The ground receded beneath me. I saw Lucy and Forest heading toward the cabin together, miniature figures, paper dolls. At last, out of breath, I reached a flight of steps carved into the stone.

As I stepped into the lighthouse, I wrinkled up my nose. The walls were so smeared with guano that they resembled a Jackson Pollack painting. Lichens and moss curled in the corners. The view, however, was something to behold. In every direction, I could see for miles—not quite to California, but across the whole of the archipelago. For the first time, I got a good look at what lay to the north. A huge hand seemed to be lunging up from the bottom of the ocean, a crescent of granite spires. Eagerly I readied my camera. Mick was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Among the northern islets, the rules of gravity seemed altered. The light was bizarre, a patchwork of shadows strewn across the waves. One rocky promontory would be outlined in gold, the next as black and empty as the night sky. There was an arch with spines like a stegosaurus. Through my telephoto lens, I saw bodies in the water. The sea lions were frolicking where no ship could ever have ventured.

“—likes your room best,” Mick was saying. “She really seems to prefer it there. Forest says he wouldn’t take that room for love or money.”

“Ah,” I said, adjusting the focus.

“I don’t mean to scare you. Just giving you fair warning. Forest hasn’t seen her personally, of course. Not like me.”

“Hm.”

“Are you even listening to me, mouse girl?”

I smiled. This sobriquet had been bestowed on me by Lucy, in a spiteful way, as though my unsettling encounter with the islands’ signature rodents had marked me for life. When Mick said it, however, it had a different sound. It felt like an inside joke between the two of us.

Names have power. I have always believed this. I’ve never known an Anne who wasn’t docile and mild. A Karen is usually sensible, trustworthy—whereas a Shane is bad news. And a woman named Melissa is always a little crazy.

Evidently, I am doomed to be a crazy woman here. The others still call me Melissa. I have not yet found the right moment to fix the misunderstanding. At first it seemed impolite, and when a few more days had passed, I felt as though I’d waited too long, and now it would be hard to admit that for two weeks I have been responding to a name that isn’t mine. Mick usually calls me Mel, which I rather like. Lucy calls me mouse girl. Galen calls me you. Forest calls me nothing. Andrew calls me Melissa, with a sibilant hiss, the way a snake might say it.

An interesting virtue of all the traveling I have done is the possibility of adopting new identities among new people. This has happened without fail in each location. During my time in the rainforest—always wet, always hot, crouching in a blind for days in an attempt to get a decent shot of the elusive birds of paradise—I pretended to be hardy and easygoing. During my time in the arctic—always cold, always lonely, photographing the northern lights in a kind of hallucinatory daze, treating the moon like an old friend—I pretended to be solitary and serene. On the islands, it seems I have taken this process one step further.

“I’m talking about the ghost,” Mick said. “Pay attention. This is important.”

Meekly, I obeyed. We leaned together against the railing, the wind tugging my collar open and fingering my hair.

“People have died on the islands before,” Mick said. “Lots of people.”

I swallowed hard. “I know. The Islands of the Dead.”

“A long time ago, the place wasn’t like it is now. It wasn’t a marine sanctuary. There were no biologists.”

“I know that too,” I said. I had, after all, done my research.

Mick went on: “Back then, everyone wanted to see what value they could find here. Fur traders hunted the animals. Sailors set up base camp. Gold miners dug up the ground.” His expression darkened. “It went on for decades. Pirates. Eggers. Russians. Nobody cared about the sharks or the seals. They just wanted to make some dough.”

I tried to visualize the scene. Staring down at the grassy plateau, I imagined it filled with figures. It was hard to grasp the idea of the islands overrun by strangers. Even I, a nature photographer, armed with nothing more harmful than a camera, had almost been denied access. These days, the place was well protected. It sat under the umbrella of government authority. The land, the sea, and especially the animals were treated as precious, finite resources. Hunting was unheard-of. Littering was not to be considered. Intruders could be thrown in jail. Even the whale-watching tours that motored in from California were required to maintain a considerable distance. It was an ecosystem left on its own—sheltered, unrefined, and unchanged.

The wind picked up, scouring my skin. I shivered, but Mick seemed unperturbed.

“Nobody stayed for long,” he said. “The islands were just too dangerous. People broke bones, got hypothermia, drowned. People were eaten by sharks. No one could stick it out.” He shook his head. “One group would hightail it out of here, running for their lives. And then some other group would move in. Set up camp. Hunt some animals. Act like idiots. Always the same. The storms would blow in soon enough. People would start dying. A few months later, they’d bolt, too.”

In short, I thought with a surge of vicarious pride, the islands had defeated them, one and all. The marauding hordes had been driven back to their native lands, tails between their legs. I lifted my gaze to the horizon. It was a clean line between blue and deeper blue, like a fold in a sheet of paper.

Mick sighed. “Pretty soon, the murre population was hanging by a thread. The fur seals had almost been hunted into extinction.”

I shifted restlessly, and he nudged me.

“Don’t fidget,” he said. “I’m getting there. All this is background.” He paused. “You see, these people left something behind.”

I glanced up at him.

“A body,” Mick said, his voice dropping an octave. “A woman’s skeleton. They found her in a cave.”

“A cave,” I repeated.

“She might have been a pirate’s wife or daughter. Or maybe an Aleut slave. Nobody has ever been able to discover her name. Even her nationality is up for debate. She might have been lying in that cave for a year, or a decade, or a century.” Mick elbowed me in the ribs, nearly knocking me over. “The corpse was taken away. They gave her a decent burial someplace. But”—he held up a finger—“her spirit is still here on Southeast Farallon.”

“This is starting to sound like a campfire story,” I said dubiously.

Mick ignored me. “The ghost has been seen lots of times. She wanders around the cabin at night, wearing a white dress. People have heard her footsteps. She makes the place feel cold on warm evenings.” His gestures grew more animated, and I took a hasty step back. “The ghost moves stuff around in empty rooms. She’ll knock a plate off a table or tilt a picture on the wall. She whispers in people’s ears when they’re sleeping.” He took a deep breath and concluded triumphantly, “I’ve seen her myself.”

“No way,” I said.

Mick paused, and I watched him, my eyebrows knotted.

“One night,” he said, “I was walking toward the cabin. This was last spring, maybe.” He paused again. “It had been a long day. One of the seal pups had died, and the mother was mourning. I couldn’t seem to let go of it. My brain was overloaded. I didn’t feel like myself. Then I looked up, and I saw somebody in your room.”

“My room?”

“The ghost likes your room,” he said, flashing a mischievous grin. “Didn’t I mention that? A thin person, very pale. Just standing at the window and staring out. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But when I got to the cabin, nobody was home. Nobody had been there all afternoon.”

In spite of myself, I felt a chill track down my spine.

I am aware that throughout history, photography has had a strong connection to the dead. Or perhaps the undead. Ghosts are often said to turn up on film—invisible in the moment to the human eye, appearing only afterward in the darkroom. I have seen some of these images myself. Floaty, pale shapes. Figures that cannot be explained by aperture or exposure. Blurred silhouettes at the back of an empty room.

“I believe you,” I said. “I believe in ghosts.”

Mick threw me a glance I couldn’t interpret. I lifted my camera and pointed it down the hill at the cabin. I took a picture.