The Call of Distant Shores

by David Niall Wilson

  Without speaking, Bobby Lee reached into his pocket and pulled something free. A moment later, as Bobby Lee flicked his thumb to free the blade, Jasper saw that it was a Buck knife. Without hesitation, Bobby Lee took a slice off the statue. Jasper watched the splinter of wood float to the floor and followed Bobby Lee's pointing finger to the spot where he'd cut it free.

  The wood only coated what lay beneath. It was smooth, as the wood had been smooth, but darker. Bobby Lee gestured for Jasper to step closer, and, not knowing what else to do, unless it was to run, Jasper complied. Bobby grabbed his wrist, and for a moment, that was nearly the end of it. The bugs crawling and shifting and seething over Bobby Lee's arm reached out feelers and legs, pinchers and proboscises to the new flesh Jasper offered. He tried to yank free, but Bobby Lee held tight. In a moment, it didn't matter.

  As Bobby Lee pressed Jasper's hand to the cut in the wood, something shot out from within. It was hard and sharp, round and hollow, and it plunged into Jasper's hand without hesitation. His body spasmed, and he tried to jerk free, but it was too late. He could feel his pulse through the palm of his hand, could feel whatever it was that had pierced him probing deeper, sucking with incredible force at that small puncture in his hand.

  The things that coated Bobby Lee were moving up Jasper's arm, but he couldn't spare them any attention. He was trying to scream and unable to free himself of the muscle-contracting spasm of pain long enough to force the air from his lungs.

  Then it stopped. Jasper staggered back, grabbing his wounded hand in the other and then releasing it to swat at the bugs, brushing them from his arm, waiting for the bites and stings that never came, and backing away again. Bobby Lee looked as if he would speak again, despite the danger of the insects swarming his throat, but at that moment, Jasper struck his back on the wall, pressing tightly into the metal and it's constant, droning vibration, and the need for speech was erased.

  Thoughts flowed in a steady progression through Jasper's mind. He saw things – strange, impossible things. He saw stars, gleaming in the sky. He saw cylinders of sleek, shining metal, gleaming and shooting at impossible speeds among those stars. He saw explosions of fire and light, like a fourth of July gone mad and he felt the waves of pain as explosions followed the flight.

  He saw masses of people and mounds of insects. He saw the giant roach, not solid and carved, but skittering about a mountain slope. He saw stone pillars and a temple, and he saw the people, kneeling, coated in shimmering sheets of exoskeletal motion – kneeling in an ocean of insects.

  He saw the swamp, saw the muck and the rising water, moss and scum, the slither of snakes and the great crash of gator tails, and always, over and over, the passing of sun to moon to sun, until, finally, he saw a fishing pole and a red and white bobber, rising and falling in the grip of a soft swell on the surface of a still pool. The line grew taut, and the pole bent. Whatever it was, it was huge, and there were droplets of water running up and down the line ... or ... not water. The droplets were moving up, not down, and Jasper saw them reach the pole and keep coming . They moved in a solid, lightning-fast strike up the line and down the bamboo and onto the hands and arms that waited. Onto Bobby Lee, who stood on the bank, staring stupidly as they invaded his flesh, taking him before he could cast the pole away and dropping him to his knees on the bank of that swamp.

  Then the statue rose, hung up on Bobby's line and dripping swamp mud and putrid, rotting vegetation. No way Bobby Lee was pulling it free of that mire – but he was connected to it, and as more and more of the insects, or whatever they were, coated his skin, he rose unsteadily to his feet, shook his head as if freeing it from something, and watched in wonder.

  Then the statue was on the bank, no clear view of how this had come to be, only that it was. Bobby Lee was wiping it down with rags, spraying it with some sort of bottled detergent and clearing away every indication that it had ever come within a foot of the swamp. Cleaning and wiping and polishing, he brought it to the sheen that Jasper had first noted, and then, turning, he walked away.

  The next image was Bobby Lee's truck and somehow, impossibly, the statue was in the back. Bobby Lee was covering it with the blue tarpaulin and fastening it carefully to the hooks up and down either side of the truck's bed.

  And then it faded. Jasper turned and walked out of the shed. He didn't look back. When he was out in the fresh, cool air of the evening, he turned around the corner of the shed and moved toward the parking lot. A moment later he plopped into his old rocker, closed his eyes, laid his head back and sat very, very still. A few moments later he heard the crunch of Bobby Lee's feet on the walk, and he looked up. There were no bugs. Jasper glanced to the side, but realized too late the cooler wasn't there. No beer.

  "It's not what you think," Bobby Lee said softly.

  "I don't think a damn thing," Jasper replied. "I saw what I saw. Where are they, crawling under you shirt, down your damned pants?"

  "They're in with her," Bobby Lee said. His voice was still calm. "They never come out of the shed."

  "Not just them, neither," Jasper shot back. "I know them twins never come out, Bobby. What did it do, suck them inside like it tried to do to me?"

  "No," Bobby Lee said. Then he chuckled.

  Jasper snapped his chin from his chest and glared at his friend. "What in HELL are you laughing at? Them girls is gone, and no tellin' how many others, and you stand there grinnin' like a damn fool."

  Bobby Lee was actually laughing, and it pissed Jasper off. He rose to his feet and cocked his arm back. "You shut up, Bobby Lee, or giant double-D goddamned cockroach or none, I'm gonna SHUT you up."

  Bobby Lee was still laughing, but he held up his hands in surrender, backing off.

  "It ain't that, Jasper," he managed to say at last. "There ain't nothin' wrong with them twins. They's waitin' at the Eagle and Anchor back in Hertford for us. You thought she was EATIN' 'em?"

  Jasper's arm fell to his side, and he frowned.

  "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked at last. "What do you MEAN they's waitin' on us?"

  "Just what I said," Bobby Lee chuckled. "She don't eat folks, Jasper, she just likes to have us near. Those others, the little ones? They only come out at night. That shed is like her temple, now. You saw the temple."

  "I saw a bunch of naked folks kneeling in a lake of bugs, too," Jasper countered.

  "Well, she has a right to feel wanted, don't she?" Bobby Lee said. He was almost whining. "I mean, she DID bring all them folks in here, just like she said, and she DID help me build that shed, then build 'er up again. She's even talkin' 'bout havin' me bring in river rocks and do it right."

  "What do you get for all that," Jasper asked. "You ain't been home in a month. I know, cuz I talked to your old lady just yesterday. She isn't sorry to see you go, but ... why?"

  "Them twins isn't the first to stay at the Eagle and Anchor, Jasper. They won't be the last, neither. Those girls, they'll be back, too. Ever' last one of 'em has felt her touch, and she calls 'em back. For me."

  Jasper's mind was reeling. Already he was daydreaming of those twins, their honey hair and wide eyes. In the background of those dreams, he could see a stone building rising from the cotton to challenge the sky. He could see cars lined up like soldiers in a huge lot, bright neon signs and banners flapping in the wind.

  "Waitin' for us now, you say?" he asked softly.

  Bobby Lee nodded. There was a flicker of greenish light around the corner of the produce stand, then the night went dark. Jasper closed his eyes, and in that darkness he could feel them, antennae flicking in the night breeze, seeking him, yearning for the salt of his seat and the heat of his skin. Seeking communion.

  "Thank the Lord," he said at last, turning toward Bobby Lee's truck and walking away, "for all them cockroach suckers."

  "Amen," Bobby Lee added, grinning.

  Above, the stars shone brightly and Jasper could have sworn, as Bobby Lee pulled out of the parking lot, that the brilliant spots of light r
e-arranged themselves into a new shape. A constellation he could believe in. Popping the top on the beer Bobby handed him, Jasper saluted the sky, tracing the lines of stars with his graze and grinning.

  "Look, Bobby Lee," he said softly. "Ain't that constellation The Twins?"

  Darkness – and the Light

  The surface of the lake gave new and deeper meaning to the term '"placid."' The water was so still, and so dark, that the very absence of sound and motion drew images from deep within Jonathan's mind that were anything but peaceful.

  The shoreline stretched out to his right so far that it disappeared in the gloom, but Jonathan wasn't interested in that dark expanse. His gaze wandered left to where the lake curved around a rocky outcropping that stretched down into the depths beyond. The forest drew within about fifty feet of the shoreline, then stopped. Nothing grew closer. There were stone, sand, driftwood and the sun-bleached bones of dead fish littering the ground, but nothing moved.

  From that flat, tide-slicked surface, the tower rose. Brick upon brick of white stone made dark by wind, and rain, mud and slime. Jonathan let his gaze slide up that wall, catching each glimmer as it reflected the moon's pale light. The last of the sun's red-orange glow had faded from the skyline, and the moon rose slowly, silver-lining the damp stone. Three quarters of the way up the wall, a window opened over the forest. From within, Jonathan saw the soft glow of candlelight.

  The moonlight dimmed, and Jonathan glanced up sharply. Dark clouds had rolled in, and a ripple of lighting shot between them. In that instant, the entire lighthouse snapped into view, stark against an outline of brilliant light and darkened sky. Jonathan took a step back, bringing his hand to his heart. A lighthouse – on a lake. No ships to guide. No wreckage lining the coral skeleton of dangerous reefs. Black, dead-calm water and silence.

  It was just as he had seen it as a child. Just as the pictures had shown it reborn. It was in the wrong place.

  Jonathan tore his gaze from the tower and spun back to the lake. The water rippled, undulating to the rhythm of the moon, oblivious to the tower and it's single, darkened eye. No light flashed from the tower. There was no wind to cause the ripple.

  "Why did you do it, old man?" Jonathan whispered. Turning back to the window, he added. "What have you done?"

  The wind had picked up with the approach of the storm, and Jonathan felt a sudden chill, despite the season. He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets and strode across the slimy rocks toward the tower. As he reached the rough-hewn wooden door and raised the cold steel knocker in one clenched hand, the beacon in the tower a hundred feet over his head snapped on, flashing in a brilliant, fog-cutting beam across the water.

  Jonathan sat at an old wooden table, fingers gripping a steaming mug of coffee. A fire raged in a small recess in the wall, hardly a fireplace, more an alcove with vents set too close to the floor to provide efficient heat, and before that blaze a man stood, hands clenched behind his back, staring into the flame. It could have been a scene from some Hollywood Scottish epic. The man didn't wear a kilt, but somehow the rugged denim jeans and work boots conveyed the effect anyway. Wild locks of deep red hair flowed over stooped shoulders, tinted with highlights of silver gray.

  Angus was tall, taller than most men and thin so that his motions seemed to take forever, long, graceful patterns of coordination. He would have seemed ungainly if it weren't for the preternatural grace of each gesture. Jonathan watched, fascinated, as his uncle began to pace before the fire, shadows dancing along the walls like great predatory beasts.

  Then, in the periphery of his vision, Jonathan caught another movement. More subtle, more powerful and so close to the corner and the floor that he couldn't be certain he'd seen anything at all. He turned quickly, his own motion a shorter, more slender version of his uncle. If it weren't for his close-cut dark hair, Jonathan might have been a small re-composition of his Uncle's form. When his father had been alive, the three of them had been a positively eerie sight, Angus too tall and wild-haired, Ewan, Jonathan's father, not quite as tall, but very angular, wide in the shoulders and a long, very narrow face – and Jonathan. Smaller, younger, but so closely modeled after Angus as to seem a shadow if he walked behind the big man.

  Jonathan stared into the empty corner, started to speak, then kept his silence. Experience had taught him that in such an audience he would get but a certain number of opportunities to question. It was important that the questions be fully formed before he gave them voice. It was important that he stuff his emotions deep inside where they would not taint his speech. Angus would know. Back turned, shoulders hunched against a Scottish wind that no longer cut through the cracks in the ancient stones, Angus would see through to his soul.

  "I carried every stone, Jonathan." Angus' voice cut through the silence suddenly, banishing it as if it had never existed. "Aye, the men, they tore her down, but I carried every stone of her to the trucks, watched them wind into the distance leaving less and less behind each time they came. Those were strong, strapping lads, but for every stone two of them lifted, I carried a second. Bits of my heart, they trucked away."

  "Why?" Thoughts of carefully chosen words forgotten, Jonathan half-rose from his seat, then leaned back, gripping the mug so tightly that his knuckles whitened. "Why Angus? You know what she watches...and why. How could you take her away?" Even as he waited for his answer, images of Angus, huge blocks of stone hefted as easily as Jonathan remembered the big man shouldering barrels of ale, trudging from the lighthouse to the trucks, and back, the waves of the lock tossing foam and droplets of water at his boots and stinging his eyes.

  "I've no more to do with it than you, boy," Angus growled, "If you think you know what she watched, then you must know that she watches still."

  Again Jonathan held his silence. The lake that lay beyond the tower's walls was ominous in its own right, but it was no Loch Drummond. It was new, with the taint of a new world, recently civilized and ignorant in the ways of the older darkness. It was water, and darkness, cut now by a swath of light that did not belong. No more, no less. Not so the Loch.

  "Word is," Jonathan said softly, "that it is restless."

  Angus' fingers tightened until Jonathan could see the skin turning white, but he didn't turn. "It was not my choice, lad. It has never been any man's choice."

  Jonathan took a long swallow of the hot coffee, feeling it burn down his throat.

  Angus whirled in anger. His eyes blazed, green and brilliant and alive with sudden accusation. "And what would you be knowin' of it? Where were you when she watched The Loch, eh? When your father, rest his soul, and I stood in the tower? London? Paris? Traipsin' the streets of Las Vegas and tellin' drunk-boy stories on your crazy Uncle Angus?"

  Jonathan stared into the swirling depths of his mug and held his silence. It was the truth. He'd not seen The Loch since his boyhood days, when he'd played beside the Loch, young and carefree, never questioning why he couldn't sit on the stones and watch the soft slap of the waves after the sun had gone down. He'd left with his mother at the age of eight and never looked back. Not during the waking hours.

  "I'm not here to tell you I understand more than you do," Jonathan answered at last. "I'm not here to apologize for my life, either. If I chose to leave, you chose to stay. Or she chose you."

  Angus stared a moment longer, deep green eyes boring into Jonathan's heart. Spinning back to the fire, the old man growled. "Damned if she didn't choose me."

  No words were spoken for a few moments, but the silence had grown suddenly less tense. Jonathan turned, glancing out the window over the forest. In the distance he could make out the soft glow of the city. There were no windows overlooking the lake. To see that, there was only one vantage point.

  "I want to see the tower," he said. Too quickly, courage lost in the space of that breath. The words dwindled to nothing, and there was no indication that Angus had heard them. The old man stood still as a stone statue, staring into the glowing coals of the fire. Then, when Jonathan
had nearly given up, the old man turned, slowly, and without a word, strode to the door.

  Jonathan rose, following quickly.

  The stairs wound up and up, too-close set, as if designed for shorter feet and stronger toes. Jonathan stumbled several times, trying to achieve some sort of rhythm, but whether he attempted one, two, or three of the old stone steps at a time, he could not make the climb more comfortable. All his life he'd climbed stairs, but somehow these presented a new challenge. Angus had already disappeared around the upward curve. Years of practice had acclimated the old man's muscles to the odd dimensions of the stairs.

  Jonathan stumbled, cracking his shoulder painfully on the wall, and he hesitated for a moment, laying his forehead against the cold stone. A sudden flash of insight nearly sent him reeling back and down. Who had these stairs been built for? Who would line up thousands and thousands of stairs so – wrong?

  Long, sinuous bodies flowing upward, losing themselves in the turns and curves, hundreds of feet pounding, slapping wetly on stone, gripping and tugging the corners of the stairs. The dimensions shifted, the windows confronted Jonathan at eye level, and the stairs became handhold after handhold after handhold drawing him upward into the light...

  Jonathan shook his head and pressed off the stone. Gritting his teeth, he began child-stepping up the stairs, no longer fighting the discomfort, but working through it. The rhythm had shifted somehow, and what had seemed impossible grew more or less bearable as he pressed on up to the tower.

  The door was just as Jonathan had heard it described. As a child, he could have climbed those stairs a thousand times. He'd seen his father, and his uncle, silhouetted against the brilliant beam of light as it snaked out over the Loch, keeping their silent vigil night after night without fail. Jonathan had loved the mystery of it, but he'd felt no urge to unravel that mystery. Something in the imposing stone walls and the expressions of those who entered had turned him aside each time. No one had ever forced the issue.