Tide of Stone
Page 13
Called himself a blossom; said in his suicide note, “Like Victor Fegeur, I wish to leave something behind.”
Victor Fegeur was a man executed in the States. His last meal was an olive with the pit still in; apparently, he wanted to turn into an olive tree. Leave something good behind. I doubt it grew.
I have asked for olives in my next food delivery. They’ll need to send away for them, but that is what I want.
Number Sixteen kept his sister in a dark small hole all her life. Their parents had died not long after she was born. His once-red hair sits in awful pink strands on his scalp. “Boat coming,” he said. He rarely said anything else.
I found out he bled black and slow and if you kept re-opening the wound, it started to hurt him.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Maria de Salvo
Ed Keeney: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1965
The Black Widow, the second one, says I’ve got more spirit than any ghost she’s ever met. I can’t help but laugh at that one.
Weird thing, the way your laugh echoes here. As if there are ghosts, indeed, and they laugh when you laugh, cry when you cry.
I did cry and my god.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Ed Keeney
Chris Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1966
It stinks of death.
And it sounds of silence.
I watched a kid paddle out here. Too eager to wait until he’s old enough. But it doesn’t do any good to be eager.
It does no good at all.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Chris Bunting
Charles Peacock: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1967
Those at the Club make you feel welcome, that’s for sure. I’m trying to remember that. Here, I feel like an outcast. It’s ridiculous, but that’s the way they make me feel. They are masters at destructive psychology. I should write a thesis on it.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Charles Peacock
Chris Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1968
Time moves on, the ball drops the ball drops the ball drops. Who would ever doubt that most of the men in this town are master clockmakers?
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Chris Penfold
Earl Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1969
They warn us not to let the prisoners see “tumescence.” Those old creatures aren’t capable of erections anymore and the women have no juice, no matter how much they wish.
Mind you, being here. And what’s out there. Is enough to dry anyone up. There’s a place in the United States—and it’s not the only one—where young kids are sent, to be “cared for” and there are dozens who never come out again.
Who could manage “tumescence” with that in your brain?
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Earl Penfold
Martin Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1970
My mum crying on the shore, but it could have been the sea salt. You’d think we’re an emotional town if you took any notice of all the salt or wind induced tears. Dad standing next to her, his arm reaching up around her shoulders.
He’s got me sorted for every kind of medical situation. He’s so uncool my old man. He has no idea. All I’ll need is weed. All you need is weed, ladida di dah.
Mum gave me an ugly scare, like, you give it back now.
Crazy lady. She was never the motherly type, but I still love her. She’s not big on the “world revolves around the children” idea but who cares? I know the world revolves around me and always will.
She’s used to basking in Dad’s adoration so isn’t good with criticism.
He’s not a man to give you a hard time, but he does have EXPECTATIONS. He will be so DISAPPOINTED if I don’t make it. He’s already on at me to have a dozen kids myself. Spread the word, spread the name.
That was about the first thing the prisoners wanted to know, my name. Yeah, I shouldn’t have told them.
They figured out who Dad was, and then got out of me who Mum was.
“Those two? Made you? I wonder if he’s doing it all? All the things he talked about? Anal, right? Do you think your dad and mum do anal? Course they do, that’s why he’s an only child.” They laughed.
Every minute with them, I feel darker. Older. You know? As if they’re sucking something from me I didn’t even know I had.
I smoked a reefer and danced on their feet.
Someone has left a bottle of whiskey here. A note on it saying, in case of emergency break glass.
The look of it…doesn’t make me sick. But it’s a prop I don’t need. I want to feel every minute I’m awake, to experience. I don’t want to be deadened. Look at the Voyager disaster. Did the captain have a triple brandy before the collision? That will never be known. But I will not. I want clarity of vision, and the truth.
They are nothing. They never will be anything. They will achieve no more in their lives.
Me?
I can do anything.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners did not require bathing. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Martin Muskett
Jimmy Campbell: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1971
Jesus fuck my head hurts.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Jimmy Campbell
Leo Adler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1972
I’ve read my dad’s report. He was here 1940.
It’s
I’m not real
Ghost
What I’ve got inside me is not what other people have
That’s what I’ll need to forget.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
Leo Adler
Leonie Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s report 1973
It stinks. I’ll never smell anything but them again. I’m desperate for perfume, any perfume, but the expensive kind. Chanel Number 5. When I get home, I’m going to bu
y perfume every single week and never be without it.
What these people did...they deserve eternal suffering. The skinniest one, pretty well a skeleton with skin stretched over it, he kept a daughter in his cellar for thirty years. Never taught her how to speak or read. All she knew about was oral sex and silent fucking. He brought men back for her and then he’d kill them. He was unrepentant. And there were the grandchildren, too.
This one, he’s got a lean to him, as if his arse cheek hurts. Sometimes he’ll push himself upright, but it takes him weeks, literally weeks. I like to tip him over again.
“Innocent innocent.”
I wish they’d keep quiet. And those bloody women, too, wanting us to let them go. There was a child who rowed out here, way back when. God knows what happened to him and you don’t want to.
All that classical study at school makes sense once you’re out there, looking at them. Tithonos and all that. Was it always this way? Or did they used to be able to preserve the bodies as well? No one answers these questions. You’re not even supposed to ask them.
Otherwise, everyone would do it, right? And the world would collapse on itself.
Look at them.
Like dried fruit.
Burnett Barton always said, “If you see ghosts, ignore them. It’s only the evil of those men made manifest and best ignored.”
You can say it’s all stories. But I know what I saw. What I saw was real.
The place is infested with spirits.
I’m infested with spirits.
I’m never having children. I’m certain of that. I can’t take the risk.
I crave oranges. I’d kill for one. I want oranges from Seville. I’ll travel there. Travel the world when I get home; pack a bag and go on an adventure.
If I had my chance again, I would tell them nothing of meaning.
The biggest trick they’ll play on you is to listen. This tricks you into believing they care, so you tell them more, and they keep listening, so you think they agree, and you keep on: blah blah blah. It’s addictive.
“Men are base,” they told me. “Never believe anything else. No matter what he says or does, he’s thinking about fucking you.”
They seriously said that.
But it’s true. Don’t tell anyone anything they can use against you. And don’t trust a man to be thinking of anything but sex.
I didn’t tell them I thought I was in love. That I’d met the man I thought I’d marry.
They didn’t need to know that.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Leonie Hennessy
Dale De Feo: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1974
The evil man’s heart is like stone.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Dale De Feo
Martin Todd: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1975
Nothing more delightful than a surprise delivery. Must have been the boatman. Don’t know why he didn’t call out hello, though. Could have done with a catch up.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Martin Todd
Melanie Brooks: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1976
They told me the prisoners are dirty old men, but these ones don’t seem the slightest bit interested.
Of course, I’m not, either. Never have been, never will be, don’t get the whole sex thing, thank god. Life’s too short for all that.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Melanie Brooks
Rosalynn Brooks: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1977
Tait is begging for underwear, pathetic worm. If you wanted him under your thumb, you’d take plenty of undies. Wave them around, tease him.
They’re all pathetic. The awful baby starver says his nose is so sensitive, he knows what you had for dinner yesterday just from sniffing your arse.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
Rosalynn Brooks
Jim Glover: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1978
I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t think of sex. I haven’t thought of sex, of fucking or sucking or plucking or whatever “ucking” you want to mention—not for weeks.
It’s so dry out here. It’s like your juices dry up or something.
And yet they want to hear the dirtiest of stories, the filthiest of details, and they’ll keep quiet if you tell them.
Poor bastards.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Jim Glover
Rod Fenwick: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1979
I said to them, “We better write up your last words. Could be any day now. You want to be ready. Imagine waiting all this time and then finding you don’t know what to say.”
Never seen them so excited. Some of them almost sweating, if they had any sweat in them. Some laughter, some actual laughter, not the vicious squeaking they usually make.
Can’t wait to tell them I was bullshitting.
Someone sent me a case of wine over. Nice of them! I’ve told the prisoners we’re celebrating their imminent release.
Bastards’ll believe anything.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Rod Fenwick
Andy Hoff: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1980
Remembrance Day. I made them all wear poppies, and I recited war poetry, Wilfred Owen’s Futility to them until they fidgeted about unhappily.
“Carry me to the sun.
Just for a short while.
Let it warm me.”
“Carry me to the sun,” Grayson said, quoting it back at me. Trying to get sympathy, make a connection, taking advantage of me in listening mode. “He wants you to try to free us and you will stay with us forever,” the old priest said.
I said, “Burnett says war is for fools.”
“Burnett! That evil fucker, that fucking evil fucker, he never went to war. Ask him how his village burned down.”
“It drowned.”
The Councilor said, “What will you give me if I tell you what really happened? The truth of Burnett’s lost village, his broken place, his vanished home.” This from a man who had systematically murdered his entire village. “How much do you want to know?”
How much indeed? It wasn’t something my life depended on, but the tenets of all we did rested on the truth of his beginnings.
“I’ll move you under the window, so you can get that tiny bit of late sun.” I lifted The Councilor and he lean
ed into me gratefully. Once I had him settled, with that warmth surrounding him, he said, “What he tells you is not the truth. He tells you snippets, all designed to make him seem like the good guy. In truth, it was his lust and greed that saw the village burn down, not drown. The screams of the children, and the cowardice that filled him like the juice of an orange let sit for months in a jar. He saved his own skin and nothing else. This is a man who clearly did not go to war. Didn’t fight for our country.”
“Who of you went to war?” I asked, although I knew. “Does going to war makes a man good?”
Number Twenty-one, the cannibal, said, “If you haven’t been, you can’t know. The desperate hunger. A man will eat anything if he is starving.”
“Yeah, but most of us won’t eat human flesh and they most definitely will stop when the war is over.” A normal company would have agreed with me. From this lot there was silence.
Another said, “Fighting a war doesn’t make you a good man. Only momentarily helpless.”
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.