The day was foggy and dark. Out the front window in Sam’s room I saw that the tops of the trees along the coast disappeared into fog, as though dipped into skymilk. I made Sam put a sweatshirt on under her jacket, and talked her into wearing her rainboots and the wide-brimmed waterproof yellow hat she had grown up enough to think was too silly to wear anymore. “Nobody you know will see you,” I said.
“Complete strangers will think I’m an idiot.”
“So why should it matter? They’ll never see you again.”
She sighed loudly and noisily. Somehow the sound put heart into me. It was as close to a laugh as anything I had heard from her since Ama died.
We took our packs down to the guest kitchen. I washed apples, made PBJs, and filled water bottles. We loaded supplies into our daypacks, then left for the day.
* * * *
Near the top of the lighthouse tower, just below the level of the light, our guide talked about first-order Fresnel lenses, prisms, and British clockworks which made the lens rotate. The clockworks had had to be wound every four hours so the keepers would stay awake. “The chains used to hang right down the center of the tower. There was this weight that dropped down. They had to hand-crank it back up. Now it’s all electric. If the power fails, there’s a sensor—” he pointed to a small square device that scanned the edge of a clockwork wheel as it rotated— “that alerts the Coast Guard station down the coast. We have a secondary system, an emergency lantern attached to the railing up here. Someone comes up to turn it on. Other than that, everything’s automated now. Lighthouse keepers were phased out in the sixties, for the most part.”
“Why is the light running during the day?” Sam asked. From our vantage beside the gear assembly, we looked up inside the light. Two bulbs were in the center, one lit, the other present in case the first burned out. Housing them was a cage of glass: the many prisms that comprised the Fresnel lens. It was like seeing the inside of a diamond.
“This machinery weighs several tons. To start and stop it takes more energy than just to leave it running.”
I glanced out one of the tower windows. Below, the headland was covered by lawn, surrounded by white pipe railing to keep people from falling over the cliffs. The red roofs of the twin oilhouses were bright patches of color under the dark sky. Waves frothed around the cliffs.
Amaryllis would have loved this place. She exulted in even dark days, and she had loved high places and strange lights.
Sam stared up into the light, her eyes just like her mother’s had been. My throat burned.
“Next tour’s waiting at the bottom of the stairs,” said our guide. He led us down the spiral steel staircase and waved us out past a group of Asian tourists.
What were we supposed to do with our day? My mind was a blank. We had explored the beach, and toured the lighthouse. We could drive into town and wander around. Maybe there was a movie playing, a matinee show.
Halfway along the road from the lighthouse back to the keepers’ house, Sam grabbed my hand. She tugged me toward a muddy trail that led up the headland into the spruce forest. “Let’s have lunch in the trees, Daddy.”
Another thing Amaryllis would have suggested. She loved paths that went places she hadn’t been. She always wanted to explore.
I followed my daughter up the hill past branchless tree trunks. All the trees were young—we had seen a historic picture from when the lighthouse and the keepers’ houses were first built, and the headland had been bare of trees, the result of a fire in the 1880s before construction began. So no tree here could be much older than a hundred years, and they had grown in thick, shading each other out, so that all their greenery was held in their tops, leaving the ground below needle-scattered and dark. A gap here and there showed us slices of distance, a gray sea under a paler gray sky, with a darker line where sea met sky and clouds kissed water.
After we had climbed a ways, we came to a wide spot in the path, a viewpoint where we could look down at the lighthouse between dark, lichen-draped evergreen branches. “Let’s eat here.” Sam rummaged in her pack and pulled out her sit-upon, a tough piece of plastic big enough for her and her pack. She spread it on the ground and plopped down on it.
I got out my sit-upon and joined her. From this vantage we could see the red roof of the lighthouse tower, with its little red bulb at the tip, and above that a lightning rod. Beyond the light, an eternity of empty sea.
Mechanically I pulled lunch out of my pack.
“Wait, Dad. Don’t eat yet. Look what I brought.” Sam produced the two pennywhistles. She held the green one out to me.
I accepted it without thinking, put my fingers over the holes and lifted the mouthpiece to my lips. My embouchure formed around it, my breath flowed into it, and a tune came out, “Chinese Breakdown.” I heard Amaryllis’s voice, full of smile: “Let’s have music everywhere we go! We need something really portable, for everywhere.” So we had both learned pennywhistles, and Ama had mastered harmonica. I could never get my tongue to behave correctly for that.
We had played wooden recorders and plastic recorders and stringed instruments, whistles and spoons and ocarinas. When we found an apartment where our neighbors didn’t mind music, we had rented a piano, even before we bought a TV. We had sung Samantha to sleep every night when she was a baby, and later, she sang with us. We had started with lullabies.
Sam played along with me on “Chinese Breakdown” for two measures. Then I lost the thread of tune and fell down into myself. Where was Amaryllis, with her quick ear for harmony? Gone. Breath leaked out of me, blurred the tune as my fingers lost their memories. I dropped the whistle.
Sam played a few more notes, then faltered to a stop. “What’s wrong, Dad?”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m just not ready yet.” I pulled my knees up against my chest. I was a terrible father. What was the matter with me? Here Sam was doing her best to cheer me up, and I kept falling into despair. What must she be feeling?
I could not force my hands to let go of my legs and pick up the pennywhistle again. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She retrieved my pennywhistle and stuffed both of them into her pack. We ate lunch in silence.
* * * *
That night we went to bed after another round of card games. Sam won most of them. I couldn’t seem to remember what cards had been played. Sam looked pale and drawn and scrawny, the shadows under her eyes almost purple. I hugged her after she brushed her teeth. “If you get scared again tonight, come on in my room,” I murmured.
She didn’t answer. She hugged me back for a minute, then went into her room and shut the door. I retreated to my room and crawled under the featherbed, then lay for several hours staring up into the dark. Snap out of it, Reed.
Out of what?
This funk. Wake up.
Why?
I must have drifted off at some point. When the noise woke me, it was hours later.
Was it the wind?
No. It came from inside the house.
A scattering of driven rain struck my window, drowning out the sounds for a moment. The ceiling creaked.
Then I heard it again.
A pennywhistle, stumbling and fumbling, playing a tune I almost remembered.
A lullaby. The same one I had heard in Sam’s room the night before.
Soft and soothing, the lullaby worked its magic. I felt drowsy and warm, ready, at last, for deep sleep. I drifted.
“Reed. Get up. Go to Sam.”
My eyes snapped open. Was that Amaryllis’s voice? I sat up, pushed out of the warm blankets, pulled on the robe, and went across the hall to Sam’s room.
I stood for a moment at the door, listening. The tune was steady and strong now.
I tapped on the door. “Sam?”
The melody faltered, then resumed.
“Sam.” I grabbed the doorknob. It was freezing. I snatched my hand away, then wrapped it in a fold of bathrobe and tried the doorknob again. It wouldn’t turn.
The back of
my neck prickled with cold. What was happening in that room? I pounded on the door. “Sam. Open the door! Sam!” The tune kept playing. It was only music, but I felt a sense of something racing away from me. I rattled the knob. It turned, but the door was locked.
Only music! Music could do anything. Open up wounds you had hoped were closed, carry you to old places and new places, summon shades you couldn’t face because just thinking about them hurt too much. In the altered state of making music—
“Sam. Stop playing. Open the door.”
The melody went on. I knew it was carrying my daughter away from me. She was on the other side of this door, and someone was piping her away, as surely as the Pied Piper had enticed the children away from Hamlin.
I had lost my wife already. If I lost my daughter too, it would crush me.
“Ama,” I whispered. “Help me.”
“Sing to her, Reed.”
I placed my palms flat on the door and listened to the pennywhistle play the lulluby. She made no mistakes. The music was smooth and true now.
“Alas,” I sang, and coughed hesitation out of my throat. Voice, I need you now.
“‘Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously,
For I have loved you so long,
Delighting in your company.’”
The lullaby turned thready, hesitant.
“‘Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was all my joy.
Greensleeves was my heart of gold—’”
The pennywhistle stopped.
“‘And who but my lady Greensleeves?’”
The lock turned. The door opened a crack. Sam rubbed her eyes and peered up at me. Her face was streaked with tears. “Daddy?”
I knelt and opened my arms. For a long moment I feared she would close the door again. I would reach out to stop it. I wouldn’t let her be locked away from me. But had she gone so far away from me already that she wanted me to be on the other side of a door? Had I let her get so far away?
She opened the door and stumbled into my embrace. Storms of weeping shook her. I held her a long time while she cried, and thought about many things.
* * * *
“She wanted me,” she told me later. We sat side by side on the couch in the front parlor, cocoa mugs in our hands, and stared out at the night. “She’s been looking and looking for her little girl. I knew she wanted me. She wanted to be my mother. And you didn’t want to be my father anymore.”
I put down my mug and pulled her into my arms. “I do. More than anything.”
“No. Mom died, and you died too. You turned into a robot.”
I hugged my daughter. “I’ve been so sad.”
“Me too.”
“I’ve been so sad I didn’t notice how sad you were.”
She slugged my shoulder with a fist. “Yeah.”
“But I know now.”
She settled, curled up against my chest. “Sometimes I want to remember Mom,” she said. “Sometimes I want to do things we did with Mom. It makes me feel like she didn’t totally disappear. Every time I tried that with you, though....”
“I know.” I stroked her hair. “Remember last summer, when we stayed in the mountains?”
“And we found the eagle with the broken wing. We didn’t know what to do. We got Mom. Mom said we should call the forest ranger. She always knew what to do.” Sam sounded drowsy.
Sometimes I won’t know what to do, I thought, and then I’ll try to think what you would have done, Ama. Please come back that much.
Thank you.
THE MEAT FOREST, by John Haggerty
The shot-callers had been fighting over the fresh meat for half an hour when Dmitri showed up. The new kid was covered in mud, the thin drizzle doing nothing to clean him off, but it was clear he was a prime cut. He was tall and good-looking, with the sort of smooth, clear skin and big slabs of muscle that you can only get if you have a lot of time on your hands. He was obviously an owner, but they dropped him just like they had the rest of us—laid down some tear gas, gyroed in, and then kicked him out into the rain and stinking mud without even touching down. When the yard boys got a look at him and word spread, the shot-callers were on him like cats.
A circle had formed, and everyone was gathered around, jeering, making lewd suggestions, showing their hardest faces while the big boys argued. The kid just stood there. He looked paralyzed, as though he couldn’t believe how bad his life had gotten, and how quickly. I watched him from the edge of the crowd. He was probably in his early twenties, but his face was soft like a child’s, as if nothing had ever been demanded of him. Surrounded by the mob of shouting, emaciated men, I imagine he had never felt so alone and lost and afraid in his life.
Nobody was backing down and it looked certain that there was going to be a beef. And then Dmitri showed—just walked right into the middle of everything—and that was enough to shut all of those chainiks up. Suddenly, there was complete silence, everybody standing nervously around, waiting to see what would happen next. Dmitri circled around the boy a couple of times, a thin smile on his face. The kid stood rigid and still, even when Dmitri playfully slapped him across the buttocks. After a few moments, he turned to the shot-callers. “Nobody touches him. He’s mine.”
“Bullshit.” It was Oleg, head of the New Odessa crew. He was big and ambitious, trying to make a name for himself. “My boys saw him first. He belongs to us.” He looked around at his men with a big smile. “You can have him when we’re done with him. If there’s anything left.” A soft, mean chuckle spread through the crowd.
Dmitri’s skin flared a dull red, his bioluminescent implants responding to his anger. He stepped up to Oleg, who flinched in spite of himself. “I said he’s mine,” he whispered, the thin sibilance of his voice somehow carrying to the edge of the crowd. “One more word and the forest will have you.”
The two stared at each other for a long moment, and then Oleg looked away. “Fine. Take him,” he spat. “What would we do with a soft little bitch like that anyway?” He smiled around at his crew, but none of them would meet his gaze.
Dmitri gave a laugh. “Follow me boy,” he said, and the kid did, trailing after him through the parting mob.
Nobody fucked with Dmitri. When they dropped him, some guys walked off, right into the forest, just to get away from him. He was connected, but that wasn’t really the whole story. Rumors followed him around, shit horrible enough to make even the old camp lifers, guys who had seen mankind at its very worst, shake their heads in shock. He was thin—almost to the point of emaciation—like all of the rest of us, but everything else set him apart. Prison tattoos and ritual scars covered him from the top of his shaved head down to his feet. He was nearly black with them, elaborate, gothic designs that the experienced could read like a book—robberies, murders, mob allegiances made and broken—the whole history of his criminal life painted on his flesh. He had rows of bioluminescent implants embedded in ridges from the top of his head down his arms, legs and torso, and they flashed away underneath the tattoos, like lamps through smoke. And when he looked at you, it was like he was looking at some kind of farm animal, like you were a carcass hanging on a hook and he was idly wondering how much you would fetch per pound.
* * * *
Dmitri approached me a few days later. I was sitting at the perimeter, staring through the drizzly mist toward the edge of the forest. I went there a lot, killing time right at the camp boundary where you could feel the hum of the electrodes. There were no fences, just the fear of the forest to keep us in, and the electric field to keep it out.
When I first got to the camp, and the hunger really started getting a grip on me, I dreamt only of food, of long tables piled meters deep in greasy red meat. Then I began dreaming of the hunger itself, of dying slowly of a desperate dissatisfaction, of never having enough. Lately, though, I had started dreaming of the forest, and I didn’t like to think about what that meant.
“You spend a lot o
f time out here,” he said softly. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me, and I started when he spoke.
“I’ve been watching you. You’re out here all the time, looking at the forest. In the camps, that means one of two things. Either you want out, or you’re about to give yourself to it. Which is it with you?”
“You shouldn’t be talking to me.” I blurted. I was a political prisoner, at the very bottom of the prison hierarchy. Dmitri was breaking one of the great camp taboos, associating with a lower caste member like myself.
Dmitri laughed in my face. “Who is going to stop me? I do what I want.” He looked out into the drizzly evening. “I can get you out of here. Do you want to go?”
“What? Out of the camp? How?”
“How do you think?” He nodded toward the gray forest that crowded the perimeter, where the electrodes got too weak to keep it out. “Through that.”
“Through the forest? I thought it was impossible.”
Dmitri tilted his head up. Beneath his jaw were tattoos of two men’s heads, done with red and black ink. Their faces were contorted in an expression of horror; their eyes were closed. He pointed to them. “Do you know what they mean?” he asked. I shook my head. “I’ve gotten through it twice. The only man in New Russia. I’ll take you.” He paused, looking me up and down. “It’s probably a lost cause. I don’t think you’ll make it. But if you’re interested, come to my hut tonight.”
I looked back out at the forest. It wavered in and out of focus in the rain, gray and silent. When I turned back around, Dmitri was already gone.
* * * *
I wandered aimlessly around the edge of the camp until nightfall, my mind restless. The forest had a horrifying reputation. Just the idea of it was enough to keep all of these hard men starving here in the mud and squalor. But life in the camp, especially for a political prisoner, was hard. Over the years a number of my friends had been sent to the camps, and none of them had come back. I didn’t want to die here, slowly starving in the constant drizzle and the stinking filth.
After dark, I made my way to Dmitri’s hut. The boy was waiting for me outside. He pushed me through the vinyl curtain that made up the doorway and followed me in. The place was palatial by camp standards—a patchwork of corrugated metal and plastic sheeting, big enough for three or four men to lie down comfortably. Some fragments of packing crates burned in the corner, giving off a choking black smoke and a little bit of warmth. Dmitri was sitting against the wall near the fire, his skin pulsing idly green.
The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories Page 17
