Skein Island

by Aliya Whiteley

  He is utterly full of shit and he will never see it. How he loves the high ground, doing what he thinks is best, thinking it’s the only way. Forging letters from my mother and destroying the real letters, deciding I should never know the truth, making such decisions in the name of being a father. And yet failing to be a father in the way that mattered – by listening to me.

  But he will listen to me now.

  I pick up my beer and throw it in his face.

  He is astonished. The beer drips from his grizzled hair, his eyebrows, his nose and chin. He opens his mouth and shuts it.

  I hand him a napkin. ‘Didn’t see that coming, did you?’

  He mops at his face.

  ‘So it turns out you don’t see everything after all. You don’t see me. You never did. That’s because I am not under Fate’s control. I’m not a hero or a villain. I don’t have to be David’s little helper, and I will never be able to predict the future. That’s because the future isn’t already written for me. Only men are controlled by Moira, not women. Now do you understand why I can win this fight? I’m not under her control. I’m not under anyone’s control. Not even yours.’

  He doesn’t reply. He crumples up the napkin and drops it on the table.

  ‘I’m sorry that my mother left us and chose a different life. But that was her choice. Not yours. And you have always been too much of a fucking idiot to understand it.’

  I stand up and walk off, down to the beach, to where Geoff is picking up pebbles and attempting to skim them across the waves. He’s rubbish at it. I watch him for a while, feeling Arnie’s gaze on my back, making my shoulder-blades prickle.

  ‘Not enough wrist,’ I tell him, and pick up a stone to demonstrate. It skims three, four, times, before losing all energy and sinking to the bottom. My father taught me how to skim stones when I was very little. We used to go to Camber Sands for holidays, and I’d amaze the other kids with my skimming ability.

  I turn around and look up, to the bar. Arnie has gone. He’s probably inside, complaining to David about me, telling him they should leave me behind in the morning.

  Over my dead body.

  Geoff tries to emulate my skimming style and fails dismally. ‘I never could do this,’ he says.

  ‘Practice.’

  ‘That’s what everyone says, but I’ve been practising all my life at everything and I’m still rubbish. Do you know what it’s like to not be good at anything? I bet you don’t.’

  ‘David said you were a big help to him.’

  He looks pleased with this. ‘Yeah, I did a good job, clearing that whole mess up. Sam said—’ He claps a hand over his mouth.

  ‘It’s all right. I know who Sam is.’

  I know enough, anyway. More than I want to know. She’s in David’s life when I am not, and I have no right to hate her for that. But I do anyway.

  The sea moves quietly, drawing closer to my feet, then pulling back: an eternal pattern. Behind us, the pop music from the bar changes to a slower song. Geoff sings along, words about not wanting to fall asleep, not wanting to miss a thing.

  Suddenly it seems important to find out more about him. ‘Don’t you listen to music at home sometimes?’ I ask him.

  ‘Not really. I watch telly. Do you like EastEnders?’

  ‘No, not my kind of thing. Do you live alone?’

  ‘With my parents.’

  ‘They must be getting on. I hope you don’t mind me asking – how old are you?’ He looks on the wrong side of middle age but his behaviour is so young, even immature. It’s difficult to get the measure of him.

  ‘Look,’ says Geoff. ‘It’s not really a big deal, is it? I don’t mind talking about stuff if you like, but I get the feeling you should concentrate on what we came here to do, right? Who cares if my favourite colour is yellow? I’m here to help David. He’s the important one.’

  There is nothing I can say to that.

  I wish there was something else in his life. I wish he wasn’t just a sidekick, had not been born that way. He is prepared to die for my husband, and he will get nothing in return.

  I want to give him a memory that is not about David. So I reach out to him, and take his hands. I pull him into a rhythm, a step to the left, a step to the right, and we dance out the song while he sings along.

  He knows every word.

  * * *

  ‘This is it.’

  The mouth of the cave yawns wide.

  A bird overhead makes a curious sound, like a laugh, loud and mechanical. I look up into the clouds, but can’t see it.

  It’s been a long morning. The men didn’t leave without me. When I awoke, David was waiting with coffee and a croissant, of all things, claiming to have found them in the minimart down the road. He watched me eat, and told me to wear practical clothes. I picked out trousers and a jumper, utilitarian, and he nodded. Then we went to find Geoff and Arnie.

  We shared a car to get here: David driving, Arnie in the passenger seat, looking even worse than before, even though the only beer he swallowed last night was by accident when I threw it over him, Geoff in the back seat with me. The ring road around the island was clear, easy to negotiate, but when David turned off to take the mountain road it became pebbly, potholed. About a mile back we started to encounter debris on the road: rocks, branches. In some cases David had to stop the car and Geoff helped him to move these obstacles aside.

  We passed a taverna, shut up, the wooden tables overturned to form a barricade against the front door. I thought I couldn’t feel any more scared, but the tables, in a haphazard, frantic pile, terrified me. It spoke of a future where everything is overturned, abandoned.

  When we arrived at our destination, I found myself climbing from the car and into David’s arms. I’ve not been able to let go of him since. I hold his hand, so tight, as we approach the mouth, and stare into the darkness. There’s a set of steps, gouged out of the stone, worn by so many tourists’ feet, and an orange rope set into the wall by metal rings, making handholds. It looks so normal. I must be wrong. Moira must be somewhere else, far away, in a place I would never think of looking.

  ‘It’s here,’ says David. He lets go of my hand.

  I look up into his face and see a faraway fascination, eyes glazed, lips loose.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The colours. Don’t you see them?’

  Geoff comes up to join us. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he says. ‘Like a rainbow. A trail. Leading inside.’

  A shout cuts through the silence of the mountain. I spin round. Arnie is on his knees, his back to us, bent forward at the waist, his hands over his face. I run to him. There is blood on his fingers; he is clawing at his eyes, gouging. I take his hands and try to force them down but he’s strong, so strong. I can’t stop him from putting his fingernails into the corners of his eyes and ripping, ripping. David and Geoff grab him, wrestle him, until they have him still, lying on his back on the ground. He stops struggling and starts whispering. I put my ear to his lips, and hear, ‘Not any more, not see any more, no colours, no colours.’

  David says to me, ‘Can you hold him while I get the first aid kit?’

  I put my hands on Arnie’s chest and David slips off the backpack he’s wearing, then crouches over it, searching through the pockets. I can’t look at Arnie’s face, his ruined eyes. I stare at his hands, lying placidly on the ground. They are slick with his blood.

  David unzips a small green case and unwraps a sterile gauze pad, then snips lengths of surgical tape to hold it in place over Arnie’s eye socket. He repeats the action for the other socket. I want to scream at him, tell him to run for help, find a hospital – shouldn’t we all be in the car, breaking speed limits, looking for doctors? But he snips the gauze, methodically, and Geoff watches the procedure with interest.

  White tape knitting the remains of his face together, the gauze already staining pink, Arnie lies still, unmoving. I stand up. The broken rocks of the mountains form asymmetrical grey and brown patterns to the sea, wh
ich stretches onwards, like the promise of a calmness to come. But not now. Something is building. I can feel it.

  ‘The colours,’ whispers Arnie, and then he wails, like a dog hit by a car, a noise of such pain and fear that I can’t bear it. I step back; I want to be away from him, my own father, and I would rather that I died than have to hear that sound. He gets to his feet. I take his arms and he shakes me off, then starts to walk, fast, up the path that leads to the higher peaks of the mountains; he doesn’t need eyes, I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he’s climbing higher, leaving the path, dropping to his hands and moving like an animal over the rocks and stones, at speed.

  ‘Dad!’ I shout after him. He doesn’t look back. I run to David, pull at his arms. ‘Go after him!’

  ‘No. That’s his choice.’

  ‘He’s not… He’s damaged himself, he needs…’

  David and Geoff turn back to the mouth of the cave. I can hear Arnie’s wails, getting further away, and I never wanted things to be like this, never; this is why I came here by myself. This is not what I wanted. I have to keep them safe. I have to go in alone. I pull myself up straight, try to take control.

  ‘Get Arnie. Drive him to hospital. Come back for me later.’

  David grabs my wrist. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You and Geoff stay here.’

  ‘No, that’s not—’

  ‘This is right. I know it. Arnie said it.’

  ‘No.’ I try to break free, but his grip is so strong. ‘David. Please.’

  He kisses me on the forehead, and I hate him for it. The hate, the wash of it over me, unravels my decisions, my certainty, and I feel my face contorting, my tears spilling.

  ‘Geoff, this is your job. Keep her safe. Keep her out of the cave.’

  Geoff nods, very seriously.

  ‘I love you,’ David tells me, but I can tell he’s already thinking of the colours, the wonderful colours that Moira brings to the world, and he is going to find her and stay with her, because he won’t be able to stop her. And I am a puddle on the floor, I am all tears and no spine, just a woman, a typical weak woman, unable to do anything but wait and despair in equal measure.

  He lets me go, and takes off his backpack once more, digging around inside it to produce a small silver flask. He unscrews the lid.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Rebecca and Inger sent it to me. It came from your basement.’

  There was nothing left from the basement, not after the collapse. I think through what remained: a few pieces of paper, random pages from declarations and one barrel of water. Moira’s water. Her essence, contained in the liquid. Used in tiny amounts to give men a taste of her power.

  David is about to drink it.

  ‘No,’ I tell him, ‘I don’t know what that will do to you.’

  He strokes my face, and in that gesture I realise I no longer know him. Even before he drinks, before he faces the monster, he has become a stranger, a protagonist in some terrible tale in which I was never going to be important. He is going on without me, just as it should be. As Moira wants it.

  He puts the flask to his lips and drinks. His throat moves, the swallowing motion, so calm, so controlled. He drinks it all, then takes a torch from his backpack, and walks away from me.

  I watch him go into the cave. My failure skewers me, drops me to my knees, and Geoff stands over me as I mourn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The first three caves were easy to negotiate. Not only were the paths clearly set out for the tourists, but the rainbow led him onwards. As long as he stayed in its stream, he felt the rightness of his route.

  The third cave was smaller, and at the point that the path ended, the orange rope tied up on the final metal ring to form a double knot, the rainbow took over completely, pulling him towards the darkest area where it disappeared abruptly. David followed, found a hole in the stone walls that became a tunnel, where the rainbow pattern stretched onwards, slow-motion, like an undulating ribbon caught in the currents of the sea. He flicked on the torch, and the rainbow disappeared. Instead there was only the length of the narrowing tunnel, regular and smooth, leading downwards to what looked like a dead end – a fall of rocks and earth. He dropped the torch and wriggled his way into the tunnel, trying not to think of how he might not be able to turn around in such a small space.

  The hard, packed surface at the end of the tunnel was as deliberate as a wall. Could the monster have placed it there? David put his palms to the rocks and pushed, and it did not give. He punched it, short jabs of his fist, as there was no space to bend back his elbow for a larger blow. After five attempts he felt the skin on his knuckles split, and the pain of it lanced through him, fierce and prophetic. It awoke the liquid in his stomach, and he felt it expand, grow warm, uncurl through his veins, snakes of intent, of meaning. They took him over, slid out through his fingertips like the tendrils of plants and slid between the cracks in the rock surface, so that the stones trembled, shuddered, collapsed into water, breaking like bubbles. The tendrils receded and the water filled up the tunnel. The light of the torch fizzled and died, and it was easy to see the rainbow once more, to swim along its wake.

  The tunnel widened and David changed from dog-paddle to breaststroke, kicking out his feet. The trail tilted upwards, and he angled his body to follow, feeling the beginning of pain in his lungs, the constriction of his throat, the demand for oxygen, shouting for it, screaming, and the involuntary breath that followed, allowing the water to enter him, sink into his chest, icy stones.

  It didn’t hurt any more. He swam on in perfect silence, encased in water.

  The rainbow grew lighter, turned to white, and he broke through to the surface of a small, calm pool, reached out with his hands and clutched at hard rock once more, a flat surface onto which he pulled himself, and stood upright. He felt no need to cough or clear his lungs. His clothes were not wet. It wasn’t only that he wasn’t in pain. He had moved beyond such considerations to something new; nerve-endings and neurological signals had become controllable. He was impervious. The white path of light called him onwards, and he walked forward, without hesitation, through shades of darkness, until the cave walls opened out into a holy cathedral of space, as tall and steepled as the mountain, reaching up in an orderly worship of stalactites. It was the ordained place: a home, a birth, a tomb. The space where a hero could slay a monster.

  All his life, he had been waiting for the moment when he became the man he was born to be. He had lived in the promise of it, standing upright, being a defender, a protector. This was his perfect moment. All other memories would pale in comparison to it: his wedding day, the death of Mark, the saving of Sam, had all been trial runs for this.

  He felt it grow near.

  His body assumed a fighting stance, hands in bunched fists, feet apart.

  It homed in on him, and it was a woman, so familiar, as soft as Sam, as sharp as Marianne. It was the perfect woman, a goddess. He had met her before, in the back room of The Cornerhouse, where she had enveloped him, penetrated him, slain him. This time he had to be the conqueror.

  She cleaved to him, moulding to him in a rush of sex scent and promises that turned the cave crimson as blood, and she offered him her submission, the sinking of their bodies together, into each other. He felt the danger of it, the secret victory that lay within her offer.

  But he wanted it, this death at the behest of his flowing damsel – to be swarmed, surrounded, kept within forever. She was close enough to touch, floating in front of him, soft pink gauze wrapped around her, legs and smile spread wide, her eyes shut, her hands reaching for the zip of his trousers. He should have known all along, they all should have known that there could be no fighting this, no way to win, to control it, he would kill for it, make the world deserving of it, be the man it could marry, change himself, change the earth, the stones, the water. Her hands found him, guided him inside her, and he watched her face, wanting her eyes to open, to be submerged, suspen
ded in their stare—

  ‘David!’

  His name, sudden, rebounding inside the cavern, brought him back to himself. Geoff had emerged from the tunnel, his eyes wide, fixed on the monster. David had no idea what he was seeing, but it transfixed the man, in a place beyond fear or desire. And Marianne was crawling through, slithering out of the tunnel. What could she see? There was no truth in this place, no way to trust his senses. David felt a compulsion, so strong, to reach up and tear out his eyes, then rip off his ears, his tongue, but he refused to obey, found the strength to keep his arms down by his sides.

  Geoff shrieked, and the cave reverberated with his pain. He ran towards Moira, his arms outstretched. David didn’t know whether he meant to love her or kill her, but either way, it made no difference. She reached into his chest and took his heart in her hands, a simple gesture, like plucking a flower, and squeezed it between her palms as he shuddered, his body convulsing, his head flopping. Then he dropped to the ground.

  She tilted her head as she surveyed her conquest, then looked up.

  She wanted him to join her.

  David felt it, the strength of it, like the playful command of a lover when the game evolves from foreplay into capitulation. She wanted his eyes on her, she wanted to eat him up with her gaze.

  He met it, and understood.

  She loved to weave stories, stories of men and their great deeds. And, like every child who delights in fairy tales, she wanted to some day be part of the story: a princess, a damsel, a prize. But her loneliness could not be pierced. It was inviolate. Every man who drew close to her went mad under her gaze, misunderstood what he was meant to be, his part in the pattern. It left her desolate, empty. After thousands of years of hearing stories, she wanted to have a voice of her own, but it was an impossibility, and she was awash with her impotent rage. So many men would make more stories, new stories. She would make the world anew as a dark and dangerous place. Every man would have a part to play in it.

  Unless he satisfied her. Unless he gave her a story, and saved the world.