Hugh Howey - The Shell Collector

Barefoot, I steal across the room and try to pick out the conversations below. I wouldn’t think a lighthouse would have a basement. I wonder why Ness would come here. I reach the rail and peer down the stairs. Someone in a white lab coat walks past. A woman. I sneak around the railing and lower my head to get a better view, watch her stop at a table and talk to someone. The acoustics below—the distant clatters and the way voices are swallowed—make it sound like a much bigger room than this one.

I decide to creep down the stairs. There’s no sense of danger, not from Ness, not from whatever this is. It isn’t until I see the massive room that I feel afraid. It looks like a warehouse. Racks of shelves cover the far walls, and the shelves are stuffed with what look like aquariums. Long tables run the length of a room the size of a large grocery store. There are industrial machines and what looks like laboratory equipment everywhere. Microscopes. Vials. Twisting tubes of glass. Expensive centrifuges. Reminds me of my marine biology labs from undergrad, but on steroids.

The scope of the place is breathtaking. All cut out beneath a lighthouse. This facility must be newer than the run-down structure that stands above it, though. Added here. Is this where he breeds his hydrothermal shells? Was what I told Agent Cooper spot-on? I watch the man and woman as they huddle together, studying an object in the woman’s hands. There’s a plastic sample case on the table near them. It looks identical to the other two I’ve seen. I wonder if this is that cross between an auger and a cerith from Tara Cay, from our underwater expedition.

The stairs go down to another floor, deeper still. No one sees me creeping behind the rail. I sneak down, make the turn, and continue to the next floor without being spotted. Here, another large open area takes up half the space. A hallway leads off in the other direction, lined with doors—offices, or maybe small labs or storage rooms. All the doors are closed save one. There’s a light inside. I listen for voices but don’t hear any.

The rest of the space looks similar to what’s above, but with no workers. And rather than the long work surfaces, here there are lines of aquariums, water gurgling noisily, pumps and circulation fans whirring. Most of the aquariums are lit. Pipes and electrical wires form a maze across the ceiling, dipping down here and there to service the tanks. I creep over and peer inside the one nearest me. What look like white and orange nutmeg seashells litter the bottom of the tank.

I look around to make sure I’m alone, and then spot a familiar sight in the tank behind me: creamy white lace murexes with their jagged, decorative shells. An entire tank of them. But Cooper said there was no such thing. I reach in to grab one of them, the water warm up to my elbow, and bring it out.

The shell isn’t empty. There’s a slug inside. A gastropod. Was Cooper right all along? Is Ness taking some other species of slug and moving it into cast shells, creating the perfect fake? Maybe something in that process coats the shell enough to fool a testing machine. Or he makes the shells out of calcium carbonate from crushed-up species that are more common. Ness’s driveway is a clue to all that he has access to. Probably dredges the shells up from his private beaches and islands. Then the shells are formed here, injected into some mold, and finally non-extinct species are moved in to make them look real.

My story has an ending, I realize. Here it is. Closure. For the piece, and for me and Ness. I came here to explain myself, to apologize, but all that guilt vanishes in an instant. The story that ran in the Times this morning wasn’t my doing anyway. I was apologizing for something that wasn’t my fault. But Ness… he lied to me from the beginning, was leading me on a wild chase, flying me to the Southern Hemisphere when the murexes were sitting in a tank a short walk from his house all along.

I hear a door shut down the hall behind me, turn and see a man in a white lab coat, his face illuminated by the tablet in his hand. He looks up before I have a chance to duck and hide. His eyes widen. I bolt for the stairs. I hear him shout for me to stop.

I race up two flights. The man yells for someone to grab me. I have the murex in my hand; I close my fist around it. I see Ness as I pass through the floor above. He looks up from a workbench, from a microscope; his face was hidden before. I freeze for a moment. As I take off again, Ness lurches up and knocks his stool over. He gives chase as well. Several people are shouting at me, shouting at each other to grab me. I don’t pause to sort it out—I just run.

The cold metallic taste of adrenaline fills my mouth, my body dumping that storehouse of energy. I make it to the top of the stairs and yank open the door to the outside. Before I shut it, I get an idea, hurry back inside, grab the umbrella. Ness is up the stairs, yelling for me to wait. I get outside before he reaches me, slam the door shut just in time, and slide the umbrella through the handle so it catches the jamb.

The door pulls inward, but the umbrella holds. I don’t wait to see how long. I run.

Racing around the lighthouse, I see the jeep with the two guards in the distance. They appear to be driving up and down the tree line, still looking for me. My car is out there, beyond the woods. Ness and the others will be out of that buried laboratory in no time.

I just need to get to safety, and then I can call Cooper, call the cops, get someone to pick me up, blow the lid off this place. My mind races. I consider hiding in the tall grasses, but they’d find me eventually. I consider trying all the cars, seeing if the keys are in any of them, and then driving one of them back to the gate and to my car on the other side.

But the jeep blocks my way into the woods. They’d get me there as well.

Only a few heartbeats pass as I consider all these options. The umbrella rattles, holding Ness at bay. I need to get to the house. There are a handful of possibilities there, all of them insane. I could grab the boat and make my way up the coast to the next dock or bay. I could hide and call Henry or Agent Cooper, either of whom will send someone to help me. I just have to get to Ness’s house.

The edge of the tall bluff is just paces away. I run to the edge and gaze down at the beach. The dunes are steep here. But I can slide. I can make it to the beach and follow the coast.

I hear the door fly open behind me. I have to decide before they get up the stairs and see me, so I jump from the edge and into the steep face of sand. I stay on my back, arms wide, legs locked in front of me, and glissade down the sand in an avalanche.

Coming to a stop on a grassy ledge, I scoot to the edge and jump again. This time my feet catch, and I go end over end. I try to protect my head, to arrest my fall, and end up in a spread-eagle sprawl at the next lip of dune, my hair full of sand.

The murex is gone, my hand empty. I don’t have a hope of finding it, don’t even think of looking for it, but then I see it right along the ledge. It feels important somehow. Evidence. To replace the ones I lost. To make it up to Cooper. I grab the shell and lower myself off the next ledge, another avalanche of sand rushing along with me as I slide the last hundred or so feet to the beach.

I catch my breath at the base of the bluff. Looking up behind me, I see Ness peering down. He doesn’t hesitate for long; he jumps and begins sliding down the cliff face. I take off, running north, knowing I’ll never outpace him. He runs for exercise. My only hope is that he’s tired from his jog this morning, that he’ll cramp up, that he’ll let me go. Silly hopes.

I aim for the hard pack by the ocean where the running is easier. Looking over my shoulder, I see Ness is already a third of the way down the bluff. I concentrate on pumping my legs but check his progress now and then. I have a few hundred meters on him by the time he reaches the beach and takes off after me.