Abby Geni - The Lightkeepers

The fourth time she did this, we were itemizing the contents of the bathroom cabinet. The trouble with having so many roommates is that nothing ever gets thrown away. Everyone assumes that a razor or bar of soap belongs to someone else. Over the seasons, the cabinet has become a museum of relics: moldy cotton swabs, fossilized tubes of toothpaste, empty boxes of dental floss. I tossed an entire collection of plastic combs into the trash. Charlene glanced at me and started to speak. Then she shook her head, frowning.

“Let’s take a break,” I said.

We headed down the stairs — which were gleaming, by the way — and sat on the couch, piling quilts over ourselves. Through the window, the sea had been churned into a mess of whitecaps, as frothy as whipped cream. Oliver’s aquarium appeared to be empty, but I knew better. He was biding his time, pretending to be pebbles and glass. The radiator clanked in the corner, trying in vain to cope with the breeze. Charlene’s brow was furrowed.

“Get it off your chest,” I said. “Whatever it is. You’ll feel better.”

“It’s nothing. It’s probably nothing.”

I waited. She glanced around, then leaned in. This amused me. It would be hard to find two people who were less likely to be overheard than we were.

“I know something,” she said softly.

“Oh?”

“It’s a little weird.” She paused, biting her lip. “It’s about Andrew.”

His name caught me off guard. A ripple of nausea passed through me. Blinking rapidly, I fixed my gaze on the window I had just washed. The glass glowed with a pale, crystalline light.

“The night he died,” Charlene said, “I heard something.”

I sucked in a breath, my eyes lifted. In the corner of the windowpane, I noticed a spider web I had unaccountably missed.

“My room is next to the front door,” Charlene said. “I hear all kinds of things. If anybody goes anywhere, I know about it. When I first got here — God! — I didn’t sleep at all. Lucy would be vacuuming until ten, and Galen would be at the table, writing in that little green notebook of his and clearing his throat constantly. When I finally dropped off, Forest would wake me at four in the morning. You know how loud he can be.” She sighed. “Four in the morning. Running down the stairs. Yelling at the top of his lungs. Slamming every door in the house.”

Still, I said nothing. The spider web swayed in a draft. The radiator clanked one last time, then fizzled to a halt, and the room was silent.

Undeterred, Charlene went on. “I can sleep through most things now, unless it’s unusual. If it’s a noise I’m expecting, like Lucy singing in her sleep or somebody looking for a book in the living room, I don’t wake up. I’m used to that stuff. But that night — the night Andrew—”

She broke off. In spite of myself, I met her gaze. Her face was suffused with color now, her cheeks burning. I swallowed hard.

“Tell me,” I said. “What did you hear?”

“I heard someone leaving,” she said. “Around eleven. I thought it was Mick and Forest. They do that sometimes. Go out together, I mean.”

Her gaze slipped to the side.

“Anyway,” she went on hurriedly, “I fell asleep after that. It gets a little confused. . There was something. A small noise, very soft. I might have imagined it. Or maybe it was an animal. I fell asleep again.”

That was me, I thought. Me leaving the cabin. I was the small noise. Charlene was fiddling absently with a lock of rust-colored hair. Her voice was low and musical, almost chanting.

“Then I heard Andrew,” she said. “I heard him go outside. I remember lying in bed, listening. Somebody was on the porch. I heard footsteps. It took me a while to be certain. He coughed. I knew Andrew’s cough. And then—” Charlene paused, eyes closed. “And then I heard voices.”

“Voices?”

“That’s right. Andrew was talking to someone.”

The full weight of what she was saying seemed to crash over me in a wave. No one should have been outside with Andrew. He had been alone on the grounds. He had lost his footing alone. He had died alone.

“I’m sure of it,” she said. “I know what I heard. Two voices.”

“But who was the other person?”

Charlene let out a long, slow breath. “I don’t know. I just know it wasn’t Andrew. He was out there with somebody else.”

YOU ALWAYS LOVED fairy tales. On quiet evenings, on lazy Saturday mornings, I was accustomed to curling up at your side with Hansel and Gretel or The Little Mermaid . You did not incline, however, toward the more modern interpretations with their happy endings, everything comforting and sanitary. You were not interested in a version of Little Red Riding Hood in which no one got eaten, or a variant of Cinderella in which the wicked stepmother and her daughters repented and were forgiven.

Instead I heard about Ariel, the mermaid who was given the gift of life on land, the ability to breathe air, and two human legs — for a terrible price. Everywhere she went, for the rest of time, she felt as though she were stepping on shards of broken glass. In your favorite take on The Pied Piper , the flute player did not lead the children away from their homes, only to return them again to their jubilant parents. Instead, he guided them all into the river to drown. In your version of Cinderella , the wicked stepmother was never offered forgiveness. She came to Cinderella’s wedding feast, where a pair of iron shoes was clapped onto her feet, red-hot from sitting in the fire. In those shoes, she was forced to dance until she dropped down dead.

These days, I wonder whether you may have been onto something. Modern fairy tales have been altered, over the years, to paint a picture of a safe and ordered world. There is magic in these stories, to be sure — witches, ogres, and giants. And yet, even the supernatural takes its place in the greater scheme of things, the moral arrangement of life. Virtue is rewarded, malice punished. Good people prosper; bad people do not. In the newest version of Sleeping Beauty , the benevolent fairies are recompensed for their integrity, living a charmed existence. The more enigmatic witch of The Snow Queen , on the other hand, suffers to a certain extent, yet survives. And the most evil creatures of all, like the hag in Hansel and Gretel —monsters who lie and cheat and have a penchant for cannibalism — are slain without mercy. In modern fairy tales, karma is a bitch.

But you had no time for such whitewashed fables. You preferred stories that were chaotic and enigmatic. The world of your fairy tales — though magical — showed the world as it actually is. Secrets flourish undiscovered. Loved ones die. Danger is not always perceptible. Evil goes unpunished. There is no order; there is no safety. I believe this is what you were trying to tell me.

I HAVEN’T THOUGHT much about my conversation with Charlene. I have not wanted to consider it. And yet, against my will, it has never been far from my mind. It is like a bright light in the corner of the room — too bright to look at directly. Though I have been keeping my gaze averted, I am still aware of that uncomfortable glow.

I know what she was suggesting. I have even dreamed about it. Andrew on the rocks, facing the sea. His skin agleam. His breath steaming the air. A dark figure behind him, rising up. Stone in hand. I have heard the grunt of pain. I have seen the splash of blood. I have watched Andrew’s body tumble down.

What I have decided, finally, is that Charlene was wrong. Charlene was mistaken. The cabin is old. Sounds carry unaccountably between the rooms through the pipes and heating grates; I have noticed it before. Once, as I was sitting at the table, I realized that I could hear Lucy gargling in the bathroom upstairs as clear as a bell, while in the kitchen the bang of pots and pans seemed muffled. On the night in question, something similar could have happened. Charlene might have heard Andrew on the porch, along with Mick and Forest murmuring in their bedroom. She might have conflated two different events: footsteps outside the house, voices inside the house.