Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

Inside, too, the walls had begun to flake and mold, and the air flapped overhead, as though the whole place were full of nesting birds. Four steps from the platform surrounding the lantern room, just at the edge of the spill of yellow candlelight from up there, Selkirk slowed, then stopped. His gaze swung to his right and down toward his feet.

Sitting against the wall with her little porcelain ankles sticking out of the bottom of her habit and crossed at the ankle, sat a doll of a nun. From beneath the hood of the doll’s black veil, disconcertingly blue eyes peered from under long lashes. A silver crucifix lay in the doll’s lap, and miniature rosary beads trailed back down the steps, winking pale yellow and pink in the flickering light like seashells underwater. And in fact, they were bits of shell.

Glancing behind him, Selkirk spotted the other dolls he’d somehow missed. One for every other stair, on alternating walls. These were made mostly from shell, as far as he could tell. Two of them were standing, while a third sat with her legs folded underneath her and a stone tucked against her ear, as though she were listening. At the top of the steps, still another nun dangled from her curved, seashell hands on the decaying wooden banister. Not only were her eyes blue, but she was grinning like a little girl. Momentarily baffled to silence, Selkirk stumbled the rest of the way up to the lantern room. This time, he froze completely.

Even on this dark day, even through the dust and salt that caked the window glass inside and out, light flooded the chamber. None of it came from the big lamp, which of course lay unlit. Assuming it still worked at all. Across the platform, a pair of white wicker chairs sat side by side, aimed out to sea. Over their backs, the keeper had draped blankets of bright red wool, and beneath them lay a rug of similar red. And on the rug stood a house.

Like most of the dolls, it had been assembled entirely from shells and seaweed and sand. From its peaked roof, tassels of purple flowers hung like feathers, and all around the eves, gull feathers hung like the decorative flourishes on some outrageous society woman’s hat. On the rug – clearly, it served as a yard – tiny nuns prowled like cats. Some lay on their backs with their arms folded across their crucifixes, soaking up the light. One was climbing the leg of one of the wicker chairs. And a group – at least five – stood at the base of the window, staring out to sea.

And that is what reminded Selkirk of his purpose, and brought him at least part way back to himself. He glanced around the rest of the room, noting half a dozen round wooden tables evenly spaced around the perimeter. On each, yellow beeswax candles blazed in their candlesticks, lending the air a misleading tint of yellow and promising more heat than actually existed here. Mostly, the tables held doll-making things. Tiny silver crosses, multi-colored rocks, thousands of shells. The table directly to Selkirk’s right had a single place setting laid out neatly upon it. Clean white plate, fork, spoon, one chipped teacup decorated with paintings of leaping silver fish.

Selkirk realised he was staring at a crude sort of living sundial. Each day, Mrs Marchant began with her tea and breakfast, proceeded around the platform to assemble and place her nuns, spent far too long sitting in one or the other of the wicker chairs and staring at the place where it had all happened, and eventually retired, to do it all over again when daybreak came. In spite of himself, he felt a surprisingly strong twinge of pity.

“That hat can’t have helped you much,” Mrs Marchant said, straightening from a bureau near her dining table where she apparently kept her tea things. The cup she brought matched the one on her breakfast table, flying fish, chips and all, and chattered lightly on its saucer as she handed it to him.

More grateful for its warmth than he realised, Selkirk rushed the cup to his mouth and winced as the hot liquid scalded his tongue. The woman stood a little too close to him. Loose strands of her hair almost tickled the back of his hand like the fringe on a shawl. Her blue eyes flicked over his face. Then she started laughing.

“What?” Selkirk took an uncertain half-step back.

“The fish,” she said. When he stared, she laughed again and gestured at the cup. “When you drank, it looked like they were going to leap right into your teeth.”

Selkirk glanced at the side of the cup, then back to the woman’s laughing face. Judging by the layout and contents of this room, he couldn’t imagine her venturing anywhere near town, but she clearly got outside to collect supplies. As a result, her skin had retained its dusky continental coloration. A beautiful creature, and no mistake.

“I am sorry,” she said, meeting his eyes. “It’s been a long time since anyone drank from my china but me. It’s an unfamiliar sight. Come.” She started around the left side of the platform. Selkirk watched, then took the opposite route, past the seaweed table, and met the woman in the center of the seaward side of the platform, at the wicker chairs. Without waiting for him, she bent, lifted a tiny nun whose bandeau hid most of her face like a bandit’s mask off the rug, and settled in the right-hand chair. The nun wound up tucked against her hip like a rabbit.

For whom, Selkirk wondered, was the left-hand chair meant, on ordinary days? The obvious answer chilled and also saddened him, and he saw no point in wasting further time.

“Mrs Marchant—”

“Manners, Mr Selkirk,” the woman said, and for the second time smiled at him. “The sisters do not approve of being lectured to.”

It took him a moment to understand she was teasing him. And not like Amalia had, or not exactly like. Teasing him hadn’t made Amalia any happier. He sat.

“Mrs Marchant, I have bad news. Actually, it isn’t really bad news, but it may feel that way at first. I know – that is, I really think I have a sense – of what this place must mean to you. I did live in town here once, and I do know your story. But it’s not good for you, staying here. And there are more important considerations than you or your grief here, anyway, aren’t there? There are the sailors still out there braving the seas, and . . .”

Mrs Marchant cocked her head, and her eyes trailed over his face so slowly that he almost thought he could feel them, faintly, like the moisture in the air but warmer.

“Would you remove your hat, Mr Selkirk?”

Was she teasing now? She wasn’t smiling at the moment. Increasingly flustered, Selkirk settled the teacup on the floor at his feet and pulled his sopping hat from his head. Instantly, his poodle’s ruff of curls spilled onto his forehead and over his ears.

Mrs Marchant sat very still. “I’d forgotten,” she finally said. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Ma’am?”

Sighing, she leaned back. “Men’s hair by daylight.” Then she winked at him, and whispered, “The nuns are scandalised.”

“Mrs Marchant. The time has come. The Lighthouse Service – perhaps you’ve heard of it – needs to—”

“We had a dog, then,” Mrs Marchant said, and her eyes swung toward the windows.

Selkirk closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the tea unfurling in his guts, hearing the longing underneath the play in the keeper’s voice. When he opened his eyes again, he found Mrs Marchant still staring toward the horizon.

“We named the dog Luis. For my father, who died at sea while my mother and I were on our way here from Lisbon. Charlie gave him to me.”

After that, Selkirk hardly moved. It wasn’t the story, which Amalia had told him, and which he hadn’t forgotten. It was the way this woman said her husband’s name.

“He didn’t have to work, you know. Charlie. His family built half the boats that ever left this place. He said he just wanted to make certain his friends got home. Also, I think he liked living in the lighthouse. Especially alone with me. And my girls.”