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

“Smart fellow,” Selkirk murmured, realised to his amazement that he’d said it aloud, and blushed.

But the keeper simply nodded. “Yes. He was. Also reckless, in a way. No, that is wrong. He liked . . . playing at recklessness. In storms, he used to lash himself to the railing out there.” She gestured toward the thin band of metal that encircled the platform outside the windows. “Then he would lean into the rain. He said it was like sailing without having to hunt. And without leaving me.”

“Was he religious like you?” Selkirk hadn’t meant to ask anything. And Mrs Marchant looked completely baffled. “The . . .” Selkirk muttered, and gestured at the rug, the house. Sand-convent. Whatever it was.

“Oh,” she said. “It is a habit, only.” Again, she grinned, but unlike Amalia, she waited until she was certain he’d gotten the joke. Then she went on. “While my father lived here, my mother and I earned extra money making dolls for the Sacred Heart of Mary. They gave them to poor girls. Poorer than we were.”

The glow from Mrs Marchant’s eyes intensified on his cheek, as though he’d leaned nearer to a candle flame. Somehow, the feeling annoyed him, made him nervous.

“But he did leave you,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “Your husband.”

Mrs Marchant’s lips flattened slowly. “He meant to take me. The Kendall brothers – Kit was his best and oldest friend, and he’d known Kevin since the day Kevin was born – wanted us both to come sail with them, on the only beautiful January weekend I have ever experienced here. 1837. The air was so warm, Mr Selkirk, and the whales gone for the winter. I didn’t realise until then that Charlie had never once, in his whole life, been to sea. I’d never known until that weekend that he wanted to go. Of course I said yes. Then Luis twisted his foreleg in the rocks out there, and I stayed to be with him. And I made Charlie go anyway. He was blonde like you. Did you know that?”

Shifting in his seat, Selkirk stared over the water. The sky hung heavy and low, its color an unbroken blackish grey, so that he no longer had any idea what time it was. After noon, surely. If he failed to conclude his business here soon, he’d never make it out of Winsett before nightfall, horse or no. At his feet, the nuns watched the water.

“Mrs Marchant.”

“He wasn’t as tall as you are, of course. Happier, though.”

Selkirk swung his head toward the woman. She took no notice.

“Of course, why wouldn’t he be? He had so much luck in his short life. More than anyone deserves or has any right to expect. The Sacred Heart of Mary sisters always taught that it was bad luck to consort with the lucky. What do you make of that, Mr Selkirk?”

It took Selkirk several seconds to sort the question, and as he sat, Mrs Marchant stood abruptly and put her open palm on the window. For a crazy second, just because of the stillness of her posture and the oddly misdirected tilt of her head – toward land, away from the sea – Selkirk wondered if she were blind, like her dolls.

“I guess I’ve never been around enough luck to say,” Selkirk finally said.

She’d been looking down the coast, but now she turned to him, beaming once more. “The sisters find you an honest man, sir. They invite you to more tea.”

Returning to the bureau with his cup, she refilled it, then sat back down beside him. She’d left the nun she’d had before on the bureau, balancing in the center of a white plate like a tiny ice skater.

“The morning after they set sail,” she said, “Luis woke me up.” In the window, her eyes reflected against the grey. “He’d gotten better all through the day, and he’d been out all night. He loved to be. I often didn’t see him until I came outside to hang the wash or do the chores. But that day, he scratched and whined against the door. I thought he’d fallen or hurt himself again and hurried to let him in. But when I did, he raced straight past me up the stairs. I hurried after, and found him whimpering against the light there. I was so worried that I didn’t even look at the window for the longest time. And when I did . . .”

All the while, Mrs Marchant had kept her hands pressed together in the folds of her dress, but now she opened them. Selkirk half-expected a nun to flap free of them on starfish wings, but they were empty. “So much whiteness, Mr Selkirk. And yet it was dark. You wouldn’t think that would be possible, would you?”

“I’ve lived by the sea all my life,” Selkirk said.

“Well, then. That’s what it was like. A wall of white that shed no light at all. I couldn’t even see the water. I had the lamp lit, of course, but all that did was emphasise the difference between in here and out there .”

Selkirk stood. If he were Charlie Marchant, he thought, he would never have left the Convent, as he’d begun to think of the whole place. Not to go to sea. Not even to town. He found himself remembering the letters he’d sent Amalia during his dock-working years. Pathetic, clumsy things. She’d never responded to those, either. Maybe she’d been trying, in her way, to be kind.

“I’ve often wondered if Luis somehow sensed the ship coming,” Mrs Marchant said. “We’d trained him to bark in the fog, in case a passing captain could hear but not see us. But maybe that day Luis was just barking at the whiteness.

“The sound was unmistakable when it came. I heard wood splintering. Sails collapsing. A mast smashing into the water. But there wasn’t any screaming. And I thought . . .”

“You thought maybe the crew had escaped to the lifeboats,” Selkirk said, when it was clear Mrs Marchant was not going to finish her sentence.

For the first time in several minutes, Mrs Marchant turned her gaze on him. Abruptly, that luminous smile crept over her lips. “You would make the most marvelous stuffed giraffe,” she said.

Selkirk stiffened. Was he going to have to carry this poor, gently raving woman out of here? “Mrs Marchant, it’s already late. We need to be starting for town soon.”

If she understood what he meant, she gave no sign. “I knew what ship it was.” She sank back into her wicker chair, the smile gone, and crossed her legs. “What other vessel would be out there in the middle of winter? I started screaming, pounding the glass. It didn’t take me long to realise they wouldn’t have gone to the rowboats. In all likelihood, they’d had no idea where they were. The Kendall boys were experienced seamen, excellent sailors, Mr Selkirk. But that fog had dropped straight out of the heart of the sky, or maybe it had risen from the dead sea bottom, and it was solid as stone.

“And then – as if it were the fogbank itself, and not Charlie’s boat, that had run aground on the sandbar out there – all that whiteness just shattered. The whole wall cracked apart into whistling, flying fragments. Just like that, the blizzard blew in. How does that happen, Mr Selkirk? How does the sea change its mind like that?”

Selkirk didn’t answer. But for the first time, he thought he understood why the sailors in the Blubber Pike referred to those teasing, far-off flickers of light the way they did.

“I rushed downstairs, thinking I’d get the rowboat and haul myself out there and save them. But the waves . . . they were snarling and snapping all over themselves, and I knew I’d have to wait. My tears were freezing on my face. I was wearing only a dressing gown, and the wind whipped right through me. The door to the lighthouse was banging because I hadn’t shut it properly, and I was so full of fury and panic I was ready to start screaming again. I looked out to sea, and all but fell to my knees in gratitude.

“It was there, Mr Selkirk. I could see the ship. Some of it, anyway. Enough, perhaps. I could just make it out. The prow, part of the foredeck, a stump of mast. I turned around and raced back inside for my clothes.