And then I heard it. A moan. A squeal of bedsprings. A gusty sigh. Andrew and Lucy were having sex downstairs.
I limped down the hall to the bathroom. I leaned over the toilet, attempting to throw up again, but nothing happened. I shuffled back to my room. I was weak enough that even this little jaunt exhausted me. Still, without pause, I bundled myself up under half a dozen sweaters. I hummed under my breath to block out any ambient sounds that might drift up through the floorboards. Gripping the banister, I descended the stairs. I left the cabin through the front door.
Even at the time, I was aware that this was a terrible idea. We all had been warned so many times. It was easy to get turned around at night on Southeast Farallon. The cabin and the coast guard house were not useful landmarks — dark shapes against a dark sky. The swiveling beam of the lighthouse was inconstant, disorienting. The roar of the sea came undistinguished from every point of the compass. There was no paved path. Many of the biologists had been injured, dislocating a knee or fracturing a wrist. I myself had been gutted by a sharp stone, and that was in broad daylight. I still bore the scar. Once, an intern had become so befuddled that he had spent an entire night hunched beside a boulder, unable to locate the cabin again, unwilling to imperil himself further by abandoning the meager shelter he had found. He had nearly succumbed to hypothermia before Galen discovered him the next morning.
And, of course, there were people who had disappeared. In the old days, when the eggers and pirates had overrun the islands, one or two men had vanished every season. They would go for a walk and were never seen again.
After a few minutes, I started shivering. There was a mist in the air, collecting against my skin like gauze. The moon was bright that night, bathing the flat surfaces in a blue glow. I thought I saw a figure ahead of me. It seemed to be moving toward the coast guard house. I squinted, my heart beginning to pound. But the shape melted away. There was no one else on the grounds. The fog often played tricks like this on the mind, tangling the moonlight in bright pockets, coating the air in planes of iridescent sheen.
During my time on the islands, I had, for the most part, ignored the coast guard house, as everyone did. Though it stood only a hundred feet from the cabin, a duplicate of our own home, we all left it alone, treating it like an optical illusion — a mirage in the desert, to be seen but not touched. Mick had told me that it wasn’t safe to try the porch steps of this ancient structure, let alone go inside. The floorboards would be rotten after so many years. Even the animals gave the place a wide berth. During the summer months, the gulls nested all over the islands, pitching camp on any free inch of grass. But they did not attempt to penetrate the coast guard house. Only the bats were bold enough to claim those empty rooms and eerie silences for their own.
Now I pushed the door open with a groan of hinges. The floor was spongy beneath my feet. My arrival disturbed the bats, who launched themselves into flight, filling the air with their frenetic wingbeats. The rooms were clean of furniture. A crumpled piece of fabric lay on the floor. It looked a bit like one of Forest’s ratty undershirts. The air had a stale quality, like the interior of a cave. I shut the door behind me. At once, I felt better. There is something fundamental in the desire to have a door to close, sealing out the rest of the world.
The exertion of my brief walk had left me dizzy. I was seeing spots. I sat down cross-legged. A bat flitted past my cheek. There were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. I could not quite see them — gray on black — but I could feel their bustle and flutter. They whirled like an indoor tornado. A swollen moon dangled above the horizon. The beam of the lighthouse swept across the sea. I listened to the pounding of the waves. I smelled mildew and rot. Nature was reclaiming the coast guard house. Mice and insects were in the process of destroying it.
There was a sound. I could not identify it — somewhere between a violin and a siren. It reverberated around the room, then dissipated. It reminded me of something, but I did not have time to consider the matter. The energy of the bats was increasing. They were moving fast, rocketing past my body, clipping me with their wings, brushing my cheek. They touched me over and over.
The bats began to rise. It happened all at once, as though they had received a command. I could see them spiraling upward in a column of smoky gray. Their wings shook the air. Everything seemed to be vibrating. My mouth was open. My palms burned. I watched the flock pour out through a broken window. Their numbers were enough to blacken the stars. They erased the moon.
Then I heard the sound again. A call. A keening.
It was the whales. This time I recognized their music. The breeze came through the window, battering my hair out of my face. The bats swirled inside the gust. I could not get my bearings. I could not catch my breath. The harmony grew louder and louder until it thundered in my ears. The coast guard house seemed to be moving around me, or else I was moving inside it. For a moment I thought I was underwater. I screamed. My voice was lost in the song. I could feel the waves crashing over me — or the wind — or the bats. I thought the whales were there too. Something was surging in the darkness, sending out pulses of noise and motion. Massive bodies rolling in the tide. Their flippers disarranging the swell of the surf, knocking me off balance. Their tails scooping holes in the material of the world. They were coming for me. Their music made my body tremble, struck like a tuning fork. The sound was mournful and otherworldly, almost human, like a cry of pleasure or pain.
I must have dozed off. Maybe I fainted. When I came to, the coast guard house was empty and dark. In the stillness, I was alone.
12
I MIGHT EVENTUALLY HAVE made a more concerted break for freedom. I might have pushed the rowboat out on my own and headed for the mainland. (The Janus would have been smarter, but I could never have started that motor without aid.) I might have told someone what had happened. I might have told Mick, however daunting it would be, stepping into the bright glare of a spotlight, all my wounds exposed. I might have smashed Andrew’s head in with a rock. I might have leapt from my bedroom window, like a dewy chick tumbling from the cliff’s edge, not yet able to fly.
But on the morning of the fourth day, everything changed.
The sun was high when I awoke. Dimly, I was aware of some kind of disturbance. For a moment I thought I was still in the coast guard house — but no, during the night I had made it back somehow. My fever was undiminished. Sweating beneath the blankets, I slid in and out of a hot, honey-colored dream. A persistent banging roused me. Someone was hammering on my bedroom door.
“Get up!” Mick shouted. “Galen wants all hands on deck.”
“I’m too sick,” I called back.
The door flew open, and Mick strode into the room. He looked even larger than usual today, his girth increased by a heavy vest.
“Get up,” he said. “We need you.”
He gazed down at me for a moment. Then he yanked the covers away. I shrieked as he hefted me out of bed. Boots were shoved over my pajamas. He tugged a sweater onto my torso. Before I could gather my wits, he had frog-marched me out of the room and down the stairs. My heart was thumping so wildly that I thought I might pass out. A shape flicked by — I almost screamed — but it was only Charlene, wrapping a scarf around her neck as she raced out the front door. Her expression was grave.