Page 35

Thirty-One

The Reach.

Early evening. The sun has been beating down hard on the island all day, but it’s cold here. It always is. It’s high up and exposed to the elements, but John thinks there’s more to it than that. It’s the extremity of the place. You’re far away from the heart of the island, and whatever warmth circulates back there has faded by the time it gets here. It’s a place of last resort. As far as you can go before there’s nowhere left to go at all.

He stands a distance back from the edge.

For as long as he can remember, it’s been a tradition for kids to approach that and get as close as they dare. Egging each other on. Not wanting to let themselves down and be laughed at. So many rites of passage seem to involve staring death in the face. And maybe that’s not so strange, but it also strikes him as a shame that it’s what the world expects of children.

It makes him think of James Palmer—bullied for carrying his toy lion to school—and how the world might be a better place if people judged a little less, and understood and cared a little more.

The wind whips around him. Despite the temperature, the sight before him is beautiful. The setting sun is burning the edges of the clouds and bruising the sky behind them. Countless fiery flickers of light are appearing and vanishing on the water, scattered in tiny lines all the way to the horizon.

If this ends up being the last thing he ever sees, it isn’t so bad.

Because it isn’t just the temperature that’s making him shiver. He thinks about the phone call he received at the cemetery. The man told John that his name was Michael Johnson, and that he needed help. John recognized the name: Michael Johnson was the teenager who had been working in the shop at the rest area that day. Johnson couldn’t talk about what had happened over the phone, he claimed; it was too much of a risk. Even seeing each other in person might be dangerous. Throughout the call, he had sounded panicked and frightened, and John hadn’t needed him to explain why. He had simply suggested the most isolated spot he could think of for the two of them to meet.

Perhaps John really is about to meet Michael Johnson here. But it seems equally possible that it’s someone else who is coming for him now. A man who has been manipulating him this whole time. A man made of smoke. Because however convincing he might have sounded on the phone, John isn’t sure he believed a word of it.

But it’s his responsibility to deal with.

And if he can’t? The suicide note he wrote is still there in the glove compartment of his car. Notify my son. Before leaving the house to come here, he sat down at the computer, erased almost all of his browsing history, and changed the password. If something happens to him today, there will be just enough information for Daniel to pick up the trail and follow it—but only if he wants to. The trail is oblique enough for Daniel to miss the meaning if he isn’t paying attention, or to ignore it if he wants. He can stay out of this; he can remain safe. To John, that feels like the way things have to be.

But it won’t come to that. He’s going to deal with it himself.

He stands for a while, entranced by the view.

And then—

“John.”

He turns around. Craig Aspinall is walking up the footpath from the car park, and the sight of the man gives John’s heart a small jolt. Fuck. There is nothing strange about Craig being here, of course; he roams around the island every day, acting as an unofficial caretaker of its beauty spots. But this is the worst possible time for him to show up. John has to get rid of him as quickly as he can without making him suspicious.

“Craig,” he calls.

Aspinall throws a salute.

“Hey there. You okay?”

“I’m good.” John turns and nods at the sea. “Just out here admiring the view.”

Craig stops beside him and stares out.

“Ah yeah,” he says. “It’s always so pretty at this time of the day.”

“Isn’t it just,” John says.

It’s already obvious from Craig’s body language that he isn’t intending to head off straightaway, and John feels a prickle of sweat on his back. He needs the man to leave, but he can’t afford to give the impression that anything is wrong. He has to go through the motions as best he can—act as though this is just another day. He’s just out here enjoying nature. There isn’t a monster somewhere out there in the trees, watching them both right now.

As always, Craig offers him a cup of coffee from his thermos. John sips from it and does his best to engage in the requisite small talk. How are they doing? They’re both doing well—or at least, as they ruefully acknowledge to each other, as well as you can be doing when you get to their ages. What have they both been up to? Not much. Craig talks about the daily tours he makes: checking on the land; repairing signs and fences; picking up litter. People, right? he says, and John nods. People indeed. Craig asks how retirement is treating him, and John tells him that it’s better than he expected, that he enjoys a quiet life with a slower pace. And as he says it, it surprises him to realize that it’s true. Or that it was, before now.

A moment of silence.

“And how’s your boy?” Craig says.

“Not a boy anymore. ”

“Ha! I guess not. Time, right?”

“It gets away from you.”

John thinks about the last time he spoke to Daniel, when he was driving to Darren Field’s house. It seems like a lifetime ago. But even then, it had been weeks since their previous conversation. How is Daniel? It’s not a question he can answer, and that causes a flower of sadness to bloom in his heart. He knows very little about his son’s life.

But he does know one thing at least.

“I’m proud of him, though,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” John takes another sip of coffee. “He’s doing great.”

Despite himself, he glances back at the trail that leads up to here from the car park. There’s nobody there. But something strange happens while he’s looking: after his head stops moving, the landscape doesn’t. The wall of trees behind him continues to rotate for a second. And when he turns back, the same thing happens again. He tries to focus on Craig, but the man keeps being farther to the side than he should be, and his face has too many eyes now.

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that,” Craig says quietly.

John looks down at the thermos cup he’s holding.

He thinks about all the times out here on the trails that he’s taken a coffee from Craig: just two old men sharing a drink, shooting the breeze, and putting the world to rights. But he notices that, even though Craig has as many hands right now as he does eyes, all of them are empty.

He’s not drinking today.

Damn , John thinks.

“It’s all that we want, isn’t it?” Craig says. “Our kids to be okay.”

John stumbles a little. Drops the cup.

“You… have kids, Craig?”

“I did once.”

“I didn’t—”

Something pounds against John’s right arm with such force that it knocks the breath out of him and bruises his lungs. There’s a moment of disorientation, and then he registers that it was the ground that just hit him, or vice versa, and that the edge of the Reach ahead has flipped upward into a ragged vertical scar. A second later, the world begins to spin sickeningly. Craig’s muddy boots appear in front of him, but the sight of them is already lost in the whirling circle that life is becoming.

Damn , John thinks again.

Craig’s voice drifts in from a different place.

“I did once,” he says again. “But not anymore.”