The lamp was crimmed, the oil fountains and canteens were filled up and the lens and machinery cleaned, which proved that the work of the 15th had been completed. The pots and pans had been cleaned and the kitchen tidied up, which showed that the man who had been acting as cook had completed his work, which goes to prove that the men disappeared on the afternoon that Captain Holman had passed the Flannan Islands in the steamer ARCHTOR at midnight on the 15th, and could not observe the light.
There were echoes of the Marie Celeste about it all. What, really, had happened to those men? Could they truly have been carried off by some freak wave during a storm? A wave that must have crashed nearly 150 feet high against the cliffs, reaching almost to where the crane emplacement itself was set into the rock.
I climb the stairs that spiral up the inside of the tower, leading to a circular wood-panelled room. Above my head is the grille into which the lamp is set, providing a floor for maintenance and cleaning. I negotiate the last few rungs of an iron ladder that takes me up to the light room itself. And what an extraordinary space it is. Glass prisms acting as lenses, providing an unrestricted view of the Flannan Isles and the ocean beyond, through 360 degrees. The glass is misted, caked by salt carried on the wind and sparkling like frost. I hear the roar of the elements outside, and see white tops breaking all the way to the horizon. I can see, through the grille beneath my feet, down into the room below. The lamp itself is twice my height, spherical, comprising glass fins on its exterior to reflect the light, and set to revolve on a complex electrical mechanism set into the floor. To stand here, in the dark, with the lamp turning, would be blinding.
I stay there for some time gazing out at the world, feeling unsettled, insecure. Why had I come out here all those times? Where did I get the keys? And I realise that not only do I have no memories that pre-date the day before yesterday, I still have no idea what kind of man I was. Sally had said she loved me, but she also said that I had changed. Had I really? I had hidden so much from her, that the me she thought she knew had not been the real me at all, just a figment of my own invention. A liar. A deceiver.
It is with a great sense of dissatisfaction that I leave the lighthouse, finally, locking it up behind me and replacing the keys below the stone. I have learned nothing, least of all about myself. The first spots of rain whip into my face on the edge of a sudden squall, and as I hurry from the gate I see rain sweeping in from the south-west, a long trailing arm of it, darker even than the cloud from which it falls. I start down the steep concrete path, but realise I will never reach the boat before the rain hits. And it is too late to go back. Instead, I make a dash for the ruined chapel, which is just a short sprint away across the grass. Its roof of stone and turf has collapsed in places, but still affords a degree of shelter. I stoop beneath the lintel of the open doorway, and turn to look out and see the island vanish in the rain that sweeps across it like mist.
I move back, then, into the chapel and stumble on something beneath my feet, having to steady myself with outstretched hand on the cold, damp wall. There is very little light, and it takes some moments for my eyes to adjust.
At first I find it hard to believe what I am seeing. A man is lying spreadeagled on the floor, legs outstretched and twisted at an impossible angle. His head is half turned, and I can see where it has been split open, pale grey brain matter congealed in the dried blood that has pooled around it.
I feel acid rising in my throat, from shock and revulsion. I swallow it back, and find myself gasping for breath. My legs have turned to jelly beneath me and will hardly support my weight. After several long seconds, I crouch down, fingertips on the floor to steady me, and force myself to look at his face. He is an older man, grey hair thinning. Mid, perhaps late, fifties. Corpulent. He wears an anorak and jeans, and what look like relatively new hiking boots. If he is known to me, I have no memory of him. But it is clear that he has not been freshly killed. Certainly not today, and probably not yesterday. And since there is no decay that I can see, or smell, he cannot surely have been dead for more than a few days.
A crack in my mind’s defences opens up to allow in the unthinkable. Three days ago I was here. On this island. The next day I was washed ashore on the beach at Luskentyre, all memory lost in a cloud of black dread, knowing that something terrible had occurred.
I look at this man lying on the floor in front of me, his head smashed in, and I ask myself the question that has been clotting in my stream of consciousness. Was it me who killed him?
I close my eyes, fists clenching, sick to my stomach at the thought of it. But it is a thought that won’t go away, growing inside me like a cancer. Is this why I have blocked all memory of the past? I stand up too quickly, blood rushing to my head, and stagger to the door, supporting myself on the stone as I lean out into the wind and rain to throw up acid and coffee.
I am shaking, tears springing to my eyes with the burning of the acid. It feels as if the earth has opened up beneath my feet and I am falling helplessly into eternity, or hell, or both. A short way off, to the east, I hear the growl of the sea as it rushes into a deep cleft in the cliffs nearly 200 feet below. And I am startled to see a group of people in brightly coloured waterproofs, fighting their way up the concrete path towards the lighthouse, leaning into the wind and the rain. Tourists, I realise. A group almost certainly brought out on Seatrek’s inflatable RIB from Uig, and landed below just before the squall struck.
Now shock at the thought that I might have killed this man combines with fear of being caught. Blinded by panic, and robbed of all reason, I dash out on to the slope just as the rain passes and a momentary break in the cloud sprinkles sunshine across the island like fairy dust. The tourists have almost reached the lighthouse above me, and I don’t look back to register if I have been seen. Locked instead in my cocoon of denial, I slither down the wet concrete and run down the steps with an almost reckless disregard for my own safety.
Below me, Seatrek’s red and black Delta Super X RIB rises and falls on the swell, anchored a few feet away from the jetty. I see a man waiting aboard her for the tourists to return. He calls to me as I reach the foot of the steps as if he knows me, voice raised above the wind and the sea. But I ignore him, dragging my tender back down the steps and leaping recklessly into her, almost capsizing her in the process. I don’t even look in his direction as he calls again, pulling instead on the starter cord, almost frantic in my desire to be gone from this place. It coughs into life on the third pull, and I gun the throttle, banking away against the incoming waves to race out across the bay to where Coinneach’s Sundancer awaits me.
I nearly fall overboard as I transfer from one to the other, but scramble safely on to the stern, before hauling the inflatable aboard and tethering her. I fire up the motor and accelerate hard away to the south-east. I look back only once as I round the eastern tip of Eilean Tighe, and see the distant figure of the man who called to me still standing in his boat, watching me go.
Chapter eight
I am seized now by a sense of urgency. I desperately need to know who I am and what it is I have done. And since I got back to the cottage I have been tearing it apart, without a thought for what the owner might say. I am beyond caring.