Chapter 31 Haunt
Haunt
Off in the distance, it does not appear the sky and sea ever meet.
Instead, in that great black divide, an increasing in scale crevasse levitates between the two.
It is but a portal to when the universe was new, when no stars or planetary bodies made us feel less alone in our surroundings as we drifted in empty night.
Out there, in that space, true loneliness exists.
All sailors throughout time must have felt it as they looked out from the railing of their vessels.
Perhaps, not knowing in measurable distance from land in meters or miles, but in units of time, in the months that it would take to get back to any shore from where they floated surrounded by nothing but water.
It does not matter whether they came from pyramid builders, colosseum fighters, dynasty rulers or star mappers—in that emptiness, it might as well be them and the universe alone on the sea.
In some way, I can see some truth into why sailors are so often unfaithful to their wives. It is for a foolish wish that some carnal desire could fill that desolate hole that lives out beyond the horizon. That place they know they could so easily fall into just one step off the end of the bow.
I know that I myself, have been filling that nebulous chasm with Lir.
He has been floating in that tar filled bathtub, filling it like a whale in a fishbowl—so stretched to every edge that I cannot see or feel the grief below, besides that which seeps up just at his edges.
Now that he has finally freed himself from it, I am forced to come to terms with my reflection in that dark water.
I don’t really forgive Eli, but looking out at this storm where my eyes cannot adjust to see any shape, form or hope within—I understand him.
My heart breaks for my marriage all over again, because I have now looked out into the same abyss he did—and I understand him now more than I ever had when he was alive.
Sorrow is out there in that darkness, and it moves and molds my mind with the pounding fists of the storm.
I understand now how someone would give anything to not see it when they close their eyes.
To forget for just a moment that it still looms out there even when you have sailed far away, even when you are back in a warm bed—anyone’s warm bed, that the despair out at the edge of the world will still always exist.
Though my tea has grown cold and over-steeped, I still grip the mug tightly in my hands.
Thumbing the crack at its edge for comfort, I take another bitter sip.
Purposefully catching my mouth on the edge of the chipped rim, I linger on the sharp clay which so resembles a certain someone’s pronounced canine that catches on my lip.
The crack continues down the side of the mug, fracturing out like lightning into tiny surface fissures so microscopic they seem to disappear into the glaze itself.
These scars that wrap around this cup do not make it any less valuable to me.
My first thought is to think of others, to think of Lir, to think of my dead husband, to think of every other person in my life I should probably have more empathy for—but, why not think of myself.
As Lir has said, “Think of yourself, Andrea…”
That is not something Eli would have ever said to me, even in death he would probably be happy to know the turmoil I have felt over him.
It was never about loving me, or us—his joy in love came from how much he himself could be loved.
How much his cup could be filled, adorned and displayed.
So yes, he would probably in some way love the idea of being a martyr, of being so desperately missed and cried over—that was probably a better fate for him in his mind than to be what he always blamed me for—tying him down.
I had not wanted to damper out his indomitable spirit as he had accused me of doing, but why could I have not been unbound with him.
Why was my body meant, in his mind, to be chained to our home with the same certainty that his was meant to be free.
But, I know what happened to Eli. I know where his spirit and flesh got him, it is conceivable to my mind—the worry I feel now is not visions of him climbing up the stairs, it is no longer his arms I imagine I’m seeing grasping up from the waves.
The fear I hold now is in the not knowing.
Not knowing if Lir is alright in this storm, is what really destroys me from atop this lighthouse.
I do not know the parameters of his body—I do not know him like I know human flesh, like I understand how my own body would be instantly swallowed up in the churning below.
Water in his lungs cannot kill him, the pounding of waves cannot kill him, and even almost bleeding out could not bring him to his end.
All these things I have witnessed should comfort me, but instead they just play over and over in my mind’s stage.
These visions loop around in my brain like the magnetic tape in the radio room.
Intruding thoughts that wrack through me over and over with no brass toggle to turn them off.
They are worse than the dreams, than the nightmares—for they claw at me from the shadows of reality that I cannot escape.
They rake at my mind and pull at my scalp keeping my eyes open, forcing me to look out at the black waves that my light gleams out over in repetitive coils.
I can feel my pupils dilating continuously as the bulb circles back around to the same spot that I am stuck affixed on.
Within my skull, that muscle’s twitching is the most horrible itch.
The mechanical buzzing around me echoes back as a scratch that never quite reaches through to the right spot to quell any of prickling they alternate between.
Vertigo and nausea rise in my throat as I am overtaken with these thoughts, they grow within me, dividing in amorphous blobs that crawl under my skin.
For just a moment, I am able to un-freeze my sweating palms from their grasp around each other in my lap.
They had been wringing out an imaginary towel to violently that I worry my knuckles will burst out from their thin parchment paper coverings.
To distract myself, I pull out from under my chair a book that appears to be about ocean mammals.
It wasn’t there for storage, but shoved under the foot keep the warped wood legs of the stool level.
Flipping through it, I can see it’s more of a textbook than light reading, but reading Latin, or attempting to at least, is enough to ground my feet to the floor—it’s enough to feel like my head in firmly planted back on my shoulders.
Huh, a blue whale can dive down five-hundred meters. How far down can a merman dive and be safe?
The whole building shakes as another whip strikes the walls, crackling sea foam in its path even up to the glass of the lens.
Flipping to the back of the book, I try to focus on just reading the index where Roman numerals and definitions can swirl around in my brain instead of the swells.
In the appendix, I squint at the charts and topographic maps trying to ignore a few more wave crashes that pull my shoulders into my ears.
The boring data shifts turns into illustrations though, as if some scientist desperately wanted to sneak in an art gallery right at the very end of the manuscript.
Between these watercolor and ink drawings are little notes about the creatures sailors once imagined to be great chimeras that now science has obviously disproven to be real.
They are but instead rare animals such as giant squids, narwhals and oarfish.
After taking a moment to look over the top edge of the book, to spy out again at the ocean, but not seeing any signs of boats or Lir, I allow myself to trace over the sketches of mermaids.
Running my fingers over the familiar tail that spirals around the edge of the page, I follow the medieval style illumination that twirls between the words that are some dedication at the end of the book.
In some final thought, the author writes of how far we have come as explorers to disprove such things.
Imaginary. Hallucinations. Myths.
The words feel letterpress raised, a burning stamp through the back cover of the book and into my lap. In these nights without sleep, I can’t help think that I too have been just imagining Lir.
So quickly, without him here, I have become an unmoored ship, my rope of sanity just a thin thread that threatens to break as easily as a spider’s web.
Feeling heavy in my pocket, I pull out the blade he carved for me.
Thumbing over the details, I press my forehead into its curved handle in my hands.
A delusion could not carve this for me, nor could it have just washed up this way in any sort of happenstance like a rock that resembles some recognizable shape.
It is real, as Lir is real because they exist in this reality that I found myself within.
The scrimshaw feels as if it is radiating warmth into my palms, as if he himself is in their grip—and I cry.
Not for grief, not for fear of the looming darkness, not for any wish to have him back to just fill some longing in my chest that his shape happens to fit perfectly within.
No, I cry because I love him more than all of that grief, than all the regret that haunts me—and with him supporting the crumbling joists of my heart, I can finally untether myself from it.