Authority (31 page)

Slowly the beam of his flashlight panned across the top of the shelves, then onto
the ceiling, maybe nine feet above him. It had an unfinished feeling, that ceiling.
Irregular and exposed, of different shades, the wooden planks were crossed by an X
of two beams, and appeared to have been built around the shelves. The shelves continued
to rise, empty, all the way up to the ceiling and then beyond. He could just see the
gap where the next row of shelves continued, beyond the ceiling. After a moment more
of inspection, Control noticed a thin, nearly invisible cut along the two beams that
formed a square. A trapdoor? In the ceiling.

Control considered that. It could just lead to an air duct or more storage space,
but in trying to imagine where this room existed in the layout of the building, he
had to take into account that it lay just opposite Whitby’s favorite spot in the cafeteria,
and that this meant, if the stairs to the third level lay between them, that there
could be considerable space up above, tucked in under the stairs.

He went to work looking for the ladder, found it, retractable, hidden in a back corner,
under a tarp. He hit the bulb as he moved the ladder into position, dislodging dust,
and the space came alive with a wild and flickering light.

At the top of the ladder, he turned on his flashlight again and, awkwardly, with his
other hand, pushed against the ceiling at the center of the half-hidden square. This
high, he could see that the “ceiling” was clearly a platform fitted around the shelves.

The door gave with a creak. He exhaled deeply, felt apprehensive, the ladder rungs
a little slippery. He opened the door. It fell back on its coil hinges smoothly, without
a sound, as if just oiled. Control shone his flashlight across the floor, then up
to the shelves that rose another eight feet to either side. No one was there. He returned
to the central space: the far wall and then the slant of a true ceiling.

Faces stared back at him, along with the impression of vast shapes and some kind of
writing.

Control almost dropped the flashlight.

He looked again.

Along the wall and part of the ceiling, someone had painted a vast phantasmagoria
of grotesque monsters with human faces. More specifically, oils splotched and splashed
in a primitive style, in rich, deep reds and blues and greens and yellows, to form
approximations of bodies. The pixelated faces were blown-up security head shots of
Southern Reach staff.

One image dominated, extending up the wall and with the head peering down with a peculiar
three-dimensional quality from the slanted ceiling. The others formed constellations
around this image, and then much-worried sentences and phrases existing in a rich
patina of cross-outs and paint-overs and other markings, as if someone had been creating
a compost of words. There was a border, too: a ring of red fire that transformed at
the ends into a two-headed monster, and Area X in its belly.

Reluctantly Control pulled himself up into the space, keeping low to distribute his
weight until he was sure the platform could hold him. But it seemed sturdy. He stood
next to the shelves on the left side of the room and considered the art in front of
him.

The body that dominated the murals or paintings or whatever word applied depicted
a creature that had the form of a giant hog and a slug commingled, pale painted skin
mottled with what was meant to be a kind of mangy light green moss. The swift, broad
strokes of arms and legs suggested the limbs of a pig, but with three thick fingers
at their ends. More appendages were positioned along the midsection.

The head, atop a too-small neck rendered in a kind of gauzy pink-white, was misshapen
but anchored by the face pasted onto it, the glue glistening in the flashlight beam.
The face Control recognized from the files: the psychologist from the final eleventh
expedition, a man who, before his death from cancer, had said in the transcripts,
“It was quite beautiful, quite peaceful in Area X.” And smiled in a vague way.

But here he had been portrayed as anything but peaceful. Using a pen, someone—Whitby?
Whitby—had given the man a mask of utter, uncomprehending anguish, the mouth open
in a perpetual O.

Arrayed to the right and left were more creatures—some private pantheon, some private
significance—with more faces he recognized. The director had been rendered as a full-on
boar, stuffed with vegetation; the assistant director as a kind of stout or ferret;
Cheney as a jellyfish.

Then he found himself. Incomplete. His face taken from his recent serious-looking
mug shot, and the vague body of not a white rabbit but a wild hare, the fur matted,
curling, half penciled in. Around which Whitby had created the outlines of a gray-blue
sea monster, a whalelike leviathan, with purple waves pushing out from it, and a huge
circle of an eye that tunneled out from his face, making of him a cyclops. Radiating
from the monster-body were not just the waves but also flurries of unreadable words
in a cramped, crabby scrawl. As surprising and disturbing walls went, it beat the
director’s office by quite a lot. It made his skin prickle with sudden chills. It
made him realize that he still had been half relying on Whitby’s analysis to provide
him with answers. But there were no answers here. Only proof that in Whitby’s head
was something akin to a sedimentary layer of papers bound by a plant, a dead mouse,
and an ancient cell phone.

On the floor opposite him, near the right-hand shelves, a trowel, a selection of paints,
a stand that allowed Whitby to reach the ceiling. A few books. A portable stove. A
sleeping bag, bundled up. Had Whitby been
living
here? Without anyone knowing about it? Or guessing but not wanting to really know?
Instead, just foist off Whitby on the new director. Disinformation and obfuscation.
Whitby had put this together over a fairly long period of time. He had patiently been
working at it, adding to it, subtracting from it. Terroir.

Control had been standing there with his back to the shelves for only about a minute.

He had been standing there recognizing that there was a draft in the loft. He had
been standing there without realizing that it wasn’t a draft.

Someone was breathing, behind him.

Someone was
breathing
on his neck. The knowledge froze him, froze the cry of “Jesus fuck!” in his throat.

He turned with incredible slowness, wishing he could seem like a statue in his turning.
Then saw with alarm a large, pale, watery-blue eye that existed against a backdrop
of darkness or dark rags shot through with pale flesh, and which resolved into Whitby.

Whitby, who had been there the entire time, crammed into the shelf right behind Control,
at eye level, bent at the knees, on his side.

Breathing in shallow sharp bursts. Staring out.

Like something incubating. There, on the shelf.

*   *   *

At first, Control thought that Whitby must be sleeping with his eyes open. A waxwork
corpse. A tailor’s dummy. Then he realized that Whitby was wide awake and staring
at him, Whitby’s body shaking ever so slightly like a pile of leaves with something
underneath it. Looking like something boneless, shoved into a too-small space.

So close that Control could have leaned over and bit his nose or kissed it.

Whitby continued to say nothing, and Control, terrified, somehow knew that there was
a danger in speaking. That if he said anything that Whitby might lunge out of his
hiding place, that the stiff shifting of the man’s jaw hid something more premeditated
and deadly.

Their eyes locked, and there was no way around the fact that each had seen the other,
but still Whitby did not speak, as if he too wanted to preserve the illusion.

Slowly Control managed to direct his flashlight away from Whitby, stifling a shudder,
and with a gritting of teeth overrode his every instinct not to turn his back on the
man. He could feel Whitby’s breath pluming out.

Then there was a slight movement and Whitby’s hand came to rest on the back of his
head. Just resting there, palm flat against Control’s hair. The fingers spread like
a starfish and slowly moved back and forth. Two strokes. Three. Petting Control’s
head. Caressing it in a gentle, tentative way.

Control remained still. It took an effort.

After a time, the hand withdrew, with a kind of reluctance. Control took two steps
forward, then another. Another. Whitby did not erupt out of his space. Whitby did
not make some inhuman sound. Whitby did not try to pull him back into the shelves.

He reached the trapdoor without succumbing to a shudder, lowered himself legs-first
into that space, found the ladder with his feet. Slowly pulled the door closed, not
looking toward the shelves, even in the dark. Felt such relief with it closed, then
scrambled down the ladder. Hesitated, then took the time to lower and fold away the
ladder. Forced himself to listen at the door before he left the room, leaving the
flashlight in there. Then walked out into the bright, bright corridor, squinting,
and took in a huge breath that had him seeing dark spots, a convulsion he could not
control and wanted no one to see.

After about fifty steps, Control realized that Whitby had been up in the space without
using the ladder. Imagined Whitby crawling through the air ducts. His white face.
His white hands. Reaching out.

*   *   *

In the parking lot, Control bumped into a jovial apparition who said, “You look like
you’ve seen a ghost!” He asked this apparition if he had heard anything strange in
the building over the years, or seen anything out of the ordinary. Inserted it as
small talk, as breathing space, in what he hoped was just a curious or joking way.
But Cheney flunked the question, said, “Well, it’s the high ceilings, isn’t it? Makes
you see things that aren’t there. Makes the things you do see look like other things.
A bird can be a bat. A bat can be a piece of floating plastic bag. Way of the world.
To see things as other things. Bird-leafs. Bat-birds. Shadows made of lights. Sounds
that are incidental but seem more significant. Never going to seem any different wherever
you go.”

A bird can be a bat. A bat can be a piece of floating plastic bag.
But could it?

It struck Control—hard—that he might not have Cheney any more sussed out than Whitby—a
hastily prepared facade that was receding across the parking lot, walking backward
to speak a few more words at him, none of which Control really heard.

Then, starting the engine and released past the security gate, almost without a memory
of the drive, or of parking along the river walk, Control was mercifully free of the
Southern Reach and found himself down by the Hedley pier. He explored the river walk
for a while, so far inside his head he didn’t really see the shops or people or the
water beyond.

His trance, his bubble of no-thought, was punctured by a little girl shouting, “You’re
getting here too late!” Relief when he realized she wasn’t talking to him, her father
walking past him then to claim her.

Where he wound up was little better than a dive bar, but dark and spacious, with pool
tables in the back. Somewhere nearby was the pontoon dock from his Tuesday jog. Up
a hill lay his house, but he wasn’t ready to go back yet. Control ordered a whiskey
neat, once the bartender had finished being hit on by a good old boy who looked a
little like an aging version of the first-string quarterback from high school.

“He was a smooth talker, but way too many neck folds,” Control said, and she laughed,
although he’d said it with venom.

“I couldn’t hear what he was saying—the wattles were too loud,” she said.

He chuckled, drawn out of his thoughts for a moment. “What’re you doin’ tonight, honey?
Am I right that you’re doin’ it with me?” Imitating the man’s terrible pickup line.

“I’m sleeping tonight. Falling asleep now.”

“Me, too,” he said, still chuckling. But he could feel her gaze on him, curious, as
she turned back to washing glasses. Their conversation hadn’t been any longer than
the ones he’d had with Rachel McCarthy, so many years ago. Or about anything more
substantial.

The TV was on low, showing the aftermath of massive floods and a school massacre in
between commercials for a big basketball series. Behind him he could hear a group
of women talking. “I’m going to believe you for now … because I don’t have any better
theories.” “What do we do now?” “I’m not ready to go back. Not yet.” “You prefer this
place, you really do, don’t you?” He couldn’t have said why their chatter bothered
him, but he moved farther down the bar. The divide between their understanding of
the world and his, perhaps already wide, had grown exponentially in the last week.

He knew if he went home, he’d start thinking about Whitby the Deranged, except he
couldn’t stop thinking about Whitby anyway, because he had to do something about Whitby
tomorrow. It was just a matter of how to handle it.

Whitby had been at the Southern Reach for so long. Whitby had not hurt anyone at any
point during his service for the Southern Reach.
Service
preamble to thinking about how to say “Thank you for your service, for your many
years. Now take your weird art and get the fuck out.”

Even as he had so many other things to do, and still no call from his mother about
the director’s house. Even as he nursed the wound of losing the biologist. The Voice
had said Whitby was unimportant, and remembering, that Control felt that Lowry had
said it with a kind of familiarity, like how you’d dismiss someone you’d worked with
for a length of time.

Before leaving the Southern Reach for Hedley, he had taken a closer look at Whitby’s
document on terroir. Found that when you did that—trained an eye that did not skim—it
began to fall apart. That the normal-sounding subsection titles and the preambles
that cited other sources hid a core where the imagination became unhinged, unconcerned
with the words that had tried to fence it in, to guide it along. Monsters peered out
with a regularity that seemed earned given the video from the first expedition, but
perhaps not earned in the right direction. He stopped reading at a certain point.
It was at a section where Whitby described the border as “invisible skin,” and those
who tried to pass through it without using the door trapped forever in a vast stretch
of
otherwhere
hundreds of miles wide. Even though the steps by which Whitby had gotten to this
point had seemed, for a time, sobering and deliberate.