I was sweating through my layers, peeling off my jacket and looping it around my waist. The ground receded beneath me. I saw Lucy and Forest heading toward the cabin together, miniature figures, paper dolls. At last, out of breath, I reached a flight of steps carved into the stone.
As I stepped into the lighthouse, I wrinkled up my nose. The walls were so smeared with guano that they resembled a Jackson Pollack painting. Lichens and moss curled in the corners. The view, however, was something to behold. In every direction, I could see for miles—not quite to California, but across the whole of the archipelago. For the first time, I got a good look at what lay to the north. A huge hand seemed to be lunging up from the bottom of the ocean, a crescent of granite spires. Eagerly I readied my camera. Mick was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Among the northern islets, the rules of gravity seemed altered. The light was bizarre, a patchwork of shadows strewn across the waves. One rocky promontory would be outlined in gold, the next as black and empty as the night sky. There was an arch with spines like a stegosaurus. Through my telephoto lens, I saw bodies in the water. The sea lions were frolicking where no ship could ever have ventured.
“—likes your room best,” Mick was saying. “She really seems to prefer it there. Forest says he wouldn’t take that room for love or money.”
“Ah,” I said, adjusting the focus.
“I don’t mean to scare you. Just giving you fair warning. Forest hasn’t seen her personally, of course. Not like me.”
“Hm.”
“Are you even listening to me, mouse girl?”
I smiled. This sobriquet had been bestowed on me by Lucy, in a spiteful way, as though my unsettling encounter with the islands’ signature rodents had marked me for life. When Mick said it, however, it had a different sound. It felt like an inside joke between the two of us.
Names have power. I have always believed this. I’ve never known an Anne who wasn’t docile and mild. A Karen is usually sensible, trustworthy—whereas a Shane is bad news. And a woman named Melissa is always a little crazy.
Evidently, I am doomed to be a crazy woman here. The others still call me Melissa. I have not yet found the right moment to fix the misunderstanding. At first it seemed impolite, and when a few more days had passed, I felt as though I’d waited too long, and now it would be hard to admit that for two weeks I have been responding to a name that isn’t mine. Mick usually calls me Mel, which I rather like. Lucy calls me mouse girl. Galen calls me you. Forest calls me nothing. Andrew calls me Melissa, with a sibilant hiss, the way a snake might say it.
An interesting virtue of all the traveling I have done is the possibility of adopting new identities among new people. This has happened without fail in each location. During my time in the rainforest—always wet, always hot, crouching in a blind for days in an attempt to get a decent shot of the elusive birds of paradise—I pretended to be hardy and easygoing. During my time in the arctic—always cold, always lonely, photographing the northern lights in a kind of hallucinatory daze, treating the moon like an old friend—I pretended to be solitary and serene. On the islands, it seems I have taken this process one step further.
“I’m talking about the ghost,” Mick said. “Pay attention. This is important.”
Meekly, I obeyed. We leaned together against the railing, the wind tugging my collar open and fingering my hair.
“People have died on the islands before,” Mick said. “Lots of people.”
I swallowed hard. “I know. The Islands of the Dead.”
“A long time ago, the place wasn’t like it is now. It wasn’t a marine sanctuary. There were no biologists.”
“I know that too,” I said. I had, after all, done my research.
Mick went on: “Back then, everyone wanted to see what value they could find here. Fur traders hunted the animals. Sailors set up base camp. Gold miners dug up the ground.” His expression darkened. “It went on for decades. Pirates. Eggers. Russians. Nobody cared about the sharks or the seals. They just wanted to make some dough.”
I tried to visualize the scene. Staring down at the grassy plateau, I imagined it filled with figures. It was hard to grasp the idea of the islands overrun by strangers. Even I, a nature photographer, armed with nothing more harmful than a camera, had almost been denied access. These days, the place was well protected. It sat under the umbrella of government authority. The land, the sea, and especially the animals were treated as precious, finite resources. Hunting was unheard-of. Littering was not to be considered. Intruders could be thrown in jail. Even the whale-watching tours that motored in from California were required to maintain a considerable distance. It was an ecosystem left on its own—sheltered, unrefined, and unchanged.
The wind picked up, scouring my skin. I shivered, but Mick seemed unperturbed.
“Nobody stayed for long,” he said. “The islands were just too dangerous. People broke bones, got hypothermia, drowned. People were eaten by sharks. No one could stick it out.” He shook his head. “One group would hightail it out of here, running for their lives. And then some other group would move in. Set up camp. Hunt some animals. Act like idiots. Always the same. The storms would blow in soon enough. People would start dying. A few months later, they’d bolt, too.”
In short, I thought with a surge of vicarious pride, the islands had defeated them, one and all. The marauding hordes had been driven back to their native lands, tails between their legs. I lifted my gaze to the horizon. It was a clean line between blue and deeper blue, like a fold in a sheet of paper.
Mick sighed. “Pretty soon, the murre population was hanging by a thread. The fur seals had almost been hunted into extinction.”
I shifted restlessly, and he nudged me.
“Don’t fidget,” he said. “I’m getting there. All this is background.” He paused. “You see, these people left something behind.”
I glanced up at him.
“A body,” Mick said, his voice dropping an octave. “A woman’s skeleton. They found her in a cave.”
“A cave,” I repeated.
“She might have been a pirate’s wife or daughter. Or maybe an Aleut slave. Nobody has ever been able to discover her name. Even her nationality is up for debate. She might have been lying in that cave for a year, or a decade, or a century.” Mick elbowed me in the ribs, nearly knocking me over. “The corpse was taken away. They gave her a decent burial someplace. But”—he held up a finger—“her spirit is still here on Southeast Farallon.”
“This is starting to sound like a campfire story,” I said dubiously.
Mick ignored me. “The ghost has been seen lots of times. She wanders around the cabin at night, wearing a white dress. People have heard her footsteps. She makes the place feel cold on warm evenings.” His gestures grew more animated, and I took a hasty step back. “The ghost moves stuff around in empty rooms. She’ll knock a plate off a table or tilt a picture on the wall. She whispers in people’s ears when they’re sleeping.” He took a deep breath and concluded triumphantly, “I’ve seen her myself.”
“No way,” I said.
Mick paused, and I watched him, my eyebrows knotted.
“One night,”
