Howard Norman

I think it was near one o’clock in the morning. Retching blood, Botho jerked his head back and forth, then lurched forward as though loosing his earthly form. This was followed by a sharp intake of breath, as though he was trying to suck it back in again. The bullet had lodged near his shoulder; it had not damaged his throat, and he could still utter, “I’ll pay the devil my soul twice over to watch you hang.” That sentence seemed to take an eternity to work its way through. I all but felt his grimace clamp down on my heart; blood bubbled along his lips.

All summer, right up to the day in October, in fact, when my father came home, my mother spent every night in the lighthouse. The change in my life had been immediate, strange, disturbing: the truth of it spun me sideways and backwards. One moment, I could almost shrug if off as her passing fancy for Botho. The next, her adultery battered my senses. In the rare time we were alone together in the house, she would sing lyrics or hum tunes I had never heard. Their source had to be Botho’s gramophone records. The songs were part of my mother’s new world, a short distance away in the lighthouse. It was a kind of secret music, because it meant more to her than I could fathom. She knew I could not bear to hear the songs. She had seen me actually clamp my hands over my ears. I would leave the room. She sang them so I would leave the room.

My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.