第3章 第10節 真夜中の放送局
Midnight at the Station
The door inward, and two men filled the with rain and shadow.
"The old man first," one said. "Then we find what she was carrying."
Nora was already moving, low behind the towering shelves of reels.
The men were tearing tapes from the racks, hunting for a single voice.
Reels rolled across the floor, unspooling years of the town's memory.
She crawled through the gap Gabriel had shown her, the key hard in her fist.
Behind her she heard him being lifted, his chair scraping the wooden floor.
"Run, girl!" he shouted, and a hand struck him into silence.
She wanted to turn, but his own voice had ordered her forward.
The night air hit her face, cold and full of the roaring sea.
She pressed herself into the black gap between the station and the sea wall.
Inside, drawers were being emptied and boxes were being thrown aside.
"It isn't here," a man snarled. "She has it. Burn the rest."
Nora's breath stopped at the ancient, familiar order to burn.
A was struck, and then the dry reels caught with a soft, sound.
Fire climbed the shelves the way water had once climbed the cannery roof.
Twenty years of recorded voices were being turned to smoke at once.
She saw them Gabriel out, a dark shape between two darker ones.
He did not struggle; he was looking back at the burning door.
The flames threw his face into gold for a moment, and then he was gone.
Nora clung to the cold key while the heat pressed against her back.
The station her mother had loved was being unmade in front of her.
Everything Marion had saved was being erased in a single orange hour.
And Nora understood, at last, that in Saltmere the fires were never accidents.