by Lydia Millet
But his small face looked serious.
“Jax? What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said solemnly, and shook his head. “But it has to do with her. Just like he did.”
“He?”
“The man in the rain.”
“You didn’t tell me he had something to do with Mom!”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I just have a feeling.”
She looked into his blue eyes and knew he believed it.
“Max would say we’re both crazy,” she said.
“Then don’t tell him,” said Jax.
“By the way,” she said, remembering. “I also saw two otters. I swear! One yesterday, another one this morning. I was going to tell you before, but then I figured—actually, I was thinking about the last time you spied on me.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Jax, and looked down, a bit ashamed.
“Mmm,” said Cara.
“I didn’t mean to, you know,” he mumbled after a pause.
“I guess,” said Cara.
But even if that was true—and she thought she believed him—in a way she didn’t care, because the point was that whether he had meant it or not, it had still been really, really embarrassing. No one should be able to see the truly private stuff.
“Anyway,” she said awkwardly. “Have you ever heard of otters around here?”
“There are still river otters in some coastal marshes,” said Jax slowly, “but I wouldn’t think there’d be any on the Cape.”
“The first one I saw was at Nauset Light. Floating on its back.”
Jax shook his head, perplexed. “But lying on their backs is a sea otter behavior. There shouldn’t be any sea otters for thousands of miles!”
“That’s what I thought,” said Cara.
They didn’t talk for a minute, staring down at the boat’s white wake as it curled away behind them.
“So what do you think the message means?” she asked finally. “Consult the leatherback made me think of an old book or something. But it’s actually a kind of big sea turtle, right?”
“I have to think about that one,” said Jax.
“Look! There!” said a tourist lady. “A whale! Spouting!”
The engine throttled down as the boat came about.
“That’s a pilot whale,” said Teddy.
All Cara could see was a grayish hump—that was her problem with whale-watching. It was all humps that looked like rocks. Whales were cool, but you could see more of them on nature shows.
Still, it was probably better to be here than dragging around the mall while her dad asked her questions like Why do some of the boys wear their pants so ridiculously baggy, and the others wear them so tight?
Jax pulled out his phone and took a picture.
Later, lying in bed, she had a long talk on her own cell phone—basic, not smart—with Hayley, in her own bed a few doors down the street. They had a plan where the minutes were free if you waited till late enough.
She told Hayley about the driftwood.
“Are you smoking something?” asked Hayley. “First there were those ocean beavers, now this.”
“Not beavers, Hay.”
“Chillax. You’re kind of freaking me out here.”
Hayley moved on to other subjects—who would talk to them at school this fall and who would ignore them; whether her mom would give her a big enough allowance for her to “accessorize.” She and her mom often struggled pretty hard with money, and Cara thought it made her feel better about it to treat it like it was trivial, like all it would affect was her fashion stylings….
After they hung up, Cara fell asleep with her reading light on. The next thing she knew, Jax was tugging at her arm. Since her mother left, he did that sometimes—came in at two or three in the morning to ask if he could sleep in her room.
“What is it, Jax?” she asked blearily, propping herself up on her elbows. “You want to sleep in here?”
Her little brother, in ancient pajamas speckled with dinosaurs, shook his head.
“You sure? It’s OK if you do.”
“It’s not that,” he whispered. “It’s that he’s … here.”
Cara sat bolt upright.
“He?”
“You know. The guy.”
“Here where?”
“Outside the door. The front door of the house.”
“Should we get Dad? What should we do?”
“He doesn’t want Dad. He wants us.”
“But I—you said he didn’t have a—a signal.”
“He doesn’t. But he still communicates.”
She didn’t want anything to do with it. It was giving her a sickening feeling.
TAKE CARE OF THEM ….
Who? Jax? Max? Who else could it be?
“Why should we talk to him? It’s night, Jax. It’s scary!”
“I have to. He calls and calls, Cara. Into my head. It’s like someone’s yelling at me. He won’t stop till we go down to him.”
“It’s not safe, Jax. Let’s wait him out, just wait until he leaves. You can go up to Dad’s room. Or stay in here tonight. With me.”
She patted her coverlet.
But Jax shook his head.
“I can’t. He’s blaring at me.”
Maybe Jax is making this up, she thought hopefully. After all, we’re talking about Jax here: a pretty weird kid. Maybe this is all in his head, and if I’m supposed to take care of him, then it’s my job to listen. And watch him.
“OK,” she said slowly. “What do you want me to do, then?”
He turned, and she got up and followed, shutting Rufus in her room so he wouldn’t bark and wake everyone.
Outside her room she flicked on the hall light, then the light over the stairs. Every light switch she saw, she flicked. Anything to make it brighter and more everyday.
Down they went, Jax padding ahead of her in his sock feet.
Their front door was old, thick with multiple coats of paint; the top half had a rectangular window with diamond-shaped panes.
“Is it locked?” she whispered.
Jax nodded.
“It’s too high up for me to get a good view,” he said.
So she stepped in front of him. She stood at the door and reached over to the wall, to the light switch for the porch.
She flicked it upward.
And gasped, jumping back and banging into Jax.
There he was.
The glass in the door pane made things blurry, but it was definitely him. He stood on the porch steps, facing right at them, his arms hanging at his sides. He had the same dark coat on, with the hood, but now the hood was back so she could see his face—sort of. It was long and pale, with dark hair plastered down on the forehead, soaking wet. She couldn’t make out the features on the face that well; he might be young or old or somewhere in between.
He was dripping, it looked like. Or maybe that was just the distortion of the glass.
The worst thing was that his lips were moving. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his lips were moving. And as they moved she felt a kind of coldness come over her, moving up from the soles of her feet like it was radiating from the floor.… It was a sick cold, the cold of lonely graves, the cold of a hospital bed that you knew, in the pit of your stomach, you would never leave….
“You have to open it,” whispered Jax. “He won’t leave otherwise.”
“No way, Jax,” she whispered back. “No way, no way, no way.”
“You have to,” he said.
“Jax, honestly,” she said. Her teeth were chattering, her feet were freezing, and she hugged herself. “I always believe you. But this is some guy on our steps in the night. He could be a murderer.”
“He could,” said Jax. “But he’s not here for that.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” she said.
“He’s like all the dark things,” said Jax. “He can’t come in unless you invite him.”
“You promise?”
/> “Well … I think so. OK, so I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
She hesitated, conflicted. Then she looked down at his worried face and thought of him by himself in his bed, hugging his knees to his spindly chest and waiting for their mother.
This was about showing Jax she trusted him. And that he hadn’t been abandoned.
Reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut, she turned the lock and pulled open the door.
And when she opened her eyes again, she had to clap a hand to her mouth to stifle a shriek.
The screen was still closed, but there was only the thin mesh between them and him. And now she saw what she hadn’t been able to see from the other side of the glass: he wasn’t just wet. He was pouring.
Water was running from his hair down his dark coat, dripping from his nose and ears and chin. Water pooled at his feet. It dripped off the ends of his sleeves, down his front, down his legs. It coursed over his face steadily.
And it wasn’t the rain. A light drizzle was falling behind him, beyond the porch. But under the porch, the visitor had a roof over his head.
And yet the water kept sliding down his face.
The man’s mouth was still moving, but there was no sound. It moved the same way again and again, like he was repeating himself.
The water poured off him and his lips moved, on and on. And the cold sickness suffused her, rose in a wave through her body until it felt deafening….
“Jax,” she whispered, struggling against it. “Do you know what he’s saying?”
There was no answer from Jax till she turned to look at him. He was staring at the man, the man he said wasn’t a person at all.
The Pouring Man.
“Where is she,” said Jax tonelessly. “Where is she.”
Cara couldn’t help herself. She grabbed the door and slammed it.
The bang reverberated through the sleeping house.
She stood there shivering uncontrollably.
Behind them someone spoke.
“What’s going on?”
Both of them jumped, squealing.
But it was only Max, standing at the top of the stairs in his boxers, hair all tousled and sticking up. He looked like a cranky, messy version of James Franco.
“You woke me up! It’s the middle of the night! What is it, man?”
They looked at each other. They were still breathing hard, still trembling.
“Uh, sorry, Max,” said Cara.
“I couldn’t sleep,” mumbled Jax.
“Just keep it down, would you?” said Max grumpily, and shambled back toward his bedroom.
They waited a minute, until they heard his room door close.
“Is he gone?” asked Cara, in a low voice.
Jax knew who she meant.
“Not yet,” he said.
Slowly, with butterflies in her stomach, she turned back to the diamond pane in the door. It was just inches from her face. She leaned forward bit by bit and looked out.
There he was.
Close.
Closer.
Right there.
His white face with dark hollows of eyes.
The lips still working, working.
Where is she.
“Go away,” said Cara. It was almost a whimper.
And then, just like that, his face vanished.
“Now he’s gone,” said Jax calmly.
They decided to share her room. Jax pulled his sleeping bag right up onto her bed, on top of the covers, and she felt the weight of his small body. She turned to face in the same direction and draped her arm over his side.
Outside, the Pouring Man wanted their mother.
He was looking for their mother.
That was what he had meant by Where is she. Cara was sure. On that point, she didn’t have to ask Jax.
She thought she’d never go to sleep, she was so confused. She felt kind of dazzled, in fact, as though something she couldn’t understand had been flashed in her face. A side of the world she’d never seen.
A shadow world beneath this one.
Where is she. The water pouring off of him.
It was a black whirlwind. But at the same time, deep inside it, there was a kernel of new hope … because maybe this was a sign that her mother really hadn’t just left their dad, or left them. That there was something else at work.
Something hidden.
Three
The smell of pancakes and melting butter wafted up to her room in the morning and brought her out of a half-suffocating dream of ice and a big white face. She jiggled the mattress as she got out of bed, waking up Jax. Pancakes were one of their dad’s few edible recipes; this time of year he put in fresh blueberries, which he bought at a roadside stand in front of a cranberry bog on 6.
“Wait,” said Jax, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with his fists. “I gotta come down with you.”
She went to the bathroom sink to brush her teeth and splash cold water on her face.
“You’re not shtill … shensing him, are you?”
She had a mouthful of toothpaste.
“I just have to check on something,” he said, and climbed out of the bed.
In his dinosaur pajamas (none too clean, with threadbare patches between the legs) and dangling his old stuffed animal (a mangy-looking giraffe), it was hard to match the words and attitude that came out of him with his little-kid face and body.
She loved him a lot, but Jax was definitely a puzzle.
“Check what?” she asked curiously.
“It’s just a hunch.” And he went out her bedroom door, depositing his giraffe unceremoniously on the floor.
“Wait up!” she called after him, and leaned over the sink to spit out the toothpaste froth.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs he had the front door of the house open. and the screen door, too. She heard satellite radio playing behind her in the kitchen, a droning voice with a British accent; her dad liked to listen to the BBC World News as he flipped pancakes. She saw Jax bending down to stare at the porch’s old slats, whose white paint was scuffed and faded.
She went outside to join him. On the top step there was a puddle of water.
That was all. A puddle.
“Don’t touch it,” said Jax.
“Are you kidding? What is it, poisoned or something?”
“Something,” said Jax grimly. “Don’t let Dad or Max come out here. And get me a cloth to soak it up with, OK? A thick one.”
“Yes, sir,” said Cara, and ducked into the ground-floor bathroom, stealing a glance into the kitchen as she passed the door. Max was on a stool at the island, scarfing pancakes—he had a big appetite these days—and her dad wasn’t looking in their direction. She grabbed a bath towel from the rack.
On the steps, Jax dropped it carefully so that half stayed dry while the other half soaked up the puddle.
“See, we don’t want it tracked into the house,” he said. “We want it to evaporate before anyone steps on it. I was hoping it would already be gone, but humidity’s pretty high today. Here.” And he picked up the towel gingerly and handed it to Cara, who took hold of it by the dry corners. “Hang it in the sun somewhere. Somewhere the others won’t touch it.”
She walked around to the back of the house, facing the bay, and carefully hung the towel up on a line between two trees where her mother sometimes dried the sheets. She felt slightly foolish doing it, as though she was humoring Jax in a bizarre delusion.
Then she had a strong picture of the Pouring Man’s face, how it had come closer—closer—closer into the frame of the front-door window. It hadn’t happened gradually, like a person walking toward you, but more in sudden
jumps.
Far.
Nearer.
VERY NEAR.
If Jax was seeing things, so was she.
“So,” he was saying to their dad and Max when she came in the back door, standing at the kitchen island holding his glass of orange juice, “no one went out onto the porch this morning?�
��
“Nah,” said Max, “why?”
“Oh, I—I think I dropped my stylus out there.”
“It’s probably right where you left it,” said their dad soothingly. “Two pancakes or three?”
“Three,” said Jax and Cara together.
“Three more for me too,” said Max.
“I’ve raised a herd of feral hogs,” said their dad.
After they loaded the dishes into the dishwasher Cara and Jax held a council in his room, which was good for privacy since both her dad and Max were reluctant to set foot inside due to snail, frog, and crab hazards.
“So why did you think—how did you know there was something wrong with the water?”
“I don’t know for sure, but we have to be careful is all,” said Jax. “That puddle could easily have been tainted. He can control water, Car. You know how both times we’ve seen him it’s been in the rain? Or with water just—like streaming down off him?”
“Uh-huh,” said Cara.
She got it. He was the Pouring Man.
“It’s his element. As in, ancient Greek element? Air, earth, water, or fire? Not as in the Periodic Table.”
She wasn’t certain what he meant but nodded anyway. If you stopped Jax every time you weren’t quite sure what he was talking about, you’d never finish a conversation.
“Water is his element and night’s his best time, probably because it tends to be more humid then. Who knows what he can do with water? A lot, I suspect. And we don’t want any part of him in our house, that’s for sure. Water is his power and his constraint.”
“Talk normally.”
“His limit. He can only move freely where there’s a certain amount of water present, and it’s easier for him at night. It’s how he is.”
“But if there’s no signal to read, how do you know all this?”
“That’s actually a good question,” said Jax in a know-it-all way, as though he were her teacher.
As he talked, he was lifting a frog out of his terrarium, one finger on each of its sides, its thin back legs dangling.