Fathom

by L. L. Standage

  She nodded and we stepped outside together. I shivered. Two of the men stood on the corner at the end of the street, just outside the glow of the streetlight.

  “Who are they?” Samantha whispered.

  “I don’t know. They took me to a hotel where this other man was. All they wanted was the seashell, except they called it a vessel. They told me the red-headed lady is dead.”

  “Then it was her.” She swore under her breath. “They’re going to let us go once we give them the seashell, right?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  I only hoped I was right. We came closer to them. The Brit smoked a cigarette. The guy with no pinky stood next to him, his right hand in the pocket of his jacket. I held the clam up so they could see it.

  I crouched to put the clam on the ground. A car sped from the other end of the street and screeched around the distant corner. I stopped, still holding on to the shell.

  “No! Olivia, no!” someone shouted from the car. I turned to see who was in the van but couldn’t make them out. Before I could react, Pinky darted forward. I stumbled back. The shell slipped out of my hand and fell onto the blacktop.

  “Run! Get out of here!” the voice from the car shouted again. Reflexes kicked in and I obeyed, grabbing Samantha with one hand and running back toward the house. I didn’t pause to wonder who shouted. Or how they knew my name. The car engine revved closer just as the deadly, feral sound of gunfire went off behind us. I covered my head with both hands and ducked as I ran, Sam a step ahead of me. The shots continued. I felt naked. Panicked. The house was only a few more yards away. We were almost to safety.

  Suddenly, my shoulder burst into unbearable, icy flame. My entire arm went numb, my back arched, and my head swam. Something gnawed at the flesh on my shoulder. I limped a few more steps, stumbled, and fell as Samantha’s screams echoed above me.

  “How long has she been here?”

  “She’s bleeding! She’s bleeding!”

  “How long?”

  “Uh… uh. I d-don’t know!”

  “Her blood, Eamon. Why is it—”

  “Different type, or maybe she’s turning. I don’t know. Help me with this. How long was she planning on staying?”

  “Olivia, please don’t die!”

  “…get her in water…”

  “…too risky…”

  Unfamiliar voices swirled around me like clouds of smoke I couldn’t grasp. I tried to speak, but my mouth felt locked, like it was full of tasteless peanut butter.

  “Mmffmm.” Why can’t I talk?

  “Olivia? Answer me.” I had never heard Samantha sound like that before. “You’re suffocating her!”

  “Take her out of here, Cal. I need to concentrate!”

  Once more, I tried speaking, but pain...pain. I groaned. Something pricked the crook of my elbow. Darkness dragged me back under.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw sunlight coming from my bedroom window. Blankets covered me and a pleasant smell floated in the air—something homey and sweet. On the bedside table sat a plant like a cross between a sea anemone and a chrysanthemum. I looked down at my legs under the blanket and rotated my ankles. I shifted to stretch but gasped as my shoulder throbbed. My right arm was strapped in a sling.

  “Olivia?” asked Samantha, a tremor in her voice. From a chair where she sat next to the bed, she reached out and grasped my free hand.

  “Sam. What…? Ugh.” I cringed as I tried to move again, tried to recall what I was doing here.

  Then I remembered: three men broke into my aunt’s house. Handcuffs. The hotel. The man in the tailored suit, the seashell, the gunfire. The pictures flashed in my head like a bright, horrifying filmstrip.

  I gave a low cry and attempted to sit up.

  “Don’t get up. Your shoulder is still healing.” She eased me down to keep me from moving, then looked toward the door of the bedroom. “Can you hang on a second? I told them I’d let them know when you were awake. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Who—?”

  She left. I reached my left hand up to my clammy forehead. How long had I been out? And I'd been shot! Why wasn’t I dead? I sighed at the miracle of lying safe in bed, feeling my own breath and heartbeat.

  The door opened. Samantha ushered someone in. A man, probably in his late fifties, tall and wiry, smiled and sat down in the chair. He looked like a tough old sea captain with his weathered gray eyes, a scrubby, rusty-gray beard, and a head of short, fine hair.

  “You must have been very frightened, giving up the vessel,” said the stranger next to me. “You’ve had quite an ordeal.”

  He had an accent too—clipped and meandering. Irish by the sound of it. More foreigners?

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name is Dr. Eamon O’Dell. You can call me Eamon. I’m the physician who tended to your wound.”

  “How did I survive?” The pictures in my head became more vivid and frightening as I grew more alert.

  “Well, for starters, you were very lucky. A bullet to the shoulder from a nine millimeter wouldn’t kill most people. With proper doctoring and hospitalization, recovery is quite attainable. But we couldn’t take you to a hospital. Too many questions.” He looked around with amusement. “And you’re coming along a sight faster than most other folk would.”

  “You’ve had some special treatment, Liv,” said Sam. “These people had special medicines they said would make you heal faster.”

  I looked from Samantha to the Irishman, perplexed. The smell of the flower next to the bed seemed to be calming my heart, but not my mind.

  “Why did this happen to me?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry to say you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He frowned. “I don’t know why Linnaeus can’t just leave well enough alone.”

  “Linnaeus?”

  “Doran Linnaeus. We believe he is the man behind all this. Wealthy man, Scandinavian—you may have met him.”

  “I think I did.” I thought back on the rich man, whose fingers had carved their prints on my jaw. I looked down at my arm in the sling and moved my fingers a little. “Why did you heal me?”

  He raised his eyebrows as though my question was both ridiculous and a bit insulting. “My dear lass, that’s what we do! You were in grave need. Surely you didn’t want to be taken to one of our hospitals?”

  I could only stare at him like a dead fish and think about the healing bullet hole in my shoulder. “Umm...”

  He continued. “This has all been a most unfortunate occurrence. I hope it won’t keep you from any future visits.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then let me give you the best assurances I can. You’ve been through a lot, but we will make sure you, or any other innocents, will not be affected by it.”

  “They shot at me and Samantha. How can we be sure they won’t come back?”

  “Trust me, lass, they’d never believe you would linger around after what happened. But assumptions aside, they won’t come after you because they weren’t shooting at you. They were shooting at us. You were caught in the crossfire.”

  I studied Dr. O’Dell’s earnest face. He seemed pretty calm about having escaped certain injury or even death. Why would Mr. Rich Man and all his minions want to shoot at these guys? What did this doctor have to do with any of the other people I had forcibly crossed paths with?

  “How long was I out?” I asked. At least one question I knew would have a simple answer.

  “A little over two of what we call days,” Eamon replied.

  Huh? What we call days? Why was he talking so weird?

  “Normally I’d keep you submerged,” Eamon went on, “but with the state of your blood, I didn’t want to risk a bad reaction. So we kept you sedated. It helps the tissue mend faster. Your friend here has helped take good care of you.”

  Submerged? State of my blood? What the…?

  Samantha gave me a wan smile. She must have been worried sick. I shuddered to think of what I would
have done if she were the one with the terrible wound. I would have asked to be sedated too.

  “If you’re feeling all right, you may get up for a while,” said Eamon.

  I sat up. I felt okay, just tired and sore.

  “Why don’t you come out and meet the rest of us before we go?” Eamon asked. “Then we’ll be on our way so you can have some solitude.”

  “Uh, okay.” With Samantha’s help, I edged out of bed, using my good arm to help myself up while Eamon walked out of the bedroom.

  “Are you in any pain?” Sam asked.

  “A little, but not bad.” I gave her a one-armed hug. “Thank you so much for taking care of me. You must have been terrified.”

  She barely squeezed back as if I were made of porcelain and she feared I'd break. “I’m fine. We’ve been well protected. The big German guy has a gun.”

  “Uh, I think he’s Irish.”

  “No, not Eamon. There’s a German guy too. I can’t remember his name.”

  “A Scandanavian, an Irishman, and a German? It sounds like one of my dad’s jokes. Who are these people?” I whispered.

  “They helped us that night. I don’t really know why, and they wouldn’t tell me much.”

  “You’ve been sitting with them for two days, and they didn’t tell you anything?” I asked in astonishment.

  “They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Did you call our parents?”

  She shook her head with an uneasy grimace. “I was going to. Eamon told me not to tell anyone what happened, because gunshot wounds attract cops.”

  “Well, that’s probably smart since one of the guys who kidnapped me was a cop.”

  “I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. I’ve just been so scared.”

  “What about the neighbors? They had to have heard everything.”

  “Yeah, but the German guy said he handled it. Some people have come by, but I never had to talk to anyone. Mostly I stayed in here.”

  I sobered, humbled again by Sam’s tireless care, then followed her out of the room and down the hall. When we came into the living room, a number of people stood to greet us, Eamon at the forefront.

  “We’re a motley group, you might say,” he said. “From all over the world. Over there is Walter Andrus from South Africa. He specializes in all our boating and scuba needs.” Eamon pointed to a large Black man sitting on the sofa, who smiled and nodded his head. “That there is Natasha Pendleton, our marine-botanist from Australia.” He pointed to a curvy woman, maybe mid-thirties, with long black hair and lots of eyeliner. She gave me a small, wiggly-fingered wave. “That’s Uther von Essen, our security and electronic specialist from Germany.” A man about ten years younger than Eamon and nearly as broad as Walter nodded his salt-and-pepper head and rested his hand at his belt. I thought he was grasping a gun at first, but when he moved his hand away, I saw it was a rabbit’s foot on a key chain. “And here,” Eamon gestured toward the last, “is Calder Brydon, our biochemist from Scotland.”

  The Scottish guy. I bit my lower lip as a flush burned from my neck. He sat staring off into space, his expression aloof.

  “Calder?” said Eamon.

  “Hm?” He looked up as though awoken from a reverie. “Oh.” He gave a brief half smile.

  I looked over each of them, still wondering to myself why they'd rushed to help me and why Eamon told me of their various expertises. What did a scuba diver and marine botanist have to do with a biochemist and a security-slash-electronics guy? What kind of group was this? They acted like I was supposed to understand, but I didn’t.

  “It’s good to meet all of you,” I said, feeling stupid. “Uh, thanks for helping us out?” Every person in the room nodded again with modest smiles on their faces. Everyone, that is, but Calder Brydon. He made no notice whatsoever.

  “Well, now. We’ll be on our way.” Eamon approached me. “You take care of that shoulder. It should feel like new real soon. And don’t you lasses worry about a thing. We’ve fixed the front door and we’ve placated the neighbors. All should remain quiet as a wee church mouse.” He looked down at me and pointed a finger like a lecturing grandpa. “I want you to get on with life and not be troubled by any of this. Nothing more will happen to you, rest assured.”

  “Um…okay.”

  “Would you like an escort home?” Eamon asked.

  “Uh, no. No thanks,” I replied. An escort home? Yikes. How did they know this wasn’t my home? Samantha must have told him. His eyes crinkled in a kindly smile.

  “All right then. Let’s go, lads.” He stepped toward the front door.

  “And lasses,” said Natasha.

  “And lasses,” said Eamon as he opened the door for everyone to go.

  “Goodbye now, Samantha and Olivia,” said Walter, his voice as deep as a bass drum. Natasha smiled and waved while Uther dipped his chin in farewell. Calder passed by behind Uther. For a slow second, we met gazes. Then he gave a similar nod and followed Uther out. I took my eyes off Calder’s retreating form to look at Eamon, who had stopped before going outside, his hand on the repaired door frame.

  “Don’t linger here too long,” he said. “Go home, lass, as soon as you can.”

  My brow furrowed, half in confusion, half in dejection. Eamon smiled again.

  “It has been an honor.” Then the Irishman walked out the door, shutting it behind him.

  In the sudden, strange quiet, Sam and I exchanged a bewildered look. For a long time, neither of us spoke.

  After our foreign friends left, the day continued in a dull drone, like an empty stadium after the end of a bad rock concert. I called my mom to check in and lied about everything being great. I couldn’t tell her the truth; she’d make me come home. And despite what had happened, I didn’t want to go home.

  Then I sat and thought through the conversations of that morning over and over, trying to make sense of it and wishing I had come out and asked Dr. Eamon O’Dell what all this was really about. The clam, or vessel, or whatever it was, must have been extremely valuable to cause so much fuss. No, not fuss. Chaos. Upheaval. Calamity. And any other synonyms for drama and disaster.

  And somewhere deep, guilt weighed on me. I’d caused this. I should never have gone to the tide pools. The red-headed woman had, for whatever reason, entrusted me with the last request of her life. And what did I do with it? I gave in to the demands of bad people. Then again, I’d never had my life threatened before. Still, couldn’t I have been a little braver? Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten shot and the evil man in the hotel wouldn’t have gotten his way. Amid my residual anxiety, there was one thing I knew for sure: I wasn’t going to be a coward again.

  Except when it came to nighttime. Courage flew out the window with the setting sun. Sam and I slept in the same room that first night, weapons in the form of an old golf club and a butcher knife on the floor beside us.

  The next morning dawned just as quiet as any other day. We stayed indoors, ate comfort food, and talked little.

  “Maybe Eamon was right, Liv,” Samantha said after the sun went down that second day. We lazed on the couch, snuggled safe in blankets. “Maybe we really should go home. Your aunt could find someone else to housesit.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m not leaving. Why should we do what he says when no one has had the decency to explain anything to us? These total strangers just walked in and acted like they were some kind of bizarre, long-lost relatives and then vanished without saying anything.”

  She looked down and bit her lip. “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed in frustration. “Why can’t any of it make sense?”

  “I just wish none of it had happened.” She grimaced and rubbed the sides of her face with her fingertips. I looked down at my feet. I needed to tell her it had all been my fault. I peeked at her face. She stared vacantly at the blank television, fear shining in her eyes. Really though, what would it accomplish, telling her I’d gotten caught by the dirty cop and Rich Guy at th
e tide pools? More fear. More paranoia. She might even insist on going home, which I refused to do. I had a group of strange guardian angels out there. Even if something else did happen, that “motley group” would have my back. And really, would it be so terrible if they did come back? A pair of gray eyes in a handsome, solemn face drifted to my mind. I shook my head. Stop thinking about him.

  “I guess all we can do now is get on with life,” I said. “Eamon told us we were safe. I don’t think anything else will happen now that the men who kidnapped me got what they wanted.”

  “A weird seashell?” Sam asked with a huff. I shrugged.

  “Maybe it’s endangered. Maybe it’s a new species.”

  “Doesn’t seem like enough to kill for.”

  She was right, but I didn’t say anything. No matter what anyone said, I wasn’t going home. I clenched my teeth and turned on the TV.

  Things needed to get back to normal soon.

  I woke up in the morning with my shoulder feeling a hundred percent normal. Weird. Those “special medicines” Samantha told me about must have worked miracles. I had managed to sleep well and even had a growing desire to start my marine biology studies again. I had a scholarship project I needed to finish. I still had no idea what to base it on. I needed a theory and I needed it quick. I got up. Before leaving the room, however, I looked in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t as pale and gross as the day Eamon O’Dell and his buddies left.

  I looked at my face for a while, then over the straps of my tank top. I turned and looked at the reflection of my shoulder. The remains of the wound stood out, pink and puckered, but I felt no pain. Covering the scar was going to be hard. I sighed. No more tank tops in public for a while, until I could think of a good story besides “I got shot in San Diego because some foreigners were fighting over a seashell.” I put on a tee shirt and walked out of the room.

  Later that morning, I went to check the mail as part of my housesitting duties. I peered out the front door. Everything appeared quiet, just as Eamon said it would be. I eased myself outside, closed my eyes, and inhaled a deep breath of sweet ocean air. The smell sent a wave of calm from my head to my feet. I opened my eyes. Slowly, looking up and down the street, I went down the little steps and crossed the sidewalk to the mailbox.