* * *
Once my vitals were taken, a nurse came into the examination room and handed me a blue bottle of Gatorade, instructing me to drink it all so my electrolytes could replenish. Grateful for the beverage, I drank it down a few deep gulps. My mouth was dry and scratchy. After I finished, I put the empty bottle on the bedside table and let my aching head rest against the pillow behind me.
Violet’s smiling face was off to my right, where she sat in a chair in front of the room’s only window. Her presence reassured me. She had proven herself much more than a bookstore owner who hosted my occasional book signing events. Over the trips I’d made to the area, she’d more than demonstrated herself a good and lasting friend, as well.
“Honey, are you feeling any better?” she asked, glancing up from her cell phone. “You had me worried there for a while. At least you’re getting your color back. And that’s a good sign.”
After a few moments of answering Vi’s questions, I felt myself drifting off. The overwhelming drama of the day finally caught up with me. Soon my head swam with spectral images. There was the Gray Man in all his legendary creepiness…my countless fictional characters…and then Derek. I still couldn’t believe he was gone. It was difficult to think he hadn’t at least in some way brought most of this on himself. I began to believe the reciprocal nature of karma. What went around came around. In his case, it seemed as if Derek paid his debt with his very life.
Within minutes, I slipped into a kind of shallow sleep. Laying there with my eyes closed, I could gradually see the plotline of my next book knitting together inside my head. I saw how the legend of the Gray Man would factor in, and even sensed a title developing: Storm Surge. It fit the direction I considered taking the book in. I could almost see the cover illustration coalescing in my head as I let myself drift further into sleep.
* * *
I woke with a start to the sound of a loud alarm going off. Violet sprang to her feet, running out of the room to call for a nurse. I looked up at the TV mounted to the wall over the foot of my bed. It was muted, but the screen came to life with dazzling graphics. A WEATHER ALERT message scrolled across the screen in bright red, backed by a large stream of color-blocked red, black, and white flags signifying a hurricane. It would seem the Gray Man’s warning had come just in the nick of time. Here I lay, in an emergency room with a severe weather event quickly approaching. Those who subscribed to the ‘life being stranger than fiction’ thing, sure knew what they were talking about. Especially on a night like this!
When she returned, Violet was the picture of calm. She said the hospital staff was evacuating everyone to the lower levels for everyone’s safety. Probably an unnecessary precaution, I thought, but one we would heed. Until we heard from the sheriff’s office or fire department, hospital officials naturally wanted us to take whatever measures necessary to insure our safety, which I found reassuring.
Violet said that we would be moved to the lower levels and notified as soon as the requisite authorities arrived onsite and had a chance to inspect the situation.
I couldn’t help thinking Violet should be home with her family on a night like this. I knew it was too late for her to leave at this point, but I hoped her family would be safe without her there to reassure and guide them.
After the Gatorade, and the few moments of rest, I felt well enough to take the stairs down to the lower level. I knew they wouldn’t want us to clog the elevators, especially should a power outage occur.
Once on the basement level, it wasn’t long before the authorities arrived and informed us of those medically cleared to leave, to do so, as each patient’s care was appropriately triaged and swiftly administered.
Outside, I was thankful to breathe fresh air again. Hurricane or no hurricane, I felt energized by the gusting wind. I’d forgotten that neither of us had a car since we’d arrived in an ambulance.
Sensing my momentary apprehension. Violet grabbed my arm and smiled. “Honey, my husband’s on his way. Don’t you worry, he’ll get us in out of the storm in no time!”
* * *
When I woke the next morning in my bed at Pawleys Inn, I was surprised to hear people outside my door anxiously discussing an approaching hurricane, especially after we’d been cleared to leave the hospital the previous night, only after the weather services deemed everything safe—that the storm had all but passed us by. Georgetown Memorial had only released some of us, so that we could beat the hurricane and get to safety in as timely a manner.
Instead of taking the time to shower, I cleaned off in the room’s sink before getting dressed, and heading out into the hallway. As I pulled on my jacket, my cell phone began trilling on the room’s only dresser. The caller ID displayed Violet’s number at the store.
“Hi, hon. I know you’ve probably already heard there’s another hurricane on our doorstep. Ron and I would like you to come stay with us, so we can ride out the storm together. If you haven’t already made other plans, of course.”
I took a moment to think about it, and knew immediately what I wanted to do.
I pushed the TALK button and spoke into the phone.
“At some point I’ll need to go back to Boston to get all my belongings, but I’ve decided to relocate to Pawleys. This place feels more like home than Boston ever did, especially now with Derek gone, and with you and Ron here I won’t feel quite so alone. Derek was always the one who wanted us to stay in the Boston area, near his family. That was never my desire. I just wanted to make him happy, so I went along with everything. But that’s no longer an issue. I’d love to ride out the storm with you and your family, and then make more permanent changes once the storm’s passed.”
I could sense Violet smiling on the other end of the line.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful news, honey!” she said. “I know I shouldn’t want you to be here during a hurricane, but if Pawleys is going to be your new home, I suppose there’s no time like the present to get yourself accustomed to such things. We get our share of seasonal storms. And we have ghosts. Plenty of those!”
When she and Ron arrived a few minutes later, I felt happier than I had in a very long time. Derek was dead, and I knew I should feel bad about that. But instead I felt free. In some ways, freer than I’d ever felt before.
FEAR SUN
Laird Barron
Click.
Wow, this is exciting.
BOO-ooom! goes the green-black surf against green-black rocks that jut crookedy-wookedy as the teeth of an English grand-uncle of mine. FAH-whoom! Ba-room! go the torpedoes bored into the reef like bullets from God’s six-shooter (in this case a borrowed nuclear submarine). Then the dockside warehouses on stilt legs fold into the churning drink. Fire, smoke, death. On schedule and more to come in act two of Innsmouth’s destruction. Daddy would have a hard-on for this action. Perhaps, in his frigid semi-after life, he does. I bet he does.
The red light means it’s on, lady. Let’s hurry this along. All hell is breaking loose as you can see on the monitors. You don’t need the gun, I’ll speak into the mike. We’ve never met, but I know who you are, and why you’ve come. I like you, chick, you’ve got balls. My advice, run. This won’t lead anywhere pleasant. The Black Dog is loping closer. Gonna bite you, babe. Smoke on the water hides worse. Okay, okay, ease back on the hammer, girlfriend. I’ll satisfy your curiosity even though you’ll be sorry.
Speaking of, mind if I have a cigarette? Judging from your expression, it’ll be my last.
* * *
Okay, let’s start with last night and go from there.
Last evening went much the same as most of my nocturnal expeditions among the locals do—cocktails and appetizers at the Harpy’s Nest. Bucket of blood on the Innsmouth docks and the closest thing to a lounge within fifty miles. Lobster entrée, ice cream dessert cake. Karaoke night with the locals, oh Jesus. I totally abhor karaoke. I made fat ass Mantooth get up on the dais and sweat his way through “Dang Me.” Not bad, not bad. Andi told me that Mantooth gra
duated from Julliard’s drama division before he got into the muscle business. Huh. That goon has opened doors and twisted the arms of my stalkers since I escaped college. Surprising that I never knew.
My dress, a Dior original, cut low as sin. Better believe I danced with a whole bevy of rustic lads. The clodhoppers stood in line. Before the bar closed, my ass was bruised from all those clutching oafs, and I got a rash from the beards rubbing my neck and tits.
For an encore, I balled a sailor in a shanty. A grizzled character actor named Zed, whom the project team recruited from a St. Francis shelter and planted here in 2003. We shared a smoke, and he recited the lore of this hapless burg and its doomed inhabitants.
“That’s not the script I gave you.” I stroked his dead white chest hair in warning. My nails alternated between red and black.
“It’s the truth, missy. The devil’s own.” His tone made it evident he hadn’t a clue with whom he conversed. Not a shocker—I eschew the public eye like nobody’s business. It’s also possible the drunken fool believed that theater had become life.
Zed’s perversion of the project script offended me. Granted, I’d done the equivalent of visiting Disney World, fucking Mickey Mouse, and getting offended when the dude in the costume refused to break character. Call me fickle. I whistled, the boys waltzed in, and beat him with a pipe. Got bored watching him crawl around like a crab with three legs broken. They pinned his arms while I exorcised a few of my demons with a stiletto heel. The actor gurgled and cussed, but he won’t tell. Know why? Because I stuffed a personal check covered in my bloody fingerprints into his shirt pocket. What was on that check? Plenty, although not nearly as much as you’d think.
That’s it for last night. Oh, oh, I had a Technicolor dream. Dream may be the wrong word—I seldom do and anyway, I was awake at the time and staring at the motel ceiling, trying to connect the water stain dots, and I closed my eyes for a few seconds and had a vision. I got shrunk to three inches or so tall, and Dad’s head loomed above me with the enormity of a Mount Rushmore bust. Icicles dangled from his ears and his flesh cycled from blinding white, to crimson, to midnight blue as the filament sun downshifted through the color spectrum. Dad said I made him proud and to keep on with the project. The seas will swallow the earth! And All the lights are going out! Beware the ants! His lips were frozen in place. He boomed is visions telepathically. Reminded me of my childhood.
* * *
Oh, Daddy.
Unless you’re a well-connected investor or an FBI special agent, you probably haven’t heard of my father. His personal wealth exceeded eighty billion before I got my hooks into it as sole beneficiary. Super!
Most of his projects weren’t glamorous, and the sexy radio-ready ones have always operated through charismatic figureheads. Tooms? What etymological pedigree does that connote? We’ve got relatives all over the place, from East India to Alaska—don’t get me started on those North Pole, hillbilly assholes, my idiot cousin Zane especially. Anyway, he’s dead. The Mexican Army shot him full of holes and good riddance, says I.
Daddy dwelt in an exalted state that transcended mere wealth; he was supreme. He created worlds: futuristic amusement parks, intercontinental ballistic missile systems, and designer panties. He also destroyed worlds: rival companies and rivals; he hunted tame lions in special preserves for dudes too smart to let it all hang out on safari. He aced a few hookers and possibly his first wife, I am convinced. The earth trembled when he walked. Cancer ate him up. All the money in the world couldn’t, etcetera, etcetera. Per his request, the board froze his head and stored it in a vault at a Tooms-owned cryogenics lab—like Ted Williams and Walt Disney! Everybody thinks it’s an urban legend. Joke’s on them; I’ve seen that Folger’s freeze-dried melon with my own two eyes—the hazel and the brown. What’s more, he’s merely the ninth severed cranium to adorn the techno ice cave. Every Tooms patriarch has gotten the treatment since the 1890s.
Come Doomsday, Daddy and his cohort will return with a vengeance, heads bolted atop weaponized fifteen-story robot bodies to make the Antichrist wee his pants. For now, he dreams upon a baking rack throne beneath a filament that blazes frozen white light. This private sun blazes cold and emits fear. His favorite drug of them all.
Yes, Daddy was a true mogul.
Mother came from Laos. A firebrand. Nobody ever copped to how she hooked up with Daddy. Some say ambitious courtesan and those some may be as correct as they are eviscerated and scattered fish food. Not sure if she was one hundred percent Laotian, but I’m a gorgeous puree of whatever plus whatever else. She hated English, hated Daddy, and virulently hated my older brother Increase (the get of the mysteriously late first Mrs. Tooms). She called him Decrease. Doted on yours truly. Taught me how to be an all pro bitch. Love ya, Moms. Mr. Tooms passed when I was sixteen. Mom died in a mysterious limo fire that same winter. Very traumatic for me, although splitting a fortune with my brothers eased the pain.
The family business putters on under the tyrannical thumb of Increase. He knows what’s good for him and leaves me to do as I please. No business woman am I.
My talents lie elsewhere. I revel with the merciless ferocity of a blood goddess. I settle for filthy rich, impossibly rich, which means anything is possible. Rich enough to buy a tropical island is rich enough to get a hold of a bag of Moon rocks on the black market is rich enough to turn this dying (dead) Massachusetts port town that time forgot into whatever I want. The people: sailors, peasants, moribund gentry, and their slothful cops, alder persons, zoning commissions, and chamber of commerce bureaucrats, mini moguls who measure up to Dad’s shoe laces, if I’m generous. I own them too.
* * *
Let’s step farther back to my vorpal teens.
Time was I aspired to be better than I am. Kinder, if not cleaner. Were I in the mood to justify a career of evil, I’d cite the head games (snicker) Daddy played with me and Increase, and that other one, the one who got away, the one we never speak of. I’d tell you about the Alsatian, Cheops, my best and only friend during adolescence, and how he drowned himself in the swan pond in a fit of despair. Took him three tries. I fished that waterlogged doggy corpse out myself because the gardener got shitfaced and fell asleep in the shed.
Mostly, though, I’m the way I am because I like it, love it, can’t get enough of it. Nature versus nurture? Why not some of both? It’s impossible to ever truly know the truth. You have to dig extra deep to churn the real muck. You have to afford a person an opportunity to sell her soul. Gods above and below, did I have opportunity to aggrandize an overheated imagination!
The idea for the Innsmouth Project has incubated in my brain since I laid up with pneumonia at age twelve, and somebody left a stack of moldy-oldies by the bed. The pinch-lipped ghost of HPL and his genteel madness made a new girl of me.
Great Granddad put ships in bottles. Dad made exquisite dioramas and model cities. Increase enjoyed ant farms. I read Lovecraft and a lot of history. Marie Antoinette’s little fake villages captivated me. It all coalesced in my imagination. A vast fortune helped make the dream someone else’s nightmare. Frankly, the US government, or a shady subdivision of the government, deserves most of the credit.
Six months after my father passed away, I graduated from high school, with honors, and treated myself to a weekend at a Catskill resort that had been a favorite of the Toomses since the Empire State came into existence. No ID required for booze; handsome servants kept the margaritas coming all the livelong day for me and a half-dozen girlfriends I’d flown in for company. Andromeda kept a watch on us. With Daddy out of the picture, there was no telling if Increase or some other wolf might try to erase me from the equation. Ahem, Andrew. Andromeda was Andrew then, and not too far removed from his own youth. I read his, her, dossier on a whim. She’d majored in paleontology. When I asked why she’d thrown away the chance to unearth dino bones for a security gig, she smiled and told me to mind my business. Most intelligent bodyguard I’ve ever had, although not necessarily smart.
>
A guy approached me in the salon, and Andi almost broke his arm as I signaled. The dude, nondescript in a polo shirt and cargo pants, introduced himself as Rembrandt Tallen. He bought me a drink. I should have known from the ramrod posture and buzz cut that he was military. The next morning, upon coming to in a dungeon, blindfolded, chained to a wall, I also deduced that he was a spook. He removed the blindfold and made me an omelet. Pretty snazzy dungeon—it had a wet bar, plasma television, and the walls and ceiling were covered in crimson leather cushions.
Tallen kept mum regarding his team. The game was for me to assume CIA or NSA, and that’s what I figured at first since our family was frenemies with those organizations. Black holes in the ocean was a topic I vaguely recalled. R&D at one of Daddy’s lesser known companies looked into this decades before it became kinda-sorta news on a backwater science news site. The military and commercial implications were astounding.
My captor turned on the TV and played a highlight reel of various improbable atrocities that no citizen, plump and secure in his or her suburban nest, had the first inkling.
“Oh, my, goodness,” I said as in crystal clear wide-screen glory, a giant hydrocephalic baby jammed a man in a suit into its mouth and chewed. Tiny rifles popped and tinier bullets made scarcely a pinprick on the kid’s spongey hide. The action shifted to a satellite image of a village in a jungle. Streams of blackness surrounded the village as its inhabitants huddled at the center or atop the roofs of huts. The camera zoomed in as the flood poured over the village and the figures dispersed in apparent panic. Not that panicking or fleeing helped—the black rivulets pursued everywhere, into huts, onto roofs, up trees, and engulfed them.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 6