* * *
I woke to the exhaustingly familiar glow of candlelight and the coarse, dry feeling of the cat licking my toes. I blinked at her confidence, cracking into a smile that split my face with its unfamiliar joy. I giggled.
“You’re not going to start eating me next, are you?”
The cat continued cleaning my feet with an efficiency that bespoke motherhood.
“God,” I whispered, “I missed you so much yesterday. How come you didn’t come visit me, kitty?”
The cat looked at my face with eerily intelligent eyes. I swallowed and shifted to sit cross-legged, more upright against the wall. She switched to licking her own paws and rubbing them vigorously over her face.
Now that I wasn’t making eye contact with her, I could see that she had long, white whiskers and eyebrows. Her ears were big and her face was tiny, and I wanted her. My loneliness drew me to her, and soon she warmed to me as well.
After that, the cat came back every day when the candle was lit and stayed for hours at a time. Sometimes, she was there when I woke up, and other times I’d see her green eyes glow in the candlelight first and call her to me. She would sit in my lap occasionally, and though I couldn’t pet her, she’d purr as if I were.
* * *
I woke, jerking my wrists against the manacles. I groaned in pain, but it came out a raspy, unfamiliar sound. My mouth was parched, my tongue a swollen, dry wad of cotton balls that puffed their way down my throat. I tried to work up saliva but couldn’t. My mouth tasted like metal. I needed water so badly. The waves pounded the walls and the inside of my head at the same time. I didn’t want to open my eyes.
When I did, even the gloom seemed too bright. Squinting, I looked for the cat, but I couldn’t find her within the circle of the sconce’s light. I didn’t see green eyes glowing back at me, either. Solitude hit me like a punch to the gut.
Weakly I called out “Kitty?” My voice was foreign to me. My tongue felt like a dead animal. “Here kitty-kitty. Come here, kitty-kitty.”
The blackness the light couldn’t reach seemed even darker in the intensity of the candle this time.
Leaning my head back against the stone, I closed my eyes and sighed, “Please come, little kitty. I need you to come back. Please come...”
“For you? No problem,” a deep, male voice purred from the darkness. “Me-ow.”
My head snapped up. Two glowing green eyes floated in the black. Fear pinged through me fast and high. I stared at the eyes.
The left one winked.
“Who are you?” I demanded, but it came out scared and weak.
“Well I’m your little pussy—cat,” the voice sang in a perfect baritone.
I crossed my shaking legs. The eyes followed that small movement, predatory.
Before I could think, I spoke. “Show yourself.”
“Which parts?” he hummed, stepping forward into the light.
I gasped.
He was a large, black, human-sized cat standing on his hind legs. His fur shone in the light, silky smooth. His face was feline with green eyes and white whiskers, but his mouth moved like a human’s. He stroked the fur dangerously close to his crotch with paws that functioned as hands. His tail twitched lazily behind him, and he licked his chops with a quick, pink tongue.
“Go away,” I tried.
“You’re awfully bossy considering you’re the one chained up,” he cooed, his hands dipping lower. I looked away. “But I’ve always been a sucker for a girl in cuffs, so I’ll let it slide this time.”
He stepped closer, looming over me, stroking his belly suggestively. I closed my eyes.
“Are we shy?” he teased, “Now that the candle is lit?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I wanted him to go away. I wanted to go away. Please God, make it all go away.
He started purring, a deep contented sound. He was at my level now, probably kneeling or squatting right next to me. He leaned over until his warm breath tickled my ear, and I squeezed my eyes tighter.
“I’m going to eat you,” he purred.
His breath smelled human. I opened my eyes wide but the candle was out, leaving me in a darkness truer than I’d ever known.
* * *
I was dreaming. Again, I ran through the tall, sun-infused spaces of the lighthouse. It was warmer this time, and I wore pink, my hair in a ponytail. I’d been here several weeks now. I was about fourteen, barefoot as usual, and learning to love the melancholy isolation of this feral place. My mother hadn’t wanted me to come, hadn’t wanted me to spend summers here with my dad, but he’d said, Darling, it’s the safest place she could be.
Looking out the rows of modern, renovated windows, I could see the chaotic waves thrash lines of white against the rocks below as if they were trying to break them from our little island. As if they were trying to steal our stable base bite by bite.
I hadn’t seen my father yet this morning. It was unusual for him not to wake me up early with a big breakfast.
A doorbell rang. There was no doorbell at the lighthouse. I thought to myself that this wasn’t quite right, but pranced downstairs anyway to see who it was.
My father called up, “Princess, it’s your uncle and Tommy!” So, that’s where he’s been, I thought, sneaking Tom in to surprise me. It made no difference to the dream that I would have heard the boat bring them up to the island. No one came to the lighthouse without Dad’s clearance.
I sprang down the stairs, suddenly eighteen, my body morphing as I ran. I slowed to see the people in front of me. My cousin Tommy was still fourteen, though he was supposed to be my age, freckled and lanky. He ran up to hug me, tucking his head below my chest as I looked across to see my uncle. All that was left were suitcases, stacks of them piled in the entry that belonged in our regular house back home, not here in the lighthouse.
I tried to step back, but Tommy wouldn’t let go of me. “Okay, Tom-Tom,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. I wrapped my hands around his wiry arms to pull them away from me. “That’s enough.”
Tom still hugged me, gripping too tightly.
My dad appeared next to the suitcases, staring at me with hollow eyes, but I was eighteen, and my dad had died on my sixteenth birthday. He’d committed suicide by diving into the sea during a storm.
I gasped. “Dad?”
“Of course, Princess.”
“But...Daddy,” I pieced together in my confusion. “Dad...you’re dead.”
I knew after I said it that I shouldn’t have. That it made the dream bad. I wanted to wake up.
Tom looked up at me then. My cousin looked up at me with green eyes gone black and cheeks sunken in like grave dirt, and I knew that he was evil – dark and volatile as the sea that took my father.
“Dad?” I begged weakly. “Will you help me?”
His words were as hollow as his eyes. “How can I help you if I’m dead?”
Please let me wake up. Please.
He still had a vice grip around me, pinning my arms to my side. Tom opened his mouth, wide, and it was a dark hole that kept expanding. His jaw unhinged, and it grew, grew, grew impossibly large.
Then he lunged at my face.
* * *
After the big tomcat, I started keeping my eyes closed even when the candle was lit, and I was awake. I tried sleeping then, too, but every invisible sound brought my head up and my eyes seeking. The little cat never came back, but my mind slipped into an odd sort of hyperawareness that left me numb.
So numb that I wasn’t surprised to see a spot of green glowing in the dark again. It was that same eerie shade, like a digital clock. At first, I thought it was the cat—big or little, talking or normal, I didn’t know—with its head turned to the side so I could only see one eye, but the spot of green lacked a pupil and moved too much. It flitted around like a glow-in-the-dark bouncy-ball. I couldn’t muster the energy to sit up and strain, but I did open my eyes wider and follow the spot.
I heard the humming of insect w
ings through the surf noise and relaxed, knowing that a glowing bug had somehow managed to sneak into my chamber. Poor damn bug. The humming amplified, unreasonably loud, growing into what sounded like high-pitched chatter.
The bug was chittering, nearing.
The glowing ball burst from the black, scattering tiny green flecks of light-refraction into the circle of my vision. I shook my head at my own delirium. I thought I heard real speaking. Too high to distinguish, but it was familiar as English. Well, what other language do you expect a bug to speak?
I wasn’t asleep. This was no dream. Had I gone crazy?
I tried to see what type of bug it was, but it was too bright. It started darting in and out at me. I figured it was attracted to the candlelight, so I leaned left, away from the sconce. I didn’t want to get stung or bitten, but it kept coming at me, not the light. It was breezing dangerously close to my face, and I whipped my head around to hit it with my hair, but that was gone.
It flashed in one final time and landed on my upright knee, in front of my face. I felt the pressure of its small weight on my bare skin. I wanted there to be warmth from the glow, but there wasn’t. The bug was colder than I was.
I cringed, waiting for it to bite or sting, but no pain came. When I looked again, it was silent and had stopped glowing. It was larger than I expected, the silhouette coming into focus.
“What are you doing?” asked a small, annoyed voice.
Great. Now the bug talks, too? You’re not answering this.
“What do you mean?” Damn it. Shut up. It’s a bug.
“I’m not a bug,” it sighed in exasperation. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I stared at the tiny man that stood on my knee. He had long, iridescent wings, like a cockroach.
“Why haven’t you tried to escape?” His high-pitched voice sounded so much like a bug.
“You’re a fairy!” I breathed in astonishment. “How did you get in here?” My voice cracked.
“Your voice will come back, eventually,” he said. “Once you’re off the...” A high-pitched hum and his wings glowed quickly, like an SOS code.
“Off the island? I don’t think I’m going to get off the island. Are you real?” My chains rattled as I tried to reach to touch him.
“Don’t move your hands, for Christ’s sake!” I’d never imagined fairies would be this belligerent. His tiny voice was starting to give me a headache. I shook my head back and forth as he flew up to examine my shackled wrists. “You’ve already got some serious infection building, despite my best efforts, and maybe ischemia. If it develops into neuropathy, you’ll lose the use of your hands. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I try not to move my hands,” I muttered unhappily.
I felt a sharp sting, and I jerked. “Hey! You bit me! You’re a bad fairy.”
“It’s for your own good. The sooner you tell us where the lightbox is, the sooner this will be over.”
“I don’t know where the lightbox is. He hid it. He hid it because someone was coming.”
“Have you even tried to escape?” he berated me as he flitted to my other wrist. His tiny, cold hands pushed my sore skin like I was a big, doughy typewriter.
I hoped he didn’t bite me again. I was starting to feel dizzy. Why did the fairy care if I escaped?
“Go away,” I mumbled. “The ‘cuffs are too tight.” I could feel my head drooping to my chest.
“You’ve got to stay more hydrated than this,” he buzzed. “Hold on.”
I heard odd noises as I started to fall asleep.
“The waves...are so...loud...” I sighed.
* * *
I dreamed I was in the lantern room. It was the night before my sixteenth birthday. I stood against the windows, wrapped in a soft fleece blanket. In the glass, I could see my father’s reflection, standing behind me in the phosphorescent green of the small lightbox. He looked older than just weeks before. I could see it in the stoop of his upper back, the gray blossoming along his temples, the deep lines leading from the corner of his mouth to his jaw.
I didn’t turn around. For the dozenth time, I asked, “What is it, Dad?”
Until then, he’d always told me he’d tell me when I was older. That time he said, “It’s love, princess.”
“Dad.”
“I mean it. It’s love. As long as you believe in it, it will keep you safe.”
I swallowed a sigh, wondering when he would really tell me.
“Someone is coming,” he said. “I’m going to hide it.”
I switched my gaze from him in the glass to the view through it. The beacon continuously swept the dark sea, as if it were searching for something. It wasn’t searching, though, I knew. It was warning – warning ships of the danger here, the brutal rocks and dark depths and unknown, unfathomable threats that swam around below our tower of light.
“Where?”
“I’d rather you not know,” he said. “You’ll be safer if you don’t know.”
I stared at the violent waves. They were the worst I’d ever seen. Through all of my summers here, the waves had never been like this. They came up over the rocks we stood on, smashing into the round walls that supported us. The impact vibrated through the floors.
“Okay,” I said, pulling my blanket tighter. “But I wish there was someone we could trust.”
“You can’t trust anyone, Princess.” I saw another five years stacked on his shoulders when he added, “Not even family.”
I didn’t know then that it would be the last time I ever saw him, but in the dream, I knew. I knew it’d be my last memory of him as he walked downstairs, up-lit by the eerie glow of the lightbox. I knew that after he hid it, wherever he hid it, he took his last breath and dove into the depths.
* * *
I opened my eyes to a blurry, black face inches from my own. I started, horrified to see the tomcat squatting before me. His white whiskers seemed to smile, and he purred, “Well if it isn’t sleeping beauty! Just in time for your prince charming, sweetheart.”
He sat back on his haunches, but then he sat up like a human and pulled his tail between his paws, stroking it languorously.
I suppose my silence annoyed him, because he snapped, “What? No hello kiss? Nothing to say?”
I stared at him with wide eyes, wishing I had enough in my stomach to vomit on him. I didn’t reply.
“That’s okay, doll. I’ve missed you. I hope you’re hungry, because I know I am.” He smiled, showing straight, white teeth, and leaned closer.
My first attempt at a scream didn’t work. My throat was too rusty, my tongue too dry. It came out a harsh sigh that grew into squeaky leaks, and finally, the sound caught somewhere deep inside me and I screamed. I screamed as I’d never screamed in my life. Even the echoes of it temporarily drowned out the waves.
The cat lunged at me. I struck out with my feet. My bare soles connected with warm, silky fur. The candle went out in a silent hiss. I froze, straining my ears to detect a sound through the noise of the waves. Any sound.
From my left came a slow, deep chuckle.
Another, from ahead to the right, louder.
A full-bodied laugh from above.
I lost it. I thrashed against my chains and screamed, “Let me out of here! LET ME OUT OF HERE. And turn on some goddamned lights!” I was sobbing, my long-lost body fluids flooding my eyes, nose, and mouth. “Damn cat,” I mumbled.
I heard the heavy, metallic flip of a switch, a click, and the humming whir of energy. The chamber was lit in the mind-numbing high-relief of fluorescents.
For one instant, before my pupils shrank to protect me, I saw everything clearly: the rounded, kidney shape of the walls, the empty pair of manacles to my left and the unlit sconce to my right—candle still smoking—the stone stairs at the other side of the room leading to a dark wood door, that I was alone, the rows of sterile lighting hanging down, and finally, the small, metal grate in the cement ceiling above me, with a single pair of green eyes lookin
g down.
* * *
I felt like I woke, but I couldn’t see. I realized that even in my dreams here, I heard the waves pounding the outside of my chamber, but now that repetitive roaring was silent. If I dreamed, I wasn’t in the dungeon anymore.
I tried to blink, but I couldn’t quite do it—wasn’t even sure if my eyes were open or closed. I tried to move, but my limbs were long, heavy strips of meat. I had the thought that I should be terrified, that I might be paralyzed, but my mind was full of gossamer spider webs. My mouth was crammed with them too, dry and fibrous, full of my tongue.
I tuned into voices. They floated to me on a calm wave of masculinity. One of them sounded vaguely familiar. Or both. Did I recognize them?
“Why do I always have to be the fairy?” one of them droned.
“Maybe because you never fuck her,” came a gruff reply. This voice was deeper and louder.
“Just hurry up.”
“What’s the rush?”
“She needs more. Let me inject her again. Her finger’s twitching.”
“But I like to hear her whimper.” Are they talking about me? “And if you give her too much, she can’t answer.”
“You’re not even asking the questions anymore.”
A slow chuckle, then a voice vibrating right in my ear, “Where’s the lightbox, princess?”
I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve gone through every hiding spot I can think of. If it’s not in any of them, I don’t know.
“This is stupid,” the other one hummed. “I’m giving her more.”
I heard sounds in a nonsensical jumble. I felt a dark, stinging pressure. An unbearable heat, then nothing.
* * *
Strong hands gripped my biceps, pushing me forward so I couldn’t see the two men at my back, holding me on the edge of the long rock jetty. Out here, the waves were louder but still less overwhelming than in the dungeon. It was the echoes that made the difference, the starlight, the cool salty wind brushing my bare neck. Heavy weights wrapped my ankles.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 15