Revenge of the Lobster

by Hilary MacLeod

The long metal rod fell off the handle and dropped to the floor.

  Bang.

  The fuse blew, but not soon enough.

  Guillaume’s cold heart stopped.

  He had been fried along with several lobsters. Boiled?

  He lay there like an ingredient in a surf and turf supper, a Pa Parker’s meal gone wrong. The lobster didn’t seem to mind. One, just one, had survived the electric jolt that surged through the water. It had butted at its dead tank mates, then crawled up onto Guillaume’s chest. It began to claw at his cheek. Parker fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands. He rocked back and forth, moaning.

  Guillaume.

  If he could have, he would have screamed, but he had no breath. After a bit, he let out one long faltering moan. It went up into the high tones and became a weak cry for all that was lost to him.

  Guillaume. Gone.

  He was silent for a moment. Silent and rocking, back and forth, the enormity of his loss crept into his consciousness.

  Guillaume dead.

  He let out another long, low moan, until the breath was squeezed right out of him.

  An accident?

  A silent scream that only he could hear.

  No, I killed him.

  Utter despair.

  I have killed Guillaume.

  The lobster was now investigating Guillaume’s eyes. They stared, frozen open, straight into the light that illuminated the grotto.

  I wanted him dead.

  The sound of the motor was growing louder.

  Cam had surfaced, and Hy swam to her and grabbed her.

  “Hold onto me,” she ordered.

  Every nerve was alive, so alive, so hot with fear that Hy never noticed how cold she was.

  The Zodiac was slicing through the water, not five feet away, the spotlight blinding.

  “Duck,” yelled Hy. They went under the water, hand in hand, as far as they could go—down, down into the cold, dark fear. The Zodiac passed above them, churning the water, sending them spinning down. Hy struggled to pull them both back up.

  They burst through the surface, gasping for air. The boat had begun to turn toward them again. One deep intake of air and Hy pulled on Cam and forced her under. The Zodiac circled back.

  Down, down they went, into the black cold, Hy’s grip on Cam tight with possession. She opened her eyes. The murky glow of moonlight filtered through the water and cast an eerie sheen on Cam’s blonde hair floating like seaweed in brine. Cam was floating too. A natural swimmer. There was surprise in Cam’s eyes, but there was fear, too.

  Her lungs bursting, Hy hauled them both up to the surface again. No time to gather strength. The boat had already turned one more time and was bearing down on them relentlessly.

  Down they went again, down into the swirling waters, Hy exhausted, ready to give up. Sudden flashing lights. Wailing. Real, or am I in the dream? She was dizzy with disorientation. Darkness beckoned her. She could go down into the darkness, find the dream, find sleep. So compelling…so seductive. Into the warm, welcoming womb of the water. The first place. It could reclaim her now, as it had not before.

  Cam began to panic. The violent yanking on her limbs pulled Hy down farther into the nightmare. Now she began to panic, struggling to unlock Cam’s grip with her free hand, trying to pry Cam’s fingers loose, to be free of her.

  She looked into Cam’s startled eyes and wrenched herself back to reality. This was not the dream. This was real. She must have one thought. One thought only.

  Survival.

  She had not lived then to die now.

  She had not survived in that place to die in this one.

  She dragged Cam up to the surface again.

  She had fought for life once and she must do it again—for herself—and for Cam.

  Ian gunned the motor and squealed out of his driveway. He skidded on the road, moist from the night dew. He corrected and sped off toward the shore. He’d seen the boat circling the dory. He checked his tidal watch. Coming on high tide. He’d have to take the long way round to Mack’s cove. Otherwise he’d be wading through water around Vanishing Point.

  Incapable of speech, Hy’s eyes bored into Cam’s—pleading for her to understand what they had to do to survive.

  Cam nodded. They both took deep breaths and plunged under the water again. They stayed still, the throb of the power motor sending the waters into a swirl above them. Hy’s lungs were bursting. Cam began to struggle to rise to the surface, but Hy held her tight. Kept their eyes locked to calm her, to keep her with her, to communicate her purpose to her, to make her strong. If we can just stay down long enough…

  Their only chance was to swim under the dory, over to the other side of it, and perhaps not be seen. She couldn’t stay under much longer. She began to swim, one arm around Cam. After that one panicked, disoriented lapse, she held on to Cam like a part of herself. There was no thought now of letting her go. If they were to survive, they would survive together. Or both die.

  A few more strokes.

  Just a few more strokes.

  She looked up at the underside of the dory. She had to get past it.

  The water was churning on the far side, where the Zodiac was circling.

  One more stroke. Now one more. One stroke at a time, she propelled them forward, until she could do no more. If her lungs hadn’t already exploded, they were about to do so. She powered to the surface, one arm around Cam, bringing her along with her, slowing, painful as it was. She came up, up, using all her willpower to break through the water’s surface silently, hoping not to be detected. Her head was hammering, blood pulsing, lungs gasping for air as she broke through.

  She watched the Zodiac pass by on the other side of the dory. It circled a couple of times, and then took off into the night.

  Free.

  Hy put Cam’s hands, first one, then the other, onto the gunwale of the dory.

  “Gonna… boost you…count of three.” Labouring for breath, she gave the count. Cam was light and lifted easily—she got her belly up onto the side of the boat and slid in. Then Hy hauled herself up. It wasn’t easy. She was exhausted, freezing, gasping for air, but she made it. Cam was slumped in the bottom of the boat. Hy grabbed the oars and began to row back to shore. Cam’s teeth were chattering and her body shaking. Rowing was difficult. Hy’s breathing was quick and shallow. Her lungs were burning. How long had they been in the water? It felt like forever.

  She wouldn’t remember later how she managed to haul the dory up onto the shore. She just remembered sensations. Cold. Dampness. Darkness. She felt dizzy. Fainted. Slumped half-in and half-out of the boat. The waves moved in and out.

  The tide was edging into shore, freeing up the dory and taking it back into the water.

  Ian veered from side to side as he drove down Cottage Lane. He couldn’t see the dory in the water any longer. The Zodiac, too, had disappeared. He was leaning over, trying to open the glove compartment to get the flashlight. It stuck, then fell open suddenly. The momentum jerked him forward, and the car veered to the wrong side of the road again. He kept feeling around in the glove box; the car manual slid out, along with some driving gloves, a present from Hy he’d never worn.

  He kept driving furiously, fumbling around the passenger seat to see if the flashlight was there in the pile of junk that had accumulated. Maps. Camera. Shoe. Shoe?

  Hy came to. The dory had floated free of the shore, but was knocking up against the sandbar. She got up. Her legs were like lead, her feet frozen, and she was unable to take a good, deep breath. She hated going back in the water. Knee-deep, she moved behind the boat and pushed it forward. Keep going. Keep going. She had to keep moving. She felt so weak, so tired, so cold. She would not give in. Cam would not, she knew. If things were reversed and she was lying in the bottom of that dory, Cam would bring her in. You could tell that about
her.

  Hy shoved the boat solidly up on shore with the last of her strength. A large cloud had passed across the moon and she could suddenly see nothing, not even the body, lying so still in the bottom of the boat.

  “Cam,” she called

  No reply.

  “Cam!” There was a stirring and a groan. She was alive, at least.

  Hy slumped onto the sand. Had it been an attempt to kill them, or was it just a warning? Was it those two again? Someone else?

  Her eyes closed and she blacked out.

  Ian was groping on the floor as he made the turn that would take him to Mack’s Shore. There! He felt it. It had rolled under the passenger seat just…out of…his…grasp.

  The car nearly went into the ditch. Ian sat up abruptly. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Just get there. Park. Get the flashlight then, but get there, for God’s sake, get there. Let it not be too late.

  Hy had no idea how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? She slowly raised herself up, and breathed in deeply a few times.

  “Cam?” she called.

  No answer.

  She stood up. Took a tentative step forward. Leaned over to look in the boat.

  Cam was gone.

  Chapter Forty

  Parker ground his fists into his eyes, trying to erase what they’d seen. He huddled on the floor, head cradled in his hands, crouching in a fetal position.

  Horrible. Horrible. This cannot be happening.

  The thing was done and could not be undone. He couldn’t look up. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was heaving, jerking as he gasped for air and could not get it. The scene played out in his mind, repeatedly. It had happened so quickly—and so slowly. The film in his head rewound, sudden, irreversible, then time held in suspension like watching a movie in slow motion. Every motion exaggerated—the arms raising, first one foot and then the next leaving the floor, Guillaime’s body poised over the water, then falling into it in a staccato series of movements.

  He would always see—until his own death—the look of shock frozen on Guillaume’s face. He would see him tumbling back, back into the pond. The splash, drenching Parker’s clothes, droplets falling from his hair like blood—translucent blood dripping down his face. Blood on his hands too, as surely as if he himself had waved the weapon.

  He could still hear the spit and crackle of the current, the bang of the fuse popping too late; he could see the stunner break apart and the steel rod go flying through the air, with its deathly surge of electricity. He could smell acrid smoke from the fuse box and the faint whiff of plastic burned into human flesh. And he could not erase from his mind the sight of Guillaume’s body jerking, jerking, and then still. The image was seared onto his brain, fixed there as firmly as the plastic to the dead hand.

  It was the click, click, click of a lobster claw against teeth that made him look up. The creature was exploring inside Guillaume’s mouth. Parker was paralyzed with horror, as still as the corpse. Stay still. So still. Still still. The stupid words caught hold of him, and throbbed in repetitive sequence in his mind, so numb that nonsense was all it could accommodate. He squeezed his eyes shut again, the permanent knot in his gut throbbing with guilt, his face etched with sorrow, distorted with pain—the pain of the whole world, the useless, senseless pain of living at all, of loving anyone. He felt himself collapsing under the impossible burden of this feeling. His face contorted in so many ways that he would have been unrecognizable even to himself.

  It began as a very small, high-pitched sound, but soon Hawthorne Parker’s grief for his lost love and hope, the emptiness of his life, filled this strange room on the shore of this odd little village where he had come hoping for a reconciliation, a new start. It was a high, keening sound that the lobster seemed to like. It raised its head and its antennae moved back and forth, in rhythm with that awful empty sound and its profound desolation.

  Cam couldn’t remember how she got here. She was very tired. She was following a sound, a sound that carried on the wind and over the water and around the point. She could only just hear shards of it—high-pitched in one moment, low and terrible the next.

  She felt compelled to follow it.

  Ian had clambered down to Mack’s Shore. He was stumbling across the sand, his urgency making him clumsy. He could see the dory down by the water and he heard Hy:

  “Cam! Cam!” Her voice was edged with fear.

  “Hyacinth!”

  She didn’t hear him at first. The wind and her own shouting drowned him out.

  “Hy!” Finally, she saw him.

  Her legs were like lead, but she moved toward him as fast as she could. She thrust herself into his arms, shivering and sobbing. He held her tightly, tightly, and felt an electric jolt of desire. He thrust it aside. Not now.

  She pulled away from him.

  “Cam—disappeared! Have to find her!” Her speech was a bit slurred. She sounded drunk—a symptom of hypothermia, like the shivering and shallow breathing. He drew her to him again. She was going to have to get out of those wet clothes.

  Cam was wandering dreamily down the shore on the other side of Vanishing Point. She’d kicked off her boots and socks and waded through the water, knee-deep, around the point. She wasn’t quite sure where she was—or why. It was dark. Clouds had moved in and covered the moon. She was alone. What am I doing here?

  Ian held up a blanket for modesty while Hy stripped off her wet clothes. His dry ones were baggy on her. He took the blanket and wrapped it around both of them. He pulled her down onto the sand with him and held her close.

  “We really should look for Cam,” she protested.

  “I know, I know,” he said, “and we will, but we have to take care of you first. You can’t do anything right now. You have to warm up. Maybe I should look for Cam myself.”

  He poured her some of the hot water from the Thermos. She took the cup, sipped, choked on it, and spat it out.

  “What’s wrong? It’s only water.”

  “I know that now,” she laughed. Some of the water had gone up her nose. “I thought it was tea.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. She sipped again. The hot liquid felt good. Ian felt good, too. She melted into the warm cocoon of him, breathed in the comfort of his masculine scent, but she was worried about Cam.

  Cam had no cocoon. There was no blanket around her, but she felt warm—with each moment, warmer still, until it was oppressive. She removed her jacket, flung it down into the water, where it bobbed, gathered up sand and got stuck, the colour of it making it look like a strange piece of seaweed, with long snaking arms that came and went with the lapping water.

  The heat was unbearable. It rose inside her, spreading to every cell and making her want to burst out of her skin. She pulled off her turtleneck in one quick, desperate movement. It, too, went down into the water.

  The heat pulsing in waves inside her, her brain bursting with it, she unbuttoned her pants and dropped them. One leg stuck around her ankle and she kicked it off—and kicked again. Her leg was heavy, clumsy. Just as she reached the door of the cookhouse, she yanked off her bra and pulled off her panties. Only the pearls remained around her neck.

  Droplets of water slid down small, perfectly formed breasts, the nipples tight like rosebuds reacting to the cold her brain could not feel, to which her body was quickly surrendering, dying, dying all the while she felt warm life surging through her.

  She went inside the building—stark naked and burning with fever—in reality, freezing to death.

  Heading for the freezer—not a cocoon. A coffin.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Hy’s legs felt like a new colt’s standing up for the first time. They buckled under her. Ian supported her with his arm.

  “You okay?” He extended a hand to steady her.

  “I’m fine,” she said with a weak smile, all she could muster. There were flashing multi-colour
ed zigzags in the corners of her vision.

  “Just fine,” she added. Her head throbbed. “We have to find Cam.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Let’s see if we can find any footprints in the sand.”

  He aimed the flashlight at the ground behind them.

  “None leading up towards the dunes, except mine.”

  “You can’t go around the cape at that end, even at low tide. She must have gone the other way.”

  He shone the light in front of them, sweeping it back and forth across the sand. “A duck—a large one, seagulls, a fox.” No human prints.

  “So she must have gone along the edge of the water and the tide’s washed out her prints.”

  They headed in the direction of Vanishing Point. Parker’s house was eerily illuminated by its one outside light and the moon, intermittently casting silver light over The A, shadowing it when clouds flitted across its face. Ian looked up at the thickening cloud. The breeze was picking up from the northeast.

  The tide was so high around the cape that they had to take off their shoes and socks and roll up their pants.

  “You shouldn’t come,” he said. “You just got warmed up.”

  “I don’t care. I’m coming. We’ve got to find her—soon.” Cam had been in worse shape than she and had wandered off. Not a good sign.

  They waded in water up to their knees, the rocks underneath slimy with seaweed.

  Ian held out a hand to help Hy navigate the slippery surface.

  “I think we should get you out of here fast, out of danger.”

  “Danger?”

  “That boat came at the two of you. Not just Cam. She may have been the target, but you were in that dory as well. Whoever did this—those two guys, I guess—wanted to scare you off or to kill you, one or both of you. They’ll find out that you’re alive. If not tonight—soon. That makes you a witness. Maybe—” he hated to say this—“to a murder.”

  What he was suggesting was chilling.

  “Cam’s not dead,” she said stubbornly, “She can’t be,” as if that would make it so.