Black Pockets

by George Zebrowski

  He felt drained, unable to move, filled up with the loss. He shivered, noticing the cold, and the world was empty around him except for the wind passing through like a hurrying intruder. On the beach the shadows were steady, clear-cut, yielding only to the light of the climbing moon. In the high places the dwarf trees were leaning back toward the land, letting go their leaves one by one...

  He got up and waded into the water, uncaring of the sharp rocks, and threw himself in. He swam for what seemed a long time, once turning on his back in the inky wetness and pushing with his legs while looking up at a sky growing more opaque with cloud and mist.

  Finally he stood up in the water and waded ashore. A wave knocked him down, but he picked himself up quickly and made it in before the next one.

  Clasping his arms around his wet body he followed the double set of web marks up into the rocks. He began to climb, continuing even when there were no more prints to follow. He went over the top and began to descend; for a while he was aware only of his breathing and the pain in his cut toes and bruised knee. Gradually he became aware of another sound just below his normal hearing.

  The only light now came from the big moon. The little moon had fled into the clouds covering the western sky. Tim went downward between the rocks, quickening his pace.

  Somewhere below he heard a gentle washing on the beach. He listened, standing perfectly still. He tensed, aching with the thought that he had lost her. Somewhere the sea was coming into the rocks, perhaps through a channel cut by the tides, into a pool which filled up once a day at high tide. He had not been permitted to explore the rocks, and he realized that this was really the first time he had ever been a good distance from the house after dark, and by himself.

  He took careful steps, each one bringing him lower, closer to the sound of the water. Then for an instant the angle was right and he glimpsed platinum moonlight floating in a pool of water. He stepped from the rocks onto level sand and the light disappeared.

  He sensed that he was standing in a large, sandy depression circled by the high rocks. The pool and the channel cutting under the rocks were somewhere in the darkness ahead, perhaps a hundred feet away. He walked forward. The sand was still warm, and it made his feet feel better.

  Clouds moved across the large moon, covering it. He stopped. There was another sound just ahead. He strained his eyes in an effort to force them to see. There was no wind in the sheltered area, only the sound of water moving in the pool, and the other, almost nonexistent strain.

  He took five steps forward.

  And stopped again.

  The clouds broke suddenly, massive exploding boulders floating around the moon. In a few moments the entire front would move in from the sea. Tim took another step and saw the dark shapes on the sand. He stepped forward until he could see them in the moonlight.

  The male was grasping her gills, pulling her gills open as he moved. The sea girl was breathing heavily, moaning in the musical way he remembered, and he saw her face as she turned it toward him. Only the whites of her eyes were visible as she rolled her head back and forth. Her hair was a black tangle on the sand around her head.

  The two did not seem capable of noticing him. The large male was like her from what Tim could see, but his skin seemed rougher and his smell was unpleasant. His huge, flippered feet dug into the sand.

  The dark form rolled off her onto the sand. Then it rose on all fours and put its mouth to her stomach and bit into her flesh in a rough circle. She thrust out her webbed hands and dug them into the sand.

  When he was finished the male looked up, and Tim saw two coals of red looking at him. The creature bellowed and Tim took a few steps back. The girl hissed. The male stood up to a fantastic height. Tim turned and ran. The creature continued his bellowing, but did not follow.

  Tim stumbled up the way he had come. When he was halfway up, the clouds smothered the moon at last and it became very dark. He groped his way to the top.

  He was grateful for the filtered moonlight that enabled him to make it down to the beach. He ran to the path at the other end of the half-moon shoreline. He sprinted up the familiar trail to the dirt road, and kept a fast, steady pace until he saw the lights of his house set among the trees on the hillside, and heard the low hum of the power generator in the shed next to it. The cool grass was a relief for his cut feet as he went up the hill to the front door.

  Jak was sitting at the wooden table in the center of the room smoking his pipe. Tim went past him and through the open door into his room.

  “Where have you been?” Jak shouted after him in a friendly tone. Tim did not feel up to explaining, and with his father gone he did not feel he had to. He threw himself down on his bed and lay still. His breathing became regular and he fell asleep.

  When he woke up, dawn showed itself as a drab light in the eastern window. He threw off the blanket Jak had put over him during the night and stood up by the bed. He was still wearing his trunks, and he noticed the stick-on bandages on his washed feet.

  As he put on a pair of fresh jeans and a shirt, the memory of her was pleasant in his mind, and he hurried. He went out into the main room where Jak was snoring loudly in front of the dying embers. He stopped at the door and took down a torch and some matches from the rack, and went out.

  It was a damp morning. The sun-beaten grass was very wet on the hillside. He went down to the road and walked the mile and a half to the beach path. There was only a slight breeze stirring the moist air.

  He walked quickly down the path and across the beach to the high rocks. As he walked he looked out to sea where the spire rode in the mists over the water, and he felt pride at having been out there at last. It seemed closer now, not quite as far away as it had seemed a year ago when he was thirteen.

  He climbed quickly up the rocks in the daylight. As he went down on the other side, the rock bowl seemed empty, even ordinary. He stepped down on the sand and walked across to where the pool of water had been. It was a polished bowl of stone, empty now. He imagined that in a large storm it would overflow, turning the entire depression into a deep pool.

  He peered sideways into the dark tunnel in the rock where the sea came in at high tide. They might have gone out this way, he thought. He looked back and saw the single set of prints running to the edge next to his own. Quickly he turned and walked back to the place where he had watched them the night before. The sand was stained and messy.

  He took out his matches and lit the torch. He stuck it in the sand, and warmed his hands while squatting. Then he got down on his hands and knees and began to dig. The sand was damp just below the surface and came up easily, just as if it had been freshly packed.

  He dug faster when he saw the strand of dark hair. There were tears in his eyes by the time he uncovered her. He looked at the sand-covered texture of her skin, her large eyes closed in death, her hair filled with small stones and broken shells. He struck the sand with his fist and sat down on his heels, whimpering in the dampness of the morning. Next to him the torch crackled in the wet air.

  Recovering, he saw the marks on her belly—a circle of closely spaced perforations. It seemed swollen, as if she had been beaten, and there were burgundy-colored droplets in her pubic hair. He looked closer and saw that... she seemed to have been stuffed with seaweed and sand. He touched her stomach. Miraculously it was still warm and soft. He remembered how fresh and magical she had been out on the rock, and how much he had wanted her. He understood now that she was not dead, and the hopelessness of it was a cold stone in his gut.

  He had to cover her up quickly, or she would die before her wintry sleep was over. It was all he could do, knowing that she was full of young. All the little pieces of information made sense now. In the spring the young would come up and make their way to the pool of water, small lizardlike things which would in time change into sea people. The liquid of her belly was filled with the eggs that the male had released into her. She would sleep while nourishing the developing young, and finally they would
eat their way out through the perforated section of her belly. But even though she was not dead, she would not waken again. He threw sand on her body, slowly covering her up.

  The birds! The sea birds would be here in the spring to eat the fleeing young. He remembered their noise over these rocks from previous years. I’ll be here with a scatter gun, he thought, I’ll be here to do that much. And perhaps he would find another one like her, earlier next year.

  His fear subsided and he finished burying her. He stood up and put out the torch in the sand. He walked away across the open area to the rocks and made his way up slowly, thinking all the way home of the new life buried there in the sand.

  When he came within sight of the house he saw the trailer home and heavy tractor standing in front of the shed. His father was home early. He ran up the hillside from the road, almost forgetting his mood. He stopped halfway up the hill when he saw his father at the front door talking to another man. The other man looked away from his father, and Tim followed his gaze to the left. He saw the girl standing, looking toward the sun which was trying to break through the morning mists. Her long hair was blowing in the breeze now coming from the sea. Tim saw his father waving to him and he waved back. At the same time the girl turned around to look at him, and he saw that she was smiling. In a moment he decided to change his direction, and continued up the hill toward the girl.

  Passing Nights

  YOU WOKE UP THAT NIGHT AND STARED INTO the darkness, your body tense with expectation as the wall by your bed dissolved and became a way into a deep, windy blackness. You were not afraid, but you remembered a fear still to come as a human figure faded into view, bright with an electric glow that seemed to come from within. Pale, clothed in sickly green seaweed, the battered male torso drifted toward you, bleeding into the black, oily water, eyes gazing at you from a haggard, familiar face, foggy breath billowing out of its mouth. You cried out then, and the figure twisted around, showing cuts, abrasions, and bruises in a sickly, brine-shrunk patchwork of red, white, and gray. You reached out to the wall, to see if the scene was real. “Don’t!” the man shouted with great effort, went under, came up splashing and grabbed at his left arm. “Where are you?” you asked, sitting up, eyes wide open, nostrils filling with ocean smells. “Don’t,” the man whispered as you reached into the wall, felt the cold water, and pulled your hand back. The man moved away, as if suddenly caught in a powerful current. His eyes were closed, as if he had found peace. You blinked as the view broke up into a grainy collection of yellow dots and light exploded into the room, destroying the vision.

  “Charles, are you okay?”

  “Just a bad dream, Mom,” you answered, lying back and staring at the clean yellow of the recently painted wall as the overhead light went out.

  “Go back to sleep, darling,” your mother said lovingly, gently closing the door.

  Your eyes adjusted to the dark and you looked at the wall. There was nothing there, but you knew that the wall was waiting for you. It would be waiting for you every night.

  This is the end, you tell yourself as you drift in the water. The ship had been a part of your own body, torn open by the torpedo’s explosion, hurling you into the water, where you bleed into the black liquid, returning your inner sea to the salty commonwealth.

  But death refuses you. Your pulse beats, and you feel that your right hand is locked around the bleeding in your left arm, unable to let go.

  The sea rocks you as you drift. You open your eyes, expecting to see stars, but there is only a cloudless darkness, without even a bright patch where the moon should be. I’m dying, you tell yourself. Might as well admit it. Eyesight’s blackening. It’s one of the signs. You can’t feel your toes. It surprises you, as much as you can be surprised, how little you care. The body prepares itself. Messengers go out to all the distant provinces of muscle and bone, whispering gently for them to slow down and accept death—the distinguished thing, as some literary fool once called it. There is no life after death. You’ll see. And you laugh, but it’s like trying to break marble with a rubber hammer, and you wheeze and nearly weep from the pain of the convulsive effort.

  Suddenly, white light floods into your eyes. Recovering, you see the boy that you were, staring at you from the room that you loved, and you remember what he feels but doesn’t understand yet. You recall having seen what he sees, what he once saw for three nights, as you gaze into that bedroom where the future is still a fabulous country, waiting to be entered. All times are woven together, so why shouldn’t they cast something of themselves forward and backward now and then?

  As you look into the boy’s sleepy eyes, you realize that these moments have been waiting for both of you all your lives, that two pieces of time are being drawn toward each other by the gravity of remembrance, and there is nothing you can do about the coming collision.

  The sea becomes very still suddenly, and you watch the boy reach into the water as if into a mirror, and draw his hand back, surprised that it is not wet. He repeats the action and is startled as some ghostly water spills onto his bed, and you realize with dismay piled on hopelessness that it was your yearning for the shelter of the past that would now destroy it. You needed to be back in that room on a twelve-year-old’s Friday night, looking forward to Saturday morning, when you would go biking and later stop at the park to watch girls playing under the big oak tree, not quite sure why they were so pleasant to look at, feeling the play of impulses within yourself. You needed that past as you had never needed your present or future, but you had to get on the treadmill of killing to realize how little you had to give to anything or anyone.

  Think! your fogged brain commands. Your need will destroy the past unless you act. Will the boy’s death end your pain? Will you still be here if the past is changed?

  But what can you do? What can a dying man do for anyone?

  You try to pull down the bridge between the boy in the bedroom and the man in the water by denying your need for the past’s islands of happiness, but the two moments draw even closer toward dissolution. The boy crawls back on the bed, astonished by the water that is now threatening to burst across time, and suddenly you know what you must do.

  You listen to the unfeeling whisper of the sea, and slowly your right hand loosens its grip on your bleeding left arm. You watch the hand move away as if it belongs to someone else, and see your bleeding resume its gentle flow into the black water.

  The boy and the bedroom slip away, and you close your eyes, relieved that the link seems to be weakening. Your past and present are safe, but you have severed your future. There’s no helping that. You have to be alive for the bridge to stand.

  And for a few moments it continues to stand, and you are that boy staring at the wall in fear and wonder, opening and closing your eyes, fleeing back and forth between the bedroom and the cold darkness of futurity, where the sea drinks your blood and the blackness crowds the light from your eyes.

  Takes You Back

  I LOVED HER. SHE LOVED ME. IT HAD ALWAYS I been that way. So deeply that sometimes I imagined that our love had been fixed that way when the universe began, awaiting our coming on the scene.

  “It’s chemical between you two,” her mother liked to say, “some unimaginable sympathy that nothing will break.” She said it as if it couldn’t be anything else, that it would be impossible otherwise. Heaven and the gods had something to do with it, or it couldn’t have happened. People don’t just get together on their own.

  “You know,” I mused as we were watching the evening news, “I really like those French doors of ours.” They closed off the foyer and made the front entrance area into a small room by itself. We often used the space for storage. I liked the curtains on the glass panels, and looked forward one of these days to refinishing the doors, stripping the brass hardware and lockset of paint to restore the shine, so that each part would again be as new. The doors were much more interesting than the news.

  “You know what I’m up for?” she said. “—some Frenc
h fries.” She gave me a sly, guilty smile and rolled her eyes at her segue from French doors to French fries. “Just this one time,” she added forgivingly.

  It had been a long time. A couple of years, anyway, since we had started watching our weight and nutrition.

  “I’ll get some,” I said, suddenly feeling like taking a brisk walk to the nearby fast food place, rationalizing that I would walk off in advance some of the calories I would bring home. I wondered if the fries would pass the test of nostalgia.

  She smiled at me again as I got up and went to the front door, remembering our college days, when she had been sick in bed one day and I had gone out in a snowstorm to get her some cream puffs, feeling as purposeful as a hunter.

  I opened the door, then the storm door. I held it while I closed the inside door, then stepped out into a warm, sprng breeze as the storm door whispered shut behind me. A clear, evening sky was bright with stars above the trees around our house.

  Memories jabbed at me as I took a deep breath. They cut through me with their regretful, structured beauties, and reminded me again of my ambivalence about moving here. Sarah and I still felt a sense of loss about our abandoned apartment back in our college town, and I still had the feeling that I would get on a bus one day and go “home.”

  I went down the stone walkway and onto the street—and stepped into autumn.

  It took a moment for the change to register. I stopped and turned to look at the house. All the lights were off. Around me the trees were losing their leaves as a cool breeze was getting up to speed. Overhead, a few clouds hurried in from the north. I stared up at the glitter of the constellations and saw that they had changed to those of fall. A chill went through me that was not part of the season.