by J. R. Rain
Thirteen minutes after twelve, a smallish guy in a brown sweater, bald, with silver-rimmed John Lennon glasses scurries in the door. If Wikipedia had a reference photo for ‘dweeby teacher,’ Mr. Brennan’s picture would be it.
He stands by the door, scanning the seating area over the dark-stained wood lattice framing the waiting section. When he looks my way, I wave. He smiles, nods, and hurries over.
Within a second of his ass hitting the chair, a man in a blue uniform arrives and gives him a hot, wet towel.
“Uhh, thanks,” says Mr. Brennan.
The waiter smiles before walking off.
“I don’t usually eat in these kinds of places. Do they have anything other than raw fish?”
I smile and flip the menu open to the ‘hot’ section. “A few things.”
“You have news about Kyle?” He tugs the menu closer but doesn’t break eye contact.
“Yes. He’s living at a campground with seventeen other people around the same age. There’s a map on this USB stick.” I pull it out of my bag and hand it to him. “I also took some photos of the area. Just a bunch of harmless kids. He seems happy enough.”
Mr. Brennan grumbles. He stares at the USB for a few seconds before pocketing it and flicking his nail at the menu. One need not be a mind reader to see he had plans for his son’s life. Probably insisted he go to a specific school, take a specific major, get a job with a specific company. Poor Kyle’s existence planned out diaper-to-coffin. I don’t bother digging deeper.
“What would you charge to bring him home?”
A blasé smile stretches my lips. “I’m not a bounty hunter, Mr. Brennan. Nor do I do kidnappings.”
The man mutters to himself while staring at the menu. I figure he’s more upset at the loss of control over his son than any fear for the boy’s safety. Other than the occasional bear, escaped convict, or crazy old woodsman, the worst thing those kids have to worry about out there is the weather. Or maybe boredom, but I doubt that will become an issue until the pot runs out.
“Sooner or later, the romance of living in the woods will fade. Kyle’s nineteen. He’s legally able to make bad choices.”
Mr. Brennan gripes something inaudible while reading the menu. After a moment, he sighs and looks up. “I suppose. Thank you for at least discovering he’s not injured or in danger.”
“My pleasure.”
Speaking of bad choices, my thoughts drift back to twenty-five-year-old-me being hell bent on a cruise.
Eighty-odd years ago, I’d been in a shipwreck off the coast of San Francisco. The trip would’ve toured the shoreline from LA to Seattle. Unfortunately for all on board, our journey ended in a surprise storm twenty miles out from land. Back in those days, bilge pumps weren’t the greatest. The storm surge inundated the vessel, and it listed to starboard… too far. As best as I’ve come to figure out in the years since, someone hadn’t properly secured cargo below decks, and enough heavy things slid to one side that it capsized. All forty passengers, and most of the crew, went flying into the black midnight ocean, surrounded by flashing lightning and giant waves.
Watching the boat you were on minutes ago slip beneath the waves is a sight no person should have to witness. The hopelessness, the terror, the screams, they stay with you. Begging, gagging on salt water. The cold. Never had I felt so cold.
In the naiveté of youth, I had assumed the captain and crew would keep us safe, that being professionals of the sea, they knew what they were doing. When the ship began to list, I’d searched for a lifeboat. I’d seen them at some point before, but strolling the deck on a sunny day is nowhere near the same as in the midst of a driving thunderstorm when the ship is lurching and there’s dozens of people panicking.
I remember the frantic splashing and bodies floating around me. The captain had drifted by, with a massive, bleeding head wound. It didn’t take him long to sink, and to this day I wonder if the blow to the skull killed him or if he’d been merely knocked unconscious and drowned. He died without knowing what hit him.
The rest of us weren’t so lucky. One by one, screams ceased. Soon, my limbs grew numb from the freezing water, and tired from trying to keep my head up in the vicious waves and driving rain. A flash of lightning revealed something white bobbing on the waves far away, one of the lifeboats. Too far. They wouldn’t see me in the dark, a head of black hair adrift in the churning froth.
I had been holding on to something, a plank perhaps. Somewhere behind me, a woman gasped and gurgled. When I looked toward the sound, nothing remained. She’d already gone under. Taken by some primal need, I dove after her. In seconds, I spotted her blonde hair and swam in pursuit. She reached up for me, and I got a grip on her arms. We struggled to the surface, trying to cling together to my scrap of wood. The pair of us weighed too much for it and we sank together, pulling the debris down. I didn’t want to let her go. I couldn’t. How do you abandon another human being to die? I held on, strangely at peace with our fate. Better to die together than ignore her.
Before we’d gone under, I’d taken a good breath. That’d buy me a minute or so. I’d always been good at holding my breath, even as a child. Big lungs or something. Lucky me. The woman, my friend-in-death, didn’t have that fortune. A great burst of air escaped her mouth, trailing in bubbles toward the surface. She spasmed once, and again, and stared deep into my eyes. Her wide, desperate gaze became glassy. When her body stilled, I finally let her go and watched her sink.
Kicking my legs, I swam in a direction I believed to be upward. I had a little fight left in me still, if only I could get my head above water. Except, I couldn’t tell where the surface was; up or down lost meaning. Panic took me as I brushed a corpse, my cold-numbed hands barely registering the contact.
A flash of silver went past me on the left. I thought I’d seen a great white. I hadn’t. Little did I know I had been hunted that night, but not by a shark.
What hunted me was far darker.
I clawed at the inky blackness, trying to sense gravity and find my way up, desperate for air, but I never did get that last breath. Hands found me, gripping my shoulders from below. The hands dragged me deeper.
And deeper.
A pallid man’s face appeared directly in front of me. He pressed his lips to mine. Reflexively, I wrapped my arms around him, holding on for dear life. His breath filled my lungs with cold air. And as fast as he’d appeared, he vanished. Too exhausted to move, I drifted leaden in the water, spinning amid swirling bubbles. A powerful, shiny tail flashed off in the distance.
All thought left my mind as a spasm took me. My body gave up and the air burst out of me; involuntarily, I took on water, a biting sting that flooded my lungs. Total panic occupied the last moments of my mortal life. Drowning sucks. I can’t think of a worse way to die. The darkness, the feeling of being trapped and helpless, the battle between the thinking mind and the unthinking body desperate for air, so desperate it tries to breathe water. That point when rational thought crumbles under the weight of instinct, even if fatal.
I’d been dying. And dying.
Except, my death never came. I’d thought I’d felt my life force slipping away, especially when I saw my husband Albert as a white shimmer off in the distance of the ocean depths. As long as I exist, the joyful smile he gave me will haunt me, his one hand outstretched, beckoning me. I still choke up whenever I think about him, about our innocence. He died far too young; we’d only had a few months together before the war took him away. Before I could get to him, his expression turned sorrowful. Something had changed. Albert shook his fist, furious, and faded away before I could do anything.
Pain rippled over me. Muscles locked with renewed spasms. Flashing lights danced in my vision, and I became aware that my heartbeat ceased. Total silence enveloped me, and all the bizarre glows and blobs winked out, leaving me in complete blackness. A deep, resonant thump in the water accompanied crackling wood. The ship had settled on the bottom.
Yet, I remained in my body, seemi
ngly alive, somehow…
I remember thinking death to be far stranger than I imagined it would be, when I realized I could still move my arms. I paddled around in circles, but in every direction, dark. No, wait, something silver streaked by. A lance of light pierced the darkness. The streak vanished far down below my feet, toward the seabed. Some strange compulsion pulled me toward it. I no longer felt the burning need for air, nor did any trace of panic remain. Even the bone-numbing cold had stopped bothering me, replaced by comfortable room temperature. Again, somehow.
Not since Albert had shipped off for World War I had I known such peace. Though, admittedly, I was… what’s the term they use these days? ‘Freaking out.’
I kicked my legs, swimming downward. Could ghosts could swim? Was I one? Whatever happened to me, I certainly didn’t feel ethereal or free from the effects of water. Currents pushed me back and forth, my body more solid than any spirit. Another streak of light shot by, followed by a second, third, and then they were everywhere. In sharp relief against the increasing glow, the bodies of the cruise passengers came into view. The captain, too, still with that vacant, almost surprised look on his face.
The instant I locked eyes with the dead man, my mind filled with a vision, of him flying across the bridge, headfirst into the wall―darkness. What? How did I see that? And how was I able to see anything so close to the ocean floor after midnight? There’s no light down here, or at least there shouldn’t be, yet I could perceive the seabed clearly. The blue-tinted world around me shimmered and pulsed with a living glow. The blurriness of seawater receded. My vision stretched as far here as it would have on land, over rocky crags, miles of silt, bizarre plants, and a few shipwrecks.
I spotted something else, something large, drifting among the bodies. A humanoid figure gazed at the dead, studying them with interest. That I could see him at all mystified me; that I could perceive his expression bewildered me.
Strangest of all, his mode of propulsion.
As soon as I realized what my eyes tried to tell me, I may have fainted.
Oh yes, that had been the strangest of all.
I blink out of my daydream, once more at the table in Wantanabe’s. Mr. Brennan had evidently ordered beef negimaki. My platter of sashimi is about halfway gone.
I saved the salmon for you, says Licinia. I know that’s your favorite.
Thanks. I smile inwardly at Licinia. She must’ve taken over while I drifted into the past.
Mr. Brennan doesn’t seem in a conversational mood. I toss a hunk of salmon into my mouth and bite down on the succulent flesh. I may have moaned like naughty things were going on beneath the table, but not too loud. I don’t want an audience. Did I miss anything?
Nothing other than him asking you again to ‘convince’ his son to go home. I told him he can do that himself. Unless he dresses up like a bag of Funions, no one there will hurt him.
I almost choke on my food trying not to laugh.
He hands me a check for the amount we agreed upon, though he’s clearly disappointed. I wonder if he’s upset to learn his son has been avoiding him rather than finding out something unfortunate happened.
“Wow.” Mr. Brennan glances at the large, empty plate in front of me. Err, mostly empty. I don’t touch the ginger. “You really like sushi.”
“You have no idea.” I wink, and devour another piece of sashimi.
arcy’s Gym is a nice little place with a giant set of windows that overlooks Lake Washington. Sadly, it’s separated from the coast by a couple hundred feet of suburbia, but the third story fitness center on Main Street, Bellevue tries. Not that I need to work out. I come here mostly to spend time with Mom. Also known as Trisha Buda. She’s not my mother, but she likes it when I call her Mom.
Trish is three months into being sixty-five. Both of her sons are away. Bill, the eldest, is in the Navy and halfway through his forties. Brian, her ‘surprise,’ was a gift she never expected from a boyfriend she’d found at forty-two. The relationship didn’t last, but Trisha did okay raising her youngest alone. The boy’s in MIT, graduate studies now if I remember right.
I sigh. I wish they had college like this when I was really twenty-five. And they even let girls go to them now, how wild is that?
Trish is on the treadmill next to mine. We meet here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, spend a while running in place, then either do some light weight lifting, a yoga class, or sometimes use the pool. I once may have won a ‘holding breath’ bet against this jackass talking down to his girlfriend. And yes, I most definitely cheated. Not that anyone could’ve ever guessed how.
“Out in the woods, eh?” Trisha laughs. “Reminds me of Woodstock.”
“You were there?” I blink. I remember hearing about it, but 1969… fourteen years after my mother passed away. I want to say I spent the bulk of the 60s in Southeast Asia, but most of the decade is a mere blur of grief-eating. Amazing I’m not sick to death of clams, and whatever those other things were. I’ve eaten stuff few people in America even have names for.
“Of course I was there!” Trisha gives me a scolding look. “I was seventeen and you bet your boobs I wasn’t gonna miss that. Hitchhiked up from Maryland all by myself.”
I prod the console, getting the treadmill up to a light run. “Wouldn’t try that these days. Too many creeps.”
“Oh.” Trisha shakes her head, making her grey ponytail dance. “Just as many creeps back then, only ya didn’t hear about ’em. No interwebs.”
She does understand what the internet is. Trisha likes playing the befuddled old woman, especially around ‘young people.’ As far as she knows, I’m twenty-two. I figure if I lie a few years off the front end, she won’t realize I haven’t changed at all ten or fifteen years down the road. Hopefully, by that point, she’ll be fuzzy enough in the mind not to notice or care. Call it dark if you want. I like to have a friend―one friend―and I pick them older, for this precise reason. Having to explain to someone why after forty years of friendship I still look the same as when we first met and they’re a grandmother… no thanks. And, all right, maybe some part of me hasn’t quite gotten over losing my mother. Trisha insisting that I call her Mom doesn’t help that. Or maybe it does.
“So, the boy’s fine?” asks Trisha.
“As far as I know. Looked like a bunch of grown kids having a good time.” I describe the campground. “I’m pretty sure his father’s the reason he’s going off the deep end.”
“Overbearing?” Trisha pokes a few buttons on her treadmill’s console, but her speed doesn’t change.
“You can say that. The man wanted to pay me extra to drag the boy home.”
She laughs.
“So, according to Buddha’s wisdom, do you think leaving him there is the best choice?”
Trisha lets go of the handholds to clasp her palms together like a Shaolin monk, while continuing to jog. “The curious cub does not learn until it has been bitten.”
“Or gotten spifflicated.” Oops.
“Heh, you young ones and your new words.” Trisha grabs the handrails.
Yeah, I heard that term when I was still human, somewhere in the early 1920s. The thought that when she’d been born in 1952, I should’ve been Trisha’s current age, less a year or two, lodges a stone in my throat. I don’t hate what I am―far from it―but I’m not immune to the regret of what-ifs. I didn’t have to fall in love and skip school to marry young. I didn’t have to get on that boat. I didn’t have to do a lot of things, but I did, and here I am.
“I just made it up. Sounded like a funny way to say high.” An easy smile plays on my lips.
Being around Trisha calms me. Even if I am almost twice her age, I think my brain jammed in my middle twenties. I don’t feel like a wise old being. Despite knowing how long I’ve been around, whenever I’m with her, I become the daughter looking for answers. She’s so calm, self-assured, fearless, and wise. My actual mother was all that as well, but more reserved. Trisha’s free with humor and freer with ‘me
dicinal herbs.’ Mother didn’t even drink. I’ve come to believe my birth father had been liberal with alcohol, and watching him made her a teetotaler.
“You know, I’m thinking of hiring you,” says Trisha.
“Oh?” I almost stumble when my ankles bash together. Damn, I hate that. Cringing, I hold myself up by the handrails, sneakers off the tread, until the pain subsides. How is it smacking my ankles together hurts more than getting shot with a Tommy gun? Did I mention I hated those damn things, too?
Her machine beeps and whirrs down as it slows. In seconds, she’s fast-walking for a cool-down phase. “My neighbors at ‘the place.’”―that’s her term for the fifty-five plus development she lives in―“Their son Jace is in the Army, and he wound up getting deployed. Obviously, he can’t take his children with him to Wherever-stan.”
I chuckle. “Yeah.”
“The mother’s out of the picture, so he had no choice but to ask his parents to watch the brood. Five, four, and seven.”
“Wow. The mother took off?” I quirk an eyebrow at Trisha.
She shrugs. “No idea. They didn’t go into detail, just said she’s not available. Who knows? So anyway, the Lyons are good folk, but the bitch who lives next door to me is stirring up trouble. She can’t stand the idea that children are inside our community for longer than a day visit.”
“Oh.” I shake my head. “Some people.”
“Edith is bound and determined to make them either get rid of their grandchildren or sell their damn house and move.” Trisha steps off her treadmill and reaches for a towel to dab her face. “I was hoping you could sneak into her house and plant a nice big fat bag of combustible herbage that an anonymous tip to the police could sort out.” She lowers the towel to grin at me. “What do you think?”