Siren

by Tricia Rayburn

  My heart ached for him as his eyes turned down.

  “She said we couldn’t be together like that … that she loved me too much to risk anything happening to me.” The book shook as he squeezed it with both hands. “In an attempt to convince her it would be okay, I wrote this for her. I wanted her to know that I would always be there for her, to talk to her, to distract her from her fears, if that’s what she needed from me. But she never changed her mind.”

  My eyes fluttered closed as Simon’s hand pressed against my back.

  “That wasn’t the worst of it, though.” His voice was lower now. “Just because she said we couldn’t be together didn’t mean she wanted it that way. And one late August night many years later, when I was missing her so badly I couldn’t see straight, I looked for her at the restaurant. She wasn’t there, and on a whim I returned to where we’d first met. She was swimming, and when she saw me watching this time, she climbed out of the water and came toward me without a word.”

  I was glad when the lights flickered off and stayed that way. My cheeks were burning as I listened to Oliver talk about his romantic rendezvous on the rocks, and I imagined Simon’s lips against mine last night.

  “Nine months later, she had Raina.”

  My eyes widened. I knew she was Betty’s daughter, and that she had to have a father … but it was hard to imagine that strange Raina was the result of such real, passionate, forbidden love.

  “She stopped talking to me completely after that night on the rocks,” Oliver said sadly. “I still went to the restaurant. I told her I wanted to show our daughter as much light and happiness as her mother had shown me. But she wouldn’t listen. It was like she didn’t hear me.”

  “And that was it?” Caleb asked. “She didn’t give you another chance?”

  “I’m afraid not. I wrote, I called, I sent flowers. I went to the restaurant just to be near her. I sent gifts on every special occasion—birthdays, holidays, any day I thought of her so much I had to physically do something about it. And I did the same for Raina—until those gifts and cards started coming back to me.” He paused. “Years later, after Betty’s accident, I tried to visit her at home … but Raina wouldn’t let me in. She said it would be too upsetting. I still go to the restaurant now, though, just to feel as close to her as I can.”

  “Oliver,” I said, “the place where you and Betty first met, where you met again a few years later … where was that, exactly?”

  He frowned, then reached into a leather knapsack at his feet. He pulled out a large drawing pad and held it toward me. “I’m not much of an artist, but doodling is quite therapeutic.”

  I took the pad and handed it to Simon to open. I already knew what Oliver wanted me to see.

  “The water at the bottom of Chione Cliffs has always been a good swimming spot,” Oliver said. “I liked it because it was secluded. Betty liked it because it was the area’s deepest natural pool. She said when she dove into it from the cliff, she could swim straight down for minutes and never reach sand.”

  A log shifted in the fireplace just as my breath caught. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice my surprise.

  “She could swim underwater for minutes?” Caleb asked. “How?”

  “I thought it was a skill she’d learned after years of practice—that, or it was just another seemingly impossible talent she was blessed with. But when she stopped talking to me so abruptly after our night there, I started gathering information. I wrote down the few personal details she’d granted me—including swimming for minutes without oxygen. I wanted to help her. I wanted to figure out what she was so afraid of so that I could help her deal with it. I thought if I could just help her be not so scared, maybe we could be together.” He reached forward and lifted a canvas bag of books onto his lap. “I didn’t figure it out in time for Betty and me … but maybe we can figure it out in time for Winter Harbor.”

  I eyed the covers of the books as he placed them one by one on the floor by our feet. “Greek mythology? Untold Sailor Tales? Mermaids?”

  The last time I saw Oliver in the library, he’d said history repeated itself, that the way to figure out and stop what was happening now was to revisit what had happened in the past. I’d expected books about crime, murder, death, and destruction—nonfiction works that chronicled true, gruesome events throughout time. Kind of like the obituaries with the smiling victims in the back issues of the Winter Harbor Herald, but on a bigger, more terrifying scale.

  “Les chanteuses de la mer?” I read aloud as Oliver pulled out the last book. It had a faded red cover with an illustration of a woman reaching out of the water, toward the sky.

  “‘Songstresses of the sea,’” Caleb translated, his voice grim. “French was the only subject I ever liked,” he added when Simon and I looked at him, surprised.

  I turned to Simon, my rock of scientific theory. “Really? You really think Betty’s some kind of evil singing mermaid? With, what? Webbed feet and a spiked coconut bra?” I tried to joke because he wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t rolling his eyes or immediately dismissing the idea.

  I turned back to the book, which Oliver now held open. My eyes skipped over the French text and landed on the illustration. The only light in the room came from the flickering fire, so I couldn’t make it out right away … but when another bolt of lightning struck nearby, the image was as clear as if it were blown up on a movie screen.

  A man lay on a rocky shore. His body was limp, his limbs splayed across the beach like strands of washed-up seaweed. From the neck down, the picture suggested his death had been painful, even torturous. He looked like a fisherman who’d been caught in a storm, snatched from his boat, and then tossed about among the waves before being thrown to land.

  But despite the unfortunate outcome, from the neck up, he looked like he wished he could do it again.

  Because the dead fisherman was smiling.

  CHAPTER 18

  “THIS IS CRAZY. You know this is crazy.”

  “It sounds crazy,” Caleb said, “but it makes perfect sense.”

  Simon stared straight ahead as he drove, not agreeing with either of us.

  “Raina might be strange and Zara might be capable of doing some terrible, unimaginable things, but … sirens? Like the beautiful, fictional creatures that lured sailors to their deaths?” I shook my head. “This isn’t The Odyssey. This is actually happening—here, in real life. If you want to call them serial killers, fine. But to say that they magically sing to guys for the thrill of the hunt is insane.”

  “Vanessa, I can hear Zara.” Caleb sounded excited, as if relieved to have an explanation finally. “Even when I don’t see her, I hear her. That’s why I can’t focus on anything else whenever she’s calling to me. I can’t even think about how much I can’t stand the thought of her, or how I wish she would go away and leave me alone. I can only listen to her, and picture her, and want to be near her, even though being within a hundred miles of her is normally too close.”

  An image of the two of them on the rocks in the woods flashed through my head. He’d seemed simultaneously eager and uncomfortable as she’d crawled toward him and pressed her body against his—but he’d just lost his girlfriend. And despite whatever lay underneath the pretty exterior, Zara was still stunning. He’d just been hurt, and lonely, and guilty for being attracted to another girl.

  “And you heard what Oliver said—this was the past Betty tried to escape. It’s why she left her family and came here, and why she and Oliver couldn’t be together.”

  “Because the other crazy, man-hunting women in her family would find out, lure him away from her, kill him, and then take her back?” I looked at Caleb. “Do you hear how that sounds?”

  “What about the man who fathered Zara and Paige?” he asked. “Have you ever heard them talk about their dad?”

  “No,” I admitted, “but maybe they’re just a very private family. I don’t know Paige’s favorite color or when Zara’s birthday is, either.”

  “Y
ou don’t know about their dad—just like we never heard anything about their dad—because there probably wasn’t just one. And Raina probably killed them both after each deed was done.”

  “Um, Simon?” I looked at him, then at his knuckles turning white as he clutched the steering wheel. “A voice of reason would be helpful right about now.”

  “Caleb should go in.”

  It took me a second to realize the car was no longer moving. I followed Simon’s gaze and tried to make out where we were through the rain streaming down the windshield. “The Lighthouse?”

  Caleb sat back and peered through his window. “What are we doing here?”

  Simon continued to stare straight ahead. “Betty stopped talking to Oliver after they spent the night together on Chione Cliffs. The night she became pregnant with Raina.”

  “And …?” I wasn’t making the connection.

  “According to Zara’s scrapbook, she dropped each guy the second he said he loved her, and then they disappeared.”

  “Zara has a scrapbook?” Caleb asked. “I wouldn’t have pegged her as the type.”

  “And now,” Simon said, ignoring Caleb, “Paige is pregnant.”

  My stomach dropped. I’d been so intent on disbelieving everything Oliver had told us, I hadn’t thought about what it might it mean if it was actually true. “Jonathan.”

  “Jonathan,” Caleb repeated. “Jonathan Marsh? What about him?”

  I looked toward the Lighthouse docks. The fancy yachts, all abandoned, bobbed like toy boats in the choppy water. “He’s Paige’s boyfriend.”

  “Betty loved Oliver,” Simon said. “She wanted to protect him, which was why when they finally gave in to each other, she cut him off. She could’ve killed him—and it sounds like if she hadn’t been on her own the way she was, she would’ve. Not because she wanted to, but because it was expected. Because they didn’t want anyone else finding out what they really were.”

  I stared out the window, wondering how these words were coming out of Simon’s mouth. Where was the scientific skepticism? The automatic insistence that such things were humanly impossible? The demand for proof?

  “We have to tell Jonathan. We have to warn him about Paige before something happens.” Caleb’s voice was resigned.

  I shook my head. “I know Paige. Even if—hypothetically speaking, in some alternate universe—Betty’s a descendant of murdering mermaids, Paige hasn’t been swimming in that gene pool. Or if she has, she doesn’t know it. She’s too nice, too good. And I’ve seen her with Jonathan—she’s crazy about him. She would never do anything to hurt him.”

  Simon looked at me. “What about Zara? Or Raina?”

  My face flushed. He wasn’t kidding.

  “What do I say?” Caleb asked. “How do you tell someone … this?”

  Simon turned toward him. “You don’t. We don’t want to scare him or give him reason to ask Paige anything. We don’t know what she might say to Raina. The last thing we need is for them to be suspicious of us.”

  “Do you want me to just check on him? Make sure he’s still standing—and hopefully not smiling?”

  “Pretty much. And see if you can find out anything about Paige, or their relationship. You worked together, right? So it shouldn’t seem strange?”

  Caleb half laughed, half sighed. “Right. It shouldn’t seem strange at all.”

  He was still for a minute, and I thought he might be reconsidering the realistic plausibility of what they both seemed to think was true, but then he opened the door and jumped out of the car. I watched him fiddle with his iPod and the headphones in his ears as he sprinted through the rain.

  “You’re right.”

  I looked down at Simon’s hand on mine.

  “It sounds completely insane,” he continued. “All of it. And under normal circumstances, I would’ve thanked Oliver for his time and dismissed everything he said. But these aren’t normal circumstances.” He leaned toward me. “Think about it. Oliver aside, think about everything you’ve seen. Everything you’ve told me.”

  “I’ve seen some strange things,” I admitted. “But I don’t buy it. I can’t. The idea of sirens had to have been invented back when men couldn’t predict or explain certain things. Like the weather—when they didn’t know how the moon and the sun and the oceans all worked together to create crazy natural drama, and when some guys accidentally died as a result. Sirens were imaginary tools used to explain what man couldn’t.” I squeezed his fingers. “But you know better. You know about the weather. You can explain why these things are happening.”

  “You’ve been with me when I’ve tried to understand it the last few weeks. What’s been happening breaks traditional rules. It defies scientific reasoning.”

  “What about Justine?” I asked. “She was a girl. And she wasn’t found smiling.”

  “I think she was getting in the way. I think, for whatever reason, Zara zeroed in on Caleb, and when he didn’t respond the way she wanted him to, she went after the obstacle.”

  I stared at him, my frustration giving way to concern. As a lifelong chicken and firm believer in all that went bump in the night, I was more likely to accept illogical, irrational theories. Simon was Mr. Science Guy. He was the walking, talking Weather Channel. How was I the skeptical one?

  “You know something else.” I wasn’t sure of it until I said it aloud. I ducked my head to get him to look at me. “Don’t you? You know something I don’t. That’s why this makes sense to you.”

  He looked away.

  “Simon.” I squeezed his hand tighter when he tried to release mine. “Tell me. Whatever it is you think I can’t handle, I can handle.” I watched him as he stared at the rain.

  “It was the other day,” he said finally.

  “The other day … in Springfield?”

  He nodded. “In the woods. When we first saw them on the rocks.”

  I looked down. I wasn’t sure he referred to the same moment, but I had no problem recalling at least one—when he’d looked at Zara like he hadn’t known what beautiful was until he saw her there. And when he’d seemed to forget I stood right next to him.

  “At first, all I could think about was Caleb. I worried we wouldn’t find him, and about the state he’d be in if we did.” He paused. “And then when I saw his sweatshirt hanging on that tree, like some sort of twisted clue, all my worries and thoughts exploded in my head. I was mad. Running toward them, I thought about what I would say to her—what I would do to her. By the time we reached the trees, I was ready to plow through and run right at her.”

  I waited. “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know. My body was fully charged, but my head …”

  “It’s okay, Simon,” I said. “Your head … what?”

  “Vanessa, please understand, I couldn’t control it, I didn’t know what was going on … I was only vaguely aware that it was happening.” He took a shallow, shaky breath. “But when we saw them there, on the rocks, I didn’t want to hurt her … I wanted to hurt him.”

  My chest tightened. “Your emotions were displaced. Everything collided at that moment, and you were overwhelmed.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  He said this so seriously, so earnestly, I had no choice but to believe that he believed what he said. “But, why?” I asked. “Why would you want to hurt Caleb?”

  His face scrunched up as he tilted his head, already apologizing for what he was about to say. “Because I was jealous.”

  I sat back.

  “As soon as I saw her everything else went away. The woods, the search, everything that had happened the past few weeks …”

  “Me?” I guessed, looking through the windshield.

  “All I was aware of was her,” he said, his voice wavering. “Vanessa, she tried. She tried to get me to react, to respond to her. And what they do—it’s strong. It’s not just a sound, or a song—it’s nothing like the legends we read growing up.”

  I looked at him, my heart drumming in my ear
s. “What is it?”

  He paused. “You know how when you’re floating on your back in the lake, the water rises and falls against your ears? So that for half a second you can hear everything around you and then for the other half a second everything’s muted? It almost feels like you’re suspended between two worlds.”

  I knew exactly what he was talking about. Even before the accident, the half second that I couldn’t hear everything above the water always made me nervous.

  “It’s kind of like that—like floating on the surface and then slowly, gently, being pulled under. You feel yourself going deeper, but you can’t stop it, and it’s not unpleasant, so you don’t even try. You just kind of give in and let the water pull you down until you can’t hear anything else.”

  “Did you see her? When that was happening to you?”

  “Yes. But she looked different. Everything looked different—softer yet brighter. It was like we were surrounded by a million mirrors, and the sun’s rays were ricocheting back and forth between them until the woods were filled with a white, shiny haze.”

  “Well,” I said, attempting to sound like I was ready to help him the way a good friend should, “it’s a crazy story. But I trust you, and trust that you know what you saw and heard. So if this really is what we’re going on, then—”

  “Vanessa.”

  I closed my eyes. All I’d wanted was to know what had really happened to Justine, and what she’d really been doing in the months before her death. I’d just wanted some answers so I could understand why she jumped when she did, deal with it, and move on. How had I gone from that to this?

  “Vanessa,” he said again, lifting a stray strand of hair away from my face and smoothing behind my ear.

  “Simon … don’t. Please. It’s just a lot. It’s a lot, but it’s okay.”