“And there’s something in the water?”
“Probably just dolphins.”
“Ah we safe to be in a storm? Is there anyone else here?”
“Oh yeah, we’re safe. I’ve already been through a few storms out here. Learned the hard way how to keep my house from blowing away. And myself.” He chuckled. “Yes, there are a few of other people around,” he lied vaguely, “But I like to spend time alone.”
A marmalade cat strolled casually out onto the deck. Troy moved his tablet just in time, clearing his lap for the cat’s landing there. “In case you haven’t met her yet, this is Millicent Oberon McGillicutty. Millie, for short.” He petted the cat, mouthing baby talk.
Tommy watched the old man pet the marmalade cat. “So . . . what are the chances of getting home from here?”
“I can get you close enough to the States to get you home, but not until after the storm blows over. Don’t worry, though. I’ve got satellite TV and internet. If you like to read, I have a nice little library. You’ll be comfortable enough for another day or two. You should be resting, anyway. Hey, by the way, where did you come from? How did you get here from . . . Georgia, was it? How did you make it halfway around the world from there?”
It was Tommy’s turn to shrug. “I actually didn’t come from Georgia to here. I was visiting friends in Cali . . . went for a boat ride and got caught in a freak storm. Got knocked out, landed on a big piece of boat. Floated around awhile. And here I am.”
Troy scrutinized Tommy’s face for a moment. “Hm. You’re looking a little pale under your tan. I think you got out of bed too soon. Feel free to use the sofa if you don’t feel like going back to bed.”
“Y’all may be right.” Tommy rose carefully from his chair and slowly made his way inside.
“I’ll get dinner together in a little while,” Troy called after him.
* * *
Tommy closed the bedroom door behind him and sat heavily on the bed. Shelley buzzed over to him.
“You need to rest,” she said. “Drink more water.”
Obeying, Tommy picked up the glass that the old man had left on the bedside table earlier and took a few sips of the water. He noticed a drawer in the bedside table and, curious, slid it open. It contained only a framed photograph. He pulled it from the drawer.
The photo was of a man in his forties; short dark hair, a smile that reached the corners of his eyes. Tommy knew this man immediately. He hadn’t recognized his elderly host, with his matted beard and crazy Einsteinian tufts of gray hair; but he knew him, now. And his name wasn’t Steve. It was Troy Fairchild.
The very man Tommy had been searching for.
* * *
Millie yowled, complaining loudly.
Troy stroked her back. “Just a few minutes, Miss McGillicutty,” he said. She yowled in response, her paw striking out, her claws extended for slashing.
“Hey!” Troy exclaimed. Millie jumped down and paced the deck, her tail swaying slowly from side to side. She stopped every few minutes to groom herself and yowl.
“Who pissed in your cornflakes?” He asked her. She ignored him.
The same three geckos had been sunning themselves on the deck since early that morning. It was about the time of day when they retreated to hot, sunbaked rocks for the night; except they were retreating in the wrong direction. Troy watched the three of them climb up the side of the house to the roof.
All of the remaining geckos on the island (or so it seemed to Troy, because of their sheer number) suddenly poured over the edge of the deck in droves. Troy sat in stunned surprise for a split second, then quickly reversed his chair through the French doors and hit the “Close Door” button on his universal house remote. The doors swung shut even as the swarm of geckos reached the threshold. It seemed they were seeking higher ground: they followed the first three up the front wall of the house. Troy watched their little toes and tails flatten against the glass as they scurried up the outer surface of the French doors.
At first, when the flood of geckos tapered off and his windows cleared, Troy thought the storm had finally arrived and that the high winds were sending pieces of vegetation and tree branches swirling about in the air. After a moment, however, he discovered that what he actually saw and heard through the three-inch thick shatterproof glass was the flight of birds. Hundreds upon hundreds of birds, mostly parrots, though there were several flaming orange doves among their number, as well as a surprising few “golden-maned” hornbills, huge against the more petite members of their company.
It was normal for the island wildlife to act out of character before a bout of extreme weather conditions, and this wasn’t the first time he had seen this behavior from his fellow island dwellers. Still, what appeared to be an exodus to “higher ground” nonplussed him enough that he spent some time in his communications room, listening to NWR for any updated information on the approaching storm. There was nothing new; only the repeated admonition that the storm would make landfall within the next twenty-four hours and the usual warnings about evacuation or storm preparation.
He returned to his living room to find the castaway reclining in the corner of his sofa, long legs stretched out before him.
“Feeling better?” Troy asked.
“A little.” Tommy drawled vaguely, looking preoccupied.
“You hungry?”
Tommy’s sharp blue eyes focused on Troy a little more clearly. “Shore am. That soup y’all brought me before was awesome, but something solid would help, now.”
The old man nodded and stowed his binoculars on a shelf, then removed the tray from his chair. After setting it aside, he rummaged in the refrigerator and pulled out two of the swordfish steaks he had stored that morning, as well as the prawns. He was going to use the indoor grill.
“Storm getting closer.” Tommy called to him.
“Yeah,” Troy responded, gathering his ingredients. “It’s getting rough outside.” He turned on his grill to heat, and prepared a marinade of fresh coconut milk, ginger, and lime juice. He threw some green chile and jalapeño peppers into his food processor for a few seconds and added them to the marinade. Troy popped the marinating prawns shrimp back into the refrigerator.
Tommy got up from the sofa and joined Troy in the kitchen. “Mind if I get more water?” he asked.
“Help yourself.”
Tommy filled his glass with ice from the icemaker in the refrigerator door, then with water from the dispenser. He took a seat at the table and watched Troy drop the swordfish steaks on the hot grill. “Y’all’s pretty good with those wheels,” he commented.
Troy glanced at him briefly. “I’ve been in them a few years. Long enough to learn how to work them.”
“So . . . what happened? If y’all don’t mind me asking.”
“Car accident.”
“A collision?”
“You could say that . . .” Troy tossed mango and papaya chunks with freshly shaved coconut. “A car collided with me while I was strolling down a sidewalk one day.”
“Damn, that sucks, man. Did they catch the guy?”
Troy didn’t look at him as he dropped his marinated shrimp into a hot frying pan. “Yeah . . . they caught the guy.” He brandished a pair of wine glasses. “White wine?”
“Shore! Why not? So it wasn’t hit and run?”
“Oh yeah, it was a hit and run. But they found the driver.” Troy flipped the swordfish steaks and checked the prawns, then rolled back and forth through the kitchen, setting plates, silverware, fruit, and bread on the table. He checked the seafood again. “I believe we’re in business.”
“Awesome! Smells amazing.”
“We’ll see.” He plated the steaks and prawns.
They dug in.
After a few minutes, Tommy broke the silence. “Ah wonder if this storm is the same one that I got caught in.”
“Doubtful. If you were off the California coast, you would have been too far north. This tropical storm originated more to the south.”
“Hm.” Tommy sipped his wine.
“So what do you do, Tommy?”
“Me? Oh, I design warm weather sportswear. For skaters, surfers, you know. Board shorts, shoes, t-shirts, jerseys.”
Troy raised his eyebrows. “Really. That’s interesting.”
“And how about y’all, Steve? How did you get yourself this little island?
“Settlement.”
“Ah. Say no more.”
“Shall we adjourn to the Weather Channel?”
Tommy scraped his chair back and reclaimed his seat in one corner of the sofa. “Wow,” he said. “Looks like a total doozy.”
Troy hit the kitchen light switch on the way into the living room, leaving the television as the only source of light. He stared out the doors at the approaching fog bank, which had reached the island. The glare of the floodlights now cast the swirling, roiling mass in an eerie greenish tint. It looked like something from an experimental science class beaker. He looked up, but the fog seemed to continue up toward the sky without end. It continued on into the blackness to the right and left, beyond the reach of the floodlights. He guessed that even if he could identify the line between light and dark, he still wouldn’t be able to see where the fog bank ended – in either direction. It advanced inland at a slow crawl, like a sluggish, mindless animal.
“You look nervous. I thought y’all said you’ve been through a few storms out here.”
Troy turned his head and gave him a brief glance. “I have. But I’ve never seen anything like that since I’ve lived here.”
“That’s not normal?”
Troy reflected for a moment. “There is fog, sometimes. It just doesn’t usually look like that.” He thought about the images of the dark shapes beneath the water that his drone had captured. Was he sure they were dolphins?
At that moment, the two men heard a high-pitched screaming noise coming from the direction of the beach.
“What the hell is that?” Tommy asked, a note of alarm in his voice. He clamped his hands to his ears as more screams erupted from the beach, rising in pitch and volume, creating an intolerable din.
Troy looked past him, down to the shore.
As he watched, something emerged from the roiling edges of the fog. Its lumbering movements reminded Troy of a giant sea lion. Was it an elephant seal, maybe a walrus? Whatever it was used long front flippers to propel itself along the sand.
But its head looked human.
More of the things came out of the fog and lumbered up the beach toward Troy’s house. He recalled the video feed the drone had sent to his tablet earlier. The dark shadows swimming below the surface of the ocean, ahead of the wall of haze.
A sudden stench assailed his nostrils. It permeated his walls and filled his living room and kitchen: the rotting, revolting smell of decomposing fish.
“What are those things? What the hell is that smell? Hey, where y’all going?”
But Troy had rolled away. He reappeared in a few seconds with his drone.
He didn’t like opening his doors after he had already sealed up the house and enabled his fortifications against the impending tropical storm, but he only needed to open them enough to launch the drone.
It flew over the creatures on the beach, feeding video back to Troy’s tablet. His stomach dropped with fear as he observed the images.
The creatures’ front arms were flipper-esque, ending in webbed claws. They had no rear legs, just massive, scale-covered tails which they dragged behind them as they approached. From the waist up, the creatures’ oversized, humanoid chests seemed to be covered in a thick, coarse fur, resembling that of a sea lion. The fur continued up their necks, where it tapered off below the chin. Their faces were smooth, black, and vaguely humanoid, but where a human nose would have been was a bump containing two vertical slits. A thick black ridge jutted out above golden eyes that glowed, fish-like, in the floodlights’ glare. Their black pupils were also vertical slits, similar to how a cat’s pupils looked in bright light. Hair grew from the rough heads, long and dripping with seaweed, or maybe algae, and hung down their backs. Dark slashes that resembled gills appeared on either side of their necks.
Tommy looked over Troy’s shoulder. “Holy shit, those things are fugly!”
The older man had to agree. The things were fugly. They were strange, abnormal. Like really nastyass mermaids – or mermen – but were they a threat?
Just then, one of them tipped its head back, opened its mouth and screamed, revealing triple rows of razor sharp teeth. The other creatures followed suit, screaming in answer. The result was a shrill cacophony, a sound more felt than heard, that reverberated sharply through the men’s heads. Tommy dropped to his knees, clutching his ears. Troy recoiled against the back of his chair.
If he’d had doubts before, the old man had none, now. These things were a threat, even if it came only in the form of a sound that could bloody his eardrums. Those teeth might be something to be concerned about, too. He hoped the main diet of these mermonsters was fish and other seafood. He thought wryly that perhaps they had smelled his dinner.
He grabbed his flashlight from the bookshelf, hustled to the bathroom and pulled two pairs of earplugs from of his cabinet. Experience had taught him that tropical storms could be tremendously loud. He had prepared accordingly and stocked up on earplugs. Maybe they would help against the creatures’ shrill screams. For good measure, he also grabbed two headsets from his communications room.
He rolled out to the living room and tossed a pair of each at Tommy, who was pale and visibly shaken. “They can’t get in here, can they?” he asked in a trembling voice.
Troy jammed earplugs in his ears and put his headset on. “I don’t think so. The only access from the first floor is through a three-inch thick stainless steel elevator door, which is on lock-down for the storm, and a hidden trapdoor under two feet of sand. Unless they can somehow climb up the outside of the building, they shouldn’t even be able to reach the second floor.”
“Let’s hope they don’t have suction cups on those flippers. What if they do somehow reach the second floor?”
The old man shuddered at the image. “Those French doors would be the one spot I would worry about,” he said. “But that’s shatter-resistant glass, and I had state-of-the-art electronic slide bolts installed; there are sixteen of them, from top to bottom. The door frame isn’t even wood, though it looks like wood that’s been painted white. It’s white-painted stainless steel. And they are sealed through air pressure. There are several other windows up here, but they all use shatter-resistant glass and the same electronic slide bolts, and they’re sealed, too. Again, the only way to get to any of the second floor openings is by ladder . . . or by somehow climbing up the side of the building. And even if those things could climb, they wouldn’t be able to get inside the glass. They wouldn’t be able to break it. I’m not an expert on sea monsters, but I’m not sure those things can climb.”
“I feel a lot better,” Tommy responded.
A piercing shriek rose from the beach, followed by an ear-splitting answering chorus. Tommy quickly stuffed the ear plugs into his ears and added the headset.
Troy said, “I want to try to figure out why they’re here. What do they want?”
“I don’t know, but that fog getting closer.”
In the dimness, Tommy watched the sea creatures flop their way up the beach, the fog bank close behind them, their tails being chased by ocean water. Water?
“Steve?” he said, “Didn’t the tide already come in? Weren’t we at high tide over an hour ago?”
“Why?” Troy joined him at the edge of the French doors.
“Because it looks like the tide is still coming in.” Tommy pointed to the gently lapping water’s edge, which had advanced up the beach just beneath the fog bank.
Troy rubbed his hairy chin, his brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. That water is almost all the way up to the house.”
“Is the island sinking?”
>
“I don’t know.”
“Is your house waterproof?”
“Supposed to be.”
Tommy felt frustration building throughout his chest at the old man’s noncommittal answers. He wasn’t promising safety. Therefore, there was a chance that his reinforced walls would not hold back the pressure of the entire South Pacific.
The two men stared silently from the dark interior of Troy’s house at the mermonsters, the sickly green-tinted fog bank and the rising ocean water.
Should have stayed in bed this morning, Troy thought. He had rarely feared anything in his life. The few things that had inspired fear in him were when he’d first lost the use of his legs, and he wondered how he was going to take care of himself for the rest of his life. Other moments in which he had felt fear were during the previous tropical storms he’d experienced. Other than these storms, for the past several years, he’d had nothing to fear on his isolated island. It was only him, the lizards, and scads of exotic birds, not to mention some delicious ocean fish. The millipedes could be annoying, but the most he had to fear from them was a painful bite – as long as it was above the waist. Below the belt down to his toes, they could bite all they wanted and he wouldn’t feel a thing.
He had seen some strange weather phenomena and the occasional unusual flora or fauna during his years as the island’s only human inhabitant. Until tonight, however, he’d had yet to witness any kind of intimidating or deadly wildlife. He could safely say that the mermonsters scared the shit out of him, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it, but he kept it to himself, anyway. He was still questioning that he was even seeing the nightmarish creatures.
He found himself double-checking his fortifications in his head, checking the list of storm preparation plans that he had developed over the past decade.
Elevator locked and sealed. Check. Windows closed and sealed: kitchen, check. Living room, check. Bedroom, guestroom, check, check . . . he had sealed the windows in the bathroom, and the communications room. There were no windows in the panic room. The French doors were closed, locked, and sealed. Two backup generators at the ready: check. Dry goods and canned supplies, bottled water: check. Sterno: check.
Blood and Bone: A Smattering of Unease Page 3