Black Water

by Ninie Hammon

  Would the world then just go black? Would she even know when it happened? Would Brice look back and see her jet ski idling, race back to find her bobbing in her life jacket, literally “dead in the water”?

  A small icicle of apprehension began to spread a chill through her veins.

  The fear itself scared her to death. It indicated the presence of something new and very different in her world.

  The only reason she could possibly dread/fear dropping instantly dead was because she no longer yearned to be dead. It could only mean that she had turned some kind of emotional corner. Somewhere between her passionate desire to save this child from the horrible death she had experienced with her, and making … okay, admit it, friends — T.J., Dobbs and … yes, Brice — there had been a shift in the tectonic plates in her psyche. There were people in her life who mattered now. People she cared about and who cared about her. That was a sensation, a sense of family she hadn’t felt since the day she saw Aaron’s shoe lying in the street in the rain.

  She had not connected on any level with another human being in almost a year and a half. That lack of connection was what had tipped her over the edge into the black whirlpool circling the drain, spiraling down into utter despair. That lack of connection had put the Smith & Wesson revolver in her hand, had helped her pull the trigger.

  But she wasn’t alone anymore. She hadn’t planned it, didn’t do anything to orchestrate it, didn’t even actually want it, but it had happened whether she wanted it or not. And though it was too strange, too bizarre to possibly understand, she felt the strongest connection of all to the little girl in the cold, dark water, crying for her mother, holding her breath until it burst out of her throat. She was knit together with that child in an impossible relationship that transcended the bounds of normal humanity.

  And that connection created an urgent, desperate need to keep the child alive, darkly ironic given that her own death had been the price she’d paid for Bethany’s safety. The water’s relentless pounding hammered a nail of truth into her soul: Bailey didn’t want to die anymore.

  Chapter Twenty

  The sun had already passed behind the mountain to the west of Whispering Mountain Lake, casting its long, dark shadow out across the water, when Bailey and Brice turned in their jet skis at Joe’s Hole Marina and she walked on wobbly legs up the switchback staircase to the parking lot.

  She was exhausted, in mind, body and spirit. It was a good thing Brice was the one keeping track because she had lost count hours ago of how many houseboats they’d located. The number was irrelevant. They hadn’t found the one they were looking for and it was the only one that mattered. She had no idea how many T.J. and Dobbs had been able to locate. But there couldn’t be many. They could only have checked out the ones parked at the marinas they searched. The two old men had not likely climbed aboard jet skis and searched the coves, nooks and crannies of the huge lake that offered untold hidey-holes where a houseboat could tie up and its occupants enjoy their own private pond of still water.

  She waited at the top of the steps while Brice changed back into his uniform in the restaurant bathroom. A few feet from the top of the steps, the vendors with booths were boxing up their wares, clearing off the display tables for the night. She wandered over to the booth featuring a “Kavanaugh County Craftsman’s Association” sign where handmade deck furniture of all kinds, including Adirondack chairs, were on display for sale. The drowning child of her vision had bumped into a chair like these in the water, had reached out to grab it, but she couldn’t hold onto it. Instead of saving her, the big chair had tumbled over on top of her and knocked her underwater. Bailey reached out to the nearest chair to run her fingers over the smooth surface that’d been too slick for the little girl—

  The instant her fingers came in contact with the chair’s wood the world went black and she fell into another reality.

  She blinks her eyes and instead of the chair and the parking lot and the sunset behind a mountaintop, she sees a little girl’s hand, reaching out. An adult takes the hand and presses something down on top of it. When he lifts the stamp, her skin is marked with wet ink in the shape of a roaring lion’s head. The initials WBTC are on the top of the circle surrounding the lion’s head. Beneath it is the date: July 3, 2015.

  Bailey can smell popcorn and something else sweet — cotton candy. And she can hear voices and music. A calliope. Children laughing.

  I’m bigger now! I’m tall enough.

  The little girl’s thoughts become Bailey’s thoughts.

  The child remembers the line on the fence beside the Mad Walrus ride. You have to be tall enough for the top of your head to reach that line, or they won’t let you ride.

  Bailey hears the little girl say, “…wanna ride the Mad Walrus. I’m big enough this year. Mama said when I was tall—”

  Then the world vanishes.

  Bailey felt Brice’s hand on her shoulder, gasped, heard his voice but it seemed to come from a great distance.

  “…All right? Bailey, answer me. Bailey!”

  “She’s there. She’s there right now. At the carnival. I saw!”

  Bailey looked up into Brice’s face in such fanatic desperation she knew it sounded like she’d come completely unhinged.

  “Who’s at the carnival?”

  “The little girl, the little drowned girl.”

  Bailey realized then she was gripping the Adirondack chair with all her strength. She let go, stepped back and looked at it. There was a tag attached to the arm she wasn’t clinging to. The tag read: “Sold.”

  She brushed past a totally confused Brice and ran to the man who was loading the contents of the booth into the back of a cargo van.

  “That chair” — she pointed to the one Brice stood beside — “the tag says ‘sold.’ Who bought it?”

  The man gave her the look her desperation and near hysteria deserved.

  “Ma’am, if you want a chair, we got lots of others, but we’re closed right now.”

  “I don’t want to buy a chair. I want to know about that chair.” She started to take him by the arm and drag him to the chair, but Brice appeared before she had the man totally spooked.

  “You’re Dan Ragland, aren’t you?” Brice held out his hand. “From up near Turkey Neck Hollow?”

  “That’s me, Sheriff McGreggor.” The man shook his hand. “How can I help you?”

  Brice nodded toward Bailey. “She’s with me. We’re working on a case. What can you tell me about that chair?” He pointed to the one that Bailey had touched.

  “I can tell you it’s sold. And I can tell you the man who bought it was crazier’n an outhouse rat.”

  The man set the small table he was holding into the back of the van and went to the chair, looked at the tag.

  “Yep, this is the one. We got to paint it blue.”

  Brice let silence urge the man to provide more information.

  “My brother Joe was the one sold it to him, I’s helping another customer. Heard him ask the guy, ‘Why blue?’ and the guy sneered and got all sarcastic like, said he already had a red one and a white one and tomorrow bein’ the Fourth of July — he wanted to be patriotic.”

  Ragland shook his head.

  “What Joe was tryin’ to explain to the mo-ron was that this here chair’s already got a finish on it.” He pointed to the shiny surface of the wood. “You can’t paint a chair’s already got a finish. So I tried to help out, told the guy I could get him an unfinished chair and paint it any color he wanted, but he exploded like a shook-up Coca-Cola on a hot day. Said he wanted that chair, said he’d sat in every one we had here and that there chair was the most comfortable one of the lot.” The man shook his head again. “Sheriff, every one of these chairs is the same, made from the same pattern. Ain’t one no more comfortable than the next but wasn’t no way to convince that jackass of nothing.”

  Ragland leaned close to the sheriff and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “You ask me, if you’s to do a blood test on t
hat dude, you’d find every chemical known to man — including Ty-D-Bol. Eyes was wild, scary-like, pupils half the size of BBs. He was on crystal meth or I’m my own grandpa.”

  “Who was he? What was his name?” Bailey demanded, unable to stand quiet and let Brice do the talking. The man looked at Brice as if to ask if he really had to answer her question.

  “Would you mind looking?”

  Ragland sighed, went around to the cab of the van and retrieved a cash box off the front seat. He dug around in it, looked at receipts, compared one to the tag on the chair and finally said, “Here’s the receipt.”

  He handed the receipt that had the same number on it as the tag on the chair. The name on the receipt was totally indecipherable.

  “Can you read that name?” Brice asked.

  The man shrugged. “No, but it wasn’t like I was gonna ask a guy who was that fried to spell it for me! It don’t matter. He’s got a copy of the receipt.”

  “So you don’t know who this is?” Bailey asked, only barely managing to keep her voice from breaking.

  “Like I said, I don’t need to know his name. He gives me his copy of the receipt, I give him the chair.”

  “Was there a little girl with him?” Bailey asked. “With long hair, braids?”

  “Mighta been. I didn’t notice.” He looked at Brice. “You need anything else? I gotta get this stuff loaded up, drop this chair by Seth Cosgrove’s so he can paint it blue before tomorrow. Paint ain’t gonna stick on that finish, but…”

  “Thanks, Dan. You’ve been very helpful.”

  Brice turned and pulled Bailey along beside him. She had the presence of mind not to speak until they were out of earshot from the man loading furniture into the van.

  “That chair, it’s connected to … I don’t know how to explain it, but when I touched it, I…” She paused, took a deep breath, knew her babbling wasn’t winning her any sanity points with the sheriff. “I think she, the little girl in the portrait, must have touched this chair,” she heard herself say and knew it for absolute truth the moment it came out her mouth, though she could have given no rational reason it should be so. “Think about it. The guy comes here to buy a chair, brings his family — wife, kids maybe. He was trying out the chairs, sitting in all of them. They probably did, too. The little girl sat in this chair. She must have because that chair connected me to her.”

  “Connected you?”

  “It was like when she was drowning. I could see what she saw, see out her eyes.”

  She watched the sheriff struggle to keep his face neutral, knew for certain then he didn’t really believe any of this, was just humoring her, T.J. and Dobbs. Fine! So long as he kept humoring them she didn’t give a rat’s ass what he believed.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “The carnival. She was at the carnival … is at the carnival, right now. She reached out her hand and the man stamped it with the stamp we saw. The smudge is the head of a lion with the letters WBTC—”

  “Wasuski Brothers Traveling Carnival.”

  “And the date is July 3, 2015. Today!”

  “So you’re saying that chair was purchased by the little girl’s father, the little girl we’re looking for?”

  “Yes, but—”

  The sheriff turned and went back to the man loading the furniture into the van, reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a card.

  “This is my number, personal cell is on the back.” Brice handed the card to the man. “When the guy comes back for that chair, I want you to call me. If you lose my card, dial 911 and give the dispatcher a message.”

  “I knew there was something wrong with that guy! What’d he do? What’s he wanted for?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that. He’s not in any trouble, but it’s a matter of life or death that I find him and talk to him. Do not give him the chair until you talk to me.”

  “Then you best be on a short leash, Sheriff. I’ll call you when he shows up, but I ain’t gonna cross him. He wants the chair, he gets the chair. There wasn’t nobody home in them eyes. That there was a man destined to electrocute himself on the great bug-light of life, if you know what I mean.”

  The sheriff returned to Bailey’s side. “When the man shows up to pick up the chair, we’ll—”

  “No!” Bailey felt desperation clogging her throat, making it hard for her to breathe and form words. “It could be too late by then. Didn’t you hear him? He said the guy had two other chairs already. We can’t wait for him to come pick up this one. The guy’s a druggie. Dangerous. What if the boat explodes tonight? The chair the little girl bumped into in the water could have been one of the other two chairs.”

  “The guy didn’t actually have two other chairs, he was just being sar—”

  “She could drown, she could die before they ever come back for the chair.”

  Brice stood looking at her, helpless.

  Suddenly her face lit up. “She’s at the carnival right now! She has to be. You said it opened every night at five o’clock. That stamp had today’s date, she had to have gotten it in the past half hour or so. She’s there, a little girl with braids. How many kids can that be?”

  “Hundreds maybe. And how will you know which—?”

  “I’ll know! If I touch her, I’ll … connect. I’m sure of it.”

  “And all you can tell me about her is that she’s got braids?”

  “No, that’s not all.” Bailey turned and started running toward the cruiser parked in the No Parking area near the head of the steps. “She wants to ride the Mad Walrus!”

  Brice had spent the day trying to keep his face from revealing his emotions. He had kept his skepticism, which was roughly the size of North Dakota, strictly in check. He had spent the evening after he had left Bailey, T.J., Dobbs and the two paintings sitting side by side on easels in her studio trying to figure out what he actually believed about the insanity he’d gone crashing into with his gun drawn that afternoon. He had narrowed the possibilities down to roughly half a dozen.

  One: T.J. Hamilton and Raymond Dobson had, for reasons unfathomable, perpetuated some grand hoax on the unsuspecting Bailey Donahue, who, as far as the sheriff could determine, had met neither of the men until the day she put a bullet in her skull.

  Two: T.J. and Dobbs were totally sincere, genuinely believed that his mother had painted a portrait of a dead Bailey Donahue more than a quarter of a century before she was born. They were sincere, but crazy.

  Three: T.J. and Dobbs were not crazy. They were telling the truth. His mother had painted the portrait, had indeed painted lots of other portraits of people and events unseen, that had not yet occurred in real time, and they had tried to prevent Bailey’s suicide when T.J. had recognized Bailey’s face in the painting.

  Four: Bailey Donahue had so damaged her brain with the bullet still lodged there that she had lost her grip on reality and believed she had somehow connected to a dead child — no, to a live child who would shortly be dead unless they could find her and keep her and a whole host of other unspecified people from drowning.

  Five: All of the above.

  Six: Something else entirely.

  The story was absolutely too preposterous to be believed. But the evidence, backed up by the paintings themselves and by the characters of the people involved, testified to a reality that defied possibility.

  Brice didn’t have anywhere in his mind to put a thing like that. Oh, he didn’t believe the universe operated with the precision of a pocket watch. You could sentence yourself to an all-expenses-paid stay at Club Mad by insisting everything in life made logical, rational sense, that it followed a this-because-that logic. Occasionally, you had to accept the unexplainable. And Brice was down with that. But this was so far on the other side of unexplainable you couldn’t have found it on Google Earth.

  So what did Brice believe? He believed … that he didn’t have to decide that right now. One thing above the fog of screwy-ness here was clear. As a law enforcement officer,
he had a sworn duty to protect his constituents, including Bailey Donahue. Though the methods were unorthodox, he believed he really was keeping her alive.

  But he could tell Bailey wanted, expected, way more than that. She saw no gray areas here. She had grabbed hold of the quest of saving the life of a mysterious child with every ounce of her being and you didn’t need a doctorate in psychology to figure out the connections her brain had made between this child and some other child somewhere in Bailey’s past life. It wasn’t hard to understand the motivation of a woman desperate to save the life of some unknown and possibly/probably fictional child as a surrogate for a little one she had lost. That kind of fanaticism knew no boundaries, accepted no limitations and required an equal level of fervency from everyone involved.

  He’d done his best to keep pace with her passion, but as he raced down the highway from the marina toward town, lights flashing, siren screaming, he was certain she was again going to crash head-first into reality. The number of houseboats on Whispering Mountain Lake paled in comparison to the number of children who’d be at this carnival, all shapes and sizes, running here and there in the excited abandon of children at a carnival, and the likelihood that the two of them would be able to locate a single little girl among all the others, a faceless child whose lone identifiable characteristic was braids…

  What if her mother’d put her hair in a ponytail tonight? Or pigtails? Or let it hang down straight? There was no face to identify.

  The sheriff killed the lights and siren several blocks away from the parking lot where the carnival had set up. There was not a NO Parking area he could commandeer here, and no way to get close to the area you could see in the distance lit with colored lights. People walked down the middle of the streets, having parked along the adjacent side streets, and even lights and a siren wouldn’t likely have parted the sea of humanity. He got as close as he could, then parked in the red zone in front of a fire hydrant.