He began to run, feet sinking into the loose icy sand. He shifted his path down closer to the tidemark where the drenched sand provided firmer purchase. Pamela had once told him that the shore was an edge place, where two separate and spinning planes met, providing some sort of crack in the fabric of reality. It was why seabirds always uttered such desolate cries as they neared shore, she said, they saw the rip in the fabric of time and space, sensed it as humans could not, creatures of air that they were. He remembered the goose bumps rising on his skin as she’d told him this, green eyes as uncanny as a witch’s, as though she too had seen into this abyss and was lured by its siren call.
‘Perhaps,’ she’d said dreamily, ‘perhaps it’s where monsters hide. The ones you’re so certain of as a child, the ones you know are just waiting in the shadows with jaws held wide to snap you up. The ones your subconscious remembers as an adult. The ones that snatch away the innocent and the afraid, whose very innocence or fear was the thing that allowed them to stray too close to the edge of that spinning plane in the first place.’
He ran faster, insides icy with fear, seized by the certainty that his wife was about to fall into one of those nightmare rifts if he didn’t reach her in time. But the sand kept giving beneath his feet, the lightning distorting the atmosphere into an alien sphere, as though he were trying to scale an arc that remained resolutely flat beneath his feet.
He yelled her name, feeling the wind and rain spit the frail syllables back into his face. There was no way she could have heard him within the howling wind, and yet her head turned toward him and he saw her hand come up in invitation and demand.
“Come back to the house!” he yelled, close enough now to see something wild in her face, something reckless. He shouted at her once more even as he dropped to his knees beside her, pulled by a need that emanated like fire through the air and water.
She shook her head; his words were lost in the wind in the bare foot between them. Her own intent was clear, though, as she grasped him behind the neck, pulling him over on top of her, arching against him in a passion that was nine parts desperation, matched only by his own to have and possess—to leave this shore with the scent of her heavy on his body, the touch of her molded to his skin, the heat of her lingering upon him.
She looked like a sea creature in the strange storm light, eyes as enigmatic as the ocean itself. He had a sudden fear that he would drown in them and never belong to himself again. Would wake to find himself imprisoned in a soul cage at the bottom of the sea.
Even through the rain, he could smell the tang of seaweed in her hair, and taste the salt in her mouth. He was dizzy with her, as though the world moved with them, rushed over them, took away and gave back. She was as fully open to him as the gates between worlds this night and thus he could see her dark side and know it the twin of his own.
“Harder,” she whispered, urging him against her with body and words, “I want to be able to feel you after you’re gone.”
He groaned, lost already in the heat that only needed a look, a bare touch, to spring into a blaze that threatened to consume them both. How many times had he made love to this woman? And yet he never tired of it, never slaked the thirst for her that gripped his very innards. He’d been afraid those first few times they made love that such a fire would have to peak quickly, leaving only ashes in its wake. But it hadn’t happened. He still came hungry and needing to her every time and occasionally left her in the same condition. It frightened him, the force of such a passion. It was as elemental as breathing, and as necessary to life for him now.
After she held him tightly through the aftershocks of the flesh, the world lit an eerie blue all about them.
They half walked, half ran back in silence, only partly clothed, the world wild about them and the rain falling hard against their skins.
Casey looked back only once, but behind him, the shore was empty. Still, he shivered, primal brain alerting the spine of some danger that couldn’t be seen, but was no less real for its invisibility.
Nor could he rid of himself of the idea that his wife had been trying, between himself and the sea, to exorcise something—some intangible demon, from her very soul.
Chapter Eleven
Tales From the Fourth Dimension
OUTSIDE THE WIND HOWLED, shrieking round the boughs of stunted trees and the salt-licked corners of the cottage. Inside all was snug, the chimney drawing well despite the clamor, firelight reflecting warmly off the polished pine boards. Regardless of the cozy surroundings, Casey shivered, unable to rid himself of the feeling that he had seen something on the beach—the form and shape of a man—and yet when he’d reached out—nothing. He eyed the tightly shut curtains, knowing there were no cracks through which they could be seen, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—something, was watching them still.
Pamela had made a fire in the grate, boiled the kettle, ordered him under the blankets and brought him a cup of hot chocolate to ward off his chills.
“Christ, are ye not human, woman?” he asked, as another shiver struck out from his spine, shaking him to the ends of his fingertips. “Ye’ve not so much as a goose bump on ye, an’ here I am blue to the gills.”
“Landlubber,” she said unsympathetically, adding another two logs to the fire now that it was well caught, poking it up into a blaze that scorched the fine hair on his arms, and began to thaw his skin.
“If not bein’ a landlubber means splashin’ about naked in the ocean on such a night, I’ll take the title an’ wear it proudly.” He shivered again, teeth chattering against each other. “Woman, come warm me. That’ll wait ‘til mornin’, will it not?” He nodded his head toward the pile of wet clothes from which she was shaking sand.
She nodded. “I suppose they will, though they’ll smell awful.”
“I’ve reeked of fish guts for weeks now, a pile of wet clothes isn’t likely to offend my senses. Please come to bed.” There was something odd in his tone—a note of fear that made her turn sharply, wet clothes forgotten.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, brows drawn down in fine inked lines.
“Pamela, please,” he said, a hand emerging from the blankets to pull her down into the makeshift pile of quilts and pillows.
She took the hand, allowing herself to be drawn into his embrace. He held her tightly and she could feel the tremors that shook him from head to toe, though his skin emitted a healthy warmth. He smelled of wood chips and brine and the co-mingled scents of their recent lovemaking. She breathed deeply, wishing she could stay here with him, by the fire, indefinitely.
“Talk, man, you’re warm as toast and shaking like a leaf,” she said as the worst of his tremors seemed to have passed.
“Well...” he drew the word out uneasily, “it’s only that I could have sworn I saw someone out there with ye.”
“What?” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the sudden tension in her body.
“Wasn’t so much someone as something,” he said, tone heavy.
“Some thing?” She glanced up to see him looking positively sheepish. “Casey, what on earth do you think you saw?”
“Don’t look at me that way, woman, I’ve not taken drink,” he said, a tint of indignation coloring his tone.
“I haven’t accused you of drunkenness,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him, “now just tell me.”
“A ghost,” he said.
Both of her eyebrows shot up as she leaned up on one elbow, to better see the expression on his face. She put a hand to his forehead, which he swatted away irritably.
“’Tis no joke, I’m serious,” he said, meeting her incredulous look with a black glare.
“You believe in ghosts?” she said in disbelief.
“Mmphmm, well,” he began, uncomfortably, making one of those indecipherable Celtic noises that said he wasn’t thrilled with the direction the conversation was taking.
“Do you?” she insisted, noting that he was now studying the edging on the worn quilt with g
reat interest.
“Well,” he frowned visibly in the firelight, “I’ll not say as I do, but I’ll not say as I don’t.”
She eyed him narrowly and he capitulated with the deep sigh of an Irishman who knows himself backed into a corner. “It’s only that a man will have experiences that can’t be explained in the normal run of things, aye? An’ mayhap it’s only somethin’ that cannot be understood as yet, an’ mayhap it’s beyond explanation altogether.”
She raised her eyebrows at him and he sighed again. “Alright then, I’ll try to explain what I mean, but I’ll need a cigarette to get my thoughts together.”
She watched him as he reached for the crumpled pack, pulled a cigarette out, and lit it with an unusually elaborate set of motions. For some reason the mention of ghosts had made him uneasy in the extreme.
“Well, as I see it, it all comes down to subatomic particles,” Casey said, after taking a long drag off his cigarette.
“What?” she asked, momentarily confused by the jump from ghouls to the netherworld of quantum physics.
“Bear with me, darlin’, I’ve given this matter some real thought.”
He shifted in the blankets, propping a pillow up against the armchair behind him, then leaned back against it and tucked her in the curve of his free arm.
“Now there is an actual ghost behind this, or at least I think there is, but I’ll get to that later. See, I’d an experience in prison that I could never find a reason for, an’ I’d pretty much given up on explainin’ it to myself. Until one day when I was browsin’ through one of them scientific journals Pat is so fond of readin’, an’ I stumbled across somethin’ that seemed like a possible explanation.”
“An explanation of what?” she asked.
“Patience, woman,” he said, “I promised ye a ghostie, an’ I’ll deliver. I bet ye couldn’t wait for dessert when ye were a wee one either, could ye?”
It was her turn to make an indecipherable Celtic noise.
“This article was about subatomic particles, see? An’ they were explainin’ how these particles didn’t occupy space or move through it in any way that was familiar or quantifiable. An’ the really odd thing—an’ this was the thing that struck me—was that these particles came in pairs that even when separated were affected by interactions happenin’ to the one. The scientists couldn’t figure out how—it made no sense—as information travelin’ from one half of the pair to the other would have to exceed the speed of light. Which we know is impossible. That left them with no answers, so they called it a phenomenon. Which I think is the name assigned to anything scientists don’t have the answer for. The conclusion bein’ that it wasn’t explicable in human terms, as it didn’t behave in a rational or orderly manner that could be classified. But it seemed to me that such a thing was very human, as so much of our behavior is inexplicable. Ye cannot slice a cell an’ divine by it why one man is a coward an’ another a hero. Some say it’s environment an’ experience, but I always thought it went deeper than that somehow.” He shook his head, as if absorbed momentarily by some inward melody, something only he could hear.
“Anyhow it brought back to me some of my schoolin’, both the formal an’ the informal,” he smiled ruefully, “there was, as ye may well imagine, a great deal of time for readin’ in prison. Well, I remembered a passage of some book that said matter could neither be created nor destroyed, an’ it went on some further way down the page to say that matter was really just another form of energy, an’ that energy was really tricky, as it could exist—even just the potential of it—in absolute nothingness. So I pictured it as this void, where something could be, an’ then just as swiftly, not be. An’ if that were so—an’ these men seemed to think it was—then it made definin’ where the borders of reality were a little difficult. Do ye follow me so far, Jewel?”
“I think so,” she said slowly, the hairs on her arms rising in the night air.
“Well if ye take it as a given of our story here, that the borders of reality are merely a matter of the creature perceivin’ them, then ye can follow the next bit of what I’m goin’ to say. We’re three dimensional creatures an’ so it follows that we live in a three dimensional world, right?”
She nodded and he paused to take another drag on his cigarette, the glowing red tip of it punctuating the dark that was gathering around the edges of the dying firelight.
“But suppose, darlin’, that a two dimensional creature existed in our sphere, an’ to be honest we’ve no way of perceivin’ that they don’t, what do ye suppose this cigarette end would seem to it?”
“Well I suppose that would depend on the angle of the ember, wouldn’t it, and whether or not this two dimensional creature was circumnavigating the cigarette?”
Casey snorted. “We’re not talkin’ about the Magellan of two dimensional creatures, just an ordinary run-of-the-mill entity, sittin’ firmly in place with no desire to move. Ye understand?”
“Ah,” she slapped a hand to her forehead, “I think I do, this is an Irish, male, two dimensional creature, nursing a pint of ale.”
“Woman,” Casey eyed her sternly, “do ye wish to hear the rest of this tale or not?”
“Pray, go on,” she said with mock seriousness.
Casey shot her a purely Irish look, cleared his throat and continued. “Alright then, suppose yer seein’ the burnin’ end as a two dimensional creature. Imagine there’s a knife slicin’ the cigarette an’ ye can only see where the knife cuts, not above it, nor below it and only on a flat plane out to the sides. But at the same time this figurative knife is cuttin’ at an angle, so what do ye see?”
“A red line for a split second and then nothing.”
“Aye, like a flash in the corner of yer eye, but when ye turn yer head, it’s gone an’ so ye presume there was naught there. Now, Jewel,” the red ember in question danced in graceful curlicues in the air with the movement of his hands, “supposin’ that we three dimensional creatures are that knife, we see neither above nor below and only on a flat plane out to the sides.”
“A fourth dimension.”
“If ye must stop there, then aye, let’s presume a fourth dimension. So three dimensional creatures drifting through four-dimensional space will see only shadows of things, an’ not the reality, because it’s outside the sphere of their dimension.”
“Are you saying ghosts exist in this hypothetical fourth dimension?”
“Well,” he drew the word out reluctantly, “I don’t know exactly what I’m tryin’ to say. Only that there are things, as yer Englishman said, between heaven an’ earth, that have no explanation, but it doesn’t make them less real.”
“Ghosts?”
“Aye, ghosts,” he leaned over to the side and stubbed out his cigarette, face drawn into the dark-inked lines it always assumed when a topic bothered him. He leaned back into the pillows and took a deep breath.
“Now, Jewel, I’ve never told a soul this story, ‘cause I thought I was mad at the time an’ that I’d only imagined it all in retrospect. An’ ye know, I’m not so overfond of talkin’ about my days in prison at any rate. Well prison, as ye can well imagine, is not a pleasant place for any man to be, but it’s altogether less so for an Irish Republican militant who’s incarcerated in a British facility. An’ truth be told, though I’d acted like a pig-headed fool an’ deserved the punishment I got, I was still a boy. An’ I was scared out of my wits an’ still grievin’ my da’ an’ the loss of my brother. An’ maybe these elements combined provided a rip in the fabric of reality—who’s to say?
“I think, too, that whatever thin thing it is that separates us from the animals, that civilizes us, it’s not so much in existence in prison. Humanity on the outside is a fragile thing. It doesn’t take a great deal to reduce us to violence an’ murder, but in prison even the pretence of that is gone, an’ it’s every man for himself.”
She shuddered. She could well imagine, a little too clearly perhaps, what life had been like for him. Nineteen and de
fiant on the outside, but still a boy needing his father’s love and assurance on the inside. His innocence and inexperience would have stuck out like a sore thumb as well. Tall, dark and by no means ill favored in the looks department, which would have attracted all sorts of unwelcome trouble for him. The sum of this equation meant he would have been a magnet for the uglier side of what prison life had to offer.
“Things didn’t go easy on me right from the start, but I’d expected some of it.” His tone shifted, his look faraway. “But there are things a man cannot imagine unless he experiences them. I’d no real notion of how brutal one human bein’ could be to another. I thought I’d seen all there was to see of hatred an’ anger an’ violence in my own streets. But in prison my education was,” he glanced at her quickly, “shall we say, to be broadened extensively.”
He gazed down, stroking absently at the quilt that covered the two of them, and she knew he’d gone back in his memory and did not register the squares of velvet and flannel, worked in shades of deep purple and lavender, but instead saw the high, dark walls of Parkhurst, clear in his memory as if they’d been outlined with charcoal and then burned into his synapses by tempered steel.
“It was October an’ near to the end of it. A time, my Daddy used to say, when the gates between one world an’ the next briefly stand open. About a week before Hallowe’en...”
It was autumn, and though he could not define it by the usual set of signs, he could smell it in the air, the smell of smoke and mellow sunshine with a whiff of decaying earth accompanying them. If he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply he could almost feel the crunch of leaves— amber, copper, brown, bronze and gold under his feet, releasing the silk-fine dust of death as they fractured under thick-soled shoes. At night, if he scrunched his large frame tight against the damp, mildewed concrete of his cell he could just see, through the barred window, a wedge of the moon and a scraping of stars. Autumn was the least spectacular of the seasons in the sky, the first magnitude stars all but invisible in the great galactic haze of the Milky Way, with only summer’s lingerings left.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 11