Waiting

by Stephen Jones

  “Don’t say it, Annie.” Sarah’s voice breaks. “Was it so much to ask?”

  Howard doesn’t open the door. He doesn’t think to offer comfort, knows somehow that he should not be hearing any of this, wonders if this relates to the letter that arrived today. Wonders if, if he’s found out, he will suffer the same fate, the same crisis as his father?

  Howard imagines his aunt leaning into her sister’s much prettier face as she says, “Yes, Sari, it was too much to ask. And before you wail and howl yet again, how can you expect the truth of what we are to be bearable for anyone? Lillian and I made the choice never to marry—”

  “I don’t recall anyone ever asking,” his mother says bitterly.

  “— chose not to marry. Mother and Father shared secrets, shared lineage, they were between creatures as are we. But you . . . you had to marry out.” Then his aunt’s tone turns mournful. “We are so few! Neither one thing nor the other, our blood so thin!”

  “Then why are you so cruel to Howard?”

  “Because his blood’s thinner yet than ours! He’s further from us than we are from them, and it renders him even stranger! The ill health, the dreams, the things he says, the things he hears! Don’t think I don’t know! He listens, I see him sometimes, just standing there, head a’tilt—”

  “Annie.”

  “You could have chosen any of our own. You might even have chosen one of theirs, strengthened the bond, brought us closer. But you chose Winfield, a man whose mind broke at the first sign of weirdness. Imagine what Howard might have been!”

  “He wouldn’t have been himself,” says Sarah firmly, and Howard is heartened to hear her come to his defense. “He is who he is, Annie, and he is mine”

  Neither one says anything more for some time, until his aunt mutters reluctantly, “What did Doctor Walcott say in the letter?”

  “Only that there’s no change for the better. Although he’s stopped talking about them, it’s not because he’s stopped believing that he saw what he saw.” Sarah sighs. “But . . .”

  “What?” Annie’s tone is sharp, demanding.

  “He’s tried to escape three times.”

  “But they’ve caught him?”

  “So far. Whatever other failings Winfield has, a lack of determination is not one of them.”

  “Then let us not worry about it for now, Sari.”

  Howard hears the noise of silken skirts moving and he imagines his aunt crossing the room to stand beside his mother . . . but there’s not just silken skirts rustling. Does he hear something else? Or imagine it? There is a low sound, a crooning that reminds him of the hum he hears in the walls, under the floorboards, a sound like a lullaby, a comfort.

  Inside the room, his mother begins to weep softly.

  What could his father have thought he’d seen? How can his mother be anything but his mother? He bends his knees a little, puts a hand against the doorframe to steady himself, and leans in to press one eye to the keyhole.

  A hand clamps over his shoulder; the touch is gentle but inexorable. Howard twists his head, sees first the flash of gold, the signet ring, engraved with the image of some mythological creature, set with rubies for eyes, then Grandfather standing there, a sorrowing serious gaze directed at him. Whip lifts a finger to his lips, and draws the boy away.

  Outside Howard’s own room, Whipple crouches with a cracking and creaking of knees, and stares at his grandson for a few moments, lips pursed in thought.

  “Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes, we simply must not look. Even if we can, we must not. Remember Lot’s wife. Sleep well, Howard, you’ve been dreaming, my boy, sleepwalking as you do. Forget these fancies.”

  And the old man kisses the boy’s forehead, opens the door and tenderly pushes him inside.

  Howard stumbles toward his bed, head filled with something he may or may not have seen, a long green-gray limb trailing behind his mother as she sat on her bed, a similar appendage at Aunt Annie’s hems as she sat beside her sister.

  Perhaps he has been dreaming after all.

  Several days later, when Aunt Lillian returns to her idée fixe on Howard’s education over breakfast, Whip decides to take the boy from the house.

  Howard wonders if his grandfather wishes to discuss the keyhole incident, but no. It’s worse.

  Whipple takes him to Watchaug Pond—a lake really—and rents a small rowboat from a man who sits in a tiny hut at the landward end of a thin jetty. Howard waits while his grandfather counts out the hire fee. He watches the boats bobbing at the end of the pier, tethered like anxious hounds; the thought of anything even vaguely canine reminds him of his nightmare, of the jade dog-sphinx, and he shudders.

  After Whipple hands him onto the seat, Howard decides he does not like boats anymore than he likes dogs. He doesn’t like the way it rocks beneath him, as if trying to tip him out. The boat, he decides, is treacherous. The boat, he thinks, is plotting his demise. It’s not a stable thing, not like the solid and reliable ground he’s used to.

  They have not gone out too far onto the water, but the boy feels ill, his fear increasing with each yard they traverse. Howard is about to tell Grandfather that he wants to go home, even though he knows this will not please Whip. Foolishly, he abruptly stands, forgetting he was told not to, and turns, tilts, and tips, all to the sound of Whipple’s bellowed warning.

  The boat does not capsize, although Howard does. One moment there is sky above, the next everything is sideways—and he sees, he sees, by the edge of the water, a bearded face, a man ducking behind trees—and then there is a splash, a journey through wet glass, and Howard sinks, sinks, sinks.

  After the initial shock of the cold wears off, he begins to panic, to thrash, to try to propel himself upward, to where there is light, a filmy filtered sky.

  He kicks out, but feels on his ankles, his calves, his knees, the thin grasp of fingers, the thick grasp of flattened palms. If he were able to pay attention to more than the burning in his lungs, he might notice there seems to be webbing between those fingers, that those palms are wider than they should be, their architecture of flesh infinitely stranger than it might otherwise be.

  He is pulled down. Deeper, deeper, to where the light is a weak echo of itself, so pale he feels that even if he could break free, he wouldn’t know which way is up.

  Howard is swallowing water now; it’s both warm and cold, tastes of salt and sediment. He knows he’ll never get the sourness out of his mouth, the smell from his hair, his clothing—if he ever surfaces again.

  He looks down—at least he thinks it’s down—to where his feet are, where those grasping hands are and sees, though he knows he should not be able to, not in the darkness of the churned waters, a face. Two faces, three. Wide eyes, ichthyoid and protuberant; lips pouting, flat noses; hair so black it’s barely distinguishable in the dark liquid. Queens of their kind, whatever kind that might be: weirdly beautiful, pitiless, terrifying.

  They seem to be smiling. Not nicely, however. No, triumphantly. One opens her mouth, rows of tiny glowing teeth like sharpened pearls ring the aperture. The others follow suit, lips move and Howard hears even though he should not, perhaps in his head and not in his ears, one word:

  Ours.

  And abruptly there’s pressure around the crown of his head, a desperate searching touch, then fingers twine in his hair, and Howard is drawn swiftly upward. There’s a brief resistance from the hands of the queens that makes him feel he’ll be pulled apart, but quickly their fingers slide away.

  There’s only the strong hand, its digits thickened with arthritis that Howard can feel, clutching his own hands around the rescuing limb; and there it is, the thing he recognizes by touch alone: the ring, thick gold engraved with the strange carving, set with rubies.

  Soon he’s lifted into the bottom of the small, traitorous boat, soaked, coughing, prone, and suddenly so very, very cold. He blinks the fluid from his eyes and watches his grandfather. The old man is rowing, rowing, rowing, powerful shoulders heavi
ng beneath his jacket, and Howard finds himself thinking of an ox at a plough.

  But Whipple’s face is pale, paler than his snowy beard, his eyes are wild. Howard is almost distracted enough by the sight of his grandfather’s panic to not notice that his own shoes and socks are missing, that his toes appear elongated and webbed as if the brief dunking has changed him—but this illusion only lasts for a few moments.

  When the sun comes out from behind the clouds, everything is normal again; Howard glances at his hands, thinks that he’s too late to see what they might have been, but he can feel the strange itch of transformation, as if his skin has recently shrunk to accommodate a restructured skeleton and musculature.

  But it makes him wonder if he imagined the state of his feet; if the lack of air, the taint of the brackish water, his own fear and the incipient headache that he knows will grow and leave him abed for days, all took their toll and made him imagine things.

  He knows his perceptions are off, for otherwise how could Grandfather have reached him? Perhaps he was not as far down as he thought?

  Why else would he have imagined a face he recognized, just before he went in the water, a face he’s not seen since he was three when his father was institutionalized?

  He stares up at the sky and shivers. There’s no warmth in the sun.

  Whip is still rowing, rowing, rowing, muttering to himself, lips pinched, eyes all pupils, as black as night. When at last the lake becomes too shallow and they hit the shore, Whip keeps rowing as if he’ll row them home, across the park, along the streets, right into the front yard. His stroke is so powerful it digs into the muddy earth, pulls them from the water, and two or three feet up the bank.

  “Grandfather?” says Howard, then louder, “Grandfather!”

  Whipple Van Buren Phillips stops abruptly, midstroke. He stares at Howard for seconds that seem to drag on forever. His gaze focuses on his grandson, actually sees him; Whip’s face, stiff, stern, stony, finally relents and relaxes. He clears his throat, forces his lips to smile though they appear reluctant to perform this service.

  He says, “Well, boy, what an adventure.” He tries to make his tone jovial, but it’s too much for him and the pitch is flat, affectless. “You gave this old man a fright. And what did I tell you about rocking the boat?” He forces out a laugh. “You’ll know better next time.”

  But Howard senses—with an immense relief that makes him a little ashamed—that there won’t be a next time. Somehow he knows this, understands this. But what he doesn’t understand is why his grandfather kept repeating as he rowed them across the lake the words “Not yours, not yours, not yours . . . !”

  Howard might have been pulled safely from the lake—pond, Aunt Annie keeps saying as if to make it mean less—but he feels it has not let him go. Indeed, as if the immersion, the swallowing, have conspired to make an eternal connection between himself and the water. It’s inside him, now and forever; he wonders if he will ever sleep again without the sensation of sliding under the surface being the first thing he encounters when slumber takes over.

  In his dream the queens are there, too, waiting and watching in the liquid shadows, eyes bright points in the darkness. They don’t drag at him this time, do not insist, but move their arms and hands in elegant gestures to direct his attention to the scene below: a gleaming city, shining spires, precarious towers, great dead houses where great dead things lay dormant though not expired, not properly. As he stares down, Howard wonders at the drowned city, at its luminescence as if the moon holds sway beneath the waves.

  When the queens’ pantomime becomes impatient—You must come, you must go, you must see!—Howard remembers to be afraid. He kicks his way up, cuts through the dream-sea, desperate to be away, to escape the queens and their wrath, their thwarted wants. He breaks the surface, dragging deep gasps of air into his lungs (even though he’d felt no sense of need until now) and splashes about in a circle to see where he might be.

  Here, too, there is moonlight that seems to burn, that illuminates the surface of the water like fire, and shows his salt-stung eyes a place of safety: a reef, a rock formation, lapped at by the waves, but not overcome by them, and much closer than the nameless seaside town the lights of which can barely be seen in the foggy distance. In his nightmare he strikes out with an assured stroke toward the ridge made of coral and stone.

  It is only when he is almost ashore that he realizes there is movement on the rock, low to the ground, a kind of wormlike progression, almost peristaltic. Soon he realizes it is more than one figure, more than one body proceeding in this manner; some, he sees, sit upright as if bathing themselves by the moon. Like the mermaids in the fairy and folk tales Whip reads to him; but not really like mermaids, not at all. Not pretty or alluring, with none of the weird grace of the queens, either. Green-gray, round heads, with fins on spines and shoulders, hips and flanks, webbing betwixt fingers and toes, wide mouths emitting a frog-like croak.

  Howard begins to push himself back out into the dream-sea where only the most desperate hope of escape waits—but then comes the all-too-familiar feel of hands around his ankles, calves, knees . . .

  When Howard wakes, tearing himself from sleep, he fears he has wet himself, but soon it becomes clear that the entire bed is awash. When he rolls over, there is so much water that the mattress and linens slosh. He can smell, for no good reason, salt and seaweed. Just as he is frantically trying to come up with an explanation that will placate the Aunts—or is it possible he can simply hide the mattress? Leave it somewhere to dry? Burn it?—the waters inexplicably retreat like a wave withdrawing from a beach. He cannot say where they go, but somehow they disappear into the darkness, into the slivers and cracks of the spaces between breath and sleep.

  A few days later, when Howard has ostensibly recovered from the dunking and the inevitable illness it brought on, when the dreams have for the most part receded (he’s told no one about the queens, not even Whipple, whom he suspects knows already), Aunt Lillian calls him into Grandfather’s study, although Grandfather is not in evidence.

  Lillian sits beside Aunt Annie, and both are smiling; this would make him nervous, but for the fact they’re not smiling at him. Someone is sitting across from them, his back to Howard, a man with thin shoulders and dark thick hair slicked to his skull. The suit he wears is brown and Howard, coached by Whipple to recognize quality and believe that one must not compromise, gives an approving nod; little does he realize he’s been given a set of values it will be hard to live up to later in life, after the family fortunes are lost and he finds himself utterly unfit for earning a living.

  “Howard, we have wonderful news,” says Lillian, her tone sweet, and Howard doubts this most sincerely.

  “Yes, Howard, come and meet this lovely gentleman who’s the answer to all our prayers.” Aunt Annie is doing something strange with her face, her lashes batting up and down like a butterfly’s wings, her lips quirked and a little rouged if he’s not mistaken. This is the way she looks at the butcher’s boy when he makes deliveries.

  Howard wonders where Mother and Grandfather are, but he obeys the Aunts. He rounds the chair where the man is sitting and stands on the afghan rug, feet squarely set on two flowers as if he’s grown from them. He looks at the visitor.

  Thin nose, protuberant eyes a little too close together behind his thick glasses, wide forehead, and even though he is smiling nervously there is still something that hints at a habitual tight pursing. The white of his shirt looks not bright enough against the intense pallor of his face, and the hands that hold his hat tremble just a little.

  Howard sympathizes: the presence of the Aunts often sends shivers down his spine, though he is surprised to note an adult feeling the same effects. The man, intuits Howard, doesn’t want the Aunts to know, however, and is doing his best to not show fear. Howard wonders at it for a moment, then decides there’s no reason for anyone to be different to him.

  “Howard,” says Aunt Lillian, “this is Mr. Kindred, and he has k
indly agreed to be your tutor.”

  “My tutor?” asks Howard.

  “Well, we tried you at school and we all know how well that went.” Aunt Lillian’s tone is as bitter as old almonds. She laughs to take the edge off the comment, but it leaves a cut thin as something inflicted by paper. Howard notices the tutor suppressing a shudder.

  “Perhaps Howard would feel more comfortable if he and I were to talk together?” says Kindred and the Aunts, though they appear a little taken aback, nod.

  Perhaps this will help keep their plans on track; perhaps Howard will be less inclined to sabotage their schedules with his illness, his attention-seeking, his apparent determination to get his own way. He can almost hear their thoughts, almost feel the thudding rhythm of their resentment.

  They nod, and rise, and leave the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

  Howard and Kindred stare at each other for a few moments, then the tutor smiles, a strange nostalgic thing, almost fatherly. “Please sit down, Howard.”

  Howard does so, but continues to stare at the young man, waiting.

  “I understand you are sometimes vexed by your aunts.”

  That surprising pronouncement—a truth, though it is—shakes Howard somewhat. He nods.

  “They don’t like me,” he confesses, wonders if the Aunts had managed to hide this from the young man. Wonders if Mr. Kindred will report back to Annie and Lillian, and Howard’s life will be made that much more difficult.

  “I suspect it feels that way, Howard. But sometimes when people are worried they express it badly. When they fear for someone they care about, it comes out as anger. They simply do not know how to express themselves properly. Do you think perhaps your aunts might be like that?” The young man’s tone is so kind, so reasonable that for a moment Howard considers the proposition.

  Then he shakes his head. “No.”

  Surprisingly, the tutor laughs and the sound puts Howard at ease. So IS much so that he asks, “Do you believe in monsters?”