Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  He raised his hand up to strike out at the driver, but the partition slammed shut and his hands connected with the window weakly. All strength drained from his body, like water poured from a cup onto the floor.

  “We’ll keep it civil. Lots of guards. It’ll be a bit of a sausage fest on the boat tonight, but I think it’ll be fun nonetheless. Don’t you?” Ryanson asked, leaning forward. He pulled a bottle of whiskey from the sideboard. He popped off the lid and poured the tea-colored liquid into a crystalline rocks glass. He cut it with water from the mini fridge. All his movements were slow and methodical as if he had no worry at all that Konstantine might reach out and attack him.

  And he was right.

  The backseat began to stretch and whirl around Konstantine. I must not lose consciousness, he told himself, as if his will would override the drugs coursing through his veins.

  “You used me,” Konstantine said and found he was smiling. Of course, he had been used. He couldn’t even say that he didn’t have it coming.

  “No more than you used me,” the man replied. It was the man because he could have been anyone now. The face and body blurred. A child’s finger-painting done on a living room wall. His eyes couldn’t focus on the light shooting through the windows. He was leaning forward. That much he knew because his face was inches above his knees. His body was a rock seeking a solid foundation in the jostling ride of the car.

  “Close your eyes and when you open them, we’ll be there. It’ll be a party just for you.” The voice elongated like a tape played in slow motion. The kind he used to have to rewind with his school pencils when the tape players ate the coffee-colored ribbons. He was such a tape now. Unraveled. Pulled apart.

  The car hit a bump in the Texan road, and Konstantine was pitched forward. He was falling. Falling through the darkness. And he lost consciousness before he ever hit the ground.

  36

  King counted backward from a hundred. When Lou still didn’t appear, he counted forward to a hundred. The numbers trick was something he’d picked up in therapy during his divorce. He had not sought treatment after the Channing incident. They were told to, and medical leave was forced upon him. But he couldn’t go.

  The therapist he did see, with her horn-rimmed glasses and bangs that fell into her eyes, had insisted that human emotion could only be felt for ninety seconds. So, anytime he felt overwhelmed with anger and grief, his best bet was to stop whatever he was doing and to count to a hundred slowly, keeping his breath slow and steady as he did it.

  It turned out that this particular therapy technique was not very efficient when used in a fucking sealed Siberian transport container.

  Big fucking surprise!

  After counting to one hundred the first time, he didn’t feel any less anxious than when he began. In fact, his anxiety grew like a black spider on the wall, larger and larger. The numbers seemed to be building toward something.

  Something terrible.

  “Can you sit down?” Brasso begged. “You’re making me motion sick.”

  “The container isn’t moving,” King said through grit teeth. “You can’t be motion sick.”

  “You’re moving!” Brasso whined. “It’s you moving that’s making me sick.”

  King glanced at the thick orange rust coating his fingers, like a hand left too long in the Cheetos bag. It proved he had been tracing the inside of this container for a long time. Black lines ran up and down the wall where he’d completely rubbed off the rust. Breathing in these rusted particles was probably wonderful for the lungs too.

  “What were you going to do with Venetti?” King asked.

  “Not this again,” Brasso begged. “Shoot me already.”

  No, he thought. If I have to eat you, I’m going eat you fresh, he’d decided. He’d already, in his mind at least, started calling the corner where Brasso leaned “the kitchen nook.” And his eyes kept sliding to the opposite corner, which was slowly becoming the bathroom, as his bladder grew heavier and heavier beneath his belt. An uncomfortable burn formed inside his trousers.

  “Answer me, or I’ll shoot your foot,” King insisted. He’d resumed pacing. Going from wall to wall helped. It reminded him of how much room he had.

  “You know we were going to kill her and dump her in the bay. Don’t play dumb.”

  King nodded absentmindedly. “What else?”

  “I like daisies and when the girls touch my pee-pee. Please stop fucking moving.”

  Pressure rose suddenly between King’s ears followed by a sharp POP as the pressure equalized. He turned and saw a girl form herself out of shadows, out of nothing.

  “Get me the fuck out of here!”

  The words exploded from King’s mouth. Some wise, distant part of him noted, I’m hysterical.

  Lou froze as if afraid to come closer to him. But then her hands were on him and—thank god in heaven—the shipping container dropped away. A clear, moonlit floor of his apartment rose to catch them. Only it wasn’t moonlight. It was too purple.

  King turned to his watch. 6:36.

  Evening. He’d been in the shipping container all fucking day.

  He had taken a lunging step toward her before he realized he’d done so.

  She had already moved out of his reach.

  “Don’t you ever!” he bellowed. “Don’t you ever leave me somewhere like that again!”

  Lou’s frown evened out.

  “Do you hear me?” King said. He felt the cords on the side of his neck standing out. A vein in his forehead throbbed. “Don’t. You. Ever.”

  He sucked in great gasps of air.

  A panic attack. I’m having a panic attack.

  He dropped to one knee.

  Lou shifted uncomfortably. “Are you dying?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  He waved her off, pointing emphatically toward the bedroom. He made a motion with his hand hoping she understood. He sucked at charades.

  She went into the bedroom. Drawers opened and slammed shut and then she returned with a red rescue inhaler. He swatted at it, knocking it into the floor before fumbling it up to his mouth. Pump. Inhale. Hold. Pump. Inhale. Hold. He breathed. Deep. Steady breaths.

  He collapsed onto his ass, still clenching the inhaler in his fist.

  The black spots and red sparks in front of his eyes began to disappear.

  His palm holding the inhaler fell to his lap. The world came into focus. The throbbing headache didn’t leave him, but the air was going in and out of his chest again.

  He looked up, expecting to see her gone, but she stood there. Gun in her hand, watching him.

  “You’re hyperventilating,” she said.

  “You fucking think!”

  “Use your inhaler.”

  “Where the fuck were you?” he asked when he felt like he could spare enough breath to ask a question. His lips were ridiculously dry. He reached up and wiped away congealed spit from the corners with his thumbs.

  He was dehydrated and yet, ironically, had to piss like a racehorse. But getting off the floor was not an option.

  “Men came after Lucy,” she said in a steady voice, speaking the way one might to an enraged horse.

  “What?” King said. The air was leaving him again.

  “I took care of it,” she said. “But it took a while. Lucy has carpet. No rugs.”

  “Lucy has carpet,” he repeated. He was starting to see things now. The perfect steadiness in her hand. She wasn’t thumbing the safety. And her clothes were clean and her hair was still wet from a shower, presumably.

  “You’re tired,” he said. He snorted, absolutely surprised. “I thought you were like a fucking terminator. Send in a hundred bad guys, and you just say I’ll be back.”

  She didn’t smile. She didn’t even shrug.

  “Is Lucy okay?” His chest tightened again.

  “She’s on the move with Venetti. They’ll keep moving until we finish this.”

  “Until we finis
h this,” King said, his mouth was going dry again.

  “Why do you keep repeating everything I’m saying?” Lou’s brow scrunched up. “Are you sure you aren’t having a stroke or—”

  “You abandoned me in a Siberian shipping container and...and...” King searched for the next words.

  “And he’s claustrophobic,” Mel said.

  King turned and saw Mel standing in the archway between the living room and kitchen. Her eyes were lined in thick black makeup and golden bangles jingled on her wrist. How had she crept up on them without a sound?

  Lou hadn’t looked away from where King crouched on the floor with his inhaler. She’d known Mel had snuck in. Of course she did. The girl probably saw a whole spectrum of things that King couldn’t imagine.

  “What are you carrying on about, Mr. King?” Mel said. “I have customers downstairs. You can’t be up here screaming and carrying on.”

  King ran a sweaty palm down his face. “I thought you wanted atmosphere.”

  Mel arched an eyebrow. “A screaming man upstairs isn’t the kind of atmosphere I’m going for.”

  “Why are you claustrophobic?” Lou asked.

  “He was buried alive for days. Ain’t that right, Mr. King?”

  “You should have told me,” she said.

  “Yes, because you look like the type who is very sympathetic to weakness,” King said.

  Lou flinched, and King wished he could take the words back. He’d been scared and angry, but he was wrong to direct it at her. That’s what pathetic men do. But it was worse than that.

  Lou looked like hell. She was too young for the thick bags forming under her eyes. Dried blood had begun to flake off her skin.

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” King said. “You didn’t know.”

  King looked to Mel, curious what she thought of this girl.

  Mel crossed the room, palms turned over in welcome, like she was going to hug the girl. Lou was mortified. Her shoulders tensed, inching up toward her ears.

  “You wouldn’t know,” Mel said. “But men are worse than children. They cry about all the wrong things. When they have a papercut or a cold, they act like the world has rolled over their legs and they’ll never walk again. When they’ve been beaten half to death, they tell you not to fuss.”

  Sensing Lou’s resistance to an embrace, Mel stopped short. Instead, she took Lou’s shoulders in her palms and squeezed. Lou softened under the woman’s grip.

  “Priorities,” Lou said with a pathetic smile.

  “Speaking of priorities, you need sleep,” Mel said. “It’s written all over your face.”

  “We have a lot to do,” Lou began. It was the opening line of an argument.

  Mel’s hand went to her hip, and her tone sharpened. The harsh, bird-like Melandra that King knew returned. “Aren’t you tired of carrying around dead bodies?”

  Lou’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile.

  “They can’t be light,” Mel pressed.

  The smile widened.

  Mel arched an eyebrow.

  King wasn’t sure if he should get up or stay on his knees. “You two do what you want. You’re both grown.” Mel gave first, throwing her hands up and turning toward the door. “Just keep it down, Mr. King. You’re not the only one trying to do business here.”

  The door shut behind her. Then the wall behind the stove vibrated slightly as she descended the stairs back into the shop. The ghoul by the door screamed.

  King pulled himself to standing. Gratefully, Lou did not try to help him. He felt enough like an invalid, old man as it was. “You can have my bed,” he began.

  But when he straightened he saw that she was already stretched long on his red leather couch, one arm folded under her head and the gun, still in her grip, resting across her navel.

  I’ll have to wait to tell her about Ryanson, he thought. Because his bones ached and his head throbbed and the air moving in and out of his mouth wasn’t nearly as smooth as he needed it to be if he was going to go in guns blazing.

  37

  Lou couldn’t sleep. The cold barrel of the gun was a reassuring weight on her belly, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw blood. She saw a man’s head exploding. Jabbers bloody snout ripping an abdomen, guts erupting as if spring-loaded.

  Her aunt’s wide and tearful eyes as she surveyed the carnage in her apartment. The carnage that Lou had brought to her door.

  Lou sat up, listening to the dark. She heard nothing. She’d already taken two steps toward the large cherry armoire before she realized what she was doing.

  When she placed her foot down again, silk shirts brushed her cheeks and the smell of a man’s cologne lingered. She reached out and found the doorframe, and then the closet’s handle.

  She pushed it open, peering out into the room. It was a child’s bedroom, two twin beds with spaceship sheets. Her aunt and Paula slept. Paula snored as loud as her father had when she was a child. A deep rumbling rattle in her chest, her head tilted back and mouth slightly open in the moonlight spilling through the open window.

  Her aunt was curled on her side, facing Paula. She was on top of the sheets, her shoes still on.

  Ready to go, Lou thought, and a wave of sadness struck her full in the chest.

  How could I be so stupid? How could I think that what I did would never come back to her?

  Lucy stirred in her borrowed bed. Lou understood it was some empty vacation rental in an offseason. The world was surprisingly full of them, rooms waiting to be filled. Some more stocked than others. Timeshare cabins and condos. Rentals or houses for sale. They could be found the world over.

  I’ll finish this, Lou thought, watching her aunt, so small and fragile, sleep the night away. I’ll make you safe again.

  She remembered all the prescription bottles lining the kitchen sill. A lot of bottles for a woman who thought love and tea leaves would cure all. Lou couldn’t look at that truth yet, its significance. So she turned away and slipped back into the darkness.

  When she stepped past the armoire into King’s apartment, she couldn’t bring herself to lay on the couch again.

  She had better things to do. Like cut off Ryanson’s hand and slap him across the face with it.

  Before she realized it, Lou had paced herself right out of King’s apartment into the stairwell. Only it wasn’t a stairwell so much as an overlook. A railing created a partial hallway that ran waist high to the left. There was nothing right. When Lou looked over the railing, she saw only the store below.

  The lights were on, and a girl was pulling the door closed and turning the lock.

  Lou descended the steps as the girl picked up a broom propped against the wall. As she turned, she saw Lou and jumped. Her movement awakened the skeleton beside her, which also shrieked, a blood-curdling cry.

  “God!” the girl said, stamping a foot. “I hate this thing.” She bent and yanked the cord out of the wall.

  Lou crossed the floor heading for the door. She would walk the block and cool off. Give King another hour or so of sleep before taking him into a firefight.

  The girl stepped back into the wall, bumping her head.

  Lou stopped advancing. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The girl’s eyes doubled in size. “Oh, I’m not scared. I was—”

  “Moving out of the way of someone holding a gun.”

  The girl frowned. “No. It’s not like that.”

  Lou didn’t move. She was unsure what to do with herself. Why was she even down here?

  She saw King in her mind’s eye. Saw him collapsing to his knees and holding his chest. He went down the way a man who was shot goes down. Like how her father went down.

  There you go, stupid girl. Be honest with yourself at least.

  He’s not my father, she thought.

  No. And you don’t need him to go after Ryanson. So why are you still here?

  The girl standing with her back pressed against the door seemed to wonder the same question. “Hey, are you okay
?” she asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  Lou holstered her gun for the first time all night. Her eyes blinking open as if she were coming out of a dream. “I should fix this.”

  “No, I mean you look good. You just look...” she searched for words. “Stressed maybe? Tired? Like what was the deal with the guy in the apartment? The one I clobbered?”

  Go alone. If something happens to you, it’s just you. Venetti, Aunt Lucy, and King—they need to stay out of it.

  As if on cue the compass inside her whirled to life.

  Go, go, go, it murmured, tugging at her insides. Before it’s too late.

  Lou had turned away and hurried toward the velvet curtain. Surely it would be dark enough back there to slip to her apartment first and then—

  She threw back the curtain and found Mel bent over a table peering at cards in the candlelight. A chubby guy in his mid-twenties looked up with wide eyes.

  “What the fuck?” His chin wobbled in surprise.

  Lou didn’t have time to look for another exit.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Mel. Before slipping in plain sight of the landlady and her customer she added, “Tell him I couldn’t wait.”

  38

  Lou took only five minutes to suit up. Three compartments from her secret vault were emptied. She brought five guns and the corresponding clips. She strapped two knives into sown-in slips designed for their enclosure. At last, her father’s bullet proof vest hugged her as tight as his arms ever had.

  And then she stepped out of a closet and into...what? A toilet pressed against the back of her leg and she put her hand down on the porcelain surface of a sink. A tiny bathroom then. She listened to the thin door for voices but heard only the low rumble of an engine. A car on a distant street? No. The floor swayed under her, back and forth. The gentle rocking of a boat and the slapping sound of rough waters assailing the hull. The scent of salt was sharp, burning her nose.

  Ryanson’s boat then.

  No doubt the same boat Venetti leaped from with an oxygen tank, her last-ditch attempt to save her life. The question: why did she appear here now? Was Ryanson dumping more bodies? Killing more girls? Making shadier deals with the parasites feeding on the world’s underbelly?