Life Guards in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  Uncle Henry held command in what would have been the front desk in a hotel. Maybe the reception area when passengers first boarded the ship. The chief had cut-away schematics of the ship spread out under portable lights, three different phones in front of him, with one Bluetooth in his ear and an unlit cigar clamped in his teeth.

  “I swear, Willow Tate, I’m going to arrest you for hampering justice. Unless you find those women.”

  We passed psychics everywhere, trying to locate the girls by casting mental nets. Joe the plumber stared into a bucket of rainwater. Margaret handed people woven finding bracelets. Other men and women had heat-seeking detectors. Big Eddie had his useless K-9 dog, Ranger, and his own nose, but there were too many bodies, too much water damage and mildew. Did Matt know what perfume Melissa wore?

  He had no idea.

  “No matter, the whole place still reeks of fear.”

  That was me.

  I stepped into the first empty space I could find, a small office behind the concierge’s desk, dragging Matt with me by flashlight. “We don’t know where to begin. We need help. You tweet.”

  He knew I didn’t mean on his cell. He chirped, while I sent mental calls to the parrotfish. Oey, help! I pictured a willow tree, cold, wind-tossed, alone. Then a lollipop and a skunk, shivering, crying. Lost, need, fear, hope, brave Oey, beautiful Oey. Find.

  “Twee.” Love, friend. Find, Oey, find. Help.

  Big Eddie came back to our office, to rest Ranger, he said. To clear his sensors, more likely. He cursed about the neoprene wet suits, the spoiled food, the dead eels, my shampoo. Everything stank of stagnant water. “Even the parrot smells like a fish.”

  “The parrot!”

  “Yeah. It must be the one they lost in the big wave. Somehow the stupid thing found its way back to the boat, instead of heading for land.”

  “You should be so stupid!” I snapped at poor Big Eddie. Then I apologized and asked where he’d last seen the parrot.

  He pointed and Matt shouted, “Follow the bird!”

  We raced down dark corridors and stairwells with no windows, no lights, no sounds. I thought I felt the ship rocking. Maybe groaning. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t think about it.” Matt had my hand again, and we paused every few yards to listen for Oey.

  We called. She answered! “Twee!”

  Then we heard Lou swearing as he ran to catch up to us, a miner’s light on his head, a weapon in his hand, three of his agents behind him. We waited for him, catching our breaths.

  “Damn you, woman, you have no business here. Vanderman’s got to be desperate by now, and we aren’t a hundred percent convinced the two women are all that innocent. You could be walking into a trap or a shootout, not to mention how precarious this damaged ship is.”

  I wished he hadn’t mentioned the boat’s condition. I thought I felt movement under my feet, which didn’t help settle my stomach or my nerves. Why had I thought I needed to be on board anyway? Melissa was Matt’s relative. Hell, I didn’t even like her.

  Lou wasn’t done ranting. “I’d use the stun gun on you right now if I didn’t have to explain it to your grandmother.” He looked at Matt. “And I trusted you to look after her.”

  That helped put some starch back in my spine. “Hey, I don’t need a babysitter.” Good thing the chief wasn’t around to hear the lie. Or maybe the truth. I needed a keeper, not a babysitter. Then I heard Oey call again, and I remembered why I had to be here, why Melissa and Lolly needed me. “Hush up and listen.”

  “Twee.”

  “Yes, we’re coming.” I tried to show her what I was seeing so she’d know we were close. Then I heard the squawk out loud and the surprise in my head: Twee! He theeth.

  Thit. “Vanderman has more talents,” I told the others.

  No one asked how I knew.

  We were so far down into the ship’s belly by now that the rows of close-together doors we passed must be crew quarters. They were small, windowless, narrow, and drab, with bunk beds stacked on both long walls. A few personal possessions remained, photos, slippers, magazines, all tumbled about when the ship heeled over. Everything felt damp, although this side of the ship had stayed above water. I did not want to think about leaks.

  Lou pointed to the varied marks on every door. They’d all been searched many times looking for survivors, but not yet today, looking for Vanderman and his captives. Like Matt, I wanted to believe Melissa and Lolly were victims, not co-conspirators. Besides, Oey’d sent pictures of them in distress.

  Lou’s agents and the three local cops in their wake opened every door, weapons drawn. They weren’t taking chances, no matter what I believed. I heard them giving our location back to the chief as we moved.

  Listening to Oey’s calls, not Lou’s curses as they searched room after room, Matt and I went ahead to a different corridor. The doors here had fewer marks on them, as if the inspectors and searchers hadn’t noticed this section—or had been hypnotized to ignore it.

  One cabin was locked. I knew Keys was with Lou’s group, so I called for him to come open the door. They all came, plus some others who’d heard us, or heard the bird.

  At first the compartment appeared smaller then the others, shallower, with a single narrow bed and an Indian blanket as a wall covering. Then Matt pushed past Keys and shoved aside the blanket to reveal the rest of the cabin, and broken walls leading to the partitioned rooms on either side. One room held sacks on top of sacks, all filled with money and jewels and electronics. The other room contained two women, bound together and tethered to a table bolted to the floor. It also contained Vanderman, with a gun aimed at Melissa.

  Matt roared and would have charged, but Vanderman moved the gun barrel to aim at him, then at me.

  Me? I lost my footing when Lou came up behind me, shoving others aside to get in. I stumbled, skidding closer to Vanderman than I ever wanted to be. I didn’t have Big Eddie’s nose, but I could tell Axel had been drinking, and not bathing.

  He grabbed my arm, then pressed the gun into my scalp. Shit, Dad warned me not to try to rescue the lollipop and the skunk. Now I needed rescuing. Matt watched, helplessly.

  “Put down your weapons,” Vanderman ordered, staring into Matt’s eyes, then Lou’s and the cops’, with his swirling, whirling bottomless gaze. No one obeyed. No one was susceptible. “Fuck.”

  “You’re cornered, man. Drop the gun.”

  Vanderman laughed, without humor. “You won’t shoot. Not to chance putting a hole in the hull, or into her.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re the one with the power. The one I need. These”—he waved the gun toward Melissa and Lolly; I could sense Matt’s fury—“served their purpose. Now it’s a witch I need.” The gun came back against my temple, which didn’t hurt half as badly as being called a witch. “So you tell the others to leave and I’ll let your girlfriends go. Maybe the boyfriend, too, though I hear he’s got some of your talent.”

  I couldn’t see a happy ending here. All I could do was try to stall the inevitable. “How can you make threats when you are surrounded, on a ship in the water?”

  “Because I have friends, too. Coming soon.” He looked toward the door at the agents and the cops. They’d all stopped, paralyzed into inaction not by ensorcellment, but by danger to civilians. “I’ll say it for the last time. Put your weapons down or I shoot. I shoot the Tate woman, and without her you’ll all be left at my mercy.”

  They believed him. “It’s true,” the chief huffed from the back of the crowd. “Even if we kill Vanderman, we still have to face whatever waits in the eye of the hurricane, without Willy.” Two cops nodded. “It’s true. We need her. But so does Vanderman. Alive.”

  Vanderman lost his composure, or his sanity. “I need her! I need her power.”

  “It won’t work, Axel,” I tried to reason with him. “You can’t hypnotize me.”

  “But I can kill you and the vet and win it that way!”

  Lou snarled out, “You’ll be de
ad before she hits the ground, you asshole!”

  Vanderman looked confused. He tried to see beyond Matt to find out how many threatened him, but Oey got in the way. “My petth!” The huge parrot flew straight for Vanderman, smacking his head with that powerful fish tail.

  A gun went off. Vanderman’s? I thought so. Had he hit me? I was too numb to be sure, but I didn’t think so. Oey? No. The parrot had blinked out of sight, which confounded Vanderman enough that he took his eyes off me and Matt for an instant, long enough for Matt to tackle him and wrest the gun away. Lou and his agents rushed in, weapons waiting for a safe shot.

  “Don’t shoot him! You might hit Matt! We need him.” And I needed Matt. “And don’t wipe Vanderman’s talent away, either.”

  Lou hit Vanderman with the stun gun before I finished telling him what not to do.

  That worked. So did the plastic ties they bound him with, the gag in his mouth and the blindfold over his eyes, just in case.

  Matt ran for Melissa. The chief gathered up Lolly as soon as the ropes around their wrists and ankles were cut. Both women were filthy, wet, cold, sobbing. But they were alive. Melissa was so distraught she thanked me.

  And Matt— Well, he shoved her into Big Eddie’s arms and came for me. Big Eddie pushed her in Russ’ direction. “You’re the computer geek, you take her.”

  Matt came to me, to hold me, to kiss me, to check every inch of me for wounds. Me, instead of Melissa.

  I could breathe again.

  “Do not ever, ever do that again,” he said between kisses.

  I was busy making certain Vanderman hadn’t hurt him, either. “I’ll try not to.”

  I’d try with every ounce of my being to keep Matt from danger. What kind of life could I have if he wasn’t in it?

  CHAPTER 36

  “SO TELL ME WHY WE NEED VANDERMAN?” the chief asked.

  We were all in the enclosed forward observation lounge of the cruise ship, we being most of the psychic half of Paumanok Harbor, Lou and his DUE crew, and Vanderman, tied to a chair. We couldn’t observe much, with the dark gray rain coming in sheets against the super-strength glass window. Someone had rigged lights. The amount of bodies in the room raised the temperature, and all the restaurants and delis in the village had provided sandwiches and coffee.

  I still wasn’t comfortable. They all looked at me. The senior council, that was. The others huddled together in groups, listening to radios, glued to their iPads and tiny TV screens. Matt wasn’t back yet from checking on Melissa and the veterinary hospital, out in flooded roads, washed-away shoulders, downed trees and wires. How could I be comfortable?

  At least I knew Melissa and Lolly were safe and out of danger—from their imprisonment and from prosecution. They were in good condition, physically. Vanderman had scavenged supplies from the ship: blankets, flashlights, and candles. Mentally, they were wrecks.

  Once they’d been checked by the EMTs and calmed by Doc Lassiter’s touch and Grandma Eve’s tea, they’d been interviewed by Chief Haversmith, several other truth-seers, the village attorney, and Judge Chemlecki, who’d just arrived.

  Neither woman had known what they were doing. Everyone agreed they spoke the truth about that.

  Lolly knew she worked extra hours at Vanderman’s house, but the place never got clean. He gave her extra money to run errands for him, but she could never remember where she’d gone or what she’d done. No fresh dry cleaning, no new groceries appeared. When she asked Vanderman, he told her to take the money and mind her own business, so she did because she needed the job.

  Melissa thought he loved her. Sure he was old enough to be her father, but he was smart, almost as good at a computer as she was. They had games to see who could break what codes sooner, just for fun, he said. And she helped him move some money through cyberspace, but all his own money, he swore. He told her some catastrophic financial upheaval was coming and he wanted funds out of the country, totally legal, he insisted. He’d take her with him when he left, he promised. So she found ways.

  She couldn’t remember exactly what they did together for all the hours missing from her nights. She had no record of dinners out, movies they’d seen, concerts they’d attended, other couples they’d met. Yet her gas tank was always empty. Most troubling of all, she could not remember having sex with her exciting, older, sophisticated, wealthy lover.

  Eventually, she confronted him with her complaints and concerns. But Lolly was there, cleaning, and he would not talk. He just looked at her with those eyes that kept her fascinated, that said how much he adored her, that she was the only woman in his life. She and Lolly. Infuriated, she looked at the other, older, frumpy, stupid woman and saw what she’d missed, that they were being used and manipulated and God knew what else. “Look away!” she screamed at Lolly, too late.

  Vanderman had them bound and immobilized, no matter how hard they tried to keep their eyes closed, their minds free of his tainted touch. He didn’t care, Melissa told the listeners. He said he’d be leaving, but they were too dangerous to his plans to let free, no matter how they promised to keep quiet. No matter if he left suggestions in their minds, someone could unlock those spells. Melissa, especially, knew his intentions. She just didn’t know that she knew.

  They had no memory of getting aboard the cruise ship, only periods when he was gone, when they realized he was going to leave them to die in that tiger-striped lounge, or the tiny cabin. They pretended to be sleeping or in shock when he came back, hoping for a rescue.

  Melissa promised to help Russ recover the missing money, even if she had to be hypnotized to remember Vanderman’s account numbers and passwords. She never meant to break the laws.

  “That’s the truth,” the chief said, happily chewing his pastrami sandwich. Rick Stamfield nodded. So did Kelvin from the garage. No one itched, twitched, or belched. It was true.

  There’d be no charges, just a lot of community computer service for Melissa and counseling for Lolly. And they’d get Melissa out of town, back to college, with only a small portion of her memory permanently wiped out, thanks to Mayor Applebaum’s talent.

  That left Vanderman, and what to do with him.

  They couldn’t hand him over to the FBI or the state cops. He’d be in the wind before they could blink. The same with putting him in a cell somewhere with ordinary guards, ordinary criminals.

  One of Lou’s men was all for killing him right then, tossing him overboard and claiming the storm took him. Someone else thought they ought to blind him so he couldn’t use his warped talent again. Lou fingered the small device he carried in his inside pocket. But even without his power to mesmerize, Vanderman still threatened Paumanok Harbor and its paranormals. He knew too much. And he’d caused too much damage.

  “But we cannot become what he is!” I shouted. “We cannot use our powers for our own ends, even if our motives are purer. What about his rights? What about the law? You haven’t even read him the Miranda card or offered him a lawyer. That makes us criminals, too!”

  “We haven’t arrested him yet,” the judge declared, “so there’s no need to extend him his civil liberties. And this might be a case of terrorism, where other standards apply.”

  I’d heard that before, and liked it less every time. Everyone knew he was guilty. Everyone knew he was evil. Only I thought we had a use for him, intact and willing.

  I explained as best I could. How I thought the sea serpent had come to Paumanok Harbor to avenge its imprisonment and banishment. Now I believed it had come here because of Vanderman, its kindred spirit. He’d known the thing was coming, and he went on his crime spree to prepare for his future after Paumanok Harbor got destroyed. He came here, to the boat, so N’fwend could find him, could carry him away to start taking over the rest of world.

  Without him, we had no hope of slaying the beast, or sending it back to its prison in the center of Earth. No evil eye beads, no magic words from Grant and DUE, no pictures I’d drawn showing the dragon reduced to a tiny egg, could get rid o
f the monster. Not without holding its soul mate hostage long enough to get its attention.

  “So we dangle Vanderman out in the storm to let the wave serpent see him.” Lou never took his eyes off the prisoner. “Who’s to say the monster doesn’t steal Vanderman’s power and overtake our efforts? Or we subdue the kraken, but it transfers its powers into him, like when he was conceived.”

  I didn’t have all the answers. I just knew we needed Vanderman if we were going to succeed. If not, we’d all be swept under the sea serpent’s tsunami of hate and greed and genocide. “We’ll have help,” I told Lou and the others. The dolphins circled the ship. Oey called from somewhere nearby. As the dark day grew blacker still, I thought I saw flashes of light, like fireflies in the lightning. “We are not in this alone.”

  Someone cautiously mentioned that the last time the rogue wave appeared the professor and his fancy curse could not subdue it.

  I held the old man’s trembling hand. “That is true, but remember he vanquished it decades ago. This time he does not have to recall the exact words. We have them on tape. And Dr. Harmon will not be facing the demon on his own.” I felt his hand squeeze mine. It almost killed me to say it, but I did. “I’ll be there.”

  “And I.” Matt came in then and stood behind my chair.

  “No, you cannot confront N’fwend. You are not … not one of us.”

  I never saw him so angry, so hurt at the same time. I looked at my hand in the professor’s while he cursed. “Bullshit. You made me one of you.”

  “But we don’t know what effect the serpent will have on you. You could fall under its spell.”

  “More bullshit. I faced Vanderman, didn’t I? I looked straight into the bastard’s eyes to gauge his moves, and didn’t get sucked into his vortex. And you need me. How many others here can see the serpent in the water? You don’t know. But how many can see the parrot?”