In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  Diana ran around the corner, through the front parlor and to the stairs. She had to get Sam.

  None of it was real, she kept telling herself. None of it. Not here, not now. Even still, she was out of the cellar, and she had to get out of the house, had to get out before Ford got hold of her again. Ford. She suddenly heard screaming coming from below. The voices of the woman again, and the man.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, she glanced into their room, and saw Ford sitting up on the bed, confused, disoriented, but waking. He jumped up when he saw her, began rushing her way, but Diana grabbed the knob and pulled the door shut, holding it tight.

  She yelled out to Samantha, hoping she’d wake, praying she’d wake, told her to get her shoes, coat. Ford was at the door now, pulling from the other side. He was stronger. She wasn’t going to be able to resist very long. The door opened an inch—he was still talking through, not yet yelling, talking through bared teeth, telling her she was being ridiculous—Diana pulled, both hands, and it clicked shut again. She called out again to Samantha. Diana was braced, back on her right heel, with the toes of her left foot tight against the door, keeping her leverage. Ford pulled again twice, but the door stayed fast. Diana clenched her teeth. She couldn’t believe she was keeping it shut. How was she keeping it shut?

  “Diana!” he said. “Enough! This is foolish!” He knocked again. Banged. Pulled on the knob. “I think I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping my temper, but don’t push me, Diana. I’ve had enough.” He rapped harder. She was losing her grip, her strength. “I’m supposed to be at work, Diana! I have to get back! Do you want me to lose my job? Is that what you want?! Who’s going to pay for everything then? You?” The door opened a crack one more, time and again she pulled it shut, but this time as she did, she lost her balance stumbling backward.

  She hit the floor, landing on her bottom, and bracing herself with her hands behind her, expecting Ford to fly out at any moment. She began to inch backward, in the direction of Samantha’s room, mesmerized by the door. Ford was still banging, pulling on the knob—the knob was turning—but the door wasn’t opening. How could the door not be opening? There wasn’t even a lock on it. Not from the outside. Diana, wide-eyed, inched farther away, and Ford banged harder.

  “Diana! Open this fucking door now! I’m not happy about this, Diana! Not happy! You need to let me out of here, Diana!” The door wasn’t budging, not even a little, but then it rattled with a loud boom down toward the bottom. Twice. He was kicking it. The door wasn’t that heavy, not that secure. If he was kicking it, it wouldn’t last long. “Diana!” he shouted again. “I need to get back to work, Diana! You fucking little bitch!”

  Diana jumped up. There was a bolt lock on the outside of Sam’s door. New. Diana slid the bolt and rushed into Samantha’s room, praying she would be in there, and felt a sudden wash of relief. Samantha was sitting up on her bed, Louie on her lap, and the stuffed wolf beside her. Her shoes and coat already on. She didn’t say a thing, and she didn’t move from the bed. She looked hesitantly to her left, and Diana followed her eyes. The woman from the picture was sitting in the rocker. The woman from the cellar, the well. Dripping wet.

  Diana screamed.

  She ran over and swooped Samantha up in her arms, Samantha reaching for Louie and the wolf as she did. Her purse was still on the floor in the hall, and she leaned over to grab it. Ford yelled louder. Diana ran out into the hallway, her bedroom door shaking with each of Ford’s blows, and it was then that the man came out of the wall. He walked in long, quick strides, charging. His eyes on fire. Even in the shadows, she could see who he was. Slicked hair and muttonchops. And just a few feet away.

  Diana leapt halfway down the stairs, losing her balance and tumbling against the wall. She could hear the noise above them. A cacophony of voices. The man’s and the woman’s. But mostly Ford’s. He was demanding she come back. Demanding she open the door. When she stumbled to the landing, her eye caught the back parlor. The furniture had been rearranged. Looking just as it had when they first moved in. And inside the dining room, the table was set. As if for tea. The china dolls. All of them, sitting around the table. Diana froze, and then a woman came into the dining room from the foyer. An old woman, humped, red-rimmed eyes, and paper-thin skin. Balancing on a cane. A woman she had seen before. Pictures. Ford’s. The aunt who had left him the home. Dorothy.

  “This nonsense goes on all the time,” she said. “I’ve just about had enough of it.”

  Diana ran past her and threw open the door and ran out into the night. She didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to see the house now, was sure the lights were all on now, everything illuminated. All watching her. Samantha hugged her tight and began to cry. Diana passed the cemetery, whispers suddenly coming from all around her, and started down the hill, Green Leaf Avenue, on the far side of Sunset Pond. Just through Trinity Park, she thought, across Circuit Avenue, Ocean Park, and then down to the ferry. It was almost sunrise, she thought, there had to be a ferry running soon.

  She couldn’t see the sun yet, but everything about her was bathed in gray. When she reached the foot of the hill, she put the little girl down, her arms exhausted. She looked about, catching her breath. The pond was covered in mist, cold meeting warm, the reeds all about it brown and dead, waiting for light, waiting for summer. Diana took Sam by the hand and hurried onto Pawtucket Avenue, into Cottage City, Trinity Park. The little girl was still crying, and Diana tried to hush her, console her. It was over, she said. All over. Just a little farther. They were just going to the boat, and once they were on the boat it would all be okay.

  She looked to her left—a narrow white gingerbread with orange-and-green trim—and a man walked out onto the porch. Stopped and stared. He was round and bald, and he was smoking a pipe. There were people everywhere all about the park. Clustered in front of the gingerbread houses as if posing for pictures. Out on the porches and the cantilevered balconies above. Some fanning themselves, others sitting in chairs beneath the tall oaks—so many oaks—others holding the hands of small children, all dressed for summers, summers of a hundred years before, and all watching her. There was a man riding an old-fashioned bicycle like Diana had seen in the pictures, the pedals on the enormous front wheel, and an older lady in a hoop dress, all dressed in black, high hat with feathers, walking with a cane. Diana picked Samantha up again and started to run again, keeping to the circular road around the tabernacle, almost running into a small group of children holding hands. ring-around-the-rosy. Long dresses brushing the ground, tight at the waistline, and aprons. White aprons. The boys with them wore short pants baggy at the knees and straw hats and caps. They all stopped and stared. Everyone was staring. Diana covered Sam’s eyes.

  “Don’t look,” she said. “Please don’t look.”

  Where was the cold? None of these people were dressed for early spring, none of them should have been here. Not this time of year. No one was here this time of year, not in Trinity Park. It was always empty, always deserted. A voice called out, somewhere to her left. The voice of a woman, barely a whisper.

  The girl who lives on the hill, she said, she’s the girl who lives on the hill.

  Diana kept running, but there was music now as she passed the tabernacle. A sea of voices. Singing.

  We shall sleep, but not forever.

  Diana didn’t want to look, but she had to look. The tabernacle was full. Row upon row of benches, and in the back, folding chairs. Faces old and young, women in bonnets, and men with their bowlers perched on their laps, foreheads perspiring in the heat. The heat. The music continued, an organ, but the singing stopped, the people stopped all turning her way, suddenly frozen in time as if posing for an enormous group photo. A banner loomed above them—May the Glory of the Lord Be in this Place.

  Ford slammed his fist into the door and the wood cracked beneath it. He screamed for Diana again, but now the house was suddenly silent. Either she was hiding or he was alone. He pulled at the knob and this tim
e the door opened, swinging slowly inward. Ford took a step back, stared at the door, the floor and the threshold. For a moment, he was afraid to move. Terrified that someone was waiting for him in the hall. Something. He called out again to Diana. Nothing. The house was playing tricks on him again. That’s all it was. Tricks. But then how the hell did she manage to lock him inside? He stepped slowly into the hallway, and listened. Nothing. The light on in Sam’s room, but no one inside. Nothing. He hesitated, and then started down the stairs, trying to be quiet.

  “Diana,” he whispered.

  Nothing. He whispered her name again. None of this was supposed to happen this way. None of it. He wasn’t going to be his father. He wasn’t his father. So Jesus Christ, why was she making him be his father? They could have had a nice life out here together. A nice quiet life. If only she had listened to him. If only she wasn’t so goddamn high-strung. If only she didn’t start fucking around on him. She couldn’t see the stress he was under, what she put him through. Only thought of herself. Why for fuck’s sake did she only think of herself? It didn’t have to be like this.

  Ford reached the first floor. All the lights were still on downstairs. He looked right and then left. Listened. The cellar. He could hear sounds coming from the cellar. Sam’s voice, barely audible, crying, and then Diana’s quietly hushing her. They were back in the cellar. He couldn’t believe they had gone back to the cellar. Must have just wanted him to think they had left, so he would leave himself, go after them. Tricking him. Again.

  Ford opened the door as quietly as he could. No lights on down there. They were hiding in the dark. But how much could they hide? There was nowhere really to hide. Nowhere to run to. He flicked on the light, and waited, listened. Movement. Footsteps, but no more voices. “Diana,” he said again.

  They reached the edge of the circle, but a man sitting with a horse and buggy blocked the path to Circuit Avenue. A small girl with ribbons in her hair stood beside the horse, holding the reins. A light breeze whistled in the leaves of the oaks—everything suddenly looking, smelling alive—and rustled the ribbons in the little girl’s hair. Samantha wiped an eye and waved to the little girl, but the girl just stared, not waving back, and Diana pulled Samantha closer.

  “Don’t look,” she said. They circumvented the buggy, the man making no attempt to stop them, and reached the street, Trinity Park behind them now, the voices, the music, now somehow seeming much more distant. Echoes. Fading with the breeze. Gone.

  As she stepped onto the street a car rushed past them. A car, swerving. A car. Thank God it was a car. Diana stopped for a moment, and caught her breath, her heart still racing. She looked up and down the street. Pavement, parking spaces, and desolate shops. Early April in Oak Bluffs just as it should be. 1995. The grocery market not yet open, the dim fluorescent nightlights on inside. Diana crossed the street, and took a right onto the pedestrian park on Healey Way. Open and deserted. The Nashua House Hotel and The Offshore Ale Pub ahead in the distance. Then the dead grass of Ocean Park now, the sea gray and cold beyond. They would just wait on the wharf for the next ferry. She didn’t have a schedule but there would have to be one within the next hour.

  “That little girl is getting too big to carry like that.”

  Diana turned quick to her right. A man stood on the porch of the Nashua House, one hand on the ornate rail, and one holding a cigar. A straw hat and bow tie. Three-day growth of grizzle. He puffed on the cigar.

  “Much too big for a little thing like you.”

  Ford put a foot on the top step. He didn’t want to go down there. He hesitated. Listened. More voices. Samantha, no longer crying, but whispering—“Is he gone?”—and Diana hushing her again. Ford took a slow breath, and the house creaked around him.

  “Diana,” he said, “if you just come on up, it will be easier for everybody. I don’t want to have to lock you down here again. It will be better. We can talk this out. Nobody’s wrong, nobody’s right, we’re just not seeing eye to eye right now. That’s all. That happens in marriages, nobody’s perfect. Marriage is a lot of work. Diana?” He waited. More footsteps. Puttering on the dusty dirt floor. They were moving to the far side of the room, scrambling like little rats. Little rats, that was all. They were little rats. Rats … “Diana. Don’t make me come down there.”

  He listened again. “I want him to leave,” someone said. Sam. Had to be Sam. “Make him leave.” More rustling. Then another voice, indistinct, the words not clear. It had to be them. Or was his mind playing tricks on him still? The house playing tricks on him. Goddamn house. He was beginning to hate this fucking house. Hated it down here.

  “I’m not leaving, Diana,” Ford said. “This is my house. I pay the bills, I pay taxes. What do you pay? Besides nothing. I’m not going anywhere. It should never have come to any of this. If you had only listened to me for once. That’s the problem with you—you’re too obstinate, you never listen. Diana?” He took another step, his hands shaking now. He had started to sweat. He hated it down here—she knew he hated it down here, and that’s why she was hiding. It didn’t matter though. Things had gone too far. He was the man of the house, he had to straighten it out. He could get them, get back upstairs, and make things a little clearer. That’s what this situation needed—a little clarity. One way or another, he was going to get through to her. Clearer. And if not … “Diana! Upstairs! Now! This is ridiculous!”

  “Ridiculous,” a voice repeated. Sam’s. Definitely Sam’s. But Sam wouldn’t repeat him. Wouldn’t dare. More movement. Footsteps going across the room again.

  Ford breathed in deep, and ran down the stairs, stopping at the bottom, the sweat now dribbling down his temples, his sides. He looked about the room. They were nowhere in sight. Hiding behind something. Had to be. They had to be down here. And if they weren’t?

  “This is foolish, Diana. What are we? Little kids? Hide-and-seek? I know you’re down here, so just come out now, and we can go talk it out. I won’t lock you down here again. I promise. I need to see you. Diana. I … need … to … see … you.” Ford took three steps forward, looking side to side. She had hit him before. Could try it again. Come up behind him. Let her try, he thought. She hits me, I’m going to get her good. Send her sailing into next fucking week. Sorry, judge, self-defense. He looked toward the well, the water heater gurgling in the corner, nothing. The little rocking chair in the corner, and boxes of books. The tool bench. The laundry machines. Nothing. “Diana, come out, now!”

  He heard feet again. Tiny feet, scuffling. He moved to the center of the room, and now he did see a rat scurrying by the edge of the wall, casting a large shadow across the floor. It turned and looked at him, as if daring him to come after him. Rats. Rats made it worse. He hated rats.

  “Diana,” he said again. And then something from above. A creaking. The door. Ford swung his head around, and then leapt for the stairs, but before he reached the bottom step, the door slammed shut above. The key turning in the lock and the bolt sliding into place.

  “Fucking bitch,” he muttered, and he charged up the stairs.

  Diana ran across Ocean Park toward the wharf. The park was empty, the boardwalk, too. Just the roar of the waves of beyond.

  “Just a little further,” she whispered to Sam. She turned once to make sure the man from the Nashua House hadn’t decided to follow her. But he was nowhere in sight. There were eyes on her though; she could feel them. She looked up toward the covered roof deck of the Dr. Harrison Tucker Cottage, but there was no one there. Diana picked up the pace, passing the gazebo, and small blue cement pond. The water fountain off, the pond dry. She crossed to the boardwalk, and put Samantha down so she could catch her breath again. The waves broke on the shore, angry and loud, high tide, and the air was wet with the mist from the spray. Tinged in salt. Gulls crying. The wharf was empty, the sun now just beginning to break on the horizon, cracks of red spreading up into the dying blue night, and Diana heard the horn. The ferry was moving toward the shore.

  Ford bang
ed on the door, screaming Diana’s name. Demanding she let him out. He didn’t know how she tricked him—thrown her voice somehow, or somehow got back up the stairs when he had his back turned, quiet as a mouse—but she had. But how? He would have heard her, seen her. But it was okay. It wasn’t over. This, he told himself, is far from over. He would decide when it was over and how it would end. He banged again, but there was no answer on the other side. He needed something to break down the door with, had to be something below. He turned nervously, his heart racing even quicker, his nerves on end—God, he hated this fucking cellar—and looked down the stairs. No noise from down there anymore, nothing down there. Nothing. He had to remind himself of that—there was nothing down here.

  The gulls circled above them. One landing on the boardwalk just ahead, waddling like a drunk on the way to the bathroom. The bird stopped and stared. Diana and Samantha kept walking, but the bird didn’t move. They sidestepped around him, and the bird pivoted, but didn’t fly off. Still watching them as they went.

  “He wants to come with us,” Sam whispered.

  “He can’t come with us,” Diana said. “No one can come with us.”