by Michael West
But there was no madness in the flame, only power.
Neil could harness it, could wield it; and, to his delight, he found this to be a sought-after skill in certain circles, one that paid quite handsomely. Tonight, for instance, Mr. Ludwig had ordered him to turn an old warehouse into ash. Ludwig never said why, and Neil knew better than to ask, but the reason was obvious: the big man, Roger Hays, wanted to build a skyscraper, and this old building alone stood in his way.
The flame danced on the head of Neil’s matchstick. He brought it to his mouth, ignited the cigarette that hung from his lips, then took a nice, long drag. The tobacco fibers glowed in the dimness.
Neil leapt to his feet and moved to the center of the warehouse, a carpet of oily rags and old New York Times. He took the cigarette from his mouth and placed it in a fresh book of matches, creating a timer. The Camel would smolder until it reached the waiting heads of the matchsticks. They would ignite; spread the flame to oil-soaked rags. Dry, wooden skids would act as kindling — combusting easily, carrying the blaze toward the outer walls. At that point, the warehouse would become unstable, would disintegrate, and the roof would collapse in upon the holocaust below.
It was going to be a glorious achievement.
Rats — their bodies gaunt, their fur matted — scurried around him as if fascinated by his work. He offered them a smile before placing his timer. The white surface of the cigarette turned gray as it smoldered its way toward the matches. Neil stood, scanned the interior of the warehouse one last time, his mind coloring its surfaces with fire, then he sprinted to the safety of an alley across the street.
From the shadows, Neil watched flames lick the window glass of the warehouse, transfixed by their beauty. He wondered if the rats would ignite, would escape the building like fiery demons from the mouth of a volcano. That would be an interesting sight indeed.
Sirens. A neighbor must have called 911.
Fire broke through the walls, growing in strength and intensity, becoming more and more powerful. Firemen would be too late to stop the destruction. Yes. Even now, tongues of orange flame consumed the roof, rising up toward the moon as if trying to scorch it.
The arsonist grinned into the darkness, his eyes twinkling with reflected firelight. As the building died, there was no sense of guilt, only a warm feeling of supremacy and great satisfaction.
FIFTEEN
Kip Lunden leaned over the stern of the Maggie May, reaching for his buoy. He hoisted it from the surf, pulling up the nylon rope that tethered it to a wire cage below. He paused, searching the sea for Coast Guard patrols and conservation officers.
Trap fishing was not illegal, but you needed a permit, and Kip had no money to pay for one. Every cent he had seemed to be eaten by Maggie May, which was always hungry for repair to one part of her anatomy or another. And, if they caught him trapping without a license, evidence in hand, it would mean a two-thousand-dollar fine or a year in jail.
The fisherman could no more afford the penalty than he could the permit.
It was all just a big government scam. You paid to catch crabs and lobsters; if you wanted people to help you, you had to pay for each of them to be registered. You then had to pay more money if you were going to sell what you caught (a Trader of Lobster Meat and Crab Meat Fee, they called it). Some might say that these fees were small compared to the fines, but it was the principle of the thing. The government was worse than the fucking Mafia, and Kip would be damned if they’d get any more of his hard-earned money than they did every April.
The water lay still in all directions.
Kip continued pulling up rope, and, when his cage broke the inky surface, it was empty. While this was disappointing, it wasn’t what angered him. No. What made him mad was the gaping hole in the side of his trap, wires pulled outward in all directions like the petals of a metallic flower.
Damned animal nuts.
Just another problem Kip had to deal with: environmental activists. They went around with their wire snips, cut open his traps, robbed him of his income, and for what? For fear that, if a cage happened to break loose from its buoy and sink to the bottom, any fish or crab stuck inside would starve to death. Never mind that he might starve. No. These kooks just snipped away, freeing their crustacean pals and making Kip late on his dock payments.
Of course, tampering with traps was against the law, but therein lay a Catch 22. So Kip would curse these vandals, mend his traps, and the cycle would go on, and on, and on.
“They get another one?”
It was Ralphy, Kip’s mate; he made his way down the ladder from the flying bridge, a freshly opened Sam Adams cradled in his hand. It was a good thing Kip wasn’t licensed, because old Ralphy sure as hell wasn’t worth the fees. The only help he provided on these nightly runs was to empty Kip’s beer cooler.
“Yeah.” Kip threw the ruined cage onto the deck where it landed with a clang. “Damn crab lovers.”
Ralphy held his bottle up in a toast, “May they all get the itchy kind and be unable to scratch.”
Kip scanned the horizon again. The surface of the water was smooth as silk. No sign of another ship anywhere. The damage had to have been done earlier in the evening. Just once, he thought, I’d like to catch one of these pricks in the act. It would almost be worth the loss of his trap if he could catch the culprit with wire snips in hand. Kip thought of a proper sentence to administer if such a meeting ever took place. Chopping the asshole up into chum and feeding him to the crabs sounded pretty appropriate.
Kip sighed; two more traps to bring up before they could head back into Exeter. He glared up at his shipmate, watched him down the last beer. “We’d get done a whole lot quicker if you’d help.”
Ralphy gave a salute. “Aye, aye, Skipper.”
He climbed down off the ladder, staggered toward the buoy at the Maggie May’s bow, the empty bottle still clutched in his hand.
If he throws that overboard, Kip thought, I’ll kill him. The ocean was his living, and dumping trash where you fished was like pissing in your own drinking water.
Kip grabbed the next buoy and brought it on board, pulling rope. There seemed to be weight on the other end.
Good, the night won’t be a total loss after all.
Sure enough, when his trap surfaced, it was teeming with lobster, all with carapace above the three and a quarter-inch legal limit.
Hot damn!
Kip smiled at the cage and set it down on the wooden deck at his feet. Inside, lobsters crawled over one another as if playing a slow-motion game of leapfrog.
A thunderous splash caused Kip to jump.
His eyes shot up to the horizon; light from the mainland sliced sky from sea with surgical precision. He found no Coast Guard cruisers, however, no conservation officials, not even a diver bobbing in the water with metal snips in hand. In every direction, the surface was obsidian glass.
Must’ve come from the bow.
“Ralphy?”
The idiot must’ve dropped the trap back in the water.
Then came another possibility: Maybe he fell in.
Kip frowned. Ralphy had downed a lot of beer. Kip dropped his line and looked toward the bow; the Maggie May’s cabin obstructed his view. “Ralphy?”
Something crawled over the railing; Kip heard water run off its body onto the deck in a hard rain.
The fool did fall overboard.
Kip shook his head. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d known Ralphy since kindergarten, he’d throw the bastard off on the dock and find himself a new mate, one that actually knew what the hell he was doing. But, as things were, the man was down on his luck and had nowhere else to go.
Kip removed the rope from his trap and coiled it. The lobsters paid him no mind; they climbed over, under, and around in an orgy of motion. If there were more in Ralphy’s trap, he might actually be able to buy a new fuel line for Maggie. The current one was buried beneath a layer of tape.
Another body climbed aboard. The sound of wet feet
smacking the wooden deck was unmistakable.
Kip’s breath caught in his throat and he dropped the cord.
It’s the crab lovers!
They’d grown tired of going after his traps; now, they wanted to take their wire snips to his belly. No trapper, no traps. It was some kind of Lobster Liberation Organization gone mad.
Kip ran to the cabin and grabbed a machete off the wall. He used the large blade to cut fish and heavy-duty lengths of rope. Now it was all that stood between him and this unknown boarding party.
He heard glass shatter and the deck lights flickered out, plunging the ship into darkness.
Kip thought of the radio in the cabin, then remembered it was broken, in need of a hundred and twenty dollars worth of repairs. A hundred and twenty dollars he’d been unwilling to spend. Kip might have felt differently if it had been his only source of communication, but there was —
The marine radio.
He had to get up to the flying bridge, had to call for help. Fuck the fines the Coast Guard would slap him with when they got here.
Kip held the machete out in front of him like a sword and stepped from the cabin; sweating, he raised his voice to the dark, “Whoever you are, I got a big fuckin’ knife. You’d better haul ass off this boat before I gut you like tuna!”
Squishy sounds of wet movement near the bow were the only reply.
His eyes shot up the ladder to the flying bridge. He put the machete up to his mouth, bit down on the blade, and climbed hand over hand. Movement, swift and unnatural, registered in Kip’s peripheral vision. He froze in mid-step and peered into the darkness.
An octopus.
Kip could make out the pulsating sac of its head, could see its tentacles writhing like black snakes in the moonlight. Then he saw the arch of a sinuous back, saw the spiked dorsal fins, and he realized what was on his boat was no octopus.
The creature snarled, leapt onto the cabin’s roof, its legs bent like the hindquarters of a dog.
Kip reached for the next rung and pulled himself up.
It was on the ladder below him now. Its claws scratched at the aluminum. Its respiration warmed his heels. It grabbed Kip’s exposed calf, its slimy touch like a branding iron pressed to his flesh. Once, as a teenager, he’d been stung by a jellyfish. That pain had been a pinprick by comparison.
Kip bit down on the blade and screamed, kicking until he was free.
The pain faded quickly; his leg went numb, became dead weight dangling from his hip, and he pulled himself onto the flying bridge. In the moonlight, he saw swelling, saw a seeping ulcer where the “sting” had pierced him. The loss of sensation spread, moved up into his torso, and Kip found himself struggling to breathe.
The creature clawed its way onto the bridge.
Kip crawled backward, hyperventilating, his heart slamming against the rear of his sternum. He grabbed the machete from his mouth and held it out against his attacker, but numbness devoured all feeling in his arm.
The blade fell to the floor with a loud clatter and the beast moved in; its head eclipsed the moon like a huge, blossoming flower.
Kip was poisoned, paralyzed. The marine radio hung just above his head, but it might as well have been a million miles away.
The platform shook beneath him. The creature closed in. Fluid dripped down from it, soaking his clothes.
But he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t feel anything.
And a moment later, he was grateful for it.
SIXTEEN
Ten o’clock in the morning.
Larry sat in his folding chair on a rocky plateau, his easel by his side. He looked up at Colonial Bay’s lighthouse, trying to convince himself that Susan Rogers had been a dream and nothing more. It was the only sane explanation. Dead bodies didn’t go out for midnight strolls.
His eyes focused on the round ledge near the top of the tower, the ledge where Susan had been standing before she jumped, then followed the arc of her fall. No body lay on the beach, nor the rocks that surrounded it.
There was no body, because it was all just some weird fantasy.
His mind kept throwing the image of Natalie’s dead body over his eyes. She hadn’t been like the rotting abomination he’d seen —
Dreamed!
— last night. She’d been lying on her bed, just as beautiful as ever, and then Larry had seen her eyes. They’d been open and glassy, lifeless. Her long, red hair lay in a puddle of her own vomit, the empty vial of pills still clutched in one rigid hand. The phone dangled off the hook by her side, the same phone she’d used to call his machine, to tell him that he’d brought her to this end.
Natalie was wrong about you.
Dream or no dream, Larry knew that was true. At least, he hoped he knew.
He returned his attention to the canvas; he’d drawn a rough outline and it craved paint. The wooden box in his lap held various tubes of color, twisted into a mélange of shapes through constant use. Many were covered in multi-colored fingerprints, others in a rubbery layer of dried acrylic.
As he scanned his collection, Larry’s eyes kept drifting back up to the lighthouse. Was the entrance like the one in his dream? The thought munched on his brain until he felt he needed to have a look, just to get on with his life.
Larry put down his paints. He studied the cliff face until he found a path to climb, then grabbed hold of the rock. With some effort, he managed to pull his weight onto higher ground.
Just like the rock climbing wall back at the club, he thought, out of breath, then hoisted himself onto a grassy plateau.
In daylight, the lighthouse looked more like a huge barber’s pole than the ominous spire of his dream. Its flaking paint and sparkling glass hardly instilled fear. It was just another historical landmark, a symbol of another time.
Larry should’ve been shocked to find a cement staircase that led down to the beach, but he wasn’t, just as he wasn’t surprised to see a wooden door at the base of the lighthouse. He moved to it, took the warm brass knob in his hand.
It’s gonna be locked, Neuhaus. This place is a landmark. You don’t think they’d just let you waltz —
Larry opened the door, looked in all directions, then entered. Sunlight filtered down from the grated ceiling, illuminating the interior. Large fishing nets hung from hooks in the wall, and intricately woven spiderwebs swayed in the breeze from the open door.
His heartbeat increased.
On the floor, at the foot of a wrought iron staircase, a lantern lay smashed in a pool of blood. Larry ran his fingers through his sweat-dampened hair, visually following a blood trail up the stairs, and a tiny crab scurried out from beneath the bottom step.
“Christ,” he muttered.
It’s a crab, his brain conceded, but it needn’t be the crab. It can’t be.
But, in his dream, he’d knocked a lantern off the shelf. It fell to the floor, shattered. And now, here it was, smashed at his feet.
You were sleepwalking, his mind reasoned. You hit the shelf in your sleep and your subconscious incorporated the act into your dream. Ever hear the one about the guy who ate the world’s largest marshmallow? He woke up and found his pillow was gone.
“Okay,” Larry murmured in agreement, anxious to prove that he was still in control. “Sleepwalking would explain the robe being wet.”
Right, his mind consented. Nothing insane about a little walk in your sleep. Hell, Jennifer Aniston does it all the time!
But how did the girl know about Natalie’s message on his machine — the one that began with “uncaring bastard” and ended with “murderer”?
She didn’t know shit, you knew about it. It was your dream. You wanted to be told that it was all right, that the people you couldn’t save couldn’t be saved.
It all sounded logical enough. The blood, however, could not be so easily explained. He studied his hands, wondering if he’d smashed the lantern as he’d smashed the mirror, but his wounds hadn’t reopened, and no new cuts appeared.
T
he flesh is the clay of the gods.
“Blow it out your ass.”
Larry ascended the stairs; the glass-enclosed room was just as he remembered it. A gust of cool wind met him at the open doorway. He stepped onto the metal catwalk and strolled around.
The blood trail came to an end, as though the donor had spontaneously healed, or leapt over the side. Larry looked down.
Still no body. That’s something at least.
From the lighthouse spire, visitors to Colonial Bay’s streets appeared as multi-colored insects fleeing to and from an unseen nest. Larry found himself longing to be one of them, blissfully ignorant of what, if anything, was happening.
SEVENTEEN
Peggy paid a visit to Colonial Bay’s Historical Society. She’d wanted Larry to join her, but he’d been anxious to paint, and she was happy to see him enthusiastic about his art again.
If you’d asked her a year ago, she would have said marriage was a certainty, that everlasting happiness was all but guaranteed. But who could predict the future? Nobody. At least, in a novel, you could look ahead if the suspense became too great.
Peggy had written a few romance novels over the years. She’d typed them up, printed them out, and sent the bulky manuscripts off to an array of publishers, only to receive a collection of rejection slips. Peggy read the letters — which all began with “Thank you for your interest in...” and ended with “We regret to inform you...”— and felt like crying, but Larry was quick to cheer her up. He reminded her that even Dr. Suess and Stephen King were turned down a hundred times before they made it big. And so Peggy kept at it, and, every time she mailed off her work, she held out hope that the next reply would be “the one.”