Outcasts

by Nick Wisseman

  * * *

  One Day Ago…

  “‘Why I think you will go quite mad,’ she said. ‘Quite mad.’” Ryan shook his head slowly as he said this. He paused to allow Martin time to comment, but the Frenchman was intent on a group of gulls perched twenty yards to the north.

  “She was always so philosophical. Every night I went to see her, she never failed to engage me in some sort of discussion…This was her favorite topic, though: ‘the futility of exploration.’ The blasted futility.” Ryan fell silent for a moment before suddenly slamming his fist against the black, unforgiving surface the two men rested on, yelling in frustration as he did so.

  Martin’s gulls started and flew off the Thing and out of sight. The Frenchman glared at his fellow castaway and reclined in disgust.

  “‘What will you do when the Unknown becomes Known?’ she’d ask. ‘When you’ve discovered everything there is to discover?’ she’d needle. ‘Made the world too small for yourself? Mapped yourself a prison of certainty? Turned the globe into a cell?’” Ryan lapsed into silence, noting with irritation that Martin had managed to fall asleep.

  * * *

  Thirteen Days Ago…

  “Did you go ashore in Lisbon, Williams?” Ryan imagines the young ensign looking quizzically at his captain’s back in total confusion.

  “Sir?”

  “Answer the question, sailor.” Surprised at how calm he feels, Ryan continues staring at the inky blackness they’ve been shadowing for four days. He keeps the French ship out of his line of vision; the Thing makes the mighty boat look depressingly small by comparison…But even facing away from his subordinate, Ryan can still smell the man’s stench of whiskey.

  “Yes, sir…I did, sir…You gave us permission, and—”

  “Did you know a woman by the name of Isabelle in that port?” Ryan has never gazed at the Thing this long without flinching.

  “Sir?”

  “I’ll not prompt you again, sailor.”

  “Yes, sir…A…A whore near the docks. But it was only the one time—”

  With a speed he hadn’t known he still possessed, Ryan turns and strikes the boy’s face with an open palm. As the older man’s hand pulls back from the younger’s cheek, night turns to day, and ahead of them the French ship becomes an inferno.

  * * *

  Two Days Ago…

  “She asked me to map her one night.” Ryan was walking without watching; he’d already swerved into Martin more than once.

  “Is that what the English term it?”

  Laughing darkly, Ryan shook his head. “We have many names for the act, my dear frog, but when I say map, I really do mean map. ‘Chart me,’ she said. ‘Measure me, plot me, grid me, label me, map me…’ Best night I ever had.”

  “Careful, now.”

  Ryan didn’t register the Frenchman’s warning quickly enough to avoid bumping into him again. Martin swore, the birds he’d been studying took to the air, and he swore even louder. Then he collapsed in a heap, one hand covering his eyes, the other pressed to his shrunken stomach.

  “You’d never have caught them anyway.” Sitting down five yards away, Ryan stared into the sun. “Gulls were her favorite animals, come to think of it. She must have admired their freedom.”

  “And why, why on earth would this ‘Lady’ ask you to transcribe her womanly form?”

  Ryan looked back to glare at Martin before answering. “She was teasing me I suppose. Seeing how I would react once I knew her so precisely. Jesting that I would tire of her.”

  “And did you?”

  Turning once more to the sun, Ryan said nothing further for the rest of the afternoon.

  * * *

  Nine Days Ago…

  “Sir?”

  His first mate looks desperate. Ryan has no idea what to tell him.

  Martin murmurs something in French. An oath, no doubt. Or a prayer. Neither of which would do justice to the absurdity before them.

  Nothing could.

  “Sir?”

  “I heard you the first time, Lucas…Let me…Just let me think a moment.”

  Lucas nods his apology.

  Ryan turns his eyes away from the Thing’s doubling—two of it; how could there be two of it?—and stares in the only direction still free of a dark presence: southeast…Southeast.

  And Ryan suddenly realizes what they need to do. Understands what’s happened, and where they need to go for certainty.

  Martin chuckles sourly. “Our new heading, no?” With a southerly flick of his right arm, the Frenchman lets Ryan know that he’s not the only one to have unraveled the mystery.

  Swallowing as he nods, Ryan slowly looks back at the monstrous, jet-black cross blocking them to the north and the west…There were two Things now, intersecting at a giant right angle, the unholy propagation of what had been diabolical enough as a single entity. A phenomenon no one had ever reported or even joked about.

  Martin mutters to himself in French again.

  Poor man. This latest infuriating revelation followed the shock of seeing his ship blown up behind him the night before. Ryan shakes his head, an all too common motion of late. Either one of the French crew had tried to detonate a barrel of powder on the Thing and gotten it wrong…Or given into despair and gotten it right. Martin and his cook, rowing towards the Valiant for a captain’s dinner, had been the only survivors.

  The Thing, of course, had been completely unscathed.

  “Your men won’t like it,” Martin interjects at last.

  “Initially they will, for as long as the Thing is out of sight. But if we’re right, and we do run up against more of it…” Ryan closes his eyes to blot out the hellish crossroads before him.

  “We are right, and you doubt it not…But even if we don’t find a label, it would not disprove us. The monstrosities are probably following their own map.”

  Ryan gives no answer, and Martin doesn’t press him for one.

  * * *

  Three Days Ago…

  The Frenchman reached up to pick at his bald, peeling scalp. “How long do you think?”

  “If we catch one of those gulls? Maybe a few days.” Ryan eyed the water skin he held in his shaking hand. His small, sweating, solitary water skin. “At best.”

  With their legs dangling over the Thing’s inky surface, he and Martin stared into the empty horizon. Salt misted over them intermittently as waves crashed against the monstrous black cliff, irritating their sun-seared skin.

  “A hunt, then? Or would you rather save your strength?”

  “Let’s go.”

  The pair rose to their feet and began walking south as Ryan decided against asking what they could possibly be saving their strength for.

  * * *

  Four Days Ago…

  “They must realize that they’ll hit another monstrosity within a few days, no matter what direction they go.” Martin offers this as a statement rather than a question.

  Ryan has no immediate reply. The two sit next to each other on the Thing’s all-too-familiar blackness, watching the Valiant race towards the horizon.

  “Ironic, this,” Ryan says at last. “I’ve always had an affinity for letters, and now I’ll die on one.”

  “Better than ending aboard a heathenly large line of longitude I suppose.”

  Laughing bitterly, Ryan turns away from the now tiny Valiant and looks instead at the waves lapping futilely against the Thing’s edge. This was one structure water would never wear down…

  A gull swoops low and then rises again to pass overhead. Marking its trajectory, Ryan wonders how high the bird would have to soar before it could see the caption “Atlantic Ocean” spelled out in all its jet-black, horrible enormity…And how much higher still would the gull have to climb to take in the perfectly regular grid enclosing these monstrous words? Would that be a lofty enough vantage to determine where their ships had first run afoul of this heinous map?

  Lowering his gaze, Ryan finds the Valiant vanished from view. He laughs
again, but this time he can’t make himself stop until he notices Martin muttering to himself, eyes closed.

  LOW-LIMB HIGH

  The footprints from Caroline’s last visit were still discernible, still recording the past passage despite the attic’s attempt to bury the evidence under an avalanche of new dust. What remained of the trail was just detailed enough for her to identify her previous shoes’ tread marks; she hadn’t worn that pair since July, when Uncle Cliff bought her a “sturdier” set of Nikes…Which meant it had been at least a month since the bad grade—or stubbed toe, or dirty look, or whatever the disaster had been that particular day—sent her running up here in search of sanctuary.

  A full month…She was getting better. Still not cured of her need for this crutch, but better.

  Renewing the blurred tracks by fitting her feet to their outlines, Caroline followed the path to Sire’s Seat, her brother Ethan’s name for the tattered, many-stained easy chair her mother hated so vehemently. Her grumblings had never amounted to much while Caroline’s dad was around, but within days of him walking out, the Seat had disappeared, along with pretty much everything else associated with him. Caroline and Ethan hadn’t seen the chair again until a year later, when they’d fled to the attic to hide from a babysitter.

  Collapsing into the Seat’s leathery familiarity, Caroline closed her eyes to savor the lingering scent of cigarettes and Old Spice. Then she folded her arms across her skinny chest and squeezed hard to complete the imitation of her dad’s embrace…

  Even if she was growing more self-reliant, it was still nice to have the Seat as a fallback for the really bad days…Like today, which had been going so well until that hideous confrontation with her mother—

  Warm fur brushed over Caroline’s ankle. She screamed and opened her eyes in time to see a terrified mouse scurrying from view. Angry with herself for reacting like a girl, she ripped off her left shoe and hurled it at the rodent’s vanishing tail. The sneaker missed by a foot and struck an old bookcase with enough force to send a box teetering back and forth on the highest shelf.

  Stifling a cry, Caroline tried to cover the distance in time…and came up just short. The box smashed to the floor directly in front of her, scattering keepsakes everywhere, including a watch—her dad’s watch—which bounced, bounced again, and then skidded to a stop in one of her twice-trod footprints.

  * * *

  “Mind saying hi to your mom for me?” Danny Hammond asked with an idiotic leer.

  Turning her blonde head in what she hoped was a pointed fashion, Caroline kept walking towards the school’s main entrance. She tried not to cringe when she heard the little moron shout “Ms. Thornburn’s a fox but her daughter’s not!” across the blacktop.

  After winding her way through the halls to the cafeteria, Caroline bought a chocolate milk to justify her presence. She’d already eaten breakfast at home—two slices of cinnamon-sugar toast and a glass of Pepsi—but purchasing something here allowed her to sit in peace for a few minutes at her own table. Sit in peace so she could think…about a family heirloom that should have disappeared long since.

  The pocket watch had been in her family for generations. Caroline knew because her dad had made sure she knew, drumming it into her every time he was flailing for something to say and his hand nervously wandered into his pocket. “Ahh, Cary, now this, this is truly a treasure. The only link we have with the first Thornburns to come to this country…”

  Caroline’s eyes started glazing over reflexively before she shook herself back to focus; Ethan had dubbed the watch the Family Snore, the only one of his nicknames Caroline disliked…even though she secretly agreed with it. But boring as her dad’s sermons had been, she’d paid enough to them attention to know that he’d prized the item currently hidden under her pillow more than anything else he’d owned. It had been a fixture of his apparel; Caroline had trouble remembering him without it.

  The day’s first bell shrieked overhead. Caroline rose to throw away her half-empty milk carton and head to English, pleading with herself to ignore the watch—and its sudden, inexplicable appearance—until school was over.

  * * *

  The key under the mat was missing; her mother had probably lost her own set again and borrowed the spare to lock up the house. A year ago Caroline would have been annoyed—and she still didn’t have her own key—but over the summer she’d finally worked up the courage to climb the old oak in back. She had to use Son’s Stump (Ethan’s favorite reading log) as a stepladder, though, and it galled her terribly: her brother used to joke that you had to be “low-limb high” to leave home, meaning tall enough to grab the first branch flatfooted so that you could easily climb back into your room unnoticed upon your return. The day after Ethan stole away in the night for good—on the two-month anniversary of their father’s disappearance—Caroline had measured the branch and then her doorframe, marking the latter at five feet, eight inches; she was still four inches shy. But as much as it burned her to use the Stump, jumping seemed too desperate, and getting the extra key from the neighbors over and over again was embarrassing. Besides, it was a lot more fun to enter her house like a cat burglar than a latchkey kid.

  After washing the sap and bits of bark from her hands, Caroline returned to her room and rescued the watch from under her pillow. Cradling the silver timepiece, she pored over its surface, noting how well preserved it was aside from the small dent on the back edge. As a clock, it was still a failure (it had never worked, despite her dad’s constant tinkering); but as a piece of art, it was beautiful, permeated with an understated elegance that kept luring the eye back…

  The phone rang, shattering her reverie. Caroline let the answering machine stand in, her breath catching—as it always did—when the male voices said their parts of the all-family greeting her mother had never changed. The actual message was predictably anticlimactic, however: “Hey Sharon, this is Cliff again. Just calling to check up on the Toyota and see how it’s running now…”

  Did her uncle really think her mother would call him back?

  Returning her attention to the watch, Caroline let its roundness refill her hand, the soft metal exerting a gentle pressure on her palm. Even the two protruding knobs felt good, the hollows they created in her skin pressing like the first forces of a deep massage. She closed her eyes…and saw her next project. Its details were incredibly vivid, and she’d learned from bitter experience that if she didn’t start rendering them immediately, the best bits would start to diminish.

  So Caroline slipped the watch into her pocket and hurried to her sketchbook.

  * * *

  The standard twenty minutes elapsed before her mother came upstairs to check in; shedding the trappings of work, glancing at the New York Times, and making a martini (or two, or three) took their usual priority. Tonight’s obligatory appearance didn’t occur until 6:15, when her mother entered her daughter’s bedroom humming a show tune. “Hi, sweetie. How was school?”

  “Fine.” Caroline’s gaze stayed fixed on her painting, even as she wondered if her mother would look at the emerging picture closely enough to recognize what it represented.

  “Creating your own little world again, I see. Would it be a lost cause to try and tempt you with a movie tonight?”

  “Probably.” Keeping her head down, Caroline suppressed a smile at her parent’s obliviousness.

  “So I suspected, but don’t say I never tried. And still scribbling on the wall…” Based on the slurp of her martini, it sounded like her mother was standing by the doorframe now, where Caroline had made a new measurement the night before. “Dinner at least?”

  “Don’s Wok?”

  “Again? Well, why not. I’ll call you when it comes.”

  “Okay.” Her mother was already halfway down the stairs and humming again before Caroline remembered her question. “Oh, Mom?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Whatever happened to Dad’s watch?”

  Her mother’s footsteps stopped abruptl
y. “Dad’s watch?” she eventually repeated.

  For the first time in ages, Caroline wished they were talking face-to-face; her mother’s change in tone had been striking. “Did he take it with him?”

  “I’m sure he must have, dear…Whatever made you think about that gaudy relic?”

  “A kid at school had one kind of like it. Just made me think.” Reversing her wish, she prayed that her mother stayed on the stairs; Caroline’s easy flushes made her a transparent liar.

  “All right then. I’m going to call Don’s Wok now.”

  Once she heard her mother trudge into the kitchen, Caroline reached down to squeeze the watch for reassurance. Then she turned back to the painting—her third draft—and resolved to convert its image into a diorama that night.

  * * *

  The attic was always a good place to find a finishing touch; Ethan had been a modeling fanatic since he was twelve, and the amount of material he’d accumulated over the years was staggering. Caroline still felt a little sacrilegious rummaging through it, but taking up his hobby had given her an outlet this last year, one that kept her from clashing too much with her remaining parent.

  Well, now it did. Initially, her mother had made some predictably sharp comments about her second child’s new interest. She’d mellowed out over time, though, probably because part of her enjoyed the déjà vu; for all her comments about how many of Ethan’s friends had cars by age sixteen instead of little metal universes, everything he’d left behind had been carefully catalogued and packed away against…the day he returned, Caroline supposed. But for now, it was her secret treasure trove, a goldmine of resources she tapped whenever she could overcome the guilt of rifling through her brother’s legacy.