I glanced at the fourth bell. I didn’t like the way it made me think of a shipwreck. Shipwrecks meant drownings.
“How do you know you need seven?” I asked. “And how do you know you have the right seven?”
D-O N-O-T L-I-S-T-E-N, Gerald had spelled with the blocks.
“I’m not incompetent,” Terrence said, that awful rage surfacing again. “Are you going to trust the octopus over me? Are you going to question everything I do or do you want to help?”
“You know I want to help. I’ll always help you. What do I have to do?”
“Okay. Good. Just listen. I’ll try to show you what I mean.”
Terrence struck the seven bells again with that copper rod. The sounds were hollow, even more muted than before. Terrence bobbed his head and kept looking back and forth from me to the bells. After a moment it was clear nothing was happening. For Terrence’s sake, I really wanted whatever he was doing to work.
He muttered something about Peter always getting it right and went back to flipping through the big book the mechanical arm was holding.
A tiny shadow moved across the worktable. Then about a dozen rounded, almost triangular, fish-like shapes followed. Only nothing was casting them. Gerald jetted to the corner of his tank nearest us. He rolled and unrolled his arms while patterns of green and purple pulsed along his skin.
The little school of shadows moved back and forth on the table then disappeared. My ears filled with the rasp of dozens of whispers all speaking at once. Then there was only one voice. Peter’s voice.
“Do not go to Lin-Kasai,” it said.
I waited to hear more but there was nothing. Terrence continued to flip through his book in frustration. Hearing Peter’s voice had me shaken.
“I can’t figure out if I should look next in Argentina or— ”
“You didn’t see or hear any of that?” I asked.
Before he could answer, the items in Gerald’s tank lifted from the bottom. A cloud of blocks and chess pieces and map markers swirled around Gerald floating motionless in its center.
“Are you doing that?” Terrence screamed at him.
There was no way for Gerald to spell no. I could feel his fear. Everything ceased moving and fell to the bottom. Gerald quickly began arranging them. He marked a location and a route to it with plastic pawns on a map of Long Island.
“Hmmm. A change of heart?” Terrence said. “What’s gotten into him?”
“Go easy. He almost got pummeled by that cloud of stuff flying around in his tank. Did your bells do that?”
“I think so. They all have neat tricks. I just can’t figure out exactly what they are.”
“Neat tricks, huh?”
Gerald was messing with his blocks again. I expected another round of Die Terrence.
I W-A-N-T T-O H-E-L-P, Gerald spelled. W-A-N-T T-O C-O-M-E.
“But you can’t,” Terrence said.
I wanted Gerald to come with us too. Terrence had begun a dialog and addressed him directly. That was something, and at least some kind of a start. I’d take it.
It took us all night to find the place. I don’t know why. It wasn’t terribly faraway. An industrial park in Hauppauge. I’d been in a nearby park last summer where they manufactured the blades for a hydrofoil we had created. This whole area was deserted. We walked through an alley that led into a square formed by the convergence of several alleys. A circular fountain that had gone dry long ago remained in the square’s center, a lonely reminder that people used to frequent here. A garbage dumpster partially concealed a door on the other side.
We walked across and rolled the dumpster away from the door.
The words Silversmith and Ironworks adorned the wall in faded black paint.
The opening refrain of the song “Gimme Shelter” blared from Terrence’s pack.
He fished his phone out. Gerald filled the screen. His suckers were alive with motion as he formed words with the blocks.
“Who is filming him?” I asked. “How’s he calling you?”
“I don’t know,” Terrence said. “He’s using the arm? Doesn’t matter. He’s just trying to piss me off.”
Gerald moved his head right up against the camera so his eye filled the screen.
“You can’t come,” Terrence yelled and turned his phone off.
I hated watching him like this. He pushed the old door open and I followed him inside. Light streamed in from the doorway and spaces between the rows of boarded windows high up on the left wall. Empty black iron cauldrons big enough for a person to bathe in and discarded dirty white molds were in a heap in the center of the floor. From the look of the thick layer of dust and all the debris no one had passed this way in ages. Terrence picked up one of the molds. Inside the block of dirty plaster was a concave half-hourglass shape.
“A bell,” he said. “They’re all molds for bells.”
I found something profound about the empty shape. I knew if I could just corral my thoughts I could share them with Terrence. What I was driving at was something he needed desperately to know. But I found no words and couldn’t form a cogent train of thought.
Terrence was picking up molds and inspecting them. I crossed to the other side of the floor and into a small square room that was once an office area. A map of the world covered its back wall. Different colored pins marked towns and cities. Lines were drawn in marker between them indicating supply lines or delivery routes or who knows what. One lone pin was marked at the tip of South America. Lin-Kasai was written in black marker next to it in a familiar scrawl.
“I think you ought to see this,” I called to Terrence.
A star had been drawn around the pin on the town of Playa Portencia. The map indicated it was not far from our home on the North Shore, in fact it showed to be only a few beaches over. Granted I spent most of my time working, but I’d never heard of it. Next to the star was written:
“You’ll find me here. Bring the bells.”
The handwriting was unmistakably Peter’s flourishing scrawl.
Peter’s parents had buried him but wouldn’t tell us where. That was all I knew to be true. Everything else, the handwriting on the map and Gerald sending us to the foundry, there had to be an explanation for.
Playa Portencia was a fishing town, a real throwback to what life on Long Island used to be like. Too few of them remained. The fishing boats were out for the day, except for a large freighter on the horizon, bound for some port unknown or maybe heading into the seaport in the city. A hot wind whipped spirals of sand along the asphalt parking lot. Terrence and I trudged to the rocky shore, the bells snugly stashed in his backpack. Saltwater tide pools were everywhere between the rocks of all shapes and sizes covering the beach. At the shore about a dozen wooden docks stretched into the water. Three quarters the way across was a square concrete foundation the size of a child’s desk. It looked like the base for a statue or monument.
Someone bumped into me as I maneuvered on some rocks to avoid dipping my feet in a tide pool.
“Sorry,” I said.
He looked nothing at all like a fisherman; he was older than me, but young and oh so thin. His shock of dark hair was flipped to one side, like a fifties rocker.
“I wasn’t looking, sorry man,” I repeated.
He pointed to the freighter just barely visible on the horizon.
“That’s the Amaranth,” he said.
I called to Terrence to look. He was already at the concrete, bent down and reading from a placard set in it. I looked back to the skinny man but he had vanished.
“Here lies Peter Ramacoord. Beloved son,” Terrence read.
“It also says that this is a historic site. A merchant ship was claimed by the rocks here long ago.”
He stood there in silence. I wanted to ask him if the name of the ship was the Amaranth but he was having a moment; thinking about Peter, I hoped, which was what he had needed to do for so long. Then he placed his pack on the concrete and took out the bells. A thin silver flute.
A small brass one that looked like the kind they rung for a butler in the movies. The old iron one he placed in a groove in the concrete as if it were made for it.
For some reason this made Terrence laugh. It was the first levity I’d seen in him for a while, but it was a nervous laughter. I didn’t like it.
“Terrence, what was the name of the merchant ship?”
“I had it right all along,” he said, ignoring me. “I was just in the wrong place.”
I moved so I could read the placard myself but then he rang the first bell.
I winced; part of me expecting an explosion of sound or something. There was nothing. Terrence fell to his knees, his body shaking as if responding to something physical. The fourth bell rocked back and forth in its concrete cradle. I could see it and all the bells vibrating but I heard nothing.
I noticed a faint ting, an almost imperceptible sound, like the first patter of a sparse rain on grass. Someone was standing at the shore by one of the docks, sketching in a pad. I knew that pose. I knew those black jeans and that tattered T-shirt. Peter.
A realization was dawning on me how this had come to be. The idea was just aching to be born in my mind, along with my thoughts about the molds in the foundry, something about the distinction between the living and the dead and between the past and the future, but I could not grasp it long enough to give it voice.
“Reach for it,” Peter said. “Let all misconceptions and misunderstandings fall away like negative space and see the creation.”
Though he was by the shore I heard his words in my mind clearly as if he were right in front of me. I wasn’t sure if he were speaking to me or about something he was drawing.
“I’ve got it,” Terrence shouted to me. “I’ve figured it out. They’re not bells they’re keys.”
He didn’t see Peter.
The wind whipped the waves into spray. The ephemeral vortexes of mist unlocked my answers. I knew what I had to say to Terrence. I knew how to make this all right.
“You always were the smart one,” I said. “I knew you would figure it out. They’re not keys to open. But to close. We’re here to say goodbye. To lock our memories, our love for him in our hearts. That’s the way things go. That’s what we do, that’s all anyone can do when you lose— ”
“No. The bells open doors. I figured it out. We figured it out. Just think of what we can do with this.”
“Terrence, I really think we should stop and think this over.”
“No,” he said. “I have all the bells and I know what to do.”
A big wave rolled in and erupted into a cloud of spray and foam. The water gurgled and became a patch of bubbles. When it cleared something big was there. At first I thought it was a boulder or dislodged seaside rocks, but it was metal. A brown metal orb patched up with different colored metal plates, climbing from the sea on eight robotic legs. Our rover’s mechanical legs. It was our dive bell. Gerald’s head peered from the glass porthole in its center. Seawater sluiced off its sides as it stood on four legs. The other four waved in the air, pincers at the end clacking open and closed. Terrence laughed and I wished it were with the amazement and joy I felt. His face looked anything but happy.
Gerald had no voice. No blocks to spell with but the meaning of his suit’s outstretched arms was universal. Stop.
Terrence looked at him and smiled. He held up the fourth bell and said, “No.”
“I’m sick of you,” Terrence said. “You think you’re Peter but you’re not. And I’m not surprised. I knew you were building it. I let you.”
Gerald moved toward him. His mechanical legs whirring and clicking as he inched closer.
Terrence raised the fourth bell higher. Its crust fell away revealing a finish that was solid black. Its odd gloss looked like it would shine and reflect light, but it didn’t; it was as if it were a piece of night cut in the shape of a bell. I knew I couldn’t let him ring it.
I ran to him and grabbed for it. Terrence pivoted. I slipped on wet rock and fell into a tide pool. I heard a crunch, crunch, crunch and the whir and hiss of motors and hydraulics. Gerald had closed the distance from the shore and was upon Terrence reaching for him with his mechanical arms.
Terrence rang the bell before Gerald’s arms could restrain him. I winced again, but I heard no sound. Gerald snaked two of his arms around Terrence’s waist and lifted him. With his two others he tried to pry the bell from Terrence’s grasp. I knew the strength of those motors. He should have been able to snatch it away like that, but was unable. Terrence held on.
“He only wants to help,” I said. “He knows you need to stop. You treat him like he’s nothing.”
“He is nothing,” Terrence cried. “Nothing like Peter at all.”
“Of course he is nothing like me,” a familiar voice said. “He has way too many legs.”
Peter had come from the shore. Terrence saw him now. They stood side by side in their black jeans and rock T’s. A smile grew on Terrence’s face. We were all together again.
“You’re back,” Terrence said. “You’ve come back to us. I knew you would.”
He was all choked up and fighting not to cry.
“No. I’m not back. I’ve only come for these,” he said. “They’re much too dangerous to have around.”
Peter reached for the bells. As his hand neared them one by one they disappeared. Something changed. I couldn’t pinpoint what. It was the relief akin to the removal of an annoying background hum or the fixing of a flickering fluorescent light. It was hard to say what was different but I felt the relief from a pressure I hadn’t realized was present. Only the fourth bell, the bell that Terrence held, remained. I knew it too needed to disappear. I knew once it too was gone the weight I’d been carrying around would be lifted, and danger would be averted.
“Don’t do this, Peter,” Terrence said to him. “Don’t you miss us?”
Peter smiled. Terrence smiled too. Seeing them standing there next to the mechanical hulk Gerald wore, smiling together, provided some comfort. This was my family. Things were going to be all right again. Everything was going to be okay.
Terrence closed his hand around the top of the black bell and thrust it at the glass faceplate of Gerald’s dive bell. Gerald’s arms grasped for him but Terrence pounded, pounded, pounded away.
The plate cracked, spider-webbed, and broke open. Water poured out sending Gerald onto the rocky beach. He convulsed on the rocks, his tentacles reaching for a tide pool. Terrence put his foot down, blocking Gerald’s path to shore. He pushed the empty shell of Gerald’s suit and it fell.
“Do something,” I screamed to Peter and ran to them.
Peter only reached for the fourth bell. As his hand neared it both he and it disappeared. Gerald crawled for the shore. I ran into Terrence and did my best to tackle him. He met my charge, punched me, and flung me off him.
A big wave crashed on the shore and enveloped Gerald. As it pulled back to sea, Gerald was gone. I stood and ran for the water and dove in. I hit my head on a rock. Sharp edges cut my hands and arms. I tried to swim. The current took me. Waves battered me. I pulled myself forward. With the last of my air I called for Gerald before everything went black.
I woke up to the all too familiar blips and chirps of a hospital room.
“Don’t worry,” Terrence’s voice said. “I’m with you. I’m working on something to make this all right.”
I meant to protest but whatever drugs they had me on took me.
After my concussion healed Terrence returned to take me home. My stitches itched and I wanted them out. The living room was back to the way it was. No worktable. No tank. Nothing to indicate Gerald had ever been with us.
“I’m working on something,” Terrence said gently. “When you are up to it do you want to go visit Peter’s grave?”
“Gerald’s gone,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I can find him.”
He was happy. He was embroiled in a plan again. Angry as I was, there w
as some comfort in seeing him content. But I knew he was wrong. No memorial, no visiting of Peter’s grave, no machine Terrence could dream up was going to help this time. Gerald was gone. Peter was not coming back. The water had taken everything.
THE TARN
by Simon Bestwick
A late Saturday afternoon, November ’83; the gray sky above was nearly black, rain streaming down as I walked a field of wilted yellow grass. To my right, the motorway, cars rushing by, their head lamps little yellow coals, lorries rumbling past in a mist of rainwater churned up by their wheels, their lights like blazing eyes.
Below, to my left, a housing estate; up ahead, an old mill—red bricks sooted black, windows boarded, outline ragged with neglect—and, just before that, the tarn.
Lots of old mills had them. Tall grass and rushes grew around it, but I could see the water, flat and gray like lead, still but for the rain. I looked at it for nearly half a minute, then took a deep breath and started walking again, praying I was wrong.
The sodium lights along the motorway were coming on. Some glowed dull red, warming up; others shone orange. They made me think of my nan’s old coal fire; I wanted more than anything to be there again, or at least indoors, warm, out of this, with no reason to look in that water. But most prayers go unanswered, and as I reached the water’s edge, I saw mine hadn’t been any exception.
She was facedown, about two feet from the bank. Her little blue duffel coat hung open, spread like wings in the water; her dark hair spilled out around her head, waving like weeds. Real weeds, I noticed, clung to her—a thick strand lay across her back, another knotted round her ankle like a tiny noose.
Her name was Maisie Donovan. She’d gone to a local playground that morning; when her dad went to get her for lunch, she was gone, and none of her friends knew where.
My cousin Geoff was a police constable back then, and asked if I’d help with the search. I was out of work and glad of the chance to do something useful. So were quite a few other lads. There was a sense of community in Salford then; still is. We’d spread out, reeling off her parents’ description of Maisie, till finally someone on that housing estate had remembered seeing her heading up towards the old mill.
Death by Water Page 9