by John Langan
“I know.” Dan held up his hand, palm outward, a cop halting the protest about to leave my mouth. “I flipped to the first page of the book and checked the date. He’d started this log in May of 1948. This wasn’t an earlier entry that had been misdated. I checked the other pages in the journal, every last one of them. There were no other references to seeing my grandmother. It wasn’t some kind of code for a good day of fishing. It was—I didn’t know what it was. Saw Eva.”
“Did he ever go back to Dutchman’s Creek?” I said.
“No. At least, not that he recorded in the notebook. He continued fishing for a long time after that. I wondered why he hadn’t returned. I mean, this was the place where he’d seen the woman he’d lost, and suddenly at that. How could he have gone anyplace else? Unless—unless whatever he’d seen, whatever glimpse of her he’d had, had been enough. We talk about that, don’t we? ‘Oh, if only I had a chance to say all the things I should’ve to her.’ ‘If only I could have one last hour with her, or half an hour, or ten minutes.’ What if he’d said what he’d wanted to say? What if he’d had that hour? Would that have been enough?
“And yes, I realize how this sounds. From the start, I knew what it sounded like, a grieving husband and father, trapped in denial, unable to transition out of it. I couldn’t ask my grandfather about the entry: he died in ’75. I went to visit my dad in his nursing home, but he’s half-senile. From what I could tell, he wasn’t along for the trip to Dutchman’s Creek; nor had Grandpa spoken to him about it. Mom’s been gone since ’88. I called my brother and sister, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, but none of them could remember Grandpa mentioning Dutchman’s Creek, much less, encountering Grandma, there.
“Of course I checked the map. I had to find out if the place was even real. Took me a couple of tries, but once I could put my finger on it, follow its course to the Hudson, somehow, that made Grandpa’s words seem that much more convincing, you know?”
The nutty thing was, I did. At least, I could recognize the train of wishful thinking Dan had boarded. I said, “That was when you decided we had to come here.”
“You’re always looking for new fishing spots,” Dan said. “Tell me you aren’t.”
“Fishing spots,” I said, “not…” I waved my hand at the weird fish, the murky pool I’d drawn it from, “this.”
“Saw Eva, Abe, saw Eva.” All the strain had long since left Dan’s voice, as the beast on the rock went from frightening monster to sign that his hopes for Dutchman’s Creek had been justified. “He saw her. My grandfather saw my grandmother, his wife, who had been dead for years. I—morning after morning, I sat in my car at that light with the fishing journal propped against the wheel, open to that entry, to those words. When the light turned the page red, the letters were darker, almost blurred at the edges. When it clunked over to green, the words were lighter, harder to see. Only when the light switched to yellow did the words return to normal. Saw Eva. What were the chances, right? That I could see Sophie, Jason, Jonas. That I could speak to them, tell them—everything. Tell Sophie she was the best thing that had ever happened to me, that I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far in life as I had without her, that I was sorry I’d pushed off as much of caring for the boys onto her as I had. Tell the boys how much better they had made my life—our life—apologize for not having been more patient with them when they were still so small. Tell them I loved them, I loved them, I loved them, and that being without them was killing me. Saw Eva—why not, Saw Sophie? Saw Jonas? Saw Jason? What about you? Wouldn’t you like to be able to say, Saw Marie?”
“You can leave Marie out of this,” I said. The sound of her name snapped whatever hold the fish had on me. I turned my head away from it, and pushed myself up onto legs that had gone to sleep from sitting too long. Wincing, I said, “I have no idea what in the hell this thing is. But it’s a fish. This is a stream. That’s all.”
If I was anticipating an argument from Dan, he disabused me of that expectation right away. Nodding at the fish, he said, “I figure this must have originated upstream. Where I was fishing, the water flows into a wide bed that’s too shallow for something this size to have swum up it.” He retreated a step. “I guess it’s back the way we came. Are you with me?”
“Dan,” I said.
Without another word, he set off upstream, walking at a brisk pace.
“Dan!” I called after him. He did not acknowledge me. “Goddamnit.” For a moment, I was caught between conflicting priorities. Whatever my doubts about his present mental state—in fact, because of those reservations—I was not about to let my friend go wandering away on some insane quest. At the same time, I had pulled a fish from this pool that was unlike any that had been fished in this area—in every area, I was willing to bet. The thing appeared motionless, but there was at least a chance of it convulsing itself into the water. Were it to remain on the ledge, a passing predator or predators might be drawn by its smell and make a meal of it. I realize how cold-blooded this must sound. How could I have debated my choice at all, right? Chalk part of it up to anger. Dan’s account of the actual source of his information about the Creek—not to mention, his motivation for bringing us here—had kindled the annoyance I’d felt since his outburst at the truck into genuine ire. Along with that emotion had come another, unease, shading into outright fear. Not so much for Dan’s sanity: I was concerned about it, yes, but I thought I understood what had happened to his mind. What made my palms sweat and my heart quicken was the fish lying on the stone in front of me, the skull embedded in its flesh. Was the skull even human? The eye-sockets looked more pronounced than they should have, the brown sloped back at too sharp an angle. I had told Dan this creature was a fish, because it had to be, there was no way for it to be anything other than a fish. Except, I didn’t quite believe my assertion. The thing was impossible, yet here it was. If so fantastic a creature could take my lure, then maybe what Dan’s grandfather had written in his journal wasn’t so out of the question, after all. Which meant that the story Howard had told us might not have been complete bullshit, after all.
“Goddamnit,” I said again. Apparently, Dan’s and Howard’s lunacy was catching. I turned and knelt beside my tacklebox. At the bottom of it, underneath packets of rubber worms and loose bobbers, was a knife I’d picked up at a yard sale a few years ago. It looked like your average wooden ruler, a foot long, blond wood, but there was a seam at the six-inch mark. Grip the ruler to either side of that and tug, and a six-inch filleting blade slid out of inches six through twelve. I was thinking that I would draw a little more line out of my reel, then use the knife to cut it. I could secure the extra line to a rock, and if there was any mercy in heaven, once I returned from fetching Dan, the fish would still be here.
As I was standing, something caught at the top of my vision. At the edge of the treeline, thirty feet away, a slender white figure rested its right hand on the trunk of a hemlock. Naked, her hair and skin soaking, a young woman regarded me from eyes as golden as any fish’s. I want to say it took a moment for her face to register, but that isn’t true. Immediately, I knew her, as if I’d only just now watched her chest rise and fall for the last time.
It was Marie.
V
There Fissure
Already, she was sinking into the woods. I couldn’t find the words to tell her to stop, couldn’t find the voice to utter them. It didn’t matter. I was moving forward, propelled by legs still half-asleep. Arms out, mouth moving dumbly, steps stumbling, I staggered after her like a kid playing Frankenstein. My heart—I could not feel my heart, nor the emotion gripping it. What I felt was too big—it was as if it were outside me, a current that had swept me up and was rushing me along. Everything around me, the rock, the trees, the Creek, the rain, seemed to be part of that feeling, of that motion. The only thing separate from it was her, Marie, whose golden eyes did not blink as her bare feet took her deeper into the forest. Her skin was pale, pale as the flesh of a lily, but it was as unblemished as it
had been the first time she had dropped her robe in front of me in a hotel room in Burlington. She might have stepped to this moment directly from that one, before the scars on her chest, the bruises on her arms, before her scalp bared, her cheeks dulled, before her body shrank to her bones as the cancer consumed her. All that was different were her eyes, whose metallic hue seemed in keeping with the strangeness of seeing her, here.
You may have read or watched reports of folks who thought a loved one was dead, killed in an accident or catastrophe, and subsequently had that news contradicted when the supposedly deceased opened the front door. You can appreciate how those people must have felt. Here they were, trying to adjust to their loved one’s having been wrenched from the category of the living and thrust into that of the dead. Of course the mind resists such a dramatic change, so in addition to the joy that leapt in them at the sight of their loved one, a small voice inside them must have whispered, “I knew it.” No matter that your wife is lying without breathing on the hospital bed before you, that the nurses have switched off all the machines that were monitoring her and disconnected the wires that allowed them to, you can’t accept it. You may understand it, but you can’t admit the fact into yourself. That surrender has to be negotiated over time. Once it has been accomplished, however, you can imagine how upsetting—how deeply, fundamentally traumatic—it would be to find yourself confronted by the person you had relinquished to death.
My strides were more confident, hers, not as quick. I might have guessed she wanted me to catch her, but I couldn’t read anything in those eyes. At last, she stopped, her back to a large maple. I was so focused on her face that I almost crashed into her. Closer to her than I had intended, I halted, the momentum of my pursuit carrying speech past my lips. “Marie,” I said, the name somewhere between a question and a statement. “Marie.”
“Abe,” she said in the voice I’d resigned myself to hearing only on our wedding video’s tinny soundtrack. Not like this, the rich, slightly throaty tone that rose up into whatever she was saying, filling it with her warmth and intelligence. At the sound of it, my vision swam with tears.
I wiped my eyes, swallowed. “How?”
For a reply, she lifted her right hand to my face and pressed her fingers to my lips. Her fingertips were cool, her skin charged with the briny smell of the sea, but her touch was as solid, as real, as ever it had been. I caught her hand in both of mine. She raised her other hand to my cheek.
A sob I hadn’t been aware was forming burst from me. A second, and a third, followed it, each eruption of sound a convulsion that doubled me over, squeezing tears from my eyes. Marie’s hand in mine, I dropped to my knees, sobs shaking me. She sank beside me, her free hand touching my face, my ear, pushing back my cap to slide her fingers into my damp hair. “Shhh,” she said, “shhhh.” My tears pattered on the dead leaves underneath me. Interspersed with my sobs, a low, keening moan escaped my lips. To be sure, I had wept over Marie, before this. I had cried at her bedside. I had cried at her graveside. I had cried liquor-flavored tears many a night thereafter. The river of tears that rolls through all those old sad songs had poured down my cheeks. But what had me now was of a different order of magnitude entirely. This was no river; it was an ocean forcing its way through a canal. I brought Marie’s hand to my mouth and kissed it over and over again. Her left hand shoved my cap off and stroked my hair. She leaned in to me. The briny tang of her skin filled my nostrils.
She pressed her lips to my forehead. Then to my eyebrows. Then to my eyelids. When she reached the bridge of my nose, she started to make the soft noises, little sighs and groans, which in another life had signaled her growing arousal. She slipped her hand out of mine and used it to lift my chin so that my lips could meet hers. Her mouth was as cool as the rest of her, but she kissed me the way she always had, a press that softened into a caress. She took my head in her hands as she extended the kiss. I was not done sobbing, but the sobs lessened as I responded to her. The moan that was issuing from me was changing tone, sorrow giving way to desire. Marie’s hands were moving down my neck, to the collar of my shirt, to the zipper of my raincoat, which she pinched and lowered. My hands were clasped in front of me, as if I were praying, but when her fingers started unbuttoning my shirt, I released them and reached for her breasts. They were full in my hands, the nipples raised at my touch, and she gasped into my mouth as I cupped them. Her hands moved faster, tugging my shirt out of my jeans, slipping up under my t-shirt and sliding over my chest. I was fever-hot with the want of her, and her cool skin was a balm on mine. Her hands were at my belt; mine were on her hips.
I have desired women before: Marie, yes, and the handful who preceded her, and the few who followed her. I’ve known the hand-shaking eagerness of the young, and the dry-mouthed anticipation of the more experienced. There was a time I broke the speed limit and blew through at least two stop-signs in response to a suggestive phone call Marie made. There was another time I emerged from what had seemed a particularly vivid dream of us making love to discover Marie moving on top of me. The emotion that filled me now, though—it was as if the grief that had been pouring through me had ignited, sparked furnace hot. There was desire present in it, but it was fueled by the grief, which gave my appetite a searing urgency. As Marie dragged my fly down, I pushed her over onto her back. Leaves rustled; twigs cracked. I could not read the expression in her eyes, but her hands guided me into her. She was as cool inside as she was outside, but I was plenty hot for the both of us. “Oh, Abe,” she said. I tried to reply, but couldn’t, all my attention taken by what was happening between us. Her legs raised, clasped my hips. I pressed against her. She gasped and turned her head to the right, closing her golden eyes. I kissed the corner of her mouth. She murmured the sweet obscenities that had first shocked and then aroused me. I groaned. Her head tilted back. We moved faster. She pushed her hands through my hair. We moved slower. She flung her arms out to either side of her. We moved faster again. She cried out a long series of cries, and I shouted as the torrent that had been rising within me found release.
Head swimming, I eased myself off Marie and onto my back. Once upon a time, I would have cracked a joke—at the very least, said, “I love you.” But nothing I could think of seemed appropriate—adequate. Truth to tell, there wasn’t a whole lot of organized activity happening between my ears. The conflagration roaring through me had blown out, extinguished by the finish to Marie’s and my lovemaking, leaving me empty, scoured and scorched by its ferocity. Aware of her beside me, I gazed up at the trees pointing to the clouds overhead, blinking at the rain that made it through the lattice of branches. Mother-of-pearl, the clouds struck me as blindingly beautiful. My mind a pleasant blank, I turned to Marie.
What was sharing the forest floor with me had the same gold eyes, but the rest of its face might have leapt out of a nightmare. Its nose was flat, the nostrils a pair of slits over a broad mouth whose lower jaw jutted forward, exposing the row of daggered teeth lining it. Its hair was stringy, a mane of tendrils. The hand it rested on my chest was webbed, each thick finger capped by a heavy claw. Its mouth opened, and gave forth a sigh of post-coital contentment.
More than anything else, that exhalation sent me scrambling away, crab-crawling as fast as my arms and legs would move me. Had my pants not been bunched around my ankles, I might have gotten further; as it was, my legs caught on one another and set me down on my ass, hard. I grabbed for my belt, simultaneously trying to raise myself to my feet, but the thing that had taken Marie’s place—the thing that had been Marie—was up and approaching me, its webbed hands out in front of it. “Abe,” it said.
Despite myself, I said, “Marie?”
The thing’s features shimmered, as if I were seeing them through a layer of water across which a succession of ripples passed. They settled, and I was looking at Marie. “Abe,” she said, and stepped toward me.
“You stay right there!” I backpedaled, yanking up my jeans as I went. My heel caught a root, dumping me o
n my ass, yet again. When I stood this time, I had found the filleting knife where I’d slipped it into the pocket of my raincoat and had it out and unsheathed; although, to be honest, I’d never appreciated quite how small it was. Not to mention, I had no idea how to use it outside of cleaning a fish.
“Abe,” Marie—I didn’t know how else to think of her—said.
“What are you?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“What are you!” The knife trembled in my grip.
“A reflection,” Marie said.
“Of what?”
She smiled, faintly.
I didn’t understand. I said, “You are not my wife.”
She didn’t answer that, either.
“Where are we? What is this place?”
“Dutchman’s Creek.”
“That’s—what about the fish?” I said. “The one I caught over there,” I flung my arm in the general direction of the pool.
“What about it?”
“What is it?”
“A nymph,” Marie said.
“I don’t—what do you mean?”
“You’ll have to come upstream to find out.”
Upstream reminded me of Dan, who had vanished from my mind the instant I’d recognized Marie. “Sonofabitch,” I said. If I had encountered Marie—or this thing passing for Marie—did that mean he’d found what he was searching for? Or that he thought he’d found it? “I came here with a friend,” I said.
“Yes,” Marie said. “Dan. Your fishing buddy.”
“I think—he wanted to go upstream. He was hoping he’d find—”
“His family, Sophie and their boys.”
“Did he?”
“Would you like me to take you to him?”