She would have to be quiet, Jessica thought, but she was good at that. The front door was easy to open, she had seen Mommy and Daddy open it before and they let her do it when they ordered pizza or food from China that burned her mouth and came with funny spaghetti. She closed the door behind herself, making sure the lock was turned so she could get back in. Then she ran across the grass to the that pile of leaves. Across the street people were cutting branches off the tree by that ugly house Daddy hated and it made a loud noise like the machine in the sink that ate the vegetables.
The pile of leaves smelled nice and wet and she remembered when she was younger how Daddy would sweep them up as big as a mountain and she and Tommy would jump into it. They had laughed and thrown the leaves at each other and then she found a slug on her arm and she realized there were icky things hidden in the leaves and she cried. But she was a baby then and now she was a big girl and icky things didn’t scare her any more.
Then something moved inside the pile of leaves and she stopped a few feet short of it and waited. It moved again, a few wet leaves tumbling down as the pile shifted. The slugs and snails and worms were small and they couldn’t hurt her, but whatever was inside the leaf pile was large and big and looked like it was breathing. Leaves were vegetables and if the slugs ate a lot of them they could be Big and Strong, big enough to gobble her up.
The leaves rustled and moved a third time and the strangest thing happened. A hand reached out. Jessica whimpered and stepped back as if the hand would keep growing until it stretched all the way across the driveway and grabbed her. But it didn’t. It was a small hand, and behind it she could see the face of the boy and his little black raisin eyes inside the pile of leaves. His hand was balled in a fist and when it opened she saw something glimmering and shiny held in his grey palm.
Her six year old mind tried to comprehend what she saw. The boy in the pile of leaves held a key in his outstretched hand. A few icky things clung to his arm but they didn’t seem to bother him. Perhaps they were baby slugs with baby teeth like hers and didn’t bite. Then his arm disappeared back into the pile of leaves, taking the key with it.
It was a game, she knew it!
He had taken Mr. Bun and left the leaf there for her to find. The leaf had led her outside to the pile where he was waiting and inside he held the next clue: a shiny key! But to get the key she would have to reach into the leaves and take it from the icky things. She glanced back at the house and thought about asking Mommy or Daddy for help but she knew they would be angry that she went Off Limits and then she couldn’t get the key and find Mr. Bun.
And that was a Bad Thing.
No, she was a big girl, and big girls weren’t afraid of icky things. She rolled up her sleeve and crouched in front of the pile of leaves and reached into that spot the boy’s hand had protruded from. It was wet and warm and she felt her knees shake as she thought of giant slugs and grown up teeth, chewing on the leaves then turning their pincers onto her intruding arm.
But there were no pincers, only the metal of the key, slick and cold, waiting deep inside the pile where the boy had been. Her fingers grasped it and she pulled her hand from the pile in a flash and wiped the muck and yellow leaves from her sleeve.
She knew the key the moment she opened her hands. Daddy used it during the summer to open the old lock on the hot tub outside. They had played in the warm water and she had worn her inflatable Learn2swim arm bands and they all laughed when Ginger had scampered up and jumped in with them. It had been a Happy Day and maybe that’s where Mr. Bun was now, with Ginger, playing in the warm water. Another Happy Day waiting for her and she had the key to it all!
She ran as quick as her feet could take her, closing the front door and turning the lock so no one knew she had been Off Limits. Then she ran out to the back yard but Mommy wasn’t there and her gardening tools, that big spoon and the hand fork and those small scissors, all sat in the grass by the sick roses. It was good, she thought, that Mommy wasn’t there. If she was playing a game and not working then Mommy would use the Slow Voice and be sad and wouldn’t let her look for Mr. Bun and Ginger.
She ran around to the side yard, by the umbrella, and there it was: the wooden hot tub. It made funny noises at night, like it was having a bad dream or choking on something, but in the daytime it slept beneath the plastic cover. She gave a look over her shoulder and when she saw no one was watching she took the key from her pocket and put it in the old lock on the big lid.
The lock clicked and sprang open and fell to the ground. She pushed against the big lid but it only buckled as the plastic gave a groan. It was heavy, maybe too heavy for her, and she knew that Tommy wouldn’t help. He would throw popcorn or call her a bad word and tell on her. If only she was strong and smart and big like Daddy or Mommy then maybe she could open it and find Mr. Bun.
Something glimmered to her right and her eyes snapped towards it. A quarter of the way around the heavy lid sat a metal bolt latch that held the lid to the wood body. The sunlight seemed to bounce off it even though the sun was behind grey clouds above. The latch, that was how it opened. The lock and the latches. She remembered helping Daddy open them on the Happy Day in the summer. There were three of them and a lock, like the four points of a compass, and only when they were all opened would the lid fold back. She smiled with excitement. She wasn’t a stupid girl, a retard as Tommy called her. She was smart and clever and she would solve this problem and find Mr. Bun.
The bolt latches slid open easily and she saw specks of rust fall off. Then, remembering how the two halves of the plastic lid folded together like a giant taco, she put her arms under the lip and pushed it up. It was heavy, heavier than anything she had ever lifted, and she could only hold it for a moment, but in that brief time she had seen him. Mr. Bun was down there! Then she had to let go and drop the heavy lid.
Mr. Bun was in there, but he was in trouble. He was down at the bottom of the dark water beneath leaves and sticks and some icky oil. He was old and weak and she had to save him because the water would hurt him, make him into a raisin like the bathtub. He had watched over her at night and kept the monsters away but now he was in trouble and she had to be a big girl and save him. She had to lift the lid by herself.
She dug her heels into the wood step and pushed against the lid with all the might her little body could muster. The lid buckled and popped up again and she used one hand to hold it at an angle. She looked down in the brackish water where the old rabbit had been. For a brief second she saw him staring back up from the bottom of the water, heavy and helpless, floating up towards her.
“Found you!” she giggled.
But it wasn’t Mr. Bun. The water shimmered and his face blurred and become that of the boy’s face and he was sneering with anger as if woken from sleep. His fingers broke the surface, then his face, and his rattling tongue filled her ears. She felt his fingers wrap around her neck and they were cold and sticky and strong, stronger even than Daddy’s.
Then those fingers pulled her and she felt the cold slap of water, first on her face and then down her whole body. She saw, for a fleeting second, the light from the lid disappear as it slammed shut and the world went to shadow and ice.
Of the endless terrors born of becoming a parent, the nightmares of kidnappings and accidents and broken bones, the worst case scenarios that haunted their minds, finding their own daughter floating inside an old hot tub lay among the dark recesses of unconsidered horrors. There were crooked stairs behind the basement door, chemical cleaners beneath the sink, even Jessica's own bunk bed that she had insisted sleeping atop. Yet those dangers had all been safeguarded behind locks and railings, their children given countless lectures about safety. There were places that were off limits, actions ingrained into their kids’ heads--“look both ways”--“don’t put that in your mouth”--and before that afternoon Dan and Linda had felt their children could be trusted not to put themselves in harm’s way.
The murky water of the old hot tub did not facto
r into their horror the same way some parents describe with confusion how a faithful and gentle family dog snaps one day and mauls a child to death. There had been no warnings of the hot tub because, to them, it was impossible for their children to access it. There were three bolt latches and a padlock. The key was kept on a ring in the garage above the mess of tools that he told himself he would one day organize. The key hadn’t even been labeled, only affixed with a small yellow dot that matched the yellow dot on the back of the padlock. It was when Linda unleashed a banshee wail that sent him running to the backyard, when he saw the padlock and key together on the ground next to one of Jessica’s Pink Princess shoes, it was only then that he realized he had forgotten to drain the hot tub.
The shape hung wet and limp in Linda’s arms, and when he saw it his mind seized up. The thing looked inhuman. Golden hair clung to its face like a dirt-sullied veil. For a brief point in time it was his child-self he saw, not in Linda’s arms, but rather the tender embrace of Father O’Malley, carrying him through that dark basement after hours in the trunk.
The second scream brought reality crashing back and it was his daughter’s body held by Linda that drove him forth, covering the distance between the door and the hot tub. Time distorted and seemed to exist at two speeds, both in fast forward and slow motion.
“Do something!” Linda screamed and lowered his daughter’s body to the bricks. “Oh God please do something!”
He brushed the hair from Jessica’s face and when he saw her eyes were closed his heart sank--please oh please he begged--as he felt for a pulse on her neck and tilted her head back and opened her mouth and listened. He saw Tommy and Sam, standing at the doorway frozen in terror, and he heard Linda shouting for them to call 9-1-1, but the words were muffled and quiet. He thought back to a CPR class he had taken on a Saturday in college, but the actions and their order made no sense. Something yellow and thick covered her tongue, and he dug his fingers into her mouth. He withdrew a moist leaf and threw it to the ground, screaming her name.
Then a sound came from between her lips, a sound he knew and dreaded. It was a low liquid rattle that had hung in the air of the hospital when his father-in-law expired. A rattle that came from that shadow child who stalked him in his hallucinations. A rattle, now coming from his own daughter.
It was the rattle of the dead.
No, no it wasn’t.
It was the sound of water burbling forth. First in weak gasps and then exploding from her lips in a violent fountain. She convulsed and he lifted her forward, slapping her back as her body bent in on itself and she let out a wail. It was the scream of life, the scream of a newborn baby, the scream of their daughter who had almost drowned in that fetid water that he had forgotten to drain. It was heartbreaking and beautiful and when he heard it he cried.
She coughed again, her tiny hands clutching his biceps, her eyes open and weak. Those eyes, those beautiful eyes of her mother’s, now leaking pathetic little tears as they blinked and looked up at him and he knew she would be all right and he hugged her as tight as he’d ever hugged her before.
It was the second time in two weeks that emergency vehicles sat outside their house. The paramedics examined her and said she was lucky to be alive, that they’d had situations similar to this that didn’t end well. They listened to her lungs, took her blood pressure, and said both seemed all right. They asked her questions and she stared back at them, uncomprehending. They even shined a flashlight in her eyes and said her pupil dilation was slow and asked to take her to the hospital for further check up.
“You did good. Probably saved her life,” one of the paramedics told Dan with a slap on the shoulder like a boss congratulating an employee on clinching a business deal. Dan wondered what they said in the situations that ended in tears.
Tough break. Should’ve drained the tub.
“My guess is she’s going through a bit of PTS,” said Doctor Lee with a nod. “Post traumatic stress. It’s not uncommon for children to sort of shut down. Temporarily, of course.”
“I don’t understand,” Linda said, glancing at Dan as if perhaps she had misunderstood the answer. “She’s hardly said a word.”
“None, actually,” Dan added. “Not a peep.”
“And she might not, at least, not right away. Not until she’s ready.”
In the two hours between the paramedics and the ambulance and the scans she hadn’t said a single word, hadn’t done much of anything except follow the nurse’s directions and stare at her feet. When Linda asked her a question she replied with a nod or a shake of her head, then reset her glance back to her shoes.
“You have to understand,” said the doctor. “She had a terrible experience, easily the most frightening of her life. She’s probably still processing it.”
“What can we do?” asked Linda.
“Same thing you always do: be loving parents and let the healing process take place. When she’s ready, I’m sure she’ll let you know.”
“You don’t think she has, I don’t know, brain damage or anything?” asked Linda, looking at Dan as if the words themselves were cursed and capable of harm.
“Very unlikely. The scans didn’t show anything unusual. Physically, she’s fine. Mentally, it might take a little longer. Consider that she, on a very real and tangible level, just learned about her own mortality. For most children this is a very complicated issue, one that takes them years to fully grasp.”
Years, Dan thought, or lifetimes.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she has trouble sleeping or even displays some deviant behavior. Children often block out trauma, or change it, all so they can come to terms with it. But besides todays little mishap, she’s a perfectly healthy young girl. And such a pretty one too,” he added, poking her in the shoulder and smiling at her but she returned only a blank gaze.
The doctor was wrong about one thing: she had no trouble falling asleep that night. They both tucked her into bed, mother and father arranging her dolls, and she smiled upon seeing Mr. Bun, sitting at the top of her bed, waiting on her pillow. Within minutes she was fast asleep, that old rabbit held tight in herms.
The Lost Coast
IT WAS 10 A.M. when he smelled Denise’s cotton candy bubble gum, the same kind that Tommy chewed, coming from her lips not far from his face. She slid the lab results across the counter to him.
“We ran the sample through two spectrometry tests to determine the paints used. Based on the additives, we have a winner.”
“Really?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said and leaned further over the counter. He noticed the top three buttons on her blouse were open. He could make out the form of her generous cleavage as she flipped through the last few pages of the results. The fact that her blouse was open, he suspected, was not a mistake. When he was waiting in line earlier he had only noticed one button open.
“Okay, here we are,” she said. At the top of the list, next to a rating of 99% Accuracy, sat one name. “Yuray Arts,” she said.
“Never heard of them.”
“I hadn’t either. It turns out it’s a real mom and pop shop up in Greywood Bay, north of Mendocino. They’re pretty popular with the twig and granola crowd, but they only sell regionally, so--”
“Whoever painted this, bought it there,” he cut in.
“Exactly,” she said with a smile, as if he was a smart kid and might get a treat.
His eyes fell back to the results. “Were you able to generate a list of pigments?”
“Already done,” she said, flipping to the fourth page that listed eight different colors. “Sample size wasn’t big enough to get a full list, but it’s a start.”
He cleared his throat and looked at the results. “What about the canvas?”
“That was another can of worms,” she said. “We had some funky results, so we sent it up to the city for further tests. Should have the results anytime now.”
He smiled and took the lab results. “You’re a super star Denise.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks Prof,” she said with a smile, and he saw brown streaks along the base of her teeth.
“You’ve...” he pointed to his teeth. “Something in them.”
She blushed and turned away, picking at her teeth with her blue fingernail and he caught a glimpse of grey, scabby gums inside her mouth.
His car crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on the northbound 101 shortly before two. He nibbled on the remains of some animal style fries while listening to a congested woman on NPR discuss a new David Sedaris book with the author, and Dan had to turn off the interview for fear of falling asleep.
Outside, it was a clear, blue, and crisp day. To his right he could see Alcatraz, Marin, and Angel Island, and all the tourists standing along the edge of that giant red bridge and taking photos. To his left the sun hung high over the endless Pacific, above the whitecaps of waves that dotted dark waters. He thought about the various creatures lurking just beneath that black water and the time he’d taken the kids to see the humpback whale migrations. Tommy had cheered and Jessica had screamed and Linda had spent the afternoon seasick, vomiting below deck.
He stretched his shoulders and rolled down the window, smelling the crisp ocean air. It woke him up. It always had. Half a lifetime ago, when he’d left the plains and red dirt of the Midwest behind, the Pacific had greeted him without question, only acceptance, ending the eighteen years of dreams that had come before. He had no money then, only a name and a backpack full of art books and an ambition to build a new future in a new place. It had worked out pretty well, he thought. These old Nebraska bones hadn’t just built a future, they’d built a whole new life.
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