by Albert Berg
standing there like I told you and there's that shadow. And I look up at the sun, but there's nothing there. The sky's as clear as anything. And then...I look down."
There was another of those pauses, and this time I think it was fear that stopped him. Fear of bringing that dream out into the open, into the light where all of it's ugliness might be seen.
Then he said, "I look down and there's something wrong with the water. And I realize...it's not a shadow at all, but a special kind of darkness coming up under the boat in the water. Then something happens in that dark water, and the boat starts to turn and swirl, and I'm caught, being dragged down into this enormous maelstrom like a toy in a bathtub, and then the water washes over me and..."
"You wake up?"
"No. No I don't wake up. Not yet. I'm...suspended in the dark water, floating, but somehow I'm not worried about air or anything like that. But the boat is sinking away from me into the depths, and the fish..."
"What about the fish?"
"At first they're floating with me," he said. "All around me, they're floating limp and white in the dark water. And then...I turn and one of them...one of them twitches, and it slowly rolls over and I see it's eye and it's watching me. It's alive! They're all...alive, all of them swimming, slow and lazy at first, but then faster and faster, a frenzy of fins, and I see they're all swimming around me." He shuddered then, as if he had been touched by a cold and clammy hand. "They're all watching me," he said, and somehow I can see it in their eyes. They're angry. And...teeth."
He let that one word hang in the air for a long time. "They come at me all at once, and they're tearing at me with their teeth, tiny pieces of flesh and blood floating in the water in front of my face and I try to swim away, but... They devour me." He finished in a low flat voice that belied none of the horror I could see in his eyes.
"You need someone, David. Someone who can help you."
"I'm not crazy," he said. And he sounded sure. So very sure.
"It's just...all of this," I said, pointing once again at the notebooks. "It doesn't seem healthy."
"I know how it looks," he said. "But...I think I have a handle on this. Some way to fix it all."
"A way to stop yourself from being devoured by imaginary fish?" I asked.
He looked at me with horror. "You don't know...no. No you don't know. But all the same, you're right. I'm a fisherman trying not to be devoured by imaginary fish. And do you know how? Its very simple really. I have to become a fish myself."
"Dave. This isn't normal. Please, go and see someone. For my sake. No one has to know. You don't need to feel ashamed. Just...please. This isn't right."
But he just shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just, you know, a few loose screws up there. But I can't shake the feeling-"
He stopped abruptly and looked back over his shoulder at the wall behind him.
"What?" I asked.
"You should go," he said. "I'm falling behind. I have to keep writing."
And with that he grabbed the notebook off the top of the pile, opened to a page somewhere in the middle and started scribbling madly.
I looked over his shoulder and saw that the page before had already been covered, but the writing was so dense, the letters so hurriedly formed that I couldn't make them out. I stood there for a minute or more feeling awkward, but it seemed as if David had completely forgotten me. The world in his notebook...that was all that mattered to him.
So I left. Let myself out the front and drove home thinking that my brother had gone off the deep end. That he was playing in some very dark water indeed. And I wanted to help him. But I couldn't.
But looking back...I think he did want help. He tried to tell me what the problem was. But I just couldn't see it. Not until after. And by then it was too late.
After that, I kept tabs on David on a fairly regular basis. I made myself call him up at least twice a week to see if he was okay. He would always answer the phone, almost always on the first ring. And as we talked I could see him sitting there at that table with a notebook open in front of him, and pencil in his hand, fingers twitching with impatience as he forced himself to speak in calm and measured tones. And maybe it wasn't like that at all. Maybe he had good days, days where he let himself get out into the yard, and maybe pulled a few of the weeds out of the flower garden that Celia had tended so carefully. Maybe. But I doubt it.
But then, sometime in September, there really was a breakthrough. I could hear it in the tone of his voice. He sounded almost...excited.
"You sound better today," I said.
"I'm on the verge of something," he told me. "I think...it's been a long time, but I think I might actually be making some headway."
"That's good," I said cautiously. "What kind of headway?"
"He's getting weaker," he said.
"Who's getting weaker?"
"You remember. The fish? From my dream?"
"Oh."
"It's been a long haul, but I think maybe I can beat him after all."
"Anything I can do to help?"
There was a long pause. Then David said, "No, I think is something I'm going to have to finish off on my own."
"Okay," I said. "As long as things are getting better."
"They are. They really are."
But then things got worse.
One night in the middle of October David called me. It was something like midnight and I was just getting ready for bed when the phone rang. And when I picked it up it was David and he was crying.
"They're back, they're back, they're back," he said repeating the words like some kind of mantra.
"Who? Who's back David?"
"The FISH!" he said and the word came out in a squeak, like a little girl's scream.
"David, it's not...there aren't any fish. Are you hurt?"
"Police left a few hours ago," he said as if he hadn't heard me.
"The POLICE? What? What happened David?"
"Someone broke in my house. Just broke the door down in the middle of the day."
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"They roughed me up. The one guy had a crowbar. Took my stereo and my laptop. But they left the notebooks. Called me a freak."
"Are. You. Okay."
"They left the notebooks. I can still write. It took me a while to get rid of the police though. Time lost. And he's not weaker. I thought he was but...no one breaks into a house in the middle of the day. Not in real life. It's him. Don't you see?"
But I didn't see.
"I'm coming over," I said.
"No, no, no. No time, no time. Have to write."
"I'm coming over," I repeated, and snapped the phone shut.
And when I got there every light in the house was on. The rest of the street was dark, but that one house, David's house, I could see it from blocks away. Like a suburban lighthouse.
I went inside and David was at the table scribbling away in one of those notebooks. And there were more of them now, stacked up along the kitchen wall like some kind of barricade of words. He didn't even look up.
There was a recorder sitting next to him on the table, the digital kind that can hold hours and hours of audio. It was running playing back conversation between David and the policemen. The policemen were saying something about calling medical assistance and David was saying, no, no, no, that he was fine, fine, fine.
I stood there waiting for him to at least acknowledge my presence, but he never turned his attention from that notebook.
From where I was standing I could see the dark circles under his eyes, darker now, and there were bruises along his cheek and a thick knot swelling up on his head.
On the recording David was asking the policeman what kind of criminal breaks in during the middle of the day, and the policeman said that it was rare, but not unheard of, and David said in that high pitched squeaking voice, that it was HIM, over and over until the policeman, clearly at the end of his rope shouted for David to calm down.
"David?"
I said, hoping he would look up or at least acknowledge me. "David?" But the only sound that came in response was the scratching of pencil on paper.
So eventually I went and slept on the couch. When I woke up, sometime a little before sunrise, David was still writing.
There was something maddening in the sound of pencil on paper, something almost insectile, a crawling, scrabbling, biting sound that burrowed into my mind and wouldn't let go.
I got up off the couch and rubbed the sourness out of my limbs.
"David," I called out. "Are you okay in there?"
The scratching stopped. "I didn't hear you come in," David said.
"What? Are you serious? It's been all night, David. This isn't funny."
"You need to go," David said. "I've been thinking about it and maybe it isn't just me. Maybe he's strong enough to target....others. I mean after all, why not right?"
"The fish again? David can you let it go? It's just a dream."
He looked up at me and the look in his eyes was the saddest I have ever seen. "You don't understand," he said. "It isn't fish. Not really. It never was a fish."
"What then?"
"Sometimes they say dreams come true," said David. "But there's a flip-side to that too."
"What?"
"Sometimes the truth becomes a dream."
And maybe because I was tired, or maybe because I just couldn't handle it anymore, or maybe...and this reason wouldn't make sense to anyone but David, maybe because I wasn't really in control anymore, I turned and walked out.
I thought about David quite often in the next few months, but I didn't call. I didn't call because well, to tell the truth I had felt something that morning that I didn't fully understand. And maybe it was just the strength