The Scrimshander tilted his head. I could see nothing but a narrow chin and thin lips. Then he smiled. The teeth were very white, and sharp.
Then he said, “Me.”
* * *
You know that phrase, “My knees went weak”? I thought it only happened to people in love songs.
I fell forward, my meat leg as dead as my carbon-fiber one. My hand seized on the canvas, and as I fell the material popped free of whatever held it to the ship. The cloth dropped onto the Scrimshander. He shrugged it aside and moved toward me. I was on all fours, my heart pounding. He reached for me.
The Albatross rested on a metal lift. I rolled under the crossbars, then scrambled to a crouch. Too fast, and too high; I bashed my scalp against the keel and stumbled toward the other side of the boat.
The opening to the bay was maybe thirty feet away. I ran, stumbling over hoses and extension cords. I’d almost reached the garage door when I realized I couldn’t get out that way; the boat bay, still holding Bob’s outboard, blocked me.
The metal door began to descend, the metal wheels shrieking in their tracks. I cut left to circle around the boat bay—
—and the Scrimshander was waiting for me. He’d come around the other side of the Albatross. He stalked forward, his head still bowed. The knife dangled at his side, twitching like a fish on the line.
I looked at the water in the boat bay. I knew what I had to do. Jump in, swim under the garage door, then get to the shore and the road.
Now, I thought.
My legs didn’t move.
Now!
My body wouldn’t obey. My eyes were fixed on the surface of the black water, and I seemed to be hovering above my right shoulder, watching myself. Screaming at myself.
The Scrimshander grabbed me by the throat. “What’s the matter? Can’t swim?” He squeezed my trachea, choking me. I grabbed at his arm with both hands. The skin of his black coat slid from my grip like something alive.
“Me, I love the water,’” he said. He walked me backward, toward the boat bay. “Practically born to it.”
I sucked in air, but his grip was too strong. The garage door rattled down, cutting off the light.
“The thing is, when you’re afraid of something, there’s only one thing you can do.” The Scrimshander shoved me, and I flew backward. The water slapped into my back, and then I was under, into the cold.
I flailed my arms and managed to get my head above water. The Scrimshander dropped to one knee at the edge of the bay and put a hand on the top of my head, almost caressing it. He leaned close and said, “You got to dive right in.”
He pushed me down, below the surface of the water, and kept a firm grip on my head, keeping me under. I clawed at his arms, but I couldn’t get a grip on the slick material. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. The water was pitch black.
I wanted to scream, but knew that if I did I would die. Still the man wouldn’t let me up. I bucked against his grip, and he pushed me down farther.
I felt my pulse in my ears. My chest burned. I clamped my mouth shut and tried to reach out, to the side of the metal edge of the boat bay, but it was too far away.
Something fastened around my left ankle.
I did scream, then. The air rushed out of me.
The thing around my leg tightened, then pulled down—hard. My skull blazed with pain; it felt like a chunk of hair had been torn out by the roots.
The thing dragged me down, down. My lungs burned, and spots erupted in my vision. I saw my father. He was looking at my face, and he was saying, “Look at the jellyfish.” His voice was clear and strong, and for the first time I could remember what he sounded like. I thought, Hi, Dad.
And then I wasn’t thinking of anything at all.
10
How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life return’d,
I heard, and in my soul discern’d
Two voices in the air.
I woke in the dark, something sharp digging into my back. I moved onto my side to get away from the pain, but then something burned in my chest and I coughed. Water sprayed from my lips. Someone slapped me between my shoulder blades and I coughed again, then again, desperate to clear my lungs.
Finally I stopped convulsing and breathed deep. I became aware that I was wet, and very cold. I opened my eyes.
I lay on my side on a rocky beach. The water was only a dozen feet away, and Dunnsmouth Bay gleamed in the moonlight. I tried to remember where I was. I’d been at the pier, then …
I jerked to a sitting position. Someone was squatting next to me, skin glistening like an eel’s.
I shouted and scrambled backward. “Get away from me!” My voice was a raw bark.
The figure rose to its feet.
It was the fish boy. His large eyes caught the moonlight. His wide mouth was set in a thin straight line that turned down at each end, and that jaw looked like it could unhinge and swallow a toaster. He raised one hand and spread his fingers. Webbed fingers.
For a long moment we stared at each other.
Finally I said, “You saved me, didn’t you?”
He blinked slowly.
“And you can understand me?”
His gills opened on each side of his neck, then flapped shut.
“Just nod if you understand what I’m saying,” I said.
“Okay,” the fish boy said.
“You can talk!”
“You should keep your voice down,” he said. His own voice was low and resonated strangely. His accent, too, was off-kilter, as if all the vowels had taken a step to the left. “We’re not that far from the pier.”
“You can talk!” I said again.
“Okay, you’re in shock,” he said. “That’s probably hypothermia.” I didn’t say anything, and the fish boy said, “That’s when a human’s body—”
“I know what hypothermia is.” I was already shivering, and the wet clothes were sucking the warmth from me. My wet hoodie felt heavy as cement.
“We’ve got to get you dried off,” the fish boy said. He stood up, then extended a hand. “My name’s Lub.”
That hand ended in claws, and reminded me too much of the Scrimshander’s. But I shook it. “Thanks, Lub.” At least that’s what I meant to say. I was shivering so much now that all I managed to get out was a stuttering “Thanks.”
“My b-b-book,” I said.
“Oh, right,” he said. “Newton and Leeb! Sorry about that. But I did give it back. Plus I just saved your life, so that should be worth something.”
Lub was naked but for a pair of skater shorts that hung down to his knees, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. I was trembling uncontrollably now, every muscle trying to jump off my bones. I had so many more questions. Why did you say my mother’s alive? What are you? How did you find me? But my teeth were chattering like a wind-up Halloween skull.
Lub led me up the densely wooded hill, toward a road. He was taller than me but seemed about the same height because of the way he moved, hunched over, arms swinging. He kept pausing to check on me. I was bent almost double, my arms wrapped around my stomach. My feet didn’t seem to work properly. My carbon-fiber leg seemed too heavy, and I kept tripping over rocks and tree roots. Because of the shivering I could barely look left or right. I walked in a tunnel.
I bumped into a tree and then leaned against it. My mouth made a hissing sound. I was trying to say Stop a second, but my jaw did not want to unlock. I wanted to lie down. Get warm. I thought, Maybe if I take a nap here, just for a little while, I’ll feel up to the hike home.
Lub put his arm around me. “Come on, Harrison. You can do it.”
He helped me away from the tree, then half carried me up the hill. He was surprisingly strong.
Finally we reached level ground, the edge of the roadway. I tried to remember the number of the highway that ran past town—61? 65?—but my brain wouldn’t cooperate. A car’s headlights approached from the dist
ance.
Lub said, “Harrison, can you talk? Can you tell them how to get home?”
Tell who? I wondered. But I nodded. “Sh-sh-sure.”
“Wait here,” he said. He stepped out into the middle of the road and began to wave his arms. The lights grew bright, and the car kept coming.
It’s not going to stop, I thought.
Brakes squealed, and the headlights slewed from one side of the road to the other. Lub leaped off to the side. The car shuddered to a stop right where Lub had been standing.
Lub ran to me and crouched. “Terrible driver.”
A car door opened, and woman’s voice said, “Oh my God! What are you? Get away from him!”
“Got to go,” Lub said. “Please don’t tell the human about me. I’m serious. They will hunt me.” He disappeared down the hill, into the trees.
I forced myself to walk out onto the road. A woman in a short white dress gaped at me, openmouthed, like one of the stuffed fish on the bait shop’s walls.
It was Nurse Mandi. With a heart to dot the “i.”
“Help,” I said. I was very proud of myself that I said the word so clearly.
* * *
It was a glorious thing to be warm. The next morning, I woke up in my own bed, under half a dozen blankets. I was still drowsy, and my sleep-fuzzed brain decided it would be a good idea to never leave this bed. Mom could make me breakfast in bed, and we could …
No. Mom was gone. Missing.
But maybe still alive.
The memories of last night rushed back to me. I’d nearly drowned. The Scrimshander was out there, waiting. But also, Lub was out there. And for some reason that allowed me to think that Mom could really be alive. If the world contained things like a fish boy, anything was possible.
When I’d appeared at the house last night, half carried by Nurse Mandi, Aunt Sel had swung into action like a one-woman NASCAR pit crew. She put me in my bed, then stripped off my clothes. I was too dazed to be embarrassed. She struggled with my leg’s snap-lock, then finally got it undone. Water poured out of it.
She found sweatpants and a T-shirt, pushed me into them, then buried me in blankets. At some point Nurse Mandi said, “We should check his…”
“Pulse?” Aunt Sel asked. “What?”
“… temperature.” I was surprised the nurse was still there.
Aunt Sel managed to find the thermometer in our bathroom supplies. As I lay there with the thing under my tongue, Nurse Mandi said, “I think he’ll be fine.”
Aunt Sel said, “Are you going to be fine?”
“Why would you ask me that?” Nurse Mandi said.
“Because your mascara is all down your face. Also you seem a little—”
“Heartbroken?”
“I was going to go with a different word, but sure. Man trouble?”
“There are monsters out there.”
“You got that right, honey. Now, let me take care of Harrison for a minute, and you just take a seat in the living room and we’ll have a nice chat.”
“I really should be going.”
“Nonsense. Let’s have a little girl talk before you get behind the wheel all … heartbroken.”
I must have drifted off, because the next thing I remembered, Aunt Sel was holding a cup to my lips: hot tea loaded with honey. I’d never liked tea, but I had to admit I liked the sensation of the warm liquid sliding down my throat and into my stomach. I don’t remember finishing it.
Now my body ached in strange places: my shoulder, my left ankle, the top of my scalp. I gingerly patted the crown of my head, where the Scrimshander had held onto my hair—held on while Lub yanked me down.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay in bed all day. I had to get out, and tell someone.
I’d just thrown off the covers when Aunt Sel knocked on the frame of my door. “Back in bed, kid. It’s Saturday. Besides, I’m not letting you leave the house.”
“We have to call the police,” I said.
“Why? What happened?”
“There’s a boat. It’s called the Albatross, and it’s in the garage down by the bay. At a place called J. Ruck’s Marine Engineering.”
“This is where you fell in and banged your head? All you said last night was, ‘I fell in the water.’”
“It’s got a hole in it, Aunt Sel—right in front. The boat rammed my mom’s boat. Or something. I’m not sure how. But I think—”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “But breakfast first.”
She brooked no disagreement. She sat me at the kitchen table with an afghan around my shoulders and wouldn’t allow me to speak until I’d finished a bowl of cereal and a tall glass of orange juice. Nurse Mandi, thankfully, was not still in the house.
Aunt Sel sat beside me. “Okay, who told you this Albatross rammed your mother’s boat?”
“Nobody told me.”
“So you just decided the boat had something to do with it?”
I tried to think through how much I could tell her without giving Lub away. “I got a note,” I said. “An anonymous note.” I told her what it said, and how I’d gone down to the docks to look for a boat with that name, and followed Chilly Bob to the boat garage.
“Chilly Bob,” she said skeptically.
“He runs the bait shop,” I said. “Maybe he’s cold or something.”
“Or makes chili.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The point is, I found the Albatross, hiding under a tarp. It had a hole in it. I was going to leave then, but then—”
I couldn’t finish.
“Harrison?” Her voice went soft. “What happened?” She must have seen something in my face. “You can tell me.”
I took a breath. “There was a man there. He caught me in the building, and he had a knife, and he chased me.”
“You were attacked? Who was it? What did he—?”
“I don’t know his name. Chilly Bob called him the Scrimshander. He pushed me under the water—and then I got away.”
I couldn’t tell her about Lub. She probably wouldn’t believe me if I did.
Aunt Sel was up and pacing the small room. “We’ve got to call the police.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying! This guy, and whoever was on the Albatross—they sunk Mom’s boat. I’m sure of it. There was no rock or island out there in the middle of the ocean. No storm. This is the only thing that makes sense.”
“But why in the world would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Aunt Sel puffed her cheeks, exhaled heavily.
I said, “You believe me, don’t you?”
Aunt Sel sat down again, and put her hand on mine. “I want you to hear this. I believe completely that you saw what you say you saw. Whether the hole in the boat means that—well, we’ll find out. None of that matters compared to arresting the man who attacked you.”
* * *
Chief Bode came that afternoon. He perched his chubby body on the edge of the chair and took careful notes while I talked.
I told him the story as I’d told it to Aunt Sel, leaving out nothing—except for Lub. The chief seemed to write every word, asking me to repeat a phrase or slow down. He asked many questions. But as the interview went on it became clear that he was believing my story less and less. And when I said the word “Scrimshander” he looked at me for a long moment, then put down his pencil.
“What?” Aunt Sel asked. “You think he’s making this up?”
Chief Bode put up his hands. My aunt’s directness could be alarming. “It’s not that, ma’am,” he said. “But this Scrimshander fella—”
“Ask Chilly Bob,” I said. “The Scrimshander was there.” I told the chief everything I could remember about him, from hat to knife. I even described his teeth.
“Pointy teeth,” Chief Bode said.
“That’s right,” I said.
Bode looked over my head at Aunt Sel. I hated that look. “You see, ma’am, the Scrimshander’s kind of a local myth.”
<
br /> “A myth?” she asked.
“Like Sasquatch,” he said. “The boogeyman.”
“He was there,” I said.
“Talk to this Bob person!” Aunt Sel said.
“I will, I will,” the chief said. “I’m sure there was somebody there. Probably one of the lobstermen who works out there. But as for it being, well…” He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I get it, son. You’ve been under a lot of pressure, what with your mom going missing.”
“Do not condescend,” Aunt Sel said icily. I made a note to myself: Never piss off Aunt Sel. “You will look into this man, and the boat, yes?”
“I’ll ask around. You said he had a…” He thumbed through his notes. “A hat.”
“Yes,” I said evenly. “And a knife. A big knife.”
“Well, everybody’s got a knife around here,” he said.
“I’m sure they do,” Aunt Sel said. “As for this boat—”
“That’s another thing,” Bode said. “This ramming theory?”
“What about it?” I asked.
“The Albatross has been up on blocks for weeks. Well before your mom went out on the water.”
I didn’t know how to absorb this information. I felt like an idiot. I’d been so sure.
If Aunt Sel doubted me, she didn’t let on in front of the chief. She thanked him for his time, walked him to the front door.
“Wait,” I said. I went back to my bedroom and fished through the pockets of my jeans. The green paper was nearly destroyed by my dunk in the water, the ink smeared. I took it back to the living room and handed it to the chief.
“Someone put that on our truck,” I said. “The morning my mom disappeared.”
“I can’t make heads or tails of this,” he said.
“It says, ‘Stay out of the water.’ It was a threat. An anonymous threat.”
“Right.” He wrote in his notebook. “A-nonymous. Got it.” He tucked the paper into his shirt pocket. “So how long will you two be staying, now that the search is called off?”
“What?” I looked at Aunt Sel. “You knew this.”
“Detective Hammersmith called this morning,” she said. “You were sleeping.”
“They can’t do that!”
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