Neither of us suspected she would ever find proof of her ideas, but then the sea can, on occasion, be quite generous.
We captured the thing in the early morning after a raucous storm that knocked and shook the ship and churned the ocean like a blender. Gabriel and Sorenson brought it aboard in the net they had been using to cull specimens from circling schools of fish. It fought and hissed at them, but they trapped it on the deck, and in a blind panic, struggled to beat it senseless and hurl it overboard. Dagmar arrived in time to stop them, barely able to assert her authority over the two superstitious crewmen, and ordered them to take it below to the largest observation tank. For days she refused to let any of the crew or research team view the creature but for me, herself, and Fawkes, whose knowledge of extinct species she needed, and she swore both of us to secrecy. Rumors and supposition riddled conversation among the crew, and the senior members of the research team protested Dagmar’s actions. She refused to budge and promised only to reveal her find before we returned to port.
From the moment I met the thing, I wished Gabriel and Sorenson had been swifter or more defiant. Its swollen, deep-ochre flesh revolted me. The pale ring of cold, jade lips that surrounded a black maw tinged with tiny deltas of bone set my skin crawling. Its form, humanoid, yet also amphibian in construction, suggested some unnatural marriage between man and animal, like the fevered creations of the fictional Dr. Moreau. But the worst of its aspect was its eyes, obsidian wells that gleamed with smoldering anger and obvious intelligence—and locked unwaveringly on me whenever I entered the chamber.
Dagmar noticed the thing’s interest in me right away and persuaded me to participate whenever she conducted tests on the beast or tried to communicate with it. She hoped my presence might draw it out. The constant scrutiny of the inhuman thing depressed and agitated me, and I imagined that it was my unpleasant appearance that captivated it. Yet, I agreed to Dagmar’s request, unwilling to risk her anger, reluctant to divorce myself from what could become the greatest scientific find in history. By the final days of our planned voyage, however, Dagmar had learned little more than the organism’s basic biological functions, and all of her attempts at communication had failed. Facing a boiling mutiny among the senior researchers, she opened the tank to the rest of the research team, hoping to glean some insight from their fresh perspectives.
Their reactions ranged from fascination to horror, from religious fear to furious jealousy. Chaos followed as rivalries sprang up and tempers flared, and it was with an unwelcome sense of relief that I anticipated our return to port. The camaraderie that had made most of our voyage a pleasure had dissipated and my colleagues now schemed and conspired behind each other’s backs, each hoping to achieve their own selfish objectives. The organism’s presence shattered the bonds we had formed; the thing’s indiscreet attention to me made the others suspicious, and more quickly than I’d have imagined possible, all feelings of friendship and admiration toward me dissolved. Even Dagmar distanced herself from me, asserting her authority to make sure she would not lose the benefit of any favor the creature showed me; I once again became the student and she the teacher.
For the second time in my life, circumstance had cost me my future. As a child caught in a chemical explosion in my father’s laboratory, I lost both my happy family and my face. Now I was to lose the life of acceptance and scientific research I had found.
Dagmar had charged me with arranging transportation for the organism to her research facilities at San Blas National Aquarium for continued study and eventual unveiling to the public. It was then that I decided I must leave the research team and pursue my studies elsewhere. The afternoon the St. William docked I requisitioned the proper equipment to move the observation tank, eager to wash my hands of the foul affair.
The organism seemed to sense the coming change and even to understand much of what was said in its presence. Early on the morning of the move I went to the tank for one last attempt at contact, hoping perhaps to understand the thing’s strange fascination with me before I left and never laid eyes on it again.
I peered through the cloudy streams of the tank, and said, “We’ll be moving you today. Dagmar has a little place for you.”
The organism floated toward me, its webbed hands sculling figure eights. Gelatinous eyes regarded me with what might have passed for longing on a human face.
“She’s going to make you famous.”
The creature stared outward, regarding me with an expectant tilt to its head.
“Well, I suppose, that’s all. I don’t expect to see you again. This has all gone to hell, thanks to you, and I don’t have a place here anymore, just as I’ve never had any place. Maybe you’ll have better luck with these fools. Just don’t sleep with Dagmar. She can be a real bitch.”
The alien reply paralyzed me. It escaped from the tank, damped and dim, a trembling, gargling voice, but its words a bellowing cry for me to return.
“Limulus Polyphemus. Class Merostomata, Order Xiphosura.”
Its voice was liquid sound, full of knots of bubbling and gurgling, muted by the water and thick glass, but clear enough. My face burned with a sudden flush of anxiety.
The creature’s eyes widened, deepened, as though desperate to draw me into its gaze, as though—my mind quivered at the thought—it hoped for something. I returned to the tank.
“Radial symmetry,” it said.
Cold invaded my flesh. Strength abandoned me. I staggered toward the tank and stumbled the final steps before I thrust myself against the chill glass and peered with fresh insight at the hideous organism. The thing raised a scale-glittered hand and placed it opposite mine on the glass. A bauble, a bright trinket of unknown richness, previously hidden somewhere in the folds of the creature’s flesh or the crevasses of its scales, dangled from one rippled finger, a bright, bloated pearl set in flashing, white gold, a sunbeam against olive flesh.
I whispered, “Lynna?”
The creature burbled, “Hello, Dennis. It’s been so long, but I hoped you might recognize me.”
Its voice carried me back to Knicksport, to that cold afternoon in Lynna’s dank and cavernous house, to the muttered rumblings of her grandmother in the dark.
“Lynna.”
“Dennis, you must help me escape, again.”
* * * * *
Lynna left Knicksport as suddenly as she had arrived, and I never forgave her for it. How could I? First loves are always the most raw, especially when they prove to be only loves, as well.
One weekend, hiking along the Bossoquogue, hand in hand, Lynna told me that her family had dark secrets in its past and that she feared she would one day pay the price for the bad things her ancestors had done. Her family was one among a number that lived in a city shunned by neighboring communities for the odd disease that afflicted them, cut off from the rest of the world but for a single bus line that carried meager traffic to and from the rotting place. Her people had been subjected to constant persecution by other communities in the region and by a government that feared and despised their religion. Lynna and her grandmother had fled to avoid being taken away by federal agents and placed in a camp like so many of her friends and neighbors had been. And, now, she told me, it seemed she would soon have to flee again.
“They’re in town. I’ve seen them around,” she said. “They haven’t found us, but they know we’re here. They’ll locate us soon. Grandma and I have to run again.”
I didn’t want to believe her, but her voice and face showed no signs of falsehood. “Who’s in town?”
“The government men. Federal agents. They’ve been hunting my family and everyone else like us in secret for decades. Maybe you’ll see them around. Maybe you won’t. They blend in, but I know what to look for. Somehow they followed me and Grandma here. Only a matter of time before they find our house.”
“What does the government want with you? You never did anything wrong. Did you?”
“I told you, it’s because of my family, becaus
e of things they did in the past. Grandma and I have to be punished for it.”
“You’re making this up.”
“I wish!” she said. “You think I want to leave? You think this is the first town we’ve stopped in and then run away from? I tried to be a friend to you, Dennis. And I tried to be something more to you, because I think that you deserve a better life than what you have. We both do, and for the last few weeks, you’ve made me feel human again. I can’t ever thank you enough for that, for what you’ve given me. I don’t want it to end.”
Minutes passed in stillness. We sat amidst the murmurs of the creek and the wind through the high branches of the oaks and the low calls of the seagulls, and after some time I took Lynna’s hand and said, “I think I love you, Lynna.”
I had hoped she might kiss me then, but instead she looked away. She was crying.
I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, then stood and bolted into the woods, leaving me too stunned and confused to call after her.
That was the last time I saw her, and the last time I thought I ever would see her.
She never returned to school. The next day, strange men in dark suits walked the halls with our principal, and though none of the students knew who they were, I guessed they were the men Lynna feared, burly, clean-cut, chisel-jawed men who strode by with confidence and authority. I went to Lynna’s house after school, but no one answered the doorbell. I went back every day for a week, until one afternoon the door cracked open an inch and an ugly eye peered out from the shadows within. The stink of wet rot and salt wafted out.
I asked for Lynna.
“Lynna’s gone,” her cousin said. “Went away with her Gran’mama. Now git out of here.”
I walked home through the woods in the dimming twilight and told myself Lynna would come back once the federal agents left, once the coast was clear, but I knew that she never would. I made up my mind that one day I, too, would leave Knicksport, and never come home again.
* * * * *
I conspired to free Lynna from Dagmar.
Lynna told me of others like herself who dwelled below the waves, thousands if not millions, spread throughout all the seas of the world, hidden from humankind. Her school, her clan, would be seeking her, because they instinctively knew when one of them rose to the surface and moved onto dry land. They would free her violently if need be, but it could be avoided if I simply helped her return to the sea. She had heard from her cousins that I would be traveling the waters near her home and had followed our ship for several days, hoping for a glimpse of me, when the storm hit. Caught off-guard and unable to flee to the depths, she was battered in the maelstrom and left senseless, an easy catch for the St. William’s nets.
I questioned Lynna about Dagmar’s theories, and she confirmed many of them, including the immortality of her own kind, who died only by accident or murder. She spoke of her dwelling in the freezing depths, of the curse that had afflicted her family, and the pledge of her great-great-grandfather to Dagon, an old god, forgotten by mankind.
That was the truth of the disease she suffered: life immortal, a home away from cruel men, a place among the vast numbers of her clan. A balance for the hideous aspect her body had assumed as she matured.
I promised to return that night after Lynna had been moved into the Aquarium and help her escape. Taking advantage of Dagmar’s trust in me, I saw to it that no security officers would be on duty. The research facility stood on the coast, and it would be a short trip to the open water.
* * * * *
Human again. That’s how I had made her feel when we were together. But then she had robbed me of my humanity, shattered every hope I had of being happy, before she returned to tear down the foundations of the life I had built without her. Lynna and her grandmother had found their safe haven, but now they had destroyed mine.
A sharp gale carries stinging sand into my eyes. I rub them raw. I sigh. Leaning into the backseat, I seize the coarse burlap and tug the heavy bundle onto the beach. Something screeches on the water. I straighten and peer into the moon-licked ocean, seeking shadows, phantoms, monstrosities.
The water froths and calms.
The pale night looks like all eternity.
I scream the secret names Lynna shared with me, the abominable oaths of the outcast, of the damned.
* * * * *
Jealousy, hatred, rage, fear. My soul floundered in violent emotions. Lynna had come back into my life only to leave it again. Too soon. And knowing it was her, I no longer found her grotesque appearance horrifying. She was my Lynna, and in my mind, I still saw her as the beautiful, young girl who wrapped her arms around me and gave me my first kiss. I wanted to go with her now, but she said it was impossible. Maybe, when we were younger, it could’ve been arranged, but not now. But I didn’t believe her. With Lynna beside me, I thought, anything should be possible.
I remembered what I said to her the last time I saw her back in Knicksport, words to which she never replied. The memory boiled in my mind. My hands shook as I opened the tank access hatch and helped Lynna emerge. Then as she sought her footing on the slick tile floor of the lab, it was as if my thoughts broke apart and my body acted purely on the fuel of the rage I felt at this new loss. I seized a microscope and caved in the back of Lynna’s skull. Once Lynna had shown me the possibilities of the world, but twice she had stolen them all away from me. She gave me hope only so that I would understand the true depths of my loneliness. I had no forgiveness for her in my heart, which felt as scarred and calloused as my body.
But when I looked upon her dying face and saw her eyes turning plastic and filmy, my senses returned, and I realized the expansive horror I had committed against Lynna but against myself, as well. I had become those who had tortured me in my youth, a body animated by dumb fury, lashing out at something unlike me, something that had shattered the fleeting security of my existence. I wailed as the last spark of life faded from Lynna’s expression, and I wept as I wrapped her body in burlap, placed it in my car, and drove to the beach. Even in the face of such horror, I felt compelled to keep my word, to help Lynna escape.
* * * * *
Fresh tears roll down my face.
I pray Lynna’s people can undo what I have done, that immortality can be renewed, that her powerful, ancient god can restore what I have taken from the world. And that perhaps, he may find some measure of pity for one such as me, unwanted by my own kind, unsuited for the one being I ever loved. What sacrifice could I possibly make to win his favor?
I bellow over the rumbling surf.
Dark shapes rise among the swells. Deformed heads mounted by bulbous eyes pierce the surface. Massive webbed hands guide them forward. Slender gray fins protrude from the hulking backs of horrible creatures Lynna called her Deep Ones, her family, her kind. I drop to my knees beside Lynna’s lifeless body and beg forgiveness, crying out for them to restore Lynna, praying to the unknowable god that rules them.
They circle me. One among them steps forward, fat and squishing, vaguely familiar, its shoulders bent with anger. It points at me with one monstrous hand, adorned by a ring I have seen before, the twin of that which Lynna showed me, the pearl that had adorned her grandmother’s hand.
Her eyes, like Lynna’s were, are deep, rolling abysses. They are unforgiving. They are cold, cruel, and inhuman. After all, Lynna’s grandmother never did approve of our relationship, but hoped I would help her granddaughter get something out of her system.
“I have nowhere left to run,” I say. “Like you once did. Like Lynna.”
The circle tightens around me. I am an interloper. I am different than them.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. I only wanted someone to be with.”
I remember Lynna’s room on that gloom-soaked afternoon, the way the cold rain washed across its windows, and how Lynna’s smooth warmth felt pressed against me. I no longer deserve such a memory, but still I try to lock it in place, to live in that moment.
A clammy hand wraps around my throat. Others join it, I feel myself dragged onto the wet sand, into the surf, and a cold black world welcomes me.
Resurrection House
Of 19,453 prospective buyers Red Moriarty chose Peter Carroll to purchase the notorious property at 1379 Hopewood Boulevard, better known as “Resurrection House.”
No one was more surprised than Peter.
Carroll only met Red at the closing when the great man swept into the office, trailing a team of assistants and lawyers in his draft. For a man said to be in his eighties Red got around like an athletic fifty year old, his body commanded by a mind still sharp and facile. He moved with the effortless superiority and inbred poise of royalty, the unspoken assurance that all in his path belonged to him or could be made to belong to him should he only desire it. Moriarty’s presence transformed the powerful, wealthy men he employed, powerbrokers hated and feared by those with whom they did business, into fawning children, who shrank from his gaze.
But not so Peter Carroll.
From the moment he met him Peter felt something akin to warmth and paternal affinity from Red, even as the man used his ethereal blue eyes to pick him apart from across the table.
Satisfied, Moriarty sported Peter a wink. “Wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into, Mr. Carroll?” he said.
“Well,” said Peter. “It is a…a big day, isn’t it?”
“Did you know that your offer was the third lowest one I received?”
“Oh.” Peter hadn’t thought it had been that bad. “It’s really all I could muster. It’s my life savings.”
“Hmmm,” Moriarty said, reducing the sum of Peter’s efforts to less than words.
Resurrection House Page 8