The thought of that made him laugh until he was sick, and he barely made it to the small bathroom in time.
Mike spent the next week shopping online for a new home, and ended up buying a former sheep ranch in Toorale, Australia. Deep in the Outback, it was several miles from the Murray and Darling rivers. The three thousand acre ranch contained a crumbling Victoria mansion from the 1890’s and a rutted airstrip. He got the ranch for a little under a million and invested another seven in getting the home and airstrip restored. The contractors promised the work would take less than a year.
Mike’s plan was simple: live in Mojave until his new home was finished, then take up residence in one of the hottest and driest places on Earth. Whenever he got lonely he would have his private jet take him to any of the world’s most fabulous cities. As long as he was constantly on the move when he traveled, she would never find him.
He spent much of his time watching the egg. He had set up a special saltwater aquarium in place of the television and watched it instead. He especially liked it at night, when the only light was from the aquarium and the pearlescent colors washed over him like gifts from the goddess Iris.
At night he dreamed of the sea, swimming in deep waters and lagoons. Sometimes he was a man, other times a fish. It didn’t matter, he was happy.
Claire’s foray into Dubai and India were both even more successful than with her U.S. contacts, and his wealth approached the hundred million mark, even with his home restoration, purchase of a private jet, and a collection of sports cars which were garaged for him in Reno.
Claire had two eggs left. Word had quietly circulated amongst the world’s super-rich, and she told Mike she might actually be able to auction them off. Prospects in Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Berlin looked very strong.
She also apologized, she had always meant to send him the reports from the marine biologist she had consulted with at Scripps.
A lot of it was beyond his understanding, thing regarding density and pH levels and oxygenation. But there were also ultrasound pictures, and these carried far more weight than the various graphs and tables of electrochemical potential and genetic markers.
The creature inside the egg looked much like a human fetus, but with a torso that tapered into a long tail with the slightest suggestion of a split at the end. Its face was a mere suggestion of one, its one visible eye overly-large and ill-defined, but still there was a sort of grandeur about it, a glimpse into the Unknown.
The reports said that the creatures seemed to be in stasis, that they could survive on land if the temperature stayed in the lower 80’s. The biologist postulated that the eggs needed a catalyst to survive, possibly some sort of secretion from the mother.
Mike printed out a picture of the sonogram and taped it on the tank. He wished some film footage had been included, it would have been nice seeing the little creature move around.
It made him feel guilty, sometimes, that the egg might never hatch, the creature inside never knowing any world but the one inside its egg. Still, it was a damn sight better than being dissected by scientists and put on exhibit in some museum.
In October he received reports that a group of people representing the rights of indigenous Australians had blocked construction in several places, including his home. The contractor assured him that such occurrences were part and parcel of living in the Outback, and that they expected to be on schedule after Christmas. Mike offered the man more money, but was told this would not open the roads any sooner.
His final email from Claire came in late November. It was a triumphant report of an auction she had held in Luxembourg, where the final two eggs had sold for two hundred million dollars. She was coming home to wrap up her affairs in Los Angeles and then was moving to Paris.
Mike had discovered that Google and other search engines could act as electronic “clipping services” and collect stories and information. He had programmed his for mermaid sightings and deaths or disappearances where the sea or water were mentioned.
Claire had been first.
Apparently she had been using the pool at the Beverly Hills Country Club, something she did every Tuesday and Thursday when she was in town. Witnesses said she had been swimming laps when she suddenly seemed to develop a cramp at the deep end. She went down with surprising speed. Several members who dove in after her all agreed that she was pulled down into the drain. Every bone in her body shattered as some tremendous force tried unsuccessfully to force her through the small aperture. One man claimed to have seen a hand grasping her, another said it was a tentacle, but the police dismissed these details as a trick of the light and the trauma of the incident. Claire had no family, but her company was suing the country club for negligence.
Mike had tried to warn Claire away from the ocean, from any body of water. She had laughed and called him her “paranoid golden goose”.
Wealthy software mogul Dins Tagger was next. He had gone swimming off his private beach in Tiburon, California and disappeared. He washed up on that same beach a day later, his body bloated and cyanotic. Authorities were mystified by spines protruding from his abdomen. A subsequent autopsy showed the presence of two stonefish in his belly. No one would hazard a guess how the spiny creatures had gotten into Tagger’s stomach, but a local ichthyologist said the pain of such a death would be “excruciating”.
Next were Berlin weapons developer Max Krieger and Sheik El Fadil, a member of a Saudi royal family. Both men had been discovered in a penthouse suite of the Burj al Arab hotel in Dubai. Both had been found naked in the center of the room, their bodies enshrouded in a dozen Chironex fleckeri, a box jellyfish reputed to be one of the most poisonous creatures in the world. One source said that that it would have been the “most painful death imaginable”. How a jellyfish indigenous to Australia wound up in the coastal waters of Dubai still had authorities baffled. That and the fact that the security tapes showed that no one had used the private elevator, the only access to the room. Terrorists were suspected, though no group stepped forward to take credit for the grisly deaths.
Mike had seen that hotel on a cable special. It featured a fountain that shot a column of water from the ground floor up to the ceiling, a distance of a thousand feet. Such a fountain might serve a mermaid well, giving her access to men who has possession of two of her children.
How angry must she be, Mike wondered, how driven with hatred for humans and love for her offspring? What terrible plans might be conceived in her deep green thoughts as she searched the oceans and rivers for her children.
Now there were only three buyers remaining, but Mike had a feeling they were already dead or soon would be. Some might disappear like Oke, never to be seen again, their fate the source of urban legends and endless speculation.
Christmas came and went with little fanfare. He watched the egg and wondered if the child inside had any idea of the changing seasons. If he held her egg, would she know? Would she one day tell her mother that he had cared for her, literally watched over her day and night?
The contractor called him with bad news just after New Year’s. His home had been burned down. A call to local papers had said the place was “cursed” and “an abomination”. The statement was anonymous and no group claimed responsibility. Mike approved both new construction and the posting of 24-hour security. The contractor was optimistic that Mike could move to Toorale by September.
The final death red flagged by his search engine occurred in June. The details were sketchy, but involved Piers Vliet, a wealthy industrialist living in Rome. He had been found hanging from a trompe l'oeil ceiling depicting the Ascension. His ragged skeleton was covered with a variety of portunid crabs, many of which were still feeding on his remains. An official with the Roman Police said that even the most hardened of his men had been sickened by the sight. The death was attributed to organized crime and the case was still open.
Now he stood on the veranda with his warming beer, the Sunoco thermometer’s red line creeping upward, his t
houghts on Oke and the sea.
Mike knew he had been smart to give up the ocean, although it called to him almost daily. He had tried playing a tape of ambient wave and seagull sounds, but the contrast with his desires and the reality of Mojave made him too heartsick.
That night he drifted off, as usual, in the chair set before the aquarium and the mermaid’s egg.
He dreamed he was pouring a beer, and that the only light in the trailer came from the aquarium and the open fridge. Outside the night was the deep obsidian black that only a moonless desert can bring.
He heard a scraping at the door. At first he thought it was a coyote, and he intended on scaring it away, but then he heard the distinctive sound of metal on stone.
Someone was outside his door. A chill radiated from his gut and he felt his skin tremble with gooseflesh. He walked slowly and quietly to the door of the trailer, and peeked through the faded curtains.
Someone was digging at his front step. They were tall and gaunt, and he thought he could hear them weeping, a strange kind of keening sound.
Mike wished now he had kept a gun. He always thought the desert would protect him from U’ua, but he had not considered that the desert had its own species of predators.
Mike had his dive knife, but the man outside had a shovel. He would clearly have the advantage in a fight. As Mike watched, the man lowered something into the hole he had dug and covered it. He tamped the dirt down with care and then stood up, wiping the sweat from his brow.
It was Oke.
He was impossibly gaunt, almost skeletal, and his hair was white. His eyes were deeply hollowed, giving his face the aspect of a skull. It was the face of a ghoul, or one of those hungry ghosts he used to tell tourists about to make their experience more colorful.
Mike almost cried out, but was afraid to betray his presence. Still, Oke seemed to stare at the door for a long moment before retreating into the desert darkness.
Mike woke up near dawn, his body stiff and sore from sleeping in the chair. He went into the bathroom, relieved himself, then filled the sink with bottled water. He washed his face and remembered what he had dreamed.
He chided himself, but he still peeked out the curtains before going out the front door.
No one was there.
He went out, and looked under the metal step bolted to the trailer.
There was freshly turned earth there.
Mike broke out into a cold sweat, even with the outside temperature already climbing into the 70’s.
He had no shovel, so he used his dive knife and a large spoon to dig out whatever was buried there.
He found a bright blue and white plastic box with a picture of a smiling angler catching a big bass.
Sportsman’s First Aid Kit
And his name, printed in his twelve-year-old hand: “Michael Robert Clute, Troop 129”.
Wishing he could just drive away and get on a plane to Australia, he opened it.
It was a severed hand, feminine and delicate. The nails were the same color as goldfish, and there was a pale green tinge to the skin. He looked closer and could discern webbing between the fingers.
It was one of the most beautiful and terrible things he had ever seen.
He thought of burning it, but the thought of the stench it might make made his stomach roil.
He pulled it out of the box, despite an irrational certainty that it would grab him. He walked behind the trailer and threw it as far as he could out into the sand. He was sure that insects or perhaps a coyote would take care of it.
He reburied the box, although he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t want to keep it but the guy who delivered his groceries and took away his garbage wasn’t due for another week.
He went inside and got good and drunk on beer and tequila, something he had last done with Oke at a bar in Makawao.
When Mike awoke, his head throbbing and his mouth seemingly filled with sour cotton, it was long past midnight. He was in his chair, facing the aquarium, a dried patch of drool on his “Save the Whales” tee shirt.
The hand was in the aquarium.
He started back, falling awkwardly out of the chair and banging his head on a bookcase.
The hand was not just in the fish tank, it was grasping the egg. It lay on the bottom, palm up, and the egg rested in its grasp. At first he thought he saw the fingers flex, but this was an illusion of the bubbles from the filter.
He looked around wildly, expecting Oke or some half-human monster to advance on him from the tiny kitchen or the bathroom. A quick search said that he was alone.
He wanted to get the hand out of there but was loathe to touch it again. Now even the water bore the taint of that severed extremity. Instead, he went out with a flashlight and searched the perimeter.
There was no one around, and the night offered no answers, no comfort. He wanted to scream out into the darkness that he was sorry, that he wanted to be left alone. He almost offered to return what he had stolen, but the thought of not having the egg made him feel dizzy and unsettled.
He stumbled back into the trailer and locked it securely. He took several Advil and deliberately went to sleep on the couch along the front wall, the aquarium only visible peripherally.
He dreamed he was surfing the North Shore, the swells big and beautiful, the beach filled with life and sun and blue sky. He felt a part of the sea, and it enfolded him as he bottom-turned into the barrel. He was laughing and crying at the same time, feeling like he was home for the first time in almost two years.
A sharp pain roused him, and his first thought was that someone had smashed the aquarium and he had been hit with a shard of glass. The aquarium was intact, but the egg was not. It was lying in pieces at the bottom of the tank, now indistinguishable from the ruins of an abalone shell. The hand was gone as well.
Mike felt a sharp pain in his breast, and looked down.
The creature was the size of a kitten, its eyes large and green like a cat’s. It’s hair was more like a profusion of fine tentacles that undulated Medusa-like as it regarded him. It had the merest suggestion of a nose and a wide mouth filled with serrated teeth. Its lips were stained with blood and it bit down on his nipple again, feeding on his blood instead of milk.
He was afraid but he petted it all the same, it strange hair giving him little shocks, a sensation that was both painful and pleasurable.
The creature made a sort of purring sound, and its tail slapped against his thigh. The tail was a golden-green and scaled, the tip of it lined with projecting spines of a deep lavender. The skin of its upper half was as smooth and absent of blemish as any human child, just colored a pale sea foam green.
It squeezed his breast with one pudgy hand and sucked greedily.
“Drinking the ocean out of me,” Mike thought.
He found himself humming to it, an old lullaby his grandmother had sung to him.
He phased in and out of consciousness, finally waking when the weight on his chest was lifted away.
Oke stood over him, the child of U’ua nestled in his arms.
“Hey, bra.” Oke’s voice was a whisper, the sound of dust and sand.
Mike was too weak to move. He wanted to ask for some water, or a beer, but his couldn’t make his mouth work.
“It’s the venom,” Oke explained, as if knowing what Mike had been unable to articulate, “it’s not fast but it will kill you.”
Mike strained with what little strength he had and was able to mouth the word “sorry”.
Oke nodded, and touched Mike’s cheek tenderly. Then he turned and left the trailer.
The absence of the child was enough to rally Mike, and he was actually able to sit up and look out the window into the noonday sun.
Oke was walking toward a figure in a wheelchair. The figure was dressed in a broad sun hat and shawl and blanket. As Oke handed the child to the wheelchair’s occupant, Mike caught just a flash of green scales under the blanket, then Oke turned the wheelchair and pushed it to a waiting limousine.
>
Mike tried to call out, but his vocal cords were paralyzed. As they drove away he flopped back on the couch. As his heart slowed, Mike stared at the saltwater aquarium, which was the closest he would ever get to the ocean again…
That, and the taste of his tears.
The End
Dead Bait Page 26