"I am, too."
"So I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you I don't want to continue with you, unless you bring your wife to our next session."
"What?"
"I'm sorry, Eduardo, but I don't want to hear anything else about this until I see your wife."
"But that's absurd! You're treating me, not her."
"I ask you to not put pressure on me."
"You can't do this to me!"
"This is a private clinic. Of course I can."
"Don't think I'm going to pay you for this."
"That's fine. Don't. But please leave."
* * * *
7.
Eduardo left, slamming the door behind him. Dr. Fresneda waited a few minutes until she heard how he slammed the building's front door just as loudly. She then stretched a trembling finger toward the speakerphone.
"Robert, bring me the file on Eduardo Ledantes."
After the secretary had placed the file on her desk, the doctor read through it carefully, drumming her fingers on the desktop. After a few minutes, she picked up the phone, dialed “0” to make an outside call, and then the number listed in the file. The phone rang at least twenty times, and no one picked up.
After a half-dozen equally fruitless attempts, she hung up the phone, picked it up again, and dialed the three digits to report an emergency.
* * * *
8.
Eduardo charged furiously through the streets. What did she believe? What did she think she knew? Dr. Cifuentes had never made any such insinuations. He turned right at the next corner and walked towards his house. He'd speak with Ines and he'd take her down to Dr. Fresneda's office. He'd drag her if he had to.
He arrived at his front door and took the stairs. The elevator hadn't worked for a month.
"Ines!” he yelled from the doorway. There was no response.
He went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. His sweaty shirt clung to his back underneath his coat. The water-filled pan still sat in the sink, with the cup and saucer inside it. It seemed Ines had left without even cleaning the kitchen.
Or maybe she hadn't left, he thought. It was still early, just eleven-thirty. Maybe she was in the shower.
"Ines!” he yelled again, heading towards the bathroom.
Still no response. He opened the bathroom door, but no one was in there. The living room was equally empty.
Either she was still in the bedroom, or she'd left.
He walked down the hallway to the bedroom. The door was still just cracked open, and the shades were still down. It was dark inside the room. He reached for the doorknob, and then it happened.
It was subtle—very subtle—but even still he could tell. Something had changed. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, exactly, because the hand still on the doorknob was the exact same as his own hand, it ended in a wrist just like his, and was covered by a sleeve with the same fabric and color as the shirt he was wearing. But it was different. He could tell it was different.
He cleared his throat. “Hello,” he said, and the voice was his own. But at the same time, it was different. Wasn't it? Subtly different.
He turned his head from side to side. The hallway was the same . . . and it wasn't. The paintings on the walls hadn't changed, but still...
"Ines?” he murmured, gripping the doorknob tightly. So in the divergence, her name is still Ines, he thought to himself.
No one responded. He pushed the door open. Its texture, weight, and turn radius were identical to the real thing. Except that they weren't real.
It was too dark in the room. A cold sweat trickled down his spine. A feeling of déja vu pierced like a melting icicle deep in his brain. He had never been in a divergence like this one. It had never been so complete, so real.
"Ines?"
Nothing.
He reached one hand to the light switch. The hairs on his knuckles were exactly the same—weren't they?—and his wristwatch was the same model and brand.
"Ines, I'm going to turn on the light. If you're there, say something . . . “
Silence.
His heart pounded in his chest as though it wanted to break through his chest cavity and run across the rug. He softly flicked the switch, and with the same click that he remembered, the light turned on.
Ines was there, on her side of the bed, atop the bloody sheets. And it was Ines, and it wasn't her. It was the same dark hair, the same pale complexion—now with a blue tint—the same beige pajamas, the same profile, an identical pout on her lips. But it wasn't Ines, it wasn't his Ines, because his Ines couldn't be dead.
Her pajamas were shredded in many tatters, stuck to her body by the blood-soaked flannel. He could glimpse things moving from time to time within her open mouth, maybe flies, maybe worms. The irises of her eyes were completely white.
Eduardo felt his knees buckle. He clutched the doorway to keep himself standing, and shut his eyes tightly.
"Ines?” he murmured, with his eyes closed.
He opened them, but Ines was still on the blood-drenched bed.
He remembered with every minute detail—his other self remembered—the argument when he'd arrived home from work at twelve o'clock at night two weeks ago. He remembered the yelling, the insults she hurled at him while she lit a cigarette, saying it was his fault she had started up again. He was guilty of all of it, he was ending their marriage, ending her life. He remembered how the blood had rushed to his face and his head, clouding his understanding, how his hands had found the letter opener on the table, how he had stabbed it again and again into his wife's body until she fell on the unmade bed, her blood soaking into the sheets.
He remembered how he had put the covers over her afterwards, how he had turned out the light and closed the bedroom door, and how he had stood in the hallway with his hand on the doorknob before going back in, into the darkness, to sleep.
But it hadn't been him, had it?
You'll wake up, he told himself. You'll return to your world. The divergence will end, and you'll return to your world. Ines will come home, and we'll go together to see Dr. Fresneda.
Are you sure?
I'm sure.
He managed to gather enough strength to leave the room. He left the door open and the light on. This way he would know if the divergence had ended just by stepping into the hallway. If the light was on, he'd know he was still diverging.
Relax. It'll be over soon, he thought to himself.
He went to the kitchen. It was his kitchen: the same kitchen with the same water-filled pan in the bottom of the sink. He wanted to scream. He walked towards the hallway. The bedroom light was still on.
He saw the crossword puzzle on the table. divergent. wake up.
He picked up the paper and, with it in his hand, he stepped again into the hallway. Still on.
From the street wailed the sound of a police siren. Again in the kitchen, he brought the puzzle close to his face. And then he saw it.
The words were still there: “divergent” and “wake up,” written in red capital letters. He again felt the chill that seemed to precede his leaps between reality and reality, and discovered the crossword clues had changed. They were no longer “To be outside of the mainstream” and “Revive thought,” but rather “Invention” and “Leave something behind."
A great wave of relief swept over him. He sighed deeply. He looked at his hands, his legs. He was there. He had returned. He didn't remember killing his wife, because he hadn't killed her. It was absurd.
The sirens grew nearer until they were right below his window. All of a sudden there was banging on the front door and Eduardo left the kitchen to open it, after making sure the bedroom light was off. Two policemen asked to come in, and Eduardo stepped aside with a great smile of satisfaction on his face.
Then, following them down the hallway, he felt the chill again, that subtle internal seasickness. He lowered his gaze to the newspaper and saw, horrified, that the crossword clues had gone back to what they had
been, and he knew he had returned, and he didn't need to raise his head to know the bedroom light was on.
He had returned, and the light would never turn off again.
*From 15th-century Spanish poet Jorge Manrique's Stanzas on his father's death, as translated from the Spanish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
©2010 by Marc R. Soto; translation ©2010 by Cara Goodman
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: TANGLE BEACH by David Braly
* * * *
Art by Mark Evans
* * * *
A history graduate of Reed College, David Braly has written many articles and books about the history of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. In his debut story for EQMM, he makes use of the strange resurfacing of old shipwrecks along the Oregon Coast after the unusual storms of 2008. With the wrecks come their sometimes murderous histories—at least in Mr. Braly's fictional account of one of them! He is the author of many other stories, including several for AHMM.
The three of them walked down from the resort motel onto the beach, and then past the ancient dead trees whose vast tangle of ruin had given the area its name. The boy, fourteen and more venturesome than the girls, eleven and twelve, led.
Steve Gillen acted confident and self-assured, though with the girls he was really no such thing. He had a round face dominated by a sneering smile, and his oiled-down brown hair was combed forward in imitation of Donald Trump or some other idolized male, perhaps his father, because no loss yet dictated this style. The sunny day was perfect for the vacation taken by the boy's parents from their jobs in Portland. The girls, from Seattle, followed him because of his confidence and their own curiosity about the area and the boy. Daughters of an architect, they found the working-class boy unusual. They didn't recognize him as a bully; given time for his true nature to assert itself, they would have.
They edged past a line of boulders that stretched to the ocean, and reached the miles-long beach that few had walked upon even after the motel was built beyond and above it. A tree-lined cliff thirty feet high and five miles long stood majestically above this narrow patch of sand. Boulders bigger than houses sat in the ocean, at varying distances from the beach, barren mini-islands too steep for man or seal to climb.
"This place is spooky,” said twelve-year-old Margaret Worth, a knock-kneed brunette in a soft blue dress who stood an inch taller than Gillen. “Let's go back."
Her sister Ann, a bolder spirit confined in a shorter though plumper body, would normally have disagreed, but could find no reason to.
"It's not spooky,” insisted Gillen, adding scorn to his tone to hide his own distaste for the place. “Just empty."
"So there's no reason to be here,” said Margaret.
"Sure there is. Something might've washed up that nobody's found."
"Like what?"
"I don't know what. Maybe a bottle with a note in it."
"I've been to beaches about a hundred times and never once seen a bottle with a note in it."
Gillen had never been to a beach before, but he wasn't about to admit it to these classy girls. “Have you been to this particular beach?” he asked.
"No."
"Well, then."
He marched forward, confident that they would follow. Ann did immediately. Margaret hesitated, but finally she did also.
They walked the shoreline, at first briskly. The sand pulled at their feet. They gradually slowed to a trudge. After twenty minutes even Gillen recognized the journey's futility. There were no bottles, only driftwood and floaters. The chilly air stank of fish. Gulls strolled on the waterline hundreds of feet ahead of them and flew above, their calls the only sounds there other than the snapping of waves on the gray sand.
Atop a slight mound, he stopped. Three huge boulders stood in the ocean, all in a row next to each other, 150 feet out in the water. These barriers interfered with the natural movement of the water, making the waves here especially large and violent. The girls joined him on the mound.
"This is boring,” complained Margaret.
"I guess.” He wanted to disagree, but the lie would be obvious. “We'll go back."
The girls stepped off the mound.
"Just a minute,” he ordered. “I've got sand in my shoe."
He bent down to remove his right shoe—
—and dropped straight down into the sand.
An instant of silence followed: No sound came from the mound or the hole within it or the horrified girls. Even the gulls were quiet.
The girls, frozen in fear, each wondered whether to investigate or run for help.
And then Steve Gillen screamed.
He screamed like nobody either girl had ever heard before. Screamed piercingly, in abject terror, like a woman in a monster movie.
He continued screaming in the hole as the girls ran like cheetahs back toward the motel, the sounds of his terror behind them propelling their legs to greater speed and endurance.
A half-hour later, two dune buggies roared across Tangle Beach. Ann, not Margaret, sat beside the motel manager in the lead vehicle. Margaret had refused to go back, but Ann was anxious to show them. Her father accompanied the maintenance man in the second buggy.
"There!” she said. “The three rocks in a row! The little mound's right across from them."
The manager jumped out of the buggy the instant it stopped. A tall, weathered, khaki-clad man in his late thirties, he'd feared a tragedy when the frightened girls ran into the lobby screaming that a boy had been swallowed by sand. Their horror told him it was no prank. And now he saw no boy, but did see the mound.
He ran to it, and saw, yes, there was a hole. But not the hole he'd expected, with sand sides going smoothly down below. He could see a line of wood, with sand atop and darkness below.
"Boy!” he called. “Are you down there?"
"Help!” And then a piteous, “Please!"
He hurried to the hole, but stepped back from the edge when he felt the ground—or maybe wood below the ground—start to give way. He leaned forward, and looked down. He could see the boy's ashen face in the darkness.
And then, with a shock, he realized it wasn't a boy's face.
It was a skull.
* * * *
Sheriff Chuck Chamberlain stopped the dune buggy a dozen feet from the yellow police tape that blocked off the crime scene. Deputy Stan Hennessey, the guard, did not stir from his beach chair beneath a wide yellow-and-blue umbrella. Beside Chamberlain, forensic archaeologist Ruby Shapiro smiled. Perhaps, thought Chamberlain, amused at the deputy's stereotypical languor. But what did she expect? Hennessey to jump up and salute? Or march like a sentry under the sun?
They climbed out of the buggy. An attractive, outdoor-looking woman in her twenties, Ruby Shapiro wore a blue shirt, bluejeans, and Nikes, and carried her notebook, cell phone, and other possessions in a green backpack.
"Did the waves uncover all that?” she asked.
"No. The waves didn't break through the sand. The boy did that. We removed enough to expose the cab and top of the hull."
They walked to the tape, lifted it to duck under, and stepped over to the wreck.
Hennessey stood and came over to join them.
"Looks like it's being buried again,” said the sheriff. “There's more sand on the sea side of the hull than yesterday."
"Yep. And I had to run off more than a hundred people this morning."
"Were they from the motel or did they drive down from Oldport?"
"A little of both.” Hennessey, a husky-going-to-fat bullnecked man in his forties, glanced appreciatively at the shapely visitor. “Mostly folks from Oldport."
Chamberlain explained to Hennessey that Shapiro had driven over from Salem to confirm the boat's identity.
"Confirm it?” Hennessey asked her. “You already got some idea what it might be?"
"We think so."
Hennessey waited, but Ruby Shapiro said no more.
"She won't say word one,” Chamberlain told him,
smiling.
"I understand your curiosity, but we really must be sure,” she said. “Confirmation means confirmation, not guesswork. There are a lot of old wrecks on the Oregon coast."
"True,” agreed the deputy. “And ever since late two thousand seven they've been popping right out of the sand."
"It does seem that way. It happens whenever the ocean waves are unusually high and violent."
The “popping up” had started shortly after Thanksgiving 2007 with waves shifting away the sands that had long covered a 223-foot-long steam schooner launched in 1917, the George I. Olson, which ran aground with a cargo of lumber on Coos Bay's North Jetty in 1944. After that, as though jealous of all the attention the old ship received from the news media and the hundreds of curiosity-seekers who had traveled to Coos Bay for a look, other wrecks began climbing out of Oregon's sands.
February 2008 was the most active month for the old shipwrecks. A wooden one appeared near where Cut Creek entered the Pacific, just north of Bandon. Another appeared, briefly, and then disappeared again, where the Siuslaw River entered the ocean near Florence. Two cannons from the U.S.S. Shark, a Navy schooner that ran aground on the Columbia Bar in 1846, were found by a father and daughter at Arch Cape. The cannons were retrieved, though each weighed half a ton. Many plans were devised for their public display before the federal government notified the state that even though the ship had gone down 162 years earlier, the cannons remained Navy property. An old mail truck appeared next. And then a “ghost forest” of ancient stumps from trees sunk centuries earlier during an earthquake.
The two men watched while Shapiro examined the ruin. She crawled over everything with her tape measure, and jotted many notations in her small notebook.
"How's the boy doing?” Hennessey asked Chamberlain while they watched. “He still in the hospital?"
"No, back with his parents. They're returning to Portland this afternoon, cutting their vacation short. The kid still has the trembles."
"Can't blame him. More than a half-hour with those two skeletons and unable to climb out. Remarkable he didn't go insane."
EQMM, September-October 2010 Page 8