In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

  He, though, had retired—and Ismail had gotten a promotion. Go-getter. No sense of humor. She wished he hadn’t insisted on being here for the recovery operation. Not that she blamed him. Nor was it his fault that she trusted no one but Maurice to do this right.

  Right being a relative term. In more ways than one.

  “These people are not prone to exaggeration,” Ismail insisted, pushing his glasses up his nose, then wiping his hands, rather fussily, on his pants. “And despite appearances, I assure you that . . . that they’re all quite civilized. Poverty, you know—”

  “No one’s saying they’re bad people,” Maurice interrupted. “But they’re fuckin’ armed to the teeth.”

  Ismail gave the old man a disdainful look—not the first of the morning, either. The A Priori scout might not judge Malay fishermen by appearances, but he had not been so gracious with Jenny or her two-man crew.

  “What you see on that beach is mere precaution,” he said, very slowly, enunciating each word as though Maurice might not understand him otherwise. “If the . . . the thing . . . is stolen before they can receive payment—”

  “Of course,” Jenny interrupted smoothly, ignoring the grunt that came from the man seated behind Ismail. Les, the second member of her crew—a bronze god, the girls back home liked to call him. Buttery brown hair, golden-tanned skin, perfect body. A smile to die for. He glanced past the scout at Maurice and Jenny, shaking his head and mouthing, “This is crazy.”

  They were all crazy, Jenny thought, as Les cut the engine of the battered flat-bottom skiff that Ismail had met them in. He had bought the boat from a nearby village using company funds, and was going to donate it to the fishermen, along with a large cash payment from A Priori. If their claims proved true.

  Several men waded into the ocean to help pull in the skiff. Up close, they were small, compact, and young. Early twenties, perhaps, dressed in shorts and faded T-shirts dotted with holes. No one spoke or smiled, but Jenny watched their faces carefully and found no malice. Just tension. And, perhaps, fear.

  “Something’s wrong,” Maurice muttered, also watching their faces. He reached down, ostensibly to scratch his upper thigh, but Jenny knew he kept a small pistol holstered beneath his oversized cargo pants. His right pocket had a hole large enough for his hand to fit through, and he always carried a little something strapped to the small of his back and between his shoulder blades. Never would have dreamed it, just by looking at him.

  Ismail spoke to the fishermen. Jenny didn’t wait for him to finish before she jumped out of the skiff. Too late to run, even if things turned bad.

  Maurice followed close behind, moving with only a little stiffness. Les, however, lingered in the skiff just a moment too long. Jenny glanced at him and looked away almost immediately. He had been tense all morning, but now his hands were clenched into fists, held tightly in his lap against his stomach. His face was white. He looked ill, but it was more than that. As though he were staring at a ghost.

  Les could skydive from two miles up, or face a great white shark without the protection of a cage; but whatever he was seeing on this beach was giving him second thoughts about doing his job. It was an unexpected reaction. They had been in more uncomfortable situations than this.

  Ismail finished, and the man who held the AK–47 stepped forward, waving his hand toward the south. He was older than the others, his voice sharp, biting—but not angry. Frustrated.

  “He says that we’ll call him a liar,” Ismail translated slowly. “But he wants us to know that he’s not. None of them are. It . . . changed . . . on them. They couldn’t stop it.”

  Maurice scowled. “Is that his way of saying that we came all this way for nothing?”

  “What a surprise,” Les muttered, finally climbing out of the boat.

  Jenny ignored them both, stepping past Ismail to face the armed man. “Tell me everything.”

  “Easier to show you,” Ismail translated, moments later. “They locked the creature in a special place.”

  “Creature,” she echoed, and spat out her chewing gum. “Show me the woman.”

  It took less than five minutes to reach the place where they had hidden the woman. It was a short distance off the beach, down a narrow trail barely visible in the jungle growth. The heat was suffocating, and within moments of her leaving the stiff ocean breeze, Jenny’s limbs turned leaden, her skin slick with sweat. Cotton stuck to her body. She’d had to cover her arms and legs. This area was predominantly Islamic.

  Walking was difficult, too. Her body wanted to sway with the sea, but the world around her was solid and far too still. Everything felt alien; all those golden-tinged shadows, and the cries of birds—twisting knots of vines and thick tree trunks bruised with undergrowth so solid, so tangled with leaves, she felt caged.

  Maurice strode in front, following Ismail and the man with the gun. Les walked behind her, several of the fishermen well in the rear. But not all of them. Keeping watch on the beach—or worse. Not that anyone could steal The Calypso Star, which was moored less than a quarter mile offshore. The security was state of the art—bulletproof glass, reinforced doors—and a biometric lock that secured the science yacht’s interior. The worst any thieves could do would be to sun themselves on deck.

  “I don’t like this,” Les muttered.

  “You didn’t need to come,” she replied, watching the trail for anything that could trip her. “Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Confused. You’re scared.”

  Les tapped her shoulder. “That happens, Jenny. Even to you.”

  All the time, she wanted to tell him, so bottled up with the words, her throat hurt.

  Ahead, she saw the tin roof of a shanty through the trees, and the glint of a machete held across the lap of a man sitting guard some distance from the crude door. He stood quickly when he saw them, swaying nervously on the balls of his feet like he wanted to run.

  The man with the gun spoke quickly. Ismail glanced over his shoulder at Jenny. “He says that several days ago, some men attempted to steal . . . it. Word had gotten out. A group from another village came in the night, and there was a fight. Our . . . friend . . . had the larger gun.”

  “Not so large,” Maurice muttered.

  “It . . . the creature . . . was fine, at the time,” Ismail replied. “Or so our guide says.”

  “Not it. Her,” she corrected, and the man shrugged, shoving his glasses up his nose while giving her a faintly condescending smile.

  “You’re a scientist. Perhaps you should . . . observe . . . the creature before speaking of it in . . . human terms.”

  “I know what I am,” Jenny replied tightly, wishing she didn’t have to speak at all. “I stand by what I said.”

  “As do I. I have a job here, Ms. Jameson. One based on complete accuracy.”

  Jenny exhaled through her teeth and tugged her soaked blouse sharply away from her back. “I hope you’re not implying that our goals are different.”

  He said nothing, which was almost as insulting as what she was certain he was thinking.

  Spoiled rich girl. Working for her grandparents because no one else would hire her. Only pretending to be a scientist while she traveled around the world in a multimillion-dollar motor yacht with a beach bum, a babysitter, and a closetful of cocaine and bikinis.

  More or less. Jenny had heard it all before, in different variations. Trying to defend herself only made it worse. She couldn’t stand whiners—least of all when she was doing the whining.

  “Mr. Osman,” Maurice said gruffly, and Ismail suddenly pitched forward, falling hard on his knees. His jaw hit the ground a second later, and she heard the painful sound of his teeth snapping together.

  Maurice stood at least ten feet away from Ismail. And he continued standing there, carefully keeping
his distance, until the injured man rolled over and looked at him. First, with accusation in his eyes—and then confusion.

  “You pushed me,” he said hoarsely, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “How could I?” Maurice replied, holding up his hands—his tone utterly conciliatory, even sympathetic. He walked quickly to Ismail and helped him up. “Nothing broken,” he added, moments later. “Can you walk?”

  Ismail nodded, carefully not looking at Jenny. With measured steps, he hobbled down the trail after their armed guide, who had stopped and was giving him a disdainful look. Behind, Les made a small sound that she thought was laughter, but when she glanced at him, he was staring past her at the shanty, now clearly visible through the trees. His face was deathly pale.

  “You okay?” Maurice asked, waiting for them to catch up. Jenny thought he was speaking to Les, but when she looked at him, his gaze was focused entirely on her.

  She managed a faint upward tick at the corner of her mouth. The old man nodded and clapped her on the shoulder. He stayed close as the trail emptied out into a small clearing barely large enough for the shanty. The man with the machete gave them all a questioning look, then used the tip of his blade to push open the door.

  The smell hit Jenny from more than ten feet away.

  “Fuck,” Maurice growled, staggering to a stop. So did the fishermen, staring at that open doorway with mixed expressions of fear and loathing.

  Jenny gritted her teeth and ran toward the shanty. The men got out of her way. She had her penlight out before she even reached the door, and breathed raggedly through her mouth as the stench of rotting flesh hit her again.

  The woman had been left on the dirt floor. And she was a woman—not an it.

  Had been, anyway. She was dead now. Hard to estimate just from looking, but given the state of decay, Jenny thought she had been gone for at least two days. She was skinny, long-limbed, her face nearly obscured by matted blond hair. Totally naked and covered in blood. Her body had been gouged with long, raking wounds that resembled claw marks. Jenny saw exposed bone—her ribs, and part of her hip. Savaged by an animal, maybe. She had died in agony, that much was clear. Died in the dirt, alone amongst strangers.

  Something small and round glittered beside her blood-rusted knee, caught briefly in the penlight beam. Jenny swooped down and snatched it up, just as Maurice shadowed the doorway. He stopped, staring—and made the sign of the cross. Jenny hardly noticed. She was fighting not to shake, or drop to her knees, or stop breathing entirely.

  Hold on, she told herself, clutching that small, hard object. Hold on.

  “Poor girl,” Maurice said, just as Ismail pushed through behind him.

  The scout trembled, looking away and covering his mouth. His glasses almost fell off, and he grabbed them in his hand before sneaking another peek at the woman’s corpse. “She has legs.”

  “Yes,” Jenny whispered, crouching. “She seems quite human.”

  “So they lied.” Ismail took a half step outside. “Hard to believe. They seemed very . . . certain.”

  The object she held so tightly bit into her palm. “Pay them anyway. And arrange to have this woman’s body taken to the boat. We’ll put her in the cold locker until we can turn her over to the authorities.” Jenny pulled a single latex glove from her pocket and slid it on. Ever so gently, she pushed the woman’s hair away from her face. It was difficult to tell what she had looked like while alive, but her cheekbones were sharp and high, almost inhumanly so. Pale skin, broken with small holes where the flesh had been chewed away, perhaps by rats.

  Jenny covered her face again and stood. Too quickly, maybe. She felt faint, and swayed, shoving the heel of her palm against her forehead. Maurice started to hold her up, but she slipped away from him and staggered to the door—stripping off her one glove and shoving it into her pocket. Ismail was already outside, speaking with the fishermen. Les stood bent over, his hands pressed against his knees.

  “You saw?” she asked him roughly.

  “Smelled,” he mumbled. “So what is it? Wild-goose chase? Another fake?”

  Jenny dug into her pocket for chewing gum and held it out to him. He took several pieces, and stuffed them all in his mouth. As he closed his eyes, sighing, she turned away and glanced down at her other hand, fingers slowly, stiffly, uncurling.

  A silver scale glinted on her palm.

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “A fake.”

  Hours after the body was brought aboard The Calypso Star, Jenny found herself underwater, pretending that she was drowning.

  Or just holding her breath for so long, it was almost the same thing.

  Records were always being made and broken, but the last time she had checked, the world record for holding one’s breath underwater had been broken by a Frenchman, at eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds. Took the man six months to train and two months to recover.

  Jenny could hold her breath for a little over four minutes. It wasn’t hard. Especially when she had a lot on her mind. Some people took a shower when they needed to think. She always had to go deeper.

  Right now, fifty feet.

  A weighted cable hung beside her, a ten-pound anchor tied at the bottom to maintain a straight line. Lead bands were strapped to her ankles, as well. With one hand on the cable, it wasn’t difficult to keep from sinking, and she could climb back up when it was time to breathe. She had been down here for half an hour already, rising like a porpoise every four minutes to take a breath.

  Red hair, caught in pigtails, floated around her face; and in the ocean twilight, her fair, freckled skin looked ethereal, cast in silver and blue. Much the same as the scale she held in her hand, contained inside a small glass jar for safekeeping.

  She turned the jar around and up and down, unable to look away as the scale shifted colors: shades of pale green, lavender, and silver; iridescent as mother-of-pearl. It was thicker than a regular fish scale—almost like a very thin shell—but pliable, too. She had found two others over the years. A beach walk on Galapagos had yielded a find—and a shop of curiosities in Madrid the other. Random moments, like some higher power speaking to her. Or destiny, using Morse code.

  You’re the only one who knows the message, thought Jenny, tearing her gaze from the scale to stare into the darkness below. At least at night, when she gazed at the sky, there were stars. The ocean deserved stars. It felt as vast as the sky. Three-fourths of the earth was covered in water. Scientists knew more about Mars than about the deep ocean. More people had stood on the moon than had traveled five miles under. No light penetrated deeper than five hundred feet. Anything was possible. Anything could be hiding.

  Mermaids. Mermen. People of the sea.

  Her lungs began to ache a little, but she didn’t pull herself up the cable. The next time she broke the surface, she would have to climb back onto the boat—and she wasn’t ready. She did not want to face that corpse. According to the fishermen, the woman had been discovered a week earlier in the aftermath of a storm. Washed ashore, nearly dead. Attacked by some gang of men, Ismail was saying now. Tossed into the ocean, perhaps. Pirates were a problem in the area.

  Jenny didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that Ismail was so ready to dismiss what the fishermen had first claimed—that the woman was not just a woman, but a monster. Part fish.

  Never mind that she had legs now. Ismail didn’t know as much as he thought he did. His specialty was bioprospecting—scouting for plants and animals that might prove medically beneficial to humans. It was big business—cutthroat, in the most literal sense of the word—and A Priori had one of the largest, most extensive research networks in the world. Even if no one realized it.

  Part of that network had been built upon the backs of paid informants, most of them locals in third-world countries where remote areas still remained virtually unexplored. Nor was it just p
lants and traditional healing remedies that they reported on. Rumors of strange sightings, miracles—anything inexplicable—were investigated quickly and quietly by people with far more experience in the odd and arcane than Ismail Osman.

  Less than a week ago, ten miles from here, a man who knew a man who paid for unusual stories had told of a monstrous woman. Ten minutes later, Ismail had received a call in Singapore, which he had then passed on to an office in London. Which had placed another call to Nova Scotia.

  Until, finally, Jenny had been brought into the loop. There were other marine biologists in A Priori, but none were family, and few could be trusted with the possibility of anything so . . . sensitive . . . as a woman who might not be human.

  A flicker of light caught Jenny’s eye, but it was just a small school of narrow-barred mackerel, glinting silver as they darted through the water. She watched them for a moment, until she sensed movement on her left. When she looked, though, nothing was there.

  Jenny’s skin prickled—and her lungs were aching fiercely. She had waited too long. Tucking the jar into her swim pocket, she hauled upward on the cable with her other hand, kicking hard with her finned feet.

  Halfway up, she sensed another streak of movement—a flash of light near her head. Bright, brief, and gone in a moment. Jenny strained to see, but again, there was nothing. Even the mackerel were gone.

  Seconds later, something cool brushed against the back of her neck.

  It felt like fingers, sliding into her hair to pinch the base of her skull. Jenny whirled around the rope, heart pounding, but she was alone. No signs of life, not even fish.

  Jenny kicked hard, using both hands to pull herself toward the surface. Her heartbeat refused to slow, eating up even more oxygen. By the time she shot out of the water, gasping, her vision was full of all kinds of dancing lights.