Out of Salem

by Hal Schrieve

  “Do they have you confused with Cassie?” Z asked. “Since she was a shapeshifter?” They looked back at the note. “A shapeshifter isn’t the same thing as a selkie, I thought.”

  Mrs. Dunnigan slowly shook her head. “They mean me,” she said.

  She lifted the thing in the box and brought it out completely, standing as she did so. What Z had thought was a coat fell the full length of Mrs. Dunnigan’s body to the ground. It was a skin—but a skin which had not been cut open. It was somehow folded, opened, without there being any kind of cut or seam. It took you a moment, but you could see it once you knew. There were the odd legs, the eyes, there the tail. A sealskin. The deep chill cutting through Z got worse and an enormous tension shot through their legs and gut.

  “Cassie told me she was keeping my skin someplace safe. She hid it so we could be together. I knew it was in the bookstore someplace, so I never went rummaging in boxes in case I found it by accident. I knew I would be able to find it again if I needed to go back to the water. This year I almost went looking for it when I was sick. I thought I might be dying. But I stopped myself, because you needed me.”

  Z stared at the old woman, bent low with the weight of the skin.

  “Oh,” they said finally.

  Mrs. Dunnigan took a few moments to gather herself, and then she closed her eyes and opened them again and looked at Z with those deep black pupils and lids red with crying. “They took it from the bookstore. They could have burned it. If they had burned it I would have died.”

  “Now you have it back,” Z said, worried. “They didn’t burn it. Can I see?”

  She lifted up the skin again and it flapped forward, toward Z, letting off a warm, musky, salty smell, mixed with the smell of the straw it had been packed in for who knows how many years. It hung there, dead and dire and unfathomable.

  “It’s beautiful,” Z said.

  “Do you understand?” Mrs. Dunnigan asked Z, leaning forward. “Look at it. This is the kind of skin that people in the North used to hunt. Look how thick it is, how smooth, how dark. There was such a huge trade in sealskin at the turn of the century.”

  “You’re a selkie,” Z said, framing it aloud and hearing their own voice crack. “A selkie, and this is your skin.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Dunnigan said, and two tears sped down her face simultaneously. She had embraced the withered leathery thing again. “Oh lord. My skin. My skin. They take it from you and you don’t know what it feels like to be without— My skin.”

  Z watched her, unmoving. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mrs. Dunnigan’s eyes met Z’s for only a moment. “You always have to be careful.”

  “I know.”

  “Z, darling, I love you,” Mrs. Dunnigan said suddenly, and lurched forward with the terrible black thing around her shoulders. She threw her arms around Z. “I love you so much.”

  It felt like a goodbye. Z did not want to go too long without saying what they were thinking, so they braced themselves and clenched their jaw tightly and burst forth with it. “If you’re a selkie, doesn’t that mean you have to go back to the ocean now that you have your skin?”

  Mrs. Dunnigan’s smile faded a little at that.

  “Doesn’t it?” Z asked again, looking with determination out the window. “That’s the rule, right? Selkies are brought from the ocean to live when a human takes their skin and hides it from them, and they return when they get it back. Ancient magic. So you getting your skin back, that means that you go back to the ocean.”

  “Yes, it does.” Mrs. Dunnigan paused, and there was a thing hanging in the air then that felt heavy and wet like a body underwater. “That’s why they gave it back to me instead of burning it or telling the police. So that I’d have to leave you alone.”

  “So now that they know where we live, and they know that you have to leave,” Z said, “they’ll come here . . .” They paused. “Who’s the ‘they’? The rioters?”

  “Probably,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “The man who stepped on your fingers, maybe.”

  “They’ll come here, then,” Z said.

  “I don’t know how soon,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She scowled. “We should put the box back where it was so it looks like we haven’t opened it. That’ll buy us time, unless they’re watching all hours of the day.”

  She busied herself for a few minutes closing the crate, and shutting the box over it. She told Z to go get tape and tape it closed again, and they did. They went inside. Then Mrs. Dunnigan started moving around the house as if she were shutting it up and preparing to go on a journey. But she packed no bags.

  Z stood in the kitchen and felt their muscles spasm and their knees shake.

  “You could stay just for a little,” Z said. “Throw them off.”

  “You can’t know the—the pain of this.” Mrs. Dunnigan was speaking through gritted teeth. “They’re bastards. I didn’t think they could do this. I didn’t tell Sal to move the box when I had time. Now I have to leave you here, and there’s no time.” Mrs. Dunnigan was pulling the curtains of the house closed. “There’s no time for anything I meant to do.”

  “Is the ocean thing forever? Can you go in and then come back out?”

  “That depends on a lot of things,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She turned away and Z saw her shoulders shaking. Z moved around the table and leaned against it, staring her in the face, trying to make eye contact.

  “What am I going to do?” Z asked. “Go with you and walk into the water?”

  Mrs. Dunnigan was quiet. She looked down at the floor and fumbled in her pocket for her keys. She found them and thumbed through them as if to make sure they were all there. Then she handed the ring to Z.

  “Stay here until you can’t. You have the checkbook. My savings aren’t much, but it is a little. My bank card is here in the drawer.”

  Z watched Mrs. Dunnigan point to the drawer. They froze up and felt the world narrow around them. They took the keys from Mrs. Dunnigan, but their hands were stiff and they dropped the keys on the floor. Z’s body was shaking. Mrs. Dunnigan finally looked at Z. She exhaled slowly.

  “If I resist and I have the skin with me I’ll get sicker. I’ll waste away. Not a matter of weeks but three or four days. I’m old. You must have heard me coughing in the morning. I couldn’t survive it. The doctor told me three months ago I didn’t have much longer and I didn’t believe him, but lately it’s been getting hard to ignore. The water is the only thing that will save me.”

  “You’re abandoning me,” Z said abruptly. “I can’t live alone, like this. I’m a kid. I’m just a kid. You said you would protect me.”

  “You will be taken care of. You have your friends. You’ll get out of this town. I’ll make sure you do. Once I’m in the water I’ll have more of my magic. I’ll do magic for you, for safety.”

  Z did not say anything. They looked at the blue teapot sitting on Mrs. Dunnigan’s table and felt like sweeping it off with their hand, but they just stood there leaning on the table, staring at the pattern on the ceramic.

  The light in the kitchen looked yellow against the blue daylight outside.

  Z made tea for her and fed the cats. After the box had been opened they had begun to behave strangely, pawing at the doors. Mrs. Dunnigan opened the door a little and three cats departed, rapidly, as if there were a stench behind them. Mrs. Dunnigan called her friend Sal, from the bookstore. Z wasn’t sure if it was the college student who helped her sometimes with stocking or the older man who worked on Saturdays. Z had been told and had forgotten the names of both. Mrs. Dunnigan spoke to Sal about the rain. Her voice was still shaky. Her narrow knees knocked and the black sealskin hung down her back as she stood there in the yellow kitchen. She curled the cord around her withered finger and said it would be nice to drive to the seaside today, wouldn’t it? Despite the rain? Can’t you humor an old woman? She could give Sal that month’s check in person, too.

  Sal agreed. Mrs. Dunnigan set the phone down and explained that she would be leaving i
n an hour. Z was glad that she did not try to look solemn for Z’s sake; the brightness in her eyes was unconcealed and one could feel a sweaty buzz coming off her. She wrapped the skin in newspaper and held it on her lap, sitting on the couch by the door looking out at the road, and Z helped her pack a picnic to take with her. Sandwiches and carrot sticks and apples. It was probably unsanitary for a dead child to make food, but Z wore rubber kitchen gloves. The car pulled up outside just before one in the afternoon and Mrs. Dunnigan got into it, and then it drove away. And so Z was alone with the cats, who were pawing at the door. Z opened the door and the rest of them ran outside. Z could see none of them lingering in the yard and became worried for a moment, but then put out a bowl of cat food and thought, They will come back if they want to.

  Aysel said over the phone that she had to go to a meeting across town for anarchist werewolves and she couldn’t get out of the house, and for some reason she thought Z would have some idea as to how to resolve the situation. Sitting next to the phone in Mrs. Dunnigan’s kitchen, Z tried to help.

  “Tell her you’re going to the store.”

  “She’s grounded me.”

  “Go to the bathroom and climb out the window and when you get back say you went to the store.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Z, please. Can you think of anything—is there anything with school we might be doing? That I could come over to your house for?”

  “I don’t know,” Z said. “I haven’t been doing that much homework.”

  “That’s it. You’re going to fail out of school and I have to help you study. There’s a paper tomorrow that you didn’t know about. I am trying to help you and you’re doing your best, but you’re too sick to get around. That’s why I went to the library yesterday!”

  “What are you talking about?” Z asked.

  “We’ll go through this together, buddy, don’t worry,” Aysel said loudly. Z sensed Azra was in the room. Then there was a click on the other end of the line and a long beep. Z slouched on the floor staring at the back of Mrs. Dunnigan’s olive-green couch. The fabric had long ago been clawed to shreds. Outside, they heard the bus screech to a halt at the stop, and then hiss and lurch away. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still dark.

  And Mrs. Dunnigan would not be home. By now, the water would have come up and closed over her head, by now she would be far out in the deep salty clean sea. Z prayed there were no oil slicks near the coast. Z thought of the miles of water, so cold, and dark, and the sky above the sea gray, and shivered.

  Aysel came over to get Z and they went on the bus and then walked, to a part of town Z did not know, and now Z sat on the stoop of the black house. In the yard there were a few tents set up covering the sparse yard and sidewalk, and someone had dragged a picket fence so it bordered the yard. The tents were empty; their occupants were inside with the other people who lived in the house. There was no more rain and the sky was drying out. Z was glad. They could feel it now when the rain fell on them. They were cold. They felt more cold lately, felt the absence of heat as a kind of ache, and even though that was probably better than being totally numb, or being in pain and falling apart, they didn’t like it. The rain made the cold worse, so now that it was dry—maybe it would get better. It would have been warmer inside, but Z did not want to go inside. From inside they heard the voices of the meeting, a low mumble through the glass. Z knew it was important. It had definitely sounded political. Z was glad Aysel was meeting people, but the noise and the buzz and the intense sound of all those unfamiliar rushing hearts was too much when they went in with Aysel and it only took about ten minutes before Z had said they were going outside, to smoke. Z hadn’t known why they had said that, but it seemed like a good cover story, and Aysel smoked now, apparently, and carried cigarettes around with her, so it was convenient to take one or two and just check out. The image of the waves coming up to Mrs. Dunnigan hit them again. All that cold water, the feeling of all that salt and seaweed, the joy in her eyes and the melting bones becoming one with the skin kept so long in a box. The bubbling breath of seals and the deep salt water after all those years of pretending.

  It must be perfect joy, Z thought. I am happy for her. She can find a group of seals and go up north to the San Juans and frolic, and avoid boats, and eat salmon. There must be a great mystical beauty in being out at sea and waking and swimming in the surging waves watching the dawn. Z thought of the empty house with the cats in it, and the rent. Mrs. Dunnigan had left without telling them how to pay rent. Z knew she had a pension check that came every month, but Z wouldn’t know what to do with it. She had said Z would be taken care of. By whom?

  But then there was the question, how long would Z be here to worry about it? The Anti-Monster league, or whatever they called themselves, could be watching the house.

  “Hey,” a voice said behind Z.

  Z turned around. It was a boy. They realized after a second that it was the boy they’d seen over a month ago when he asked for a cigarette and directions. Z realized that the girl who had been with him was Aysel’s Elaine. The boy smiled his weird smile and Z looked at his mustache as he lit his own cigarette.

  “I saw you before,” the boy said. “You said you didn’t have a cigarette then. Started smoking?”

  “Stuff happens,” Z said glumly.

  “Yeah,” the boy said. He was looking at the scars on Z’s forehead. “Did we exchange names? Someone said Aysel said your name was Z.”

  “It is,” Z said. “I mean, not legally, but that’s what I go by.”

  “I’m Chad,” the boy said. “Same deal. What I go by.”

  Something clicked in Z’s head. “I knew someone named Chad a while ago,” they said.

  “That’s funny, because I had an internet friend from this town named Z.” The boy smiled. “They were supposed to be older than you, though.”

  Z stared at him. “Wait,” they said. “Wait.”

  “Did you listen to the Team Dresch tapes?” Chad asked.

  “I did,” Z said. They felt a series of sparks around their heart suddenly sink into them in a way that was painful. They had a vivid memory of lying with their headphones on in their parents’ attic, clutching Chad’s letter. The cassettes had sounded like an echo of an echo of the music because they’d been recorded on a tape recorder from somebody else’s stereo. It had only been four months ago.

  “What did you think?” Chad said. “They’re a little corny, but I like what they’re trying to do.”

  Z tried to exhale and felt the smoke catch inside them. “They seemed really cool. But I had to leave my tape deck and stuff when I left my uncle’s.”

  “I thought you lived with your parents.”

  “They died,” Z said.

  “Shit,” Chad said.

  “Stuff happens,” Z said. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Yeah it is. Stuff happens and you get weird forever,” Chad said. Z felt him looking at the scars on their neck and wondered if he knew.

  “I was already weird.”

  Chad had finished his cigarette and stamped it out with his foot. “Look, Z. I’m glad you’re here. I know it’s weird to see each other in person and you maybe didn’t want that, but I want to be your friend or bro or whatever still. I’m no good at that stuff but I think you’re a cool kid still.”

  “Thanks,” Z said. It sounded dry but they were sort of dry-sobbing. They wanted to touch Chad, and couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

  “I think we all have to get out of town pretty soon. I don’t know when I’ll see you again, but I can write you.”

  “I’m probably not staying long either,” Z said.

  Chad looked at them seriously. “Is it that bad here for you?”

  “How bad is bad?” Z asked. “Nobody’s set me on fire yet.”

  “I guess that is the standard,” Chad said. “It’s hard to leave a place until it’s literally killed you. But then again, you d
on’t want to wait that long.” He spat on the deck. “You sound old. I forget teenagers aren’t dumb. I’m sorry if I ever treated you like you were dumb.”

  “Maybe we’ll leave at the same time,” Z said. “I can go with some of you guys.”

  “The cops are on us, probably,” Chad said. “We won’t all get busted, but werewolves right now aren’t great road buddies.”

  “I want to stay in touch. Whenever you’re online. I don’t know when I’ll be online all the time, but I’ll write back.”

  “I can definitely say yes to that,” Chad said.

  They hugged for a second. Z wasn’t sure who had moved first. It only lasted a second, and they didn’t make eye contact. Then Chad slapped Z on the back and went inside.

  Z stood up and, creaking, stretched. They walked into the weird narrow alley at the side of the house, where the mud was wet and thick, and balanced on a wooden beam that someone had thrown down, and took out one of the cigarettes Aysel had given them. They also took out the lighter with the little picture of Betty Boop on it. They wondered where Aysel had gotten the lighter. Their hands were able to bend. There was a collection of sighs that filled their lungs that seemed all at once to burst into the air.

  The sirens started a long way off and got closer over the course of minutes, and you didn’t notice that kind of thing right away; it was just a kind of echo, until it was right there on top of you. Z tuned out the sirens, because there had been so many lately. They thought about Chad. They focused on the cigarette, burning down at the low gray tips of their fingers. Then they looked up and there were policemen there, and four cars, with the lights flashing. Z dropped the cigarette into the mud. They looked up at the window. They could try to knock on it, to alert someone— but the door to one of the police cars was opening, and Z was pressing their body into the side of the house instead. And really it was times like that when you felt like a huge coward. Wasn’t it? Z held themselves as still as they could. The police did not see them. They could hear everything, though.