Chet polished off a rib and wiped his hands on a paper towel and got up, retrieving the radio from the side shelf of the grill.
I bit into a rib. The meat was succulent; tender and juicy. Perfectly done. And the barbecue sauce was fantastic.
“This is delicious,” I said after I’d swallowed.
Loni smiled. I could see why Chet was getting fat.
Chet fiddled with the radio and finally got a clear reception.
“... Bill Edwards, who escaped from the Cross City Correctional Institution in Dixie County early yesterday morning...”
“What’s that?” said Loni, studying the radio nervously.
“... is forty-three years old, six feet, two inches tall, one hundred and ninety five pounds, with shoulder-length sandy blond hair and brown eyes...”
“Someone escaped from prison,” said Chet, listening with interest.
“... should be considered armed and dangerous. If you have any information concerning his whereabouts, you should immediately call your local authorities. Coming up next, sports.”
“That’s only an hour and a half from here,” said Loni.
“They’ll catch him,” said Chet, digging into another rib. “He probably isn’t coming this way anyway. Nothing here but fishing boats.”
“Exactly,” said Loni. “He could steal one and sail to Mexico.”
“Good riddance,” said Chet, tearing off another hunk of meat.
“And poor Kate’s out there all alone,” said Loni, turning to me. “Why don’t you stay here with us?” she said. “At least until they catch him. The couch is a pull-out.”
“I’ll be fine, really,” I said, reassuring her. “Chet’s dad left his rifle at the cabin. Which reminds me,” I said, turning to Chet. “I was going to ask if you thought he’s mind if I kept it for a bit. In case I run into that alligator.”
“Alligator!” said Loni, becoming even more alarmed.
“Don’t you mean the Fish-Man?” said Chet, trying to pick meat off an already immaculately clean bone.
I kicked him under the table.
“Fish-Man?!” said Loni, by this point thoroughly perplexed. “What are you talking about? Did you see him, too?” She grabbed my arm. “There’ve been a lot of sightings lately.”
Chet groaned, rolling his eyes. Seeing his father’s look of disapproval, Josh followed suit.
“What? You’re the one who brought it up,” Loni snapped.
“No, I haven’t seen it,” I said. “Chet’s just teasing me. There’s no such thing as a Fish-Man.”
“Oh,” Loni looked somewhat relieved. “I suppose you would know. Not that I believed it, of course. But so many people are talking about it. Well ... it makes you wonder, that’s all.”
“The Fish-Man’s a myth,” said Josh authoritatively. “Like the Wolfman.”
“That’s right,” said Chet approvingly, tousling his son’s hair.
“And mermaids,” Josh added, turning vindictively to his sister.
“Mermaids are real!” Allie shouted, bursting from her seat.
Chet put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back down.
“Yes, Allie, mermaids are real,” he said, sighing and shaking his head. “Don’t listen to your brother.” Chet turned to look at me. “Are you sure you still want kids, Kate?”
I smiled, but held my tongue.
More than ever.
Chapter Ten
“We should probably get you home,” said Chet. “Looks like there’s going to be a storm.”
The sky had turned a sickly shade of green-blue, and thick, low clouds were rolling in off the coast. It had started to spit, and the wind had returned, blowing my hair in my face. Josh and Allie were running around the lawn chasing down paper plates and napkins that had blown off the table.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” said Loni, trying to cover the salad bowl with the plastic wrap, which was getting tangled up by the wind. “Allie can sleep in Josh’s room if you don’t want to sleep on the couch.”
“No, thank you. I really should get back. I saw the fish you painted, by the way. They’re beautiful. Chet never told me you were an artist.”
Loni blushed. “It’s just a hobby,” she said, stacking everything on a tray to take back inside.
“And the ribs were amazing,” I added. “Though Chet did tell me you were a good cook.”
“At least he has his priorities straight,” said Loni.
I chuckled and she smiled at me conspiratorially. She seemed to be warming to me. I’d already decided that I liked Loni very much. I hadn’t realized that I’d been interviewing her to see if she was good enough for my best friend, just as much as she’d been interviewing me. Between her unassuming soccer mom demeanor and the obvious care and interest she devoted to her family, she’d earned my seal of approval. I could see why Chet liked her, and I was happy for both of them.
But being happy for them just reminded me of my own dismal love life. The more I thought about my relationship with Henry, and compared him to Chet, the more I realized how much of a jerk Henry had been. He’d always been short-tempered, arrogant, and self-centered. I’d taken it as an unfortunate trade-off for his superior intelligence and status in the scientific community (he was arguably the most important marine geologist in the world, after all) but when it came right down to it, he was just a narcissistic son of a bitch. He hadn’t even shown remorse when I’d confronted him about his affair. He’d made up some absurd excuse about the psychotropic effects of some new species of starfish he’d discovered when he’d been conducting deep sea research off the coast of Japan. Then, when I called him on his bullshit, he tried to turn it around on me, as if it had been my fault that he’d slept with that tramp, Margery Tarsk, the big-titted, blonde cetologist all my colleagues referred to jokingly as “Dolphin Girl”. As if my constant nagging about starting a family had driven him into the arms of another woman. The only things driving him were the contents of his underpants and the “research photos” Tarsk constantly posted of herself in skimpy bikinis. Studying dolphins, my ass. Collecting Instagram followers was more like it. I hoped that bitch took him for everything he was worth. I didn’t want to admit to myself what I hoped happened to her, though defective shark cages sometimes sprang to mind.
“You still in there?”
I looked up. Chet was waving his hand in front of my eyes and snapping his fingers.
“Yes, sorry,” I said, embarrassed.
“You kind of drifted away on us,” he said, grinning.
“Just thinking,” I said.
The table was already cleared and Loni was rounding up the kids to scoot them inside. I tried to take another sip of my beer but the cup was empty.
“You always were a big thinker,” said Chet. “I always admired that about you. I knew you were going to be an important scientist someday, even before you did.”
I smiled. Somehow, Chet’s unwavering faith in me made me feel better about it all. Chet always knew how to bring me back from the edge. He could make me feel good without even trying.
“I always knew you’d be married with a houseful of screaming children,” I said, teasing him.
Chet guffawed. “I guess sometimes other people do see us better than we see ourselves. Come on. It’s getting scary out. I want to get you home before the roads get bad.”
He pushed himself up from the table with a satisfied sigh, letting out a huge belch.
“Chet! Really?!” said Loni, standing in the patio doorway. She shook her head with disapproval.
“Nothing she hasn’t heard before,” Chet said, grinning and rubbing his belly.
“It’s true. Unfortunately,” I said, turning to Loni as I got up from the table.
“It was a pleasure to see you,” said Loni, reaching out and embracing me.
I hugged her back, feeling a pang of envy at her soft, swollen belly.
“It was great to finally meet you,” I said back.
“
Come visit anytime. Come tomorrow if you want to.”
“Maybe I will,” I said.
I waved to Josh and Allie, who were watching through the patio doors, and followed Chet back to his van. The wind had picked up quite a bit, and the clouds looked even heavier and more ominous than they had five minutes earlier. By the time we made it back to Ollie’s Oyster Shack, the rain had started in earnest.
“Going to be a bad one,” said Chet, cranking up his wipers. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine, Chet. A little wind and rain doesn’t bother me. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life on the ocean, remember?”
“Fair enough. Do you have a flashlight if the power goes out.”
“And my phone. And candles. Honestly, Chet, I’m not an invalid. I’m going to be okay.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to nag.”
“You’re just turning into a parent, that’s all,” I said.
Chet laughed. “I think you might be right. I’m turning into my old man. At the risk of sounding like him, if you need anything, just call.”
“I will.”
We rode in silence for a minute. The tops of the trees were bending like grass, and leaves were blowing across the road.
“So how’s the summer project going?” said Chet, turning on the stereo. Two men were talking about fly fishing. It sounded like a local channel.
“I haven’t started yet. Just planning, so far. But I’m going to get started tomorrow if the weather clears up.”
“Well, keep an eye out for gators,” he said. “And this time I’m not joking.”
“I brought my speargun,” I said. “Between that and the rifle I think I’m all set.”
“You’re a regular Lara Croft, aren’t you?” he said, grinning.
“Pretty much.”
The rest of the drive was uneventful, in spite of the rain. There was hardly any traffic at all. Chet pulled the van into my lane and I got out, wishing him a safe drive home before slamming the door.
I ran to the porch, clomped up the steps, and then came to an abrupt halt, looking behind me.
Are those more footprints?!
I looked down at the mud at the bottom of the stairs, astonished. There were faint indentations filled with water, little puddles that looked vaguely like large, webbed feet. I looked up at the van, but it was already disappearing down the lane. I went back down the steps and crouched down to take a better look. On closer inspection I realized that it was just too hard to tell. The dents, whatever they were, had already been eroded by the water.
You’re imagining things, you idiot. Your mind’s playing tricks on you.
I ran back up the steps, dripping wet, and fished the keys from my purse in the shelter of the porch. I was already planning my evening. Coffee and research.
I’m a cheap date.
I unlocked the door and hurried inside, feeling a thrill of nervous excitement. I had that feeling again, as if someone were watching me. I shut the door and locked it, my heart racing.
Silly. Scaredy-cat.
I set up the coffee and changed into dry clothes, drying my hair with a towel as I perused my father’s bookcase. Tucked away in a row of adventure novels were some slim paperbacks with grisly, lurid covers. H.P. Lovecraft. I suddenly recalled that my father had forbidden them to me when I was a child. He’d said they’d give me nightmares.
I flipped through one of them, suddenly intrigued. One of the stories was called The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
What was so awful about these stories that he didn’t want me to read them? I wondered. They just looked like regular ghost stories to me.
I took the book over to the couch and sat down, putting my feet up on the coffee table beside the stack of science textbooks. There was a rumble of thunder.
Maybe I should get the candles ready, I thought. Just in case.
I got back up and dug through the drawer in the kitchen and pulled out some old, sticky candles. I found some saucers in the cupboard and a lighter and melted the bottom of the candles until there was enough soft wax to make the candles stand upright on the plates. I left one of the mounted candles on the kitchen island, and placed another in the bedroom on top of the dresser and a third in the bathroom. I took the last one into the living room with me with the lighter, feeling much less anxious about the prospect of losing my power. I didn’t really need electricity for much but the fridge, the fans, and the lights. I didn’t have any cable or even an Internet connection. My living conditions were positively rustic.
Barbaric, Henry’s friend Amir would have called them.
Taking my freshly perked coffee over to the coffee table, I sat back down on the couch and picked up the book.
I was soon thoroughly engrossed, hanging on every word. Worse, I was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. It wasn’t just the rain, which was pounding the roof of the cabin like a herd of angry antelopes, or the wind, which was whistling through the cracks in the walls like a tribe of angry ancestor spirits; it wasn’t even the thunder that was shaking the foundations of the cabin like an army of tribal drummers, or the lightning that periodically slashed across the sky like the spear of an angry god. It was the story itself, the creeping, haunting premonition that I really had stumbled on some terrible, monstrous, unfathomable secret. The description of the Deep Ones, the hidden inhabitants of the town of Innsmouth, in particular, was deeply unsettling:
I think their predominant color was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four...
There was a crack of thunder. My hand jerked and the book slipped from my fingers, tumbling to the floor. Then the power went out, plunging me into darkness.
This is not happening, I thought, completely panic-stricken. This is not fucking happening.
I groped for my lighter in the dark and accidentally knocked it off the table. I heard it clatter on the floor and roll away. Cursing, I got up and tripped over a stack of books. I fell and hit my elbow on the ottoman, banging my knee on the floor. Growling, I kicked the books aside and crawled around on the floor, sweeping my hands left and right until I found the lighter. I heard a creaking sound and froze, still on my hands and knees. Was that the sound of something large and heavy ascending the porch steps? All the hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up. I listened intently, hardly daring to breathe, but the sound did not repeat itself; or, at least, could not be heard over the wind and the rain. I scurried back to the coffee table, found the candle, and lit it.
Something banged on the window behind me.
I spun with a start, gasping, almost dropping the saucer and candle. Something was pressed up against the glass.
My heart was pounding painfully in my chest, a sick knot of fear tightening in my belly. I stared at the window, but couldn’t make out what was on the other side. It was just a dark, wet shape.
Timidly, every nerve on edge, I cautiously approached the window, holding the candle out at arm’s length in front of me.
I sighed with relief. Just a palm leaf.
It must have blown off a tree and plastered itself against the wet glass. The wind must have been getting worse.
I scowled at the book where it had fallen on the floor.
Now you know why dad didn’t want you to read them, I scolded myself. No more scary stories for you tonight.
I restacked the pile of textbooks and carried them into my room, placing them on the bed. Then I went back into the kitchen and made up a big plate of crackers and cheese and grapes to snack on and took them, along with a bottle of wine and a glass, into the bedroom. I grabbed Dan’s rifle from the hall closet and brought it with me as
well, locking the door behind me. I laid the rifle on the bed beside the books and the plate of snacks.
Aren’t you being just a little bit paranoid, Kate? I thought with chagrin.
The sound of the mysterious aquatic creature banging against the dock drum echoed in my memory.
Nope. Not paranoid at all. Just being cautious. ‘Respect nature, because it sure as hell doesn’t respect you.’ That’s what dad always said, and he was usually right.
This all fell under the category of ‘better safe than sorry’ in my book.
I poured myself a big glass of wine and popped a grape in my mouth. I felt safer already. I tried not to think about the patch of crushed grass right outside my bedroom window.
I sat down on the bed and cracked open the book on coastal habitats. Two hours later, the storm had reduced somewhat in intensity, I’d finished off all of my snacks and half the bottle of wine, and I felt tired enough to call it a night.
I got undressed to my tank and undies, blew out the candle, and crawled into bed.
Then I remembered I still hadn’t washed the sheets.
Chapter Eleven
Thunk.
I jerked up with a gasp, roused from a deep, fitful sleep. My heart was racing in my chest, like I’d been running for my life. Had I heard that sound — the sound of something heavy striking hollow wood — or only dreamed it? I snatched up the rifle, clutching it close to my chest.
There’s something here.
I stared wide-eyed at the darkness. The room was sunk in an ominous gloom. A flash of lightning suddenly glowed through the shutters and there was a harsh crash of thunder. Rain pelted the roof of the cabin, like millions of tiny fish butting their heads on the drums of the floating dock. I strained my ears, trying to hear over the wind and rain, but there was nothing.
Gradually, I relaxed.
I sat cross-legged, laying the rife across my lap, too nerve-wracked to lie down.
It’s just a storm, I thought. Nothing to be afraid of.
Liar.
There was a rhythmic tapping sound right outside my window.
Tamed by the Creature from the Lagoon Page 8
