Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Tucholke, April Genevieve

  Sunshine groaned. “Right. I’m a girl, so I’m too scared to go in the tunnel. Screw you, Luke.”

  “They say a lunatic lives in there,” I said, turning to River. I put my hands on my hips and swayed them a little so Freddie’s yellow skirt would move against my legs in an engaging sort of way. Then I realized it was something Sunshine would do, and stopped.

  “Go on,” River said, and he was smiling and his brown eyes were amused and cool, but also kind of dancing and eager.

  “The story’s been going around since we were kids, maybe longer,” I said. “There was a man named Blue Hoffman, who went to war and killed people. It made him crazy. He came home, and then kids starting disappearing. The cops finally went looking for Blue, but by that time he’d disappeared too. They never found the missing kids. They say Blue lives deep in the tunnel and keeps the missing kids as slaves, and they never see the sun, and they run around like bats in the dark, and they’ve gone practically blind, and they live on raw rat meat, and they’re all mad as the Devil.”

  Luke shook his head. “I can’t believe you remember all that, Violet. I stopped believing that story in kindergarten.”

  I shrugged, and refused to feel stupid. “It’s Echo’s own personal urban legend. It’s not about whether or not you believe it. You just have to keep the story going.”

  Despite what Luke said about not believing, I knew the tunnel scared him. It was so dark inside that a flashlight barely dented the blackness. And the thought of some poor missing kid with clammy white skin and half-blind milky eyes following you as you stumbled around, waiting for the right moment to drag a moist finger down your face before sinking two sharp bat-like teeth into your neck . . . well, it was enough to keep everyone, even my brother, out.

  Sunshine, Luke, and I had spent five summers together, counting this one, and we’d walked past the tunnel hundreds of times on our way into town, but not once had any of us gone in more than a few dozen feet. Not even that time last year when Sunshine dared me to go to the end, and then threatened to make out with Luke in front of me if I didn’t. They had kissed, a long, loud kiss, and still I didn’t go in, though I was squirming.

  The thing is, they both knew I was as un-touched and un-kissed as a nun, and they both figured that I probably preferred not to be. Besides, their kissing made things two against one all of a sudden, instead of all for one and one for all.

  But anyway, now River was watching and Luke was looking to impress and the tunnel was sitting right there.

  River shot an arm out and wrapped it around Sunshine. “How about me and Sunshine go check it out, while you two twins stay here and hold down the fort. What do you say, Sunshine? Should we try to find this rat-eating lunatic?”

  Sunshine grinned, and Luke looked pissed. I wasn’t happy, either. River led Sunshine to the mouth of the tunnel. They took one step in, and another, and then disappeared into the damn murk.

  Luke stomped around, his light skin turning pink in the heat, and his red-brown hair looking redder in the sun, like our dad’s. Finally he just lay down on the ground and looked up at the sky.

  I plopped down on the ground too, on a little bit of grass off the path, near the tunnel. I slipped off my flip-flops and wondered what the hell River meant by taking Sunshine into the tunnel. Alone.

  Luke turned and blinked pissed-off hazel eyes at me. At my clothes. “I see you’re wearing Freddie’s skirt. Why do you do that? It’s weird, sister. It’s so damn weird. That thing looks a hundred years old. It makes you look crazy.”

  I smoothed out the yellow skirt, my thumbs running over the soft pleats, and didn’t answer him. I had started wearing Freddie’s clothes earlier that year, just some of her old skirts and dresses from when she was young. I’d finally grown up enough to fit into them properly. It wasn’t that odd.

  Besides, it was summer again, and summer was the season when the missing-Freddie feeling was the sharpest, and the deepest. And if I wanted to wear her old dresses, then I would.

  Why is my brother like this, Freddie? Why can’t he just be nice to me once in a while?

  Maybe he is. Freddie’s husky voice flooded my brain. Maybe you’re just too damn busy disliking him to see it.

  I looked at Luke. “You know, there are some of Grandpa’s suits hanging in one of the closets on the second floor. You could try on his vests, or maybe wear one of his ties, or his hats. It’s kind of . . . nice, wearing old, lived-in clothes. Who cares if it makes you look crazy? Everyone already thinks we’re crazy because Mom and Dad are missing and our house is so big and we have wealthy, illustrious ancestors.”

  Luke looked at me for a second. Then he shook his head. “No wonder you don’t have any friends, Vi. Do you really think for one second I’m going to walk around town with you, wearing the clothes of our dead ‘illustrious ancestors’?”

  I sighed.

  A few more minutes passed. I began to wonder if River was kissing Sunshine in the sunless tunnel, and if she was trying to steal his wallet.

  I felt kind of sad.

  Then I heard the scream.

  I snapped my head toward the tunnel entrance. Sunshine stood there, at the edge of the sunlight’s reach, face tilted back. She was screaming. She screamed and screamed while I jumped to my feet and ran. I reached her as she hit the ground, skirt up to her waist and sheer black underwear shining against her white thighs. I was right there next to her. I should have knelt beside her, moved her skirt back down, and tried to wake her up. But I didn’t. I was afraid that if I touched her, I would faint too, and my own skirt would fly up as I slid to the ground.

  River came out into the light. He and Luke dropped to their knees beside Sunshine, and whispered things to her, and tried to wake her up. But I did nothing, absolutely nothing. Finally, River slipped his hands underneath her and lifted her to his chest. He carried Sunshine away from the tunnel, back to the patch of grass. I followed, my arms hanging at my sides. River set Sunshine down and she opened her eyes.

  “I saw him, Violet,” she said, looking straight at me, brown sleepy eyes haunted and scared as hell. “I saw Blue.”

  CHAPTER 5

  WE DIDN’T GO to the grocery store.

  Sunshine said she wanted to go home, so I took her. The boys went back to the guesthouse. Luke thought we should call the cops, but I told him to leave things be until I could talk to Sunshine. Luke never took orders from me. But he shut his mouth this time and did as I said.

  Sunshine lay down on the couch, drank some iced tea, and wouldn’t talk to me, not for a long time. I watched a streak of sunlight move across the floor, and waited.

  Sunshine’s house was small, especially compared to mine. The Citizen was a rambling labyrinth of turns and twists and stairways and spare bedrooms and floor-length windows and rotted-out balconies and forgotten closets and cellars inside cellars. But Sunshine’s cabin was cozy and comprehensible and cluttered, with every corner lived in and covered with books. I loved it.

  Two glasses of tea later, and Sunshine finally looked at me. “He’s in there, Violet.”

  “Blue?”

  “Yeah.” She paused. “It’s funny, River and I didn’t even walk that far into the tunnel before we saw him. River had a lighter, one of those old refillable gold ones—do you know what I’m talking about?”

  I nodded. The ones that look like they fell out of Jack Kerouac’s pocket. We had a few of them lying around the Citizen.

  Sunshine swiped the condensation off her glass with one hand and then held it to her forehead. She was pale. “River held up the old lighter, so we could see, but it was still dark. Really, really dark. All I could hear was our feet echoing on the stone. The air kept getting colder and danker, and I thought River was going to stop and kiss me. I was giggling and swinging my hair, and he had his hand on my arm. Finally, he stopped walking, and tugged on my elbow to turn me around. I licked my lips,
because I thought I knew what was coming.”

  Sunshine shivered. She was sitting in the direct sunlight, and it was warm, almost hot, but she shivered.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

  I slipped my hand into my tea and grabbed an ice cube. I knelt beside her and put it to her forehead. “Here, Sunshine. You’re all right. Tell me what you saw, when River turned you around.”

  Sunshine blinked. The melted ice ran down her temples and made a wet stain on the couch. “I turned, and I saw a man, crouched near to the ground. I saw him, clear as day. His eyes were huge and milky blue. He smiled at me with these little sharp teeth, and they looked fuzzy, somehow, as if he had been eating fur.” Sunshine’s voice came faster and faster. She sat up, and gripped her knees under her chin. “I was screaming by this time. I was already screaming, when I saw it. Violet, there was a small boy, or maybe a girl, lying by Blue’s feet. It had horrid white skin. And long, pointed ears. And the same fuzzy teeth. And every time I think of that thing, that white furry-teethed kid-thing, I—”

  Sunshine put a hand to her mouth. She jumped to her feet and ran to the bathroom.

  I called the library and told her parents to come home.

  Cassandra and Sam were nothing like their daughter. They were skinny. Skinny like gangly teenage boys, not skinny like older people who exercised a lot or starved themselves. Cassie put her hair back in a bun, like a ballet teacher. She wore thick round glasses like Aldous Huxley, and liked wearing gray things with white scarves. She had faint lines around her mouth, and raised blue veins crisscrossing her hands. Sunshine’s father, Sam, had a scruffy beard and mostly wore corduroy. His eyes were sleepy like Sunshine’s.

  They closed the library early and came right home. I told them what happened; Sunshine was still in the bathroom. I checked up on her once, but she was lying with her cheek on the cold white tiles of the floor, her hair spread out around her like a soft brown shawl. She told me that if she moved, she would throw up again, so I left her there.

  After I told them about the tunnel, and Blue, and Sunshine, Cassie started to make tea and Sam stared off into space for a moment, looking puzzled and a little bit lost. It was a look he wore well.

  “You do know, Violet, that the story isn’t true,” he said at last. “Blue was just a sad, confused man, and the children he was supposed to have kidnapped walked back into town a week later. Turns out they read Tom Sawyer in school and got inspired.” Sam’s fingers fiddled with the bridge of his nose. He didn’t wear glasses, but I got the impression that he wished he did. “They ran off into the woods,” he continued, “and lived off berries and peanut butter sandwiches. Eight days later they showed up, hungry and dirty and surprised at the fuss. Blue disappeared all right, but into a mental institution up north. This happened thirty-odd years ago, when I was a teenager. I can’t believe that story is still going around.”

  I nodded. And then shook my head. “But Sunshine’s not lying. She saw something. She was screaming and screaming. It was . . . it was terrifying.”

  “Did this other boy see anything?” Cassie turned and handed me a cucumber sandwich. It was wafer thin, with the crusts cut off. She grew up in England and thought cucumber sandwiches and tea solved problems. Which they sort of did, sometimes.

  Cassie took a sandwich for herself and began to nibble at it, her skinny elbow jutting out in the air.

  “Yes,” Sam added. His thin face looked even thinner when his eyebrows were raised. “This new boy who is staying in your cottage. Did he see a man in the tunnel?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. I had forgotten to ask. In all the excitement of Sunshine’s fainting, I had flat out forgotten to ask River if he saw Blue. I looked at the small triangular cucumber sandwich between my fingers. The nightmare of the tunnel was wearing off, quickly, as nightmares do, and Sunshine’s story was sounding more and more outrageous.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll go ask him.”

  The bathroom door opened. Sunshine stepped into the kitchen, pale and sweaty, her hair tangled. Her brown eyes didn’t have their usual sleepy, semi-bored look. Instead they were frustrated. Violent. Two emotions I’d never met before in Sunshine. She was not the kind of girl who got . . . passionate. Not in that way.

  Sam went over to his daughter and gave her a hug. “I always said that you were harboring a brilliant imagination, Sunshine. It had a funny way of rearing its head, but I knew it would come out sooner or later.” Sam gave a low sort of chuckle. “Violet talked about the Blue legend, and then you went in the tunnel, and that’s who you saw. But Sunshine, that story isn’t true. You know it isn’t true, don’t you?”

  Sunshine said nothing.

  “It’s okay, Sunny.” Cassie wrapped a long, thin arm around her daughter’s waist, hugged her tight, and smiled. Unlike her body, Cassandra’s lips were full and pouted, like a cute little kid’s. Like Sunshine’s. “We all see things sometimes. When I was your age, I was so in love with Wuthering Heights that I convinced myself Heathcliff really existed. I still lived in Cambridge then. I took a bus up to Yorkshire and set out to find him. I walked for twenty miles across the moors, following what I thought was Heathcliff’s shadow, stretching across the heather, calling me to him. I ended up in a pub, hours later, tired, cold, and embarrassed.”

  Sunshine caught my eye over her mother’s shoulder. She was still angry. Really angry. And it unsettled me.

  “I’m going to go talk to River,” I said.

  CHAPTER 6

  I KNOCKED ON the guesthouse door. Luke answered. He scowled when he saw me, but stepped back so I could come in. The scent of coffee hit me, and it smelled like caramel and chocolate and black soil and time to wake up in the morning. A large moka pot was steaming on the stove. My parents had Italian artist friends, and a moka pot was what they used for espresso. It looked like a stout woman in a silver dress with her hand on her hip, and I was mildly surprised that River knew how to use it.

  “I borrowed some coffee from the Citizen,” River said.

  I pictured River going through my kitchen cupboards, uninvited, looking for coffee . . . and found I didn’t mind. Liked it even. “How did you know what the moka pot was?” I asked. “Have you been to Italy?”

  River smiled. “I spent a few years in Naples as a kid, living in a tiny flat on a busy street with an aunt.”

  “Italy? Really?” I’d always wanted to visit Italy. “Say something in Italian.”

  “Io non parlo italiano.” He winked at me. “It means I don’t speak Italian.”

  “Yeah, I kind of guessed. But you’re lying. If you lived there for a few years, you’d have to speak it pretty well. Say something else.”

  He didn’t. “So how’s Sunshine? She all right?”

  “Not really.” I wanted to ask River more about Italy. But he was staring at me, half smiling, his eyes twinkling, almost as if he wanted me to ask him another question, so he could dance around it again.

  I fidgeted for a second under his gaze. “River, did you see a man, in the tunnel? Sunshine said she saw Blue, and a little kid. Did you see them too?”

  River took three espresso cups from the cupboard, dusted the insides with the lamb towel, and filled them with creamy brown espresso. He handed one to Luke, and me, and then sipped at his own.

  “No,” he said at last. “I didn’t see anything. We were in the tunnel, walking in the dark, and then Sunshine started screaming. She ran out and I followed her.” He paused. “So she thinks she saw Blue, huh? She must have one hell of an imagination.”

  “But that’s just it.” I took a sip of my coffee. It was smooth, and hot, and very good. “Sunshine doesn’t have an imagination. Well, not that great of one, anyway. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, or monsters, or fairies. She doesn’t even read. She believes in realistic horrors, like global warming and serial killers, but not urban legends and men wit
h furry teeth.”

  “Furry teeth?” Luke asked. “What the hell?”

  “That’s what she said. The man she saw had furry teeth, like from eating furry animals. Sunshine couldn’t make that kind of detail up. So I know she saw someone in that tunnel. And we need to go back in and check it out ourselves. If there is some crazy guy in there, we need to find him, and tell somebody.”

  River turned and poured himself another espresso. But before he turned, I caught a smile. It was fast, so fast I almost thought I didn’t see it—like maybe I blinked, and saw it in my mind. I held out my cup for more coffee.

  “Oh, Violet.” Luke ran his hand over his chin, which still didn’t sprout much of a beard. I guess he thought it made him seem wise. It didn’t. “River already said he didn’t see anything. It would be a waste of time to go back to the tunnel. Sunshine’s just being a girl. She heard your story about Blue and got hysterical.”

  “You didn’t think that two hours ago. Two hours ago you wanted to call the police.”

  Luke ignored me. He put down his cup, reached his hands toward the ceiling, and stretched. The thick tendons in his arms looked swollen and stiff and stupid. Whereas River, standing next to him, was all straight, lean lines. Luke’s shirt was two sizes too tight and his jeans two sizes too big, while River’s clothes hung perfectly on both halves of his body, as if they’d been made just for him. Which maybe they had.

  “Man, my muscles are sore,” Luke said, stroking his pecs with both hands, as if to prove my point. “I did some really hard lifting this morning.”

  “You know what, Luke?” I said. “Your muscles are boring. And don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. If you want to distract me, I suggest you talk about something other than weight-lifting.”

  Luke grinned, happy he’d managed to annoy me. “Maddy doesn’t think my muscles are boring. Maddy doesn’t think my muscles are boring at all. Speaking of Maddy, her shift is over in half an hour, and if me and my muscles aren’t there waiting for her, like a big-eyed puppy, I won’t be getting to second base. River, it’s been great. Glad to have you on board the Citizen. Are you going to the movie tonight?”