The Weird

by Ann

  He stood then, gasping, the rain savage and cold on his face, his undershirt soaked, and he stood that way, clutching the window sill, until he was sure he would not faint.

  Returning to bed, he found his wife still sleeping soundly and he knew, immediately, that he would say nothing in the morning, that the sense of suffocation, of fear, would seem unreal, its source irrational. Already the moment of panic was losing its reality, fading into the realm of nightmare.

  The next day the rain stopped again and this time the sun was not routed. The police arrived on the third day of clear weather.

  Mrs. Hume had opened the door, and she shouted up to her husband, who stood on the landing. ‘It’s about Mr. Franklin.’

  Mrs. Franklin came out of her room then, and George Hume thought he saw the child behind her, through the open door. The girl, Melissa, was lying on the bed behind her mother and just for a moment it seemed that there was a spreading shadow under her, as though the bedclothes were soaked with dark water. Then the door closed as Mrs. Franklin came into the hall and George identified the expression he had last seen in her eyes for it was there again: fear, a racing engine of fear, gears stripped, the accelerator flat to the floor.

  And Mrs. Franklin screamed, screamed and came falling to her knees and screamed again, prescient in her grief, and collapsed as George rushed toward her and two police officers and a paramedic, a woman, came bounding up the stairs.

  Mr. Franklin had drowned. A fisherman had discovered the body. Mr. Franklin had been fully dressed, lying on his back with his eyes open. His wallet – and seven hundred dollars in cash and a host of credit cards – was still in his back pocket, and a business card identified him as vice president of marketing for a software firm in Fairfax, Virginia. The police had telephoned Franklin’s firm in Virginia and so learned that he was on vacation. The secretary had the hotel’s number.

  After the ambulance left with Mrs. Franklin, they sat in silence until the police officer cleared his throat and said, ‘She seemed to be expecting something like this.’

  The words dropped into a silence.

  Nancy and Steve and Mrs. Hume were seated on one of the lobby’s sofas. George Hume came out of the office in the wake of the other policeman who paused at the door and spoke. ‘We’d appreciate it if you could come down and identify the body. Just a formality, but it’s not a job for his wife, not in the state she’s in.’ He coughed, shook his head. ‘Or the state he’s in, for that matter. Body got tore up some in the water, and, well, I still find it hard to believe that he was alive just yesterday. I would have guessed he’d been in the water two weeks minimum – the deterioration, you know.’

  George Hume shook his head as though he did know and agreed to accompany the officer back into town.

  George took a long look, longer than he wanted to, but the body wouldn’t let him go, made mute, undeniable demands.

  Yes, this was Mr. Greg Franklin. Yes, this would make eight years that he and his wife and his child had come to the hotel. No, no nothing out of the ordinary

  George interrupted himself. ‘The tattoos…’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t know about the tattoos, I take it?’ the officer said.

  George shook his head. ‘No.’ The etched blue lines that laced the dead man’s arms and chest were somehow more frightening than the damage the sea had done. Frightening because…because the reserved Mr. Franklin, businessman and stolid husband, did not look like someone who would illuminate his flesh with arcane symbols, pentagrams and ornate fish, their scales numbered according to some runic logic, and spidery, incomprehensible glyphs.

  ‘Guess Franklin wasn’t inclined to wear a bathing suit.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, we are interested in those tattoos. I guess his wife knew about them. Hell, maybe she has some of her own.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Not yet. Called the hospital. They say she’s sleeping. It can wait till morning.’

  An officer drove George back to the hotel, and his wife greeted him at the door.

  ‘She’s sleeping,’ Mrs. Hume said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Melissa.’

  For a moment, George drew a blank, and then he nodded. ‘What are we going to do with her?’

  ‘Why, keep her,’ his wife said. ‘Until her mother is out of the hospital.’

  ‘Maybe there are relatives,’ George said, but he knew, saying it, that the Franklins were self-contained, a single unit, a closed universe.

  His wife confirmed this. No one could be located, in any event.

  ‘Melissa may not be aware that her father is dead,’ Mrs. Hume said. ‘The child is, I believe, a stranger girl than we ever realized. Here we were thinking she was just a quiet thing, well behaved. I think there is something wrong with her mind. I can’t seem to talk to her, and what she says makes no sense. I’ve called Dr. Gowers, and he has agreed to see her. You remember Dr. Gowers, don’t you? We sent Nancy to him when she was going through that bad time at thirteen.’

  George remembered child psychiatrist Gowers as a bearded man with a swollen nose and thousands of small wrinkles around his eyes. He had seemed a very kind but somehow sad man, a little like Santa Claus if Santa Claus had suffered some disillusioning experience, an unpleasant divorce or other personal setback, perhaps.

  Nancy came into the room as her mother finished speaking. ‘Steve and I can take Melissa,’ Nancy said.

  ‘Well, that’s very good of you, dear,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve already made an appointment for tomorrow morning at ten. I’m sure Dr. Gowers will be delighted to see you again.’

  ‘I’ll go too,’ George said. He couldn’t explain it but he was suddenly afraid.

  The next morning when George came down to breakfast, Melissa was already seated at the table and Nancy was combing the child’s hair.

  ‘She isn’t going to church,’ George said, surprised at the growl in his voice.

  ‘This is what she wanted to wear,’ Nancy said. ‘And it looks very nice, I think.’

  Melissa was dressed in the sort of outfit a young girl might wear on Easter Sunday: a navy blue dress with white trim, white knee socks, black, shiny shoes. She had even donned pale blue gloves. Her black hair had been brushed to a satin sheen and her pale face seemed just-scrubbed, with the scent of soap lingering over her. A shiny black purse sat next to her plate of eggs and toast.

  ‘You look very pretty,’ George Hume said.

  Melissa nodded, a sharp snap of the head, and said, ‘I am an angel.’

  Nancy laughed and hugged the child. George raised his eyebrows. ‘No false modesty here,’ he said. At least she could talk.

  On the drive into town, Steve sat in the passenger seat while George drove. Nancy and Melissa sat in the back seat. Nancy spoke to the child in a slow, reassuring murmur.

  Steve said nothing, sitting with his hands in his lap, looking out the window. Might not be much in a crisis, George thought. A rich man’s child.

  Steve stayed in the waiting room while the receptionist ushered Melissa and Nancy and George into Dr. Gowers’ office. The psychiatrist seemed much as George remembered him, a silver-maned, benign old gent, exuding an air of competence. He asked them to sit on the sofa.

  The child perched primly on the sofa, her little black purse cradled in her lap. She was flanked by George and Nancy.

  Dr. Gowers knelt down in front of her. ‘Well, Melissa. Is it all right if I call you Melissa?’

  ‘Yes sir. That’s what everyone calls me.’

  ‘Well, Melissa, I’m glad you could come and see me today. I’m Dr. Gowers.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your father,’ he said, looking in her eyes.

  ‘Yes sir,’ Melissa said. She leaned forward and touched her shoe.

  ‘Do you know what happened to your father?’ Dr. Gowers asked.

  Melissa nodded her head and continued to study her shoes.

  ‘
What happened to your father?’ Dr. Gowers asked.

  ‘The machines got him,’ Melissa said. She looked up at the doctor. ‘The real machines,’ she added. ‘The ocean ones.’

  ‘Your father drowned,’ Dr. Gowers said.

  Melissa nodded. ‘Yes sir.’ Slowly the little girl got up and began wandering around the room. She walked past a large saltwater aquarium next to a teak bookcase.

  George thought the child must have bumped against the aquarium stand – although she hardly seemed close enough – because water spilled from the tank as she passed. She was humming. It was a bright, musical little tune, and he had heard it before, a children’s song, perhaps? The words? Something like by the sea, by the sea.

  The girl walked and gestured with a liquid motion that was oddly sophisticated, suggesting the calculated body language of an older and sexually self-assured woman.

  ‘Melissa, would you come and sit down again so we can talk? I want to ask you some questions, and that is hard to do if you are walking around the room.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Melissa said, returning to the sofa and resettling between George and his daughter.

  Melissa retrieved her purse and placed it on her lap again.

  She looked down at the purse and up again. She smiled with a child’s cunning. Then, very slowly, she opened the purse and showed it to Dr. Gowers.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘There’s nothing in it,’ Melissa said. ‘It’s empty.’ She giggled.

  ‘Well yes, it is empty,’ Dr. Gowers said, returning the child’s smile. ‘Why is that?’

  Melissa snapped the purse closed. ‘Because my real purse isn’t here. It’s in the real place, where I keep my things.’

  ‘And where is that, Melissa?’

  Melissa smiled and said, ‘You know, silly.’

  When the session ended, George phoned his wife.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess it went fine. I don’t know. I’ve had no experience of this sort of thing. What about Mrs. Franklin?’

  Mrs. Franklin was still in the hospital. She wanted to leave, but the hospital was reluctant to let her. She was still in shock, very disoriented. She seemed, indeed, to think that it was her daughter who had drowned.

  ‘Did you talk to her?’ George asked.

  ‘Well yes, just briefly, but as I say, she made very little sense, got very excited when it became clear I wasn’t going to fetch her if her doctor wanted her to remain there.’

  ‘Can you remember anything she said?’

  ‘Well, it was very jumbled, really. Something about a bad bargain. Something about, that Greek word, you know “hubris”.’

  ‘Hewbris?’

  ‘Oh, back in school, you know, George. Hubris. A willful sort of pride that angers the gods. I’m sure you learned it in school yourself.’

  ‘You are not making any sense,’ he said, suddenly exasperated – and frightened.

  ‘Well,’ his wife said, ‘you don’t have to shout. Of course I don’t make any sense. I am trying to repeat what Mrs. Franklin said, and that poor woman made no sense at all. I tried to reassure her that Melissa was fine and she screamed. She said Melissa was not fine at all and that I was a fool. Now you are shouting me, too.’

  George apologized, said he had to be going, and hung up.

  On the drive back from Dr. Gowers’ office, Nancy sat in the back seat with Melissa. The child seemed unusually excited: her pale forehead was beaded with sweat, and she watched the ocean with great intensity.

  ‘Did you like Dr. Gowers?’ Nancy asked. ‘He liked you. He wants to see you again, you know.’

  Melissa nodded. ‘He is a nice one.’ She frowned. ‘But he doesn’t understand the real words either. No one here does.’

  George glanced over his shoulder at the girl. You are an odd ducky, he thought.

  A large, midday sun brightened the air and made the ocean glitter as though scaled. They were in a stretch of sand dunes and sea oats and high, wind-driven waves and, except for an occasional lumbering trailer truck, they seemed alone in this world of sleek, eternal forms.

  Then Melissa began to cough. The coughing increased in volume, developed a quick, hysterical note.

  ‘Pull over!’ Nancy shouted, clutching the child.

  George swung the car off the highway and hit the brakes. Gravel pinged against metal, the car fishtailed and lurched to a stop. George was out of the car instantly, in time to catch his daughter and the child in her arms as they came hurtling from the back seat. Melissa’s face was red and her small chest heaved. Nancy had her arms around the girl’s chest. ‘Melissa!’ Nancy was shouting. ‘Melissa!’

  Nancy jerked the child upwards and back. Melissa’s body convulsed. Her breathing was labored, a broken whistle fluttering in her throat.

  She shuddered and began to vomit. A hot, green odor, the smell of stagnant tidal pools, assaulted George. Nancy knelt beside Melissa, wiping the child’s wet hair from her forehead. ‘It’s gonna be okay, honey,’ she said. ‘You got something stuck in your throat. It’s all right now. You’re all right.’

  The child jumped up and ran down the beach.

  ‘Melissa!’ Nancy screamed, scrambling to her feet and pursuing the girl. George ran after them, fear hissing in him like some power line down in a storm, writhing and spewing sparks.

  In her blue dress and knee socks – shoes left behind on the beach now – Melissa splashed into the ocean, arms pumping.

  Out of the corner of his eye, George saw Steve come into view. He raced past George, past Nancy, moving with a frenzied pinwheeling of arms. ‘I got her, I got her, I got her,’ he chanted.

  Don’t, George thought. Please don’t.

  The beach was littered with debris, old, ocean-polished bottles, driftwood, seaweed, shattered conch shells. It was a rough ocean, still reverberating to the recent storm.

  Steve had almost reached Melissa. George could see him reach out to clutch her shoulder.

  Then something rose up in the water. It towered over man and child, and as the ocean fell away from it, it revealed smooth surfaces that glittered and writhed. The world was bathed with light, and George saw it plain. And yet, he could not later recall much detail. It was as though his mind refused entry to this monstrous thing, substituting other images – maggots winking from the eye sockets of some dead animal, flesh growing on a ruined structure of rusted metal – and while, in memory, those images were horrible enough and would not let him sleep, another part of his mind shrank from the knowledge that he had confronted something more hideous and ancient than his reason could acknowledge.

  What happened next, happened in an instant. Steve staggered backwards and Melissa turned and ran sideways to the waves.

  A greater wave, detached from the logic of the rolling ocean, sped over Steve, engulfing him, and he was gone, while Melissa continued to splash through the tide, now turning and running shoreward. The beast-thing was gone, and the old pattern of waves reasserted itself. Then Steve resurfaced, and with a lurch of understanding, as though the unnatural wave had struck at George’s mind and left him dazed, he watched the head bob in the water, roll sickeningly, bounce on the crest of a second wave, and disappear.

  Melissa lay face down on the wet sand, and Nancy raced to her, grabbed her up in her arms, and turned to her father.

  ‘Where’s Steve?’ she shouted over the crash of the surf.

  You didn’t see then, George thought. Thank God.

  ‘Where’s Steve?’ she shouted again.

  George came up to his daughter and embraced her. His touch triggered racking sobs, and he held her tighter, the child Melissa between them.

  And what if the boy’s head rolls to our feet on the crest of the next wave? George thought, and the thought moved him to action. ‘Let’s get Melissa back to the car,’ he said, taking the child from his daughter’s arms.

  It was a painful march back to the car, and George was convinced that at any moment either or both of his c
harges would bolt. He reached the car and helped his daughter into the back seat. She was shaking violently.

  ‘Hold Melissa,’ he said, passing the child to her. ‘Don’t let her go, Nancy.’

  George pulled away from them and closed the car door. He turned then, refusing to look at the ocean as he did so. He looked down, stared for a moment at what was undoubtedly a wet clump of matted seaweed, and knew, with irrational certainty, that Melissa had choked on this same seaweed, had knelt here on the ground and painfully coughed it up.

  He told the police that Melissa had run into the waves and that Steve had pursued her and drowned. This was all he could tell them – someday he hoped he would truly believe that it was all there was to tell. Thank God his daughter had not seen. And he realized then, with shame, that it was not even his daughter’s feelings that were foremost in his mind but rather the relief, the immense relief, of knowing that what he had seen was not going to be corroborated and that with time and effort, he might really believe it was an illusion, the moment’s horror, the tricks light plays with water.

  He took the police back to where it had happened. But he would not go down to the tide. He waited in the police car while they walked along the beach.

  If they returned with Steve’s head, what would he say? Oh yes, a big wave decapitated Steve. Didn’t I mention that? Well, I meant to.

  But they found nothing.

  Back at the hotel, George sat at the kitchen table and drank a beer. He was not a drinker, but it seemed to help. ‘Where’s Nancy?’ he asked.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Mrs. Hume said. ‘She’s sleeping with the child. She wouldn’t let me take Melissa. I tried to take the child and I thought…I thought my own daughter was going to attack me, hit me. Did she think I would hurt Melissa? What did she think?’

  George studied his beer, shook his head sadly to indicate the absence of all conjecture.

  Mrs. Hume dried her hands on the dish towel and, ducking her head, removed her apron. ‘Romner Psychiatric called. A Doctor Melrose.’