The Half That You See

by Rebecca Rowland

  It nearly seemed for all its busy rustling and peeping birdtalk, the park was absent of people. She knew it wasn’t—she’d passed the usual joggers and dog walkers up early like her on the path down. Seen the flash of light-up collars, reflective vests. People were here in the park with her—and yet…

  Not here, right at this moment. It was just Josie and her rod. She cast off. Watched the glint of the fly as it soared and plopped, rippling the black sheet of water. Her neck loosened, then her shoulders. She inhaled, and released.

  Released the image of Mama, twisted on the floor, reaching under the bed…

  Released the march of EMTs, police, the white sheet, the stain left behind on Mama’s pale rug…

  Released that bird’s blue eye, orange beak, Josie, help me…

  She reeled in. Cast off again. She breathed. The sky went from bruised to fever pink as she stayed there, longer than she normally did but she allowed it. It seemed right. To linger.

  After the fourth cast off, though, she turned, picked up her kit, and moved to the second spot. She looked both ways out on the dark water, checking for the black snake-head, the outstretched wings. Nothing. She was alone. She set down her bag and cast off.

  For her third spot, she chose the same path as the last time, along the slope of lake water toward the boathouse. She eased down the steep slope to the water’s edge, mindful of the mud and slick leaves from last night’s rain. There, the narrow band of water, the surface dipping and rippling with the breeze. No ducks, no birds, no black-necked cormorants. She cast off.

  From behind her came the crashing sounds of something in the trees. She turned, heart thudding, her rod shaking in her hands. A big white dog bounded down the slope and came right up to her, tail wagging, and barked. She stepped away, not trusting its happy advances. It circled her kit bag, sniffing, and then turned back to her and barked again.

  A whistle, a voice from the path above. “Barnaby, come!” And quick as that, the dog vanished in a tangle of white up the slope. She breathed, turned back to the water—

  “Josie,” said a soft, creaking voice, “you came back.”

  She dropped the rod then, and stumbled backward, away from the dark edge of the water.

  “Who’s there?” she whispered, trembling. She listened; it was silent and still. She breathed. You’re imagining things, she told herself. Auditory hallucinations were the easiest trick for the head to play.

  She moved back toward the water and recovered her rod, reeled in. She peered around the trees, hoping to see nothing, just the blank sheet of lake. But there, on a flat rock stood a cormorant, wings out, its head tilted toward her, waiting.

  “Josie,” it said again, the voice like an old door swung on a bad hinge, “you came back.”

  She watched its beak move with the effort of words. It looked like it was talking—this wasn’t just a sound she’d conjured. She wiped a hand across her face. Covered her eyes and counted, slowly, to five. She looked up again.

  The bird was still there, with wings outstretched, watching her.

  She’d be damned if she’d speak to it, talk to it. A bird. Her brain could play wild jokes on her, make her think her mind was going down the same road as Mama’s had at the end, but she would not give in. She turned her back on the bird, reached into her kit bag for a towel to wipe her muddy rod, her hands. And then, with shaking arms, she cast off, fly soaring out into the water.

  Silence, save the birdsong increasing with the growing sunlight. The ripples of the water, the glug-glug as it hit shore edge, rock. She would not look at it, acknowledge it, accept it. She would—

  “Josie,” it creaked.

  She kept her eyes straight ahead.

  “I know you hear me,” it rasped. And then, changing its tone to something deeper, something more terrible, “Jocelyn, my daughter.” It was Pop-Pop’s voice. She had not heard that voice in over thirty years.

  Devil bird, she thought, going cold. Devil bird.

  There was a splash and then the snaking neck appeared in the water. It grabbed the end of her line before she could reel in and began twisting in the nylon string, slowly, turning round and round.

  “Jocelyn,” it said, the voice now swinging from Pop-Pop to Mama’s plaintive bellow, “help me.”

  The line played out as the bird turned and turned, knotting itself in a web. It thrashed, as though struggling but fixed her with its steady blue eye. “Help. Me.”

  Josie locked the reel and tugged, trying to pull free although she knew it was no use. The bird had tangled itself so completely there’d be no simple undoing. She could cut it, cut it and leave the bird—the devil bird—to mischief of its own making.

  “Josie,” the voice a rusted hinge once more, “hold on tight!”

  And the bird dove into the water with a sharp plunge, the rod jumping in her hands. She nearly dropped it but held on as the bird went deeper. She teetered at the edge, still holding her rod, feeling the pull as the bird tugged and tugged. She should just cut it and go, cut it, go, but one foot slipped and now she was in the water, cold seeping into her shoes. The rod jerked again and she stepped in farther, water at her shins. And then a third, final tug and she was—

  —underwater.

  And she breathed. She did not know how, understand, but with each gulp of water she felt oxygen fill her lungs.

  And she saw. The water, clearer from down below than above. Here, there were fish fat as goats, bigger than any that had made contact with her hook. Turtles turning in slow circles, their shells as wide across as manhole covers, their mouths long, snapping snouts.

  Deeper, the bird pulled her and she felt neither wet nor cold, just the sensation of movement, of being tugged as through a warm wind, farther and farther, deeper and deeper.

  She should let go. She should let go and float to the top and get back to shore, get herself to the nearest mental hospital and yet…

  She went deeper, the cormorant’s pull constant and strong. It did not pause to let her gape at the car—a car!—beneath her as she floated past. Its curved shape limned in mud but still, a car. Who knew what other treasures lay hidden here in the heart of her lake?

  The fish knew, the turtles. Those eyes they gave her as she whirled past, smiling, eager to reach out and tap their silver backs. They said: Who invited you?

  The cormorant pulled her farther still, out and down toward the very bottom of the very middle of the lake. The light faltered here; as she craned her neck she could see only the distant glaze of the sun above.

  The bird dove down sharply and Josie felt a chill for the first time, a coldness sliding into her. The air—was it air?—she breathed crisp in her nose, mouth. Like fall, like the excretion of a thousand years of autumn trees on a rain-wrecked night.

  Below them, a house—or what was left of one, lurking in the murky bottom waters. A chimney, stone, a wall. A doorway.

  The bird pulled them toward it, pulled harder, tugging them down, down, down…and she was through the door—

  —and it was the apartment. Her apartment. Her and Mama’s. But…

  She was on her feet, standing, not wet, not dripping onto the carpet, which was good because Mama was standing there too. And beside her stood Pop-Pop. They were at the window, their backs to the door.

  She could tell from the hunch of Pop-Pop’s shoulders, the way he waved his hand in the air, that he was drunk. “Don’t you hagride me, now, woman,” he was saying with that voice she’d last heard from the cormorant’s mouth.

  How could they… “Mama?” she said, then, softer, “Pop-Pop?”

  Neither turned at the sound of her voice.

  “Go then,” Mama spat. “Go, and so help you, if you do, I’ll—”

  And Pop-Pop pushed Mama, hard. And past them, toward the window, Josie saw rain beating against the glass.

  “Pop-Pop,” Josie said again, her voice suddenly the low squeak of a young girl.

  Mama, dazed from her fall, rubbing the back of her head, pulled
something long and silver from her apron pocket.

  “What you going to do with that, woman?” he laughed. “Stab me?”

  And Mama thrust out with her hand and Josie screamed, loud, louder than she had ever screamed in her life, her throat burning, her ears ringing with the sound of it.

  Pop-Pop turned at that, from the window. The black handle of the knife in his chest, a line of red only just beginning to seep beneath it. Mama glanced over her shoulder and then, startled, turned all the way around. “Josie,” she whispered. “You’re here?”

  “Jocelyn,” Pop-Pop said, heedless of the knife, the running blood, “my daughter.”

  He smiled, but she saw tears in his eyes. Wasn’t he hurting? That knife.

  There were tears in Mama’s eyes too now, Josie saw. “Josie,” Mama said. She sounded so sad. “You… you have mud on your dress.”

  Josie bristled. Dress? She hadn’t worn a dress since—

  She looked down and saw she was in one of the pink and white church dresses Mama always put her in. Before she grew taller than Mama, that is. After Pop-Pop had left.

  But there she was, her full-grown size, standing in the doorway of her apartment at the bottom of the lake, wearing pink and white and shiny black shoes with frilled socks. She touched her hair, it was braided in neat rows ending in beads, she knew without trying to find a mirror, that would be pink and white.

  But her body was the body that the bird had pulled through the lake…

  She turned back to the door, which had closed behind her. She went to open it, to leave. This wasn’t where she wanted to be, this was not the secret heart of her lake. This was—

  “Don’t,” her father said. “Not yet.”

  She paused, her hand on the doorknob. She stood on tiptoes—tiptoes?—to see out the peephole. Through the fish eye she saw black swirling water—

  And then she saw the doorknob, the peephole above her, just out of reach. She should get a chair, her stool from the bathroom sink so she could look, look and see…if the noise outside was Pop-Pop coming up the stairs from the park, banging the walls as he sang, slamming the door so loud she woke—

  “Jocelyn, my daughter,” Pop-Pop said again, from behind her, his voice booming through the room. She felt that prickle, that sense of alert. The peephole seemed so very far away.

  “Josie,” Mama’s voice shook, “this is important.”

  She turned from the door, letting go of the knob.

  Her parents were seated on the couch now. A space between them. The knife still in Pop-Pop’s chest.

  She lowered her head and obeyed, walking over. She squeezed herself in. Her legs dangled above the floor, and she kicked them back and forth, watching the shine bounce on the toes of her shoes.

  “Stop it,” Mama said, putting a heavy hand on her knee.

  She stopped it.

  She sat, head bowed, waiting.

  Her father sighed and said, his voice softening, “It is time.”

  Mama gave a soft gasp. “Must we—”

  Pop-Pop drew in a deep breath, clucked his tongue. “She’s here. She came of her own choice.”

  Josie didn’t say anything. She wasn’t supposed to. She was told to listen, listen and be still.

  “Together, woman,” Pop-Pop said. “Do you hear me? Together.”

  Josie said nothing. She thought of school, of the book she was supposed to be reading for her report. She didn’t want to go anywhere. She didn’t want Pop-Pop or Mama to go either. Why couldn’t they just stay here?

  “Josie,” Mama’s voice, sharp now. “Do you hear what your father said? Will you be a good girl and do as you’re told, for once?”

  She looked up at Mama, at her wide face, smooth and clear. She nodded and Mama took her hand, squeezed it in her warm, dry one. Pop-Pop took the other, damp and hot.

  “Are you ready?” he asked them both, and Josie nodded again. She had no choice. She had to do what the grown-ups said, go when they said go, be still when they yelled for quiet.

  They stood, all three together: mother, daughter, father. And they walked toward the door, water now leaking in underneath, a slow, dark drip, mixing with the red running in thick lines from Pop-Pop’s chest. She felt her hands slip and noticed she was taller again, her head nearly at her mother’s shoulder. Her father reached for the door handle and Josie was his height, then taller. She reached forward and pulled the knife free just as he opened the door.

  The world flooded in and Josie swam toward the light.

  Officer Baby Boy Blue

  Douglas Ford

  I almost gouged out my own eye at a young age. But not in the usual way you hear about, not with fireworks, and certainly not with a weapon. I never broke rules, so nothing that glamorous.

  Instead, it happened with a model kit, the plastic sort requiring a special sort of cement that came with a warning label about how sniffing it could cause brain damage. I never did anything like sniff glue, either. I didn’t want to face consequences, and I certainly didn’t want brain damage. What kind of future could I expect with brain damage?

  But I nearly gouged out my own eye with a hobby knife, an X-Acto blade. Just a slip of the hand, and the blade pierced the skin just an inch below my left eye. Just imagine if the blade went into my eye and didn’t stop there but continued going and into my brain. A horrid thought.

  The kit I worked on was the Frankenstein monster, not the kind other kids put together, like a battleship or a bomber, but a monster out of a black-and-white film, lumbering away from a gravestone, arms outstretched. To remove the plastic pieces, I used my X-Acto blade, just like the instructions suggested, and somehow, I still managed to have an accident. Just one careless slip and the point of the blade sliced a two-inch incision, like a third set of eyelids.

  A mental fog prevents me from explaining how it happened exactly, but I distinctly remember the panicked trip to the hospital and the chaos in the emergency room. The chaos didn’t happen right away though, only after a very long period of time in the waiting room, with my mother holding one of several paper towels to my face in an attempt to stop the bleeding. It came as a relief when someone finally showed me to a bed where a doctor would examine me. They told my mother she would have to wait, and a nurse took me back and helped me up to the bed, smiling at me as she closed the curtain halfway, leaving plenty of space for me to see the doctors and nurses moving about the floor.

  Then pandemonium broke loose.

  To this day, I don’t know the exact nature of the crime or emergency, but the facility began filling with wounded policemen and burned firemen on gurneys, many of them still wearing their emergency gear, heavy coats for the firemen and armored vests for the policemen. At first, just three or four of them arrived, but their count steadily rose until every visible gurney and bed held some horribly injured emergency worker. I don’t even know where they came from. Many of them screamed and groaned, sounds made more terrible by the glimpses of blood and burns covering their skin.

  No one remained still, the whole area in constant movement, a flurry of confusion as injured firemen and policemen continued to pour into the hospital.

  But one person moved slowly, taking his time and gazing about with what looked like curiosity and fascination. I could see him through the half-closed curtain, a police officer, strolling casually toward the bed on which I lay.

  As he came closer, I could see that he wore mirrored sunglasses, even though we were indoors. Despite the glasses, he looked friendly enough, and he even smiled as he walked into my curtained area. I hesitated before returning the smile. I wanted someone— preferably a doctor or nurse—to come tell me everything would soon be okay. But I supposed the police officer would have to do.

  When he approached, I saw how the mirrored glasses filled his face. And worse, I could see my own reflection in the lenses. I looked horrible, so bloody and ragged. The wound on my face gaped like the mouth of a dead fish.

  The officer shook his head and made a tsk
ing sound. I had to look away, not wanting to see my reflection anymore.

  “It looks bad,” he said, as if I needed confirmation of what I myself could see. Then he added, “But it could be worse.”

  I almost turned my head for an explanation, but I couldn’t face my own reflection.

  “No, really,” he said, “it could be worse. I’ll show you. Look.”

  That voice had real authority, so it compelled me. I knew I had to look. I turned in time to see the officer lift his sunglasses, an act that made me thankful at first, grateful that it made the awful image of myself go away.

  But then I saw what the sunglasses had hidden.

  His left eye, just a folded mass of flesh, was held shut by a line of grotesque metal stitches. Had I any presence of mind, I might have made an association to the model kit left unfinished in my bedroom, the Frankenstein monster. I wouldn’t think of that for quite some time, just as I wouldn’t make another association until years later, when I would see the puckered folds of a woman’s labia for the first time. At this moment, seeing the eye stitched closed, only horror existed, and I couldn’t turn away, no matter how badly I wanted to do so.

  This was, in part, because of his voice. So matter-of-fact, almost happy, despite the injury he suffered.

  “I had the most beautiful set of eyes,” he said, “until today. Now, there’s just one, as you can see, thanks to that criminal today. Everything going on around here, would you believe it’s because of one person, just one, single person? When I woke up today, I had two of the most amazing eyes you’ve ever seen. I owe more than my charm to those eyes—I owe my intuition to them, my ability to look at anyone and see what they want to hide. People took one look at my eyes and would tell me anything. Now, look where it got me. Mutilated forever. Look here to get an idea of what I’ve lost.”

  He pointed to his remaining eye as if he were showing off the prized piece of a coin collection, and I looked, if for no other reason than to avoid focusing on those awful stitches. I had no medical experience, but even to me, the stitches looked rushed and amateurish, the work of a mad scientist working feverishly in a laboratory converted from an abandoned windmill. The surviving eye looked like any normal eye, nothing special. A typical shade of blue.