The Boat House

by Stephen Gallagher

  She hung onto the ring. It was all that she could think to do. Her good leg slipped from the quay, and swung down.

  Her foot connected with something solid.

  The grip was released.

  Spray drenched her as she saw Alina make a messy, uncontrolled backward landing in the dock. The water seemed to part and enfold her, and then she was gone. Diane swung herself up onto the quay, and started to run. She's actually made it almost to the stairway when her body remembered that it was already hurt, and seemed to pull the plugs on her; she went sprawling, and landed hard on the planks.

  She rolled over and looked back. Alina was rising from the dock, dripping, gleaming in the underlight. Behind her was the dark Princess, cabin lights ablaze, a sinister looking beacon that cast her long shadow across the quay. Her hair lay sleek and wet and her thin cotton dress had plastered itself to her body. She was pure hostility, looking to do harm.

  Diane started to push herself back. With the upper level door locked from the inside, she was safe from nothing other than rescue. She had to get to it, but all that she could do now was to crawl. She kept on pushing herself back before this slight, dangerous figure that was advancing on her from the zone where the nightmares played.

  The stairs were at her back. She could go no further.

  "What did they do with my book?" Alina said quietly.

  "I don't… I don't know what you mean," Diane heard herself say.

  "My pictures. Did they move them? Did they hide them? I really have to know."

  The photographs? Was she kidding? Diane's mind raced, looking for an angle, any angle, that she could exploit. She'd had two shotgun shells in her pocket; but she seemed to have lost even these in the scramble and, besides, the shotgun itself was still on the far side of the quay.

  She'd have to improvise.

  "I think they burned it," she said.

  Alina stopped.

  "You're lying," she said.

  "Why would I lie? All that's left is this." Propping herself on one elbow, Diane reached inside her jacket. She pulled out a single sheet of stiff coloured paper, made awkward by the photographs that had been glued onto either side. It was the loose page with the photograph of Pavel that Aldridge, hardly concentrating, had told her to keep as evidence. The way that he'd said it, Diane had been able to tell that precise details of procedure weren't uppermost in his mind. She'd had to fold it to put it away, and it had taken more creases since. As a last surviving remnant, it looked pretty convincing.

  "Please," Alina said. She was staring at the page like a junkie in the presence of the world's last fix.

  "Why do you need this?"

  "It's my last dream of home," Alina said bleakly.

  Diane wondered how she saw herself. Did she hold up her own hand and see scales, claws? Did she see the souls of her victims as she released them to stand in that dark country beyond death itself? Diane wondered how profound a belief had to be before others were drawn in and persuaded by it. An easy trap to fall into; Diane had already begun to think of Alina and the Rusalka as two separate entities, each intertwining with the other like a body and its disease.

  But which was she talking to now?

  "Give me the photographs," Alina said carefully, as if each word was a test, "and I'll let you leave."

  "Can you really promise that?"

  There was a struggle for a while.

  And then Alina admitted, "No. I don't have that much control."

  "Over what you do?"

  "Over what I've turned into."

  "Looks like we've got a stalemate, then," Diane said, and she wished that she could make herself sound more convinced; because it was a pretty unequal balance with only one crumpled sheet of paper on her side against the Rusalka's track record on the other. All that she could do would be to start tearing the photographs up, and it wouldn't take much to stop her from doing even this. Alina was holding back, but she was under patient assault from within. It couldn't last.

  Even she seemed to know it, and after a tense silence she was the first one to speak.

  "I'll do what I can," she said. "Go up the stairs, let yourself out of the door. Leave the photographs inside, and lock yourself out. I'll try to hold back. But do one thing for me, please."

  "What?"

  "Whatever happens, try to remember me as I was. Don't hate me for what I became."

  And then, as Diane hesitated in her uncertainty as to whether or not this was a ruse, she added, "Go!" with such urgency that Diane struggled to stand and turned to face the stairway, the page clutched tightly in her hand.

  There was at least one moment when the Rusalka could have flown at her unseen.

  But she didn't.

  It was a long haul, one step at a time. She had to hold the folded page in her teeth in order to free both hands for the climb. Having her back toward Alina was the hardest part, but nothing happened. Except that, from behind and below her, there came a sound like that of quiet, frustrated weeping.

  Diane's shadow was long across the ceiling as she hobbled toward the door, reaching for her pocket as she went.

  "Why have you stopped?" Alina shouted to her a few moments later. There was a new harshness in her voice that set Diane on her guard, but she had no choice but to reply.

  "I must have lost the key when I fell," she said, hearing her own voice as if it was coming from somebody else. "Will you throw it to me?" And please, she thought, don't let it have fallen into the dock or else the whole thing ends right here.

  No weeping noises now, but a sound like a nest of snakes coiling around one another. The pattern of water-reflected shadows on the high roof changed as Alina moved, unseen beyond the edge of the platform. Was she doing as Diane had asked?

  Or was she coming for her?

  The tension buzzed in Diane's ears.

  The key came spinning through the air, and it landed on the boards close to the top of the stairs. Diane crouched awkwardly and, still holding the paper that had bought her some safety, she reached for it.

  As her hand made contact, there was a low, rattling rasp… she looked over the topmost stair, and saw the Rusalka almost flying toward her with its eyes blazing like green lasers.

  Diane threw the paper into the air. It flipped open like a kite, slowed, and began to flutter downward. Alina switched direction and followed it like a leaping fish, away from the stairs and out over the dock; it seemed an impossibility but she caught the page in midair, grabbing it to her as she fell in a headfirst dive toward the open water. One of the photographs had come loose, and it followed her down like a spiralling leaf.

  She hit the surface just as the world exploded.

  A big motor cruiser came rearing in through the bursting doors on a high bow wave, its nose barely damaged by an impact that had torn through slatted wood like so much paper. The huge white dart of the GRP hull came running in like a spear, ramming the Princess off-centre and causing her mass to ride up in the dock as she was slammed back into the wharf timbers. Diane had a brief glimpse of Alina being swept up and tumbled under as the cruiser's bow fell, but then there was so much heaving water and so much spray that she couldn't see any more as she screwed her eyes up against the welcome daylight.

  Down below, the newly arrived boat's engines were still idling. She saw Pete scrambling out of the deck cabin and onto the coachroof.

  FIFTY

  Pete had come down through the woodland like Death's own carriage running late to a hanging; as he'd fought his way through bracken to the shoreline he'd seen Ted Hammond on the flybridge of one of the Birchwoods, bringing the craft in for a mooring at the boat house's narrow extended jetty. He didn't stop to wonder how or why or even to give thanks; he simply kept on running, his legs beginning to feel drained and unsteady and his breath like knives in his chest, until he'd hit the jetty and covered the last dozen yards. One of Ted's clients, an obvious weekender in a bright green lifejacket, was already ashore with a line; Pete said, "Thanks," and took it from
him and threw it back aboard before clambering after.

  "I think I just lost you a sale," Pete said as he gunned the still-idling engines and backed the craft away from the jetty. The weekender was standing there, as stunned looking as a Jesuit being welcomed at the gates of Hell.

  "Get away," Ted said drily from beside him on the flybridge. "Now what?"

  "Duck," Pete suggested, and with the Birchwood's nose aimed at the boat house doors he slammed open the throttles.

  The Birchwood was in one piece but the Princess had taken serious damage, and he could guess why; any one of those badly protected girders underpinning the wharf would have been enough to rip the hull. The Princess was taking on water, and starting to list already.

  "Diane!" Pete called over the noise of the engines. "Are you all right?" And to his relief, she answered him from somewhere above.

  "I'm fine," Diane shouted, "but she's here!"

  "Where?"

  "She's in the water!"

  The deck fell suddenly, ripping free of the joist on which the hull had been snagged. Pete grabbed the rail as they hit, spray thrown up all around and drenching him. By now Ted had boarded the Princess as well, but Pete couldn't see what he was doing. Pete shouted, and Ted shouted something unintelligible back.

  And then, as the spray fell, Pete saw Alina.

  She was down by the side of the boat, almost under the collapsed part of the wharf. She was holding onto one of the cross-braces but seemed unable to climb any further; her knuckles were showing white, and her head was only just out of the water.

  Pete jumped the gap. The wharf shifted as he hit it, a telling sign of deep structural damage. Down below, the water still heaved as if boiling. Ted was out of the Princess and crossing the wharf behind him now; Pete threw himself flat on the decking and reached down over the edge. The boards were sprung and uneven.

  He stretched his hand out as far as he could. His fingers brushed Alina's wrist, and she looked up.

  She appeared to be in some pain; he wondered if she might be trapped somehow beneath the surface. "Give me your hand," he said, although over the violent swell and the roar of marine engines in the confined space it wasn't easy to make himself heard.

  Someone was calling his name. He didn't respond, but concentrated on trying to reach just a little further.

  Alina's hand closed around his own in a life grip. He held onto hers just as tightly.

  "You followed me," she said wonderingly, as if such a thing simply couldn't be. Pete was locked to her eyes, seeing her fear as she stood at the edge and looked into the darkness beyond. Her face was as pale as a stone from a riverbed, her hair darker than in reality because it was so wet; but he thought that he could recognise the true Alina, the Alina that only he knew, the frightened girl that he'd reassured on the eve of the Liston Hall party.

  But he was wrong.

  He knew that he was wrong because suddenly he wasn't pulling her up; she was drawing him down. And now he could see that there was a strange light in those eyes, a hint of something almost feral in its intensity.

  He grabbed at the edge and held on. But he could feel the long board starting to give, its nails already prised half out and his pressure increasing the strain on them. He began to panic, and looked around for some kind of help. They were still calling to him, and didn't seem to realise that he could no longer move to respond.

  There they were… Ted had carried Diane across to the Birchwood, and they were yelling to him to follow. They were yelling because there was fire in the Princess. How, he didn't know… but they were lit by a hell-light and shrouded in smoke, and before them the windows of the Princess glowed like holes punched in a nightshade.

  There was fuel aboard both cruisers, there were gas tanks in the galleys. Suddenly the boat house was not a good place to be.

  And still Alina was drawing him down toward the water. Its heaving surface was greasy with spilled marine fuel. He'd braced himself as hard as he could, but already his shoulders were over the edge and his feet were beginning to slide.

  He looked back to her.

  "You can be with me now," she said in a tense whisper, a voice meant for only him to hear. In her own mind she seemed to be detached from her surroundings, and from her desperate situation. "You can be with me forever. Isn't that what you always wanted from the beginning? Isn't it really?

  "Just let me help you," Pete said, hanging on grimly and wondering for how much longer. "That's all I want to do."

  Something changed in her expression. At first, he wasn't sure what. Her grip didn't slacken, but there was a difference in her grey eyes. A moment ago, he hadn't known her.

  And now he did.

  "So many people have said that to me. And you were the only one who ever really meant it. I'm sorry, Peter. I'm sorry it didn't work out."

  "Me too," he said. "Come on, try to pull yourself up."

  Diane was still calling his name. Desperately, now.

  Alina glanced over his shoulder. Wet hair fell across her face and she shook it free with a single, violent flip.

  "I told you she'd be right for you," she said. "I told you I could help the two of you to get together. I wasn't wrong, was I?"

  "No, you weren't wrong," Pete managed to say. "Now climb, damn it!" His arm, now lifting her, was starting to shake with the upkeep of the pressure.

  She responded by raising herself a little, so that their faces were closer together. The strain on Pete's arm grew fiercer. His entire body was braced and trembling. In spite of everything that was going on around them, she could now lower her voice almost to a breath and still be heard.

  "Remember when you first brought me to the valley?" she said. "We made a deal. You had to promise never to fall in love with me. And I said I'd try never to hurt you. I suppose you thought that was a strange thing to say."

  "Grab the edge!" he said, "You can do it!"

  But unexpectedly, she opened her hand. He was left holding on alone. Already he could feel her wet skin beginning to slide.

  "Now perhaps you can understand," she said.

  Her hand slipped through his own like smoke, leaving him not knowing whether he let her or whether he lost her, just staring at the oily surface of the water where she'd been not an instant before.

  The Birchwood was reversing out again with Ted at the helm, releasing more daylight to pierce the smoke as it withdrew. The nose was crumpled, but the hull was in one piece. The Princess was listing badly and its interior furnishings were beginning to blaze. Something inside her fireballed with a soft thump.

  The gap was widening; Pete took it at a run, and almost didn't make it.

  The explosion that followed blew the roof off the boat house, scared the birds out of the trees for miles around, and echoed off into heaven like a distant thunder.

  EPILOGUE

  After the Drowning (2)

  FIFTY-ONE

  It was two years later to the day — or rather, to the night — that Ted Hammond took a plastic office chair out to the end of an empty jetty so that he could sit and watch the lake and the valley's few lights. It was a warm evening, but he had some cool beers that were going to stay cool because he'd put them in a net bag and lowered the bag into the water. He also had Wayne's radio-cassette player and a couple of his tapes, and he set this out beside him on the jetty and turned the volume up good and loud. Chuck and Bob lay on the boards, waiting for the empty cans to crunch.

  He sat back, breathed the air. He'd done this a few times before, but tonight seemed special; almost an anniversary.

  Wayne didn't talk to him any more. He missed it, but he was also relieved because it meant that his mind wasn't going after all. His doctor had told him that such a thing wasn't common but it wasn't exactly abnormal either, and after a period of attendance in an out patients' clinic and a course of antidepressants they considered that he'd been 'stabilised' — which mostly meant that he'd ceased in his reporting of symptoms that they couldn't explain.

  And the d
octors hadn't even heard the worst of it.

  Out across the bay, he saw the lights in the restaurant go out at the end of the evening's business. Further lights on the north shore were so dim that they were like dying stars. Ted fished up the net, took out his second can, and dropped the others back over the side.

  It was about half an hour later when a van door slammed and the two dogs came suddenly alert. He calmed them with a word, but they stayed watchful.

  Then, after a minute or so, Angelica Venetz walked out along the jetty toward them.

  She'd picked up a chair for herself along the way. Ted didn't stand, or look surprised; this, again, was nothing new, but neither was it yet a routine so familiar that the formalities of it could be skipped.

  Ted said, "Is it the noise? I didn't think it would reach you from here."

  "It doesn't," Angelica said. "I just came to join you for a while. Assuming that's all right."

  "'Course it is," Ted told her, and gestured for her to set her chair next to his own.

  They'd had three or four of these informal late night get-togethers since Adele's second, more major stroke back in February. Ted had been the one who'd stepped in when the usually competent Angelica had been caught wrong-footed, when without being asked and without needing to be invited he hired them a relief chef and kept their business ticking over until Angelica had been able to give it some attention once again. Shouldering someone else's worries had been an unexpected recreation for him; at least, it had been a break from his own.

  "Will you have a drink?" he said. "Unfortunately there's only beer, beer and beer, but at least it's cool."

  "I believe I will," she said, and so he hauled up the net and took out a can and then, after unzipping the ringpull, passed it over to her. The dogs' eyes followed every move.

  "No glasses, either," he apologised. "Looks like I'm not too well set up for visitors."