It was like an optical illusion resolving itself, like one of those Magic Eye books suddenly surrendering its hidden picture. The edges of difference he felt matched up with the light and shadow falling on the water, which meant that... yes, that cool spot there must be the shadow of their boat!
The delight of understanding made Francis sit up straight and blink, and then his father swore at him for rocking the boat, then apologized for swearing. “Guess I’m just cranky ’cause they ain’t biting,” he said. After a pause, he asked if Francis wanted a 7-Up, and Francis said no, and his dad got out a beer.
Francis sank back into the mind of the water, and realized those bright moving shapes had to be fish. He oriented himself in the water with the boat’s shadow and put himself on, or in, or through the dark blue presence. His body up top slowly dangled the worm closer, and his mind down below worked the fish. He didn’t control it, not the way he controlled the RC car his uncle from Maine had given him, before it broke (and before Dad left and the uncle stopped coming around).
It didn’t feel like that. It was more like he knew what the fish was going to do, or had decided to know, and the fish did exactly what he already knew it would. Or something.
Anyhow, he brought hook and fish together and caught a decent-sized bass. His dad looked at him with genuine happiness, real pride, unforced joy for the first time Francis could remember.
♦
After that, it’d been simple to get better and better at it. With practice, you could do anything, and this was the first time Francis had tried to learn something that wasn’t hard (like reading and math) or tricky (like hitting a baseball or riding a bike). He found out he could go a lot bigger in salt water, and that while he could feel inside the fish, whales and dolphins and swimming people were just holes in space, like rocks and boats and pieces of trash. He wondered what that meant, but didn’t think he could ask anyone.
He might have told his dad about it eventually, but Dad left. The fights had eased off after the Stony Hill trip, but when they started again they seemed louder, and worse. Francis caught more and more fish, started competing at the junior level, trying to keep Dad around, but he’d failed somehow.
That had been years ago, and people were no longer impressed. It wasn’t special anymore. Instead of being confused, the kids now just made it one more thing to tease him with. “Hey Icky, you smell like fish guts!” was a typical example. It was just accepted that he’d graduate high school to make his mom happy, or drop out, or flunk out, and become a professional fisherman. Maybe he’d compete at sport, maybe he’d go up to Alaska on the big boats, but those were details.
Pushing himself into the sea, any future felt very far away.
♦
A week earlier, on Friday the fourth, his mom had said, “How come you ain’t got a girlfriend?”
Icke never replied when his mom asked this, which was often. It was afternoon, after school, and he was mixing up batter. They had fish just about every night – fried fish, fish stew, fish fillets, whatever he caught. Icke could never pin down when it started, but as he’d gotten older he found himself doing more and more. After Dad left, Mom deputized him with the cleaning and cooking. She’d acted like it was a togetherness thing, the two of them against the world.
But the bigger he’d gotten, the less she’d done. She’d still put together a chowder now and then, if she had a yen for it, but by seventeen he was doing almost all the housework and cleaning and bill paying. Mom still shopped for groceries, since Icke was too young to buy Crème de Cacao (which Mom drank in coffee all winter) or gin (which she drank in 7-Up all summer) or beer (which she drank year round). He’d kind of hoped, at some level, that the money they saved with him filling the freezer with cod and haddock and speckled trout would come back as some good thing. He was getting old enough to realize that all he’d done was expand his mother’s booze budget.
“I mean it Francis, it’s time you got yourself a girlfriend and stopped moping, got yourself some joy. You’re no prize pig, but water always finds its level. There’s someone out there, most everyone can wind up with someone.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Don’t you ‘yes Mama’ me, always ‘yes Mama’ and no action! You’ve got a lot to offer. You’re a good, a good provider, you’ll make a very comfortable living some day. There’s many a girl who’d be happy to get herself someone so reliable.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“So go out there and look! Christ, you’re seventeen, you’re supposed to be a horny devil and I’m supposed to be, to be keeping you away from girls, not pushing you out the door! Y’ain’t one of those gays, are you?”
Icke’s ears burned and he peered intently at the batter, making sure to whip out every lump. “No, ma’am.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know?”
“Too picky, I ’spect. Look, none of us gets exactly what we want in life. The trick is to take what you get and don’t fret. There’s nothing wrong with a poor girl. You find a girl who’s hungry and fill her up with food, she’ll find some love in her heart soon enough. Poor girls can be pretty too, you know, and grateful!”
Icke didn’t answer, but he was thinking about Wendy. She wasn’t poor, and he didn’t think he could get her, and he didn’t think he’d accept anyone else.
♦
After about five minutes of sitting, Icke baited. He was in no hurry. Usually there would be a good number of casual fishermen out on a Friday afternoon, but today was just too cold. That was fine. More for him. There was a good school out by the shoal and he knew they were coming closer. It would be a minute or so before they were in reach. He whipped the line out and waited, letting the float get still. Less suspicious to them if they just came upon it.
When the first fish struck, Icke felt its pain, the confusion of being bitten from inside. There was nothing in it prepared for this. When he pulled, he felt the stretching dark agony run from the mouth through its whole body. He knew that meant the hook was deep enough, so he yanked and then started reeling it in as the others scattered. He wasn’t worried. They wouldn’t go far.
The smothering alien panic when the fish hit the air was familiar too, and the relief when he unhooked it into a wire enclosure dangling in the water. The normalcy of the water sedated the pain from its lip, somewhat. When Icke filled the cage up, he’d pull it out, carry it home with his catch flopping and suffocating, and then one by one he’d behead them with a heavy cleaver on a flat-top stump in the back yard. Some people bashed their fish with boards, but Icke preferred the knife and he kept it razor sharp. It was quicker that way.
Other fishermen saw the sport as a gradual game, or a tranquil pastime, or just a way to get some good eats. To Icke, it was killing. It always had to be. It was too close when he felt it. He couldn’t think of it as anything else.
♦
“Oh, uh, hi,” Francis said.
“Oh. Hi there!” Wendy replied, and Francis thought she might sound a little too cheerful, like she was faking it and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But he wasn’t good at judging things like that.
It was Monday the sixth, and they were coming out of school. Wendy stayed late for basketball practice. Francis knew she walked home by the back stairway, while the other girls mostly drove. He’d watched the last couple days, waiting for her, as casually as he was able. She’d gone somewhere else those days. But today she was here.
“I was thinkin’,” Francis said. “Um. This Saturday I’ve got a weight-fishing thing, y’know, at Barnes’ Stream. Couple towns south. Anyway, I’ll probably win some money there, I usually do... eh, when I get back, would you... y’know... like to... um...”
“Oh.” Wendy looked off to the left, though there was nothing to see there. “Oh, Francis, no.”
“Yeah, okay.”
/>
“I mean, I don’t...”
“Yeah, I know. It’s no big deal. It was just a thought.”
“Okay then.” She gave him a small brave smile, heartbreakingly sweet and a little sad. Like maybe she wished things were different too.
He watched her walk away, and when he turned around, Wesley was there. Wendy’s older brother.
“Hey!” Wesley said.
Icke shied away, started to slink around him.
Wesley stepped into his path. He was breathing heavy, like he’d run to get there. “Where d’you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Home,” Icke muttered, turning to go down the steps. Wendy was already out of sight.
Wesley grabbed his shoulder and turned Icke around. The boy wasn’t big, didn’t play sports. In fact, Icke knew that some of the guys laughed about beating Wesley, the same way they laughed about beating him. But Wesley was still stronger than Francis.
“I heard you were bugging my sister. Is that right?”
“No,” Icke mumbled, looking away, stepping back, trying to reclaim his sleeve from Wesley’s grasp.
“Don’t lie to me, you freak!” Now Wesley had both his shoulders, and Icke realized this wasn’t going to be the same as the other times. The boy wasn’t going to hit him for fun, or to make himself feel better, or to look tough. Wesley was going to do it because he was revolted, because Icke disgusted him and he needed to face it.
“I’ll leave her alone,” Icke said, getting his hands up into a too-familiar cringe, “I won’t talk to her again.” He knew his assurances would do no good. Wesley had to do this. Icke could almost understand, even through his hatred. He hated the boy in that minute, and all the people who’d made Wesley hate him, all the people who’d made jokes and made fun until Wesley couldn’t stand the thought of Icky polluting his sister. For just a moment, his hate of them eclipsed his hate of himself.
Wesley hit him in the head.
Icke hadn’t expected that. It usually started with punches to the belly, or the kidneys, or somewhere that wouldn’t leave a mark. It was an unspoken rule. The head was for slapping or spitting. You only punched the head with a closed fist against a worthy opponent, or at the end, as a final statement if you were really wound up. Wesley didn’t seem to know the rules. He pulled Icke in by his shoulder, reeling him right into the blow. Icke stumbled back a pace, and had time to see Wesley’s knuckle bleeding from a tooth-cut before he took a step into open air and crashed ass-down on the concrete stairs. His head whipped back against a painted-steel stair rail.
♦
The night of his beating, Icke put a trash bag on his bed and then put the ice bag on top of it, tucking the black plastic around it. He knew cold water would form on it, and he didn’t want his sheets to be wet at bedtime. He lowered the bump on the back of his head onto the ice, and tried to relax. It hurt a lot.
He’d been unconscious for a while. He didn’t know how long. When he woke up and looked up the steps, he saw Woody Manderveigh at the top, staring down at him, motionless. When Icke glanced down, there was blood on his jacket and shirt, but not too much. He stumbled to his feet, and Woody didn’t help. By the time Icke was standing, the other boy had gone.
Icke had walked home and showered, glumly grateful that it was his mom’s night for bar drinking, and put himself to bed without comment. It was hard to get sleep, though. He kept thinking about what he’d seen while he’d been knocked out.
He’d gone out into the ocean again, sending his mind farther and deeper than ever before. He hadn’t been able to hold any clear thoughts or grasp a string of words, but at some level he’d been hoping that if he went far enough, he might not have to come back. Eventually he did return, but between waking and black-out he’d found something.
Miles out and fathoms deep, he’d occupied a creature unlike any other. He could tell it was primitive, simple in thought and act, even compared to a swordfish or a salmon. It wasn’t exactly a fish either, though he felt fins and gills. Icke’s wandering talent had touched squids and octopi, and this had something in common with those as well.
He felt tentacles, but more than eight. There was something of the polyp to it, something crustacean in the way it was joined together, but it had no shell, and it was immense. Of that he was certain. Icke had felt around whales, on one rare day when no other human knew they were passing, and this was bigger. It was bigger than the whole pod.
He couldn’t say how he knew it was old, older than men, any more than he could explain knowing its size and its slumber and the hunger that slept with it. But he knew that it was vast, and easily roused to frenzy. He knew it was too primitive to die.
♦
As Icke’s Friday catch filled his wet prison, he reached out farther, deeper, searching for that vast mind of stupid and alien dreams. It was still there. He had some vague sensation that the lump on his head was acting like an antenna.
He put himself through it and knew that it could come ashore. Its mere rising bulk would be enough to flood the cheap houses, like his, that were close to the beach where the fish got gutted.
He knew that whatever its limbs were – not tentacles or pseudopods or hands or claws exactly, but something long and numerous and powerful – they could reach the top of the hill, as far as Wellesport Central High School. Certainly they could reach Wendy and Wesley’s home, halfway up. It could rise and reach and crush and consume. It could.
Icke thought about whether Wendy would be grateful if he saved her from it, or if that would only raise more questions. He wondered if he could escape its hunger, if he called it. He wondered if that mattered to him.
He couldn’t control these things, exactly. It was more like he knew what they’d do before they acted, and they always acted according to the knowledge he possessed.
He stared out at the sea, and wondered what he should decide to know.
The cage was full. Francis Icke reached down into the water. Even though the water was icy, he paused, his hand halfway between the carrying handle and the latch that would set his captives free.
CODING TIME
by Marc Reichardt
I heard someone approach. “You’re gonna go blind, hunched over the screen like that.” I looked up, my focus shifting from the Dylath program to the sallow white of Jean’s angular face. Everyone looked like that eventually in the perpetual darkness of Onyx division. I couldn’t tell whether her bright red hair made it better or worse.
I sighed. “Did your mom tell you that? You don’t look old enough to have been watching CRTs.” Maybe she had parents that cared.
She smiled and brushed a stray lock of hair back from her face. “Eyestrain. You should be fourteen inches from the screen.”
“Actually, that’s why we maintain the lighting at this level.” I jumped. Roger’s silky voice made it sound like he was right by my ear, but the clicking of his hard-soled shoes indicated that he was still down the hall.
I glanced back. His dark suit kept him part of the shadows. I still couldn’t tell what his true complexion was. Was he Arabic? Otherwise Asian? He didn’t sound black, as much as people can ‘sound’ anything. He rested his arms on the cubicle wall, blocking out the dim hallway behind him. The glare of my screen revealed none of his secrets.
“Eyestrain is mostly caused by the presence of bright peripheral objects. Focusing on one light source in front of you isn’t supposed to be a problem.” He smirked – not that any amusement touched his almond-shaped eyes. “That’s what the government says.”
Jean forced an obvious giggle, then nodded and slipped past him, purse over her shoulder. She’d told me once,
during lunch, about how uncomfortable he made her. At a diner, maybe? I blinked hard, trying to remember. I’d been working way too long on this project.
Roger turned to me. M
y monitor brought a bit of clarity to half of his face. One eyebrow arched, his eye pinning me to my chair. “Heading home, too?”
I squinted back at my screen. I was suddenly tired, but I shook my head anyway. “No. I still have some work to do on Dylath. Kleiner said he wanted to start the compiler tomorrow, if he could.”
His face fell to shadow again, but I could still see his smile. It seemed to be almost glowing in the darkness. “All right, then. You know we appreciate everything you do here, Stephen.”
I half-smiled and nodded, caught in that awkward space where you feel compelled to thank someone for thanking you, setting up the infinite recursion loop. Roger was always so damn courteous, even if he did expect us to work like dogs. You couldn’t hate the guy. The best you could do was follow Jean’s lead, and try to avoid him.
He headed for the hallway, gliding more than walking. It wasn’t until he was some distance past our area that the clicking started up again. As I stared at my screen, gazing into the depths of Dylath, it occurred to me that the whole place was tiled. His steps should have been clicking the whole time...
8:47
... but the noise was actually the check wheel, hanging in the diner’s call window. The waitress had put another order in it, and the surly-looking cook had spun it around for a look. He hovered above the grill in stained whites, caught amid the hiss of grease and steam. I looked back to the oversized digital clock above the window. Still 8:47. I’d been watching it for a while. I couldn’t remember seeing a digital clock that big
Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Page 17
