I wanted to ask them why they didn’t care. What was wrong with them?
Meanwhile, they acted like there was something wrong with me.
“Don’t go that way,” a young Selkie mother warned as she grabbed her little boy and swam past me.
Whatever it was, whoever it was, I couldn’t stop myself. I had to see who was weeping and, if possible, I had to help. The water thickened until it was no longer transparent, it was now muddy and dark and I found myself choking. Still I couldn’t stop.
The cries began to sound familiar.
I now swam alongside the shadow of a rocky mountain range, mammoth walls looming all around me until they formed a narrow, twisted corridor. The only light came from my own pale blue eyes, their glow illuminating my path like a pair of tiny headlights. I rounded a corner and saw a massive cave, iron bars across the entrance. Someone stood inside, hands wrapped around the bars, weeping and crying for help.
“Let me out, please!”
All the eels and swordfish and prawns fled until I was the only one brave enough to approach the cave. Up ahead, a slender figure—about my height and build—leaned against the bars, her features still cast in shadow.
She stretched her hands between the bars, revealing thick shackles on her wrists. Long dark hair floated around her face like a cloud. Then the current shifted and I saw her face for the first time. I stopped. Suddenly afraid to approach.
It was my mother.
But there was something about her, something horrible. I couldn’t see it in her eyes or her posture, yet I knew it instantly. I started to back away from her, then I realized that I was inside the cave, behind the bars.
I was trapped in the prison with her.
But it wasn’t my mother. It was a monster. And now I couldn’t get away.
•
I woke up, my room filled with darkness, and wondered whether I was truly awake or if this was still part of the nightmare. Outside a storm raged, cold wind rattling the windows, thunder booming in the near distance, flashes of lightning creating bright spider webs across the night sky. I took a hesitant breath, tried to figure out whether I was under water or in the real world. It took me a full minute to realize that I was truly awake.
I sat up, slid my legs over the edge of my bed, pulled an afghan over my shoulders.
Somewhere in the house a window hung open. Cold air swept down the hallway, pooled in my room and made me tremble. I had to find the window and close it.
I stood up, still surrounded by darkness, wondering if my Selkie eyes would begin to shine. I took a step forward, but my foot struck something unexpected and I stumbled, almost lost my balance. I stepped backward, turned on my bedside lamp, then blinked when yellow light temporarily blinded me.
I stared at the floor, stunned.
My bed was surrounded by fresh hawthorn boughs.
But Dad was in the hospital and Gram was asleep. Besides, Gram wasn’t strong enough to cut down this much wood by herself. Even I would have had a hard time cutting down this much.
I stared at the barrier, a full foot tall, suddenly afraid. Who was trying to protect me and what were they trying to protect me from? As far as Selkies went, I didn’t think they got much worse than my sister. Besides, the Selkies I’d met didn’t like hawthorn, but it didn’t make them stay away. Caleb had no problem standing next to me when I wore my cross.
My hand instinctively flew to my throat, I ran my fingers over Gram’s necklace that hung there. I felt comforted, knowing it was safe.
Then I heard it. Just like in my dream.
Someone nearby was weeping and the sound was enough to break my heart. And just like in my dream, I had to find out who it was.
•
Step by step, I moved into the hallway, bits of my nightmare still making me jumpy. This all felt like some eerie déjà vu experience, like it had all happened before. The house wore shades of gray and black, meanwhile outside, thunder continued to rock against the windows, each echoing wave so loud it made me stop and hold still.
Waiting for the silence.
And for the sound of someone crying.
I paused in front of my door, staring down the hallway. The door to my father’s room stood open and the sound was coming from there. It had to be Gram. She must not have been able to sleep, just like me, and now she was in his bedroom, maybe remembering him as a boy.
Part of me knew that I should go back to bed.
The other part knew that it wasn’t Gram crying in Dad’s room.
I continued to move forward, one step at a time, wincing whenever an old floor board would creak beneath me. She wasn’t dead, I kept telling myself, thinking about my mother and the dream I’d just had. If my sister wasn’t dead, then my mother probably wasn’t dead either.
But if she wasn’t dead, then why hadn’t she come back to us, like Riley had?
Why had she only come back once in the middle of the night, when I was twelve years old? And why wouldn’t Gram or anyone else tell me what had really happened the day my mother and Riley disappeared?
Maybe my mother had tried to kill Riley after all. And maybe she was in my father’s room, right now, waiting for me, waiting to drag me down into the ocean where she would lock me up in a cave.
The clouds parted then, the storm began to roll past, and a sliver of moonlight washed in one of the windows. A beam of pale light glistened on the floor in front of me.
Revealing watery footprints.
The crying stopped. I froze. Ran a finger along the chain on my necklace, made sure that the wooden Celtic cross was still there.
“Kira?”
A soft familiar voice called out to me from my father’s room.
A shiver wound its way around my body, like a sea snake.
You’re not supposed to answer the dead when they call you, especially not when they call you by name.
My mother was in the doorway then, a lean silhouette with no face, dark hair swirling in the wind like a tangle of Medusa snakes. She must have known that I wasn’t going to come any closer.
“Where is he?” she asked, her voice shaking from weeping. “Where is your father?”
Whatever she was, monster or murderer or one of the walking dead, she still loved my father. Just like I did. Suddenly I didn’t care about any Celtic curses or warnings or folklore. I only cared about my family. And this creature at the end of the hall was part of it. Whether I liked that fact or not.
“He’s in the hospital,” I said, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want Gram to wake up. Somehow I was more worried about Gram seeing me talking to my dead mother than I was about all the curses.
She shook her head. “No.”
“He’s going to be okay.” Without meaning to, I took a step toward her. I think I was trying to comfort her. I’m not sure.
She opened up her arms to me. That embrace I had longed for was waiting for me at the end of the hallway. Maybe it would take me to the bottom of the sea. Maybe not.
I took another step nearer.
Then a hand grabbed me, pulled me backward.
“Don’t you dare go any closer to her, girl, you hear me? You turned, you’re not safe anymore.” Gram had latched onto the back of my nightgown and she was pulling, with a lot more strength than I ever imagined she had. I was behind Gram now and I realized that she held Dad’s ax in her other hand.
“And you,” she said to my mother. “Get out of this house. You’re not welcome here!”
My mother retreated into the shadows. “Tell him I love him. I always will,” she said, her voice a mournful wail now.
“He knows it. I wish to God he could forget,” Gram answered.
Then my mother slipped through the window. Her shape seemed to shift as the moonlight hit her, her human features sliding away. A foul odor seeped in the house, a stench like rubbery tentacles and thick briny water and dark oily pools.
She loped away across the yard, toward the cliff.
But it wasn’t my mo
ther any more.
It was a hideous, lumbering sea monster, with long swinging arms, a body thick as a tree trunk and mossy seaweed hair.
Chapter 48
Kira:
Every light in the house was on, even though it was three in the morning. On top of that, every window and door was locked and a fresh pot of coffee was brewing. The coffee was for Gram. I had my own preferred brand of caffeine, front and center. A can of Coke. I was supplementing it with a can of water-packed Bumblebee tuna.
Neither one of us could go back to sleep. In fact, I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to sleep again. Not after seeing that unbelievably creepy monster.
I shuddered. I had almost given that thing a hug.
Gram poured steaming black coffee into a large mug, then flavored it with a healthy dose of Jameson. She still had that ax at her side, carried it with her from room to room. I was beginning to wonder where I could get one for myself.
She sat across the table from me and we glanced at each other as we took sips from our drinks. Outside the storm had picked up. I flinched every time the wind made one of the windows rattle, kept imagining that beast was trying to get inside again.
And what the heck was that thing?
Gram set her cup down, but her shoulders still hung taut, the muscles in her arms never resting. One eye always kept that ax in view.
“Okay, Gram, spill,” I said. I knew she didn’t like slang, but I also knew she understood it. “What in the world was that—” I paused. I didn’t even have words to describe it. “—that monster thing?”
Gram stared down into her cup.
If her eyes hadn’t been open, I would have thought she was asleep.
“Gram?”
She looked up at me. I could see a thousand thoughts flying through her mind. Maybe she was trying to figure out an answer that I would believe. Maybe she was hoping I wouldn’t ask again. But in the end, she must have decided to tell me the truth, because I could see the pain in her eyes.
“That was your mother,” she said.
I sank back into my chair. Shook my head. Then I actually turned around and pointed back toward my father’s room. “No, Gram, that thing that was just in our house. What was that?”
“I told you. That was your mother.”
I took a deep breath. “Look, either my mother is dead. Or she’s a murderer. Or she’s a Selkie. But that thing was—that was like something from a horror movie. Did you see it? It changed after it crawled out the window. It turned into something I can’t even describe. Long rubbery arms, like about ten arms, and wild snake-like hair and it was as big around as that hawthorn tree that grows in the garden. And the smell! Did you smell it?”
“Did I smell it? Did I see it? Of course, I did.”
“So, you’re saying that my mother is a monster.”
“No, I’m saying that’s all that’s left of your mother. She died trying to save your sister from the Hinquememem.”
Hinquememem. Where had I heard that before? Must have been in one of Gram’s books. I tried to remember, but couldn’t.
“Did that thing take Katie?” I asked.
Gram nodded.
“Why?”
She paused, as if searching for the right words. “Everything has a natural predator. The Hinquememem hunts Selkies. Not in the water, though, only if they’ve been on shore too long. Your mother had been living as a human for almost twenty years. That beast came hunting her and found your sister instead. Your mother managed to hide you in the cellar, so it couldn’t get you. Then she ran off to save Katie.” She shook her head. “She never should have gone alone. One woman isn’t strong enough to take down a beast like that. But I don’t think there’s a mother alive who could stand back and let one of her children be stolen by that monster. I know I couldn’t.”
“So, she must have saved Katie, right? That’s why Riley is here now.”
“Yes. But, Kira, that’s all I know. Once your mother disappeared, we all thought the Hinquememem had killed the both of them. It wasn’t until years later, when your father told me that he saw your mother, how she would come to him once a year, that I began to suspect—”
“Suspect what?”
Her head swung from side to side, as if she didn’t dare speak any more.
“What, Gram? You have to tell me.”
Her gaze lifted then, caught and held mine, made a chill race over me.
“I don’t know for certain, the legends about those things aren’t clear. But I think she followed it until it let Katie go. I think she may have even killed it in the process.” Her voice trailed off and her eyes filled with tears.
“But that’s a good thing, right? Killing it? I mean, that monster sounds awful.”
“You don’t know the whole legend, child. And I don’t want to talk about it any more. Not tonight. You’re never supposed to say its name at night, you might accidentally call it back if you do.”
“But you could tell me, without saying its name—”
She shook her head one final time, then stood. “No, we’ve talked about that thing enough. Here.” She handed me the ax. “This is about the only thing it’s afraid of. This and hawthorn wood. Just promise me one thing.”
I frowned. Not sure if I should. But I did anyway. “I promise,” I said, waiting to hear what I had agree upon.
“Promise me if that thing ever gets close to you again, you’ll swing this ax or at least show it to the beast.” Her eyes were like stone now, not a drop of mercy or compassion. “But you make sure you never actually strike it. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You swing, but you never, ever strike, no matter what happens. Even if it drags you off into the sea. Because if you swing and if you hit it—” She was staring off into the gloomy distance, over my shoulder, back toward my dad’s room. “—if you hit it, you’ll find out there are things in this world much worse than dying.”
•
I don’t know how, but Gram managed to go back to sleep. Fog rolled over the cliff and filled our yard. It pressed against every window and it blocked out both the night and the approaching day. Everything, from our driveway to the cliff to the distant ocean horizon, was now shrouded in a shape-shifting, white-gray cloud. Whenever I lifted my head, I thought I saw things, strange creepy things, outside the window.
People turning into monsters.
Monsters that watched my every movement.
I sat huddled over the kitchen table, surfing the Internet on my laptop, trying to find answers. I only found a few mentions of the Hinquememem, but they were all about something that lived in a lake in Canada. None of those stories quite fit in with what Gram had said, or what I had read in her books.
My spine snapped to attention.
I needed her books. Now.
So, I snuck down the hallway, quietly opened her door, listened to make sure she was sleeping. A soft snore let me know that she was. I crept into the room, felt my way from one piece of furniture to the next until I finally found her bookshelf. This time I just grabbed an armful of books. She was going to know I had them soon enough, no reason to put other books on the shelf in their place.
Then when I turned to leave the room, the cat jumped off her bed and wound his way between my legs. Every step was treacherous now.
“Stop it, Raven,” I whispered.
He answered with a loud meow.
I moved several steps closer to the door.
“Shhh,” I said.
Another long meow.
Behind us, Gram turned over on her side, the bed squeaked and she sighed, long and heavy. In a half-asleep voice she mumbled, “Shut up, Raven.” Both the cat and I froze until she started snoring again.
Then the cat bounded toward the open door, me a step behind him.
•
Three empty cans of Coke, a half-eaten bag of Doritos and an empty jar of pickled herring later, I was still hunched over the kitchen table, this time with seven of Gram’s books open
in front of me. Some of them had my sticky notes marking clues and I continually typed all the information I found into a Word doc on my laptop. I found the spell that Gram had taught me for changing into a human. I also found one for changing back into a Selkie. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it or not, but I wrote them both down anyway.
Altogether, I found six mentions of the Hinquememem, but they were all about how to ward one off. None of them said exactly what the monster was or where it came from.
And, despite Gram’s stern warning, I couldn’t find anything about not hitting it with an ax.
In fact, one of the books told exactly how to strike the beast if you wanted to kill it. One strong blow to the head. Although even by looking at the accompanying diagram, it was hard to tell where the head was. And after that, there was a cryptic note.
“If you want to break the curse, however, don’t strike the head. Instead, swing at the midsection, a blow perpendicular to the Hinquememem’s torso.”
I copied that text in bold, wondering what the difference was between killing the Hinquememem and breaking the curse. But I was pretty sure that my mother was the Hinquememem and I didn’t want to kill her. So, breaking the curse sounded like the thing to do.
I noticed blood on my thumb and realized that I’d been biting my fingernails again.
Then I heard rustling and scuffling outside, thought I saw movement in the shadowy fog. My muscles tensed and I instinctively grabbed my new best friend, the ax. I stood up, suddenly afraid to move in my own house. I glanced down at the cat, who up until now had been curled in his bed beside the stove. His eyes widened when another shuffling noise sounded outside—even closer this time—and then he ran, belly close to the floor until he disappeared in the other room.
“Chicken,” I mumbled.
Someone knocked on the door and I startled, then dropped the ax to the floor with a loud clatter. I knelt to pick it up, glanced at the clock. It was only seven o’clock, so it couldn’t be Sean.
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