Beneath The Surface

by Simon Strantzas

  She still scowled, but it was augmented with a grim determination, and whatever she said to me across the distance between us could not be heard over the sound of wind and crashing waves.

  Rather than feel relieved, I felt quite the opposite. There was something wrong, something about the woman that I did not like. My body started to move of its own accord, disregarding the pain as it rocked back and forth, trying to extricate me from my confines. The woman shook her head, stumbling forward as fast as she could, her clothing pressed against her by the blowing wind. Her mouth kept moving, her voice screaming, but I heard nothing I could understand.

  I leaned on my arm, my one good arm, and pushed myself higher. A dried corpse lay broken beneath me, and the blood I had spilled seemed to soften its sharp edges. My eyes played tricks on me as that flesh began to tremble and then shiver as I pushed myself away.

  I heard a long moan, like the ache of something not yet dead, as the wind threw sand into the air. I hid my head from it the best I could, but I knew the woman had not stopped coming towards me, her voice finally loud enough that I could discern strings of words. “You are not supposed to be here,” I think she said, though it might have been, “You are supposed to lie there.”

  My body, its energy nearly spent, refused to listen to anymore.

  I gambled on one final effort and pushed myself up and backward, rolling myself off the heap of corpses and back onto the grey sand of the beach. I lay still for a moment as my every limb screamed in pain. I may have lost consciousness for a moment, as I remember sinking miles deep into a sea of black tar, the weight of it pressing down and suffocating me. Then, I opened my eyes and saw the world, that grey colorless world, with its grey clouds rolling across a grey sunless sky. I turned and looked at the grey woman and her grey bucket. And behind her, the grey city poured more of its grey pollution out of its tall grey towers.

  I stood on shaking legs and, though the woman was nearly upon me, managed to slip through her fingers and distance myself. Her voice was dry and rasping, and she continued to scream at me through her sour bloodless lips.

  “Where are you going?” she said. “Stay there!”

  But I would not.

  Behind me, the wind continued to moan, her voice soon blending into it, a wail that drowned in the crashing waves of the tumultuous sea. I did not turn around again, desperate to find a way off the beach and out of the city.

  But the only way out was through.

  It was night in the blink of an eye, and I hobbled lost through the filthy streets. The wind continued to plague me, but it had become gritty, full of sand that ground against my wounds. It was as though the beach itself was after me wanting to pull me back into the arms of the old woman.

  I looked around for any indication of where I was, but the street names did not seem to change. I thought I passed Gerrard Street twice, yet each time the road looked different — filled with lights and storefronts I did not recognize. I was unfamiliar with the city, and it was to be my downfall.

  I took a seat on a concrete bench along the street’s edge. Above it hung the skeleton of a dried tree, its trunk disappearing into a small, square cut in the sidewalk. Brittle branches creaked in the gale, but only the smallest of twigs broke free to then skitter down the street.

  I did not know how my mother could have survived such a place. She, who inside was only light — at least at first — seemed alien to its cold dark touch. And in truth, I supposed, she didn’t survive. The city was a disease and, once it was caught, there was no cure. I watched it suck the light from out of my mother even when she was no longer in its grasp, and I feared it would be worse for me the longer I stayed amid its crumbling walls.

  I held my wounded arm to my chest and rocked myself gently. My eyes stung from the dryness, from the grit of the wind, and I closed my lids as tears formed. I did not open them again until I heard that long, terrible moan as the wind became stronger. I looked up and could still see the clouds, churning faintly in the night, blocking the moon just as they had earlier blocked the sun. I shivered. And then beside me stood the woman.

  I did not see her at first, my eyes focused on the sky. I jumped when I did, startled by both her sudden proximity and her presence on the cold concrete when, until then, I had only seen her on windswept sand. Her face was contorted with a grimace that fluctuated between anger and irritation and perhaps fear. Once she set her eyes upon me I was caught with no place to run.

  She was old, and the pail she carried was heavy; but I was a broken man, and could barely move.

  I felt my life draining from me as she watched, my eyes growing tired and heavy. I struggled to stay awake while she stood there frowning, waiting. I saw faint anticipation in her, then it was gone and I wondered aloud, “What is going to happen to me?”

  She only shook her head.

  “I didn’t —” I said, but she hushed me, the flat of her palm raised. As I watched her, she carried her bucket to the bench and set it down at her feet. She looked intently at me — her thin face crumpled linen, tight with lines of worry — and when I thought I could take it no more, she put her cold rough hand to my forehead, to my face, and lightly squeezed.

  Her touch was sandpaper.

  She sat down.

  “Do you hear the sea?” she asked, and I nodded. “The sea gets louder every year. It gets larger. It gets deeper. Where there was once sand, there is now not. Do you understand?”

  Again, I could only nod.

  “It comes closer. Soon, it will take the sand. The levee is weak. Soon, I think, it will take the beach, then flood the streets.”

  I looked at her, but she was no longer looking at me. Instead, she had her face turned into the wind, and it blew wisps of her grey hair back; the strands fluttering like flaps of fabric. She spoke again, but what she said was no longer clear. The wind was too strong, and I found myself staring intently at the bucket between her feet. The liquid within it was dark against the metal of the can, reflecting little of the swirling clouds overhead. Instead, they reflected the woman, but the liquid stretched the image of her face, distorting it. She turned back out of the wind and faced me again. All I caught were her last words, “Though I build the levee I fill the sea.”

  She put her rough hand back on my cheek and asked, “Can you live with that?”

  I thought a moment, and then stood up, my bad arm cradled to my side. She stood, too, and for the first time attempted to smile, though that smile was not one of happiness or satisfaction — it was of relief. Her face relaxed for only an instant before it tightened again.

  “Are you ready for what is next?” she said, and I nodded once more, and for the last time.

  “I am ready,” I said, and before she could reach down for the dull metal pail, I snatched it and threw it as hard as I could.

  The pail took to the air, moving upward along a path so slow I feared time itself was stopping. The woman stood stunned and we both watched its long arc, until the wind took hold of the object, rolling it in the air. The contents began to slip out then, the dark liquid pouring onto the grey asphalt and, upon seeing this, the old woman let out a scream from the cold darkness within her.

  I ran, ran with all the energy I had left. The wind blew stronger against me, but it could not prevent my escape. I heard the waves of the sea crashing angrily upon that shore which I could no longer see, hidden far behind the cracking walls of the grey crumbling city. I ran in fear the woman would follow, but I knew she would not. I ran until my legs refused to keep working, until the breath in my lungs was burning and stabbing into my heart. And, still, I ran. I ran until I saw some sign, any sign that I had escaped from that cold empty place, where towering walls and clouds of filth blocked the sun from touching the world below it. I ran until the sky was clear again and the sun had emerged from where it hid. I ran until there was no reason to run any longer.

  And when I stopped, I fell to my knees.

  A THING OF LOVE

  1

 
; HE KNEW EVERY inch of the apartment, counted each distance with a measured footstep over and over again until he could rebuild its stark walls and fogged murky windows within the darkness of his mind’s eye. Books, papers, all manner of material bound and unbound lay scattered, thrown in fits of despair and depression to ease the gnawing emptiness that swelled within him. Each of those books was filled with words, yet none bore his name upon the cover. Those books — those worn dogged volumes that he had managed to squeeze from his soul before the death of his beloved mother — had been thrown in a hail from his fourth floor window over a year ago. Afterward, when he awoke from his stupor, he realized he could not retrieve them; the apartment had become his cage. He could not move beyond the locked door for fear the rancid world would swallow him whole. He could only watch the volumes decay through the locked window, watch as their bindings fell apart and the pages became free to awkwardly creep through the cramped gutters of the street below like a flock of wounded birds.

  Even with the window sealed, the stench of the world remained. It stank of death and there was nothing that didn’t bear that mark. It spoiled his food; the milk in his icebox becoming so thick and chunky its foul odor stung his eyes as he poured the congealed white mass into the sink. He had to dial the grocers’ to have its replacement delivered, and when he did he found his voice was rough from days of disuse.

  His mother, his beautiful mother . . .

  He could still feel her hands upon him, her gentle caresses and professions of love. No one understood him like she, no one made him feel the things she made him feel, and the world in its ignorance wanted to take that away from them. He had been sitting at her feet when she revealed the truth, and he pressed his face into her lap and cried in fear. It was only a matter of time, she said. Her beautiful blonde hair soon thinned and fell, her angular features turned sharp, then soft as though blurred. The cancer ate her away from the inside until there was nothing left but a husk. Even that soon faded and he was left with nothing.

  The telephone’s ring woke him from his memories.

  “Stanley, I should come see you,” said Leslie, her voice uncharacteristically resolute, as though afraid of the nervous small talk she habitually rattled through. “I want to make sure you’re okay. You won’t come to me, so maybe I’ll come over there.” His agent waited for him to speak. Instead, he cleared a pile of loose pages and lifted from the mess a photograph of his mother and himself. They stood, arms about each other by a brick building Stanley could not recall, and he remembered how she made him feel, how her lips felt pressed against his, her hands running upon him. His eyes thickened, warmed, felt heavy. He touched the side of his thigh gently. He had no wish to be disturbed.

  But Leslie would not remain silent.

  “I . . . everybody is worried about you. They’re asking me about the advance and the book’s progress, but I don’t — I mean, I think they think I’m lying, Stanley. Please, I need you — I need you to give me something, anything . . .”

  He wiped the photograph off and placed it across from him so his mother might watch as Stanley spoke for the second time in a week.

  “I can feel my soul being stolen from me. Can’t you understand that?”

  Leslie’s voice caught in her throat, and when it emerged it was slightly higher, more rushed. “Please, you have to let me come over.”

  Stanley hung up the receiver and laid his fingers on his lips before touching the photograph.

  How could he be anything like them? He, who at every moment still felt the hole his mother had left, who did not sleep or eat for days on end, who for months had watched himself slowly withering in the bathroom mirror? They were a different species and he wanted little to do with any of them. How could they be anything like him and not all want to die?

  He missed his mother’s caressing touch stroking his thigh as he lay beside her. She had reassured him everything would be all right, but things were not and though he tried his love was not enough to save her. He couldn't even attend her funeral — by then, his walls had already become his prison.

  There was a knock at the door and it startled him. He clutched his mother’s photograph to his chest and watched the crack of light at the door’s foot and the heavy shadow that moved across it. He found his pants lying in a crumpled pile and quietly slipped them on. He crept closer to the vibrating door, its rattle shaking the sealed windows. He put his eye to the peephole but the visitor’s features were indistinguishable in the fish-eye lens. The figure was shapeless, as was its droning voice.

  “Delivery.”

  Stanley pressed his back against the wall and did not move. The shadow continued to break the wedge of light on the floor, allowing the darkness to creep in. He was powerless to stop it.

  With a dull thud the wedge disappeared for good, and Stanley heard the thick clomp of feet on uneven stairs, followed by the closing of the door at the staircase’s end.

  He waited. He waited until those monotonous footsteps ceased echoing within his head, and then slowly checked the tiny peephole. The stairwell was empty. He pulled away and idly fingered the long scratches on the inside of the door.

  He checked the peephole once more, then opened the five locks that ran along the door’s length. The stairwell was a sickly yellow, and though the lighting was poor there was enough to illuminate the brown paper-covered box that lay pressed against his door. The package was a foot square and it reminded Stanley of his mother’s hatbox, except its corners were bumped and dented and strange brown smudges ran across the paper. Stanley’s address was printed across the label with a palsied hand, but his name, like the return address, was absent. He cautiously lifted the box and was surprised by its weight. With a quick glance down the uneven stairs to ensure he was alone, he pulled the package back into his apartment. The sound of five locks snapping into place immediately followed.

  Stanley inspected the box again. There were no other features that might betray the sender’s identity. Even the courier stamp was smeared to the point of illegibility. He doubted it came from grocers’ — it was unlike them to send anything in such a fashion. A weight shifted within with a sound like long fingernails scratching the sides. Curious, he lifted the package to his nose but found its sour odor only vaguely familiar.

  He put the box down reluctantly when the telephone rang. At the other end there was a low rasp like an old woman’s dying breath. He shivered — his voice breaking in his throat, his knuckles turning pale and twisted — until Leslie spoke. A great despair crawled over him and he found it difficult to pay attention to what she said.

  “ . . . need me to. You know I can’t explain what’s going on. I need to see you, Stanley. Or . . . or at least tell me everything is under control. I can’t . . . I can’t afford to lose you . . . or any of my clients, for that matter. Please, let me help.”

  The box that sat across the length of the room seemed to transform before his eyes, swelling as if it took a breath. Leslie continued to speak but he was no longer listening; her words streamed by him without comprehension, and halfway through her plea he placed the receiver back upon its hook.

  He returned at once to the package. Beneath the paper was hidden white cardboard, the clear tape across its flaps sealing every opening. It took only the edge of a pencil scrounged from the floor to break the seal, and Stanley heard the briefest of exhales — the rush of air escaping. The flaps pulled back easily as he leaned in to inspect the package’s dark contents.

  Thick with fur, the shapeless thing reminded him of an old hat or shawl but he knew it was neither. His mind tried to decipher the mass, tried to determine the use of those tiny jewels. Why did the leather seem folded or coiled? What was the purpose of that long slit? No matter which way he looked, the contents defied him . . . until the thing moved. It took a breath and when it did he unthinkingly hurled the box and its contents against the far wall of the room. His eyes, however, remained fixed on it, and everything that followed seemed to unfurl in slow motion.
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br />   He stumbled back over himself and crashed to the floor. The box lay on its side, the stained bottom flaps hiding its contents completely. Nothing had spilled — nothing disturbed beyond the photographs scattered in its wake — and for a moment his concern for the pictures made him believe he'd imagined the writhing shape. Then the rustling returned, that sound of fingernails upon cardboard — hollow, rough, sporadic. A long fibrous stalk emerged from the upturned carton and curled over, feeling for purchase. Then more followed, one after the other, until there were enough to pull the bulk of the furry creature free. It landed with a dull thud, its body heaving as though out of breath, and then it darted at Stanley, appendages flailing wildly in some insane locomotion. The slap of wet flesh filled the room.

  He scrambled backward as fast as he could until he rammed his head into the wall behind him. The creature stopped, then moved a few more feet and waited. Its tiny jeweled eyes were blank and lidless, and without warning the creature turned and skittered away, disappearing from view behind the piles of boxes and papers at the opposite end of the apartment. The sound of its intermittent movements continued for minutes afterward.

  Stanley stood, keeping his back pressed against the wall, and inched towards the door, all the while watching for movement in the shadows around him.

  Each bolt unlocked with a heavy snap no matter how carefully he tried to prevent it, and he was sure each would draw the creature out of hiding and it would attack, its tendril-like legs moving out of time with the pulsations of its split abdomen. When the fifth lock was turned, he took a deep breath and pulled the door open. Pale light dropped into the darkness and was consumed immediately. Tiny fits of scratching echoed all around him, and were increasing in volume. He covered his ears and flung himself through the doorway. He did not get far.