Beneath The Surface

by Simon Strantzas

  “You’re out of season. The hotel is closed.” She pursed her lips in a grimace. Maggie tried to look directly into her eyes, but the thickness of the glasses precluded it.

  “But I made the arrangements weeks ago.”

  No one spoke. A long moan from outside hung in the air for too long.

  Then, the woman asked: “Who did you speak to? Who promised you?”

  Lynda shrugged. “I don’t know his name. I think he was the owner.”

  The old woman snorted. It was an ugly noise, like something drowning. “He doesn’t own anything. I paid for this place myself and he never lifted a finger. He shouldn’t even be answering the telephone. Not in his condition.”

  Then, she stepped down from her ladder and opened a drawer in the front desk. From it, she removed a cross, which she placed gently on the counter, then a brass key hung from a piece of leather.

  She looked once more at Maggie, then shook her head and offered the key to Lynda. But she didn't let go of the strap. Instead, she pulled it closer after Lynda took hold.

  “I can see in your friend’s eyes it would be best if she wasn’t here.”

  “Thank you,” Lynda said curtly, snatching the key. “I think we’ll manage just fine.”

  The woman shrugged and smiled only slightly. Then, she took the worn cross from the counter and turned around to resume her dusting.

  “Lynda, let’s go,” Maggie said, and picked up her bag. Lynda huffed, then followed.

  “Breakfast is at ten,” the woman called flatly as they left the lobby.

  The stairwell to their room was narrow and unevenly lit, and Maggie had to support herself with her injured hand to keep from falling. Each time she rested upon it, a jolt of pain scurried up her arm. Lynda followed closely behind, stomping up the stairs as though she were trying to punish them. Motes of dust kicked up into the air, and Maggie did her best to avoid breathing them in. There was the faint odor of fish being burned.

  Lynda grew more upset when Maggie opened the door to their room.

  “This is ridiculous.”

  A large dingy sheet covered each piece of furniture in the room, and as Maggie walked inside, clumps of dust rolled across the floor.

  She scratched her bandage idly and looked for somewhere to set her bag.

  “We should go talk to that woman right now,” Lynda said, still filling the doorway.

  Maggie lifted one of the dusty sheets carefully. Beneath it was a bed, already made.

  “You go. I’ll wait here.” She tried to sound as decisive as possible. Lynda remained dubious. “I need to rest for a minute.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Lynda stammered. “I’ll just leave my bag here. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  Maggie nodded and forced a thin smile.

  As soon as Lynda walked away, the room shrank. It was suddenly difficult to breath the stuffy air, and all Maggie could hear was rushing wind. The sound only intensified her isolation. She tried to open the window with her one hand but it would not move. Instead, she rested her forehead against the cool glass.

  The world had already changed color in preparation for dusk, and Maggie watched as the trees swayed, releasing their leaves into the unforgiving wind. Nothing else moved in the small town. The road that had brought the two women to Markham was also quiet, and it stretched back into the darkness, back to the life Maggie had left behind only a day ago.

  And back to the life she has lost exactly a year ago.

  The room felt over-warm, but Maggie could not blame her watering eyes on the stuffiness or the dust. She lay down upon the revealed bed, her back to the door, and hugged her knees to her chest in hopes of quieting the heaving sobs that were about to follow.

  Her body felt as though it were burning away like sparks in the night, and she worried that if she didn’t find focus for her scrambled thoughts soon she would crumble like ashes over the top of the bed.

  Everything was shattered: first Charles’s plane, then her heart; it continued until she had nothing left. Even her body was not safe. Broken glass and shredded flesh — there were pieces of her life everywhere, multiplying so quickly she couldn’t collect them all.

  Instead, they managed to slip through her damaged fingers.

  The exhaustion of the day took Maggie before she realized it, and within minutes of sobbing she was asleep on the bed. In her mind the burning continued everywhere she looked, only she felt something she had not before. She felt the memory of being high above the world and of what it was like to see everything beneath so small and insignificant. The planet moved slowly, each day gradually turning to night, and still that time between was a fraction of a moment. Dark space enveloped her. She moved with the patience of eons, slowly turning her great form.

  But before the motion was complete, there was a burning that appeared too quickly within her. She spewed hot white ash into the air, then dropped from the sky, unable to hold herself aloft any longer. She fell, pieces of her flesh burning past her, plummeting towards a world from which she had remained so distant.

  And before she felt the ground, she opened her eyes.

  She was still dressed in her clothes from the day before. She felt groggy, her hand throbbing with discomfort, and her mind was a crowd of memories and images that raced away as she tried to grasp them. She looked over and Lynda’s bed was uncovered and rumpled, yet empty. The windows shook with a frenzy.

  She lay back down and listened to the howl.

  When Lynda hadn’t returned by ten, Maggie went downstairs to look for her. The only light in the small dining room was what dimly crawled through the glass patio doors, and it made strange shadows of the sheet-covered tables.

  Lynda sat at one, speaking in murmurs to someone across from her, someone concealed by the darkness that edged the room. Part of Maggie wanted to return to bed and stay there, but before she could Lynda turned around.

  “Come join us.”

  Maggie approached, albeit cautiously, weaving between the upturned furniture. Lynda looked tired, her eyes puffy and half-closed, yet she watched every step Maggie took towards the table.

  “This is Mr. Fry, our landlord . . . or rather her husband.”

  An old man leaned slightly into the light. His eyes were too large behind his thick glasses.

  “You ought to sit down,” he said.

  Maggie pulled out a chair and sat. She looked at both Lynda and Mr. Fry in turn, instinctively cradling her bandaged arm to her chest. It itched again, but she resisted the urge to scratch.

  “Is breakfast coming?” she asked, and the two looked at each other silently, then Mr. Fry turned his round eyes to her.

  “No, it’s not.”

  He took another drink from the bottle he held tight in his fingers as Lynda stood.

  “Are you ready to go?”

  Maggie fidgeted again with her bandages.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But, we’ve come all this way. I thought —”

  “Did you?” the old man asked, standing on his wobbling legs. “Did you?”

  Neither of the women moved. He stumbled out from behind the table into the pale light so Maggie could see him. His face looked as though it had been sandblasted, tiny scars running across it on an angle, sketching his features. Only his eyes were untouched, and he looked at Lynda, then at Maggie, for a long time without saying a word.

  Then he asked: “What’s wrong with your hand?”

  Maggie looked down at it and pulled it closer.

  “I hurt it,” she said.

  “I can see that. I can see the hurt even with all this in me.” He raised his bottle, some of its contents spilling over. “I told your friend she shouldn’t have brought you. It was a bad idea.” He started shaking his head. “A bad idea. But here you are.”

  “My husband,” Maggie said; “His plane crashed —”

  “Yes, yes.” He sounded impatient. “How could I forget? All I have to do is open my window. If you knew any better, you’d turn around a
nd go home. You’d take that part of your husband still inside of you away and love it before it’s gone.”

  He held the bottle to his lips again and leaned his head back. Murky brown liquid flooded his mouth, then trickled down the side of his face. Maggie looked at Lynda, wanting to leave, but Lynda simply watched the old man’s display.

  When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked at the two women again.

  “Do you like the room?”

  Lynda remained silent.

  “Yes,” Maggie offered. “I slept well.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you like this room?” He stabbed his finger at the walls, and Maggie saw nothing at first. Then, as the shadows along the edges of the room fluctuated, hints of the wooden moldings became clearer. They were carved with an ornate design, and Maggie found herself drawn to them. Lynda followed close behind.

  “I installed those myself. A very special design. I wish I didn’t know what was coming, though,” the man said, his words becoming progressively more slurred the longer he spoke. “My wife blames me. But what does she want me to do? The pieces keep coming.”

  Maggie had trouble concentrating on what he was saying. The wind had become quite fierce, and it blew against the glass doors, filling the room with a white noise the old man’s voice could not crack. Words were dropping away, and what he said made less and less sense as he went on.

  And the pattern in the moldings was distracting. A great fish or whale swam in waves through a carved ocean, a swarm of tiny lines circling it. There was something strange about the animal’s shape — something in its features. The carved empty eyes stared right into Maggie’s own, and she felt her skin ripple and slide against her bones.

  “My wife thinks God is inside us all, but she couldn’t be more wrong,” Fry said, and laughed from his throat. Then he stumbled and dropped his bottle. It crashed to the ground in a loud explosion, and broken glass spread across the floor. He looked down at the pieces. Stared at them.

  And then jerked his head up.

  “Do you hear that?” He tried to stand still, but continued to waver. “That noise?”

  Maggie heard at first only the howl of the wind. Then, somewhere beneath it, she heard another sound, like a moan or a low whisper that she couldn’t understand but found familiar nonetheless.

  “Do you hear it?” Lynda asked.

  Maggie nodded.

  She turned to the glass doors and saw the swaying world outside, saw leaves spinning and branches breaking. She lifted her good hand and laid it upon the glass. Beneath her touch, she could feel every grain of dirt and sand that pounded the window’s surface.

  “It’s coming,” he said. “I would tell you not to open the door, but I’d be a year too late.”

  “Come on, Maggie,” Lynda said. “It’s time to go.”

  Maggie looked at the remains of the bottle spread across the floor. She squeezed her bandaged hand until it hurt.

  “No,” she finally said. “Not yet.”

  The old man looked at Lynda and smiled, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed. Maggie gasped and knelt beside him but didn’t know what to do. She looked up at Lynda.

  “We should get his wife!”

  But Lynda said nothing. Instead, she walked to the glass doors and unlocked them.

  Suddenly, the wind was in the room, pushing over the furniture, roaring through the dining room. Maggie had to cover her ears.

  “What are you doing?” she cried. “Close the door!”

  “We have to go. It’s time.”

  Maggie looked over at the old man lying face down on the floor, unmoving.

  “He’ll be fine,” Lynda urged.

  Maggie stood, unsure. Lynda pointed.

  “Look, there’s his wife.” Maggie turned and saw the woman struggling to enter the room against the gale. She was screaming something at them, at Maggie, but the sound of the wind was too fierce to hear what it was. “Come on, Maggie. We haven’t much time. This is why we came here.”

  Maggie followed, stepping outside into the spinning world. Waves of grit rained upon her and she turned to see Lynda closing the door while the little woman inside ran through the wreckage to her broken husband. She hit him with her fists, but he did not move.

  Lynda took Maggie by her bare hand and pulled her forward. The wind was fierce, and everything spun in turmoil around them. Maggie had trouble seeing — everything was moving, most of it against them. Dirt and debris that had been picked up by the storm continued to batter them, but Lynda did not seem bothered by it. Maggie, though, felt her breath stolen by the gale.

  “Can’t we wait until it’s safer?” Maggie said, but Lynda only looked at her with a blank expression.

  Then she asked: “Do you still hear it?”

  Maggie didn’t know what she meant, and then she heard the voices again. They were still there, mumbling something to her she couldn’t quite make out, but the words affected her nonetheless, and she felt drawn further into the woods. She started to walk forward without knowing just where she was going.

  “I’ll follow you,” Lynda said.

  Everything spun in turmoil around them. The air was full of soot; it stung Maggie’s eyes and face and slipped into her mouth whenever she opened it. The dirt was driven hard by the wind, and it felt as though it were passing through her, stealing pieces of her soul away. She kept moving blindly despite the discomfort. Each time she slowed, Lynda pushed her on from behind, directing her forward.

  “Charles always wanted you to see this place,” Lynda said, her voice straining against the din. “He felt connected to it.”

  Maggie swallowed more dirt. It felt warm in her throat.

  “I thought — I didn’t know he’d been here before,” she said. Lynda shrugged, and then urged her on.

  The hail of debris that filled the air became a swirling mass, and that mass congealed before Maggie’s squinted eyes, gathering into a giant dark cloud that hung over the earth. It did not seem bound by the air currents, hovering when everything else spun around it.

  “That’s where it happened,” Lynda said, then pushed Maggie forward.

  The shadow remained airborne, writhing over itself, and on the ground below Maggie saw the earth was black and scorched. Maggie’s wounded hand throbbed painfully, stinging as though it were being consumed by a nest of ants, and she scratched through the bandage as hard as she could to soothe it.

  She left Lynda behind as she slowly approached the shadow. The gale felt painful, and Maggie was forced to keep her face covered so she might keep moving. She squinted through tears but could not see beyond a few feet. Her skin felt numbed by the stinging sand, and her ears deafened by the wind ripping past them. The world had turned dark as though a shadow had passed over her. She raised her head and saw a teeming mass of blackness wriggling through the air above her.

  That cloud descended, enveloping Maggie in its swirling chaos. Thousands of tiny shapes stung her, each drawing its point of blood. Her vision flickered and blurred, and what was once a single landscape became two — two worlds overlapping each other, superimposed upon each other. Then the world she knew, the world of dirt and rocks and screaming wind, gave way to another, gave way to a world of cold and empty silence, gave way to the vacuum of space.

  She floated high above the earth, a celestial body that moved with the speed of eons. She watched the world form, watched gases contract and molten rock cool. Watched water condense and freeze. Watched pieces of the world begin to drift and life rise from the swamps. She watched reptiles grow and die, and in the time it took her to blink, man was spread across the earth. She turned, her mighty tail pushing forward, and she saw the others watch as she watched, moving through the great ocean of space. She saw their long tentacles stretch out towards the planet beneath, waving slowly as they absorbed all they could from the tiny world. She blinked again and the world was alight with fire.

  She moved closer, but move
d too far and suddenly she was falling. And it burned. Her consciousness fragmented, and pieces of it crumbled away until there was nothing left.

  The illusion then fell in dark pieces from her eyes, and Maggie was once again standing within the howling wind. The air was filled with earth desperate to be airborne, and she could see each particle as it moved within the mass, making its way toward the dark center. The pieces of something more were returning to where she stood, and behind that stream she saw Lynda, her face flickering as though it were being stripped away until she disappeared.

  The darkness thickened, swirling around Maggie, scratching her as it moved faster and faster. She did not want to retreat from the feeling of it against her skin, as though the filth were scouring her burdens from her. Her entire body buzzed with the sensation of pins and needles that seemed concentrated beneath her stained bandages. She held the gauze-covered hand before her eyes, and in a flicker of another world she saw something long and thin and viscous squirm and writhe beneath it.

  She struggled to peel a corner of the bandage free, then pulled until everything fell apart. There was her fragile hand, bleeding from millions of shards of glass, the tiny stars that had cut into her what seemed like so long ago. The filth descended upon her again, descended upon her exposed hand, and she watched as it was worn away, exposing the flesh, then the bloody bones, then nothing at all. Soon, the skin of her arms followed, and then more.

  All the while, the pain grew worse; the darkness that contained her condensing. She felt her life too being torn apart, everything she knew becoming pieces of the storm that engulfed her. She closed her eyes and her lids turned to dust before she could open them, then the rest of her body followed. Every molecule, every atom returning to reform the thing from which she had come, reform that which had been lost and spread across the planet in space and time. Dark rough flesh slowly became solid once again at the center of the storm, and then a set of black fins rose and launched the heavy ancient thing back into the stars.

  YOU ARE HERE

  “YOU CAN’T GO down there,” the woman said, her red scarf wrapped twice around her throat. Gibbons couldn’t help but stare at the ruddy-faced apparition. Had she finally come back for him? “They locked all the doors because the place was filled with bums.” The last word, unnecessarily emphasized, cut through his fog. It was not Beverly speaking to him; she was still gone. He turned his back to the woman and waited for her to leave, but she lingered, her eyes burrowing into him. If it wasn’t for the storm, she might have stayed there forever. “Find somewhere else to sleep,” she said and he heard her shoes crunch sharply away through the icy snow.