Fantasy Life

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  And why wouldn’t she? Those two emotions had, ultimately, warred inside her the day she had ridden her bike to Reginald’s.

  “Come on,” Lyssa said, not wanting to lose her advantage. “Grab your coat.”

  “Are we gonna live here?”

  The moment of truth. How was it that children always managed to find it?

  “I don’t know,” Lyssa said. “Let’s go find out, shall we?”

  Emily gave her a grave look, then grabbed her raincoat. It was red with a little hood that made her look like a character from a children’s novel. Emily had loved it when they’d bought it last year. All she had done since they’d arrived in Oregon was complain about it.

  But she didn’t complain now. Instead, she slipped on the coat, tugged Yeller underneath, and grabbed the door handle. “You coming, Mommy?”

  Nope, Lyssa wished. You go ahead. They’ll want to see you. It’s me that’ll cause the problem.

  Instead she smiled wearily, grabbed her London Fog raincoat—which had inconveniently come without a hood—and her purse.

  “We have to make a dash for it,” she said.

  They got out together, and Lyssa took Emily’s hand. It was warm and comfortingly small. The rain had turned colder, feeling like hard, little ice pellets pounding their faces.

  “Let’s go!” Lyssa said, and they ran toward the twin lights, and up the long curving, sidewalk. Emily didn’t even try to look at the landscaping that someone had finally successfully managed or even at the cliffside, not fifteen feet away.

  She stared straight ahead, at the massive oak door and the arched entrance that did look like part of a medieval castle. All it needed was a moat, a drawbridge, and an iron gate to complete the illusion.

  “The house missed me,” Emily said as she jumped up the two steps leading to the entrance.

  Lyssa put a hand on her daughter’s back and held her in place. Any other parent would have taken that statement as fanciful and wrong—Emily had never been here before, so if the house had the ability to miss anyone, it couldn’t have missed her—but Lyssa knew, with a certainty she rarely had, that Emily’s statement was true.

  The house had missed Emily.

  And stranger still, the house had missed Lyssa too.

  Thirteen

  Highway 101

  The Village of Anchor Bay

  Gabriel sat in the parking lot, his car running, until Lyssa’s car disappeared around the curve at the top of Leland Hill. He felt shell-shocked, but he wasn’t sure if that was because of Lyssa’s arrival, the long day he’d had, or the look Lyssa’s daughter had given him as the car drove away.

  Finally, he chalked it up to exhaustion and reached for the radio. Athena had gone home, so he would have to patch himself through to Zeke.

  As he did, Gabriel settled back in the squad car. The rain seemed lighter—or perhaps that was because he wasn’t in it any longer. His pant legs were wet, but the rest of him was remarkably dry given the afternoon he’d had.

  The empty road looked benign—the yellow light giving it an otherworldly cast—and it seemed as if nothing had gone wrong this day. But Gabriel knew that when morning came, he’d have mess after mess to clean up, not just on the beach but at various homes and businesses.

  The problems simply weren’t visible at the moment.

  It took a bit of work, but he finally got through to Zeke.

  “Where are you?” Gabriel asked.

  “Mile Post Three.” Zeke almost seemed to be shouting. Behind him, Gabriel could hear the whistling wind. There didn’t seem to be as much wind downtown, but that could be a false impression. The cable building was probably shielding his car from the worst of it.

  “Problem?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Gabriel wished he could see Zeke’s face. Sometimes Zeke had a dry sense of humor, and it almost always sounded like this. But Zeke never joked about trouble.

  Gabriel’s hand tightened around the microphone. He shouldn’t have left them alone out there.

  He had let himself get sucked in by his old crush on Lyssa Buckingham and hadn’t followed guidelines that he had set up himself.

  “Stop toying with me, Zeke,” Gabriel said.

  “Okay. I found something in one of the ditches.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “The kind that disturbs most people. I’ll show it to you in the morning, if we can still get into town.”

  The conversation was frustrating Gabriel. They were talking in code, partly because they had to—too many people in town owned police-band radios and listened to them for entertainment.

  “It’s something you can carry with you?” Gabriel asked, letting his confusion out.

  “Yeah. It’s small, and it’s a good thing we found it, not some tourist.”

  “Zeke—”

  “Think, boss.”

  Gabriel sucked in a breath. “There was something in the forest after all.”

  “Frankly, I think it floated up from the ocean, but Suzette assures me that’s not possible.”

  “Nothing flows from the ocean,” Suzette said, her voice still far away. “Jeez, Zeke, how long have you lived here?”

  “Long enough to see some waves that would contradict your assumption,” he snapped.

  Gabriel changed his mind. He was glad he wasn’t with them after all. “Is it alive?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Gabriel frowned. He didn’t want to ask if they’d killed anything, not over the radio anyway. Most of this conversation would have to wait until morning.

  “If it’s organic,” Gabriel said, “you’ll have to use proper storage techniques.”

  “My freezer won’t cut it, right?” Zeke said, and again Gabriel couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  “‘Fraid not,” Gabriel said, knowing he couldn’t explain freezer burns to Hamilton Denne. “You know the drill.”

  “I do,” Zeke said, “and we can’t keep this thing where we found it. There’s no guarantee it’ll be there in the morning. So we’re taking custody of it.”

  “I could meet you at the office now.”

  “Actually,” Zeke said, “I think it would be better if we stayed on this side of the mess. From what I can see, this storm isn’t getting any better, and Anchor Bay is going to be pretty isolated.”

  “How was the road through the development?” Suzette asked.

  “Tricky,” Gabriel said. “But I think it’ll hold through the night if you want to come home.”

  “Thanks, sir,” Suzette said, without giving him a definitive answer. It sounded as if she was shaky, and whenever she got shaky, she didn’t want to be alone.

  Somehow, though, Gabriel couldn’t imagine Zeke comforting her. He’d have to ask Athena about it. Athena kept up with all the gossip from all over the county, not just the office stuff. She would be able to tell Gabriel if his two deputies had moved to a less-than-professional relationship.

  “I want to see this thing tomorrow,” Gabriel said.

  “Yeah,” Zeke said. “It’s pretty interesting.”

  “Any more cars since Lyssa’s?” Gabriel asked.

  “Nada. I’m sure the highway patrol’s got this place shut down tight. We’re setting up the highway barriers now so that no one local tries to drive through that pond at Mile Post Two. Then we’re done.”

  “Since this part of the county is isolating itself,” Gabriel said, “I think we’re going to have to share duties tonight.”

  “I figured as much. Does South County have our home phone numbers?”

  “They’d better,” Gabriel said, “because I’m not spending the night in the office.”

  Zeke chuckled and signed off. Gabriel made a mental note to check when he got home, to make sure that the South County dispatch did have their home phone numbers, and to let the dispatch know that no one would be in the office for the night.

  Gabriel put the car in drive and headed out of the parking lot. He wondered
what Zeke had found that was small. All manner of creatures were in this area, some that Gabriel was familiar with, and some he’d only heard about, and he couldn’t remember any that were small.

  He paused at the driveway’s exit, looking up and down the highway before turning onto it. He always felt a bit anal doing that when the highway was so obviously empty, but he’d been clipped more than once by people doing 100 mph down an empty 101.

  He turned right, going the opposite direction from Lyssa. He used to live near Cliffside House as a boy, but when he’d moved back to Anchor Bay, he’d stayed away from that neighborhood. His parents had already left, tiring of the storms and the strangeness, and retiring in Arizona with the sunbirds they used to claim they hated.

  They’d still owned their house, however, and had offered it to him. He couldn’t imagine rambling around in that badly kept-up ranch. When he’d gone to the neighborhood, ostensibly to help his parents find some renters, his skin had crawled. His entire youth returned—in fact, it never seemed to have left that place—and he didn’t want to be anywhere near it.

  But on the north side of town, he’d found an older neighborhood that he hadn’t known existed. It was filled with Cape Cod cottages on a crest leading up to the Devil’s Candlestick—the north cliff—and some beautiful 1920s Arts and Crafts homes on the other side of the highway, all with ocean views.

  Most of them were unaffordable on a sheriff’s salary, but one, nearly ruined by its previous owners, was in his price range. During his off hours, he’d fixed it up, room by room, and now he had a stunning house with the world’s ugliest kitchen and bathroom—the two rooms he couldn’t redo all by himself.

  He headed there now, thinking of a fire in the fireplace, something warm and soothing to drink, and a large meal, probably spaghetti, because he could put that together quickly. His stomach growled at the thought. He’d shut the curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean and pretend the storm wasn’t happening, that it was just another day in his own little town.

  The highway curved around the flattest portion of beach. No cars were in the Anchor Harbor Wayside parking lot and, oddly enough, not even any gulls. Usually the gulls spent their entire winter in the Wayside parking lot, as if they were having some kind of gull conference. They were there even during storms, their heads tucked into their wings like miniature optimists, believing that because they couldn’t see the bad weather, it did not exist.

  The lack of gulls bothered him more than anything else had that day—and it had been a fairly disturbing day. He slowed, wondering what had spooked them, then he saw something white over the guardrail.

  He brought the car to a stop, hoping he wouldn’t have to get out again, straining to see more of the whiteness. It looked like a sheet attached to the rail itself, or a bit of ground fog that had been trapped by some ocean current.

  Only it was too windy and stormy for fog, and no sheet was that transparent.

  His heart started to pound hard, and with it came annoyance. The last thing he wanted to do was get out of the car. He would see what he could from the car, and if no human being was in trouble, he would go home.

  He turned the car into the parking lot. Water sprayed from his tires, and rain pounded his windshield so hard that for a moment, he couldn’t see. The wind buffeted the vehicle, rocking it back and forth.

  When he’d been in the cable company’s parking lot, he’d thought the storm had died down, and when he’d been stopped a few moments ago on the highway, he hadn’t noticed rain or wind this strong. Was he in some kind of pocket where the storm really powered through? Was that what had driven the gulls away?

  He drove slowly to the guardrail, and stopped. The rain eased slightly, but his windshield wipers still had to work at top speed to keep the glass clean.

  The sea glowed, as it so often did. It had a phosphorescence all its own, which high waves only amplified. The white-caps came toward him now, foamy and powerful, slamming onto the beach below. The car shook with the water’s power, and if the waves got any higher, he’d have to block off this parking lot too.

  With his headlights on, all he could see was raindrops moving into and out of the light. He shut off the headlights, and the whiteness reappeared. It didn’t look like a sheet up this close. It looked more like a person, clinging to the guardrail with one arm, and extending another to someone below.

  Only Gabriel could see through the person-shaped whiteness. And as he looked toward the ocean, he could see a trail of white heading into the deep.

  The whiteness looked like a fog bank coming inward—except that someone who had lived around fog as long as Gabriel had knew that fog didn’t work this way. Not only was it too windy to sustain any fog at all, but fog did not come out of the ocean. It rode along the top of it like a milky part of the sea.

  Whatever the whiteness was, it had more solidness than fog, and it was coming from underneath the waves.

  Gabriel sighed and reached for his rainslicker. He was about to put it on when a wave slammed into his car and pulled it forward with such force that the car plowed into the guardrail.

  Gabriel cursed and hung on, hoping the guardrail would hold. He was acting like a stupid tourist, forgetting the power of the ocean, particularly on stormy nights.

  When the wave receded, Gabriel put the car in reverse and backed away from the guardrail. A wave like that usually brought its friends, and he didn’t want to test his luck a second time.

  As he drove, he saw the whiteness still clinging to the guardrail. Only its posture had changed. It still seemed to have a human shape, but the head wasn’t looking toward the sea any longer.

  It was looking at him.

  A chill ran down his spine. He had never seen anything quite like that in all his years in Anchor Bay. The white thing wasn’t a ghost—ghosts really did look like people, just as solid, just as colorful—but this thing did not. It only suggested a person, the way that the bleat of a dolphin suggested laughter.

  Another white shape, and then another, joined the first along the guardrail. A wave swept over them, not as powerful as the one that had dragged him toward the sea, but powerful enough to throw a lot of water onto the pavement.

  And still the white shapes didn’t move. They appeared to be studying him, as if his behavior gave them answers to a question he didn’t even understand.

  No wonder the gulls were gone. These creatures—if that’s what they were—were eerie. He’d seen a lot of what Denne called fantasylife, and none of it had ever been this white, this transparent, and this spooky.

  Gabriel reversed the squad all the way out of the parking lot onto the highway, watching not the road like the good driver he usually was nor even the rearview mirror, but the white shapes lining up like children denied access to a circus.

  His back tires skidded on the water-soaked surface, and the car spun just enough to grab his attention. He shoved it into drive, then used one hand on the wheel to right the car in its proper lane.

  The highway still glowed yellow and black, with no odd white shapes. But he couldn’t resist one more glance as he headed home.

  He could no longer see the white shapes, but the seawater covered the entire parking lot, as if trying to reclaim that little bit of land and make it part of the harbor.

  If he were a newcomer to Anchor Bay, he would have convinced himself that the whiteness he saw was just phosphorescence or weird-acting ground fog or maybe even some kind of mist on his windshield.

  But he’d grown up here. He knew that he had seen something supernatural. And whatever he had seen, it was something he didn’t much like.

  Fourteen

  Cliffside House

  Lyssa and Emily stopped in front of the large oak door. Emily let her hood drop, and Lyssa shook her head, feeling the drops of water fly from her hair.

  She wasn’t going to look presentable, not on a night like this, maybe not ever—at least coming to this house. Nothing could make her presentable, not
even a tailored suit complete with pearls.

  She grabbed the door knocker with one hand. The knocker was shaped like an anchor and made of brass. It was as smooth and shiny as it had always been. Somehow years of exposure to the salt air hadn’t touched it.

  She pounded the knocker against the wood, listening to the solid thud echo through the house. She remembered that sound. Somehow it reached even the highest tower on the sea side, even though a shout from the main room never reached the first landing of the staircase.

  Just one of the many inexplicable things about Cliffside House.

  Emily sidled up against her, the plastic of her raincoat creaking as she moved. Lyssa brought her hand down and put her arm around Emily. The bulge that was Yeller made Emily seem lumpy and unfamiliar, but Lyssa persevered.

  Her breath was coming in short gasps, and she had a hunch that if she had been alone, she would have turned around, found a hotel room for the night, and slipped out of Anchor Bay without a word, letting Athena and Gabriel Schelling deal with Cassie.

  Then the door opened, and Cassie stood there—thinner and shorter than Lyssa remembered. Cassie’s long black hair, which went to her knees, was loose and instantly caught in the wind, blowing inward like a model’s hair in a makeup commercial.

  Cassie and Lyssa stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but could only have been a fraction of a second because Emily started to move forward as the door opened.

  “Grandma!” Emily shouted, launching herself at Cassie.

  The look of joy on Cassie’s face was unexpected and startling. Lyssa stood on the threshold as her mother crouched, opened her arms to Emily, and didn’t even flinch when Emily’s sopping raincoat soaked Cassie’s clothes.

  “Baby girl!” Cassie said, picking Emily up and twirling her around as if she were a toy.

  The words surprised Lyssa. She had always thought baby girl was her endearment, something she hadn’t picked up from home. She had always worked hard at keeping her mother out of her speech.