Deep, Deep Ocean

by Carter Bowman

  There was a pause. I braced for the impact, hugging my pillow.

  “THE CASINO?!”

  This went on until past four in the morning, which maybe worked out for the best, because that was about when I would have fallen asleep anyways given the strange, strange day it had been. My thoughts drifted in and out of that horizon separating dreams and reality while snapshots played on repeat — shuffling into increasing confusion through the early hours of the morning.

  Luffy was driving our stolen car along an ancient brick road towards a beach where my father waited for us.

  The creature from the black sea was talking in my father’s voice, telling me that Luffy would come back someday.

  A black waiter was giving me a bowl of cereal to help me sleep — his curious expression turned into Christopher’s, blank and staring.

  My parents were far away. I would have to drive on that ancient road for a long time to reach them. By the time I did, I would be as old as they were.

  The next day was a little easier. I came downstairs just past nine in the morning to find Dad in a deep sleep on the sofa. He had a throw-blanket wrapped around him, the kind Mom loved that was mostly made of holes and did a terrible job keeping someone actually warm. I didn’t want to disturb him, but his eyes flickered to life as my bare feet caught a creaky floorboard in the living room. His face smiled. It was tired, and there were deep bags beneath his eyes, but it was my father’s grin, back where it belonged.

  I sat in the Lazy-Boy chair beside the sofa, reclining the way my Father did when he wanted to enjoy a movie with us.

  “That was pretty rough last night,” I said.

  My father shrugged, pulling himself into a sitting position, the hole-filled blanket still wrapped around him.

  “It’s about what I deserved. I haven’t been so awesome lately,” he responded, rubbing a tangled spot in his thinning hair.

  “But Mom is super mad at you.”

  “And she gets to be. I was far from playing my part. But we’re a team, Silas, and we’ll put things back together and get back on track.”

  That was reassuring. Mom and Dad had been together longer than I’d been alive, longer even than Maggie had been alive. They must be pretty good at it by this point.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened now?” Dad asked me, looking me right in the eyes. It was not the questioning look he gave when trying to find out if I was hiding something, but only a genuine curiosity.

  I recounted every detail I could remember over the next two days, starting with finding Luffy above his bed in the middle of the night. I would jump back and forth in the story as details came back in unplanned bursts, but he did his best to keep up at every disjointed step.

  “So your friend was being called to the casino, and that just happened to be the same casino where I was… where I was going in the evenings?”

  “I guess so,” I said, not understanding his question.

  “Your friend, Luffy, he was able to see my dreams, right? He could see the details about my life?” Dad asked, pondering as we ate ice cream outside of a small shop next to a dry cleaner near our house. It would be one of the last days to buy the apricot flavor, with bits of the real fruit suspended in cream. After this week, apricots would go out of season and I would have to wait until next year.

  “You think that Luffy knew the whole time?” I asked, a trickle of white and orange trickling from the cone to my hand.

  “I think that you made a very good friend,” said my father.

  The thought brought Luffy’s face in my memory again. I thought about the comic where his name had come from, how the fictional Luffy had gone off on his own and nearly been eaten by a sea monster. But Red Haired Shanks had protected him, fending off the sea monster at the cost of his own arm. Maybe the name Luffy hadn’t been the right one to give him after all.

  “He’s going to come back, you know.”

  “Of course he is,” said my father, munching on his own cone of cherry ice cream, chunks of red sticking out of the dessert. “And you’d better be ready to welcome him back when he does.”

  “I’m having trouble finding the partings now,” I said, frustrated. “They used to be all over the place, but now I can barely wiggle my finger through the one in my room.”

  I had been excited about my new talent. It was something that made me special, something that only I could do. But with each passing day, I had found fewer and fewer partings in fabric that led to the lower worlds.

  “I think you should leave that be for now, Silas,” said my father, sternly. “Being able to open and close holes like that too easily, you’re bound to go in. Everyone has their home, and I have a feeling you would start running into trouble like she did if you stuck around where you don’t belong for too long.”

  “We never did find out her name. Luffy said that names are for other people, not for ourselves. Or something like that — it’s not easy to remember. I don’t think she ever got to have a name, and that’s kind of sad.”

  The two of us sat in silence after this. I pondered where she was now, and if she was happy or sad. I didn’t want her to be too upset. She’d already been though her share of pain. I wouldn’t get to know how her story ended until Luffy came back, but I hoped it would be happy enough. I hoped that she could swim and be okay for at least a little while before making plans to come back to the surface. I doubted my Dad was thinking about the same things. He had never seen the black ocean, and grown-ups’ imaginations rarely worked the same way in any case.

  I wondered if my imagination would go the same way as the fabric between the worlds — smaller and smaller until I could barely squeeze my pinky through. I would get older and older until everything was a series of straight, boring lines, and I would have to decide my own horizon between dream and reality. I didn’t want anyone else making that decision for me, though.

  “I think I’m ready to start school now,” I said, breaking the silence.

  My father laughed, coughing on a bite of cherry. “I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  I feel a little bad that the father figures in my books are always troubled, because my own Dad has been an incredible source of encouragement and support for me in the creation of this book. You’ve kept me going every step of the way, and I truly appreciate all that you’ve done. Thank you as well to my wonderful girlfriend, Lauren Kories, who has believed in me as well, read through my roughest drafts, and helped to field story ideas, both the brilliant and those better left in the journal.

  Thank you to my fantastic editor, Josiah Davis, for your invaluable feedback as well as your generosity of wisdom and flexibility.

  Equal thanks goes out to my cover artist, Jake Caleb, you never cease to amaze me with your creativity in bringing these books into the world with the perfect artistic spin I would have never thought of.

  Lastly, I want to thank the authors and artists who changed my childhood in such a monumental way with their stories. Silas’s anecdote about finding a copy of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline was taken directly from my childhood. I can remember being scared by a story for the first time in my life, Gaiman’s narrative igniting my love of literature at the age of eleven. We all have the stories that change the way we look at the world from a young age, it’s my hope I create that story for someone one day.

  Upcoming Title:

  Calm; Decay

  Book 1: Who Killed Cock Robin?

  Available Fall 2018

  The hunters are coming.

  For a century, the shrouded world of Chryssus has crept into the haven of Passerine. As a child of these overlapping worlds, Ashra’s very survival is called into question by the laws keeping the peace-seeking citizens of Passerine safe. Fleeing for his life, Ashra will be forced to rely on Chryssus and its mysteries that go bump in the night if he is to have any hope of seeing the morning.

  But the hunt is on, and profitable justice always finds a
way. Calm; Decay dives into the fine line between good and evil, and the survivors who decide the differences between them. Join the revolution, and start the saga that will pit one man against time itself.

  Prologue

  Peter Gloom ought not to have wandered. Being a precocious child, he was forever certain that whatever hid around the next corner must be far more exciting than the mundane view from his parents’ periphery. His mother, Carol Gloom, would have done well to keep a better eye on Peter. But this was her own street, barely a minute’s walk from their front steps, and nothing so terrible should happen this close to home.

  Mrs. Gloom would later omit that she had been in rapt conversation with the handsome Mr. Siegfried when Peter toddled out of sight. Over the coming weeks, as journalists and investigators placed Upton and Carol Gloom under the limelight time and again, there were many details of their lives they wished could have remained private. Those same journalists, happy to be the oil in the machine set in motion, posed unanswerable questions to the public, leaving the democracy of justice to a uniformly uninformed world.

  How could a parent let their child wander away?

  These headlines would circle the drain of public attention, tapping readers’ desire for tragedy, scorn, and questions of integrity before finally settling at tragedy once more.

  Peter Gloom would never see those headlines, not that he could understand complex words like tragedy in any case.

  The alleyways of upper Franconia were clean, but possessing enough shadows to send shivers of excitement down six-year-old Peter Gloom’s tiny vertebrae. Peter knew he would be scolded for dirtying his leather afternoon shoes, but freedom was intoxicating, and the happy splashes his shoes made in the alley’s trickling stream were too enticing for his little mind to resist. The stream wound up the alleyway, making a hard left where the bricks turned from dusty orange to an obsidian the boy had never seen before. He allowed his exploration to continue, though, winding through the black buildings made gray by a fine fog.

  Though it was barely past five in the afternoon, almost time for supper, the dark buildings and unreflective metal sheets hanging from the looming lofts gave Peter the impression that nighttime had snuck upon him unaware. The windows in the alley stood unlit, and the small stream of water beneath him was seeping into his socks with an ice-cold wetness. A single sign waved in the chilly breeze at the alley’s cross-section, its neon glow winding into unreadable symbols.

  Some grown-up part of Peter Gloom decided that now would be a good point to turn back. He had failed to bring a coat, and could see that the alleyway would continue to branch off indefinitely if he allowed his curiosity to carry him any further. After all, an adventure was only well and good so long as he had the certainty of returning to his mother. Besides, Peter knew he was no coward, but there was a flavor to the mist settling around him that did not agree with his stomach.

  Peter turned away from the violet glow, steeling himself to face whatever talking-to his mother surely had in store for him. He would follow the stream back to his home, and all would be well. Dismay settled in Peter Gloom’s throat, however, when he found that the trickling water path did not follow a singular route home. The violet light illuminated no less than six paths back the way Peter had come, none of which stood apart from the rest. Peter hurried past first one street, then a second, the splashing of his feet in cold water no longer kindling the glee it had only moments ago. Every path disguised itself as the next, dissolving into a winding white mist maze.

  Peter’s panic was swelling past what he could take. His ears strained in the silence, listening for anything that would lead him towards safety and warmth. How far from his mother could he be? The answer was unclear, every step either taking him closer to, or further away from the smells and sounds he so desperately needed.

  “You’ve wound up far from home, haven’t you?” The cool voice punctured the quiet of the alley. Peter came to a stop, relief filling his heart at the sight of a tall shape leaning in the frame of an open door. Grown-ups meant safety, they meant warm cups of tea and fresh clothes unstained by dismal alleys.

  “I got lost. My name is Peter Gloom and I live on 13 Winchester Street,” recited Peter. His father had trained him to repeat those words if they ever became separated. Upton Gloom had more than likely hoped the words would be spoken to a policeman.

  But this figure was no policeman.

  For one, the policeman’s uniform did not include long, rough-hewn robes, tarnished by the dampness of the early evening’s fog. For another, policemen did not wear masks covering the majority of their faces, this one, a white cotton drape that hooked around the nose to hang loosely past the chin.

  “Well, Peter Gloom, I am very sorry that you have become lost,” said the masked figure.

  In later reports, actual police officers would struggle to identify normal tools that could recreate what had been done to Peter Gloom’s face. The best estimation by the coroner was that claw-like hooks had been used, too sharp to belong to any wild animal.

  “Can you help me to find my way home?” Peter asked the stranger. He surmised that it must be a woman, its hunched back and narrow shoulders too small for any grown man. Its voice was too shrill for a man as well, trembling with some emotion Peter could not identify.

  “You must first tell me something,” said the figure. Her eyes shone from beneath a matted hood, two shards of ice that sparkled with an excitement out of place in the dead alley.

  “If I can,” said Peter, uncertain.

  “Do you think I’m beautiful?” The shards of ice waited expectantly for the child’s reply.

  Peter realized he had been retreating slowly, his back now pressed against the blackened wall. “I don’t know. I cannot see your face.”

  The ice crinkled in response to her grin beneath the veil. Slender fingers reached from the robe to pull at the loose cloth.

  Peter Gloom’s scream reached his mother, only a block away. Both adults sprinted towards the wail, terror painting pictures in their minds as the world funneled into its single note of agony.

  Mr. Siegfried and Mrs. Gloom rounded the corner, stopping in the red-painted water at the scene before them. Peter Gloom had died before the scream finished echoing. There was no hope, no wish that Peter could be saved, because there could be no return from the fate that found him in that dark place.

  The woman beneath the robes smiled at Mrs. Gloom and Mr. Siegfried, her mouth one long slit stretching from ear to ear. That same smile had been lovingly carved into the face of Carol Gloom’s only son, an afterimage of his own final view before everything faded to black.

  Sunny, Gloomy Day

  A flock of black-silhouetted birds took to the sky, curling beneath a migration of low-hanging clouds. Ashra Swallow followed the congregation as it passed behind the city’s clock tower, reemerging as two coveys in the mid-morning light.

  “I should have brought sunglasses,” said Ashra, squinting against the brightness.

  “Nonsense,” said Douglas Swallow, pushing him into the street. The traffic conductor lifted a green flag, inviting throngs of visitors from across the country to swarm from the sidewalk while grumbling trolleys waited their turn. All faces pointed to the clock tower, all backs to the bridge behind Ashra and his father.

  “I just don’t see it raining today, even though they promised it would,” said Ashra, similarly facing the sky as they walked. Looking upwards gave Ashra the opportunity to avoid looking at other people without the obvious social surrender of staring at his toes. He did not enjoy looking too closely at strangers, as they had a tendency of looking back.

  “Then you shouldn’t have dressed like it would. You look like enough of a wallflower,” said Douglas, ribbing his son.

  “Maybe you could give me some pointers? I hear socks and sandals are making a comeback,” retorted Ashra. In truth, both men had more or less forgotten the fashion standards of the world at large. It was only as Ashra took in the shorts and sleeve
less shirts of the pedestrians around him that he admitted his charcoal button-up may defeat its own purpose by standing out in the festivities.

  Ashra was about to follow up with a second comment regarding his father’s particularly loose brown slacks, when a commotion at the end of the street interrupted traffic with an explosion of music and confetti. Young women in fluorescent colors threw candy from the bed of a float to children, while one unlucky participant waved to the crowd from inside a eagle mascot costume. A team of men pushed the float from behind, visibly less invigorated by the repeating music. There was a round of applause as traffic picked up and the proud eagle paraded past. The crisp white of his wings gleamed in the sunshine, the crown on his head shone a flawless gold to match the sword on his belt.

  “What a show, keeping the traditions alive,” commented a portly woman at Ashra’s side.

  At just over six feet tall, Ashra could only watch the Roost Tower Square tick closer to noon in the distance. He wanted to keep walking, but his body remained pinned by the shuffling crowd.

  “I could do without the scantily dressed girls,” said the woman’s similarly proportioned companion.

  “You can’t keep up with how these younger ones think. Let them be; the centennial anniversary is a special occasion.”

  One hundred years. It was a long time — long enough that someone like nineteen-year-old Ashra should not have to avoid eye contact with strangers. But today did not celebrate the victories of individuals like Ashra Swallow. As the gleaming crown on the eagle’s bald head proclaimed, today was about the selfless heroism that led to others’ joyful celebration.