by Aaron Dries
“No.”
“Really?”
“Caleb, it is never the same. I’ve been to a lot of places more than once, and it’s never as good as the first time.”
“Gee. That frightens me.”
“No; don’t be scared. Yes, it is sad, but it cannot be helped.” Tobias cupped Caleb’s face in the warmth of his giant hands. “The only thing that feels as good as the first time is home.”
4
Sycamore was back at her beach bungalow by three in the morning. She stank of the sewerage the girl’s corpse had been submerged in. The taste of shit was still strong in her mouth.
Lightning rolled in the storm clouds’ bellies, granting enough light to guide her way toward the water’s edge. The sound of the tide ushered her closer, ebb by ebb, step by step. It wasn’t until she’d dropped to her knees to strip off her saturated shirt, until she felt the ocean spray against her brow, that she realized how all-consuming her thirst had become. There was heat glowing bright inside her, a ball of light.
The swallowed spirit.
There was nobody around to watch her strip naked and slip into the water. Gentle waves cusped the curves of her body, massaged her into moaning. Sycamore turned her head to the sky and watched the dull, throbbing strobe.
Thousands of bioluminescent plankton swam around her, a swarm of underwater fireflies.
She floated on the blade that divided ocean from sky, glowing in light from above and below. The teenager’s oily blood formed a slick around her as the briny hands scrubbed her clean.
5
The island was surrounded by pitch-black water, reflecting the sky like the pupil of a teary eye. Her trees stirred and swayed in the tug of shifting winds. Ivory sand glowed in moonlight.
A hollow whistle sang from her heart.
6
Amity was asleep and sprawled across her bed, snoring into her pillow. It began to rain outside, bringing with it a sliver of cool that prodded at the three tickets weighted against her backpack with a mud-speckled Converse shoe. The tickets were covered in a dance of Thai and broken English writing, all under the misspelled heading: AN UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCECE.
A pen was propped between Amity’s fingers, the point bleeding ink into her insect-repellent sheet. The postcard near her arm could be seen in the flickering streetlight from outside: a picture of the Hua Hin night markets on one side and a handwritten message on the other.
Dear Ma,
Having a great time. Ridden elephants, canoeing, swum lots, eaten heaps of food. Everything’s strange/wonderful. I bought some silk for you—you’ll love it! We’re in Hua Hin atm and tomorrow we’re going to go to an island called KOH MAI PHAAW. It’s a nature preserve and only a couple of boats go there at all!!!!! It’ll be great to go somewhere nice where there are no tourists. Miss you love you can’t wait to see you again.
xxooxx Amity and Caleb
7
Rain drummed against the roof of Sycamore’s bungalow, the sound almost overcoming the cheeping of her laptop. A gecko dropped from the ceiling and landed on the keyboard, killing the swirling screen saver. It scurried away, leaving behind a wiggling tail, which Sycamore picked up and inspected before tossing aside. She dropped into her chair, naked, and wiped crusty sleep from her eyes. The blue phone symbol was flashing on the screen. Her Skype account was awake, even if she was not.
HOME CALLING…
A glance at her Rolex, sitting against the tabletop, revealed that it was quarter to five in the morning. “God damn it.” She cracked her neck and stared at the laptop, through it, and imagined her little London home. The diplomas on the wall; the yet-to-be plotted plants on the back step that led out to a square of garden; her father’s old armchair in the living room.
She saw all of this and felt nothing.
Sycamore tapped the enter key and was thrown into dark, limbo loading.
Her husband’s face appeared in the pop-up window a moment later. She watched his eyes grow wide with surprise, watched the faces of her three teenage daughters light up beside him. Their joyful, high-pitched screams shook the laptop’s warbling speakers, making her ears hurt. The women of her life were crowded around the Microsoft webcam she’d bought at Dixon’s for thirty-nine quid last summer. As far as she knew, the receipt was still tucked away in her good handbag, which sat sideways in the crawlspace behind her bedroom wall.
8
Foil candy wrappers on the surf, reminders of the men, women and children who had visited the island the week before. The weathered boats, piloted by men in straw hats, had arrived in the morning, bringing with them the stench of food. But never enough.
9
Susan Sycamore was flat against the floor, absorbing the chill of the floorboards through her back. She hammocked the weight of her head in her hands and sniffed the bitter tang of her armpits. Geckos crawled over her naked body, flicking their tongues across her abdomen.
“I remember you,” she said to the empty room.
Sycamore was talking to the ball of light inside her. It belonged to the girl she’d killed in the South African slum. She was a bright thing, her little black-bitch Tinker Bell. Her first. The girl had been playing in an alleyway near her hotel, toying with a dung beetle tied to a length of twine.
You were sweet. You were warm.
There was also the homeless woman in Buenos Aires. A drunk tourist in Chile, her head, breasts and hands cut off and dumped behind an abandoned house. The young shoe shiner who’d told Sycamore that she wanted to be a police officer when she grew up—eyes dug out and jaw torn from her face.
And they were only some of them. Her burning lights.
“I can feel you inside me,” Sycamore said. She opened her mouth so wide her jaw began to ache, and allowed her victims to reach up through her body to pluck the strings of her vocal chords. A moan slithered out over her tongue, a deep, drawn-out word. “Hel-llllp—”
10
The wind dropped and the island’s whistle ran dry, leaving behind silence. Almost.
11
The whale song playing from the iPod deck eased Robert Mann out of his sleep. A thin ray of sunlight crawled across his panama hat, the bag of pirated DVDs, lit his unshaven cheek. It tickled.
He bolted upright, the mattress thrusting against him. Hands rose to his face. Scratched his skin. “God damn it, you fuggin’ bastards!” he yelled, leaping into the bathroom, clipping his shoulder on the door frame. The walls of the resort room shook under the force of the impact.
The bedbugs were crawling over him again, latching their barbed mouths into his flesh and biting. He was their kingdom now. They vomited up their meals into the scabs they had carved in him. Their tiny black faces, dank with his night sweats.
Robert slammed his fist against the bathroom blinds and stumbled to the mirror. He pushed his face up against the glass, grabbed the pucky skin under his right eye with a finger that still stank of the shellfish he’d eaten the night before and pulled down the lower lid. A pink kiss of flesh was revealed.
“Where are you?” His voice was wavering and girlish. Robert jumped up and down on the spot in frustrating leaps, sending his man breasts jingling from side to side. “You fuggin’ fuggs, get outtah me! Gah! Out!”
But there was nothing there.
That ain’t true. They’re in there somewhere. The bastards are hiding in my hair, or they’ve crawled back inside my ears. I can feel ’em scuttling around, making burrows in the wax.
“Stop it,” he told the gaunt-faced reflection in the mirror. That man, with his gray hair and lined face, was so much older than he really was. Heavy fatigue grabbed his arms and dragged him to the floor, where he pooled in an awkward bundle of limbs and fat. He sat there, chilled by the tiles.
12
The monkey, a male rhesus macaque, strutted out onto the beach from a teepee of collapsed trees. Its furless pink face was white in the early morning glare, except for its eyes, which were doll-button black. Its movements were sluggi
sh, alternating between walking on its hind legs and using its forearms for balance. It left a curved trail of cleft shallows in the sand from its tail.
It was dressed in the tattered remains of a rose-colored tutu. Red earth had been used to rouge its cheeks, applied by its own hands. It had been brought to the island in a chicken-wire cage by men many moons and meals ago, stolen in the night from its previous owner, another man, who had trained it to juggle butcher knives, jump through hoops of fire and laugh on command. It did not think of that other life, nor did the others of its kind who had been stolen and deposited here on the sand.
The monkey stopped at the shoreline, tried to fish candy wrappers from the water. When it failed, it sat back on its haunches and stared at the ocean. Waited. It opened its mouth in a hiss that mingled with the thundering waves. It bore thirty-two razor-sharp, rotting teeth.
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Transit
1
Their boat slit through the gulf, bleeding brackish water. Gulls swooped and cawed and shat, but only for a while. Soon they dipped low and nestled against velvety waves, traveling no farther.
“Do you think it is going to rain?” Tobias asked, shielding his eyes against the glare. Clouds dueled morning sunlight, shedding a striking glow. He’d given up on wearing the imitation Ray-Bans he’d bought for a couple of baht on the mainland. It was near impossible with the ocean spray and wind.
“I don’t know,” Caleb replied, dwarfed by the size of his foul-smelling life jacket. He stood in the rocking boat to take a photograph of the horizon, but the resulting shot was little more than a blurry streak of lines. “Bloody thing. We’re going so fast I can’t get a clear pic.”
At the 400 Menu Restaurant they had eaten at before leaving, the boat pilot had told the group that his name was Nikom. “I’m thirty-one and my brother sold you ticket. I love the travel today. Many tourist is good for rainy season fun.” Caleb, enamored by their guide’s smile and broken English, had struggled to translate the intricacies of Nikom’s name to his sister. He ended spelling out the letters in a slick of window grime with his fingertip.
A straw hat held down Nikom’s shaggy locks of hair. Brown skin caught the sunlight like a multifaceted diamond, offsetting the same uninspiring blue work shirt his brother had been wearing at the kiosk. His Billabong flip-flops were worn down to a film of rubber. He steered the boat with one hand on the wheel, a gnarled cigarette in the other.
“Nikom,” Robert called over the roar of the engine, “how much further until we get there?”
“You sick?”
“Well, it’s pretty rocky.”
“Fifteen minute. Very soon. You sick, over side of boat.”
Robert nodded and sat back on the bench seat. He’d been overwhelmed by the 400 options on the restaurant’s menu and had settled instead for a bowl of fried rice, which back home he’d never eat so early in the day. Savory breakfasts had never sat well with him, even as a child on those mornings when his father’s mood swung in their favor and the old man cooked up bacon and eggs. But Robert ate whatever was placed in front of him anyway, regardless of how the rich smell of fat made his stomach churn. He didn’t have the heart to tell his old man otherwise. Even little truths undo the biggest of men.
A dolphin breached the water, its side glimmering in the light before thrashing against the big blue. Amity was on her feet, pointing at the rippling swell. Her blond hair whipped around her face in messy tangles, revealing the contours of her smile. She almost thought she might cry. Nobody else had seen what she had seen.
It was just for me.
She thumped onto her seat and could feel eyes probing her flesh—it was almost instantaneous. Amity tried to focus on the three bright-blue coolers on the deck. Just ignore her. Easier thought than done, that was for sure. The woman was on her right, greasy eyes drinking her up.
2
Sycamore watched the girl turn away, exposing the back of her neck. Pink skin through flapping locks. Yes, this one was a tender thing—she would burn when hot and yield under a firm hand, should pressure be applied. The girl’s red life jacket burned bright red, the color arousing something in Sycamore, and that something glistened in the pits of her eyes. It was the color of cancer—welts and bloodied sheets.
She thought maybe that someone she’d once known had died of cancer, but that was from another time, another life. If so, had that person been important to her, she wondered? Had they been kind? The few remaining memories were eroding away. Soon there would be nothing left, and of that, she’d be glad.
“Excuse me…”
The reed voice pierced her, scattering already scattered thoughts.
“Can you take our photo?”
A child, who seemed lost between seven and ten years old, stood in front of Sycamore, a waterproof camera in his hand. From the thick lap of his words and the dark soil of his skin, she figured the boy and his father must be Lebanese, maybe Egyptian.
“Why, sure. Let me grab that camera. This is a fancy thing.”
“Thank you, miss.”
“So where are you and your daddy from, then?”
“Beirut, miss.”
“Beirut! Isn’t that a thing!”
“Where are you from, miss?”
“London. Do you know where that is?”
“It’s where the Queen lives. In a big castle. I’ve seen pictures in a book.”
“That’s right. You speak awful good English.”
“We learn it in school.”
“Dad,” Sycamore said, addressing the man behind the child. “You must be proud!”
“Oh, yes. Yes,” the man replied. “Will you take the photo, miss?”
“It’d be my pleasure.”
Sycamore peered through the viewfinder. There, captured within the camera’s crosshairs, were father and son with arms wrapped around each other. A tarpaulin veil from the boat’s roof waved behind them, but the hazy horizon could still be seen.
Click.
Man and child become one in flesh and sinew. A slaughter embrace. Bones rise through meat to greet the day. Mouths wide in death screams.
“How did it turn out, miss?” asked the father.
“Oh, it’s a keeper.”
“Wonderful. Obtenir la caméra, Aban.”
The child crossed the slippery deck—passing the three ice coolers and a tub of assorted snorkels—just as the boat rammed an uncompromising swell. The boy, lips drawn into a sudden O of shock, skidded sideways and fell. Sycamore reached out and caught the waif, felt the boy’s warmth. Aban’s young face was caught in the twin mirrors of Sycamore’s sunglasses.
“I see your light,” Susan Sycamore told the child.
3
There were nine of them in stagnant waiting, lulled by the rock of the boat. The engine snarled. The final two in their number were a Swedish couple in their late twenties.
They were on their honeymoon, the memory of their wedding still fresh in Judit’s and Rolf’s minds. Three hundred people had been in attendance, watching them enter the church, hand in hand. In accordance with tradition, Rolf had been wearing his ring since the night of their engagement. When the time had come for him to slip Judit’s wedding band on her finger, she’d beamed. And it was then that he knew: This doesn’t just feel good, it feels right. That moment was captured in the brilliance of a hundred flickering cameras. They left the church for their reception in a rain of rice and bubbles blown from lollipop rings. The toastmaster, Rolf’s brother, eased them through the night with between-courses anecdotes. Judit’s father wept into his handkerchief during his speech. Knives tapped against glasses, a sign that it was time for the newlyweds to smooch. When Judit left the room to powder her nose, Rolf was swarmed with kisses from all of the female attendees. Afterward, Judit kept her bouquet and asked her mother to have it pressed and framed while they were away. She wondered how those flowers would look on the wall of their Uppsala apartment.
It made her sm
ile.
Her husband was by her side, knee to knee. Every time she felt his skin against her own, a tide of tingles rolled through her, reminding her of all they’d shared and the future that lay ahead. They would be the first to die, though others would bleed before them.
4
“Tobias, are you feeling okay? Amity wants to know. You don’t look well.”
“I am okay, Caleb.”
“Are you sure?” He touched his shoulder only to have him flinch. “Jesus, you’re shaking.”
“I said I’m fine!”
Caleb snatched back his hand. “Have I done something?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?” he asked as Amity nudged him. Caleb waved her away with a glib string of signs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Did you ask?”
He shot his sister an icy glare. Of course I fucking did, Caleb mouthed. “Yeah, understood that one, didn’t you?”
“Don’t get snappy with me just because he’s angry at you.”
“Stop giving me shit.”
“Give you shit? Do you have any idea how awkward all of this has been for me?”
“Just stop. I’m trying to enjoy the day.”
“You’re not alone on that one.”
“I didn’t even want to come. Think yourself lucky I’m here at all.”
“Would you two stop?” Tobias asked, rubbing his forehead. “I hate it when you do your signs around me. I can’t keep up.”
“Well, just tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing.” He sighed and turned away, as though looking him in the eye was some kind of resignation. “Really. It’s just I felt funny. Seltsam. Weird. Like, furcht. I don’t know how to say it in English. It’s been like this since we left, after breakfast.”
