He went to the hot pool and kicked off his sandals so he could better stand on the hot wet rock. He crept to the high part where the shallow pool was. It was stagnant and muddy around the edges. The water poured from a spout in a crevice high up the rock wall and he watched it come out clean and crisp and steaming. It hit this high shallow pool, filling it, then fed through another series of rock channels, finally coming out crisp and clean in the middle pool where Dar and the rest of the others had sat and played yesterday afternoon. That seemed like a million years ago to Zeke. His head was so foggy and he couldn’t remember what had made Mary so mad. Had Mr. Tom done something wrong, he wondered.
Something moving caught his eye up the rock wall. It wasn’t the camera bag. He tip-toed into the muddy water. It was much hotter in this pool than it was in the second. It felt tingly on his feet, like that time the Kresge had a foot massager on sale and the manager let him try it. I got money, he had told the manager, which apparently, was enough to have him think he’d make a sale from ol’ Zeke, the town retard.
Zeke crept forward up to his ankles, then halfway up his calves. Then to his knees. Up there on the rock wall, beside the crevice, the rock face was cracking. A split carved in black was opening up, forming into a hole. More water spilled from it, and at first, Zeke thought the whole wall would give way, just shatter into a thousand pieces and rain down a tidal gush of boiling water on him.
It didn’t. But just as soon as the hole formed about as big as, say, Zeke’s middle finger in diameter, it stopped shifting. Zeke heard a distant hum. It grew and then turned to a vibration that he felt traversing from under his feet and below the shallow water. His teeth vibrated. He looked around to see if a big truck was coming. Sometimes he felt a similar feeling and would look up to see a big farm truck on Main—where it wasn’t supposed to be—or a large rig hauling a summer yacht owned by one of the rich tourists.
No trucks, no big yachts with their fin taller than Zeke. He looked back at the steaming spout of water and that new hole also spilling hot water like a kettle into the shallow pool at his feet. He leaned in closer and the humming vibration eased a bit. Then a dark object plugged up the hole for a split second. It came from inside, like a black pebble stopping the flow. It wiggled and then pushed through, bringing more water with it.
Whatever the lump was, it unfurled. Though he couldn’t come close to reaching it, Zeke reached out a hand of curiosity, of wonderment. The thing unrolled in the flowing water, still clinging to the opening. Then it snapped out of the water with a splash and launched into the air. A dapple of hot water hit Zeke’s face and startled him. He blinked and when he opened his eyes, the object was a dragonfly. Its body was dark red wine-coloured and bled into a long tail showing alternating yellow stripes. It was a dragonfly but with the paint job of a yellow-jacket wasp. It hovered near the water, still with tiny clear droplets on its furry body. It swooped a few inches to either side like a hummingbird trying to shed the extra weight of the water drops. The buzz it made was loud, louder than any dragonfly Zeke had ever seen. He’d seen brown ones, blue ones, green ones. Even violet coloured ones, but none with this deep, dark red—bordering on jet black—with stripes of shocking yellow going up its tail.
It hovered a moment longer, then the buzz grew louder as it swept through the air directly at Zeke. He flinched but it rested in the air in front of his face, as if it was a tiny helicopter whose pilot was sizing him up. This close, Zeke realized, it was bigger than any dragonfly he’d ever seen, too. This critter was at least seven inches in length. It moved side to side in the air, acrobatics in nothingness and with an audience of only one. Then it moved slowly to Zeke’s hand, still outstretched from his body, but less so than a moment before. It lit upon Zeke’s arm hairs, light as a feather. It only offered a tickle and Zeke was struck by how different it looked.
Its tiny mandibles scrubbed at each other and its face and its bulbous green eyes, just like a black fly would. Its perfect wings stood still as ice, six panels of wafer-thin glass so intricate with veiny panels tracing out symmetrical shapes. Then, shockingly, just like a scorpion, its tail curved up over its head. There was a long, stabbing pointer there: a two inch stinger.
As Zeke realized what the pointed dagger was, it snapped at him. The dragonfly launched at Zeke. It struck him in the neck on an angle. He felt it pierce him like a dart beside his jugular. It made a noise like an air rifle at a distance and his neck jerked back. The point struck into the spot roughly where you would test a person’s pulse if they were unconscious. Zeke learned that from watching Hawaii Five-O with Smitty at Ocean View.
Zeke staggered backwards and lost his balance. His hand went to his throat but he miscalculated and knocked his glasses from his face. With a clack and a clatter, they landed somewhere, bounced, and then went into the shallow pool with a hollow, distant splash.
Pain radiated out from his neck, shooting like lightning across a sky over the ocean when you could see multiple strikes at once. His sight burst into a haze then went dark, as if the sun had set in the last three or four seconds. He saw the yellow-jacket dragonfly buzzing. He still heard it too... but then, both sight and vision faded to nothingness. His last thought was of Mary. Mary laughing.
PART II
Polished Glass and Snot
1
Tom looked for Mary. And he did so for hours.
When she wasn’t out at the main road, he did a bad maneuver to wheel the bus around. It tilted so hard, he was certain he’d roll it, but it stayed on all four wheels—even if Tom felt like two left the ground at one point. He parked on the trail and left his four-ways on while he got out and pawed through the bush and scrub. He left his new camera on the passenger seat and cursed it with gritted teeth. Coveting that thing was what got him out here in this mess.
He called her name. At first he used only his speaking voice, as though more volume would betray what he’d done—to a stranger in the woods, or more likely, to an all-powerful god who could hear men’s guilty thoughts.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” he said under his breath and wiping at his forehead with an arm that smelled of salty sweat. His underarms stank of his own odour and his whole body crawled with a clammy film. “I’ve lost one of my fucking retards. Oh shit oh shit.”
As the minutes dragged into a half hour, he finally raised his voice. “Mary! Maaaary,” he called out. Then his calling turned to shouts and then to hoarse shrieks. “Mary! COME ON, Mary! IT’S ME IT’S Tommy! ZEKE’S WITH ME, SO COME OUT OKAY?”
Utterly defeated by the time the sun sank below the trees and then below the horizon, Tom had a short, quick panic attack when he couldn’t find his way back to the Nameless Beach trail where he’d left the Ocean View van.
His heart started pounding. His legs were bloody with bramble scratches and his skin itched from bites. He started running. And that only brought more gouges and blood. The marks stung from his sweat pouring into them but he kept running.
He burst out onto a path but he wasn’t sure it was the right one. He thought, frantically, that maybe he’d veered hard to the north and wound his way beyond the clearing at the spring pool. Maybe he was an hour’s walk to the van. Maybe two. He was pretty sure he knew where west was. The sky over there still showed the slightest hint of light. In five or ten minutes, it would be gone. To the east—what he thought was east—the grey moon hung at about three-quarters. He had to give up. And he had to go back and tell Karen and Fidela what he did.
Who knows, he thought. Maybe Zeke was already back and had told Karen. Maybe he’d said it to Fidela and maybe Fidela, God bless her, hadn’t understood a word.
Either way, Tom knew he had to get out of the woods and get back to Ocean View.
That sick-sounding dog cry came. It gave him a chill. It sounded so close and it wasn’t funny anymore. It faded off, but he thought he could still hear it in his ears, like an echo.
She’s gonna die out here, he thought. Lil Mary-Mary-quite-contrary is gonn
a die out in these woods tonight and it’s my fault.
He thought that if he got back now, he could bring helpers and flashlights. They could comb this stretch of woods together and find her. A dozen men with light could cover more ground—
But where was the fucking van?
Don’t lose it, Tommy, he said to himself. You do no good to anyone if you lose it now. You’ve made a massive screw up. The biggest in the history of screw ups, but you need to keep it together.
He heard rustling behind him. He looked back and saw that the forest had shrunk. There was a radius of tree trunks and brush but it had been swallowed by the dark. Now, Tom could only see about five feet or so. And the white poplar trunks were dark gray. The dog barked again, startling him. It was close. Much closer than before. The barking bled into a howl that ended in the same choking stifle that he and Farrah had laughed over.
Not laughing now, Tom ran.
He ran south down the trail, or at least what he thought was south. He lost track of the three-quarter moon, lost track of everything.
Up ahead a tiny flash bounced and jittered in his sight. Then it was two flashes. A heartbeat of red light. It was the four-way flashers on the Ocean View short bus. Thank God.
Tom got to the bus as if all of Hades’ minions were hot in pursuit. He climbed in and reached to ignite the engine. He pinched his fingers at the van’s ignition, grasping nothing but air. Where was the key? Where was the key?
He looked down to confirm it. The keys weren’t hanging from the ignition.
He looked out into the blackness through the crisp windshield, lit like a strobe with each measured flash of the four-ways. They gave the forest an alternating look of bleak desolation and then one sprayed in a hollow red wash of posts angled this way and that. Red wash, bleak desolation, red wash, bleak desolation.
In one blink of the red wash, Tom thought he saw the flicker of two white pinpricks: animal eyes in the distance. Then another flicker. Two more eyes. Then gone.
The keys, the keys. MY GOD THE KEYS.
He looked over at the passenger seat. In the alternating flash, his new camera, not housed in its case, sat where he left it hours earlier. No keys. He strained and reached into his shorts pockets. He emptied those onto the seat. All of the canisters of 35 millimetre film he’d shot this afternoon. Two crunched sticks of Juicy Fruit. The receipt for the camera. Three of Ocean View’s vitamins. His Velcro wallet, now empty except for a couple of bucks after blowing his wad on the camera. Usually he dropped the wallet into the driver’s seat behind him when he left the—
He arched his back and reached into the crack where the bottom cushion of the seat met the back of it. His fingers met the familiar teeth of one key. There was one for the van and another for the back door of Ocean View. The plastic keychain for Highliner’s Cafe held them together.
Tom let out a weak, whistling sigh. He blinked a couple of times, then put the key into the ignition. He started the van, killed the four-way blinkers and headed for home, feeling only a tiny bit better.
Mary was still out there. Mary was alone and scared.
Tom felt like he was going to vomit.
2
He hesitated at the turn off into Lannen Lane. Then he stomped the gas again and came up to the house, then into the drive. It wouldn’t matter if he caught hell for using the new van. That transgression paled in comparison to losing one of the houseguests.
It was fifteen or twenty minutes past full-on dark now. But a Wednesday night in DC was still pretty quiet. A few cars on Main and Broadway, likely tourists in their renters. But on residential streets, only the glow of living room TVs and street lights betrayed signs of life.
The van’s headlights swam across the front, covered porch. Karen was sitting there in a rattan rocker. She was waiting for Tom, no doubt about it.
Tom killed the engine. He left all his stuff in the passenger seat but took the key, gripping it and swearing he would pocket it from now on.
Slowly, we walked from the turnaround up the path and then to the front steps.
Karen’s eyes followed him. She was slouched down in the rattan rocker. Not rocking, though. No movement in her, except for the whites of her eyes. Tom could see those lit by the porch light which itself wavered. There was a moth caught in it and it batted around with a flitting sound while the light skipped over the floorboards and over Karen.
It was hot. She was drinking something from a mason jar. It was dark, maybe iced tea. There was silence from the house. Tom had missed dinner, but rarely ate at Ocean View on his day off. He only had one a week so he made the most of it and stayed away as late as possible.
“Out for a drive?” Karen asked. Her tone was sardonic. But, what was that? Was she being playful?
“I—uh—”
Karen waved her hand and gave a smile—a real one. “Oh, don’t worry about it.” She looked out at the van. “You might as well have some fun with it tonight. In the morning, I’m taking it back to the dealer. Can’t afford it. Not after James Fucking Roundtree dropped in from the ninth circle of hell.”
Tom’s mind reeled. Have some fun? Back to the dealer? James Roundtree?
He felt that threat of impending vomit again. He had to come clean. He had to get people mobilized and get them out in those woods to look for Mary.
But Karen spoke like no one was missing. She spoke like Tom, her once-upon-a-time boy wonder but now eternal-little-shit, had not just pooped out the biggest screw up in the history of screw ups.
“Take it back, Ms. Banatyne?” he said, with apprehension she either didn’t notice or didn’t care to.
“Yeah, that backwoods inbred. I’m pretty sure he’s going to cut our funding. Our books aren’t up to snuff. It’s my fault.” Her tone changed again. “Come sit, I won’t bite. You missed dinner.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Don’t be. Fidela’s mad at me, same as everyone. She made a real turd of a supper. Nobody ate more than two bites. Anyway. It’s your day off, kiddo.” Good gravy, Tom thought. She sounds so... fraternal. “We made our deal. You went to get my stuff and I let you have that afternoon plus the night and your regular day off. No problem. You did get the stuff, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Yup. Sure did,” Tom said quickly as he took the other rattan chair, this one without rockers.
“Good. Did you put them away?”
“Not yet, Ms. I will.”
Absently, Karen took a sip of her iced tea. Now that Tom was up close, he saw the ice cubes and lemon slice floating in it. Then she reached to her far side and picked up a flask. He smelled what he thought was gin, but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t come from a family of drinkers and like most nineteen year old boys, usually drank vodka or beer when he could get someone to pull it for him.
Karen poured a big swig into her iced tea. Then added another drop for good measure.
Tom’s heart fluttered.
“Shitty day, kiddo,” she said, leaking air out of her like a stabbed tire.
“Totally shitty,” Tom said, taking his turn to look off at the dark street, highlighted by that big ugly van.
“Everyone’s asleep. You might as well turn in too. It’s my night.”
“Wait,” Tom said. “Everyone?”
Karen turned to look at him, her lips puckered from a lifetime of sucking on cigarettes. Even the red lipstick couldn’t hide those up-and-down wrinkles. “Yeah, everyone. You were expecting me to let them stay up for The Tonight Show?”
“No,” Tom said, feeling another application of his sweat forming in his scalp. “Course not. I just—it’s weird. I miss them on my day off.” He thought as fast as he could with his tired, empty mind. Empty except for only one thing: Mary. “No troubles with Mary?”
“None. Why?” Karen gave him another odd look.
“She wouldn’t take her vitamins earlier. That’s what Zeke said.”
“The devil,” Karen said, but that was the extent of her badmouthing. No talk of retards, nothi
ng about how the houseguests would be dead without her and Chris to take care of them. “She went to bed just fine. Ate her dinner too. No problems with anyone. Ingrid wanted the light on so I let her. I tell you, Tom, I totally get that.”
“Get what, Ms.?”
“Get what you mean when you say you miss them. They really do become like children, don’t they?”
“Sure,” Tom said, hardly believing this entire, surreal conversation. The moth continued to flap and fuss. The openings were wide enough, Tom thought. If it would just stay calm, it could probably walk out. But instead, its panic would be its undoing. It would burn to death on a forty watt bulb all because it couldn’t muster some calm.
“My own daughter won’t even talk to me anymore.” She took a big gulp of her gin and cold tea. “Says I’m smothering her father. Her too.” Tom knew that Karen had a step-daughter, Chris’s girl from his first marriage, though she may have done the paperwork to make the grown woman legally hers at some point while still a minor. “Haven’t seen her since the wedding—which I paid for, thank you very much.” Her tone rose at the end, becoming closer to its usual indignation.
“And now all this...” she said, trailing off and looking for the right word. “This... shit. Ah, who’m I kidding? Look at you. You’re just a kid. You don’t know what responsibility is. Not yet. But you will. And being a mom, you’ll get some of that one day. But just a touch, mark my words. Fathers don’t know what mothers go through...”
She took another gulp and the ice clanged inside the mason jar. She wasn’t really talking to Tom. She was talking at him. Or maybe she was just talking and Tom happened to be with her. He didn’t know. All he knew is that this couldn’t be true. Mary was not inside the house. Couldn’t be. But he had to find out.
“It’s been a rough one,” Tom said. “No doubt about it. Listen, I’m gonna turn in—”
“Yeah, sure, sure,” Karen said, absently, and still not looking at him. “You should. There’s mercurochrome in the medicine cabinet. You look like shit.”
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