Minus Tide

by Dennis Yates

  How long had it been since she’d come here? After she and James returned from Portland, they’d never made it back. They’d try to make plans but something else would always come up and they continued to put it off until one day it became a kind of cynical joke between them, a sign that their relationship had been forever changed.

  Shadows shot from the entrance of the salal tunnel and coalesced in front of her. The dog’s barking deafened her. Cyclops emerged from the tunnel last and unfolded into an impossibly tall and horrifying figure. As he advanced toward her, the dog-shadow spread apart like a pool of crude oil. His gutting knife glowed as if harvest moonlight were striking it.

  “I’m running out of time. It’s going to be daylight in a few hours and I’ve got a train to catch… How’s the leg by the way?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Cyclops laughed. “You’re kind of late to be saying that little girl …”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I think it’s pretty clear … And if you think about it you’ve only got two options: The other side of that cliff behind you, or me. But it’s really just an illusion, don’t you think? Ann dead and Ann dead…”

  Ann pounded the head of the flashlight against the side of her good leg. It burst on long enough to see that Cyclops was naked down to his waist. His chest was covered by tattoos and wormy white scars. She noticed his arm was bleeding where she’d shot him but it looked like she’d only grazed him and the blood was drying.

  The light in her hands died and everything fell back into shadow.

  “Why am I hearing dogs but not seeing any?”

  “Because they’re ghosts, Ann. My ghosts. People I killed for business and people I killed because they looked tasty to them I guess.”

  “I still don’t understand why you want me.”

  “I’m just trying to survive the only way I know how.”

  “By killing people.”

  “It’s not something I enjoy.”

  “Yeah. It shows.”

  “You don’t understand. I have no choice anymore.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. I admit that I have killed a lot of people. And they’re angry at me at first. But then most start to accept what’s happened to them and they leave me alone. It wasn’t until I took down the really bad ones that things started happening. Murderers worse than me-rich men who paid big money to satisfy their bloodlust and ruthless drug lords. These dogs-these bad ones got together and decided what the hell, if they could use me as their instrument then they might as well start having fun.”

  Ann tried to knock the flashlight back to life again but it refused to come on. She tossed it into the brush and gripped the.38 in both hands. You’ve only got one chance to get this right. One bullet and that’s it. So piss him off and get him in close.

  “Sounds like some more of your hobo-psycho bullshit to me.”

  “Bullshit?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I could have left you on that rock to die, Ann. It would have been so easy.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  Cyclops edged forward and so did the pool of shadow.

  “Because the dogs weren’t interested. They needed to see your fear and you were only semi-conscious.”

  “Drop the knife.”

  “Come on Ann…”

  “For your information I’m pointing a gun at that big greasy head of yours.”

  “You and I can keep debating the truth for a while longer. But why must you insult me?”

  “Because you smell bad… Like a vulture just pissed on you.”

  “I know what you’re doing, Ann. And it won’t work.”

  “Why do you have to do this?”

  “I loved your mother. If you must know, this is all her fault.”

  “Drop the knife. Now.”

  “You must understand. I had to do it. I never planned to let her live the day she left with me to California.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Chapter 57

  Other than giving her mother the best few days possible of her life? You drowned her in the motel pool before you left town. But then you began to feel guilty about it. You kept seeing those eyes staring at you, so you invented the story of her drifting out at sea and losing them…adding yet another layer of self delusion that you just kept telling yourself over and over with the hope it would one day make it true.

  You only went back to town and stole her from the morgue and buried her in the desert because you thought it would ease your mind. But it never did. She followed you. Left pool water in every car you owned, until you gave up and switched to riding trains. Haunted you day and night. Until you thought the only way she would ever rest was if you gave her what she missed the most-Ann…

  Cyclops still hadn’t let go of the knife. She watched him raise the blade and gaze at it in the phantom light. He was still too far away from her. She began to wonder if she would ever be able to find a clean shot at all.

  And then something happened she couldn’t explain. The black cloud drifting around Cyclops began to break apart and turn into the shapes of dogs. With human faces.

  Ann wanted to scream and run. But there was no where else she could go. He had her backed up against the cliff edge.

  She pressed her back against a rock and tried to steady her pounding heart. What was she going to do? He knows you’re losing it, that the fever’s got hold of your mind.

  Something moved next to her legs. She knew it was stupid to look away from him but she did anyway. One of the dog-shadows had broken away from the others and was approaching her. She saw a whitish form hovering where its head should have been. A woman’s face framed by a fluid sheet of protoplasm. She smiled when Ann looked at her. Ann thought she was beautiful.

  “Who is she?”

  “You don’t recognize her?”

  “No…”

  “It’s your mother Ann.”

  “It can’t be. You’re lying.”

  “Then take out your locket and you’ll see.”

  How did he know I had it with me? And then Ann recalled how she’d awakened on the beach without her clothes.The bastard had had plenty of time to see all that he’d wanted. What else did he have time to do? Thinking about it made her sick to her stomach.

  She reached down the neck of her damp sweater and pulled out her mother’s silver locket with a trembling hand. It felt like ice against her palm. She pressed the tiny clasp on the side and it clicked open and she held it up close. Inside she saw a cutout picture of her mother as she remembered her, smiling, with the sea behind her.

  Ann looked back at the image floating in the night mist. No, it can’t be.

  “What did you do to her?”

  Cyclops had moved several steps closer. “I ended her suffering, Ann.”

  “No…”

  Chapter 58

  “She knew she would probably never see you again. That Duane would surely come after her. And then one night I made the decision to go through with it… I came back to the motel to find she’d been drinking again and taking pills. She was angry and talking shit. It was our fault that she couldn’t be with you. She told me everything she knew about the business I had going with the sheriff and Duane-enough, I thought, to get us into some real trouble. Instead of taking them away, I gave her more pills and vodka. And after she calmed down and stopped screaming at me, I waited until it was late and took her down to the pool. We talked and I told her the last week had been one of the happiest in my life. When it was time I asked her to forgive me and she seemed to nod her head as if she wanted me to help her die.”

  Ann was crying. “Then why did you lie to me? You said she’d committed suicide.”

  Cyclops edged closer, dead branches snapped below him. “Because I wanted to make things easier on you.”

  “No. You wanted to protect yourself. You’re a coward. You want to believe it because it makes you feel better.”r />
  “I’m afraid there’s nothing that will make me feel better. Your mother has made that impossible. She’s with me wherever I go. I’ll never be free of her.”

  “So what stopped you from killing me before?”

  “I came close once a few years ago … I sat in your bedroom and watched you and not a soul in the house even knew I was there except for the cats. But I left you a gift instead. The locket you’re wearing now. I took the picture of your mother that’s in it. She was standing on a cliff in Big Sur.”

  “No, that’s impossible. I found it in a box of her things that Aunt Kate kept in a storage shed she rented in Knife Cape. She hoped that some day detectives would go through them and find the piece of evidence they needed to make an arrest…”

  “You’re surprising me, Ann. Didn’t you wonder why you hadn’t seen your mother wear it before?”

  “At first I thought it was hers. And then I realized Aunt Kate must have done it. She knew I’d sometimes go to the storage shed without telling her. She must have thought it would make me feel better somehow.”

  “She was wearing it the night she died. I bought it for her from a silversmith in Tijuana. She had a picture of you in her purse and she cut it out and put it inside. When I brought the necklace back and hid it in the box I put the picture I’d taken of her in it.”

  He must be telling the truth, Ann thought. She’d once removed her mother’s picture and had seen her own below it-blurred, she’d thought, from water damage. She remembered the chills it had given her.

  Her arms were getting tired. She wouldn’t be able to hold up the.38 much longer. So much for pissing him off. This obviously isn’t going to work.

  You still haven’t answered me. Why didn’t you kill me the last time?”

  “After I listened to your sleep-talk I couldn’t go through with it. It made me sick.”

  “Sleep-talk?”

  “A skill my mother taught me long ago.”

  “What is it?”

  “You wouldn’t understand … It would take too long to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  “All of us have a voice that talks while we are asleep, one that we are not aware of. It’s another language and takes years of training to understand. But if you do learn it, you’ll find out many things about a person. And it doesn’t stop there. You can also learn things about the future as well as the past.”

  “What did my sleep-talk tell you?”

  “I heard your mother’s voice coming from your mouth. She was talking from the other side…through you. While you slept.”

  “You heard my mother? He’s only trying to scare you, Ann. Trying to get the dogs going. Don’t let him distract you.

  “She had already changed so much by then. In fact, I almost smothered you with a pillow to quiet her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me that the only way she’d ever let me rest is if I killed you, sent you over to her.”

  “You’re lying… She’d never say that.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s not the same woman that you or I knew before. All your mother wants is to have you back, no matter what the cost. And when I told her I didn’t take children from the world, she became obsessed with making my life a living hell.”

  “But now you’ve changed your mind. About killing me.”

  “Of course I have. Look at what your mother has turned me into? I live like an animal because of her.”

  “You got off easy.”

  Ann pulled the trigger and Cyclops finally dropped the knife.

  Chapter 59

  Ann choked.

  He had her throat between his grime-covered hands. He could feel her pulse ride up through his palms, the lifeline he knew he needed to cut off.

  Her fists pounded his face and he laughed when he heard the dogs begin to take a greater interest in her fear. He was bringing it up to the level they liked. The dogs surrounded them like an electric field, anticipating a wave of fresh energy to burst from his hands.

  But they couldn’t wait. There were so many of them now and they were hungry and fighting for their place at the table. He could feel their icy breaths against his skin as they gnashed their teeth. They clawed up on his back and weighed him down.

  Ann’s arms slipped away. His eye was clouded with sweat but he could see her face tighten into the familiar rictus of fear. He still tasted the elk’s heart he’d eaten earlier, knew that its blood-jam was pumping wildly through his veins. You’re closeAnn…so close. While he pressed down he felt the dogs’ mouths crowd in tighter. Until something inside told him to release her…

  When he drew away his hands he looked up and saw Ann’s mother.

  She reminded him of a demon story he’d heard as a boy. A tale his grandmother once told him. About a beautiful woman who’d died under suspicious circumstances. And when the townsfolk began seeing her ghost, some warned that she could not accept what had happened to her, that eventually a madness would develop and she’d turn into something terrible.

  Most of the time Ann’s mother no longer resembled the woman he’d met years before. What Cyclops saw now was the face of a woman who’d been pulled from a shallow desert grave by coyotes, her eyes milky white and her flesh bubbling with sores from the day’s scorching rays.

  You must give me my child!

  Cyclops staggered to his feet and tried to run. He threw back his head and screamed in agony. The shadow-dogs clung to his body from his neck down. Their electric teeth sinking deep into his flesh. He stretched his arms out to his sides and the dogs wriggling bodies caused him to sway-moving him past Ann and toward the cliff as if he’d become their marionette. They brought him up to the crumbling edge. He spotted an exposed tree root and looped his arm through it.

  “Leave me!”

  The shadow-dogs pulled him over and he swung above the dark chasm until they tired and let go, dropping from his body toward the rocks and roaring surf, taking Ann’s mother screaming down with them.

  When they were all gone, he climbed back up to look at Ann. She lay on her back, coughing. Her chest heaving for fresh air. He pulled off the remains of his shredded jacket and threw it over her before picking her up in his arms.

  Chapter 60

  Many times after they fought Duane would take off in his car. The screams and shouting beforehand often woke Ann up, and sometimes she’d hear her mother sobbing and go to their room and lie down next to her until the growl of Duane’s Camaro rattled the windows again and she’d slip back to her own bed. If she was lucky enough to fall back to sleep, her dreams would still arrive to scare her and she’d end up lying in bed, staring up at faces in the wood ceiling until the morning half-light came through her window and showed her they were only knotholes. Often her mind was still dreaming when she opened her eyes and the things in the ceiling would whisper too softly for her to understand.

  One night she woke up from a bad dream and thought Duane hadn’t come back and she wanted to crawl into bed with her mom because when she did the scary dreams wouldn’t bother her. At the end of the hall, however, she’d seen a strange light coming from the kitchen and decided to see what it was. The side door to the kitchen had been left open and moonlight was pouring inside on the linoleum and she’d gone and stood in it and it made her feel good.

  The kitchen door shouldn’t be left open, and she wondered if Duane had just forgotten to close it or if the raccoons were now trying doors in the middle of the night. She heard someone crying, and it sounded a lot like her mother.

  She padded into the doorway and saw light coming from the garage door and she went outside to see who was in there. It was a warm night, and the buttons on her pajamas twinkled. She glanced around the yard and didn’t see any raccoons watching her. When she reached the door she could hear Duane and her mother talking, but the window was set too high for her to look through.

  She was about to knock but something stopped her hand. Instead she flipped over an old milk crate
her mother used to sit on when she was picking peas and set it next to the door. The window was still too high and she’d needed to stand on her tiptoes to be able to see her mother lying back on the old couch and Duane bent over her outstretched arm and giving her a shot like a doctor would do. Her mother’s eyes were glazed and when she looked up and saw Ann’s face floating in the window she began to laugh like she did sometimes when she didn’t think anyone else was around to hear.

  Ann suddenly didn’t recognize her and fell off the crate. She hit her head on a stepping stone and lay there until Duane found her and they took her to the hospital. And that’s when the doctor said her trouble with faces may have started, because she’d hurt the place in her brain that did that kind of thing but she’d never told him what she’d seen that night to make her fall.

  Chapter 61

  After learning that their little brother had been last seen headed for Traitor during the storm the night before, Chad’s brothers had started to worry. The phones were still out and no one they spoke to had any idea what had happened to him. And although a second storm was due to hit, they decided to drive up over the old mountain road in a pickup loaded with chainsaws and extra gas.

  Chad hadn’t drifted far out into the bay before deciding he wasn’t going to leave Ann behind. When he got back to shore Ann and the sheriff were nowhere to be found. He’d discovered blood on the ground and tracked it from the boat ramp up to the highway. He was limping down the middle of the highway when his brothers found him, shivering and barely able to speak.