by Sarah Graves
A blast of a horn erupted out of the darkness at him, a massive, world-cracking, elemental explosion of sound that blew him back off the boat’s seat and slammed him whimpering into the transom. Reflexively he clapped his hands to his ears, but that was laughably useless. The sound was inside him, battering him like the shock wave of a bomb blast, his ribs vibrating with it.
Stunned, he lay helpless. Something up there, a huge shape forming above him, emerging endlessly from the fog … Oh jesus.
The curving bow of the enormous vessel bore down on him out of the streaming darkness. He couldn’t see the top of it through the fog, only a hazy glow from the deck lights far above.
But what he could see was coming right at him. Another heart-stopping, brain-hammering blast of the great horn exploded all around him. Not because anyone on the ship knew he was here, though. Or if they did, it was too late to do anything about it.
Huge, inexorable, the thing just kept coming. Desperately, Chip scrambled up, pounded the outboard’s starter button again and again, to no avail. The wave alone would swamp him … .
The wind hit first, thick as a fist, a vast blowback off the ship’s flat moving side. It lifted the spare life jacket and carried it away. Then the high white wall of rolling water struck, lifting the tiny vessel he was on like a stick of driftwood, and him an insubstantial bug clinging to it.
Wrapping his arms around the Evinrude’s console, he hung on, grateful for the life jacket he was wearing but knowing it wouldn’t do him any good, either; that ship’s towering bow was going to slice him in half in another second-He stared wonderingly at it. For an instant it was so close, he could count the rivets in the glow from the lights above … .
Hey, he thought, I’m down here, look at me. …
But of course they didn’t. And then it hit him: Row, you idiot, row! He leapt forward, seized the oars, and flung their blades into the water. Hauling on them, he felt that his heart might burst out of his chest with the effort and his terror.
Row … The churning sea yanked his shoulders. Every stroke felt like his joints might dislocate. But nothing was happening; his tries were nothing against the massive waves and the giant thing bearing gigantically down on him.
Oh jesus oh mother of god oh jesus … He closed his eyes and hurled himself backward, pulling and pulling, again and—
Suddenly something smacked one of the oars with the force of a train locomotive, snapping his arm back and shattering the oar itself; he had only its grip in his hand. At the same moment the opposite oarlock jumped up out of its sleeve; the wind hit the oar’s blade, and then the water did.
And then it too was gone, and he was powerless. Sitting there stunned and helpless, he gazed up openmouthed at the size of the freighter, its skyscraper height looming above him and its lights hazily brilliant, like a massive city afloat in the fog.
Its bow wave hit him. His own ridiculously small craft rose up sharply, the bow pointing heavenward as the stern spiraled around, rolling one way, pitching another … and then everything beneath him suddenly slid down the side of the great, gleaming wave cascading off the slanted bow of the huge ship.
Away he went, zooming into the roiling darkness, surfing sideways, then headfirst, in a boat now so near to rolling over that small objects in it showered past him like change out of an upended purse.
And then … then it was gone, the freighter’s massive bow shining for an instant before the fog made it all into a glowing blob. As his breath came in spasms that became sobs, the blob diminished hazily, faded, got sucked into the fog … and winked out. The ship’s horn sounded again, the sound drifting back to him, lonesome and small. Then nothing; he was alone once more, spinning in the churning wake of the big boat.
Chip leaned over the rail, lost whatever was in his stomach, and fell back, drained. His heart still stuttered ineffectively, weakness flooding him and his breath subsiding to short, defeated huffs.
Relief washed waterily over him as he fell back against the Evinrude’s solid bulk, but then came despair. If he’d had any idea that he might still survive the night out here, that notion was gone, blasted to smithereens by the departing horn of the great container ship.
Because maybe he’d escaped it, but what was next? Squallish gusts buffeted his boat, which had taken on water in the violence of the recent encounter and was now listing badly. He’d lost the oars, and the cell phone, if not overboard, was somewhere at his feet, drowned and ruined under several inches of icy brine.
Miserably, he calculated his chances of getting out of this alive and found them skimpy in the extreme. Probably he would never see his apartment again, his books and CDs, the collection of posters from indie music groups hanging framed in his hall.
Sadly, he wondered who would arrange his funeral. Not the Old Bastard, now so pickled in bourbon that he would probably not even understand the bad news.
Assuming he thought it was bad. And not Chip’s mother, now an aging, made-up, and bejeweled drama queen happily ensconced—he continued to hope—in a mountainside commune in New Mexico, where she’d gone to escape the rigors of Chip’s own early childhood, and never returned.
Occasionally he’d had a card from her—one at Christmas, usually, and once in a while there’d be one on his birthday. Sometimes the card had a hundred bucks in it.
But nothing for several years now. And otherwise, no one. Surprised, he searched his mind; could it really be that he’d become so alone, so isolated, that if he died, no one would …
Siobhan Walters might miss him. For a few minutes, anyway. Long enough to send a short, somber e-mail to the marketing and publicity people, and the handful of others in the office who’d known him distantly.
After that, though, she’d be on to the next new whoever, a new writer with new ideas who could show up with the stuff, on time and in shape. It was why Carolyn had always been so driven, he understood now, so intent on not letting anyone steal even an ounce of her thunder.
And on stealing any she could get her hands on, herself. Because once you were out there, alone in the cold and dark, you might never get in again.
Wretchedly, he leaned back against the boat’s transom, trying to find a position where everything didn’t hurt. He was still moving right along, the boat riding a fast current, or so it seemed from the way the wind stayed constant in his face and the water chuckled faintly against the boat’s side.
Riding to disaster; he just didn’t know what kind or when. Yet …
Something hit the bow with a dull thud. He lurched up, his heart suddenly hammering again and his ears ringing loud in the silence. But nothing else happened. Driftwood, maybe.
He fell back, bones aching with fatigue and chill. The rain, at least, had stopped for the moment. But he had a bad feeling that pretty soon now it would get even colder.
A lot colder, and his jacket and the slicker, even with the life jacket under them, weren’t nearly enough. He stuffed his cold hands in his coat pockets and closed his eyes.
After a while he thought of shouting. So he tried that, but the wind snatched his voice and swirled it out into the fog, where it was swallowed up instantly. No answer came, and when his voice was only a harsh croak, he stopped.
Maybe when morning came, the fog would lift and he would at least be able to see again. Maybe then some other boat would be out here, too, and somebody would find him.
Thinking this, he fell into a sort of trance; of darkness and fog, the water moving beneath him like a great unseen beast. He couldn’t tell how much time went by, nor did he care; what difference did it make? He found his iPod and put the earbuds in again; k.d. lang began asking what his heart concealed.
But for once even her lush, languorously articulate voice failed to revive his spirit. All he knew was that he was cold and frightened, that he never, ever should have tried coming out here alone, and that it was dark.
His bravado in the Eastport police station, confronting Roger Dodd, now seemed a cartoon-like bit of pl
ayacting. Big man, he mocked himself bitterly, when there’s a cop to protect you in case somebody sees through you.
And all the things he’d been thinking and feeling the night before were even worse, his silly I’m-going-to-do-this and you-can’t-have-that.
God, had he really ever thought he could hurt somebody? That he could harm Carolyn, that there was something important enough? Had he been that stupid?
Well, now he knew better. He missed Carolyn, her abrasive, demanding way of looking at everything, her self-absorption, and her instant, reflexive belief that people were going to arrange things the way she wanted them.
Or else. Chip sniffled, not caring anymore how pathetic he was. Maybe if he’d been a little more like Carolyn, he wouldn’t be in this trouble.
But it was too late to worry about that now, too, wasn’t it?
And anyway … a sob racked him and he let it, unashamed, as this last thing occurred to him:
That anyway, Carolyn was probably dead.
WHEN THE THREE EASTPORT WOMEN CAME OUT OF THE Dodd House on Washington Street, it was full dark. Fog like a thick, damp sponge muffled all sound, and in the glow of the streetlights the pavement gleamed wetly black. A few cars passed, their dashboard lights tiny beacons and their wipers smearing the drizzle.
Jake picked her way down the wrecked front steps. The weird forbidden-thrill feeling of exploration and discovery had faded fast as they came down the dusty hall toward the front door. Now behind her the lovely old house stood silent, as if too proud to acknowledge the fact that it was being abandoned again.
Sam, she thought. A foghorn moaned distantly. “I’ve got to get back,” Ellie said. “Your father’s waiting for me, and George might call.”
There had been no word from the husbands-Jake checked her cell phone again, without result—but if the wardens Bob Arnold had promised to alert had found the hunters, they might be out of the woods by now, perhaps even on their way home.
She nodded, hunched up under her jacket against the damp air. Another car went by downhill, its tires spinning crystalline droplets that vanished as they flew off into the darkness.
Bella tucked the sheet of paper with the map on it into her coat. Its delicate, revealing smears of soot wouldn’t survive for long, but she knew what it had showed, and she would remember.
“I’m going downtown to see Bob Arnold,” she said.
“Bella, we can call him from home. It’s awful out here—”
The housekeeper turned. In the gloom her long, hard face was like an antique wood carving, deeply grooved. “I’m going,” she repeated, and when she got like that, there was no point arguing with her.
“All right,” Jake gave in. “Tell him—”
“I know what to tell him,” said Bella flatly. What they’d found, where they’d found it, what it was …
Well, that much was obvious. Even Jake, no expert marine navigator, recognized Digby Island. The barest, most unappealing and inaccessible little spur of jagged stone for a hundred miles, it lay about halfway between the north end of Deer Cove and the Canadian port of L’Etete, just barely on the Canadian side of the line. Its nickname was Nothing Rock because it had no place to put ashore and nothing on it to put ashore for.
According to Sam, who had once gotten stuck there with a crapped-out bilge pump, the only reason anyone would try was if they were already sinking, and even then it was even money if they’d get to the shore alive, because the channel around Digby was so deep in some spots and rock-infested in all others.
Drown, smash, or get hung up at low tide and capsize later at high: those were your choices in the waters around Digby, Sam had reported. He’d survived the episode, but Sam was so expert on the water that he practically had gills.
So, why had Randy drawn a map of the place? So he could avoid those rocks? To put people off his track? Or for some other, even worse, reason?
Bella’s final comment cut into Jake’s thoughts. “If that miserable Roger Dodd is around, I’ll know what to tell him, too,” she declared as she marched off.
Ellie put her arm around Jake and then released her. “Listen. It looks bad now. But this is going to be—”
All right. “I know,” Jake said. But it wasn’t. She managed a weak smile. “Sam’s pretty capable. I’m sure if there’s anything he can do, he’ll be—”
“Of course he will,” said Ellie, and with that they parted, Ellie heading downhill toward the thinly shining lights of Water Street and Jake turning into the dark, dripping alley beside the nursing home, toward her own house on Key Street.
By the time she reached the porch steps, the need to go out and find Sam for herself felt like a toxic compulsion; it was all she could do not to get into the car at once. Even driving around aimlessly would be better than this awful waiting and fearing.
Instead she went inside, let the dogs out and fed them and petted them, and then put coffee on. She reset the phone, and turned the lamps on, pausing in each of the empty rooms in case their silence should have something to communicate to her.
But none of them did. At last she ventured upstairs to Sam’s room, where the sight of his neatly made bed struck her anew with the force of a well-aimed blow. On the dresser his Morse code notebook lay open. His seaweed experiment grew in its aquarium.
His penknife wasn’t there, nor the compact emergency fire kit-flint, steel, and a dozen strike-anywhere wooden matches—she’d given him the previous Christmas.
So he had those, anyway. And his textbooks stood in a pile on his desk like a mountain he had not yet finished climbing. But he would.
Surely he would; looking out his window to the dark street below, she promised it to him. Yet she had no idea how she would manage this, and after watching the silent street for a while she went back downstairs to the doorknobs and the X-Acto knife.
She poured coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and opened the bag of doorknobs. They were really very pretty ones, and fully salvageable. She looked at the X-Acto knife, at the paint on the old china knobs, at her hands, and at the knife again.
And then it hit her, what else Sam had said when he’d returned from his unpleasant adventure on Digby Island:
That not only was it wild, inaccessible, and protected by rocks so sharp you might as well jump feet-first into a bag of razor blades.
He’d said that at low tide, it had a sandbar. No problem at high tide, he’d allowed, expanding on his adventure, when twenty feet of water lay between it and your boat’s hull.
But at low tide it could catch you up and strand you, put your vessel on its side quick as a wink, and when the tide came back in again you’d go swirling straight to the bottom.
A sandbar, Sam had said, so wide you could walk across it. She dropped the X-Acto knife and dashed into the parlor. On the mantel stood a device like a clock but with just one black hand.
It was a tide clock. Sam had given it to her last Christmas. High, Ebbing, and Low, said the words on the dial, then Flowing and back to High again.
At the moment, the hand pointed at High. So, right now the sandbar Sam had described didn’t exist. But in a few hours the tide would be going out again from Passamaquoddy Bay. Then for an hour or so there would be a land bridge over to Digby Island.
Only … from where? Sam hadn’t said. She flew to the right-hand bottom drawer under the kitchen cabinets, yanked it out, and rummaged in it, tossing all the many electronic-equipment manuals out onto the floor while the dogs sniffed curiously around her.
Because beneath the electronics manuals, Bella kept other books, including a DeLorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer. The information it con tained was very detailed… .
She found it and pulled it out, laid the large paperbound volume open on her lap as she sat on the floor, and began paging hurriedly through it. Randy Dodd knew the water around here, the tides and currents, coves, inlets, and islands. Whoever he’d drawn a map for, she felt certain, it had not been for himself.
And who it had been for was a
question for another time, as well, because for now it didn’t matter. For now, all she knew was that she needed to find her way to where a cunning fugitive might be holding Sam captive.
Bella would give the soot-smeared map tracing they had found to Bob Arnold. Bob knew the waters around here as well as Randy Dodd or better; if the map turned out to be useful, he would use it.
And that was all well and good. But if she didn’t try, too, and Sam didn’t get found, she would never forgive herself.
So she had to. She just had to. And the DeLorme—
“Come on, come on …” she murmured impatiently, flipping to the next page, and the next.
—the DeLorme was a whole book of maps.
CAROLYN DREAMED OF WATER. SHE WOKE WITH A STRANGLED shriek that came out a painful croak to find the man standing over her. An empty plastic quart jug was in his hand; he’d emptied it onto her.
Desperately she licked at the moisture on her face, felt the cool liquid relief spread like a blessing onto her parched lips and tongue … only not enough.
Not nearly enough. Pleadingly she gazed up at him, her eyes like two hot stones, aching and burning.
He kicked her. “Get up.” Then he walked away, the plastic jug with a few precious droplets perhaps remaining in it hanging loosely from one big hand.
Aching, she shifted tentatively and found that while she’d been out cold, he’d taken the tape off the blanket she was rolled in. Pains shot from her joints as she tried to move, to get up; with a groan, she fell back onto the deck.
He was at the wheel of the boat, his back turned to her. “You don’t get up and I’m gonna just shoot you where you’re lying there.”
She didn’t believe him. It was not a part of his plan. She recalled very clearly the look in his eyes as he’d held the knife to her throat. A look of longing to push the knife in. Now …
But something had changed. His face when he’d found that the slip of paper he’d had was missing … He’d been afraid.
