Maybe, in her own way, Irene Benjamin had been real, too.
Everything was on the beach.
A receding wave foamed around the first box, tugging it into the surf. Ben grabbed a book award, wound up like a discus thrower, and sent the bronze plate flying into the night.
"You took them all," he shouted. "You took too much. You owe me."
A warm wave surged around his ankles; soft sand tickled his feet as the water receded. Boxes and manuscripts drifted out to sea like toy boats; Ben threw a dry, dusty protea arrangement after them and shouted a hearty bon voyage.
Ben tumbled another box and threw clothes, perfume bottles, and jewelry into the sea. Everything had to go. Only then would the sea understand that when it took Ben's love, it took three people. It wasn't right, taking all of them, and leaving him with nothing at all.
Sweaty and exhilarated, Ben reached for more.
In the sand, next to the empty box, he found the plaster handprint.
Ailina. The sea seemed to whisper the name. Ben shuddered, gripping the plaster disc tightly, his big fingers overflowing the tiny furrows made by a child's fingers so long ago, and suddenly he saw Ailina for the first time, a poor girl who dreamed of wearing elegant clothes and perfumes that were advertised in slick magazines. A sweet, serious little girl who dreamed of living in the ultimate beach house on a perfect piece of land in Hawaii. He saw that little girl, and he remembered how hard she'd worked for her dreams as she grew older, and he remembered all the struggles he'd shared with her.
Ben and his wife. The two of them. And Irene Benjamin, and Ailina. The four of them.
Berkeley. Rejects. Agents. Publishers. Together, they'd shared it all, along with the eventual success. In some ways, for both of them, for all four of them, success had been the greatest struggle of all.
The clothes, the perfumes, the jewelry... even the beach house. They were her things, after all. They belonged to a child named Ailina, and to a woman named Irene Kaneholani. They belonged to Irene Benjamin, as well.
And to a man named Benjamin Winslow.
He remembered his wife's words (She's real, Ben. She's us.), and now he understood them.
Not three, not even four, but one.
And, realizing that for the first time, one was more than Ben Winslow could stand to lose.
A wave crashed behind him. He whirled. Warm water closed around his legs — pushing, then pulling, pulling—drawing him off balance. A protea stem scratched his ankle. Wet clothes slithered across the slick sand like heavy slugs. Perfume bottles bobbed in the surf. Ben splashed after them. He caught them up and wrapped them in a cotton dress, smelling a dozen scents that spoke his wife's name.
He recovered what he could. Then, exhausted, he dumped his bundle at water's edge.
A spent wave lapped at his ankles, and he stepped on something hard — the plaster hand-print, half buried in the wet sand. Gingerly, he pulled it up, saw the tiny golden hand printed in the sand, the name printed backward beneath it.
Ben's fingers slipped between the soft, sandy fingers. Interlocked.
"Ailina."
The Kona wind rippled over the waves. Muggy breath warmed Ben's neck.
Between his fingers, the sand grew warm.
Wriggled.
Ben's lips brushed the sand and found her golden lips waiting there, open to his kiss. And then there was only the soft, warm sand, and the Kona wind, and the wave closing over them.
Seeing the Wizard
In some stories, writers give it up to you. They pull back the curtain and show you the man who's hiding behind it, just the way that little black dog does in The Wizard of Oz. You get a nice long look at him. That's the writer's intent.
Other times, in other stories, you don't see the wizard. Oh, you might see that curtain move a little. You might even glimpse a faint silhouette and have a good idea who—or what—is behind there. But you can't quite be sure...and that gnaws at you, and it unsettles you.
The latter method of storytelling can work especially well when crafting horror fiction. Sometimes it's the things we glimpse in the shadows, not the things we see clearly, that can frighten us the most. Read a few of Ramsey Campbell's tales and you'll see what I mean.
Writing a story of that sort isn't easy. Word selection becomes extremely important. So does creating a mood. And so does editing. Sometimes the hardest part of the job is deciding if you've revealed too much to the reader, or not quite enough. Falling too solidly on either side of that line can ruin the effect you're aiming for. But hitting it right... well, that can be something special. Just read a story like Campbell's "The Trick," or Charles L. Grant's "Coin of the Realm," or Al Sarrantonio's "Boxes," and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Writers like Campbell, Grant, and Sarrantonio inspired me to try this one. It's another early experiment in style. And since we're talking about other writers, I'll admit here that I named the three characters in "Vessels" Steve, Pete, and Chet as a tip of the hat to three fine gentlemen whose work I've admired: Steve Rasnic Tem, Peter Straub, and Chet Williamson.
I remember revising this story several times over a period of weeks in an attempt to get it just right. I'd cut a few lines out, then let it sit a week, I'd take another look, and I'd put the lines I'd cut back in. Back and forth I went until one day, in near exasperation, I decided to go with the stripped down version. That was that. "Vessels" went in the mail, bounced around a few times among small press editors, and finally found a home as one of the originals in Mr. Fox.
Rereading "Vessels" for the first time since its publication in 1992, I'm still not sure that I didn't carve too much off the bone. But that's made for a few interesting conversations over the years with people who've read it. I've heard a few interpretations of the story that, in truth, hadn't occurred to me in the writing.
That doesn't mean those interpretations aren't valid. The less is more style can create a more collaborative experience between writer and reader in that regard, and that can make for a special kind of magic.
I'll shut up now.
It's time for the story to do the talking.
VESSELS
There were three of them. Two stood on the gravel shore while the other stripped down to her panties and waded into the lake.
"Ditch it, Chet. We're busted."
"Relax, Steve. It's only a bunch of girls. Sierra Clubbers or Greenpeacers getting all touchy-feely with nature — not deadly Amazons come to punish you for your heinous pilfering."
Pete nodded in agreement. "Besides, Steve, the chances are a million to one that they're looking for it. That thing was down there deep... you said so yourself."
Chet picked up a pebble and squeezed it. "Water must be freezing. God, look at those nipples. Like little rocks...."
The girl in the water gasped, the sound echoing clear and sharp off the rocky island where the young men sat, and Steve was already thinking of his CPR training when her head dipped below the surface. Her ass arched for an instant as she twisted her body — Chet gave a low whistle — and then she kicked strongly, completing her dive.
"Smooth and pretty," Chet said. "Smooth and pretty."
Steve shivered. Nothing to worry about. Only a dive.
A last kick. A hollow thump as her foot displaced water, a sound like a big stone hitting the still surface of the lake, and then quiet.
Spooky. That's what it was.
No. Just a sound of displaced water and displaced air, Steve told himself. Nothing spooky about that.
But the hollow thump stayed with him. His mind was still running over his CPR training, only now he was remembering the rubber dummy —lips cold, painted black eyes open—and the empty gasp it had made when he turned his head from its head. He remembered it so clearly. A single sour breath blowing from the dummy's soft red lips, washing over his cheek.
And he remembered thinking, God, all that work, and the thing still isn’t alive.
"Relax, Steve. She's just taking a swim."
Pete rolled his eyes like Groucho Marx. "And we’ll see a little bit of heaven."
"You've got that right." Chet twisted the butt of his pocket knife and the cork came out of the smoky-green bottle with a quiet pop — another sound of displaced air, as hollow as the diving noise the girl had made.
"What is it?" Pete asked, but Steve knew right away what it was, for the smell was deep and rich, tinged with the scent of seasoned oak.
Too strong a smell. He didn't like it. It overpowered the soothing perfume of pine and moss and water. It brought to mind the sour puff of air that had issued from the lips of the CPR dummy.
Chet raised the bottle and silently toasted the girls on the shore. He tipped it back and a black trickle broke the corner of his mouth and rolled down his unshaven chin.
Pete laughed. "You look like a sloppy vampire," he said.
"Give me a break," Chet drank again. "I'm thirsty."
Pete got some food out of his rucksack, and they ate sardines and cheese and crackers while they passed around the bottle. Steve sitting on a rock at water's edge, Chet sprawled in the rubber raft, Pete leaning against a stunted pine tree. The pine had been a blessing in the hot afternoon, but now it swarmed with bugs that buzzed off the calm water in kamikaze waves, and Pete was doing more swatting than drinking.
Twenty feet away, the girl broke surface, gasped, then dived again.
"Here's to our last binge," Pete said. "No more fun when we hike out of here and get in that car tomorrow. Me off to Berkeley, Chet to Harvard, Steve to — "
Chet laughed. "Hey, Stevie, where do lifeguards go after summer vacation?"
Steve didn't answer. He hadn't told Chet and Pete about the awful things that lifeguards had to do. He wasn't going to tell them now.
By his watch, the girl had been underwater for a full minute. "Got a hot date?" Chet asked.
"Huh?"
"You keep looking at your watch."
Steve caught a hint of annoyance in Chet's voice. "No... nothing." He motioned for the bottle.
It was cool in his hands. Not slimy with algae. Thick smoked glass. It wasn't a new bottle, but there was no label to date it. How long had it been down there before he'd found it? Who had lost it? Or had someone left it in the water to cool?
The girl.
She came up for air. Gasped. Dived again.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. Steve exhaled sharply, as if someone had knocked the wind out of him. This girl... she could have been a twin to that girl on the beach at Santa Cruz. She could have been —
No. That was stupid. Lots of girls had dark hair and dark eyes. It wasn't anything strange, or rare, or —
"Drink up," Chet said. "I can't wait all night."
Steve drank. He didn't like red wine, and this was the good kind, the expensive stuff that was so heavy it seemed to stick to his teeth. He passed the bottle and stared at the girls on the shore. They hadn't moved. They watched the water, not Steve or Pete or Chet.
Steve wondered what they were waiting for, what they were doing. They weren't laughing, like friends enjoying an outing. They weren't making camp, or skipping stones, or talking.
Steve drank again. The girls didn't move, but somehow they seemed upset. Frustrated beyond all hope of any action that could vent their frustration. Like fisherfolk without poles, like hunters without weapons... resigned to watch the prey slink by.
Steve knew something about that kind of frustration.
But where was the diving girl?
Steve checked his watch. Three minutes had passed. Had she come up while he was drinking?
Yeah. Had to have.
The bottle went around again.
"Guys, she's been under for a long time."
"Steeeeve... give it up."
"I'm serious."
Chet passed the bottle to Pete, saying, "She's probably swimming. Gone around the side of the island or something."
Steve didn't think so. The water was damn cold when the sun went down, and it was starting its descent now, the sky shading from blue to purple as the sun passed behind the mountains to the west. But he didn't want to argue, didn't want to spoil the last night of a good time, so he said nothing.
Instead, he took another drink.
And he didn't like the cold feel of the bottle on his lips.
It wasn't like the other lifeguards had said it would be, and after it happened they all knew that it hadn't been the same for him, and they knew that it bothered him, too.
"I don't know what to do about it," he'd told his boss. "I mean, I know I did all that I could, textbook-wise. But I keep dreaming about her, about her black eyes. It seemed like there was something there when I dragged her out of the water, but then it went away. I saw it go. With every ventilation I saw those eyes change, and I knew that she wasn't going to make it. And, God, when I gave up, I couldn't stop looking at her. I kept thinking how much she looked like that CPR dummy we use in the classes. You know —the one with the perfect face like a department store mannequin? And then I started thinking that that couldn't be, that I had to know her from somewhere, because all of a sudden it seemed like I did know her, all about her..."
His boss had said that he'd heard it before. Other lifeguards had felt the same way after a failed resuscitation, especially when it was the first they had ever attempted. "It bothers some people. Then again, some people it doesn't bother at all — it's like their minds aren't tuned in to that kind of stuff. But the ones who think about it... well, they think about it a lot. They remember those stories about your soul escaping with your last breath. They get the idea that somehow the escaping soul got mixed up with their own inhalations, or that their own breath is trapped in the body of a dead person, and they worry that they've lost a little bit of themselves, taken a little bit from the dead.... Look, Steve, it's normal to think about this stuff, but it's going to pass. There'll be another. And it won't turn out the same way next time."
Steve had wanted to believe that. He'd waited for the next time, thinking about the dead girl almost constantly, hoping to see the next sleeping face come alive under his ministrations. But the season ended before a next time, and a next face, had come.
Steve took off his shirt and dropped it on the rocks. "I'm going in. See what's up."
Pete shook his bead. "Christ, Steve. That's stupid. I mean, look at her friends. They're just standing around. Do you think that they'd be standing around like that if she was in trouble?"
"No... but..." Steve couldn't say more. He was suddenly cold. Even standing on the shore, he could feel the numbing power of the dark water.
His lungs burned. Sour wine churned in his belly.
He sucked a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened them and stared across the still water. The girls were watching, their eyes hard on him.
Not knowing why, Steve reached for his shirt.
Chet laughed. "Bashful boy."
"C'mon, Steve," Pete said. "Sit down and have a drink."
Steve sucked another deep breath. Barely got it down. Gut-warm wine started up his throat, but he held it down.
Chet jumped up, a joyful leer spreading across his face. "All right! They're taking off their clothes!"
Steve looked across the water. The girls peeled off their jeans, slipped off their shirts, and waded into the lake, naked.
They weren't moving fast, but they weren't moving slowly, either. Steve unbuttoned his jeans. "I'm going in."
Chet raised the bottle. "Bring 'em back alive, m'boy," he said.
The water was cold, but the cold kept Steve moving, his hands slicing before him, his thick shoulder muscles driving his arms back to his sides as he swam deeper and deeper.
Looking for a needle in a haystack, that's what it was like. He could hardly see a thing; the water was as dark as the smoky-green wine bottle. And every time he broke the surface the two girl
s were nowhere in sight, and when he hollered to Pete and Chet they invariably said that the pair had just gone under. So Steve kept diving, moving closer to the shore each time, his hands scrabbling along the lake bed when he hit bottom.
The bottom was loamy mud dotted with algae-slick rocks. It would be hard to see the bottom under the best conditions; it was almost impossible now that the sun was going down, reducing to a bare minimum the reflected light that managed to wash the depths of the lake.
Steve knew that he couldn't stand the darkness or the cold much longer. He treaded water for a moment, then let his body drift silently. Listened. Heard nothing: no sounds of swimming, no sounds of bodies breaking surface, no one nearby. A few bubbles escaped his mouth and brushed his cheek, and he reached out to paddle further.
His fingers scratched the bottom.
It had to be a rock. It was big and slick. But it was almost too smooth, and the way it curved —rising and falling back, narrowing and widening — was strange. His fingers found two smooth mounds, both dotted with a single thick protuberance.
More air escaped Steve's mouth. He had to start for the surface, and he twisted his body so that he could push off of the rock with his feet.
It shifted under his toes.
Gooseflesh rose on his arms. His ankle was caught.
He kicked, hoping to free himself from whatever it might be — a tangle of rope, an old fishing line —his calf had gone numb with cold and he couldn't sense what was holding him. He opened his eyes and looked down but saw only grainy blackness.
His lungs gave up. A torrent of bubbles escaped from his mouth.
Something white and round passed before his face. Two cold circles above a slash of red. It passed again, or another just like it. And then he was pushed down against glassy curves, and the curves met the muscular curves of his body. Pointed mounds dug into his chest.
Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales Page 12
