Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  “So where’s this alleged house?” Bryce huffed up the steep incline. “I’ll break trail, follow so you don’t get as wet.”

  Her toes were already throbbing but she didn’t want to say and risk having Bryce insist she go back to the Jeep.

  A weird nervousness tickled in the bony recesses of her chest.

  “Too bad we don’t have snowshoes.”

  “Next time,” he called back.

  “Yeah, next time,” she repeated in a quiet voice, stepping in his tracks. She liked the idea of a next time.

  “Maybe over this hill?” she suggested, breathing heavy as they trudged in knee-high snow. She pulled on her bottom lip. “Hope it’s the right place.”

  “The fire sign matches TJ’s address.”

  “True.”

  She could hear Bryce breathing.

  “Hey,” she said. “Remember when we were in the Java Sea just off Jakarta and that captain entered the wrong coordinates and wouldn’t admit it?” she asked.

  “You mean the known meth and crackhead that the NSF had vetted and authorized as our charter for the dive project?” Bryce said.

  “And the guy wouldn’t admit we were going out to sea?”

  “Yeah, and then the fucker locked himself in the bridge and Jason had to break the window so we could open the door and get in,” Bryce continued the story, pausing to catch his breath.

  Amelia paused too. Resting her hands on her thighs she bent over to catch her breath. “God. I’d forgotten about Jason having to do that.”

  “And then remember Jen jumping on the guy and pounding the living snot out of him?” he said. It sent them both laughing as they remembered the spectacle. “I’d never seen her so pissed off.”

  Bryce continued the ascent. Amelia followed.

  “Except at Brad.”

  “Yeah well.” Bryce got serious. “Brad deserved it.”

  She couldn’t see the top of the embankment, it just kept going. Amelia felt uneasy and stopped.

  “You know,” she called up to him, resting for a moment. “I can’t shake the feeling someone lives there,” Amelia said.

  He’d stopped too and looked back at her.

  “TJ said no one’s lived there for years, right?”

  “Yeah.” But something felt off, or wrong. Maybe there were squatters, or a homeless person living rough.

  “Think they’ll close the mall again tomorrow?” she asked as they resumed the climb.

  “Fat chance,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Tell me this wasn’t a stupid idea?” she said, out of breath.

  “I don’t do stupid, Am,” he called over his shoulder. But the specter of his camo hat, Sea Life polo shirt collar poking out of his gray wool rag sweater, and flannel pajama bottoms, the whole thing struck her as funny and she started laughing.

  Bryce stopped. She guessed he’d reached the summit by how he stood taking in the vista.

  “Here.” Bryce took a few steps back, reaching to hoist her up. His cheeks were bright pink from the cold.

  “Look,” he said quietly, his arm around her.

  There was no sun, no overhead warmth. Charcoal clouds tumbled into Chequamegon Bay advancing like the sandstorms she’d seen in a National Geographic special on the Sahara Desert. The view opened to Lake Superior. Heavily treed islands were powdered white with snow.

  “And that,” he pointed to a tiny dot downhill, “is your house.”

  The land dropped off sharply and then leveled into a slight plateau on which stood a tiny mustard-colored one-story structure that had the same panoramic view of Lake Superior and surrounding islands.

  The snowy field sloped down toward the lake, bracketed on either side by tree lines that marked where the forest began: pine and bleached birch, their leafless branches blurred into what looked to be a mishmash bouquet of bird feathers: sparrow, wild turkey, and natural-colored ostrich.

  She paused to catch her breath.

  “You okay?”

  “More than okay.” She was still smiling without realizing it.

  The lake was unnaturally white with ice and a covering of snow. It was so dramatic and vivid against the dark sky that it resembled a stage set more than real weather.

  It had a raw and unforgiving quality. The contrasts alone silenced them. An eerie stillness settled on the valley and she felt scared. Seagulls dove for cover—their bodies stark white against the dark sky as they passed through her field of vision like phantom floaters. No caws of crows, no last-minute rustling of foraging squirrels. Wildlife had the good sense to take shelter, not like the two of them wandering around half-cocked on some kind of nutty treasure hunt; the only exposed souls. She turned toward the pungent scent of pine.

  There was a rumbling in the clouds.

  Bryce looked out to the bay.

  “Was that thunder or lake thunder?” Bryce asked.

  “Don’t know.” The deep rumble was like she’d touched a live wire. Unnerved, she stood still; recalled the myth of the Greek Sirens who’d lure ancient mariners through their songs and beauty toward the rocky shoals and to their deaths. A shudder passed through her. She felt afraid again for no reason and tried to shake it off.

  “Let’s go.” Amelia pulled up and snapped her hood under her chin and took the first downhill step toward the dumpy little mustard-colored house at the bottom.

  They’d make it before the clouds were halfway across the bay.

  Bryce stepped ahead to break trail.

  “Dad,” she whispered into the air as she lagged behind. What had it been like to live with a heart so divided?

  Who was this woman he’d fallen in love with, the woman who, as TJ alleged, was his unbreakable love? A woman he couldn’t give up yet had. One thing for sure was that nothing was indestructible.

  26

  It looked like a fifties’ style raised ranch badly in need of repair.

  A sooty cylindrical metal chimney rose from one section of the roof like a ship’s mast, presumably venting a wood-burning stove. An ugly industrial-looking gray metal roof, one you might expect to find on a warehouse not a private residence, covered the entire house. The parts not covered with snow looked pitted and dented from having endured years of Lake Superior’s temper tantrums. The mustard-colored aluminum siding along one side looked as if it had been pried up either by someone or something in search of what was beneath.

  A snow-covered wooden deck surrounded the house, looking as if it had been nailed on as an afterthought. Three steps led up to what appeared to be the front door.

  “Quarter says it’s locked,” Amelia called to where Bryce waited at the bottom step.

  He snorted with disgust. “That’s not even a bet, Am.”

  She laughed out loud. “Never know, country folk in Vermont don’t lock their doors.”

  Bryce chortled. “Yeah, you wish, darlin’.”

  His deep voice made her chuckle again as she reached the steps.

  A foot of accumulated snow lay undisturbed along the railing without so much as a bird’s footprint. Amelia knocked it off in one piece with her sleeve and it fell without a sound. The railing underneath was splintered, reminding her of weather-beaten railings on the docks at Stony Brook. Every summer her Summers by the Sea participants would run down the dock, hands skimming the railing, snagging an array of splinters. Amelia would have to dig the slivers out with a needle.

  “Ladies first,” he said at the base of the front steps.

  “Ain’t exactly Tara, is it?”

  “Well this ain’t exactly Georgia now either, hon,” he answered back with a mock drawl.

  She thought of the Revolution House.

  “Miss the Rev House.”

  “Yeah.” He looked away and sighed. “Miss a lot of things.”

  The first step made a cracking noise so loud she flinched. “Think it’ll hold?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Bryce jumped on the first step.

  Amelia raced up the remaining three.
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  “Ta da!” She lifted her arms just as the deck popped like someone had shot off a gun. They both shirked.

  “Temperature’s dropping,” Bryce reported, looking off at the tree line on either side of the property.

  She felt it too. Her feet felt like wooden blocks.

  “Think the deck’ll hold?”

  “No, but I’ll say ‘yes’ if it makes you feel better,” he said. Each footstep elicited a referred boom around the other side. “The fall won’t kill us.”

  She stepped toward the plain vanilla-colored fiber-core door, no windows in which to peek, and no decorative raised panels. The bottom marred with generations’ worth of dog scratches and scuff marks.

  It was locked. Of course.

  The doorknob’s gold finish was worn off from tens of thousands of turns, only a key lock and no dead bolt.

  “You could pop this baby open,” she said.

  Bryce faced her with his give me a break look.

  “So?” she lifted her arms like, do it. “You think it’s disrespectful or something?”

  “Not cool to break the door.” He turned and headed toward the other side of the house, following the deck. “Might be an easier way in.”

  “Got your phone?” she called. He backed up and looked her in the eye as he patted down his pockets as she did the same.

  “It’s on the driver’s seat.”

  “Mine’s on the dash.”

  “Guess we’ll have to be like pioneers, Ammy.”

  She heard him on the other side of the house as the deck shifted and popped under his weight.

  She stepped lightly for fear of breaking through a board. Across the field there was a half-collapsed outbuilding that might have been a garage. Up under its eaves were dozens of antlers nailed up, in the center a huge set that were moose.

  Had her father nailed up those antlers?

  “Hey,” Bryce called from the other side. “Your dad a hunter?”

  “No,” she called back. “But then I didn’t think he was a bigamist either.”

  Antlers all tacked up from the man who’d blanch at having to drop a live lobster into a pot of boiling water. She’d remember her parents arguing over the baby lamb that Penelope’s brothers had bought from a farmer to slaughter in celebration of Greek Easter. They’d cut its throat on one of their suburban driveways in a bid to connect with peasant roots from the motherland. Ted and Amelia had watched as they’d hosed off the blood.

  “Oh stop it.” Penelope later raised her voice at Easter Dinner, knowing why her husband had lost the stomach for the sliced lamb she’d set on a platter. “Jesus was the Lamb of God that got slaughtered.”

  “Yeah, but not in a driveway in Baldwin,” Amelia said.

  “Fresh mouth.” Penelope’s hand caught her in the face.

  The lakeside of the house was all windows. The first two were boarded up; in the third a shade was drawn around which Amelia tried to see.

  An outdoor table and chairs were positioned on the far side of the deck overlooking the lake, each chair with a snow pillow in the shape of its seat. She imagined people sitting during the summer, looking out to where the waterline blurs into shades of an aqua-blue horizon. Amelia thought back to the picnic table out by the lab’s pumping station on Narragansett Bay, the old part of the marine biology building covered with weathered shingles where they’d sit and gaze out onto such horizons. Sitting around with staff as they’d discuss foibles, plan research projects, and eat lunches they’d brought from home, wiping mouths on sleeves or the backs of their hands.

  She paused, brushed snow off the railing, and leaned, taking in the frosty Apostle Islands. An eerie partial sun peeped though one side, making the dark storm clouds seem more so as they edged into Chequamegon Bay. Downtown the docks looked empty, the ferry battened down, even the fish tugboats looked frozen in for the season. She’d never seen a Superior fish tug in the water before, only in photos. They were legendary for their buoyancy in all kinds of seas. Many looked more like bathtub toys than serious fishing vessels. Known as some of the world’s longest-working boats they were unique in marine design and construction, some had been in operation for generations—built of timbers harvested on land owned by family members.

  She heard a noise. Turning her head, she held her breath, listening. Cocking her head to the side, she concentrated. It was faint—the sound of an animal softly mewing. Then it was joined by another. Looking around she tried to locate where it was coming from.

  Amelia tilted her head, trying to decipher. Was it from inside the house? Glancing over to the ground below, she looked for animal tracks but saw nothing in the fresh snow.

  Then it stopped. She waited, listening. Then she heard it again. Bending over, she listened. The sound was coming from under her boots. She cleared away the snow with her foot and then dropped to her knees, digging with her fingers to clear the gaps between the boards.

  “Hey, Bryce,” she called out, momentarily balling her hands into fists, retracting them into her sleeves as they ached.

  “Hey, yeah?”

  “Can you come here?”

  Laying her ear to the wood she listened. Mewing and soft grunting grew louder. Something was calling. She felt its distress. And while she wasn’t familiar with topside mammals, she knew distress calls frequently triggered chemical reactions in humans.

  “Hello?” she called through the boards, her lips pressed to the space.

  Then there was quiet.

  She tried to get a clear view. It smelled of moist hay and quiet—a den of sorts.

  “What’s up?” He appeared with hands on hips and then squatted as soon as he saw her.

  “Something’s down there,” she said and glanced at him. “You hear it?”

  He knelt and then lay his ear down on the gap, watching her eyes.

  “Nope.” Bryce sat up.

  “Like crying,” she said. “I just heard it, I swear.”

  “Mmm—baby raccoons?” he suggested. “A baby bear in hibernation? Newborn mammals are tough to ID, they look so much alike.”

  She thought it too high-pitched to be a bear, though what did she know about baby bears since she’d never heard one in her life? Providing that the size of the animal matched its sound, which wasn’t always the case, she guessed it was small, perhaps with a protective mama poised to scratch out anyone’s eyes.

  “Any tracks on the other side?” she asked.

  “None on the deck.” He stood up, brushed off the front of his flannel pajama bottoms, and then stuck his hands in his coat pockets. “I’ll go look in the field.”

  She waited.

  “Nope. Nothing,” he called.

  Then they backtracked, climbed down the front steps, and split up, each circumnavigating the parameter of the deck to search for an opening.

  Her fingers stung with cold. She partly unzipped her coat and tucked them into her armpits.

  The space between the ground and the top of the deck was covered by a decorative wooden lattice. Amelia touched it. The wooden crisscross slats felt more like parchment. It would be easy to break through.

  The snow seemed deeper on the lakeside. More icy talc filled her boots. Amelia leaned against a post, took off each boot, banged it empty, and then slipped it back on.

  Then she spotted the opening.

  “Found it,” she called and rushed toward it.

  Bryce met up lakeside.

  She bent over and called, “Hello?”

  Still nothing.

  “I’m going in,” she said.

  “Let me.”

  “No. I’m smaller. It’ll be easier.”

  “I’ll follow.”

  “No. Stay out here in case the mom returns,” she said.

  “But what if she’s inside?”

  She turned and cracked a foolhardy grin which for some reason she felt certain.

  Something had chewed and broken its way in by evidence of the irregular shape of the break. This was the only opening so she
guessed the animal to be fairly intelligent. She’d heard former colleagues at the university griping about the stupidity of woodchucks that’d chewed into New Hampshire cabins but weren’t smart enough to find the same hole and had to chew out through a second.

  While there were no outside tracks, just inside there were pawprints frozen in the mud.

  “That’s one big dog,” Bryce said and turned to her. He raised his eyebrows.

  There was worry in his voice. They both knew dogs made her uncomfortable.

  “Well.” She made a stupid face to get him to smile but he didn’t. “Here goes.”

  It was her stock line when kicking off a first dive on location right before biting into the regulator and falling backward off the starboard side of a ship.

  Crouching down on all fours, she stuck her head in to listen. Rustling noises from somewhere, a critter moving around. It was dim but not dark, and very still. Bathed in a yellow glow from the mustard-colored siding the den was protected from the wind. She wasn’t surprised that an animal would den up here.

  “Hello?” She called again, crawling in slowly to announce her presence. If a wild animal lashed out, there was no protection. Pausing, she listened for a warning growl. The cries commenced, intensifying as Amelia approached. Her chest ached with a sweetness she’d only felt around newborn things.

  The moist smell of hay was so strong she could taste it. It was light enough to make out objects. Several hay bales were stacked up, a garden rake and tools, a dusty lawn mower smothered with dried blades of grass. Some of the hay bales were still tightly strung into rectangles, others were broken apart and looked as though they’d been that way for a while. The animal cries came from the section closest to the lake, underneath the patio furniture.

  “Anything yet?” Bryce called in.

  “Getting closer.”

  “Yell if you need me.”

  As she approached the cries, Amelia braced and pulled down her hood over her face in the event of an attack. Reaching the farthest bale of hay, she noticed a pile of wadded-up clothes along with a crumpled-up red-and-green blanket that looked like a baby quilt.

  Amelia pivoted alongside to see.

  “Well, hi,” she said. In the dimness, lying in hay from a bale that was broken open, were little animal forms huddled, writhing, and shivering, their enormous furry heads turned toward her, watching.