Eric turned to face her uncle. “I’ve got another twenty bucks that says if we ever see any hint of a lusca, Mack will cut and run.”
Mack laughed. “Right. I would be the one running. You’re too scared to even go underwater.”
“Maybe. But at least I don’t parade around pretending to be a war hero.”
Mack’s eyes narrowed. He set down his prosthetic and looked at Eric. “Watch it, you little shit.”
“I know what really happened in Iraq, Mack.” Eric held out his laptop, looking defiant and frightened at the same time. “It’s all right here.”
Val said, “What are you talking about, Eric?”
“I started looking into his record. I wanted to learn more about his brave deeds, so it would be easier to stomach his insults. But I didn’t find what I’d expected. Your uncle here isn’t a hero at all. Tell her how you really lost that leg, Mack.”
“She already knows. I stepped on a goddam IED.”
“Yeah, but does she know the whole story?” Eric said.
Val said, “What are you doing, Eric? Mack’s been through enough already. Leave him alone.”
“I’m tired of his shit, and you always defending him because you think he’s so much better than he really is. He isn’t the guy you think, Val. He’s nothing but a coward.” He paused. “And he got American soldiers killed in Iraq.”
Val tensed, expecting her uncle to lunge at Eric then, but he just reached for his drink and took a long swallow.
She said, “I don’t understand—”
“It’s all online, if you know where to look,” Eric said. “There are unprotected blogs, a few public records. I even found a news article about it.” He thrust out the laptop, screen toward her. “Come take a look. It says Mack here was a deserter. Lost his leg when he went AWOL, and stepped on a mine in the dark. When his buddies came to find him, they ran into Taliban. Three American soldiers died.”
Mack clenched his jaw.
“Unless, of course, there was another Alistair McCaffery who lost a leg in Iraq.”
Val regarded Eric. “I don’t believe you.”
“Of course, you don’t. It’s right here, but you’re not even willing to come see the truth for yourself. He barely avoided a court-martial, but men from his own unit went online and publicly called him out after they got home.”
“But I thought . . .” Val stood and started toward Eric. She stopped. The computer screen glared back at her with a harsh whiteness. She turned back to her uncle. “It isn’t true. Right, Mack?”
He set down his empty glass. “Val, I can explain.”
“Explain what?” She stood frozen, part of her wanting to go look at Eric’s laptop, another part terrified of what it might have on it. “Uncle Mack?”
“Oh, fuck this. And fuck you, Watson. You goddam weasel.” He began to hastily reattach his prosthetic leg.
Val looked at Eric. “Stop smiling. Whatever you’re doing here, it isn’t funny.”
Mack stood unsteadily and started for the back door. As he hurried away, he stumbled and his artificial leg bent sideways under his weight and came free. Mack cried out as he collapsed to the hard floor.
Val knelt to help him. She glanced back at Eric. At that moment, she hated him.
CHAPTER 42
Midday heat penetrated the dense pine forest, its reach greater than that of the light that filtered down from the same sun. Val followed Clive through the bush, on a narrow footpath that ran through dense underbrush concealing holes in the rock underfoot. He was carrying some sort of package for the woman they were seeking, and she hadn’t asked what it contained.
“Are you sure this is the right way, Clive?”
At the sound of her voice, a solitary mourning dove took flight from the trees above, its wings whistling in the still air.
“Don’ worry,” he said over his shoulder. “We almost dere, dear.”
Only she had been allowed to join him today. He’d said the old woman they were visiting didn’t like outsiders—especially men. But she puts up with old Clive.
There was absolutely nothing, nobody, out here. Val was glad to be away from Eric, and from her uncle. She needed time to think.
Before starting down the footpath fifteen minutes ago, she and Clive had rode in Mars’s van for an hour. He’d brought them a distance down the Queen’s Highway before turning onto dirt roads, and had finally driven them for miles down what might have been an old logging road. It wound westward over low, rocky ridges tangled with underbrush, deep into the island, until the ruts became impassible.
From there, they had waded through a lower, wetter area Clive referred to as “swash,” at the head of one of the island’s many brackish tidal creeks. She’d seen nothing but water birds—herons, red-winged blackbirds, king-birds—and had to swat almost constantly at small, biting insects on her legs that swarmed her where mangroves dug their roots into the murky bottom. They had crossed through a disused fruit-tree farm, and passed by a small, unattended brush fire creeping in the grass on one side, the smoke smelling of vanilla. The fire worried Val, but Clive assured her they happened all the time. Just past the popping flames, they had left an overgrown road in the abandoned farm and he led them down the unmarked trail into the pine forest.
“This trail doesn’t look like it ever gets used,” she said.
“Obeah woman don’t get out much.”
Val thought she could still smell the smoke from the creeping forest fire, but then she spied another low rise through the trees in front of them. Smoke rose in lazy tendrils through a shaft of sunlight. She was wondering if they were walking toward another wildfire when Clive spoke.
“Dere it is.”
She peered past his shoulder, through the underbrush and narrow columns of third-growth pines. A few hundred meters ahead, squatting on top of the low rise, was what appeared to be a small shack.
“After all this, I hope she’s home,” Val said.
As they approached, she could see a small fire burning inside a ring of rocks in a clearing beside the shack. The fire was putting out a tremendous amount of smoke, but flies still buzzed noisily around a wooden lattice over it, trying to get at what looked like raw meat hanging in pink strips. At the far end of the clearing, a small vegetable garden was somehow growing in the rocky soil beside the tin-roofed shack. The structure was very different from all the solid structures she’d seen elsewhere on the island. Even this far from the coast, if there was a hurricane—
There was a cackle behind Val, and she jumped.
She turned to see a heavyset old woman wrapped in a filthy, colorful sarong moving toward them out of the forest. She carried an armload of sticks. Her head was wrapped tightly in a bright red strip of colorful An-drosia, the local batik fabric. The sarong’s dominant color was also red, with vertical stripes that might have once been white, and as she moved the waving folds of fabric looked to Val like the sinuous movements of a fish. The woman dropped the sticks on the ground beside the fire and smiled at Clive.
“Mithta Clive. I knew you was coming,” she said in a lisp through missing front teeth. Her broad face was mapped with wrinkles.
“Good day, my old friend. I hope you well,” he said.
“I’s well. What you bring me dere?” She nodded at his hand.
Clive stepped toward her and handed her the small plastic bag, rolled up tightly. She opened it and smiled, then stuffed it into a fold in her sarong.
“How kind a ya,” she said. “But nothin’ come for free, do it?”
“We need your wisdom today.”
She nodded, and then finally looked over at Val, as if seeing her for the first time. “An’ who might you be, sista?”
“My name’s Valerie Martell. I’m here on the island doing research.”
“What kinda research?”
“I’m a marine biologist. I’m studying life in the blue holes.”
“Ahh.” She nodded. “You are welcome here. Both of ya.”
&
nbsp; “Clive still hasn’t told me your name. . . .”
Clive shot her a warning glance, but the old woman waved her hand at him. “It’s okay, Mithta Clive. I like this one. Come. Let’s talk inside, where da forest can’t hear nobody.”
She turned toward her shack, not waiting for them. She pulled aside a heavy blanket that served as a door and disappeared into the dilapidated wooden structure.
Val wondered, not for the first time, what the hell she was doing out here.
Clive took her arm gently as she started forward, stopping her. “Please, dear, don’t ask her name again. And don’ make her mad. When some folks here want someone dead, dey come to her.”
She followed Clive past the blanket, into the dim shack. As a thick cloud of marijuana smoke assaulted them, an orange cat dashed out, past her legs and into the underbrush. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the old woman was sitting on a crude pine chair, puffing on a pipe, the bag Clive had brought her beside another cat on her lap. The stuffy shack was crammed with boxes and hand-woven baskets full of personal items, with a narrow bed raised off the ground in one corner and a crude table built against one wall. Brightly painted crafts fashioned from wood, shells, and other natural materials hung from the walls and ceiling.
“Come in, come in,” she said. “Sit down. You want any a dis?” She extended the pipe.
Val shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
“It help me with my visions.”
Val thought, I’ll bet it does, but said nothing.
Clive sat down on the floor in front of the woman, cross-legged. Val remained standing. The heat in here was even more oppressive than outside, with no breeze at all. She waited in silence as the old woman puffed on the pipe, then carefully set it on a wooden crate beside her chair. Finally, she looked at Val. Her large, dark eyes practically bulged from their sockets, like those of a fish.
“Come here, sista.”
Val looked at Clive, and he nodded. She stepped over to the Obeah woman, who reached a hand out and rested it gently on Val’s abdomen.
“Ah, yes. As I thought. You big up, ain’t ya?”
“Excuse me?”
Clive said, “She asked if you’re with child.”
“No. What?” Val’s neck and arm hairs stood up, even though she was sweating. She stepped back. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh? You didn’t know?” The Obeah woman cackled, a squawk like that of an angry parrot. “Well, no matter. Please, sit.”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“As ya please,” the woman said. “But ya wanna talk tah me, you gonna sit down.”
Val finally sat, stunned and irritated by the woman’s statement. Maybe she was grasping for some bit of truth, like any good charlatan. They’d watch your expressions as they tried different approaches, then continue to peddle falsehoods once they’d struck on something real in your life. Obviously, in this case, Clive’s sage didn’t know what she was talking about. She was already looking very much the fraud.
“What can I help ya wit today, Mithta Clive?”
He leaned forward and said quietly, “We need you to tell us about the lusca.”
“Shhssssttttthhh!” Her eyes darted toward the door. She held her hand to her chest, as though about to swoon. “No more mention of her name! Not in here.”
“I fear she’s back,” Clive said. “That she’s been killin’ again.”
She nodded. “Yes. Perhaps.”
“What exactly is this lus—I mean, what is this creature? This legend?” Val looked at Clive. “And what do you mean ‘She’s back’?”
The Obeah woman said, “She da wrath of nature. She come back now and again, to restore balance. To protect Andros.”
Ah, yes. Andros Island’s Godzilla. Ridiculous. But Val kept her mouth shut, not wanting to offend Clive . . . or the Obeah woman. She wiped her brow.
“Is it an octopus?” Val said.
The old woman unwrapped the soiled red rag on her head, revealing bald skin marked with scars. She looked at Val and said, “Yes. But she not natural. Ya hear?”
“What do you mean?”
“She a child of man. When we put out bad things, we end up wit bad things. If we was all good people, doing only good things, she nevah come back.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘she’?”
“Because she probly big up too. Da mamas da most hungry. Late in life, when dey build da nest. Dey stop eating later, before death come, but before dat . . .” She leaned toward Val. “Dey have da hunga.”
The old woman stood and shuffled past Val. She dug through a basket, muttering, then moved to another. “Ah-hah! Here it is.”
She turned and produced a small object, dangled it in front of Val’s face. A necklace. From a leather thong hung some sort of small pouch, shaped like a whale and crafted from what looked like dried animal innards. Val took it and sniffed warily, but it smelled earthy, almost sweet. Familiar somehow.
“What is this?”
“It’s for you. For luck. It keep ya safe, sista.”
“Safe? How will this keep me safe?”
“Wear it aroun’ ya neck. Here . . .” She leaned forward and with wrinkled hands helped fasten it around Val’s neck. She smelled like sour sweat and an odd mix of kitchen spices.
“Thank you,” Val said. “But what we really need is information. How do we find this animal?”
“Dat easy. Where do mamas spend dere time?”
Val thought. “I don’t know. In a safe place. At home.”
“Right. She a mama, like you be soon. So she find a place to build a nest, and she stay near dere. Dat where you find her.”
A nest. Did she mean a den? Val thought again of the mounds of rubble DORA had filmed in the blue hole off Oceanus. Middens. But they’d already been there. If something aggressive was living there—
“You could learn from her, sista,” the Obeah woman said.
Val blinked. “What do you mean?”
“From da beast. To be a betta mama yourself.”
“I already told you. I’m not pregnant. And I don’t have kids. I can’t have them.”
The woman squinted at her. “Soon. You need a change. Not ’bout you anymore.”
Val was sweating profusely now, and she’d had enough. She hurried to her feet. “Thank you for your time . . . ma’am. Clive, I’ll be outside.” She pushed out through the door, back into the sunlight, and took a deep breath. Even in the stagnant smoke and smell of rotting fruit, it was better to be outside.
The woman was a fraud. Clearly. Lusca or no lusca, she’d proven her ineptitude right after Val had walked in.
You big up, ain’t ya?
It was all nonsense. She couldn’t get pregnant. The last time was a fluke, and it had failed. Besides, she’d only slept with Will a few times in the past several weeks, the last time almost a month ago, when she’d given in to her emotions. But it occurred to her that it had been much longer than usual since she’d had her period....
No. She wasn’t pregnant.
She glanced back toward the shack, to make sure she was still alone, and felt a surge of emotion as she placed a hand on her navel.
Over her womb.
PART III
OCEANUS
CHAPTER 43
The date had gone well. Really well, for Eric.
Ashley actually seemed interested in him, in his work. She wasn’t looking at her cell phone now, or making some lame excuse to get up and leave, like many of the women he’d gone out with in California.
They’d just had a few drinks and finished an early dinner, on an outdoor patio at Oceanus, overlooking a saltwater lagoon embedded in man-made rock terraces. The towers of the hotel rose off to his left, silhouetted by the early twilight. Eric had wanted to take her someplace else on the main island, but she’d insisted that the food here was the best.
He’d just told her how he’d grown up on the West Coast, how his parents weren’t around much when he’d been a kid an
d so he’d taken to reading lots of books, building models, taking apart handheld radios and old television sets and putting them back together.
“So you’re the baby?” she said.
“I am. And you?”
“I’m the oldest. I have three siblings too.”
He smiled. “Tell me again where you grew up.”
“In the Bahamas. But not here.” She leaned back in her chair and looked past him, out past the resort and toward the ocean. “A place called Two Finger Cay.”
She touched the gold cross around her neck. “When I was young, I spent a lot of time at a small church on the island. It’s a little one-room building, made from old shipwreck wood. I always prayed that my daddy would make more money, or that I could get off the island and do it myself.”
The waiter moved up beside the table and asked them how everything was.
“This conch salad is amazing. I could eat it every day,” Eric said. The savory crunch of the cold salad, the fresh citrus and spice, perfectly complemented his bottle of Kalik.
The waiter grinned at Ashley. “You betta watch out for dis one, girl.”
“Hush, Lionel.”
The waiter walked off with a tub of dirty dishes, laughing to himself.
“What was that all about?” Eric said.
She blushed. “In the Bahamas, conch is thought to be an aphrodisiac. He thinks you’re trying to get us in the mood.”
Eric scooped a large spoonful of the salad and offered it to her. She smiled and took a small bite. She studied his face. “You never came back to see me again, until now. And you’re leaving soon. I don’t understand.”
That morning, Eric and the others had gathered data on what was supposed to be one of their final blue holes. It had been awkward, with nobody getting along. But they were wrapping up this week, after almost a month, and had visited almost every accessible marine blue hole or submarine cave in the vicinity. They’d decided to visit The Staircase a final time, tomorrow.
They still had nothing, even though it was almost time to pack it up.
He said, “I was going to come back sooner. It’s just that . . . it’s about the elevator.” He took a deep breath. “I have a hard time with elevators.”
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