The Cartoonist

by Sean Costello

  They had made a killing on their house in Ottawa—its value had more than doubled in the eight years they’d owned it—and the deal on the lake-front property had been a good one. The artist-owner had been in a hurry, had needed cash quickly. Krista’s argument was simple: Why should Scott continue to work so hard when in reality he could retire right now? Not luxuriously, mind, but comfortably, and with enough left over to assure their child the best of educations. Why, when he spent most of his time griping about committees and administrative time-wasting projects, should he continue to knock himself out? She didn’t expect him to retire, of course not, but she failed to see why he couldn’t at least keep his evenings and weekends free. He was a psychiatrist, for Christ’s sake, not a god damn heart surgeon.

  Nastily, in his own defense, Scott had come around to the subject of Krista’s expensive tastes. That was when things had turned ugly. At least no one could accuse him of dragging psychotherapeutic side steps into his marriage. When Scott argued, it was from the gut.

  “I suppose you think I’m a boring old obsessive-compulsive, too,” Scott said to his friend, breaking the silence.

  Gerry laughed. “I think you’re an asshole...but the nicest asshole I’ve ever met.” Scott beamed. “Listen, I was over there this afternoon and left a present for you, but you’ve gotta go find it. I hid it behind a loose rock in the upstairs fireplace.”

  Scott’s curiosity was instantly piqued. He loved surprises—pleasant ones, anyway. The fireplace was in the master bedroom, but Scott had never noticed any loose rocks.

  He was beginning to smell a conspiracy.

  “Gotta go,” Gerry said before Scott could pump him. “Have a nice birthday. And drop a hint before it’s too late.”

  “Thanks, pal. Bye for now.” Gerry was giggling when Scott replaced the receiver in Mickey’s hand.

  Behind a loose rock in the fireplace...

  Half-lit and grinning, Scott thumped upstairs to the main floor. He padded quickly along the hallway to the next flight—pausing to peer into the living room and see that Krista had vanished—then started up. As he spun into the staircase, using the newel post as a pivot, his fingers nicked the letters he’d left there earlier and sent them scattering to the floor. Cursing softly, he bent to retrieve them, his gaze falling on one which had been postmarked in Winnipeg. There was a return address, but no name. The handwriting was distinctively female.

  Feeling suddenly and inexplicably apprehensive, a gut-level sensation not unlike the one he had awakened with early that morning, Scott thumbed the letter open. And as he walked up the stairs, he read the single handwritten page it contained.

  Dear Scott:

  Even as I write this I cannot believe what I have to tell you. Brian is dead. We buried him three weeks ago, but only now am I finding the time and the courage to notify his more distant friends. It happened at the hospital, a freak accident. Brian was called to a cardiac arrest in the ER. He was about to give the patient countershock, but when he applied the paddles the apparatus backfired somehow and electrocuted him. They tried for more than an hour to resuscitate him, but they just couldn’t get him back. Brian’s heart was not all that good to begin with. All that extra weight, I guess. He loved his food.

  It was a terrible tragedy. Our lawyers are going to sue, but that won’t bring Brian back. He was a good husband, a good father, and a good friend.

  Although you and I have never met, Scott, I feel that I know you. Brian thought highly of you and spoke of you often. He told me what happened years ago, between you and him and that other man, Jake. He swore me to secrecy, but I guess that no longer matters. It is mostly because of what he told me that I am writing to you now. It must have been terrible, especially for you. Still, I feel you did the right thing. Life goes on.

  It was signed: Regretfully, Delia Horner.

  Delia’s letter, that last paragraph, summoned in Scott a memory so foul, so solidly encrusted beneath a years-long effort to eradicate it, that he had to steady himself against the shudder that curled up from his bowels. Lightheaded, he leaned against the door-frame to his bedroom and gazed up blankly from the letter.

  As if in a dream, Scott saw his wife lying provocatively against a mound of pillows by the fireplace. A crisp yellow fire was burning and Krista was wearing her most rude undies. In front of her, chunked down in a bucket of ice, leaned a bottle of vintage champagne. Beside her, gleaming in the firelight, stood two of their finest crystal goblets.

  Now Krista was getting up, looking not sexy but frightened. Scott tried to smile, to pretend everything was fine, that he loved the gag they’d played on him and she looked delicious, and that if she gave him just a moment he would join her in a toast and then they would make love...

  But he couldn’t. The memory prevented him.

  Krista placed a hand in the crook of his elbow. “What is it, hon?” she said with concern. “You look dreadful.” Then she noticed the letter in his hand and apprehension wormed its way into her voice, making it waver. “Did someone die? Family?”

  “No, Kris,” Scott said, his voice low. “Not family. Remember the guys I went through undergrad with? Jake Laking and Brian Horner?”

  Krista nodded as the memory filtered back. Scott hadn’t mentioned those two since before they were married.

  “It’s Brian Horner,” Scott said. “The linebacker. He’s the one dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, hon. But you haven’t been close to him in years. When I saw you there in the doorway, looking so lost and pale, I thought it might be...I don’t know. You gave me a fright.”

  Scott balled the letter into his fist and flicked it into the fire. It went up in a bluish flare, then curled into black, diaphanous ash.

  “I’m all right,” he said, embracing his wife. “Had a few too many, that’s all.”

  “You got room for one more?” Krista said, popping the catch on her bra.

  “You bet,” Scott said, and lay with her there by the fire. As it turned out, his birthday present wasn’t behind a rock after all.

  Later, they fell asleep there.

  And to Scott’s relief, there were no dreams that night.

  5

  SCOTT AWOKE JUST BEFORE TEN that Saturday morning, hung over and a little stiff from having slept on the rug. Beside him, an empty champagne bottle leaned coolly in a bucket of water. When he saw it, he smiled, remembering last night....

  But the smile vanished when he thought of Delia Horner’s letter and the memories it had conjured. It surprised him that Brian had told his wife. Years ago, Scott had vowed he would never tell Krista.

  He found a small, clumsily wrapped gift at the foot of the bed, and as he opened it, his smile returned. It was from Kath, some sort of unearthly creature she’d fashioned from clay. He set it atop the highboy next to a framed photograph of his parents, then turned to the casement windows.

  Outside, the lake was choppy, the sky the flat gray color of tin. In the east a lone thunderhead crouched like a dark colossus, only its crown and powerful torso visible above the jagged horizon. It was going to storm. Typical weekend weather.

  As Scott turned away from the window, a shriek rose from outside, a high, startling sound that gripped him with its suddenness. Then he saw Kath and her friend Lita horsing around on the dock, pushing and squealing playfully. Relieved, he pulled on a pair of trunks, grabbed a towel, and ambled downstairs.

  Krista was on the living room floor, twisted into some unlady-like but fascinating aerobic contortion. Then she was shifting, spreading her legs to the limit, and Scott got an unlovely image of her splitting right up through the middle. She grinned, but it was more like a grimace. Scott blew her a kiss, then headed outside through the sliding screen doors.

  Kath scurried up the path to meet him, and Scott bent to lift her as she thrust herself into him. She was soaking wet and cold against his skin. She kissed him heartily, enfolding his neck with her sturdy bronze arms.

  “Didja get my present?”

>   “Yes, and it was lovely,” Scott said. What he’d unwrapped was a multicolored blob-man—goggle-eyed, pig-snouted, with a punk-style haircut and a buck-toothed grin. Original, maybe, but lovely it wasn’t. “But do you really think it looks like me?”

  “Don’t be a goof, Dad. I made him up. But now that you mention it...”

  Kath laughed and Scott put her down.

  “Going swimming?” she said, pointing at the towel.

  “Thinkin’ about it,” Scott said. “Know anyone who might like to join me?” He noticed that Kath’s friend Lita had disappeared.

  “Might,” Kath said.

  Scott walked onto the dock to its far edge and bent to lay down his towel. As he straightened, two strong little hands buried themselves in the meat of his buttocks and pushed. Then he was tumbling into the cool blue envelope of the lake. When he bobbed up, suddenly wide awake, Kath cannonballed him. Scott pretended to chase her and she scrambled spryly up the ladder, shrieking playfully and splashing him. He followed her up and sat beside her on the dock.

  “Got a hangover?” she said in an adult voice.

  “Just a small one—” Scott said, stopping in midsentence when Kath gaped in horror at her wrist. “What is it, babe? What’s the matter?” Visions of bloodsuckers flashed in his mind.

  “My bracelet,” Kath said. “I lost my bracelet.” She angled her gaze to the water. “It musta fell off when I cannonballed you. Oh, Daddy, what am I gonna do?” She was suddenly close to tears.

  In June Scott had given her a plain silver bracelet for her birthday and Kath had worn it religiously ever since. Now there was only a fine white line where the bracelet had screened out the sun.

  “Can you get it back for me, Daddy? Please?”

  Scott squinted into the algae-clouded depths, shielding his eyes with his hands. He thought he could see a faint metallic glint down there, seven or eight feet out from the edge of the dock.

  “We’ll find it, kiddo,” he promised. “Don’t panic. Why don’t you run up to the rec room and dig out Daddy’s diving mask. It should be in that box of junk next to the workbench.”

  Kath was up the hill like a shot, her tanned legs pumping furiously. Breathless, she was back inside of a minute, Scott’s black diving mask clutched in her hand.

  “Here,” she said, handing it over. “Can you see it?”

  “I think so,” Scott said as he fitted on the mask. “Not to worry.”

  He stood at the edge of the dock, hyperventilating, judging the trajectory of his dive. He could still see that faint silvery glint, like a star in a muddy sky. The lake got deep fast out here, dropping to twelve or fifteen feet just off the edge of the dock. It was one of the reasons he was glad that both of his girls were strong swimmers.

  He took a last deep breath and dove in, submerging quickly, leaving a cyclone of bubbles in his wake. A dense bed of weeds sent undulant fingers up to greet him, broad, translucent strands that sent shivers skating through him. The water was cooler at this depth, almost cold.

  After a quick scan Scott spotted the bracelet. It had landed atop a cluster of large, algae-mantled boulders. Eager for his daughter’s praise, he snagged the silver loop and turned back toward the surface, shoving off with his feet.

  He noticed it then, as he stroked up into warmer water, and the association made an almost audible click in his head.

  The undersurface of the dock. That odd pencil drawing, the one which had triggered that pervading sense of déjà vu. The senile old artist had been sketching the undersurface of the dock...

  The complete absurdity of this deduction struck Scott even before he surfaced from his dive...and yet, if memory served, the similarities were undeniable. He’d seen the underside of the dock only once, late last April, the day he and Gerry lowered it into the thaw. Because she lived alone, the previous owner had constructed the dock with easy handling in mind. She’d built the narrow walkway in three short sections, which rested on cast-iron stilts in the shallower water near shore, and the main section of the dock was a simple twelve-by-twelve square of cedar that floated on barrels, easily detached in winter and reattached in the spring. Scott had gotten only a brief glimpse of the dock’s crusty undersurface on that cool day in April—but he’d noticed those unusual barrels, with their closely knit ribs and rose-shaped decals. Now the memory was very clear.

  He pulled himself out of the water and sat on the edge of the dock, perplexed and a little off balance. Kath plopped down beside him, her hopeful eyes searching his hands.

  “Didya find it?”

  Scott opened his right hand, where the small silver ringlet lay cupped. Kath uttered a squeal of delight. She grabbed the bracelet and pulled it on, kissing Scott full on the mouth. Just then Lita reappeared, and Kath scampered off to fill her in on the details of the near-catastrophe, her eyes as she hurried up the path admiring the bracelet like newfound treasure.

  It was impossible, of course, just a coincidence. That was the only explanation for it. Clearly the old artist had been sketching something else, something which had triggered Scott’s memory through some vague similarity to real life. That had to be it. How could he have seen the underside of the dock? Of this dock? He might have known the artist who lived here before, Scott reasoned lamely, but even if he had, how could he possibly know who lived here now?

  But what if he does? Scott’s mind countered with one of those crazy thoughts that crazy situations have a way of inducing. What if the old guy does know that I live here? And if so, was he trying to communicate with me? Using the drawing as some sort of sign?

  But no, of course not. The old boy was out of it, not even a flicker of a mind left. And even if he had been trying to communicate, why choose something as obscure as the undersurface of the dock? If he knew where Scott lived, why not simply sketch the house itself? It was nuts.

  Scott sat wet and shivering in the prestorm cool and wondered about that drawing, trying to recall the details of the few bizarre moments he’d spent alone with the artist the previous afternoon. First had come that uncanny sense of having seen the objects before, then the nurse had come by with a message for Scott...and hadn’t the old man hurried up just then? Started drawing more quickly? As if he feared Scott might leave without seeing the drawing? Without making the connection?

  Shaking his head, Scott stood, his mind’s eye conjuring an image of the drooling, demented old man whose talent seemed so drastically out of place. He tried shifting his thoughts to firmer ground, to write it all off as a trick of the mind.

  But it was no good. He was unable to reconcile the association his mind had made and had fixed on despite his best efforts to explain it away. Glancing back into the depths, he decided there was only one way to settle this thing once and for all.

  He turned and hurried up the hill in uneasy strides.

  In the rec room closet Scott rooted around in search of his waterproof Minolta. He found it still in its box behind a set of unused golf clubs. The compact, plastic-encased camera was a gift the girls had given him this Christmas past. He had used it on Christmas day, snapping off shots of the family around the tree, then had put it away. In fact, he hadn’t had the film developed yet. The partially used roll was still in its cartridge. That was good. It would save him a trip into town for a new one.

  He tested the flash and found it operational. Then, after a cursory glance at the instructions, he hurried back outside. Kath joined him partway down the path.

  “What are you gonna do with that?” she said, indicating the danger-yellow camera that dangled from his wrist.

  “I have to check something under the dock.”

  Kath frowned. “But you told me never to go under there, Dad. Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Only for little girls.”

  Clutching the camera, Scott dove into the lake. After a few quick strokes toward bottom, he turned to examine the dock. From this depth, suspended above the rocks, he could make out the four crusty barrels and, just evident in the poo
r illumination, their tightly cropped ribs. And there were the white-rose decals, faded but still visible—old White Rose oil drums. It all looked damned similar to what he could remember of the drawing. But his angle wasn’t right for a photo. The point of view in the sketch had been from further out, and deeper.

  Scott stroked back to the surface and filled his lungs with air. Kath was standing by the ladder, looking down at him, her tiny face pinched with worry.

  “Don’t stay under so long, okay?”

  “Okay, hon,” Scott said.

  He climbed onto the dock and waved at an approaching motor boat. Bob Anderson and Fred Mills were just returning home from their early-morning trolling session. Grinning proudly, Bob held up a string of fat-looking pickerel. By now Scott knew their routine: fish from seven until eleven, back to Bob’s for sandwiches and beer, then head out again until four.

  Camera in hand, Scott plunged like a human spear, feet-first into the lake. As he descended, he could hear the pinging knock of Anderson’s small outboard. In seconds he reached bottom, landing atop the same greasy cluster of boulders that Kath’s bracelet had lit upon a half-hour earlier. Chest-high weeds surrounded him. He tried to ignore their creepy texture and peered back up at the dock.

  Yes, by God, there it was, the same pattern that had triggered his memory when he glanced at the drawing the day before. The four ribbed barrels, the faded roses, the wavy lines that were the cedar slats of the dock’s undersurface, distorted by the rippling lakewater.

  Scott aimed the camera and shot. In the bright-white pulse of the flash, the dock flickered detail.

  From behind him a freak undercurrent bore in a cold channel, sweeping several weedy tentacles onto his back. A long filament encircled his waist like a loose-fitting belt, and Scott shuddered, partly because of the icy undercurrent, but mostly because of the ghastly feel of those weeds on his skin. He crouched, preparing to thrust upward for the surface....