Generation Loss cn-1

by Elizabeth Hand

  She stabbed a finger at my portfolio on the table: Hard To Be Human Again. “You’ve got so much rage in you, you’re hardly even human now.”

  * * *

  I walked until I found the road Toby had spoken of, an earthen track covered with chunks of stone. Far below, the wind roared off the gray Atlantic; to either side, cat spruce thrashed and moaned like something alive.

  The speed made me even colder. My fingers on the boat hook were almost numb. I slid on wet rocks and struggled to keep my balance as the sky darkened. It was difficult to believe there had ever been sunlight at all. My lower abdomen burned as though I’d been branded. I slipped my hand beneath my T-shirt and felt the familiar ridge of scarred skin.

  I thought of Kenzie Libby. Studs in her chin and ear, a necklace of weathered glass and aluminum. That childish face and the bad dye job on her cropped hair.

  People make themselves spiky for a reason. Maybe being stuck in Burnout Harbor was enough, watching the trickle of rich strangers grow to a torrent and wash away your world, with no hope of anything for yourself but a job at Wal-Mart or—maybe, if you were lucky—someone from away who’d take you with them when they left, spikes and all.

  But those spikes don’t do anything to protect you. I remembered what Toby had said about the fishers—how they’d flip a porcupine over then rip its belly out.

  They think nothing can kill them.

  Fishers never came to the islands, but I’d seen one.

  Denny never leaves the island.

  I kept climbing. It felt strange to walk along a road without houses or telephone poles or utility lines. Ragged thickets covered the thin soil, along with dead ferns, scattered birch and maples. Bushes thrust from cracks in moss-covered granite. A crow flapped up from a tree, screaming, and disappeared into the shadows.

  But after a while I began to see signs of former human habitation in the underbrush. Crumbled stone foundations; fallen chimneys; cellar holes filled with rubble. A few minutes later I reached the first quarry.

  It was set off from the old road, a miniature lake cut into the hillside. The water looked solid and cold as obsidian. Wiry, leafless trees clustered at the water’s edge.

  I used the boat hook to keep from sliding on loose scree, grabbed one of the trees and bent it toward me. It had smooth, silvery brown bark covered with tiny bumps that looked like insects. Dozens of blood red shoots sprouted from its trunk, like a hydra. It looked malevolent, and more alive than anything in that frigid landscape.

  I clambered back up the slope and kept walking. I passed two more small quarries, and more cellar holes, but nothing that even a hermit could have lived in.

  Eventually the road curved. I found myself looking down across crowns of cat spruce to an expanse of rose-colored rock that gave way to a muddy beach. Blocks of granite were scattered across it, like giant dice. In the center of the beach stood a ramshackle wooden pier. Tied up at the end was a motorboat: Lucien Ryel’s Boston Whaler.

  I saw no other signs of people. My forehead grew clammy with sweat. I swallowed a mouthful of Jack Daniel’s and kept walking. A few more minutes, and I reached the big quarry.

  It was about the size of a baseball diamond. Sheer rock walls rose thirty or forty feet above the waterline. I didn’t want to think how deep it was. A crow swooped down, flew croaking above the black surface, and landed in a dead tree on the opposite shore. I stared at it and frowned.

  There was something in the tree, a ragged mass like a squirrel’s nest, but with something snarled in it, something blue and white. A plastic bag, maybe, or a balloon. It was impossible to tell from where I stood. But if I wanted a better look, I’d have to walk all the way around the quarry then fight my way through the underbrush. I didn’t want to do that.

  I continued on up the road. It was nearly full dark, but I was afraid to use my flashlight and draw attention to myself. Beyond the quarry, I could just make out the remains of several buildings, worksheds or barns. Still nothing that looked like where someone might live now. An icy mist blew up from the shore. The air grew hazy, the ruins insubstantial as paper cutouts. I couldn’t stop shivering. A few minutes later, I stood on the crest of the hill.

  Around me the island dropped down to the sea. Fog rolled across the water and up the hillside. I could just make out the Boston Whaler. I turned to where the road began its descent.

  Through the dusk, lights gleamed. A group of small buildings stood behind the quarry, tucked between spruce and more remnants of Tolba’s abandoned industry—broken statues and granite columns, piles of rubble that gleamed in the yellow glow from a small house with smoke coiling from its chimney.

  The sight of those glowing windows made me sick. I clutched the boat hook, leaned over and spat up a thin string of bile, waited for the feeling to pass.

  It didn’t. I swallowed another mouthful of Jack Daniel’s.

  Fear and whiskey, I thought. Run, Cass, run. Light guttered from a broken streetlamp. So you’re really from New York, huh? That must be really, really nice.

  I saw her stumbling through the cold dark toward Burnt Harbor, then down toward the beach, hands shoved in the pockets of her hoodie. Trying to get up the courage to go into the Good Tern and talk to a stranger from the city.

  I would love to go to New York.

  Yeah, well maybe I could fit you in the trunk on my way back.

  Whose voice did she think she’d heard as she walked on the beach by the Good Tern?

  My fingers tightened on the boat hook. I took a few steps toward the lights when I heard the crow again. I looked up.

  Several yards from the road, a single pine reared from a black thicket of underbrush. The crow sat in the tree’s uppermost branches. It stared at me and gave another harsh croak, lifted its wings, and flew down toward the beach.

  I watched it go then squinted at the tree’s lower branches, at a dark tangle like what I’d seen in that other tree overlooking the quarry: a shapeless mass like a squirrel’s nest.

  Only this was way too big for a squirrel’s nest. I tugged my jacket tighter and headed toward the tree. Between the failing light and the thicket, it was difficult to see clearly.

  The tree was huge. In its shadow, a mossy area had been meticulously cleared of everything save a few sticks and dead leaves. Here a number of small, flattish objects had been set in a circle about eight feet across.

  I crouched and turned on my flashlight.

  At first I thought they were rocks, maybe as big as my hand. But they weren’t rocks.

  They were shells. Not seashells—turtle shells.

  I picked one up and grimaced.

  It was a baby snapping turtle. I used to find them as a kid in Kamensic; they’d fall into swimming pools and you’d have to retrieve them with a skimmer. The most vicious little things I’d ever seen—after you rescued them, they’d run at you hissing, tiny jaws wide.

  It had been a while since this one had attacked anyone. I tipped it back and forth. It seemed empty. But I caught a whiff of something, a musky reek like rotting fish and skunk.

  I set the shell back down and stared at the others: a dozen baby turtle shells in a circle. In the center of the circle, four small indentations formed a square.

  That circle had a definite ritual appearance. The indentations looked more like holes left by tent pegs. But the area was too small for a tent, only the size of a Porta-Potty. I straightened, saw a small white object beside one of the turtle shells.

  A candle nub. I rolled it between my fingers, thinking, and put it in my pocket.

  The sky was nearly black. Icy rain spattered my face as I slowly traced the flashlight’s beam across the circle. A few tiny objects shone white against the ground, like bits of broken crockery. I picked one up.

  An eggshell. Not a turtle egg or something exotic, just the broken shell of an ordinary egg. I chucked it away, continued searching the ground until I saw a faint gleam, as though my light struck glass.

  I got on my knees, searched u
ntil I saw a glint like gray metal. A nail head, I thought; but when I tried to pick it up, there was nothing there.

  What the hell?

  I pointed the flashlight at the ground. The reflected light was gone.

  But when I looked at my finger, I saw a grayish smudge. Not dirt, more like the residue left when you kill a silverfish, greasy and dark. I sniffed my finger: no smell. I wiped my hand on my jeans, stood, and trained the flashlight on the tree.

  The jumble of sticks was about ten feet above me, caught in the crotch of two large branches that splayed into smaller limbs, their stiff needles shaking in the wind. The tree held other things as well. A torn bag, hanks of dead grass.

  I walked toward it. When I stepped outside the circle of turtle shells, something cracked beneath my boot. I bent to pick it up.

  An antler, mottled white, thin and slightly curved, with tiny ridges along one edge where it had been gnawed by an animal. I ran my finger along it, felt hardened shreds of tissue like splinters of wood, then held it to the flashlight.

  My mouth went dry. I’d spent enough hours thirty years ago, photographing myself with a lifesize model of a human skeleton to know this wasn’t an antler.

  It was a human rib.

  I turned it to clearly see the crosshatch of teethmarks at one end, panicked and flung it into the darkness. I spat on my fingers and rubbed them frantically on my jeans. Then, clutching the boat hook, I walked the last few steps to the pine tree and slowly raised my flashlight until, at last, I saw what was there.

  A body. What remained of it, anyway, caught in the crook of the branches like a burst trash bag. A T-shirt and ragged jeans still clung to it, the shirt dangling so I could see the faded Nike wing emblazoned on the chest. What I had taken for sticks was a tangled mass of bones, blotched with dried shreds of sinew. Part of the ribcage protruded through the T-shirt. What I had taken for dead grass was black hair, matted with leaves and hanging from something that resembled a deflated soccer ball.

  I backed away, my boots sliding on slick rock and moss.

  I’d just seen Martin Graves.

  25

  I stumbled back to the road. I’d seen bodies before—I’d sought them out, back in the day—but nothing like this.

  No animal could have dragged that body into the crotch of a tree. Denny Ahearn had—but why?

  The wind whipped up from the sea, carrying gusts of rain. I took a few deep breaths then swallowed, tasting salt and blood. I spat, leaned on the boat hook and willed the throbbing in my head to stop. A few hundred yards below me, buildings yawned black in the gathering dusk—all save that one house with its malign yellow windows. I thought of what I’d just seen in the tree, and of the other tangled mass by the first quarry’s edge.

  Yellow light pulsed. Someone whispered my name.

  Cass, Cass.

  It never ends. It’s always 4 am. beneath a broken streetlamp. And afterward every step, every drink, every person whispers the same thing: You didn’t fight.

  Until now.

  I swallowed some whiskey and gulped another Adderall, hefted the boat hook, and started toward the house.

  Denny’s compound consisted of several outbuildings scattered between stunted trees. A few buildings had been repaired with plywood or driftwood. Others were little more than cellar holes patched with drywall and plastic sheeting, roofed with sheets of blue Styrofoam.

  One building, an old barn, had been more carefully renovated. Its doors were open. I shone the flashlight inside and saw a small tractor and stacks of plastic storage containers, a chainsaw.

  I moved on. The ground was slippery. There was rubble everywhere. Granite obelisks and broken columns, an arm as tall as a man. Cemetery figures of angels and grieving women. On each the same symbol had been painted: two concentric circles with a dot in the center.

  I realized then what I had seen on the standing stone by Denny’s abandoned bus.

  Not a bullseye: an eye. And every single one held a blotched green star.

  Sleet rattled against the outbuildings. I crouched alongside a low shed with a wire run. A gleam showed through windows covered with blue tarps, and I could hear the low murmur of birds roosting inside. A henhouse.

  The main house was about fifty feet away. At the back stretched a small, windowless addition, its shingles raw and unstained. I recalled what Toby had said about building a darkroom. There were solar panels on the roof, and a jerry-rigged water system—plastic tubing, oil drums, a large metal holding tank. I headed toward the rear of the house.

  As I drew close I could hear music. Woodsmoke wafted through the icy rain. I approached one darkened window and then the next, and tried to peer inside.

  It was hopeless. Sheets of plastic opaque with grime had been nailed across each window. Everything stank of urine and that now-familiar reek of musk and fish. At the back of the house I found a liquid propane tank and a woodshed. I continued to the other side.

  Windows boarded up with plywood; flapping bits of plastic. Something crunched beneath my boots—a pile of eggshells. I took a few more steps and halted by a big wooden box, about five feet tall, no lid. I shone the flashlight inside and shaded my eyes, dazzled. It was filled with splintered plate glass.

  I killed the flashlight and headed for the front of the house. I clutched the boat hook as tightly as I could, and edged toward the steps.

  A figure stood in a pool of light by the open door.

  “Hello,” he whispered.

  He was a good six inches taller than me, broad shouldered and muscular, his face gaunt, clean shaven. He wore a brown tweed jacket with frayed sleeves, wool pants tucked into gumboots, a white cotton shirt pocked with tiny holes. His white hair hung in two long, tight braids to his chest. Around his neck was a heavy silver disk inlaid with turquoise and threaded on a leather thong.

  He said, “Are you looking for someone?”

  He had the face of an aging WASP ecstatic, with high cheekbones and deepset eyes, wide mouth, sharp nose. I felt sucker punched, not just by his beauty but by the sudden dreamlike sense that I knew him, that this had happened already and something—drugs, drink, my own slow spin into bad craziness—had kept me from seeing the obvious.

  Then he lifted his head, and I knew.

  He had eyes the color of dark topaz. In the left one, just below the iris, was a spray of green pigment like a tiny star.

  Stephen Haselton wasn’t Gryffin’s father. Denny Ahearn was.

  No one had bothered to tell me. And of course I had never asked.

  “I—yeah,” I stammered. “I’m, uh—are you Denny? I’m a friend of Toby Barrett’s.”

  “Toby.” He repeated the name in a whisper; a cultivated voice, less Maine than Boston Brahmin. His big hands shook in a slight palsy as he looked past me into the rain. “Is Toby here?”

  “He’s—he’s on his way. He had to do something at Lucien’s house.” I remembered Aphrodite’s death, and nausea gave way to a rush of adrenaline. “We—I—have a message for you.”

  “Come in out of the rain.” He held up a hand. “But you must leave your staff outside.”

  He pointed at the boat hook. I hesitated, then leaned it beside the door.

  “You’re a friend of Toby’s?”

  I nodded. He bent over a stack of firewood beside the door, picked up three enormous logs as though they were made of Styrofoam.

  “I thought he closed up the house a few weeks ago,” he said and straightened. “I wasn’t expecting him.” He stared at me, licked his lips, then whispered, “And you are…?”

  “Cass.” My voice broke. “Cassandra Neary.”

  “Cassandra Neary?”

  His mouth parted in a smile. My skin prickled. There was a dark blue line along his upper and lower gums, as though he’d outlined them in indigo Magic Marker.

  “Please, please—come in,” he whispered. He stood aside so I could pass.

  Everywhere were mirrors. Big mirrors, small mirrors, beveled mirrors in gilded frames,
tiny compacts and those big convex eyes you see at the end of driveways. They covered the walls and hung from every corner. Mirrors, and hundreds of snapping turtle shells. Music played on a turntable, Pink Floyd, “Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” A hurricane lamp was the only illumination.

  “This is where I live.” Denny dropped the logs beside a woodstove, then gestured at the ceiling. “Do you see?”

  The ceiling was covered with CDs, silver side down so that I stared at my own reflected face in hundreds of flickering eyes.

  “From AOL,” he explained. “I go to the post office in Burnt Harbor a few times a year. They always have lots of them. Do you know what a dream catcher is? Those are light catchers.”

  He stared at me, mouth split in that awful livid smile. He tilted his head to gaze at the ceiling, and his face reflected beside mine in those myriad eyes.

  “I see you,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. “I see you too.”

  I crossed the room. On one wall hung a turtle shell the size and shape of a shield, painted with two almond-shaped eyes. A carefully drawn green star gleamed in one of them.

  “They’re sacred,” said Denny. He picked up a small snapping turtle shell. His palsied hands trembled as he touched it to his forehead, reverently. “All turtles, but especially these.”

  I noticed that the turquoise in the silver disk he wore was carved in the shape of a turtle. I said, “They—they must mean something.”

  He nodded. “The turtle is the bridge between worlds, earth and sky. They carry the dead on their backs. It’s my totem animal.”

  “You chose it?”

  “No. It chose me.”

  “Where do you find them?”

  He replaced the little shell on a table covered with others just like it. All faced the same way, to where a 8x10 was propped against a piece of driftwood, a faded black-and-white photo of a beautiful young man, long haired, smiling. His arms were around a fresh-faced girl in a much-patched denim shirt covered with embroidery, her dark hair falling into her eyes. She gazed at him with such unabashed joy that I had to turn away.