Into the Hurricane

by Neil Connelly

  “Lucky for a lot of reasons,” Max answers.

  The wind dies down to nothing but a strong breeze, and the rain slows to a drizzle, like somebody’s shut off the fan and turned off the spigot.

  I take in the damage to the section of the boat we’re on. The deck is tilted at about a forty-five-degree angle, with the bow rising above us, the tip of our little island. Overhead, huge chunks of the third floor got ripped loose by Celeste, like something enormous took a few bites of it. Below, where this section of the boat cracked from the other, the wreck rests in the water.

  With a moan, the other half of the Capricornia crumbles in on itself, going from wrecked riverboat to trash in about five seconds. The waves, small now and almost what I’d call calm, get to dispersing the debris. I say to Max, “No way of knowing how long we got on this thing.”

  Max looks at the sloped deck beneath us as if trying to gauge its strength. “Search-and-rescue teams?”

  I shake my head. “They got a lot on their mind. Celeste’s headed to Texas to make trouble now. Behind her, the disaster zone’s going to be a hundred square miles. And don’t forget, nobody thinks there’s anyone down here to save.”

  As if to add to my argument, a portion of wall below us sags and drops into the water. Pieces of lumber bump into each other.

  Max looks at the upside-down raft. “You like our chances in that thing?”

  I consider her question and look up at the stars dotting the sky overhead, which is now miraculously cloudless. “I like our odds in that a lot better than here. We grab up some of them boards, paddle toward the land.”

  Max stares out at the horizon, squinting. “That brings up an obvious question.”

  I scan the waters in the direction I think is land. Other than the wreckage from the back end of the Capricornia, there’s nothing save a gray ring of distant clouds. I wonder if we got pushed out to sea, and if so, how far. “C’mon,” I say, and we take hold of the railing again to ascend to the crooked bow.

  Up at the peak, I see we’re not totally hung up. Way off to the right, maybe a few miles, the moonlight shines on the water tower sticking out of the ocean. I strain for the steeple from St. Jude’s, which ought to be just a bit closer, but either I can’t see it or it isn’t there anymore.

  “Eli,” Max says, touching my shoulder. She points in the other direction. Much closer, maybe only a half mile off, I see the tallest structure of this drowned world. Lucy stands proud and strong, not seeming to notice or care that her base is submerged. I look at the backpack Max is still carrying, think of what’s inside and the quest that brought her here. “You up for a quick detour before we head back to civilization?”

  She seems to consider this in silence, nibbling on her lip. I add, “You can finish what you started.”

  Max nods. “I like the sound of that.”

  Together we make our way down to the life raft, set it right side up, then wrestle it over the railing. It splashes down into the water, then bobs on the surface, trying to float off. With the skin chewed up on my hands, I wince as I hold the rope secure. We give it a few minutes to be sure there’s no leak, watching nervously.

  Finally, I tell Max, “Okay. All aboard.” She slips under the rail, sits on the deck’s edge, then shoves herself away from the boat. She lands in the raft like a kid in a moon bounce. The raft, shaped like a stop sign, has got space for a dozen people. The little tent enclosure part has been torn away, but somehow the base is intact. As Max gathers up some drifting boards to use as paddles, I’m thinking what a pain maneuvering her will be, but with the two of us, we’ll manage. I figure twenty minutes to the lighthouse, mostly with the tide, then a few hours to town, slow going in the debris without real paddles. Any luck the sun’ll be up by then, and we’ll survey the damage, search for Sweeney and Charity, then make our way inland to Hackberry. Best bet we come across a shelter or some rescue crew. The day ahead will be long and hard, but with the storm behind us, we’re in way better shape now than we’ve been since we met.

  She waves me down and says, “You waiting for an engraved invitation or something? This way the hell out.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I set my hands on the top rail, still holding the rope, ready to climb over and leap down. Just then, though, a shadow blocks the moonlight and draws my eyes up into the sky. A flock of clouds scoots overhead, and I notice the life raft is getting tossed a bit higher on agitated waves. I look to the horizon, where that dirty wall of swirling gray clouds seems closer now than it was just a few minutes ago. A whole lot closer. Up above, I squint at the patch of open night sky and realize it’s a circle.

  “Eli!” Max yells. “What’s with the face?”

  I look at her and see she’s still smiling. I tell her, “We’re not out of this yet. This is the eye passing over us.”

  “The eye?”

  “A calm zone at the center of the hurricane.”

  She looks around, holding on to the side to balance as the raft rocks. “You mean it’s coming back?”

  I shake my head. “I mean it never left. We’re in the belly of the beast.”

  “Well, hell,” Max says. “That about sucks. Do we go or stay?”

  I look at the remains of the Capricornia. “Can’t stay. This boat’ll never last through act two.”

  Max’s face grows anxious. “Then move it! We’ve got to make it to the lighthouse!”

  “Sounds about right by me,” I tell her.

  Only then, just as I’m about to spring down to her, the hackles on the back of my neck shiver, and something turns me back to the Capricornia one last time. Just up from the waterline, inside the doorway that leads to the casino, stands Celeste. Etched in charcoal, she’s wearing those same cutoff jeans and black T-shirt, but this time, her head’s got that nasty gash from her lighthouse jump. Blood stains her forehead. One leg is crooked inside her pants, bent at an impossible angle. Celeste leans away from the busted leg, into the slanted frame, and she fixes me with her eyes. Looks like you messed up good again, eh, Eli?

  I take a single step toward her, and she seems pleased by this. You’ll never make it, Eli. No point in trying.

  Max yells, “Yo! What’s your deal?”

  Just stay, Eli! Don’t you leave me!

  These are the last words my sister ever said to me, when she was dying on the rocks and I told her I was going to get help in her truck.

  “Eli!” Max hollers behind me.

  I don’t take my eyes off Celeste when I answer over my shoulder. “It’s my sister,” I say. “She’s here.” Celeste smiles when she hears this, glad to be recognized as real.

  “Bullshit,” Max yells. “Your head’s twisted up in a million ways. You need to get your butt in this boat now! You need to—” I’m sure that Max keeps talking, but her voice fades away. The rope attached to the life raft slips from my grasp. All my world becomes Celeste, begging me, Stay, stay, stay.

  I don’t feel the same fear as strong as I have before. Instead, I feel calm as I approach her. She blinks and smiles at me, and I can see the slick shine of blood on her face, a darker patch along her hair where it’s started to crust. It could be that if I reached out to touch her, she’d be solid as a hatchet. But I find now that I don’t need to test this theory. It doesn’t matter to me if she’s real or not.

  When she reaches for me with her free hand, the other hanging on the busted doorframe, she doesn’t stretch out as if to hug or lean on me. She goes to grab me by the wrist. I step back, and her smile melts to a nasty frown. Whatever she is, this Celeste doesn’t mean to embrace me. She means to take hold and drag me down.

  Stay, the shade’s voice insists. All that’s out there is more screwups.

  “No,” I say, slowly shaking my head side to side. “I’m sorry. And I’ll love you all the days I got. But you made your choices. Now I need to make mine.”

  This comes out of me with more conviction than I thought I had, and the spirit Celeste rears back. In the ivory moonlight, I watch th
e edges of her penciled form start to fade, as if being erased. She looks at me with drowning eyes, and I don’t look away. My sister’s ghost crumbles to nothing but black ash, and she’s gone.

  I spin and start running up the tilted deck, drawn by Max’s yelling, charging upward, bursting with energy I don’t know where from, and when I get to the railing, I don’t climb it, I just leap, out into the open air. I see Max in the raft, floating fifty feet away, and beyond her the distant lighthouse. There’s an instant that I feel certain I’ll just lift away. I feel so light I could take flight.

  And it’s here, floating through the open air, that I hear Celeste’s real voice. It’s not the charcoal ghost whispering just in my mind. I hear it in the air around me, and it’s clear and true. My sister, the loving one I lost, tells me one last time, “Attaboy.”

  MAX SEES ELI RISE OVER THE RAILING OF THE CAPRICORNIA wreck, flailing as if he’d been catapulted. His body plummets downward, and he crashes sideways into the rolling waves of the storm-tossed gulf, fifty feet away. She sees the splash and then, after a few tense breaths of nothing, the bright orange life vest appears on the turbulent surface. The choppy waves grow with each undulation, sharper and taller, not only rocking the life raft but also stealing Eli from her view. She grabs one of the boards she’d scavenged moments before and begins to paddle madly, digging at the water. But this lopsided effort only causes the boat to rotate uselessly. A wave lifts the far edge of the life raft, nearly dumping her into the ocean, and she leans back into the middle of the heaving boat.

  Through the thickening rain, she catches a glimpse of Eli here and there. He’s swinging his arms, struggling to swim, and she cups her hands to her mouth and shouts his name into the wind. As she rides the waves, kneeling in the raft’s center, it seems Eli may indeed be getting closer. Whether it’s because of his efforts or just the motion of the swirling waters, she can’t tell. But soon, he’s near enough that she can make out his face, see his one good eye wide in desperation, his gaping mouth sucking for air. A wooden chunk of wreckage slides over a wave’s crest and she watches Eli grab for it, only to have it race past him, out of reach. Another wave sloshes over his head, and he lifts an open hand straight up.

  Max’s eyes swivel around the raft’s perimeter until she finds the rope they used as a tether. She snatches it up, reels the full length into a loop, then flings it toward her friend. The wind bats it down, dropping the lasso into the water not ten feet from the raft, nowhere near Eli. Max tries again, and this time the rope simply unfurls.

  The current seems to be spinning Eli and the raft around each other, as if they’re circling a drain, about twenty feet apart. He’s doing some sort of lame doggy-paddle, barely keeping his mouth above the water as far as Max can tell. But it’s also clear that his strength is fading, that the life vest can only do so much. Eli is dying before her eyes.

  Once again, she reels in the tether rope, keeping a watch on the bobbing orange vest. Only this time when she finds the rope’s end, she threads it through her belt, tying off a quick knot. No sooner has she cinched it tight than she’s over the side of the raft, diving into the churning waves.

  Max feels no panic as she swims in the direction of where she last saw Eli. With each jagged peak, she rises up and slides down, scissoring her legs and swinging her arms. When she can get a clear breath, she hollers, “Eli! Eli, come to my voice!”

  She hears a faint cry, the exact word swallowed by the storm, but it gives her a rough location, and she tries to head toward it. It’s a strain to fight for every stroke and kick, and Max has no clear sense of whether she’s going anywhere or just treading water. But then—incredibly—Eli appears, on his back and motionless, drifting in the swales not too far off. With a burst, she closes that last distance.

  Max grips Eli’s vest with both hands. She tilts him upright, bringing his face to hers, and he blinks at her and manages to say, “You should’ve stayed where you were safe.”

  “Like hell,” she tells him. “Now hang on to me and don’t let go! Got it?”

  She sets his hands on her own life vest, and Eli nods weakly. Then she reaches for the rope around her belt, finds it, and starts to tug. Fist over fist, she makes slow and steady progress through the rolling valley of waves, and she can’t tell if she’s pulling herself to the raft or pulling the raft to them, but she doesn’t care. All that matters is it’s growing larger, drawing nearer.

  “Eli!” she screams when it’s finally within arm’s reach. “You need to climb up inside there. Take hold and climb up!”

  Max is amazed when he actually does what she says, clawing his way over the rounded inflatable side and collapsing into the raft. She follows, and for a few moments, they lie on their backs, straining for breath. But then Max rolls over and says, “Break time’s over. This storm’s only getting stronger again. We need to make it to that lighthouse.”

  Flat on his back, Eli looks exhausted and spent, but she sees a strange smile on his face. He turns onto his belly and gets onto all fours, grinning still. As they gather themselves, Max can’t help but ask, “So what happened back there?”

  Eli wipes at his face. “Last scene of a long story. One that went on way too long.” He gropes for one of the makeshift paddles and lifts his head. “Which way to the lighthouse?”

  Max points to the tall white column. The clouds have swallowed the half-moon, so Lucy is just barely visible through the slanting sheets of rain. Eli nods and drapes his chest over one side of the raft. Max takes a position opposite him, and together they start viciously paddling, coaxing the boat toward safety.

  With every stroke, Max can’t be sure they’re doing any good. It’s as if they’re on a fluid roller coaster, constantly lifting and dipping on the rollicking waves. Though they don’t talk, now and then Max spares a look at Eli, every time finding him working that board steady as a machine. She’s surprised that he hasn’t passed out. Tumbleweeds of low dirty clouds spin overhead as the sky darkens to midnight black.

  Maybe it’s the waves as much as their efforts that brings them, eventually, into the shadow of the lighthouse. It looms above them, uncaring, as they drift past with no way to stop themselves. And it seems for an instant that they’ll miss their chance, simply float inland, but then the raft stops abruptly, even as the waves roll by.

  “Get that rope!” Max hears Eli yelling. “Tie us off!”

  Max scrambles across the raft’s fabric floor and finds Eli leaning over the side, gripping what she realizes is the top of the cyclone fence. She snatches the tether and bends by him, both of them being lifted by the rocking boat but holding steady. After she’s anchored them, she says, “Now what?”

  Eli hands her the backpack and says, “We abandon ship!”

  The twenty feet to the lighthouse looks like a fast-flowing river you wouldn’t try to cross, but Eli and Max slip over the side, into the tumultuous sea. “Stay close,” Eli yells as they fight toward the tower. The twisting current shoves and tugs them, even tries to draw them down below the waves. They each suck gulps of air and tilt their heads back into their life vests. At one point, Max gets swamped by a swell and feels a hand yank her back to the surface. And then a thick wave gathers them up, sweeps them along, and drives them into the great curved wall of the lighthouse.

  “Grab something!” Eli yells.

  Max’s hands run along the wall, and her eyes scan for some nook or corner. “Nothing to hold,” she yells back. Above her, just out of reach, is a window with the glass broken out, a thick iron frame like a cross. “C’mon!” she hears Eli say as he scoots along the wall, hugging it. They work their way around the tower. It takes them a while, battling the cresting waves, but they find themselves again below the window. Max asks, “Where’s that damn door?”

  “Beneath us,” Eli says flatly. “Underwater.”

  In the raging water, it’s a battle to stay in place. “Then we’ve got to go down,” Max yells, saying what she’s sure Eli already knows. “We’ll dive
together.”

  “Right,” Eli answers. “But not with these things on.”

  Max isn’t sure what he means until Eli starts unbuckling his life vest. She watches in shock. The vests are the only things keeping them from drowning, and once they release them, they’ll be on their own, at the mercy of the hurricane. “What if we don’t find the way in? We’ll never get back to the raft.” She glances in its direction and sees it, the twenty feet looking like a hundred miles.

  Eli tugs his arm through the life jacket, then folds both arms over it. He shrugs. “I figure at that point we pucker up and kiss our butts good-bye.”

  “This is nuts,” she says as she passes the backpack to Eli and goes about removing her own life jacket. When she’s finished, she retrieves the backpack, and then the two of them bob on the surface, holding hands, each with the other arm around a bunched-up vest.

  “Get a deep breath,” Eli says, and together, they let go of the vests and descend.

  Under the water, the sound of the storm is muted. Everything is darkness and a muffled, distant roar. Max kicks down, vaguely aware of Eli at her side, and she stretches in the inky black, feeling the wall’s rock hard certainty with an open palm. It feels good to give in to the weight of the urn, to let it drag her deeper still. With effort, she flips head down, fluttering feet now up above. Her eyes blink in the darkness, but nothing can be seen.

  And then her fingers find a break in the wall’s constant shape, an edge, a corner below. She reaches out for Eli, locates a handful of cloth, and tugs, urging him downward. Using the top of the open entryway, she pulls herself deeper, flipping upside down through the threshold that once housed the door, and then quickly rising up, lifting with the last of the air in her lungs, bursting to the surface inside the lighthouse.

  She swings her arms in the pitch black, bangs into stairs, and crawls out of the circular pool of water. It’s surprisingly calm, just sloshing gently, and Max waits in the stillness. She thinks, C’mon, Eli. Don’t you—but then he too erupts from the surface, gasping for new breath. “Here!” she says, reaching out for him and pulling him to her on the curving stairs.