Scary Out There

by Jonathan Maberry

  The tiara Tammy picked up at the yard sale helped. It gave the audience a way to tell them apart. She twisted the hairpiece into her curls as tight as she could, pushing the metal bobby pins up against her scalp to keep it secure through all the swirling, diving, and splashing. With the tiara perched on her head, that little coronet with the tacky stones, Tammy was the one to watch.

  She was the girl with the silver crown.

  • • •

  The shows took on a comfortable, familiar pattern.

  Sometimes, the themes were different—pirates, or police, or shipwrecks—but the daily routine was usually the same. Every day, there was practice and training, with Frank barking the story along through a megaphone. Every day, there was time spent sipping from the tiny air hoses and learning to breathe without gasping in front of the audience.

  Breathe and smile. Drink a bottle of fizzy Grapette underwater while the kids clapped and their parents wondered How on earth do they do that?

  But they weren’t on earth.

  They performed beneath it, under the blue skin of the pooled spring and down in front of the enormous, underground window—they frolicked like polar bears in a zoo, with only the thick and tinted fishbowl glass between them and the wide-eyed watchers.

  And all the people in the auditorium sat and shivered, cool as almost ice in the orange-hot heat of a Florida afternoon. Openmouthed, they watched the women in bright bathing suits from a fairy tale—they saw how their fins twisted in the current, how their smiles stayed in place because people had paid good money to see them.

  It was magic, and it hid out in the open. The rules were different, there.

  • • •

  “Car!” Frank bellowed through his megaphone. “Car!”

  All the girls knew what to do. The mermaids rallied from the tank with a flurry of flinging water. Wet hair went tied up in scarves or combs, and fins were quickly, carefully stripped. Pruney feet with painted toenails felt about for sandals, and, finding them, they pattered away from the spring.

  “Hurry up!” Frank hollered. He pulled a short-sleeved, button-up shirt over his wet chest and retreated toward the ticket office. “Go get ’em, ladies!”

  All eight of the mermaids on duty charged out of the dirt and gravel parking lot and over to U.S. 19. And, yes, a brand new ’51 Chevrolet was coming in from the north. It was black with chrome and fins shining like silver, and inside it must have been hot as an oven, come noon in July.

  The car slowed for the swarm of girls and stopped on the side of the road. All of the windows were down, so within seconds, each one framed at least two grinning young women wearing not very much in the way of clothes.

  The driver grinned back from beneath a gleaming mop of slick black hair and matching eyebrows. If it weren’t for the pink haze of sunburn across his nose, he would’ve looked like a happy vampire.

  Elaine spoke first, leaning into the car. “Hey there, mister.”

  “Hey there, sweetheart,” he replied, and his voice was shiny too. Oil on aluminum. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  One of the other girls spoke next. She batted her eyelashes and hung her boobs over the passenger side window. “We’re the girls of Weeki Wachee—a little place you can find right over there, through the trees. We put on a mean show, if you’d like to make a little room for us in your wallet.”

  “What kind of show?”

  “Mermaids!” several of them said at once.

  He laughed, and the sound shimmered around the edges. “All right. You’ve got me now. Let’s see what you little sirens can do.”

  The girls chased his car into the lot and vanished in a trickle, one or two returning to the tank or to the concession and ticketing area. The rest swarmed into the locker room and began dressing up. It could be quick, and it didn’t have to be perfect. It was just one guy, not a family or a group to fill the eighteen-seat auditorium.

  But the week had been slow, and Frank was a big believer in word of mouth. He said it was always worth putting on the show for the occasional individual, because that one guy might go home and tell his friends.

  So Tammy slid over the side of the tank with one practiced, slippery motion.

  She imagined she was a seal, a sea lion, or a penguin—something with rounded edges and a shape meant to move through water. Once she was in the aquarium, it was all too easy to sink like a stone. It was hard to remember not to paddle and kick, to pretend she was born with the aqua-blue fin. It was hard to swim by flexing her waist and snapping her ankles.

  She did it beautifully, and down into the spring she tumbled.

  The water was too cold at first. She closed her eyes, then opened them. She found the rubber breathing tube and remembered how to swim, and breathe, and smile. She tucked the tube away behind an ornamental rock, so the man in the auditorium couldn’t see it.

  Two other mermaids joined her, and then her sister did too. They moved together; they found their tubes and discreetly sipped enough oxygen to writhe their swimming selves into position. They were sea lions and sirens, every last one of them.

  Tammy waved at the man—he’d said his name was Ed—standing all alone in the auditorium. He didn’t take a seat. He stood at the glass and he waved back. The gesture was filtered through the window, and the sparkling clear water, and through the bubbles of the breathing tubes behind the rocks. But Tammy saw it, and she smiled at him because that was her job now.

  But suddenly, she didn’t mean it.

  Her smile froze where it was, and it did not melt.

  It unnerved her, the way Ed stood there in the empty room with the tiny tile mosaics in blue, pink, and gold. It cast a chill through the window and into the spring water to see him there, arms folded after he finished waving at them.

  Through the glass with the soft green tint she saw him differently, standing alone in the empty room with the folding seats like a movie theater. He did not look like the same man who drove the black Chevy down U.S. 19. He looked colder and sharper. The pink was gone from his skin and the blue was brighter in his hair through the lens of the window glass—and through the heavy, cool weight of a million gallons between them.

  Elaine swam up to Tammy’s side and handed her a new bottle of Grapette. Startled out of the spell Tammy took it and popped the bottle cap. In sync, she and her sister drank together, and the man clapped to see the little red-haired sirens take their sodas underwater.

  Such a precious trick. Such a pretty thing to watch.

  And maybe that was what it came down to, when Tammy later tried to think of what had bothered her so much about Ed and his blue-black eyes, his blue-black hair. Through the whole story—even when Frank joined in as the pirate king and the funny fake cannon sent explosions of bubbles and waves through the water—Ed was never watching anything or anyone except for Tammy. And he never looked her in the eyes, but he stared somewhere higher, above her forehead. He was looking at the cheap, pretty tiara fixed to her head with bobby pins and skill.

  When the show was over, Ed went on his way, and Frank called Tammy aside as she toweled herself dry.

  “That guy, Ed. Did you know him?” He looked worried, but he was trying to hide it.

  Tammy shook her head. “Never saw him before.”

  “Huh.” Frank twiddled absently with the end of a cracked breathing tube, one he was repairing or replacing from a compressed air tank. “I wondered, that’s all. He talked about you like he knew you, but he didn’t know your name.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Frank tossed the tube aside, into the trash. He shrugged his big shoulders with the tight-looking muscles underneath them and leaned back against the doorframe. “He said he liked the show. And he especially liked the girl with the silver crown.”

  “Oh. I guess that’s me, then.”

  “I guess it is, but I don’t like how he said it. Where did you get that little crown anyway? I’ve noticed it before. It looks nice with the fins, but maybe you shouldn’t wear
it anymore.”

  “I found it at a yard sale in New Port Richey. Why shouldn’t I wear it? Because some creepy guy pointed it out on a lark?” She was nervous again, not because of Frank, who made the same concerned face her dad used to make when he smelled trouble, but because she couldn’t stand the thought of taking off the tiara. She’d been wearing it more lately, even without the costume. Even for fun, down at the movies or at the beach. It belonged one of two places: in the locker at the ladies’ rooms or on her head.

  Preferably, on her head.

  “Look,” he added, still in father mode, “I didn’t like that guy, that’s all I’m saying. I didn’t like the way he looked at you. Nice guys don’t stare like that. If you see him around, or if he comes around again . . . I want you to tell me about it. And next show, maybe you can leave off the hairpiece. We’ll find something else to match your costume.”

  “Okay,” she told him. She knew he was right, but he was a little bit wrong, too.

  It wasn’t weird, the way Ed had looked at her. It was weird how he’d looked at the tiara, like he’d seen it before. Like it meant something to him. Well, it meant something to Tammy, too.

  • • •

  Two days later Frank was sick—or that’s what he said. There was a sign up at the entrance to the concessions and ticket area, where the doors were locked and there weren’t any lights turned on inside.

  BAD CASE OF THE FLU.

  TAKE THE DAY OFF.

  BACK AT THE REGULAR TIME TOMORROW.

  Tammy and Elaine were early for work, and they were the first to see the sign. They puzzled over it.

  “But Frank’s never sick,” Tammy complained. “He’s practically invincible.”

  “I hope he’s all right.”

  “He will be. He’s practically—”

  “Invincible. Yeah. I heard you.” Elaine picked at the tape on the sign and leaned her head close to the door. Somewhere in the distance, down a floor or two below—she thought she heard something. But it was faint. There was nothing certain, nothing she could point to and say, Listen. What’s that?

  So she didn’t say anything about it, and the pair of them walked back to U.S. 19 to walk or hitchhike home, like they did most days. It was better to do it while the morning was still new and before the sun got too high.

  One by one the other girls arrived and read the sign, and one by one they turned and went back home with a grumble.

  But not a single girl listened as hard as Elaine did, with her ear right next to the concession room door. None of them heard the splashing, the soft rubbing coming from down below in the auditorium. None of them pulled at the door or fought the lock.

  A day off was easier than chasing phantom sounds.

  But Frank was not home in bed with the flu. He was there at Weeki Wachee, downstairs in the auditorium where the eighteen cinema seats lined up like soldiers facing the aquarium window. He was standing on a stool, wearing a grim expression and a pair of shorts, but nothing else. He held a rag and a sponge—the big kind, the kind they used for washing cars.

  Beside him was a bucket, and inside the bucket was soapy water that had turned almost purple.

  He wrung out the sponge and the rag and pulled them back and forth over the wide underground window that was bigger than a movie screen: wiping, smoothing, cleaning. Erasing the message he’d found there, first thing that morning—a message which was so much worse than the one he’d left to protect his girls.

  If they saw this one, they’d only be afraid. There was no need to involve the police, no reason to let the authorities wander around asking questions and issuing warnings. Cops would be in the way. They’d be bad for business.

  And there was nothing to be afraid of, anyway.

  Or that’s what he told himself, same as he told the mermaids. But all the same he’d be on the lookout for a dark eyed man with hair blacker than the ace of spades. He’d keep his eyes peeled for that fellow who called himself Ed.

  With runny, tinted water staining his hands, he kept on working—wearing away the series of letters that stood as tall as his arms were long. By suppertime not a trace would be left, and it was better that way.

  But for now, the window still read: IT BELONGS TO ME AND YOU MUST GIVE IT BACK.

  Frank didn’t know how he knew it was Ed, but he did. And somehow, he knew precisely what Ed wanted back. It was that stupid crown, the one Tammy wore in the show. There was something uncanny about it—something that made you want to touch it, hold it. Even wear it, not that Frank would ever do such a thing.

  That ridiculous bauble wasn’t normal—and neither was Ed.

  Somehow, they belonged together. He wondered how they’d ever gotten separated in the first place.

  Maybe he could retrieve it when the girls had all gone home. Maybe he could throw it away himself—or leave it out for Ed to find. Frank didn’t like a bully, and he didn’t like following orders from random vandals. But maybe if he did what the message said, Ed would go away.

  • • •

  “You shouldn’t be the last to leave.”

  “What?” Tammy asked. She wrapped her towel quickly around the tiara and pulled it out of the locker, hiding it against her stomach.

  Frank closed his arms over his chest. “We talked about this. Where was your sister today? And what have you got there? Is that that hair doodad? I thought we talked about this—I don’t want to see it anymore, not in the show.”

  “I know, and that’s why I’m taking it home. What are you doing in the ladies’ room?” She felt guilty and nervous, and she knew it was dumb. The tiara was hers. She could take it home with her if she wanted to. Frank should be the one feeling guilty and nervous. He was the one sneaking up on her in the bathroom.

  “I thought everyone was gone,” he told her. “I was going to check in here for . . . um . . . toilet paper. I was going to take out the trash.”

  “You should’ve knocked.”

  “I did knock. Didn’t you hear me?”

  “No.” But when she said it out loud and thought about it, yes, maybe. Maybe she had heard him. She clutched the towel bundle and retreated, pushing her back against the locker door to shut it.

  He stepped back too—almost sitting on the edge of the sink, he leaned so hard against it. Maybe he felt guilty and nervous after all. “How’re you getting home today?”

  “Hitch or walk, same as always.”

  “By yourself? No, I don’t like that. Let me give you a lift.”

  Outside, the sun burned down hot and steady, even though it was almost seven o’clock. Tammy thought about it for a second, but only a second. She trusted Frank. Everyone did—you pretty much had to . . . and it was amazingly, blindingly hot outside. She didn’t really want to walk. “All right. Yeah, I’ll ride with you.”

  “Good. Let me lock up around here, and we’ll head out.”

  She nodded and held the tiara tighter, as if she were afraid he might try to take it away from her. He almost looked like he wanted to.

  He didn’t try it. He only stomped away in his brown sandals and tan shorts. Over his shoulder he said, “Five minutes. Meet me at the spring.”

  “Five minutes,” she echoed.

  And she wandered down to the spring’s edge to stare down into the human sized aquarium filled with tubes and props. The sky gleamed in ribbons, and the sunlight on the waves threw stripes of white to cut up the blue surface.

  Behind her, against the sky, there was a flash of some other color.

  Dark and also blue—a navy blue that shined nearly black, or was it the other way around?

  Tammy froze, squinting at the reflection. Just past her head, it was there—the pale silver face with cruel, small eyes as bitter as coffee beans. And above the eyes, that shock of hair—so dark, and blue, yes, blue. Blue in the reflection, with the sky behind it. How had it ever looked black?

  She turned around fast, throwing up an arm—throwing up a defense against nothing at all. He wasn’t there.
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  And then, with a quick cuff of his fist against her chest, just beneath her throat, she fell backward—towel and tiara and dry clothes and all.

  Back and down.

  And as she fell her eyes met his, and they were the same ones from the Chevy, from the shiny black car that no one ought to drive in Florida, not in the dead of summer. The reflection and the man didn’t match—they couldn’t match.

  But there he was, where the silver-faced man had loomed behind her. No, not a man. A fey thing, dark and terrible. Something that belonged in the dark, in the water of a swamp. Not in the sun, not in a spring.

  As she fell, she thought—in that half second before she hit the water and closed her eyes from pure reflex—that there was distortion around him like a halo, like the way hot air rises from asphalt, or the way gasoline fumes twist outside a car’s tank while the pump fills it up.

  And in that split instant when she hit the water and her eyelids were dropping down hard, she saw Frank, too. Coming up behind Ed with a look on his face like murder.

  Tammy slapped into the water backside first, and it stung when her shoulders smacked down. The weeks of training held her gasp in check, and when she broke the surface she took a deep breath, then sank. She let the water close over her before opening her eyes again.

  It was strange and hard to watch from underneath, but there they were—Frank and Ed, tussling in a hard way, a jerky way, a rough way that made her glad she was in the water and not up there with them.

  Her stomach tied itself tight into a knot, and she wasn’t sure why. She shouldn’t be worried for Frank. She should stay there, in the water, in the spring where she was safe and where she knew how to reach the air tubes. Frank was practically invincible. Navy veteran. Solid as a side of beef. Tough and quick.

  But he was not different. Not unreal, not like Ed—if that was even his name.

  (It probably wasn’t. Silver-skinned things with black-blue hair don’t have names like “Ed.”)

  Tammy pushed the towel with the tiara up under her armpit and kicked herself down and away from the surface. Let Frank throw the bum out. Of course he would. He had to. Because if he didn’t . . . then what?