Lullabies for Suffering

by Caroline Kepnes et al.

  His words weren’t meant to comfort me, and they didn’t.

  What happened next happened incredibly fast. Adrenaline was rushing through my veins and accelerating everything around me.

  We left the parking lot and Ronny drove all the way into Old San Juan and then down into La Perla. I hope you’ve never been there, but I’m sure you’ve seen it. La Perla is a ghetto sitting below the walls of Old San Juan. It pushes against the water and is the most important trafficking spot in the Caribbean. Poverty is rampant, but it’s also home to some very rich drug lords. The place is trapped between the water and the huge walls the Spaniards built to protect the city. There’s only one way in and out. This had made it easy to control. Cops don’t go there anymore. It’s a dangerous, violent place where a lot of people die every year.

  Please, do not ever visit this place. Ever. Stay away and keep your mother away. Make sure no one you care about goes there, especially near the water.

  After entering La Perla, Ronny drove until the road ended where there is little lighting but lots of privacy. There was a white SUV already waiting. We both exited the car and walked around to the trunk. Ronny pulled out a blue backpack and a shotgun. He handed me the gun and pointed at the top of it. I pushed the safety off.

  “If you so much as fucking aim that thing anywhere near me, I will kill you. We clear?”

  I nodded.

  We made our way to the tiny corner of land jutting into the water. As with every chunk of beach in La Perla, it was rocky and the sand was dark brown. The ocean breaking over the reef about a hundred feet away drowned every other sound around us. The combination of rocks, darkness, and waves made the place feel forbidden, like nature had built its own barbed wire barrier. We had just gotten there and I was ready to get the hell out already.

  As we approached, I saw two men waiting for us close to the water. The way they were dressed threw me off. Both were wearing long coats, dark pants, huge boots, and large hats pulled down over their faces. If Ronny was out of place because his jacket made no sense in the Caribbean heat, the folks I was looking at belonged to an entirely different universe where common sense plays no role.

  Ronny walked up to the men and stopped about five feet in front of them. I stayed a few feet behind him to his right. I wanted to see everything but stay separate. I figured taking part in the transaction that was about to go down would be worse than just being a witness.

  “Gentlemen, I have your package.”

  Ronny smiled. The two figures said nothing. Not being able to see their faces made me extremely uncomfortable. Even before getting into a fight people will look into their opponent’s eyes. You already know they say eyes are the windows of the soul. Whether that’s accurate or not is debatable, but I like to look at people in the face.

  “The last package…Ronny…not good.”

  The one who spoke was standing in front of Ronny. His voice sounded horrible. Imagine a fat man with emphysema choking on pancake syrup and you have an idea of what he sounded like.

  “What do you mean not good? You know we always bring you the best shit, man. Always.”

  “Not good…Ronny!”

  The voice had a wet quality to it that I’d never heard coming from a human throat before and it sent shivers down my spine. Then he said a word I couldn’t make out. Something that sounded like “sick” or “thick.”

  “Listen, man, this is premium shit, okay? You know Marco likes you and your…people. He wouldn’t fuck you over. We’ve been doing business for a long time. You know he wouldn’t do that.”

  The man in front of Ronny lifted his hand and pointed at him. The hand was grey and only had four fingers, and I could swear it was webbed. I was so scared I forgot the gun until Ronny stepped back and looked at me. He wanted me to act. I lifted the shotgun.

  “Settle the fuck down, man!” Ronny yelled at them with my shotgun to back him up. His voice was a few octaves higher than it had been before. Realizing he was nervous made me even more afraid. I looked back at the man’s hand. It was dark and I was sure the lack of light was playing tricks with my eyes. His hand couldn’t be that color, and yet it was.

  The man started speaking a language I’d never heard before. It sounded like Russian or Turkish but being spoken by someone with a slashed throat.

  “Stop!” said Ronny. “I have no fucking idea what you’re saying. You want the junk or not?”

  “No! Poison!”

  The scream came from the second man. He stepped forward, brought his hand up, and removed his hat. The only way I can describe his face is like that of an aborted abomination concocted in a lab, like they were trying to mix an ape and a fish with a touch of toad thrown in. His skin was a dull grey, his lips were humongous. There were only a couple of slanted holes where his nose should have been, and his eyes, which were bigger than any eyes I’d ever seen on a human face, were unnaturally round and covered in a milky membrane. He had no hair, no ears, no eyebrows.

  “You made us sick,” said the…thing with the huge eyes and lips. He turned toward the water. In the distance, right where the deep blue of the sky met the reef, three other figures were standing. They had slim bodies, huge heads, and unnaturally long necks and limbs. My eyes darted back to the two creatures in front of us. Subterranean. Amphibious… whatever it was, these were not humans like you and I, Angelica, and my fingers clenched on the shotgun as if I was holding you tight, for at that moment, I didn’t think I would ever see you again. I only had four shots.

  My breathing was speeding up and my heart was pounding in my chest like a tiny caged gorilla.

  The one who had removed his hat held a grey finger up to his face and took a step forward. Light from the street fell on to his face.

  “You…made sick!”

  The initial shock of seeing his batrachian features subsided and I looked at where he was pointing. There was a lesion under his left eye. It looked like those horrendous lesions caused by krokodil, that semi-synthetic drug that folks use because it has similar effects to heroin and morphine but that makes your flesh rot. I’d seen a few junkies with deep lesions, so I stayed away from krok. The jagged hole in this thing’s face was horrendous. Something thick and black was dripping from it. In the center, yellowish flesh speckled with black surrounded a hole where I could see bone. I heard Ronny gasp.

  “Are you saying our horse did that to you? That’s not possible. You know we always deliver the goods. You’ve never had any trouble with our stuff, man. There’s a lot of pollution in this water and mayb—”

  The creature who was still wearing a hat lunged at Ronny. Ronny tried to jump back. The creature landed on him. The backpack went flying. They fell to the sand in a flurry of black leather and greyish limbs. The hat flew off, the mask was gone, his face was revealed. He looked just as monstrous as the others.

  I looked up just in time to see the second fucker moving my way. I pumped the shotgun. Clack-clack. I pointed at the thing’s chest and squeezed the trigger.

  The blast broke the night in half, its echo ricocheting against the gigantic wall and filling La Perla with the sound of a cannon. The shotgun threatened to rip my arms off. The creature shrieked and stumbled back, flailing his arms as if he was trying to catch something that wasn’t there. His long coat flew open. I saw the thing’s white, scaly belly underneath and it made me pump the shotgun again. We all fear otherness on some level, some primal response to things we don’t know, and my own lizard brain was taking over.

  The thing landed on the sand in a sitting position. I let out a scream that entered my ears and sliced my soul with a blade of ice. I was seeing and hearing a fucking monster. A real monster. Before I could squeeze the trigger a second time, a muffled gunshot came from the floor next to me. I looked down. Ronny was doing his best to push the creature off of him.

  In front of me, almost inaudible to my ears because they were ringing from the shotgun blast, I heard something like a wet cough. The creature I’d shot had its mouth open,
coughing and gagging. Rows upon rows of tiny black teeth reflected the scant light that reached its face, and an inky liquid sputtered out of its monstrous mouth. Its outstretched hand reached toward me, the grey triangle of flesh between the webbed fingers clearly visible. I pulled the trigger. The blast opened a dark hole near the top of its white chest and pushed him onto his back. It twitched once and stopped moving.

  I felt something on my shoulders and turned, ready to fire again, but stopped. Ronny was standing there, covered in the dark blood of this strange species. He was still holding his gun. His chest was pumping up and down like he’d just run up a dozen flights of stairs.

  “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

  Ronny picked up the backpack and started running back to the car. I stood there, looking at the two creatures on the sand. Something strange happens to your brain when the impossible becomes real. It shuts down. It cracks a little under the weight of a new truth that had previously been inconceivable. Depending on their significance, new truths can freeze you. The two creatures in front of me were real. I’d seen and heard them. They were bleeding black blood on the sand, their strange bodies unmoving so my eyes could take in their reality. Still, even with the evidence in front of me, a part of my brain was screaming No! This isn’t real!

  I heard Ronny shout behind me. I pulled my eyes away from the bodies on the sand, turned around, and ran the same way we’d come. As I reached the end of the sand, I turned around. I wanted to make sure those things weren’t following me. What I saw then froze my blood in my veins. A lot of people talk about abject horror, but few of us ever get to really experience it. That night, I experienced it.

  The two bodies on the sand weren’t moving, but closer to the shore, another ominous body was emerging from the water. Each second it got closer and I got a better look. It was naked, the body was humanoid, but it was clearly not a human. It was hunched over and its arms reached almost all the way down to the sand. Its legs were skinny and it walked like it hurt to do so. His mouth reminded me of watching videos of fishermen hauling giant groupers out of the water. The whiteness crawled up its neck and dark slits opened.

  The creature was horrific. I was mesmerized. An amphibian thing was walking out of the ocean on two legs. I was in the middle of a horror movie and I couldn’t move. I heard the engine of Ronny’s car roar to life and the spell was broken. I turned and ran as if the thing on the shore could break into a run at any time and tear me to pieces with that huge, horrendous mouth.

  I jumped into the car and we burned rubber out of La Perla. Nobody spoke until we were almost at the parking lot behind the panaderia.

  “What the fuck was that all about, Ronny?”

  “Listen, man, it wasn’t supposed to go down like that. I don’t even know what to tell you. Usually we just hand them the backpack full of dope and get the money or they tell us where the money is. I…I don’t fucking know what that was all about. Call Marco and talk to him.”

  I knew asking more questions would get me nowhere, so I didn’t ask any. Five minutes later we pulled into the parking lot and I opened the door. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see you, to breathe in your wonderful smell and listen to the small sounds coming from you. I already told you that being a parent and being a junkie are very much alike, and cravings are a huge part of it. The presence of your children, seeing them happy and knowing they are safe at that moment, is as relaxing as the best drug in the world, and just as addicting. I needed that. My body was halfway out of the car when Ronny talked to me and made me jump.

  “The shotgun stays, man,” he said.

  I hadn’t even realized I’d been clutching it that whole time. I checked the top, clicked the safety on, and gently placed the butt of the gun on the floor. Ronny didn’t seem in the mood for another single word, so I closed the door. He peeled out of the parking lot, his lights quickly merging into the avenue in front of the panaderia and then vanishing in the distance at a high speed.

  I got in my car, turned it on, cranked the AC, and sat there like an idiot, turning the night’s events in my head over and over. There was an argument in my head:

  That was impossible.

  You saw it.

  That didn’t happen.

  You killed a creature on that beach.

  Strange fish-human hybrids don’t exist.

  One of those things almost killed Ronny and the other had the same plans for you.

  When the argument stopped, the questions began. What were those things? The question was one I could not ignore. I needed answers. And I needed a fix.

  I drove home in silence. I walked into the house, checked on you and your mother, and then went to the bathroom and took care of myself. The dope wasn’t working as it should. I felt clammy and the junk was buzzing but failing to explode inside me, like a bad electronic song with a superb buildup that fails to deliver on its promise. I felt itchy and dirty, simultaneously tired and wound up.

  Eventually, I crawled into my bed. Darkness overcame me in waves. Sometimes it resembled sleep and sometimes it was just fear. Then I fell asleep and the fear got worse.

  I had a nightmare. I woke up in the middle of the night to strange sounds. I sat in bed, trying to identify what the sounds were. They came from down the hallway near your room. Something like a dog slobbering on a bone. I jumped out of bed and ran to your door. The sounds were louder. I panicked even though I had no idea what was going on. Every parent has a sixth sense, especially in the middle of the night, and mine was telling me something was terribly wrong. I started praying.

  I barged into your room and threw the light on. Two figures stood over your crib. They looked exactly like the things I’d seen walking out of the water. Both had blood running down their atrocious faces, their huge lips barely touching as they ate. One lifted its fishy head and looked at me with its humongous eyes covered in that white film. Then it opened its mouth and shrieked. The sound pierced my ears and I had to close my eyes and grab my head because it felt like it was about to explode. The shrieking stopped. I looked at the monster again. It stood in the same place, its glistening lips still open. Bits of flesh were visible inside its mouth clinging to the rows of tiny, pointed teeth. There was a touch of white inside as well, crunching like carrots.

  They were eating you, both your flesh and your bone.

  Seeing the two creatures hovering over your crib, lips parted and coated in blood like huge fresh wounds, ripped a scream from my throat. I ran to them, ignoring the danger. I wanted to see you. I needed to believe you were okay, even if I knew you weren’t. Three quick steps into the room was all it took. My perspective changed. I could finally see inside the crib. Your pink pajamas were shredded and soaking in a pool of blood. I knew that mess was you, or what was left of you. I screamed so loud it became silence, unable to move, rage and fear tensing every muscle in my body. The creatures came to me. They reached out for my face, their long fingers drenched in your blood.

  Thank God I woke up.

  I never managed to go back to sleep that night. Instead, I stayed in your room and listened to your breathing until your mom walked in to feed you.

  The next day at lunch, I rang Marco. He seemed distracted and said he’d rather not talk on the phone. Given his line of work, I understood. We agreed to meet at our usual spot, except this time we would go inside and get some coffee. I called to tell your mom I was going to work an extra hour or two on the new project. If being a junkie has one benefit it’s the ability to lie even to those you love most without even thinking about it.

  Once Marco and I were sitting down, twin cups of coffee steaming in front of us, Marco looked at me.

  “I didn’t know shit was gonna go down like that, Adam,” he said, genuine concern or regret from that realm in his voice. “I wouldn’t have asked you to go if I’d known.”

  “Thanks for saying that, Marco, but it doesn’t really matter to me right now. What matters is knowing what the hell I saw on that little beach. Those things wer
en’t human, but they talked to us. They were fucking angry. They attacked us. When we—”

  Marco brought his hand up. The gesture did its job: I stopped talking.

  “Not here,” he said. “Finish your coffee. We’ll talk outside. I just needed the caffeine.”

  I blew on my coffee obsessively and downed it in three or four sips. I kept looking around, convinced people knew Marco was a drug dealer.

  A couple of minutes later we were sitting in Marco’s car.

  “So what the hell were those things, man? I need to know. I need some fucking answers.”

  Marco was looking out his window. The world around us kept going. People were getting coffee, walking their dogs, driving to and from a variety of places. They were all oblivious to the horrors that inhabit our reality. Just like me until the previous night, they all ignored the monsters with which we share our space. The idea made me want to exit the car and start screaming about it in the middle of the street. I didn’t even care if I sounded like a crazy person because by then I had started doubting my sanity. Some overpowering sense of self-preservation kept me glued to the seat, eagerly waiting for Marco to answer me, to shine some light on what I’d experienced.

  “The shit I’m about to tell you has to stay in this car. We clear?”

  “Yeah, Marco, I just need to know what those things were. And if I’m in danger,” I said.

  “Ronny texted me that shit had gone south but I only know so much. He left the backpack in a secure spot and vanished. He never replied to my texts. I haven’t been able to get a hold of him since his last text telling me the deal ended badly. I have no idea all that went down. Can you fill in the details?”

  “Sure, man,” I said. “We showed up. There were two dudes at the beach. Except they weren’t dudes. They were…creatures. Fucking fish walking on two legs and talking. Ugly as hell. Ronny had a backpack with him. He tried to give it to them, but they started complaining. They told Ronny the last batch had made them sick. Then they attacked us.”