CHAPTER 10

AS SOON AS JULIA CAN reasonably slip away from the dinner table, she does. The moon is enormous, casting enough light to make the sand glow. She can’t remember the last time she saw so many stars either; there’s no light pollution casting an orange sheen to the night sky. The air so clear she can even see the band of the Milky Way. She kicks off her flip-flops, picks them up, and heads down the path toward the beach.

Her heart is racing. She doesn’t know why. It just started to feel too tight under the pavilion, claustrophobic, and even though she’s blowing an opportunity to mingle, pry into the backstories of the other guests, she can’t bring herself to. She needs some time alone.

She gets to where the beach has been smoothed and flattened by the ocean, no prints except the ones she’s leaving. The sand is cold and wet under her feet. Lights are on in the bungalows along the pier—they look warm and inviting. The waves break farther out, and the looming dark shapes of rocks now poke through the surface. A thin rush of water spreads toward her, wraps around her ankles, before being pulled back into the deeper waters.

She’s three hours behind Pacific time. Probably almost midnight there, a good enough excuse to not call in. And the truth is, she really doesn’t want to hear Aunt Liddy’s voice, not now. Maybe it’s the effect of whatever it was she drank, but she has a disjointed sense of being outside herself, looking in. Checking in is not important. Leanne and the baggage handler wearing masks, not important. Even the urban rumor of Kapu’s healing powers, not important.

Her heart is just a knot of pure pain. Sitting across from newlyweds trying to conceive. It’s like stepping through time, being a ghost on the periphery of who she used to be.

What time is it on the East Coast? Soon the morning sun will rise there. She pictures Evie in bed, asleep, Mr. Bones curled in her right arm. She misses waking her up, tickling her toes under the bedsheet, then swooping in for a kiss on the forehead. The damp scent of sweaty, sleeping child. Good morning, sunshine. The smell of espresso—Ethan made it himself, never trusted it to anyone else. He was always up before them, fully dressed—chinos, white shirt, brown loafers. Julia would joke he could walk into any decade and fit in. A timeless kind of style.

There were nice parts. She has to hold onto the nice parts, protect them. Where did it go wrong? They were as happy as she reasonably expected two people to be. She never thought the honeymoon would be forever, and she took his occasional bouts of itchy dissatisfaction to be typical of marriage. Nobody is truly happy ever after; she’d always known that was a fairy tale, a myth. So when he complained about her using the fine china every day, buying—gasp—clothes for Evie at a discount store, letting Evie play and track in mud from their backyard garden, it just seemed like the usual jostle of irritation that happens between people in close quarters. Then he started complaining about what she chose to wear to dinner parties. Then he suggested she go to an orthodontist to get her teeth fixed, and why don’t you ever do anything about your hair? Like she was a Pygmalion experiment that wasn’t working out as expected.

She didn’t understand that her class was considered inferior, not until it was too late. That he wanted Evie to have different values.

His.

A shudder of longing hits her, so strong she wants to jump into the ocean, start swimming for the other side of the globe. It’s hard, so incredibly hard, to check the impulse, to stay on land, be patient.

Money. Money is what she needs to see Evie again. Just stick with the plan, Julia.

She takes a deep breath. Settles herself into the present.

Something bobs along the crest of a wave, too dark to make out. A living something, intent on the lava rocks. She sees a dark arm reach out and for a panicky moment thinks it’s a person—the nightmarchers—but then another arm reaches out, and another, and another, and then the slick skin glimmers in the moonlight and she can see they’re not arms, they’re tentacles. An octopus, climbing out of the water, latching into crevices to pull itself up.

She watches, briefly fascinated to witness this in the wild. Probably tide pools lie along the surface of the lava rock, small fish trapped there. A late-night snack.

The octopus reaches the top, slithers about a foot, then stops. She wonders how long it can hold its breath.

Suddenly it pounces, and barely a few seconds later it’s back in the water, landing with the softest plop. Dinner is served.

Sometimes it seems to her that half the world is trying to eat the other half.

She can hear bits of conversation carried on the breeze, laughter. People are straggling back. She turns her back to the ocean, starts up the slope to her bungalow, hurrying to avoid being caught up in a conversation. She’s too shaken, too emotionally vulnerable. And she’ll need her best, sharpest mind on hand for her trip to see the Reverend.

She gets to the lanai, pulls out her key, unlocks the door and is just about to open it when she remembers the paper she’d slipped into the doorjamb.

Still there. But wasn’t it lower now? Uncertain.

She enters the cabin, shuts the door behind her, and locks it. Takes a look around. Nothing seems amiss; all looks exactly the way she left it. She heads over to the armoire, and yes, her suitcase is still there, apparently undisturbed.

It just feels like someone has been inside.

So she takes one of the wooden chairs and props it under the knob. There. Then she heads for the bed, collapses on it, not bothering to even get under the covers or pull the mosquito netting closed. Lets her eyes close.

The breaking waves a much better lullaby than the traffic along the 405.

She hears a conch shell blow. Is it morning already, time for breakfast? But when Julia opens her eyes, the room is still dark. She must have been dreaming. She’s irritated with herself for waking up—as if that was in her control somehow. No clock to tell what time it is—it could be one in the morning, or four, or just before sunrise.

Something chirps inside the cabin. Another something responds. Two geckos—they weren’t there when she went to sleep. Theoretically she knows they’re harmless—good, actually, since they eat mosquitos and cockroaches and spiders. She should be grateful, but damn they’re loud. She tries covering her ear with one of the pillows, but no luck.

Chirp.

She presses a second pillow against her ear.

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

No, she’s never going to get back to sleep with that racket.

She reaches out for the lamp, turns it on. The bungalow fills with soft light. The geckos aren’t hard to spot, at least: both of them cling to the surface of the cool window, skin white as ghosts. No way to camouflage themselves on clear glass.

Wait, there are the specimen jars in her suitcase. She could try to knock them into a jar, trap them inside, then release them in the leafy green foliage by the lanai if she wants to be generous. Or she could try to kill them, whack them with something without breaking the glass. If they were spiders she wouldn’t even hesitate, but those damn commercials featuring the talking gecko with a Cockney accent make her feel like she couldn’t possibly be so cruel.

So she pushes herself up and out of bed, bleary-eyed. Pads over to the armoire, pulls out her suitcase, takes out all her clothes—again—then unlocks the hidden panel. Pulls out a specimen jar, twists open the top.

Thinks a moment, gets the opened bottle of Jack Daniel’s, takes another swig, then caps it. The funny thing is that she was completely dry throughout her marriage; the drinking started after the divorce. A part of her knows it’s a dangerous crutch, but the other doesn’t really care anymore.

The whiskey warms her stomach, makes her feel just a touch more grounded in the present. She gets to her feet, approaches the first gecko slowly. Her shadow follows her. The gecko’s eyes are large dark orbs bulging out of its head, mouth curled slightly upward, which makes it seem like it’s smiling. And the skin is actually slightly translucent. She can see its tiny lump of gray stomach, the fine scaffolding of its spine. Flutter of a tiny heart.

She’s heard they jump. She hopes it doesn’t jump.

Quickly she tries to brush it into the jar, and startles its companion into running up the wall, wriggling like a serpent, and so fast: in seconds, it’s already on the ceiling. At first she thinks she’s got the other—one at least—but then the damn thing climbs right up and out of the jar with its sticky, webbed toes and launches itself onto the floor, scurrying away toward the chair propped up under the doorknob, slipping under the door.

In the cup, something else wriggles.

The tail.

It is, as Irene described, fascinating and disturbing to see something that isn’t alive, not in the traditional sense, moving. It twists and turns and flops over on itself, curls and uncurls, like the tail is in the fight of its life, like it too might jump out and wriggle its way under the door.

A wave of nausea hits. Her knees feel like they might give out.

But she can’t look away. A living dead thing. Finally the tail starts to lose steam, like it’s realized it’s dying, and must give in to the inevitable. A few final quivers, then it’s still. She gives the jar a shake, just to be sure.

Put it in the trash can? She doesn’t think she could possibly go back to sleep—not with that . . . thing inside. No, better to dump it outside, let the cycle of life have its way.

She heads for the door. Feels something soft land on her shoulder. Julia stops, turns her head, and sees the second gecko staring at her with a curious intensity, flicking its tongue out to taste the air.

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

Her heart starts to beat faster. She doesn’t quite know what to do—they’re so damn fast and the prospect of facing another wriggling tail isn’t appealing. The gecko takes a hesitant step forward. Cocks its head. She gets the strangest sense that it regards her with an equal intelligence.

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

Something soft and small lands on her head, and she cringes, brushes it off—another gecko. Skin pale as milk, it tumbles to the dark floor, its tail separating on impact. She watches the gecko scurry away with just a nub where its tail used to be, while the tail writhes and twists and flips.

Jesus Christ.

Chirp, chirp, chirp. Again something lands on her shoulder—another one, it hops down her elbow as three run out from under the bureau. One jumps on her bare foot, tries to climb her leg.

“Ugh! Fuck!”

She shakes the gecko off her leg—it lands on its back, twists quickly onto its belly—and then geckos start falling around her like rain.

Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. A whole symphony that’s nearly deafening.

She looks up and the ceiling is writhing with geckos, so many they’re crawling up and over and around each other, a tapestry of rippling white reptilian flesh.

She drops the specimen jar on the floor where it smashes, and—no . . . impossible—sees that the tail inside the jar isn’t a tail anymore; it’s a gecko again, one that tries to run up her other leg, while more drop on her head, her shoulders—she can feel something crawl down the back of her neck, under her shirt, tickling along her shoulder blades.

She bolts for the door—feet registering soft flesh squishing beneath her toes—but when she pulls the chair out from under the knob, tries it, the knob is firmly locked, or stuck, or broken. She rattles it, shakes it, desperately pulls on it with all of her might, but the damn thing won’t turn, and now there are so many geckos she’s practically ankle-deep in them—where the hell are they coming from!—they race up the walls, flood out of the armoire, the bathroom, and cover the lampshade, dimming the warm light. They climb up her legs, fall onto her shoulders, creep along her arms, and she madly tries to brush them off, but as she does their tails fall off, joining the wriggling fray on the floor as her heart pounds—the window.

She wades through the geckos, reaches the window, hands frantically searching for the lock—there is none, it’s just a single sheet of glass, no way to open it, escape.

And then she sees something outside. A girl, standing just under the canopy of a palm tree. She wears a simple white shift, no shoes. A shadow obscures her face.

Julia pounds on the window to get her attention, “Over here! Let me out! Open the door! Open the door!”

The girl shifts her weight from one foot to the other, considering.

Julia pounds on the window so hard her hands hurt. She’s surprised the glass doesn’t break, fracture. “Please!” she shouts. “Please!”

But the girl just turns her back and slips into the dark leaves of the jungle, disappears.

And Christ, the geckos are now knee-high, she’s going to drown in the things if she doesn’t escape . . . but wait. . . .

Something’s not right, her feet don’t feel right, they feel like . . .

 . . . like they’re standing in mud. Distantly she hears the rush of wind in the trees, a sound that grows louder, eventually overpowering the cacophony of geckos chirping. The bungalow shimmers, and black spots gather at the corner of her eyes until they take over completely. She smells something fragrant, like a night flower blooming, feels the soft breath of a breeze tickle her neck.

She opens her eyes.

Finds herself in jungle brush, facing a low wall constructed entirely of lava rocks, more of that white mildew or fungus running up and along it like veins. Two bamboo poles crossed in front of her, each capped with a battered white ball of some kind. The poles look old, weathered, like they’ve been there for centuries.

Is this real?

She looks down at her feet—she’s standing in a puddle of mud, scratches on her legs. She absently reaches into her hair, feels the debris of leaves and twigs. Overhead the palm trees sway; she hears the rush of the sea breeze through the fronds. Insects buzzing.

I was dreaming. I must have been sleepwalking.

But that’s never happened to her before. Insomnia, yes, but finding herself outside . . . Where is she anyway?

She turns and sees the moon is higher in the sky, still bright enough that it illuminates the cove, the cabins by the pier, the small cluster of bungalows on land that overlook the beach. She must be about a good quarter mile away. It shakes her, to have been compelled so far by her subconscious.

Chirp.

A gecko clings to a nearby leaf. She never would have seen it if it hadn’t made a sound—it’s just the shadow of an outline against the background of the leaf.

It jumps away from the leaf, onto the wall, and then behind it, into the land that, according to Isaac, is forbidden to enter.