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WHEN THE SUN SET P.J. had spent the majority of the day packing things into cardboard boxes. Between his clothes, his sneakers, and his random bric-a-brac, he realized what he actually had. Nothing. The uniform he'd wear. The sandals. Half-empty bottles of sun lotion or hair shampoo. His laptop and phone and their respective chargers. He dug out the dark green shirt from the University of South Florida. He felt the cloth in his hands and looked at the bull stitched onto the breast pocket.
There were some people, P.J. thought, that were on a track from the start. With each passing institution they came closer to their goals in life. Grade school to high school to college to a career. Even more abstract institutions like brotherhood and parenthood and love and anger and spite. All of the wheels lurched forward in one direction. These experiences were like stonemasons and they crafted statues of men and women, formed people into what they were supposed to be. A great sadness filled P.J. as he felt the shirt in his hands. There was an absence of that track. A sort of directionless so profound it was as though it was never meant for him. The sailor looked to the bluff and the ship rocked unsteadily. Beneath it, a great mass swam. The glass of the worlds. The one side and the other.
At two in the morning P.J. was asleep and Dennis left the apartment. He was nervous and when he dialed Max's phone number – now blurry and smudged in the napkin – his hand shook.
"Where should I go?" His voice squeaked, a betrayal of his tough-guy persona.
The drive to Max's motel was faster than Dennis had anticipated. He was queasy and his clothes were hot – an all black wet suit he changed into when he got in the car. Tight on his legs and arms. Something he nearly out grew either through age or because of his stomach. When he pulled up into the driveway of the motel he saw Max standing outside by the door. He flipped off his headlights and got out of the car. Dennis looked foolish and he felt it too. Max laughed audibly and the sweat on Dennis's neck increased, now with embarrassment.
"I'll drive," Max said.
They took his car and drove in silence the entire way. For Dennis, this was him running down the hall to wake up his brother all over again. He hoped to find nothing in the man's house. To open the closet in the bedroom or peek under the bed with a flashlight. There is no monster in the darkness. There's nothing. And in that nothing will be a reassurance of the order of the world.
For Max, it was taking the backpack off his shoulders and dumping it out. His guilt and shame and dread. Like he was using borrowed time. Like he was overstaying a welcome. It was a purpose to redeem himself to himself. He's not the sadistic creep that preyed on Haley for some self-serving ego trip. He's a good man. Had been for a long time even if he didn't believe it.
The car pulled up next to the small house. Max cut the lights. The place sat there in the dark. It seemed to give off a drone. Like its very atoms were shaking in anger. Like the wood and mason that made it were seething evil with rage.
"Now what?" Dennis asked. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. He felt vulnerable for the first time in a long time.
"I don't think anybody's home."
"Yeah. I don't think he's been home in a long time."
"What if he's out drinking with friends, and he's gonna come home drunk and mad?"
"Do you think he's out drinking with friends?"
There was a pause.
"No," Dennis admitted.
The moon was shrouded in clouds and streetlights of the main street walk were far behind and even the pier way out there was dimmer than usual. Max silently opened the car door and closed it behind him. He made sure to keep the car unlocked in case of a hasty retreat, and Dennis followed him to the front door.
"It seems pretty empty to me," Max said. The crashing shore just yards away seemed loud. The air was breezy but still too warm even in the night.
"What are we looking for exactly?" Dennis whispered from behind.
"Your brother said this guy was up to no good. So look for anything that either proves him right or wrong. Here, take this," and Max handed Dennis a flashlight.
"Why are you doing all of this?" Dennis asked.
And the question fell on Max just like it did before when Quinn asked it.
"What do you mean?" Max whispered back. The two were crouched at the front door. Hidden in shadow.
"You don't know me or P.J."
"It's not about you. Not anymore. It's about my friends and about finding out what happened. It's not about you at all."
"Sorry."
Max turned to the door and tried the handle and it was locked. They crouched quietly in the dark and in the shadow of the front door. Headlights, far away, passed by and disappeared in the distance. Dennis strained to hear people playing on the beach, and he could see no bonfires in the distance. Then he felt more scared for he realized that they actually were alone. Anything could happen to them.
"Let's do a window," P.J. said and the duo moved quickly and quietly around the corner to the first boarded up window they reached. He picked up a rock by the edge of the driveway and raised it high. He struck it down hard and level with the glass and it cracked in a mosaic of reflection and then Dennis nudged it just hard enough for the panel of glass to separate and cascade into the house.
Immediately and without warning a foul odor raced through the hole in the window, and like a deluge, it overwhelmed the two boys and they gagged and coughed. It was of rotten fish, weeks old, salty and putrid. The ocean, lapping against the dark blue sand only added to the sensation and Dennis put his hands on his knees to steady himself while Max threw his back against the old wall and coughed violently.
Far away, in his bed, P.J. tossed and turned in his sleep. Under his eyelids his eyes darted back and forth. In the darkness of his mind he saw the ocean, vast and ominous as it was. Soaring back and forth, diving deep and swirling in the rays of the moonlight, cold and unforgiving. And yet deeper and deeper and deeper he went, til he was cold and tight and could only see, not feel, but see how deep the darkness went, and it went forever. And if he was quiet enough, hushed and still, he could hear the conversing of different entities, perhaps different deities, in their own esoteric language. Their very voices felt immense and destructive, like a gas that seeped into your lungs and destroyed you from the inside, from the soul. But he swam on deeper and deeper, his legs moving slow and with struggle like he was in mud or thick snow. Soon the caverns of a trench opened, and soon the mouths of the caves revealed themselves but he only sank downwards, past trees of coral and past mountains of stone and even deeper until he heard the man's giggling high pitched gibberish – and in response to the gibberish came a booming growl and the gibber replied back and quickly P.J. jolted awake and screamed in terror, for though he did not know what they were saying, his soul felt in danger.
Max reached his arm into the hole and unlatched the window. He slid it up. The cardboard and newspapers wrinkled, folded, and then fell.
Then Max climbed in.
Dennis, more nervous than he'd admit, did one last scan around him. He was far from anyone that could see him in that darkness. Even the sky seemed to have its curtain drawn and when he stared into the black square of the window it seemed more and more like a black hole of some kind. As he looked into the foul black the faint lapping of the ocean seemed to grow lighter and lighter until it stopped and the cars passing by on the street almost disappeared. Then a flashlight inside the hut turned on and started wagging around, an illuminating cone bouncing around like a beacon.
"You coming?" Asked a faint voice.
Dennis nodded and climbed in and joined the other. Inside, he felt scared. Though the hut was of a small size and livable proportions it seemed claustrophobic. To Dennis the ceiling was inches above his head and each wall seemed an elbow's distance away. It reeked of rotten fish and the smell hung inside your throat and nose. Dennis's mouth started to produce saliva and it grew wet preparing for vomit. His stomach was light and airy and the foul briny smell stung his eyes. He tried to recuperate himself while Max bounced all around the small hut shuffling through everything with his flashlight.
"Are you finding anything?" Dennis asked. There was a fold out chair with newspapers on it and he pushed them aside and sat down and tried to catch a breath. The walls seemed wet and dripping with humidity and his palms shook cold and clammy. "This place is killing me, man," Dennis continued, "This smell will kill me, I swear." And he listened in the darkness for a reply from the journalist.
The hut was no bigger than a large public bathroom but Max sounded far away, like the sound in the walls didn't carry at all, but rather, stayed there, stagnant and dying, never to reach its destination. Dennis flipped on his flashlight and looked around staying seated. The wet suit he was wearing was suffocating him. He could feel the skin on his arms and chest push back against the foam neoprene. He pointed the flashlight around the room. The small circle of yellow light trailed the dark gray walls and up to the low discolored ceiling. The circle made its way to the floor where stacks and stacks of opened and closed books were scattered all over each other. Big open glossy pictures of great whites and tiger sharks and anatomical diagrams of hammer heads and white tail reef sharks and even threshers and blues. His circle of light danced on the images and the glossy pictures seemed to glow back as if the sharks, with their dead black eyes, were making a note of his intrusion. The light moved along the floor to a pail in the corner filled with fish halves and heads. And up along the walls were tacked pages of what had to have been Rory's bible. Pages describing Matt Hooper's death and the death of the child and pages describing the ocean and any page that even mentioned the great white. Words seemed scrawled onto the walls in thick permanent marker. Words like CARCHARODON written and misspelled numerous times CHARCHADON CHARCADON CARACADON CHARCHARON CARON CHARCH CARCADD and other words like CARCHARIHINUS also misspelled and other such identifiers.
"This guy really was a shark freak, huh?" Max's voice bounced from around the corner. Dennis couldn't understand how light it sounded, so unburdened with dread. The question seemed so innocent like it wasn't clued in or processing everything correctly.
Dennis mustered his strength and stood up. He stepped over the spread of images on the floor.
"Did you find anything?" he asked. He hoped for a No, so he could run back to his brother and wake him up and tell him everything was fine. And then a thought dripped into his head. He was waking himself up. Through all the years of shaking P.J. awake and telling him there were no monsters he was also telling himself. By reassuring his brother year after year, time after time, he was speaking into existence a reality his own mind felt comfortable with. Right here in this hut he could feel the truth. He had been lying to P.J. every time he calmed him down. There were real horrors outside in space and in the cosmos and in the ocean. And right now, they just walked into its den.
Dennis could see the way Max held his arms close. He was putting on an act. It was clear he felt it too. He was fighting off the cold from stretching its fingers through the cracks of the car door. That cold Vermont night so long ago, the fear of being taken in, the fear of being punished for your life rested on Max's face, barely visible from behind the flashlight.
P.J. had always been right, but Dennis still needed to help him.
"Not yet," Max answered. "I'm about to check his bathroom, though. I've just been struck by his kitchen here. Look at all this," Max said shining his light on the countertop filled with silver reflecting buckets. A ladle stuck out of one and Dennis walked over to see the contents. Each one had a different amount of chum and the pools reflected back dark red.
"No wonder it smells so bad in here," Dennis said but Max had already headed to the bathroom. "I can't tell if the dude likes sharks or wants to be one."
There was no sound.
"Max?"
The call fell flat in the black house, seemingly swallowed whole. Even the ocean outside seemed nonexistent. Everything was hushed and the dying circle of his flashlight waved around the small space searching for a presence other than his own.
"Max?" Dennis called again. He shuffled slowly to the door of the bathroom. The glow from under must have been Max's light. Dennis approached the door and eased it open. It creaked heavy and another foul odor rushed past Dennis trying to escape. Max kept his light trained on the bathtub and Dennis, without delay, flipped on the bathroom light. The pale room lit up in the bright light from the ceiling and Dennis saw the tub and forced himself back out of the room to catch his breath.
"What the fuck is that? Jesus fuck," Dennis exhaled, breathing heavily, doubled over. He had given up any tough man façade he had donned.
"I guess it's food," Max said staring at the contents of the tub. Inside was a pile of various carcasses. Half eaten dogs with matted fur and maggots lay intertwined with bitten up seagulls and fish. Cats with huge fist sized chunks of meat missing from their bloodied rotten bodies lay tangled with rats of the same mutilation. A duck, bitten off at the neck, was stuffed in the corner with its coagulated blood smearing everything.
"How the fuck are you calm?" Dennis asked.
"I just don't know what I'm seeing," Max said and then Dennis understood. Max's fear didn't reveal itself the same. It was deeper set and more troubling. Max's fear, his pure dread, had nestled itself tightly in the pit of his stomach. The damage it was causing was imperceptible but devastating like poisoning a rootstock. "It's like he was tasting them all."
A cold sweat intensified on Dennis's neck His wetsuit grew even tighter. "I gotta get out of here," he said. He made his way to the window he had entered. "Max, we gotta get out of here. We gotta call the cops!" He shouted, his terror turning into anger. He shined his light on more of the pictures of the deadly fish and he kicked a pile and it scattered into the darker corners of the hut.
There was a flash of light from the bathroom and Dennis turned. And then another flash came, briefly casting a pale glow to all of the surroundings, lighting up the pages and the sharks on the wall – all staring with wide eyed sentience. Dennis trembled. Max appeared holding his phone. He walked over to the counters and took more pictures of the chum and even more of the floor and walls.
"Know what I noticed?" the journalist asked, standing still.
"You mean other than all of this?" Dennis replied, his hand on the window's edge already.
Max looked around one final time before explaining, "There's no bed."
The island had reached its darkest hour and P.J. was alone on the beach. He hurried to the shore line, tense with an anticipation he was brewing in his sleep. In his dreams. When he reached the water's edge his face crumbled and he put his hands to his head in denial and in fear. Again, just like last time, it was still. Not a wave. Not a ripple.
The water lay solid like black marble extending out. He refused to step in it as before. He feared the way it lay dormant. But it didn't rest long before producing another horror. He heard thumping and a stifled, airless scream like in a vacuum. He looked down and tears welled up in his eyes. Beneath the surface of the water was a girl's face, horribly disfigured, staring back at him, screaming, hitting and punching to break free from her watery imprisonment, but it had the same effect as when someone hit the bottom of his old boat. He fell to his knees and tried to push through the water but couldn't. It bent and morphed like a curtain of plastic or a melting glass. He banged his fists and the woman, suspended in her own wet hell, screamed muffled. She was maimed and was missing an arm and only when P.J.'s eyes adjusted did he realize it was Haley. He banged on the glass-water hard and violently and soon Haley was joined with a smaller, paler body. It was the boy. His head was halved from the back and spilling out contents that remained suspended in the water floating out like krill. The bloody meat from their wounds seemed to float in all directions but the two could not break free from this amnion. P.J. banged harder on the glass water. He screamed for help but then he found himself splashing around crying and yelling. The victims were gone and were replaced by shallow water and deep dark sand and P.J. clawed the sand and searched the water that now regained its undulating flow. The images poured through his fingers. The blood and thick rotten flesh that he saw so vividly was gone. It was the Bog Man all over again.
Then his brother pulled him out of the water and dragged him to the hard sand and dropped him on his back. P.J. shrieked and hollered and fought but the light from the second man's flashlight showed the face of the first.
"Did you see that? Did you see that?" was all he asked, pressing his chest as if to stop a heart attack.
"Are you okay?" Dennis asked. He had saved him again.
Then P.J. saw the reporter.
"What's going on?"
"Max and I went snooping around," Dennis explained, "And you're right." Dennis paused to regain his composure. He kneeled down. He felt close to P.J. in a way he hadn't in some time. Behind him Max stood. With each breeze he looked off, surveyed, and wondered if he was going to spot some shade coming after him in a full tilt sprint. Wondering what he would do if that happened.
"He's not human, or if he is, he's different. Very different."
Then Dennis saw a fear of realization in P.J.'s eyes. They were wide and his eye brows furrowed in confusion.
"You went into his house?"
"We had to find information," Max piped out, defending Dennis. He stepped forward to assert his claim. P.J. climbed to his feet.
The three of them stood there on the cold dark sand, heretics to the new cause. Then the tide started to make its way back. It seemed foreign though. The universe, dark and massive and spiraling out of control, headed recklessly to the maelstrom beneath. It picked up speed. Giant revolutions faster and faster. The little stars in the sky were few and far between and the journalist and the younger brother both looked at P.J., who had become so damaged and weak. His soul limped and his eyes were flat and wooden. Max shifted his footing in the sand. P.J. spoke.
"Do you understand what you've done? If he finds out he'll go berserk."
And that's what happened. Because over near the hut, the water produced the acolyte once again, born into the world to feed his masters in the other. The water's edge was nothing more than a threshold to his newfound home and he crossed it, his webbed and slimy feet picking up sand as he went. The crown of his baldhead was beginning to ridge back to his neck and his eyes were a deep obsidian nudging out a thin wire of sclera. His nose was sharp and long and his lips were mangled from his teeth constantly biting on them and they hung from his jaw like ribbons. His hands were fully webbed and his spine jutted out like a valley jagged and unsightly. With every step he felt the subtle vibrations of simple grains of sand falling over each other. He could feel the way the palm trees bent. He could smell the rubber on the streets. He trudged up the dune to his house and was taken aback when he smelled the neoprene of a wetsuit. He barged into his house and growled. He searched every corner as if to catch an intruder by surprise. He could smell even stronger the scent of skin and sweat, two different kinds. As he marched through the house he felt the vibrations of the shards of glass shaking quietly on the floor. He rushed over and searched until he found the hole in the window and its latch unlocked. An anger over took him and he yelled and punched and kicked. He gnashed his jaws and paced around the house and his teeth cut up his own mouth and soon it bled down his chest.
Quickly a great appetite overtook him. He went to his bathroom but kept the light off. He looked at the tub of carcasses and recalled all of his attempts at eating them. But now he was stronger. More vicious. Hungrier. He kneeled down beside the tub and began with the cat. He didn't finish until the tub was empty and even still his hunger was insatiable. By the time he was done the whole bathroom was red and his stomach hung large and distended and even still the anger in his body grew. But his divine transformation was not yet complete and he vowed to expedite the process by any means necessary.
When he was down there, floating prostrate, blue as ice, Rory watched with beady eyes and a rapid heart the colossal beasts glide by, their fins sails of the deep, their tails heinous. The scariest part of all was that it was shrouded in mystery. The cloak of uncertainty wrapped Rory up in everything he did and everything he thought. He had the thought that though everything is worth understanding, not everything is understandable. At first that notion frightened him, but slowly it became a blanket, keeping him warm, assuaging his worries.
The great blackness inside him, clawed and malicious, seethed heavily. His eyes were empty. His nails were jagged. A great dense hatred sat inside him like a star, ready to nebula out and consume consume consume. It was never his plan to betray his kind. It was only after they betrayed him did he understand his place in the Way. The monsters beneath passed by gently, sounding in the current. They gave a knowing nod to him to say that, yes, they understood, and, no, he needn't fear it here.