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THE THREE OF THEM BICKERED angrily throughout the night. They jittered with fear and were cold with anticipation.
“I’m going to the police,” Max decided. He stood up. Maybe subconsciously he put his chest out more than usual.
“Let's just forget about it and leave this island,” P.J. insisted. He ran his hands through his curly locks, now damp with sweat and seawater. “We’re running out of time.” He explained. His eyes darted around the room looking for nods of agreement.
“If we don’t tell anybody, then more people could get hurt,” his young brother retorted. Max agreed with him.
“When I go home and you’re not with me what am I supposed to tell dad?” P.J. asked Dennis.
The ceiling fan spun slowly and the silence of the room beset the three. With the balcony door closed the room grew stuffy. Finally, there was a concession.
“Okay. Fine,” P.J. said locking eyes with Max, then drifting slowly to Dennis. “Go to the police.”
Realized he’d been found out, Rory set his house on fire. He gathered all the photographs and books into a pile and he doused it with lighter fluid. He knew it was no longer his real home. His real home was several yards from where he stood, deep in the lapping of the waves and the pressure of the sea. Before he lit his home on fire he grabbed the copy of the book he had kept hidden away in his dresser. Many of the pages were tacked on the walls and the book felt light and small in his hand. He looked at the cover longingly then he kissed it and thanked it before he tossed it on the pile and set the flaming match on it. He stepped back and watched the orange monster spread its tendrils and flick its tongues. As the orange light danced on his face, it resembled some fabled telling of Hell. The monster in the darkness and the fire and the blood on the walls and in the kitchen in pails. Rory stepped back to his front door. He watched the fire leap to the walls. The tacked on newspapers ignited in brilliant portraits. Then he left and closed the door. He circled the perimeter of the house over the light orange sand illuminated by the roaring windows.
He stood on the water’s edge and watched the black hut scream in the night. Smoke rose in plumes and blotted out the few remaining stars of the world, like a beacon signaling that now all hope was either lost or found. Soon the fire broke the windows and reached up and grabbed a hold of the outside walls.
There was a memory Rory had from a long time ago. When he was a child and it was Halloween he watched a jack-o-lantern on a porch slowly collapse on itself. Something set up and built by a loving family to scare and be ghoulish, seen in the cover of night, a flickering face inviting the damned. But then, like that, the memory was clouded. Rory found it hard to focus. His memories weren’t his own anymore. They were clouded with visions of water and coral and massive bone white structures reflecting back iridescent like a light show in the darkness of a void. They were the thoughts and memories of his kin. Tracers of light flicked from the burning flames. A great beast flowed before his thoughts. His head pounded.
The hut was soon engulfed in flames on the gray sand of the dark blue night. The nearby brush of his dirt plot ignited and the driftwood on the sides of his house soon too burst into flames like a faggot of the dark ages. Rory stood on the water’s black edge, the threshold to his world, the orange and red dancing its dance, flickering on his mangled visage. The snapping of wood and the popping of flames awoke him from his trance and he walked into the water deeper and deeper until he swam long and hard north past the pier where he found a jetty of white stones branching far out into the water and snug and tight in them he watched the house burn, but he did not sleep.
The arson did not go unacknowledged. The papers inside charred and blackened and curled and the roof began to grow weak and slowly cave in. In no time the fire trucks of Marisol Island raced towards the spot blaring their sirens and colors. The attempt at rescuing the house was pointless and soon it fell in on itself. Smoldering ashes leapt high in the air and the surrounding sand was blackened and it seemed as though the orange light remained even after the fire was out, twirling languidly on the few palm trees nearby and the street that passed behind.
The trio was ignorant to the goings-on just outside of the room. They drank and plotted and through the duration of it P.J.’s head was miles away. They resolved to let Max tell Chief Eugene first thing in the morning and to show him the photographs he’d taken with his phone. Before long the small hours of the morning were approaching and P.J. stood up and limped to his bed, and he turned in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. Max and Dennis spoke to each other and then Dennis looked up to P.J. and said goodnight and P.J. hesitated and then said it back. He went to his bed and collapsed into a feverish slumber.
He dreamt of a great grayness passing through the water deep and profound. It had a mouth immeasurably wide, perhaps miles and miles from end to end. Teeth like mountains crushed side by side and everything fell into each other into the gaping maw. He dreamt of the body, its planet-sized skeleton on dried land eons old. Settlers, primitive and hairy, would camp in the valleys between the teeth, and maybe some would venture deep into his sun-bleached labyrinth of a skeleton. P.J. dreamt that he, too, was a settler. He had a rucksack on his back and stood atop of the colossal fish. The ridges of its skeleton were like houses but onward he climbed, making his way to the head. It stretched on before him forever and the bone was blinding white. Deep down below the caverns were adorned with paintings of blood and sacrifices inside. People shuddered in the shadow of its immense fins and P.J. kept on hiking. The primitive people with their big jaws and deep-set eyes watched him and shrank away. They foolishly thought they had conquered the leviathan. And P.J. soon was on the skull of the beast before he realized the sun was to eclipse. He looked down while the other ape-men looked up and screeched and ran and when the blackness cloaked the world with a shout he was the only one to notice the behemoth resurrect. It began to thrash around and carve up the land like a derailed train. The people resting in its maw were ground to a dust and the people in the body fled through the spaces between the bones. The hunched, sloped, people ran and shouted and hurled spears and rocks at it but they were paperclips to a wall. P.J. held on tight as the leviathan set forth towards the water and as it slithered back the sea level quadrupled and P.J. rode it to the depths. And the sun never came back.
After the brothers went to sleep Max stepped out into the hallway of the apartment building. He set the door ajar behind him and called Quinn. It was late, almost dawn, and then the phone rang a few times before he answered.
“When I said call late I meant around midnight,” he said. He was half asleep. Eyes closed. Max could he hear him shuffling on the bed, trying to stay comfortable, trying not to be forced into waking up for the day.
“I’m sorry,” Max said. “I’ll let you sleep.”
“It’s almost five. I think I can see the sun rising.”
“Just didn’t want you to worry about me.”
There was a small laugh from the other side.
“I wasn’t that worried,” Quinn said. “When are you coming back?”
“Not sure anymore. Soon though.”
“Well text me when you are sure.”
They said goodbye and Max rested against the stucco wall of the unit. The lights above were on a timer and in an hour or so the sun would come up and the lights would turn off. Right now he stood under the fluorescents. The pink of the new day was coming over the island, but it looked sickly. Pallid. The blush of measles or lupus. A quick breeze came through the walkway and Max shivered.
In the morning there was a dense fog that coated Marisol Island. Faint squawks of seagulls were heard and the beach was unoccupied for there were fears that a storm was approaching. During the earlier hours firefighters and police inspectors tiptoed through the debris of Rory’s shack. They stepped over fallen wood and over piles of ash and soot. They wiped the ash away from walls but everything was dead.
Neither Max nor Dennis knew of what had happened until well into the midday when Max drove back to his motel. The fog was thick and as Max drove past the house he saw the wreckage. The police and inspectors walked high stepped and carefully like they were from another planet, and he watched them peer and peek through an environment they barely understood. A great nervousness overwhelmed him and he dialed Dennis’s phone.
“Dennis,” Max said, “He burnt the house down.”
Dennis sat up in his bed. The morning taste in his mouth left crust on the corners. He rubbed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“The shark guy’s house. It’s burnt down. Totally leveled. I just drove past it.”
“What? How?” Dennis asked. He stood up and pinching the phone between his ear and his shoulder he hopped into his khaki shorts and sneakers. He then put on his blue uniform as an excuse to go to the area.
“I don’t know how, man. It’s just... gone.”
“Fuck,” Dennis said, “Well when you go to the Chief and explain then –
“No way,” Max interrupted, “I can’t go now. None of us can. How can I show pictures of the inside of a house that I broke into the night it burned down? They’ll blame me for it!”
Dennis, defeated, sat on the edge of his bed. His shoes were untied and he looked down at them. He felt like he had been cornered. He felt like every move they’ve made had been the wrong one.
“Dennis? You there?”
“Yeah.”
“What do we do?” Max asked pulling into the parking lot of the motel. He had his headlights on because of the fog and now they shone brightly on the outside walls.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Let me ask P.J., I guess,” and Dennis hung up. He stood up and walked through the house to P.J.’s room and knocked on the door. When Dennis told him what had happened P.J. was relieved.
“What’s our next move?” Dennis asked the ground.
“We leave,” P.J., said, his words final. He turned around and started to get dressed. “I’m going to dad’s today. I’m telling him I’m moving back for a short while.”
“Okay. What about Max, though? What do we say?”
“He’s not our responsibility,” said P.J. The coldness struck Dennis. “If he knows what’s good for him, then he’ll stop too.”
Dennis stood there in silence. He had to go with P.J. It wasn’t a choice.
“Let me say bye.”
In the motel, Max uploaded the pictures he took. He pored over them looking for some hidden clue to an unasked question but there was nothing. Then he did his research and he learned in great detail what attracted sharks and when was the time to find them. He went out to the bait shop and bought a bucket of chum. He bought a crowbar as well and he went back to his room and saw Dennis on the curb.
“We’re leaving, but I’m coming back,” Dennis said.
The two stood in front of each other. Max set the chum on the asphalt. Dennis looked at it. Then he studied the crowbar in Max’s hands. It was a heavy dark red metal with a shepherd’s crook.
“What are you going to do?”
“Bay Breeze up north keeps kayaks locked away in a shed. I was gonna borrow one and take it out.”
Dennis stood in puzzled silence.
“Something is out there,” Max continued. “We know that much. He’s out there hiding who the fuck knows where. And something is in the water. I have this theory that he’s feeding things to sharks. I think he’s kidnapping people like Haley and that little boy and I think he’s cutting them up and mixing it with chum and feeding them to sharks.”
“So how is this going to help them?”
“Nobody is gonna see me. I’m gonna glide up and down the shoreline and just keep an eye out.”
“And what about this?” Dennis asked. He kicked the bucket of chum. It was heavy and filled to the brim.
“I’m gonna attract some. You’ve seen the papers. Nobody has seen the sharks. Nobody even knows what type they are. But if I get pictures of them, at least of their fucking fins, then we can go from there. We can estimate their size, their diet, their patterns. We can have something to go on.”
The two stood there. It was past noon. Dennis wiped sweat from his brow. Then he dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out a key card.
“I can’t let P.J. do this by himself, but I am coming back. Take this,” he said. He handed the card to Max. “Just crash at my place. There’s no sense in you running up a bill at this shit hole. And we have to work together on this.”
“Look, you have a lot on your plate,” Max started. “Your brother needs you right now.” He was thinking of when Wes pulled him aside after the Haley incident. Max didn’t want to involve anyone else. He had to be on the cross. It was his guilt. His redemption. If something happened to Dennis, or to P.J. because Dennis wasn’t there, he’d never be the same again. Here, right now, he was barely holding on.
“We’re all scared. But P.J.’s on a different level. This thing has gotten into his head. He’s having nightmares, I can hear him shouting and talking in his sleep. He’s not thinking rationally.”
Dennis looked at the chum and the crowbar and considered his remark. The two shared a silence. Then Dennis walked past Max to his car.
“You’re a good brother,” Max said after him. “He’s lucky to have you by his side.”
Dennis put his hand on the door. He thought about what Max said, but he didn’t feel like it was true. He still felt like he was trying to overcompensate for something. “Just be careful in the water,” he replied before climbing into the car.
Dennis and P.J. drove east. They left the fog behind on Marisol Island and soon enough the sunny road presented itself and they drove along. P.J. felt the heat of the sun through the windshield and on the dash and he took it as an omen of a good path. He felt free from his fears. For a moment he was unburdened by any goings-on back behind him. He knew Dennis viewed him as a coward, but he didn’t care. His brother, slumped against the passenger door, thought long and hard about what he had seen in that house. He thought about Max too and what he was planning for the night.
“I feel better already,” P.J. said.
There was no reply. The road ahead came and went. The white support cables of the bridge looked like bleached bones under the sun. It reminded P.J. of his dream and the seatbelt felt tight on his chest.
“Are you excited to see dad?” P.J. asked. He nudged Dennis in the thigh to elicit a response. P.J. wanted to ask the obvious. What’s going on? What’s wrong? But he knew the answer.
“He’s crazy to stay back there,” P.J. said. He was referring to Max. But Dennis said nothing. “It’s stupid. We have no idea what that guy is capable of. How dangerous he is. And I know you don’t believe me but something insane is happening. Something I can’t explain.” He sat up and tightened his grip on the wheel. “He’s gonna get himself killed. And he was gonna get you hurt too. You’re my little brother, I’m supposed to protect you.”
“You’ve never protected me a day in your life.”
It came out faster than he expected. Dennis sat up. He took a sharp inhale like he could suck it back in, but the words were there in the car rotting and smelling. He spoke more.
“It’s always been me protecting you. And that’s fine. But I don’t want you to pretend like us going back home is helping anybody but yourself. I just want you to be honest.”
“That’s not fair.”
“We could go to the police, we could help Max, we could warn people on the beach.”
“You didn’t see what I saw. You weren’t there.”
Dennis crossed his arms. He looked out the window and watched the water under the bridge. Small birds flew in formation just above the surface.
P.J. thought about the night before when they were all bickering and arguing in his apartment. He thought about how good it may have felt to haul off and punch Max out. He never had a flattering image of himself but compared to Max he felt even worse. Still though, the prickle of the water has stayed with him. The coldness of it when he fell in. The jaws of the shark reaching up through the bottom of the boat. He took his hand off the wheel and traced the scar under his shorts. Dennis watched him out the corner of his eye. Maybe he was right. He hadn’t seen what he saw.
When they arrived at their house, P.J. was flush with emotions and even Dennis, surprising himself, sat up in the passenger seat. The neighborhood was gorgeous and wealthy. The styles of the homes were Mediterranean and had long orange and brown roof tiles and deep dark blue windows and fountains in the front lawn. Long stretches of bright grass connected to horseshoe driveways and to multicolored bricks that bent their way up to two- sometimes three-door garages. It was a gated community and it sat about thirty minutes from any town and circled around a large lake in the center, despite every house also having a pool.
The two brothers drove through and they remarked on who still lived where and how this or that never changed. When the small car pulled up in front of the house P.J. stopped the car and looked at Dennis whose attitude changed but only a bit.
“Ready for this?” P.J. asked with a smirk. He tried to keep the mood light. He tried to act like they were there for a different reason.
“Are we going to tell dad the truth of why we’re here?” Dennis asked. He unbuckled his seat belt. His young face looked younger to P.J. in the shadow of their boyhood home. Like he saw all of his ages at once under the stressed face.
“Just let me do the talking,” P.J. said before he opened the car door.
In no time the sun approached the horizon. The day had been quiet and without beachgoers. The scorched plot of land had been wrapped in caution tape and left alone. The journalist spent a portion of the day on the phone with Quinn back in St. Pete. Again, Quinn asked, “Why?”
Max sat there in his room and packed up his things. He had told the woman at the front desk that tonight was going to be his last night renting. He spoke with Quinn while he shuffled around, and he did his best to explain to Quinn what he felt he owed. A part of him was upset that Quinn didn’t empathize to the same level. A part of him was upset that Dennis had left. He maneuvered away from specifics regarding why he was still not home and what he had found out exactly. Quinn sat at the kitchen table back at their apartment and listened. When they said their goodbyes there was a brief pang that Quinn felt in his chest. Max sounded hollow on the phone. He sounded stressed and cagey. Quinn held the phone to his lap and closed his eyes and hoped for good energy. Max hung up the phone and threw his belongings into his car, but he kept one bag in his room on his bed. It had towels, extra money, and a tape recorder that Quinn had given him a long time ago. He said he found it in a small shop and, in truth, bought it as a joke. That night they stayed up and got drunk and interviewed each other sitting cross-legged on Quinn’s bed. They liked to hear how they sounded when played back. They tried practicing their interview voices.
When the quilt of darkness fell thickest around the island, Max left his room. He carried the heavy bucket of chum in one hand and the crowbar in the other. He walked out far north to the beach property of another hotel called Bay Breeze and went to where they kept kayaks locked away. In the dead of the night, to the rhythm of the shore, he busted the padlock away with mighty swings of the heavy crowbar. The chum bucket sat nestled in the sand as he cracked away at the metal lock. Soon the wood around it splintered and fell away. The thin wooden doors of the shack creaked open and Max grabbed the kayak off the middle rack. It had two seats and he grabbed a double-sided oar and dragged it all to the water. The sky was a dark velvet as was the ocean and the sand was an even darker gray. His pale hands in front of him looked light blue like he was frozen in ice. He could not see the veins or the ridges like he could in the motel. There was no blood pumping. No life in their movement.
The kayak glided into the water without a sound. The waves came up and fell back down on to the sand and against them Max pushed the boat. He lifted the heavy chum bucket into the front seat and the kayak dipped with the weight. With his hands on either end of it he directed the kayak out and then climbed into it. He used the oar to push himself by digging into the wet sand and punting out. On that dark water he was barely perceptible. There was chill on the island. His shadow paddled out and nobody stood on the gray sand to watch or wave off. His hair blew back and his cheeks felt cold to the air, to the gusts of wind that bounced off the white caps and came bracing and wet. He dipped his hand into the water and trailed it around back and forth and watched the ripples and wakes spread out barely seen in the blackness of the water. The chum bucket in front of him sat squat and obtrusive. For a brief moment he imagined it to be Quinn sitting there in front of him. He remembered them getting into a water fight some time ago on Lettuce Lake and how with each splash of the paddle their boat rocked more and more. It was so hot that day. The mosquitos and the Spanish moss that hung from the boughs. The algae on the surface. He remembered how hot it was. He always remembered the heat.
Max grew emotional out on that water, though he couldn’t place why. His boat bobbed up and down with each black swell and he rested the wet paddle on his lap. He kept his back to the shore and looked out to the smudged horizon. It was too dark to tell where the water ended and the sky began. It was as if the water reached out far beyond and curved upward, expanding into the galaxy, covering the sky, and swallowing the moon like the circle of a well. There was a thick silence around him, under the crashing of the water that never ended. His kayak rose and fell and rose and fell and far off, in the water as well, a pair of black eyes watched him.
Max took off the plastic lid of the bucket and the smell overtook him. He was downwind of it, and it stung his eyes. With images of the now-in-ashes-hovel he recoiled in disgust. In the thin moonlight, like a veil, he inspected the thick goop sitting in the white bucket. He then realized he forgot a ladle for scooping the chum. He cursed to himself quietly. He was afraid to be heard. But the eyes in the water moved nearer. A nictitating membrane flicked across clouding the already black eyes. The face didn’t break the water. It laid just below like a polyp or a tumor.
He took out his phone and rested it between his thigh and the seat. He used the paddle of the kayak as a spoon and dipped the end into the chum. He then took it out and let it fall into the dark water where it dispersed and disappeared. Below the surface the chum swayed and floated and spread out like smoke. Its odious scent billowed with the current and flowed down and up and through noses unseen. But the black nightmare eyes drew nearer, the water breaking over the crest of the crown.
Again, Max dipped his paddle in and spilled some chum into the slick that flowed behind his kayak. He paddled himself around to face the shore and did the same and the slick flowed north, to his left. He spotted an apartment complex on the street across the sand and used it as a reference point to where he was going. He looked out to the right and to the left and not a soul was in sight. He dipped the paddle again and spilled the chum and the slick floated on. He paddled a little bit into shore, for a breeze blew on his neck and goosebumps rose on his skin.
When he saw the eyes in the water his first thought was that it looked like a cat. Cut gems in the darkness staring back. His apartment back home had cats around the building. They’d mewl and fight and play just beyond the reach of the light. When they’d turn to the balcony he’d see them – green, blue, a shimmer of colors that shift and fade and then turn to disappear. But then he knew it wasn’t a cat. The shape bobbed softly in the water and stared back at him. He wasn’t sure if the white glimmer was in the eyes themselves or if it was reflecting the moon above. It seemed small and from another world. Max’s hands began to tremble. He reached for his phone to take a picture. The flash was useless in that open space. It was bright from the phone for a second and Max saw the shape go back underwater. And then he got nervous.
He wanted the shape to get closer. Again, he dipped his paddle into the chum but in raising it he lost his grip and the paddle fell from his sweaty hands and bumped into the side of the bucket. With the weight from the paddle the bucket tipped to the left and fell to its side. A river of blood began to pour from the gaping mouth over the edge of the kayak right into the water. Max cursed again and leaned forward to straighten the bucket out. The paddle slid from his lap into the water and dipped down and began to float off. He reached for it and the weight of the bucket pitched in the other direction and the kayak tipped over entirely. Max fell into the warm black water. He felt the needles pierce his skin and cut his body in the same way P.J. felt nights before. The water was aggressive, barging its way into his pores, ripping at the soft hair on his body. But what’s more is that he heard the speaking of the devils below. In a foreign tongue, faint beyond the muffled surge of bubbles past his ears, he could make out distinct communications between the evil hateful beings. They wanted him for his arrogance. His eagerness to deceive. Max resurfaced coated in the chum he slicked. He gasped for air and tasted the copper of the blood on his mouth. The bucket sank deep and disappeared. Max felt an immense fear bolt through his veins. He could feel them watching him. He wiped the water from his face and grabbed onto the turned over kayak. And the eyes came closer.
Max, scared out of his wits, flipped over the kayak with all his strength and then swam sloppily to the paddle floating away. A fine panic began to excite his bones and he started to move faster but less precise. His splashing became erratic and the vibrations of his movements excited the hungry beasts of the deep beyond. They rose from out of the murky gray and hurried over, their thick leather tails cutting through the water. The black eyes of the crested crown eased on with patience, the moon reflecting off the bulb, single and idolatry. The webbed hands reached through the water below as if to halt any speedsters or charging bulls, and the bulls did question him, because splashing away like a child, right before them, was their third offering. But, no, the webbed hand stopped them, not to save the offering, but to stalk it.
Max thrashed around in the water and grabbed the paddle and made his way back to the kayak. He climbed aboard clumsily and without hesitation began paddling himself wildly back to shore. A rebellious fiend, one who ignored the webbed creature in the dark, swam and jolted into the back of the kayak, raising it a foot or so out of the water, and sending Max lunging forward, practically into the next seat. He let out a scream and looked behind him to see nothing but a splash, a seething of ocean, then nothing at all. The webbed acolyte begged for patience from his advancing authority and the deity obliged and sounded back through the murky water and circled back just to watch the show of the pathetic journalist yammer to himself and paddle wildly. Soon Max reached the shore and jumped ship. He hurried out of the water but the deep thick sand slowed him down. He lost his footing and fell and landed face down and then on all fours he scrambled out, not looking back until he was yards into the gray sand, covered in it, like a second skin. He watched the heavy water roll towards him and his heart mimicked a hummingbird. Beyond his knowledge, beyond his comprehension, eyes watched him just below the foam of the breathing gulf. Many many evil eyes. Intrinsically hateful. Malicious. They watched him black and beady and then they turned to their manservant, floating, crouched in the dark sand something amphibious and dolorous.
Max stood up and made a run for safety. The phone he had tucked by his side was long gone. His clothes clung to his body and the sea breeze was cold on his chest but onward he ran across the sand, parallel to the street, to where his motel sat, pink and stupid and dilapidated as it was. He kicked up sand as he went. In the water, parallel to him the acolyte swam, fast and easily. He soared through the water like a torpedo. His webbed hands propelled his enameled body with great energy and he brought forth the image he had of when the great white pursued Quint on the ship. A fitting grin straddled his hideous face and he soared on through the water, not cutting the surface, for his dorsal had not come in yet. The stars in the sky began to fade and dip, being pulled under.
Max ran and Rory swam and his mentors urged him on gnashing their teeth, violently swearing in a language unknown. Soon Max reached where his Motel was and he banked left and so did Rory, merging from the black water like a creature out of oil, born again to kill, baptized to enslave. Max’s wet footsteps slapped against the cement pavement leading to his little green door. Rory picked up fast behind him. The sand clung to his legs and onwards he ran, gaining onto the cement pavement too, just witnessing Max escape into his room. Rory ran, gray and hairless, across the building’s side until he reached Max’s door. Then he waited, not with his ear pressed to the door, but in silence, with his nose perched high, his core poised for vibrations.
Far away, in his own childhood bed Dennis laid on his covers. He did not sleep but, rather, stared at the darkness of the ceiling. The lights were off and his cell phone sat on his desk not two feet away. He looked at the familiar shadows of his room. Blobs of gray. Smudges of shapes. Posters and knickknacks. He didn’t miss any of them. He didn’t feel the nostalgia for them in the way he thought P.J. might. He didn’t want to be there in the smallness of it all. He will not remember his dreams in the morning and he will not hear from Max again.
Max’s fingers shook scared and confused over the motel phone. But before his brain could communicate to the rest of him what to do a great banging came at the door, like a shark slamming at the hull of a ship. The sound jolted through Max and then he dropped the phone. He leapt behind the bed, knocking over the lamp. It fell on its side and the shade shot a crooked shadow across the room like a crime scene. Again the loud slam came against the door. Then the knob wiggled violently. Then the slam came again.
With the help of the fallen lamp, Max dug through his belongings until he found the tape recorder Quinn had got him. He crouched behind the bed and talked fast and incoherent into the recorder. Soon he realized that the slamming had stopped. From under the door he could see the light return. The person on the other side had left.
Max slipped the recorder into his wet pocket. He grabbed his car keys out of the drawer and hurried to the blinds. Through the slants he saw nothing but the black, mostly empty, parking lot. Then he left his room. Nobody was around him, but he noticed wet footprints side by side with his, leading all the way up to his door, then off around a stone corner. His heart froze. That was the first time he realized that he was being chased. Not just in the water but out of it. Moreover, the footprints were bi-pedal. Whatever it was had legs. Whatever it was wanted him.
He tiptoed to the corner and peeked around. He saw nobody. The footprints went on growing fainter, fading in the dark. Max turned and hurried to his parked car and got in. The ignition roared on and the headlights lit up the ugly pink walls. Max finched, expecting to see some figure there, ghastly white in the headlights. But nobody was there. Max backed away and shot off towards Dennis and P.J.’s apartment there on the island, seeking some sort of safe haven that he will not find. As Max sped along the road, he wiped tears from his eyes. He pulled the recorder out again and kept talking. Kept explaining everything, from the beginning to the end, which grew nearer and nearer like a falling moon. He recounted when he first set off to Marisol Island and how he thought he’d be back with Quinn in no time. He recounted the details of meeting the Neil brothers and of the hovel they snuck into. He told about his trip in the kayak and how his intentions were foolish. He tried to find comfort in his own retelling of events. It was like watching a walkway get built stone by stone. But as he spoke objectively, it only made him more emotional; to narrate his past actions like he was reading a book, and to see that there were few pages left, and there was no way the story would tie up nicely. No way to run back to the start of the path where the first stone now lay weather-worn and cracked.
Eating at the diner adjacent to the apartment was Nina, lonely, and thinking about P.J. She understood that to visit P.J. again at his apartment would be inappropriate. Risky even. bBt she had a bottle of whiskey in her car that she could carry up if he wanted to party. She weighed the pros and cons in her booth.
She had developed the curves of a Columbian woman at a young age and there was a time, before she graduated high school, when guys of all ages would flock to her. But in college she had a hard time finding friends and partners of better repute. The guys that went after her felt they were owed her body, and the guys she wanted to be with were intimidated by her, and when she thought about P.J. and how sweet he was to her she grew insecure that it was only because he was drunk. There was something in her that wanted to know for sure if that were the case. She could handle the truth. She was strong in that way. For any other guy she wouldn’t even consider visiting his apartment uninvited, let alone for a second time, but there was something in the way he spoke to her and kissed her that inspired a sense of hope. It was because he was weak and moved with a sense of dread and worry. She could feel how scared he was. She wasn’t a romantic by most standards, but she knew what she wanted. It wasn’t to take care of him. It was to be there for him and to calm his soul. She felt that he had such a precious energy to him that if he were to turn into a puddle right then and there the world would be at a loss. She wanted to keep him awake and alert because there were glimpses of a genuinely sweet man with a kind heart and when his eyes looked into hers instead of darting around the room or looking over his shoulder, she could see in them someone who was tired of being scared.
If P.J. was to rebuff her, then she’d move on and forget about it. But there was a chance - a slight, minuscule chance – that they’d go out dancing again and drink and talk. She felt that she deserved to take that chance. She looked at her hands and thought of her sisters and of what they’d say or think if they saw this. Then she thought the other way. She decided that it was only embarrassing if she let it be. That was her motto in college. Her courageous and bold brand was secretly reinforced with wall after wall simply blocking out the embarrassment and toiling anxiety. She only needed the approval of herself.
One last try, she thought. And she paid her bill, got the bottle of Jack from her car, put it in her purse, and then walked to the same apartment building that Max raced to, pursued by an unseen predator.
When Max screeched to a halt in the parking lot he got out of the car, but then quickly returned. He threw his tape recorder on to the dashboard, slammed the door, and then ran up the wooden steps to the Neil floor. Nina, on the other side of the building, walked nervously and insecure up the wooden steps. She paused briefly on a landing and opened the bottle of whiskey and took a pull. Her face grew warm and flush. She climbed the steps some more, paused and took another pull. Her lipstick left a ring around the mouth of the heavy bottle.
There was a time back when she first moved to Marisol Island that this tactic worked. His name was Sammy and he was Mexican and she came to his house and he let her in. They spoke while she watched him cook dinner. They were together for the summer and one day he called it off and moved away. She never cried about it, but late at night she wondered where he went in such a hurry. She turned back to the open landing. She could see the diner she had just left, the side of the parking lot, and over, if she leaned out, the water. “I’m really glad you came by,” Sammy said while they drank in his apartment. She had rolled the dice and won. And now she was going to roll them again.
Back across, Max, terrified, took steps at a time before reaching the long gray hallway. He ran down, his lungs hurting and gulping breaths. He dug his hands in his pockets for the key card Dennis gave him. And he felt nothing. A wave of nausea come over him. He dug more in his pockets. There was nothing. Panicked, he wondered where it was. Did it fall in the water? Did he leave it on the counter in his room while packing? Then he realized it didn’t matter. It wasn’t with him.
He banged on the door of the apartment in hopes someone was home. Hoping somehow Dennis was back or never left at all. The lights above flickered. When Nina climbed into view she saw Max at the door. She shrank away, confused. She crouched low on the steps and peered over to see Max slam and cry at the wooden door to his safety.
Rory was soundless in his ascent. The creaks of the steps were masked by the loud bangs of the wooden door and the pleas of Max. Rory knew he had a brief window before people woke up to witness the scene so he picked up his pace and entered the narrow hallway, nude and menacing. His gray body was taller and the bulges of his bones were more contorted. His eyes were pitch black but glossy. His member was all but a fleshy mass attached to his slick gray veiny flesh. His hands were webbed, as were his feet, and his gross boney crown caught the fluorescent lights of the gray corridor. Nina witnessed this character before Max did and her stomach dropped heavy and low and she fell backwards onto the landing unsure of what she saw. Her breath escaped her. She felt tears come to her eyes. Who is that up there? What unspeakable terror charged down the corridor? And how far would it come?
The Acolyte stepped quickly and precise and when Max finally felt his presence it was too late. Max turned and tried to shout but the man knocked his head against the door with a mighty swipe of his leathery claw. Max’s head slammed against the door and his skin broke and a small stamp of blood sat there as he ricocheted to his right and fell to his side. Nina, far off, hidden from sight, but not from smell, cowered on the landing. She spun around thinking and panicking and then regained her position and continued to watch. The giant man stripped Max of his clothes and hoisted him high on his shoulders. Rory walked off down the hall but then stopped, catching a whiff of alcohol in the air. But, more intriguing, a good scent he couldn’t place. It was perfume but it was also skin and the oils of dark, curly hair. He turned to the stairwell and, trusting his new instincts, he headed that way fast and with intent. Before Nina could back down the steps he was already there before her, standing tall, blocking out the light of the hall behind him. He descended the few steps to her landing and she backed up to the metal railing that looked out. Rory put down Max’s body. He straightened his back and examined her with his black eyes. She saw her reflection in them, bent and warped on the sides.
“Please,” she cried.
“I w-will not k-ki-kill you,” he said growling, gurgling on spit. He stuttered when he spoke but it wasn’t from embarrassment. His numerous teeth cut his own lips and his black tongue was too big for his mouth. It sat folded over itself like a belt, getting cut and nicked with every word. He wasn’t meant to speak. Red blood trickled down his chin onto his bare chest in rivulets of crimson. And then he hit her across the head with his powerful fist. When she collapsed onto the ground the bottle of Jack spun out and under the rail and over the edge and crashed onto the street below. He hoisted her body over his shoulder, hoisted the boy’s over his other, and walked out with the both of them to the sand close by.
The breaking of dawn was less than two hours away and if anybody saw the creature with his two sacrifices they wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of it. But nobody was up. Even the squalls of the birds were absent. Rory made his way to the water slowly, his feet sinking deeper than usual, for the amount of weight on his back was the greatest it’s been. As he approached, the water’s surface grew more and more tumultuous. It was clear that his deities were growing restless, anxious, and thrashing about just beyond the slope. He couldn’t help but smile and maybe even blush. He reentered the water feeling at home. Soon it was up to his waist and the slope approached just a foot or so away. He could see the snarled faces of the beasts swimming into and over each other, their tails breaking water just to splash back down. Max opened his eyes. His vision was bleary and he was disoriented. He saw Nina’s face listlessly gazing back at him. For a second he thought he recognized her. Thought he knew her from the past. Her eyes fluttered and her vision refocused. She didn’t know who Max was, but she felt sorry for him. Then she thought of her sisters and hoped that whatever they were doing, they were having fun. And then both of them were dunked under.