Fathom (18 page)

She turned her head and eyed the place where her children had vanished.

“Not the tiniest fish,” it clarified, lest she infer its true intent. “Not the smallest water horse with a curled and coiled tail. Not the littlest crab with the most insignificant claws. I have not the will, nor the skill, and certainly not the desire to attract your wrath.”

She considered this.

The creature on the ground rested and struggled to pull itself back into a shape that would let it crawl away from her. It prayed to the universe or to the unseen that the water witch might swallow the lies and think no harder on the matter. It prayed that the long years between its exile and her outburst had dulled her memories. Let her contempt protect him. Let her disdain provide false proof.

It watched her eyes flicker with uncertainty. It had successfully worried her, but it had not completely thrown her off its treachery. Quickly, before she had time to give it any more credit, it added, “What reason could I possibly have to draw a goddess to me, when destruction is the finest treatment I deserve?”

She nodded, because it sounded like a fair plea—and it was presented in the obsequious manner she most preferred. As a matter of form, she pretended to object.
Be careful with the titles you assign, you low and ridiculous insect.
The pool at the sinkhole’s floor began to fill itself again as the water witch descended and returned the
liquid to its proper location.
Your praise is ill-considered,
she accused.
I do not trust you, and I do not believe you. Your treachery has passed into myth, and your deceptive spirit serves as a warning to all of us who remain. But no pathetic orphan could have crafted a signal so effective.

“I am a wretched ghost,” it affirmed, though it lent the admission more heartfelt misery than it would have liked. With exhaustive effort and a trembling twitch, it mustered enough stability to extend a penitent hand. “Pity your tragic servant, Mistress. I have meant you neither harm nor offense, and I only beg an undeserved pardon.”

That much is true; you deserve no pardon from me. You deserve no quarter, and no mercy.
Arahab turned away from the slimy patch of earth and drew herself down into the frothed and muddied pool.
We should have destroyed you long ago. We should have taken your last breath as well as your domain, and cast you into the formless void.

And the pool went still, its surface barely bubbling from the disturbance that the water witch left in its wake.

What was left of the creature’s battered shape cracked itself into a vicious smile. “Hag,” it spit. “You
tried.
”

Being Ware of Wishes

I
nsurance was not Sam’s passion. As far as he knew, it wasn’t anybody’s passion, but someone had to calculate and process it, and so far as the Bradenton Fire Company was concerned, that someone was Sam.

He sat sweating at his temporary desk in the purgatory warmth of the attic of the Anna Maria courthouse, and he scowled.

Upon the desk lay a letter from the county’s chief, its envelope cut and its contents spilled. Several phrases leaped up from the hastily handwritten note. One said, “No action necessary or practical at this time.” Another mentioned a conversation with the mayor. Yet a third indicated that perhaps Sam could find something better
to do with his free time than trespass repeatedly and to no real purpose on private property.

“It isn’t private property, exactly,” he complained to the empty room. “Not if no one owns it. It’s city property. Langan has to buy it from the city.”

The papers rustled in response, stirred by the chain-driven fan above and a quick, light breeze through the window behind him.

Besides, wasn’t he working? For Langan, if not for the fire department precisely, he was 100 percent on task—investigating a potential property for an out-of-town investor. Just because he wasn’t working for Chief Porter, that didn’t mean he wasn’t working.

The final line of the letter proposed that Sam locate Dave more or less immediately, and return with him to the mainland.

Sam had an assortment of arguments stacked up against it.

For one thing, he could barely stand the sight of Dave for more than an hour at a time, and he wasn’t looking forward to the journey home. For another, his bureaucratic little soul had hit its threshold for refusal.

He’d filed no less than a dozen letters with various island city officials, and down to the last scrap they’d been ignored. So he’d filed a second set of meticulous documentation about the goings-on at the beach house, and that second set had been likewise disregarded.

In person, then, he had addressed every correct and proper agency. They all rebuffed him, sometimes gently, sometimes condescendingly, and sometimes with outright anger.

He simply couldn’t understand why no one thought it was even
interesting
—much less important—that criminal activity was taking place in this closed, quiet community right beside the ocean.

Granted, he didn’t have a great stash of evidence to show.

For that matter, he remembered grimly, he had no evidence at
all. His carefully collected specimens from the courtyard had vanished from storage at the courthouse where he’d made his temporary headquarters; and no amount of outraged inquiry could retrieve the items or solve the mystery of their disappearance.

The secretary had stared at him as if he’d pulled a cat out of his pants when he suggested that she ought to look into this travesty, and possibly seek police intervention. She told him to notify the police if he liked. The policeman’s name was Bud, and he lived down by the lighthouse between the pier and the main road; but he’d gone down to Longboat Key for a fishing vacation, and he wouldn’t be back for a week.

Sam seethed at the unfair, incorrect, and inexcusable disorganization of it all.

Even when he took into consideration that this was a small city, accessible only by ferry, there was no good reason whatsoever for civic untidiness. If anything, he would think that a smaller population would make it easier to keep everything in order.

But no.

As long as things were quiet, no one cared what went on in the dark.

Well, Sam cared. Or at the very least, Sam was intensely interested—and he’d met with so much resistance that he couldn’t let it go.

Sometimes he wished he could be more like his traveling companion. Dave had long since let it go, or hell—maybe he never had it in the first place. If Sam knew Dave at all, Dave was down at the Sandbar trying to talk the man behind the counter into bringing out some of the bathtub liquor that everyone knew was made in the back.

Another insulting word blared up from the letter. “Impractical.”

If Chief Porter wanted to get technical about it, selling fire insurance on an island with no ready access to a fire company was
completely, ludicrously impractical—but people wanted it. The chief insisted that they could drive their American LaFrance pumper out from Bradenton in no time flat if the ferry was waiting right, and anyway, there was always the old engine stuck in storage.

Sam rose from the desk and pushed his shirtsleeves as far up his arms as the fabric would permit. The lone window behind him didn’t let in half so much breeze as heat, and he was warm enough from being angry.

Downstairs, the phone rang and the secretary answered it. Outside, a rickety truck rattled along the sandy street like a big mechanical insect.

“Also impractical?” Sam said aloud. “The steadfast refusal of proper pavement.” Even if the fire engine could arrive at the island in time to fight a blaze, the truck would never make it down the streets. It would be too heavy, with all the water and equipment. The machine would bog down before rolling more than a few feet off the pier.

He reached down and grabbed the letter, wadded it up, and threw it into the metal trash can.

His time and money were almost up. One way or another, he’d have to return to Bradenton within a couple of days, with or without any proof of the strangeness down at the house on the shore.

But with every hour that passed, he was more convinced that something weird was going on. It wasn’t just the traces of little fires; it wasn’t just the bones and the blood that he found smeared and scattered around the property. It was the way people looked at him when he tried to call attention to the issue. It was the sudden darting of their eyes, or hasty laughter.

And now he was being sent away. Urged home. Kicked out.

The secretary’s voice was low and measured. She was taking a
personal call on the company phone. Otherwise, he’d be able to hear every word from his borrowed space, like usual.

Sam sighed. He was tempted to storm downstairs, burst past the secretary, charge onto the mainland, and return with the state police, or the FBI, or whoever else he could scare up with his reports of . . .

But if he were forced to admit it, he didn’t have much to report.

The animal parts could be attributed to a predator of some kind—an island dog, or even a panther, someone had suggested. Sam didn’t know if there were any enormous Florida cats on the island, but he was willing to bet there weren’t; and even if there were, they wouldn’t use knives. Some of the scraps of fur and flesh he’d found showed distinct signs of having been cut with something sharp.

And all the candle nubs, left scattered in the grass—they weren’t regular candles. They had a greasy texture and a black coating. Who used black candles? No one up to any good, that’s who.

He stopped his pacing and crossed his arms.

Actually, the candles gave him an idea.

Maybe the police were the wrong call; maybe he ought to look in a different direction. Candles were used in ceremonies and services, weren’t they? And who would know more about ceremony than the church?

He grabbed his satchel of books, notebooks, and pens and dashed downstairs, taking them two at a time.

When he reached the secretary, he was panting, but determined. “Ma’am,” he said to Francis, “What kind of churches do you have here on the island?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Churches. For worship. Where people go on Sundays and the
like—a chapel, or a . . . I don’t know. What’s the population like here?”

“Ours is a fine and spiritual population, Samuel, but there aren’t that many of us and there are only two churches between here and the mainland.”

“Excellent. What kind are they?”

She shrugged and twirled a pencil in an idle manner. “They’re just normal churches. You know.”

“Normal? You mean Christian?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“So you don’t attend services yourself?” Sam asked, realizing that the question was a touch personal and possibly inappropriate.

But if the implication offended Francis, she didn’t show it. She twirled the pencil again and stuffed it behind her ear. “I go sometimes. But I don’t go all the time.”

The phone made a tinny ring.

The secretary pointed at it, letting her hand hover for a few seconds while she answered the question she knew he’d ask next. “Go out to the main drag and take a left. It’s half a mile or so down, on the right.” Then she lifted the receiver and turned away to speak into it.

Sam backed out, then twisted his feet around to carry himself forward.

The courthouse was a small building, barely any bigger than a house, and it was made from a combination of stucco and coquina with long, tall windows, ostensibly to keep it cool. Sam didn’t think the construction worked until he stepped outside and found it even hotter in the sun than it had been in the attic.

He checked his watch and noted with some relief that the sun would be down in an hour. Night wouldn’t bring anything close to a chill, but at least the blazing light would be aimed elsewhere and the ocean air could blow the muggy afternoon away.

Sam thought of the courtyard, and of the infuriating fact that every time he visited, there was something new and disgusting left behind to greet him. He thought of Dave, who was happy to see nothing, hear nothing, and know nothing so long as he got paid and got to take a nap in the afternoon.

And he thought of the insulting letters and the ticking clock, and he knew he was running out of options. He would try this church, and he would try the courtyard one more time—that night, which might be the last opportunity before he was forced to go home to Bradenton.

First, the church. Then, the courtyard. He could hide himself behind the banyan tree at the courtyard’s edge, and from there, he could watch through the archway and see for himself if anything sinister was at work.

Left, Francis had said.

Left into the packed-dirt street he went, and up onto the curb to avoid what small amount of traffic traveled it. Along the main drag there were a handful of stores and a market, where seagulls argued amongst themselves in the yards, bickering over scraps of trash and food. They fussed and flapped, but they hopped out of the way on their pale, webbed feet when Sam went striding past.

All the stores looked more or less the same. They were cracker shacks painted with light colors to deflect the sun, and some had porches wrapped with wire mosquito mesh.