Resurrection House (8 page)

“Grandma?” said Lynna. “Are you awake?”

A gargling sound replied, and Lynna stepped closer.

“This is the boy I told you about. His name is Dennis Framer. We’re working on a report for biology class. It’s on starfish,” said Lynna.

I couldn’t understand her grandmother’s low, garbled reply.

“Yes, Echinoderms. We know that, Grandma. Dennis knows all about the water and stuff that lives in the ocean.”

Mrs. Marish spoke again.

“Come closer,” Lynna said to me. “She wants to see you.”

I stepped nearer the bed and peered through the murk, searching for Lynna’s grandmother’s eyes. “Hi, Mrs. Marish,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. I brought some cupcakes. My Mom made them. We left them in the kitchen.”

Again Mrs. Marish’s response eluded me, but Lynna’s harsh reaction was clear.

“Grandma, please!” she said. “What do you know about it, anyway?”

More inscrutable mumbling from Grandma.

Lynna softened.

“I’m sorry, Grandma. You’re right.”

Lynna took my hand again, pulled me deeper into the pale light. Mrs. Marish’s bulk shifted beneath her blankets and quilts. Her figure was an irregular shape that bulged and twisted and filled almost the full area of her queen-sized bed while her face remained hidden in shadow. She raised a hand, her gnarled, knobby fingers wriggling for me to take it, but it repulsed me. Her disease had turned her flesh squamous and gray, bent her joints into nearly solid masses, draped flaps of skin across her bones. A massive pearl set in a gold ring gleamed against her dark complexion like bioluminescence penetrating the lightlessness of an undersea cavern. For Lynna’s sake I clasped Mrs. Marish’s hand. Her clammy palm stuck to mine, and she squeezed back, crushing my fingers together.

Lynna interceded, pulling me free. “Okay, Grandma, that’s enough. Dennis and I have a lot of work to do.”

Mrs. Marish’s arm dropped and she rolled away from us.

“Bye, now, Mrs. Marish,” I said.

Lynna took me to her room down the hall and closed the door behind us.

“Lynna, do you have the same disease as your grandmother?” I asked, and right away regretted it as visions of Lynna suffering like that ruined, old woman flickered through my mind, visions of her living with certain knowledge of her painful future.

Lynna’s smile wavered for only a moment. “Yes,” she said, “but not exactly. It’s a very rare condition and it’s different for everybody. Faster for some, slower for others. Right now, I don’t want to think about it.”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. “We have a report to write, anyway. Shouldn’t be too hard for us. Let’s start with radial symmetry.”

Lynna shook her head, a mischievous expression on her face. “Actually, our report is all done,” she said, lifting a stack of typed papers from her desk. “I did it last night, so we wouldn’t have to waste our time on it.”

Lynna set the report on her desk. She crossed the room and threw her arms around me as she placed her lips on mine and kissed me. The sensation was moist and thrilling, warm and electrically intense. Stunned I returned the kiss as best I could, having never before done anything like it.

Lynna nuzzled the side of my neck. “We have more important things to do,” she whispered.

I placed my trembling arms around the small of her back as I pulled her closer to me. In response Lynna tugged me toward her bed, and unsure, frightened and amazed, I followed. Her lips gripped mine with their soft touch. Her warm fingers slid beneath my shirt, scraped at the coarse ridges of my chest. I inched my hand along the hot, satin plain of her belly, wedged it past the waistband of her jeans. Outside rain began to fall and the evening darkened until Lynna’s room diminished to a grotto of shadows and gentle shapes, entwined and swaying in rhythm to the steady downpour.

* * * * *

Some nights, as we lay in bed, sated, cradled in the rolling of the ship, Dagmar spoke to me of her dreams and theories, the two things inextricably intertwined around her conviction that a long extinct intelligent species had once populated every major body of water on the planet. She spoke of legends and folktales, of strange artifacts lost to contemporary knowledge, of whispers among isolated island tribes that suggested incredible powers beyond the scope of science. She told me of the discredited Orne account from Massachusetts and rumors of immortality granted to unknown beasts of the sea. That idea appealed to her the most, I think. Secretly she hoped for some way to be reunited with her husband. She never discussed these things in public, fearing the ridicule she knew the scientific community would heap upon her, and she had hesitated even to talk to me about them until I made it clear that I would not pass judgment on even the wildest of her pet notions.

Neither of us suspected she would ever find proof of her ideas, but then the sea can, on occasion, be quite generous.

We captured the thing in the early morning after a raucous storm that knocked and shook the ship and churned the ocean like a blender. Gabriel and Sorenson brought it aboard in the net they had been using to cull specimens from circling schools of fish. It fought and hissed at them, but they trapped it on the deck, and in a blind panic, struggled to beat it senseless and hurl it overboard. Dagmar arrived in time to stop them, barely able to assert her authority over the two superstitious crewmen, and ordered them to take it below to the largest observation tank. For days she refused to let any of the crew or research team view the creature but for me, herself, and Fawkes, whose knowledge of extinct species she needed, and she swore both of us to secrecy. Rumors and supposition riddled conversation among the crew, and the senior members of the research team protested Dagmar’s actions. She refused to budge and promised only to reveal her find before we returned to port.

From the moment I met the thing, I wished Gabriel and Sorenson had been swifter or more defiant. Its swollen, deep-ochre flesh revolted me. The pale ring of cold, jade lips that surrounded a black maw tinged with tiny deltas of bone set my skin crawling. Its form, humanoid, yet also amphibian in construction, suggested some unnatural marriage between man and animal, like the fevered creations of the fictional Dr. Moreau. But the worst of its aspect was its eyes, obsidian wells that gleamed with smoldering anger and obvious intelligence—and locked unwaveringly on me whenever I entered the chamber.

Dagmar noticed the thing’s interest in me right away and persuaded me to participate whenever she conducted tests on the beast or tried to communicate with it. She hoped my presence might draw it out. The constant scrutiny of the inhuman thing depressed and agitated me, and I imagined that it was my unpleasant appearance that captivated it. Yet, I agreed to Dagmar’s request, unwilling to risk her anger, reluctant to divorce myself from what could become the greatest scientific find in history. By the final days of our planned voyage, however, Dagmar had learned little more than the organism’s basic biological functions, and all of her attempts at communication had failed. Facing a boiling mutiny among the senior researchers, she opened the tank to the rest of the research team, hoping to glean some insight from their fresh perspectives.

Their reactions ranged from fascination to horror, from religious fear to furious jealousy. Chaos followed as rivalries sprang up and tempers flared, and it was with an unwelcome sense of relief that I anticipated our return to port. The camaraderie that had made most of our voyage a pleasure had dissipated and my colleagues now schemed and conspired behind each other’s backs, each hoping to achieve their own selfish objectives. The organism’s presence shattered the bonds we had formed; the thing’s indiscreet attention to me made the others suspicious, and more quickly than I’d have imagined possible, all feelings of friendship and admiration toward me dissolved. Even Dagmar distanced herself from me, asserting her authority to make sure she would not lose the benefit of any favor the creature showed me; I once again became the student and she the teacher.

For the second time in my life, circumstance had cost me my future. As a child caught in a chemical explosion in my father’s laboratory, I lost both my happy family and my face. Now I was to lose the life of acceptance and scientific research I had found.

Dagmar had charged me with arranging transportation for the organism to her research facilities at San Blas National Aquarium for continued study and eventual unveiling to the public. It was then that I decided I must leave the research team and pursue my studies elsewhere. The afternoon the
St. William
docked I requisitioned the proper equipment to move the observation tank, eager to wash my hands of the foul affair.

The organism seemed to sense the coming change and even to understand much of what was said in its presence. Early on the morning of the move I went to the tank for one last attempt at contact, hoping perhaps to understand the thing’s strange fascination with me before I left and never laid eyes on it again.

I peered through the cloudy streams of the tank, and said, “We’ll be moving you today. Dagmar has a little place for you.”

The organism floated toward me, its webbed hands sculling figure eights. Gelatinous eyes regarded me with what might have passed for longing on a human face.

“She’s going to make you famous.”

The creature stared outward, regarding me with an expectant tilt to its head.

“Well, I suppose, that’s all. I don’t expect to see you again. This has all gone to hell, thanks to you, and I don’t have a place here anymore, just as I’ve never had any place. Maybe you’ll have better luck with these fools. Just don’t sleep with Dagmar. She can be a real bitch.”

The alien reply paralyzed me. It escaped from the tank, damped and dim, a trembling, gargling voice, but its words a bellowing cry for me to return.

“
Limulus Polyphemus.
Class Merostomata, Order Xiphosura.”

Its voice was liquid sound, full of knots of bubbling and gurgling, muted by the water and thick glass, but clear enough. My face burned with a sudden flush of anxiety.

The creature’s eyes widened, deepened, as though desperate to draw me into its gaze, as though—my mind quivered at the thought—it
hoped
for something. I returned to the tank.

“Radial symmetry,” it said.

Cold invaded my flesh. Strength abandoned me. I staggered toward the tank and stumbled the final steps before I thrust myself against the chill glass and peered with fresh insight at the hideous organism. The thing raised a scale-glittered hand and placed it opposite mine on the glass. A bauble, a bright trinket of unknown richness, previously hidden somewhere in the folds of the creature’s flesh or the crevasses of its scales, dangled from one rippled finger, a bright, bloated pearl set in flashing, white gold, a sunbeam against olive flesh.

I whispered, “Lynna?”

The creature burbled, “Hello, Dennis. It’s been so long, but I hoped you might recognize me.”

Its voice carried me back to Knicksport, to that cold afternoon in Lynna’s dank and cavernous house, to the muttered rumblings of her grandmother in the dark.

“Lynna.”

“Dennis, you must help me escape, again.”

* * * * *

Lynna left Knicksport as suddenly as she had arrived, and I never forgave her for it. How could I? First loves are always the most raw, especially when they prove to be only loves, as well.

One weekend, hiking along the Bossoquogue, hand in hand, Lynna told me that her family had dark secrets in its past and that she feared she would one day pay the price for the bad things her ancestors had done. Her family was one among a number that lived in a city shunned by neighboring communities for the odd disease that afflicted them, cut off from the rest of the world but for a single bus line that carried meager traffic to and from the rotting place. Her people had been subjected to constant persecution by other communities in the region and by a government that feared and despised their religion. Lynna and her grandmother had fled to avoid being taken away by federal agents and placed in a camp like so many of her friends and neighbors had been. And, now, she told me, it seemed she would soon have to flee again.

“They’re in town. I’ve seen them around,” she said. “They haven’t found us, but they know we’re here. They’ll locate us soon. Grandma and I have to run again.”

I didn’t want to believe her, but her voice and face showed no signs of falsehood. “Who’s in town?”

“The government men. Federal agents. They’ve been hunting my family and everyone else like us in secret for decades. Maybe you’ll see them around. Maybe you won’t. They blend in, but I know what to look for. Somehow they followed me and Grandma here. Only a matter of time before they find our house.”

“What does the government want with you? You never did anything wrong. Did you?”

“I told you, it’s because of my family, because of things they did in the past. Grandma and I have to be punished for it.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I wish!” she said. “You think I want to leave? You think this is the first town we’ve stopped in and then run away from? I tried to be a friend to you, Dennis. And I tried to be something more to you, because I think that you deserve a better life than what you have. We both do, and for the last few weeks, you’ve made me feel human again. I can’t ever thank you enough for that, for what you’ve given me. I don’t
want
it to end.”