Siren (7 page)

“Here it is in black and white,” Bill said.

Evan looked at the newspaper on his desk and raised an eyebrow. The first article to catch his eye at the top of the page read
DELILAH TURNS ON THE RED LIGHT
.

“Here
what
is, Bill? The city council wants to change the zoning on West Avenue to allow a massage parlor? I didn’t realize you’d been waiting for this. Tired of driving to San Francisco for your five-fingered oil treatments?”

Bill rolled his eyes. “Puh-leese. All you’ve gotta do is go up to O’Flaherty’s after midnight if you want a good feel. Guys’d be stupid to go pay for it when all they gotta do is pop for a drink.” He pointed to a smaller piece on the right corner of the page. This one read
KYLIE REYNOLDS
, 22,
MISSING
. The article was short, with a mug shot of the local girl, who hadn’t come home from a night out at The Sand Trap with her boyfriend several days ago. The boyfriend was quoted as saying he’d broken up with her that night and he hoped she hadn’t done anything stupid. Police said they’d welcome any information that would lead to finding the girl.

“Yeah, so?” Evan shrugged. “What about it?”

“Chalk another one up to the Siren,” Bill said.

“You can’t be serious. Every time someone goes missing in this town, it’s the fault of some mythological harpy?”

“A Siren is not a harpy. Get your Homer straight.”

Evan laughed. “I didn’t realize you were so literary.”

Bill didn’t laugh. “Look, Evan, I know it sounds ridiculous. But if you ask people around Delilah—people who’ve lived here their whole lives—they’re going to tell you they believe that something is out there near the point. Some call it a Siren; some probably say it’s a sea monster. But Siren rings true to me. There have been disappearances out there for as long as I can remember. The papers just say the currents out there are dangerous and pull people in. But there are stories from the early 1900s of rumrunners crashing into the rocks out there, and every now and then, one of the sailors would survive and get to shore. You can go look this shit up—every survivor who ever swam in from one of those wrecks talked about hearing a beautiful woman singing. And the next thing they knew, they were swimming for their lives in the waves.”

“Sounds like they were drinking too much on the job.”

Bill shook his head in disgust. “You believe in God, Evan? Heaven and hell, all that shit?”

Evan nodded.

“So. You believe in a great invisible tooth fairy in the sky, and horned demons running around a land of brimstone and lava where the dead burn in agony ’til the end of time? And you probably believe in a purgatory, where the souls go who weren’t quite bad enough to warrant demons repetitively sticking pitchforks in their eyes to sweat out their sins until they can get to the secret land of harps and honey. Is that right?”

Evan grimaced. “I wouldn’t exactly describe heaven and hell like that.”

“Read your Milton. And Revelations is a hoot too.”

“Did you take one of those online courses in English literature this week, or what?”

“Just think about it,” Bill said, ignoring the dig. “You
believe in all this invisible shit that nobody has ever seen, but you can’t believe in a real flesh-and-blood creature that has been written about for hundreds of years here on earth that people have reported seeing over and over again?”

Bill turned back to his desk and shook his head. “We don’t know it all yet, man. And we never will. There are secret things still on this earth. Be careful.”

“Be careful.”

Bill’s words echoed in Evan’s head as he walked the beach after dark that night. He hadn’t told Bill about his tryst with Ligeia. He had intended to; he needed to talk to
somebody
about it. But after their conversation about the missing girl, it just hadn’t seemed like the right time.

So tonight his heart remained a mess of guilt and lust. He had toyed with the idea of not going out, but…walking the beach was what he did. And he did want to see her again. He pledged to himself that he would not let his guard down again though. He needed to talk to her. To find out more about who she was, and to apologize for last night. Because he had made love to her under false pretense. He was married; he couldn’t say “happily,” because the past year had been the worst one of his life. But not because of his wife. He loved her and did not want anyone else. Even if Ligeia had given him the best sex of his life, bar none.

But he was married. Not available.

Tonight the waves were quiet, the whitecaps few. A chill wind blew in from the northwest, and he shivered. A gull called out once somewhere nearby, lonely in the dark. Evan shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the white glints of moon reflecting off the wet pools disappearing into the dark sand ahead. Night crabs scuttled
out of his path and along the waterline like furtive spiders, darting to snatch pieces of seaweed or fish and then disappearing down holes in the sand. The beach was quiet at night, but never empty.

Evan bent to pick up a miniature conch shell, speckled pink and brown and horned with some impressive spikes on its thicker end. Even after all these years, he never tired of bringing home interesting shells; Sarah had glass jars throughout the house filled with his finds. He slipped it in his pants pocket.

He walked near the point now, and slowed his pace, stopping before he reached the finger of dark rock. He bent to retrieve a small, flat stone and skipped it across the quiet ocean. One, two, three, four…five………six times! A smile creased his lips—Josh would have been proud. They used to compete on how many skips they could get out of a stone.

The memory cascaded into myriad snapshots of their times at the beach. Playing Frisbee, skipping rocks, falling together in the sand laughing, sitting out by a campfire, late, Evan strumming on the guitar…

Unconsciously, he began to sing another of their favorite songs, from the band Industrial Disease. “Let me touch you now, forever, just this one last time…” But he couldn’t complete the lyric. His throat closed. He teared up every time he sang that song anymore.

Somewhere else, as if in answer to his aborted song, a melody picked up. But the melancholy of Evan’s tune transformed to light in its mirror. The voice moved high in the sky, almost like a wordless birdsong. And then it swam deep, a contralto cresting just above the waves with a sweetness that made Evan’s knees tremble. He wanted to slip to the sand and lose himself in the perfect sound. Whoever this woman was, Ligeia had the most amazing
voice he had ever heard. Why she wasted it out here on nobody, he couldn’t fathom. Unless she simply came out here to practice? With a range so wide and a depth so beautiful, Evan couldn’t imagine that she didn’t sing professionally. Though he didn’t know of any famous opera stars or the like living in Delilah. And he’d never heard of a singing star named Ligeia.

Evan looked for her on the rocks of the point and was about to start climbing the treacherous path to walk out into the bay, when he realized that she wasn’t on the rocks tonight. A faint smear of ivory bobbed and moved in the water beyond the point, and as he stared, Evan saw that she appeared to be lying on her back, floating in the water, and singing to the stars. Every now and then he could see her arms break above the water, or a pale knee lift out of the waves and then disappear again to allow her to maintain her dreamy swim atop the waves.

Evan moved closer to the water; his whole body yearned to be nearer to the source of the music. Ligeia’s song was hypnotic; he closed his eyes and felt her fingers play across his body like he were an instrument. The night seemed to warm around him as he surrendered to the sound, and opened his heart to the beauty of her song. The melody swam in his veins like liquor, expanding the reach of his consciousness, while at the same time rendering him numb to all distraction.

He was glad he had not followed his initial promise to himself to avoid the beach. He needed to stand next to her again. Even if he never touched her body again, Evan needed to listen to her song. His breath seemed to slow and speed up with the slipstream movement of the music, and he took another step nearer to where she sang. Evan was lost in the sound, and didn’t even open his eyes to see where he was walking. He only drank in the sound and
sighed, as it filled him up and then slipped away to leave him desperately aching. Ligeia’s music played the emotions like a harp, and yet, Evan couldn’t even have defined a single word of what she sang about. There
were
words and familiar syllables. But she sang in some other tongue, he thought. A language that was more beautiful than any he had ever heard. Somehow, the foreign sounds still gave him meaning; he felt as if he were on a ride through a powerful story—as she sang his heart quailed in fear and then rejoiced to the point of ecstatic pain at some lost piece regained. Evan moved closer to the sound and smiled as he realized the truth of her voice, the ultimate truth of the sound—music was a communication that went beyond words, and whatever she was saying, he understood the feeling, if not the words.

And then the music stopped, and Evan felt hands slipping around his shoulders. He gasped at a sudden chill, and opened his eyes…

…to see waves all around him!

Suddenly he fell out of the dream world and realized that he was neck-deep in the ocean, the water lapping like deadly acid around his face. Ligeia swam just before him, her fingers outstretched to play around his shoulders and slip up into his hair. But in five seconds Evan went from lolling in heaven to standing in hell. His gorge rose and his heart tripled its beat as his eyes went wide. He didn’t see Ligeia as she rose and fell with the water. He only saw beyond her—the black waves and the panic overwhelmed him as completely as her music.

Evan opened his mouth and screamed.

A wave sloshed past at that moment, and the tip of a whitecap dashed him in the face, leaving him with a mouthful of brine. His scream turned to a choking cough and he lost his balance. Evan’s head slipped beneath the
waves, his eyes bulging wide and his arms flailing. Everything was dark, and his nose and throat filled with the cold seawater. He gasped for breath and only took in more water, choking silently beneath the night waves.

This was Evan’s worst nightmare. Ever since he was a child, he’d woken up some nights in cold sweat, the memory of being trapped beneath the water still frozen in his eyes. And now, after all this time, it had come to pass. He tried to reach the surface, but his feet couldn’t seem to find the bottom, and his head only poked out from the water for seconds before the current sucked him back down.

A hand found his arm, and then another slid around his waist. Ligeia. She smiled at him beneath the water, and leaned in to give him a kiss. Evan shook his head no, no, no—he was drowning!

And then her lips were on his, and Evan felt…relief.

His lungs no longer felt the fire of seawater and his throat didn’t burn with salt. Ligeia’s eyes bored into his own like brown pools of mystery, and holding him tight to her body, she swam him to the surface.

“Oh my God,” Evan gasped as their heads broke the water. He clung to her like a baby and she carried him to firm ground until he could stand comfortably, the water lapping only as high as his chest. She faced him, the water moving her hair between her breasts to cover and then unveil with a rhythmic tease. “Thank you,” he said. “I thought I was going to drown. I’m so afraid of the water and I’ve always been afraid of drowning and I don’t even know what happened. I heard you singing and somehow I just kind of sleepwalked into the water, but I can’t swim, and…”

“Shhhhhh,” she said, and pressed a finger to his lips. Her other hand moved beneath the ocean, and slid along
Evan’s right thigh. She kissed him again, and Evan felt a surge of heat as her tongue entwined with his. Then he realized that her hands were working at the belt on his jeans, and he shook his head, breaking the kiss.

“No,” he said. “I came out here partly because I wanted to tell you…what happened last night was wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m married. And she’s a wonderful woman. I love her…We can’t…”

He gripped her arms and tried to push them back, but she was already pulling down his zipper, and then dragging the pants down his legs under the water. Fingers reached between his legs to cup and caress him, and Evan found it difficult to refuse the touch. But he steeled himself again, and pressed her back. “No,” he said again.

Ligeia shook her head. Her eyes questioned him, her brows raised. And then she opened her mouth and began to sing again. She sang of sex and raw animal need.

She sang in a whisper against his ear, and then as she threw her head back in a scream, she urged him harder with her hand. In moments, she’d pressed him inside her, with the ocean as her lubricant.

Evan felt out of control, as if someone had put his mind in a box and shoved it on a shelf with a hole cut in the side for him to watch himself. Because this amazing, sexual creature was making love to him in the ocean and he couldn’t stop his body from meeting her. The night seemed to shimmer and shift with a danger that only made the action more erotic. Ligeia’s song stilled every doubt in Evan’s head, and all he could see were her eyes, dreamy and dark. He sucked deep on her lips and then moved to taste the salt of her nipples as she clung to him and slid her body up, down and around him as if he were the pole, and she his mermaid dancer. Her orgasm came while Evan was lost in his own internal fireworks, and her
voice cried out with a sound that was both pure in its expression of pleasure and thick with its animal celebration of lust.

Evan closed his eyes as she held him, and whispered to him softly of dreams. “When I was a little girl,” she said at one point, “I prayed that I would meet a man like you. And now that I have, I don’t want to ever let you go.”

He tried to respond, to tell her that he was taken, that she would have to let him go. But he couldn’t get up the energy. Instead he only rocked with her some more in the water, relishing the velvet touch of her skin against his and the sweet stories of desire that she told.