Fathom (23 page)

Sam thanked heaven for the small blessings and kept his head low. He didn’t know what else to do, other than drive.

Over the Waves

L
ying on her back in the fire truck, staring up at the blackening sky, Nia was deeply conflicted.

When the afternoon began, she had no idea that she was in any danger, though she’d gathered from the monster and the squirrelly little man that there was real peril, and she was being rescued. And it was easy to figure that she was being rescued from the robed people with the candles and the dead animals.

It was the most excitement she’d seen in years.

How many years? She wasn’t sure. Several, at least. She could distinctly, and sometimes indistinctly, recall snaps of cold between stretches of hot—and though she no longer counted sunsets or
sunrises, she would have estimated that a thousand or more had passed since . . .

. . . since that night at the Murder House.

Since she’d seen those awful eyes underwater and wondered what they meant, as she sank down to die. Since she’d frozen, and sunk, and stopped doing anything except watching and wondering and waiting to die again, in slow motion.

She couldn’t see either of her rescuers. One was in the driver’s seat, crouching there as if he was praying that no one would see him. The other was kneeling beside her, off to her left and out of her immediate view.

Between them, she was more likely to trust the squirrelly little man.

He was small and frenetic, with round wire glasses and a head of hair that wouldn’t lie down smoothly, but he seemed like an organized and generally helpful fellow. Unfortunately, it was perfectly plain that he was even more in the dark about what was going on than
she
was.

This left the monster.

She strained inside her prison, trying to inch her vision far enough to get another look at the leafy, dirty, powerful thing with the improvised body and the voice that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

She couldn’t see it, except for the rough curve of its upper thigh and a glimpse of its crooked elbow.

The ride was rough, but she knew it wasn’t far. The ferry was less than a mile from the house, or it had been when she’d been alive—although that was a strange way of thinking about it. She tried to think back, tried to remember walking from the ferry to the cottage. There was a footman, or an employee, or something. Somebody. Someone Antonio had employed. He’d carried her things, she thought.

It hadn’t been far.

Her back bounced against the metal floor. She tilted and tipped, knocking her arm against the bed’s wall and clacking her knee against the creature.

The creature turned and looked down at her.

There, she could see it better. Its filthy face—not merely dirty, but made of decomposing filth—gazed down and its leafy lips cracked into a mirthless smile. It wasn’t a grin of greeting or a signal of joy; it was just a U-shaped crease in an inhuman face.

Behind it, stars were blinking one by one against the sky.

Where are you taking me?
she asked, knowing that it had heard her and answered before.

It answered this time, too. “Away,” it told her.

Away from what?

“From the water.”

“Who are you talking to?” the man asked.

The creature smiled again, and the smile looked more honest, if somewhat more sinister than its previous attempt. “Her.”

The man tried to crane his neck far enough around so that he could see her, but he couldn’t do that and drive at the same time. “She can talk?”

“No, but I can hear her.”

“She’s alive in there?” He sounded almost frantic, almost awed, horrified and hopeful at once.

“Yes. But not for long.”

The man’s foot slipped away from the gas pedal, and the truck seized. He put his foot back into place and pushed some more, and the truck kept going forward at its astonishing clip.

“What do you mean by ‘not for long’? She’s going to die in there?”

“That’s not what I mean at all,” the creature assured them both. “I mean, she’s going to come out here. Very soon. Though we’ll all be well served if she can wait until we’re past the water. We need
to reach the mainland, and carry her as far from the water as we can.”

“But this truck is too heavy to ride the ferry. That’s why it’s been here all this time—the bridge washed out, and now there’s nothing to take cars back and forth. Even without the tanks, I don’t think it can—”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll carry her. And when she emerges . . .”

Sam leaned his head toward the creature, waiting for the rest. When nothing further came, he prompted, “Yes? When she emerges?”

It lifted one hand in a funny shrug. “Then we’ll see.”

“You don’t
know
?”

“I’m not
sure
. That’s not the same thing. What’s that, over there? Is that the dock?”

“That’s, yeah. That’s the ferry. And look, see—there’s no way the truck will—”

“I told you.” The creature sank down, hiding close beside Nia. “We won’t take the truck, just the cargo.”

“And how are you going to—?” The man didn’t finish, because there wasn’t time. They’d arrived, and the ferry was waiting.

Sam cut the engine and climbed down out of the seat; Nia felt the wagon sway when he left it. She felt it bob on its springy wheels as he stepped away, up to the man who moved the ferry from shore to shore.

The creature turned to her and stretched itself out so its body was flush with hers. It whispered to her, and its voice was lower than a parent’s, less loving than a lover’s . . . but it conveyed qualities of each.

“You’ve been so patient,” it said. “And I’ve been patient, too, also without recourse. I’ve been alone much longer than you have. This either makes me more accustomed to the silence, or far more desperate to end it. I know not which.”

What’s that supposed to mean?

“Later,” it said. It touched her face with one lumpy, fingerless hand and ran that same misshapen stump along her arm, down to her breasts and ribs. “Let him make the arrangements. We’ll put you on the boat and hold our breaths until we reach the other side, and then, you’ll have all the explanations you can stand. I’ll give them to you—and to him, because we’re going to need him for a little while longer.”

Who is he?

“His name is Sam. Other than that, I couldn’t say. He’s predictable and easy to bully. He’s also competent when it comes to following instructions, and he understands the ways of this world far better than do I.” It patted her arm. “Once you’re awake, you’ll need no rescuers—no guardians, no guides.”

Nia thought to herself, careful not to project,
So it knows how to lie. And I know it is lying now, because it already admitted that it does not know what will become of me when I am born
.

It did not seem to hear her, or if it did, it had no response.

Sam was returning, outpacing another man and trying to move fast enough to earn a few seconds alone at the fire truck.

He reached the truck and whispered down to the monster and its child.

“I’ve made up a story. I’m transporting the statue to Bradenton, like Langan wants. The ferryman’s name is Mel. He’ll help me load her. But you—” He hastily indicated the creature. “—I don’t know what to do about you.”

Rather than answer, the creature began to dissolve. In less than the length of time it takes to draw a breath, it had collapsed into a pile of dirt, twigs, and leaves. It left no shape, and no trace that it had ever moved or spoken.

Nia felt a strange pair of hands grab at her lower legs. “This thing, now. I’ve seen it before.”

Mel was an older man, by the sounds of it. He might have been the same man who piloted the ferry the first time Nia had crossed the water, for all she knew. She tried hard to remember that trip; it felt like it’d taken place a thousand years before.

A thousand years, a thousand days. She couldn’t tell the difference.

There had been a man, though. He’d been lanky and knobby, all elbows and knees, and he had a curly white puff of hair that blended seamlessly into the curly white puff of beard that covered half his face. He hadn’t talked much. And maybe that was Mel.

Her suspicions were confirmed when he approached her side and leaned down over her. It was almost dark, but she could see all that white, halo and disguise rolled into one.

Sam helped to scoot her back, dragging her across the metal truck bed and catching her when she slipped over the edge. “It’s from the courtyard of the . . . well, you know. The Murder House, everybody calls it. I work for the man who just bought it,” he said, and Nia knew that was a lie, but it was a quick and easy lie, and she was glad that he’d thought of something so plausible.

Mel caught the parts of her that Sam failed to catch. “I heard someone was interested in it.” His hands were huge, and shockingly strong for a man whose hair had gone so snowy. “What’s all this trash back here, beside her?”

“It’s not trash,” Sam said quickly. “It’s . . . soil. For a garden, I think. All these gardening supplies were in there already. I only borrowed the truck, you know how it is. Someone else will come and pick it up after we leave.”

“Did you leave the keys?”

“They’re in the ignition.”

Mel’s tight leather arms strung themselves underneath Nia like a sling. “And someone will come and get it? It can’t stay here at the dock.”

“Probably the reverend.”

“You think?”

Sam nodded and strained to carry his portion of the stone girl. “He’ll probably be waiting when you get back from dropping us off on the mainland.”

Shuffling sideways step by step, the two men lugged Nia onto the ferry. She felt their feet shift when they met the small barge; she felt the water beneath her dip the flat-bottomed craft left to right. It threw off their balance, and they struggled harder to keep her from falling over the side, into the ocean again.

She couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or hopeful at the thought. How much worse could it be, back in the water, under the sand? Now that she no longer needed to breathe, how much more pleasant might it be to end up buried that way?

But then she remembered the eyes, gleaming and glittering and dead—flickering under the waves like fresh bait.

And then she prayed that they would hold her steadily and true.

“You should’ve boxed this thing up first,” Mel said.

“I thought about it, but I couldn’t find a crate that would hold it. And then, when I asked Mr. Langan, he said that I should just move her loose like this.”

“Her?”

“It. You know. I’m real sorry about the trouble,” Sam said.

“It’s no trouble.”

Mel and Sam worked Nia into a semi-upright position against the hull. She looked out at them, over her hands—the one outstretched, and the one that covered her mouth. And she looked beyond them, too, because she could only see straight ahead.

Behind them, a nebulous shape with the color and scent of soil was creeping across the pier, over the gray-brown boards, and onto the ferry.

She could smell it, even though she wasn’t breathing. She could
hear it, even though her ears were closed. And she could see it, through eyes that shouldn’t have seen a thing.

It moved, undulating snakelike and curling like smoke as it shifted its bulk to join them . . . to join her. And she heard it whisper, “Cover her. Hide her from the water’s eyes.”

Although Mel didn’t seem to catch the instructions, Sam did—and he jumped nervously. “I should cover her up,” he announced. “Let me go get a drop cloth from the truck. I’ll go get that and we’ll tie her down, cover her up. You can get ready to leave, and I’ll get the cloth.”

Nia thought that, yes, just as the frantic undercurrent in Sam’s words suggested, they needed to hurry.

The creature was on board and it had oozed out of sight, but Nia could still smell the faint corpse odor that it wore, and she knew that it lingered somewhere close. And at the edge of her senses, just beyond the part of her that knew quite clearly what it was hearing, there were angry voices and there was the burning fuel stink of torches.

They’re coming
, she tried to say.

“I know,” the creature replied, from some hidden nook that was closer than she’d suspected. “But we’ll be gone in time.”

Are you sure?

It didn’t answer.

But she could hear Mel over at the pi lot house pushing buttons or pulling cranks, and she could hear Sam flapping a big burlap cloth away from the back of the truck, and then Sam was running back to the ferry.

“Lift the line there, fellow,” Mel ordered, and Nia saw him pointing at the rope that hitched the ferry loosely to the pier.

Sam grabbed it as he hopped on board, pulling it up behind himself and pushing at the pier, as though his own slight weight could push the boat away faster.

He dropped the loop of rope down onto the deck and took his twisted bundle of tarp over to Nia. With a loud snap, he flipped the fabric open and brought it down over her, and then she could see nothing else except for the dark underside of the scratchy shroud.