Salvage

SALVAGE

A G
HOST
S
TORY

D
UNCAN
R
ALSTON

Seattle, WA 2015

COPYRIGHT 2015 DUNCAN RALSTON

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Cover Design by Yosbe Designs

Edited by William Campbell

Lord I’m Coming Home song lyrics by William J. Kirkpatrick

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

PRINT ISBN 978-1-5137-0443-2

EPUB ISBN 978-1-5137-0493-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953519

For Mom and Dad,

whose house built me.

GRISTLE & BONE
(collection)

For more visit

www.duncanralston.com

After death, no reviving;

After the grave, no meeting again
.

- Thessalonian inscription on a tomb

Suffer the Children

WHEN OWEN SADDLER
was thirteen years old and his sister Lori was five, the two of them went down to the cool, clear waters of China Cove to play, on a rare summer day when the whole family was together. Owen loved his sister, but he'd taken her along with him only begrudgingly. What he didn't like, more than anything, was being told what to do, and as it was his stepfather who'd stuck him with looking after Lori, he liked the task even less.

Already he felt a strong loathing toward the man pretending to be his father, a man Owen's mother had told him to call "Dad," but whom she herself called "Gerald," and never "Gerry." Owen couldn't remember his real father, but he was certain the man couldn't have been more different from Gerald. His real father had been a
strong
man, a
determined
man. He knew this because his mother had often said so, and Owen had a vague sense—not enough to be called a memory—of its truth. Gerald was neither of these, but he was tall, was often quick to anger, and he usually drank so much on these infrequent little trips that Owen's mother would have to drive them home. Yet for all the man's faults, he had given Owen a younger sister to pal around with (or ignore, depending on his mood), so Owen supposed he owed the man at least a little credit.

Lori plodded along in her candy-striped tank top and Adidas swim shorts, scooping up bottle caps, pop tabs, and candy wrappers with her shovel, crinkling her nose in disgust, and flicking them away in a scattering of sand. Owen followed along a short distance behind her. Farther down the beach, some older boys were throwing a football, chasing each other, and laughing once they'd piled on top of one another, fighting over the ball. Owen made sure not to be caught too close to Lori, for fear the boys might lump him in the same category as her and call him a baby.

"Let's go back this way, okay?" he said, taking her hand and directing her away from the boys.

"I wanna go swimming," Lori said, pouting. She knew all about his dislike of water, of lakes in particular—he didn't like to call it "fear," but truthfully that was what it was—and he supposed she knew he wouldn't take her much closer, let alone join her. The sun beat down on the beach in China Cove, where the islands of Georgian Bay and the endless blue of Lake Huron came together. Owen wore a
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
T-shirt to cover his scrawny chest (the smart one, Donatello, was his favourite), long board shorts, and his shoes and socks. He had grown too hot not to cool off his legs, but just the idea of stepping into the shallow surf troubled him. There was no reason for it, as far as he knew. Gerald had called it a "phobia." His mother had held her tongue when he'd said it, something Owen had thought unlike her.

"Mom said no swimming," he lied.

Lori's scowl was deepened by the shadow of her sun hat. "That's not true!"

"It is. Go ask her if you don't believe me."

Lori turned away from the water, toward the trees, where Gerald and their mother sat in the shade, her reading, him blowing the foam off a can of beer from the cooler. It was too far to shout, so Lori squinted up at her brother as if to assess his honesty. He struggled to keep a straight face. "Fine," she said finally, sulking until he let go of her hand.

Owen recalled snippets of a hushed conversation in the car on their way up to the lake, while Lori sang along to the music from her colorful "My First Sony" Walkman. Their mother hadn't wanted to come here, that much he'd been able to hear. But Gerald, who was usually neither strong nor determined, had put his foot down—literally, stepping on the accelerator—and had refused to reply to Margaret Saddler's passive-aggressive comments about Gerald's impending drunkenness until she'd finally given up her protests, saying "Fine," in the same sulky tone their daughter did now.

Lori trudged to within a few paces of the water and peered back, apparently waiting for Owen to follow. He did, but only after realizing, too late, what she'd had in mind. Once she'd figured out he was too far away to catch up to her, she turned and ran: the sort of deke-out the boys playing football might have applauded.

"Cripes," he muttered, and chased after her.

Lori's little legs carried her into the surf before Owen had made it halfway to the water's edge. She was already up to her waist when he stopped dead where the waves left shapes in the sand as they retreated, disintegrating bit by bit a small mound of wet earth that had once been a sandcastle. Suddenly Owen no longer felt the sun's baking heat; instead, a cold, shuddering fear gripped him from head to toe.

There were creatures in the water with sharp teeth and spiny fins. There were bloodsucking leeches and turtles with vicious alligator snouts. There were slippery, slimy things that squirmed in the muck at the bottom of the lake, hideous blind invertebrates that had never seen daylight.

A wind whipped his hair. He turned and watched as it swished through the trees, tilting pines and rustling the branches of enormous maples. A steel-gray cloud suddenly blocked the sun. Owen frowned uneasily, and turned back toward the water to see Lori's sun hat blowing from her head. She cried out, half-laughing, and chased it farther out into the lake.

Out where it should have been too deep to stand, a man Owen hadn't noticed before was standing up to his ankles in the lake. Dressed in a white buttoned shirt and loose-fitting black pants, from whose right pocket Owen caught a glimmer of gold, the man locked eyes with him, and Owen found himself unable to look away. The wind caught the man's dark hair, and a malicious grin spread below his moustache. The man stretched out a hand toward Owen.

"
Lori!
"

Owen hadn't meant to scream, had only meant to call her out of the water. But the boys farther down the beach looked over at the sound of his cracking voice and snickered. Owen wheeled around to see Gerald and his mother rising from the picnic blanket.
Oh God, they're coming over
, he thought, feeling the familiar warmth return, rising up his neck to his cheeks as embarrassment seized him.