Undertow (4 page)

Winter break finally arrived. Jim planned to fly back to Denver to visit his family for the holidays. Actually, he was going there because the skiing in the Rockies was vastly superior to the wet stuff on Mt. Hood. Marissa wouldn’t know. The thought of strapping sticks on her feet and zooming down a hill appealed to her as much as bungee jumping.

Before he left, Marissa struggled to tamp down her nervous energy. He dawdled inexplicably and kept asking if she would be alright.

“All you have to do is say the word,” Jim said for about the eighth time. “I’ll call the ’rents up and let them know I can’t make it.”

It was freezing on the porch, and she bounced from one leg to the other to keep warm. “Are you nuts? It’s Christmas. They’ll kill you if you don’t go home.” She wished he’d just kiss her goodbye before Erin came out and started chattering.

“I’ll take that chance,” he smiled. “Sure you won’t get too lonely?”

“Lonely? Are you kidding? There’s no getting lonely. Mom never leaves me alone for a second when I’m there.” She tried to laugh, but made a weird hiccup sound instead. He frowned at her. Marissa nearly shoved him toward the car, reassuring him that she’d be fine.

An hour later, when she calculated that he was safely past the point of changing his mind and turning around, Marissa dragged her suitcase from the closet where she stashed it after packing last week. She grabbed her coat and phone. Hopefully, she’d get out the door before Erin caught her. Really, the last thing she cared to do was to engage in some meaningless conversation with her roommate, and the girl was absolutely incapable of taking a hint.

She didn’t intend to drive straight to her mother’s, not yet. That could wait. What she planned couldn’t. For weeks, since that first dream in which her rescuer had finally appeared to her, Marissa had been aching to do some detective work and those investigations required a trip to the coast. Solo.

It was a straight shot out to Waldport from Corvallis. From there she drove south on 101 until she saw the vacancy sign. The website had done a pretty good job capturing the look of the place, but seeing it in person sent a tremor across her skin. She sized it up. The inn was an old house set upon a bluff, just South of Cape Perpetua. With its ocean view, even off-season rates were sure to be pricey, but she reasoned the expense was for a good cause—scientific research.

The woman in the lobby gave her a suspicious look and asked for cash. Marissa counted the bills one at a time on the counter, took the key from her and stomped off. She hauled her bag up to the room on the second floor and dropped it on the bed. Standing at the window, she took in the view of the ocean.

He lived under those waves somewhere, she knew. She just had to find him.

The sun would set in a couple of hours. If she planned to get to the beach and back before dark, she’d better go now. She grabbed her binoculars and slammed the door shut behind her.

The beach below the hotel was empty. Even the popular beaches didn’t get much traffic during the winter; without a parking lot and stairs for easy beach access, drivers weren’t likely to stop here anyway. She picked her way down narrow stairs obscured by manzanita shrubs and clung to the rope anchored beside them.

Sand gave way beneath her feet as she walked along the base of the bluff. Logs and stones, polished smooth from tumbling about in the ocean and deposited at high tide, would rest unmolested until some extraordinary wave in a winter storm stole them back like a greedy child grabs a toy.

The afternoon sun hid behind a thin band of gray clouds on the horizon. She ran her hand along the basalt jutting from the headlands and let the stone warm her skin; its smoothness contrasted with the angular edges of its layers. Inevitably, the bluff would disappear as the fissures grew wider and section by section it would crumble. Everything falls apart, she thought. Even stone.

It was low tide, and shallow pools with sea stars and anemones clinging tightly to their edges dotted the exposed rock at the tide line. The whole beach crawled with life. Even the bare sand seemed in motion with sand fleas hopping about frantically; the sight of them made her itch. Tiny birds hopped among tufts of grass and feasted on the fleas. Farther back, yarrow and wild strawberry sent tendrils trailing over loose rock, seeking a place to root. Searching for a home, she thought, like herself.

But the beach was a wasteland compared to the ocean, she’d learned in Marine Biology last quarter. Beyond the tide’s lowest reach, the black water dropped into an abyss which concealed fantastic animals like giant squid.

Or
, she thought,
people like Him.

Marissa turned back toward the cottage. She didn’t want to risk getting lost on this beach, so far south from where she’d met Him. Inside, she shivered even before shedding her jacket. It had been colder outside than she’d realized. In the cupboard she found a can of cocoa; a quick sniff told her it was stale, but at least it was chocolate. She put the teapot on the stove and went to the window to watch the sun splay brilliant orange fire across the surface of the ocean. Her heart ached with the now-familiar longing to feel His silken kiss again.

On the corner table by the window, twenty or so books were haphazardly stacked. She browsed the tattered copies while she waited for the water to boil. One title caught her eye:
Pacific Northwest Indian Lore
. Taking it with her to the kitchen, she poured the hot water into a mug and absentmindedly stirred the chocolate while she scanned the contents page.

She gasped when she spotted the chapter title.“The Maiden Who Wed a Merman.”
Somebody must have put the book there for her to find. How did they know she’d be staying here tonight?
Unnerved, but unable to resist reading the story, she sat in the rocker beside the window, spilling the hot cocoa over her hand in the process. She set the mug at her feet and turned to the chapter. The preface said it was a Coos Indian legend. The tribe had lived on the South coast before the white settlers arrived; like lots of coastal peoples, they left behind folktales about the sea. A thrill shot through her spine like an electric shock. She was so close now to answering the questions haunting her: Who is He? What is He? And how can He
exist?

She rushed through the tale about a young woman who spurned all human offers of matrimony. One day a stranger approached her upon the shore and begged her to follow him out to sea, promising that she could return to land whenever she wishes to visit her family.
Bethany,
she thought
.
But her sister had been a little girl. In the story, the woman accepted his offer and lived in the ocean thereafter, even having a child with him. Years later, cloaked in otter skins, she went back to her people and collected all the arrows they shot at her, giving them to her son in the ocean. In repayment, the sea-dwelling people gave a beached whale to the villagers to share.

Marissa shivered
.
The story was disgusting. Even so, it proved the Coos knew about creatures like the one who rescued her that night at Crescent Beach, people who lived in the ocean. Mermaids, or mermen, or whatever they were called. The legend proved what she already believed in her heart.

And now her doubt was banished. Somewhere in the deep water, she knew He waited for her.

Six

W
hen she woke in the hotel, she'd thrown on yesterday’s clothes, dirty and wrinkled from the beach. The kitchen was stocked with oatmeal packets and coffee. She considered whether to eat first, but decided to leave immediately. If anyplace had information about the sea floor off the Oregon coast, the Hatfield Marine Science Center located just north in Newport would.

News articles and papers on campus touted the grant funded projects the college was researching: wave energy, sonar and satellite mapping of the sea floor, carbon sequestration. Hatfield was home base for all that. Jim carried on about wave energy pilot projects over dinner a couple of nights before he left for Denver, clueless to her growing restlessness. Fossil fuel alternatives made sense, she got that. Didn’t everybody? It was the planet, after all, home, only an idiot wouldn’t care. Still. All she could think about was what might be living under those waves.

Something like a human, Marissa was sure of that now. She’d seen one, been rescued by one, had her lips pressed to the mouth of one. There must be others like him. Mermaids had populated the mythology of human civilizations as far back as records could be traced. Even in Oregon. Wasn't that evidence? She wondered how they had evaded the detection of their land-dwelling cousins for so long. There must be some way they remained hidden.

The Honda's wipers worked overtime as it pushed through the sheet of rain and the car was forced to creep up Highway 101 doing twenty miles per hour. At this pace, it would take forever to get to Hatfield. Tired of squinting through the windshield, she pulled into the first restaurant she saw. The sign painted above the door read
Luna Sea
. Inside, she ordered a cup of clam chowder, served with a heavy dose of 60s psychedelic music. By the time she finished inhaling her soup, the rain had let up. She put a ten dollar bill under her coffee mug and left.

 The stop light came up too fast, and Marissa slammed her brakes. The car lost traction and hydroplaned sideways through half of the intersection. Her heart pounded as if it was attempting to break through her chest; time slowed and every detail was crisp as she braced for the impact. A moss green van careened toward the Honda and stopped just short of plowing in to her broadside. Marissa could see the panic in the driver’s eyes.

The middle aged man looked familiar, like a memory from some primal place in her mind. Rage flashed up and wrested control from her, rage caged in since that last morning with Drake, since long before that, even. A deep reservoir of impotent rage flew out now in a stream of obscenities and gestures. The danger she had just narrowly escaped, getting smashed to bits in a steel collision, sat on the periphery. Cursing the rain, the drive, and every jerk she’d ever known, Marissa threw the car into reverse, righted its angle, and punched the fuel pedal.

Marissa strutted past the volunteer at the front counter, ignoring the donation box and the giant octopus creeping along the glass wall of its display inside Hatfield’s foyer. It reminded her of a third grade field trip to the museum of natural history. She’d been cranky from the crowded, noisy bus; inside, all she could see were the heads of the kids in front of her, bobbing up and down as they stared at the gigantic skeleton of some ancient creature or other. Proof that strange creatures once lived, creatures nobody would believe existed otherwise.

Exhibits which showcased research conducted by graduate students flanked the walls. For the moment, she ignored these and instead walked toward a station that played different whale songs. Holding the megaphone to her ear, Marissa heard a haunting call which seemed familiar.

The world disappeared and she floated in the cold brine until someone bumped into her, jerking her back to reality. Before she identified the perpetrator, she fixed him with a vicious glare. She recognized him—it was the guy who almost killed her back in Waldport. Was he following her?

He offered his puffy hand to her. “Miss. Are you alright? I'm sorry I didn't see you . . . you ran the light . . .”

She stared at him like he’d spoken Japanese. He must have followed her. Why? Not to apologize for nearly smashing her car, that’s for sure. She backed away.

“I’m Ned.”

The guy creeped her out, following her around like this. “I don’t care who you are. Just leave me alone.”

The face he made was part kicked puppy and part just-saw-a-rattlesnake. He withdrew his hand and shook his head before she moved off toward the kelp exhibit.

Her irritation drifted away and she mused again about the fact mammals as huge as whales could live in the ocean. Marissa’s mind was like a sunflower, tracking the sun as the earth turns each day, east to west, until it’s gone for the night. She had already forgotten Ned. She tried to remember why she’d needed to visit Hatfield and pondered a while before it came to her. Where do they live, she wanted to know. How could they hide from everyone but her?