Siren. Part 2

Evan ran through the story of walking on the beach the night before, hearing the strange naked woman singing, and then watching her dive into the water to vanish without a trace.

"How are things with you and Sarah?" Dr. Blanchard asked.

"Apropos of nothing?" Evan laughed.

"I'm just curious...how are things with you two? The last few times you've been here you've said that her drinking has really increased. I'm just wondering..."

"You're just wondering if I'm hallucinating because I've been sharing the bottle with her, or because I'm desperately wishing she'd come home...or not leave home at all?"

She let a wry wrinkle crease her smile before answering. "Transparent, huh? I don't get to ask by-the-book questions like that very often. Sorry."

"You think I'm by the book?"

Dr. Blanchard shook her head quickly. "The book says nothing about men who see naked women diving into the ocean."

"So am I crazy?"

"I'll reserve judgment on that for now. Tell me about Sarah."

"Whose psychiatrist are you anyway?"

"Who is the most important woman in your life?" Dr. Blanchard asked. And then with a wicked smile, she held up one finger. "And don't say me."

"Sarah." He grinned. "And she's not good." His smile fell instantly. "I'm pulling her off a stool every other night. And she won't talk about it."

"I'd like to talk to her," Dr. Blanchard said gently.

"I'd like to bring her," he answered. "But we can't afford it-my insurance won't cover it. And she wouldn't come if we could."

Dr. Blanchard nodded. "I think you're under a lot of stress right now..." she began.

"...So I'm imagining naked women on the beach?" he finished.

"That's not what I meant."

"No? Did you mean that you totally believe me when I tell you I saw a nude woman last night lying on the rocks who sang in the most beautiful voice I've ever heard-even though I couldn't tell you a single word that she sang-and that I watched her jump into the surf to drown in the waves? Is that what you meant?"

"You didn't see her drown," Dr. Blanchard said after a moment.

Evan laughed. "No, that's what makes it all bearable, isn't it? There's no evidence that I killed the woman, is there?"

"You didn't kill anyone," Dr. Blanchard spit back at him. "You couldn't save Josh. That's all. And if anything happened last night...then the fact is, you couldn't save her either. But you didn't kill anyone. And you have to admit that it's entirely possible that if you did see a skinny-dipper last night, that she was embarra.s.sed and swam as far and as fast as she could before she let anyone see her face again. She's probably safe at home right now with her husband and kids, and her cheeks are flushing red every time she thinks about that guy last night who spotted her."

"Nice try," Evan laughed.

"I'm serious."

"Okay," Evan said. "So I saw a desperate housewife."

"Maybe."

Evan watched her face twitch. For a psychiatrist, she seemed to have no ability to keep her thoughts to herself; her facial muscles telegraphed every emotion she experienced. Inwardly he laughed; maybe that's why she was practicing a hundred miles from any major city.

"Evan," she said finally. "I've told you this before. But...what happened last night really just underlines it."

She leaned her elbows on the desk and sought to meet his eyes with her own in a gaze that was both serious and uninterruptible.

"You need to face your fear," she said. "How long have you been aquaphobic?"

Evan almost laughed as soon as she said it. He still hated that word. It reminded him of Aquaman, and thus seemingly meant something about how he was scared to death of watery superheroes. That's not what she meant, but the unbidden image made him laugh.

"I've never been able to swim," he said. "You know that."

She nodded, one faint wisp of blonde hair trailing over her nose. She didn't move to correct it. "Yes," she said, "but when did it become a problem? When did you realize that you simply couldn't ever swim? That you were afraid of water?"

Evan didn't even pause to think about it. "I've always been afraid of the water," he said.

"But you live by the ocean," Dr. Blanchard said, for the umpteenth time poking at the root of his phobia. Only he could decide, ultimately, to uproot and face it.

Evan shrugged. "I just always have been afraid of it. And then I moved here, and it got worse."

"The woman, unveiled. The water, unprotected...The vanishing...Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, this is all a sign?" Dr. Blanchard hazarded. It sounded like bad Freud, but it made a certain amount of basic sense too. She continued, "Don't you think it's time to face your fears? Don't you think it's time to touch the water? You've been hiding from this since Josh died. The longer you hide, the longer you can blame yourself for that day. You need to release, forgive, and move past that horrible day. And the only way to do that is to forgive yourself."

Evan felt the bile rise in his throat. They'd been here before, he and Dr. Blanchard, and he thought he'd gotten past this piece of her paint-by-numbers psych test. Apparently not.

"I didn't see the woman last night out of guilt," he said. "But at the end of the day, I did kill my son."

Dr. Blanchard nodded her head. "So. We've basically gotten nowhere over the past year."

Evan didn't answer at first, and then looked up at her. "A year ago I didn't see women jumping to their deaths," he said.

"Nor did I," she said. "Nor did I. And I'd completely love to keep it that way."

She looked at him hopefully. "Here's what I think," she said. "I think you need to take swimming lessons."

She shifted behind the desk, and at the end of her fidgeting, she pulled one lone blue-jeaned leg up from beneath and slapped it on the top of the desk.

"Look," she said. "You've been coming here for a year. There are good reasons that you've been upset, but it really is time to move on. Your son is not going to come back to you, and you are not responsible for his death. You were afraid of the ocean before you ever blamed it. Now you have to face both of those issues, and there's not a lot here that I can do for you." She paused for a minute, and then smiled. "In all honesty, I think you just need to go out and walk in the ocean. I'd recommend that Sarah be there with you. The two of you insist on suffering alone, when you should be together. Seriously, Evan, at this point there is nothing much that I can do for you. I can listen. I can give you some advice on what you need to do to help Sarah. But what do you need to do for you?"

She lowered her head and gave him the widest, most intelligent look of her eyes that she had. He could almost ignore her freckles.

"You need to face your fear. And your fear is the water. You need to go back there."

"I'm there every night," he said. "You know that."

"You're not there," she said. "You're next to there. You're just torturing yourself by looking at the scene of the supposed crime." She looked at him and shook her head. "If you want to put Josh to rest, there's only one way for you to do so. You have to get off the beach. And I don't mean avoid the beach. You have to follow your naked woman. You have to go into the water. That's where your answers lie. Not on the sand. And not here."

She motioned to the sterile confines of the office with its plastic potted plants and white-painted window frames. "I can listen to you for as long as you like, Evan," she said. "But I don't think I can help you anymore, if I ever could."

Chapter Six.

The house was empty when Evan came home, and tonight, he didn't feel bad about that. He stood in the doorway of Josh's room and stared at the Katy Perry poster on the wall. Dr. Blanchard was right about one thing-his life had become that of a bystander. Every day he looked at the shrine to Josh's life, his room. And every night he walked the beach and relived all the accusations that the place brought him. But it was like a film loop, playing over and over. He was frozen, not moving on.

He went to the kitchen and warmed up a plate of beef stew from the weekend. Sarah cooked most of the time, but Evan crocked up a mean stew on occasion and after sitting for a few days, the meat and spices marinated to get even better. He sat there at the kitchen table and stared out into the last glow of sunset as the beef melted on his tongue. Something had to change, he knew that.

But not tonight, he backpedaled a few minutes later. He pulled on his beach sandals and slipped out the back door.

The night air raised goose b.u.mps on his arms as Evan walked down Butler Drive and arrived at the dry mounds of sand and spiky brush that marked the start of the beach. He trudged through the loose sand until he reached the waterline and then slipped off his sandals to walk along the water's edge. His night walks had been a ritual ever since he and Sarah moved here, over a decade ago. On the surface, it didn't make any sense that a man petrified of water would taunt himself by skirting its edge every single day, but Evan was fine with the ocean, as long as you didn't tell him he had to enter it. He loved the smell of the seaweed and salt that clung to the air, and the gentle, repet.i.tive rush of the waves was the best sedative known to man. He slept soundly after his walks; or, at least he used to, when he wasn't retrieving Sarah afterward.

Tonight he walked a little faster than normal, a pace more determined than strolling. He wouldn't have admitted to himself where he was going, but his destination was clear.

Gull's Point.

The dark finger of rock jutted out in front him like a shadow in the night and, deep in his heart, he hoped that he'd see the woman again. Evan held his sandals tight. He'd need them for crawling around on the rocks.

He covered the half-mile walk in record time, and wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead when he set his first foot on the path down the point. He kept listening for a hint of music in the air, but the only sound was that of the surf. Carefully, he threaded his way down the rocks until he reached the end, the flat lookout where, last night, he'd seen the woman leap into the waves. Had she drowned?

She wasn't there tonight.

Evan laughed at himself. Of course she wasn't there. If Evan's fears were true, then she was at the bottom of the bay, and sooner or later, her body would probably be discovered floating to sh.o.r.e. And if Dr. Blanchard's theory were correct, then she was just a local skinny-dipper who was probably too embarra.s.sed at being discovered to return immediately to the scene of the crime. Either way, she wasn't coming back here anytime soon.

He sat back and stared at the moon for a moment, and caught his breath. He'd walked faster than he realized to get here and his breath was labored.

Evan hadn't told Sarah about the woman last night. He told himself it was because she was out of it when she got home, but maybe it wasn't so clear-cut. Sarah wasn't the jealous type, normally, but, there was something about seeing the woman-and not just her nakedness-that had made him feel...

He began to hum to himself, the same melody he'd sung last night just before the woman had appeared. "Forever Now." Even just humming the song brought out emotion in him, and he let the melody die halfway through the first verse and chorus.

There was going to be no woman tonight. No song. No perfect pearl skin. Evan rose and threaded his way back off the point, carefully stepping between the jagged edges of black rock laced with gull dung. He began to walk toward home, though with something of the opposite in urgency to his journey here.

He'd only gone a few foot-dragging steps when something made him pause. Wishful thinking?

No.

There was the song again. His blood chilled and warmed from its very first notes. He looked out at the waves and saw only darkness. The rocks betrayed no movement. But the song. The song was everywhere. Evan didn't know which way to turn, but he knew he had to get closer to its source. He had to see her again. Talk to her. Such an amazing voice...

He started back toward the point, but then stopped; the music didn't seem to be any closer as he walked toward the point, maybe it was even farther away. Again he scanned the dark beach and darker rocks and waves, but the moonlight didn't betray any sign of the singer.

Evan closed his eyes. The sound washed through his brain like the ocean over sand. He realized it was even stronger when he just relaxed and listened...and so he did. A smile grew unbidden on his face, as he followed the pure, perfect soprano notes. They trilled, crystalline like birdsong, before plummeting to the sonorous call of a whale before swirling back to dreamy octaves of more traditional verse. Beauty in dichotomy. Beauty in symmetry. Her voice swam effortlessly through curls and twists in melody, a sweet, dangerously alluring exercise in music. He couldn't make out any words per se, but she was singing something. And whatever the syllables meant, they made his heart tremble with joy and then cringe with sorrow. The song was bittersweet madness, and Evan let himself be lost in its beauty.

After a while, he knew which way to go, and he moved toward the sound. He felt drunk, groggy in the way you only feel after amazing late-night s.e.x, the warmth and l.u.s.t cooling but transposing into something more than simple physical ecstasy and release in the soul. Evan walked. He didn't open his eyes, but it was almost as if he could see anyway; the music brought him visions of lightning cracks in deep, somnolent purple and mountains of lush emerald and ocean waves that shimmered with the coolest, gemlike blue ocean waves that...

...lapped at his chest and sprayed his face with foamy salt.

Evan opened his eyes at the splash of a wave and saw her. The woman floated just a few feet away, dark eyes glinting in the moonlight reflecting off the ocean. Her tongue moved against white teeth as she trilled an exotic melodic riff, but suddenly Evan wasn't under its spell any longer. He was feeling the cold of the water on his skin and panic rose from his heart to his head like an electric current.

Evan screamed. The woman's eyes opened wide, and then she dove beneath the waves.

His own eyes popped as she disappeared and left him to realize how far into the ocean he had walked, completely unconscious of his path. How could he have done this? He'd never even felt wet until he'd opened his eyes to stare into hers. Evan's arms flailed for balance against the steady rush of the low waves, and he realized that he hadn't stopped screaming since the moment he'd felt the splash of salt.w.a.ter on his face. Struggling for control, he forced his feet to step back, and back again toward land.

The woman hadn't resurfaced, but Evan didn't care about her anymore. All he could feel was the electric prod of panic. His heart beat in triple time. His chest burned and he couldn't catch his breath.

Evan turned away from the ocean to face the sh.o.r.e. When he saw that stretch of sand, safe haven, he stepped through the water faster. His heart pounded so loud in his ears, he imagined his valves giving way in an explosion of blood. In his mind he saw himself collapse here, just yards from sh.o.r.e, clutching at his heart as the water dragged him back to its murky, hungry depths. He forced himself to keep going, one step at a time. When the waves crested only as high as his thighs he began to run toward the beach, even though the fear warned him that he could fall and be dragged by the current back out to sea.

He had to get back on land. Now.

And then, he was there.

Evan collapsed on the wet-packed sand and struggled to control his breathing. It was difficult because as soon as he realized he had made it to safety, he began to cry. His chest heaved in ragged gasps and he closed his eyes and counted, using the power of slow, steady numbers in his struggle to regain control. He lay there on the sand for several minutes, willing his heart to slow down. He felt a fire beneath his ribs that threatened to consume him. He counted, and focused on the numbers. One, two, three...with each number, he slowed his breathing a little more. Finally, after pulling in a long, deep breath, he stood up, and stared back out into the ocean.

Waves crested and capped for as far as he could see, until the moonlight did no good and the water's surface was simply black.

No woman's head bobbed amid the breakers. Shaking his head in disbelief at what had just happened, Evan decided to join Sarah at the bar, as soon as he changed clothes. Only, tonight, he was having a drink.

Chapter Seven.

June 3, 1887 Sometimes Captain James Buckley III felt like a pirate. During the long stretches between ports he had to keep driving the men, or they got sloppy. If they had their way, the deck of the Lady Luck would be littered with fish bones half the time, and the masts would hang loose with untethered sails. Not that he had a crew full of lazy louts, but...men will be men. And men without reason to keep things shipshape...didn't bother. When you're out on the waves, day after day...housecleaning doesn't seem very important. After all, who's watching?

Captain Buckley provided them the reason. Private "Three Hands" Nelson was getting a taste of the reason-one that he'd remember for many voyages to come-right now. The crewman was tied to the main sail, and periodically, when he felt like it, Captain Buckley would wander over and take a couple cracks at the boy with the whip that hung from a hook on the wheelhouse cabin. Right now, the lad's back was a series of red lines and welts and a fair amount of dried blood. 'Twas getting about time to release him back to his quarters for a day to recover.

It was brutal, yes, but the boy would learn a lesson he'd not soon forget. And the rest of the crew got a good brush-up reminder of who was captain each time they pa.s.sed by the mast.

Served two purposes to give your crew a floggin' once in a while. They learned a bit of respect, and it kept the ship in shape.

One of the crew came running around the wheelhouse. Jensen was his name. Cauldry's younger brother. Buckley had hired him on Cauldry's recommendation, even though the kid was greener than gra.s.s when it came to working a fishing rig. But Jensen actually looked green now. "Captain, we've just pulled in a net that I think you should see." The boy seemed to be biting his lip as he said it. His Adam's apple bobbed.

"All right," Buckley said, doing his best to sound put out by the interruption, though, in truth, he was curious about what could have riled up the boy up so badly. Seamen, no matter how young, didn't tend to be easily rattled. "Show me."

They walked to the stern, where a large net lay open on the deck. Silver minnows bounced and flipped in the air like popcorn. But at the far end of the pile of dying fish were Buckley's men: Jensen, Travers, Reg and Taffy.

Travers bent over something in the net, and Taffy kept stealing glances over the first mate's shoulder, but then looking away.

"Over here, Captain," Travers called. Buckley stepped around the puddles and lumps of broken seaweed near the net and bent over to look at what his first mate had found. His first thought was that they had netted a rib roast from depths of the deep blue. Chunks of b.l.o.o.d.y red meat hung off yellowing strips of curved bone. But his eyes followed Travers's hands, and he saw that the ribs sprouted an arm, and at the end of that arm dangled a gnarled, raw lump of something that may have once had fingers. Travers was twisting at one of those appendages and the juice of bloated death dripped red from his arm as he did.

"We got us some kind of half-eaten shark or baby whale here?" the captain mused, but Taffy shook his head. Then the white-faced crewman pushed away from Reg and went to hang his head over the side of the boat. Taffy never said a word, but from the sounds bleeding over the side of the hull, he didn't need to.

"Naw," Travers said, strangely quiet. "Not unless sharks have taken to wearing rings." The first mate held up a shiny gold band with a black stone in the center. "Looks like we found Rogers, sir. And something's eaten him up pretty bad."