Useless Bay(14)

My fingers probed the perimeter till they hit something soft and squishy that swayed with the ripples of the water.

I jerked my hand away.

I started to shake—and not from the cold.

I knew a dead thing when I felt it.

Maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was. Maybe it was a halibut or a spiny dogfish, even though I knew the truth.

Halibut don’t have fingers.

By now, Henry had found the flashlight and was standing on the back patio, shining it in my eyes, his own eye a puffed-up, plummy mess.

“Pix?” he called.

I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want him to see what I was afraid we’d see. I tried ignoring him.

“Pixie?” he said again.

“Stay there, Henry. Call my brothers.”

The only response was a splash. I should’ve known. Say what you like about Henry’s mood this afternoon, he wasn’t the type to stand back and observe when there was an emergency.

I tugged on the cable and tugged again, but it wouldn’t come free.

Henry surfaced next to me with a gasp. “What have you got, Pix?”

He wasn’t ready for this. He hadn’t been trained. So I tried once more to send him back.

“I can handle this on my own, Henry.”

He ignored me. He reached under the water and found the hull.

I’d forgotten that he was boat-savvy. He rowed crew. Even his mess of a face was a boathouse-related injury.

He felt along the cable to where it was attached to the buoy and loosened the complex knot.

The rowboat should’ve floated to the surface.

It did not, but I could’ve told him that. There had been a drag to it when I’d tried to lift it earlier.

“All right. Let’s flip it, then drag it to the beach.”

“Henry . . . ,” I said.

I couldn’t see his expression, but I knew that even if he thought he was ready for this, he wasn’t. I’d met people in his situation before. Dads mostly. People who thought they were prepared for the worst, as though there were some kind of test you could take to be ready to see a loved one who’s died violently or in a stupid accident.

But there were no courses for this. If someone offers you an out, take it. You can see your baby brother cleaned up in the funeral home later. And you’ll be better for it.

“It’ll be harder to flip once we’ve beached it,” Henry said about the boat.

Had he felt the soft tissue underneath? I didn’t think so. And I didn’t want him to.

“Let me take care of this. If you want to do something, call my brothers. They can help.”

It was so dark out, so cold. And it was about to get worse.

I don’t know exactly when Henry realized that I was trying to get rid of him, but he knew now.

“I’m not leaving, Pix. Grant is mine. I should be here.”

Trying to get Henry away from here was useless.

Together, the two of us flipped the boat. It was so heavy, it didn’t float any nearer the surface. So we beached it.

Henry found the flashlight where I’d dumped it on a log on my mad dash to the buoy. He shone it on the interior of the boat.

There was a pale hand, reaching directly for me, attached to long fingers, some of them still sporting jewels. The arm was attached to a lithe body and an open black mouth, as though it were going to chew me up and spit out my bones.

It was the troll from my nightmares, and yet it wasn’t. Even in death, no one could ever accuse this woman of looking like a troll. She had those high Slavic cheeks. Her hair was smooth and glossy, even though the only thing keeping it in place was water.

It was Henry’s stepmother, Lyudmila.

The cable was wrapped around her neck three times. I undid it and, even though I took her pulse and didn’t find it, I pulled her from the rowboat and into the sand so I could perform CPR to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive,” because that’s what you’re supposed to do, even though she was too far gone for disco.

“Henry?”

I kept pounding Lyudmila’s chest, but slower this time. Water dribbled out of her mouth, but it didn’t seem to be doing her any good. I didn’t think I’d be able to bring this one back.

A rat-a-tat-tat came from the lagoon. Some idiot was duck hunting with some serious firepower.

Henry was just standing over me, not knowing what came next.

“Call my brothers,” I repeated. “We need help.”

He ran up the boardwalk to where he he’d dropped his jacket on a log. I heard him rustle around and then saw his face lit up from his cell phone screen.

As soon as he was gone, something strange happened.

Water gushed out of Lyudmila’s mouth, so I rolled her to one side, even though I knew this wasn’t a fairy tale. Here, in the real world, yurp up the poisoned apple and you’re still dead.

I took my hands off her.

In one jerky motion, Lyudmila sat up.

I scuttled backward on the cold sand.

There could be no doubt about it: Lyudmila was gone. There was no pulse. So why was she moving? Pointing at me with a long bony finger? Staring at me with cloudy eyes?

She spoke with a voice that wasn’t her own.

Stay . . . , rasped the thing that had been haunting me for years. Good girl.

Then I blinked, and she was a corpse again, lying on her side on the cold sand.