Night Film(200)

“No!” I called out to him. “You misunderstood.”

But he was jerking it with surprising strength by the bow, the boat’s propeller digging into the sand as if trying to resist.

“Hey, forget it! Ma?ana!”

The man made no sign of having heard me. Knee-deep in the water now, he was stooped over, yanking the starter cord.

I fell silent, watching him, and then found myself turning, staring back at the way I’d come.

There were a few lights, back at the end of that road. They looked lively and soft, and suddenly I was filled with longing, as if around the corners of those dark houses I might find Perry Street and my old life, all that was known to me and familiar, all that I loved, if only I had the inclination to walk back there. Yet as close as they appeared, they seemed also to be receding, warm rooms I’d already passed through, the doorways gone.

The man had managed to turn over the motor, thick smoke streaming out, a deep rumble tearing through the wind clattering across the rooftops of the shops behind me.

I walked to the boat and climbed in. An inch of seawater slurped in the hull, but the old man was unconcerned. Taking his position beside the engine, he unfolded a blue cap from his shirt pocket, pulled it low over his eyes, and with a single nod at me of evident pride, he began to steer us away from the shore.

We hadn’t gone two minutes when I spotted deep green, seemingly uninhabited islands surfacing like giant whales to my left. I assumed we’d stop at one, but the man kept driving us past, one after the other, until I saw there was absolutely nothing left in front of us, not a single landmass, nothing—only a black churning ocean and a sky, equally empty.

“How much longer?” I shouted, turning around.

But the man only held up a grizzled hand, muttering something voided by the wind, which seemed to charge his dirty gray shirt with volts of current, revealing a frame as withered as an old tree.

Maybe he was Charon, ferryman of the River Styx, transporting all newly dead souls into the underworld.

I turned back, staring ahead, trapped in the feeling that something was about to appear and the horror that nothing ever would. We continued on, I didn’t know how long. I couldn’t release my grip on the sides of the boat to check my watch or the compass, the waves growing violent, ocean spray soaking me as they turned upon themselves, beating the boat. Slowly I began to surrender to the possibility that we’d go on and on like this, until the gas ran out, and when it did, the boat’s motor would clear its throat like an exhausted opera singer leaving the stage, and I’d turn to find that even the old man was gone.

But when I did turn, he was still hunched there, squinting far off to our left, steering us toward another massive green-black island growing out of the horizon, this one with a narrow beach fringed with foliage and beyond that, immense cliffs rising like muscular shoulders out of the sea. The man grinned as if recognizing an old friend and when we were some twenty yards offshore, abruptly he cut the engine, staring at me expectantly as the boat pitched and jerked. I realized, as he extended one oil-blackened index finger toward the water, still smiling, it was my cue to jump.

I shook my head. “What?”

He only jabbed that finger toward the water, and when I waved my arm, trying to tell him to forget it, a heavy swell blasted the boat. Before I could brace myself, I was abruptly tossed forward.

I was spinning upside down in the freezing waves. I broke the surface, gasping, seawater filling my mouth, but as the ground found my feet I realized it was shallow. I kicked my way to shore, struggling to stand, bending over, coughing. But then I whipped around, horrified. I’d neither paid the man nor made any arrangements to get back.

He’d already restarted the motor and was circling the boat around.

“Hey!” I shouted, but again, the wind erased my voice. “Wait! Come back!”

He didn’t react or didn’t hear me. Shoulders hunched, bracing himself against the wind, he was speeding across the water, motor screeching, and within minutes he was nothing but a speck of black on the sea.

I looked around. There was just enough light left to see, farther down the beach, where the sand narrowed as if brutally shoved aside by the cliffs, a giant boulder. It had a hole through it.

The trap of the mermaids.

Stunned, I stumbled toward it, then quickly realized that an immense flock of seagulls, their cries extinguished by the ocean, were swarming not only around the boulder but most of the shoreline, feasting on something scattered across the rocks. The rain began to fall harder, so I took off, taking refuge under the foliage fringing the beach.

I noticed, just a few yards away, a plank jutting across the sand.

A series of boards had been flung over a muddy path leading straight back into the forest. I checked the compass, the needle resolutely pointing east, and then stepped onto the wood, the mud underneath belching from my weight. I followed it, instantly hit with stagnant air, humid and thick, but also something else—a rush, a sensation that I was sliding toward something, being funneled into a hole I couldn’t climb out of and shouldn’t try. Twisted branches wound around one another growing so dense all that was left of the rain was the sound of it, like a crowd whispering overhead. I began to walk faster, and the walk became a run, the run a sprint, the uneven planks hitting my feet, some snapping in half, sending me knee-deep in mud. I didn’t stop, streaking past spider ferns and bobbing flowers, waist-thick tree roots climbing out on either side of the path, as if trying to escape. My only company appeared to be a single bird, which dogged me like a final warning, fluttering, chirping in the overgrowth until it flew right at me, black wings grazing my cheek, emitting a sharp cry before diving again into the dark. The pathway was becoming an incline, growing steeper as if trying to shake me off, but I didn’t stop, ascending so rapidly, after a while I couldn’t feel the ground under my feet.