And The Sea Called Her Name(16)

I lost consciousness then. There was nothing for it, my mind could absorb no more and I fell to the wet sand that normally was always covered by the sea. The returning water awoke me and now I know that I was only unconscious for seconds, perhaps a minute. The water rushed over me and I spluttered as it closed over my head and I struggled for the surface, pawing at the ground below me. I gained my feet and turned, coughing out the sickening taste of saltwater.

A ridge of sea that would have capsized a thirty-foot sailboat was cutting away from the cove. A fin so tall it would have blocked the sun had it been shining, rose from the crest that was being upraised by the thing’s passing. And I saw then that what I had seen rising from the water had only been its head. The disturbance of water hid, I was sure, miles of the thing from the deep, its length and vastness beyond comprehending. Beside it a miniscule trail slashed the water where something much smaller swam, the movement of whipping tendrils barely visible through the rain as they headed further out to sea where the depths became deeper and deeper.

And then they were gone and I slept.



~

That was fourteen years ago this fall. As I write this I sit on my front porch and look out at the flatness of the Kansas field before my small house. Two miles to the south rests a marker that signifies the very geographic center of the United States. It is equally as far as I can get from either ocean that flanks the country and most days it doesn’t rain, which is good.

You see I can’t stand the rain. Water in general for that matter. I have a feeding tube that I put down my throat twice a day and pump fifteen ounces of water through since I gag whenever it touches my tongue. I hate everything about it, the taste, the texture, how it moves. There’s also a port I had placed permanently in my arm that I hook up to an IV on days when I can’t get myself to use the feeding tube. I bathe with baby wipes, tolerating a shower only once a month, and never a bath. Never a bath.

I love the dry reaches of Kansas and how the sun seems to shine longer than anywhere I’ve ever been before. I know the days don’t really hold more hours of light here, I suppose it’s the lack of trees and hills that create the illusion, but I’ll take it.

Because the nights are hard.

When the dusk begins to crawl toward my house across the land and the shadows lengthen in the fields, each blade of grass and every stalk of wheat seem to have a secret. And I already know too many secrets. I lock all the doors and windows then as the day dies outside and I turn on every light in the house. I’ve had extra installed in each room to dispel every inch of darkness.

And I try to sleep, but the dreams come for me when I do.

Dreams of sinking down through water the color of ink, so black you can’t see your hand before your face. The water crushes me and there is no air to breathe, but I don’t perish. I fall into an abyss where something waits. I always awake screaming before it touches me because I know that it will turn me over and show me. Show me its unblinking eye again. And what’s worse, I know she’ll be there beside it.

I’ve had a lot of time to think and some would say that it wouldn’t be a good habit to get into considering my situation. But I’ve swam in madness and I’m sure I left my sanity somewhere behind me in the surf of that cove. On days that the sky darkens and the wind speaks of rain, I think about her last words, so full of regret and horror.

It made me. It made me.

And I know now that she not only meant that the thing from the deep had controlled her actions in those days that should have been the happiest of our lives, but also that she knew where she truly came from and where her mother disappeared to for a week nearly nine months before Del was born.

But I try not to think of that too much, though it’s hard not to when the rain begins to fall. Because sometimes the hammering of a storm on my roof sounds like waves rushing up onto a rock-studded beach.

And sometimes it sounds like my name.





Author’s Note


As always, thanks for reading. I hope you had as much fun with this story as I did.

This story was one of the rare ones that came after the title popped into my head. My wife and I were on vacation in Maine, standing on a huge slab of rock, watching the tide come in when I realized I really wanted to write a horror story about the ocean. Now I’ve done it before; in my collection, Midnight Paths, I have a story called Adrift, which is one of my favorite stories of the bunch. But this time I wanted to have a different theme attached to it. The title flew into my head out of nowhere along with a glimpse at the basis of what the plot would be. The theme however was born out of the distance that can come between a couple. I’ve been in, and seen several relationships that slowly failed, the life draining of them for apparently no reason other than individuals growing away from one another instead of closer together. People drift apart and the cause isn’t always apparent. I wanted to capture that essence within the story, hopefully I did so.