Harrison Squared (14 page)

Aunt Sel sat beside me. “Okay, who told you this
Albatross
rammed your mother's boat?”

“Nobody told me.”

“So you just
decided
the boat had something to do with it?”

I tried to think through how much I could tell her without giving Lub away. “I got a note,” I said. “An anonymous note.” I told her what it said, and how I'd gone down to the docks to look for a boat with that name, and followed Chilly Bob to the boat garage.

“Chilly Bob,” she said skeptically.

“He runs the bait shop,” I said. “Maybe he's cold or something.”

“Or makes chili.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “The point is, I found the
Albatross
, hiding under a tarp. It had a hole in it. I was going to leave then, but then—”

I couldn't finish.

“Harrison?” Her voice went soft. “What happened?” She must have seen something in my face. “You can tell me.”

I took a breath. “There was a man there. He caught me in the building, and he had a knife, and he chased me.”

“You were
attacked?
Who was it? What did he—?”

“I don't know his name. Chilly Bob called him the Scrimshander. He pushed me under the water—and then I got away.”

I couldn't tell her about Lub. She probably wouldn't believe me if I did.

Aunt Sel was up and pacing the small room. “We've got to call the police.”

“That's what I've been saying! This guy, and whoever was on the
Albatross
—they sunk Mom's boat. I'm sure of it. There was no rock or island out there in the middle of the ocean. No storm. This is the only thing that makes sense.”

“But why in the world would they do that?”

“I don't know,” I said.

Aunt Sel puffed her cheeks, exhaled heavily.

I said, “You believe me, don't you?”

Aunt Sel sat down again, and put her hand on mine. “I want you to hear this. I believe completely that you saw what you say you saw. Whether the hole in the boat means that—well, we'll find out. None of that matters compared to arresting the man who attacked you.”

*   *   *

Chief Bode came that afternoon. He perched his chubby body on the edge of the chair and took careful notes while I talked.

I told him the story as I'd told it to Aunt Sel, leaving out nothing—except for Lub. The chief seemed to write every word, asking me to repeat a phrase or slow down. He asked many questions. But as the interview went on it became clear that he was believing my story less and less. And when I said the word “Scrimshander” he looked at me for a long moment, then put down his pencil.

“What?” Aunt Sel asked. “You think he's making this up?”

Chief Bode put up his hands. My aunt's directness could be alarming. “It's not that, ma'am,” he said. “But this Scrimshander fella—”

“Ask Chilly Bob,” I said. “The Scrimshander was there.” I told the chief everything I could remember about him, from hat to knife. I even described his teeth.

“Pointy teeth,” Chief Bode said.

“That's right,” I said.

Bode looked over my head at Aunt Sel. I hated that look. “You see, ma'am, the Scrimshander's kind of a local myth.”

“A myth?” she asked.

“Like Sasquatch,” he said. “The boogeyman.”

“He was
there
,” I said.

“Talk to this Bob person!” Aunt Sel said.

“I will, I will,” the chief said. “I'm sure there was
somebody
there. Probably one of the lobstermen who works out there. But as for it being, well…” He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I get it, son. You've been under a lot of pressure, what with your mom going missing.”

“Do
not
condescend,” Aunt Sel said icily. I made a note to myself: Never piss off Aunt Sel. “You
will
look into this man, and the boat, yes?”

“I'll ask around. You said he had a…” He thumbed through his notes. “A hat.”

“Yes,” I said evenly. “And a knife. A big knife.”

“Well, everybody's got a knife around here,” he said.

“I'm sure they do,” Aunt Sel said. “As for this boat—”

“That's another thing,” Bode said. “This ramming theory?”

“What about it?” I asked.

“The
Albatross
has been up on blocks for weeks. Well before your mom went out on the water.”

I didn't know how to absorb this information. I felt like an idiot. I'd been so
sure
.

If Aunt Sel doubted me, she didn't let on in front of the chief. She thanked him for his time, walked him to the front door.

“Wait,” I said. I went back to my bedroom and fished through the pockets of my jeans. The green paper was nearly destroyed by my dunk in the water, the ink smeared. I took it back to the living room and handed it to the chief.

“Someone put that on our truck,” I said. “The morning my mom disappeared.”

“I can't make heads or tails of this,” he said.

“It says, ‘Stay out of the water.' It was a threat. An anonymous threat.”

“Right.” He wrote in his notebook. “A-nonymous. Got it.” He tucked the paper into his shirt pocket. “So how long will you two be staying, now that the search is called off?”

“What?” I looked at Aunt Sel. “You knew this.”

“Detective Hammersmith called this morning,” she said. “You were sleeping.”

“They can't do that!”

“It's been four days,” the chief said. “That's well beyond what they usually allow.”

I wheeled on him. “Get away from me, you useless piece of—”

“Harrison!” Aunt Sel said.

“Watch yourself, boy,” the chief said.

Aunt Sel stepped between us and put a hand on my chest. “Chief Bode, like you said, this is a stressful time.”

She gave me the tiniest shove, like a ref directing a boxer to his corner of the ring, and I stalked back to my bedroom.

*   *   *

That afternoon I did nothing but fume, sulk, brood, and seethe. Not very productive activities, but at least I was good at them. I refused to talk to Aunt Sel, and I ate in silence. At nine I went to my bedroom again, sure that I wouldn't be able to sleep—until my body shut down on its own. Evidently I was still recovering from the dunk in the bay.

I woke up Sunday feeling calmer. All that emotion from yesterday seemed like it belonged to someone else. My temper had caused me problems, but punching a cop would have been a new high point in my career as a juvenile delinquent. Mom would have been so disappointed. We'd talked for years about controlling what she called my “dual nature”: one side calm and analytical, and one … volcanic.

Aunt Sel immediately read my change of mood. “You look like a man who needs waffles.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“Any idea how to make them?”

She called Saleem. I told her I could drive, but she wasn't hearing it. He arrived in half an hour and drove us to a diner in Uxton. By the time we arrived we were famished, and I plowed through an order of pancakes, bacon, and fried eggs.

“Civilization,” Aunt Sel said. “I'll be glad to get out of Dunnsmouth, I'll tell you that.” Then: “Did I offend you?”

I realized I'd sat back from the table. “No. It's … fine.”

She frowned at me. “Out with it.”

“I'm not giving up on her,” I said. “You can leave if you want to, but I'm staying.”

Saleem looked uncomfortable. “I need to call in,” he said. “See you outside.”

After he left, Aunt Sel said, “I'm not leaving, Harrison. And I won't pressure you to leave, either.”

“Really?”

“I can put up with bad food, a lack of culture, and zero cell phone service. I do worry about you, though. Running off like that on your own to find that boat. You have a genetic predisposition for obsession. From both sides. No wonder your grandfather was worried about you coming back here.”

“Well, worried about his son coming back here,” I said. “He didn't know it was me.”

“The details were wrong, but the concern was well-founded.”

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “I only know what my mom told me, and obviously she left things out.”

“Hmm, like that the accident happened near Dunnsmouth?”

“And what my dad was doing there in the first place.”

Aunt Sel crossed her legs. “It's so hard to finish a meal without a cigarette in my hand. I do miss them. Whatever you do, don't start.”

“Tell me,” I said.

She took a breath. “I can't tell you much. I could never keep up with your father's enthusiasms. Do you know what a cultural anthropologist is?”

“Somebody who studies culture,” I said.

“Close—it's someone who bores you to death at dinner parties. Oh, I tried to stay conscious as he described the latest cult or superstition he was tracking down, but your mother was the only woman I know who was
actually
interested. Not very successful on dates, your father. He got lucky when he found a geek as beautiful as your mother. No offense.”

“None taken. She
is
a beautiful geek. But you don't know why they came out here?”

“Nothing specific. I know he was on sabbatical from Stanford, and couldn't understand why he was going to spend it in the dreariest location possible. You all came along for the trip. You were just a toddler. Why you all ended up on a boat on the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night … well, your mother never could explain that. And then when you were hurt…”

I flashed on an image: a creature with skin like onyx, eyeless, with a round mouth ringed by razor teeth.

“Are you okay?” Aunt Sel asked.

“I'm fine.” I didn't know where that memory had come from. “Go on.”

“Well,” she said. “The Coast Guard had trouble believing that some shark or squid had attacked you. Probably why she changed her story when she told it to you. She was in shock when she called your grandfather. The size of the creature she described … well, not exactly credible. If she was confused, or had hallucinated some of it, no one blamed her for it. She nearly died of hypothermia. That's when—”

“I know what hypothermia is.”

“Somehow she got you to shore, and you were life-flighted to Boston for emergency surgery. You almost died of blood loss. Then afterward there was some kind of rare infection that kept you in the ICU for weeks.” She exhaled, then smiled humorlessly.

“Your mother wasn't the same after that. She did nothing but take care of you for the next two years. And of course she'd lost your father. When she went back to grad school we thought she was finally, well, healing. I had no idea till now that this new focus of hers was still all about what happened to you and your father. I think it's clear now that she always intended to come back here to find … whatever it is she thinks she saw.”

“Don't make her sound crazy,” I said.

“You have to admit, it's all rather Ahab-ish.” She paused. “Harrison?”

“Right,” I said. I'd had a thought. Several of them, actually. There were at least three things that I needed to be doing right
now
. And most important was to find Lub. He knew something about the
Albatross
. And he knew—somehow—that my mother was alive. But how was I supposed to find him?

“Harrison, look at me.”

“Yeah?”

She reached across the table to put a hand on my arm. “Promise me you won't let Dunnsmouth change you. I don't want to come back here in five years and start searching for
you
out in the ocean.”

Oh, but she didn't understand: I was already changed. I knew things I didn't know before. I'd met a boy with
gills
. There were monsters out on the water, and on the land.

“No promises,” I said.

11

She was surrounded by a sea of pale faces. Their eyes seemed to shift in the flickering light of the oil lamps, so even when her captor was gone, as he was now, Rosa Gabriel Harrison felt as if she was being watched.

Her prison was a cave, but the walls were lined on three sides with shelves made of glossy polished driftwood that held irregularly shaped slabs of white and yellow, some as small as tea saucers, others wide as serving platters, still others long and thin as broom handles. On each surface was a delicately etched portrait: men, women, and children, alone or arranged in family groupings. They stared down at her from shelves that started at chest height and rose into the dark like rows in a coliseum.

She recognized the materials and the method by which the portraits were made. This was scrimshaw, made by scratching with knife or sewing needle at the material of whales—whalebone or baleen, tusk or teeth—until the picture was complete and the lines were filled with black ink. She'd never seen examples so beautiful, or so awful. The faces were mournful, and they seemed to be pitying her.

Her wrists were bound in thick, scratchy rope, and a second length of rope encircled her waist and bound her to a rusty, centuries-old anchor that leaned in the corner. It was eleven feet tall, shaped like a pickax, and weighed somewhere north of a thousand pounds. She could move only a few feet in any direction, and could not reach the shelves, or the belongings of her captor.

He'd assembled furniture worthy of a hermit: a wooden table with a single chair; a chest where he kept his knives and other tools; a collection of nautical bric-a-brac, like the iron trident that hung from a wooden rack in a place of honor. She lusted for that trident. The sharp tips could have cut through her bonds easily.

But the only thing in range of her tether was her “bed,” a pile of sailcloth. Some of that cloth had been used like a straitjacket to bind her and drag her from the boat.