Monstrous Beauty (23 page)

She waited like that, to give herself time to adjust to her new setting. The walls of the chest were so thick, she could hear visitors only when they were directly in front of her and speaking in normal voices. All the better that it was so well insulated: no one would see or hear
her
, either. She was free to breathe. When she was confident that she knew the environment, she slowly removed the Doyle journal and the toy lantern from her bag.

For the next hour and a half she read. At three-thirty, with the blood pooling painfully in her hip and shoulder and her legs aching from being folded, she shifted onto her back and propped her head against the wall. At four-thirty, the visitors left and Hester saw someone—the docent?—sweep past the keyhole three times, making sure everyone was gone. At four-fifty the lights went out. Within minutes of each other, two office doors slammed. She decided she would stay hidden until five-thirty to be safe. Besides, the next part of her task—stealing private property, trespassing, and setting off alarms—promised to be much more stressful than waiting in a cramped chest. All at once she was nervous about leaving, after hours of wishing she could.

She calmed herself by reading.

The most extraordinary ability common to all females of this species and of obvious potential temptation to mankind is not only the power to heal wounds, including those dire in nature, but most incredibly, under the proper circumstances and given suitable material to work with, the power to resuscitate the living from near death, or even the newly dead from veritable death.

The little lantern flickered, and the glow weakened as the battery began to die. She shook it, but the light was waning quickly.

Such feats are not achieved without cost, however, as the principle of conservation holds with equal importance in the undersea realm as it does in our own earthbound world. In short, one cannot get something for nothing, and in practical application the exchange proves to be as much or in some cases more of a sacrifice than the original loss, with an added measure of uncertainty regarding a successful outcome, making the use of such powers inadvisable, and their existence something to be concealed from the human race forever, to avoid their misapplication.

The lantern faded completely. Hester stayed still for a moment, thinking. If she had read the passages correctly, they were essentially saying that the sea creatures could raise the dead. But what exactly was “suitable material”? What was “the exchange”?

She thought about her mom, her ashes scattered in the ocean. She felt a heaviness in her chest: there could never be “suitable material” there. Then she thought about Linnie—deprived of growing up, eternally longing for love and warmth, never understanding her half existence—whose bones might still be in a casket at Burial Hill. How might Linnie use the rest of her life if she could live again? Were bones “suitable material”?

She shook her head. Those thoughts were too macabre. She had to stick to the task of taking Linnie’s doll to her, of putting her spirit to rest. She felt for her bag in the dark and put the toy lantern and the journal inside, closing the flap but not fastening it. She squirmed to put the strap of the bag over her shoulder. Her legs were asleep now, tingling with pinpricks. She took a deep breath. She rehearsed the steps in her mind, trying to visualize a flawless performance: open the lid (do not hurt the painting); climb out of the chest; close the lid; take a moment to stretch and get your balance; step into the main part of the permanent collection, in view of the electric eye (alarm sounds); move quickly to the childhood exhibit; lift lid of glass case; remove doll; put doll in bag; fasten magnet closure on bag; exit via fire door; walk (do not run) along back wall of museum behind bushes; reach Chilton Street; walk away (casually); police arrive but you are already gone; sneak home for supplies; hide out until dark.

“Showtime,” she breathed aloud, and pushed up the lid.

Chapter 36

H
ESTER SLIPPED A NOTE
under Peter’s back door after dark, sealed in an envelope with his name written on the front.

By now you know I stole the doll, and you’re convinced I’ve lost my mind, which I probably have. Please forgive me for lying to you. My only defense is that I’m using it to help someone. If all goes well I won’t damage the doll and I’ll return it to the museum tomorrow, taking full responsibility. (Will colleges refuse me admission if I have an arrest record?) If for some reason I haven’t returned the doll by morning, look for it in Burial Hill and remember that I am

Your friend always,

H.

She put her hand on the back of her head and felt the shell barrette. She bit her cheek. She remembered when Peter had given it to her. He had pulled the perfect gift from his back pocket and handed it to her as if it were nothing. It was the night of the school party. The night she’d met Ezra in the cave—or, rather, the night she’d heard his irresistible voice—without knowing what he would become to her.

“Ezra,” she whispered, exhaling.

Just saying his name filled her with the desire to see him.

She looked at her watch under the Angelns’ porch light. It was just past ten o’clock. She had promised herself she would stay away from Ezra, at least until she had freed Linnie. Then the hauntings would end, Pastor McKee would be satisfied and stop trying to dissuade her from going to the beach, and Hester could quietly go back to researching her curse with Ezra.

She sighed. Who was she fooling? She knew what she wanted—to hold him, to kiss him, to break all of her rules.

She walked her bike out to the street and felt her resolve weakening. Maybe a short visit with Ezra would actually help? He was an expert in myths and legends, after all. Maybe he could offer some advice that would help her speak coherently to Linnie. McKee had been so vague: Show her the doll, talk her away. But what exactly was Hester supposed to say? Were there ways in which it could go wrong? She nodded her head, having decided: she needed to see Ezra.

She rode to the beach, with the cool night air raising the hair on her arms. She locked the bike to a lamppost and carefully hid her bag inside the dense bushes next to it. With rain in the forecast, she had switched her bag at home for her waterproof backpack; she couldn’t risk getting the journal or the doll wet. She rolled her eyes at the irony: she was protecting her precious stolen antique contraband. What was wrong with her? After seventeen years of impeccable behavior, she had tossed ethics aside, along with her once-steely resolve never to fall in love. She ran across the lawn to the stone stairs.

Even in the darkness she could tell that the beach was flooded.

“Damn!” she shouted, stamping her foot.

In the two days since she had seen Ezra, the tides had changed. She could see that the water was just beginning to ebb. That meant that low tide would be around three in the morning.

She walked down the stairs to the water. There was barely any beach left. She stepped out of her shoes and left them on the landing with her socks tucked inside. There was no moon yet, only a faint ambient light from the streetlights. She swallowed a sharp pang of disappointment in her throat. Ezra would have helped her; Ezra would have bolstered her for what she needed to do. She could almost see his eyes—caring and penetrating, his attention intense and undivided.

She waded into the black water. It was soft around her ankles, soothing her, calming her, making her muscles relax. She went in up to her knees. She swished her foot, feeling her toes drag in slow motion through the heavy, rippled sand. Her foot passed over a large shell—it felt like an intact knobbed whelk. She was wasting valuable time, she knew. But she didn’t want to see Linnie, not just yet. She bent over to pick up the shell, feeling for it underwater. Something stirred in front of her, and from the corner of her eye she thought she saw a flash of white.

Two cool hands grabbed her wrists and pulled her into the water. She barely had time for half a scream before she was plunged under headfirst. Bubbles burst around her face and water rushed up her nose. She yanked her right arm away. She was being pulled hard, and her feet were scrabbling frantically along the bottom. She dug them into the sand, slowing the creature, or startling it. Her face broke the surface for a moment—long enough to take a gulp of air—before she was pulled under again. The water quickly became too deep for her to feel the sand beneath her.

She struggled and writhed as the thing switched positions, easily hooking an arm around her neck and swimming her down—headfirst, faceup, deeper and deeper—in a death-spiral version of a lifeguard rescue. It was a distinctly humanlike arm that held her, and Hester clutched it with both hands, afraid of the speed, and afraid it would strangle her. The rhythmic thumping and pumping beneath her was the unmistakable action of a powerful tail, propelling them to the depths of the bay. Hester kept her eyes closed, but she knew without seeing the creature: it was a mermaid.

They were real.

McKee was right; E. A. Doyle was right.

And Hester was about to be killed.

Her lungs felt as if they would implode from the pressure. She had the sensation of knives stabbing through her ears into her brain. She tried to release small bubbles of air from her nose, hoping it would ease the pain. She clawed at the arm around her neck. She dug her fingernails in, but they bent backward against the tough skin. She pounded on the arm, twisting and turning her body. She had used up the last of her oxygen fighting, and she had been dragged too deep, too fast. She stopped resisting. She felt her body begin to go limp.

Would she take a breath when she fainted? Was that how people drowned?

Her parents flashed into her mind, then Sam. And next a picture of the doll, tucked safely in her backpack with the journal. Who would find them under that bush? And finally she saw an image of Ezra, beautiful Ezra, lying under her in the sand, looking into her eyes with a contentment she’d never before seen on anyone’s face.

Her mind clouded with pain. She felt a scorching in her lungs. Even if she could break free, she couldn’t swim to the surface in time to save herself. Remaining alive was no longer bearable. She felt herself begin to lose consciousness.

And then she had a vision:

little Peter’s feet dangling above her

the hot pink of the underside of his swim-a-ring

the jack somewhere past the sandbar

swimming

the murky depths

searching

deeper

seeing

deeper

there’s the jack

forgetting to hold her breath.

Chapter 37

T
HE WATER RUSHED
into Hester’s lungs, and her body seized. In the fraction of a second in which she thought she died, she felt the dry cavity of her chest flood with an oddly familiar, merciful coolness. She waited another second, anticipating a death that didn’t come. Instead, the scorched feeling had been bathed away. She was still being carried to the bottom by strong arms and those powerful, rhythmic tail bursts. She sucked in more water and closed her mouth. It refreshed her. It oxygenated her. It made the pressure of the ocean around her tolerable.

It was impossible.

The stabbing pain in her ears was gone. She dared to open her eyes, and she could see—at such depths!—a grainy, dark, monochromatic-green vision of another world. A huge fish swam by, the retina of its eye warily glinting metallic in her direction. She breathed again through her nose. It was miraculous. And yet it was a sensation she recognized—that hazy, early memory from childhood. Her muscles became tense with anticipation. If she was going to die, it would not be by drowning.

Her marvel increased with every moment. Not only could she see and breathe, she realized that she could also hear underwater. The bay was full of sounds that her dull ears had never picked up before when she was swimming at the beach: the low-frequency rumblings of distant boats, the high-pitched call of dolphins, the melancholy song of a humpback whale, the sound of rocks and pebbles shifting against each other on the ocean’s floor. And then a voice—the voice of the thing that had her in its clutches. It was incomprehensible, with periodic click-consonants.

“S!glaemie tor!ga meelay, Syrenka.”

Hester angrily shook her head, but the motion nearly strangled her because of the arm around her neck. “
Nng
” was the only sound she could get out in protest, clawing at the arm again, which finally loosened. The creature stopped swimming, released her, and turned to face her, holding Hester’s upper arms, steadying her. Hester expected to float up, the way a human body should in water, but she remained stationary, neither sinking nor floating.

Why hadn’t she died of hypothermia? The water at the surface was sixty-five degrees on a good day, but at this depth it had to be close to freezing.

The creature stared at her. Hester was riveted by her eyes—large and round and nearly clear, with horizontal slits for pupils. She was beautiful … and frightening. Hester had a sudden instinct to tuck her legs and arms in, recoiling from danger like an octopus.

“Sno eaer!gla Syrenka?”
The creature pointed to herself.
“!Gla Needa.”