The She (7 page)

I stood up. It was cold in here, all of a sudden. I walked over to the window. They had put the night-lights on out on the grass. There was no cemetery associated with Saint Elizabeth's, except maybe the one said to be under the building itself. But there were two gravestones at the far reaches of the property, over by the wrought-iron fence, which belonged to the man and his wife who had donated the place at the turn of the century. A spotlight had been respectfully cast onto the two stones, so they stood out in the surrounding darkness. The wind was kicking up outside. The grasses blew in front of the stones, and the trees rustled, and it made those stones look so incredibly still and upright.

Grey read, "'Residents of the Hooks and neighboring barrier islands tell tales of the
Ella Diablo
of the Baltimore Canyon, eighty miles off the coast, who will rise out of the deep when certain rules that she established have been broken. If husbands and wives sail on the same vessel, she will become jealous and seize them. If people swim in odd numbers, she will make it an even number. Dogs chasing sticks at low tide are her favorite delicacy, and numerous dogs, bathers, and even sizable sailing vessels have been disappearing around the canyons for hundreds of years.'"

She turned the page. "Here's one eyewitness account, taken from a crewman's diary at the turn of the century. Want to hear it?"

I forced myself to nod, just because she seemed in need of telling it. Her voice was wound up.

"He says, 'She came in nothing but a small rainstorm. I was looking over the stern, as my job on our ship was to watch a following sea. I could see her rising out of nowhere, so black in the blackness, only because the stars behind her were disappearing. And then she revealed her face. Two white eyebrows cracked the blackness, then a hideous mouth opened and thrust itself out at me. I turned and ran for the captain, but he was on his knees paralyzed by a noise I myself could not hear. Shally was with him, the bowman. Since no one else was on deck, and since he was my captain, Shally and I knelt and prayed over him. I kept my eyes tightly closed, so as not to contaminate myself by the sight of this hideous abomination. But she sent driving spit and hiss all over the deck, all over me and my captain, sending us to a port list where the mast almost touched the water. But she failed to devour me and my captain, possibly because I was reciting my captain's prayer, It was a strong and good one. She took her cursed form back into the deep where she came from, and spared our vessel. Unfortunately, Shally was lost. We lit every torch lamp and searched the surface into the day, but nothing was seen that night except her belches of sea foam, and the following day, the surface was as if she had never come.'"

I had my hands on my lips, pulling on them like it might ease my sudden case of gut ache. I had my back to Grey, staring out the window, so I'm not sure she noticed. She just went on.

"I read somewhere in here that the number of ships that disappeared off the Jersey coast over the past three hundred years is something like nineteen."

"I've heard Aunt Mel talking about that," I told her. "She says you can't count any that disappeared before the days of radios. Anything could have happened in the old days. The captains could have been toting stolen goods or pirate treasure and lived out their lives having fun in Madagascar."

"Whatever. I went to the library to find out about tsunamis, tidal waves, and the shape of the human ear, and I come out with this book. I couldn't find anything else on the South Jersey coast. It's like any book of science in that library was hidden. It's almost like ... something intended for me to have this."

"Don't get carried away," I muttered. I'd been pretty calm, though that picture and stern watcher's story had rocked me up for a minute or two.

"And I felt so strange asking Mrs. Ashaad to see if you could come up here and tolerate me for an hour. My thought was that I had brought some terrible memory surge ordeal down on a kid who lost his parents in a boating accident ... then I have a boating accident? It's too creepy, too
Ella Diablo-
ish."

This time I laughed, holding back from saying, "If anything, it's more evidence of a just God than a wailing she-devil." I understood her little hell. I didn't know what to say.

She snapped the book shut. "I thought you might be a little more helpful. Or at least supportive. As I understood it, you were no calmness king last year at this time."

"No, I wasn't," I admitted, and thought back on it. "I'd heard my parents' boat going down on their ship-to-shore radio, and I must have made myself forget that whole night somehow. When it's too much for a kid to stand, what's that called?"

"Repression?"

Sounded right. "For years, all I could remember was waking up in Emmett's bed the next day, and him and Opa coming in and telling me the folks had gone missing. Last year some of the night before came flying back."

She walked over to me, put a hand on my arm, and her forehead hit my shoulder as I stared into the little spotlights outside. I could feel actual sympathy and regret wafting off her I didn't look at her but I put a hand on top of hers. I might even feel sorry for Jack the Ripper if he had heard that shrieking.

"What did it sound like to you?" I couldn't help muttering.

"Like a thousand cats in a fight, only higher," She'd whizzed out that answer kind of fast, which let me know she'd given some thought to it.

"Not bad, Grey." I turned and walked back to the chair again, plopping into it. "Look. I was helped. But it was probably not in any sort of way that would help you."

She pulled her chair right up close and grabbed my upper arm again. "I heard you took a trip to West Hook that's been, like, shrouded in secrecy. You won't even tell Bear what happened down there."

I sighed.
Why would I tell what would sound ridiculous, even to my best friends?

"Look at me, Evan. I'm a waste! Whatever it is,
I believe,
okay? Right now, I would believe
anything.
So don't think I'm going to laugh at you. What did you do, go see Bloody Mary? Did you drink some of that rotgut stuff she serves up to people so they can talk to their dead relatives? I'll talk to a dead Girl Scout. Maybe her body is caught under some shoal, and that's why it never turned up. Maybe there's not any she-devil, not any hole. Maybe that screeching we heard is just ... some funny wind pocket that weirdly shaped ears can hear. I do believe in talking to the dead. I mean, I would ... probably ... if Bloody Mary could tell me—"

"Bloody Mary." I laughed up some scorn. "She's
easy
to believe in. She uses tonics and powders and potions. She throws bones and reads cards and charges real money. And there's people who have heard this or that impossible-to-know detail from her about the dead. I suppose Bloody Mary might have a little real power of some sort. But, also, I don't know anyone who spends summers in the Hooks who has ever been to her sober: She's like a giant giggle. Except that there are some local islanders my grandfather cringes over; who went to her about an actual dead person. Supposedly, she's got no problem telling the gory details if she's asked about somebody who died a horrible death. I haven't stooped that low yet."

Grey watched me like a hungry cat. I got scared she would drool on me. She said, "Some people think you went to see Edwin Church."

I turned my head slowly and looked at her trying to gauge what she would be thinking. She didn't look too impressed. She shook her head. "The sailing director at the yacht club says he's just an old burnout who was a POW in Vietnam for too long and came home to drop too much acid. In spite of all the education."

I turned my gaze back to the floor. That's about what I would have expected someone to say.

"Why'd you go to him?" She took the leap of assumption, and I figured,
Okay, why not just tell the truth?

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? You must have felt there was something he could do for you."

"Grey, I didn't even have a reason to go to West Hook, okay? I just ... felt it, felt like if I didn't go, I'd go crazy." I stood up and wandered a few steps aimlessly. "I'm just that type of person. I feel things, and I do them. I drive my brother crazy sometimes. He's got to have a
reason
for everything. I just have to have a
feeling.
"

She said nothing but watched me in a way that made me think she might not laugh.

"I guess I was looking for something, just like you are, only Bloody Mary is out of my league. She runs that tattoo place, and I do remember having one thought that if I went to her she might get under my skin somehow. I'd walk out with some multicolored snake on my chest that I wanted like a hole in the head."

She cracked up a little, and I ignored it.

"Edwin Church ... I don't know. I went to visit my old house, which Opa hasn't had the heart to sell yet. And when I was standing in there, I just knew I was going to take a ride out to Sassafras to visit him. He's not dramatic like Bloody Mary, but there's that whole business with his hands."

"What about his hands?"

There were a few choice pieces of gossip in West Hook that only the natives knew, and I wondered if this could be one of them.

"I'd only heard tell of one person he'd ever done this for, and I was a little kid when I heard it. So I wasn't even sure it was true." I let my breath out, shutting my eyes, because as much as I'd gotten from him, it was still embarrassing to try to share it. "But he claps his hands, rubs them together and sticks them up to your temples. Like this."

I stuck that fleshy, thumb-knuckle part of my palms up to my temples and pressed, shut my eyes. "He said it's something he learned when he was a POW. It's karate, or mystical, or something. He doesn't explain it very well himself. He just does it, and then ... you can see things."

Before she could start in on me, I collapsed in the chair again and blathered. "See, that's why I'm saying it wouldn't be any help to you, Grey. If you're more into going to libraries or something, talk to my brother. He knows better libraries than Philly Free, and he's kept up his seaman's license, if you can believe that. I'll bet there's a lot of information about the sea he would know how to get ... if he wanted to."

"Did you tell him about Edwin Church?"

"No way. He lives in a ... a 'closed system,' as he calls it. Nothing exists but the physical universe and what we learn from each other: He would think Edwin Church is as ridiculous as Bloody Mary, and he would kill me if he knew I'd gone. He would say all I did was replace one superstition with another. I replaced a sea hag with some other higgly-piggly horseshit Edwin Church stumbled on in Vietnam. But if it's undertows and eardrums you're interested in, Emmett's got a lot of professor friends at Drexel—"

She put a hand up. "I'm more interested in results than information. You're a sane, normal, and functioning person again."

"Yeah."

She looked at me in a way that surprised me. Kind of like she was looking behind my eyes, the way I do to other people. Like she was seeing stuff there.

"You don't believe it was higgly-piggly. You believe whatever he got you to see, and however he got you to see it, it is totally true."

I didn't say anything.

"Why are you holding back on me?"

I shifted around and sighed. "For one thing, Edwin Church is a very, very weird guy. He's probably had more education than my brother and Aunt Mel put together and yet ... he told me he actually does believe in some dark force out over the water: I don't think he'd call it a giant hag, maybe something less Bloody Mary-ish and
slightly
more socially acceptable. Maybe it's like a force of darkness that has no form but has the power to waylay a ship. He said he was very respectful of the tales seamen tell, and beyond that, he wasn't really clean You could go to him and not get any relief—not if you're looking for the same type of answers that a library could give you. It just so happened ... my feelings about going there were right for me."

"So he stuck his hands up to your head and then what?"

"No, first he kind of talked me into this hypnotic trance, same as a shrink would, probably. And then he did that thing with his hands. I was able to see my parents going down in the sea. I was scared to death I would see something like what's in that book of yours. But I didn't. I didn't see anything unexplainable like that."

"What was it?" She leaned up a little.

"It was about the biggest fucking wave I've ever seen in my life."

"A wave."

I could hear her insides trying not to be skeptical. I shifted around again.

"Look, I know the closest tidal wave ever recorded on the Atlantic was across the ocean in the Netherlands. I know it would have taken a hell of a lot more wind, sleet, and rain to create a storm wave big enough to roll the
Goliath.
I know the oceanographers would laugh. But that's what it was."

"I think that's great you sound so sure," she said, but her voice was forced. Not that I could blame her for thinking maybe I belonged in here with her. If you're going to believe in visions, why not just believe in The She? What the hell's the difference? I really didn't know.

But I hurried on. "I believe it, not just because of how I felt when I was seeing it. He did that trance thing to me twice. The second time, he covered my eyes with this bandanna he had around his neck. He said, 'If you're seeing that your parents' boat was rolled, let's find out if you can see where.' He spun me a bunch of times, told me to walk. I took about six very dizzy steps. Small shack. I was afraid to go farther for fear of ending up on my face, tripping over the furniture. He told me to stick out my finger anywhere and try to touch something. He put his hands back on my head like that and started breathing out really hard. I reached out toward the left, where I kind of thought his lamp was. He said, 'That's where the sea struck and rolled them.' Then he pulled the bandanna off, and I looked. I was nowhere near the lamp. He has this map on his wall that's about six feet long by four feet high. It's one of those huge maps of the world, where Asia looks like a kid's cutout."