The Twilight Swimmer (18 page)

“What’s up, young man, is that the Sheriff gave orders and I relayed them to you. What
will
be up is you getting a hiding if you don’t oblige me by obliging him and getting your hind parts over to the clinic as ASAP as possible.”

“ASAP stands for—“ Dallas began to correct her.

“I know what it stands for! Get to the clinic!”

“Okay, I’m going. Just have to make one detour—”

Sally audibly moved her mouth away from the radio and cursed. “No detours. Combers found a young man on the beach, buried up to his chin in sand, naked as the day he was born and cut to ribbons. That’s all the info I got, and all the info you’re gonna get. Now git.”

Dallas straightened up in the driver’s seat, finally grasping the seriousness of the situation. “Roger. Over and out.”

In the passenger seat, Brandi’s smile had quickly melted away. She knew who the young man was, who it must be. The thought of the Swimmer injured, possibly dying, was horrifying enough. Still worse was the idea of the doctor, and her father, looking him over and realizing – as they surely would – that he was no man at all. What would they do with him? Even if he did recover from his mysterious injuries, would he survive the scrutiny of these men?

Dallas gripped the steering wheel, now focused. “I’ll have to drop you off at the station. Won’t take but a—“

“No, take me with you.”

“You heard Sally. If I show up with you, well, I guess I don’t know what will happen.”

“You take me with you, or the second you drop me off at the station I start walking across town and show up anyway. Out of breath and pissed off.”

Dallas bit his tongue for a long moment, deciding how to handle the threat. “Making this difficult for me, you know. Thought we were getting along. Not sure I deserve it.”

“It’s got nothing to do with you. Let’s go.”

The medical center stood atop the gentle slope of Hill Street, overlooking the town proper situated to the southwest. It was a small campus of buildings that had been expanded thirty years ago to accommodate the growing community of fishermen. Each new building was connected to the central building by a corridor, giving the medical center the effect of a starfish trapped and exposed on a boulder at low tide. Now, after years of decline, the town wasn’t populous enough to warrant such a large complex. Three of its five wings were effectively abandoned; their linoleum floors rarely received a sweeping or buffering.

Dallas parked his cruiser in the fire lane near the clinic’s emergency entrance. A nurse enjoying a cigarette against the building scowled at him for his choice of parking spots, but said nothing. Brandi was already inside the building before Dallas had stepped out of the vehicle. He trotted after her.

The registrar at the front desk glanced up from her magazine when she heard Brandi’s feet tapping toward her. She offered Brandi a smile of recognition, then inclined her head toward a nearby hall. Brandi nodded her thanks and headed that direction.

Dallas was on her heels by now. “Look, I don’t know if you’re supposed to be back there.”

“You don’t have to come,” she answered.

“Well yeah, yeah I do. Your dad—”

Brandi kept walking, peeking in open doors as they passed a row of recovery rooms. Most of the patients reclining in medical beds were elderly, deposited here by their families, long-term, for lack of a retirement home. They rolled their eyes toward Brandi as she passed, some staring blankly, others parting chapped lips to show her their bare gums. The gaping smiles of the dying, she thought. Something accusatory in those smiles. She tried to block them out, to ignore the reality of their mortality. She kept walking.

At the end of the corridor, she found a room with a closed door. The only closed door, as far as she knew. Surely, the Swimmer was behind it. She reached for the handle. But before she could turn it, Dallas dropped his hand on her own to gently restrain her.

“You can’t just walk in there, uninvited,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Privacy, first off. The man deserves privacy. Second, could be the man’s got injuries that make him susceptible to infection. Can’t go in there without, I don’t know, washing up. Putting on a mask. I don’t know how it works.”

“But you’ve seen it on TV?” she asked.

Before Dallas could answer, the door opened from inside. Conrad was at the handle, his rumpled sheriff’s uniform blocking Brandi’s view inside the room. She heard the quiet conversation of physicians attending to their patient, but couldn’t see any of them. Conrad stepped out into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him. He took a long look at his daughter, then turned his furrowed brow to a nervous Dallas.

“What is this? A date?”

“No sir, sir. I picked her up at the school, like you asked me to. Then I got the call—”

Conrad waved Dallas silent and returned his attention to Brandi. “Go wait in the lobby. I’ll be out in a few.”

“I want to see him,” she said, defiantly.

“He’s in poor shape, and it’s none of your business.”

“What does that mean? What happened to him?”

Conrad sighed audibly and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Morbid curiosity is unbecoming, Brandiwine. Go.” He turned her around with no effort at all and gave her a firm push toward the lobby. Then he grabbed Dallas by the collar and hauled him inside the treatment room, shutting the door behind them with a muted thud.

Brandi paced the lobby, chewing on her thumb nail. What was her father thinking, right this moment? He was a skeptical man by nature, unlikely to believe anything he hadn’t seen with his own eyes. But he could see
with his own eyes
that the Swimmer was something other than human. The pale skin. The paper thin webbing between his digits. And worst of all, the gills at his jaw line. They would be unmistakable to anyone but the absolutely close-minded. Surely they had already identified the Swimmer for what he was. They may have already begun placing phone calls to various scientific institutions in the state, or even region-wide. With a discovery as significant as this, they could have contacted anyone. Even international scientific bodies. What biologist wouldn’t jump on a plane, in an instant, to come see the first creature of a species thought, until now, to be merely mythological? If the Loch Ness Monster were suddenly available for viewing and study in a massive aquarium, the line of inquisitive visitors would stretch half way across the globe.

The Swimmer would never be free of them, once the scrutiny began. He was doomed to life under the microscope, literally and figuratively.

She had to do something.

“Shark attack,” said the registrar behind the front desk. Brandi stopped her pacing and crossed to the woman, who was leaning forward on her elbows, having discarded her magazine. “I saw him myself when they brought him in. Looks like he’s been through a waking nightmare, the poor boy. Hasn’t got half a wit left in his brain, he’s in such terrible shock. Can’t even say his name, where he’s from. Nothing, poor thing.”

“A shark. Are you sure? Where is he hurt?” Brandi looked around the lobby, making sure no one else was listening in.

“Where isn’t he hurt? Still had all four limbs, near as I could tell. But cuts all over. Deep lacerations on his neck, right around here.” The registrar ran her hand along the line of her jaw: the exact location of the Swimmer’s gills. “Skin just hanging open. Could breathe through them, if he had the know-how. Plastic surgeon might be able to close him up and minimize the scarring. But that poor young man won’t ever take a good photo again, if he does survive, handsome though he is. Not without a high collar. Turtleneck, you know? Poor thing!”

Brandi’s heart was racing. If the doctors believed the Swimmer had suffered a shark attack, they might explain away all of his physical peculiarities, including his gills, without leaping to the one conclusion that would destroy him: that he was not a man. That he was
more
than a man.

“Do you think you might know the boy?” asked the registrar. “All those wounds, and his skin all red and inflamed from head to toe. Never saw anything like it. And the trauma that poor child has endured, and is still enduring. I think you ought to be allowed in there to see him, to give him some comfort. He needs it, Lord knows. Just to see a friendly face, and squeeze your hand. That’s good medicine, if you ask my opinion. Not that they ever do.”

“Thank you for the information.”

“Of course, dear. I saw you yonder, worried half to death. Sometimes not knowing is worse than even an awful truth.”

Brandi returned to the lobby and picked up pacing where she left off. But after a few minutes, she headed for the emergency doors and exited the building. Once outside, she took up position where the nurse had been smoking. She withdrew her cell phone and quickly scanned the names. She dialed. She waited through several rings, her anxiety building. “Come on, come on. Pick up.” And then…

“Is this some kind of prank, because I know the real Brandi Vine would never call me. I’m not that lucky.” It was Spider, his voice a blend of chipper optimism and cautious pessimism. He had been chewing something, but swallowed it audibly. “What’s the occasion?”

“I need you.”

“Yeah you do! That is the most romantic thing any girl has ever said to me. Like a line from a movie. I love it. And I mean, hey, I need you too—”

“Spider! Stop talking! I mean that I need your help.”

Spider took a moment before speaking. When he did, his voice was entirely serious. “What’s wrong? You need me, I’m there. Five minutes ago.”

“Can you come pick me up at the medical clinic?”

“When, right now? Yeah, sure. What happened? Are you hurt?”

“No questions, okay. Just come pick me up. The back lot, though. Understand. You have to park in back.”

“I didn’t know there was a back lot. What does it matter where I park?”

“I said no questions,” Brandi fought to keep her impatience out of her voice, but was losing that battle. “Are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, yeah. Gotta put gas in the wagon, but yeah. On my way. You’re not hurt?”

“Spider!”

“Okay! It’s called concern for your well-being, and it’s generally considered to be a good thing. On my way.”

Now the small problem of getting into the Swimmer’s room.

Brandi spotted Dallas’s police cruiser, parked in the emergency lane. She glanced left and right to make sure no one was watching, then ran over to the cruiser, slipped open the driver’s door, and took a seat behind the wheel. Keys. Couldn’t do much without keys. She reached over and opened the glove box, but found nothing inside but neatly folded maps, a user manual and a pair of handcuffs. She was tempted to snag the handcuffs, out of curiosity, but slammed shut the glove box instead. Next she tried the visor above the steering wheel. No keys there, either. That took care of all the cliché key hiding spots. She stooped over and began probing beneath the seat on the off chance there was a spare key just lying on the floor. There wasn’t of course.

Then she glanced at the ignition. Keys. Dallas had pulled them out just enough to disengage the ignition, but had left them dangling from the steering column. With a nervous giggle, Brandi jammed the key all the way in and gave it a hard turn. The engine rumbled to life. She checked all her mirrors and scanned the parking lot, but saw no one. She put the cruiser in gear and took her foot off the brake, rolling slowly down the emergency lane until she reached a stop sign at the end. Where to go? There, at the back of the parking lot. A bank of dumpsters. She took a hard left and coasted that direction. There was an open area just beyond the dumpsters, a tight squeeze for the vehicle, but she managed to lodge it alongside the dumpster without bumping.

What now? She hadn’t thought this through at all.

Yes! The radio!

Brandi reached down and liberated the radio from its cradle. She pressed the button to turn it on, spun the dial a few times. She found the channel Dallas used to communicate with the station. There was a faint hum emanating from the speaker, but no sign of Sally on the other end. Brandi covered her mouth with the palm of her hand and brought the radio close. Her voice muffled, she made a serious of noises. Groans, barks, anything and everything she could think of. Still nothing from the station. Frustrated, Brandi uncovered her mouth and cleared her throat loudly. Still nothing.

“Blah blah blah,” she said in her best approximation of a male voice. “Blah blah blah JOY RIDE!” she hollered, her voice cracking with the added volume.

And now the radio crackled as Sally took up her microphone on the other end. “What’s that Dallas? You sound like you swallowed a bug.”

“Joy,” said Brandi, gripping her throat to keep her voice deep and unrecognizable. “Ride,” she finished.

“Joy ride, eh?” asked Sally with a yawn. “You’re supposed to be at the medical clinic with Conrad, not gallivanting around town on a pleasure cruise. And you most definitely are not supposed to be rubbing it in, to an old woman no less, who is stuck behind a desk watching wallpaper peel.”

Brandi didn’t know what to do. So she screamed.

“Oh my god! Dallas, what in the hell?! Are you… who…”

Brandi suddenly regretted the scream. She’d gone too far. Sally might think someone had been kidnapped and was being held hostage. She might call the National Guard to begin the frantic search for a victim that didn’t exist. Panicking now, Brandi did the first thing that came to mind. She laughed. And she whooped. And she screamed again, this time making sure to make it the happy scream of a teenage girl on a… well, on a joy ride.