The 'Geisters

THE JOINING OF TWO

The production company Ian Rickhardt had hired was to be editing the wedding video while Michael and Ann were off in Tobago; Ian Rickhardt had led Ann to expect that she wouldn’t see it until the honeymoon was over.

“These guys are good,” he said. “Normally, they’d take a month on this thing. For me—for you, they’ll cut it in two weeks. One way or another—they’ll get it perfect. And when you’re back, we’ll sit down with bowls of popcorn and check it out.”

As far as anyone knew, that was Rickhardt’s plan all along.

And it was—until he drove into town, met with the editor, had a talk about just how much he’d been able to achieve, and sat down with a rough cut.

That changed everything.

Ann and Michael were on the Buccoo Reef, snorkelling under a clear Caribbean sky with a glass-bottom-boatload of Venezuelans. It was very non-exclusive. The whole honeymoon had been managed by a business contact of Michael’s—Steve Clifford, a Trinidadian banker who either owed Michael a favour or was building up some credit.

He’d found them a beach house—a two-floor cinderblock affair not technically on the beach but within sight of the sea. It was near the airport at the capital town of Scarborough, but not too near. Coconut trees surrounded it, and it was far enough from the road that it might be considered remote. Michael liked it because it was “off the grid,” the grid being the line of resort complexes that had breakfast buffets and swim-up bars and a list of activities.

“Sounds like my kind of grid,” said Ann when they discussed it. But she was persuaded by photographs of those palm trees, and the promise of a housekeeper and driver.

Steve Clifford would, in that spirit, have organized an exclusive just-the-two-of-them trip out to the reef and had in fact made the offer. But Michael and Ann had agreed: Steve had done enough already, setting them up in that beach house with their own housekeeper and cook, arranging a car and driver to be on call for them.

By the time they decided to check out the local sea life, stepping back on the grid, getting to see some people, didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

So Ann arranged for two spots on the Calypso Empress, a big outboard shaped like a shoebox, and they settled around the glass floor to watch the bottom of the sea scoot by.

The Venezuelans were in a group, and they were tied up in wedding business too. They were all guests, though; the bride and groom were holed up at a resort by the airport, getting ready for the big day. These ones were friends of the groom; they worked with him at a newspaper in Caracas. It was one of the newspapers that didn’t much care for Chavez—or so Ann surmised from the conversation.

When she pointed this out, several of the Venezuelans laughed. “We all hate Chavez,” said one. “Even in death. That is what they pay us for!”

The ride to the reef was just under a half hour. It went quickly. The Venezuelans were delighted to hear that they were on a boat with honeymooners, and peppered them with questions. When were they married? Where were they staying? Were there going to be lots of kids? Did they have an opinion regarding President Obama?

They played a guessing game about their nationalities. The newspapermen pegged Ann as a Canadian right away, but guessed wrong twice about Michael. German? Swedish? Or (the closest one) Dutch?

He seemed pleased when he finally had to tell them: “South African. We should have put money on it.”

Soon enough, the glass-bottomed boat rendered up its rewards: a sand shark, schools of yellow sunfish, great crabs. A manta ray paced them for a while.

The boat paused at a nondescript shallow that had been named the Nylon Pool by visiting royalty. It was rumoured to have rejuvenating powers, and everybody climbed into the water with that in mind. Rejuvenated (and a little bored), they climbed back out, and moved on to the reef, while the guides admonished them about the penalties to befall any visitor tempted to break off coral or do anything else to upset the ecology.

The guides passed out masks and snorkels, black rubber shoes. No need for fins: the reef was shallow enough here that a tall person would have to crouch a bit to get the mask underwater. They all climbed down a little steel ladder that extended from the boat’s stern.

Ann didn’t have to bend very far to get a look at the reef. It was a revelation! A school of tiny silver fish swirled around her ankle, and not far from her toe, a barnacled crustacean of peculiar origin moved aside. Her first impulse—to jump back, away from the world that she was invading—passed in an instant. The guides were right: this was an ecology, a whole world unto itself.

She made her way across the coral—itself a huge living entity, maybe seven kilometres across, if you stretched the definition of living and entity.

The water deepened and she was able to stand straighter, and she went deeper into that strange, drifting land, and thought: I could get used to this place.

That was when the fish struck.

Later, the guide would proclaim it a parrot fish, so named because of the hard, beaklike jaws it had, perfect for biting off pieces of coral. It was not a fish known for its aggressive tendencies. It was not a very big fish.

But it could bite.

Ann actually watched it approach. It came close, circled her waist, spiralled down her legs. It slowed as it reached her knee. It was then that it made up what passed for its mind.

Ann screamed more in surprise than pain—although the bite certainly hurt. The fish took a small piece of her left knee with it as it spun into the deeper parts of the reef. Michael splashed over to her side, accompanied by two of the Venezuelans and a guide.

“Fuck!” she shouted as she hurried back to the boat. The mask dangled from her neck. Her knee hurt fiercely. She explained, at some volume, what had happened and that she was probably bleeding. The guides shouted to the others to come in.

“Sorry,” she said aloud.

It wasn’t as bad as she thought, but it was bad enough. The Calypso Empress had a first aid kit on board and the guides were trained. To take her attention away from the pain, the guide handed her a cold bottle of Red Stripe, and asked her to describe the fish. When she was finished, he nodded. “Parrot fish. Eats the coral, not the tourists. You didn’t make much of a meal for it if that makes you feel any better.”

“She is a pale girl,” said one of the Venezuelans, and his friend punched him, and added, “skin like alabaster, he means,” and the first said, “like fine coral.”

Michael held Ann’s shoulders and gave a squeeze.

“Maybe we should get a bit of sun tomorrow,” she said to him, “just as a precaution.” And she reached around and stroked his chin, and he laughed.

“Maybe,” he said.

Ann got the injury looked at properly at a clinic in Scarborough that Steve recommended, and after that they had a meal of fresh-caught sea bass and plantain, grilled for them by Thea, their housekeeper.

That night, they had another go at it in the bedroom.

It would be wrong to call it a failure, at least from Ann’s point of view.

Michael Voors was an attentive lover. He had a box of scented oils, which he would apply with great assurance, using hands here, a feather there, the tip of a tongue in the tricky spots. He would kiss her, and do this and then that—and then, with a piratical leer, he would vanish beneath the sheets for quite some time to “bring the boat home.” Ann wondered how he managed to get any air during these dives, but she didn’t want to discourage him, so kept the question to herself.

As far as it went, that was fine—wonderful, really. She only wished she could return the favour so adeptly.

In a series of failed attempts, she had developed a solid repertoire of tricks, and she drew on them that night, mixing up the order of things.

First—rather than waiting for him to roll off her, disentangle him from the sheets, she slid her right leg underneath him, brushing against him lightly with her calf, sliding up to tweak him with her toe. In the past, she’d lingered there to diminishing effect. This time, she pulled away, and rolled out of bed. She walked naked to the French doors, taking time to stretch with calculated languor. She glanced back at him, noted his eyes on her, and flicked the latch. She complained that she was freezing. But the moon was very nice. Michael obligingly got out of bed and joined her. He put his arms around her, rubbed warmth back into her arms.

Got him! she thought.

This was a new trick, and she held out great hope for it. With a nudge and a bit of pull, she manoeuvred his hands from her arms to her breasts. Hands free, she reached down behind her, and took hold of him. “Nowhere to go but up,” she whispered, too quietly (and just as well), because he only said “Hmmm?” as she pressed him against her hip.

Ann smiled to herself. This seemed to be working; Michael was stiffening appropriately, his breathing was quickening as it should. But she didn’t declare victory yet: they’d been here before.

So she proceeded with care. She turned. She pressed. She stopped pressing. Turned. Led. Sat. Stroked. Kissed. Stopped kissing, then started again, now with the tip of her tongue—in a different spot than the night before. Made sure to keep eye contact, as she drew him into her mouth.

“How is your knee?” he asked.

“What do you like?” she asked some time later.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. What’s your fantasy?”

“My fantasy?”

“Deepest and darkest.”

“Hum. I must think about this. My deepest, darkest fantasy…”

“Give it up.”

“I’m thinking. Why don’t you tell me yours?”

“I just wish I knew what you liked.”

“Don’t be worried,” he said, and stroked her hair.

And she said, “I’m not worried.”

What she was, was more than a little pissed.

While Ann was busy being pissed, Ian Rickhardt was on his way from Toronto. It was not until he touched down in Grenada for fuel, at about four in the morning, that anyone knew he was coming.

He contacted Steve with instructions: get a car to the airport at Piarco, and work out a route to meet the fast ferry: Rickhardt didn’t want to get on another plane after all this flying. It gave Steve just enough time to arrange a car at the airport. They drove through the morning to make it to the docks on time.

“Shall we call ahead?” Steve asked. “I have the numbers for Michael’s Blackberry.”

No.

“Do they have any idea you’re coming?”

“None.”

“Do you think they’ll be pleased to see you?”

“Don’t call.”

Ann and Michael weren’t expecting him, and they were out for the day. When they came back, they ran into Steve at the roadside by the drive to the beach house, sipping shandy and munching a double.

“He is inside,” said Steve, after filling them in on the back story. “Try to act surprised. I think he wants you to act surprised.”

The beach house smelled of the sweet curry that had been simmering stovetop for the afternoon. Thea was sitting in the dining nook with Ian. They could hear her laughter from the steps from outside.

“Surprise,” said Ian when they came in. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and nylon walking shorts. He had trimmed his beard down to white nubs. His bare feet were propped up on a chair. Thea, dressed as usual in a long red skirt, her hair tied under a yellow kerchief, covered her mouth and looked at them apologetically.

“Dinner’s comin’ up,” she said.

Ian nodded. “It’s fantastic. Coconut prawn curry on rice and peas. Side of okra. And there’s a fresh case of Caribe in the fridge. I brought it myself. Surprise,” he said again, and grinned.

Ann waved her hands at shoulder height, and said, “Surprise.” Michael took the hint, and went to fetch the beer.

“Sit down,” said Ian, moving his feet, and before Ann could say anything else, “Thea tells me you were bitten by a parrot.”

“A parrot fish, Mr. Rickhardt,” Thea said.

“Of course. It all gets mixed up in my mind. While I was at the airport, in Piarco—I picked up one of the local newspapers. There was a story about a widow who was convinced that her dead husband had been reincarnated in the body of her pet parrot.”

Thea nodded. “They write the story once a year.”

“Hush my darling,” said Ian. “She knows he has returned, she said, because the parrot walks on her just the way he used to. Did you hear that, Michael?”

In the kitchen, Michael shut the refrigerator door with his heel. He had four beer bottles, two in each hand. “A parrot who walked on her? Did the husband walk on her in life?”

Rickhardt appeared to consider this. “The article didn’t say. It also didn’t explain how it was that her husband was reincarnated in the body of a parrot that was hatched before he died.”

“This woman, she believe the spirit of her husband entered right into the parrot,” explained Thea, and tapped the side of her head. “She ain’t right here.”

“That’s not reincarnation,” said Rickhardt. “That’s possession.”

“Oh, best I not,” said Thea as Michael put an open beer bottle in front of her. He shrugged, slid the beer over to Rickhardt, who slid it back to her and she laughed and shook her head and sipped the beer. “Thank you Mr. Voors… Mr. Rickhardt.”

“You were bit by a parrot fish?” said Rickhardt. It took Ann a moment to realize he was asking her the question. She nodded. Bent her leg up so she could display the knee, a thick square of gauze conveying the enormity of the wound.

“The fish mistook me for coral,” she said.

Rickhardt squinted at the knee and shook his head. “That sounds farfetched. My money’s on possession.”

Tobago delivered up sunsets out of postcards every night. They used that one to set the mood for dinner: still waters, swaying palms, a flamethrower igniting the sky. As they tucked in, Ian laid bare the dual purpose of his visit. He wanted to show them the wedding video, and talk a bit of business with Michael. Either one by itself, he said, could have waited. Put together…

Michael didn’t object.

Ann found herself in the kitchen as Thea was cleaning up for the night.

“Quite a fellow,” said Thea, lifting a thumb to the saloon door leading to the dining table, “that Mr. Rickhardt. He doh eat nice.”

“I’m sorry?”

Thea smiled. “He say all sorts of things, don’t he?”

“Did he say something to offend you?”

“To offend me?” Thea laughed. “Oh no. Nothing to offend me.”

Ann opened the fridge, took out another beer and a fresh lime. “Thanks, I’ll cut it myself,” she said when Thea offered.

“He pay for your wedding, that one. Must have a lot of money.”

“He does.”

“And you don’t like him.”

Ann carved out a wedge of lime and stuffed it down the neck of the bottle. It fizzed and twisted in the amber liquid.

“You should not like him,” said Thea. “Here he is, uninvited, on your honeymoon. He pay for your wedding, think he can do that? Come here and vex you so.”

Ann took a swig of beer. It was tart and hoppy and just what she needed. “I don’t like him,” she said. “But I suspect we won’t see that much of him once we’re settled.”

You suspect that, do you?” Thea smiled, shook her head. “He flew in a plane to show you a movie of that wedding he bought you. On your honeymoon. Ah,” she said, and turned back to the dishes, “I’m overstepping. None of my business. But I will tell you something, Mrs. Voors. He’s very charming that fellow, yet he not going to leave you be. That monkey know what tree to climb.” She smiled and shook her head when Ann tried to hand her a bottle. “No thank you. Better I loll off no more.”

Ann put the second beer back in the fridge.

“You’re not overstepping,” she said to Thea, “and I won’t tell.”

“Tell if you like,” said Thea. “It don’t really matter to me.”

“You were gone awhile,” said Michael when she came back and fell into her chair. Ann smiled at Michael, then at Ian.

“Just thought I’d give you two a chance to catch up.” She raised her bottle, now half-empty, and made as if to toast.

Ian and Michael had been hunched together, talking in low tones, as Ann was talking to Thea; Ann had noted it over the saloon doors from the corner of her eye. Now Ian was leaning back, hands behind his head—Michael, arms crossed.

They both looked, she thought as she sipped the dregs of her beer, vaguely guilty.

“You didn’t have to do that,” said Ian.

Ann smiled and said, “Liar.”

She’d meant to say it sweetly—but she’d had… three bottles of Ian’s beer now? That sounded right… and her ire must have leaked out. Ian and Michael shared a glance.

She tried to recover. “Nice liar, I meant. You two have business to talk about. I can leave you to it….”

Ian smiled and shook his head. “Taken care of,” he said. “And really, I wanted to show you this.” He lifted a DVD in a plain white case from the table. “What can I say? I’m an old woman. They really did a fantastic job of it. I couldn’t wait.”

Ann shook her head. “I can’t believe you flew all the way down. Couldn’t you just upload it onto YouTube? Send it by courier?”

Ian’s eyes widened and he clutched at his chest theatrically. “YouTube? A courier? Heathen! This is special stuff! You don’t just fling it on the internet, give it to some lackey. It’s a treasure!”

Ann and Michael shared a glance themselves at that.

“Why don’t we watch it,” said Michael, “right now.”

“Excellent idea,” said Ian. He looked out the open French doors. “It’s about dark enough.”

It certainly was getting dark; the sun had pretty much set—there was just a tiny line of purple at the horizon. Stars were emerging overhead. But Ann didn’t see what that had to do with watching a video and said so. Rickhardt laughed.

“You didn’t think I was going to show it to you on the TV set they’ve got here.” The TV set being an old 27-inch Toshiba that occupied a corner in the living room. “I’ve set up something special,” he said, and got up.

“What—” Ann began, but Michael put a hand on her arm.

“It’s all right,” he said, “Ian told me about it while you were in the kitchen. Speaking of which—Thea?”

“Yes?” she called from the kitchen.

“You can finish up,” he said and they stepped around the kitchen to the living room. Ian was already there, unzipping a black nylon case and pulling a laptop computer out. As he plugged it in, and pulled out what Ann recognized as a projector, Michael lifted down a framed lithograph of a tall sailing ship and set it aside. The frame left a faint outline on the white wall.

“You’re projecting it,” said Ann, “like a presentation video.”

She’d done this more times than she cared to admit in the service of Krenk & Associates.

Ian nodded. “Full cinema experience,” he said. “Nothing but the best.”

Thea popped in to say goodnight as she left, and patted Ann on the shoulder where she sat.

“Funny ideas,” she said, so only Ann could hear. “Don’t let ’im spoil things.”

And then she was gone, and Ian slid the DVD into the side of his laptop and said, “Enjoy.”

Michael set an open beer down in front of her and flicked off the lights.

And their wedding began, anew.

A black screen.

A cool, descending bass line for a few bars, and then a trumpet joined in, blowing all over the place. The screen shifted to blue—the sky, over the Rickhardt Estates winery, two weeks ago—while on the soundtrack, Louis Armstrong put the trumpet down and wondered what good melody and music was without swing.

“Did you pick the song, Ian?” asked Ann.

“Hey, be thankful,” said Ian. “Michael wanted Sinatra. ‘Love and Marriage.’ Or was it ‘The Tender Trap?’”

Michael barked a laugh as Ann punched him in the shoulder.

The camera came down on the treeline, then the rooftop, and then the milling guests outside Rickhardt’s winery. The image faded to sepia and froze, and the title faded in.

And there was a date, and a location, and their names, and then the whole picture swam out of focus.

Literally.

As the trumpet faded out, it seemed as though the picture spun—as though Ann were spinning herself, dizzily reeling in a dance across the floor of Rickhardt’s winery. She couldn’t say how he did it—the screen simply shifted from a sepia exterior to an interior pan across a row of inverted wine glasses, a fiery stand of maples seen through a window.

And yet…

“Wow,” she said, and looked down and took a sip from her beer.

“Wow,” echoed Rickhardt, softly.

The camera was moving along the floor now, or near to it, past rows of guests seated in front of the dais where she and Michael would say their vows. Michael was at the front, hands crossed in front of him, smiling in genial terror. She would have been in the limousine still, sipping a small flute of champagne with Lesley at her side.

This was the part of things she hadn’t seen.

Faces, now—most of them strangers, some of whom she might know the name of—some of whom she knew more intimately. The lens drew across each of them, fading between so that sometimes one might seem to morph into another. Drew Sloan, one of the partners at Michael’s firm, laughed as he blended into the hollowed cheek of an older woman, who brushed a lock of her blonde hair from her eye and looked past the camera with wry approval, as she melted into the face of a young African boy, who looked bored and sullen, sitting in his chair beside his mother and transforming—into Jeanie Yang.

“Shh,” said Ann, as Ian kicked off a sandal, and it thumped on the floor. She leaned forward.

Jeanie was wearing a dark blue satiny dress, her black hair braided tight at the back of her neck. She was standing and talking and laughing, her purse under one arm, her other reaching out as if to touch the shoulder of her companion. But the camera pulled out to show her standing, alone. Who was she talking to? Someone on her Bluetooth maybe? Hard to say, because she quickly slid away. In her place sat Susan Rickhardt, Ian’s wife.

She had not been having a good day that day (Ann had never seen Susan having a good day), but this shot made the most of her. She was seated by a tall window that overlooked the vineyard. The sun came in at a high angle. It caught the fringe of her pageboy haircut, illuminated the ridge of her wide nose and perhaps, the hint of a smile—and bathed it all in a warm, golden glow. She might have been in Tuscany that afternoon. She saw the camera, turned, broadened her smile to just shy of Mona Lisa amperage, and with two fingers made a tiny wave.

And the screen went black.

It couldn’t have stayed black for as long as it seemed to; the single breath that Ann drew as Susan Rickhardt ended her wave couldn’t have sustained her.

The editor was working his art again, and the act of transition was somehow transformed into something more. But this time, Ann didn’t feel as though she were spinning; she felt herself a fixed point in space and time. All of it slowed to an instant, and that instant stretched.

At first, Ann thought she couldn’t look away, that something was holding her gaze on the screen. As the breath rasped through her throat, she began to think that she could look away, could look anywhere she wanted in fact—but the blackness had replaced everything else, so it didn’t matter. Ann began to panic. It manifested in attempts—at screaming, at getting up, at just asking Ian Rickhardt: Please could you turn it off a moment? Nothing would come of it, though. She wondered if she might be dead.

And here was the fulcrum of it, as Eva might say. The point where we can make a choice: dead or alive.

Ann wasn’t going to be dead.

And thinking of Eva, Ann began to imagine—to construct—to inhabit—the safe place.

It was a struggle; she recalled that first time, sitting with Eva at the hospital, building the castle stone by stone in her mind, clearing the woods around it… fashioning, or at least conceiving, the architectural details. It was a true act of creation.

Here, creation was barred from her. She saw the place she and Eva had made as through a dense fog. Standing in the high corridor, the fog’s tendrils clutched and flowed through the tall windows. Ahead, a blackened branch poked through. She could barely see anything; when she willed a candle, it snuffed out.

She shuffled down the corridor, which was, she discovered, covered in mud. Sensation returned to her as she did. She felt the cool mud between her toes, rotten leaves sliding beneath her bare heel. She ducked beneath the branch, felt its bare twigs catching in her hair.

She stood in front of the door to the tower room, the rot of swamp, of cesspool, filling her nostrils.

And there, she stood and listened.

Wood scraped against stone—as though a great trunk were being dragged across the floor of the tower room, one end to the other. The dragging stopped. There came a creaking sound then. And a great exhalation of air, as though an old man, an old woman for that matter, had just finished a big job.

Then came a humming, and a scratching—with an occasional rending sound, as though a claw had found purchase in the wood.

The humming sounded like a man. The tune was hard to place. It might have been random. It sounded like insanity.

Quiet down, Ann wanted to say. Behave.

But she still couldn’t summon the voice to say that. She was still drawing that single breath, and she could only watch—as her lungs filled—as the door buckled—

—and cracked.

“Hey li’ si’.”

She was looking at Philip. He was wearing his jacket-and-tie wedding uniform, although she could only see the collar, the knot of tie, because the camera was in close. His mouth was twisting like it was its own creature; his eyes, though, were steady, gazing straight into the camera as he tried to say, Hey little sister.

“Con’a—hin,” he said. Congratulations.

Ann coughed, and gasped, and sucked in lungfuls of fresh air.

“Oo boofoo.” You’re beautiful.

She looked around, sat up on the sofa, and took stock of her situation.

The living room was darker than it had been when the video began. Michael and Ian were gone.

“Uv oo,” said Philip from the wall.

I love you.

Another wicked bass line came up—“Bang a Gong” by T-Rex; actually one of Ann’s choices—and the scene cross-faded to a shot of Ann and Michael and Lesley dancing, very badly, while Mr. T-Rex went on about how dirty, sweet, skinny and black-clad his girl was.

Ann got to her feet. She was unsteady. Her mouth tasted sour—of too much beer. Had she had too much beer? That might explain things. She rubbed a chill out of her arms.

T-Rex’s girl was weak, and also had hydra teeth. This was Jeanie, bopping side to side as she breached the fringe of the dance, showing every one of those teeth in a broad grin. She and Bridal-Ann faced off on the screen and yelled at each other to bang gongs, get things on.

Where were the men? Ann did a check of the main floor. The kitchen was empty, pristine. The entry hall. A little coat closet. She called out: “Michael? Ian?” as she climbed the stairs to the second floor, the bedrooms.

T-Rex went away and laughter and squealing replaced it. “Congratulations Mikey!” shouted a woman on the TV. People clapped.

Partway up the stairs, Ann steadied herself and flicked on the hall light and climbed the rest of the way. The doors to the two bedrooms were open, their interiors dark. The bathroom door was closed. So was the door to the linen closet.

“Guys?” she called as she stuck her head in one bedroom, then the other. “Guys?”

Nothing. The beds were made.

“Insect?” she whispered as she touched the freezing cold doorknob to the bathroom, and as she thought of that other door, she pulled this one open.

The bathroom in the beach house was nice but nothing fancy. There was a biggish bathtub with jets, next to a fibreglass-formed shower stall opposite the toilet, whose tank was high on the wall. You flushed it by pulling on a chain at the bottom.

Ann flicked on the light. Everything was as it should be at first glance. Towels were hung neatly by the sink. The mirror was clean, and uncracked—and while it was true, her arms and legs were gooseflesh, there was no frost or even mist on the mirror. The water in the toilet bowl was clean and blue. There was nothing amiss.

Other than the fact my husband is missing.

Ann shut the bathroom light off and crossed the hall to their bedroom.

The French doors there opened onto a miniscule balcony; they were cracked open. Had Ann left them that way this morning? Had Michael? Wouldn’t Thea have shut them while they were out?

Yes. She would have. She most certainly would have.

Ann closed her eyes—tried to visualize the safe place. That, she knew, was the one sure way to deal with the thing that was happening. But she couldn’t get far—the memory of the shambles that she’d found there, just moments earlier, was too strong. She might be able to reconstruct it, but it would be well-nigh impossible to do it herself. And she couldn’t face that door—not without Eva. And Eva was far away.

“Fuck,” she whispered, and opened her eyes. “Fuck.”

It was darker now; the door to the hall was shut. The French doors were wide open. Her mouth tasted copper-salty; she had bitten her lip hard enough to draw some blood.

Outside, the palm trees swayed; the leaves sounded like knives on a sharpening stone as they rubbed against one another. And underneath that—

A humming sound.

It sounded like a man—humming a tune to himself while he worked. What tune, Ann couldn’t say. It was coming from outside the room though. She made her way around the bed, and peered out the window.

The bedroom was badly placed for any view; it looked out on the small cleared garden behind the beach house, which ended not twenty-five feet off, in thick foliage. There was a moon tonight, but also some cloud. So while Ann could hear that the humming was coming from the edge of that foliage—she couldn’t see much, at first. Just something moving, swaying back and forth. She went to the edge of the railing, and leaned over to look.

It was a man. Who, she couldn’t say. But she could see arms outstretched on either side—a head that seemed to loll back, far enough that the neck might have snapped. He was turning like a dancer. She wanted to call out—but her throat felt full of sand. She couldn’t even open her mouth.

She also couldn’t look away.

Because she began to realize that he wasn’t turning like a dancer at all—he was spinning, as though he were dangling on the end of a string, or a wound up elastic band; there was no contact with the ground. And as he turned, he seemed to rise up: a half-dozen revolutions, and the tips of his toes soon hovered at Ann’s eye-level—not more than a few metres out.

His rotation had slowed—he might have been making one revolution every two seconds. His close-cropped beard caught the faint moonlight in a stippling of silver, as he spun to face her for an instant. Then the moon struck silver hair—bare, suntanned shoulders—the flank of pale naked buttock.

He corkscrewed higher still, and when he turned, Ann found herself face to face with Ian Rickhardt. His eyes were shut—his jaw clenched.

Ann stumbled back into the room. She fell against the bed and righted herself with her hands. When she turned back to look, the French doors were shut again. The room was like ice now.

Ann pushed herself up and tried to open the doors. They were stuck—of course. She drew the curtain aside and peered out through the glass. There was nothing there but the trees. She put her hand on her racing heart and drew a deep breath, and shivered. When she exhaled, her breath condensed on the glass, and made a lattice.

“Get back in your room,” she said. “Back into the tower.”

But she didn’t have the stamina to do what she had to do—go back to her safe place, visualize the necessary repairs… toss those things out the windows on her way to the door, which she might then secure with… something… something that would keep the Insect in its place.

“Get back!” She hoped to sound strong. But she was all too aware how her voice broke over the words—how the terror manifested, in her quaver.

The room hummed back at her—mocking.

Ann stepped away from the window as a crack started to grow along the frozen pane.

“Get back!” She tried to turn on the lamp, bring real light to drive away the dark, but it was dead.

She rounded the foot of the bed and found the door to the hallway. She twisted the doorknob and pulled hard, and the door opened. She stepped out of the bedroom, and into the tropical warmth of the beach house again.

The hall light was out too—but it wasn’t dark.

A warm yellow glow was coming from one of the closed doors—not the bedroom or the bathroom. But the utility closet.

Was there a light fixture in there? Ann didn’t think there was; when Thea had given them the grand tour, she’d shown it to them: the place to get towels and clean sheets, and light bulbs in case one blew.

“Shit.” Ann swallowed. The light bulbs.

She had to be careful if that’s what it was.

The light bulbs had sent her mother to the emergency ward one time; she’d have lost an eye if the glass had flown just an inch higher. Ann approached the closet carefully, one hand shielding her eyes. She pulled open the door, standing behind it as light spilled out, accompanied by the crackling whiff of ozone.

Ann stepped around the door, and looked in. That’s what it was, all right.

The dozen sixty-watt bulbs were yin-yanged in their little corrugated cardboard sleeves, next to the stack of towels. They were all glowing bright and hot.

The packaging was starting to smoulder.

She could see how this would end—how it had almost ended, the last time.

Ann opened the washroom door and turned on the tap in the sink. The pipes moaned, but no water came out.

Fuck you, she thought, and found a small bucket by the toilet. She dipped it into the toilet bowl and pulled out a half-bucket of water. The first bulb popped, then, and as Ann turned she saw the fire had started, flames licking around the edge of the cardboard.

Ann flung the water into the closet. But she was too far away, and the water that got there just hissed, just threw up steam. Another bulb exploded, and then two more, in fast succession. The fire grew, as though someone were standing close fanning it. Ann dipped the bucket back into the toilet and stepped closer this time.

“Fuck you!” she shouted, tossing the bucket directly into the flames, which had now spread to the doorframe, making of it a gateway of fire. Steam and smoke billowed from the middle, forcing Ann back.

She dropped the bucket and coughed. There was a sparking and a hiss over her head, as the ceiling light fixture shorted beneath the inverted dome of the cover, sending a scar of black across the frosted glass. Fine white smoke poured out around the edge and cascaded down like the foam from an overflowing draught.

Ann bent low and her hand flailed behind her and caught hold of the bannister. She pulled herself to the stairs and, on hands and knees, backed down them to the dark main floor as her injured knee protested. The smoke followed her in grasping tendrils but she was faster, and soon she was on the main floor. Only then did she let herself draw air. She struggled not to let it turn into a sob.

The Insect was out. And tears? Tears only fed it.

The door to the front steps was jammed, as was the sliding door to the balcony; a part of Ann knew this would be so even before she checked. She tried various things to smash the glass—a chair, a frying pan, and finally Ian Rickhardt’s laptop, still playing their wedding on its draining battery. Any one of them would have done the job. But Ann wasn’t surprised, when at the end of it the only thing shattered was the laptop. Ann wasn’t that strong to begin with, and the Insect had a way of pulling her punches for her, at times such as these.

Smoke rolled down the stairwell, crawling across the ceiling of the living room, lit as if from within by the flames from the second floor. Ann bent low and drew in what air there was.

She wouldn’t be breathing long and she knew it. The smoke, the heat of the flames… she would suffocate, immolate, one or the other or both, very soon now.

The Insect had her, and it knew it too. It pounded triumphantly on the walls, shook the windows in their runners. Outside, it would be stirring up a storm. Nearer: flames roared and the room lit orange, as something caught. The smoke pressed her down further, and she rolled off her knees, so her face touched the floor.

It would not be long. And there was no way out.

Ann shut her eyes, and went the only other way she could.

In.

“Why?”

She stood in mud, among the shattered foundations of the castle tower that she and Eva had built together. The sky overhead was a rolling storm. The stones of the tower stretched like the spine of a huge beast, over a dark hill and into twisted branches of a ravine.

It was no place Ann had dreamed. Yet when her eyes closed, when she sought the safe place—this was where she landed. The field of her defeat.

She wished Eva were here now, or available somehow, to help her—to reconstruct, to find the Insect… rope it back inside. What might she say? First, she would tell Ann to banish this ruin from her mind; to think of bright banners and trumpets sounding, of victory marches. Set her subjects to work, reconstructing the tower, while riders spread out across the land, accompanied by hounds who had gathered the scent of the Insect.

Above all, she would tell Ann: Step out of the mud.

But Ann could not; it was thick and deep, and her ankles were mired in it. And as she looked down, Ann realized there was no need to send trackers after the Insect. For in that mud, it crawled and clicked in a multitude of itself, centipedes and blue-backed beetles the size of her fist churned through the mud, spun about her ankles, crawled up as if to consume her.

“Why?” they clicked and whirred, mocking with their tea-coloured wings and mandibles—with their pounding, growing louder, on the walls of the beach house, “Why does it ever go so?”

“Why are you trying to kill me?”

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” sang the Insect through the buzzing of its flies, the chirps of crickets… the sharp crack, of a wooden doorframe.

Ann felt arms underneath her own, and then the floorboards dragging against her legs. She tried to open her eyes but couldn’t—the smoke stung too badly. Then she was off the ground entirely, draped over shoulders. Someone was shouting, and coughing—and she was moving. At once, there was a sharp pain as her shoulder hit against something hard. And then a wash of cool air—a stomach-lurching shift—and gravel biting into her back, her thigh.

“Ann!”

She opened her eyes, and looked up into Michael’s. He knelt over her. He was shirtless, the thin blond hairs on his arms, crawling up his shoulders, turned into a halo of orange sparks by the light of the burning building behind them.

He slapped her lightly on one cheek. She stopped him from doing the same on the other with her hand. She coughed, and coughed, and eventually managed to sit up, and tell him she was all right.

“Thank God,” he said. “Oh thank God.”

He took her in his arms, and she held him too—and they sat like that, as the flames climbed into the night sky, until the sirens announced the arrival of the firefighters and the ambulance.

Ian Rickhardt was apologetic, but not to Ann. Michael kept him away from her after the fire. The two men had their conversation in a courtyard of Tobago County Hospital, while Ann drew oxygen and waited for the results of a chest X-ray and a blood test in the emergency department. Ian wheedled and bargained, but Michael held to his guns.

When he returned to Ann’s bedside, he was alone.

“He’s going back,” said Michael. “What an awful idea he had, coming here. I won’t let him do that to you again.”

Ann shook her head and pulled the oxygen mask aside. “I’m fine,” she whispered.

And she was fine. Ann hadn’t taken in very much smoke at all before Michael got to her, and she’d kept clear of the flames, so there were no burns to treat. She’d re-opened the fish-bite on her knee, but that was a simple matter of cleaning and re-dressing. Her throat still felt raw and her voice deepened half an octave. But Michael thought it sounded sexy and so did she.

Given all that, Ann agreed when Michael suggested they could book a suite at the Coco Reef resort and ride out the rest of their honeymoon in style. That made sense in more ways than one. It would be nice to restart the whole honeymoon, and draw some good from it; and really, Ann wasn’t sure she wanted to get on a plane just now.

Given all that.

As for Ian Rickhardt: he sent a card and a basket of fruit and rum to their suite, but otherwise had the good sense to make himself scarce.

He wasn’t the only one. Ann tried calling Eva Fenshaw five times. She left four messages. But Eva didn’t seem to be answering. Eva didn’t seem to be around.

Ann hoped she was all right.

“It’s the fish woman!” said the man at the beach.

Ann opened her eyes and squinted out from under the beach umbrella.

The man was tall and thin, with a long face and a thick beard, olive skin and light brown hair. He wore a pale blue tank top shirt and swimming trunks that went down to his knees, and carried two bottles of Corona: one with the lime stuffed inside, the other with fruit still peeking out the neck. She recognized him from the expedition to the reef. But she had no idea what his name was, so she smiled and waved and said hello. He solved the mystery instantly.

“I am Paolo. We met on the Calypso boat.”

“I’m Ann. We did.”

“I remember your name,” he said. “You were devoured by a fish. You don’t forget something like that. How is your knee?”

She was wearing a flesh-hugging patch of a bandage now, and underneath, it was feeling a good deal better. She said so.

“I see you’re without a drink,” he said, and offered the fresher of the two Coronas. She smiled and fended it off with a hand.

“Thanks but no. I hope you didn’t get that for me,” said Ann. “I’m giving my liver a break.”

He shrugged and grinned. “No loss in trying,” he said, eyeing one beer, then the other. “But my work is cut out for me. May I join you?”

Ann was sitting in a wooden chair joined to another by a small table, and the other chair was empty. She motioned to it.

“Where is your dashing husband?” he asked as he took the seat and set the beer bottles between them.

“Inside. He’s sleeping off a sunburn.” It was true; Michael had pulled her from the burning beach house unscathed. Their first afternoon here, he’d fallen asleep on his stomach by the pool, stayed there for an hour, and that was all it took. Funny old world, he’d said.

“He won’t mind me sitting here?”

“I don’t think so. He’s sleeping.”

“Okay,” said Paolo. “I don’t want to make trouble on anyone’s honeymoon.”

Ann laughed, and it must have been a bit too hard because Paolo frowned. She waved a hand and shook her head, and asked him, “On that subject… how was the wedding?”

“Oh, it was very beautiful. We all took off our shoes. Danced in the sea as the setting sun turned the bride and groom to gold.” He took a deep pull from the Corona. “Now they are gone, to a house down the coast. And the rest of us will be back to Caracas in a day or so.”

“That sounds lovely.”

Paolo smiled and squinted out at the sea.

“Weddings are often lovely,” he said. “Now tell me, Ann. What are you doing here? Sitting by yourself on the beach. Not even a drink beside you. Not an iPad or an iPod or even a book. No husband. And you are here! Weren’t you staying at a beach house?”

“Burned to the ground,” she said, and he laughed.

“The heat of passion,” he said, and when she didn’t laugh, he apologized.

“It’s all right,” she said. “No offence taken.”

Paolo finished his beer. “You probably think I’m hitting on you,” he said. “And probably, I am a bit. I shouldn’t be. You’re on your honeymoon after all. And your husband is much handsomer than I. Even all burned up.”

He stood up, and made a small bow of his head.

“Excuse me, please, Ann. I hope your husband’s sunburn recovers as well as your lovely knee.”

Ann smiled and thanked him, and Paulo made his retreat. He was out of sight, when she noticed that he’d left the untouched bottle of Corona on the table, within easy arm’s reach.

She contemplated it a moment. From the sweat on the bottle, the beer was still cold; bubbles of carbonation traced up its side and gathered around the triangle of lime stuffed in its neck.

Ann shut her eyes. Another bottle of beer was not what she needed right now. Because there was work to do. She took a deep breath, and imagined a spectrum of colour, in sequence, and dreamed a verdant land at the foot of a range of mountains. It was a place near, but out of sight of the tower where she had imprisoned the Insect long ago. But it was a good site; the mountains would yield stone to build a new tower; the land would yield crops to feed the men and women who would raise the walls that would soon make a home for the Insect once more.

The last time she’d done this, it had been hard work. But she thought that this time it might go quicker; after all, when the closet had lit bright at the Lake House that winter, the first time, Eva had not told her about the safe place. No one had known what to do.

They had all done the best they could, with what tools presented themselves.