The Mermaid House: Part Nine

HE WENT TO HER house after dark.
    Although there was no address, he knew it was the same house becaue of the mermaid door. But the windows weren't boarded up, the garden was neatly chaotic, and the Medusa head was a beautiful stone face with swirling hair and a smiling mouth. He moved carefully up the steps, wincing when they creaked. He peered into the cozy, sea-themed parlor. It was an illusion. The whole house was an illusion. He wondered what he was really looking at, what his brain wasn't registering.
    The front door flew open. He slammed a hand over his mouth to keep from yelling.
    Violet stalked onto the porch. "Idiot," she whispered, grabbing his other hand, dragging him off the porch. "They're home."
    "Your family? Why can't I meet them?"
    She stared at him. Then she pulled him from the house, down the street. She said, "I've told you, haven't I, what I am."
    "No, Violet." He turned on her. "You haven't. You've implied some pretty unbelievable things."
    "The houses in the woods, in fairy tales, the ones that belong to monsters...that's my house."
    He swallowed, said, "Again with the implications."
    "A shipwreck of a house. A gorgon face outside of it. They are from the ocean, and as old as the ocean. Don't come here again."
    His common sense decided she was elaborating on the truth, or that she was crazy. He said, "Then you come with me. We'll drive somewhere -- where do you want to go?"
    She glanced back over her shoulder. She looked down, frowned. He resisted an urge to reach out and touch one of the brown curls falling against her cheek. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Okay."
    They began walking towards his car. Idly, he said, "So...can you do magic and stuff?"
    "Not the kind you'd want to see."
    She said she wanted to go to the seashore, which was ironic, but he drove there, through the mist-shrouded night. She directed him to the oceanside road, where they parked. She led him down a stairway, to massive, concrete ruins on the beach. Graffiti and metal girders glittered against the ocean darkness. He saw stairways that led to the sky and knots of sea vegetation. Cypress trees twisted around columns. It was an eerie, stark landscape.
    "These were public baths, a long time ago. Indoor baths." Violet balanced on a low wall, her arms outstretched. "There were potted trees and chandeliers and statues and lots of elegance."
    Burningly aware of Violet's strangeness -- her eyes would catch the light and silver -- he stared at the ocean, and thought, She isn't human.
    Then: So what? What was so special about being human?
    She was suddenly very close, and her eyes went dark. And he was kissing her, his hands in her hair, her scent of flowers like a drug, her mouth soft as a plum.
    She pulled away and he gasped as air filled his lungs. She stepped back with a crooked smile, set her hand on a pillar.
    She flinched, drew her hand down, stared at it. Her eyes were wide.
    "Violet?" he spoke cautiously.
    "I cut myself on the stone. I'm bleeding," she whispered. She sat down on the low wall, staring at her hand.
    "Is it bad?"
    "Do you know," She drew up the hood of her jacket, "blood plasma is like sea water? Almost the same chemical constitution."
   "I did know." He sat beside her, watched uneasily as she touched the beading blood on her palm as if it was gold.
    "I have to go back." She slid to her feet and began trudging across the sand. "Come on."
    He stubbornly wasn't going to follow her -- let her wait at the car -- but he drew his gaze from the black and wild ocean and trudged after.
                                                                      ***
(Illustration: Richard Dadd)

The Mermaid House: Part Eight

LEANDER WONDERED WHY he hadn't noticed the silvering of her eyes before. He had to steel himself to keep from leaping up and running away from her. In the twilit gloom, with the hole in the ground before him and a creature beside him his instincts were telling him wasn't human, he felt as cold as the moon.
    "Let's put this back, shall we?" She reached for the board and, without his help, dragged it over the gaping hole in the ground. Then she rose. "Owen told me where you lived."
    "Owen Thyme?" he whispered.
    "The one you met on a moonlit road."
    He didn't want to look at her. He wanted her to go away and childishly wished she would.
    "Ignoring me won't make me go away."
    She was a stray something. He began to shiver. Then he thought of his father lying in that hospital bed. He realized the idea of Violet was far less terrifying than the reality of his father dying.
    "Okay." He rose and faced her, making an effort not to flinch from the otherworldly silver of her eyes. "Why don't you come in and watch a movie? Do you eat?" He walked past her, towards his house. He half hoped she wouldn't follow.
    She followed him. "I don't eat."
    His hand shook as he turned the doorknob. As she passed over the threshold, the house seemed to become degrees colder. He walked past his neglected dinner in the microwave, into the dark parlor. He switched on the TV, glanced at the clock. He'd meant to watch a movie tonight, a black and white classic on cable.
    She sat beside him on the sofa and he attempted to think of her as normal. She watched the movie without saying a word. When it was over, she said, "I think I saw that once."
    "It was called The Haunting."
    "The old witch scared me the first time."
    "I suppose that sort of thing doesn't scare you anymore."
    "Not really, no." She tilted her head. She wore a red T-shirt with Chinese symbols on it and tartan leggings, with boots and an aviator's jacket. She still smelled like flowers.
    "What happened to Owen Thyme?" He was pleased at how steady his voice was. "Did someone push him into that well?"
    "Keep away from that well. Especially at night."
    He wanted to throw a grenade into the well. "I went to your house. It was a wreck."
    "Maybe that's because it was built from shipwrecks."
    "A dead boy spoke to me. What are you?"
    "That's a rude question."
    "You're not going to answer it, are you?"
    She rose with quicksilver grace. "Someday I will."
    She left and he remained on the sofa, not quite sure if he had seen her leave. Her voice drifted back to him: "Don't come to my house after dark."
                                                               ***

The Mermaid House: Part Seven

Owen Thyme, who was dead, had spoken to Leander on an ocean boulevard. Leander had been allowed to see a veiled world no one else around him would ever believe in.
    He returned to an empty house and another note from his mom. He tossed a frozen meal into the microwave and walked to the kitchen window, gazed out at the backyard, a narrow tangle of trees and weeds. He was alone. He had nothing to lose.
    As the microwave beeped behind him, he went out the back door and strode toward the nest of trees in the far corner of the yard. The stained-glass window of the church behind his house glowed as he pushed aside ivy and spiderwebs and found a circle of gray stone with a board aross it in the grass. He stepped back. The sight of the well made him sick. This was where Owen Thyme had died, fallen into the well, his neck broken.
    He crouched down and pushed aside the board. He saw a black pit, fungus sliming the stone rim. His bones went cold as he peered down, saw a glisten of dark water. The smell of earth and water was not so innocent here.
    There was a glopping sound, as if something had emerged from the water below. He couldn't move, staring down at the darkness which began to take shape with something silvery gleaming in the center...
    An eye? Was it--
    "Leander."
    He jumped and a slim hand grabbed his before he tipped into the well. He was almost shocked when Violet from the mermaid house crouched beside him. She looked down into the well, up at him. She said sweetly, "What are you doing?"