The Mermaid House: Part Sixteen

LEANDER AND VIOLET FLED toward Leander's car. Someone was whispering above the tidal roar, in a sing-song, female voice,
    "Jack and Jill went up the hill..."
    When something huge and black snaked from the shadows, across the sand, Leander shouted. Whatever it had been vanished into the night. It left no trail.
   "...to fetch a pail of water..."
    "Leander." Violet tugged at his hand, pulling him back. "Not that way."
    "Jack fell down...."
    They ran toward a slope of rocks, into the swampy darkness of a cave. He could hear the gurgling rush of water and hoped they weren't going to submerge themselves in the ocean. He could barely see. At least her voice couldn't reach them, here.
    "Violet..."
    She pulled him toward a black sky and a full moon. He saw the ocean then, inky and silver and wild against the rocks. She looked back at him, her face white, desperate.
    "Violet--" He saw no hope for them and a languid despair made him fall back.
    "They're not all evil," Violet told him, "the people of the sea."
    "The giant snake back there--"
    "It wasn't a snake. It was a water spirit, and it is what killed Owen Thyme...because she wanted him."
    He sank down against the cliff, exhausted, and gazed at the ocean. He put his head in his hands and wondered how his world had come apart around him.
    He heard her sit beside him. He reached out, blindly, and felt her hand twine around his. She whispered, "I am a failed thing...Leander, you made me a person again. Don't move from here."
    She pulled away.
    "Wait--" He scrambled up, but she was gone. He turned in place, blinking, shivering. He wanted to run away, didn't dare.
    He looked despereately back at the ocean and wished he'd brought his video camera, to prove all of this.
    He heard a scream, wild and lingering, and he bolted back down the tunnel. "Violet!"
    He ran across the moonlit sand, toward the ruins. He halted when he noticed dark spots in the sand, flinched when he realized it was blood. He ran forward. "Violet!"
    There was a crash above the ocean roar, as if a wall of glass had just fallen. He shivered again, felt sick. Around him, the air shimmered. Glass seemed to twinkle in the air, growing like frost.
    He breathed out, staggered back. Water began to pool around him. He heard a soft clanging, as if metal girders were being raised. He stood very still as the invisible world slowly appeared around him.
(Illustration: Harry Clarke)

The Mermaid House: Part Fifteen

SOMETHING DARK had followed them. As the figure sauntered forward, the first thing Leander noticed was the eyes, silvery and inhuman, before the shadows fell away from a young man in jeans and a black T-shirt. His long, blonde hair was knotted back. He was as pale as Violet, with that same otherworldly manner that caused an instinctual uneasiness. He smiled like an animal baring its teeth. "Introduce me to your friend, sis."
    "I don't want to know you." Leander was very aware of their isolation in the cold night around them.
    "His name is Joukainan," Violet told Leander without looking away from the young man. "He's my brother."
    "Just call me Johnny." The young man's grin was definitely wolfish. "Do you want to see a neat trick?"
    Leander couldn't move. A shudder ran through him. Violet's hand tightened around his, painfully, as her brother drew out a small knife and sliced into his own wrist. What emerged from the glide of the blade through his skin wasn't blood.
    Even knowing what he did about Violet, Leander didn't believe what he saw....flower petals dripping from Johnny-Joukainan's skin...black petals which swirled across the sand.
    "Tulips. A sacred flower to my people." Joukainan looked up and malevolence breathed from him. "What do you think Violet's filled with?"
    Leander backed away, pulling Violet with him. His stomach churned as his fingers tightened on her wrist. He could feel her veins, the pulse which meant blood, not some horrific, supernatural embalming. "Go to hell."
    "I've been in hell for some time." Violet's brother tilted his head. "Is he going to join the family, Vi? He looks like a buttercup."
    Violet whispered to Leander, "Go. Get in your car. I'll keep him back."
    Leander couldn't leave her. He had no defenses, no idea how to help her. And the creature calling itself Joukainan was smiling with teeth that seemed sharper than they ought to be.
    "Think he can outrun me, Vi?" Joukainan moved forward.
    Leander swallowed and almost bolted.
    Joukainan lunged. He grabbed Violet by the hand, slid the blade across her arm.
    "No--" Leander leaped forward. He pushed Joukainan away, but the other scarcely seemed to notice -- his gaze was fixed on the blood beading Violet's arm. His colorless gaze slid to Leander, who hovered between Violet and her 'brother.' "You. Boy. You made her bleed."
    "You're the one who--"
    "Get." The knife vanished. Joukainan gestured outward. "Both of you."
    When Leander and Violet hesitated, Joukainan shouted, "Go!"
   

The Mermaid House: Part Fourteen

BEWARE THE DARK DAUGHTERS of La Mer.
    A terrifying mermaid lived in a house that was sometimes a ruin and sometimes not and a girl who might not be one of the living had kissed him.
    There followed a series of grim days through which Leander moved as if he were a clockwork thing, his nightmares reels of pirahna-teethed mermaids and corpses wound in seaweed. After the funeral, his mom had found a job at the hospital. She now slept through her days and worked nights. He was alone again.
    He went out to the well one afternoon, with a large flashlight, and pushed away the board to peer into the darkness below. The light hit moss-furred stone, a pool of sinister black water.
    "Hey!" he called, feeling like an idiot. "Whatever you are -- I want to talk to you--"
    Something struck him in the forehead. He fell, gasped when the board slid back across the well. As if to emphasize its intentions, the invisible entity slammed a piece of stone from the wall of the church behind his house, over the board.
    Leander scrambled back. The projectile that had hit him had been an old soccer ball.
    "Then you tell me!" Leander pushed to his feet, turned in a circle. "Come on, ghost boy! How do I help Violet?"
    A wind swirled through the yard and Leander thought he heard a male voice whisper, Sutro.

He waited until the sun began to set before driving to the ocean road and clambering down the stairs to the remains of the Sutro Baths.
    Violet sat on a crumbling wall, swinging her feet and gazing at the sea. He wanted to run to her.
    She turned her head slightly. "Go away."
    "No."
    "Look at me." She rose to face him. There was a bruise on her cheek. The sun had set. Her eyes were dark. There was no inhuman silver glint. He strode toward her, reached out. She raised her hands and twined her fingers with his. She looked like a waif in her old jeans and denim jacket.
    "Your hands," he whispered, "they're warm."
    "And this." She pressed one of his hands to her breast. Her expression was pleading, but he scarcely noticed that, with his hand where it was. She said, "Not my breast, idiot -- what's beneath it. My heart shouldn't be beating."
    "Violet--"
    "And I bleed. Do you know what you've done? Then you go and practically bare your throat to
her--"
    "What is she?"
    "What are any of us?" The new voice made Leander hurtle around to stare at the shadowy figure leaning against a pillar. Violet gripped his wrist and pulled him back with her. She didn't drop her gaze from the shadow as she whispered a name.

(Illustration: Arnold Bocklin)

The Mermaid House: Part Thirteen

LEANDER TORE AWAY FROM the malevolent thing pretending to be a girl. Her eyes flashed the silver of a deep sea creature's scales and the inky tattoo on her brow writhed as if its tentacles would lash out at him...
    What was he doing?
    He ran for the door.
    It crashed open and Violet stood there, in jeans and a denim jacket. She looked like a warrior, feet apart, eyes dark, her hair swirling around her face. She said to Leander, "Get out."
    Aware of the cold thing behind him, he whispered, "I won't leave y--"
    She lunged forward, grabbed him by the wrist, and flung him out the door. He lost his balance, fell on the porch. He scrambled up as the door slammed in his face. He struck it with both hands and shouted Violet's name.
    All of the window shutters slammed closed.
    He stumbled down the stairs. He circled the house, tripping over roots, tearing through drifts of ivy. He found the back door. He yanked on the handle, but it didn't give.
    A wind crashed through the garden, swirling leafy debris over him. He sank down against the door with his arms over his head.

He woke to sunlight and birdsong. He could smell flowers. He raised his head. He sat against the back door of Mermaid House, in a patch of velvety, purple flowers.
    Violets.
    He stumbled to his feet and bashed at the back door until it fell open.
    "Violet!" He ran through the ruined house, shouting himself hoarse. As he pushed into the final room, he saw only shattered glass and graffitti, a puddle of black water within which lay a forlorn doll with its hair pulled out and its eyes missing. A shiver convulsed him. He backed away. And ran.
                                                                           ***
(Illustration: Edmund Dulac)