Red Mourning, page 22
part #2 of Rosie Casket Cozy Mystery Series
I knew I had reached the edge of the pool when my forehead struck a rock. The pain was severe, like I stood up too fast underneath a table, and I almost gasped and sucked water through my nose.
But I kept my wits. My angle of approach had been off the mark. Instead of going left, I squirmed to the right, still whipping my feet and probing the rocks with my nose like a proper dolphin.
Nothing. Nothing. More nothing.
My lungs were screaming now. Any second I would have to abort the attempt. But if I came up for air, I’d never be able to dive back down and get the momentum moving again, not with my hands tied behind my back.
I twisted and forced my hips to propel me forward, my lungs about to split open. Then, my face stopped scraping against the wall and a strong current blew me backward.
I had found the fissure. I fought against the incoming water, twisted onto my side, and whipped my feet and hips like a fish swimming upstream. I entered the crack, the passage narrow enough that I had to turn my dolphin kick into a slither. But I had barely moved a foot when my momentum stopped. A terrible headache ate up the rest of my oxygen and chewed away at my motivation.
I was trapped between the rocks.
I wanted to give up and inhale and let the fissure be my watery grave. Someday a tourist would find me when the tide went out. Then maybe my death would serve a noble purpose, a warning to those who sought in vain to find the treasure in Taylor’s Bluff, a treasure that was, in fact, nothing more than incarceration.
My toes found a ridge. The verge of death gave me one last burst of strength and I pushed through my feet.
Before I knew what had happened, the rocks fell away and I rocketed into the open harbor.
I tried kicking again, but was out of strength. I was completely disoriented and had no idea which way went up to the surface and which way went down to Davy Jones’s locker.
I opened my eyes, but could only see a wavy blackness. And then, overhead, there was a circle of light. A bright and shimmering circle. Dare I swim for it? Dare I head toward the light? Was it real? Or was it a false hope, a last vision as the lack of oxygen choked my optic nerve and sent me down, down to the murky depths?
I kicked for the light. My lungs cried for mercy as my whole body worked in concert. The lack of air made it impossible to think, to dissect, to overanalyze, to doubt myself, and I was one with my body, every ounce of my being channeled into my survival.
But I didn’t have the skill to reach the surface. Instead, the light darted away like a bioluminescent fish and then was gone. The doubt rushed back in, I panicked, convulsed, and my reflexes took over and my body betrayed me. I was powerless to stop evolution; thousands upon thousands of years of heredity conspired against me and forced me to inhale.
I sucked water through my nose and the salty sea burned my nasal passages and seared my head and whatever light might have been went completely black.
Chapter 39
Something hard poked my side. As I floated, it forced itself under my armpits, scraped the curve of my torso, and then cradled me in the soft spot beneath my rib cage.
Before I could figure out what was happening, my butt was rushing upward, the water and kelp streaming past my ears. My spine broke the surface of the water first and my hair tried to escape in ghostly undulations and spread outward like a puddle of oil had caught fire around my head.
I snorted water out my nose, but with my lips taped, I still couldn’t breathe and I thrashed my whole body, that cold metal hook bruising my ribs.
“What in the heck is that?”
“Is that a dead dolphin?”
“There ain’t no dolphins in Maine!”
“It’s a sea lion.”
“No, you, dolt. There ain’t no sea lions neither. It’s a girl.”
“A mermaid?”
“No, look at that red hair. It’s a dead clown.”
“You caught Ariel!”
“I think she’s moving. Haul her up.”
“She’s too heavy! You haul her up!”
“Drop the hook and siddown,” a gruff voice said.
There was a tremendous splash beside me. Then someone grabbed my shoulders, rolled me over so my face was out of the water, and swam me over to the hull of a boat.
I bobbed there, his hand in the small of my back, the waves slapping his stubbly chin. He was wearing a bright orange life vest and treading water beside me.
“Toss me a knife!”
A knife? I panicked and squirmed and kicked.
“Stop it,” the gruff voice said. “Or you’ll drown us both.” There was a small splash, a cold blade against my wrists, and then he cut my hands free. I had never cherished freedom more and slapped at the water like a kid in the bathtub.
“Stop it. Raise your hands.”
The man ducked under the surface, put his hands on the crest of my hips, and kicked and hoisted me out of the water. More hands grabbed my wrists and pulled me up the side of the hull.
Then I was out of the water, the weight of my body and my soaked clothing feeling like my arms would yank right out of their sockets.
I kicked at the slick hull, but the hands pulled me over the side and lay me down on the deck. Without my glasses, everything was a blur of orange life vests, groping hands, and gray hair.
“Her feet’s tied up too!”
“Cut her loose.”
Someone rolled me onto my side.
“Who knows CPR?”
“Get that tape off her mouth first, you moron!”
Someone yanked the tape off my lips. The pain of the rip jolted me back to full awareness and I coughed and spat water onto the deck. At least I wouldn’t have to wax. Had the tape not kept my lips sealed, I might have swallowed fish and seaweed.
I coughed again and brought up chunks of lobster.
“Yuck! Someone get the hose!”
“Biohazard!”
I was lying on the deck of an old boat, the planks on the deck warped and weathered and hairy. Without my glasses, I could only see shapes and colors.
The first thing I thought I recognized was a shepherd’s crook, a large metal hook used to pull lobster pots out of the water. It must have been what they used to pull me near the hull.
Beyond the hook, was a circle of white sneakers. Leaf peepers. Was this the same group of tourists from earlier?
Was I on The Moaning Lisa?
A bright white light swung around and landed on me. Then, a pair of rubber boots broke through the semicircle of sneakers. I looked up. A pair of orange Grundéns. They were slick and wet. The man’s face was blurry, but I was pretty sure it was Captain Herrick, the pervert. The pervert who had jumped in the cold water to save my life.
“If I ain’t mistaken, that’s the same girl who stole your electronic thinga-ma-bobber,” one of the white-haired tourists said.
“You oughta throw her back to the sharks!” an old lady said.
Yikes. Tough crowd. I surveyed the faces, but could only see white hair. Cue tips, all of them.
“Fetch me the tarp,” Captain Herrick said.
“You’re shivering, Captain.”
“His timbers are shivering,” one of the tourists joked.
Indeed, Captain Herrick was thoroughly soaked, his curly black hair pasted to his face like sideburns, his legs twitching from the cold.
“Give it her the tarp first,” Captain Herrick said. “We got bigger things to worry about tonight. Like them rocks over there. Sorry folks, but there ain’t gonna be no cave viewin this evenin.”
“Throw her back in!”
“It ain’t her fault,” Captain Herrick said. “The lighthouse went out. I ain’t got no sonar and we can’t see the rocks.”
“But I paid a hundred bucks for this tour.”
“Stangood’s treasure can wait,” Captain Herrick said. “We can come back again tomorrow night, but not if we run aground. You’ll all wash up on shore and the coast guard will have to come sweep you off the rocks like seagull droppins.”
“I want a refund!”
“There ain’t no refunds! Put Miss Ariel on the bench over they-uh, get yer life vests, and help me swing that light back around to the cliff so we can see where we’re goin.”
Two of the older male tourists grabbed me under the armpits and dragged me over to the bench. They put a tarp over my shoulders and rubbed my shoulders to warm me up.
“What are you doin out in the harbor, little Miss Floating Red?”
“Who tied you up?”
I tried to talk, but my jaw was taut from the cold and I was shivering too hard to form any coherent syllables.
At the front of the boat, two other tourists on the pulpit swept the spotlight from the stern to the starboard bow and a tiny searchlight crawled over the darkness of the bluff.
“This light ain’t big enough,” one said. “We can’t see nothing.”
“If we crash, we better get our money back!”
One of the tourists pointed at me. “You remember what she said back at the pier? She told the lighthouse keeper to put out the light. You remember that warning! She cursed us!”
“Malarky,” Captain Herrick said. He was standing at the wheel, a tarp draped over his shoulders like a cape. “My pop was in the Navy with old-man Eldritch. He’d cut off his nose before he let a boat sink on his watch. Somethin bad musta happened to him.”
Powerless to affect the course of the boat, I hugged myself for warmth. Across the deck, twelve tourists were now sitting on the opposite gunwale, all staring at me.
Captain Herrick throttled up and The Moaning Lisa chugged and coughed black smoke from somewhere below the transom. Captain Herrick put his whole body into wrestling the wheel and we turned to port.
Then one of the tourists twisted and pointed at the water. “There’s something else out there, Cap’n!”
Captain Herrick leaned over the coaming. “I don’t see nothin worse than flotsam. It’s somebody’s abandoned lobster trap, all busted up.”
Then from under the hull, there came a loud scrape and groan.
“That ain’t no flotsam, Cap’n! That’s a whale!”
Suddenly, a bright, but inconstant light from the cliff cast a broad stretch of orange on the brackish waves.
All of the tourists turned to look at the water.
“The lamp’s back on!”
“It’s Moby Dick!”
“That ain’t no whale! That’s a rock! A humpback, rock! We’re gonna crash!”
“We’re all gonna die!”
“Hold onto your butts,” Captain Herrick said. He throttled down and made a hard turn in the opposite direction. The tourists all grabbed the coaming and watched as the hull scraped past the exposed rock.
There was an ungodly roar, like a twisted piece of metal screaming as a junkyard compactor turned it into a cube. The deck shuddered beneath my feet, the hull about to tear open, and I gripped the side of the boat.
Hand over hand, Captain Herrick spun the wheel in the other direction, trying to avoid disaster. There was a last groan, and then the shuddering stopped.
“Relax your sphincters,” he said. “We’re past it.”
We chugged back out to sea. One of the tourists picked up his foot. His sneaker was all wet. “I think we’re sinking, Captain. That rock ripped us open.”
“We ain’t sinkin,” Captain Herrick said. “That’s bile from Ariel’s lungs. This old Lisa’s got a thicker skin than you think.”
“Captain Herrick, look!” one of the tourists said.
The whole congregation turned to follow the path of his pointer. Me too. Behind us, as we emerged from the shadow of the cliff, bright orange tentacles were groping for the clouds.
Eldritch hadn’t lit the lamp. Even without my glasses, I could see the blaze. The light that had saved us was not the lamp.
Instead, the lantern room was engulfed in flames.
Chapter 40
With dread, I remembered Dimitri’s warning that old-man Eldritch would have a “very hot night in the tower.”
I fumbled to pull my phone from my wet pocket. My jeans were so wet my pockets were pasted to my thighs and I had to turn my fingers into little pinchers to remove the phone.
I pressed the home button, but the screen didn’t respond. I tried again, pressed the off button and swiped the screen. Still nothing. I banged it against the coaming, but the harbor water had turned it into a brick. Water resistant, my rear.
“Great,” I chattered. “Does anybody have any rice? Does that even work?”
They all stared at me.
“Can I borrow someone’s phone? We need to call the cops immediately. Stanley Eldritch is up in that tower.”
“Who?”
“The keeper,” Captain Herrick said. “She’s right. He’d never abandon his post.”
“My battery’s dead,” one tourist said.
“I only use Wi-Fi,” another said.
“I left my phone in the car,” another said, her hands hidden behind her back.
Despite my missing glasses, the picture was clear. They still hated me for cutting in line on the pier. “Fine, whatever. You make the call yourselves. But don’t make the old man suffer. Call the Maine State Police and ask for Trooper Matt Mettle.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Call 911. Anyone. Now.”
They all just stared at me.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t get reception out here,” one man said.
“Unbelievable,” I said. I tossed the tarp off my shoulders, got up, marched to the old lady who was hiding her hands behind her back and yanked the phone away from her.
I held the screen close to my face to try to make sense of the numbers in my blurry vision. It was a lousy flip-phone, even more primitive than mine. On my phone, Mettle’s number had been stored in memory, but not my real memory, so I didn’t know how to call him.
With no other choice, I held the number pad up to my face and dialed 911.
A moment later, the dispatcher answered, the voice the same from before. “911, what is your emergency?”
“There’s a fire. On Taylor’s Bluff. In Dark Haven. The lighthouse exploded.”
“Someone already called it in,” the dispatcher said. “The police and fire department are on their way.”
“How long ago was the call placed?”
“About five minutes.”
The whole town must have been able to see the blaze. But since the old firehouse had been converted into a library and Dark Haven shared their fire engines with the neighboring town, EMS wouldn’t get there for at least another ten minutes. And by that time, Stanley Eldritch might be dead, if not by the flames, then by smoke inhalation.
I tossed the phone at the old lady whom I had taken it from, but without my glasses, she was just a blur of white and her phone sailed right past her face and plopped overboard.
“Hey! My daughter bought that for me!”
“Sorry,” I said. “Send me your address and I’ll buy you a better one. In fact, everyone’s welcome to stay at my bed and breakfast tonight, free of charge.”
There was whispering among the tourists. I didn’t wait to answer any questions and marched for the big orange man that I assumed was Captain Herrick.
“You need to get me over to that cliff,” I said.
“No way, my sweet cherry pie,” Captain Herrick said. “You saw what happened earlier. We’ll run aground.”
“Stanley Eldritch is up in that tower,” I said.
“I can’t risk these folks lives,” he said and then whispered, “They’re payin customers.”
“If Eldritch dies, Lord knows how long the township will take to replace him. Think about all the lost tours then.”
Captain Herrick thought about it for exactly ten seconds. “Those lousy bureaucraps will rob my livelihood.”
“Exactly.”
“How do you plan to get up there?”
I pointed to the Victorian house to the left. A light was on upstairs, just a blur of yellow. “That’s my inn over there. Take the tourists all ashore, get a fire going in the fireplace and make yourselves cozy. The embankment is low enough to hike up to the back porch. Even the old ones can make it.”
Captain Herrick stroked his chin. “You got any cocoa?”
“I have tea. Rooibos.”
“Maybe we can make this part of the tour,” Captain Herrick said. He spun the wheel and swung the bow around. “Change of plan, folks! Next up on our tour of Dark Haven is an historic inn, one built around the time when the Mayflower crashed down there at that Plymouth dock thingy. We’re gonna get ourselves warm and cozy and drink some lobster tea.”
There were whispers and nods of approval. We motored toward the shore and he throttled down and dropped anchor about fifty feet from the embankment.
“You got a dinghy tied up anywhere?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“If you ain’t got no dinghy, then how we gonna get ashore?”
“Since you’re licensed for commercially transporting private citizens, you must have an emergency life raft, correct?”
Captain Herrick’s eyes darted from side to side as if he were suddenly wary of township spies. “Ayuh. Of course. For emergencies. Plenty of life rafts.”
“Then I think this counts as an emergency,” I said. Without waiting for his approval, I jumped over the gunwale.
“Hey!”
“The back door’s open!” I said in midair. I hit the water with a splash of cold and then swam the front crawl to shore. With the use of both my arms and legs, my progress was much swifter than before.
As I neared the rocks where Thomas Seyton had washed up, I crawled, and then stood up like a Darwinian freak emerging from the primordial depths, and headed for the woods. I was soaking wet, shivering, and double-exposure to the cold harbor had pruned my digits. My adrenaline was all used up, but I made myself pump my arms wildly and ran for the bright orange blaze between the trees.
Without my glasses, I could barely see a thing, all the trees reduced to twisted bars, the flames blooming between them, but I had made the trek so many times by now that I could run through the woods blind. I tripped and stumbled over stumps and roots, but kept running, trying not to think about Eldritch slumped in that tower as the flames nibbled at his sideburns.
