The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook (5 page)

But his small face looked serious.

“Jax? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said solemnly, and shook his head. “But it has to do with her. Just like he did.”

“
He
?”

“The man in the rain.”

“You didn’t tell me he had something to do with Mom!”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I just have a feeling.”

She looked into his blue eyes and knew he believed it.

“Max would say we’re both crazy,” she said.

“Then don’t tell him,” said Jax.

“By the way,” she said, remembering. “I also saw two otters. I swear! One yesterday, another one this morning. I was going to tell you before, but then I figured—actually, I was thinking about the last time you spied on me.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said Jax, and looked down, a bit ashamed.

“Mmm,” said Cara.

“I didn’t mean to, you know,” he mumbled after a pause.

“I guess,” said Cara.

But even if that was true—and she thought she believed him—in a way she didn’t care, because the point was that whether he had meant it or not, it had still been really, really embarrassing. No one should be able to see the truly private stuff.

“Anyway,” she said awkwardly. “Have you ever heard of otters around here?”

“There are still river otters in some coastal marshes,” said Jax slowly, “but I wouldn’t think there’d be any on the Cape.”

“The first one I saw was at Nauset Light. Floating on its back.”

Jax shook his head, perplexed. “But lying on their backs is a sea otter behavior. There shouldn’t be any sea otters for thousands of miles!”

“That’s what I thought,” said Cara.

They didn’t talk for a minute, staring down at the boat’s white wake as it curled away behind them.

“So what do you think the message means?” she asked finally. “
Consult the leatherback
made me think of an old book or something. But it’s actually a kind of big sea turtle, right?”

“I have to think about that one,” said Jax.

“Look! There!” said a tourist lady. “A whale! Spouting!”

The engine throttled down as the boat came about.

“That’s a pilot whale,” said Teddy.

All Cara could see was a grayish hump—that was her problem with whale-watching. It was all humps that looked like rocks. Whales were cool, but you could see more of them on nature shows.

Still, it was probably better to be here than dragging around the mall while her dad asked her questions like
Why do some of the boys wear their pants so ridiculously baggy, and the others wear them so tight?

Jax pulled out his phone and took a picture.

Later, lying in bed, she had a long talk on her own cell phone—basic, not smart—with Hayley, in her own bed a few doors down the street. They had a plan where the minutes were free if you waited till late enough.

She told Hayley about the driftwood.

“Are you smoking something?” asked Hayley. “First there were those ocean beavers, now this.”

“Not beavers, Hay.”

“Chillax. You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

Hayley moved on to other subjects—who would talk to them at school this fall and who would ignore them; whether her mom would give her a big enough allowance for her to “accessorize.” She and her mom often struggled pretty hard with money, and Cara thought it made her feel better about it to treat it like it was trivial, like all it would affect was her fashion stylings….

After they hung up, Cara fell asleep with her reading light on. The next thing she knew, Jax was tugging at her arm. Since her mother left, he did that sometimes—came in at two or three in the morning to ask if he could sleep in her room.

“What is it, Jax?” she asked blearily, propping herself up on her elbows. “You want to sleep in here?”

Her little brother, in ancient pajamas speckled with dinosaurs, shook his head.

“You sure? It’s OK if you do.”

“It’s not that,” he whispered. “It’s that he’s …
here
.”

Cara sat bolt upright.

“He?”

“You know. The
guy
.”

“Here
where
?”

“Outside the door. The front door of the house.”

“Should we get Dad? What should we do?”

“He doesn’t want Dad. He wants us.”

“But I—you said he didn’t have a—a signal.”

“He doesn’t. But he still communicates.”

She didn’t want anything to do with it. It was giving her a sickening feeling.

TAKE CARE OF THEM ….

Who? Jax? Max? Who else
could
it be?

“Why should we talk to him? It’s night, Jax. It’s scary!”

“I have to. He calls and calls, Cara. Into my head. It’s like someone’s yelling at me. He won’t stop till we go down to him.”

“It’s not safe, Jax. Let’s wait him out, just wait until he leaves. You can go up to Dad’s room. Or stay in here tonight. With me.”

She patted her coverlet.

But Jax shook his head.

“I can’t. He’s
blaring
at me.”

Maybe Jax
is
making this up, she thought hopefully. After all, we’re talking about Jax here: a pretty weird kid. Maybe this is all in his head, and if I’m supposed to take care of him, then it’s my job to listen. And watch him.

“OK,” she said slowly. “What do you want me to do, then?”

He turned, and she got up and followed, shutting Rufus in her room so he wouldn’t bark and wake everyone.

Outside her room she flicked on the hall light, then the light over the stairs. Every light switch she saw, she flicked. Anything to make it brighter and more everyday.

Down they went, Jax padding ahead of her in his sock feet.

Their front door was old, thick with multiple coats of paint; the top half had a rectangular window with diamond-shaped panes.

“Is it locked?” she whispered.

Jax nodded.

“It’s too high up for me to get a good view,” he said.

So she stepped in front of him. She stood at the door and reached over to the wall, to the light switch for the porch.

She flicked it upward.

And gasped, jumping back and banging into Jax.

There he was.

The glass in the door pane made things blurry, but it was definitely him. He stood on the porch steps, facing right at them, his arms hanging at his sides. He had the same dark coat on, with the hood, but now the hood was back so she could see his face—sort of. It was long and pale, with dark hair plastered down on the forehead, soaking wet. She couldn’t make out the features on the face that well; he might be young or old or somewhere in between.

He was dripping, it looked like. Or maybe that was just the distortion of the glass.

The worst thing was that his lips were moving. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his lips were moving. And as they moved she felt a kind of coldness come over her, moving up from the soles of her feet like it was radiating from the floor.… It was a sick cold, the cold of lonely graves, the cold of a hospital bed that you knew, in the pit of your stomach, you would never leave….

“You have to open it,” whispered Jax. “He won’t leave otherwise.”

“No way, Jax,” she whispered back. “No way, no way, no way.”

“You have to,” he said.

“Jax, honestly,” she said. Her teeth were chattering, her feet were freezing, and she hugged herself. “I always believe you. But this is some guy on our steps in the night. He could be a murderer.”

“He could,” said Jax. “But he’s not here for that.”

“Well, that’s a comfort,” she said.

“He’s like all the dark things,” said Jax. “He can’t come in unless you invite him.”

“You promise?”

“Well … I think so. OK, so I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

She hesitated, conflicted. Then she looked down at his worried face and thought of him by himself in his bed, hugging his knees to his spindly chest and waiting for their mother.

This was about showing Jax she trusted him. And that he hadn’t been abandoned.

Reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut, she turned the lock and pulled open the door.

And when she opened her eyes again, she had to clap a hand to her mouth to stifle a shriek.

The screen was still closed, but there was only the thin mesh between them and him. And now she saw what she hadn’t been able to see from the other side of the glass: he wasn’t just wet. He was pouring.

Water was running from his hair down his dark coat, dripping from his nose and ears and chin. Water pooled at his feet. It dripped off the ends of his sleeves, down his front, down his legs. It coursed over his face steadily.

And it wasn’t the rain. A light drizzle was falling behind him, beyond the porch. But under the porch, the visitor had a roof over his head.

And yet the water kept sliding down his face.

The man’s mouth was still moving, but there was no sound. It moved the same way again and again, like he was repeating himself.

The water poured off him and his lips moved, on and on. And the cold sickness suffused her, rose in a wave through her body until it felt deafening….

“Jax,” she whispered, struggling against it. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

There was no answer from Jax till she turned to look at him. He was staring at the man, the man he said wasn’t a person at all.

The Pouring Man.

“
Where is she
,” said Jax tonelessly. “
Where is she
.”

Cara couldn’t help herself. She grabbed the door and slammed it.

The bang reverberated through the sleeping house.

She stood there shivering uncontrollably.

Behind them someone spoke.

“What’s going on?”

Both of them jumped, squealing.

But it was only Max, standing at the top of the stairs in his boxers, hair all tousled and sticking up. He looked like a cranky, messy version of James Franco.

“You woke me up! It’s the middle of the night! What is it, man?”

They looked at each other. They were still breathing hard, still trembling.

“Uh, sorry, Max,” said Cara.

“I couldn’t sleep,” mumbled Jax.

“Just keep it down, would you?” said Max grumpily, and shambled back toward his bedroom.

They waited a minute, until they heard his room door close.

“Is he gone?” asked Cara, in a low voice.

Jax knew who she meant.

“Not yet,” he said.

Slowly, with butterflies in her stomach, she turned back to the diamond pane in the door. It was just inches from her face. She leaned forward bit by bit and looked out.

There he was.

Close.

Closer.

Right there.

His white face with dark hollows of eyes.

The lips still working, working.

Where is she.

“Go away,” said Cara. It was almost a whimper.

And then, just like that, his face vanished.

“
Now
he’s gone,” said Jax calmly.

They decided to share her room. Jax pulled his sleeping bag right up onto her bed, on top of the covers, and she felt the weight of his small body. She turned to face in the same direction and draped her arm over his side.

Outside, the Pouring Man wanted their mother.

He was
looking
for their mother.

That was what he had meant by
Where is she
. Cara was sure. On that point, she didn’t have to ask Jax.

She thought she’d never go to sleep, she was so confused. She felt kind of dazzled, in fact, as though something she couldn’t understand had been flashed in her face. A side of the world she’d never seen.

A shadow world beneath this one.

Where is she.
The water pouring off of him.

It was a black whirlwind. But at the same time, deep inside it, there was a kernel of new hope … because maybe this was a sign that her mother really hadn’t just left their dad, or left
them.
That there was something else at work.

Something hidden.