Troubled Waters, Part 7, and Operating Heavy Machinery
Title: Troubled Waters
Rating: PG, Gen
Summary: In northwestern Washington, Sam and Dean run into a cult, missing people, plagues, some really humid weather, and possessed trees.
Disclaimer: As usual, I don’t own anything. The geography in this story is fairly accurate; everything else is fiction. Oh, and apologies to William Butler Yeats.
Author's Note: Much thanks to
big_pink, who listened to me whine about the troublesome nature of writing a story with an actual plot, and who did a fantastic beta-ing job.
Previous chapters
Part Seven: Sunday, July 9, afternoon
The best thing one can do when it’s raining is let it rain.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
xxxxx
His patience was minimal at the best of times, and mid-drenching, it was non-existent. There were several large black umbrellas in attendance at the marina, but not enough to go around. Dean huddled in on himself, shoulders hunched and head bowed, but his windbreaker was sopping wet, and he could feel rain trickling down his spine. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and kept asking if anybody had seen his brother. He received shrugs in answer; in the chaos of organizing the search, the Queen of England could have walked by and no one would have noticed. And these people were supposed to be observant? thought Dean.
There had been some coming and going of cars; searching now were the county police, the state police, the Coast Guard, and a contingent from the Naval air station a few miles away. Dean saw a black Suburban pull up; he watched as it expelled a couple of sheriff’s deputies, and he shuffled over, unwilling to walk any faster in his wet jeans.
“Afternoon, officers,” he greeted. “I’m Dean Fogerty, with the Mounties, been liaising with Sheriff Douglas on a case about a missing girl-Celia Edwards?-from Vancouver, BC. Down here with my partner, Sam; don’t suppose you’ve run into him lately?” he asked casually. A shrug. “Can’t reach him on his cell phone.”
One of the deputies cocked his head to the side. He had put a clear plastic cover on his wide-brimmed hat that Dean knew was government issue, but still managed to look more ridiculous than the plastic bags that old ladies wore over their hairdos in the rain. “Sure, I spoke with him, oh, before lunch,” and Dean’s stomach chose that moment to remind him that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. He tried to ignore it. “Seems to me he joined Douglas on the Coast Guard cutter.”
“Really.” Dean paused. “Do you know when they’ll be back?”
“Not a clue. But if you need to reach him, whyn’t you go to the harbormaster’s office; think they’ve got a communications centre set up there.”
Dean thanked him, and trudged through the downpour-had he really wanted it to rain? He must have been out of his mind with the heat-towards the small building. Inside, he found a couple of people from each government agency involved, and radios and cell phones in quantity.
Dean gave his standard spiel-RCMP, missing girl, cross-border investigation. “So, uh, do you know which boat the sheriff’s on? ‘Cause my br-partner’s probably on it.”
They didn’t know where Douglas was, exactly; Dean wondered, if they couldn’t keep tabs on the sheriff, how were they going to find a missing fishing boat? Radio calls went out, and shortly, Sam was located.
xxxxx
In the summers, when Jasper Kelman was not in San Diego and his family went to visit his grandparents in Washington State, he explored the whole coast. The rules, of course, about not leaving the compound applied solely to the ordinary members, not to respected leaders such as his parents. He spent little time on the beach; the ocean was not a novelty to him as it was to the holidaying children at the state park. He scorned their wonder: it was only the ocean. Just a lot of salty water. It was there. That was what it did.
Instead, he scouted what was inland of the high-tide line. The low sand dunes, the rocky bluffs, the dense forest. He had no brothers or sisters, had no one to play with-no, he did not play; at the compound, the children did not commit acts as pedestrian as playing-so, he explored, and for companions he had only the squirrels and stellar’s jays and shadows.
He climbed trees and dug out rotten logs and cached treasures inside. An eagle’s feather, a rodent’s skull, flat, smooth stones.
His favorite tree overlooked what the state park signs called the desert. He knew it was not desert because they had desert in California, and there it was arid and stark and the ground was hard. The tree reminded him sometimes of a bowl of spaghetti. Sometimes the tree reminded him of a sponge. A block of wood, with holes drilled haphazardly, like Swiss cheese but with less cheese. And sometimes it reminded him of an octopus.
He was drawn to this tree. He had first laid eyes on it when he was four years old, and his grandfather had taken him by the hand, telling him he had a surprise for him. He was carried, eyes shut, the last hundred yards to the tree, before being set down on a branch four feet off the ground.
He had been too young to climb, but had known already that the tree was luring him. That the tree was seeking him out, and him alone.
As time passed, he only felt the attraction strengthen. Every two or three years, his family would make the trek northward to Whidbey Island, and the tree mesmerized him. As a teenager, he climbed to the very top of the tree, a flat network of limbs, a canopy over the soft sand and shed needles below. The view was incredible-beautiful sunsets over the Pacific Ocean, Destruction Island and its lighthouse several miles out to sea, a sailboat, the silhouette of an oil tanker on the horizon. The round head of a harbor seal, or an otter.
He did not know why the tree enthralled him so. Seduced him, he thought when he was seventeen, and resolved to figure out why.
He researched fastidiously, if infrequently-somehow, the fir slipped his mind entirely when he was in San Diego, surfacing only when he was crossed the forty-eighth parallel-and slowly he pieced together the story, finishing as he sat in the Oak Harbor public library in 1997. At dinner that night, at his grandparents’ home, he was told that they were moving to Yuma, where it was reliably warm and dry, and so he could move into the house, if he wanted. Afterwards, he walked along the shoreline to the Douglas fir.
As he stood near its base, branches snaking out around and above him, he knew that he was right. That he had figured out the story. Though he was only twenty-three, he was mature enough to know that acting rashly with this new power would not end well. He needed time to plan. He could not utilize his knowledge tomorrow, or the next day. It would require extensive planning and research to exploit the force embodied in the tree, but he was confident in his abilities. He would bide his time.
xxxxx
A sudden rapping at the glass window behind him made Sam jump; he reluctantly turned from the vision in the sea to the pilothouse. The sheriff was motioning for him to go inside. With a last glance at the waves-the face, that of a young woman, was lying just below the surface-he stumbled into the dry.
Douglas pointed him towards the radio, and he was handed a headset that looked sturdier than those worn by astronauts during re-entry. He put it on, tugging it over his ears and adjusting the mouthpiece. The foam sphere over the microphone was large enough to obstruct his vision.
He heard static, and then a faraway voice calling his name. He said, “Hello? Yes?”
And then he heard, “Sammy?”
“Dean?!” he said incredulously. Could it possibly be his brother?
“Yeah, it’s me.” The quality of the connection made Dean’s voice sound like it was coming from the dark side of the moon. Astronaut headset, indeed. “Answer your phone once in a while, okay?”
“It didn’t ring,” protested Sam, pulling the cell out of his pocket. Two missed calls. “Oh. Well, I didn’t hear it. It’s loud out here.”
“You coming back to shore any time soon?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Listen, um, there’s something I have to tell you. Can I call you on the phone?”
“Let me call you,” said Dean, neatly avoiding the issue of his own cell phone’s deficiency.
“Sure.”
Dean left the building and found a pay phone near some vending machines. Famished, he bought a bag of Nibs for a dollar fifty-five; what a rip, he thought, and called his brother.
“So, don’t think any of the women got into the cult, at least of their own accord. Don’t know what happened to them though; but they were all engaged. Isn’t that strange?”
“Dean, in the waves out here? I saw… I saw a face.”
Dean paused. “A face?” he asked. When in doubt, repeat the last thing the other person said.
“Yeah. Of a young woman. With raven black hair.”
“Ooookay,” said Dean slowly. “And it’s not any of the missing people?”
“No. It… there was no body, just the face.”
“What do we do now?” A beat. “Did you tell anyone?”
“What, are you crazy? No, I didn’t mention anything. I’m on the deck right now, freezing to death, and everybody else’s inside, staying warm and dry.”
“Was there anything else? A young woman, black hair, anything more specific? Like, maybe a bullet hole in her forehead? Or a distinguishing scar on one cheek, so I can track her down?”
“No, Dean, and there wasn’t any skywriting, either. Although… she looked maybe Indian. Like, Native American. Maybe there’s a legend? About a girl, and the water?”
“I’ll see what I can do. And, set your phone to vibrate, okay?”
xxxxx
They had heard this before, but that was no reason not to tell them again. Jasper Kelman stood at his place at the head of the table and orated. “The Indian maiden’s beau, you’ll recall, was heartbroken. His future wife had fallen under the spell of the man from the sea. She visited from the depths every year for four years… and then she never returned again. And so, grief-stricken, he killed himself. Hanged himself. His spirit still yearns for her return.” He waited a beat for it to sink in. “Rise,” he announced. “A moment of silence, please, in honor of his spirit. In respect to his spirit who, like us, was overlooked, ignored. Who was cast aside. But we are taking up the battle! Our quest, our desire, our aspiration-this, the moral imperative-our righteous crusade-to show that I will be victorious. I will be triumphant.” Jasper Kelman surveyed the twenty-eight attentive faces, saw them on their feet, remembered why. “A moment of silence,” he repeated, and they bowed their heads.
xxxxx
Libraries weren’t really Dean’s speed, and anyway, it was still Sunday (though it felt like he’d been awake for days) and the library was closed. At the harbor, small groups of officers and search and rescue people huddled under hastily-erected tents and sipped coffee. Everyone was antsy, desperate to help but stuck on shore and unable to do anything productive. They shifted their weight from foot to foot and repeated the same conversations: I hope they find them; I wish there was something I could do; any news? Dean moseyed, or tried to, anyway, in his sopping wet clothes, over towards one of the older officers. The older you were, the more stories you had to tell.
Taking pains to be casual, Dean inquired, “So, do many boats go down in the Pass?”
He got a sharp look for his trouble; he’d broken the cardinal rule of rescues, and that was to mention failure while there was still hope. Dean cleared his throat. “I mean, like, historically.”
“Historically?”
“Yeah. Like, are there any… can you tell me… you know, like…” Any minute you can jump in, man, thought Dean. Cut me a little slack, huh? “Like legends.” He out-and-out said it.
“Legends?”
This is ridiculous, thought Dean. Nobody was this curt. Or at least, not to Dean. He’d never managed to produce such a small reaction in anybody in his life. “Never mind,” he sighed, and grit his teeth. “Nothing like helping a fellow officer,” he muttered under his breath. He was ten feet away before the man spoke.
“Hey.”
Dean turned, raised his eyebrows in silent question.
“You’re an officer?”
Dean nodded. “RCMP.”
The man shook his head in apology and held out his hand, which Dean took. “Didn’t realize. Thought you were one of them.” He jerked his head towards the people gathered around the edges of the yellow police tape that attempted to keep the crowds at bay. “A thrill-seeker.” The man looked Dean up and down. “You don’t look like an officer.”
Dean gave a tight smile. “It’s a good thing, I think.”
The man gestured ambiguously and introduced himself as Tom Silversmith. “So you’re interested in the local lore.”
Dean shrugged, self-deprecating. “Yeah, well, it’s something to pass the time, you know?”
“I do crossword puzzles, myself,” said Tom, rubbing at the grey stubble on his chin. Absently, Dean noted that it was the same color as the sky. What hair there was on his head was lighter, nearly white, although the man was probably only in his late fifties. He was comfortably overweight, not potbellied, but stocky. His tan uniform had probably been crisp when he’d dressed this morning, but the rain had been hard on it, and it was wrinkled like he’d slept in it.
“There is a story,” Tom admitted grudgingly, and there was a long pause before he went on. “Samish Indian legend. The women once gathered shellfish along the shores of Deception Pass. Then one day, a particularly beautiful young maiden dropped a clam she’d collected back into the sea, and she reached into the water to catch it. It kept getting farther away, and she kept going in deeper to get. She was waist-deep when something grabbed her arm, and she screamed.”
“Anybody would,” said Dean, wondering if there were male sirens.
The corners of Tom’s mouth turned up slightly and momentarily. “It gets better. A voice told her not to be afraid, that he only wanted to see her beauty. She was released and she went home. The next day, the same thing happened. She was lured into the sea, and the man would grip her hand and say he loved her.” He stopped speaking. Dean waited. Tom seemed unused to forming this many words at once. Time passed, and he cleared his throat and continued. “He told her about the world under the sea, a stunning village where he lived. The sea plants and fish, beautiful colors and shapes that were far more amazing than anything on land. Eventually, the man came out of the sea and asked the girl’s father if he could marry her.”
“The lack of gills never came into it?”
Tom’s face was expressionless as he stared at Dean. “Don’t believe so. The girl’s father said no, and the young man said that he would curse the sea so that the shellfish would disappear, leaving the girl’s people hungry. The father still said no, and the fish vanished. Then the rivers ran dry and there was nothing to drink, either.”
“Hard decision to make, huh,” commented Dean. “Good of one or the good of many?”
Tom did not appear interested in philosophizing. “You telling this story or am I?”
“Pretty sure it’s you.” It was out of his mouth before he’d thought about it, and Dean wasn’t sure that Tom would continue. But he did.
“Eventually, the father caved and sent the girl to live in the sea, provided that she came out once a year to visit. The young sea-man agreed, and they were married. The fish returned and the rivers flowed, and each year, the girl came to visit. As time passed, she seemed to like it less on land. Barnacles grew on her skin. After four years, her father said that she didn’t need to come visit if she didn’t want to. She never returned, but her husband made sure that the Indian people always had fish to eat and water to drink.”
That was interesting and all, thought Dean, but it wasn’t the fishing that was down the tubes.
“And the Indian people used to say that when they paddled through the Pass, if they thought of the maiden, they had no trouble paddling their canoes through the currents. If they didn’t, they would get caught in the whirlpools and drown.”
Dean nodded thoughtfully. That was a little better.
“They used to say that, sometimes, they could see the young woman wading in the water behind them, keeping watch.”
“Thanks,” Dean said, “very much. That...was great.” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Sorry, but I have to make a call. Gotta run.”
At the pay phone, Dean realized he was running low on change. After this call, he would have seventeen cents left. He’d have to go get some coins from their stash in the Impala; they collected quarters like they were going out of style, for the constant stream of Laundromats.
Blessedly, Sam answered. “Dean?” His voice was timid.
“You okay?”
“Hope so-it’s just really windy and wavy and, well, I’m trying not to get seasick.”
“Windy? Really?”
“Believe it or not.”
“Huh. Still calm here. Though raining like you would not believe. Anyway, I found this legend…”
When Dean had finished recounting the story, both brothers were silent.
“So it was this girl you saw,” said Dean finally. “We can’t go dig up her grave and burn her bones or anything. Got any ideas for how to get rid of her?”
“Why would she be taking girls randomly from the island? The fishing boat, I get. What’s happened that’s caused her to begin going ashore?”
“The first one went missing January of last year. Now, seems to me that was just after Jasper Kelman’s little nut show got started, am I right?”
“Think so.”
“So, the Indian girl gets upset, for some reason, and starts kidnapping young women. All engaged, like she was when she went to live on the ocean floor.” A beat. “Do you think the arbutus tree thing could explain it?”
Sam pondered it as he gazed at the whirlpooling sea, hoping for another glimpse of the girl. “Probably. And… the cows? How do they fit in? What do you think they did with the bodies? We only found blood by the fire pit.”
“Maybe they ate them. Barbequed.”
Sam paused. “It’s possible,” he said. “But, unless they have a bunch of deep freezes in the basement…”
“Well, I can head over to the grounds and maybe do a binding ritual, something like that. After I head to Pass Island and… do you think I could burn the tree in this weather?” Dean seemed honestly curious.
“I think you better not,” said Sam hastily. “It’s park land and there’s lots of trees around; the fire could spread. And, besides, it’s right alongside a busy state highway. You wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous as you wandered around with all the tools of arson on your person.”
Dean was silent. “Wonder if I could somehow draw the girl’s presence. Then destroy her.”
“Dean, she only goes for girls who are going to get married.”
“You fulfill half the requirement.”
“Dean!”
Dean cleared his throat and stopped joking. “What about that other tree? The twisted one, by Cranberry Lake?”
“What is it with these people and trees?” Sam asked rhetorically. He grabbed onto the deck rail as the boat began a wide 180-degree turn. It was running a search pattern east-west through the length of the channel. The rain and wind had not let up, in fact were growing worse.
“Okay. I’ll go dig up some rituals and we’ll go from there. You, uh, hang tight, okay?”
xxxxx
In the motel room, cell phone charging on the nightstand, Dean scoured his father’s journal for the magic words. Latin words that would mysteriously vanquish the girl’s spirit, that would send her back into the depths of the sea (or hell, or wherever she belonged) and would neutralize, as it were, the arbutus and the fir and the fire circle in the clearing.
He gathered his supplies: the journal, with a few important pages dog-eared; salt; holy water; some small pouches that smelled like potpourri that Missouri Mosely had prepared and that he’d been saving for something tricky. He packed everything into a clear plastic bag he’d found under the liner in the bathroom’s garbage can, and then put the filled bag, and a spare, into a duffle. Two of the three battery bars on the phone were showing, and Dean figured it would have to do. He got into the Impala and headed north on the 20.
The downpour was so intense that, even with the wipers on high, Dean could barely see out the windshield. He had no choice but to drive painfully slowly, stuck behind a long line of cars with out-of-state, and out-of-country, license plates. Tourists. They had all the time in the world. Dean, on the other hand, did not.
It was three o’clock before Dean was standing beside the arbutus, which appeared entirely unassuming. Uncharacteristically self-conscious, because none of the other steady stream of cars were stopping at the viewpoint in the fog and the wind-yes, the wind-and the rain, Dean rummaged through his bag and pulled out a cardboard box of rock salt. Keeping his back to the highway, half-hidden by shrubs and young firs, he sprinkled it liberally around the base of the tree, putting an extra layer on the disturbed earth where the wooden box had been buried. Then he opened a bottle of holy water and poured it down the tree’s trunk from eye level, to cleanse the scars from the peeling bark.
With a glance at the road, he moved through the shrubbery to the far side of the tree, further obscuring himself from passing cars. Also, he told himself, so that he would be at least slightly protected from the elements, to avoid getting the journal wet. He carefully extracted it from the duffle, opening it to the right page and inserting it into the extra plastic bag. He held the waterproof package in both hands, gave the tree a solemn look, and began to sound out the Latin.
Rating: PG, Gen
Summary: In northwestern Washington, Sam and Dean run into a cult, missing people, plagues, some really humid weather, and possessed trees.
Disclaimer: As usual, I don’t own anything. The geography in this story is fairly accurate; everything else is fiction. Oh, and apologies to William Butler Yeats.
Author's Note: Much thanks to
big_pink, who listened to me whine about the troublesome nature of writing a story with an actual plot, and who did a fantastic beta-ing job.
Previous chapters
Part Seven: Sunday, July 9, afternoon
The best thing one can do when it’s raining is let it rain.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
xxxxx
His patience was minimal at the best of times, and mid-drenching, it was non-existent. There were several large black umbrellas in attendance at the marina, but not enough to go around. Dean huddled in on himself, shoulders hunched and head bowed, but his windbreaker was sopping wet, and he could feel rain trickling down his spine. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and kept asking if anybody had seen his brother. He received shrugs in answer; in the chaos of organizing the search, the Queen of England could have walked by and no one would have noticed. And these people were supposed to be observant? thought Dean.
There had been some coming and going of cars; searching now were the county police, the state police, the Coast Guard, and a contingent from the Naval air station a few miles away. Dean saw a black Suburban pull up; he watched as it expelled a couple of sheriff’s deputies, and he shuffled over, unwilling to walk any faster in his wet jeans.
“Afternoon, officers,” he greeted. “I’m Dean Fogerty, with the Mounties, been liaising with Sheriff Douglas on a case about a missing girl-Celia Edwards?-from Vancouver, BC. Down here with my partner, Sam; don’t suppose you’ve run into him lately?” he asked casually. A shrug. “Can’t reach him on his cell phone.”
One of the deputies cocked his head to the side. He had put a clear plastic cover on his wide-brimmed hat that Dean knew was government issue, but still managed to look more ridiculous than the plastic bags that old ladies wore over their hairdos in the rain. “Sure, I spoke with him, oh, before lunch,” and Dean’s stomach chose that moment to remind him that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. He tried to ignore it. “Seems to me he joined Douglas on the Coast Guard cutter.”
“Really.” Dean paused. “Do you know when they’ll be back?”
“Not a clue. But if you need to reach him, whyn’t you go to the harbormaster’s office; think they’ve got a communications centre set up there.”
Dean thanked him, and trudged through the downpour-had he really wanted it to rain? He must have been out of his mind with the heat-towards the small building. Inside, he found a couple of people from each government agency involved, and radios and cell phones in quantity.
Dean gave his standard spiel-RCMP, missing girl, cross-border investigation. “So, uh, do you know which boat the sheriff’s on? ‘Cause my br-partner’s probably on it.”
They didn’t know where Douglas was, exactly; Dean wondered, if they couldn’t keep tabs on the sheriff, how were they going to find a missing fishing boat? Radio calls went out, and shortly, Sam was located.
xxxxx
In the summers, when Jasper Kelman was not in San Diego and his family went to visit his grandparents in Washington State, he explored the whole coast. The rules, of course, about not leaving the compound applied solely to the ordinary members, not to respected leaders such as his parents. He spent little time on the beach; the ocean was not a novelty to him as it was to the holidaying children at the state park. He scorned their wonder: it was only the ocean. Just a lot of salty water. It was there. That was what it did.
Instead, he scouted what was inland of the high-tide line. The low sand dunes, the rocky bluffs, the dense forest. He had no brothers or sisters, had no one to play with-no, he did not play; at the compound, the children did not commit acts as pedestrian as playing-so, he explored, and for companions he had only the squirrels and stellar’s jays and shadows.
He climbed trees and dug out rotten logs and cached treasures inside. An eagle’s feather, a rodent’s skull, flat, smooth stones.
His favorite tree overlooked what the state park signs called the desert. He knew it was not desert because they had desert in California, and there it was arid and stark and the ground was hard. The tree reminded him sometimes of a bowl of spaghetti. Sometimes the tree reminded him of a sponge. A block of wood, with holes drilled haphazardly, like Swiss cheese but with less cheese. And sometimes it reminded him of an octopus.
He was drawn to this tree. He had first laid eyes on it when he was four years old, and his grandfather had taken him by the hand, telling him he had a surprise for him. He was carried, eyes shut, the last hundred yards to the tree, before being set down on a branch four feet off the ground.
He had been too young to climb, but had known already that the tree was luring him. That the tree was seeking him out, and him alone.
As time passed, he only felt the attraction strengthen. Every two or three years, his family would make the trek northward to Whidbey Island, and the tree mesmerized him. As a teenager, he climbed to the very top of the tree, a flat network of limbs, a canopy over the soft sand and shed needles below. The view was incredible-beautiful sunsets over the Pacific Ocean, Destruction Island and its lighthouse several miles out to sea, a sailboat, the silhouette of an oil tanker on the horizon. The round head of a harbor seal, or an otter.
He did not know why the tree enthralled him so. Seduced him, he thought when he was seventeen, and resolved to figure out why.
He researched fastidiously, if infrequently-somehow, the fir slipped his mind entirely when he was in San Diego, surfacing only when he was crossed the forty-eighth parallel-and slowly he pieced together the story, finishing as he sat in the Oak Harbor public library in 1997. At dinner that night, at his grandparents’ home, he was told that they were moving to Yuma, where it was reliably warm and dry, and so he could move into the house, if he wanted. Afterwards, he walked along the shoreline to the Douglas fir.
As he stood near its base, branches snaking out around and above him, he knew that he was right. That he had figured out the story. Though he was only twenty-three, he was mature enough to know that acting rashly with this new power would not end well. He needed time to plan. He could not utilize his knowledge tomorrow, or the next day. It would require extensive planning and research to exploit the force embodied in the tree, but he was confident in his abilities. He would bide his time.
xxxxx
A sudden rapping at the glass window behind him made Sam jump; he reluctantly turned from the vision in the sea to the pilothouse. The sheriff was motioning for him to go inside. With a last glance at the waves-the face, that of a young woman, was lying just below the surface-he stumbled into the dry.
Douglas pointed him towards the radio, and he was handed a headset that looked sturdier than those worn by astronauts during re-entry. He put it on, tugging it over his ears and adjusting the mouthpiece. The foam sphere over the microphone was large enough to obstruct his vision.
He heard static, and then a faraway voice calling his name. He said, “Hello? Yes?”
And then he heard, “Sammy?”
“Dean?!” he said incredulously. Could it possibly be his brother?
“Yeah, it’s me.” The quality of the connection made Dean’s voice sound like it was coming from the dark side of the moon. Astronaut headset, indeed. “Answer your phone once in a while, okay?”
“It didn’t ring,” protested Sam, pulling the cell out of his pocket. Two missed calls. “Oh. Well, I didn’t hear it. It’s loud out here.”
“You coming back to shore any time soon?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Listen, um, there’s something I have to tell you. Can I call you on the phone?”
“Let me call you,” said Dean, neatly avoiding the issue of his own cell phone’s deficiency.
“Sure.”
Dean left the building and found a pay phone near some vending machines. Famished, he bought a bag of Nibs for a dollar fifty-five; what a rip, he thought, and called his brother.
“So, don’t think any of the women got into the cult, at least of their own accord. Don’t know what happened to them though; but they were all engaged. Isn’t that strange?”
“Dean, in the waves out here? I saw… I saw a face.”
Dean paused. “A face?” he asked. When in doubt, repeat the last thing the other person said.
“Yeah. Of a young woman. With raven black hair.”
“Ooookay,” said Dean slowly. “And it’s not any of the missing people?”
“No. It… there was no body, just the face.”
“What do we do now?” A beat. “Did you tell anyone?”
“What, are you crazy? No, I didn’t mention anything. I’m on the deck right now, freezing to death, and everybody else’s inside, staying warm and dry.”
“Was there anything else? A young woman, black hair, anything more specific? Like, maybe a bullet hole in her forehead? Or a distinguishing scar on one cheek, so I can track her down?”
“No, Dean, and there wasn’t any skywriting, either. Although… she looked maybe Indian. Like, Native American. Maybe there’s a legend? About a girl, and the water?”
“I’ll see what I can do. And, set your phone to vibrate, okay?”
xxxxx
They had heard this before, but that was no reason not to tell them again. Jasper Kelman stood at his place at the head of the table and orated. “The Indian maiden’s beau, you’ll recall, was heartbroken. His future wife had fallen under the spell of the man from the sea. She visited from the depths every year for four years… and then she never returned again. And so, grief-stricken, he killed himself. Hanged himself. His spirit still yearns for her return.” He waited a beat for it to sink in. “Rise,” he announced. “A moment of silence, please, in honor of his spirit. In respect to his spirit who, like us, was overlooked, ignored. Who was cast aside. But we are taking up the battle! Our quest, our desire, our aspiration-this, the moral imperative-our righteous crusade-to show that I will be victorious. I will be triumphant.” Jasper Kelman surveyed the twenty-eight attentive faces, saw them on their feet, remembered why. “A moment of silence,” he repeated, and they bowed their heads.
xxxxx
Libraries weren’t really Dean’s speed, and anyway, it was still Sunday (though it felt like he’d been awake for days) and the library was closed. At the harbor, small groups of officers and search and rescue people huddled under hastily-erected tents and sipped coffee. Everyone was antsy, desperate to help but stuck on shore and unable to do anything productive. They shifted their weight from foot to foot and repeated the same conversations: I hope they find them; I wish there was something I could do; any news? Dean moseyed, or tried to, anyway, in his sopping wet clothes, over towards one of the older officers. The older you were, the more stories you had to tell.
Taking pains to be casual, Dean inquired, “So, do many boats go down in the Pass?”
He got a sharp look for his trouble; he’d broken the cardinal rule of rescues, and that was to mention failure while there was still hope. Dean cleared his throat. “I mean, like, historically.”
“Historically?”
“Yeah. Like, are there any… can you tell me… you know, like…” Any minute you can jump in, man, thought Dean. Cut me a little slack, huh? “Like legends.” He out-and-out said it.
“Legends?”
This is ridiculous, thought Dean. Nobody was this curt. Or at least, not to Dean. He’d never managed to produce such a small reaction in anybody in his life. “Never mind,” he sighed, and grit his teeth. “Nothing like helping a fellow officer,” he muttered under his breath. He was ten feet away before the man spoke.
“Hey.”
Dean turned, raised his eyebrows in silent question.
“You’re an officer?”
Dean nodded. “RCMP.”
The man shook his head in apology and held out his hand, which Dean took. “Didn’t realize. Thought you were one of them.” He jerked his head towards the people gathered around the edges of the yellow police tape that attempted to keep the crowds at bay. “A thrill-seeker.” The man looked Dean up and down. “You don’t look like an officer.”
Dean gave a tight smile. “It’s a good thing, I think.”
The man gestured ambiguously and introduced himself as Tom Silversmith. “So you’re interested in the local lore.”
Dean shrugged, self-deprecating. “Yeah, well, it’s something to pass the time, you know?”
“I do crossword puzzles, myself,” said Tom, rubbing at the grey stubble on his chin. Absently, Dean noted that it was the same color as the sky. What hair there was on his head was lighter, nearly white, although the man was probably only in his late fifties. He was comfortably overweight, not potbellied, but stocky. His tan uniform had probably been crisp when he’d dressed this morning, but the rain had been hard on it, and it was wrinkled like he’d slept in it.
“There is a story,” Tom admitted grudgingly, and there was a long pause before he went on. “Samish Indian legend. The women once gathered shellfish along the shores of Deception Pass. Then one day, a particularly beautiful young maiden dropped a clam she’d collected back into the sea, and she reached into the water to catch it. It kept getting farther away, and she kept going in deeper to get. She was waist-deep when something grabbed her arm, and she screamed.”
“Anybody would,” said Dean, wondering if there were male sirens.
The corners of Tom’s mouth turned up slightly and momentarily. “It gets better. A voice told her not to be afraid, that he only wanted to see her beauty. She was released and she went home. The next day, the same thing happened. She was lured into the sea, and the man would grip her hand and say he loved her.” He stopped speaking. Dean waited. Tom seemed unused to forming this many words at once. Time passed, and he cleared his throat and continued. “He told her about the world under the sea, a stunning village where he lived. The sea plants and fish, beautiful colors and shapes that were far more amazing than anything on land. Eventually, the man came out of the sea and asked the girl’s father if he could marry her.”
“The lack of gills never came into it?”
Tom’s face was expressionless as he stared at Dean. “Don’t believe so. The girl’s father said no, and the young man said that he would curse the sea so that the shellfish would disappear, leaving the girl’s people hungry. The father still said no, and the fish vanished. Then the rivers ran dry and there was nothing to drink, either.”
“Hard decision to make, huh,” commented Dean. “Good of one or the good of many?”
Tom did not appear interested in philosophizing. “You telling this story or am I?”
“Pretty sure it’s you.” It was out of his mouth before he’d thought about it, and Dean wasn’t sure that Tom would continue. But he did.
“Eventually, the father caved and sent the girl to live in the sea, provided that she came out once a year to visit. The young sea-man agreed, and they were married. The fish returned and the rivers flowed, and each year, the girl came to visit. As time passed, she seemed to like it less on land. Barnacles grew on her skin. After four years, her father said that she didn’t need to come visit if she didn’t want to. She never returned, but her husband made sure that the Indian people always had fish to eat and water to drink.”
That was interesting and all, thought Dean, but it wasn’t the fishing that was down the tubes.
“And the Indian people used to say that when they paddled through the Pass, if they thought of the maiden, they had no trouble paddling their canoes through the currents. If they didn’t, they would get caught in the whirlpools and drown.”
Dean nodded thoughtfully. That was a little better.
“They used to say that, sometimes, they could see the young woman wading in the water behind them, keeping watch.”
“Thanks,” Dean said, “very much. That...was great.” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Sorry, but I have to make a call. Gotta run.”
At the pay phone, Dean realized he was running low on change. After this call, he would have seventeen cents left. He’d have to go get some coins from their stash in the Impala; they collected quarters like they were going out of style, for the constant stream of Laundromats.
Blessedly, Sam answered. “Dean?” His voice was timid.
“You okay?”
“Hope so-it’s just really windy and wavy and, well, I’m trying not to get seasick.”
“Windy? Really?”
“Believe it or not.”
“Huh. Still calm here. Though raining like you would not believe. Anyway, I found this legend…”
When Dean had finished recounting the story, both brothers were silent.
“So it was this girl you saw,” said Dean finally. “We can’t go dig up her grave and burn her bones or anything. Got any ideas for how to get rid of her?”
“Why would she be taking girls randomly from the island? The fishing boat, I get. What’s happened that’s caused her to begin going ashore?”
“The first one went missing January of last year. Now, seems to me that was just after Jasper Kelman’s little nut show got started, am I right?”
“Think so.”
“So, the Indian girl gets upset, for some reason, and starts kidnapping young women. All engaged, like she was when she went to live on the ocean floor.” A beat. “Do you think the arbutus tree thing could explain it?”
Sam pondered it as he gazed at the whirlpooling sea, hoping for another glimpse of the girl. “Probably. And… the cows? How do they fit in? What do you think they did with the bodies? We only found blood by the fire pit.”
“Maybe they ate them. Barbequed.”
Sam paused. “It’s possible,” he said. “But, unless they have a bunch of deep freezes in the basement…”
“Well, I can head over to the grounds and maybe do a binding ritual, something like that. After I head to Pass Island and… do you think I could burn the tree in this weather?” Dean seemed honestly curious.
“I think you better not,” said Sam hastily. “It’s park land and there’s lots of trees around; the fire could spread. And, besides, it’s right alongside a busy state highway. You wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous as you wandered around with all the tools of arson on your person.”
Dean was silent. “Wonder if I could somehow draw the girl’s presence. Then destroy her.”
“Dean, she only goes for girls who are going to get married.”
“You fulfill half the requirement.”
“Dean!”
Dean cleared his throat and stopped joking. “What about that other tree? The twisted one, by Cranberry Lake?”
“What is it with these people and trees?” Sam asked rhetorically. He grabbed onto the deck rail as the boat began a wide 180-degree turn. It was running a search pattern east-west through the length of the channel. The rain and wind had not let up, in fact were growing worse.
“Okay. I’ll go dig up some rituals and we’ll go from there. You, uh, hang tight, okay?”
xxxxx
In the motel room, cell phone charging on the nightstand, Dean scoured his father’s journal for the magic words. Latin words that would mysteriously vanquish the girl’s spirit, that would send her back into the depths of the sea (or hell, or wherever she belonged) and would neutralize, as it were, the arbutus and the fir and the fire circle in the clearing.
He gathered his supplies: the journal, with a few important pages dog-eared; salt; holy water; some small pouches that smelled like potpourri that Missouri Mosely had prepared and that he’d been saving for something tricky. He packed everything into a clear plastic bag he’d found under the liner in the bathroom’s garbage can, and then put the filled bag, and a spare, into a duffle. Two of the three battery bars on the phone were showing, and Dean figured it would have to do. He got into the Impala and headed north on the 20.
The downpour was so intense that, even with the wipers on high, Dean could barely see out the windshield. He had no choice but to drive painfully slowly, stuck behind a long line of cars with out-of-state, and out-of-country, license plates. Tourists. They had all the time in the world. Dean, on the other hand, did not.
It was three o’clock before Dean was standing beside the arbutus, which appeared entirely unassuming. Uncharacteristically self-conscious, because none of the other steady stream of cars were stopping at the viewpoint in the fog and the wind-yes, the wind-and the rain, Dean rummaged through his bag and pulled out a cardboard box of rock salt. Keeping his back to the highway, half-hidden by shrubs and young firs, he sprinkled it liberally around the base of the tree, putting an extra layer on the disturbed earth where the wooden box had been buried. Then he opened a bottle of holy water and poured it down the tree’s trunk from eye level, to cleanse the scars from the peeling bark.
With a glance at the road, he moved through the shrubbery to the far side of the tree, further obscuring himself from passing cars. Also, he told himself, so that he would be at least slightly protected from the elements, to avoid getting the journal wet. He carefully extracted it from the duffle, opening it to the right page and inserting it into the extra plastic bag. He held the waterproof package in both hands, gave the tree a solemn look, and began to sound out the Latin.