The Tide Clock: A Tale of the October Club (Anger)
The Tide Clock: A Tale of the October Club
The year's end draws near. A light snow dusts the streets outside the October Club. Within it is quiet and warm. Few come to share their stories at this time of year, when thoughts turn to home and family. But there are always those who listen. The woman who has come to speak was obviously once a very pretty girl, and her beauty has matured with age. Her pale yellow hair is cut short. Laughter and tears have carved lines of wisdom in her face. She wears slacks the color of stormclouds and a crimson pullover. Her slender fingers are wrapped around a steaming mug of strong tea. The tale begins.
The last Christmas present my husband ever gave me was a tide clock. It was a beautiful thing of dark oak and crystal. The single brass hand followed the moon in its eternal dance and indicated the level of the tide. It covered the dial once every twelve hours and twenty-four minutes. That always seemed odd to me, although I understood the reasons for it. It seemed like a visitor from some parallel world where time was different.
Peter knew that I loved to walk along the shore near our home when the tide was low. I would step among the treasures that the ocean had left behind in its eagerness to follow the moon. Shells, sand dollars, seaweed, mermaid's purses, strange things that I couldn't identify. I was in love with the tide clock, and I was as excited as any child that Christmas. I don't remember what I gave Peter. The next day he was dead, killed by a drunk driver while he was out on some stupid errand.
If the woman who had killed my husband had survived the crash, I would have had someone to hate. Instead, she was cruel enough to die herself, and I was left alone with my rage. It was cold and blind, the kind of anger which shows itself in silence and unshed tears.
I hated my husband for leaving me and our young son. I hated myself for letting him go. I hated God; the God I had never believed in until I hated him. But I never hated my child. Jonathan was the one thing that kept me from falling completely into madness. Instead, I was only three-quarters insane. It may seem funny to measure such a thing so precisely, but I felt as if I had some barometer in my soul, which kept an exact measurement of my lunacy.
After the phone calls and visits from my friends and family, who kept my wounds open with their kindness, I went through our home and destroyed all signs of the holiday. I shattered every ornament with my bare hands, pleased by the pain of glass cutting my skin. I tore the tree apart, branch by branch, and burned it. The living wood made a foul-smelling, smoky fire that stung my eyes, but still I could not cry. Jonathan thought it was some sort of game, and laughed at his crazy mother.
The one reminder of the holiday which I could not bear to lose was the tide clock. Perhaps it was only because I love the seashore so much. Sometimes, however, I think it was because it reminded me of myself. Just as the tide clock somehow found nearly an extra hour in every day, I was not quite aligned with the rest of the world.
I might have been forced back into something resembling ordinary life if my husband had not been wealthy. As it was, I had no need to worry about mundane things such as mortgage payments. Our home, a many-windowed, modernistic cube, had been payed for with a single check, as had our portion of the North Carolina coast over which it brooded.
Not long after sunset, on one crystalline night, the tide clock told me that the sea was at its ebb. I decided to walk along the shore with my son, and share its mysteries with him. The wind was brisk and full of the sharp scent of salt. The moon was low in the east, and nearly full. I could almost imagine it calling the water, like a woman welcoming her lover.
The tide was lower than I had ever seen it. It felt strange to walk on land that had always been hidden from me. Jonathan was delighted by all the wonders we found. Whelks and periwinkles, starfish and tiny crabs. We even found a seahorse, that most magical of all ocean creatures.
Jonathan was playing with ropes of seaweed when I saw the skeleton. It was small, no larger than a cat. The skull, half-hidden by clinging mussels, appeared to be that of a human child. The rest of its bones were like nothing I had ever seen. Its arms were thin, and ended in very long fingers. Instead of hips and legs, its spine was connected to a series of tapering discs which reminded me of a snake.
I held Jonathan close, his face turned to me so he would not have to see it. Terrible images went through my mind of some woman throwing the body of her deformed infant into the sea. Before I could pick up my son and carry him back to the safety of our home I heard a sudden splash, and something emerged from the water.
It lifted its head to look at us and raised its slender arms. Its torso was fully exposed to the night air, but the rest of it was half-hidden beneath the water. It seemed to have a thick, muscular tail, like a dolphin. Water dripped from its body and sparkled in the moonlight. Bits of seaweed clung to its silver-green skin. A delicate webwork of scales flowed from its head and down its body, outlining two rows of nipples. A pair of gills on its neck fluttered open and shut as it tried to breathe. Its eyes were large and yellow. Its fingers ended in long, sharp claws.
I wanted to run, but something froze me in place. I held Jonathan tight, ready to face those razor claws to protect him. The creature looked down at the skeleton I had found and moaned softly. I knew that sound. There had been many nights when I dreamt of my husband. When I awoke, for a moment I forgot what had happened, and I reached for him. Then the memory came rushing back. I knew that sound.
The creature picked up the body of her child, her claws weaving themselves between its ribs. She turned, and with a sudden crash of her tail disappeared beneath the waves. Somehow I made my way back to my home, weeping all the way.
Jonathan never saw what happened. All he remembers is that we met a sad lady by the side of the sea, and that his mother learned how to cry. I'm still learning. Next year, I think I'll put up a Christmas tree.