The daily Astorian., October 25, 2018, Page 9, Image 9

OCTOBER 25, 2018 // 9
“Liar! You knew what William did!
You saw it with your eyes.”
Nathan couldn’t help but wonder if
Ansa was implying that Kyle had had a
vision of her captivity.
“Ansa …” Kyle started.
“Liar!” she said. “You have always
been a liar. Now everyone will know.”
The boat shifted as the selkie slid
across the deck.
“They will all know,” she seethed.
“But now,” and she smiled a toothsome
seal grin equidistant from terrifying and
adorable, “I have to go. I have a date
with an old lover. Afterward I will need
to take a very long, cold bath.”
As Ansa breached the gunwale with a
splash, both men rushed portside to see
if there was anything to see, but all they
found was the dark, still waters of Black
Lake.
Nathan peered into the open fish hold.
As his eyes strained to dig through the
darkness, he noticed a clump of spotted
seal skin in one corner. Did Ansa molt?
But it soon became clear this was a pup
that hadn’t moved or molted in a long
time.
“Oh Bill,” he said. “What have you
done?”
He turned to see if Kyle had heard
him, but he was still spellbound by the
water.
“Nathan,” he said. “You got to see
this.”
Below the surface of the lake, rib-
bons of neon green as effervescent and
unnatural as antifreeze began to snake
out from the spot where Ansa had dived,
cycloning through the opaque water
with a gathering speed. The lake began
to bloom an unhealthy glow and bubble
like a cauldron, though it was a cold boil,
like off dry ice.
“What’s happening?” Nathan said.
“I think we got cursed.”
There were times that Nathan would
have welcomed a curse if only to explain
why he left things in ruin. Now was not
one of them.
Then things began to float to the top
of the lake. Nathan leaped to the stern
and scooped his hand in the water.
In his palm was his own mother’s
wedding ring and a soggy billfold.
“Kyle?” he said. “Why did Ansa say
you knew what Bill was doing?”
“I really don’t know,” he said. “She’s
crazy. I mean, she’s like a fish witch or
something.”
Nathan plunged his hand into the
water again and pulled out an antique
watch, a silver broach and a credit card
with the name Peter Gunderson on it,
which was the name of their tenth grade
math teacher.
“Kyle?” he said again. “Why did
Ansa say you knew?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “Okay, may-
be one night I was driving by the marina
and I saw Bill and Ansa slipping below
deck and she caught my eye. I mean,
hell, she always caught my eye. I didn’t
think anything. They were doing their
thing. I was doing mine. I mean, I hadn’t
even heard she had left yet.”
“She never left,” Nathan stated flatly.
The water began to cede larger
objects as if the glowing lake had refuted
gravity — stereo equipment, fishing
rods, animals too. Dogs and cats broke
the surface, paddling, a parakeet wob-
bled into the night sky.
“This is impossible,” Kyle said.
“None of these things could be here.
There’s no way.”
Then the smashed front of a Dodge
Ram emerged from the sickly water.
“Kyle?” Nathan asked. “Why is Cory
Hoyt’s old Ram in Black Lake?”
“This doesn’t make any sense! I gave
it all back!”
“Kyle, I’m going to ask you again.”
Nathan inhaled a sense of calm that had
evaded him all night as he picked up the
tuna hook. “Why is— ?”
“Because I stole it okay?” Kyle
yelled. “Because I could, because it was
funny, and because Cory Hoyt was the
one that burned me with every damn
fishing boat on this port! So, yeah, I stole
his damn truck. I crashed it. And then I
told him where to find it.”
Kyle ran his hand through the water,
but didn’t pick anything up. Dogs were
yapping like geese.
Each item and every animal was an
apparition implicating him further, rising
from a different dimension — the deep.
Nathan didn’t know squat about selkies,
but he was beginning to figure you
shouldn’t cross a selkie scorned.
“So I stole it all,” Kyle mumbled.
“But I gave it back.”
“Why?” Nathan asked. With the hook
in his hand, he backed Kyle towards the
bow.
“Why?” Kyle snickered. “Why?
Because it’s fun. Because I didn’t have a
thing like football, like you did. Be-
cause my daddy didn’t leave me a boat.
Because it’s a rush to get away with it.
But you know what the real rush is? The
thank-you you get when you show some-
one where to find their most precious
thing. Then, I guess, after a while—”
“No,” Nathan stopped him, gripping
the wooden handle of the hook so hard
he thought it might splinter. “Why is
Char’s Buick floating out there?”
“Whoa, Nathan.” Kyle put his hands
up as his calves bumped the bow. There
had been 3 inches of water at the stern,
but here they had reached higher ground.
“You had messed her up pretty bad,”
Kyle said, shaking his head. “I’d stopped
by with a six-pack and you were gone.
She wouldn’t stop talking.”
Nathan raked the hook starboard.
“She was going to call the cops,” he
said. “I was just trying to keep you out of
trouble.”
Why did Kyle have to smirk with
only his mustache?
“She just wouldn’t stop talking.”
“I don’t believe you,” Nathan said,
shifting the hook to his left hand so that
he could drum Kyle with his dominant,
just above his heart, until Kyle’s legs
folded, slipping him onto his back.
“What did you do to that girl?” Na-
than whispered, leaning his knee against
Kyle’s lungs as he held the hook to his
throat.
“What? Who? Sara?” Kyle squirmed.
“I didn’t do anything to her, man. She’s
like a distant cousin or something.”
“Then why the hell are we out here?”
Kyle tried to slurp a deep breath but
couldn’t. “I thought if we found her,
we’d be like famous or something,” he
said. “I thought it would change our
lives.”
Nathan bore into Kyle’s eyes,
searching for a shade of BS in his pupils.
Outside the boat, a cat yowled as it tried
to stay afloat.
Nathan and Kyle had always been
proximity friends the way countries that
share borders are often allies and then
not. He thought he had Kyle pegged 100
percent. Now he had no idea how to read
him.
“How can I trust you?” he said.
He punched Kyle in the throat repeat-
edly as if expecting him to cough up an
answer truer than blood.
“I don’t know what’s out here, man,”
Kyle gasped. “I keep trying to tell you
I’m not a damn psychic.”
Nathan then understood that he’d lost
track of the fillet knife hung portside as
it entered his ribcage and began stirring
around in there.
Continued on Page 17