The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook - Lydia Millet (primary phonics .txt) 📗

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.

Three

The smell of pancakes and melting butter wafted up to her room in the morning and brought her out of a half-suffocating dream of ice and a big white face. She jiggled the mattress as she got out of bed, waking up Jax. Pancakes were one of their dad’s few edible