Part 1, Chapter 11

 

 

XI: The Dock

 

              In the new context of living with a girl who could seemingly spontaneously produce fire, Ray suddenly found the concrete and metal of the Hole to be comforting—or, more accurately, the lack of wood. All in all, save for some isolated objects like the sofa, their clothing, or the papers in the file cabinets, their place of living was largely fireproof. But this was not enough to make Paula feel comfortable, evidently, and Ray awoke the following day to see her scurrying about the underground chamber putting any flammable items as far away from each other as possible, lest she accidentally spark some chain reaction of fire.

              “Maybe I should get rid of the sheets on my bed,” she mumbled nervously as she picked at her lip.

Ray leaned against the wall groggily behind her. “Don’t you think that’s overkill?” he yawned. “It was, like, the tiniest fire I’ve ever seen. Little tiny pathetic fire.”

Paula glanced at him as if offended for a fleeting moment, then turned her attention back to her bed. “I just don’t want anything to happen while I’m sleeping. I could kill you if I started a fire.”

He rubbed his eyes. “I’m sure I’d be fine.”

“And maybe that would kill me, too—hot things don’t seem to affect me, but that doesn’t account for the toxicity of fumes an uncontrolled fire could produce. I’m sure I could certainly still choke to death.”

“Paula. Would it make you more comfortable to just ditch the sheets?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, then do it.”

“Emotionally, I mean,” she added. “Physically, no. I just—,” she paced around the bedroom. “I just think—that… It seems to be ramping up, right? Because at the beginning, when you were leading me around by the hand, you never said anything about my skin feeling hot. But that changed. You burned your hand on the cover of the manhole just because I’d touched it.”

“Could’ve also been the fact that it’s made of metal and was getting sun all day.”

“Yeah, but weren’t you able to hold on to it just a couple seconds before that? Before I had touched it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“See? So it was probably me. And then there were all those stupid tricks I pulled on the beach to get clothes…”

He scratched at the back of his head. “You need it more than they do.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about heating up the sand, heating it sufficiently to make people uncomfortable enough to want to move. I boiled water…” she trailed off, pulling on her fingertips mindlessly. She turned to look at Ray. “I boiled water, Ray, that is not normal. How was I just okay with that? And then last night, the flame. That’s—there’s something bad happening. I think I’m sick.”

“With what, fire disease? I don’t know medical stuff, but we gotta be real with ourselves. I don’t think it’s a virus kinda thing.”

“So what, then? Something worse?” She sat on the corner of her bed, body tense. “Am I—Is it something more intense than that? Something metaphysical? Maybe I’m possessed. I don’t know. I don’t even believe in that stuff. Do I? Maybe I do.”

“Jesus, Paula, you’re not possessed.”

              “Then how do you explain whatever this is?” She gestured towards her eyes. “This is not a thing that just happens. Or boiling water. Or starting fires out of nowhere.”

              “It very well could be,” Ray said calmly. “We’ve just forgotten.”

              “Then maybe it is a virus, and you’ve just ‘forgotten’ how viruses work.”

              “Nah, I don’t think so.”

              Her voice was rising. “See, but that’s not fair. You can’t just refute things because you don’t feel like that’s how the world works, and then tell me I can’t do the same thing.”

              “What? That’s not what I said.”

              “It functionally is, though!”

               A pause. “Why don’t we get outside for a little? Some fresh air?”

              “Are you trying to say I need to calm down?” she asked flatly.

              “No! No, no, I just—usually go out to the beach at night, but I didn’t yesterday, so I feel like I need to get out.” He wrinkled his nose. It had been lingering in the back of his mind as his brain had slowly woken up that day, but now he finally noticed with his full consciousness the faint foul smell that hung in the stale air. “It also kinda smells weird down here.”

              Paula sighed. “Okay. Sure. Let me change into something more presentable,” she said, shooing him out of the room.

              “Oh, yeah, same.”

              (He had no intention of changing out of his hoodie.)

              Ray chuckled to himself as he turned and left. Why this girl cared any bit at all about looking presentable to a bunch of half-naked beachgoing strangers walking around the island, he found completely unfathomable.

              He found Hitchcock in the kitchen (the raven had pierced through a bag of rice and was probing it with his beak), and lifted him up to his shoulder. Eventually Paula emerged from the bedroom, wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat. It was too big on her, and shifted just out of place with every movement, but she still managed to make it look elegant.

During one of their days spent “shopping” up and down the perimeter of the island’s beach, Ray had spotted at the far side of the island a very nice-looking dock, which he’d meant to properly check out since. They set out towards it from the Hole, with Hitchcock fluttering closely behind.

              Ray took with him a bare stick of a mop he’d found on one of his shopping trips in the dumpster, which he’d leaned against one of the walls in the main room. It was made of smooth, solid wood, and nearly as tall as he was when he held it. He’d begun using it as a walking stick on his nightly excursions around the island, especially as he trudged through the mangroves and needed to test if the ground ahead of him was solid or a deep pool of mud with a caked surface. Navigating the woods with his staff made him feel like some great adventurer.

              A considerable way into their walk, Ray did a double-take after realizing Paula had been walking differently, and saw that she wore bright orange heels.

              “Wh—Paula, heels? You know we’re gonna walk along the beach, right?”

              She looked him up and down. “And you’re wearing a thick hoodie and sweatpants. You know we’re going to walk along the beach, right? I can take off my heels.”

              She strode with confidence and rhythm, with her chin pointed up and her arms moving fluidly at her sides. In the oppressive daylight it was impossible to see any luminescence escape from her eyes, but still she seemed to emanate rays of sun as she walked.

              It was only when they were within view of the dock that Ray remembered it was across the road. He gazed at the streams of cars in agitated stiffness, watching the great shining hunks of metal as they shot over the tire-marked asphalt. He hated the metallic beasts. They were ugly, moved impossibly fast, and made him feel strange. But he made up his mind that he would cross the road anyway, though he waited long enough for a clearing in the traffic for an increasingly impatient Paula to snap at him to just go already.

              Once on the other side, they were met with a tall chickenwire fence separating the public area of the beach from the part containing the dock; he saw now that it appeared to be part of some school of marine science.

              “Uhh, yeah, I don’t see a door in the fence, so it’s cool if—”

              “We can climb it,” Paula cut him off.

              “Yeah? You’re alright with that?”

              “Yes.”

              He shook his head at her slowly. “I don’t get you.”

              Ray was beginning to find Paula to be completely impossible—just yesterday she’d nearly gone hysteric over going down the hallway of a chamber they’d already been living in for a couple of weeks, and now she was perfectly alright with trespassing in broad daylight.

              They climbed the fence (Paula climbed in her heels) with no issue; no one was around on the premises of the school—Ray wondered if it was a weekend. The beach here was small, with only a couple yards of beige sand separating the tangles of sea oat and beach elder from the waves that steadily scaled the slope as high tide approached.

              The air here, away from the dense wet vegetation of the mangroves, was light and fresh; it still carried the salt of the sea, but also a pleasant floral sweetness. The waves lapped rhythmically, but minorly, so that very little sand was kicked up from the sea floor—the water was a brilliant turquoise, and glittered radiantly in the afternoon sun. The island was quiet here, away from the public beaches.

              They stepped onto the dock, and Ray ran his hands along the wood dock pilings. They were weathered and dark where the water lapped against them, and encrusted with barnacles and sprigs of rust-colored seagrass. Ray set the mop stick down. They sat at the edge, legs dangling over the vibrant water, quietly observing the sea. The waves were so mild that the water’s surface was like a transparent sheet of glass, and they watched tiny yellow and blue damselfish dart around the sea-eaten wood.

              Ray fell into a thoughtful trance watching the undulating water. His mind always seemed to return to trying to piece together some shining revelation about who he and Paula were, but every time he found himself picking at nothing. At the beginning, after they’d first woken in the abandoned stadium, Ray had conjured up some successful, heroic image of himself within his mind—someone who’d gather evidence and clues and draw logical conclusions, and sort everything out neatly as if it were a great jigsaw puzzle. That was only two weeks ago, but he felt childish now thinking about that—it was as if they’d been playing detective, nonsensically convinced there would be a trail of breadcrumbs leaving them to some cohesive, succinct answer. But the truth was that he felt almost no closer to assembling their pasts than he’d felt their first day here.

              It wasn’t that it particularly bothered him, having no sense of where he came from. He knew Paula felt that way—she was perpetually frustrated—but he was perfectly content with the idea of just starting over from where they did. It was less some deep-rooted sense of misery over his loss of memory that kept driving his thoughts towards the mystery, but more simply, a genuine curiosity.

              He rubbed his sleeve under which the tattoo lay. Was he stupid? Was there something he wasn’t seeing? It felt as though they’d accumulated quite the collection of strange eccentricities—the chalkboard was witness to this—and yet they didn’t seem to point towards some obvious narrative. He wondered airily if there was someone, somewhere out there, who knew about his and Paula’s pasts. Maybe somebody had witnessed whatever calamity had caused both of them to lose their memories. Maybe somebody was looking for them. Maybe their families were looking for them.

              He ran his fingers over his scalp. Why hadn’t they gone to the police, again? That would’ve been the obvious thing to do, right? But he recalled that bizarre, constituted feeling that had grasped him by the shoulders all those days ago, when he’d first considered asking someone for help. Even now he had no concrete idea of what exactly had caused this feeling, and yet it was unshakeable and as firm as a physical wall separating him from any stranger he’d consider approaching.

But still—maybe he’d been foolish to take mere intuition as a deciding factor. Paula was clearly unhappy in their current state. If they couldn’t make substantial progress in reasoning their identities past their first names, maybe he would have to consider ignoring those warning feelings and bring this to the attention of someone else. He certainly didn’t want to—he was indeed, as far as he was aware, perfectly happy milling about and forming an entirely new sense of who he was. But he knew Paula was discontented, and that was beginning to wear on him.

              Paula was sitting with her hands on either side, gazing down at the transparent water. She’d set her heels beside her neatly on the dock. Her head was fixed, and her lips were pursed tightly as if she were deep in thought.

              Then Ray noticed a grey mass moving underneath the surface of the water—a large rounded shape, not unlike a boulder in appearance. But as he squinted at it he realized it was moving—moving at a pace so slow he thought himself wrong several times and decided it was in fact stationary. But, no, the object continued to glide closer to the dock leisurely. Hitchcock hopped off his shoulder and perched at the edge of the dock with a stately stance, peering below alongside Ray.

              As it approached their place of rest, and accordingly the length of water between him and the object lessened, the waves’ distortion softened and he saw another lump joined at the object’s end; then two other lumps, one on each side, and a very flat lump on yet another side—and finally, so late that he laughed at himself for having been so completely off in his prior assessments, he realized he was scrutinizing a manatee.

              He was enraptured by the creature, and instantly tugged at Paula’s shirt and whispered excitedly to look (he wasn’t sure how these animals worked, and whether or not their voices might scare it). But the manatee seemed entirely unaware of their existence altogether, and continued to glide on its path as if being pulled by an invisible rope. As the creature’s back passed by the end of the dock, Ray saw that its tail was terribly scarred, with so many cuts and scratches it was as if someone had dragged a knife along its flesh. The length of its back was tinted green, coated by a thin layer of algae.

              At last the manatee disappeared from view as the water between them lengthened and grew more opaque, fading into the deep turquoise.

              “That was insane! He just passed right by us,” Ray said to Paula, beaming.

              She lifted her head. “What?”

              “The manatee.”

              “Oh,” she said distantly. “I didn’t notice.”

 

 

              The remainder of the day was spent wandering aimlessly about the marine school’s campus, complete with lunch (there was a vending machine on the side of one of the great white buildings, into which Hitchcock was gracious enough to wedge himself). At one point some older man dressed in a neat polo shirt passed by ahead of them, glanced at them, then continued on his way—but aside from this, they were given no trouble for being there. And to Ray’s enduring surprise, not once did Paula suggest they leave and stop wandering around where they weren’t supposed to. On the contrary, she went so far as to point at a building with strange architecture on the far side of the campus and say, “I want to see what that is over there”—words that were, of course, music to Ray’s ears.

              Even more surprising was Paula’s enduring stamina even as day gave way to night. Usually, she pressed for them to be back at the Hole by dusk, but today every building they circumnavigated gave way to another, or to a beach trail, or to a fence she’d challenge him to heave himself over. It got to the point where even Ray was beginning to lose steam during their night exploration, and began to wonder if the sun would be rising soon. By the time they arrived back, Ray was exhausted, and he could see that Paula was as well. Even for the past few hours, Paula had been yawning and supporting herself against walls where she could—and yet she had insisted that they not return yet.

Finally they trudged back through the mangrove forest. The fresh beachside air gave way to the heavy atmosphere of decaying vegetation and thick mud. They had gotten better at navigating the tangled limbs of trees (and Ray made a justifying use of his staff by using it to check if the ground ahead was solid dirt or a deceptive mud puddle), and were able to estimate in which direction they should walk depending on where they entered the woods in order to find the entrance to their home. As Paula lifted the manhole cover, a tiny part of him wondered if someone was already inside—if someone really had unlocked the door with the keypad, and if that someone would now finally meet them. But the Hole was quiet as they descended the chipped-painted ladder into the central room. Everything was as it was when they’d left earlier in the day.

              Paula sat at the desk in the bedroom and continued her journaling. Ray made a beeline for the kitchen, where he filled a dented pot with water. He lit the stove, which had decided on its daily coin toss to function properly this evening, and waited impatiently for the water to boil. He knew Paula could’ve hurried the process, but he hesitated to stress her out further about her abilities; so he leaned back against the kitchen wall, with all its mysterious brown stains and indentations, arms crossed in waiting.

              Hitchcock hopped off his shoulder and onto an unlit part of the stove. He scrutinized Ray and ruffled his feathers.

              “You’re gonna have to wait for pasta. Not ready yet.”

              Ray took a box of pasta from the pantry and broke its seal. They were down to the last two boxes of pasta. There were still other foods—some bags of rice, canned fruits, beef jerky, and other assortments—but it was beginning to dawn on him how finite their supply was. And once they exhausted the non-perishables in the pantry, the only other resource he had easily disposable to him was the collection of vending machines strewn about the island—and he acknowledged, reluctantly, that they probably shouldn’t try to live off of cinnamon buns so full of artificial substances they could hardly be called cinnamon buns, cheese puffs, and sour candies. They would have to start thinking of an alternative… But that was later. As of now, right now, he told himself, they were completely fine. It was not something to worry about.

              The raven fluffed his feathers again and looked at Ray expectantly.

              Ray threw his hands up. “What? What do you want?”

              Hitchcock cocked his head, then took off from the stove, soaring through the main room and fluttering to a stop just before the door to the hall.

              Ray sighed and rubbed his face as he followed behind. “No, no, nooo, dude, not again.”

              The bird pecked at the closed door.

              Wait. Ray had closed that door last night, after he’d put the papers back in the file cabinet.

              But hadn’t Hitchcock still been down the hallway when he closed the door? If he remembered correctly, the raven had still been at the very end of the hallway, standing stiffly before the “CONTAINMENT” door. Then how had the bird gotten into the kitchen this morning before they left for the day?

              “Paula,” he called, “Did you go in there while I was sleeping?”

              “Where?” she called back from the bedroom.

              “The room with all the files.”

              A pause. “No. Why?”

              “Nothing. Just curious.”