Fantasy Life Read online

  Weeds covered the bike path, scratching her as she made her way around the house. Mosquitoes lived here too and didn’t seem to know they weren’t supposed to be out in this heat. She slapped more than one, had to flick a spider off her arm, and swallowed a mouthful of gnats, which were swarming in front of a big black tree.

  The bike’s wheels click-click-clicked, which sounded loud now that she wasn’t riding it and listening to the whoosh of cars. She wondered if her daddy could hear her moving through the underbrush and if he worried that some bogeyman was coming to get him, even though it wasn’t dark.

  Her old daddy, the one with the personality she knew, he wouldn’t have been afraid of the bogeyman, but she wasn’t so sure about this new daddy, the one the judge said didn’t have the right to see Emily anymore.

  What could a daddy do that was so bad that his daughter had to be punished too?

  When she reached the little dip in the path, the one that used to be a fork until the Dixsens sold the next-door house and the new people didn’t have kids so no one found out about the path, she let the bike tip over really slow so that she wouldn’t knock the chain off.

  Then she bent down, opened the pack, and got out her suit, along with the towel and the book just in case Daddy wasn’t there after all. She wrapped the suit and the book in the towel and tucked it under her arm. She walked the rest of the way, her breath catching in her throat.

  The air was really still. There wasn’t even a bird singing, although in her memory, birds always sang here. She stepped into the yard before she realized she’d lost the path; the tall grass confused her, made her think she was still in the no-man’s-land by the garage.

  The garage was almost lost in weeds, the door shut and locked, and one of the windows on the back side had a small round hole in it, the grass cracked in a circle all around it.

  Emily’s mouth was dry, and she wished she’d brought one of her bottles too, even though there wasn’t much water left. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she would be.

  Her footsteps, knocking down the grass, were the only sound she heard. The air took on a familiar marshy scent, the smell that always made her think of the lake in the summer.

  As she got closer to the patio, she saw that the cabana had been taken down—all that was left was concrete where the floor used to be.

  A shiver went through her even though she wasn’t cold, and she glanced toward the lake to see if Daddy had at least put out the dock.

  He had, and he was sitting on it, cross-legged, staring at the sailboats that looked pure white against the hazy sky. The lake itself was blue-gray, the air so full of water that the sunlight filtering through it almost looked like sun coming through fog.

  Emily had never seen her daddy sit so still. It was almost like he was like those prayer guys she’d seen in Union South one day while she was waiting for her mommy.

  Emily set her towel on the patio stones—which were cracked and weeds had grown through them—and no one had bothered to put out the big glass table with the umbrella and the cushiony green chairs with the white legs, even though it was the middle of the summer.

  She glanced real quick at the patio doors, trying to see inside the house, but it was too dark. She couldn’t even see if anyone was moving around inside, like maybe Daddy had gotten a new housekeeper or something.

  Mommy said to the lawyer lady that toward the end it wasn’t good to sneak up on Daddy, so Emily made as much noise as she could coming down the hard path. She swished the grass and coughed and cleared her throat.

  When she got to the edge of the dock, she jumped on it, so it bounced just like it always had, and the water rippled around it, and her heart lifted. No matter how much changed, this—this, at least, stayed the same.

  Her daddy turned, real slow, like he was at the end of one of those ripples she caused. His hair was too long and it wasn’t black anymore. It had lots of gray in it. And he had lines on his face that she’d never seen before. He was kinda thin and the polo shirt he wore, one of his favorites, seemed like it was made for someone else.

  But he smiled when he realized it was her, and that was Daddy, that big goofy grin that covered most of the lower part of his face.

  Emily grinned back and waved and said, “I missed you, Daddy,” even though she’d promised herself, promised, promised, promised, she wouldn’t say anything like that because she didn’t want him to feel bad.

  He got up and held out his arms and she ran to him, hitting him so hard that she felt his body rock as she wrapped her arms around him.

  “Em,” he said, and his voice sounded a little funny, like it used to when he had a cold or when he talked too much to his classes.

  His hand ran along her short hair. She’d forgot Mommy had done that at the beginning of the summer, made Emily cut her hair so that she’d be cool and no one would have to worry about the tangles like they did in past years. Daddy hated short hair, he always said so, that his girls should look like girls.

  “You’re so tall.” He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back, just a little, so that he could see her face, and she was glad that he didn’t say anything about her hair at all.

  “Mommy didn’t want me to come, but I had to see you, Daddy, so I rode all the way here, and I’m hot and I thought maybe on hot afternoons I could come and we could swim and pretend everything was okay.”

  Daddy’s gray eyes seemed a little glassy, like Mommy’s did when she had just woke up.

  “Yes,” he said, although Emily wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with. “Yes, of course.”

  He crouched, touched the chopped part of her hair again, and smiled at her. Only this wasn’t the goofy grin at all, and Emily’s heart started to pound.

  “Yes,” he said again, “it makes sense that you would come now with the drought and the heat and the dying lake.”

  His hands slid down her arm. They were cold. His fingers dug into her skin.

  “Daddy?” she asked, her heart pounding harder now. Was this what they meant about him being different? That he didn’t make any sense and his smile had gone all funny and his fingers, which had never ever hurt her before, were going to leave bruises in her skin?

  “We’ll solve it together, Emmie A.,” he said, using his old nickname for her. It sounded funny, like a stranger talking with Daddy’s voice. “Come on.”

  He let go of her shoulders and held out his hand like he used to do when they crossed the street, back when she was a little girl.

  She stared at him for a minute. He seemed so funny with those glassy eyes and that flat smile and the gray hair. But the lines on his face made him look even sadder, and she had missed him, and maybe, just maybe, she’d been listening to Mommy too much.

  She took his hand.

  He smiled at her, the soft Daddy smile that he used to use when she did something exactly right, and then they walked, together, to the end of the dock. The wood bobbed beneath their feet, and there were holes in the middle where there had once been boards. Nothing was like it used to be. Not the dock, not the yard, not Daddy.

  Not even Emily.

  She tried not to sigh. When they reached the edge of the dock, Daddy turned to her. “Are you ready to go in?”

  She grinned. “I’ll get my suit. I brought it.”

  “You won’t need a suit,” he said, and picked her up.

  His eyes were wild now, and her heart was beating so hard it hurt. Emily struggled but Daddy didn’t seem to notice.

  Instead, he bent over and shoved her into the water. It was wet and hot on the thin upper layer, and then she hit a pocket of cold because he had shoved her so very deep.

  There was water in her nose and she was coughing, the sound muffled by the water, and she tried not to get water in her lungs, but she was failing. Water was running down the back of her throat, and she was choking.

  Daddy was holding her shoulders, pressing them down, playing too rough like he did last summer when he first scared Mommy, and he couldn’t te
ll Emily was in trouble.

  She thrashed and struggled and grabbed his wrists with her hands, trying to let him know that she couldn’t breathe. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. Her chest burned, and she coughed again, this time sucking in a big mouthful of water.

  She was dying, really dying, and Daddy wouldn’t let her go.

  Two

  Anchor Bay. Oregon

  Gabriel Schelling crouched beside the body on the beach. The tide was out, and the sand should have been dry, but it was the texture of concrete, damp and smooth. The air stank of dead fish.

  A crowd of tourists huddled near the cliffs that formed the southern end of the bay. He had asked the tourists to go away, but that was like asking the ocean to get rid of its salt. Tourists never did what you wanted them to, and they never ever left—especially when a body was involved.

  The tourist who had called the sheriff’s office had reported finding a woman who appeared to be long dead. But as Gabriel looked over the body, he realized that, although the creature before him was female, it wasn’t a woman.

  Fortunately the face was pressed against the sand, and the tourist, like anyone who stumbled on something awful, didn’t look too closely. This so-called woman had bulging eyes, almost no nose, and lips that were permanently pursed.

  She also had chalk-white skin that was covered with a layer of nearly translucent scales.

  Gabriel’s father had called these creatures fish women, but the residents of the southern part of Seavy County called them mermaids. Gabriel didn’t think either description was exactly right.

  He also had never seen a dead one before, and he doubted that anyone else had either. For all he knew, these creatures lived forever in their strange home deep in the sea, even though there was talk that they were amphibians, and that they often walked the land.

  Gabriel grabbed his radio and pressed the talk button. “Athena, where’s Hamilton?”

  Athena Buckingham had been the North County dispatcher for the Seavy County sheriff’s office ever since Gabriel was a boy. She was efficient and tough, and someone who still put the fear of God into Gabriel, even though he was, technically, her boss.

  “He left the moment I contacted him.” Athena’s voice, operatic in person, seemed tailored for the radio. “He should be there at any moment.”

  Depending on traffic and accidents along the way. Getting from one part of Seavy County to another in the summer was a nightmare, which was why the sheriff’s office had finally split into three districts.

  Only one road, Highway 101, ran all the way down the Oregon Coast. In Seavy County, particularly in the northern part, the highway was often the only north-south road for miles. The Coastal Mountain Range was wider here, placing tall mountains on the east side of the highway. With the ocean on the left, there wasn’t a lot of room for roads, houses, or anything else.

  And the traffic in the summer got worse every year. July was peak tourist season and roads that were built for hundreds of cars had to cope with thousands. Usually if Gabriel saw a body, it was on the highway, inside a demolished car that had tried to pass in a no-passing zone. If he had a dollar for every one of those accidents he had seen in the seven years he had served as North Seavy County’s sheriff, he would be able to retire already.

  Gabriel said, “Tell him to get his butt here as fast as he can. He’s going to like this one.”

  “He’s going to like this one?” Athena repeated. “What does that mean?”

  Gabriel let go of the radio and reattached it to his belt. He knew better than to answer that question on the public bands. But he also knew that Athena would repeat his words to the coroner, Hamilton Denne.

  And Denne, who had a great scientific and historical interest in what he had once dubbed the fantasylife of Seavy County, would love this one. He would find out everything he possibly could about this creature, and then some.

  Gabriel thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked over at the tourists. At least two families waited by the black rocks, as well as a single man standing off to the side. Two women wearing wet suits and holding their surfboards watched as if they were waiting for the right wave.

  Gabriel studied the tourists out of reflex. If this were a dead human body before him, he would be thinking about suspects. Seavy County had at most two or three murders a year, but there were a lot of accidental deaths. And in accidental deaths, especially ones around the ocean, murder always had to be ruled out.

  The family on the left had the same avid look on their faces as the surfers did. The children, a boy and a girl both nearing puberty, were beginning to lose interest. They were casting longing gazes at the ocean.

  But the parents seemed riveted. Gabriel would guess that they were Southern Californians just by their clothing. The shirts were tasteful, although short-sleeved, and their shorts were khaki, but completely inappropriate. Even though the sun was out, making the sky a brilliant blue, the temperature down here hadn’t gone higher than sixty-five. In areas the wind could reach, the temperature went down at least ten degrees.

  No wonder the children wanted to move. They were probably cold.

  The wind didn’t get to this part of the beach because of the cliff that the tourists were leaning against. The cliff, which extended for at least two miles, curved against the beach, forming a natural barrier to anything that came from the south.

  The cliff was black and large. On the tip, the cliff rose even farther up, forming a shape that people had once compared to a goblet, giving the entire southern tip of Anchor Bay its name—the Devil’s Goblet.

  A friend of Gabriel’s often joked that the Devil used to live on the Oregon Coast, and when he left, he abandoned a lot of things. Lincoln City had Devil’s Lake, and farther south tourists could find the Devil’s Punchbowl, his Churn, and his Elbow.

  Hamilton Denne had told Gabriel that Dee River in Whale Rock used to be called the Devil’s River, and other sites in Seavy County were either still named for the Devil or renamed away from the original devilish names.

  At some point, Gabriel thought he would do a travel article on the Devil and the Oregon Coast, but he had a hunch his usual publishers, both Oregon-based tourist magazines, wouldn’t take it.

  The other family seemed even more intense than the first. These people, parents and three children, knew how to dress for the coast, and they looked vaguely familiar. Gabriel wondered if they were weekenders—people who owned a second home here and often thought they belonged.

  Anchor Bay’s six hundred year-round residents never believed that weekenders belonged, and many of the locals thought the tourists should stay away. Often, at the end of a long summer, Gabriel was one of them.

  But the person who caught Gabriel’s attention the most was the single man standing next to the surfers. The man was tall and thin and had straggly gray hair. He seemed nervous.

  “Hey, Gabriel.” Hamilton Denne stood on the beach access steps. He was holding his kit in one hand and a body bag in the other. “What’ve we got?”

  “Come see for yourself, Hamilton,” Gabriel said.

  Denne stepped off the concrete steps and started across the dry sand. He was the strangest person Gabriel knew in an area filled with misfits, ex-hippies, and people who simply didn’t fit anywhere else. Denne’s family had lived on the Oregon Coast forever and somehow became one of the state’s most influential families.

  Denne’s marriage to the daughter of one of Portland’s wealthiest families added to that. Hooking up their oldest daughter with a Denne was like having a member of the Bush family marry one of Bill Gates’s daughters, only on an Oregon scale.

  But about four years ago, Denne quietly divorced his wife. Since then, he seemed lighter, happier, and increasingly more ghoulish.

  He didn’t look ghoulish though. Denne still had an East Coast prep-school air to him. Some of that was his collection of Harvard sweatshirts, updated every year, and some of that was because Gabriel had yet to see him in
jeans. Even Denne’s grungiest pants had a crease down the center.

  This afternoon, he was wearing a brand-new pair of Nikes, and the sleeves of his sweatshirt were rolled up, revealing surprisingly muscular arms. Denne’s blond hair needed a trim, and his angular face actually looked a bit haggard.

  “This doesn’t look good,” Denne said as he got closer.

  That was precisely what Gabriel had thought when he’d first crossed the sand. “You have to see it from this angle.”

  Denne set the kit and the body bag down, then crossed over to Gabriel, careful not to step on anything that could be evidence. Gabriel appreciated Denne’s caution. The two murders they had worked together had resulted in convictions because of Denne’s meticulousness.

  Gabriel held his breath as Denne crouched. Denne loved anything unusual and collected most everything that had to do with Seavy County lore.

  Denne peered at the body and then, to Gabriel’s surprise, lost all color in his face.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Denne asked.

  “What do you think it is?” Gabriel asked, knowing better than to put his assumptions on Denne.

  “A mermaid.” Denne breathed the word, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear him.

  “I never technically think of them as mermaids.” Gabriel swept his hand toward the legs, bent at the knees, and the long, flipperlike feet. “No tail.”

  “That’s true.” Denne spoke like someone crouched over the body of a friend. “My father used to call them sirens, even though that’s not accurate either. In Greek mythology, sirens never went into the water. They sang from the coastlines.”

  Gabriel studied him. “You okay, Hamilton?”

  Denne shook his head slightly. Then he leaned even closer, careful not to touch the body. “Definitely dead. See? There’s a bluish tint to the lips and nostrils that can’t be natural, and there’s some kind of substance in the gills.”

  “Nostrils and gills?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not the only one built like that,” Denne said. “Real mermaids of the fairy-tale type would have to have them too and so would water nymphs.”