Fathom (23 page)

My mother was in the doorway then, a lean silhouette with no face, dark hair swirling in the wind like a tangle of Medusa snakes. She must have known that I wasn’t going to come any closer.

“Where is he?” she asked, her voice shaking from weeping. “Where is your father?”

Whatever she was, monster or murderer or one of the walking dead, she still loved my father. Just like I did. Suddenly I didn’t care about any Celtic curses or warnings or folklore. I only cared about my family. And this creature at the end of the hall was part of it. Whether I liked that fact or not.

“He’s in the hospital,” I said, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want Gram to wake up. Somehow I was more worried about Gram seeing me talking to my dead mother than I was about all the curses.

She shook her head. “No.”

“He’s going to be okay.” Without meaning to, I took a step toward her. I think I was trying to comfort her. I’m not sure.

She opened up her arms to me. That embrace I had longed for was waiting for me at the end of the hallway. Maybe it would take me to the bottom of the sea. Maybe not.

I took another step nearer.

Then a hand grabbed me, pulled me backward.

“Don’t you dare go any closer to her, girl, you hear me? You turned, you’re not safe anymore.” Gram had latched onto the back of my nightgown and she was pulling, with a lot more strength than I ever imagined she had. I was behind Gram now and I realized that she held Dad’s ax in her other hand.

“And you,” she said to my mother. “Get out of this house. You’re not welcome here!”

My mother retreated into the shadows. “Tell him I love him. I always will,” she said, her voice a mournful wail now.

“He knows it. I wish to God he could forget,” Gram answered.

Then my mother slipped through the window. Her shape seemed to shift as the moonlight hit her, her human features sliding away. A foul odor seeped in the house, a stench like rubbery tentacles and thick briny water and dark oily pools.

She loped away across the yard, toward the cliff.

But it wasn’t my mother any more.

It was a hideous, lumbering sea monster, with long swinging arms, a body thick as a tree trunk and mossy seaweed hair.

Kira:

Every light in the house was on, even though it was three in the morning. On top of that, every window and door was locked and a fresh pot of coffee was brewing. The coffee was for Gram. I had my own preferred brand of caffeine, front and center. A can of Coke. I was supplementing it with a can of water-packed Bumblebee tuna.

Neither one of us could go back to sleep. In fact, I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to sleep again. Not after seeing that unbelievably creepy monster.

I shuddered. I had almost given that thing a hug.

Gram poured steaming black coffee into a large mug, then flavored it with a healthy dose of Jameson. She still had that ax at her side, carried it with her from room to room. I was beginning to wonder where I could get one for myself.

She sat across the table from me and we glanced at each other as we took sips from our drinks. Outside the storm had picked up. I flinched every time the wind made one of the windows rattle, kept imagining that beast was trying to get inside again.

And what the heck was that thing?

Gram set her cup down, but her shoulders still hung taut, the muscles in her arms never resting. One eye always kept that ax in view.

“Okay, Gram, spill,” I said. I knew she didn’t like slang, but I also knew she understood it. “What in the world was that—” I paused. I didn’t even have words to describe it. “—that monster thing?”

Gram stared down into her cup.

If her eyes hadn’t been open, I would have thought she was asleep.

“Gram?”

She looked up at me. I could see a thousand thoughts flying through her mind. Maybe she was trying to figure out an answer that I would believe. Maybe she was hoping I wouldn’t ask again. But in the end, she must have decided to tell me the truth, because I could see the pain in her eyes.

“That was your mother,” she said.

I sank back into my chair. Shook my head. Then I actually turned around and pointed back toward my father’s room. “No, Gram, that thing that was just in our house. What was
that
?”

“I told you. That was your mother.”

I took a deep breath. “Look, either my mother is dead. Or she’s a murderer. Or she’s a Selkie. But that thing was—that was like something from a horror movie. Did you see it? It changed after it crawled out the window. It turned into something I can’t even describe. Long rubbery arms, like about ten arms, and wild snake-like hair and it was as big around as that hawthorn tree that grows in the garden. And the smell! Did you smell it?”

“Did I smell it? Did I see it? Of course, I did.”

“So, you’re saying that my mother is a monster.”

“No, I’m saying that’s all that’s left of your mother. She died trying to save your sister from the Hinquememem.”

Hinquememem
. Where had I heard that before? Must have been in one of Gram’s books. I tried to remember, but couldn’t.

“Did that thing take Katie?” I asked.

Gram nodded.

“Why?”

She paused, as if searching for the right words. “Everything has a natural predator. The Hinquememem hunts Selkies. Not in the water, though, only if they’ve been on shore too long. Your mother had been living as a human for almost twenty years. That beast came hunting her and found your sister instead. Your mother managed to hide you in the cellar, so it couldn’t get you. Then she ran off to save Katie.” She shook her head. “She never should have gone alone. One woman isn’t strong enough to take down a beast like that. But I don’t think there’s a mother alive who could stand back and let one of her children be stolen by that monster. I know I couldn’t.”

“So, she must have saved Katie, right? That’s why Riley is here now.”

“Yes. But, Kira, that’s all I know. Once your mother disappeared, we all thought the Hinquememem had killed the both of them. It wasn’t until years later, when your father told me that he saw your mother, how she would come to him once a year, that I began to suspect—”

“Suspect what?”

Her head swung from side to side, as if she didn’t dare speak any more.

“What, Gram? You have to tell me.”

Her gaze lifted then, caught and held mine, made a chill race over me.

“I don’t know for certain, the legends about those things aren’t clear. But I think she followed it until it let Katie go. I think she may have even killed it in the process.” Her voice trailed off and her eyes filled with tears.

“But that’s a good thing, right? Killing it? I mean, that monster sounds awful.”

“You don’t know the whole legend, child. And I don’t want to talk about it any more. Not tonight. You’re never supposed to say its name at night, you might accidentally call it back if you do.”

“But you could tell me, without saying its name—”

She shook her head one final time, then stood. “No, we’ve talked about that thing enough. Here.” She handed me the ax. “This is about the only thing it’s afraid of. This and hawthorn wood. Just promise me one thing.”

I frowned. Not sure if I should. But I did anyway. “I promise,” I said, waiting to hear what I had agree upon.

“Promise me if that thing ever gets close to you again, you’ll swing this ax or at least show it to the beast.” Her eyes were like stone now, not a drop of mercy or compassion. “But you make sure you never actually strike it. You hear me?”

“Yes.”

“You swing, but you never, ever strike, no matter what happens. Even if it drags you off into the sea. Because if you swing and if you hit it—” She was staring off into the gloomy distance, over my shoulder, back toward my dad’s room. “—if you hit it, you’ll find out there are things in this world much worse than dying.”

•

I don’t know how, but Gram managed to go back to sleep. Fog rolled over the cliff and filled our yard. It pressed against every window and it blocked out both the night and the approaching day. Everything, from our driveway to the cliff to the distant ocean horizon, was now shrouded in a shape-shifting, white-gray cloud. Whenever I lifted my head, I thought I saw things, strange creepy things, outside the window.

People turning into monsters.

Monsters that watched my every movement.

I sat huddled over the kitchen table, surfing the Internet on my laptop, trying to find answers. I only found a few mentions of the Hinquememem, but they were all about something that lived in a lake in Canada. None of those stories quite fit in with what Gram had said, or what I had read in her books.

My spine snapped to attention.

I needed her books. Now.

So, I snuck down the hallway, quietly opened her door, listened to make sure she was sleeping. A soft snore let me know that she was. I crept into the room, felt my way from one piece of furniture to the next until I finally found her bookshelf. This time I just grabbed an armful of books. She was going to know I had them soon enough, no reason to put other books on the shelf in their place.

Then when I turned to leave the room, the cat jumped off her bed and wound his way between my legs. Every step was treacherous now.

“Stop it, Raven,” I whispered.

He answered with a loud meow.

I moved several steps closer to the door.

“Shhh,” I said.

Another long meow.

Behind us, Gram turned over on her side, the bed squeaked and she sighed, long and heavy. In a half-asleep voice she mumbled, “Shut up, Raven.” Both the cat and I froze until she started snoring again.

Then the cat bounded toward the open door, me a step behind him.

•

Three empty cans of Coke, a half-eaten bag of Doritos and an empty jar of pickled herring later, I was still hunched over the kitchen table, this time with seven of Gram’s books open in front of me. Some of them had my sticky notes marking clues and I continually typed all the information I found into a Word doc on my laptop. I found the spell that Gram had taught me for changing into a human. I also found one for changing back into a Selkie. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it or not, but I wrote them both down anyway.

Altogether, I found six mentions of the Hinquememem, but they were all about how to ward one off. None of them said exactly what the monster was or where it came from.

And, despite Gram’s stern warning, I couldn’t find anything about not hitting it with an ax.

In fact, one of the books told exactly how to strike the beast if you wanted to kill it. One strong blow to the head. Although even by looking at the accompanying diagram, it was hard to tell where the head was. And after that, there was a cryptic note.

“If you want to break the curse, however, don’t strike the head. Instead, swing at the midsection, a blow perpendicular to the Hinquememem’s torso.”

I copied that text in bold, wondering what the difference was between killing the Hinquememem and breaking the curse. But I was pretty sure that my mother was the Hinquememem and I didn’t want to kill her. So, breaking the curse sounded like the thing to do.

I noticed blood on my thumb and realized that I’d been biting my fingernails again.

Then I heard rustling and scuffling outside, thought I saw movement in the shadowy fog. My muscles tensed and I instinctively grabbed my new best friend, the ax. I stood up, suddenly afraid to move in my own house. I glanced down at the cat, who up until now had been curled in his bed beside the stove. His eyes widened when another shuffling noise sounded outside—even closer this time—and then he ran, belly close to the floor until he disappeared in the other room.

“Chicken,” I mumbled.

Someone knocked on the door and I startled, then dropped the ax to the floor with a loud clatter. I knelt to pick it up, glanced at the clock. It was only seven o’clock, so it couldn’t be Sean.

Do monsters knock?

I moved closer to the door.

“Who is it?” I asked, although I had no idea if the Hinquememem could pretend to be human whenever it wanted. And maybe it had many disguises. Maybe it could look like my best friend.

“Riley,” a small voice answered.

I took the doorknob in my hand, pulled the door open, ax still firm in the other hand. Curls and wisps of fog had transformed my porch into a nightmarish world, but the creature that stood there didn’t look like a monster. Riley wasn’t wearing any makeup and her eyes were red and puffy from crying, her shoulders slumped and for the first time I realized that I stood a full two inches taller than she did.

She glanced at my ax and she flinched, then steadied herself.

“Can I come in?”

I stared at her, wondering if Selkies were like vampires. Did they need to be invited in? My mother didn’t. She had just crept in a window. None of this folklore was making sense to me.

“Kira, I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I just—we need to talk. That’s all.”

“Okay, but if you turn into anything, you’re toast,” I said.

“Yeah, whatever.”

So I stepped aside and let my sister into the kitchen. The very same room where I had last seen her, eleven years ago. Just before the Hinquememem had stolen her away.

Caleb:

The fog billowed around me. It muffled sounds and smells, hid everything from view, almost like an evil supernatural presence. I sat crouched in a tangle of oleander, my legs and arms stiff from the cold. I had seen the Hinquememem as it ran away earlier in the evening, and I had continued guarding Kira’s house throughout the night—even though I knew this wasn’t the night that the beast would strike.

This was the one night in the year that it got to be human. It got to remember who it used to be—Kira’s mother.

Heavy emotions ran through me as I pondered the legends of this family and I realized that they had all been true.

I understood now. But it didn’t stop me from wanting to protect her.