Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

“Emma? Are you okay?”

“Too much coffee,” I say. The look on her face tells me she doesn’t believe me, but loves me too much to call me on my bullshit. “Just antsy. I gotta pee real bad.”

“Then open the damn door.” She leans close and blows in my ear. I can hear the sympathy in her voice. “Let’s get inside. Whatever’s in there… we can handle it.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You don’t have to be.” She squeezes my hand. It’s only been three weeks , she doesn’t say, but I hear anyway. Your mom is dead. You shouldn’t be okay.

“If I don’t get inside I’m gonna pee on your foot,” I say instead.

Gina bites my ear gently and I push open the door. The air inside the house smells musty, and the ugly, pseudo-rattan wallpaper is warping along the edge of the ceiling. Sure enough, the décor is still stuck in the seventies. The carpet is a matted riot of overbright geometric shapes. There are carved wooden birds sitting on every surface, decoys in the shape of sandpipers, ducks, and other local waterfowl. For a moment, a memory overlaps what I’m looking at, and I can almost see my family arranged in the living room. My dad reading a paperback thriller on the couch, my mom gazing out the window and turning a shell over and over in her hand. I blink, and their phantom bodies evaporate.

A thick layer of dust coats everything, and the first thing I do is flip on all the fans. Gina flips them off immediately.

“Dude, do you want all this stuff in your lungs? We should wipe everything down first.” She wrinkles her nose, shouldering her backpack. “Why are there so many dead horseflies? It’s like someone held a party and left behind the worst confetti.”

“Someone might have left a window open.” We trudge upstairs, checking all the rooms. Sure enough, one of the windows in an upstairs bedroom is slightly cracked, and water damage spreads all throughout the room and into the hall. I grimace and shut the window. “Goddammit. At least it’s not the master bedroom.”

“That’s where most of your mom’s stuff is, right?” Gina twines her fingers with mine. “We don’t have to go in right away. We could get dinner first, or unload the car.”

“I need to know if there’s water damage there, too,” I say, pulling my hand free and wiping my palms on my jeans. The knot of stress and nervousness in my stomach constricts. The beach house had been Mom’s haven. She’d always come alive at the beach, bright and vibrant the way she wasn’t at home. As far as I knew, she hadn’t come up here alone in the ten years since then. “We can unload the car after I check.”

Walking the hallway dredges up more old memories. Lying on the carpet by the stairs, playing Pokémon on my Gameboy. My mom singing to herself when she thought she was alone, straightening the pictures on the wall. My dad pulling me aside, nodding at a photo on my phone. That boy’s a keeper. Don’t let him go.

The master bedroom lies at the end of the hall. My hands are cold as I reach for the door. All of the what-ifs spin through my head, constricting my thoughts like a lasso. Images of water damage, boxes of ruined possessions beneath the bed, sea-streaked clothing flash through my head. What if someone’s carelessness had ruined everything Mom had left behind? What if I couldn’t handle what I’d find?

But when I push the door open, I breathe a sigh of relief. Just like the rest of the rooms, everything is faded and covered in dust, but all the windows are locked tight. Mom’s ugly rose-pink bedspread is still there, along with the lace-lined pillows and the painting of gulls coasting above the surf. It looks just like she left it.

“Emma?” Gina’s voice breaks through my head, and the knot in me eases. I turn and hug her tight, ignoring her surprised noise. Her body is soft against mine.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m so glad.”

Gina hums and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Me too,” she says. “Let’s get the beer out of the trunk and sit down for a bit. You look like you could use a drink.”

That night, we drink too much and curl up together on the couch. Gina runs her fingers through my hair as I listen to her heartbeat, slow and steady. “I can’t believe you wanted to do this alone,” she murmurs. “You can rely on me a little more, okay?”

I’m not good at relying on people, but Gina insists. I press my cheek against her chest. “I’ll try,” I say.

The bad weather persists, and we spend most of the next day excavating the house. Gina finds the vacuum cleaner and makes sure we have livable conditions to work in, and I haul giant bag after giant bag of trash out to the dumpster down the cul-de-sac. The worst part, though, is the smell of rotten fish that wafts in halfway through the day.

Gina shuts off the vacuum cleaner and gags, holding her throat. “Em, if you don’t open a window, I will actually die.”

She’s being dramatic, but she’s right. Even turning the AC on high doesn’t dispel it, and the stench chases us out of the house by afternoon.

The wind kicks sand up around us, and it stings my exposed legs as we walk toward the boardwalk. Gina’s got a pair of giant bedazzled sunglasses on, and it’s never seemed like a smarter fashion choice. My phone keeps buzzing in my back pocket, and after twenty minutes of notifications, it’s starting to make my butt go numb. Gina frowns at it.

“Em, you should’ve left that back at the house.”

“What if we get lost? I need to make sure we can find our way back.” My fingers itch toward my phone and she grabs my wrist. Her eyes are clear and serious.

“Don’t text him back,” Gina says. “You said you were done with him.”

I drop my hand and let my thoughts slide away from the barrage of texts from my boyfriend. Clayton hadn’t taken the breakup well. He punched a hole in my apartment wall right next to the refrigerator. I’d headed over to Gina’s after that, and Clayton’s been blowing up my phone since then, trying to apologize. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m trying.”

She laces her fingers with mine possessively. “Why haven’t you deleted his number? He doesn’t love you, Em. He wants to own you; that’s different.”

I wince. Even when we were just friends, Gina never passed up a chance to shit on Clayton. She’s usually right, and she only does it because she cares about me. But it still leaves an uneasy taste in my mouth. “I broke up with him yesterday, give me a break.”

“I love you, Em,” says Gina. Her grip on my hand is tight. “And what you had with him isn’t love. Don’t let him occupy your head and ruin this trip for us.”

That makes me bristle. “It’s not a vacation , Gina. Jesus. I’m sorry, but is sorting through my dead mom’s effects your idea of fun? Because it sure as hell isn’t mine.”

Her mouth drops open. “I didn’t mean—”

My phone buzzes again, and I swear, grabbing it and shutting it off. Clayton’s latest text—EM, WHERE ARE YOU? I’M CALLING YOUR DAD—flashes across the screen before it goes dark. When I look back at Gina, the naked hurt on her face is visible even behind her sunglasses. Shit. “Look,” I say, guilt gentling my voice. “I just… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. That was really unfair.”

“Yeah,” she says. “It was.”

I rub my face. My eyes sting from the salty air. “Can we just get lunch?”

Her mouth sets in a thin line. “Fine.” We walk the rest of the way side by side, not looking at each other.

By the time we make it to the beach, Gina’s shoulders have lost some of their tension, and I reach for her hand. She starts to tuck it into the pocket of her jeans shorts, but then she sighs and takes it. “You better be sorry, you bitch.”