Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“I read this article about a couple who just flew off to Europe for a few months without packing anything but their phones and a charger,” she said, explaining all the research she’d done before they left. She saw his lip quiver, but she wasn’t sure of the cause. “They bought new toothbrushes wherever they went, washed their clothes in strangers’ houses, and just met as many people as they could. It was like there was this whole world of people working together to help them get by. It was surprising.”

“Surprising, how?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She ran her hand over her shorts to dry it. “I guess I asked myself if I’d do the same — if I’d help a stranger like that.”

“I think you probably would.”

She didn’t say anything. She wanted to believe he was right even if it sounded unlikely. But more importantly, she wanted him to continue believing that sort of thing about her. It was important he not know what kind of things dwelt within her head. He wouldn’t understand. No one had ever really understood. Not her father when he was around, and certainly not her mother once he was gone. “My little lost girl” was what he’d called her as he held her tight in his arms. They sat in their warm backyard as the sun set earlier each summer day. “My little lost girl,” he said, and squeezed her the way no one had squeezed her since. And she didn’t know what he meant, not until he was gone. Then she knew the feeling well.

She looked out the window at the passing scenery. She and Leonard had not spoken in some time, and she liked the quiet rhythm of the wheels on the road. Between the Chevrolet and the horizon the grass dipped and sloped upward, and tiny farms dotted the distant landscape. Farther still lay a series of hills obscuring what lay beyond. All she knew of that land was it was occupied by giants. Wind turbines, more that a dozen in a row and sprouting upward, blades moving in slow endless circles. They stood so far away that Alexandra could not fully grasp their enormity.

“You can tell how big they are by their spin,” Leonard said. “If they were closer, the blades would be moving a lot slower. Those turbines are huge — you just can’t tell how huge things are from so far away.”

“I can feel how huge they are, though, if that makes any sense. They make my head loopy.”

They almost missed the ramp onto the interstate. Unending miles of highway banked with forest, giant trees too thick to see between, covered in oranges and reds and golds like a burning sunset. Alexandra felt insignificant beside them, no better than the insects crushed against the Chevrolet’s windshield. When those trunks petered out, she saw, in the distance, the glint of cars moving away.

Her map — she needed to consult her map.

There, the forest was demarcated with a faint brown line, and almost upon it the blue ink of her pen where she’d traced their route onward. She looked from the map, afraid it was too late, and saw the green sign on the shoulder pass in an instant, hanging branches covering its warning. The ramp was imminent.

“Here. You want this exit here!”

“What?” Leonard slurred as though awoken from a dream. Alexandra watched the exiting lanes rush toward them. Panic seized her.

“This is it! This is the ramp. Take it. Take it. Take it.”

Leonard snapped awake, pulled the wheel hard after the marked lanes had already split. A symphony of honks trailed, and the Chevrolet shook from the forces pulling it in multiple directions. Alexandra was flung aside as the car wrenched itself into the proper lane, and as Leonard tried to straighten its path, the tail began to wag. He spun the wheel all the way to the left, then again all the way to the right, trying to keep the car from skidding as the horns blared louder. Back and forth, back and forth, the tail swung until finally, with only a minor tremor, he regained control over the car. He accelerated away from the complaining motorists.

Once safely out of danger, Leonard turned with another grin.

“I hope we didn’t go the wrong way,” he said.

Alexandra did not understand Leonard’s obsession with the ocean. He hadn’t been born on a coast; he had lived in the same small dry town as Alexandra long before she met him. The ocean never arose during their courtship’s early months, and why would it? It was not typical dinner conversation. And yet, he seemed aghast when she reveled in passing that she had never seen the ocean herself. His dumb silence eventually gave way to incredulity, and it was from that point that his dreams became consumed with taking her there.

“Wait until you see it,” he promised. “It’s so immense you’ll feel completely insignificant.”

The idea terrified her.

Water was never something Alexandra was comfortable around. Small amounts of it for cooking and bathing didn’t bother her, but once the bodies became larger — fountains, pools, lakes — her anxiety increased. It wasn’t a phobia — she did not fear water like some feared snakes or spiders — but instead it seemed to whisper to her whenever she was close. The words were too quiet to make out, but they left her with an unfathomable urge to submit herself to it. To walk bare-footed into the waves and let them consume her. Mind. Body. Soul. The water unnerved her because the water wanted her submission, wanted her to lose herself to its power, and the sensation that swirled in her head was as suffocating as any drowning.

They pulled off the interstate for dinner at a small unnamed restaurant, dark branches draping over its burnt-out sign. Alexandra folded her map carefully and placed it in her bag where it would be safe at hand. Leonard watched her, the hint of amusement twitching in his lips, but said nothing. When she stepped from the car Alexandra realized the parking lot was nearly empty, and inside the restaurant, it seemed no more than three of its dark wooden tables were occupied. The rest had places set and menus out, prepared for occupation by a host of souls who would never arrive. When the teenage hostess finally greeted Alexandra and Leonard, her hair tied in a tight bun against the back of her head, Leonard immediately asked where all the customers were. The girl shrugged as she marked their table off her list.

“I guess not as many families are traveling right now since it’s so close to school.”

Leonard nodded, satisfied, but the hostess didn’t wait long enough to see it.

She sat them in a booth by the window. Alexandra saw the western sky and the sun change color like autumn leaves.

“I still can’t believe you’ve never been to the ocean,” Leonard said over his menu, not lifting his eyes from the rows of barbecued meat and pasta. “You’ve never felt the urge? Not even once?”

She shook her head.

“It’s never really been a priority, I guess. I’ve never been much of a traveler.”

“Wow, that’s amazing. I feel like I’d be happy if all I did was travel. You know: get on a plane and hop from one place to another — like that couple in the story you told me about earlier. Maybe stick around for a few days. When I was just out of school, I took a trip around Europe. It was fantastic!”

She nodded, not sure how to explain that she’d never felt the same drive. The idea left her queasy. Already, she felt so lost, so untethered, that the only way she could hang on was to surround herself with the familiar, the comfortable. At home, she knew where her favorite restaurants were, where to get the clothes she liked. At home, she knew how far it was to the office and how long it took her to get back in the evening. At home, she was safe, and the constant gnawing fear that seemed so much worse at night, in the dark, behind her closed eyes — that fear that she was anything but safe, adrift in the void of the unfathomable universe — was a muted shout from deep within. The terrors squirmed inside of her, but she was able to keep them contained.