Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“Even if you don’t see any whales, you see all sorts of other crazy things. When I was out there, I just happened to be on the boat with a marine biologist, and she pretty much became the de facto tour guide for us. There was this school of fish . . . Have you ever seen a huge school of fish before? Maybe on television? It was larger than that. It was massive. All those sleek black bodies slicing through the water, all moving as one.” He moved his hand away as if to illustrate the size, but even if it weren’t too dark to see, Alexandra did not open her eyes. “They say the reason a school of fish can react so quickly is because they act together, each fish part of a single super-mind. They’re much more of a hive than bees are, I think. The school stretched out so far I couldn’t see its edges, as though they encompassed the sea — millions of lithe bodies becoming one giant creature beneath the waves — all sharing a single thought, all using a single voice. It was so beautiful. I really hope we get to do that — go out on the water. You have no idea what it’s like!”

Leonard’s disembodied voice continued whispering nonsense to her in the dark. It was warm and comforting, so she let him ramble on as the day’s journey finally found her.

In her dreams, she and Leonard drove the length of an extended highway bridge, flanked on both sides by endless water. The wheels hummed as they passed over the asphalt, so filling the car with volume she heard nothing else. Not the radio, not Leonard beside her, not the black shapes that crested the water’s turbulent surface before submerging once more. She heard nothing but the teeth-gnashing drone. Even her shouts were inaudible over the noise. Lost and panicked, she felt they’d been driving that road forever. They were moving too fast, and when she looked down she saw her own foot pressing the pedal to the floor of the car. Reflexively, she lifted it, and the throbbing in her head intensified in response. The only way to quell her nausea was to press the pedal harder, move faster, burn along the solitary bridge. She looked beside her but the passenger seat was empty; she alone was driving. She alone was crying. And she drove. And drove. And drove.

And she did not wake well rested. She felt drained; her swollen, tired eyes nearly impossible to open. At some point before morning Alexandra had moved into the bed, dragging a single blanket with her, and from beneath it she watched Leonard perform his morning rituals. She rolled her sour tongue and wished she had some water, though the notion of drinking anything made her ill.

“Good morning,” Leonard said. “I’m pretty much ready if you want to hop in the shower now.”

“I think I might lie here a bit longer. I’m not ready to get up yet.”

“Er . . . okay,” he said. “But we’ve got to check-out, so don’t leave it too long.”

“Why? I thought we had until eleven.”

He stopped his preparations to look at her. “What time do you think it is?”

She rolled over and checked the display on her cell phone. The digits didn’t immediately make sense. How could it be nearly half-past ten?

“Why did you let me sleep so long?”

“Let you? How was I supposed to stop you? You wouldn’t budge this morning. That must have been some dream.”

Fragments surfaced in her memory, flashes of that expansive body, the foreboding of what lay ahead. She felt restless and agitated, possessed by a tension nearly at its limit

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy,” she said, then stretched her arms as far as she could and sat up. The discomfort in her head worsened. “Ugh. I feel horrible.”

“Take your shower. You’ll feel better once we eat.”

She rubbed her palms against her face, doubtful.

Out the Chevrolet’s window the trees had returned, though they kept a cautious distance from the highway. Leaves slipped off in the breeze in a steady stream, golds and scarlets in long spiraling chains through the air. Alexandra and Leonard continued eastward, and with each mile traveled the tether Alexandra felt tightening since she awoke, the tether to her home in the dry country, stretched thinner and thinner. Staring out the window, trying to keep her eyes open while her skull tightened, she felt something like a soft pop, and her vision filled with light. Somewhere ahead, somewhere distant, somewhere future, a soft gentle roar echoed. The waves, the surf, the vastness. Leonard was right. There was power in the ocean. She heard its whisper for the first time, urging her onward. Fingers wriggling inside her head.

“How long before we get there?” she asked. Her condition hadn’t improved since waking, but the discomfort had become a dull ache behind her eyes. Her mouth parched, head throbbing, she did her best to hide it from Leonard.

“Only a few hours. Maybe two? You’re the one with the map.”

She nodded and looked down at it, but the brightness of the sun seemed to flare, and no matter how she squinted she couldn’t see the lines she had drawn. Everything was escaping, fluttering into the ether, and no matter how desperately she tried to catch and draw it back they merely slithered through her fingers.

“I know you have everything plotted out,” Leonard said, nodding his head toward her without taking his eyes from the road or the cars he was weaving among, “but it’s amazing how much has come back to me. I remember that hill over there—” He pointed off to the left at a large incline, the peak of which was a new horizon across the cloudless sky; “—and how shadows moved across it. This place, where we are right at this second, is so beyond real that I can barely process it. Some people say there are extra senses? This must be what they’re talking about, because I can sense how much we belong together, on this journey, right now.”

Alexandra nodded, though barely understood him as he continued. The pain rattling through her skull intensified. But instead of dulling and distancing her from reality, it drew the world into sharper focus. The rush of the ocean a hundred miles away echoed in her crowded head, quelling her lifelong displacement and isolation. The car traveled quicker toward the coast, quicker than she’d thought possible, and while Leonard spoke Alexandra’s eyes returned to the over-bright map crumpled in her hands that was coming into focus. The folds condensed the lines she had plotted, shortening the distance between where their trip had begun and their final destination. The truth of the journey slipped into focus, and Alexandra finally understood. Eased of the nag of dislocation, the knowledge of where she was — of when she was — became clear. And it felt good to finally understand. Beneath the discomfort of her throbbing head she wondered if that was how the rest of the world felt. Present. Aware.

Cars whizzed past as the Chevrolet raced across the highway, barely slowing for the austere toll booths. Leonard’s face was serene in the bathing sunlight, while Alexandra’s was covered by jittering hands working her throbbing temples. When the pain became too unbearable, Alexandra asked if they could pull into a rest stop so she could use the washroom, and there she splashed water on her face and took some chalky tablets, but the endeavor did nothing. She remained in excruciating pain, and yet was terrified Leonard might stop if he learned the truth. The risk was near incalculable, so instead, with the taste of bland chalk still on her tongue, she smiled and told him everything was fine. But even as she did she barely saw his face behind the stars that had gathered in her vision. His muted voice asked her twice if she were okay, and Alexandra responded with forced casualness. She hoped she didn’t look as pale as her reflection in the washroom mirror has suggested, or speak with the slur she certainly heard. But if Leonard noticed either, he was too polite to say, and they were soon back in the car speeding toward the ocean.