Page 27 of The Dead of Summer

I completely forgot Pfaff’s missions. I haven’t been spying on Willy, like she asked, or anyone for that matter.

The idea feels absurd. What does she think these people are hiding?

What does she think I’ll find by sifting through the sonic fragments of their grief?

Most of them are elderly, or stressed parents with little children, and yeah, sure, a handful are worshipping a death cult, but they’ve been anything but discreet about it.

So what’s left to upturn in the sealed terrarium of this library, where nothing but the Suds has managed to come in or out?

Oh, but that’s not quite true, is it? Willy was just outside himself.

“You know something.” Pfaff leans in.

Shit. She’s an expert at prying information off the smallest facial feature. I try to think of something else I can tell her, and then it hits me: I’m not exactly empty-handed, am I?

I place the digital recorder on the desk between us and hit play. The air crackles with static, and then the office fills with the shifting song of the weepers I recorded by accident as I tried to lead Sam to safety.

Even though the moment in Scuttlebutt’s felt like forever, the recording is only a minute. Pfaff replays it.

“These are …”

“The weepers,” I confirm.

“Poetic name. Others have been calling them the infected, but that’s not quite right, either. To be specific, these are people who have been—”

A voice speaks from the doorway. “Colonized.”

Elisa is standing there, arms crossed. She lets herself in and sits down. Dr. Pfaff looks at her with a mix of intrigue and fear, like she might look at an aquarium full of poisonous lionfish.

“We already know the weepers are colonized with some kind of fucked-up coral created by you and your mad scientists at AMIOS,” Elisa says. “What we need to know now is how to stop it.”

“Or understand it,” I say.

“That may very well be the same answer.” Dr. Pfaff sighs.

Elisa narrows her eyes. She looks from the digital recorder, to Pfaff, to me, and I think she’s figuring out where I got the device. I decide to worry about it later. If I can get Dr. Pfaff’s gears turning on the weepers, she won’t be able to resist talking through some new breakthrough.

“I’ve been listening to the weepers since they showed up,” I say. “At first I wasn’t sure, but now I’m confident. The sounds they make aren’t just random vocalizations and screams. They’re singing.”

This, I know. Sam showed me how to listen. I’m not him, but I have to earn the belief he put in me. Maybe I can make myself indispensable to Pfaff’s mission.

“There’s intonation. Phrasing. Calls and responses. I don’t understand it yet, but I think I could if I listened long enough. Music is its own kind of language. Maybe this is how they communicate.”

By the way Pfaff’s eyes look through Elisa and me, I can tell that I’ve told her something that’s clicked a puzzle piece into place. Her hand even twitches toward her red notebook. I want her to say what she’s thinking, but instead she hands back the recorder with a shrug.

“Interesting theory, but coral lacks ears. Brains, too, for that matter. All the anatomical machinery to support your theory simply doesn’t exist in the phylum as we understand it.”

I open my mouth to protest, but Elisa puts her hand on my knee under the desk. She wants me to let this go, and I do. We both saw the way Pfaff reacted, and we both know the woman is just trying to misdirect us.

“You may go,” Pfaff says, turning back to her work.

Elisa elbows me, like We can’t leave empty-handed . Right. Okay.

“Actually, we want to know what you were doing at AMIOS,” I say, making sure it sounds like a demand and not a question. “We know Easter Energy funded the whole operation, so don’t bother lying about it.”

Pfaff’s eyes focus for a moment, but only to squint at us with pitying amusement. She locks her hands together, over the red notebook. I note that the moment her work with AMIOS and Easter is brought up, she guards the red notebook like a dragon curling around its treasure.

“Ecosystems are fragile things, and they must be maintained,” she says.

“A body is like an ecosystem, too, in a way. Within our veins there are predators and prey. Within our tissue things grow and wither, bloom and rot. We are taught that the enemy of our body is decay, but like all ecosystems, the end comes as a result of imbalance. Growth, unchecked, can sicken, too. You should know, Orlando.”

She means Gracie’s cancer. I grip the fabric of my shorts, hanging on every word of what she’s telling us.

“All ecosystems have their balance. Our bodies. Our island. And the treatment for unmitigated abundance is just the same.”

“Poison.” I spit out the word. Just like the chemotherapy they gave to Gracie, the answer Pfaff describes is one that requires the near death of the host to kill off a ravenous sickness, except she’s talking about Anchor’s Mercy.

Elisa clears her throat. “Are you saying the spill in the sixties was … on purpose? To kill the coral?”

“Cnidaria imperia,” Pfaff whispers, and it sounds like both a correction and a confirmation. In fact, she almost sounds reverent of the coral— Cnidaria imperia . Elisa is not impressed with the unspecific answer, and she slaps the desk as she stands.

“Just tell us what you were doing at AMIOS.”

“You may very well survive long enough to find out for yourselves.” Pfaff rises to meet Elisa’s stance. The woman is much taller. The focus in her eyes is terrible now, crawling over Elisa’s upturned face with cruel scientific interest, as though Elisa isn’t a girl but a specimen.

“You know,” Pfaff says, “you have your mother’s eyes, Elisabete. Be careful what you make them see.”

“Fuck you.” Elisa turns, heading for the door. “Come on, Ollie.”

I hesitate. That was a well-aimed arrow, striking Elisa right where her pain meets her fury.

Now I’m not only sure Pfaff is hiding something invaluable but that we are close to guessing it.

I stand, but I don’t go. I anchor the uncomfortable moment a few seconds longer, knowing that in a battle between Elisa and anyone else, Elisa’s stubbornness will win.

I’m right. Pfaff relents with another long sigh.

“You want answers? On this island, there’s far more hidden inside than out. You might start with whatever your beloved Wendy Pretendy is hiding in those containers out back.”

I can picture the containers. Large shipping containers, like off a cargo freighter. I barely ever noticed them rusting out back behind the library, but now they glow in my mind.

“Why not go look yourself?” I ask.

“I have my work,” Dr. Pfaff says with a shrug. “And now you have yours. The container is locked with a padlock, but it’s been the same padlock for years. Tiff would know the code, or someone else who worked at the library.”

Elisa and I make eye contact.

Bash.