Page 108 of The End of the World As We Know It

Seth shuddered, remembering the wizened little face of the Jenny Haniver. A person would have to be pretty desperate to eat that… But people afraid of getting sick did become desperate sometimes, didn’t they? Unaware he was doing it, Seth touched his throat, feeling the swollen glands there.

He closed the book and set it on the porch boards beneath the swing, where he would not be able to easily reach it again. He wished he hadn’t gone and gotten it in the first place, couldn’t remember why it had seemed urgent enough to brave the horror of his old home.

Darkness had begun to draw down on the island again. Not yet ready to get up, he dozed in the swing and dreamed of Grand Illumination Night, one of the touchstones of his childhood. On this magical evening, the gingerbread cottages were decorated with thousands of paper lanterns in all colors and sizes. When the signal came, the lanterns blazed to life, a softly shifting, swaying array that painted the crowd’s faces with kaleidoscopic light. The eye scarcely knew where to look, how to credit such wonder. His parents had brought him to Illumination every year. He remembered walking beside his mother, holding her hand. Back in the days when she was a living person who loved him, not a rotting body he had abandoned.

Seth saw the lanterns in his dream, but now their colors seemed wrong, as if a slightly different spectrum had become visible. An especially large one hung nearby, swaying in an unfelt breeze. He didn’t want to look at it, but in the way of dreams, he could not stop his head from turning. It was thechochin’obake, his childhood fear, its split-open mouth sagging, its huge mournful eyes beseeching him to come closer. If he did, he knew its long paper tongue would lick at his face. He tried to back away, but his feet wouldn’t move. The mouth drooped farther and the creature spoke in a terrible rasping whisper: “Hello, gayboy, little infected gayboy. There’s no place for you in the old woman’s world, you know. They would drive you out. You and your plague.”

Seth didn’t know who the old woman was. He thought hemightknow, might be able to think of it, but only if thechochin’obakewould stop that awful whispering. “The world has had enough plague. No one will want you, no one will welcome you. They might even kill you. Yes, I think they might very well kill you. The old woman’s God doesn’t love little infected gayboys.”

There was a dark man inside thechochin’obake. Seth could see his awful, gleeful face now, hiding behind the lantern’s facade. The paper tongue lolled out, seeming to taste the air. “But if you come to me, if you come with the other sinners, I will welcome you. I will value your tainted blood. There are… thingsI can do with it.”

The creature laughed, and the tongue shot out like a party blower, at least ten feet long. Seth wrenched himself awake before it could touch him. He was halfway out of the porch swing, his legs pedaling madly, trying to propel himself backward. He grabbed for the flashlight he knew was nearby. Found it. Clicked it on and nearly screamed when he saw what was at his feet:The Old Legends of Japan, open to the picture of theningyo, though Seth clearly remembered closing the book before he dozed off.

After a few bad moments, he realized that compared with the horror he had met in his dream, the mermaid creature wasn’t so fearsome. It almost seemed to be smiling at him. He pulled the book toward him, and as he touched it, he felt a wave of reassurance and comfort like a mother’s embrace.The old woman’s God loves everyone, he thought, although his nightmare was fading quickly and he was unsure what the phrase meant.

He found that he was no longer reluctant to bring the book inside. He took it to bed with him, and slept a blessedly dreamless sleep.

Seth went back to Menemsha the next day. He found Mole cleaning bonito in the boat shed; his rough hands bloody with it. “Thought you said you got seasick,” Seth said.

“Catch these with a line from shore when they’re runnin’,” said the old man. “I should think an island kid would know that much.”

“I know how to dig for clams.”

Mole snorted. “Every little squirt on this island learns to dig for clams before they’re off their mother’s tit. D’you want to meet the mermaid?”

“The mermaid?”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re here, ain’t it? I don’t think you came back forme.” That merited a brief cackle as the old man wiped the blood from his hands. “Come on up. We’ll see if she wants to say hello.”

The interior of the shack was dark and dismal, smelling strongly of low tide. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Seth saw Jenny Hanivers hung on the walls and dangling on wires from exposed beams. He remembered a childhood friend who’d had a huge doll collection arrayed on shelves in her bedroom. These things seemed to stare at you like those had, blind yet knowing. Interspersed here and there were other bits of flotsam: a dried starfish, a horseshoe crab shell, a green glass ball float encased in netting. A ratty-looking hammock hung in one corner. He saw the big aquarium on the far side of the room, sensed murky movement within.

“Come on,” said Mole, crossing the room. “No need to be shy.Shesure ain’t.”

Seth peeked over the edge of the tank. The creature within was about four feet long, perhaps half as wide. It (she?) was made of fleshy ruffled petals that reminded him of hydrangeas, but deep blue, almost black. Just beneath the surface of its skin, lines of gold rippled like the chromatophores of certain octopuses he had seen.

“Say hello to our company, dear,” the old man said, and among the petals, two pairs of eyes opened. They were a deeper gold than the coloration shot through its (her) skin, as large as the palm of his hand, hellishly intelligent.

Seth stumbled backward and almost twisted his ankle on a pile of rusty tools. He could not meet that anguished golden gaze. Mole laughed. “No need for that, either. She can’t hurt you. Wouldn’t if she could. She helps us and we help her.”

A liquid cooing came from the aquarium.

“Put your hand in the water,” Mole urged. “Help her. She needs it.”

Seth didn’t want to, but his body seemed to be working with no input from his brain. He immersed his arm to the elbow in the chillywater. The mermaid swirled up from the bottom of the tank and engulfed his hand. He could feel the petals urging him deeper. His fingertips met a firm surface, and as he stroked it, the mermaid’s whole body shuddered around his hand. The contact seemed to slide him into a dimension where everything was sexual. He was dimly aware of Mole kneeling before him, unzipping his pants and gripping his cock; then the old man’s mouth was on him, and Seth thrust his fingers deep into the mermaid and his cock deep into Mole’s throat. There were a few moments of slippery sensory overload. Seth tried to pull away, but the old man’s hand gripped his ass, holding him in place. The sensations were too intense, almost painful. The three of them came together, and the mermaid’s consciousness speared through the two men, joining them together so that they felt the others’ orgasms as well as their own.

Afterward, Mole offered him a shot of whiskey, and Seth took it. The liquor burned his throat and kindled in his belly. A second shot gave him the courage to say, “You should let her go.”

The old man’s sharp blue gaze pinned him. “Let hergo? Go where?”

“The ocean.”

“The ocean.” Mole gave a sardonic little laugh. “My pa pulled her up out of theoceanthirty years ago. Something had bit her near in half. He didn’t know what she was, but he brought her home and took care of her, nursed her back to health. She thanked us by showing us what she could do. She doesn’t want togoanywhere.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know? Just look at her!” Mole gestured at the aquarium. “She’s whole, she’s healthy, nothing’s going to try and eat her. She’s safe here.”

“You love her, don’t you?”