I don’t so much sit down on the beach as slump; the bones and muscles in my body have all gone soft. My lower back burns with icy-heat, and my head is full of the buzz of the voices of unseen creatures. It should be disquieting – disturbing even – but instead it’s calming, reassuring. I have the sense the voices are talking about me rather than to me, but I’m comforted rather than frightened.
Every single one of the people I’ve met through MFIT interviews described the serene quiet over the body of water into which their loved ones were taken, but what I am hearing from the loch can only be described as a din. It’s as though a party is happening right under the surface of the water.
And then, just as quickly, the excited chatter stops, and is replaced by a low, deep rumble, like a band of drummers playing in unison in the depths of the loch. I sense rather than see movement – the quick-fire scatter of whatever creatures were just chattering away. A sharp, piercing pain pulses between my eyes, across my forehead and, although no voice accompanies it, I know that it’s a threat, a warning.
Something that wants nothing more than to harm me lies, waiting, just under the surface of the water. I know that with absolute certainty. I could try to raise it above the water, but I suspect that’s what it is waiting for. I can’t make myself vulnerable by drawing it closer to me.
My dreams – I remember my dreams after Rufus disappeared, about lifting the water like it was a piece of flimsy fabric. If I could see under the surface – just for a minute – I could identify whatever threat lurks there.
Isn’t it possible that revealing the creature, even for an instant, could have the same effect as raising it up out of the water? I might still make myself an easy target, a sitting duck.
Fighting the urge to lift the veil, I close my eyes and try to visualize what waits in the invisible depths. At first I see nothing more than hundreds of pairs of eyes illuminated by the moonlight, almost comically blinking at me. My lower back tingles, and I can relate to Ondine’s belief that some interfering force altered Jenny’s journal to deceive and distract her. With eyes still closed, I flick the fingers of both hands up towards the night sky, then draw them out sideways in a quick pulling motion.
I open my eyes, to find that the water has indeed been pulled aside, and I get a quick glimpse of the thing I was sure meant me harm. It looks like a huge, hulking man, bent almost double at the waist, slightly hunched like a linebacker intent on charging at me. We make eye contact – its eyes a bright, painful neon green – and I draw my hands back together, pulling the water-curtain back so the loch is intact.
It’s not brave or special powers-y, but I run, staggering with the effort to get back to the house as quickly as I can. I imagine the creature’s breath on my neck, can almost feel the slimy, icy-cold touch of its finger-fins as it reaches out to grab me by the shoulders.
But somehow, amazingly, I arrive back at the house, my body – if not my dignity – intact. At first I don’t see Dr. Pendle, who is sitting outside with a cup of tea.
“Sir,” I say, surprised.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Thom. I’m out catching the dawn. There are few more beautiful sights in this world, I think.”
“True, Sir,” I agree, following his gaze upwards, to the soft pink tendrils of clouds in the early morning sky. “Were you waiting for me?”
“If that’s overbearing of me, then no I wasn’t. But if it’s a concerned colleague wanting to make sure you’re okay, then yes I was.”
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I don’t know how much of what just happened to tell Dr. Pendle about, or which words to use. “There’s a fishing boat on the beach.”
Dr. Pendle takes a sip of tea and says, “Was it there when you arrived?”
“No, Sir.”
“I see. Did the act cause you injury, or pain?”
“Not really, Sir. But I remembered something afterwards – dreams I used to have about parting the water like a curtain. I tried it and – and I saw something that I was sure meant me harm.”
The image of the creature flashes quickly across my mind and I see it again, hulking, menacing. But then a different sensation passes through me, and I see it not as an angry sea beast but as a man – abducted, never rescued, over time taking on the features of creatures that live in the sea, without actually fully being one of them. What if the thing I saw was a man, frustrated, helpless, awaiting rescue, hoping I was there to save him?
Suddenly I’m not at all certain I was ever in any danger. And then I remember something else; Agnes asking Dr. Pendle if he’d ever met someone who’d returned from the sea.
“Sir, please forgive me for asking this, but I overheard something Max said to you once, after we met Agnes, and she asked if you’d heard of anyone coming back. You said you hadn’t, and when Max asked you about it later, you told him it wouldn’t help Agnes to know the truth.”
Dr. Pendle’s eyes were sad as he nods, and says, “I lied to her. Despite a career spent advocating for the truth, no matter how unpleasant or disturbing, I lied. I made a choice to hide the truth, to prevent Agnes from any further worry about what happened to Fiona. As you likely suspect, the single instance we’ve found about an abductee’s return would not give family members hope. So, we’ve never released that data.”
He’s quiet for so long that I’m not sure if he’s going to say anything else, and I don’t want to push him. I listen to the morning-song of birds for several minutes, and then Dr. Pendle says, “Have you been wondering what your friend will be like, if you are able to rescue him?”
“No – I mean yes, I have sometimes wondered that, but that’s not what I was thinking just now. When I was telling you about lifting the veil of the water and seeing that creature, in the moment I was scared – very scared. I ran all the way back here after I saw it. But when I saw it again, in my mind, I suddenly saw that it was scared, too. Or frustrated, feeling abandoned. Maybe it was hoping I’d do something to help, rather than run away.”
“It’s entirely possible that the experiences of humans who are abducted are all very different, thus making it impossible to generalize about their behaviour, if rescued or if they otherwise find themselves back on terra firma.”
A gull flies overhead, screeching. We wait for it to pass, then Dr. Pendle says, “If I tell you about the single incident about an abductee returned, there’s a chance you’ll find it so disturbing that you’ll be propelled into action, to try to enact Rufus’s rescue. Either that, or you’ll decide it’s a risk not worth taking.”
I take a deep breath and say, “I think I need to know either way, Sir.”
“A young woman disappeared from her bed in late summer in Orkney, and her father strongly suspected the Finfolk. She was uncommonly beautiful, to use his words, and taking a precious beauty would ensure the Finman’s immortality. Twenty years after she disappeared, she reappeared – just as suddenly. Her father had left her bedroom just as it was, all those years, and he couldn’t believe his eyes when he walked past it one morning and there she was. She hadn’t aged a day.”
A blackbird lands on the hydrangea bush right next to Dr. Pendle, and sings a whole stream of cheerful notes. When it’s finished, he continues. “Well, there were parties in the village to celebrate her homecoming. But there was disquiet, almost immediately. People remarked that she looked distant and vacant, like she wasn’t really fully present. Everyone thought this was understandable, given what she’d been through, but even so, something about her made them feel uncomfortable, on edge.
And then the strangeness started. Family pets started disappearing, until after a time there was not one pet left. Birdsong grew quieter with each passing day, and then stopped completely. All of the chickens people kept were decapitated and maimed, their bloodied corpses found in their coops. Children refused to go near the woman, or to play on the beach near the water, saying that she would drag them to their deaths.
That’s how the rumour – or folk belief – began, that she had come back only to take children back to the underwater kingdom she’d lived in, to please her Finhusband, because they were not able to have children of their own. Then, the rumour became reality – the children all disappeared on the eve of Samhainn, and so did the woman.”