You might call this the missing link. And who knows…you might even be onto something.

[The Police \\ Murder By Numbers]

First You Make a Stone of Your Heart

1.1

There is a rhythm to life, and to death, and yet we remain unprepared for that final reality, that the beating heart we know will never understand the infinite. But somehow, through the sharp lens of time, we have grown accustomed to the idea of that singular, defining moment. Some have accommodated their own gnawing fear through the practice of rituals that are at once very personal yet of origins beyond the arcane, while others have grown content with whatever fate or destiny or even random chance has in store. Along the way we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that about all we can hope for is a long life unfettered by pain, that we can all somehow dance in our parents’ shadows, and that, with luck, our children might dance in shadows all our own. Still, it seems that of all the creatures in this world, only humans have embraced an overarching sense of goodness as a guide to our actions, and conversely, most have repudiated evil in all its many guises. This repudiation, at times, defines the contours of this dance. As it defines our shadows.

Yet we take it for granted that for goodness to exist there simply has to be a countervailing force, this thing we call evil. Yet, indeed, is it possible that neither goodness nor evil ever truly exists outside of the human mind? But, what of this mind? Was it not this same soaring intellect, the same voice that proudly proclaimed that good and evil are the defining limits of our existence? And were these not the constructs of more primitive minds? Remnants, perhaps, of an age when humans above all else feared the night. When everything was a shadow, and we danced in fear?

But what of the voice of reason? The vox clamantis in deserto? Why do some heed this voice while others turn away and run headlong into the night, consumed by fear?

Could it be, possibly, that these proud minds are the most evil thing of all? Or could it be that the light of reason will, in the end, be our salvation?

Oh, Diogenes! Open your eyes!

1.2

She sat at the battered old Steinway, drifting along unseen currents as amber candlelight washed over the dark oaken walls of the old room. Drifting through a melange of Debussy and Gershwin, she was afloat among notes and passages that had spoken to her all her life, yet she was weaving subtle emotions with the subtle passages she chose, intonations at once as obscure as they were arcane. No one noticed. Not one head turned, and yet it seemed she had been waiting all her life for that one reaction.

She was playing in an alcove in the Grill Room, a hallowed enclave within the St. Francis Yacht Club’s main floor, and if she had bothered to look she might have seen the city lights winking on across the far reaches of San Francisco Bay. As it was, she sat erect with her eyes closed, swaying to the tapestry she wove as kelp might on a slackening tide. Her father was a member here and on Saturdays she liked to come and sit by the fireplace, and no one seemed to mind when she played the old piano in the corner. Indeed, most of the people there seemed to consciously ignore her – most of the time.

‘She’s not well, you know…’ one hushed note might imply.

‘Oh?’ a soft, contrapuntal note could be heard in reply.

‘Yes. Schizophrenia, or so I hear…’

But those knowing voices mattered not at all to her, not anymore, not after so many years of their knowing, sidelong glances. Theirs were eyes that could not see, and they spoke in hushed, shallow voices that knew only half-truths – and yet she loved most of those voices. She knew them, had known them all her life, and she had sailed with them all too many times to remember.

Her father came up after the sun settled into darkness, and he leaned into the old Steinway just as he always did before he spoke of leaving.

“I’m heading home now, Dev. You want to stay a while longer?”

She swayed to the left just a bit as she settled into Gershwin’s Love Walked In, but then she shrugged – playfully – before she finally relented with a nod and a quiet smile.

“Okay. Try not to stay out too late.”

She looked after her father as he walked out into the night, then she returned to her thoughts…and to the currents she danced on.

“Miss Devlin, we closin’ now…”

She opened her eyes, noticed the bartender leaning over to gently roust her and she nodded. “Is it midnight already?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss Devlin. You want I should go and get your coat?”

“Thanks, Ernie. Would you mind?”

“Not a bit, Ma’am. You just wait right here.”

She looked around the room, noted embers dying in the fireplace and that a dense fog had settled over the bay, then she noticed a tall stranger sitting in a corner opposite the piano, and that the man was nursing the remnants of a brandy. She thought the sight a little odd, too, if only because she knew every member of the club – and had for years. Her house, or her father’s house, was only a few hundred yards distant, not even a block inland on Baker Street, so it felt to her as if she’d spent her entire life within these walls. And in a way she had.

She looked at the stranger again and felt a sudden wave of unease wash over her, then as she watched he turned and looked her in the eye before he stood and made his way to the main entry foyer and, presumably, out to his car. Ernie the bartender returned with her coat, a heavy old US Navy pea-coat, and after the old man helped her into the jacket he walked with her to the foyer.

“You best turn up that collar, Miss Devlin. It feels right cold out there tonight.”

She saw the shadow run up one wall and then watched it turn and slide along the ceiling and then out into the night and she wanted to turn and run but she didn’t want to make another scene, didn’t want Ernie to have to call her father to come pick her up again, so she turned up her collar and followed the inky shadow out into the night. She walked through the sentinel rows of eucalyptus down to the dinghy docks, knowing that the shadows were out there somewhere just ahead, out there just waiting for her – then she saw the man, the tall stranger from the Grill Room – and he was walking away from her along the beach trail by the Green. She stood near a covey of Etchells 22s, watched the man as he walked up to the crosswalk at Marina Boulevard – but then he simply disappeared, just like all the other shadows gathering in the clinging fog.

She stood in the stillness for a moment, and she had walked all the way to the Green when she realized the tide was in – and that the black water was close to the mute stones that lined the trail here – so she stopped by an ancient streetlight and stood in the safety of the pooling light, until she realized the fog was growing colder and was now – quite suddenly – impossibly thick.

She stepped back into the fog and made her way quietly along the trail towards home – but she stopped dead in her tracks when she heard a violent commotion in the water off to her left, and when she turned to look she saw an inky black creature oozing silently out of the water and slithering up the stone steps towards her. At first she thought it must be a large harbor seal but then the quivering creature stood on human-like legs and turned to face her and she didn’t know what else to do but scream.

+++++

Kirk Dooley was the first responding officer on the scene and he took one look at the blood-soaked woman and called dispatch: “6-12, will need a Watch Commander and Homicide at my location, and I think we’re going to need the divers…”

Dooley gathered the half-dozen or so witnesses, as well as the woman’s father, in the yacht club’s parking lot, and as other responding units arrived ‘Crime Scene’ tape was strung out to cordon off the area. Paul Weyland gathered up his daughter and held onto her as she stared off into the night, and Dooley tried to figure out who had seen what and when, scribbling down notes as fast as he could…

Then a large blue step-van pulled into the lot, and two men got out and began suiting up in dive gear, then hauling all their assorted gear down to the water’s edge.

Then a baby-shit-green Plymouth Interceptor pulled into the lot and Dooley recognized Frank DiGiorgio, one of the detectives, get out from behind the wheel, but he wasn’t sure he recognized the other detective, even after he finally got out of the Plymouth and started walking over. But it didn’t matter; DiGiorgio would be in charge and he was a real straight shooter, an old-school, no-nonsense cop who could get things done, and besides all that he was clean – and Dooley knew you couldn’t say that about too many of the cops working out of Central these days.

Then a flash of memory came to Dooley. The other Dick was one of the new guys that had just been promoted. They’d worked The Tenderloin together a few years back, too. Callahan, wasn’t it?

“Hey, Kirk,” Callahan said as he walked up, “how’s it hangin’?”

“Good, Harry. You?”

“Can’t complain. Look, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but – where’s the body?”

Dooley nodded towards the water. “That’s the thing, Harry. There ain’t one. Yet…”

DiGiorgio walked over when he heard that. “Then what are we doin’ out here at two in the a-m, numb-nuts?”

So Kirk switched on his Kel-Lite and shined the beam on a woman’s legs, and when DiGiorgio saw they were covered in blood he walked over to her, then he looked at the stones on the trail before he turned to look at the woman again.

But one look was all it took. DiGiorgio knew those faraway eyes; he’d seen them too many times to not know exactly what they meant. Kids coming back from ‘Nam these days called it the ‘Thousand Yard Stare’ – which was where the mind took refuge when reality became a little too real to deal with. But then Callahan stepped up and looked into the woman’s eyes – he saw tremors cross her field of view – so he leaned closer still – until she could see nothing beyond the contours of his face.

“What did you see?” Callahan whispered gently. “Tell me. They’re gone and they can’t hurt you now.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” she whispered in kind.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he added, taking her hands in his.

She looked down, looked at his fingers and she recognized the fingers of a kindred spirit. “Debussy?” she sighed – as unseen currents passed between them.

“Gershwin.”

“Even better.” Was he the one, she wondered?

“Trust me. Tell me what happened.”

“It came out of the water.”

“What came out? Can you describe it for me?”

“Black. Slimy. At first I thought it…but then it stood and he was huge.”

“He? The man you saw…”

“He wasn’t a man.”

“But you said ‘he,’ didn’t you? And he was black and slimy? You mean like you saw a man covered in oil?”

She trembled as another memory rattled through her bones. “Skin…black…not oil…shiny, like a snake, only the eyes were different…amber, and big – like an owl’s eyes.”

An old black man walked up, and he nodded as he approached. “I seen it too, Mister. She ain’t lyin’ none.”

“You were…you saw this thing too?” DiGiorgio scoffed.

“Yessir. I was the second person out there, ran out from the parking lot behind Jimmy, and that thing took him and dragged him out into the water.”

“What?” Callahan said. “Are you saying this thing took someone out into the bay?”

“Yessir, right over there, where all that blood and stuff is.”

Which was, Callahan could now see, right about where the two rescue divers had entered the water.

And beyond the water, standing on the sidewalk above the yacht harbor, the tall stranger watched as the creature turned towards the divers, at this new presence in the water, and as the creature swam to face the new threat the tall stranger turned and walked away.

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | fiction, every word

[The Police \\ Tea in the Sahara]