Chapter 1
His young face twists, the tears glittering in the moonlight, as he crumples up a greeting card, and throws it on the floorboard. It blossoms open, its creases turning into pedals draping over a typed manuscript of a book stamped with muddy shoe prints. It reads, The Curse of Sandusky Bay, written by Redworth Mason-Kross, Copyright 2020.
“Aren’t you going to read the book your father wrote for you? I’ve been saving it for your birthday”.
“I already read it. It thought it was stupid. It doesn’t even have an ending. He couldn’t do nothing right”.
“I know its been a rough year with your father passing away. But Victoria is really looking forward to spending the day with you. And she’s swimming in gold”.
The boy sits quietly in the passenger seat. His little feet floating above the floorboard. His eyes watching the starlight drown behind the navy blue sky. The high beams twisting along the lonely path between the towers of pine. Nothing but curving asphalt planted with road signs and billboards. A long green one shouts, 20 Miles to the Marina.
“I’ve been reading up on your Aunt. She specializes in the science of aging”.
The road ahead swirls with thin fountains of upward spiraling fog. The boy sits, watching the world of trees and stars, as its swallowed alive by the wall of gray smoke. And the road, once colored by the piercing high beams, now reflects its blinding light back at them. She flips down the high beams as she massages her eyes.
“I need you to be my navigator. Grab my phone”.
He grabs her blue handbag- pulls out a finger length black plastic tube, a black plastic sea shell, an aspirin bottle that rattles with effort, a heavy coin purse, an empty wallet, a thin book of checks, a single stick of gum, a tin of Mints harboring a single mint, and a cluster of keys that no longer jingle- setting them neatly on his lap one by one.
The phones screen glows like radioactive waste, as he pulls it out, unlocks the screen, and hits the little microphone icon.
“Sandusky Marina from here” he says, before hitting the little microphone.
The app screen opens, loading deep in thought for a brief moment – waiting to pop into existence- for the sole purpose of filling in the empty screen with detail after detail of the surrounding area. She glances at the screen.
“How much further?”
SCREECH! The phone hits the windshield, while the objects in his lap scatter across the dashboard, before bouncing to the floor.
A herd of thin wiry fur and lean muscles tread past them, their hooves cracking like thunder, as the solid muscular phalanx of antlered bucks, white tailed doe and young spotted fawn fade into the woodland shadows beyond the sun drenched fog.
“Holy Ghost! Their must have been every bit of twenty five just now”.
She loosens her grip of the steering wheel. The boy unlocks his seat belt, follows the phones fading aura from between the seat cushions, reaches in, grabs it, fishes out the phone, and opens up the application. The map reads destination 0.0. He turns it towards her. She reads it, waits for the stampede to fade into the distance, and turns left.
They roll into the fog before reaching the downward slope of the boat launch on the far end of the marina. The breaks grind to a stop.
Samantha flips the sun visor down, before flipping the mirror cover up. The tiny lights of the mirror showcasing the blemishes on her pale skin, as she dusts her face smooth with the plastic sea shell retrieved from the creases of her handbag.
The boy, deciding its as good of a time as ever for an Easter egg hunt, begins to gather up all the objects, tossing the nick knacks into the bag, leaving the floorboard clean of all rubble, sans dirt and pebbles.
A few minutes later, his task complete, the boy stands hunching over the dashboard, trying to find the golden corona over the crimson horizon through the fogs white opaqueness . It was no use.
The phone begins to buzz, flash and beep. Samantha picks up the phone, lets out a sigh and a grown, drops the phone and flips the mirror back down, picking up the plastic finger to paint her lips enchanted pink, before rolling down the window and lighting a cigarette.
Liam coughs, rolls down his window and spits over the front tires that kiss the water, before drinking in the sweet dampness of the lakes cooling effect, as it creases against his cheeks and hands. He looks over at Samantha texting, the tiny screen illuminating her pretty, freshly painted face. Her unattended cigarette burning in her lips as she orchestrates the symphony of messages from lovers, co workers, friends and family.
The boy frowns behind chubby little cheeks, his bowl cut hair capped above his ears. He jerks his three foot frame rippling under the white and blue striped nautical t-shirt, khaki shorts and little hiking boots. His smokey breadth rising with each exhale, as the last wave of warmth runs out the open window, into the bone soaking dampness of the rising dawn.
The vibrations of the idle Jeep shake, as the engine coughs to a sputter, gasping for air, and rattling to a stop. She sets the phone on her lap, sparks up the ignition, backs up the yellow Jeep into an empty parking spot overlooking the water, flips the lights off, and shuts the engine down. He looks at her with a damp smile.
“Lighten up, Liam. You’re going to have a wonderful weekend with aunt Victoria. She owns property all over Erie: Crystal Lake, Marblehead, Kelly’s Island, Cedar Point and Isle of St. George. She owns property as far north as St. Thomas, Canada and as far west, as Buffalo New York. You see those boats over their?”
She points her finger off into the darkness, but Liam shakes his head no. Samantha flips on the high beams to unveil a forest of masts and sails bobbing through small round patches in the fog. Liam nods his head, yes. She smirks at him.
“When you’re out there slicing along the water like butter, society behind you and nature ahead, with nothing but the mercy of the water beneath your feet, it’s heaven”.
She pauses, letting the words linger, before pointing a finger out past her left shoulder.
“Beyond that fog is Johnson Island, the birthplace of your father”.
She takes a long slow drag of her cigarette. Liam pays little attention to her, instead, taking notice of a ripple coming from the direction of Johnson Island.
“Mommy look”.
He points towards the ripple.
“Is that a hand?” she mutters.
She steps out onto the shoreline for closer inspection, walking west along the beach a ways, her eyes fixated on the enigma coming from Johnson Island, and hoping to God, that it wasn’t a hand. A bluish gray fish with a large gaping mouth jumps through the air, causing Samantha to loose balance of the shifting sand, and fall seat down on the beach. She stands back up, as the fish splashes back into the shallow water. She turns towards Liam, as another fish jumps, Samantha jumps, but doesn’t fall, instead, starts laughing at herself. She walks back towards the Jeep, but the splash is followed by another, and another, and another, until whole schools, and finally, whole populations of bluish gray gaping mouths leap across Sandusky Bay. Their noise like that of shattered glass. Samantha falls, struck by awe, landing seat down on the sandy shore.
Liam watches, his eyes full of fear, and full of pain.
Samantha climbs up from the beach, snatching the phone from the open window, and opening up the screen.
“Your aunt Vicky just messaged me”.
And as she said it, the fog broke to the slithery sail of a yacht, as it slips back behind the smokey veil. The sound of the fish murmur to a silence, snuffed out by buzzing wings of dragonflies, butterflies and fireflies, as they fill the bay with a rising whisper.
Samantha jumps in and rolls up the windows, as swarms of fireflies and dragonflies move over and under and through the vehicle, all but the unlucky ones, spitting across the surface with a thud, and filling the steamy glass with specs of guts.
Then the chaos fell back to calmness, and Samantha flips on the wipers, smearing the guts evenly like fat on a cooking sheet. Slowly, it unveils the next wave of exodus, as the sky gives wide birth to a large flock of geese heading in an indeterminable direction away form the lake, their creamy white excretions replacing the bug guts from the wipers frantic scraping, and Samantha lets out a deep sigh. But then, the curtain of fog lifted, creating a panorama across the silhouette of sails and masts, with their tiny lights blinking from the cabins, and the bridges, and atop the mastheads. She flips off the wipers, steps out onto the Marina, opens the backdoor and grabs Liams things.
“That must be your aunt. Make sure to be a good boy, and above all, have fun”.
She smiles.
He molds her a lumpy and uncertain smile, but she takes little notice of his uncertainty, instead, appreciating the calmness of the mourning horizon, as the fog opens up the pearl surface to fleshy gold reflections of leaves clinging for life to their mothers branches.
“It’s so beautiful”.
She wipes a tear from her eye, lights herself another cigarette, and lets the blue smoke fall from her mouth. She watches the cranes levitate majestically over the lake, before fading behind the foggy curtain, the sky leaving with them, along with the sun, and the swarms of pigeons forging along the shoreline.
But even in the mist, from the Mariana docks, an image of a tall slender shadow cuts through the dense smoke. Liam grabs for his mothers hand, but she swats it away, nudging him towards the shadow.
“That’s her. Wow! It’s so foggy, we didn’t even see her dock!”
“Go on. Grab your things and go put them in the yacht”.
