I laughed, shifting the grocery bag from one hand to the other. “Well, I’m glad you got a trip under your belt before winter showed up. Don’t think it’ll be long now before it snows.”
He regarded the skies like a weatherman studying a barometric pressure reading. “Be a day or so and we’ll be gettin’ a storm. Not snow yet but wind’n rain for sure.” Over the years I had come to trust Harold’s predictions when it came to the weather. The old timers had something that the forecasters could never attain with their technology and weather models. It was as if time bestowed gifts to certain people when they reached a definite age, secrets that were normally out of reach becoming knowledge after so many years alive. “You and that pretty wife a yours should stop by soon, cook me up somethin’ off your boat there. I got a nice bottle of Cabernet that my daughter gave me and the doc said not to have more’n one glass at a sittin’.”
“We might take you up on that,” I said, starting to sidle away. “Give me a shout tomorrow if you figure out a night that would work good.”
“Any night’s good for me,” he called as I strode toward our house. “Ain’t got no one waitin’ on me but the reaper, an he can sit an spin for all I care.”
I laughed and threw a final wave over my shoulder as I made my way up our walk. I chuckled, stepping into the house, making a note to tell Del we’d have to bring dinner to the old man sometime this week. Del made a mean blueberry pie and we still had some frozen from the hours of picking I’d done in August.
I stepped into the kitchen, opening my mouth to ask Del which night she thought would work best to visit Harold, and stopped.
Del was standing at the sink. Her hands pressed to her mouth.
Her jaws worked, feverishly chewing. I could see the muscles in her cheek bulging each time she bit down. For a moment I thought she was having some kind of seizure or that something had happened while I was outside. She had fallen maybe and the baby had been hurt inside her. I took a step forward, reaching out, terrified to look down at the floor, knowing somehow that I would see blood there, pooled beneath her, running from her in a torrent of life that would never be.
There are sights that a person can witness that will not fit within the normal boundaries of consciousness or recognition. To put it simply, there are limits to the human mind that horror can surpass, and when it does, there is nothing but the void of madness waiting beyond.
Something was moving between Del’s lips. Squirming.
For a brief moment I thought it was her tongue, but then I saw the glossy blackness, the wet movement I always attributed to sea life, and a tentacle wriggled free between two of her fingers.
“Del, what the hell are you doing?” I said. She neither looked at me nor broke her gaze out the window. Her teeth ground together with a wet crunching.
I stepped forward and in that instant something let loose. It seemed like a physical presence had relinquished its grip on the room and fled, leaving the air cleaner and lighter. Del’s eyes narrowed and she turned her head toward me, her glazed stare slowly clearing.
Her mouth opened and the partially chewed squid fell out into her hands. It was a mangled, slimy mess of slick skin and broken tentacles. One limb death-flailed and wrapped around her little finger. Del’s jaw worked and her fingers opened, the writhing squid dropping free to the floor with a wet plop. The scream that burst from her was a rending of sanity, a shriek so full of repulsion and abhorrence that I flinched.
She shrank away from the squid that was turning itself in a slow circle, its remaining legs twisting obscenely. Del took two steps back, one of her hands coming up to cover her mouth, surely to stanch another scream, but just then she slipped. Her feet tangled and she began to fall.
I leapt over the dying cephalopod and snagged her hand, ignoring the slime that covered it, and pulled her to me, stopping her fall. She was stiff as a wooden timber and shaking. Her whole body trembled beneath her clothes like she had been hooked to high voltage. I stroked her hair.
“Shhhh, it’s okay, I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” I whispered. My voice was surprisingly steady in comparison to how my insides shriveled and crawled, mirroring the squid’s feeble movements across the wood floor. My mind was screaming countless questions, a barrage that I had no answers for.
“Jason.” She sobbed my name, crying fully now and leaning all of her weight on me. “What’s happening to me?”
I continued to stroke her hair and stare at the squid, its movements slowing. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”
~
I slept in bouts and fits through the night, mostly because Del kept waking and clinging to me as if she were falling. I had brought her up to our bathroom after the incident and bathed her, washed her hair, helped her brush her teeth, speaking as calmly as I could, reassuring her that she was okay, that she was safe. She didn’t seem to be fully conscious of what I was saying, her eyes drifting shut again and again. When I finally got her into bed, she fell asleep almost at once. I took the opportunity to go downstairs and retrieve the squid from the floor. It was dead when I tossed it into the container with its two healthy companions. I walked down to the ocean and stepped close to the tideline, emptying them all into the sea. I stood there for a short time, looking out across the darkening waters before returning to the house. I had no appetite and simply washed my hands and face before climbing into bed beside her, but not before I called the first psychiatrist I found in the phone book. I left a message on a separate line that was given, since it was after hours, and the doctor, a man by the name of Jeff Chave, returned my call in the morning saying he would be happy to see me before his first appointment.
When I left the house, Del was sleeping solidly for the first time all night, her hair splayed out on her pillow. She looked so peaceful I could almost pretend that the night before hadn’t happened. I locked the door behind me, jingling Del’s keys in one hand. I didn’t want her having access to her car while I was gone, and though I felt a twinge of self-loathing at taking her transportation away like a jailer, I would never forgive myself if something happened to her.
The drive to Chave’s office was fairly quick, and his receptionist greeted me before showing me into a comfortable room complete with a leather reclining chair and a small stool beside it. One wall held a tall bookshelf filled with tomes, and a wilting plant sat in one corner. A single window covered with a thin drape let in sickly light from the day that seemed would get no brighter. I sat in the recliner studying my hands until I heard footsteps approaching the door. Chave stepped into the room and greeted me with a warm smile and a handshake filled with strength I didn’t expect. He was middle aged, a small potbelly hid behind a yellow shirt beneath a hounds tooth coat. He had a full head of iron-gray hair and wore a beard the same color. His eyes were dark brown, magnified by the thick glasses he wore.
He took a seat on the stool beside me and scooted it back, giving us some distance to study one another.