Among gallery owners and collectors, Skad is known as The Atrocity Artist for his transgressive paintings depicting zombified people fused with transistors, vacuum tubes, and circuit boards. But his true masterpiece, his ultimate atrocity, has been...
With each step carrying him farther from the house, the ringing grows dimmer until it's reduced to a product of his imagination. Only a few security lights from the flying saucer disturb the pleasant darkness. Otherwise it's asleep, except for a faint flickering blue. The renter must be watching tv. Probably with the air conditioning cranked high enough to create an artificial arctic climate in its barren cement rooms.
Long grass splatters slimy beads of moisture against Skad's ankles. The rain that fell at dusk has left the ground spongy and his slippers sink into it leaving dents behind. Humidity adds an electrostatic charge to the air. It's thick and heavy like the breath of a teenager in a fumbling sexual embrace. Fog rises from the water in the thin tendrils of a million tea kettles boiling at once.
Even if the phone had given him a moment's peace tonight, which it never does, it's too hot to sleep. When he was young and the summer heat was overwhelming, he slept out here naked or nearly so. He'd lay on the dock in his boxers. Splinters would dig into his back and legs but the fog kept him cool.
His back is too temperamental for rough living these days, so he smokes, crushing a spent cigarette out while he lights the next. The lighter and pack go into his bathrobe's pocket when he's done. Their weight pulls one side down prompting him to tighten the belt.
Something moves offshore. A glimmer of brightness against the gray mist. Could some fool in a boat be risking death? It wasn't unheard of for drunks to leave the bars up in Wolfetown and set off for home heedless of any hazards. Unfortunately, most ended up making the journey safely.
No, that isn't a boat's light. Closer to the shore this much is obvious.
If anything, it looks human. A person walking across the water. A glowing messiah defying physics.
It's a woman coming directly toward him. She drifts with the fog moving with languid strides, her body sways with slow, sinuous strides.
"It can't be." The words rasp against his dry throat. He walks right up to the lapping waves and peers out at the vision, a hand against the trunk of an elm steadies him.
Blonde hair rolls over her shoulders in curls. She seems to be made of living mist and grows and wavers with its whims. The face has no distinctiveness, but he recognizes her lean body and the way the blue T-shirt clings against her breasts.
Angeline. But it's impossible. She's been dead for forty years.
Drowned in these very waters, a voice in his brain reminds him.
She's only a few yards away when her features to blur together. His tired eyes betray him watering at this strange moment, and although he strives for details, she has become a hazy blue flame.
"Angie." The name escapes him and sounds like a plea.
"You left without saying goodbye." Her speech is quiet and yet sounds nearer than he expects it to. A divine voice coming down from on high to pass judgment on him. "I waited for you all night but you never came."
"I was young. I didn't want any crying and all that. Figured it would be better for the both of us to avoid it all."
"I loved you, you know. And you just left me without a word."
"I couldn't stay here."
"Bobby, you're nothing but a coward."
He sinks to his knees in the dank, fetid mud, one arm outstretched to her. All his words have abandoned him.
She says, "If you ever loved me, come to me now." Angeline begins to drift back out to the middle of the lake.
"Come back," Skad says in a strangled cry.
"Come to me," she repeats. "And we can be together again."
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