The Last Mermaid

I couldn’t imagine living on a continent; that would feel strangely ill-defined. I was born on an island. I grew up learning every part of it, from the barnacle-covered jetty where the ferry lands after making its trip across the Sound, through to the forest covering the island’s upper slopes. Mother said we should thank our lucky stars that we were home-schooled and didn’t have to make the daily ferry trip to the mainland like most of the local children. We already knew the advantages: there was a gang of island kids that were the bane of my brother’s existence, run by someone we called the Brute, a freckle-faced lout who delights in the fear he and his minions inspire in us.

These days it seemed that everyone was frightened, even our parents, who huddled around the radio at night, listening to the news from Europe. They put a brave face on it but it was obvious they’re worried. The news from across the Atlantic wasn’t good: the Reich continued to advance. It seemed unstoppable.

Alice was 12, I was 16, and Vincent 17. As a girl, I was the one charged with keeping an eye on Alice. Alice hadn’t been the same since the death of the baby. She’d created an altar in the cellar, dedicated to our dead sibling. Vincent had seen her dragging a piece of lumber up the hill from the beach and alerted me. We went to investigate. Alice’s altar was makeshift: candles and sea-bleached wood, on which rested a picture of the baby she’d removed from the family album.

We made Alice put the photograph back.

She’s clearly not well, Vincent said when we were alone.

She’s losing weight, I observed. She skips most meals and the few she does eat, I suspect she vomits. Notice how she limps? I think she has stones in her shoes.

We used to be a relatively calm family. As I said, we were home-schooled. A downstairs room was set aside as a classroom, complete with desks and blackboard. It was here in the mornings that we followed the subjects of mathematics, geography, English, and history. Since the death of the baby, lessons had been haphazard at best. Not that any of us had seen fit to complain about the matter.

We’d followed the progress of the Reich’s expansion on the map in the classroom. It was festooned with little flags as each new country fell. England had lasted scant weeks longer than its European cousins. After the Battle of Britain when the last RAF fighters were cut down in the skies over London, it was just a few days before the German warships arrived, disgorging troops. We’d listened to Lord Haw Haw as he described the crowds cheering the arriving soldiers. Even though it was obviously propaganda, the echoing of the goose-stepping rang like an ominous drum.

It was unnerving to think that across the Atlantic, somewhere east of our island, the massive might of Hitler’s navy was gathering.

That night we had a late supper because our parents were by the radio. There was a speech by the Fuhrer, who was letting it be known that if the US left continental Europe alone, then his fleets of hunter destroyers would not go after shipping or make any further gestures to draw the US into the recently-ended European war.

At least the Fuhrer’s made the trains run on time, said Mother. Father nodded, saw that we were within earshot, and we got shooed out until the report was finished.

Politics is boring, Alice said later, bringing up bits of her supper into a napkin. Our parents didn’t notice; they were listening avidly to The Jack Benny Show. I frowned as she disappeared toward the kitchen to dispose of whatever she’d vomited.

She blames herself for the baby, said Vincent.

It was the following day. We’d assembled a picnic basket and after the morning’s school, settled on the slope overlooking the houses below.

There’s no good reason for her to do it, Vincent continued. But it’s clear she does.

Alice had been the one who’d discovered the baby. Immediately after, hysteria erupted in our house. The doctor was summoned from the mainland, bringing his bag, filled with an endless supply of calming tablets and injections. Vincent and I fled when he turned his attention to us.

The cause appeared to be cot death. It was just one of those things. My brother and I hid in the bushes until the doctor’s old car roared down the hill toward the ferry. We crept inside. Our parents were like statues, skin like marble. Thereafter, Mother took to her bed for days. Father developed stubble, a black outline on his face descending from his sideburns and sweeping around his chin.

The clutter grew in the kitchen as pots and pans were used and shoved to the side. It was three days before Father set to cleaning with a vigor that was frightening. We snacked on bread when we could, made simple porridge or fried eggs, and kept out of the way. Father would make a tray of food and take it up to Mother, and we heard muffled arguments raging back and forth, interspersed with the crash of things being broken. It was Vincent’s decision that we simply let them be.

They’ll snap out of it eventually, he said.

And eventually they did. Mother emerged from the bedroom thinner, her usual joking self replaced by an anxious façade. Father returned to work down at the small post office in the village, stamping papers in his little office. Normality resumed.

Neither Vincent nor I had seen the dead baby, only Alice had, and she kept her secrets. Sitting on the slope, I eyed her playing with a toy, making growling noises as if imitating the passage of something ferocious.

Vincent dug into the basket, pulled out a paper-wrapped bundle of fried dough smeared with jelly, offered me a piece. He called to Alice, and the usual discussion ensued. She said she didn’t want to eat. After a moment’s thought he said why not eat and be sick later? That way, she could enjoy the food and still purge herself as she seemed to need to?

Alice contemplated this idea. Vincent dangled the fried dough. Alice grabbed for it, rolling away so we couldn’t see her eat. He shot me a crooked smile. Alice had some kind of religion in her. It was eating away at her mind. There was only one place she could have become infected.

We all seem to have secrets, I thought, thinking of the little stone church, next to the graveyard.

As a group we’d explored the church secretly, drunk from the supposed holy water, even tugged at the loin cloth of the crucified wooden statue. I’d decided that the mythology was absurd. Nonetheless, Alice’s behavior since the baby died was disturbing.

I wonder, I said, whether Alice has had dealings with the Reverend.

I regretted the words the instant they were out of my mouth.

Why would you think that? said Vincent, licking the jelly from the tips of his fingers.

Alice seems to want to pay for something, I said. After all, the scratches on her arms and her pained-grin-walk when her shoes were filled with stones did suggest something of the flagellant.

Vincent grunted, watching Alice’s doll progress through the grass. Thinking of the Reverend I felt myself flush.

Any more of that dough? I asked, rubbing my arms. Vincent dipped into the basket and produced another piece, holding it by the paper. I peeled the newspaper back, reading the thick black letters: ‘U.S. FACING WAR?’ Some of the inked lettering had transferred itself to the dough like a photographic plate.

I ate, considering my sister.

Our family was not one for religion. We siblings treated the nearby church as something of a curiosity; its graveyard a quiet place to sit of an occasion during forest expeditions. This said, each of us – my brother, my sister, and me – had availed ourselves of the mythology from time to time, and met with the priest. Mother and Father gave him the cold shoulder but tolerated his occasional visits – awkward things full of small talk and clinking tea cups.

Mother rarely spoke about her religious background, but from the little she’d let slip, it’d been of the fire and brimstone variety. We had the odd crucifix on the wall, and a small painting of Jesus beside the steps leading to the attic. I’d sat on Sundays, watching the faithful make the journey up the hill to the stone building, wondering what it was that propelled them so. It had led me to my first encounter with the Reverend in the dubious ritual called confession. And that, in turn had led to other things...

There was movement down by the ferry: an army jeep spun its wheels, trying to get traction on the dirt road. Distant figures emerged and stood around. Eventually the jeep got moving again, crossing below us, heading towards the twin rows of houses that made up the town.

Coming to check what defenses are needed, guessed Vincent.

Or making lists of who has to go to prison if war comes, said Alice.

Vincent and I looked at her. It was a contentious issue: Mother was originally German. All of us could speak it, although she’d never formally taught it to us. Thus far there’d been no round up of citizens, like three years ago after Pearl Harbor. Having read the reports of the grim internment camps in the Mid-West and California, naturally we worried whether a similar fate was going to befall those of German origin. Try as we might, none of us could picture Mother being taken away in handcuffs.

When they come, you’ll be behind barbed wire, the Brute once sneered. Next to your Nazi mother. Vincent saw red, and it earned him a black eye and several bruises. The Brute rarely went anywhere unaccompanied, but this hadn’t prevented Vincent from lunging at him, and to his credit, he did manage to get one stinging slap to the side of the Brute’s head before the sheer force of numbers overwhelmed him.

I’d helped clean him up and Alice had slipped indoors to get a fresh shirt. We’d swapped it for the blood-speckled one, which I washed in secret.

It was only days later that mother noticed the state of Vincent’s eye and inquired as to its origins; he’d made up a story about walking into a door. Father peered at Vincent from behind his newspaper and told him to be more careful. Then the newspaper swallowed our father again.

At night, peace descended on the island. The last crossing was at 8pm and after that, the ferryman put the chain link fence across the end of the jetty, and began his slow walk along one of the trails worn into the slope. We followed him sometimes, taking the parallel paths higher up the hill, keeping pace with him all the way to where the Brute lived, the second-to-last house on the lone street.

Wouldn’t it be nice to set fire to that? said Vincent, eying the Brute’s dwelling.

I rose, hearing my joints click softly. I tugged at Vincent’s shirt. Come on, I said. Let’s go to the forest.

There was something peaceful about moving through dappled moonlight, knowing most of the island’s inhabitants were asleep – and here we were, gliding like pale beasts between the trees.

I’d sometimes find occasion to lead us near the church and the small cottage at its back where the Reverend stayed. It’s called a manse, Vincent informed me one night as we crept closer to its windows and watched the old priest in his armchair drink and stare at his fireplace. I was always tempted to say what drew me here, confess to my brother the thoughts I had. Sometimes I’d open my mouth, scaring myself, as if words might spill forth of their own volition.

Beyond the church and manse lay the graveyard, the older graves wafer-thin slate tombstones. Farther down the hill, just out of sight of the church were the newer graves. Their markers were thicker, shinier, with still-legible lettering. In the moonshine we gazed at the marble slab of the baby’s grave.

It must be quiet in there, Vincent said. Inside the coffin, I mean.

What if she’s sitting up? I said. Playing with her toes in the darkness and waiting for someone to release her? 

I got a momentary image: a gray-skinned creature, in its box six feet below us, filled with a murderous rage. It gave me gooseflesh.

You’re indulging your imagination again, said Vincent softly. There was a sharp exhalation as my knuckle found his forearm. At times it wasn’t a good thing that we knew each other so well. A night bird cawed in the distant trees. The glow remained in the priest’s window, alluring, like a bolt-hole in an iron oven during winter, revealing red-orange flame.

Let’s go to the Nest, I said. It had been a while. The Nest was within a craggy outcrop in the center of the forest, only accessible if you wriggled between smooth rocks. The interior air was sweet, and the soil of the cave smelled untouched. When we’d first discovered it, Alice had refused to go inside, for fear of bats becoming tangled in her hair. She’d waited while Vincent and I slid into the crevasse, calling out every few minutes whether we were all right. That time we’d come back out again almost immediately, but privately, Vincent and I resolved to return to explore it further.

The Nest? Vincent said.

Yes, I said, looking away from the hypnotic glow of the priest’s window. There was something about the Reverend’s proximity that brought out my darker nature.

I slipped from the graveyard and entered the tree-line, hearing the owls hoot softly and things rustle in the long grass. The forest by night was like a painting done in thick lurid hues, illuminated by shafts of moonlight. Vincent took my hand as we navigated around the trees. My excitement grew. I imagined presenting myself to the Reverend to request confession, then curling up beside him as I murmured the unspeakable, feeling him squirm beside me.

Here we are, Vincent whispered, although there was little need to keep our voices down. There was no one within earshot. In the clearing, the moonlight shone on the cleft in the rock ahead, making it seem prepubescent. I turned my face to the sky, soaking in the glow of the full moon. Vincent slipped from view, and I took a second to look around. All was still, the forest gossips in the branches continued their chirping and cawing. Then it was my turn to turn sideways and enter the mossy confines of the interior, as dark as any mother’s womb.

*

You know what they’re doing now over in Europe? McGinty said, cradling the bottle he was drinking from.

What? I said.

They’re putting people in ovens and burning them to ash, he said. In great roaring kilns, they’re disappearing all those the Germans want gone.

We were sitting on the hill, watching the slow movement of the docking ferry. It disgorged two army jeeps.

McGinty squinted at the ferry landing. More and more of them every day, he muttered.

What are they doing? asked Vincent, briefly grimacing as he received the full force of McGinty’s breath.

And suppose I do tell you what they’re up to? he said. And then suppose you’re German agents who’d get on your secret telegraph machine and tap in Morse code to submarines out there? He gestured vaguely at the advancing surf below.

Oh for heaven’s sake, I said. How likely is that, Mr. McGinty?

He eyed me. I saw his glance drop to my chest.

Well? I persisted, resisting the urge to draw my sweater closed.

McGinty took another draught of the bottle.

Town scuttlebutt spoke of a time before his drinking, when he had a wife. But she’d been taken by the Spanish Flu and since then, McGinty became the island’s misfit and replacement fisherman – at least for those few who’d have him on board. He lived in a tumbledown shack beyond the far end of Main Street, where the beach gradually gave way to long slivers of surf-splashed rock. 

Most of the year McGinty could be found wandering the island, dispensing pleasantries and observations. He had a small pension which enabled his lifestyle, much to local disapproval. His cheerful demeanor briefly dampened by the onset of winter, when he’d take the ferry across to the mainland and there, it was rumored, hole up for the duration in the local Salvation Army shelter.

To his credit, he always took the time to talk with us when our paths crossed.

Out here on the edge of America, said McGinty thoughtfully, these islands are like doorsteps. You can almost picture the Nazis warships. Here’s where they’d probably drop anchor, before creating beachheads on the mainland.

On the dirt trail below, the jeeps roared by, their long antennae curving.

But Hitler said he won’t attack, I said.

McGinty drank again at length, pausing to get his breath. Oh, he said, he may not come today or tomorrow. But sooner or later, I reckon, we’ll see them.

We eyed the Bedford trucks waiting on the mainland jetty, their contents covered by canvas. My money’s on them building a base here, McGinty said, aiming his bottle.

For some reason, the idea of my island seeing any influx of soldiers felt like a personal invasion. I said as much. Vincent agreed.

Reading between the lines of the news, McGinty said, things aren’t going well for the Japs in the camps. Hope they’re not building one of those sorts of camps here.

My fears about Mother’s German ancestry came to the fore again, but I kept my mouth shut. McGinty corked his drink, slipped it into his pocket, and rose, waving airily.

See you folks soon, he said, heading down the slope toward the distant houses.

Vincent shifted. Think he’s right about a base being built?

I rested my chin on my arms. There’s a marked increase in army stuff, I said. We turned to look at where the distant trucks waited. Perhaps when those get here, we should take a stroll down and see what they’re unloading?

Beside me, Vincent checked his watch. I understood. It was still school time. We had a few hours of free-roaming before the Brute and his minions returned. They’d walk together as a group to the houses, spilling off in ones and two’s, and then the Brute himself would be home. There’d be a brief hiatus when he ate lunch, and then the forces would reassemble. The gang would go roaming, and Vincent would have to be on guard.

We trudged along one of the paths running parallel to the road. Washing was being brought out behind some of the houses: vast dripping frilly things that never usually saw the light of day. We passed the small shop run by Mrs. Cohen. She kept a riding crop behind the counter and although it happened long ago, the village still recalled when the old woman chased a boy thief the length of Main Street, raising welts on his back at every other step.

Want to look in? said Vincent, pausing alongside the shop window. I shook my head. I had no spare pocket money, at least not enough for braided taffy or anything scrumptious.

Up ahead the local community hall loomed. I eyed the announcement board, seeing the colorful film poster. Gaslight? I murmured.

Wasn’t there another version of it a few years back? said Vincent.

The hall was used as a bioscope from time to time. The ferry closed too early to take advantage of the proper cinema in the town. Mr. Grubbler was just emerging, blinking in the light. He worked from a small room in the hall, creating the local newspaper and doubling as projectionist on film nights. He saw us and smiled.

Come to check on the doings of our noisy soldier friends, have we? he said. We nodded, turning at the distant sound of revving engines.

Army bases, patrols, and enemy agents, Grubbler said with a sigh. It’s like being in a film. He looked around conspiratorially before speaking. Apparently they’re bringing in bulldozers next.

Vincent frowned. They’re not knocking McGinty’s shack down, are they?

A cloud passed over Grubbler’s face. No, unfortunately not, he said.

We said our goodbyes and moved down the alley between the supply store and the hall, seeing the dark grey of the ocean swell approaching. We came out on the beach and squinted along it. The shore beyond McGinty’s shack was a wasteland of piled sand, trucks roaring back and forth, tipping their loads. The sand dunes that used to undulate off into the distance were gone.

There were army tents set up above the high water mark; men clutching blueprints sat at trestle tables. We trod past the tinkling things hanging from the eaves of McGinty’s shack, keeping our eyes on the soldiers in the tents.

One looked up and saw us. Ah, the local wildlife. He grinned, showing teeth. A gust of wind threatened to catch the large sheet of thin paper he was examining. He deftly caught it and secured it using a rock.

Are you building a prison camp? Vincent said.

Not just a prison camp, the soldier replied. An office block and living quarters beside a prison camp. He glanced at the flat ground where the dunes had been. Know why this wouldn’t be suitable as a prison?

I eyed the area. Beach sand? I said.

Exactly! the man exclaimed. Come closer, I’ll show you.

The blueprint revealed two squares, one beside the other. The smaller of the two was tapped by the man’s fingers. That’s here, he said, for the personnel.

So the other square, Vincent said, is on solid soil and rock.

For the prisoners, I