DUNT EVER COME BAK HERE AGIN MERRY
I LOVE YOU ALWAYTS AND WONT FERGET YOU
PROMISS ME YOU WILL KNOT COME BACK
HOLD THEE LINE HOLD THE LINE
“I can’t promise you that, Avery,” she replied, sobbing and leaning close to the door, despite the smell so strong that it had begun to burn her nose and the back of her throat. “You’re my brother, and I can’t ever promise you that.”
There was another violent thud against the door then, so hard that her father was sure to have heard, so sudden that it scared her, and Meredith jumped back and reached for the candlestick.
“I remember the ninth wave, Avery. I remember what you said—the ninth wave, greater than the last, all in flame. I do remember.”
And because she thought that perhaps she heard footsteps from somewhere below, and because she couldn’t stand to hear the frantic strangling sounds that Avery had begun making again, Meredith hastily gathered up the sticky, scribbled-on pages from the pad and then crept down the attic stairs and back to her bedroom. She fell asleep just before dawn and dreamt of flames among the breakers, an inferno crashing against the rocks.
March 1915
“This is where it ends,” Merry, her mother’s ghost said. “But this is where it begins, as well. You need to understand that if you understand nothing else.”
Meredith knew that this time she was not dreaming, no matter how much it might feel like a dream, this dazzling, tumbling nightmare wide-awake that began when she reached the foot of the rickety spiraling staircase leading her down into the deep place beneath the house. Following her mother’s ghost, the dim glow of a spectre to be her Virgil, her Beatrice, her guiding lantern until the light from the pool was so bright it outshone Ellen Dandridge’s flickering radiance. Meredith stood on the pier, holding her dead mother’s barnacle-and algae-encrusted hand, and stared in fear and wonder towards the island in the pool.
“The infinite lines of causation,” the ghost said. “What has brought you here. That is important, as well.”
“I’m here because my father is a fool,” Meredith replied, unable to look away from the yellow-green light dancing across the stone, shining up from the depths beneath her bare feet.
“No, dear. He is only a man trying to do the work of gods. That never turns out well.”
The black eye set deep into the flesh of Meredith’s palm itched painfully and then rolled back to show its dead-white sclera. She knew exactly what it was seeing, because it always told her; she knew how close they were to the veil, how little time was left before the breach tore itself open once and for all.
“Try to forget your father, child. Concentrate on time and space, the aether, on the history that has brought you here. All the strands of the web.”
Meredith squeezed the ghost’s soft hand, and the dates and names and places spilled through her like the sea spilling across the shore, a flood of obvious and obscure connections, and she gritted her teeth and let them come.
On December 2, 1870, Bismarck sends a letter to Wilhelm of Prussia urging him to become Kaiser. In 1874, all Jesuits are ordered to leave Italy, and on January 8th, 1877, Crazy Horse is defeated by the U.S. cavalry at Wolf Mountain in Montana. In June 1881, Austria signs a secret treaty with the Serbs, establishing an economic and political protectorate, and Milan is crowned King of Serbia—
“It hurts,” she whispered; her mother frowned and nodded her head as the light from the pool began to pulse and spin, casting counterclockwise glare and shadow across the towering rock walls.
“It will always hurt, dear. It will be pain beyond imagining. You cannot be lied to about that. You cannot be led to bear this weight in ignorance of the pain that comes with the key.”
Meredith took another hesitant step towards the end of the short pier, and then another, and the light swelled angrily and spun hurricane fury below and about her.
“They are rising, Merry. They have teeth and claws sharp as steel, and will devour you if you don’t hurry. You must go to the island now. The breach is opening.”
“I am afraid, mother. I’m so sorry, but I am afraid.”
“Then the fear will lead you where I can’t. Make the fear your shield. Make the fear your lance.”
Standing at the very end of the pier, Meredith didn’t dare look down into the shining pool, kept her eyes on the tiny island only fifteen or twenty feet away.
“They took the boat when you crossed over,” she said to her mother’s ghost. “How am I supposed to reach the gate when they’ve taken the boat away?”
“You’re a strong swimmer, child. Avery taught you to swim.”
A sound like lightning, and No, she thought. I can’t do that. I can do anything except step off this pier into that water with them. I can stand the pain, but—
“If you know another way, Merry, then take it. But there isn’t much time left. The lines are converging.”
Merry took a deep breath, gulping the cavern’s dank and foetid air, hyperventilating, bracing for the breathless cold to come, all the things that her brother had taught her about swimming in the sea. Together they’d swum out past the breakers, to the kelp forest in the deep water farther offshore, the undulating submarine weald where bat rays and harbor seals raced between the gigantic stalks of kelp, where she’d looked up and seen the lead-pale belly of an immense white shark passing silently overhead.
“Time, Merry. It is all in your hands now. See how you stand alone at the center of the web and the strands stretch away from you? See the intersections and interweaves?”
“I see them,” she said. “I see them all,” and she stepped off into the icy water.
October 30th, 1883, an Austro-German treaty with Romania is signed, providing Romania defence against the Russians. November 17th, 1885, the Serbs are defeated at the Battle of Slivnitza and then ultimately saved only by Austrian intervention. 1887, and the Mahdist War with Abyssinia begins. 1889, and a boy named Silas Desvernine sails up the Hudson River and first sees a mountain where a nameless being of moonlight and thunder is held inside a black stone. August 1889, and her father is led to the edge of the Pacific by a Miwok guide. August 27th, 1891, the Franco-Russian Entente—
The strands of the web, the ticking of a clock, the life and death of stars, each step towards Armageddon checked off in her aching head, and the water is liquid ice threatening to freeze her alive. Suddenly, the tiny island seemed miles and miles away.
1895 August, and Kaiser Wilhelm visits England for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. 1896, Charles E. Callwell of the British Army publishes Small Wars—Their Principles and Practice. February 4th, 1899, the year Aguinaldo leads a Philippine Insurrection against U.S. forces—
All of these events, all of these men and their actions. Lies and blood and betrayals, links in the chain leading, finally, to this moment, to that ninth wave, mightier than the last, all in flame. Meredith swallowed a mouthful of sea water and struggled to keep her head above the surface.
“Hurry, child!” her mother’s ghost shouted from the pier. “They are rising,” and Meredith Dandridge began to pray then that she would fail, would surrender in another moment or two and let the deep have her. Imagined sinking down and down for all eternity, pressure to crush her flat and numb, to crush her so small that nothing and no one would ever have any need to harm her again.