Date: 2020-05-28 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Doctor Craig Bo has everything: a perfect wife and children, a thriving dermatology practice, and a house in a lovely coastal town. Nobody is surprised when he is chosen to be the Sea King of Beachside in his hometown’s annual festival. But after the festival Craig’s world turns upside down. Something starts growing on his skin. His son tells him a story about a sinister mermaid who lives in the attic of the local history museum. And his beautiful wife, Penelope, can no longer hide her dark connection to the sea. As Craig grapples with his own secrets and misdeeds, he finally understands the w
Publisher: Unnerving

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental.

The Kelping Copyright © 2020 Unnerving

The Kelping Copyright © 2020 Jan Stinchcomb

THE KELPING

JAN STINCHCOMB

The women were out of this world. That’s what Nick was promised and so far it was turning out to be true. One after another after another. The blonde on the plane who offered him a ride to his hotel. Those girls wearing bathing suits at the bar. And tonight? Tonight was his. Tomorrow he was supposed to go out to breakfast with the other executives, but tonight he had a date at the beach.

A date at the beach with a beautiful woman. What a great little town. Maybe he had been wrong about Harvard. He should have studied out here. Already he was feeling relaxed. His heart had stopped doing that little jig whenever he got too stressed out. He would definitely be retiring in Beachside.

He chose a button-down shirt and shorts. Sandals. Then he headed for the Beach Bridge, where she had told him to meet her.

She was late, but he wasn’t going to let it get to him. He kept his hands in his pockets and gazed at the ocean. He pulled out his phone. The sun was just going down. There was still plenty of time to find someone else.

“Hey, there.”

Her hands covered his eyes. She giggled. Nick spun around and took her by the waist. She was wearing only a bikini. He could tell from her kiss that he was going to score. He took a risk. “We could go back to my hotel.” Something in her eyes changed. “I mean, so you won’t be cold. The room service is great. And I have a view of the ocean.”

“You know what I’d really like?”

“What?”

“To walk on the beach. It’s my favorite thing. Of course, it’s best with an escort.”

She took his arm and they crossed the bridge and headed for the sand. It was high season. They were surrounded by people, so she led him north, away from the bustle of the boardwalk, far from the last of the lifeguard stations. She didn’t have much to say, but Nick offered little observations about the beauty of the sunset and the size of the waves.

“Are you going to tell me your name now? You promised you would.” They stopped walking. He brushed black hair out of her eyes.

“My name?”

Nick laughed. “I like to know a woman’s name if I’m going to spend the night with her.”

“You think you’re going to spend the night with me?”

“You said you would show me your town. Remember? You said you could tell I was the kind of man who would enjoy it.” He wrapped his arms around her.

“I said you were the kind of man who gets what he deserves.”

“No. That’s not true. You said I was born lucky. You said I would get my heart’s desire.”

Two bikini-clad women were approaching in the distance. The nearest restaurant was at least a quarter mile away. Nick looked around but didn’t see any other people on the beach. He considered taking off his sandals, just in case. He was in good shape. He could outrun a woman.

“Do you know them?” He nodded toward the women, who were taking their time but clearly headed straight for him. There wasn’t any of the usual smiling and waving that went on between women who knew each other, none of the excitement.

They were close now. Nick panicked when he recognized the blonde from the plane. Beside her was a young redhead. Was she one of the girls from the bar? “Okay, ladies. What is this?”

“A Beachside tradition,” his date said. “A very important one, to honor our visitors. You’re a sailor, right?”

“I told you I went sailing once with my uncle.”

He took off his sandals in a daze. His heart was jumping around, skipping beats. Stressed.

The little redhead took his face in her hands. “You’re a sailor at heart.”

He started to run but the blonde grabbed him by the ankles. Before he fell, he punched his date in the face, but she barely reacted. They dragged him to the waves, where they started undressing him. He was shouting, but the redhead covered his mouth with hers. The force of the suction was incredible.

They tossed his clothes into the waves. His final thought was that he should try to recover his wallet, but by then he was below the waves. The women were still with him. Blue eyes were the last thing he saw. Eyes that he realized, too late, were not quite human.

The three women emerged from the sea a few minutes later, blood dripping from their mouths.

And then they started laughing.

1.

The phone calls started the Friday before the Sea King Festival. Although Craig didn’t see patients on Fridays, he still went to the office, and he didn’t think this Friday should be any different. His cell rang when he was examining the before and after pictures of one of his patients, images that would be used to advertise his practice. There was no number, just one word, Unknown, in glowing aquamarine letters. He answered in confusion, only half-thinking about what he was doing instead of letting it go.

“Hey, Craig. You’re going to look pretty cool out there in that crown, getting your crotch wrapped by mermaids.”

Craig hesitated, bristling, as he searched for a possible explanation. He hadn’t had a prank phone call since before the kids were born, and he needed this to be a prank.

“Seriously, dude. Everyone knows it’s going to be you.”

He thought he recognized the voice, a parody of a California surfer accent. Of course. It had to be one of his friends or neighbors playing around.

The voice went on, “But just to be sure…”

Craig walked over to the far end of the office. “Who is this?”

“Don’t worry about who this is. Put five hundred dollars in a brown paper bag in the Little Free Library at the corner of 3rd and Cortes. That should take care of everything.”

Silence.

Craig was trying to figure out what to say next when the call dropped.

He went on with his day but couldn’t shake the phone call from his mind, especially the sound of that voice. When he got home later that afternoon, Penelope was trying on different bikinis and posting the resulting selfies to Yay Me! so that her followers could vote on the best one for the Sea King Festival. Craig longed to disappear into other, more anonymous internet sites but Penelope wouldn’t stop asking for his opinion. She was not her usual tranquil self and instead seemed troubled.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

There was no time to talk. The Sea King Festival was the next day and there were still arrangements to be made, including a visit to the bakery, endless trips to the store, and the last call to the caterer. Finally, when Dash and Daphne were home from their day camp and everyone was trying to figure out a plan for dinner, Penelope approached Craig and whispered, “I suppose you’ll win. It’s inevitable.”

He forced a smile. “You don’t have to sound so disappointed. What’s wrong? I thought you loved these Beachside traditions.”

“Of course. I want to be your queen.”

“Really and truly?” He kissed her.

“Yes. I would kill for the opportunity,” she said. “I would kill simply to be your wife.”

“That’s kind of dramatic, don’t you think?” he asked. “Hey. Don’t look so tense. Try to enjoy yourself tomorrow. We should have fun no matter who wins.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll win.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. We’ll have a good time. It was going to happen one of these summers. You’re the natural choice. A family man, a big donor, a native son. My king.” She stroked his face and he grabbed her hand and kissed it.

The kids, tired and hungry, began hovering. “Let’s get takeout!” Craig cried, clapping his hands. “We’ll go to the Tempeh Palace.”

The children were disappointed but Penelope wouldn’t eat at all if they chose burgers or a pizza place. As they were getting into the car, Craig’s phone rang. This time there was no information, just a shimmering band of aquamarine running across his screen.

“That’ll be a thousand now, buddy.”

“Who is this?”

“You think you can treat a pretty little thing that way and go unpunished?”

Craig froze. “What is this about?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Are you excited for tomorrow?” That was the end of the call.

Everyone else was belted in and waiting on him. Penelope frowned as she checked her makeup in the mirror. “That wasn’t a patient, was it?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, who was it?”

All the plausible explanations spilled out of his head. “I don’t know. A wrong number.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand the guy’s English.”

Between Craig’s mounting anxiety (less than twenty-four hours to go before the festival!) and the limitations of tofu, the meal was awful. He had to pull into an organic burger place on the way home to make the kids happy. Back at the house, Penelope put a movie on for the kids and began one of her extensive skincare treatments to prepare for the next day. This one went on for hours and included most of her body. Seeing her round ass and high breasts covered in blue clay gave Craig an instant hard-on, but before he could plead his case, his phone rang again.

“I’m at the Little Free Library, dude. We’re all here. It’s a big party. Where are you?”

“Who the hell is this?” Craig nearly shouted into the phone, his erection repurposed and ready for battle. He walked away from the bathroom so that Penelope couldn’t hear.

“Fifteen hundred. Cash. Five minutes. Put it in a beach bag.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? How about that little cutie on the bike path?”

Craig’s mouth went dry. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Wait!”

The call dropped and the chiding, jokester voice disappeared. Craig stood there with his mouth open.

The bike path by the beach. He had been riding at dusk a few months earlier when it was still chilly and the summer had barely started. The wind was horrible, and he was tempted to dismount and push his bike the rest of the way home. Nobody else was out there, and as soon as the sun went down, he had the dark clouds to himself. He stayed to enjoy the pure solitude; the bike path was the only place he was ever alone.

Then he saw what looked like a small woman in the middle of the path. He was still negotiating for space when the figure threw itself into his wheels. He tensed up in anticipation of the impact and almost fell over, struggling to stay upright as the figure rolled off the path and onto the sand.

“What are you trying to do?” he cried. “Are you crazy?”

The strange little woman got to her feet with surprising speed and then spoke in a tiny voice. “They told me you could help.”

For a second he panicked. What if she was a child? Christ, had he hit a kid? But she didn’t seem to be hurt. Craig wasn’t sure of her age. He couldn’t make out her features in the growing darkness, and her voice, though tiny, sounded old to him. He was about to say that she should go to the emergency room if she was hurt—he was perfectly willing to take her—but then she did something strange. She ran her hands all over her body, lingering on her crotch, and said, “Follow me if you really want to help. I have to get back to the way I was. I need the water.”

For a second he thought of pedaling away since she was clearly suffering from some kind of delusion, but his doctor side, not to mention his dad side, wanted to be certain of her physical state. “Are you injured? Can you walk?”

“Come down to the sea with me.”

The sultry voice he heard now definitely did not belong to a kid. Was she a young girl? He wished he could examine her under one of the lights that lined the bike path. There was a light a few yards away, but then he would have to take her by the hand, and he didn’t want that. Was she some kind of drug addict? A drifter? The familiar street blend of sweat, urine, and marijuana rose from her body. She beckoned to him before running for the waves.

Craig put his bike down and followed her. The lifeguards were long gone and there was nobody else to ask for help. Though he was worried about leaving his bike unattended in the dark, there was something else at play, something familiar that lay deep inside him but could rise to the surface with little provocation.

This was an opportunity.

He began the dialogue within himself. He liked women. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. She wasn’t even his type. She was peculiar, possibly ugly. He couldn’t be sure. Obviously he was following her to see if she was at all attractive, but if questioned by an authority figure he would say that he was only trying to determine if she was hurt. He was obliged to offer his assistance, wasn’t he? He was being responsible and doing the right thing.

She was a woman, not a girl. That was what he told himself. He had decided.

When he caught up with her, close to the water, she was taking off her clothes. “What are you doing?” he asked. Fear entered the picture, chasing away reason, and under the fear, as always, was titillation. His skin felt electric.

She looked up at him and offered a smile. His eyes adjusted to the darkness until he could just make out her face, which was fine-feature but covered in a spider’s web of lines, prematurely aged. Yes, it was as he had suspected. She was not pretty and possessed that undeniable class-marker, bad teeth, with breath that smelled of decay. She was nothing like the women he usually chased. He could not go on with this.

Now he was embarrassed. “It’s freezing out here. You’re not going swimming, are you? I thought you wanted help.”

“You have to follow me.”

“No way. Sorry. I’m out of here.”

“Are you sure?” she asked him. That strange little voice. Did she have an accent? Was there something wrong with her?

“What? Of course I’m sure.”

She dropped her clothes, and a network of scars flashed in the moonlight. Then she fell to her knees and began working on his drawstring. He stood still, facing the ocean. He tried to think of the growing darkness as a blanket. Could anyone see them? Was it dark enough? There were big pink streaks in the sky. In the distance, he could see the Ferris wheel all lit up at the pier and he imagined, though he knew it was very unlikely, someone watching him through a pair of binoculars.

Transgression worked like a drug, a lover, his best friend. Everything was high-speed and super clear, ten times better than regular life, and even the details that should have disturbed him—her chapped lips, her filthy hands, her dirty little rag pile of clothes that he could see out of the corner of his eye—worked a certain black magic that he knew he would try to recapture later, in his fantasies.

Craig tried to stifle a moan though there was nobody to hear him. When she was finished he fumbled with his drawstring. Shame and panic began their swift descent but they were part of the dance. Without them, there was no risk. He needed the threat of punishment.

“Will you follow me now?” she asked. “I want to go home.”

“I have to go—” Craig said, catching himself before he uttered the word home. He did not want to speak of his real life. He ran across the sand as quickly as he could, trying to obliterate the woman with each step. His bike was where he had left it.

He worked on an alibi as he pedaled, the darkness underscoring his sense of doom. Trouble greeted him in the driveway. Penelope and the kids were already in the car, all three of them determined to find him. Seeing their concerned, innocent faces made him feel like crying. He explained that he had had a little accident on his bike but assured them he wasn’t hurt. “There was something slick on the path. I lost control for a second.”

“Why didn’t you call us?” Penelope asked with a trace of something other than concern in her voice, perhaps nothing more than annoyance, but he imagined for a second that she was on to him. This happened sometimes. He feared that Penelope knew everything about him and could somehow see all that he had ever done, as if her internet prowess, the hunting and gathering she did online, resulted in omniscience. She knew who he was and still she played along, overlooking his transgressions. In these moments Craig felt his world implode. Their marriage was a lie. No, that was too simple. All marriages were lies, or at least shared fantasies. Theirs was a fragile choreography at best, a blend of improvisation and role-play, but he was committed to it. He needed it.

He took Penelope’s face in his hands and worried—though he had been careful not to touch the woman—that a trace of her scent was left on his fingers. “I tried to get home as fast as I could.”

He used more soap in the shower that night than he had ever used before.

When he woke the next morning, he was restored to his normal self, the public self, the man everyone knew as Doctor Craig Bo, but now he felt sick. Why did he do these things if they always left him feeling so tortured afterward?

His mind started to turn on him.

He had to call his lawyer. He knew this was a mistake but could not stop himself. It was either call his lawyer with a murky story or tell Penelope everything. He knew he was not in control, but the only way to regain control was to start shaping the events of the night before into something he could live with. He was already forgetting details. The woman’s weird little voice, for instance. Could he pick her out of a lineup? Probably not. (Could she identify him? Not allowed to be an issue.) Her hand, though, took on a new life in his memory. It glistened as it fluttered around her labia, a detail which he did not share with his lawyer.

The lawyer listened to Craig’s tale of colliding with a drifter on the bike path, appeared politely interested and then advised him to do nothing. “You’re too honest for your own good. Look at you. You’re a big donor, a family man, but you can’t help everyone. You tried. You were right to leave. Forget about it.”

“Do I have an obligation to follow up on her injuries? Should I call the hospital?”

“Craig, do not call anyone. Do you hear me? Do not call any hospitals. Do not tell this to the police. Think about it: what if it was a set-up?”

“A set-up?”

“You say she threw herself at you?”

“Definitely.”

“You did the right thing. This is not your problem.”

Craig tried to believe the story he had told his lawyer and carefully buried the part where he followed the woman down to the beach. He could exhume that later, when he was sure he was safe. In the terrible days that followed, each time the scene on the bike path resurfaced in his mind, usually late at night as he lay awake, the details became less and less reliable. He still felt the startling impact of his bike hitting her body, but their brief dialogue had no soundtrack. He saw her lively little hand but could no longer say how tall she was. He smelled the telltale odors of her street existence, but now he began to wonder if he had somehow exaggerated them.

He would probably never see her again. She would become like all the others.

And then, on the day before the Sea King Festival, the phone calls started.

So who was calling him, and why now, right before such an important public event? Who was asking for so much cash, but in weird amounts, like donations to an elementary school carnival? Someone had obviously seen him down there on the beach with that woman. What his lawyer had said about a set-up preyed on his mind.

Penelope showered off her blue mask and got the kids into bed without his help. Then she paced around the house, checking on the final details for the party, so preoccupied by her own concerns that she didn’t notice him frowning and chewing his lips.

Craig had plenty of cash in his safe. He could walk over to the Little Free Library when Penelope was asleep. Of course, too much time had passed since the last phone call.

It was absurd that he was even considering this.

How did this person know he was in the running for Sea King? Whoever had seen him that night obviously knew who he was. Of course they knew how wealthy he and Penelope were! This was bullshit. Harassment.

God, he had such bad luck.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? Indecent exposure. Public lewdness. Was that what it was called? She was not a minor. No. She was old, if anything.

First thing Monday he would call his lawyer and make a proper appointment. Face to face. He was going to have to come clean if these calls didn’t stop.

He didn’t sleep at all that night and was alarmed by the dark circles that greeted him in the bathroom mirror the next morning, Saturday, the day of the festival. So much for the crown, he thought. Maybe somebody else would win.

Anxiety had him so worked up he began to feel nauseated. He no longer cared about being king. All he wanted was for the event to be over so that they could come home and enjoy one of Penelope’s famous parties. He liked hosting. It took nothing out of him because Penelope had so much energy that she eclipsed him from the moment the first cork popped. It was her party, her house, and her generosity. All he had to do was smile and walk around his backyard refilling drinks. He was a nice person, a benevolent man, which was why the phone calls were so unfair.

Craig walked into the kitchen and poured himself a large cup of coffee. The children sat picking at their omelets. Dash looked up at him with sad eyes.

“You people look like you’re going to a funeral. Come on now, kids. This is the big day. I need your support.”

Penelope clapped her hands. “That’s right. No gloomy faces today. Hurry up and eat. I want to get to the beach early.”

“Everybody should make a wish,” Daphne said. “Close your eyes and think of what you want the most. But don’t tell anybody.”

Craig smiled and watched his wife and children, eyes closed, faces tranquil. He wished for the health of his family.

On the sands of Serenade Beach the sun was brutal. Craig wore plenty of sunscreen and hoped for the best. He couldn’t wear a hat, Penelope reminded him, because what if he had to put on a crown? Oh, the weight of this crown-anxiety was exhausting. It refused to go away. Perhaps it would be better to lose so that he could escape earlier.

He was sweating as he walked through the crowd shaking hands. People were staring at him, then smiling politely as they let him pass. Was it his imagination, or were all the women giving him funny looks? Penelope kept an eye on the kids as they navigated the big crowd, but Craig would rather have done that himself. There was nothing like a child’s hand in his own to make him feel more like the man he wanted to be.

It also helped to control the flow of conversation. People were less likely to walk up in front of the kids and say things like, “Can I count on you for ten thousand?”

Leonard Massif, last year’s Sea King and the current Master of Ceremonies, wanted the money for the new school library. Someone else asked him to donate to the local playhouse. Then a representative from the homeless shelter approached him. If he stayed here much longer, he would be completely cleaned out.

He heard a voice in his ear. “A few thousand would have made that problem on the bike path go away. I could have saved you from this.”

Craig whirled around to see who had spoken, but there were too many people around him, all of them moving in different directions. He couldn’t find the source. It was like trying to track a small object lost in the ocean waves. Everyone was pushing in an attempt to get close to Leonard Massif, whose words, despite the microphone, were spirited away by the breeze. Craig surrendered to the buzz of excitement and social expectation. He smiled his perfect smile and, with choreographed precision, a hundred similarly perfect smiles beamed back at him. Beautiful faces and flawless skin everywhere. This was his work! His community! He was like a god, personally responsible for erasing the wrinkles and age spots. It was a symphony of aesthetics and he was the conductor.

There was Stacey Shell, still a tiny bit swollen after her last round of Fraxel.

Ben Worth’s nasolabial folds were barely noticeable, thanks to Craig’s needle.

The lips Claire Baldwin sported were fuller and more sensual than they had been just days before.

Beauty was his contribution to Beachside, not the occasional missions of medical charity to third-world countries, not even the school library that he was supposed to help pay for. The perfect surface of the human face, especially the female face, was his signature.

With the sun in his eyes he felt lightheaded and weak. He approached an enormous pink and white shell, made years ago by Beachside High School art students, where the crowning ceremony was to take place. Penelope was already there, center front, quivering charmingly alongside other wives of wealthy men. He wanted to rush up to her and beg her to relax. Hadn’t they agreed that the festival didn’t really matter? They were supposed to be having fun.

He held onto his smile.

The next part went fast. Penelope picked up Dash and held him while little Daphne stood serenely by her side. What was his son crying about and why now? He could barely hear what Leonard was saying even without Dash sobbing. Craig worried Dash was too sensitive and quiet and, well, weird. He was on track academically, thank God, but he was so neurotic, tormented by some unnamable anxiety, definitely the misfit of the family. He was handsome, or at least he could be, when he didn’t have tears running down his little face.

Craig signaled to Penelope to carry Dash away from the crowd, but she either didn’t understand or didn’t want to miss the announcement. She looked like a queen bravely presiding over a funeral procession. Where was her smile? What was wrong? Impatience with his wife flared in his heart and threatened to tip over into anger. Just as Craig was zeroing in on Dash to whisk him away (not approaching the microphone with confidence, as his competitors probably thought), Leonard made the proclamation.

Doctor Craig Bo was the new Sea King of Beachside. That meant him. For a few seconds the applause drowned out, even the misgivings about his son and those terrible phone calls. He turned to face the crowd. Leonard Massif placed a surprisingly heavy metal crown on his head.

Craig smiled and joked around, playing with the crown and shaking hands, all of which came easy to him. Dash quieted down and stared at his father with eyes of terror. Did the kid know something he didn’t? Penelope transformed in the space of a moment. She smiled, accepting her own crown with breezy radiance, and Craig had to admit that at times like these she was exactly the wife he wanted. The irritation had already dissipated. This was Craig’s experience of marriage: nothing was constant.

Craig felt truly happy. He was king.

And then the kelping started.

He had almost forgotten about this part. Every year it was such a strange sight to behold. The kelping. Three beautiful young girls, wearing mermaid dresses with long slits that permitted them to walk, approached him. Buckets of kelp were lined up and ready, attended by unfortunate little flurries of flies.

“Don’t worry, Doctor Bo, we’ve got this.” The head mermaid was a gorgeous brunette with her hair piled high. “You just strip to your swimming shorts and stand there with your arms and legs spread wide. Kind of like a scarecrow. Here, let me help.”

Discomfort crept over him, slow but undeniable, like the tide. He had seen the kelping before, but he had never really considered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of this public ritual. What if he got a hard-on in that sea of iPhones? The mermaids worked quickly, covering his body in ribbons of kelp, which he welcomed for the coolness and whatever sun protection they offered. He knew women paid for some version of this to be done in beauty salons throughout the city. Maybe it would work. Maybe he would live longer and get richer. There were all kinds of myths about the kelping: how it helped your skin, your internal organs, your fertility, your pocketbook. But by the time the seaweed strands had travelled from Craig’s ankles to his waist, he was getting impatient with the ritual and wanted to go home.

Two of the mermaids wrapped while the third followed up with a honey-colored glaze that she brushed on the kelp to make it stay in place. “What is that stuff?” Craig asked. The smell was terrible.

The redhead wielding the brush gave him a dazzling smile. “We wouldn’t want to give away any mermaid secrets now, would we, Doctor Bo?”

When the kelp was at his chest, Craig felt his skin begin to tingle. Most of the crowd had dispersed, except for family, close friends, and diehard bloggers who needed a picture of the completed process. The local news station was still there, of course, as well as Marjorie Delmar from the Beachside Museum of History, patiently waiting to take a picture with her Hasselblad. The rest of Beachside was moving on with its day, thank goodness. Craig looked around for Penelope but she was too busy in her role as queen, chatting with her loyal subjects.

“Are you all right, Doctor Bo? Do you need some water?” the third mermaid, a curly-haired blonde, asked him. “It’s hard to hold your arms out like that, isn’t it?”

“It feels odd,” Craig said. “It’s like I’m vibrating.”

The head mermaid nodded. “That’s what they all say. That means it’s working. Don’t worry. We’re almost done.”

His wife arrived at his side when the process was over so that they could take the final photo. “Penelope, I must look like a monster.”

She warned him, “Smile. Everyone is going to see these pictures. See? There’s Marjorie, with the serious camera. She’s documenting this for the museum.”

“I know what she’s doing, Pen. I grew up here.” He was hungry, that was the problem, and it was making him snappy. He gave Penelope a kiss to make up for it, a theatrical kiss, in front of their adoring audience.

But he was not yet free. According to the rules, he was supposed to walk across the sand and swim in the ocean until the kelp dropped from his body. “Are you serious?” he asked, looking around for help and finding nothing more than a small troop of approaching seagulls. The news station was still trying to film him, so he had to keep smiling as he walked, awkwardly monster-like, down to the waves. Little Daphne stayed with him throughout the process, all the way into the ocean, where she helped him cheat by diving under the surface like an otter and removing the kelp manually. Dash had gone ahead to the house with some of the guests.

“Don’t lose your crown!” Penelope called as father and daughter began to play in the ocean. “And hurry up. We’ve got a party starting soon!”

Craig was still sticky everywhere but his face. “Climb on,” he said, offering Daphne a piggyback, but she immediately started complaining about the glaze.

“It’s sticky! And it’s making my legs feel funny.”

Penelope, cautiously victorious, had already prepared the front passenger seat with plastic wrap and a beach towel. They drove the short distance to the house with their crowns on and the radio blasting. Craig was reminded of prom night and his wedding day. “Maybe we should have hired a limo,” he said.

“That would have been vulgar.”

Craig threw his head back and smiled, relaxing for the first time that day, but the motion caused a disconcerting pop in his sore neck. He was desperate for things to return to normal and hoped that the party would help.

At first everything was peaceful and reassuring. Craig wanted a drink on the patio and the company of friends, as well as the shower he couldn’t quite sneak in. He had to be careful not to damage the furniture with the kelp residue.

Just as Craig was getting ready to unwind, Dash started causing trouble. It was inevitable, Craig supposed. The kids were both exhausted.

Penelope was serving the cake, a sugary representation of a sandy beach and one huge ocean wave, on which a tiny Sea King and Queen rode in victory. When Craig went inside to get a piece for himself, he saw his wife and children standing in the front room. Penelope and Daphne were on either side of Dash, who was dazed and eerily quiet. Most of the guests were in the yard. Penelope turned to Craig with a strange expression on her face. “Dash is scared.”

“Of what? What in the world is there to be scared of?” Craig asked with a forced, goofy smile as he repositioned the silly crown. He was trying for relaxed and magnanimous but malice filled his voice.

Penelope ran her fingers through Dash’s hair. Craig stared at his son, who collapsed against his mother. “Something scared him at the beach but he won’t say what it was.”

Craig wanted to take Dash by the shoulders and shake the drama out of him. He took one step in his son’s direction and the kid hid his face. “Okay,” Craig began, getting down on his knees and taking a deep breath, “if you don’t tell us, we can’t help you, Dashiell.”

More silence. Craig felt sick all over. Penelope and Daphne gazed at Dash as if he knew an important truth.

Craig clapped his hands and stood up. “I don’t have time for this. We, as a family, do not have time for this. We are hosting a party right now. Dashiell, we’re being rude to our guests.” Craig looked at Penelope. “Is it sunstroke? Has he been drinking enough water?”

“Yes. All day. I made sure of it,” she said.

“Okay then. Call a doctor. Monday. A psychiatrist.”

Craig turned his back on his family.

—

Aside from illicit sex and the view from his sunny office on a weekday morning, there was nothing Craig liked more than climbing into his bed at night. He cherished those few moments before falling asleep when he could let his mind roam freely. It was almost like meditating and it always ended in peace. But Craig could tell the night after the Sea King Festival was not going to be peaceful.

“I can’t believe you can sleep,” Penelope told him. “We already have over three thousand likes on Yay Me! I’m going to be busy for a while.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“You know it can’t. I’ll be done soon.”

He kept his eyes closed and waited for her to leave.

Alone in the dark, his mind returned to recent events. There was that voice in the crowd, the strange phone calls, and the woman on the bike path. What if he simply ignored the unpleasantness? What were they going to do to him? What if he did nothing?

He tossed in the sheets and remembered that night. The woman’s hands. Her smell. Finally, he got up and took a Placidia for anxiety. In the kitchen, while drinking a glass of water, he thought about the cake and realized that with all the commotion Dash had caused, he never even got to taste it. He tiptoed out to the front room to make sure that Penelope was nowhere near (they had a rule that neither of them could eat after ten o’clock) and then crept back into the kitchen like a thief. From the refrigerator he took the bright pink cake box from the Neptune Bakery and lifted it carefully, as if he were performing a surgical maneuver. It was surprisingly heavy.

He flipped open the lid. A fishy smell overwhelmed him. The cake Penelope had ordered was gone. Craig saw instead a tangle of sand, seaweed, and gnats, a tiny beach scene. The ocean wave had collapsed, leaving the miniatures of the Sea King and Queen adrift and open-mouthed, clawing their way back to the beach. The beach itself looked like Beachside might appear after a tsunami. There was even a shattered blue lifeguard station, and Craig could just make out, trapped in the seaweed strands, remnants of the huge clamshell under which he himself had stood earlier that day. Those busy gnats made his stomach turn.

If this was a gag, it was spectacular. Craig wondered if one of his friends or colleagues could possibly have pulled this off, but no, none of them was this creative. Nobody he could think of had quite this sense of humor.

He wasn’t so sure it was supposed to be funny.

Dash and Daphne liked scary things. They watched Scooby-Doo and read Goosebumps. This was much more sophisticated. It would have taken a real artist to make this. And that smell. How had the prankster achieved that smell?

He had to keep the cake. This was something he could not explain to anyone else, not ever. First he went to the den to check in with his wife. Everything depended on her reaction.

Penelope looked up at him with her beautiful blue eyes. “Hey, do you want to help me? I’m still working on the post for First Love. I want to put in some audio for the Sea King Festival. What do you think? Just ocean sounds or should I go with the Beach Boys?”

Craig smiled. “Actually, I thought I’d have a piece of cake.”

“What? Craig! It’s too late for dessert. Have some tomorrow. Now tell me what you think of these pictures.”

“It’s funny, but I think it’s gone bad somehow. It smells really odd.” He stared right at Penelope, trying to see if she was pulling his leg.

“You mean the cake? Well, you know, it was real buttercream. Maybe we left it out too long. Throw it away if you want. We certainly don’t need the calories.”

“Pen, be serious. You must know what I’m talking about.”

“What? If you’re worried about the kids, forget it. They don’t need any more sugar. None at all. Do you know how much sugar the average American eats in a year?”

She wasn’t kidding. “All right. I’ll throw it away.”

He pulled on some shorts and stepped into flip-flops, then went back out to the kitchen, where the cake box was waiting on the counter. He took one more peek inside—there was something fishy in there, yes—before going out to the backyard. The outside world was calm and quiet under a nearly full moon. Craig walked through the yard to the detached garage, which had a little side door they never locked.

He liked to park his Carrera in the garage. There wasn’t much room for storage, but they managed to fit a lawnmower, some gardening tools, and the kids’ favorite beach toys. There was one row of shelves in the back and Craig had a certain spot in mind. Of course, he couldn’t leave the cake box exposed since he didn’t want Penelope or the kids asking about it. He found a plastic recycling crate and an old beach towel and made a kind of nest for the Neptune Bakery box before stowing it on the top shelf. He was the only one tall enough to reach it without a ladder.

Then he grabbed a flashlight and headed to 3rd and Cortes, a quiet street of stately homes with well-lighted porches. The Little Free Library was a small box with a glass door propped up on the fence of the only house in his neighborhood that could be described as bohemian. The owner was some famous music producer. Craig had walked past it many times and noticed that there were usually a few books available and sometimes even old copies of The Beachside Mirror. Tonight there were only two books, Our Bay Is Dying and The Body You Want Is Somewhere Inside of You.

He opened the glass door and shined the flashlight inside. He even felt around behind the books. Craig did not know what he was searching for, but this was where the voice had told him to put the money. He looked all around to see if anybody else was on the street, perhaps watching from a distance. Who had called him? Did his antagonist live around here?

All Craig saw was darkness. The good people of the neighborhood were in their beds. What was he, the Sea King, doing out here at this hour? He closed the door to the Little Free Library and, like a scared kid on Halloween night, went running off as fast as his flip-flops would allow, telling himself that this was the end of it. Back at his house, which welcomed him with its reassuring chic, he climbed into bed, feeling as though he had committed a crime. For the second night in a row he barely slept, dropping occasionally into disturbing visions.

At some point before dawn, Craig saw the ruined cake in a dream. He noticed that the Sea King was without his crown. In his state of semi-consciousness, he tried to remember if the miniature crown really was lost. He would have to check on that as soon as he had a chance.

Then another detail from that day woke him up for good, frightening him, and he sat upright in bed, his heart pounding. He heard Penelope’s voice, “Something scared him at the beach but he won’t say what it was.”

What had scared Dash?

Craig was back in that moment in the living room with his family, feeling the horror that his son had felt.

He wanted to go into the boy’s room and wake him up. Why not? It was summer. Who cared about day camp?

Craig left his bed and walked the dark hall. He opened the door to Dash’s bedroom to look in on the sleeping child. Why didn’t he do this more often? There was nothing as beautiful as a child in repose. Kids were so different from adults. The perfection of Dash’s skin and features made Craig’s heart ache.

He did not wake his son. He left Dash’s door open a crack and went back to his own bedroom.

—

There wasn’t much time available for transgression; that was the problem with adulthood. Worse yet, Craig was a bad liar. He knew this about himself. Fortunately, Penelope was easy to deceive, partly because of her own neuroses, partly because of her own desires.

Or so Craig had thought.

He had promised himself many times that he would stop. He had even made this promise to Penelope. She knew what he was like. They met back when he was in medical school, so many years ago, one day at Serenade Beach. He was sitting by himself when Penelope emerged from the waves. She was special.

He thought of her as his mermaid. She was like nobody else he had ever met. Her parents were dead and she had plenty of money; she lived in her own loft in the arts district, her beauty was unreal. Those were not the reasons Craig pursued her, however.

She was otherworldly, strangely free of the concerns that troubled everybody else. He liked that she seemed to have no baggage, no history. It was a relief to be with a woman who wasn’t constantly talking about her emotions or her sad past. Not that she didn’t have a sad past. Her fiancé had drowned, after all. Craig remembered hearing about the tragedy, mainly because the man in question had been so wealthy, the kind of person who was always in the news.

Penelope kept her grief private. Craig treated his own grief in much the same way, submerging it so that it would not overwhelm him. Other people didn’t understand this. There was the kind of grief you could just barely share, parceling it out in the occasional anecdote or reminiscence, and then there was the grief that was its own country, dark and endless. He had never ventured into it. He never said his parents’ names aloud. It seemed that Penelope was the same way, turning her back on the past so that she could remain optimistic and forward-looking. The future was the answer. With this beautiful girl, this angel who understood so much without needing words, he stood a good chance of continuing in the right direction.

Had he finally found a happy person? Sometimes he thought happy people were their own species and he simply needed to locate more of them. His mother always said you could know a man if you knew his friends, and he tried to surround himself with positive, fulfilled people. Penelope had few close friends, but he liked this about her. She valued privacy. She was a bit obsessed with her image and with appearance in general, but wasn’t that natural for such a good-looking woman? Besides, the whole town focused on beauty. His business, the dermatology practice he dreamed of creating, would be based on the importance of the physical.

After only a few weeks, it felt as though they had been together forever. Early on, Penelope discovered his taste for pornography, but she merely rolled her eyes and never complained. He in turn thought she was sophisticated for not making a fuss about it and liked her all the more. He felt doubly sure of her love because she could accept his faults. This was the sign of a mature relationship, wasn’t it? They got each other. They really did. Naturally, he hid his one-night stands and lived in fear of her finding out. Even after they were committed to each other, he was unable to break the habit. He kept this activity in a silent, secret part of himself. It became less and less frequent, but when he was especially stressed out, approaching exams or nearing the anniversary of his parents’ death, he knew no other way of blowing off steam. It worked so well and took so little time. He had it down to a science.

He never did it with minors or men. He preferred blowjobs to the close, face-to-face intimacy that he reserved for Penelope. Quick, predictable, almost tacky interactions: pick-ups in bars, or chance encounters in bookstores or cafés. College towns and their outlying areas were good for this. He was an expert at sizing women up. There was a certain look, a stance, a way of walking, that he could spot a mile away.

Increased risk made for increased pleasure, a level of satisfaction that he could not get anywhere else, a release from anxiety that lasted for hours, or even a whole day. It was worth it.

Penelope revealed to him one day, with all the grace and discretion of a princess, that she knew what he was up to. He had the sense that the earth had opened up below him, welcoming him into its depths. So this was life. You found a perfect love, but you could not match its perfection, and it was therefore taken from you.

Penelope was not saying goodbye. She was waiting for him to reform. It was miraculous. She claimed to want him more than ever. Her biggest objection was not that he would fall in love with someone else, contract a disease, or get arrested, but that she was not enough for him.

“It has nothing to do with you, baby,” he told her, and he was not lying.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You say you have no control. Why is that? Why do you need anyone else? You should be content to worship me.”

That made him laugh. Penelope said the craziest things, but she was right, in a way.

As the years went by, more and more convinced of his own ability to deceive, he continued to hide his actions from Penelope. They had a long, relaxed courtship, with no pressure to marry. Penelope said she could wait for him to finish medical school. She could wait for children. This gave him plenty of time to get his story straight.

He savored the details of his recklessness, storing them up for when he was safe and alone. While masturbating, he relived parking lots, alleyways, and restrooms. It was best when he was the one being taken care of, and second best was turning the woman around and taking her from behind. He rarely met with opposition to his desires. There seemed to be a whole culture of people out there who wanted this kind of contact without any real connection—anonymous fucking.

He never kissed any of them.

He never gave his real name.

“You do know a man in your position shouldn’t be doing this?” Penelope asked pointblank, shortly after Dash was born.

She caught him completely off guard. “What are you talking about?” he said with a fake smile.

Penelope looked at him without any anger. “I need your word that you’re being careful. Beyond careful. Nothing can happen now that we have a child. Nothing. This is dangerous for us, Craig. You have no idea. I can’t have any scandal. I need to know that I can rely on you. That you’ll always be there.”

So she was onto him, still. She had been onto him all along.

He knew what she was talking about. It was time to grow up. She was afraid of public disgrace, smart woman that she was, but there was nothing to worry about. If she could only understand how fast it happened each time (and there were fewer and fewer times—he went for whole months without it), almost as if it wasn’t happening at all. It was like it wasn’t him. Maybe it was an assertion of his old self, a person he was having difficulty leaving behind. He needed to ease out of his bachelor days. It was a process, as Beachsiders liked to say about the ongoing project of self-improvement. Process, a word he used with his patients.

He backed up his fake smile with a fake laugh and promised that his nastiness was limited to the internet. What was she thinking? They were both so exhausted with work and a baby. It was easy to lie to Penelope because he loved her so much. It wasn’t really a lie. It was a way of working toward the man he needed to be, toward the life they both wanted to have.

Penelope was on the verge of tears. “You know I need you. Your devotion. Your adoration. It isn’t easy for me to be on this earth. I need a good, faithful servant. We’ve been together for so long. I’m somebody else now. I was a completely different creature when you met me. I don’t know where I’d be without my loyal Craig Bo. The man who treats me like a goddess.”

Craig got down on his knees and made a show of worshipping her. It was a game but it was also serious.

The emotion overwhelmed them both, which led to a lovely episode, dirty and weird, just the way Craig liked it. When they were finished and Penelope had fallen asleep, Craig honestly believed he could do this thing. It wasn’t that hard.

He lasted three weeks.

—

In the middle of the week following the Sea King Festival, Craig finally had a chance to check on the cake again. It was always hard to find time alone in the summer when the kids were home from school most of the day. One night after Penelope suggested a trip to the movies, Craig told his family he had a terrible headache and wanted to go to bed early.

Daphne’s disappointment cut to his core. She wanted to be with her father. God, he loved that kid.

He loved all of them as they drove away.

Now for the cake. Maybe it was time to throw the thing away, after all. Why had he kept it? There had been no more phone calls and he had avoided the bike path. He was thinking of getting a membership at a club, but clubs were even more dangerous when it came to the women he might meet.

He didn’t know what he was expecting to see when he opened the cake box. Further decay, perhaps, frightening mold, mounds of gray fur falling into black ooze, coupled with a smell so bad he’d vomit. He went out to the garage, took down the crate and set it on the floor. He lifted the box and opened the lid. The atmosphere of rotting beach held steady as he peered at the contents in the dim light.

The Sea King had in fact lost his crown and his wife appeared to be dead, her eyes shut, her body curling into a fetal position. Skeletons floated everywhere. Craig recognized the three mermaids who had kelped him by their still impeccable hairstyles, but now their perfect smiles only enhanced the horror of their exposed skulls. The sea was in motion, something he had not noticed on first viewing the mini-disaster. A gnat landed on his face and the sensation made him jump. He slammed the lid down and returned the box to its hiding place in the crate.

He was afraid to see what else might surface in that churning sea.

For a moment, he considered joining his family at the movies, tell them he had had a miraculous recovery.

By the time he got on his bike, he was past lying to himself, which was both a relief and a step forward. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, not yet. He was going down to the beach to look for someone. Lying wasn’t necessary. If he ran into a patient on the way or if a neighbor saw him and asked about it later, then he would say he was going out for some exercise in the hope of shaking a bad headache. Sometimes exercise helped him to heal. Besides, he liked the beach. The beach was the whole point of living out here and paying these prices. Everything, life itself, could be traced back to the Pacific. Why not enjoy it?

It was colder on the beach, as always, and the pounding of the waves was immediately calming. He had the feeling he might see the woman again on the sand somewhere but there was such a lot of beach to cover. He both did and did not want to see her. What would he say to her if he did? What would he do? He locked his bike next to one of the restroom areas and then hit the sand, which was cool against his toes. An enormous seagull walked past him, glowering, like a tired beachgoer.

There were still a lot of people down here, of course, as it was the middle of tourist season. All around him Craig heard foreign languages, a few of which he could not identify. This was a good thing, proof that he lived in the most desirable spot on earth. He was lucky to be a Californian, so very lucky. He could have been born anywhere but instead he found himself here, in Beachside, with the beautiful people. His beloved subjects. He watched a group of French kids taking pictures in front of the ocean while jumping into the air. They were trying to capture the moment when their bodies hung suspended in space, arms spread like wings, mouths open in glee. Yes, he lived here, where others merely vacationed. Their cherished memories were his daily life. He needed to remember to come down here more often.

So where was she?

How long before Penelope and the kids came home? It was still a few minutes before sunset. He stood with his hands in his pockets, thinking about what had transpired here with that strange woman.

“Doctor Bo?”

It was a woman’s voice. Craig was startled, caught in a private moment, and it took him a second to find his public persona. He smiled and offered his hand as the woman came into focus.

She was very attractive, with blond hair and blue eyes, and something about her appearance, that perfect skin, those carefully chosen clothes, suggested a model or an actress, someone who could live off her looks. Her delicate hand felt warm and soft in his, and he was almost afraid to squeeze too hard. How did he know her? Did their kids go to the same schools? She was not one of his patients.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I recognized you from the Sea King Festival. You are the Sea King, aren’t you?”

They both laughed at her question. Yes, he was the Sea King. It was funny that such a thing could be true.

“Yes, that’s me. Strange, isn’t it? And you are?”

“Isabelle Laplage. I think it’s wonderful, your being king. I really love these old Beachside traditions.”

“Are you from around here?” he asked. He was getting a little buzz from talking to a lovely stranger on the beach and he wished this could be enough.

“I grew up in Laurel Canyon, actually. We moved out here before my daughter was born. For the schools. And for the ocean.”

“You have just one child?”

“Yes. She goes to Beachside High. And you have a boy and a girl, is that right?”

“Yep, two kids. They’re at Beachside Elementary. Well, my little girl will be starting in the fall.”

“Actually, I think you might know my daughter.”

Craig panicked. This was what he was always afraid of, encountering the parents of one of his conquests. But that was impossible. The girl was still in high school, as her mother had said.

“She was one of the mermaids,” Isabelle explained. “Beatrice.”

Craig paused for a second and then felt so grateful that he sang out, “Oh yes, of course! The blonde?”

“No. The redhead. She doesn’t look anything like either of us. We don’t know where that red hair came from.”

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Craig said, flashing back to the redhead with the brush. “Very poised. I didn’t know that high school kids could participate at that level.”

“She’s the youngest mermaid that they’ve ever had,” Isabelle said, obviously proud. “Sixteen.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Isabelle looked like she wanted to tell him something but was too shy. “What is it?” Craig asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Beatrice had a fever the night of the festival, that’s all. She’s much better now.”

Craig forced a smile. “They do bounce back quite fast when they’re young.”

“Actually, it was a little scary there for a while. She was delirious. We were wondering if something was going around. If any of the other members of the court,” and here she touched Craig’s arm, “were feeling unwell.”

“I’m fine,” Craig said, but it sounded like a question.

“Good. That’s good. Well, I should leave you alone then.” She hesitated before delivering the most charming smile Craig had seen in a while, one that revealed more than straight teeth. “I wanted to tell you how much I liked the festival. You were a really good sport about it. The kelping is so fascinating to me but I can’t explain why. Anyway, I appreciate—my whole family appreciates—everything you do for Beachside.”

She was blushing. Craig was smitten and used her shyness as an excuse to take her hand again and shake it. He was a good citizen. A big donor. The Sea King. “It’s an honor, really. You know, this is my hometown. I live just a few blocks from where I was raised.”

“Really? That’s so rare. A native. How lovely that you can raise your children where you grew up.”

For a moment, Craig felt like crying. Everything this Isabelle Laplage said was true. He wanted to cry but he also wanted to fuck this woman, and his wife, and all the women of Beachside. That was his true contribution. Was it so wrong to love everybody? All he could do was keep the smile on his face and nod. He was afraid that Isabelle could see the tears welling up in his eyes. Oh, well. She would certainly remember him in the unlikely event that she or her daughter ever needed a dermatologist. He would have bet that Isabelle’s skin was perfect all over her body, unblemished and supple, and that her daughter had been blessed with the same wondrous gift.

She turned to go, heading back up the north side of the beach. What a great ass. Craig was mad at himself. He should have kept the conversation going. Why didn’t he ask her what she was doing down here by herself? Where was her family? Everybody had a story. Mothers could almost never find time for themselves, especially in the summer.

If he stayed past sunset, Penelope would be suspicious. He was her prisoner. Lately he felt her eyes on his back every time he left the house, even if he was just going to the office. Every moment they weren’t together carried the potential for transgression, like this moment, before Isabelle Laplage had come along.

Maybe his misbehavior was his way of getting back at Penelope for always forgiving him. With her forgiveness she tied him to her forever. There was something oppressive in knowing that she would always welcome him back.

Craig’s emotions shifted. He questioned staying in his hometown and creating this doctor persona. He wanted to be somebody else, not Doctor Craig Bo, but someone entirely different, more exciting, for women like Isabelle. With hit-and-run sex he could become a different person, enter into a mini-covenant, and then fly away as if he had never been there at all. It was perfect. Sometimes he felt he could live on this earth a hundred years if he could just have a little more freedom. Even introducing himself, stepping forward and smiling, was beginning to feel like a prison.

He got home before Penelope and the kids. He was relieved, actually, that nothing had happened down at the beach, though he still wondered if he would see the strange little woman again. She felt so far away from him that it was like they had never met. Still, in moments of semi-consciousness, he remembered their points of contact. He felt the impact of his bike running into her body, and he trembled as he recalled her going down to her knees before him.

After Craig put away his bike and drank some water, he noticed his left leg itching, at first subtly, and then with a surprising ferocity. He scratched although he had long ago trained himself to step back, assess the situation. The itch was endless. He surrendered to it until he felt something come away on his fingers.

It was a little piece of kelp, so small he had to examine it under the bathroom light, turning it over on his palm until he was sure of what he saw. Kelp. Seaweed. Left over from the kelping, obviously. Strange that any could still be stuck to him. Impossible. The festival was days ago. Could that special mermaid paste have been so strong? It didn’t seem likely. Maybe he should look into that. What if that stuff wasn’t safe? Someone could have an allergic reaction.

And then, before his family got back, Craig was overwhelmed by the urge to check the cake again. He did not know what he expected to find.

At the same time, he was afraid to see what else might appear on the cake. “It’s too soon, too soon,” he told himself. Let it rest. Let it evolve. To hell with the rotting cake. He didn’t really want to think about it. The memory of the smell was enough to make him gag.

When Penelope came home, she could tell that something was wrong and she duly offered him comfort: a cocktail, a massage, a blowjob. He declined and took a Placidia. The spot on his leg where the kelp had appeared sat like an open sore. Penelope fetched a bandage and took care of it. “There. Maybe you should leave this covered,” she said with a sigh. “You got hurt on the bike path? Again?”

“Is that what I said?” Craig honestly could not remember what he had told her.

“You went down to the beach. You said you watched the sunset? I heard you telling Dashiell and Daphne.”

Craig regained control. “I went for a quick bike ride, for the exercise. And the fresh air. I don’t know how I hurt myself. I must have scraped my leg on the pedal.”

Penelope stared at him. “You seem distracted. Is something wrong?”

“No, of course not. I think we should put the kids in front of a movie and take some time for ourselves.”

“But we just went to a movie. Anyway, they’re both supposed to work on reading.” Their summer routine. Practice reading. Practice math. Never mind that Daphne already read fluently.

They ended up taking pictures and posting them on the accounts they liked best, First Love and Yay Me! Craig worked himself into the right mood and did, in fact, start to feel better. Penelope was perfectly content. Daphne always went along with whatever her family was doing and appeared appropriately happy. Dash, as usual, hid from the camera and looked miserable.

“What, are you never going to take a picture again as long as you live?” Craig asked his son. “You’re like a vampire.”

Dash turned pale. “How am I like a vampire?”

“You know,” Craig said. “They’re always avoiding photo opportunities. Because they don’t want to be found out.” Then he mimicked a vampire hiding behind his cape.

Daphne came to the rescue. “I think they avoid mirrors. They don’t want other people to know that they’re the undead. I don’t know if they had a lot of photo shoots in the old days in Transylvania. I know they didn’t have Yay Me!”

Craig laughed and hugged Daphne to him. “You have no idea how smart this kid is, Pen.”

“I do,” Dash said before his mother could answer. Craig studied his son, trying to detect a sign of bitterness, but then Dash said something that none of the others expected, “I want to go down to the beach tomorrow night, as a family. I want to watch the sunset together before the summer goes away.”

Penelope kissed Dash’s head and said, “Good idea!” Then, in a low voice she told her husband, “See? Both our kids are brilliant.”

Later, when Craig was tucking Dash into bed, he asked him as casually as he could about the day of the Sea King Festival. “So what was going on, Dash? What scared you?”

“It was nothing.”

“You can’t tell me that now. You seemed really upset.”

Craig felt lost in the darkness of his son’s bedroom.

“You have to be a kid to understand,” Dash said, finally.

“So it’s like a secret?”

“Sort of.”

Craig was at fault. He had not shown compassion or interest in the height of the drama. It was too late now. Anything he might say at this point came from the script of good parenting, a worthless string of clichés. He tried anyway. “If there’s ever anything that you need to tell me, Dash, you should just say it. No matter what it is, I’m here. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Craig continued to wait.

“Do you believe the story they tell at the museum?” Dash asked, finally.

“The history museum, you mean?” He wasn’t expecting this. “What story?” More silence. “You’re talking about the place where you took the field trip last year?” He took a seat on Dash’s bed.

“The Beachside Museum of History,” Dash said in a solemn voice.

Craig nodded. Dash was scaring him a little. “What did they tell you?”

“Nothing. I mean, it’s a story the kids tell. About the mermaid in the attic room.”

Craig searched his memory. Yes, there was some legend about a mermaid in the attic. He had not thought about this for years. She lived in a giant fishbowl and could see out the famous circular window all the way down to the playground of Beachside Elementary. That was all Craig could remember. Was there something else? Had some man wronged her? She couldn’t find anyone to love her and so she tried to lure young boys up to the attic. That was it. The kids told this story and then it always died down after the first-grade field trip. Craig had not thought about the mermaid since he was Dash’s age.

“I went up to the attic,” Dash said.

“By yourself? Is that allowed? Did you get in trouble?”

“The lady who works there, Mrs. Delmar, let me do it.”

“She did?”

“Yes. She said my name. She knows everybody’s name.”

Craig realized he was holding his breath and pushed out an angry sigh. “Dash, if you’ve done something wrong you need to own up to it. Telling stories doesn’t help. It only makes things worse.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I went up to the attic by myself. And I saw something.”

Fear kept Craig silent as his son kept on talking.

“I saw her.” The boy was crying now.

“You saw who, Dashiell?”

“The mermaid.”

Craig’s leg began to itch and burn as if a thousand jellyfish had descended upon it. He scratched like a dog until his skin was dripping. The flesh around the wound felt thick and fibrous. Dammit. What was this, some kind of infection? A living organism lodged deep in his skin? Or was it just his imagination? He was a dermatologist, but he had never seen anything like this. He was tempted to send a biopsy to the lab.

Ridiculous. They would tell him it was seaweed, not flesh. Better not to think about it. Better to wait and see.

He did not know what to say next. He felt like he was getting somewhere with Dash, but he did not like what he was hearing. “You saw the mermaid, eh? What was she like? How big was her tail?”

“I couldn’t see her tail. The fishbowl was all murky. She was leaning out of it. Her teeth were gray. She has red hair like Daphne’s, but all tangled. She knew my name, too. She…” The boy stopped, overwhelmed by tears.

Craig tried to calculate what this would cost in terms of time. Money was no object, but what kind of doctor would be able to guide Dash through these dangerous fantasies? It was obvious the boy believed what he was saying, which scared Craig more than anything. Was this normal for his age? Craig tried to recall when he had stopped believing ghost stories, but he felt like he couldn’t remember childhood at all, not really. The kids he saw as patients were usually teenagers. Pediatric dermatology was another field entirely.

“She told me things,” Dash went on.

Craig understood that this was like a dance. He had to follow certain steps to keep Dash talking. There was a rhythm to the conversation. “What kind of things?”

“She said things about Mom.”

“About Mom?” Craig had not expected that. “What about her?”

“She said that I don’t really know who Mom is. She told me that I needed to see,” and here the boy’s voice fell to a whisper, “Mom naked.”

Craig released an oversized nervous laugh. “Well, I’ve seen her naked and there’s nothing wrong with her at all.” Where was the boy getting this story? Craig considered calling Marjorie Delmar and complaining, or maybe reporting Dash’s teacher from last year.

“Dad,” Dash said, “did you see me being born?”

Another weird turn. “Of course. You know we had a home birth. The midwife came to our house.”

“But you weren’t in the room when I came out, were you?”

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Craig asked. The memory was problematic. He had stepped outside to answer a text from a woman he barely knew, and when he came back in the house, Penelope was holding a newborn boy. Dashiell. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. There had been no indication the baby was that close. The midwife was sure they would be waiting for several more hours, and in fact she too had left the room for a second, to fetch something Penelope wanted. Then the baby was there, alive and undeniable. There was no resisting this blessing, and Craig had gone forward, gratefully, jumping right into his new role as a father. (Nothing had happened. Craig shot off one chaste text to that woman from the bar. They never even hooked up. He only ever went to bars when he really needed it, to take a break from his regular life. Nothing happened with that woman. He was innocent, at least once.)

Craig started over. “What’s troubling you, exactly? Your mom is a beautiful woman, Daphne is your sister, and you, of course, are my son. We are a very happy family.” Perhaps that was all he needed to say. He probably didn’t say this enough. Children liked obvious statements and lavish reassurances.

“Dad?”

“What, sport?”

“There was something I was supposed to do.”

Craig waited. The itching kicked in again. It was amazing how it could disappear and then heat up with a vengeance.

“The mermaid told me to give you something and I never did give it to you.”

“What was that?”

“I was supposed to give you a kiss from her.”

The hairs stood up on the back of Craig’s neck. “A kiss?”

“Yes. Her lips were ice cold. She made me promise to give you the kiss but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t.”

Craig didn’t know what to say. The boy was sobbing all over again. Craig turned on the little lamp on Dash’s nightstand and found some Kleenex. “It’s all right, Dash. You’re being silly.”

“I was supposed to give you the kiss before the Sea King Festival. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

The kid was inconsolable. Craig was beyond impatience or dismay. He was so tired. Empty. He took a wad of tissue and reached down to his calf, where he found something that he could not bear to look at but identified from touch alone. It was a tidy little square of kelp. Craig ripped it off and balled it up in the tissue before his child could see it. Dash turned over and buried his head in his pillow, and Craig took the opportunity to rub his son’s back.

Craig thought about the undelivered kiss. They didn’t kiss much, he and Dash. Craig had never kissed his own father. Had there been any reason for a kiss, any occasion he had missed? Had Dash tried to approach him and been rebuffed? Craig did not remember. The boy seemed always to be avoiding him, like he was trying to stay out of Craig’s way.

The story of the mermaid bothered Craig the most. It did not mean anything, not really, but now this children’s tale was imbued with strange significance. He thought about the woman on the bike path. Was she a redhead? It had been too dark to tell. Strange. Both he and his son had encountered a mysterious female before the Sea King Festival. Dash’s story was imaginary, though, while Craig had merely got tangled up with a drifter.

Did his son have some sort of mental problem? How would they deal with this? Craig wished he could be more like Penelope, who always believed Dash to be sensitive and gifted.

Craig had an idea and grabbed Dash’s shoulder. “Hey. You can kiss me now. Why not? Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone, especially not the mermaid.”

Dash turned around and sat up. “Oh, Dad. She’ll know. She knows everything.”

Anger pounded behind Craig’s eyeballs. His leg was throbbing and he had to look down to reassure himself that it wasn’t on fire. He could not tolerate this nonsense from Dash. His father would never have put up with this from him. “Dash, if you don’t stop it with these stories, you’re going to make yourself very unhappy. That’s the one thing I know for sure. Forget about the mermaid, why don’t you?”

Dash was already retreating into himself. Craig had seen this before. Dash wouldn’t speak of this anymore tonight, possibly ever. Maybe it was good he got this out of his system. Could it be cathartic? Craig ruffled the boy’s hair and turned off the light.

Craig did not mention the mermaid to Penelope. He had problems of his own. When he finally remembered the mermaid again, it was already too late to do anything about her.

2.

The kelp was growing out of control. Craig kept finding small dried flakes in his sheets. He couldn’t wear socks without something snagging on them. Bits of fresh, wet kelp came off in his fingers whenever he absentmindedly scratched at the wound. When Craig came out of the shower the Friday after the festival, a long piece of kelp was flapping against his leg. Anxious to be rid of it, he cut it off with a pair of manicure scissors and flushed it down the toilet. All his medical training felt far away.

He was drawn to the cake in the garage but there was no time for it. He got dressed and called his office to say that he would be a little bit late.

Craig had not been to the Beachside Museum of History since he was a kid. From the outside, the place looked like it had not changed at all. Three stories high with a plain stone façade, the museum stood at the end of a residential street not far from a busy avenue. Craig, driven by the crisis in his body, craved the quiet and controlled atmosphere of the museum. And he had some questions about the Sea King Festival. Yes, he definitely needed to catch up with his hometown. When everything was back to normal, he would bring the children here, let Dash see that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Surely there was no mermaid in the attic.

Craig entered through a heavy glass door. A breeze blew over him and he smelled the sea. In the lobby, Mrs. Delmar (he never thought of her as simply Marjorie) was sitting behind an antique desk with a shell-shaped top. “Hello, Doctor Bo,” she said.

“Nice to see you again. I guess I’m famous now.”

“Of course.” She held up the Beachside Mirror where he was featured, fully kelped, on the front page. It was strange to see himself in an actual newspaper instead of on a screen. The photo made the event seem both more real and yet long ago.

Craig wasn’t sure how to begin. “Yes. We saw you there too, of course, with your fancy camera.”

“I’m there every year.”

They fell into an awkward silence, and then Mrs. Delmar explained that admission was free today and that flash photography was not allowed. As she spoke, Craig wondered how long she had been working at the museum.

Craig leaned in to study her face. Marjorie Delmar looked fantastic for her age.

“It’s great that you’re open today,” Craig said, slipping a twenty into the donation box. “I’m only here for one thing, actually. I would like to see the collection of photographs from the past Sea King Festivals, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, Doctor Bo.”

The Beachside Museum of History, while unassuming from the street, was a favorite of the Historical Society, and its interior was often featured on postcards and calendars. Craig remembered, vaguely, climbing its spiral staircases, but not every floor was open to the public, or at least that was the case when he had visited as a child. The sand-colored tiles of the first floor complemented the displays of seashells and dried seaweed samples. Black and white images of early Beachside, its streets touchingly empty, its houses grand, peered down at him from the world of the distant past. There were photographs of the largest fish ever caught at the pier, of rows of girls in modest swimsuits and bathing caps, of the famous old hotels and the aquarium. Craig rushed through the first floor as Mrs. Delmar hurried behind him. He hoped that she wasn’t going to give him a tour. He needed to be alone.

Somehow, despite her tiny steps, Mrs. Delmar got in front of him and led him up a spiral staircase to the second floor, which featured early surfboards and wetsuits, including an antique diving suit with a shiny helmet. An entire wall was dedicated to the determined sensual evolution of the bikini. Craig’s leg itched where the kelp grew, and a tidal wave of anxiety rose up from his solar plexus.

“Is there anything else you would care to look at?” Mrs. Delmar asked.

“No, thank you. Just the Sea King Festival,” Craig said.

“That’s what I expected.”

Together they proceeded to the next staircase, another spiral, narrower than the first. The third floor was noticeably hotter than the rest of the building and smelled like old wood. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling in official Sea King portraits dating back to 1920. Craig was overwhelmed. Despite the ribbon of kelp that stuck to the leg of his pants, despite the confusion of his life, he still felt pride in the fact that his picture hung somewhere in this procession of the great men of Beachside.

Craig didn’t know where to begin. He moved closer to the wall and then backed up. He went down on his knees before rising again. Finally, he looked to Mrs. Delmar for help.

“It’s a bit much to take in, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Craig said. He looked at the oldest of the portraits. One stunning, smiling couple after another looked back at him. They were flawless. “The Sea King is always a married man?”

“Always a family man,” she told him.

“Is that right?”

“Most definitely. Beachside was intended to be a family place, a safe and happy realm set apart from the rest of the city.”

Craig nodded. Aside from changes in hairstyle and sideburns, each Sea King, thanks to the kelping, looked almost exactly like every other Sea King. It was the wives, in their slowly changing swimsuits, who gave the pictures context. He assumed that each king must have felt the strange tingling he himself had felt when the kelp was being applied. Perhaps they had also felt as trapped and self-conscious as he had, standing there with their arms sticking straight out. He examined the photographs more closely.

“Has it always been the same two crowns, all these years?”

“Yes. On the Friday before next year’s festival, your wife, the current Sea Queen, will surrender the crowns to us.”

Surrender the crowns? Such strangely formal language, but Mrs. Delmar was quite serious. And why was she talking about Penelope as if she were some distant personage? The two women knew each other, Craig was sure of it. In any case, Penelope had probably put the crowns away in a safe place. They were heavy and Craig assumed they were made of junk metal. Now he wished he had taken a closer look at them, but the strange intensity of Saturday’s festival had not allowed him to focus on anything for long. The event passed like the blur of a wedding, in a continuous spray of high emotion, with hundreds of eager eyes trained on him.

Finally, he came to his own photograph, where a smaller, kelped version of himself stared out with what he realized now was a look of bewilderment. It must have been the fatigue or too much sun in his eyes. Penelope appeared dazzling as usual. Just once he wished she would take a bad picture.

“Are there any other photographs?” Craig asked, stepping back and looking around. “What about the rest of the festival?”

“We have thousands of photographs in the archives. I am constantly working to transfer these to a digital format. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”

Craig felt his body tingle and grow light. “What about the mermaids? Are there any pictures of the mermaids?”

Mrs. Delmar turned and gestured at the walls around her. “We obviously don’t have enough room to hang every picture. The mermaid pictures are in the mermaid archive.”

“The mermaid archive,” Craig repeated.

“Yes. That’s in the attic. It’s not usually open to the public. Would you like to see it?” She pointed to a narrow staircase, barely more substantial than a ladder, which led to a little door.

Craig was already sweating from the heat of the third floor. He hadn’t intended to stay so long. He wasn’t sure what he had come for. Did the Sea Kings of the recent past know what was wrong with him now? He needed to talk to someone soon about the kelp problem; others must’ve suffered this malady. For a second he was tempted to reveal his problem to Mrs. Delmar but then decided that would be unwise.

“Actually, I need to be going,” Craig said. He was dizzy now. “Can you remind me, who was Sea King last year?”

Mrs. Delmar looked surprised. “That was Leonard Massif, of course. I believe you two are acquainted.”

“Yes. Of course,” Craig said, flushing. So now he was losing his memory too? He had to get out of the museum.

At that moment a man carrying a surfboard popped out of the little attic door and stepped down the staircase. He and Mrs. Delmar exchanged smiles. She seemed overjoyed to present him to Craig. “This is Dude Pelikan, our surfing historian!”

“Surfing historian?” Sweat ran down Craig’s face as his ears began to ring.

“Hey, Doctor Bo! Good to see you. I was wondering when you would show up,” Dude Pelikan said, extending a hand that was entirely bone.

Just before Craig hit the floor, he realized where he knew Dude Pelikan from: his was the voice of the prank caller.

—

When Craig woke he was alone with Dude Pelikan in the tiny attic room with the circular window, the place where Dash claimed to have seen the mermaid. Craig now saw that the window was designed to look like a ship’s porthole. There was no giant fishbowl. There was only a cot and a chair, but the beach scents of salt, seaweed, and suntan lotion filled the room, which gave the impression of a much larger space. Dude Pelikan stood, his hands on his hips, looking out the window.

“I like to call this the summer room,” he said. “Yeah. It’s always summer up here.”

Craig rose slowly on one elbow and cleared his throat. His left leg felt like it was made of stone. He looked down to find an enormous rope of kelp had grown out of his ankle and was now twining around the frame of the cot. There were many things Craig wanted to say to Dude Pelikan, who had turned to him and was shaking his head in sympathy. “Please. I need help.”

Dude Pelikan smiled, revealing gray teeth. “Help. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I need some help myself. But everything you need is right inside your beautiful house. That’s one formidable wife you have, Doctor Bo.”

“What does Penelope have to do with this?”

“Man, that is such a good question. She’s the reason why I took this job, to tell you the truth.”

“What job?” Craig asked. He was sitting up now. The itching in his leg had turned into a steady fire. His skin was vibrating up to his knees, and he had to fight the urge to kick. “What exactly does a surfing historian do?”

“Penelope can’t speak for herself. The women in her line are like royalty, and royalty never talks. Queens always have biographers, ever notice that? So that’s who I am now, her biographer. I’ve been inside every hole, all around her head—forgive me for saying so. I know who she is. If it weren’t for Penelope, this town would be completely different. Her kind keeps the Sea King Festival alive, if you ask me.”

“What are you talking about?” He felt something crawling on his shins. When he pulled up his pant leg, he saw countless little green buds.

“You don’t know much about your wife, do you, Doctor Bo?”

The burning stopped abruptly and was replaced by a dull but steady pain. Craig thought about Penelope. He realized that he had not been able to think about anyone but himself since the Sea King Festival. He had become completely self-obsessed, a mad monarch. For a second he was panicked by the thought of his children. Where were they now?

With their mother. They had to be with Penelope.

Dude Pelikan went on as if reading Craig’s thoughts. “I’ve known Penelope for a long time. Before she was yours.”

“You have? But I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Oh, I’ve been around forever. I’m a native, too. A native of the Pacific.”

Craig paused. A throbbing pain had kicked up behind one eye. He reached around in search of his phone and was startled by how cold his own flesh felt to him. “You’ve been around forever? You seem so young.”

Dude Pelikan laughed. “You have to be young to survive this town.”

“You’re talking in riddles. I need to get out of here.”

“What’s the rush? How far are you going to get with that thing hanging off your leg? And here’s a question: how will it affect your sexual potency?” Dude Pelikan snapped his bony fingers three times.

Craig tried to stand up but was overcome by dizziness and nausea. The kelp rope reminded him that he was a prisoner. Dude Pelikan put his ice-cold skeleton hand on Craig’s shoulder. “You want the secret? It’s all about beauty and sexual potency. That’s what the Beachside people are after. The money thing is not all that important. Yeah, yeah, I know. You think you can’t live without money, but guess what? You can! I can’t tell you how many people I’ve watched ripping their hair out after that little epiphany.”

Craig lay back down on the cot. The room was spinning. “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”

“I’m talking wealth, man. Aristocracy. Kings and queens. Hollywood.”

“What? You’ve lost me.” Craig tried to lie perfectly still. Maybe he could fool the pain somehow, hide from it.

“You’re a king now, dude. You’re the current king. Surely you can understand? Sacrifice is always required of the king.”

Craig laughed. It was nothing more than a slight exhale, like a cough, but even that created a searing pain in his chest and lungs. He could barely speak. “Sacrifice?”

“Yeah, man. Sacrifice. And transformation. Look at you!” Dude Pelikan said, pointing at Craig’s leg as if the kelp were a good thing.

“Am I going to die here?” Craig didn’t know where the question came from and was surprised he could articulate it at all. But perhaps he hadn’t? Maybe he had merely thought it and this strange character, Dude Pelikan, somehow understood him.

“Die? No way! If only we could be so lucky. No, man, you’re not going to die. Not ever. That’s the thing about Beachside. This town never lets you go. Now that you’ve been crowned, you’re here forever. It’s time for rejoicing.”

Craig grimaced and his face froze that way, like a statue. His mind was racing with thoughts of Penelope in labor and how defiantly beautiful she had looked up until the moment he stepped out of the room. She never appeared distressed, not even when giving birth. Maybe he didn’t know who his wife was after all.

“You should be flattered that she started a family with you, man. Her type is usually very selective. Her survival depends upon it. Be thankful she’s not a full-fledged goddess. The gods retreat and leave the mortals to pick up the pieces. A lot of stuff, and I mean a lot, happens in coves and temples. The Mediterranean is full of these sexy, violent little stories that leave women pregnant and in tears. The men don’t do too well either. Then the gods take off. They don’t hang around to deal with the fallout. But Penelope is different. The thing about your wife is that she stayed. She loves Beachside. She got married and bought a house. She gave birth. She even goes to the grocery store!”

The kelp was sprouting from both of Craig’s legs now, slowly making its way up to his knees. Again, he could smell whatever it was that the redheaded mermaid had brushed on his body during the kelping. It made him think of Daphne, his daughter, who had that same amazing red hair.

“Mortals are always fooled by the body. No offense, but you focus on it way too much. Don’t you know that there are places in this world where people try to free themselves of it? That’s all they do, man, they work to transcend their bodies. That’s their entire notion of freedom. Beachside has gone in the other direction—you certainly have, as a doctor of the countenance. Maybe you should accept what’s happening to you. I’m sure Penelope made things worse with all those photographs. Those endless posts. She tricked you. She trapped you on the surface of things, of everything, by constantly reproducing her exterior. Didn’t you ever think about what lies beneath her skin, dude? Weren’t you curious? Come on now, how about when you were having sex? You never noticed anything unusual going on? You think it’s normal for a woman to come every single time? I’ve been around the seven seas and I’m here to tell you that never happens.”

Craig was sweating seawater. He thought about the blowjob down at the beach. Was this his punishment? Had his offense been so great? “Please,” he said. “Please help me. I never meant to hurt anyone. I never wanted to be king.”

“Oh, dude. Nobody ever wants to be king. I hear you, man. I hear you. Nobody wants to be this kind of king. That’s just the way it is.”

“Penelope,” Craig said. He was trying to address her. Invoke her. Was she the answer?

Dude Pelikan looked both radiant and mournful at the same time. “Honestly, I feel for you. I can see that you’re struggling. I mean, look at you. But at least you’re not dead! You should see what could happen to a guy like you. Ah, Penelope. Her line has been here so long. She’s always had a human body. Well, for the most part. And she really is in love with her family, especially that boy of yours. If you think a mortal woman loves her babies, especially her sons, just imagine how it is for Penelope.”

The sound of choking was all that came from Craig’s mouth, but he was hanging on to Dude Pelikan’s words as if they could save him.

“I’m the surfing historian of this museum but I can’t go in the water ever again. I tried, once, and that’s how I ended up with this hand of bone. I went down there at sunset with my board and stood for quite a while, just looking. The seawater tickled my feet. Later, I understood that it was eating my skin. Then I bent over and touched the foam with my hand, only to watch my treasured flesh disappear. Somewhere behind me I could hear that weird siren sound. Now I have this bone-hand forever, just another hidden curse of immortality.

“The maids of the sea won’t release me. This is what is known as an abusive relationship. It used to be called slavery. I can see it now for what it is. I know it can’t go on forever. Well, I suppose it could, precisely because we’re not regular mortals, but I won’t let that happen. They’re going to make me pay for escaping to the museum, though. They’ll probably turn me into an animal since they can’t kill me. The obvious thing would be to make me into a pelican, and, in fact, I’ve been studying the water-bird lifestyle. There’s a whole file on them in this museum. I wouldn’t mind flying, fishing, and being in touch with the ocean. That’s why we’re all here, for the love of the ocean. Beachside people are in love with the sea, don’t you think?”

Craig tried to nod but his neck was painfully stiff. It was hard for him to open his mouth, much less speak. Even his eyeballs were burning. Dude Pelikan put his bone-hand over Craig’s forehead like a mother checking her child for fever.

“I’m doing my job. You want to know a secret? I’m not really a historian. Oh, I write shit down, but nobody ever reads it. Sometimes, though, I think I’m the only real historian this world has ever known. You see, I guard the past, the real past, I mean, not just a human accounting of the past. There’s a portal and everything, right in this room. Everyone thinks that guarding a portal is easy—I blame comics for this—but it’s not. The trick is not merely to guard the portal but to keep everyone’s attention away from it. Human eyes can do a lot of damage and the human imagination is even worse. There can’t be any drama around the portal. People shouldn’t have the slightest idea it’s there, but a select few will figure it out. Well, congratulations, Doctor Bo. You’re one of them. For all your faults, you’re the only Sea King I’ve ever known to come in here on a workday and ask the right questions.”

The cot felt like a raft. As he drifted, Craig tried to keep his eyes trained on the window, the porthole, and he wondered if that was the portal Dude Pelikan was talking about. Had his whole life been headed toward this attic room? Love for his old self, his old life, came crashing over him.

Dude Pelikan was still talking. “You need to go back to the beach, dude. That’s where all your trouble started. Am I right?” He looked to the left, and then to the right, before saying in a low voice, “About that girl. I was trying to warn you. I don’t have much power but I do what I can. If you had shown up at the Little Free Library, I would have convinced you not to go to the festival. I didn’t really care about the money. I was trying to get your attention. That’s what you care about, right? Money? Maybe things worked out for the best. This was your destiny, dude. That little maid has left her human body behind and gone back into the waves. I guess you couldn’t say no. Well, a lot of us have trouble saying no to women.”

Craig gazed at Dude Pelikan and then swallowed seawater. His nostrils were thick with slime, and when he blinked, a weighty film glazed his eyelids. His voice sounded like it belonged to an ancient creature. “Wait. You think I need to go back to the beach?”

“You’ve got no choice. It’s the only place for you now. Penelope will see to that, eventually, but I like the idea of you taking charge. Embracing your destiny.”

Waves crashed through the room and Craig felt sea-spray on his face. He wished, perversely, that he had followed the woman into the sea that night after doing what he did with her. So what if it was freezing cold? He might have been spared all this.

The porthole blazed with the light of the sun. Dude Pelikan winked at Craig. “Come on, your majesty. You’re not beat yet. Get on your feet. Do you think you could manage that? No?”

Craig knew he had to make an effort. He swung his legs off the cot and stood up, nearly crashing to the floor as his knees locked. The rope of kelp dragged the cot until it snapped. Dude Pelikan caught him and Craig felt how wet and soft his own body was when pressed up against the bone-and-sinew of the grinning historian.

“Good job!” Dude Pelikan said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Dude Pelikan held up his bone hand, inviting Craig to give him a high-five. As Craig tried to raise his hand, his elbow popped, and the pain flooded up to his shoulder. Dude Pelikan reached for him, and they made contact for a moment, a spark flying off their weak union, one part infected Beachside flesh, one part ancient bone.

—

Craig practiced walking around the little attic. The stiffness lessened when he was in motion. He rolled up his pants and studied his legs. It looked like he was wearing knee-high socks of thick green seaweed. He imagined living this way, having to wear long pants forever, and abandoning trips to the beach. How would he manage to hide this affliction? How long could he possibly pull it off? He couldn’t hide it from the children, or from Penelope.

Penelope. He needed to talk to her.

Could he trust what this Dude Pelikan character told him? What about Mrs. Delmar downstairs? That old lady (she had to be old, no matter how good she looked) had certainly surprised him. Maybe it was best to concentrate on what was really important. Penelope, yes. He was still a married man. Dash and Daphne definitely. He loved those two. He had to live for them from now on. If he got through this, he would spend all his spare time with them. No more long hours pushing expensive treatments on his patients.

The problem with Beachside people, though, was that they would do anything for beauty.

He wasn’t attractive anymore. Not with these legs. He was a freak and he felt sick.

“You must be missing the ocean right about now,” Dude Pelikan said. “It’s your kingdom, am I right?”

“I need to talk to my wife,” Craig said.

“Your wife. Right.”

Craig found his phone. He stared at it as if he did not know what it was. He felt a little trickle of seawater in his sinus cavity. Time was running out.

“I’m glad we had this talk,” Dude Pelikan said. “Man to man. Well, transformed man to transformed man. Penelope and Marjorie keep me on a pretty tight leash, as you can see.”

“Marjorie?”

“Mrs. Delmar,” Dude Pelikan said with a wicked smile.

Craig blinked and took this in. His voice cracked when he spoke. “You call her Marjorie? I see. I think I should go home now. I have questions for my wife.” As soon as he stood up, the world turned black and his ears started ringing again.

“Good luck with that. Here, I’ll help you to your car.”

Craig slowly made his way out of the museum, struggling with each staircase, sometimes feeling as though his knees were locked in place. Dude Pelikan had him by the elbow the whole time as he murmured words of encouragement and occasional bits of praise heavy with surfer slang. On the ground floor, Mrs. Delmar looked up from her filing as if Craig were just another visitor.

Craig paused and looked at both of them. They didn’t care and they wouldn’t help. He would have to fight for his life at home.

As he lowered himself into his pleasantly warm car and got ready to call the office with a careful lie, Dude Pelikan leaned in. “Your wife isn’t the only one, Doctor Bo.”

Craig looked up. “What?”

“There are others.” Dude Pelikan looked nervously from side to side.

“Others?”

Dude Pelikan clapped his one good hand on the roof of Craig’s Porsche; the other was hidden in his pocket. “There are dangerous women all over this town. All over the beach. It’s tough for us men to survive. That’s all I can say. Keep thinking about Penelope’s family line. Think of how far back it reaches. Well, you’ll see when you get there.”

“When I get where?”

Craig started the engine and drove away, struggling to stay on the right side of the road. It was all he could manage. He had to leave the land of riddles and go home. He obviously couldn’t work while he looked like this. A terrible itching came on like bee stings. It was a miserable sensation, which only spread more as he scratched. He pulled over. What if this wasn’t the end of it?

He understood.

The kelp was going to progress upward. Keep growing, crawling all the way to his head. He could already taste it in his saliva and the back of his throat. What would happen when it reached his heart, his brain?

He finally put a call through to this office and told the receptionist that he had the flu. The technicians could take care of most of the work for the day. The work did itself after all. All you needed was one woman to explain the various available procedures and another to point the laser. What an easy way to make a living.

What if he never saw that place again?

How much time did he have left with his family?

He thought about Dash. Why wasn’t he more patient? That boy had been trying to tell him something. Mermaids were real, yes, and they weren’t nice, but that was the least of it. There was something about Penelope. Something was wrong with her. The boy didn’t know about that part, though. Not really. Dash worshipped his mother. Which was why, Craig realized, he hadn’t obeyed the mermaid: out of loyalty to Penelope. Even if he didn’t know what was happening, even if he was scared, Dash still understood family loyalty. Love for his son overwhelmed Craig until salt tears came pouring out of his eyes.

Craig worshipped her too, didn’t he? Yes, he had cheated on her, but, as he always insisted, that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. But did he know her? Had he been overlooking something essential?

He hadn’t seen his kids being born. True. That was one of the things that had troubled Dash. That, and there was the problem of seeing Penelope naked. Poor boy. He must have been so embarrassed by that idea. Craig had seen her naked, of course. He had seen every inch of her. Fucked every inch of her. His wife was shy about nothing. She begged for it.

What could he possibly have missed?

He came back to Dash’s birth. It happened so fast. Craig had stepped outside for a second (never mind what he was doing), and when he came back, Dash was a tiny, black-haired baby in Penelope’s arms. Penelope was glowing. Craig was the one who looked like he had just gone through labor, as the photographs testified. The photographs. Yay Me! Dude Pelikan had said something about Penelope’s image, how she used it to trick him somehow. But the camera never lied.

He knew who his wife was, a beautiful woman with a sad history. No parents left, either. An orphan like him. “It was just my mother and me while I was growing up. Don’t be sorry. We were happy,” she always said. One time she showed him pictures of herself and a woman who looked exactly like her, only more mature, more experienced: her mother. Now deceased. They could have been sisters. Should he have been more curious about her past? Was that his job? He loved the fact that Penelope only wanted to dwell in the present.

There was no doubt that she loved her children. None. In fact, sometimes Craig worried that she loved them more than she loved him. That was natural, though, wasn’t it, for people who didn’t have parents? Think about it. If you have lost your parents, you value your relationship with your child all the more. That was what he told their friends when they marveled at Penelope’s devotion to Dash and Daphne.

And those kids of theirs! Daphne, at least, was brilliant. When the school counselor wanted to put her in first grade at Beachside Elementary, Craig had refused. No. Let her start in kindergarten in the fall. Let her be with her peers. Let her grow up like any other kid.

My God, he thought. What would happen this fall? Would he be there to see Daphne’s first day of school?

Daphne’s birth was far more complicated than Dashiell’s, though Nancy, their hippie midwife from Topanga, kept telling him not to worry. She called Penelope a warrior. Daphne was born at home, a surprise, three weeks early. Nancy insisted they go to the hospital afterward because of excessive bleeding, but Penelope refused.

Craig remembered how determined Penelope was to bury the placenta outside, under the bird of paradise. She was very stubborn about doing it herself, even after Daphne’s traumatic birth. Craig was still ashamed of the way he had yelled at her when he found her in the yard in the middle of the night, working with a shovel as the blood ran down her legs.

She snarled, warning him to keep his distance. He considered calling an ambulance, or at least phoning the midwife, but Penelope pushed past him, striding into the house like a queen, victorious after battle.

“Don’t be angry, Craig. Try to understand,” Penelope said later that night, after things had calmed down. “This is a very important family tradition. I don’t want to be the first one to break it.” The color was already returning to her face. She looked nothing like a woman who had just had a baby. “You don’t know what a gift you’ve given me. A boy and now a girl. I am so happy. I feel like a native Beachsider.”

Craig was tickled by that remark. “Yeah. I guess you’re official now. You’ve birthed a surfer boy and a hula girl.” He didn’t know what he was saying—damned happy and sleep deprived.

Still sitting in his parked car, Craig marveled over all that had happened. Daphne was five now.

There were other memories that belonged to that five-year span. Those memories, of his failings and transgressions, were best left buried. They made him feel so guilty. He was such a bad man. Not a king at all.

The itching flared up as if to remind him that he was, indeed, the Sea King of Beachside. He had the kelp legs to prove it. Was he going to revert to that silly figure on the sands of Serenade Beach, the one who had stood there smiling while he sacrificed himself? He had let the women, the mermaids, have their way with him. All at once, it seemed to him that the strange creature who had gone down on her knees before him and the three beautiful mermaids at the festival were one and the same. He needed to warn the other men of the town, all the other men.

Don’t trust beauty. Don’t trust pleasure. Fantasies were dangerous. Everybody paid.

He couldn’t believe he had tried to sell beauty at his practice. He hadn’t understood it at all.

One of the Beachside meter maids approached in a little sea foam-colored electric car. Years ago, he had sat on the committee that approved the budget for those cars and the project made the national news. He started his Porsche and headed back to the house. It was best to get there before his condition got any worse. Once he saw his wife, once he apologized and explained, once he showed her his legs, then they could begin to work on a solution together.

Only one problem, he realized, as he turned onto his street.

He was afraid to talk to Penelope.

—

The children dropped their toys and ran to Craig, demanding to know why he wasn’t at work. Their sweet faces destroyed him. They were beautiful and innocent, even Daphne, who often didn’t seem like a child at all, but more like a little adult. Craig had questions about Daphne, given that she was Penelope’s daughter, but he could not let his mind hop onto that track, not yet. First things first.

“I feel a little under the weather. I think I’ll go and lie down, see if I can get better,” Craig said, forcing cheer into his voice. He was sure he looked terrible and he tried not to grimace as he walked across the grand main room, with its wood floors and vaulted ceiling. His legs were stiff from sitting in the car for even the short drive home.

“Mom’s at the school. Dropping off some forms,” Daphne said.

Craig was about to ask why Penelope hadn’t taken them with her. It was very unlike her to leave them home alone.

Dash, who must have noticed Craig frowning, said, “She’ll be right back. It’s not far.” He was defensive on his mother’s behalf, as was typical for him, but Craig was relieved not to have to talk to Penelope just yet.

He found his pajama bottoms, which he stumbled into behind the privacy of the locked bathroom door. Under the bathroom light, perched on the edge of the tub, Craig examined his feet, which were now covered in squishy, bright-green algae. The soles were dry and jagged, slowly turning to something resembling stone. Soon he would not be able to wear shoes at all.

Did people do that? Go without shoes? He shook his head and fought the impulse to cry like a child.

He considered getting into a cool bath but could not risk one of the kids seeing him. In the middle of the bright summer day, Doctor Craig Bo climbed into bed, his kelp-covered legs creaking with the effort. A layer of salty sweat seeped from his pores. Though exhausted, he could not keep his eyes closed. He must have fallen asleep, however, because he was jolted awake by the sound of the front door opening.

Penelope was home.

3.

Penelope’s silky voice rang out from the front door. “Craig?”

“In here,” he called. He was shaking.

Penelope walked into the bedroom and saw him. “Oh no, baby, are you sick?”

There it was. She could be so nice, and when she spoke to him that way, he felt like the only man in the world. No, that wasn’t right. He felt like a king. She had always made him feel like a king, long before all the frenzy surrounding that stupid festival. That was why he loved her. It wasn’t just her beauty that pulled him in and kept him. She had charisma. Now he wished his only complaint was a summer cold.

He remembered their courtship, how they had made love even when he was sick or tired or overwhelmed by stress. Penelope had never been sick in all the time he had known her.

For a second he let his mind go soft and blurry with the memory of sex, and then he jumped when he felt a new surge of the kelp carpet growing on his legs.

“Craig, what’s wrong? What is it?”

“Don’t get too close. I’m sick. Wait a second, please.”

Penelope stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at Craig, while he gazed up at her and tried to think.

“I know who you are,” he said, surprising himself. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m far from blame.”

The corners of her mouth quivered. “What are you talking about?”

“You need to lock the door.”

“Craig?”

“Penelope.”

The smell of salt water filled the room and a change came over Penelope’s face.

“All right,” she said. “Let me check on the kids first. I’ll make sure they’re occupied.”

She left, shutting the door behind her. In the exhaustion of illness, Craig lay back. He could hear the sounds, formerly so consoling, of his wife and children, the rise and fall of their intonation, gentle and playful. He felt like an outsider, an alien, a monster. He had not yet considered what it would mean to reveal his condition to Dash and Daphne. He wished he had always been nicer to them, more patient. The mere thought of their sweet faces caused him such pain.

Penelope came back in so quickly that she startled him. This was his new temperament, nervous and keyed up, constantly on alert. Paranoid. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked as she locked the door behind her.

He laughed. “Seriously? You’re going to keep pretending? Penelope, I’ve been to the museum. I’ve met Mr. Pelikan. I’m…not myself.” He threw the blankets off.

Penelope grew pale and for a moment, Craig regretted revealing himself. Maybe she was innocent? Maybe Dude Pelikan was a liar? He should have tried to protect his wife, but how? He looked into her eyes as he spoke, “I’m sorry. I can’t go on much longer like this. I think it’s moving up my body. I mean, obviously. Just look at this.” He scratched at his knees. “It’s already higher than it was when I came home.”

Penelope sat down beside him on the bed and took his hand. Her touch came as a great relief, and he wondered if she could heal him.

“Craig, how did this happen?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.”

“This is not my work, but perhaps it is better this way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His mouth filled with seawater as the itching spread across his body. He struggled to speak. “You’re not who I thought you were.”

Penelope flew off the bed as if she wanted to escape. “Don’t say that. Stop for a second. Keep your voice down. The children can’t hear this. Not yet.”

“It’s no use, Penelope. I told you, I went to the museum. I met Dude Pelikan. I don’t know who he is, but he’s got a hand of bone. Exposed bone! And the strange things he says. I’ve seen so much today. I know so much more now.”

“What is it that you think you know?”

“I’m not sure. I’m still trying to understand. You’re not like other women.”

“No, I’m not.”

Craig took her hand and pulled her to him. “That’s all you’re going to say? Come on now. We really need to work together here.”

“Fine, then. I’ll be honest if you’ll be honest, but I am warning you, Craig. No other man has survived the truth of me.”

“Whatever, baby. It can’t be any worse than what I’ve got going on, can it? Would you look at this? What are we going to do about it? Or maybe you don’t think it’s your problem? What are you going to do, take the kids and leave me? Drop me off at the beach?”

They surrendered to nervous laughter. Craig could not remember the last time they had laughed together like this. He wanted to return to his former happiness, but a knock at the door silenced them instantly.

Penelope went to deal with the children, promising them a movie if they would just leave Mommy and Daddy alone for a minute, and Craig remembered all the times they had relied on the Disney Corporation so that they could have sex. Sex. Life. He looked down at his legs again. How would he function in this body? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the future, but all he could see was a poster for a B-movie. Or a tent at an old-time circus freakshow. He did not want to be a special feature. He would not be able to keep his family with him if he transformed.

When she was free and the door was locked, Penelope sat back down on the bed. “Tell me when this started.”

There. That was the problem. There were so many things Craig could not tell Penelope. Even with his legs covered in creeping kelp, he was not able to confess, not fully. He tried to see how far he could get without coming clean. “At the festival. I think it was that glaze, you know? It really tingles. It’s very uncomfortable, like this out of control buzzing.”

Penelope stared at him, waiting for more, her brow furrowing.

“So much has happened. Where to begin? I started finding little pieces of kelp on my legs.” He paused as the events of the past few days ran together. “There was something funny about that cake you bought.”

“The cake?”

“It’s still in the garage, although it’s probably nothing but mold now.”

“Why didn’t you throw it away like I told you?”

“Strange things were happening on it when I opened it that first night, the night of the festival. Funny, it’s like my life changed on that Saturday. Last Saturday! A week ago tomorrow. It seems like ten years. Nothing has been the same since. And Dash. I talked to Dash.” Craig had to stop for a second, aware of how desperate he sounded. “He met someone. At the museum.”

Penelope jumped up again and began pacing. “Who was it?”

“Well, this was a while back, last fall. He didn’t tell me about it, though, until after the festival. You remember how he was crying?”

“Yes.”

They paused for a moment in the memory of their son’s distress and of their inability to remedy it. Craig shut his eyes. “Oh Penelope, I’m so tired.”

“I know, darling. I know. You’ve got to try to talk.”

“Let me ask you something first. Do you have any enemies?”

“Enemies? Yes, probably. I don’t know. I certainly don’t have many friends.”

“You, Penelope? You’re so popular.”

“Yes, but popularity is something else entirely. It has nothing to do with true friendship.”

Craig was unsure how to proceed. “Do you know the story the children tell about the museum?”

“I think so. Refresh my memory. After all, I’m not from Beachside. You’re the native. The children are natives, too. Remember?” She tried to smile. The snobbery of Beachside natives was their running joke but now it felt grim.

“The children tell a story about a mermaid in the attic room. You know that circular window? You can see it from the playground of Beachside Elementary, and so the children tell stories about this mermaid who lives there. She was wronged by her lover or something.”

“I’ll bet,” Penelope said, surprising her husband.

“Every first-grader hears that story when they take the field trip to the museum.”

“And did you go on that field trip, Craig? Do you remember?”

“I remember going but I don’t remember anything special happening. Mrs. Delmar was working there, though, even way back then.”

“Marjorie?”

“Yes. Marjorie. I always think of her as Mrs. Delmar.” Craig studied Penelope’s face. He wondered about his wife’s connection to Marjorie Delmar. Looking at Penelope, he felt as though he did not know her at all. His heart hammered in his ears as he said, “That mermaid, she was there when Dash’s class went to the museum. And she said some funny things to Dash. About you.”

Penelope squared her shoulders and made a fist with each hand. “You mean our son met the mermaid from the children’s stories?”

“Yes.”

“And where was Marjorie?”

“I don’t know. He said she let him go up to the attic. It wasn’t like she tried to stop him.”

“She didn’t?” Penelope was on fire with anger.

Craig could not answer right away. His legs grew hot and the itching sensation shot up his thighs. “I guess not. I mean, she wasn’t her usual strict self.”

“And what did the mermaid say, exactly?”

“Something about a kiss.”

“What?”

“He was supposed to give me a kiss. From her.” Craig paused to catch his breath. He could not suppress a groan. The itching was followed by a deep ache. He could not bear to think about what would happen when it reached his crotch. “Penelope, what if this doesn’t stop?”

His wife seemed far away. “We’ll figure something out,” she said.

“Am I going to die like this?”

“You’re not going to die, Craig.”

“How do you know?” He needed to believe that his Penelope, if she could ever forgive him for all his failings, would find a solution. Perhaps she had some special powers, some way to help him, since, according to Dude Pelikan, she wasn’t an ordinary human. Her words, however, had not saved him from despair. “Isn’t there anything you can do for me? I don’t want to leave you a widow. I don’t want to leave my kids!”

No warning with this strange disease. Was he already dying? Everything swirled around him. How long had he been in crisis? He tried to count the days but he could not for the life of him remember exactly when he had first seen the kelp. Why couldn’t it simply overwhelm him and end his misery? What if he had died in his sleep after the Sea King Festival or at the museum?

No. This was madness. He could not leave Daphne. He could not leave Dash.

What about Daphne? There was something special about her that went beyond the parameters of the Talented and Gifted program at the local schools. He had always known she was different, from the moment she was born. He considered the way she had forced herself out, born right there in the living room, as if she could not wait to reach their world. She wanted to meet them. It was as if she had chosen to be theirs. The first time he saw her, so beautiful, with such fine features, he had a rush of masculine pride that embarrassed him. His daughter was a looker. He assumed this was a natural reaction to having a girl. He had felt nothing like that for Dash, nothing other than fear and disorientation.

He came back to himself and tugged on Penelope’s hand. “We’re in this together, right?”

“I am your wife. You are my husband.”

“You have to help me, Pen. You’re the only one.”

“I will.”

“I mean now. Look at me. Can’t you see? Don’t you care? It itches. It itches! It’s moving up my body.”

Penelope dropped Craig’s hand and turned toward the door. “I need to go.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m going to see Marjorie.”

“Why? What can she do?”

“Marjorie Delmar is the only person I can talk to about any of this. Trust me, Craig. She’s a friend. She has been for years.”

A new wave of chills overtook him. He pulled the blankets up to his chin as he thought about Mrs. Delmar with her Hasselblad camera and unwrinkled skin. Was his hometown, where he had always felt so safe, a vast conspiracy of women? “You think she’ll be able to help us?”

“Craig, wait here. I’ll come back soon. Please believe me. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Go anywhere? How could I go anywhere like this?” He looked down at his legs. “How long will you be gone? What about the kids?”

“The kids will be fine. I’ll tell them to call the neighbors if they need anything.”

“No! Don’t do that,” Craig said. They had to keep his malady, his deformity, a family secret. His voice had grown hoarse and his eyelids were heavy. He could taste the sea. He imagined salt water replacing his bodily fluids as he drifted closer to sleep. “You can go, but don’t involve the neighbors. Tell the kids I love them. I have to sleep for a while.” He closed his eyes but they flew open one second later. “Penelope!”

“What?”

“How high will the kelp be when I wake up?”

She came back to the bed and bent down to kiss his forehead but did not answer. How could she answer? It was like asking your poor wife if you were going bald. What was she supposed to say? Penelope’s face was the answer, as always. He looked up and saw immaculate, creamy skin and impeccably clear blue eyes. Penelope looked as though she had just arrived on this planet, an adult newborn, but of course, she wasn’t who she said she was. She had never been that person. His wife was much more complicated than the face she showed to the world. He had been so busy hiding his misdeeds that he had been more than willing to let her stay mythical, impossible. Her face was her tell, he now realized. This ageless face that she was famous for, this coveted face, could never belong to an ordinary woman. It was strange that so many people aspired to remain in a similar state of baby-like flawlessness. His patients demanded it and their insatiable communal desire had made him rich.

“Penelope,” Craig asked, “do you know the woman Dash met at the museum? The mermaid?” He wanted to ask about the woman on the bike path but he simply couldn’t.

She said no, but there was more information hiding in her blue eyes.

“You’re sure you don’t know who she is? She certainly knew a lot about you.”

“Like what, Craig?”

He was afraid to repeat what the mermaid had said to Dash. He didn’t want to talk about Penelope’s naked body or the significance of witnessing her giving birth. She was his wife. There was not an inch of her skin that he had not caressed and kissed in his joy over possessing such a beauty, and now here he was, barely able to say anything. He was as self-conscious, as tongue-tied, as a teenage boy. He could not meet her eyes.

“What did she say about me, Craig?”

He crumbled. “She asked Dash if he had ever seen you naked, or if anyone had seen you in childbirth. I wasn’t in the room when Dash was born, and nobody was there when Daphne was born either, right?”

“Correct. Nobody was there either time. Not at the moment of emergence.”

The moment of emergence. He wanted to ask her if that seemed strange to her. How could the midwife have stepped away like that, twice? He wanted to ask so many things.

Craig was on fire with shame. Before he could determine how much he should tell Penelope, she made a breathy, hissing sound and her face twitched. She turned around so that he could not see her.

She rarely got angry, but when she did, it changed the air around her, coursing through the atmosphere of their home and altering the domestic bloodstream. She could intimidate anyone with her eyes, which changed color slightly, turning from light blue to gray when she was angry. The children knew better than to approach her then. Craig often felt afraid of her in those moments. Friends had been distanced, if not lost, for failing to respect Penelope’s wrath. At first he thought he had gone too far with his questions, which wasn’t quite fair, considering his current physical circumstances, but then he realized what had upset her.

Someone had threatened Dash, her sacred child, the only person who, until recently, could make Craig feel threatened. The boy was important. He had always been important. Penelope preferred him. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Daphne, she did, but she had a special love for Dash. Whenever Craig asked her about it, she told him that all mothers felt this way about their sons. Hadn’t his mother felt this way about him?

His parents! He was so grateful they weren’t around to see this.

And then Penelope turned back around to face him. “Craig, you are the Sea King. My Sea King. And Serenade Beach is my beach. It has always been my beach. There are other water women, yes, but none of them can be queen. None of them. Do you hear me? I walked out of the waves and chose you. I have made several choices to protect my family.”

“Your family?” he asked, his voice failing. “You mean the three of us?”

“Yes. And my family of origin.”

“I thought your parents were dead.”

“Everybody has ancestors, Craig. Everybody has a family that never really leaves them, a family that is carried in the body. You will understand everything soon. I promise you.”

He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. After that, she was gone.

He was freezing now. It was summer and he was freezing. The saltwater smell was strong, as if the bed had turned into a tidal pool. In the distance, he heard the movie that his children were watching but couldn’t identify it.

He slept and his dreams revealed a yearning for normalcy, despite, or perhaps because of, Penelope’s cryptic farewell. He was soon back at work, covered in seaweed up to his neck, smiling at a beautiful teenage girl whose mild rosacea he was treating. The girl smiled back and answered questions about school and summer plans. He kept expecting her to scream or for her mother to appear and whisk her away. But no, this was his life now. He went to scratch his chest hair and felt nothing but kelp strands. He was embarrassed but nobody seemed to notice. Craig was accepted, a Sea King who had grown into his kelp. How long had he been practicing like this?

Right before the young patient left his office, he realized who she was, the blond mermaid from the Sea King Festival.

And then he was with his kids at the beach. The kelp had advanced, but there was one benefit: the seaweed covering made sunscreen unnecessary. He could still use his mossy hands, though, so he rubbed lotion on Dash and Daphne. And he could help them swim. Yes, kids, let’s go visit our old friend, the Pacific. Walking took some effort as his body felt twice its normal weight, but at least he was mobile. Maybe he would float? He really wanted to go swimming, craved it, in fact. You might say he thirsted for it. Water was his element. He wanted to share the glory with his human children, and they were up for it, as they always were during a family beach day. Just as they were about to descend into the depths of the sea, a voice woke him from his dream. It sounded like Penelope, but when he opened his eyes, she was nowhere to be found. That was right. She had left him on his own. She was at the museum, brushing up on her Beachside history.

The dreams made him feel worse than ever. His career was through. The people of Beachside were never going to entrust their beauty to a kelp monster. What was more, where was Penelope in his dreams? What had become of her? He needed her help.

This was all her fault, wasn’t it?

There wouldn’t be any smiling teenagers in his future. Even his trusted staff, his favorite receptionist, would scream like the extras in an old monster movie if they saw him. Frankenstein’s monster as Boris Karloff had played him, fumbling and inarticulate, terrifying everyone, with the exception of the occasional, highly tolerant blind person. What was that monster’s name, anyway? Everyone called him Frankenstein but that was the name of his creator, an egomaniac. A sociopath. An asshole.

Nobody ever thought about the monster. Why was that? Was he so horrible? Of course you’re horrible, Craig, he told himself. Look at you. You’ll never pass. This crowd can’t even accept moles or wrinkles, and yet you think there might be some slim chance you’ll still have a place in Beachside society? He wondered if the kelp was affecting his reasoning, his poor brain. Some diseases, many diseases, were like that. But was this a disease?

What about his children? He did not want them to see him like this. He understood the monster’s desire to hide. If you hide your disfigurement, nobody will know the truth. If you stay away from mirrors and stop looking down, you could even fool yourself. It was no use, though. He was compelled to look down and track the kelp’s progress. Was it getting higher? He looked at his legs and immediately his kneecaps started to itch. That was all it took, the mere thought of the kelp’s advance, and it shot forward! Of course it was getting higher. His kneecaps were red and itchy, and he could just make out the little kelp buds as they appeared. Before Penelope got back, he could imagine the kelp reaching halfway up his thighs.

Which brought him to his cock, the center of his universe, the life force. This nightmare had to stop before he lost everything to seaweed. Was this all a punishment for the blowjob at the beach? Was that it? No. But it was happening. Perhaps his privates would be spared? What about his face? His eyes?

As soon as Penelope got back, he was going to level with her. Confess everything.

Then maybe she would be honest with him. Maybe her words would finally make sense.

—

He opened his eyes after another round of feverish dreams and knew where he had to go. He had no choice. Dude Pelikan was right: he was dying for the sea. Even the coolness of the sand against his feet (his mossy feet!) would be therapeutic. The air. The waves. He had no choice in the matter.

Little kelp buds climbed all the way up to his chin.

He got out of bed and put his long pants back on. What to do about his feet? There were no shoes for a man like him. He began the trek out to the living room, where his sweet children were still watching television, sitting there mesmerized before Sponge Bob’s innocent antics.

He grabbed his car keys off the coffee table. Dash and Daphne looked up at him.

“Are you leaving us?” Dash asked.

For a second Craig thought of taking them with him. They were his children, after all. This was his family. But he didn’t know what was going to happen. He knew nothing more than that he had to return to the ocean. It made sense on so many levels. He thought about his will, his estate, and his practice. His wish was to have his ashes scattered anywhere in the Pacific, but preferably in Serenade Bay. All the different phases of his life were colliding.

It was all happening too soon.

Dash’s huge eyes demanded an answer. Daphne stood up and threw her arms around his waist. Craig thought he felt the kelp recoil from the pressure of her little body.

“Kids, I’m going out for a drive. Maybe I’ll pick up some dinner.”

That was a lie from the old days, in response to his old hunger, his sex addiction. Picking up a meal was a good way to buy time and explain his extended absence, a kind of peace offering, but instead of coming back bearing dinner from a nice restaurant, he would be carrying a bag of hamburgers from some takeout place he had remembered at the last minute. Maybe, if he survived this one trip to the beach, he would take everyone out to a nice dinner. Or make one himself. Anything was possible.

It was obvious that the children knew he was lying. They didn’t even ask about his strange feet, ignoring that spectacle, like kids who have learned not to ask about a toupee or a potbelly. How far gone we are as a family, Craig thought. How lost. You know it’s bad when the kids stop asking questions.

“Yes. I’ll get us something nice to eat. What would you like?”

They said nothing. A terrible sadness hung in the air until Daphne suggested milkshakes. Craig wanted to kiss them but he knew he would cry. This had to be normal. They could hang out watching TV and waiting for their parents to get home. Penelope never left them alone for this long. She would be back. She had to be.

Dash reassured him they would wait and be good.

It took a full three minutes of fighting his stiff joints for Craig to walk out the door and get in his car. He didn’t even have his wallet or his phone. If anyone stopped him, he could say he was the Sea King. He had the legs to prove it.

He took the Porsche. Penelope had the other car. He drove down the Beach Bridge and cut across the coastal highway to the parking lot they liked to use when they weren’t on foot or on their bikes. It was late enough in the day that plenty of parking spaces had opened up. Right then, he wished he had taken his old board with him. Why not? He hadn’t used it in forever and there hadn’t been time to wax it, but a certain old playfulness made him want to experience surfing in his current state. Maybe this was a good sign.

He was never one of the diehards, but he remembered going surfing in high school. There were some guys who went out every morning before class. How had they done it? They must have had inexhaustible energy. Life was different back then. Kids were kids, not these high-performing little robots they were supposed to be now. Though Daphne, he had to admit, would have no trouble. Like Penelope she always knew the answer. Poor Dash would have to tough it out on his own. Behind the wheel, Craig worried about his children, truly worried, but he couldn’t think about them for long or he would never get to the end of this ordeal. He needed to go forward, to keep moving. Perhaps he should have gone back to the museum? No. It made him dizzy to think of climbing those spiral staircases, only to come up against that riddling Dude Pelikan.

Still, there was a portal. It was hard not to wonder if it might lead somewhere useful.

He was crossing the bike path now, dragging his body forward, approaching the sand. He realized it was somewhere right around here where that woman had thrown herself at him. His life had changed because of her. All the trouble had started with her, on that night, as he now saw clearly. He did not care about Penelope’s involvement. He wanted to return to his life of adoring his wife and hoping she could overlook his faults. Marriage and family worked best for him when he could drift along, keeping his secret while letting Penelope manage the details.

His parents had kept it together. They had stayed married all their lives, and then died together. Compared to the dilemma he was in now, that seemed like the perfect ending. A nice American car death. His mother had been a great fan of the Sea King Festival. She had never said anything, perhaps from superstition, but she had most likely imagined that her son would one day be king. Every Beachside mother wanted it. He remembered attending the festival with her when he was very little. Their family would often be one of the few left still watching the ritual to the very end.

For some reason the transformation was something most people preferred not to witness, perhaps because it took so long. It was enough to learn the identity of the new king and then leave him to his fate under the summer sun. Where was the sun now? It would not set for a while, and soon the tourists would gather on the bluff to watch the daily miracle of its disappearance. Why didn’t they gather like that to watch it rise every morning? Wasn’t it more amazing that it kept reappearing, not that it went out in a blaze, like a beautiful, extravagant woman?

His torso was on fire. His shoulders itched. The kelp was going strong. He still wondered if this was what happened to all the other Sea Kings. He thought of his predecessor, good old Leonard Massif. How come he never warned him?

He kept walking. The nearer he came to the sea, the larger his thirst, a thirst that came from his whole body, starting in his solar plexus and spreading to his extremities. He laughed a bitter little laugh. “I see. I am turning into something else, a creature who cannot live outside of the water.” Then the stiffness set in and he began to limp, dragging his legs. People were starting to stare. The walk to the water had never seemed so long. What was it? A half mile? He would never make it.

He had left the children behind, perhaps forever. It was undeniable.

He needed to keep Daphne and Dashiell in his mind. Penelope could take care of herself. Penelope was strong. Daphne and Dashiell and the water. He had to be able to think of those three things. Keep going forward. It couldn’t be that hard. Come on now. He thought of dropping and rolling but it seemed like too much trouble. Could anybody save him? These people who were staring, could any of them help? What about a lifeguard? He knew they pulled people out of the water all the time, but did they ever carry anyone into the sea? Perhaps if he explained who he was, Doctor Craig Bo, the Sea King of Beachside, they would understand. All he needed was a little help. And these young kids were so strong. Two of them could carry him like a log.

He saw the sky above him, an eternal stretch of blue, before he realized that he had fallen backward and landed on the wet sand.

A little boy’s face appeared at his feet. He was small enough to look on Craig with nothing but innocent curiosity, small enough to believe in magic, small enough to have the best possible reaction to the spectacle before him: wonder. Craig wanted to go home to his own children but he needed the embrace of saltwater first. His mouth was so dry it felt like it was filling with sand as he lay there.

There were so many things he wanted to say, but all he could manage was, “Get my wife.”

—

On clear summer days he can see children swimming overhead, their legs kicking above the blur of the kelp forest. Humans will always play in the sea. They will always trust it.

Penelope is victorious. Penelope is Sea Queen.

Somehow he had made it to the water. Perhaps the waves themselves had eased him in. The kelp hung off him in long ribbons that swayed in glory.

His wife met him in the depths, having crossed the portal at the museum of history, but by then they were beyond language. She kissed him where his mouth once was. He saw how she could breathe underwater though she had no tail. As the other water women danced and darted around them, Craig understood his wife’s power. And he understood who Daphne was, how she would grow into someone he would not have recognized had he been able to remain on land. All daughters surprise their fathers, and daughters of the waves are no exception. As for Dashiell, he was smarter than he looked, but he too would fall for a mermaid someday, if he was anything like his father.

Penelope did one last thing for him: she stood him up and placed a crown on his head. The only crown of its kind. The crown of the true Sea King of Beachside.

THE KELPING

1.

2.

3.

REWIND OR DIE

Midnight Exhibit Vol. 1

Infested - Carol Gore

Benny Rose: The Cannibal King - Hailey Piper - Jan. 23

Cirque Berserk - Jessica Guess - Feb. 20

Hairspray and Switchblades - V. Castro - Feb. 20

Sole Survivor - Zachary Ashford - Mar. 26

Food Fright - Nico Bell - Mar. 26

Hell’s Bells - Lisa Quigley - May 28

The Kelping - Jan Stinchcomb - May 28

Trampled Crown - Kirby Kellogg - Jun. 25

Dead and Breakfast - Gary Buller - Jun. 25

Blood Lake Monster - Renee Miller - Jul. 23

The Catcreeper - Kevin Lewis - Jul. 23

All You Need is Love and a Strong Electric Current - Mackenzie Kiera - Aug. 27

Tales From the Meat Wagon - Eddie Generous - Aug. 27

Hooker - M. Lopes da Silva - Oct. 29

Offstage Offerings - Priya Sridhar - Oct. 29

Dead Eyes - EV Knight - Nov. 26

Dancing on the Edge of a Blade - Todd Rigney - Dec. 12

Midnight Exhibit Vol. 2 - Dec. 12

www.UNNERVINGMAGAZINE.com