Carla wore a mask while trudging down the precipitous dune that shadowed Longnook Beach, her heaven on earth. She had brought from her city stash a colorful assortment of boldly patterned Mexican face coverings to make the necessity of protecting herself from airborne viral droplets less depressing. But bright flowers and butterflies, stout yellow ears of corn, and iconic unibrow Frida Kahlo faces made it no easier to breathe on the descent.
Most days, Carla used the shaft of her sheathed sun umbrella to steady herself while maneuvering over uneven ground. Today, Tom wasn’t there to help her carry her beach chair, so she had left the heavy umbrella at home. She wasn’t one of those old ladies who needed a cane, was she? A grinding creak from her arthritic left knee followed by an aching twinge and throb of pain from her right hip warned her that the uphill return would be a challenge.
Sweating, Carla struggled down the steep hill. At the bottom, she wobbled, then stopped to dig her feet into the hot sand. The ocean looked calm, perfect, the swells smooth, a gentle surf breaking close to shore. Letting out a deep sigh of happiness, she made straight for the water. But just then, the lifeguard blew three warning blasts on his whistle, waving swimmers out of the sea. He had spotted a fin.
Carla shaded her eyes and squinted. Her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, even with glasses. The big fish causing consternation lolled just beyond the surf, unreasonably close to shore. Was it a shark? Or was it a basking mola, a sunfish, harmless? Everything with a fin and some heft was pronounced a shark these days. The protected seals and sea lions had drawn shoals of great whites to the Outer Cape. Whatever it was, this fin sighting would cost Carla a good hour of bathing time. Carla remembered days as a child when her mother forced her to wait an hour after lunch before entering the water. She wasn’t good at obeying rules, but if it was a mola, she wouldn’t relish encountering its unnerving stare in the shallows, its shape like a huge dislocated head, floating in the Lethean waters of the underworld. She watched it roll from side to side, flapping its dorsal lethargically.
Frenzied children danced up and down the beach, pointing. Their parents pointed too. Why were people making such a fuss? The giant was ugly but would do them no harm. Was it like Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant, hungry for someone to love? Should she swim out and kiss it?
She smiled to herself, imagining her husband’s response. Tom had decided to do some work back at the house that morning. After thirty years of marriage, she often had conversations with him when he wasn’t there.
“What if it turns into a prince?” he might say. “Where does that leave me?”
“In the wrong fairy tale,” she would answer.
Carla settled into her beach chair and opened her book, a history of the Alsatian Dancing Plague of 1518. “Entertaining,” Tom had teased. Since the start of the pandemic, Carla could not resist reading about plagues. How long had the Alsatians, poisoned by bread mold and haunted by hallucinations, danced? Who had danced first? Frau Troffea, she read. Had she danced herself to death? Apparently not. After six days, the good Frau had danced up a rocky mountain, higher than the Longnook dune, ascending to St. Vitus’s lofty shrine to heal her beleaguered soul and her bruised and bleeding feet. Had her husband gone on that pilgrimage? No, Herr Troffea had stayed home. Perhaps, like Tom, he had work to do.
Carla looked up from her book. A small girl with solemn eyes and rippling yellow hair sat rigidly erect several yards away. The child’s legs were hidden, buried in sand. Her mother knelt beside her with a bright plastic shovel and a driftwood stick, hard at work sculpting a mermaid’s tail. She reached into her daughter’s bucket and drew out a handful of scallop shells. Pressing them into the fish tail one by one, she created a pattern of scales. The girl never smiled, so intent was she on the transformation.
“Mom’s a mermaid,” Carla’s youngest son had informed his beach buddies when he was in grade school. “Have you seen the movie Splash? That’s her.”
Carla had solemnly corroborated his claim. “Yes, that’s why I take so many swims,” she informed his credulous friends, nodding to the children and keeping a straight face. “I have to stay wet.”
She longed to get wet, a quick dunk, but the ocean was now empty of bathers, the dune behind Carla darkened by a long line of masked vacationers toiling up the incline in a laborious exodus, slowed by the necessity of maintaining a safe distance from one another’s sliding footsteps in the sand. It exhausted her just to watch. She saw ahead a not too distant future when she would have to settle for flat terrain: Ballston, Head of the Meadow, Race Point. When that day came, she would miss the golden play of light along this familiar curve of coast. Oh, she would miss it!
Carla shook her head to dislodge an irritating buzz in her ear. A green-headed fly landed on her shin, its iridescent wings shimmering in the sunlight. She moved to swat it. The insect rose into the air, then descended on the same spot, joined now by a companion with a golden head and a green body. She slapped at them. The pair took off and landed again, one on her ankle, one on her foot. Slap, slap. The green head didn’t fly away this time. It crawled up her leg to her thigh.
The buzz grew louder, surrounding Carla. A thick cloud of biting flies descended upon her; some had bright green heads, some golden heads and green bodies. The largest was about the size of a bumblebee, with a sharp proboscis that lost no time in demonstrating its capacity to draw blood. Carla tossed her towel over her legs, but the vexatious creatures gathered in droves on the cloth, leaving not a fraction of space between one vibrating body and the next. Like the fresh corpse of a sinner, Carla was blanketed in a mob of little blood-starved demons—her paradise, her sanctuary, transformed into a place of perdition.
“Life!” Carla heard her mother’s voice in her head. “You’re in heaven until—oh no, how can this be?—you’re in the other place. Never a warning. Catastrophe comes, a bolt out of the blue. It will find you vigilant; it will find you asleep. You’re the wunderkind, a goddess. Youth and beauty—yours forever. And then?”
Carla calculated that, in the time it took to collect her gear and trudge up the hill, the swarm would eat her alive. Would the flies even dissipate once she made it to the top? Her best bet was to make a break for it, in defiance of the lifeguard, and run for the water, where she could plunge her inflamed limbs, riddled with painful bites and decorated with thin trickles of blood, into cooling brine. But would her blood attract the shark—or humongous sunfish, a single-headed Cerberus, now flopping back and forth in the shallows?
If Tom hadn’t decided to work at the house that morning, he would now be helping her up the dune, as usual, supporting her to safety, and away from this new plague. Why had he chosen today of all days to abandon her to her fate? She was alone with the flies, alone with the fin, alone and caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, but if he were here with her, she would have to watch him also suffer this infestation, cry out in defenseless rage. Wouldn’t that be far worse?
Carla stood and dropped her towel. Before she could gasp, the flies took to the air from the crumpled cloth and attached themselves to her naked feet, her shins, her knees, her thighs, her neck, her arms, her helplessly swatting and waving hands, her straw sunhat, her mask.
“No!” she cried. She shed hat, mask, and glasses and galloped toward the water like a maddened horse. The stinging pain had become intolerable.
The ocean was calm and warm; the waves welcomed her. Carla splashed in and submerged. Sweet relief! As she came up for air, the flies surrounded her head. One stung her scalp, another her brow. She submerged again.
When she surfaced, the lifeguard blew his whistle at her, a single sharp toot, and waved his arms. Let him. She dug her toes into the pebbly sand, crouching down low so as to stay in the shallows, out of reach, she trusted, of great whites. The familiar pressure of pebbles on the soles of her feet reassured her.
During the birth of her first son, Tom had massaged Carla’s feet, countering each contraction with deep pressure that helped her focus and navigate the ordeal of labor. Surely, a monster of the deep would not snatch her in the middle of so comforting a memory? If she were in danger, she would sense it.
Never a warning. Catastrophe comes, a bolt out of the blue. She shook her head, attempting to dislodge her mother’s voice from her brain. Again, she plunged beneath the surface.
In her first pregnancy, Carla, fearful of the pain of childbirth, consulted a hypnotist. His hair was mousey and sparse, his small eyes burnt and black, his shoes so worn they appeared molten. He dived right in, no prologue, no moving pendulums or props. His voice was heavy and probing. He asked Carla what activity aside from sleep she found most relaxing. Swimming, she told him. He asked her to imagine herself swimming in a clear, warm body of water.
“Small, translucent fish dart past, pretty and unthreatening,” the hypnotist had said. “You breathe evenly, effortlessly, turning your head from side to side. Your feet flutter, kick, kick, kick.”
Carla unmoored her toes, allowed her feet to rise, and let her body go horizontal. Slowly, she kicked, propelling herself gently forward, hoping her sense of direction hadn’t abandoned her and she was headed away from the finned creature she had decided was a mola.
Kick, kick, kick.
“Your arms move gracefully,” the hypnotist had cued her. “You swim through green light, through green shadow. You know what you must do. You are not afraid. You swim and you are not afraid. You swim because you know how, your arms, your legs know how, your body knows because you are forever….” Here he hesitated, groping for the right word. “You swim, kick, kick, kick into the unknown. You are not afraid, not afraid because you are forever… curious.”
“Curious?” Carla had asked from her near trance. She opened her eyes and stared at him, alert to danger. “Why curious?”
Was she curious? Curious to see the mola up close? Curious to stare at it, eye to eye? Curious to identify it once and for all. Was that why, aside from the flies, aside from her childish desire to defy authority, she was swimming when the lifeguard descended from his high perch to stand directly in her line of sight, signaling her to get out? Was that why she was the only one left in the water?
She held up a forefinger, indicating that she intended to come at her own speed. “Wait a bit,” she murmured softly, as if soothing a child. “Hold on—I’m coming. Just not right this minute.”
He gave another short blast on his whistle, then turned and trotted to the flagpole, where he lowered the green flag and raised the purple. He pointed to the outline of a shark on the flapping cloth. She nodded her understanding. He had done his duty. He had warned her. He stood, feet planted hip distance apart, hands clasped behind him, stalwart in the sand. If the flies bothered him, he did not let on. The white cross on his broad chest rose and fell on a field of red, symbolizing his pledge to keep her safe. He looked admirably fit.
Carla noticed that she had drifted to a sandbar and was situated in water almost too shallow to swim. No shark could get to her here. She would show the lifeguard she didn’t need his help. She would demonstrate her much admired crawl in slow motion, calm and perfectly balanced.
Kick, kick, kick. With every stroke, her fingers brushed the silt, stirring up a grainy cloud of light.
“Wait until you’re a mother,” said her mother. “Then you’ll learn what fear is.”
Carla was a mother. Her two sons were grown now. Had they taught her what fear is? Tom would say no, she had never learned. Tom would tell her to get the hell out of the ocean. What did she think she was doing?
Kick, kick, kick.
Carla took a breath, then bubbled it out. She was thirsty. Tom must be wondering about her by now; it was getting toward lunchtime. She had brought a bottle of water to the beach, but it was back on her chair, with her book and her glasses, far away. How many stings would she have to endure for a sip?
She couldn’t remember the sea at Longnook ever feeling as deliciously warm. In the old days, Tom and Carla had to wear wet suits to go swimming here. Today the water was more like the Caribbean than the Atlantic. Global warming? There were only so many things she could worry about at one time. Melting of the polar caps would have to wait for another day, although she had read that climate change could cause a pestilence of insects. She closed her eyes and drifted. “Everything will be alright,” she told herself. It was what she told her sons.
“Don’t matronize me,” her youngest had retorted once. She laughed, but it had stung. Once a mermaid, now a matron.
Kick, kick, kick. Kick, kick, kick.
She hadn’t thought of that hypnotist in years. What was his name? She remembered his hands, his face. He had touched his fingertips together, gazing at her. The green blinds in his somber office were shut tight against the sun. His eyelids drooped. His sallow cheeks sagged. He was a stranger to daylight. He was a stranger to her and to her unborn child.
“You are curious to see your baby,” he said. He leaned back and closed his eyes, indicating that she do the same. She obeyed, placing her hands over her belly, shielding her child from this stranger. The baby kicked. She didn’t remember the hypnotist’s name, but she remembered that kick.
Carla flipped onto her back and placed her hands on her belly. The sky was bright blue. Catastrophe comes, a bolt out of the blue. A fly landed on her cheek, another on her chin. She splashed her face and waved her hands about, imitating the blades of a fan.
“Afraid of pain?” murmured the hypnotist. “Afraid of the unknown? Curious to see your baby? Good, good. Curiosity moves you. Kick, kick, kick into the unknown.”
Carla stopped kicking. She lowered her toes to the ocean floor and scanned the beach, searching for the mother and her mermaid. They had disappeared. And the lifeguard? He too was gone. That demonstration at the flagpole had been his last word. He was done with her. If she was fool enough to dawdle in the shallows when the purple flag was raised, that was her business. The beach was closed.
Carla looked out toward the horizon, straining to see beyond the swells. Her breath caught. Her heart sped up. What was that black shape floating at a distance? It was too big to be the mola. It was round, like an island, too round to be a shark or a whale. Without her glasses, she couldn’t trust her eyes, but the creature must be enormous to look so large from so far away. A sea turtle? A leatherback? She had never seen one in these waters. Was it dead?
Carla’s first baby had been born dead. At five months, after fourteen sessions of hypnosis therapy preparing her for childbirth, Carla had miscarried. At three months, she had told her mother she and Tom were past danger. At four months, she had felt the kick. Soon after, stricken by sudden grief at the mean trick her body had played on her, Carla had broken the bad news to her mother. Downcast, Tom had attempted to soothe both women. “Something must have been very wrong,” Carla’s mother insisted. Furious, Carla had denied it. The fetus hadn’t looked wrong when it came out. It had a human head, ten fingers, ten toes. It was a boy.
The sky above the turtle leviathan, if turtle it was, thickened with shrieking gulls. Cormorants gathered. The air flickered darkly. Flies? More flies?
Two stragglers on the beach waved at Carla. Get out, get out! they mimed. They were covered in flies. Were they alarmed by the sight of death in the shape of a giant turtle? Or did they see something she didn’t? They jumped up and down, gesticulating like victims of the dancing plague. She imagined them dancing for hours, days, unable to stop. If she made for shore, would she start to dance the instant she emerged from the sea?
She looked toward the high dune. The well-trodden path leading upward was deserted now. Where was her hero, her Hercules who would tame the Cerberus and carry her to safety? Where was Tom? Hadn’t he received a shark alert by now? Wouldn’t he be worried that she hadn’t returned from her morning swim?
The unidentified monster out there, possibly dead and slowly drifting toward her, would attract great whites and who knows what other scavengers and summon thicker clouds of flies. Red-eyed flesh flies. Carrion-eating blowflies. Sewer flies. Scuttle and coffin flies. Since the start of the pandemic, she had sensed the coming of the apocalypse. She had never imagined it would come as an invasion of flies, as a stinging bullet dance like the old trope from the Westerns she used to watch with her brother as a child. Take this. Bang! Take that.
A mermaid cannot dance on land, she reminded herself, no matter what the provocation, but then she was not a mermaid. She was a mother, no longer young, no longer unacquainted with fear. At the naming of her fear, her heart sped up. Fear, yes. Fear of flies. Fear of the plague. Fear of a more deadly plague to come. Fear of old age. Fear of infirmity. Fear of loss. Fear of death. Take this. Bang! Take that. Dance!
Carla spotted Tom at the top of the hill. At this distance, without her glasses, she congratulated herself for knowing his shape, his stance as he scanned the beach, searching for her. Did he spot the mola fin? The humongous black carcass farther out? Did he see her?
She stood and waved at her husband. In an instant, the flies covered her. She plunged back into the water, landing in an awkward crouch on all fours. Would she have to crawl out?
“Tom!” she yelled. “Don’t come down!”
He was too far away. He couldn’t hear her, but she was determined to warn him, to protect him from the flying demons. Something was flapping around his head, tied in knots. A rag? A towel? When had Tom ever worn a raggedy towel on his head?
It wasn’t Tom. She saw now that it wasn’t a person at all, just a tall driftwood log, silhouetted against the cloudless blue sky, planted like a rootless tree blocking the path at the top of the dune, a warning to all not to descend. Had the lifeguard put it there?
She imagined herself at the summit of the impossibly steep dune, standing unsteadily by the dead trunk, an old woman, stung in too many places.
No, no, not yet. Not yet. She thrust out her arms and floated. She would stay in the water a bit longer. Tom was still at home, not yet worried, immersed in his work. Wait another moment, she told herself. Wait. Another brief swim first, before the charge, a soothing respite from the hell her favorite beach had become. Heaven, hell, and then?
Kick, kick, kick. Kick, kick, kick.
Laura Geringer Bass is the author of twenty-one books for children, most recently The Girl with More Than One Heart. As writer and publisher, her name has been associated with award-winning children’s literature for forty years. “Mermaid of Longnook” is her first published short story. Visit LauraGeringerBass.com.
