Killer, Come Back to Me

“You figured it, Charlie, walking, smoking your cigars. You didn’t know Markham was swimming that night, watching, waiting. Right in front of his house, he dragged you under! Hit you with a pipe, then, so you wouldn’t be found there, towed you down to the end of the canal, where everything ends; including the circus and the cages and the old splintered wheels, and he laid you there. Then he swam home, slow, climbed out, went in and dried off, and maybe ate a late supper. Damn!”

Something lay shining in the water at the base of the canal.

Tin cans. A dozen of them, filled with cement, lined up in a neat row. Nothing wrong with tin cans. But they indicated the halfway mark, perhaps. They were put there, maybe, to help a swimmer orient himself without having to lift his head high above water and expose himself to view. Just a row of cans, nobody would notice but a shark.

It must have been fun for awhile, scaring people in the fog, making easy money. Playing like a kid, running around in the salt shadows, vanishing and leaving shivers behind you. Fun making your money that way, lying on the beach by day, getting exercise by night. Fun until the murdering began. You never plan for that. You never do.

Tiredness got a start in his arm muscles first. The blow struck by the thrown wrench was really hot, now, a heat almost glowing in the water, cringing with every stroke.

Getting tired. Steve thought quickly. How much further? As far as I can go and be dead tired, and then about one block, two blocks farther, counting in the added strength of an athlete like Markham. That should make it.

The shark came silent, swift and neat.

Shining only faintly, bubbles trailing from it, it shot from dimness, the strength of it becoming hands, legs, a man’s face and body!

Steve shouted under water! The anger only shot up in frothed foam!

Markham!

When you take someone into your arms it is to love or to kill. There was no love here. Only the shock of bodies throwing cushions of water, fingers coming up like spiders on Steve’s face, trying to poke into his eyes. Instinctively, he balled himself and kicked into that shimmering face, using it as a something to push on at the same time.

Markham came back. This time Steve was ready and used the canal side for traction, striking ahead to meet him. They exploded upward into the fog world, yelling for air, and then down. Muscles and training are not good things to meet. The underwater world was no place for a guy who hadn’t been down in it for years.

Markham swarmed over Steve as they sank in a fury of split water. When it came to holding breath Markham had lungs for it, big and long-trained. Just by holding onto Steve and sinking and staying on the bottom, he could win out. Steve would eventually breathe water.

Markham tried that.

Steve relaxed on purpose, just wriggling one arm, one hand. He saved his air, his legs locked against Markham’s. Funny. A guy named Markham. Fighting him underwater. Never seen his face before, can’t even see it now, thought Steve, and here I am fighting with a name and a lot of muscles and bubbles! They plummeted and struck the canal floor, like they were caught in the falling drapery of a stage’s scenery, long yards of green and black velvet tangled around them in the midst of a thunderstorm. Lightning blew Steve’s brain apart, he saw fires and comets behind closed eyes. Air! In another second his lungs would—

Steve got his right hand on Markham’s nose, thrust sharply upward. Markham’s mouth broke open, an open trap, air gurgling out sharp, quick, awful. He broke away from Steve as a crab would, scuttling.

Steve knew what happened next. Markham would rise up for air, come down again quick and hold Steve before Steve could get any air at all. Next time there’d be no failure. Only lungs getting cold and dead and soggy.

Steve did it first. He came up, swearing. You can’t swear underwater, only in your mind. The swearing is caught in you, just as you are caught in the cold web of water. Steve swore to the night, the insane pulse of oil pumps, the ocean colliding in mighty blows upon some far beach. Then he fell down upon the upcoming Markham, and Markham was wriggling like bait in a can!

Steve held his precious cache of air in raw lungs. His ears were shaking like hunks of tin hung in a high wind, beaten by great timbers of wood.

This is for you, Charlie! He made a slow beat against the slime with Markham’s jerking head. For you, Charlie! And for Big Irish and the burning shack and old man Gerbelow and the man-shark that swam in calm waters and left no print but a trail of water where he came and went, that evaporated by morning and was gone!

Two beats, three beats.

“Give up your air, you bastard! Give up your air!”

Four beats. Markham laxed. Steve held on in a tight fury. Held until the head got drowsy and all the air regurgitated. With an intake, a rushing, Markham breathed of the good cold canal water where children played in the old days, of the good cold canal water where Charlie and Steve and a little boy who grew up to be a shark played in the warm sun, where all three fell into it and, now, only one would come up alive!

Steve held on until the intake was complete.

A drowsy nightmare. He came up to the outer world, glad for lungs, glad for the miracle of air. He simply clung limp to the side of the canal for fifteen minutes and sucked in and breathed out, in and out, enjoying it.

Then, treading water very slowly, he went down and found what had to be found, and taking it by the hand, swam slowly toward the end of the canal. It seemed a million miles away, so he took it easy, stopping every now and then, and going on again, like two kids going home hand in hand, one leading the other through the cold waters.

The end of the canal. Steve thought of that, thought of Charlie walking, thought of the circus wagons; and then the ironic idea came of itself. With his last strength, he’d do it.

The end of the canal. He reached it. He went under.

When he came up, a moment later, alone, he heard noises. A siren coming in from the suburbs, car motors slowing down, brakes, doors opening. Steve climbed from the water. He heard car doors slam, feet running.

The water ran off him in cold drippings. He shivered with it. His throat was raw, cold agony, and the world suddenly became six flashlights blazing over his wet body.