The Sirens Gift

Chapter 4.

“I swear, Sabrina! I know what I saw!”

“You probably dreamt it! You fall asleep floating all the time!” She hissed at me as she set a plate at a table. I followed suit by setting the other plate I held down beside it for her customer.

“Sabby! I know what I saw!”

“You’re just making excuses for being late!” She countered as she turned back to the kitchen.

I groaned and rolled my eyes as I followed, trying to stop her and have her look in my eyes. Her blond ponytail bounced to the side as she c****d her head at me and raised a manicured eyebrow at me.

“Sabby! When have I ever lied?” I pleaded, my sister knows I’m a bad liar. “You know I suck at lying! I’m not lying!”

“I didn’t say you were Lying Addy, I just said you dreamed it!”

“No I didn’t!” I groaned as we rounded the corner into the kitchen.

“Are you still on about that Addy?” My dad groaned as he flipped a thick piece of bacon over on his grill pan.

“Yes I’m “still on” this!” I rolled my eyes, “I know what I saw!”

“Addy, just go get your tables ordered.” My sister said, waving me off.

“Please dad! I have to go back! He was hurt and I left him!”

“If he was really a mermaid why would he have let you so close to him? We have to be a threat, right!?” Sabrina reasoned.

“He was hurt! I told you he hissed at me! But I think he was desperate!”

“I think you have a wild imagination like always Addy.” My dad tried to smile.

“Dad, please? I have to go back!”

“After your shift you can do whatever you want, Adalaie!” He responded by shaking his head.

I rolled my eyes, defeated and turned, grabbing my apron from the hook beside the door to the kitchen and going to my tables to get their orders while Sabrina finished up her tables.

“Hey Jim, Calvin, what can I get you guys today?”

“Usual for me.” Calvin responded. He was Jim's middle son, the only one that had joined their dad in his lobster fishing ventures, and almost every day for 3 years they’d stop here for lunch. Jim was an ocean-hardened old marine. After he served his time and lost an eye allegedly in combat, he retired to the coast of Maine where he and his wife started a lobster fishing business in his home town. They had three sons and one daughter, who was their youngest. She was only about 2 years older than me.

Jim shrugged “Yeah, I’ll probably do the same, but throw in some extra bacon?”

“You got it!” I went to turn.

“Hey Addy…” Jim’s voice seemed to drop, and he flicked an old, wrinkled hand at me to beckon me toward him. I stepped back to the table.

“Yeah Jim?”

“You be talkin’ bout them sirens with your sister?” He asked.

“Oh… yeah…”

“Listen here kid…” he pointed to his face, he typically wore a black eye patch, he said false eyes were for new-aged millennial snowflakes… “I ever tell you how I got this?” He asked.

I swallowed hard but shook my head. “In… combat?” I asked.

“That’s what I tell people, cause I know they won’t believe me.” He grinned, “A siren took this eye.” He whispered in a hushed voice.

“Dad… c’Mon, not this story.” Calvin sighed.

“Hush it boy!” Jim shot, then he looked back at me. “A male siren, I fell into the ocean when I was deployed, when I came to I was face to face with a siren, eyes pitch black, black as the deepest night, with a matching tail and fins to go with it.”

“What… What happened?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

“That merman lashed out at me! Claws as sharp as knives! Took my eye right out!” He made a ripping motion at his face. “And when my crew hauled me back up, screaming and yellin’ bout my eye being gone… they say they saw it too!”

“Dad please…”

“And ya know what they did? The government covered it up! Sent me home a war hero with some made-up story! They told me to keep it under lock and key, and I’d retire on a handsome sum… they paid for my silence! They don’t want the world knowing them creatures roam the water! They are a threat! You’d better stay away from them!”

I swallowed hard, gulping down the painful lump in my throat. I nodded uncomfortably.

“Sorry Addy…” Calvin said softly, giving his father a tired look.

“Thanks for the info Jim…”

“Stay away from ‘em girl! They ain’t nothin’ but vicious demons sent by the devil!” I slithered away to the kitchen where my sister gave me a concerned look.

“Dude, what the f**k was that?”

“I have no clue!” I responded, squeezing my cheeks in my hands with wide eyes.

She looked through the kitchen window to the restaurant where Calvin was trying to console an upset Jim.

“He said a siren took his eye and they were sent by the devil…”

“He’s a wack job…” Sabrina said, “I’ll take their food, go take a breather.”

“Thank you…”

I stepped out the door into the alley and breathed in the fresh cool air. Jim was always a “wack job” like Sabrina said, but he had never gotten that worked up over any subject in the three years I’d been serving them in the diner. He was always an eccentric guy but never aggressive about anything.

I sighed, maybe it was a dream… but maybe it wasn’t?

Maybe that creature was still sitting there, injured and helpless… he seemed frightened and weak, as though he had been in some sort of altercation that he hadn't necessarily won… but maybe my mind did make him up, created the fictional creature because the story of Sirens Lighthouse always swam around in my head when I went to the lighthouse.

I wouldn’t feel better until I went back to that spot to check. I turned back into the restaurant and went to my dad, who still cooked calmly as his crazy daughter begged to go see a fictional creature at a lighthouse.

“Dad please! Please Please Please!”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, “If Sabby will cover your time then fine… but take your car so you aren’t spending an hour walking…”

“Okay!”

My sister begrudgingly agreed to cover me for a bit while I went to look.

“Fine, but you owe me!”

“Of course!” I said, beaming brightly as I jumped on my toes. “Anything!”

I pulled my apron off and hung it back on its hook before running upstairs to fetch my keys from my room.

I flew back down the stairs and nearly crashed into the back door as I hit the downstairs. Pushing through the door, I rounded the building to the parking lot and zoomed my little red hatchback down the road.

I threw the car in park as I hit a parking space in the park and hardly bothered to lock the car as my seat belt ripped off and I scrambled to get out of the car.

I jogged through the park, to the path that led to the lighthouse, over the sand dune and rounded the corner of the rock wall and froze.

He was gone…

But the net still laid there where I had pulled it off of him and the sand around it had my tracks from previous, the shape of his body and an angel-like outline where his heavy tail had pressed into it. I could see his hand print sculpted into the sand where he had leaned onto it, the heel of it digging deeper in as he leaned to me. Then I saw a dragging line out into the water. It looked like someone had drug a body while doing a handstand.

I pulled my phone out to take pictures of the net before following the dragging lines in the sand to the edge of the water. It was creeping in slowly as the tide started to rise, covering a few inches of the tracks.

I leaned down to the marks where one of his hand prints was well defined. I set my hand beside it and it was much larger than mine. I snapped another picture of it with my phone before setting my hand inside the print.

I sat there with my hand smoothed against the compacted sand that he had left. A strange, lost feeling washed over me as I stared at it. My chest heaved, almost remorsefully. I felt stranded on the earth, as if something had shackled me to the sand and kept me from the water. I looked into the swishing, murky blue of the ocean and felt homesick… Abandoned…