The Twice Lost

Luce. Great job explaining everything.

The curved shell of the boat vibrated as the motor roared. Air rushed across Andrew’s back. With an effort, he just managed to crane his head far enough to catch a last glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, falling into a wild gray sky. The last velvety resonance of the mermaids’ song faded away.

It was mid-afternoon the next day when Moreland went to visit Anais, an even odder smile than usual on his face. “Hello there, tadpole.”

Anais hesitated for only a second before swimming over, but she didn’t look up at him. Moreland stood with his hands spread on the glass, enjoying her lowered eyes and cowed expression. “What do you want me to do now?”

Moreland couldn’t resist pushing his luck a little. “Aren’t you happy to see me, tadpole? All alone in this tank all day, nothing to do. But you know I always bring the fun. Don’t I?”

“It’s not the same,” Anais barely muttered. She looked very pale, her golden hair matted in places. Maybe her sky blue tail was losing a bit of its iridescence as well.

“What’s not the same, dear?”

“Singing to people. It’s not as fun anymore, with you always telling me what to do, and I can’t even see them. And I just did the last one, like, yesterday!”

“Perhaps I can address your concerns this time. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to watch the effects of your singing . . . on our newest subject.”

“What are you talking about?” Anais was looking up at him now, her eyes wide and her lids dark and puffy.

“Tell me something. I’m very curious to know what would happen to someone who was obliged to listen to your death song for an extended period of time. That is, if there was no water available to . . . relieve the pressure. What do you think the results would be?”

Anais gave her habitual bewildered glare while she tried to understand what he’d just said. Then she released a kind of astonished squeal. “You mean if I sang to somebody and they couldn’t drown themselves? They’d go crazy!”

Moreland nodded. Mermaids’ voices slopped heavily in his brain, a wave made of cold, ringing metal. “Indeed. They’d go crazy. Permanently, do you suppose?”

He’d listened to that recording of mermaid song for precisely twenty-eight seconds before he’d tried to drown himself, and each one of those seconds seemed to carry more weight than the entire rest of his life. He didn’t actually doubt that someone forced to listen to Anais’s death song for several minutes would sustain irreversible damage. He didn’t expect Anais to give him any information that he didn’t already know from personal experience.

He asked instead for the peculiar pleasure of watching Anais try to think, of hearing how she’d reply. Her face contorted as she mulled the question.

“I don’t know! How am I supposed to know that? It’s not like I ever let anybody live—when I was still with the tribe! Why do you always have to ask me these questions? ”

For the first time, Moreland wondered if she genuinely missed her slaughtered friends; if, perhaps, she even regretted surviving. “Let’s assume permanently, then. The victim would be left permanently utterly insane. A gibbering idiot. It would be apparent to anyone who observed him afterward that he was mad and that nothing he’d ever said should be believed. For example, his outlandish claims that mermaids are lost little girls who’ve been terribly hurt somehow.”

Anais tipped her head. The strain of following his reasoning showed vividly on her face. “Mermaids—but girls do change because they get hurt! Except for, like, me.”

“Oh, I know that. Tadpole, of course we know things—you and I do, I mean—that we’d prefer the American public didn’t know. And if someone goes around telling them those things, we’d much prefer if they didn’t take him seriously.”

“But—who are you talking about? I don’t know what—”

“Ah, tadpole, quite a prize. A prize and a surprise for you. I hope you’ll be pleased.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Whom in all the wide world would you most enjoy hurting, Anais?”

“I—you mean Luce? Did you catch her? But me singing wouldn’t make another mermaid go crazy!”

“I’d like to propose that you can wound Luce most effectively by destroying someone she loves.” Moreland grinned. “Now are you happy to see me? I have Lucette Korchak’s father in shackles just down the hall, and when you’re ready I’ll bring him to you.”

Anais didn’t look happy at the news. Moreland was genuinely surprised. She blanched and hunched her shoulders.

“You see, dear? You don’t have to try to track down his phone number anymore because we’ve conveniently brought him straight to you. And, given what an unholy nuisance he’s turned out to be, I’d have to surmise that his bitch of a daughter must take after him.” Anais’s expression didn’t change. Moreland felt the first twinge of worry that she might actually refuse to do what he wanted. “Anais? You will collaborate with me on this little project, won’t you? You wouldn’t want me to think that you’ve . . . outlived your usefulness. Of course not.”

“You wouldn’t do anything to hurt me! Not after—I’ve helped you so much! You wouldn’t . . .”

Moreland glowered at her sternly until her voice trailed away. She was much too precious to him to be killed, but there was no reason to let her know that. “Just follow my instructions, tadpole. That way there won’t be any need for us to find out what I would do if I were ever forced to deal with your disobedience.”

“Okay,” Anais muttered.

“Okay? You’ll do a nice, thorough job of destroying Andrew Korchak’s mind? Not one speck of sanity left?”

“I said okay, already!”

She was hunched in the water, her sky blue tail coiled tightly and her arms wrapped around her chest. Moreland regarded her for a sustained moment, one hand lazily tracing the outline of her head and shoulders on the glass. “I’ll have him brought in, then. You’ll be able to . . . enjoy yourself . . . for as long as necessary. Though I think you should be able to accomplish the job fairly quickly, don’t you?”

Anais didn’t answer, didn’t look up at him. After a moment he gave up waiting for a reaction and left the pale, soundproof room. When Moreland returned there were two guards with him leading a man in shackles and a black hood. They plopped him on a plain wooden chair and fastened him to it with a few deft adjustments. “So,” Moreland said. He positioned himself directly behind the captive. “So, Anais. You were complaining that you don’t get to see them properly? We can fix that for you.” Moreland tugged off the hood and dropped it to the floor, letting Andrew Korchak stare straight at Anais, her azure eyes suddenly lifted to meet his. “Better? The shock system in your tank will be switched off in precisely two minutes.”

Then Moreland and the guards stalked out of the room.

He could observe the proceedings through live video, for once, even if he couldn’t listen. He could witness on Andrew’s face the same expression that had floated on his own on the hateful day when he’d put those earphones on, when he’d heard her and his mind had given itself to new configurations, the dark intestinal corkscrewing of relentless song.

This was the happiest he’d been in months.

* * *

Then Anais was left alone, facing the shabby, helpless man strapped to the chair. He had short-cropped, grayish brown hair, stubble, and a look somewhere between bleak and oddly whimsical as he regarded her. One cheek was swollen by a large greenish bruise. “Heya. That guy said your name’s Anais?”

Anais couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t seem even slightly surprised to see a mermaid in a tank.

“What if it is?” she asked sullenly.

“Did you know my Lucette? Sweet girl, short dark hair, light green tail? I was trying to swim out to see her