Writers of the Future - Vol. 31

Poseidon's Eyes by Kary English

Sometimes you can get to know a whole town by understanding just one man. In the seaside village of Summerland, that man was Peyton Jain. Peyton was in his 60s, as best I could tell. His face was craggy and weathered, with a beard like sea foam on rocks and eyes of Poseidon's blue.

Some folks thought of Peyton as a nuisance to be reported or a vagrant to be run off, but I knew different because it was Peyton who put me right with Summerland's spirits. The locals have joked about spirits as long as anyone can remember, but it took the murder of the Kelly children to remind us just how real-and how powerful-the spirits could be.

Summerland sits like the Pythia over a cleft in the rock, soaking up the vapors of prophecy along with the California sunshine. Spiritualists started a commune here over a century ago. Egalitarians at heart, they outlawed money and divvied the land into tent-sized plots.

Oil-oil money, really-edged the Spiritualists out. Derricks took over the beach, and the Spiritualists' canvas utopia turned into a shantytown for oil workers. My house was made from two of those oil shanties sandwiched together. The shanties had been built before electricity, so the wiring came up through holes in the floor, and the doorbell was an old ship's bell, corroded green with salt and time.

The house had no foundation, just posts and piers and seven jacks. When the floor sagged, Peyton crawled beneath to twist the jacks until everything was more or less level. That was a blessing to me because I couldn't abide the narrow crawlspace with earth pressing in around me and voiceless whispers winding snakelike over my skin.

The county said the whispers were nothing to worry about. Radon gas. Natural seepage. Buy a detector and install a fan. But radon doesn't creep up through the floorboards in silver ribbons until it pools in the corners, like living smoke. Radon doesn't whisper in the darkness like waves on sand.

But spirits? That's exactly what they do.

* * *

Peyton's battered brown pickup rumbled up the hill while I was\taking out the trash. A Sport King camper perched on the back, listing to one side like the shell of a hermit crab. The old truck clunked into park just outside my front gate, and Peyton leaned out the window. He looked bright-eyed and freshly showered, which should have meant he was doing well, but his passenger window had been busted out and covered with blue painter's tape and an old trash bag, and that meant trouble.

"'Morning, Danaë," he called. "Brought you something."

Peyton always called me by my right name-Danaë. Everyone else in town just called me Dani.

He extended one hand through the open window, and his fingers uncurled like the fronds of an anemone. Nestled in his palm was a piece of green beach glass, the edges worn smooth by sand and waves.

I accepted the offering and thanked him, turning the glass like a worry stone between my fingers.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I thought you had a spot away from the beach? That Harris kid giving you a hard time again?" Ike Harris, a teenager with a new Mustang, lived in the Mansions across town.

Peyton gave a shrug that meant yes. "He comes down at night, partying with his friends." Peyton nodded toward the shattered window. "Broke my window. Cops won't do nuthin 'cuz nobody saw it." Dejection colored Peyton's voice. That truck was all he had, and a new window was more than he could afford.

"Want some coffee?" I offered.

"Nah, I just had coffee."

"I'm about to make eggs. You hungry?" Sometimes Peyton needed money when he stopped by. I didn't always have it, but I could manage an extra place at the table.