Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Five: Ticker (Part 1)

FIVE: Ticker (Part 1)

"Emerald!....Emerald, have you seen my scuba gear?!"

Emerald could hear her dad perfectly from under the covers. She pictured him wiping a swoop of hair off his forehead, only to have it fall right back again over his glasses. His hair was always flopping into his eyes.

Harold trawled through boxes in the living room, over-turning clothes and dishes packed in newspaper. They hadn't quite unpacked, although this was nothing new.

Since Emerald's mom went missing somewhere off the Great Barrier Reef the year before, things at home had been a little disheveled, disjointed, and sad.

Imogen had been a squid researcher. She was from Fiji and Harold was from Vietnam. But they met somewhere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Harold and Imogen boarded the same boat. They were young protesters trying to stop fishermen from shark finning, a practice where the shark's fins are cut off (and used to make shark fin soup), and the still alive sharks are thrown back in the ocean. They die there, unable to swim or feed or defend themselves.

Harold had watched Imogene free a shark before it could be finned and thought she might be the most beautiful and strong woman he had ever seen. That was the moment, he decided he would stop at nothing to make her happy every day of her life.

When Imogene went missing, Emerald and Harold spent every moment searching for her. They often let the dishes pile up in the sink, let the vegetables go rotten in the bowl on the counter, let the mess run up on their house. They just wanted her back.

They missed her in all the big and small ways, every day.

"Emerald, I know you've been out diving....I'm also missing my salinometer, my chemical test kits and my oxygen probes....I know you know where they are!"

Emerald glanced at her closet. She knew where it all was. But she needed to make one more dive in the afternoon. She was sure Bangkok was in the area, feeding on schools of small fish. She was sure if she could take one more dive, she'd find him. And to do one more dive, Emerald was going to need the extra equipment. She needed to observe him, get a better idea of his powers.

Emerald heard her father's footsteps and sunk under the blankets, playing dead.

The door creaked open. Emerald held her breath.

Harold stood there in the mess that was his daughter's room, scouring the debris for any sign of his equipment. Then he walked over and kissed her blanket-covered head.

"I love you," he said it so softly, and with so much meaning, it was like a feather that weighed 1,000 pounds.

Then, he left, closing the door behind him.

He didn't like her talk of sea monsters, and giant killer squid that could live on land. It went against everything he believed in his completely logical, scientific mind.

Harold thought Emerald had gone a little berserk after her mother had gone missing. But that was understandable. He had too, in his own private way.

"There's no monster," he thought, "just global warming, just our pollution killing sea life."

That was why he had moved them to Tamarama, to study the sudden disappearance of small fish along the coast. And mostly, he thought the change would be good for her. Emerald needed a new adventure, one not connected to her mother.

This thing she had with a sea monster named Bangkok was a manifestation of her missing her mother. Howard Phan was sure of it. He did not believe that anything like the Bangkok of her stories was possible.