The House Above the Sea

1.

Neo stares at a bridge.

    It's ancient, truly more of an unorthodox jumble of decaying, termite-eaten wooden slats than it is a bridge, and even so Neo can sense that he's supposed to be more excited than he is. So for a minute he just stands there—sweat dripping from his temples and sticking the dark coils of his hair to the back of his neck, rubber grip of his bike handles biting into his tired palms—and he stares.

    Until finally his cousin Joey, beside him, sighs and dismounts from his bike, nudging out the kickstand with his toe. Neo watches as he stalks up to the bridge, holds one daring foot over it, and reconsiders. "I swear," Joey announces, swiveling around, his hands on his hips as if he's just discovered a mess left behind by his baby sister. "The internet said it would be much more exciting than this."

    Neo smirks, leaning against the front of his bike. "Famous last words."

    Joey screws his face into a brilliantly exaggerated scowl—Neo lets out a short bark of laughter—before he squats at the bridge's edge. The slope of Joey's shoulders deepens with curiosity, so even before he lifts a hand to wave Neo over, Neo's already pushed his bike aside of the gravel path.

    The truth is, Neo would rather not be here, but he has no choice. It's only his first week in Oahu, and for whatever reason his uncle Duke and his aunt Vivian are convinced Joey is the best tour guide around. "Most people come to Hawaii for like beaches and hiking and stuff," Joey said three days ago as he was helping Neo unpack. Most soon-to-be college students would probably despise the idea of suddenly having to share their room with a younger relative, but Joey was ecstatic. "But you can see all that in time. I'm gonna show you the cool, under-the-radar things. Urban legends. Shit like that."

    This bridge—the Pale Bridge, as it is called, because of a strange, pallid ghost that's said to linger around it at nightfall—is just one box checked off of a very long list of these legends that Neo apparently has to see.

    If the rest of Joey's list looks like this, though, Neo is pretty sure he'd rather  go to the beach or go hiking.

    Beneath the bridge, a small yet brisk stream tumbles over a shallow bed of rock. It babbles so clearly in Neo's ears that he has to close his eyes for a second, just to listen. Back in New York City, each day is colored by a manmade cacophony—inconsistent snatches of conversation, wheels against asphalt, hundreds of thousands of differently-paced footsteps. Neo is not used to the noise here. The strange calls of birds in the plentiful treetops, the way the leaves sound when the sea breeze rustles through them—each time he hears something like that, it's as if the world is taking him by the shoulders and saying, Look. Listen.

    Neo doesn't belong here; he knows that.

    But he wants to.

    "See?" Joey says, jostling him in the shoulder. Neo chuckles and nearly tumbles headfirst into the stream. "So maybe it wasn't all so useless."

    "It is very pretty," Neo agrees, getting to his feet again, "but for the three-hundredth time, there's no ghost."

    Joey frowns. "That's because it's not nightfall."

    Neo, already halfway back to where their bikes are parked, raises a black eyebrow at him. "If you would like to loiter around until it gets dark, then by all means, be my guest. I'll make sure to tell the police where I last saw you."

    Joey grimaces, and though he tries to play it off, his discomfort is obvious. He flips off his ball cap (inexplicably, it's for the Atlanta Braves, though Joey plays basketball, not baseball, and has never stepped a foot beyond the Hawaiian Islands his entire life), runs a few fingers back through his hair, and puts it on again. "Jesus," he says, straddling his bike seat. "You don't have to say it like that."

    Neo winks at him, then starts ahead, gravel kicking up in the air as he sets off.

    If he doesn't think too much about why he's really here, it almost feels like an extended vacation. This is something some of his albeit well-to-do friends back in New York would do, he thinks: spend the summer in a vacation home, somewhere sunny and warm and far away from the mundanity of the city. They'd send him postcards or selfies, scribble or text a brisk Wish you were here. Yes—for a second Neo can delude himself into thinking that this is it, he's finally like those latchkey kids who live on the top floors of apartment buildings and who have butlers and personal chefs.

    Until he remembers the rain—how it was pouring in sheets that day, gray and cool—and the back of his mother's head as she disappeared into the taxi, never once looking up. When he remembers that, any and all illusions crumble before his eyes.

    Joey and Neo reach the North Shore again, which Joey and the rest of the Irvines have called home ever since Aunt Vivian retired from the Army. They take the road by the sea, pavement evolving into craggy rocks which then lead to sand and crisp blue water, Joey waving at familiar neighborhood faces as they zoom by in pick-up trucks or sedans. That's another thing Neo is not used to: the friendliness, the easy smiles people give him as he and Joey pass by. In New York, most of the people are strangers, but it seems that here, even if you are a stranger, you're not.

    They ride through the town, a small strip of brightly colored buildings selling souvenirs or hot plate lunches or handmade clothing and jewelry, and as they're coming up the hill towards the main neighborhood, that's when Neo sees it.

    In truth, he's seen it several times before. As Uncle Duke and Joey drove him home from the airport, as Joey walked him down to the town to introduce him to everyone, and even more recently: when they left this morning. Yet this time, something makes him pause.

    At the top of the hill, overlooking a sizable rocky cliff, is a house. Neo wouldn't have bothered to glance twice at it if it weren't so large, so unlike the one and two-story houses in the neighborhood that barely had any space between them. Something about it is eerie and out of place, as if the town was built around it: crumbling beige siding that was likely white once, rectangular windows without shutters, grayish-black roof and vintage brown door.

    "No one lives there," says Joey, making Neo jump. "It's been abandoned since, like, the 60s. You can't tell?"

    "No way it's been abandoned that long," Neo says, automatically. He drags his bike off the road, heading down the overgrown cobblestone path towards the front porch. "I mean, it would be dust by now if that's the case. It looks like someone's been taking care of it."

    Joey and Neo both pause a moment to observe the tumult of vinery climbing up the house's side, the cracks forming in the wood.

    Neo reconsiders. "Who lived here, then?"

    Joey shrugs. "I don't know. Some old guy? He's long dead now, that's for sure."

    Neo stoops to look underneath the porch, but when he hears something skittering about in the dark, he backs up. "So he just...left it here."

    "Really. I take you all around the island and the most interesting thing you find about it is an old house," Joey complains.

    Neo hears a low dink, but before he can question what it was, Joey has already turned to head back for the road. "Sun's going down, dude," he says, jumping back on his bike. "You know how my mom is about being on time for dinner!"

    Neo grimaces, because he doesn't need Joey's reminder. It's not just punctuality Aunt Vivian is adamant about, Neo's learned. She wants clothes folded a certain way, their bedroom floors swept spotless every morning. Neo strongly believes the military messed with her brain, but if anyone ever tries to connect the dots, all she says is, "I just like order."

    Now, Neo glimpses the house once more, the sky slowly turning pink behind it, before he turns. His mother, an architect, always tells him that every building, every structure, every brick, has a story.

    As he pedals to catch up with Joey, Neo can't help but wonder just what stories are hidden within those walls.