Lydia's Mollusk Read online

  "Sis?" Arnt said, staring at her, a slight frown on his tired face. He was younger than her, by nearly five years, but looked older. He was carrying too much weight.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "You went glassy for a moment. I wondered if you—what's that on your arm?"

  He dropped the spatula. As it clattered to the floor, he grabbed her left hand and lifted it.

  The holes were bigger. Maybe almost large enough to insert the tip of a pencil.

  A wave of nausea ran through Lydia. Her legs trembled.

  "I'm getting the doctor back," Arnt said.

  Lydia just nodded. Arnt guided her to the table, pulling out one of the seats. She sat, the old vinyl crackling as it took her weight.

  Then Arnt was on his phone.

  The boys in the dinghy stared at Lydia, now their expressions more accusatory. As if she'd done something wrong.

  "Hello?" Arnt was saying. "Yes."

  He spoke quickly, arranging for Doctor Wills to come by. Darren Wills was retired—well-retired—but he'd hung on to his license and informally prescribed minor potions and lotions. He'd purchased one of her paintings, and wouldn't even speak of anything below full retail price when she'd offered it as a gift.

  Lydia felt woozy. She leaned forward and let her head rest on the table. Turned to the left, with her arm lying right by her.

  She could practically see right into the holes. Like little caves in her skin.

  There was a phobia some people had about holes in things. Tricky-something. Especially about holes in skin.

  "All right," Arnt said. He sat by her. "The doctor will be right over. I'll see what he says, but I think I'll fly you up to Cooperville and admit you into the hospital there."

  "No." Her voice sounded weak, even to her. "There's no pain. It will pass."

  "Not your decision."

  "Yes," she said. "It really is."

  Arnt harrumphed and muttered something like, "We'll see," and went off to clatter away at the stove.

  Chapter Five

  While Arnt bustled and muttered in the kitchen, Lydia slipped out and went back to the bathroom. In the cluttered cabinet, filled with medical supplies she should have tossed ages ago—half-used Betadine tubes and expired Tylenol—she found a little red first aid kit. Something she'd gotten free with some promotion when she'd bought lumber for the deck she'd built.

  Inside she found a fabric bandage and she loosely wound it around her hand and wrist, hiding the holes.

  Arnt poked his head in. He was sweating.

  "Doc's on his way," he said.

  "Okay."

  "You should stay at the table. Or in bed."

  "I'm okay. It comes and goes."

  "Those holes aren't coming and going." He glanced at her now-bound wrist. "That's not going to help."

  "Helps stop me looking at them. Did you make lunch?"

  "Breakfast. I thought you were dizzy though. Nauseous."

  "It comes and goes. I could eat."

  Lydia started toward the kitchen. It had a door to the yard and she went on out and through, standing on the deck which still looked new.

  There were thunderheads brewing away to the south, tall and bristling. From the ocean the sound of the breakers rolled over her. Enticing.

  Wasn't that why she'd come here? When it was clear that the paintings could sustain her, financially, and she could live anywhere, she needed somewhere to sustain her spiritually. She needed a healthy soul to put into those paintings anyway.

  Cheesy, Arnt would say.

  Right now, standing behind her, he said, "Lydia? Where are you going?"

  She looked around and saw she was no longer on the deck, but out on the end of the driveway. The grassy shoulders on the street rippled in the breeze and the old patched and broken tarmac lay there, a path back to the ocean.

  Her hand tingled.

  A car came along the road toward them, motor humming. Doctor Wills. A little red roadster with a long hood and barely any trunk. Shark gills on the side.

  The vehicle slowed and the doctor looked up. He was reading an actual print newspaper. Amusing, really. One, the affectation of it, but also that it was only a couple of minutes drive down from his house. Most people wouldn't bother reading on the way.

  The vehicle turned into Lydia's driveway, clicked and stopped. Wills stepped out. He closed the door and the vehicle backed out and parked at the road's edge.

  "You're up," he said. "That's a good sign."

  He was small and slim and had a goatee that was a mix of gray and brown. Not a hair on the top of his head.

  "It's worse," Arnt said.

  "It's fine" Lydia said.

  "We'll see," Wills said. "I've been reading." He held up the paper. It was wasn't really a newspaper. More like a medical journal. One of the ones that updated every month.

  "Reading?" Arnt said.

  "I'd like to see the mollusk which attacked you."

  "It didn't attack me," Lydia said. "It was frightened."

  "It tried to eat you," Arnt said. "And Marlene threw it back into the water, she said."

  "It wasn't trying to eat me. It was confused. By the bird. By the waves. It was tired and old. I felt sorry for it."

  "Tired and old," Wills said. "Your phone will have taken some images."

  "I didn't have my phone with me." These days a lot of people's phones just recorded everything and the AI winnowed it all out and turned the recording into a neatly packaged set of pictures. Uploaded and distributed for everyone to see.

  Wills raised his eyebrows. "You were out alone without a phone? No one mentioned that."

  "Look around," Lydia said. "We're at a remote community. Half the people here are looking for some kind of escape from all that. More than half."

  "Lyds," Arnt said. "Be nice to the doctor."

  She nodded. "Yes. Sorry. I'm just not sure about all this attention."

  A smile from Wills, as if he was used to grouchy patients.

  "Let's head inside," he said. "I'd like to take a look under that bandage again. Could you draw it?"

  "Draw it?" Lydia said. She started back toward the house. Why had she been out here in the first place?

  "A picture of the mollusk," Wills said, walking with her. "There are a lot of them, but not many the size that Arnt described to me. It will be one of the genetic mod things. You know from the ones they released fifteen years or so back."

  "Cleaning up the oceans," Arnt said.

  They reached the deck and their shoes clunked as they crossed to the kitchen door.

  "Cleaning up all right," Wills said, going through and sitting at the table. "But there's some worry about them evolving."

  "Of course they'll evolve," Lydia said, sitting across from him. "They're living creatures."

  "But faster than most. Very malleable genes, faster reproductive cycles. Evolution is always about errors that prove successful in a changed environment. I'm not a scientist by any measure, but they are changing the environment themselves, and as such are having to adapt. Each subsequent generation will have some individuals better adapted to cooler seas and higher salinity and what-have-you."

  Arnt was bustling at the bench. Boiling water and spooning coffee into the plunger.

  "Does this help me?" Lydia said.

  "Let's see under the bandage."

  Chapter Six

  The invigorating smell of brewing coffee swept through Lydia's small kitchen as she peeled away the last layers of the bandage from her hand and wrist.

  Back when she'd worked at a big franchise gallery in Minneapolis, she'd had to get a first aid certificate. Just in case a customer slipped, or a co-worker cut themselves with a prep blade. One icy day, a woman in ridiculous heels had come in and tripped on a mat and cut her knee. The one and only time Lydia had actually put her training to use, and then nothing more than a couple of Band-Aids on the cut.

  "Huh," Wills said, looking at Lydia's hand and wrist. "Now that is interesting."

>   Lydia tried not to look. Arnt did look and turned away immediately.

  "That bad?" she said.

  "Trypophobia," he said.

  "What?"

  "Fear of holes in things. I looked it up. Worse when the holes are in people's skin. There are lots of fake pictures online and they just make me sick to my stomach. Do you want milk, doctor?"

  "Please," Wills said. "And half a sugar too."

  "You take sugar? I thought doctors didn't do that kind of thing."

  "Doctors do plenty of things they wouldn't recommend to their patients. Of course. We're not mystical gods. We're human. And I like my coffee a little sweeter."

  While Arnt poured, Lydia looked at her arm and wrist.

  The holes were bigger. Of course. That's how these things worked. They got worse before they got better.

  Assuming they got better.

  Before, she could have put the tip of a pencil into them. Now some were still small, but a couple of them, she could have just about pushed in the eraser end.

  "This happened fast," she said. "They're growing."

  "Apparently," Wills said. He had his phone out and waved it over her arm and hand, videoing.

  "That can't be good."

  "We'll see."

  Arnt put two coffees on the table and cursed as he looked at her.

  The holes were black, but there was something inside them.

  Arnt swallowed, as if trying to avoid throwing up.

  "Are they eggs in there?" he said. "Did that thing lay them? Some kind of parasite?"

  "We'd have to operate," Wills said. "I did take a biopsy, so—"

  "You biopsied me? Without my permission?"

  Wills smiled, as if he'd expected this and as if a lifetime of doctoring meant he knew what he was doing, even if it risked a lawsuit.

  "I took a sample of the foreign material there. That's all."

  "You don't seem very concerned," Arnt said.

  "It's his job," Lydia said. "Though he is retired. But he's supposed to be reassuring. He's supposed to say that it's unusual, but there is a new treatment coming out of Israel or Sweden that's very promising."

  "I wish I could," Wills said. "There's not any documentation for this. I wish we could have seen the mollusk that did it. We could look at that and see what a useful treatment might be. There must be mollusk specialists who would know."

  "Of course," Lydia said.

  "I have sent the sample away. My equipment is a little antiquated—meaning ten years old—but I've run it through everything and sent the results to a friend who has a lab down in Shreveport. I'll send the sample too, but we can get some quick preliminaries on it."

  "She needs to get to a hospital," Arnt said. "I don't want her to lose her arm."

  "It's very early to be talking about that," Wills said. "This only happened yesterday. The progress is very slow."

  "Slow! I could stick my finger into some of those." Arnt put his hand to his mouth and retched.

  "Nice thought, thanks," Lydia said.

  "He is right, though." Wills picked up his coffee and sipped. "You do need to be admitted."

  "Some things move very fast," Arnt said. "You go from fine to not breathing in fifteen minutes."

  "Ease up," Lydia said.

  "I'm just a country doctor now," Wills said. "Part-time. Retired. Good for prescribing antibiotics and giving flu vaccines. Not much for this. I'll call Midhurst Med in Cooperville and see if we can get you over there right away."

  "I can fly her," Arnt said.

  "That's right, you have that ornithoptery thing."

  "I'm not getting into that," Lydia said. "Not a chance."

  "You'll have to."

  "I'd throw up the second we lifted off."

  "It comes with sick bags."

  "Comforting thought."

  Lydia stood. She looked at the edges of the holes. They were hardening. Didn't change shape when she turned her arm.

  "You seem woozy," Arnt said. "You should stay seated."

  "I'm fine." She did feel woozy, but wasn't about to tell him that. "I'm going for a walk."

  And she strode through the kitchen door.

  Chapter Seven

  The day was aging fast and the breeze had changed. It was cool and fast and racing in from the ocean, bringing a salty tang and lifting the hem of Lydia's dress.

  She marched along the road. There were no sidewalks. Her father would have called it walking with determination, watching with pride as she went to have words with some nine-year-old who'd beaten up on Arnt, aged seven. Or when she'd crossed the stage to receive her diploma, wishing she could be anywhere else.

  A bird flapped up from the grass at the roadside with a shrieking pip-pip-pip, before vanishing into the grass on the other side.

  Arnt was calling to her, but Lydia kept going. Turned the corner, and the next. The houses were a mixed bunch. Some old with half their frontage made up of garage, some tiny little boxes, others new, grown buildings that looked like a terrible accident had happened to a giant wicker basket.

  Things began to blur or jump. As if she was watching a poorly edited old-style film. As if she was falling asleep and waking again.

  Like sleepwalking. Maybe a side effect of whatever medication Wills had given her. Or of the... things implanted in her arm.

  The dunes. The grass brushing against her legs. Sand in her sandals.

  Arnt with her, hand on her elbow.

  "You have to stop," he said.

  "I'm stopping." She slowed. She wasn't even on a path. Was just stomping across the sand. Straightlining.

  "We'll drive you there. Doctor Wills's car. They'll send an ambulance to meet us halfway."

  "No flying?"

  "No flying."

  "The ambulance can just come here."

  "That'll take over an hour longer. You can't wait. Look at your hand."

  He reached out and grabbed it, lifting her hand, holding it between them. Right at belly level.

  Twenty or so little holes. Something within them. Hard edges. With her right index finger she reached to touch one. It really was hard.

  "Shell," she said.

  Calcium carbonate. The clever chemical mollusks used to make their hard shells. The stuff that became ground up on the ocean floor only to become limestone millions of years later. To turn into stalactites and stalagmites.

  Really hard.

  But taking a long time to form.

  "We need to find her," Lydia said, pulling out of his grip. "We need to find her."

  "Not yet!"

  But already she was moving. Hurrying toward the ocean.

  Chapter Eight

  The wind was whipping spray from the whitecaps, creating a layer of haze all along the length of the beach. The waves pounded in, breaking along their length, making a continuous roar.

  An aircraft whined high overhead, almost following the line of the coast. For a moment the sun glinted from the fuselage.

  Lydia tossed off her sandals, leaving them among the shards of high-tide driftwood and seaweed and crazed plastic.

  Her feet sank into the wet sand with every step. Arnt ran with her all the way, hurling argument after plea after demand.

  He was making a lot of sense, really.

  The tide was almost full. Lydia stopped in one of the pools of draining water, the sand covering her feet. There were bars there, hummocks of sand, just below high tide level. The water swirled. A school of tiny gray fish darted around her ankles.

  The next wave came, crashing and foaming. Rolling right over the bar. The energy dissipated quickly.

  By the time the influx of water reached Lydia, it was little more than a bubbly surge adding a few inches of depth. The fish zipped away and back, their sides flashing.

  She knelt in the water, knees and calves and ankles disappearing into the sand. It was soft and buoyant in the churning water.

  "Lyds," Arnt said. "You have to come back. This is crazy stuff."

  She glanced ar
ound at him. He was standing in the water too. His jeans soaked to the knees, sand filling his boots for sure.

  Marlene was back there up in the dunes. On the walkway. Standing watching her.

  Farther along a black dog raced after a bounding tennis ball-bot, the owner nearby in a folding chair with a paper like the one Doctor Wills had been reading in his car.

  "I have to figure this out," Lydia said. She looked at her arm again. All those holes with their hard nodules. She should be feeling worse than she was. Way worse.

  A bigger wave crashed down, the booming sound seeming to come from all around. Foam and water rushed across the low bar. Right into the pool where she was kneeling.

  The water surged around her. Up above her waist. Pushing her. Arnt stepped forward. Grabbed her shoulders. Stopped her from falling right back.

  "Lyds," he said. "Come on."

  Her arm was underwater now. Feeling as if it belonged there.

  "We'll find her," Lydia said. "She has the key to this."

  "Find who? Marlene?" Arnt helped Lydia to her feet.

  "The mollusk," Lydia said.

  "You want to find it?" Arnt looked out over the waves. "You want to find a mollusk there? Somewhere in the whole ocean?"

  "She won't have gone far."

  "You said she was sick and old."

  "Lost. I don't know about sick. Maybe."

  "She's laid her eggs in you. It was a dying act. Desperation on her part."

  "She didn't lay eggs. That's not what this is."

  "Really? Look a them."

  "You look." Lydia held her arm out.

  Water was dripping from her. From the hem of her dress, into the slowly subsiding pool. Another wave would come soon, filling it again.

  Arnt took her arm. He ran his fingers across the holes.

  They felt okay. No pain. Not even any discomfort.

  There were beads of water in them.

  "We're getting you to hospital," he said.

  "Arnt."

  "Now." He clenched her wrist. Tugged her toward the shore.

  "No." Lydia tried to pull from his grip. He held tight.