The Mermaid's Revenge Page 11

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “It's just a test,” Ms. Harper says as the water falls to just a few feet. “They'll refill it in a minute or two.”

  The mermaid is down at the very bottom of the tank, hiding in what remains of the water. Already, however, the top of her shoulder is starting to poke out above the surface, and I can see that she's starting to shiver. She's leaning further and further down, as if she hopes that some of the water will remain, but the metal tube is still shaking as it draws more and more water out of the tank.

  “Stop!” I yell. “You have to stop right now!”

  No-one listens to me.

  Instead, the very last of the water drains from the tank, leaving the mermaid shivering and hunched on the bottom.

  “Okay, get on with this,” Mr. Randall tells Doctor Collier as they approach the tank's far side. “You're sure she can breathe right now, aren't you?”

  “They've been observed to spend time above the surface,” Doctor Collier says, stepping onto a small platform. He seems a little uncertain, and after a moment he turns to Mr. Randall. “I wasn't planning to do anything like this for at least another month. It takes time to conduct a proper study, but -”

  “We don't have time,” Mr. Randall says firmly. “Catherine Sykes' death changed everything. Now get in there before -”

  Suddenly the air is filled with a horrific, churning howl. I turn and look at the mermaid, and I'm horrified to see that he's trying to sit up. Her mouth is wide open and she's screaming, except that the scream seems to be coming from much deeper in her throat and after a moment some water comes slurping out past her lips. She's shivering violently, and it's clear that she's upset.

  “It's just a test,” Ms. Harper says again, placing a hand on my shoulder. “They're really not going to hurt her.”

  “They're hurting her already!” I shout, racing along the side of the tank and around to where Mr. Randall is standing, just as Doctor Collier's platform starts rising up toward the top of the tank. “You have to stop!”

  “We're trying to help her,” Mr. Randall says, watching as Doctor Collier gets closer and closer to the top. “Sometimes you have to hurt someone a little in order to help them. Sometimes they don't know what's for their own good, so you have to give them a nudge.” He looks down at me with a faint smile. “You'll learn that when you're older, Sylvia. I guess it's just a little difficult for a child to grasp.”

  Before I can answer, the mermaid lets out an even louder scream. I turn just in time to see that she's twisting herself around, and after a moment she looks up toward Doctor Collier. A fraction of a second later, however, something hits her in the chest and she cries out before falling back, and I'm shocked to see a yellow-tailed dart poking out just below her collarbone.

  “What are you doing to her?” I scream.

  “Sedating her,” Mr. Randall replies. “It's for her own good while a sample is collected.”

  “A sample of what?” I ask.

  “Doctor Collier has agreed to accelerate certain aspects of the procedure,” Mr. Randall replies. “We talked, and we agreed that in these unusual circumstances it'd be best if we focus on activities that can produce an immediate benefit.” He pauses. “Your mother was a wonderful woman, Sylvia,” he adds, “but she had her focus and we have ours. This is the most astonishing opportunity, and your mother will get all the credit when it's over. I promise, I'll make sure that everyone in the world knows what she did.”

  “No!” I yell, before spotting Doctor Collier making his way down a ladder that has been dropped over the top of the tank. “Stop!”

  He seems nervous and hesitant, almost as if he's afraid, but finally he gets down to the bottom and starts approaching the mermaid. She's on her front and she doesn't seem to be moving, but Doctor Collier is still being very careful as he gets closer.

  “The smell isn't great in here,” he calls out. “Are you sure you haven't seen any movement?”

  “Positive,” Mr. Randall replies. “Get on with it.”

  “Her barbs are poisonous,” he continues. “I haven't analyzed them properly yet, but -”

  “Just get on with it,” Mr. Randall says. “The sooner you've got a sample, the sooner you can get out of there and then we can fill the tank back up.” He glances at me briefly, before turning back to look into the tank. “It's not fair to keep that poor creature suffering for even a moment longer.”

  I watch in horror as Doctor Collier crouches next to the mermaid, and then as he uses a scalpel to scrape some of her scales into a dish. Then he moves toward her top half and starts working on her waist. I can't see what he's doing, but when he stands and heads back to the ladder I spot a small bloodied patch.

  “The samples from the other specimen were from a corpse,” Mr. Randall explains. “A live specimen is so much more useful.”

  “You hurt her!” I sob.

  “A little,” he replies, “but it's only temporary. Everyone will be better off now, Sylvia. Including you.”

  Doctor Collier climbs over the top and then starts the motor that brings the platform down. I hurry around the side of the tank, trying to catch sight of the mermaid's face, but she's still slumped in position. A moment later the pipe starts shuddering again, and I see with relief that water is starting to flood back into the tank. The mermaid still hasn't moved, however, and I'm starting to worry that they've really hurt her.

  “Please be okay,” I whimper, with tears streaming down my face as the tank continues to refill. “They shouldn't have hurt you.”

  Within a couple of minutes, the mermaid is submerged again, although the wound in her waist causes a faint cloud of blood to rise through the water. I stand at the glass and wait for her to move, for any sign that she's waking up, but I'm scared that she might be dead just like Mother. Eventually I put my hands on the glass as I wait, but it must be several minutes now since the water level passed her and she's still completely motionless.

  “Please,” I whisper, terrified that I might be about to see a second dead boy, “you have to wake up.”

  I wait, and then a moment later her head moves slightly, and then suddenly she looks straight at me with the most horrified look on her face.

  Feeling a rush of relief, I watch as she pushes herself up from the bottom of the tank, and then looks down at the bloodied wound on her waist. She seems shocked for a moment, as if she doesn't understand, and then she turns to look at me.

  “It wasn't me,” I tell her, even though I don't even know if she understands. “I didn't do it. I tried to stop them.”

  She stares at me for a moment longer, and then she spins around and swims quickly behind the shipwreck until she's out of view.

  “I told them not to do it!” I call out, before stepping back and turning to see that Mr. Randall and Ms. Harper and Doctor Collier are talking over by the computer terminals. They seem very excited about something, and they're talking in hushed tones that I can't make out from over here. They're probably trying to think of more ways they can make the mermaid suffer.

  I know the door is still locked, and I don't want to go over to the others, so finally I sit cross-legged on the floor next to the tank. My whole body is trembling and my mind is racing, and I feel as if I have to do something even if I can't figure out what that something might be. For now, I'm completely powerless and all I can think about is the awful state of the mermaid when she was unconscious on the floor of the tank.

  And Mother.

  I keep seeing Mother's dead body in that bed, with her hand curled against her chest.

  “Mother didn't bring you here to do horrible things to you,” I whimper, turning and looking toward the shipwreck. The mermaid is hiding somewhere behind there, and I don't blame her. She must be terrified. “Mother wasn't mean or cruel,” I continue, wiping away tears. “I promise you, this isn't what Mother would have wanted. She just wanted to get something from you, and then you'd have been happy. She'd never have stared cutting bits out of you. Mothe
r wasn't like that!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I want you to understand,” Mr. Randall says a short while later, as he sits with me in the corner of the large room, far away from the water tank. “We're doing this for your own good, Sylvia. We've got your best interests at heart.”

  “I want to go upstairs,” I tell him, sniffing back more tears. “I want to -”

  I flinch as I remember the sight of Mother on her bed. Until this moment, I thought I wanted to go and hug her, but suddenly that idea makes me feel horrified. But if I don't hug her, if I don't even want to go into the room with her, what can I do? I don't want to be in my room, so that only leaves the lounge and the kitchen.

  There's nowhere for me to go at all.

  “If we alerted the world to what your mother brought here,” Mr. Randall continues, “we'd lose it immediately. Do you understand that? It'd be taken away from us forever, and that poor creature would spend the rest of its life being prodded and poked, and we'd be left with nothing. This way, we get to take control a little and decide what people know and when. It's not for long, less than twenty-four hours, but we need to get all our ducks in a row. That's why I sent Ms. Harper upstairs just now with Doctor Carrier, and it's why we're here now. I wanted to talk to you alone, in an adult way. You like that, don't you?”

  “I want to go upstairs,” I say again.

  “Soon.”

  “I want to go now.”

  “Your mother would want us to do this,” he continues. “I was her assistant, remember? She trusted me implicitly.”

  “Can I go upstairs now please?”

  “In a minute.”

  “I want to go now.”

  “Your mother was a very scared woman, Sylvia. Especially at the end. And when someone makes decisions based on fear, they tend to make the wrong decisions. You have no idea what she was dealing with, and what was causing her fear, but I promise you that it was enough to change the way she saw everything. Does that make sense to you?” He pauses, as if he's waiting for me to answer. “We're going to make the right decisions,” he adds finally. “For us. For the creature in that tank. And most importantly, for you.”

  “Why did you cut a piece off her?” I ask.

  “We took a sample of -”

  “She was bleeding!”

  “She -”

  “And screaming!”

  “Necessary evils, I'm afraid. She'd thank us too, in the long term, if she could. According to Doctor Collier, she's almost certainly the last of her kind. Wouldn't it be sad if she died and then all the mermaids were gone? Well, by taking that sample, we've guaranteed that nothing like that will happen. We've taken steps to safeguard the future.” He reaches over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Your mother would want me to take care of you, Sylvia. I promise you, as she died in that bed this morning she would have been thinking only about you, and she would have been praying that I'll make sure you're okay. I only hope that, wherever she is now, she's looking down and she can see that you're in good hands.”

  He falls silent, and again he seems to be waiting for me to say something.

  “Can I go upstairs now?” I ask. “Please?”

  “Just one moment,” he replies, getting to his feet. “I want to check a few of the notes that Doctor Collier left behind, and then we'll go up and try to take your mind off everything. Does that sound like fun?”

  I stare at him, not really knowing what to say.

  “Great,” he adds, before turning and heading over to the computers.

  Sitting completely still, I realize I still can't shake a feeling of discomfort. It's as if I can sense somehow that this situation isn't right. I keep catching myself hoping that Mother comes down soon, hoping that she'll make everything alright, and then I remember all over again that she's gone and that she's never, ever coming back. I tell myself that I have to remember this time, but then my thoughts drift for a moment and I have to remember again. What if I never remember properly? What if I'm like this for the rest of my life?

  A moment later, I glance at Mr. Randall and see that he's still checking the computers. Then I glance at the tank, and to my surprise I see that not only is the mermaid in full view, but she's in one of the corners and she's staring straight at me.

  I look around, worried in case anyone might be watching, and then I see that Mr. Randall has his back to us as he reads something from a screen.

  Even though I don't want to make any noise, I quietly get to my feet and start making my way toward the tank. I walk carefully, hoping that my shoes won't squeak on the floor, and then as I reach the tank I start to feel strangely peaceful, as if all my worries are starting to lift away. Finally stopped at the glass, I find myself face to face with the mermaid and I immediately see that her expression is different to before. After the tank was briefly emptied, and after she was cut, she looks more worried.

  Looking down at her waist, I see that the wound in her side is about one inch long. I think I can also see a cut on the fishy part of her body, where some scales were scraped away.

  Suddenly the mermaid taps a finger against the inside of the glass.

  Startled, I take a step back. Then I look over at Mr. Randall and see that he's still engrossed in whatever he's reading, and I turn to the mermaid again just as she shifts position and brings the underside of her fishy section closer to me.

  I watch, horrified and fascinated, as she reaches down and presses two fingers against her scales. Then, slowly, she parts two sides of a silvery slit, and I spot something red inside. I lean closer, and to my surprise I realize that the depths of the slit are filled with tiny orangey-red blobs, like little eggs. There must be thirty or forty of them in there, and that's just the section I can see.

  After a moment one of the little blobs breaks free from the others and starts floating out of the slit. For a second I'm able to see its perfectly round shape, before the mermaid uses a hand to carefully guide the round thing back toward the others. Then she gently closes the slit, and I look up to see that she's staring at me with a hint of desperation in her eyes.

  “What is it?” I ask, feeling a sense of awe in my chest. “Were those...”

  My voice trails off as I realize that the little round things might be eggs.

  “But that doesn't make sense,” I continue, keeping my voice low, “unless...”

  I wait, but she simply continues to stare at me.

  “You're being very inscrutable,” I tell her finally. “Like, a lot!”

  She pauses, before suddenly turning around and swimming away.

  “Wait!” I hiss. “I didn't mean it in a bad way!”

  She swims behind the sunken ship, and now she's out of sight. I hope I didn't offend her in any way, although to be honest I don't even know that she can even understand me. And even if she could understand me, would she be able to hear me through this thick glass?

  “Sylvia, are you ready?”

  Turning, I see that Mr. Randall is walking toward the doors. He's reading some sheets of paper, although after a moment he glances at me.

  “It's okay,” he continues, “there's no need to worry. I'm sure she's fine. She's probably just sleeping things off. Now do you want to come upstairs so we can maybe think about getting you something to eat. You probably don't feel very hungry, but your mother would want you to stay strong.”

  I hesitate, before turning back to the tank. I suppose Mr. Randall didn't see the mermaid coming to me just now, and he has no idea that she showed me those eggs. I should probably tell him, instead of keeping it a secret, but somehow I feel as if maybe I need to think about that a little more. Instead of saying anything, then, I simply turn and walk after him, and then I follow him along the corridor.

  It's going to be really weird living here in the apartment now that Mother's gone. But it's not as if there's anywhere else I could go. This apartment building is my whole world.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Carefully turning the handle, I push o
pen the door to Mother's bedroom. I've been daring myself to do this for a couple of hours now, since Mr. Randall and the others went to have a talk in the lounge, but now I've plucked up the courage. I just want to see Mother one more time, so I push the door a little further open.

  She's gone.

  Her bed's still a mess, but Mother's body is no longer there.

  I hold my breath, terrified, before pushing the door all the way open and stepping into the room. The place is a mess, which Mother would never have allowed, and I can't help but notice that the drawers of her private desk have been left open. There are papers on the floor, as if they were spilled everywhere. In fact, it almost looks as if someone came in here and started looking for something.

  And the bed is definitely empty.

  I make my way around until I'm right next to Mother's pillow. There's still a faint indent from where she was here earlier, but she herself is nowhere to be seen. I look at her bedside table, and I'm struck by how many different pill bottles she was looking after. I noticed the bottles while she was alive, of course, but I never really thought much about what they were for. I suppose I just thought that's what adults do. They take pills.

  Just as I'm about to leave the room, I see that the drawer in Mother's bedside cabinet is slightly open. I pull on the handle and open it all the way, and I see Mother's notebook. She used to doodle from time to time, but I always assumed she kept the notebook in her office along with everything else. I pick the notebook up and flick through it, and I see her sketches of animals from Africa. There are lions and elephants and giraffes and things I don't even recognize, although toward the middle I start finding sketches of mermaids. Reaching one particular drawing, I can't help noticing that this mermaid looks a little bit like me.

  Actually, it looks a lot like me, completely with a big fishy tale.

  “Sylvia?”