{"id":2882,"date":"2016-05-17T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T19:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/?p=2882"},"modified":"2016-05-17T12:04:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T19:04:07","slug":"water-ghosts-read-first-chapter-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/water-ghosts-read-first-chapter-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Ghosts — Read First Chapter here"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WaterGhosts-FrontCoverOnlySmall\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Water Ghosts<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 Linda Collison 2015<\/p>\n

Published by Old Salt Press, LLC<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781943404001<\/p>\n

LCCN: 2015941395<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Certain characters and their actions may have been inspired by historical individuals and events. The characters in the novel, however, represent the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.<\/p>\n

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tao Te Ching<\/p>\n

——-<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Water Ghosts<\/strong><\/p>\n

A novel<\/p>\n

by Linda Collison<\/p>\n

Chapter One<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The doomed ship is set to sail at ten A.M. and I am to be aboard. The taxi has dropped us off at the marina \u2013 my mother, her boyfriend and me. They\u2019re here to see me off.<\/p>\n

From the parking lot I can see it. Good Fortune <\/em>is unmistakable because it\u2019s bigger than the other boats and because it\u2019s old and foreign-looking. Three masts rise up like pikes from the rectangular deck. A tattered pennant hangs limply from the smallest one. Faded yellow silk.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to go but Mother is making me. Walking toward it, carrying my sea bag, I already feel like I\u2019m drowning. Dragging my feet along the rickety wooden pier, past neglected powerboats and sailboats covered with blue plastic tarps, I\u2019m trying to resign myself to my fate. I\u2019m trying to do what Dad used to tell me to do when I was afraid. Think of something funny! <\/em>But nothing funny comes to mind.<\/p>\n

Looking around at this run-down dockyard in an industrial park near the Honolulu International Airport I\u2019m thinking it\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s all wrong. Hawaii is not <\/em>paradise \u2013 at least, not for me. A jet takes off, flying low overhead, drowning us out momentarily with its thunderous roar. Mother covers her ears with her hands and squeezes her eyes shut until it passes. The boyfriend glances at his big gold watch and grins.<\/p>\n

\u201cNine-forty,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019ll be boarding soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, James! It looks like an old pirate ship, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d Mother\u2019s perky voice edges toward hysteria. \u201cA Chinese pirate ship, how cool is that! You are going to have the time of your life. I wish I was going!\u201d She continues to talk but I can\u2019t hear her anymore. Her words are bursts of color, blinding me. I look away.<\/p>\n

I see things other people don\u2019t see.<\/p>\n

The old wooden ship lists in its slip. Doesn\u2019t look anything like the picture on the website. Up close the Good Fortune<\/em> doesn\u2019t look fortunate at all. It looks bedraggled and unseaworthy; it looks like it\u2019s about to sink right here at the dock. I think of a lame cormorant, riding low in the water, awaiting its fate.<\/p>\n

Cormorants are different from most other water birds. Cormorants will drown if they don\u2019t dry their feathers. That\u2019s why you see them on a pier or on shore with their dark, dripping wings spread out in the sun and the wind. But they\u2019re the bravest of birds because they are not really at home in the water; they\u2019re not as buoyant as ducks and geese. They\u2019re marginal creatures, living on the edge. They have to work harder to get by.<\/p>\n

My father taught me about cormorants. He was a wildlife journalist, specializing in birds. Dad always said he was going to take me on a photo shoot to follow the sandhill crane migration. It was going to be a man-expedition, he promised, an epic father-son trip from Canada to Mexico. We never went.<\/p>\n

On the front side of the boat a painted, peeling eye stares at me. A dead man\u2019s stare. An eye that never closes. Is there a matching eye on the other side?\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to look, I don\u2019t want to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a piece of junk,\u201d I say. \u201cNo wonder they call them junks. \u201cCan\u2019t you see it\u2019s a scam? How much did you pay for this, anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be ungrateful, James,\u201d Mother shoots back. \u201cYou\u2019re so unappreciative. This is Hawaii. You\u2019re starting your summer adventure in Hawaii. How many kids your age get to do that? You are so lucky!\u201d Orange light leaps out from her head, a solar flare. The intense light triggers the song.<\/p>\n

With a yo-heave-ho and a fare-you-well<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And a sullen plunge in the sullen swell<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell<\/em><\/p>\n

I hear things other people don\u2019t hear.<\/p>\n

The dead men sing as they march through my head, the men from the dream. And now the dream is bringing itself to life in the form of this summer adventure program. Somebody\u2019s sick idea of \u201chelping\u201d kids with behavior problems, a sort of boot camp for misfits. Mother found this program on the Internet. Or maybe the program found her, summoned her somehow. She doesn\u2019t know she\u2019s being influenced by people she has never met, some of them dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, James?\u201d Her concern is real, I feel it, little ripples of warmth. But she doesn\u2019t get it. At all. Right now we\u2019re standing side-by-side but we\u2019re worlds apart. Like birds and humans, we merely coexist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to tell her what the matter is \u2013 but what exactly am I going to say? Mother, the dead men are singing, it\u2019s a bad sign. The boat is a doomed cormorant that can\u2019t dry its wings. That\u2019s the kind of talk that gets me into trouble. She hates it when I repeat what they say; she\u2019s afraid I\u2019m psychotic or something.<\/p>\n

\u201cJames?\u201d Gone is the false cheerfulness. Now her aura crackles and spits. A Fourth of July sparkler penetrating my skin with hot little darts.<\/p>\n

Mother\u2019s face is splotched red from the Honolulu heat. Her once pretty face, now unnaturally fragile, a face stretched too thin, too tight. A face that\u2019s known too many Botox injections, too many interventions, a face carefully composed yet beginning to crumble. Yet even now I can see the blue light of her love for me shining through the veil of disappointment. Disappointment and shame.<\/p>\n

I look normal enough on the outside (at least, I think I do) but inside me there\u2019s this, like, hole \u2013 a cavity \u2013 that I\u2019m constantly trying to avoid. Sometimes I hear my dead father\u2019s voice calling me. James!<\/em>\u00a0 But his voice doesn\u2019t come from the hole inside, it comes from behind me, and when I hear it my heart flutters. It\u2019s not really him, it\u2019s the echoes of his words bouncing around the universe, never at rest. Then comes the weight of his hand on my left shoulder and the sound of him breathing hard, like he\u2019s been running to catch up. Sometimes when I close my eyes I see his face against the backs of my eyes, like a poor quality video. His lips are moving but I can\u2019t make out what he\u2019s trying to tell me.<\/p>\n

Mother\u2019s boyfriend interrupts my thoughts; his voice is a Doberman\u2019s whine.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll be fine. You\u2019ll be fine, won\u2019t you, kid? Come on, now. Man up!\u201d He reaches out to grip my shoulder but I step back to avoid it, nearly falling off the dock. I\u2019ve hated all my mother\u2019s boyfriends. I know what it is they want and it sickens me.<\/p>\n

She smiles, her lips tight. \u201cIt\u2019s just \u2013 now that we\u2019re here \u2013 he seems so young. Compared to the others.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now I see them<\/em> \u2013 three guys sitting on the dock at the end of the pier. They\u2019re leaning against new Urban Outfitter gear bags, all sprawled out with their long legs and arms, their hair spiked up with gel. They are cut from the same mold, they could be brothers, they could be triplets.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re going aboard with me, I realize. We\u2019re all in the same boat; we\u2019re all going down together. These guys don\u2019t seem to know it, or care. They\u2019re all holding cell phones, making last minute texts to their friends back home, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. I didn\u2019t bring any cigarettes, I don\u2019t smoke. But I did bring my lighter, I carry it everywhere because you never know. I brought my cell phone too, but it\u2019s already dead and there\u2019s no way to charge it on the boat \u2013 that\u2019s what it said on the website. I don\u2019t know why I even brought it, except the weight of it, deep in the pocket of my shorts, feels solid. Comforting.<\/p>\n

My shipmates have man-legs, I envy them that. . Coarse hair covers their muscular calves like sea grass. Billabong shorts hang low on their hips, they look like some kind of California surf gang. Their feet are all huge in their ragged Converse All-Stars: black, brown, red. These three are the shit and they know it. These fuckers will taunt me, they will make my life miserable; of this I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll be fine. He just hasn\u2019t got his growth spurt yet. Your boy\u2019s old enough, hell, he\u2019s fifteen. Aren\u2019t you, Jim? You\u2019ll be fine.\u201d The Jerk-du-Jour looks at his watch again. His face is shiny, his Tommy Bahama aloha shirt is all creased and damp, and his gut presses against it like he\u2019s pregnant. \u201cIt\u2019s not like he\u2019s going off to war. This is just a cruise, a floating summer camp. They used to send kids like him to military school. Kids these days have all gone soft. Now they get to go sailing the South Pacific. Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me, right Jim?\u201d He has the nerve to wink at me, like we\u2019re buds. Like we share a secret. I hate that he calls me Jim.<\/p>\n

The truth is I\u2019m here because my mother wants to be rid of me. She can\u2019t deal with what I am, with what I\u2019m becoming. She needs me gone. Not like dead gone, just out of sight, out of mind for the summer. So she and the jackass boyfriend can \u2013 ugh \u2013 I can\u2019t let myself think about what it is they want to do with each other when I\u2019m not around.<\/p>\n

Last summer it was a different boyfriend (I forget his name, I forget all of their names) and the Teens for Christ Summer Camp for me. There I endured six weeks of forced socialization, thrown in with people I had nothing in common with. Of course I was immediately rejected from their group, expelled into the void of oblivion where I remained in orbit around Planet Jesus like a piece of space junk \u2013 potentially dangerous but mostly forgotten, a reflected light passing overhead. What were the odds of my re-entry? The resident life forms ignored me. .<\/p>\n

But this summer is going to be worse. Much worse.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u201cAll hands!\u201d a man bellows through a bullhorn. \u201cTen minutes \u2018til cast-off!\u201d<\/p>\n

Was that the captain? His voice reverberates through my bones like the crash of a gong and I nearly piss my pants with fear. This is it. This is where I board the boat, never to be heard from again. Mother bends her head for a kiss. I feel her warm lips brush my left ear as I turn my head away. She touches my shoulder, like she\u2019s afraid of me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll miss you, Jamey, honey. Love you!\u201d<\/p>\n

I want her to hug me, to be enfolded in those fake-tanned arms. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to miss me, Mother. You could take me home.\u201d<\/p>\n

She stiffens and a wave of white light shoots from her head, a scorching flame, a solar flare. She is thinking, You ungrateful brat!<\/em>\u00a0 She\u2019s also singed with guilt. I can smell her guilt like a slice of bread stuck in the toaster, smoke filling the kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not every kid who gets to go sailing on a real Chinese junk for the summer,\u201d says the boyfriend, backing her up. Wanting me out of the way. Like he\u2019s the one who paid for it. Maybe he was, for all I know. I don\u2019t think we have that kind of money.<\/p>\n

The energy pulsates from her body, so intense I\u2019m afraid she\u2019ll spontaneously combust. Her lips move but the words are drowned out by the dead men from the black hole inside me, chanting that stupid poem again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or a yawning hole in a battered head<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And the scuppers glut with a rotting red<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

END of CHAPTER ONE…<\/p>\n

\"WaterGhosts-FrontCoverOnlySmall\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Available in trade paperback, electronic and Audible editions wherever good books are sold<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n