Chapter 10 Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith sat in her hot tub, thinking about the letter the woman in white had pushed through her mail slot two days ago.
The woman who lived in the house with too many windows had passed through Mrs. Smith’s electronic gate with the cool dignity
of a priestess. After slipping around the gate behind the yard crew, her sandals click, click, clicking on the driveway, she’d
marched up the flagstone path and across the porch to the front door.
She didn’t knock. Instead, she removed her sunglasses, tucked them in the oversized pocket of her blouse, and pushed a collection
of gold bracelets higher on her wrist.
While the woman was adjusting her jewelry, Mrs. Smith had studied her face. She could easily see through the closed window
shade, and she examined her neighbor with the emotional detachment of a leopard watching a beetle scuttle over its paw.
The woman’s eyes were a bright blue, like a lagoon awash in sunlight. When she glanced up to face the door again, Mrs. Smith
saw determination mixed with fear in those eyes.
She’d seen this look on the woman’s face before. If fact, she’d seen the full range of the woman’s expressions because she’d been watching her for years.
She watched all the humans within her line of sight. Not because she was intrigued—gelatinous sea snails were more interesting—but
because she distrusted them.
After all, what did these humans do other than consume? They were entirely focused on the acquisition of things. They were like the rats infesting Mrs. Smith’s basement. Except the rats were smarter. They knew to be silent when she slithered
down the wheelchair ramp from the first floor. The rodents recognized her power. The woman in white did not. If she knew what
Mrs. Smith truly was, she’d cower inside her block of a house and never leave again.
Having fixed her bracelets, the woman had knocked on the door with her weak fist. Then she waited several seconds and knocked
again. And again.
It had been a while since a neighbor had been this dogged. For the most part, they left Mrs. Smith alone. They were not like
the humans of the previous century. Or the ones before them. And so on.
Those humans had been wiser. They’d sensed her otherness. They’d known she was a threat. They’d come in the night with iron
chains. With a noose. With fire.
More than once, they’d destroyed her nest. They’d driven her back into the water, forcing her to seek shelter on another shore.
She was never vanquished. Only inconvenienced.
She always found a new place to hide. Back then, there were dark caves where only the sea was brave enough to venture. She
would stay hidden, and she would hunt. She would punish the humans by devouring their man-children. And eventually, she would
be reborn.
The man-children restored her power. After gorging on four or five Pure Ones, she could transform into a human so beguilingly beautiful that no one could resist her thrall.
Her human form dazzled. When she chose a female form, she was fair-skinned and raven-haired.
Her eyes were the blue of a shifting sea.
Her body was supple. She moved like a river flowing into the ocean.
She had a tiny waist and creamy-white breasts that swelled over her corset like cresting waves.
Her voice was low and sultry. Her full lips whispered promises she would never keep.
In this form, she walked among the humans, trading gold coins for the perfect shelter. Solid walls close to the water’s edge
surrounded by stone or metal fences and an army of trees. A dark lair made of timber and brick.
Money was no object. She could buy whatever she wanted with the treasure she’d reaped from the seafloor. She had piles of
coins, gold bars, jewels, and trinkets. She spent a fortune on safety. On privacy.
When she had to conduct business, it was necessary to slip into a man’s form and become Josiah Smith. In the past, women did
not own estates. They did not captain ships or buy tracts of land on coasts of a dozen different countries.
Women stayed in their homes, tending to the hearth and their young. They fed and nurtured the children who would guarantee
Mrs. Smith’s next rebirth. In this century, the women were still primarily breeders, but their children spent most of the
day away from the home. In their absence, the women shopped or gardened or made themselves pretty. Mrs. Smith saw little point
to their existence.
One of these insipid creatures had knocked on her door.
She’d dared to disturb the Mother of Eels.
The woman in white had knocked again and again. Then she’d yelled, “Hello! Can you hear me?”
Mrs. Smith had wanted to whip open the door and grab the woman’s fist. She’d wanted to crush her hand like a shell, grinding the bones to powder as blood and tissue dribbled onto the floorboards. She’d wanted to clamp her jaws down on the woman’s head, silencing her kitten mewl of a voice for good.
But memories of women from the past had kept her rooted in place.
Women whispered. They whispered to one another. They whispered to their men. With enough oxygen, a woman’s whisper could light
a torch. It could build a scaffold.
As Mrs. Smith stood as still as stone on the other side of her front door, she’d heard a subtle whoosh of air followed by
a gentle thud as a letter landed on the foyer floor.
Mrs. Smith had stared down at it in disgust.
Humans loved their paper. Newspapers told them what to think. Leaflets and catalogs told them what to buy. Bills shoved into
the mailbox demanded they pay for what they already owned. They used reams of paper for their fictional stories or to create
records of their short, meaningless lives.
Such an ephemeral thing, paper. So easy to destroy.
Mrs. Smith had speared the letter with her hooked nail and unfolded it.
The woman’s name swam across the top of the page. The thin, slanting letters looked like blades of seagrass.
Elaine K. Bernstein
Mrs. Smith’s black eyes swept across the first three lines. They were full of inane platitudes and held no interest.
In the second paragraph, Elaine K. Bernstein got to her point.
She had a request. No, two requests. She wanted to cut back the oriental bittersweet infringing on the yacht club property.
She also wanted permission to set off fireworks at midnight as part of her son’s bar mitzvah celebrations.
She then wasted two paragraphs explaining the significance of the occasion.
Mrs. Smith needed no schooling when it came to these ceremonies. At one time, every culture had a ritual recognizing the passage
from childhood to manhood. Long ago, when the humans were less numerous, she received a number of these man-children as offerings.
Now, she had to hunt for the nine she required.
The thought of their sweet flesh made Mrs. Smith’s hunger swell. That hunger would grow and grow until the ninth man-child
was in her belly. The closer she got to the harvest moon, the more her cravings would rule her.
This season was the most dangerous phase of her life cycle. It was the time when her hunger was in control. Her desires overpowered
her logic. She became a desperate animal—an underwater cyclone of scales, teeth, and claws.
She had arrangements to make before the frenzy took hold. Preparations for her next life cycle must be completed. There were
treasures to bury. Properties to purchase. She’d used this nest for too many years. She would not go unnoticed for much longer.
This letter from Elaine K. Bernstein was a warning.
Mrs. Smith had been invisible until now. She’d been the one watching them. Now, their gazes were turning toward her.
The whispering had begun.
Realizing she would have to reply to Elaine K. Bernstein, Mrs. Smith dragged herself out of the hot tub and half crawled,
half slithered to her writing desk. She loaded a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter, dripping beads of water onto the
keys.
She could remain out of the water for longer periods now, thanks to the two Pure Ones she’d eaten.
It took several hours for her skin to dry out and itch for the sea’s salty caress, and her human form was less frail.
She could walk to the boathouse without dragging one foot.
More flesh stuck to her bones. The bald patches on her head were now covered with hair.
Power was returning to her age-worn cells, and she was greedy for more.
The Mother of Eels was ready to feed again. She was ready for the ecstasy of flesh, for that blaze of vitality.
Unfortunately, she could not hunt in the same place this time. The humans would be more careful there after the news of the
three lost souls circulated.
News.
Mrs. Smith reached for the yacht club newsletter. She flipped through photos of seafood buffets and smiling men brandishing
trophies until she came to a list of junior regattas. Cold Harbor’s regatta was always the last race of the season, but the
shores of Long Island were peppered with yacht clubs. Hundreds of man-children would sail out of their protected coves into
deeper waters.
On summer Saturdays, crews of man-children would zigzag their tiny vessels from buoy to buoy. There’d be dozens of fragile
boats with shell-thin hulls and tantalizing cargo.
If one boat strayed off course or was swallowed by a patch of fog, she could capsize the flimsy vessel and drag its passengers
down into the deep. It would help if rain hampered the visibility, but she couldn’t count on the elements to obey her whims.
There had been a time when she could hunt without caution, but those days were gone. If the humans caught her killing their
offspring, she would become the hunted one. They’d use their gadgets and machines to track her. Their guns and bombs to destroy
her. They could bring their fire to the water now, so she had to move with caution.