Trigger Warning: Suicide

 

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“Do you know if she was depressed?”

Red and blue lights strobed through the front doorway and lit the living room. Patrol cars both attracted attention and turned it back. I could see neighbours making excuses to pass by. Rubberneckers, straining to get a glimpse inside to find out what was going on at this time of night in our quiet little neighbourhood. Most of those who shared this street were old people or young married couples without kids who largely kept to themselves. Starter homes or homes winding down to an end, the neighbourhood not big enough or close enough to schools to raise families.

“Isn’t everyone?” I said.

The hefty uniformed detective had pushed me to the back of the living room by the kitchen door. A notepad almost disappeared in one beefy fist, pen like a toothpick in the other. His eyes narrowed at the comment. I felt like I was constantly on the edge of having to catch my breath. Corners of my eyes burning. Keep it under control, I told myself. Over and over again.

“What was that?”

“I mean, it’s the-, modern condition, the new pandemic, everyone’s depressed and always talking about how depressed they are,” I said. “Yes, she said she was depressed sometimes, anxious, scared. I didn’t think she would do-, this.”

“Scared?” The cop zeroed in on my wording. “Of what?”

“Not of anything, anxious, she was anxious. I tried to get her help, I couldn’t find anyone suitable.”

The detective didn’t like me, I could feel it. Maybe I looked too much like a skinny, privileged college kid for him, even at thirty-one. He was grizzled, a lot of bulk, soft around the middle, maybe an ex-sports star turned embittered alcoholic. Maybe he thought any man who missed the signs as badly as I apparently had done, and who came home to his fiance like I had, was a failure of a man and beneath contempt. I was definitely feeling like a failure myself. Wondering how I could have so badly misjudged Astrid’s state of mind.

I’d come home late and called for Astrid but there had been no answer. It wasn’t a big house. Wandering into the hallway, I saw candlelight flickering from the bathroom. A note was pinned under one of the candles on the lid of the toilet. Concise, meaningless in its cliche, scrawled on a piece of notepaper ripped from a book as if she’d been in a great hurry, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t take it anymore’. The bathtub, pink and still steaming. Under the sheen of water, her face, her slashed wrists, a tattoo on her upper arm that she’d never gotten shaded and coloured like she intended. A tattoo of a mermaid, an old school sailor type of skin art. I hadn’t liked the idea of her getting a tattoo in the first place but somehow she had talked me into it. Now it would be unfinished forever. Shimmering under the water’s surface where I suppose it belonged.

“Was she on any kind of medication or recreational drugs?”

“No, no meds, no drugs.”

Gurney creaking, a couple of paramedics rolled into the living room now that the police techs were done. A black body bag crinkled on top, like a sack of trash. The bag and the stretcher were wet. Breath caught in my throat. The paramedics negotiated their way out the front door like moving men with a lightweight but awkwardly shaped piece of furniture. The detective was asking questions and I was answering them but I didn’t really hear him or myself.

As soon as the gurney was loaded into the ambulance it was show’s over for the rubberneckers, nothing more to see here. I was going to have to call Astrid’s family. I was going to have to tell her friends. My mind was already making lists, checking them twice, some analytical part of my brain a million miles away from my emotional core. My raw and throbbing pain. My sense of betrayal.

“We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions,” the detective said.

~~~

Astrid’s funeral was a small affair and I stayed apart from everyone there. I’d always felt like her parents didn’t like me, although Astrid had insisted it wasn’t true. None of us were in the mood for clearing the air. Astrid and I met in university. I’d never much liked her friends and thankfully, with some prodding, she’d grown apart from them. I didn’t have any close friends or family. Plus, suicide had a stigma all of its own. People wanted an explanation of how something like this could have taken the life of a beautiful young woman like Astrid. They worried such an affliction could be catching or looked for someone to blame and I was the most likely carrier in their eyes.

After the funeral, I stood over her graveside for hours. Part of me had never accepted what Astrid had done. To disappear on me like that. Leave her mortal body behind for me to find. I was haunted by visions of her still face. The mermaid tattoo swimming below water stained with her blood.

Was it possible to bring someone back from the dead?

It was insane, it made no sense. But the crazy thought took hold as I stood by the grave. Astrid leaving me made no sense either. I couldn’t accept reality as it was so I had to change reality. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t accept it. She was mine. She was my one and only, and she had left me behind. If I was a moody Victorian medical student, or scientist, or a dabbler in the black arts, I might have become obsessed with the rejuvenating power of lightning. With building a time machine, or uncovering the secrets of the Necronomicon. But I was none of those things. I was, at best, a normal guy who liked to Google weird stuff and binge on Wikipedia in my spare time. So that’s what I started with.

Work was good enough to give me as much time off as I needed. I had over a month of personal leave saved up and plenty in my savings account, so money wasn’t going to be a pressing issue. Day by day necessities and handling friends and family I did as if on automatic. All I cared about was bringing my Astrid back to me.

Zombies, vampires, and all other members of the living dead. A few groups I uncovered all based within a couple of hours drive claimed to worship them but they were all dead ends. Overwrought Anne Rice fans. Mediums claimed they could contact the dead, not raise them. What voodoo practitioners I could get hold of emphasised they were a religion. If there was an easy answer though, anyone could do it. I started to think more laterally, and look into more localised and obscure legends. Leprechauns and wishing wells, gates to the underworld, water spirits, ghosts, late night radio messages from the other side. 

A few hours drive down the coast was a small town called Sirendale. Its main industries were fishing and weekend tourism. A blowhole along the rocks off the central part of town was its main attraction. Not much to base a whole tourism industry around but it was experiencing a boom with the Instagram crowd. Buried underneath all of that, however, was the true reason behind the town’s name.

‘Legend of the Sirendale Mermaid!’

‘Tales date back to before the first tiny fishing shacks were built and the village that became Sirendale was founded of a half-woman half-fish creature who called the area home - a Mermaid! Fishermen paid tribute to her for 100s of years. Indigenous peoples of the area may have known about her for 100s of years before that. Largely she avoids the public eye but sometimes the mermaid can be seen at dawn or dusk, playing far out in the water and singing her song.

Though the Mermaid of Sirendale avoids people there are stories of her rescuing children swept out to sea by the unpredictable tides off Sirendale. Her tears are said to grant wishes, although she will not cry for any pain or any man’s tale of woe. One legend tells of a fisherman who accidentally caught the mermaid in his nets - the man had lost his son, another fisherman who was swept overboard in a storm and never found. Having heard of the mermaid’s ability to grant wishes, he begged and begged for her to return his son in exchange for her freedom but the Mermaid refused to cooperate. It was only when the man gave up and let her go because it was the right thing to do that the mermaid gave him one of her tears. The fisherman made his wish and poured the tear back into the ocean. The next day, his son returned to him with the tide.’

The website was practically ancient. It consisted of white Comic Sans on a black background, surrounded by rotating gifs of skulls and cartoon mermaids. But it also had some antique sketches and excerpts from old books I could download. There was no mention of the Mermaid of Sirendale on Wikipedia, not notable enough, but I was able to find references to those books of folklore and a few other websites that referenced the legend. Didn’t mean it was based in fact, of course, but it was based in more than just the imagination of one late nineties, anonymous internet user.

I was drawn to the story because of Astrid’s mermaid tattoo, the image of which haunted me. Maybe that was a sign from fate. Maybe I was meant to do this, it was just the kind of answer I’d been looking for. Crazy, obscure, but easy enough to track down and test. I searched for every scrap of information I could find. All the books that referenced the Mermaid of Sirendale were out of print but I tracked a couple to some secondhand book sites and ordered them express delivery. Most of the info didn’t tell me much more than that first website had. Not everything mentioned the wish granting ability of the mermaid’s tears. Some said, instead of being seen around dawn or dusk she could only be heard singing. She was the last of her kind, or at least the last in that part of the ocean, for thousands and thousands of miles.

“Find a mermaid, make her cry for Astrid,” I said. “How hard could that be? Not crazy at all.”

~~~

I booked a hotel in Sirendale and packed some clothing, and my books and research into the car. Investigate first and then come up with a plan. The next morning I drove the three hours down the coast to Sirendale, telling no one where I was going or why. I arrived late in the morning, too early to check into my hotel. Out of some natural touristy impulse, I went and stopped by the Sirendale blowhole. A lookout fenced off a flat section of rock. Engraved panels around the lookout gave info on the local area but none of them mentioned legends of a mermaid. If I concentrated, I could feel tremors through my feet as waves smacked the shore. The blowhole bubbled. When a really solid wave hit, surf went throttling up a narrow passageway and exploded in a foamy spray through the blowhole into the open air. It was impressive, beautiful, but not quite five minutes of entertainment as I waited for the next one. Not something you’d think you could base a whole weekend around.

Sirendale had one main drag which looped around to a section of waterfront. Craft stores and op shops, touristy, artsy places, were scattered along the main street. Cafes and restaurants lined the waterfront including one fish and chips place with an enormous lobster looming down from the rooftop. Fishing boats and pleasure craft filled the bay. It was a small town, motels and suburbs fanning out until they bled into the suburbs for the next towns along the coastline.

My motel room had a double bed, a table and chairs by the window, and a kitchenette. All I’d need for however long this stay became. Unpacking the research, I spread it out on the table and then sat back to think. After a while, I returned to the reception desk to talk to the bored younger man who’d checked me in.

“Is there somewhere, like, a bar or something, where the local fisherman hang out?” I asked.

“What?”

“I’m writing a book,” I said, coming up with the lie quickly. “I wanted to speak to some local people about fishing. Are there any bars where they’d hang out?”

“I don’t know, man,” the hotel receptionist said. “There’s a couple of places that the locals would go to, I guess, not tourists.”

I waited until later in the afternoon before trying any of the drinking holes that the receptionist begrudgingly recommended. Most of the day I stewed on Astrid, getting her back, the way I’d been doing for the last couple of weeks. I could walk to the main body of Sirendale from my motel. Just off the main street was the first bar I tried. A couple of men played pool near the entrance. Sport broadcast from TVs above the bar. I got a beer and sat at a table in the corner, playing on my phone. The bartender and all the customers were men, mostly in pairs. I waited for one who was alone and looked like he might want someone to talk to.

Eventually, two beers down, a man in his early sixties came in and sat at the bar alone. He fit my expectations of a salty old fisherman down to a tee, like he was answering a casting call I’d put out in my mind. His hair and beard, under a knitted cap, were silver and shot through with white. His skin was leathery from years drying out in the sun. Hands big and scarred clutching at the beer glass put in front of him. I made my way over to order another drink but lingered when it came, pretending to watch the same TV that he was watching. Nervously, I cleared my throat.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you work on one of the boats around here?” I asked.

The older man eyed me suspiciously, not unkindly but as if anticipating a cruel punchline to a so-far innocent joke. “Yup, that I do.”

“I’m a writer, I’m writing about some of the local-, sea life,” I said. “Do you mind if I join you?”

It took a little while for the fisherman, Phillip, to open up, but open up he did. Happy to talk wasn’t quite the word for it. Desperate to talk might have been more appropriate. He was a lonely guy with no wife, no family, approaching pensioner age and hungry for conversation. He’d been doing the same sort of work since he was a teenager. Things had changed, of course, in his business, but what business hadn’t changed? The oceans had less to give, big companies were taking over. Little guys hardly stood a chance, one small disaster away from total financial ruin. He talked to me about his ex-wife, she’d disappeared on him the way Astrid disappeared on me, although not by the same method. He had no children but talked about family and friends he hadn’t seen for years. About the town, about the tourists. Eventually, I felt like he was comfortable enough for me to sidle into the real reason for talking to him.

“It’s a little embarrassing but it’s not so much sea life that I’m writing about,” I said. “It’s more like local legends, supernatural things. Have you heard of the Mermaid of Sirendale?”

“Aye, that I have, old stories, old, old stories.”

“Have you ever-, have you ever heard her? They say she sings at dusk and dawn sometimes.”

The old fisherman hesitated for what seemed like a long time. “Maybe I have,” he said. “You think me a crazy old man if I tell you from time to time, out on those waters, I seen things and I’ve heard things that I can’t explain?”

“No, not at all, I mean, it’s exactly what I’m here for.”

“Any of the others who work the tubs around here would tell you the same, if they’d be willing to admit it. A creature, half-woman, half-fish, yup, and completely beautiful. And music, singing like nothing you ever heard in your life.”

“When did you see her?”

“I only ever seen her from a long way off, far enough that you could fool yourself into thinking it was just a dolphin or some such like that. But I heard her, last time a few years ago. Sound travels a long way on the water, hard to say where it comes from, but that singing-, I tell you, that singing, you’d know it was never nothing else.”

We talked a little while longer about stories Phillip had heard from other fishermen. Most of the tales were pretty much the same. Seeing or hearing something around dusk or dawn they were convinced was otherworldly but could never prove. Other stories, more fleshed out, Phillip told me but made clear he didn’t believe. One man he’d known, a compulsive liar, had sworn up and down for years that he’d spent one night of deeply unnatural love with the mermaid, and would rave about the things she could do with her tail. Nothing he could tell me about the places she’d been spotted helped me. Apparently though, submerged and partially submerged caves dotted the coastline and she was rumoured to make her home in one or several of them. I asked him if he had heard of the mermaid’s tears and how they could grant wishes. He had, but he’d never really thought of it as something to pursue. I supposed he’d never really had dreams big enough to require hunting something so impossible. He just appreciated the little bit of strangeness the mermaid’s presence brought into the world.

“If’n you want to know more, you should talk to old Jim at the psychic shop,”” Phillip said finally. “He knows all about those old legends.”

“Old Jim at the what?” I asked.

“Jim, he and I were in school together, not friends exactly but-,” Phillip trailed off for a moment. “The psychic shop, don’t know its proper name but you go back out to the main street and head a little way down toward the water, you’ll see it. It’s got a big hand in the window and a sign that says ‘Palm Reading’. He’s got all of that new age business, palm reading and cards, and-, candles and things.”

I felt my excitement rising at hearing that not only had I found someone who confirmed the mermaid’s existence but could point me in the direction of an expert. “But he knows about the mermaid?”

“I seem to remember he had some kind of interest in it when we were kids.”

Having secured this new lead, I stuck around only long enough to finish my drink so as not to seem impolite. Phillip seemed sorry to see me go but I had my mission. It felt almost like he’d been placed in my path to lead me to the next sign. Though I doubted it would be open, I went back to the main road and followed Phillip’s directions to find the store he’d described.

Sirendale didn’t have much of a nightlife. Light spilled out of a few restaurants and onto the sidewalk. A Chinese place, Thai, Italian. All the other stores and cafes were closed and dark. So was the psychic and new age store when I found it. On the plate glass window was a massive hand with an eye in the middle of its palm, surrounded by mystic-looking runes. The purple sign above the storefront read ‘PALM READING, TAROT, CLEANSING’. I knocked on the door and waited around for a couple of minutes just in case but no one came to answer.

Returning to my motel, I wrote down my thoughts from the conversation with Phillip. Not with any narrative, just anything I could remember that might provide a later clue. First thing tomorrow morning, I’d return to the store and speak with Jim.

~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading! Keep your eyes open for part two, coming soon. Any feedback, ratings or shares would be greatly appreciated!

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