It hadn’t even occurred to Casper that “home” for Kerry wasn’t their quaint quiet house overlooking the ocean. No, that was his quiet house now.
“What’re you doing?” said Kerry from the backseat.
“Sorry.” Casper had turned onto Stawbird Lane out of instinct. “Your mom’s, right?”
“Yeah, take Straley all the way down.”
Suddenly, he was a chauffeur, a bad Uber driver. Why had she sat in the back anyway? he thought. He looked back at her again; brake lights filled her eyes at the stop sign. It made her look foreign, but still logically familiar, the way one might anomalously forget their own face in the mirror—but logically, obviously, it’s still their face.
She forced a smile. Casper turned up the radio, and country-folk led them across town to Kerry’s mother’s apartment. He parked right by the steps, his favorite spot when they’d been dating, and helped Kerry out of the car and upstairs to 2515.
Her mother opened the door, spilling cigarette smoke into the hall. Squinty-eyed at first, and then grinny she recognized Casper. It was clearly one of her more coherent days.
“Hey Nix,” said Casper. He’d mostly appreciated being on a first-name basis with her (the times she was grounded enough to be a decent friend).
Nix’s eyebrows shot up. “You guys…back together?” She whispered the last bit toward Casper instead of Kerry. Kerry fidgeted nervously, and Casper knew she just wanted to get inside.
“Just delivery duties,” Casper said for the both of them. “Designated driver.”
“Well get the fuck in here then,” said Nix. “I just put the water on…I think.”
Nix mumbled something about girl-scout cookies, probably offering them up, as she waddled into the kitchen, adjusting her drinking kimono.
Casper collapsed into his favorite rocking chair by the old dial television, but Kerry kept to standing, edging her way out of niceties with her mother.
“Oh, nope. Burner went out again.” Nix leaned over the island before continuing: “I’ve been drinking Saké. Some of that instead?”
“That’s my bottle of Saké, mom.” Kerry folded her arms.
“No. I’m pretty sure I bought this.” Casper could see half of Nix in the kitchen, lifting up the mostly-empty bottle to examine it. He watched the doubt fill her face. “Or your brother bought it, I think.” She winced and slammed the bottle down. “That damned machine—at it again. It’s so god-awful-fucking loud. Keerrr? Did you call the landlord like I asked?”
“There’s no machine, ma, remember?” Kerry finally looked at Casper. She shook her head heatedly. “None of us can hear it. Right, Cas?”
Kerry seemed a little less patient with her mother’s delusions than usual, but Casper supposed she was tired; it had been a long day for the both of them. He mustered up a confirmation, that in fact the god-awful-fucking-machine wasn’t real.
And neither was that body in the morgue. It was a hoax of some kind, Casper was sure of it. As soon as Kerry was settled, he’d tell her about it. She’d either be quite interested or laugh it off (for months now, he couldn’t confidently expect anything from her).
Nix came into the living room and placed an embroidered blue Saké set on the coffee table. “Whatever it is,” she said, “it’s loud and needs to get the hell outta here!” She slung her hands and eyes toward the ceiling, as if that’s where it’d been coming from. “I keep telling Thad to take that ratty satellite down. We don’t use it anyhow.”
Kerry came over at long last, sat on the couch and started to pick up the Sake bottle. She hesitated and gawked at Casper: “Pour me a glass.”
“…Do you really need anymore?” said Casper, rocking smugly now in his chair. He started noticing the staticky weather reports coming through on the old television. The rain was coming.
“Mom?” Kerry said.
Casper watched as Nix sat next to her daughter on the couch and autonomously poured her a cup of Saké. Nix the Great Enabler, he thought. She wasn’t always so bad, especially when Thad was home. Casper saw the numerous paystubs from Merrick Enterprises that decorated the coffee table: all of them were addressed to Thad Blackwell, and each one touting more money than Casper would ever see.
Kerry downed her cup quickly. “Another.”
“Save some for your brother.”
“This is my bottle, ma.”
Casper sat scratching his chin, gawking at Kerry. The real Kerry, who he’d never seen act this way in front of her mother, who always offered to share her drinks. Had she really fallen off the wagon this hard? As Nix poured another for Kerry, the craziest thought sprung up in Casper’s mind. Tony had brought it up: the notion of Kerry’s twin. If memory served, Nix birthed Kerry and her younger brother Thad. Their father, Eric, lived in Orlando now with his new family. As long as Casper had known the Blackwells, it was always just the three of them. But what if it wasn’t? He watched Kerry settle into her seat, the same way she always had, damaged shoulder first. He saw her try to shake off a yawn. The real Kerry always hated the sensation of yawning. Casper was just being paranoid.
The body in the morgue is a Jane Doe. He had to remind himself. Perhaps the real Kerry had lost her wallet one drunken night. And perhaps this Jane Doe, the face of which he only saw for moments before pulling away, was much older with a different nose. Tony had only ever seen Kerry a handful of times, always while on duty; he wouldn’t know the difference. Not like Casper. Perhaps he’d go back to the morgue in the morning. Only, if the Chief caught wind of it…he had to stop thinking about work.
“When does Thad get home?” Kerry asked her mother.
“Soon…nowish.” Nix glanced at the cuckoo clock.
“Okay,” Kerry stood up, having finished the bottle. “I’ll take my leave then. I’ll be in my room. Asleep. Until he’s gone.”
Casper stood up with her.
“Sweetie, you have to see your brother eventually.”
“When he quits Merrick, we’ll talk.” Kerry looked at Casper for reassurance. Casper nodded visibly in approval, so Nix could see. She knew neither of them approved of the company he worked for, especially after the boat party.
“I know, I know,” said Nix, coughing into a new cigarette. “But what can you do? They’ve got great health insurance, and I need my meds.” She shook one of several pill bottles on the lampstand next to her.
“Well, this has been fun,” said Kerry. “I’m going to bed. Thank you, Cas. I’m very much sober now.”
“Okay, yeah,” Casper tapped the ground with the faded rim of his boot. “Ker-ber, can I just talk to you a second before I leave?”
Kerry nodded and said, “Step into my office.”
Casper followed her to the back bedroom, flashing Nix a half-smile on the way.
Kerry unlocked her bedroom door (it was dead-bolted and Casper found that very strange) and stepped inside, turning on a desk lamp.
She shut the door behind him. “What is it?”
Casper didn’t really know how to begin. I saw a body in the morgue that looked like you – she had your wallet. It all just sounded so absurd and Kerry would surely muscle out a tired laugh at this point.
But before he could try to reword it in his head, he noticed the pictures at Kerry’s desk: on a corkboard along the wall above there were several underwater photographs; Polaroids of sea kelp, sunken pieces of a ship, and dry reefs; next to the photos were copy paper print outs of several types of octopi, an old comic depicting the legendary Kraken monster attacking a ship; nestled against it was an artist rendering of what could’ve only been H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu. Below them were personal drawings, sketches of her own, of a mermaid woman close to Kerry’s build with a similar nose and face; a second drawing of her had her turned away to reveal what looked like tattooed black wings down her back. On the table below the corkboard were endless scribbled notes, barely legible from the doorway. But one phrase in particular stood out in all caps:
SIRENS SPARE US FROM THE FLOOD
“What is all this, Ker?”
“That’s not what you were going to ask me.” Kerry sat in her desk chair and started shuffling the papers.
“What is it?”
“Research.”
Casper scratched his face some more, fixated on Cthulu. “Okay, Ker. Is this related to the boat party? The…siren you saw?”
“Yeah, so? You don’t believe me anyway.”
Casper’s voice fell to a gravelly whisper: “You know, I don’t have to tell you that schizophrenia runs in your family.”
“No. You don’t have to tell me that.” Kerry picked up a pen and started to scribble on the corner of a closed composition book.
“Okay, sorry. I’m just saying…I hope this isn’t an obsession, like one of your mom’s things. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“You promise?”
“I do. I promise.”
Casper had half a mind to pull her in for a hug, but was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. Thad was home.
“Alright. I gotta go to sleep now, Ghostie. Thank you for today. For…helping me out or whatever.”
“You’re welcome. Always. You know that, right? Anytime.”
Kerry nodded, fought off another yawn, and made it to her bed, collapsing into a burrito, where Casper could only see her nose. It was a very distinct nose.
“Stay if you want, ” she mumbled under the covers. “With Ma and Thad. But I need to go to sleep now. Goodnight.”
“Night.” Casper took one last look at Kerry’s corkboard before shutting the light out for her. Perhaps now wasn’t a good time to tell her about the body.
And perhaps he never would.