Rapid Eye Movement

The jetty juts out at a sharp, precise angle against the choppy curve of the bay, damp wood planks shedding splinters into the rippling water of the lake. The sand is not sand but chips of slate and broken shells, and the air is chilled and dry, and even the things that are static have something moving in them, something roiling just beneath the surface. It’s midday, but the sun is hidden behind a thick crust of clouds and everything has the same pallid grey tint.

Marty is standing on the jetty, and the wood feels spongy under his feet. A breeze shifts his hair a little. He hugs himself in the chill, and walks towards the cabin.

It’s the only thing that doesn’t belong in this wide, empty expanse. The only thing that doesn’t make sense. It’s wrong, and no matter where he looks, his eyes are drawn back to it. There’s a weight upon every cracked tile on the roof, every weed that has grown up alongside the logs. It looks like it’s falling inwards, collapsing. He knows it means something, but his pulse is thrumming in his ears and he doesn’t really want to know what.

He raps on the door with his knuckles, twice. Apprehension curls in his stomach like a snake, tightening its grip around his heart as it beats, painful, in his chest. There’s no reply, but the door is hanging slightly ajar, and Marty’s about to push it further when a voice cuts through the air like a gunshot.

“Don’t go in there.”

Marty turns, and there’s a man standing in front of him, holding out a hand with the fingers spread, like a warning. He drops it to his side, and sniffs. Marty says, “What’s in there?”

“Nothing worth seeing.” The man sniffs again, pinches his nose with his thumb and forefinger for a second. He says, “Never seen anyone else around here before.”

Marty feels like a dumbass. He’s been trained for this, and he still doesn’t know what to say. He shrugs, curls his toes inside his shoes. “I’m just passing through.”

“Right.” He sounds doubtful, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He squares his shoulders, folds his arms across his chest.

“Kinda lonely here, huh.” Marty casts his eyes around the scene again, squinting at the soft peaks of mountains far in the distance. He wonders where he is. He wonders what’s in the cabin. He wonders why everything’s so grey. “I’m Marty. Marty Hart.”

“Rust.” And then: “Cohle.” Personal cognitive recall. Marty grins, and holds out his hand. Rust takes it, and his eyes are narrowed as he shakes twice, and he says, guardedly, “How do I know you’re real?” Marty blinks. He opens his mouth to speak, but Rust cuts over him. “You could be a figment of my fuckin’ imagination. I mean, shit, you probably are. Nobody ever just passes through here.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Marty says under his breath, kicking at the stones under his feet. “No, listen. I’m real.”

He starts to crunch across the bay, heading for the jetty. Rust follows him, slowly. He walks weird, kicking his feet out, jerking his knees like he’s trying to knock them out of place. At the end of the jetty, Marty stops, arms folded, and waits for Rust to catch up.

Marty’s looking out over the lake, and the waters are constantly moving, splashing against the jetty’s supports. It’s a big lake, surrounded by rolling grey hills, closed in. If it weren’t so goddamn monochromatic here, it’d be nice. Quiet, like. Marty says, “Look, you ever seen me before?”

“Don’t know.” Rust’s still walking, footsteps slow and calculated. He comes to rest with a few planks between his feet and Marty’s, and he backs up to lean against the jetty fence. “Don’t remember you.”

“You ever seen anyone around here before?”

“Nah.” Rust sniffs again. “Just me. Doesn’t really bother me much.”

Predilection to isolation. “You always here? In this place, I mean, with the cabin.”

Rust’s looking around, lips drawn into a frown. He shrugs. “Yeah. I guess. Never really thought about it. The hell is this, anyway? You interrogating me or something?”

“Just trying to get my bearings.” Marty shrugs. “Hey, uh, Rust. Can you do me a favour?”

“Depends what it is.” Rust pushes away from the fence and starts to walk across the width of the jetty. He’s skinny. Curly hair, kind of brownish, or maybe dark blond. He’s wearing a plaid shirt, unbuttoned, and a white tee underneath, and jeans. He looks rustic, home-grown, like he belongs with the cabin. But the cabin doesn’t belong on the bay, and so neither does Rust.

Marty says, “Can you show me somewhere else? Somewhere other than here? Somewhere you’ve been before. Somewhere you remember.”

Rust watches him for a minute, then shrugs, and turns, and starts to walk back up the jetty towards the shingled beach. Marty follows, and it only takes a couple long strides to catch up. Marty’s used to walking quick, because he likes to get to places on time, but clearly Rust doesn’t mind being late. They’re crunching across the pebbles and then tracking onto a dirt road Marty’s not sure was there before. The road is thin and winding, gravelled and dirty brown, leading them into a thicket of pine trees. The air is closer here, and Marty can even smell the needles and the compacting leaves beneath his feet. They’re walking single file, and Marty’s stuck behind Rust, watching his feet to make sure he doesn’t kick Rust’s heels.

The trees thin out after a few minutes, and Marty looks up from his feet to see a dark sky and a sad, abandoned fairground sprawling out in front of them. He lets out a noise that indicates something like surprise, or maybe it’s closer to shock. Either way, it means that Rust is capable of creation rather than simple static existence. And honestly, Marty’s glad they left that creepy old cabin behind on the shore, because there was some serious emotional shit going on back there, shit he doesn’t want to deal with on top of everything else.

Rust’s stopped, and he’s staring at the fairground with something unreadable in his eyes. Marty wants to ask, but he’s pretty sure Rust won’t really answer, so he just gives him a little pat on the back and starts walking towards the fairground gates. Last time he was at a funfair it was with Maggie, with Audrey. Macie was only a baby, back then, and Maggie had held her on her hip the whole time. They’d drifted through the fair, and Audrey had begged to ride the ghost train, and Marty had sat beside her in the cart and felt her completely still beside him the whole time. He’d worried, for a little while, that there was something wrong with her, because at home that night she hadn’t asked if there were monsters in her closet, and she hadn’t crawled between him and Maggie in bed and whispered that she was scared of ghosts. He figured that she was just mature. That she knew who the real monsters were.

He didn’t tell Maggie. He rarely does.

There’s something empty about Rust’s funfair. It’s weird, seeing all the rides stood still like that; seeing it at night, with the lights off. Marty walks slow, trying to measure his pace. Left, right, left, right, left. He skims his hand over the back of a metal bench, feels the eroded texture under his fingertips. He cranes his neck up at the ferris wheel, at the rickety old wooden rollercoaster and its chipping navy blue paint. There’s no ghost train, but there’s one of those tunnel of love things, and a house of mirrors, and a pool of moss-crisped water with plastic ducks floating on the surface, and a china doll with a patchwork dress discarded in a trash can.

Marty’s staring at the china doll, and Rust’s staring at him, and Rust says, “Why are you here?”

Marty cards a hand through his hair, glances over his shoulder. Rust’s expression is measured, careful, like pretty much everything about him. He says, “I’m your supervisor.”

Rust rolls with that. He nods, like it makes sense to him, though it probably doesn’t. He sits down on the bench by the trash can with the doll in it, throws an arm across the back. He says, “Is there a way out?”

Marty sits down on the bench, side-on, with his back to Rust, and looks at his shoes. He says, “Depends. You ever tried?”

“Waded out into the lake back there and sat at the bottom with all the shit people throw in there. Empty beer cans, trash bags. Weeds tickling my arms. Sat there fuck knows how long.”

Marty squeezes his eyes shut tight. Jesus Christ. “What happened?” he asks, but he’s not sure he wants to know.

“Lungs started to ache like I’d been running for miles. Everything felt heavy, blurred. Then I pussied out and swam up.” He pauses. “Should have died, but I didn’t.”

Marty turns to sit properly on the bench, glances at Rust sidelong. Rust’s staring up at the ferris wheel, tracing the shape of his lips with his thumb. A rumble of thunder creaks through the silence; the air turns moist, and a fat droplet of rain lands right in the centre of Marty’s head. It doesn’t take long for the clouds to break, and then rain is falling thick and fast, congealing in puddles on the ground, slapping against Marty’s skin. Drops coagulate on Rust’s eyelashes and fall down his cheeks when he blinks. Each time lightning flashes, Rust’s face is thrown into sharp contrast, and his cheekbones cast deep, heavy shadows over his face, and his eye sockets are hollowed and black. Marty says, “Is this you?”

Rust says, “Rain cleans everything away.”

They sit there until the storm passes. Marty says, “I gotta go.”

Rust says, “Alright.”

Marty stands up, struggles to slide his hands into the pockets of his sodden jeans. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Rust says, “Alright.”

Marty logs out.