The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

It nearly seemed for all its busy rustling and peeping birdtalk, the park was absent of people. She knew it wasn’t—she’d passed the usual joggers and dog walkers up early like her on the path down. Seen the flash of light-up collars, reflective vests. People were here in the park with her—and yet…

Not here, right at this moment. It was just Josie and her rod. She cast off. Watched the glint of the fly as it soared and plopped, rippling the black sheet of water. Her neck loosened, then her shoulders. She inhaled, and released.

Released the image of Mama, twisted on the floor, reaching under the bed…

Released the march of EMTs, police, the white sheet, the stain left behind on Mama’s pale rug…

Released that bird’s blue eye, orange beak, Josie, help me…

She reeled in. Cast off again. She breathed. The sky went from bruised to fever pink as she stayed there, longer than she normally did but she allowed it. It seemed right. To linger.

After the fourth cast off, though, she turned, picked up her kit, and moved to the second spot. She looked both ways out on the dark water, checking for the black snake-head, the outstretched wings. Nothing. She was alone. She set down her bag and cast off.

For her third spot, she chose the same path as the last time, along the slope of lake water toward the boathouse. She eased down the steep slope to the water’s edge, mindful of the mud and slick leaves from last night’s rain. There, the narrow band of water, the surface dipping and rippling with the breeze. No ducks, no birds, no black-necked cormorants. She cast off.

From behind her came the crashing sounds of something in the trees. She turned, heart thudding, her rod shaking in her hands. A big white dog bounded down the slope and came right up to her, tail wagging, and barked. She stepped away, not trusting its happy advances. It circled her kit bag, sniffing, and then turned back to her and barked again.

A whistle, a voice from the path above. “Barnaby, come!” And quick as that, the dog vanished in a tangle of white up the slope. She breathed, turned back to the water—

“Josie,” said a soft, creaking voice, “you came back.”

She dropped the rod then, and stumbled backward, away from the dark edge of the water.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, trembling. She listened; it was silent and still. She breathed. You’re imagining things, she told herself. Auditory hallucinations were the easiest trick for the head to play.

She moved back toward the water and recovered her rod, reeled in. She peered around the trees, hoping to see nothing, just the blank sheet of lake. But there, on a flat rock stood a cormorant, wings out, its head tilted toward her, waiting.

“Josie,” it said again, the voice like an old door swung on a bad hinge, “you came back.”

She watched its beak move with the effort of words. It looked like it was talking—this wasn’t just a sound she’d conjured. She wiped a hand across her face. Covered her eyes and counted, slowly, to five. She looked up again.

The bird was still there, with wings outstretched, watching her.

She’d be damned if she’d speak to it, talk to it. A bird. Her brain could play wild jokes on her, make her think her mind was going down the same road as Mama’s had at the end, but she would not give in. She turned her back on the bird, reached into her kit bag for a towel to wipe her muddy rod, her hands. And then, with shaking arms, she cast off, fly soaring out into the water.

Silence, save the birdsong increasing with the growing sunlight. The ripples of the water, the glug-glug as it hit shore edge, rock. She would not look at it, acknowledge it, accept it. She would—

“Josie,” it creaked.

She kept her eyes straight ahead.

“I know you hear me,” it rasped. And then, changing its tone to something deeper, something more terrible, “Jocelyn, my daughter.” It was Pop-Pop’s voice. She had not heard that voice in over thirty years.

Devil bird, she thought, going cold. Devil bird.

There was a splash and then the snaking neck appeared in the water. It grabbed the end of her line before she could reel in and began twisting in the nylon string, slowly, turning round and round.

“Jocelyn,” it said, the voice now swinging from Pop-Pop to Mama’s plaintive bellow, “help me.”

The line played out as the bird turned and turned, knotting itself in a web. It thrashed, as though struggling but fixed her with its steady blue eye. “Help. Me.”

Josie locked the reel and tugged, trying to pull free although she knew it was no use. The bird had tangled itself so completely there’d be no simple undoing. She could cut it, cut it and leave the bird—the devil bird—to mischief of its own making.

“Josie,” the voice a rusted hinge once more, “hold on tight!”

And the bird dove into the water with a sharp plunge, the rod jumping in her hands. She nearly dropped it but held on as the bird went deeper. She teetered at the edge, still holding her rod, feeling the pull as the bird tugged and tugged. She should just cut it and go, cut it, go, but one foot slipped and now she was in the water, cold seeping into her shoes. The rod jerked again and she stepped in farther, water at her shins. And then a third, final tug and she was—

—underwater.

And she breathed. She did not know how, understand, but with each gulp of water she felt oxygen fill her lungs.

And she saw. The water, clearer from down below than above. Here, there were fish fat as goats, bigger than any that had made contact with her hook. Turtles turning in slow circles, their shells as wide across as manhole covers, their mouths long, snapping snouts.

Deeper, the bird pulled