Waking Storms by Sarah Porter

hands like a beggar. There was even something piteous in its roar. Dorian backed slowly away, pushing through a dense gray substance that was neither air nor water, but the wave shambled stubbornly after him, pressing closer and licking him with cold tentacles. Its breath stank of seal carcasses and weeds; it exhaled chill mist until Dorian’s moistened hair clung to his face. It wanted something, and if he didn’t find a way to placate it the wave would turn from fawning to savage in a heartbeat. It would lash down and crush him. The trouble was that he had no idea what to give it. A drawing? He groped through the pockets of his parka, searching for one, but somehow the fabric disintegrated at his touch and his hands kept reaching endlessly through cavernous space.
    The wave stretched itself, its watery chest inches from Dorian’s eyes, and then he saw a little girl’s curled arm and hand suspended in its core. The hand was green with decay. Tiny fishes nibbled the loose skin from its fingertips, but as Dorian gaped the forefinger crooked twice, beckoning him inside.
    He was still trying to back away, but his path was blocked by a cloudy wall, his legs snarled in warm weeds. In the murky depths of the wave, he could just see a girl’s face beginning to form. Dorian knew that he couldn’t let himself see that face, and with a frantic effort he flung himself around, straining to run. Something fleshy hit his mouth, and he heard himself screaming, and screaming again.
    He had a mouthful of cloth. It was his pillowcase. He was banging his head into the pillow, and that awful yielding wall was only the mattress. He lurched up onto his knees, gasping, with his sweat-slicked hair cloying around his face, and found himself staring at a baby koala perched on its mother’s back, gray light sifting through the frilly curtains.
    “I hope you had a nice restful sleep,” the man in the suit said. He was sitting in the rocking chair where Lindy did her knitting. His blue eyes were as blank as gobs of flattened chewing gum on a sidewalk. “A nice, deep, soothing sleep really makes all your troubles seem to melt away, doesn’t it?”
    Dorian wasn’t sure if this was another dream. Irrationally he thought his clock might be able to tell him whether or not he was asleep. All the red digits said, though, was that it was already twelve minutes past eight. Why hadn’t the alarm gone off?
    “I’m going to be late for school,” Dorian announced reflexively to the man, who suddenly appeared far more substantial.
    “You won’t be attending school today, Mr. Hurst.” The man stood up. He was tall, and his blue eyes were small and so close-set that they seemed to be about to merge together. He had freshly shaved, sticky-looking cheeks and a long, flat nose with broad pink nostrils.
    “I have a test today. In English.” Dorian was finally awake enough to wonder what the man was doing there. He was awake enough to remember the night before, when he’d skimmed along the pitching sea with a mermaid’s lips soft and cool against his own. How could anything in his normal life seem real compared to that? Luce. And she would come back to the beach tonight...
    The tall man smirked. “I believe Mrs. Muggeridge will accept a note from the FBI, Mr. Hurst. You can take your test after you get back from Anchorage.”
    “From ... I’m not going to Anchorage!” Dorian heard a soft shuffling out in the hall and looked up in time to catch Lindy’s frightened eyes blinking in at him. She hurried out of view.
    “You aren’t? You know, I’ve mentioned to your nice relations here that we suspect some unpleasant things about the Dear Melissa. Foul play, maybe. Criminals, maybe. Extortion, you see, aimed at the cruise line. We’ll keep popping your ships if you don’t cough up.” The man bent down and jerked open Dorian’s dresser: not just any drawer but the bottom one. Dorian was suddenly very still. The drawings ...
    The man threw a pair