1

Portland. They tell you it’s weird. They don’t tell you it’s wyrd.

‘Course, most people don’t know the difference. Not really. I sure didn’t. No, right up until the day I found out the truth, I was just another California expatriate running away to the Pacific Northwest.

I didn’t do it to steal a job, though, or blow up the housing market.

I fled the Bay Area because of a breakup.

Kind of stupid, when I look at it that way. But it’s the kind of thing you do when you’re twenty-four and your whole world has come crashing down.

Katy. She was the world that came crashing down.

Six months in, I was sure she was The One. By the one-year mark, I was confident we were headed for marriage, the house, the kids, the dog, the whole nine. I’d even started saving for the wedding, in a special surprise account.

Wasn’t just because Katy was beautiful, either, with her soap commercial skin and big blue eyes. We had the same taste in science fiction and fantasy, the same love of horror films. She didn’t like some of my music, but that was all right. I didn’t like most of her New Age crap.

I figured those little differences were what made relationships last.

The truth hit me like a rancid pie in the face.

Katy, big blue eyes full of tears. Apologizing and begging my forgiveness even as she was packing her bags to split town for Sedona, Arizona, of all places.

Turned out she’d met her “twin flame” in some internet chatroom.

Obviously that meant she was destined to dump my ass and run off to start her life anew with him.

I didn’t know what a “twin flame” was. Still don’t, now that I think of it. I think Katy tried to tell me during her blubbering mea maxima culpa explanation, but the truth is, all I could hear was my own blood rushing past my ears, and a crashing sound like a truck full of cymbals getting sideswiped by a plane full of hi-hats.

And then was she was gone, and the apartment looked half-again too big. And not just that. Everything in my life looked wrong then.

The job I’d been so happy with? Just a grind that would eat my soul.

The friends I loved so well? Well, they were the same people I loved, but now they all gave me the look.

If you’ve never seen the look, good for you. Closest I can come to describing it is a blend of sympathy, pity, and condescension.

As though they’d all seen this coming, but none of them could have been bothered to tell me.

I wasn’t sure which part of the look was worse, the pity, or the condescension. Didn’t matter. I couldn’t take either very long. I needed space, and I needed it now.

Katy was out the door maybe three days before I was online, hunting up an apartment in Portland, Oregon.

Why Portland?

I don’t like L.A., Seattle gets too much snow for me, and I wasn’t leaving the West Coast.

Portland seemed to have the perfect combination of forest and city. Plus, they had a thriving live music scene. And Powell’s, of course.

The chance to live that close to that many books?

Sealed the deal.

It was three weeks After Katy when I’d moved into a little apartment just inside the Beaverton border, on the northwest edge of Portland.

Six weeks A.K., I found out that Portland wasn’t named for its port.

It was a beautiful May morning. A Saturday, which meant pretty much everyone in the area was asleep or outside.

Much rain as we got, seeing the sun on a spring weekend was like found money. Couldn’t wait to blow it.

For me, it finally meant a chance to check out the quality of pickup basketball in Riverfront Park.

Riverfront Park is kind of what it sounds like. A great big strip of grass — acres, really — plunked down on the west bank of the Willamette River. Throw in a fountain, concrete areas for events, a hiking trail around the edges, some basketball courts, and a whole mess of trees, benches and the like, and on sunny days the place got downright crowded.

Birthday parties, elaborate frisbee games, roughly three kennels worth of happy dogs, plus a soupcon of joggers, bikers, and old folks just getting their steps.

Not to mention the great big Saturday Market, where locals artists, farmers, and others all came to hawk their wares.

Sprinkle all that liberally with homeless people, and you have Riverfront Park in the spring.

I was there for the basketball, though, and what I found made me very happy.

Wasn’t there twenty minutes before I ended up running pickup full-court five-on-five with a bunch of guys and gals who were as good as any I’d played against. And I’d been playing pickup basketball since I was big enough to throw the ball through the hoop.

This was the best kind of game, really.

Well, almost the best. My team had just lost twenty-three to twenty-one. May not sound like much, but each basket was worth one point, and it was a contest to fifteen, except you had to win by two. Throw in some trash talk and energetic defense, and we’d been running hard for a half-hour solid. Easy.

As I said. Good games, at Riverfront Park.

Unfortunately, losing meant going to the end of the line. We’d be out for the better part of an hour, unless another team came up short a player and drafted one of us.

And with me being the new kid on the block, I wasn’t going to be the one drafted. Killer jump shot or not.

So I left my teammates to gaze hopefully at the incoming team, and flopped on the thick grass near the edge of the court, a panting pile of sweat, made decent by a blue-and-gold U. C. Monterey tee shirt and gray shorts.

Gentle breeze off the Willamette kissed my face, carrying the kind of clean river smells I wasn’t used to. The closest I knew to rivers growing up in the Bay Area were the cement creeks that cut through my home town of Long Pine City.

The creeks smelled like moss and decay, an association that only built during my four years in Monterey, right on the Pacific.

But here, the Willamette smelled downright refreshing. Or maybe I was just that tired. Or that thirsty.

The sun beat down on me, as I listened to good-natured razzing while the current teams exchanged shots from the top of the key, to establish first possession.

The combination of sun-heat and exercise-heat a miasma that clung to my skin.

I dumped water on my face, still icy cold thanks to my Costco-special thermos. Some kind of space shuttle metal, but still heavy as lead when it was full of water.

Needed both hands to invert that beast above my face. Some of the water got into my mouth, and I gulped it down gratefully as I stopped the deluge.

Didn’t just cool me off. Got the sting of sweat out of my eyes, and the taste of sweat off my tongue. Drove away the feeling that I was emanating stink lines.

Plus, it wasn’t as though my short blond hair was going to get more matted to my head.

The water didn’t do anything for my hunger though, and I hadn’t eaten since that oversized blueberry muffin before I left my apartment.

I was just craning my neck to glance past the game and judge how far I was from the food tents over at the Saturday Market, when I heard the sound that changed my life.

A cry for help.

#

The cry was a single word.

“Help!”

A woman’s voice. Young-sounding. A nice voice, too, like she’d sing mezzo soprano.

I heard that cry, and it was like the whole world just froze.

The joggers, the birthday parties, the cars going up and down Naito, the Saturday Market, even the two full courts of raucous basketball. Frozen.

Even the air seemed to stop moving.

A moment between heartbeats that just stretched out, while what I’d heard sank into my head.

A cry for help.

An urgent cry for help.

When I heard it I was sprawled on the Riverfront Park grass, just off the basketball courts. My limbs tired, but the good kind of tired. Workout tired, like they’d be ready to go again if I gave them some rest first. Fifteen minutes or so. My whole body drenched with sweat, where I hadn’t splashed it away with water from my heavy thermos.

The hot sun high above, but not yet noontime high. Wasn’t ‘til later I found out I’d heard that cry at exactly eleven-eleven and eleven seconds a.m. Later still ‘til I found out why that mattered.

Then my heart beat again. Movement and sound came back to the world.

I jumped to my feet. Looked at my despondent teammates, stuck waiting for a game like I was. All their attention on the game in front of them.

I didn’t know any of their names. Typical pickup situation. The muscled Latina was Shorty. The big guy with the fro was Jolly, as in Green Giant. I was real-world tall, but this guy was basketball tall. The freckled guy was Red for his hair. The other guy was Metallica, for his tee shirt.

Same reason they called me Monterey, instead of Scott. My shirt. I’d probably have to play here at least three times before anyone bothered to learn my name.

Assuming the courts were still here. They weren’t year-round.

“Guys,” I said. “You hear that?”

Not one looked away from the game. Shorty shook her head. Jolly just mentioned a weakness he spotted in a team’s defense of the pick-and-roll.

“Someone needs help,” I prompted.

One big guy might chase off a problem, but three or four big guys definitely could.

Only Red looked at me, and he frowned like I was crazy.

I was on my own then.

The cry came again. Sharper. Terrified.

I was gone. Grabbed my keys and thermos and started sprinting toward the sound.

Not easy to track a single word in a place as noisy as Riverfront Park on a Saturday morning in May. But I was sure I heard the cry coming from closer to the river.

Off the courts I ran. Head craning. Looking for trouble.

Across a concrete area.

Young mother with two kids in a stroller. No trouble there.

Homeless guy sprawled and snoozing with his dog. No trouble

Past the bathrooms.

Nothing but casual strollers. A few relaxed couples gazing out at the river or at each other.

Hot concrete under my sneakers. Cool, river-wet breeze in my face.

But no sign of someone in trouble.

I reached the waist-high fence that was all that stood between me and the Willamette. Well, that and a drop of twenty feet or so. The fence was dirty steel rails between short, thick, concrete pylons.

I whipped my head back and forth.

Nothing.

In a park as crowded as this one, I now stood in a region maybe the size of a half-court, where I was the only person. Nearest pedestrians, all strolling away.

All moving away. No one coming this way.

No one else coming to help?

But help who?

“I’m here to help,” I called out. Desperate. “Where are you?”

“Here!”

Same voice. Same urgency.

In the water?

The rail was hot against my hips as I craned over, scanning for the sight of a woman overboard. Wondering how far it was to the nearest point anyone could get out of the river.

I knew people swam in the Willamette. There had to be places…

The Portland Spirit. A cruise ship that went up and down the river. Its dock was no more than a couple of hundred yards from…

Movement.

A head, breaking the water.

An otter’s head?

It was a big otter. Maybe five feet long. But it was definitely an otter.

“Please!” the otter cried out in that mezzo soprano voice. “It’s too fast for me!”

My mouth opened so wide I’m pretty sure my jaw bounced off my collarbone. I almost started looking around the for the camera, because this had to be a joke.

But the otter’s eyes narrowed. Its voice got all the more desperate as it said, “Please.”

I nodded. What else was there to do? It may have been a talking otter, but it needed help.

The otter pointed behind it, then started swimming to my left.

Behind the otter I saw movement under the turbulent waters of the river. A dark shadow. Maybe fifteen feet long. Coming closer.

Closer.

Consistent speed. That was good for me.

I didn’t exactly have a fishing spear. I had a thermos. Not much, but it was still half-full and pretty heavy. Regular shape. Cylindrical. Wouldn’t be much different from throwing a football.

I hefted the thermos.

Watched the shadow rise up. Rise up.

Break the water.

I threw before I even got a good look at the thing. I did see gray, fishy skin. A vaguely humanoid head. A whole lot of teeth.

Put my whole body into the throw. Perfect spiral. Angled to use some of the thing’s momentum against it.

Completion!

My thermos clanged off the thing’s skull. Too close to the sound of a basketball bouncing off a rim for my liking.

How could it sound so metallic? Shouldn’t there have been a thud?

Not where my focus should have been.

I’d put all my weight into that throw. With my hips against the rail.

Over I went.

I had just long enough to yell out, “Shit!”

Splash!

Once, when I was a little kid, I had the chicken pox. Really bad case. Temp running over a hundred and five. Temp that high, I’d started hallucinating. Losing touch with reality. Had no idea who these well-meaning people around me were, even though they were my brother Kenzie, my sister Rona, and my parents.

Mom had finally stuck me in an ice bath to get my temperature down.

Plunging into the Willamette was kind of like that ice bath.

Surface tension smacked my face. Cold shock of water seized up my tired limbs.

All I could do to keep my mouth shut against the need to find air. I should have sucked in a breath instead of swearing during the fall.

Wild-eyed and desperate. Lungs burning. Limbs too. Hunting the surface. Stressing the fish monster. Hoping the otter got away.

Light. I could see light.

Kicking with legs that wanted a break. Whipping arms, just as tired. Heart pounding. Lungs begging for a breath.

I broke the surface. Sucked in my body weight in air.

Spun left and right.

The fish monster. The otter. Where were they?

Gone.

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