The Fisherman

Lottie much prefers the camp’s bakery to her aunt’s bakery in the Bronx, mainly because her mother is much more relaxed now because she is free from the harsh supervision of Lottie’s aunt. However, the recent supernatural events have shattered Lottie’s worldview and eroded her concentration, and she makes constant mistakes. To keep her out of trouble, her mother sends her on frequent errands. It is when Lottie is on her way to a storage closet to fetch almonds that she has her “encounter” with Helen, who traps her in the closet and closes the door. Alone with Helen’s “spoiled flesh” smell and “blank, pitiless” gold eyes, Lottie feels on the verge of panic. Then she hears Helen’s voice, a hideous, “chuckling” noise that sounds like the language of the dead.

Rather than deciphering it, Lottie “sees” what Helen is describing: a vast black sea without end, which seems to run “under” the world she knows. Lottie also perceives that the black water is “crowded” with human bodies, and one in particular seizes her notice: a corpselike female face, staring, unblinking, “alabaster-white,” with blue lips gasping words out in a “low monotone.” As Lottie listens in horror, the bobbing head describes “the most pornographic of fantasies” (104) about one of her father’s friends.