The Whale's Call

By Bart McCarthy

The discovery of a beached whale leads young Corey Blake to an incredible voyage into an underwater universe of adventure, discovery and transformation. Corey and her younger brother Alexander, miraculously inhabit the bodies of two Gray Whales and travel to a mysterious congregation of cetaceans intent on changing the course of human and planetary destiny. We are introduced to a host of whale communities and personalities, from the comic to the mystical, who are all the while being threatened by nefarious government agents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bart McCarthy
• Release date: Apr 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458096937

Bart McCarthy

Bart McCarthy is the author of over 20 produced theater works and several short films. He has an extensive career as an actor and currently works in Hollywood (see his IMDB profile or go to BartMcCarthy.com) Bart began work on The Whale's Call 25 years ago, originally envisioned as a screenplay. After many revisions, The Whale's Call is at last ready to take its place in the annals of engaging and thought-provoking fantasy literature.

Book preview

THE WHALE'S CALL

by

Bart McCarthy

copyright 2011 Bart McCarthy

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

When you're a whale you always feel the moon. Eons of sensitivity to the pull of the tides, to the waxing and waning of the light upon the sea, to the effects of its pulse upon all other life in the ocean, have honed the whale's inner ear to a moment-to-moment awareness of the moon's presence. Never was this ability more important than it was to these four whales speeding to their rendezvous.

The four had already passed through great columns of kelp, a dark labyrinth that delineated the nearness of the land. They were now bearing down on the shoreline. The whales broke the surface of the water, spouting and inhaling twice before returning to formation.

If spotted by any human being who knew about such things, they would have engendered considerable surprise. The human would be stunned to see these Gray Whales swimming here long outside the season of their great migrations between the cold Alaskan waters and the warm birthing inlets of Baja California. But, so far, they had been able to avoid such notice.

They swam in a silence broken only by an occasional sonar click to renew bearings.

Cautiously, the four entered the mouth of a small bay that would finally lead them to their appointed destination. The moon had determined the timing of this journey, and they had been precise in execution, as precise as the impending sequence of tides and tonight's peaking of the moon's light.

The whales slowed to a stop and warily surfaced. They studied the rough contours of the land that loomed ahead of them. Rugged cliffs stood defiantly against the ocean, spawning harsh formations of boulder, rock and sand jutting out into the surf. Fresh deposits of kelp mottled lonely patches of beach. The cliffs were topped with tall grasses, flowers, and gentle pines which were contrasted everywhere with the sharp, angular structures of human habitation.

Atop one hill protruding out to meet the sea, was perched the largest of the visible structures, a building with a tall spire. From the whales' vantage point, they could not see beside that building there was a group of humans congregated around a mound of flowers.

They did hear, though, the melancholy peal of a bell from the steeple above rolling across the waves to meet them.

Chapter 2

Corey Blake looked up at the church bell framed in the base of the spire. The sad, regular tolling drowned out half the preacher's words: A good man --BONG... misunderstood by many --BONG... deep thinker --BONG... love of Nature --BONG... we commit his soul ...

She squeezed Alexander's hand. Her brother wouldn't lift his head, but continued looking at the ground as he had for the entire funeral. Corey watched his straw-colored hair, caught by the light sea breeze, dance in carefree swirls. It seemed wrong. She wanted to put a hat on him.

Everything seemed wrong. The sunny day. That obnoxious bell. The preacher, acting like he even cared.

The number of mourners was small. That didn’t surprise Corey, though secretly she had hoped for a huge crowd. Grampus was such a wonderful person. Why didn't people just get it? But there were less than a dozen at the service: Mom, Uncle Jack, Aunt Mabel from Boston, Corey and her kid brother, a hand full of old folks Corey barely knew, and a man and woman who had been his students when he was a professor. There was the preacher, and two creepy looking men in dark blue suits whom Corey assumed worked at the funeral home, so they didn't count. Just there because it was their job.

Grampus and the preacher had never gotten along very well. For that matter, most of the town didn't get along with Grampus. They thought he was crazy, an embarrassment; and were always fighting with him to tear down the old house he lived in near the dunes. They called it a shack, he called it a retreat. I guess they're all happy he's gone, Corey thought to herself. They've probably burned his house down already and are dancing around the ashes. The stupid --

Corey looked up at the pale face of her mother. It struck her that she had never really pictured Grampus as her mother's father. To Corey, Grampus had always been, well, just 'Grampus': that tall, leather faced man who told them odd stories about sea horses and anemones, about Captain Nemo, and the boy on a dolphin. Occasionally, he would take them late at night to see the thousands of grunion fish fluttering onto the beach to spawn. Most other times though, he kept to himself. He'd be out in his rowboat, or shuffling along the beach examining everything that caught his eye, whispering to himself in his peculiar way. The local people may have thought of him as an eccentric, but Corey knew better. Before his retirement he had been a famous Biology professor who had traveled all over the world and had even written books. He may have become odd and distant in his old age, even to Corey; but she would always treasure the memory of their walks along the beach. Occasionally, Grampus would stop, stare out at the blue expanse and intone a poem that began: The Sea ... The Sea ... The silver Sea ... Corey forgot how the rest of the poem went. It was the long drawn out tones and his mesmerizing intensity that stayed in her imagination.

The coffin was slowly lowered into the grave.

Against her will, Corey's mind was drawn to that final, bewildering hour she spent with Grampus ... No. No. She was not going to think about it! She had to stamp that out of her memory.

Once the ceremony was concluded, the crowd slowly dispersed. Painfully slow for Alexander. Every few paces another mourner would stop his mother for condolences. Corey and Alexander found themselves ahead of the others at a fork in the path that led, in one direction, to the parking lot, and in the other direction toward some benches at the rim of the cliff overlooking the ocean.

C'mon, can we get out of here? said Alexander, I hate it here.

Wait. I'll go see. Corey left Alexander, and tenuously approached her mother, who had been drawn away from the others by the two men in blue suits.

Susan Blake’s expression seemed out of place. She seemed angry, confused. The men were facing her, talking in low, fast tones.

Good grief! You can't be serious, she interrupted. Will you look where you are? I'm not talking with you today. If you want to come to my house tomorrow, fine. I'll answer your questions then.

As Corey approached, the two men stepped away.

From the fork in the path, Alexander watched as his mother knelt beside his big sister hugging her. He looked away, attaching his attention to a large group of gulls wildly rising, dipping and circling an area of the beach a quarter of a mile away. Corey returned, wiping away a fresh spring of tears.

Mom said we could take the beach path home, but if we get our good clothes dirty, we’re dead meat, got it? Alexander knew that the message was for him specifically. Yeah, yeah, he muttered, and broke into a run toward the cliff path.

Chapter 3

The two wound their way down the face of the cliff which overlooked a small cove. This was one of Corey's favorite spots, quiet and removed from the world. The small beach, made tiny by the high tide, was surrounded on three sides by great, rugged boulders. Centuries of pounding surf had sculpted them into bizarre shapes. To many, they were like frozen trolls or amorphous creatures looming over the small space at the foot of the cliff. To Corey, though, it was like the rough walls of a chapel, a place hidden away from the world for her private ruminations. The largest of these formations was a sandstone wall through which the water had tunneled a great hole. Most called this Wishbone Rock. To Corey, it was the frame for her chapel's stained glass window.

Alexander left the path and deftly climbed down the boulders onto the flat sandy area. Then, hands in his pockets, he wandered over to a small tide pool that offered sanctuary to a regiment of crabs among mounds of kelp. Corey offered no objection to his leaving the path and followed the route down the rocks to take a quiet moment for herself. She leaned against a large, granite boulder and looked out at the vast expanse of ocean.

Try as she might to shift her mind to other things, the image of Grampus in the hospital bed kept coming back to her. She gave up fighting such thoughts. Perhaps she could work through this. It had been past midnight. Alexander had been taken home long before. Corey had been allowed to come into Grampus' hospital room and sit beside him. He was asleep. She barely recognized the dying old man with the tubes in his nose and wires hooking him up to machines with graphs and blinking lights. Grampus was thinner than she had ever seen him, and his skin, usually dark-tanned, was now ashen, almost green.

Corey sat for some time, holding his hand, listening to the eerie mix of sounds: his irregular breathing, the low hums, bleeps, gurgles that the machines would make, and her mother and uncle whispering with the nurse.

Suddenly, Grampus had burst awake, surprising everyone in the room. It took him a moment to figure out where he was. Then he began to thrash about, wrenching the wires out of a machine which began to emit a piercing whistle. Grampus looked fearfully around at everyone in the room, finally fixing his gaze on Corey. He paused, staring strangely at her.

It was then that Corey experienced the most terrible, confusing moment of her