Fractured Tide

by Leslie Lutz

  A prickling on my scalp. A crawling sensation on my legs. The excitement that had driven me inside the forest disappeared, and I stopped and scanned the area, checking above and behind.

  I called his name again. The sound came back to me like a cave echo. The hair on the back of my neck stood. Something wrong in the palm forest. The Sense hit deep, screaming inside me. All of this had already happened. And we’d been right to sleep on the beach.

  Too deep, too dark, too cold. Get out and go home.

  The yellow stripe appeared, small in the distance, moving between two trunks. Gone behind a thick clump of trees, like a tropical bird.

  “Mr. Marshall?”

  Palms fronds rustled high in the canopy, shutting out the sunlit world. The crawling sensation on my legs intensified. A thousand ants slipping under my skin.

  The yellow stripe appeared again, emerging from a cluster of hashed trunks. Walking now. Toward me, his dark form slowly materializing. I waved wildly and smiled, my heart swelling with hope. Marshall. Another person. An actual adult to help us get home. Fix the boat. Find a way to avoid that thing that attacked us, and we’ll sail right . . .

  I stepped forward to close the distance, ready to throw an arm around his neck and welcome him back to the land of the living. Closer now, I could make out his pale face in the shadows. His thinning hair, thinner now.

  I stopped walking. Mr. Marshall wasn’t smiling. And he moved sluggishly, as if he couldn’t do more than that. Maybe injured. Or confused. The smile fell off my face. The prickling ants crawled to my scalp.

  When he’d covered half the distance, I still hadn’t figured it out. And I thought, Why’d he keep on the wet suit? In this heat, you’d sweat like crazy, even in the forest. And rash up. And there he was, walking toward me, slowly growing larger and more distinct, zipped up to the throat in black neoprene.

  I took a step back. His pale face. His arms swinging at his sides like they no longer belonged to him.

  I took a few more steps back.

  It was a trick of the shadows, I told myself. The way cameras catch your friend’s eyes and make them look strange. No, Mr. Marshall was fine. He would help us fix the boat.

  “Is that you, Mr. Marshall?” My voice came back to me, and this time I was inside a glass coffin. My breath close and warm on my face.

  My body knew it then, that this too was wrong. But the rest of me . . . I had almost killed him, and he was sick now and I would help him remember. Give him water. Bring him back to his wife.

  He passed through a ray of sunlight that had broken through the canopy. His eyes were off. Milky. Patches of his bare feet were raw and tinged with pink, like the inside of a blister.

  I stepped back, and a root caught my ankle. I went down.

  For half a second, the dim forest disappeared. I was inside the Andrews again, when I’d gotten lost and found that dark compartment. Shut your eyes, I thought. Pretend this isn’t happening. But I didn’t, and what I saw in his face forced me back over the roots and onto my feet.

  And I ran. I crashed through the trees, the last sight of him staying with me. Mr. Marshall staring like that lifeless eye I saw in the water when the boat went down, huge and unblinking, watching me through the flames.

  ENTRY 21

  I SPRINTED, LUNGS ON FIRE. The forest jagged. Trunks blurred. Something whipped my face and stung. I ran until my lungs gave out. I think I fell twice. Killed the other knee, but I didn’t stop. Because that wasn’t Mr. Marshall anymore.

  A burst of sunlight flooded the world. The heated air hit my skin as I exploded from the invisible boundary I now realized had been holding me in.

  I skidded to a stop at the water’s edge. Ready to dive in, to get away from what followed me. Instead I turned my back to the swell and crash, feet planted in the wet sand, and watched the darkness between the palm trees for a flash of yellow.

  Don’t go into the water.

  Don’t go into the trees.

  As I stood there, panting in the surf, a lesson came to me from one of your favorite stories, the one you made me read over eighth-grade summer—our last summer. Odysseus choosing Scylla or Charybdis. The six-headed monster or the whirlpool.

  The sea-foam brushed over the tops of my feet as the ocean surged, its heart beating out a rhythm. That’s where the six-headed monster roamed, out there in the waves. And the thing in the forest, that was the whirlpool. No escape. And I didn’t know what was on the other end. That left me and Ben and Felix and Steph owners of this narrow strip of beach between, trying not to step too far one direction or the other.

  Like a child’s game, I thought. Stepping around cracks in the sidewalk.

  After my heart slowed, I took stock of where I was. This part of the island didn’t look familiar. Big black boulders as high as my chest lay scattered in the surf. The waves broke around them, sending a spray of foam over their jagged crowns. A few additional boulders dotted the long expanse of sand leading into the palms, maybe a ton each, as if spilled from a giant’s pocket on his way over the island.

  I checked both ends of the beach to figure out where I was. And that’s when I noticed the strangest thing.

  The sun. When I’d gone into the palm forest, it had been hovering just above the horizon, ready to plunge into the ocean.

  I held up my hand and squinted. Two fingers. That’s what lay between the sun and the water. The sun had gone up, not down as it should have. Twilight was gone, along with the stars. It was day.

  I licked my dry lips. Imagined the water bottle back at camp, and the need for it hit me hard. Sweet water. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the sun reversing itself. But a drink, a bite of food—that was real.

  So I started walking. Staying in the surf, as far as I could from the horrible place I’d just left. I imagined the converters, hoped Ben, Steph, and Felix hadn’t drunk everything inside.

  Every few heartbeats, I checked the forest. During that long trek, Marshall’s face popped into my mind again and again, and each time the image felt like a slap. The eyes, the way his skin sagged. I didn’t want to see him again. The real Marshall was dead. I didn’t know what I’d met in there.

  Soon sweat coated every inch of my body, and the humidity wouldn’t let it dry. My bikini was soaked. I walked until the sun touched the water. Until it sputtered like a hot coal in a pond. My mind drifted. The thirst filled my throat with sandpaper. I thought about Mom, about whether she’d made it to shore. If she was hiding somewhere in the trees.

  Dusk had fallen when I saw it. A dark stripe lying near the surf. Trash, I thought. I grabbed it just before a wave tried to take it. When I flipped it over, my pulse leapt.

  A watch. A Casio G-Shock. Black.

  My mother’s watch.

  I checked both ends of the beach, shouting “Mom!” into the trees, into the water, into the sky.

  The only answer was the crash of the waves.

  I examined the watch again. Casio G-Shocks like that were common. What were the odds it was actually hers? And if she made it to the island, why would she take it off and leave it here?

  You once told me the big things wear us down, but the small things break us. I didn’t get it then. I do now. The watch. That tiny glimmer of hope, and then here comes logic to stamp it out.

  I don’t know how else to explain what happened next, but I . . . cracked. There I was, making my way down the beach, alone. Then you appeared beside me. As real as can be. Carrying an ice chest full of pineapple and bottles of water.

  I was about to throw my arms around your neck when another voice came from behind me.

  “Pamé.”

  Yiayia. When she was young. Let’s go, she’d said. And the sand disappeared, replaced by docks and a thick crowd all around me. Epiphany in Tarpon Springs, to celebrate the new year. The bishop was about to throw the crucifix into the water, and all the boys would dive in to see who could get there first.

  Then the crowds melted, and the bishop, and next all of Tarpon Spri
ngs, until suddenly I was swimming, free diving, following Litsa into the deep.

  I kicked my way down, where the world becomes dark blue and endless, and both of us shed everything that weighed us down on the shore. Dresses, shoes, polite conversation. All of it floated off as we made our way into the reef, following the glittering gold crucifix as it plummeted into the deep.

  Forty feet. Sixty. Eighty feet and then a hundred. Farther than any free diver had ever gone. And the bottom suddenly there, like magic, appearing out of the murk. Sandy, dotted, and crusted with fat sponges.

  We opened our bags and filled them. The crucifix first. Then the sponges. I remember thinking we’d make a killing at market. Buy food for a month. Me and Litsa, saving everyone. On the way up, Mr. Marshall appeared, in his rich-man’s scuba gear, following us back to shore.

  Somewhere in the fantasy my face felt hot, and I came out of the water dream suddenly. Or maybe it was real? I don’t know, but I’d lost track of time, and I wasn’t sure if I’d been walking in circles.

  The waves moved strangely, the forest too. Even now, I don’t know what happened to me that day. The stress, dehydration, exhaustion. Maybe the Sense taking me in and out of myself, pulling apart all my layers and reordering them.

  “Pamé,” I said to myself, walking toward that last sliver of sun. “Let’s go.”

  ENTRY 22

  A DOT OF BRIGHTNESS, floating in the dusk and the shadows of the palm forest, drew me on. Epiphany fireworks, I thought, falling into the sea. Then it stopped moving, became a signal fire tall and high, like the bonfires you and Mom once made on the beach when Felix was a baby and we were all together.

  By the time I got close enough to be seen, my legs shook and my joints hurt. Felix’s small form materialized out of the dusk, running toward me. Yiayia squeezed my arm once and disappeared. You gave me a two-finger salute, turned, and walked into the waves.

  I stood alone on the beach for a few breaths, and then fifty pounds barreled right into me and almost knocked me over. I caught Felix and held him tight.

  “You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay,” he said in one rushed breath, laughing and pulling away to dance a little bit before throwing himself at me again.

  “Yes, Felix. I’m back.”

  When we got to the warm circle of light, Ben looked up from something he was whittling with an expression both intense and a little sad. When he saw me, the shock in his eyes made me stop mid-step. He stood with difficulty and made his way toward me.

  I started to ask for water, my only thought. Before I could, Ben drew me into a tight hug.

  “Thank God,” he whispered into my hair. “We thought you were dead.”

  I glanced at Felix, who was smiling at me. Then I closed my eyes and leaned into Ben’s shoulder, the relief of being held for the first time in . . . I guess since I saw you last . . . almost taking my legs out from under me.

  He pulled away and motioned for Felix to bring the water bottle. It was a quarter full. He told me to drink it all. At first the sweet taste of it was all I could think about. Not the lack of questions from Steph, who sat outside the ring of light, her face in shadow. Not the way Felix clung to me, afraid if he let go, he’d lose me forever.

  I took two deep swallows and sighed. Water, sweet water. How awesome it was. Drinking water was better than falling asleep in a bed with clean sheets in an air-conditioned room. More relaxing than the sensation of a cool cotton T-shirt against my hot skin after a day in the sun, or the smell of the ocean in the morning, when I drove to the marina before sunrise with the windows down. Sweeter than my favorite song, the one we sang together when I was little, and more beautiful than everything ever in my life, water is so much better . . .

  Then I saw Graham.

  Our prisoner sat against a boulder, hands and feet again tied. The bruises around his mouth distorted his face so much I barely recognized him. Above his right eye, a two-inch gash angled down to his temple. Even in the flickering firelight and heavy dusk, I could see how deep it went. One of his eyelids had swelled until he couldn’t open it.

  Steph wouldn’t look at me. Instead she stared listlessly out to sea, her fishing net beside her, which was enormous now and weighted on the ends with shells and stones. The firelight showed the bruise under her eye.

  “What the . . .” I looked from Steph to Ben, who tilted his head toward Steph and gave me a meaningful look. Graham glared at me through his good eye, and I couldn’t tell if he was mad or afraid.

  “I told you to run the other way,” Graham said, mumbling through his bruised mouth. “And you went all hell-bent into the forest after it.”

  “Oh, he speaks,” Steph said.

  “Enough, Steph,” Ben said, his voice low.

  She looked at me as if hoping for an ally, a “Can you believe him?” look.

  “What happened to Graham’s face?” I asked.

  Steph ignored my question and began fiddling with a thin piece of driftwood. “What happened to you?” she said, and for a second, it sounded like she actually cared.

  “I went in after . . . I saw something. But I came right back.” The sun appeared in my mind. Rising, sinking. Didn’t I come right back? I rubbed my eyes, trying to square the circle. It was all so hazy now.

  Ben gave me a puzzled look. “Sia, you’ve been gone for three days.”

  “That’s not possible.” I rubbed my face again, my head full of sand fleas and seaweed. Was it possible? I tried to remember, but my head started to ache with the effort. “No, I’ve been gone for less than a day.”

  Steph and Ben exchanged a glance. Felix clung to my hand, watching me with wide eyes.

  I patted Felix and kneeled down in front of Graham to assess the damage. He flinched back from me.

  “He was a danger,” Steph said.

  “He was talking to us,” Ben said. “Walking toward us and talking.”

  “He was tricking us.” Steph pointed at Graham with an accusing finger. “About some imaginary thing he saw in the palm trees. He was tricking us to set him free.”

  “He was warning us,” Ben said, settling himself with a grimace by the fire. “You didn’t even give him a chance.”

  Steph went back to playing with the stick. “I’m not going to take a chance with Felix. I’m just not.” But she sounded like she was trying to convince herself, rather than us, that she’d done the right thing.

  Graham let out a humorless laugh that ended in a cough and set his good eye on me. “Soon as you ran off, the redhead flipped her wig. Smashed me over and over with a rock as big as the professor’s ego over here—”

  Ben’s voice snapped out of the darkness so loud I stepped back in surprise. “Call me that one more time and—”

  “And what? You ain’t gonna do nothin’. That’s the redhead’s job.”

  Ben got up and started toward him, his hands clenching into fists. One step and he’d already put too much weight on his bad leg. He stopped, his face twisting with pain.

  “Eager little beaver, she is,” Graham said, and then turned his eyes on Ben again. “And I don’t know why you snap your cap every time I say that anyway. I’ve known plenty of mama’s boys like you that didn’t mind. And I like ’em well enough. Knew one who was a real gas, guy who slept in the bunk next to me, always screaming out in his sleep when he had his nightmares. It was real entertainin’.”

  The shift in Ben’s expression, along with the sudden quiet around the fire, seemed to be exactly what Graham wanted. “Guess school can’t teach you everything after all,” he finished, looking genuinely pleased with himself, as pleased as a man can look with one of his eyelids completely swollen. “So like I was sayin’, sweet little dollface here took this rock and she smashed me. When I was down, she kept going until the professor”—he nodded toward Ben—“got her off me.”

  “I’m starting to regret that,” Ben said.

  Graham tongued the inside of his mouth, and then his lip. “In the service, we got a name for ones li
ke her.”

  “You’ve got a name for everything,” Ben said.

  Just as I was realizing what kind of names a guy from 1943 might have called Ben, Steph spoke up again. “I was defending myself. He was free. He was going to hurt us. And Felix.”

  I started to tell her off, but that was when I noticed Felix sitting just outside the ring of light, arms wrapped around his knees, shoulders hunched. It’s the way he sat in the visitation room at the prison while we waited for you, surrounded by strangers with harsh voices. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d first come into the fire’s glow, but fresh ink covered his calves and half of his thighs. He must’ve found Mom’s pen in the toolbox. Intricate drawings of boats and hamburgers and clownfish and coral, all over his skin. At least three days’ worth of drawings. Keeping himself busy. And calm.

  He didn’t need to hear about what I’d found out there.

  I kissed him on top of his head. “I’ll be right back.”

  He turned his innocent eyes up at me and nodded.

  I gestured to Ben to follow me away from the others and ignored Steph’s poison look. As we left, I caught Felix’s only comment to Steph, small but determined: “It wasn’t right, what you did.” He sounded so grown-up. Three days without me and he’d aged a year.

  When there was enough blackness between us and the fire, when I was sure the sound of the surf would drown out my words, I turned to face Ben. The moonlight caught the white of his shirt, his bandage, but his expression was lost to me.

  “You were gone a long time,” he said.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “What did you see out there?” He nodded to the trees.

  I looked to the palms, and then to the ocean, its enormous black body roiling in the darkness, under the moonlight. A faint green glow caught my eyes about a hundred yards beyond the breakers. A patch of phosphorescence lighting up the black water. It brightened for a few seconds, then dimmed, sank until the world became dark again. The sight of that thing haunting our coastline took the last of my energy from me.