Sea-Devil: A Delilah Duffy Mystery

by Jessica Sherry

  I started thinking about ways to make the jump to loss of consciousness. Fear kept me floating. I couldn’t be brave enough to just let go. Instead, I let my mind wander.

  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed that day in my head over the years. It’s been a light in some dark places in my life.

  I remembered how warm the sun felt on my skin that day, and smiled. I couldn’t believe it had been just a few weeks shy of thirteen years. “Face the shore,” he’d said. He’d managed to get me paddled out past the break zone on his surfboard. I straddled it, waiting for further instructions. He maneuvered the board for me, treading water at my side. “When you feel the swell underneath you, pop up, just like we practiced.” I’d given him a ‘yeah-right’ kind of look. Sam’s encouraging smile told me I could do anything, and the fact that I was there, in the water and doing okay, well, I believed him. That was the last time I felt truly brave.

  In real time, I started swimming again, slowly, achingly. “Cup your hands, Dee,” Dad’s voice echoed. “Put your muscle into it, Bean.” I moved faster.

  “Get ready,” he’d warned me, backing further away. I got into paddle position, as he’d shown me several times on the beach, and the wave came. I kicked up, balancing carefully, and for a sum total of about three seconds, I did it. I surfed. And then, I fell. The water wrapped me up, and in it I did a forward roll or two before I caught my bearings, and Sam’s arm reaching in to pull me out. When I surfaced, I was laughing.

  “That was really good,” he’d said, smiling. “It was like flying,” I’d told him.

  Something about my life shifted that day. The sharp sting of the near-drowning became dulled by Sam’s smile and the joy of being with him. Nightmares kept plaguing me, but having one good memory of water almost balanced the other out. Almost.

  Time slipped on, and my body raged. My legs were Charley-horsing. Exhaustion. Pain. Frustration. I treaded water, bobbing up and down, feeling my muscles tightening, close to revolt.

  I laughed sarcastically. “I’m so glad I learned how to swim.”

  The moon’s drooping had left the sky almost black, and I recalled that the night was always darkest before the dawn. Was that just a saying or the truth? For once, I couldn’t remember where the saying originated, and it hurt to try.

  Searing pain jolted through my head. I got sick again, and wretched into the water. Coughing and heaving, I cried out. Then, calmed down.

  Breathe. Remember.

  And then without the sarcasm, said in a whisper, “I’m so glad I learned to surf.”

  Turning on my back, I let my body sink into itself atop the water, floating, and eased into some kind of acceptance. I was so tired. “Belly button to the sky, Dee,” Dad had told me. “And relax.”

  Faces of loved ones popped into my mind like I was sifting through an album. My parents would be devastated. My mom would fuss over everything, and inside be torn in two. She would, I grinned, at least win her argument. She had never wanted me to move to Tipee in the first place. Dad would bury his tears in strength, but he would ache.

  I eased my floating into a slow backstroke, though each movement sent my body in torment. My mouth was dry. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink… and my throat was raspy and sore.

  In due array, I considered each one in my family. Arms moving back and forth one at a time, legs kicking gently. Grasping on to memories we shared like running through a slideshow in my mind. My body was cold, but I felt warmer.

  I thought again back to that warm summer day thirteen years ago. It took me a good dozen attempts before I improved on my three seconds. I got up to ten seconds, roughly. But, when I stood atop the surfboard, with the force of the wave under my feet, I felt powerful.

  “Surfing’s been around for three or four thousand years,” Sam had told me when we ate lunch on the shore. “But in the 1800s, Christian missionaries tried to eradicate it.” “Why?” I’d asked. “People always try to destroy things they don’t understand,” he’d answered, “and don’t want to.” “Good thing for us they didn’t get away with it,” I’d replied.

  “Good thing for us they didn’t get away with it,” I whispered. My eyes fluttered, and I widened them, and rubbed them with my fingers. They burned. I felt weak. Should I even try to stay awake?

  I could drift away, give in, and just sink. Maybe I’d be weak enough to go peacefully. No fighting. No struggling.

  My peace I give to you… I have overcome the world.

  Then, there was Sam. We’re the same, me and you. I felt the pain of tears, without the ability to make them.

  We’d laid an extra-large beach blanket on the upper beach, where the sand was packed but not wet. Facing the ocean, we laid there on our stomachs well after our surfing adventures had ended. The sun was sinking. I leveled the sand in front of us with my arm, and with my finger wrote, “Thank you,” in letters as big as I could reach without getting up. Sam grinned. “Again?” he’d written back. “Yes,” I wrote back with a smiling face.

  I wish we’d been able to do it another day.

  It’s okay, I thought. Grandpa will tell him I found the life vest. He’ll know I knew the truth. I smiled. Thank God I hadn’t made the mistake of letting him go again. Sam knew my heart was his, and that would have to be enough.

  My backstroke eked on. My sides were cramping. My calf muscles knotted. Up and down my body moved as the waves decided to take me. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Stars dotted the sky, a sea of eyes looking down on me.

  “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers – the moon and the stars that you set in place – what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?” I whispered, between splashes of water. “Yet you made them only a little lower than you and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them charge of everything you made, the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea-” I gulped a swallow of water.

  “And everything that swims in the ocean currents,” I recited. A wave toppled over me. I bobbed back up, a cork fallen into the bottle. I tried to check my bearings. A wave got me over the head, burning my eyes and filling my mouth. I choked and gagged.

  “This is the way the world ends,” I said, “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

  My skin stung all over. My legs cramped. I vomited into the water again. After that, a series of dry heaves almost made me lose consciousness. My arms might as well have been rubber bands.

  So, I settled on my back, letting the waves and a sorry excuse for a backstroke, carry me. I had nothing else left. For every breath I took, my head became submerged under a wave. Dizziness set in and I could swear there were birds circling my head, but when I reached out to grab them, I couldn’t feel or hear a thing. Was I hallucinating?

  “Look at the stars… look how they shine for you,” I sang in a weak, whispering voice. Coldplay’s Yellow drifted into my mind like a lullaby. A smile crossed my face.

  Belly button to the sky, Bean.

  I’d wasted time. Could measure out my life in coffee spoons. Still, I’d been graced with pieces of heaven that flooded my mind now, not just as memories, but I could hear them, see them, feel them.

  Dad teaching me to swim, even though I hated the water (“It’s just water, Dee, don’t be afraid.”), Mom reading me Shakespeare even when I was too young to understand it (“What a piece of work is man!”), talking books with Great Aunt Laura (“I am Heathcliff!”), laughing, learning, and even crying with students for there were all of those glorious things, and then of course there was that kiss. I am so glad to have had it. How dumb of me to have stopped it. “Why would you ever want to stop?”

  “Thank you, God,” I called out in little more than a whimper. “I screwed up over and over again, but You still gave me more love in my life than I could ever dream.”

  Aunt Laura filled the pictures in my mind. I looked forward to seeing her again.r />
  A wave jolted me. A sharp object stabbed at my right foot. I jerked it away. My hair was tangling in my fingers as my arms weakly went backwards. Once, I pulled at my head wound and pain seared across my skull. I cried out.

  My legs turned into rocks, hard and immovable. I let my feet sink again, and found something hard, just as a large wave rolled me up and took me under. In my underwater delirium, I wondered if that had been a hallucination, too.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Safe

  “I think she’s dead, pop,” a voice said. “Poke her.”

  “I ain’t gonna poke her,” another voice returned. “You nitwit. Let’s check her breathin’.” Hands grabbed me and turned me over, sending pain throughout my body. My eyes fluttered. Water washed up around my legs. I gasped.

  “Well, she’s alive. Call the ambulance,” the older man said. I peeled my eyes open to grayness, not darkness.

  “Can you move, darlin’? Can you talk?” he asked, leaning over me. My throat was raw and sore. I smiled at him. “That’s a start,” he grinned.

  “Medics are a’comin’,” the younger one reported.

  “Get some water from the cooler, son,” the older one ordered. “She’s got to be thirsty.”

  The younger one rushed back over, and reached down to give me water. He was about to lift my head, when the older man stopped him.

  “Look, she’s bleedin’ ‘ from the head there,” he noted. “Don’t move her then.” He poured a capful of water and gave it to me.

  “Sam,” I said. My voice was raspy and cracked and didn’t sound like mine. “Sam.” My head pulsated with sharp pains. My entire body felt numb. I couldn’t move, though I tried.

  “Get the blanket, son,” the man ordered. “She’s cold as a fish.” He rushed back to his vehicle and came back with a fleece Red Sox blanket that he covered me up in. I smiled again. I drifted off to sleep.

  I dreamed of rocking. I was back in the boat, closed in darkness. I felt my body move, creatures on my skin. They were scurrying up my arms. My eyes jerked open and I screamed.

  “Delilah, it’s okay,” he said.

  “Delilah?” the old man asked. “She said her name was Sam.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, “You’re safe, Delilah.” My eyes felt wide enough to pop out of the sockets, and yet it took me a minute to see where I was. A white-shirted man held a stethoscope to my chest, while another was speaking into a walkie-talkie. Their faces were familiar to me, but I couldn’t think. The older man and his son were watching close by. And holding my right hand was Teague. Relief drenched over me.

  “Sam,” I said. He smiled.

  “Oh, so she’s been going on about you this whole time?” the older man chimed in.

  “Couldn’t get her to say anythin’ else,” the younger one said. “Like a dang broken record.”

  “Two inch scalp laceration. Applying pressure. Blood pressure 70 over 40,” the medic to my left shouted to the other. It was Chuck and Jake from the window incident. “BPM 165.” He placed a section of gauze on my wound and pressed gently.

  “Can you tell me your name?” Jake questioned.

  “Delilah Duffy,” I scratched out.

  “How old are you, Delilah?”

  “Twenty-nine,” I answered.

  Jake looked down at the rest of me and said, “Ligature marks on her wrists and ankles? What the hell happened to you?”

  “Jake, let’s just get her in the truck, okay?” Teague said urgently.

  “Let’s start an IV,” Chuck added.

  “Head hurts,” I scratched out. Teague pushed my matted hair away from my forehead gently.

  “I know. You have a nasty gash back there,” he said. “Do you know who did this to you?”

  “No,” I whispered. I heard one of them count to three, and in a swift movement, they moved me on to a stretcher. They lifted that onto a gurney, and strapped me to the bed. Teague held my hand the entire time.

  “I hope you’re ready for a road trip,” Sam said. “It’s going to be a little bumpy.”

  “You riding along, Teague?” Chuck asked.

  “I’m staying with her,” he said.

  “To the hospital?” I asked weakly.

  He smiled lightly. “Love you more than I hate the hospital.”

  “Fine, sit on the right side and brace yourself. Tough getting in, tough getting out. Don’t get many calls out here at the freakin’ Point,” Chuck said. The gurney was rolled to the base of the ambulance and they slid it right in with minor jolting.

  Chuck cushioned me with pillows around my head and checked the bandage he had placed at my gash. For the first time, I saw the blood against the white fabric he peeled away. It made me dizzy.

  “Look at me,” Teague said, leaning in closer. He smiled. “You had me worried. You’re getting way too good at that. But, that’s okay. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.” I grinned. The ambulance started moving slowly across the beach and I heard Jake speaking into his radio.

  “Delilah, I need to strap an EKG to your chest,” Chuck told me, “but I can’t pull your shirt over your head because of your wound. So, I’m going to cut your shirt off with my scissors.”

  I looked at Teague. “Keep me decent,” I whispered. He smiled.

  “Don’t worry,” he said.

  The scissors went up my side and along my sleeve. Then, Chuck handed the fabric of my shirt to Teague, who pulled it away, leaving me in my black bra. Teague pulled the Red Sox blanket up over me quickly. My skin was itchy and covered in bits of sand. Chuck strapped a cord around my waist and planted plastic circles on my chest. A moment later, the machine was outputting.

  “I thought about surfing,” I told Teague.

  “You did?” His face softened.

  “And the missionaries,” I went on. He ran his finger along my arm.

  “Is she being coherent?” Chuck asked, eyebrow raised.

  “Perfectly,” he answered. The ambulance bumped and jolted as we moved further across the shoreline. The driver cursed each time.

  “I can’t do the IV until we’re off this beach,” Chuck complained. He looked at the readout from the EKG, and shook his head. “Heart palpitations. 170 BPM. Hurry up and get to the road, damn it!”

  “You wanna drive, Chuck?” Jake bolted back.

  “Just hurry up,” Chuck reiterated. “Teague, let’s keep the blankets on her. She’s cold. Water temp’s like 75 or 80 degrees. How long were you out there?”

  Through the back window, I could see that the sky still held the grayness of early morning. “Long,” I said.

  The ambulance finally jerked off the sand to the main road, earning one last curse from Jake. Pain shot through my head again. I winced. With his gloved hands, Chuck readied my arm for the IV, and when it went in, I just looked at Teague and didn’t even feel it.

  “I found it,” I told him fighting dizziness, “The life vest. Grandpa’s shed. Best gift I’ve ever gotten. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe-”

  “It’s okay,” Teague said, squeezing my limp fingers. “Everything’s going to be alright now.” Then, he leaned down and whispered in my ear, “You’re safe.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Remembering

  Thwack! My eyes shot open. I gasped for air. I expected darkness, but light poured into the room from a wide, picture window. I sat up, surprised at how much it hurt to do so. My head throbbed.

  “Easy.” Teague rushed over to my bedside. “Everything’s alright. You’re safe.” He’d been sitting in a chair next to me. He eased me back down against the bed and used the remote control to lift the bed mechanically until I was sitting up.

  Thwack! My eyes darted over to the mounted television set. A baseball game.

  “You’ve been in and out,” Teague noted.

  “It wasn’t just a nightmare?” I whispered.

  Sam’s face fell. “No, honey. How are you feeling?”

  “Like I got in a fight with the ocean, and th
e ocean won,” I scratched out, my voice raspy and throat still sore.

  He smiled. “No, you won this round, baby. You should see how the ocean looks. Terrible.” I chuckled lightly. Teague poured me some water and handed me a cup with a straw.

  “Am I alright?” I managed to utter.

  Teague nodded. “Dr. Merck said you have a pretty nasty concussion, dehydration. They were worried about your heart for a while, thought you might go into shock, but you didn’t. You’re going to feel like crap for a few days, but you’re going to be fine. Do you remember what happened?”

  “It’s not going to help,” I said, voice still shaky. I reached up behind my right ear to feel the bandage where my sutures had been placed. They’d cut a chunk of my hair away for easier access. The rest of my hair felt like a kinky, dirty mess, toppling down my shoulders. I combed it with my fingers.

  Teague grinned. “You look beautiful. Don’t worry.”

  “I feel weak and gross, like I took a soak in a sewer,” I argued lightly. I went on to tell Sam how I ended up in the ocean, at least what I knew. Remembering made my head throb. I took a deep breath. The splash echoed in my ears. The heart monitor shot up.

  “It’s okay,” Teague said. “We can stop.” I closed my eyes. The room spun around my bed.

  “Are you okay?” Teague asked. I nodded. A chill went through me as the darkness flooded back to my memory like a black curtain.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  The door to my room swung open, and a fifty-plus nurse bolted in. “What the heck-fire’s going on in here?” she demanded, hand on her hip. “You were supposed to tell us when she woke up.”

  “She only just did,” Teague told her.

  “Hmm, and already you’re interrogating her?” she asked, eyebrows pointed. “We want her to relax, Officer Teague.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “How you feelin’ sugar?” she said, turning her attention back to me.

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “My name’s Wilma. Whatever you need, I’m your girl,” she said cheerfully. She pointed to the button labeled nurse’s station, and went on, “Just hit this, and I’ll be here in a jiff. Dinner’s coming soon. And, you got all these folks out here clamoring to see you-”