Ocean's Fire

by Stacey Tucker

  “Hey ladies, good to see you out of that barn,” he said. “Havin’ a couple brews?”

  “I’m just heading out, Kyle, can you watch Suki?” Skylar said. “She’s here alone.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Suki protested.

  “Have fun!” Skylar said with a wicked smile, and slipped away before Suki could respond. She drove home as quickly as possible. She wanted to feel the comfort of her tiny house and forget the ridiculous incident with Joshua.

  Michael was waiting for her when she walked through the door. “Hiya, Mikey,” she said happily and gave him a pat.

  He yowled his dislike for the nickname in response.

  After her routine of making noodles, Skylar turned on the TV. She wished she could watch for more than five minutes before growing restless.

  She retrieved the Book of Akasha from her bag and fired up her laptop to resume her research on the Akashic Records. Most of the information on the Internet digressed into the wackiest of tangents. Her search led her through many pages of supernatural, spiritual, and even extraterrestrial explanations. None of it gave her the help she was looking for. She fell asleep in the living room chair around three in the morning, her laptop still aglow with useless information.

  The sky was still dark and she had a crick in her neck from the chair when she woke up. Her eyes were fuzzy with sleep as she looked at the computer screen. It hadn’t gone dark as it always did. She looked at the time. Only an hour had gone by. Blinking, she tried to refocus. As she stared at the screen, the words started rotating in circles in a figure eight until they melted slowly off the screen. She thumbed the mouse pad to stop the screen saver. It wasn’t a screen saver. The words continued to melt away. The screen remained a light shade of blue, and words in gold letters appeared:

  AKASHIC READER $24.95

  Get all of your books translated here with

  The Akash-O-Matic.

  All credit cards accepted.

  “Is this a joke?” Skylar said out loud.

  More words started typing themselves on the page:

  This is no joke! Get that book translated today! Don’t delay. This is a limited time offer. But then again, there is no such thing as time, so take lifetimes if you want, we’ll wait here.

  Skylar jumped out of her chair. Who could have pulled this off? This didn’t seem like Suki’s style. “Mom?” she asked aloud into the void. Cassie had hated technology but had always believed anything was possible with the proper tools.

  She started talking aloud in the tiny room. “If this really is help from the universe or God or my dead mother, why do they want $24.95? I don’t think any of them need the money.” She pondered it another half a minute. “What the hell.” She took out her credit card and typed in all of her information. She hesitated for a moment and then pressed Place Order. Skylar held her breath as the color wheel spun around on her screen. She watched an icon load on her laptop. It was that same light blue with the words Akash-O-Matic in the middle. There were only two instructions:

  1. Use this application with your smartphone camera to scan words from your text. Translation will appear on screen.

  2. Stay away from bears.

  Skylar snorted. Whoever was talking to her had a sense of humor.

  The screen went dark. Skylar looked at her phone, and the app had loaded there too. She picked up the book and opened to the first page. She held her phone over the text:

  Sophia

  Her mouth fell open in amazement. “Who is Sophia?” Maybe this book wasn’t hers after all.

  The sun was starting to rise. She hadn’t gotten much sleep but didn’t care. Adrenaline was racing through her veins. She was starting to get comfortable with the crazy direction her life was taking. When she eased up on her resistance to recent events, solutions tended to show themselves. This app was no different. She skimmed the pages with her reader. Some words were translating and some weren’t. There were many whole pages refusing to cooperate, so she skipped over those.

  She found a vivid memory recorded on a page of curious squiggles, confirming that the book was indeed hers. She hovered over the year 2006. Her mother had given her a kitten for her seventh birthday. Kali was white as a powder puff, with emerald-green eyes. She was the most glamorous of cats, and Skylar had loved her more than anything.

  She scrolled down a few more lines. She smiled reliving the day Jack started at the farm and brought Argan with him. It hit Skylar hard to relive this memory. Her own, actual memory was fuzzy about the first day she met him, being so long ago, but reading it in the book brought it all rushing back to her.

  She stopped reading. These vivid passages blurred the line between the girl in the book and the woman reading it. Michael weaved through her legs, announcing his desire for breakfast, and Skylar looked at the time. The book would have to wait until the commitments of the day were done. She had to make it through the day on one hour of sleep. As she climbed into the inviting warmth of the shower, she thought of Argan. He was coming back today. After the incident with Joshua, she was anxious to reconnect with him.

  Skylar made it through to lunchtime courtesy of three Diet Cokes. She wasn’t proud of her intake of battery acid, but it was the only way she would make it. She’d never been one for all-nighters. She just didn’t have the stamina of others her age for partying till dawn or staying up past midnight, not for any reason.

  Later that day, Argan called to say his trip was going slower than planned and he would be out of town through the weekend. “I’m sorry, beautiful,” he said. “These cross-country trips can be unpredictable.”

  Skylar was disappointed but took the evening to delve deeper into her book. She knew she wouldn’t last long after the little sleep she’d gotten the previous night, but she wanted to put some time into it. Truth was, she was wavering between accepting this experience with the book as true and chucking it all out the window and taking up drinking for recreation.

  She settled in her backyard with the book and her phone, and got to work. Not far into her recon mission with her translator, she found the passage about her dream of Joshua and their subsequent meeting at Art Bar. It was all there, just as it had unfolded in real life.

  She stopped to take a breath. If she read just a bit farther, she would see events that had yet to occur. Maybe Ronnie was right. A person isn’t supposed to know their future in such accurate detail. She struggled between wanting to know and not wanting to know. I won’t read too far ahead. Maybe I’ll just read up to the events of the weekend. She read on:

  “Skylar, you’re a little late for my set.”

  “Hi Joshua. It’s nice to see you again.”

  Skylar felt anger swell. “This is not happening! There’s no way I’m going to see him play again!”

  The late autumn night was uncharacteristically warm and humid. A mist hung in the air, creating a haze over the moon. Skylar looked out through the trees behind the house. A loud rustle stirred but there was no wind. Skylar continued to stare between the trees, convinced an animal would wander by. And to her astonishment, one did.

  “Cheveyo? It can’t be,” she said, frozen in her seat. The mustang casually walked toward her.

  There is no possible way he could be here, Skylar thought, and yet there he was. She remained still as he approached and turned sideways, seemingly indicating that she should mount him. She was too petrified to touch him. Michael, who didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by the beast, gave her an encouraging meow.

  Cheveyo hadn’t been at the barn long, but Skylar had already claimed him as her favorite. The cause of his injuries from his life in Montana was a mystery, but he had been brought east to Rosen to live out his days in peace.

  Skylar inhaled deeply and reached out her hand to touch him. He was solid, not a figment of her imagination. Her next thought was that he’d escaped and somehow tracked her down. She’d read about cases where such things had happened.

  “Were you bored, my friend?” she
asked him, still hesitant about climbing on. “Too confined in your little house?”

  She looked at her own house. For so much of Skylar’s life she’d felt chained to duties of being the good girl. Reassuring her parents that they were doing a good job despite their shortcomings was a role she’d taken on at a young age. And once Cassie got fixed on her plan of resurrection, Skylar’s life had become a spider web of oddities, rituals, and the burden of one day bringing her mother back from the dead.

  “How dare she put that pressure on such a young girl,” Skylar allowed herself to say out loud for the first time. She still felt the chains of responsibility around her neck, with no Plan B in sight.

  Without another thought, she grabbed hold of Cheveyo’s mane and sprang up onto his back. He had no reins, no saddle. It was just her and him. She pointed toward the trees edging the backyard and he obliged.

  Skylar had never ridden a horse in the dark. The moon was high, but a thick layer of fog hanging above the tree line dimmed its light. Somehow, though, Skylar had a blind trust Cheveyo would keep her safe.

  About a mile from the house, they came to a clearing. The light of the moon was just strong enough to illuminate a field of lavender, still vibrant though it was late autumn. Skylar gasped. She had always thought the woods behind her mother’s property went on forever, and she’d never been one to test boundaries.

  She was still reveling in the discovery of such a beautiful place so close to her everyday world when she heard grunting that didn’t come from Cheveyo. Then, across the field, four horses appeared, menacing and unfriendly. Thunder rumbled loudly—not from the sky but between them. In the darkness they all appeared black, though Skylar couldn’t be sure of their exact coloring. Anger roiled off of all four beasts like that of man, not an animal. She’d encountered a few difficult horses in her career, but no horse she’d ever met had held this much fury.

  You can give them what they want, an ugly voice said in her head. They’ve been waiting a long time. Skylar did not recognize the voice.

  Cheveyo nodded his head, as if in understanding, then snorted loudly and bolted for Skylar’s house, clearing the field in seconds. As they entered the trees, Skylar looked back at the horses standing at the edge of the field. They appeared to be confined by some invisible boundary. She turned to face forward and a branch struck her in the face, stinging her cheek. Still she held tight to Cheveyo, and he continued his pace, weaving through the trees with precision and arriving back at the house in minutes. Air puffed loudly from his nose as Skylar dismounted.

  She touched the side of his face. “Why did you come here?”

  Cheveyo just bowed in farewell, and Skylar watched him retreat into the woods. He will find his way back to the barn, a voice deep inside her said—one much warmer than the ugly voice she’d heard in the field. You needn’t worry.

  She went inside and looked at herself in the mirror. There was quite a gash on her cheek. She cleaned it up and shuffled back to the living room. The Book of Akasha stared at her from the coffee table. All her anger about her predicted encounter with Joshua forgotten, Skylar walked up the stairs to the loft and collapsed on the bed. Her mother’s quilt wrapped around her, she asked the angels for a dreamless sleep.

  Skylar got to the barn early the next morning to check on Cheveyo. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, no worse for wear. The mustang looked at her like nothing had ever happened. She was still standing there in the aisle, arms crossed, when Kyle came around the corner with a bale of hay on his shoulder.

  “Kyle, did you notice anything odd about the horses last night?” she asked.

  Kyle threw the bale in Cheveyo’s stall. “Nope.”

  “Were you even here last night?” she asked.

  He picked his head up out of the stall. “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. She had no reason to think he hadn’t been there, except that Cheveyo would have had to have been missing most of the night to get to her house and back by foot. She turned to walk away, then spun back around. “How many times do you check the horses during the night?”

  “I don’t get up in the middle of the night, if that’s what you’re asking,” Kyle said, his tone defensive. “I check before bed and when I wake up. If something were to happen in the night, like a fire, the alarm would sound and I could be down here in minutes.”

  “Oh, okay,” Skylar said. She debated telling him about Cheveyo’s nighttime visit, but she didn’t understand it herself enough to explain it to someone else. She walked off to complete the day’s tasks as quickly as possible. She wanted to avoid Suki at all costs; she knew she would press her to go to Garage to see Joshua play. In the last few weeks, Skylar had seen an unattractive transformation in her friend. Her quiet, reserved demeanor had been replaced with a wannabe Girls Gone Wild vibe. She was out every night—making up for lost years of partying during college, Skylar guessed, though she couldn’t understand why she was changing now. Her grandmother couldn’t be happy about it.

  “What do you mean you aren’t going?” Suki said later that day when she cornered Skylar in the tack room. “Argan is still away; you have no excuse. Besides, Garage is a different kind of crowd. We need to go together.”

  “I don’t need to explain everything to you,” Skylar said. “And why are you so insistent on going in the first place? I have to say Suki, you’ve been acting a lot different lately than you did when we first met.”

  “I’m glad,” Suki said, suddenly sulky. “It’s about time I let loose and have some fun.”

  “Have fun for me, then,” Skylar said, completely annoyed. She didn’t wait for Suki to respond. She quickly finished tidying the tack room and headed home.

  That night Skylar sat on her bed and pulled out the Book of Akasha. She tried to find the exact place where she’d left off, but it seemed to have disappeared. She remembered Ronnie saying that if the future changed, the records changed, so something must have happened to change the entry for that day.

  That’s good, she thought. Maybe I can use this book for good and not evil.

  She tried to read about the next few days, but the book was not cooperating. The text around her current timeframe seemed smudged. The letters were less clear than those above and below a half page down. Hours were ticking by, and she was getting nowhere. Her translator app was useless.

  The ring from her cell phone pulled her out of her search. Suki’s number appeared on the screen.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Skylar asked, concerned. Suki would normally never call so late.

  “I need your help,” Suki sniffled. “I’m at Garage. The night’s been a disaster. The group I came with ditched me, I can’t find my purse, and I have no money for a ride. Can you please come get me?”

  “Of course,” Skylar said. It wouldn’t take her long to get there at this hour. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” she said as she walked across the room and slipped on her shoes. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit . . .” out the door, “shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit . . .” and into the front seat of her car. She put the key into the ignition and heard her roadster come to life. She rested her head against the steering wheel. “Sssshhhiiiitttt.”

  Skylar pulled up to the front door of Garage at exactly 2:00 a.m. It really did have a different kind of crowd than Art Bar. Outside the city limits of Boston, just off highway 402, it was known as a biker bar—though Skylar didn’t see any bikers tonight. She did, however, see a ragged couple still dressed for summer slumped in a heap on the sidewalk, a bottle of Jim Beam between them.

  The bar was closing, and as Skylar ran into the bar, a wave of uneasiness came over her. This was not a safe place to be in alone. It had been raided twice the previous year on the suspicion the bartender was dealing heroin. And it was common knowledge around town that girls should only go there in packs, as pairs were not enough to handle things should
they go badly.

  Inside, the lights had gone up, a clear signal for everyone to get out. Skylar looked around the sparse crowd but didn’t see Suki anywhere.

  “Skylar, you’re a little late for my set,” a voice purred with mock upset.

  Skylar stopped walking and sighed. She slowly turned to face him. She couldn’t remember the exact words she’d read in the book. She wanted to purposely say something different. But this was where she’d gotten mad and stopped reading. Now she wished she’d stuck with it and found out how this night ended.

  “Hi Joshua. It’s nice to see you again.” Yup, that sounds familiar. “I wasn’t coming out at all tonight, but I got a panicked call from Suki and came to rescue her. Have you seen her?”

  “I thought she left with Kyle.”

  “Kyle Andrews?” Skylar felt her face redden as she choked out his name.

  “Yeah, he plays drums for me sometimes,” Joshua said. He looked amazing at this late hour, even better than he had at Art Bar. She couldn’t understand why no one else seemed to acknowledge his massiveness. She was suddenly hyperconscious of her hot-pink sweatpants.

  “Sorry to miss your show,” she said. “I’m sure you were great.”

  “I was,” he said with a smile that could melt steel. “A couple of us are headed to get some food. Do you want to come?”

  “I just came to get Suki. I’m not even dressed to be out. Maybe some other time.” Why would I suggest another time?

  “I think you look great,” he said. He traced her cheek with his finger, lingering at her chin. That’s it, Skylar thought. She had to admit to herself this wasn’t just attraction. The immense pull returned. All of the torturous feelings from the night at Art Bar rushed back into every tissue of her being. This was completely different than Argan. Argan was peace. Joshua was raw desire.

  She reached up to remove his hand from her face. Awkwardly, she held his wrist longer than necessary before finally dropping it. She turned back to the bar, ready to dial Suki’s phone. She wouldn’t have called Skylar and then left with Kyle.