Wraith

by Edie Claire

  I let out a sigh. Tara was right. I sucked at negotiation.

  "Fine. Assuming I ever invite you. And the second thing is—"

  "I can’t be talking to you or distracting you when you’re around other people, particularly your parents," he finished. "I already promised that, remember?"

  "So you did," I responded.

  We stared at each other for a moment. I took a breath. "Assuming you stick to the rules, I’m willing to do what I can to help you. But you have to understand something. I don’t know crap about any of this. Seriously, I don’t. I know you think I must—that I’m secretly hiding some profound truth from you. But I’m not. I’m just an ordinary person who’s been cursed with this ability to see weird stuff nobody else sees, and I have no idea why. It’s never done me or anybody else any good, that’s for sure. So whatever I may do to try to help you with your… issues, I need you to understand that I am totally and completely winging it."

  He looked back at me with a curious expression, but his eyes had become unreadable. "You really shouldn’t think of it as a curse, Kali," he said quietly. "You should think of it as a gift."

  I snorted. "Being constantly aware of dead people is no gift, believe me."

  He gave a slight shrug. "It is to me."

  I suddenly wished, really hard, that I was wearing something other than a worn lime-green nightshirt with a yellow duck on it that said, for inexplicable reasons, "Summertime Funtime" in big pink letters across the chest. I also realized that my hair was still wrapped up in a towel.

  It was too late to worry about either.

  "Look, Zane," I began, trying to muster whatever shreds of dignity I had left. "I think that what you are is more like a ghost. And from everything I’ve ever read or seen on TV talk shows about ghosts, they get stuck on earth for a couple specific reasons. One is that they were murdered, and they want justice."

  He shook his head. "Nobody would murder me. I’m too lovable. Next."

  I sighed. Lacking in ego, he was not. "Two, they murdered somebody else, or did some horrible thing they want to atone for, or they’ve been sentenced to some hell-on-earth chain-dragging gig. Like Jacob Marley, you know, in A Christmas Carol."

  He lifted his arms innocently. "No chains. No guilt. Next?"

  I sighed. "The only other thing I can remember is people who don’t realize they’re dead, and they get lost somehow on their way to the light."

  His eyebrows rose. "That sounds promising. And what light would that be?"

  I shrugged. "I don’t know. Didn’t you see anything? Maybe when… when it first happened?"

  He let out a sigh of his own. "I told you, I don’t remember anything happening. All I can remember is surfing on this beach. For the most part, I’ve had a great time doing it, too. It’s just been confusing, since I can’t remember anything else. And after a while… lonely."

  "You don’t remember seeing a light?"

  "No." He sprang up and began to pace, his voice edged with frustration. "No! I’ve never seen anything like that. There must be something else. Some point. Some reason." He stopped and held my gaze. "I mean… what am I supposed to do with myself?"

  He looked so distraught, so helpless. Those blasted puppy dog eyes of his were killing me. I almost folded back the covers and got up to move closer to him, but I caught myself in time.

  "Listen," I began, an idea forming, "I’ll admit I haven’t read much about ghosts; in fact, I’ve avoided the subject, just like I’ve avoided everything to do with the shadows. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of a ghost with amnesia. Whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing, surely you have to remember your own life in order to do it. Maybe that’s where you need to start?"

  A smile spread slowly across his face. "See there," he said more hopefully, plopping back down on the edge of my bed. "I knew you could help me."

  "I haven’t done anything yet," I protested.

  "Oh yes, you have," he insisted, his green eyes twinkling. He had propped himself up on one muscular arm and was leaning over my legs at knee level. "I wish I knew how to thank you."

  I drew in a ragged breath.

  How about you turn real and take me to prom?

  "How about leaving me alone now and letting me sleep?" I said instead. "We can work on your memory tomorrow."

  He stood up immediately. "Whatever you say, Beautiful. Where shall we meet in the morning? I wouldn't want to drop in uninvited."

  "How about breakfast on the deck?" I responded, pretending I hadn’t heard what he’d just called me. I had no makeup on, my hair was in a turban, and I was wearing a sack that looked like something out of a seventh grade slumber party. He was only flattering me because he wanted something. Duh.

  "Can’t wait," he said with a grin. Then, after a blur of action that made his entire body translucent for the smallest whiff of a second, he was gone.

  Chapter 4

  "Kali! Kali, wake up! Hurry!"

  The voice filtered through the haze of my brain like a fly trying to swim through syrup. That is to say, it didn’t get too far. My mind was deeply involved in an endless, ho-hum dream in which Kylee, Tara, and I were driving around Cheyenne in a car with no doors, trying to tell everyone that the spaghetti supper at the high school had been cancelled. Only no one was home, because they had already left to go eat the spaghetti, which meant, clearly, that we were all about to be jailed for stealing their ticket money. The fact that my brain was reluctant to leave this spellbinding tale, and resisted, quite strongly, the voice that kept trying to intrude on it, I can only blame on continued jet lag.

  "Kali, please! You have to wake up!"

  I knew whose voice it was, but that didn’t help anything. My brain seemed pretty sure that Zane was part of another dream, so it was okay, therefore, for me to go on sleeping.

  "KALI!" the voice yelled, mere inches from my ear. "Wake up NOW!"

  I lifted my head off the pillow with a start. "What the—"

  The apology came quickly. "I’m sorry, really I am. I didn’t want to yell, but I can’t shake you!"

  I fought to get my eyes focused. I could barely make out Zane’s uneven silhouette leaning over me in the near total darkness. It was still night.

  "Are you crazy?" I muttered. "Leave me alone!"

  "I can’t!" he said desperately. "Please, you’ve got to get up and come with me. I can’t do anything to stop her, but you can! It’s a matter of life and death!"

  It was his tone, rather than his words, that at last began to clear the cobwebs. I lifted my head and propped up on my elbows. "What—"

  "Just follow me," he ordered. "We can be there in two minutes." He reached out as if to help me up, but his hand passed through the crook of my arm, causing him to groan aloud with aggravation. "Come on!"

  I forced my body up and out of bed, even as my mind stayed a step behind. I had felt something when his hand passed through me. I wasn’t sure what… a curious sensation, like the slightest pinging of vibration. But maybe I was only imagining it. I was almost certainly only imaging that I was grabbing my jacket off the hook on the back of the door, stumbling through the dark condo after Zane’s rapidly moving form, and then opening the door to the deck.

  "Wake up, Kali!" he demanded as I stepped outside. "Are you with me? You have to be alert for this!"

  I paused a moment and blinked. The fleece jacket I had thrown on covered me little better than my sleep shirt, and the two together did nothing to ward off the chill of the brisk ocean wind that suddenly buffeted me from every side. When a burst of sand, spray, and grit pelted me full in the face, I at last jolted completely awake.

  "What are we doing out here?" I yelled angrily.

  "Good," he said with a nod. "You are awake. Now follow me!"

  He began to move toward the beach, but I kept my feet planted. What could he possibly want from me? I was crazy to have followed him this far.

  He turned around and was back at my side in an instant. "Kali, please! Trust me. I don�
�t have time to explain. She could die. Just run after me and you’ll understand soon enough!"

  I don’t know why I followed him. All I know is that it was close enough to dawn that a few scudding clouds had begun to glow white against the otherwise inky sky, and that there was just enough light on his face—at that angle and that moment—to convince me that the terror in his voice was real.

  The pathway from our deck to the actual beach was rough. The condo was jammed into a large cluster of houses at an odd angle, making us "oceanfront" by only the broadest of real estate definitions. After navigating the wooden steps off the deck, we had to cross multiple scrubby yards, gravel walks, and asphalt driveways before my tender feet (still months away from barefoot weather in Wyoming) at last sunk into the relative luxury of the coarse, shell-laden island sand.

  Zane kept running.

  "It’s not much farther," he encouraged, alternating between leading me forward and jogging at my side like an athletic trainer. "You’re doing great."

  His voice was measured, but the tenseness was still there. I picked up my pace, trying to ignore both the biting coldness that gnawed at my bare legs and the ominous closeness of the ocean itself—which seemed, in the eerie glow of near dawn, to be composed more of shining, frothing, whitecaps than dark and rolling waves. This was only a guess on my part, though, as the only way I could force myself to keep going was to avoid looking directly at the water.

  We ran along the shore for a couple hundred yards, the slowness of my progress seeming to drive Zane to a near frenzy. Once or twice he disappeared, again with the same odd blur that dissolved his form to nothingness in an instant. But each time he reappeared within seconds, seeming even more agitated, making me think he was checking on the mysterious her that lay ahead of us.

  The sand on the dry part of the beach was deep, and with every step it grabbed my feet up to the ankles and sucked me downward, providing a perfect imitation of the supernatural, lead-footed feeling I'd suffered so often in nightmares. Zane tried repeatedly to lead me onto the more densely packed wet sand, but his efforts were in vain. Try as I might, I could not block out the near deafening sound and pulsing vibrations of the sea. I didn’t need to look to know that the waves were more numerous, higher, and more violent than any I had yet seen. The air was thick with their salty spray, and my skin was blanketed with moisture even as the wind whipped my minimal clothing around me.

  It was the anxiety in Zane’s voice that drew me on. I had no idea what he could be afraid of. I only knew that in his case, it wasn't the ocean.

  "There! Right there!" he said finally, pointing down the beach ahead of us. "Do you see her?"

  I took a breath. Then, for the first time, I looked fully out toward the roiling water.

  I could see her. The "she" of Zane’s concern was just a toddler. Eighteen months old maybe—no more than two. The child was running, carelessly and fearlessly, right along the water line of the menacing ocean, flirting with its fickle waves. It was a game many children played, chasing the receding wave toward the ocean, then racing back to land ahead of it, squealing with delight should the leading edge of foam catch their ankles. In gentle surf, on a clear day, and with competent adult supervision, it was a timeless, harmless enough amusement.

  But in the predawn darkness, for a toddler alone on the North Shore of Oahu, the game was deadly. Here on this island, I knew, the ocean contained a raw power rivaling any on the planet. In high surf, constantly shifting sands on the beaches gouged precipitous drop-offs and exposed sharp coral, while just a few feet beyond, the giant swells of water spurred unpredictable rip currents and fatally fierce undertows. It was difficult, even for an adult, to judge how near to shore the next wave would break and how far out was too far out for safety.

  The child didn't have a chance.

  Even as I stood rooted to the spot—for one endless moment struck numb with horror—I could distinctly see the silhouettes of a set of higher, even more powerful waves gathering steam on the horizon behind her.

  "Run, Kali!" Zane ordered. "There isn’t much time!"

  My feet began to move. The wet sand was indeed easier to walk on, and after a few faltering paces, I was running full tilt. I came within range just as she had chased a receding wave all the way to its source. The child watched with amusement as the last of the waterborne sand sped around her ankles and returned to the sea; she was less amused when the next wave crashed into a white froth within feet of her. She attempted, with an admirable burst of speed, to run up the beach out of its way; but natural apprehension at last got the best of her, and with a plaintive wail she lost her balance and fell, face down, into the rising water.

  I was there, close enough to grab her, before the body of the wave struck. It was not a large wave, barely up to my knees, but it would have been big enough to cover her prone form. The child screamed and struggled as I held her—both out of fear and, perhaps, the indignity of having her fine game interrupted by the rudeness of a stranger. I lifted a foot to make my way back out of the water, barely noticing, above both the child’s screams and the roar of the ocean behind, that Zane was again yelling at me.

  He was telling me to look behind us, saying something about the next one. But he didn’t have to. I knew without looking that a larger—no, a much, much larger wave was gathering behind me. I could feel it in the force of the back current that was sucking the remnants of the last wave around my legs. I could hear it in the hellish silence that hung in the air where the crash of another, smaller, wave should already be heard—but was not.

  Zane was right beside me, still shouting. I couldn’t hear him; I couldn’t even look at him, much less at what lay behind us. I did the only thing I could do. I held on tight to the little girl, fixed my eyes on the beach, and ran as far as I could run before it caught me.

  I did not get far. I felt a splash of hideous cold on my back, and within an instant my legs were covered to the thigh. I continued slogging forward, holding the child high, as the water continued rising to my waist.

  No higher, I prayed silently, no higher.

  The water stopped rising. But I also stopped moving. Going forward was no longer an option. The direction of the water had reversed; the wave was rolling out. And it really, really, wanted both the child and me to go back with it.

  Zane was at my shoulder, shouting into my ear. Something about swimming parallel to something, not fighting it. But he didn’t understand.

  By pure instinct I made the choice to stop where I was. I anchored my feet in the sand, digging in my toes. I braced my legs, forward and back, as best as I could. I kept my eyes closed and my mind focused. All I had to do was stay on my feet.

  The pressure against me was enormous. My foothold was iffy. The child continued to struggle, flailing like a wild thing. But I hadn’t taken eleven years of dance for nothing. I might be tall and skinny, but my legs were strong, my back was strong, and like any ballerina who danced en pointe, I had learned to balance in precarious positions. In the endless seconds that followed I came close to losing it more times than I could count. But I was determined. I was not going backward, I was not floating up, and I was not letting go of that baby.

  Even if the little demon did take a plug out of my shoulder with her teeth.

  The water level dropped. Thigh high. Knee high. I waited no more. I lifted my feet and sprinted up the beach and onto the dry sand.

  My feet sank down to the ankles again, and my legs began to wobble, but I kept moving steadily away from the drone of the ocean until the painful crunch of scrubby grass and sticks underfoot told me I was well away from the water’s reach. I paused only long enough to catch my breath, still holding the crying child in a death grip.

  "Where did she come from?" A thin, squeaky voice said. I think it was mine.

  Zane hadn’t stirred from my side. He pointed towards a beach house directly in front of me. Six wooden steps led from a stone patio up to a large deck; one of a set of French doors leading into t
he house hung ominously open, swinging in the wind. I shifted the child’s weight to my opposite hip. Her waterlogged diaper weighed half again as much as she did, and with every wriggle she made, another stream of water trickled unpleasantly down my already drenched leg. I renewed my grip on the child and began a slow trudge up the steps. Her cries had reduced to whimpers, but she was still struggling mightily to be put down.

  "That was magnificent, Kali," Zane praised as we went. "I can’t believe you stayed on your feet. Have you ever surfed before? You’d be fabulous at it."

  "I’m a dancer," I said shortly. I reached the house and banged loudly on the door that was still closed.

  "Are you all right?" Zane asked. He was studying me with concern, even as he beamed at me.

  I banged again, more forcefully this time. Somewhere in the depths of the house, a light turned on.

  "You look wiped out," he continued, "but you deserve to. It’s not every night you get ripped out of a sound sleep to save a drowning child."

  Footsteps pounded down a staircase. More lights flew on. A woman in her early thirties, wearing a cotton nightgown with a silk kimono thrown hastily over one shoulder, looked out the French doors and, upon catching sight of her soaking wet, squirming daughter in my arms, turned pale and swayed on her feet. "Lauren?" came a man’s voice from the stairs behind her. "What is it? Who’s there?"

  The woman half stumbled, half ran towards me, and as she approached the French doors I stepped inside and extended the toddler to her, fearful she would otherwise crash into the glass. Once in her mother’s arms, the child calmed a bit, but after only seconds of that woman’s overzealous clasping, she began to struggle for freedom again.

  "What happ—" the man, who wore nothing but boxer shorts, had caught up with us. He looked from the child to me with wide eyes, clearly imagining and guessing correctly the nightmare that had occurred.

  "I found her on the beach," I confirmed, my voice sounding oddly distant. "She was playing in the waves."