The Sighting

by Christopher Coleman

  “I want to see it with you,” he pled. Danny narrowed his eyes and swallowed, trying to elicit an expression of sympathy and understanding toward the woman, an effort to communicate that he could understand the ecstasy of the thing she cherished most in the world.

  The giant creature was so close now, and Danny closed his eyes for a beat and then opened them slowly, again testing if he was indeed experiencing reality. The thing remained in Danny’s line of sight, the howl of the wind keeping it as silent as a butterfly as it approached.

  Danny narrowed his eyes further until they were mere slits, using all of his will to keep focused on Lynn and not the creature pressing forward. He knew that if he looked over her shoulder, directly at the ‘God,’ he would reveal its presence to her. Slouching toward her.

  Danny’s mind drifted to the poem by Yeats. He was pretty sure the title was “The Second Coming.” Those were some groovy lyrics, he thought, and then wondered if he’d just spoken that thought aloud.

  No! Another minute! He forced his mind back, trying desperately to stay conscious and in the moment. “I can help you,” he said.

  The woman hesitated, and Danny wondered if she had heard him, or, again, whether the words had actually crossed his lips at all.

  “You can help me with what, Danny?”

  She had heard him all right, and the creature was only steps away now.

  The size of the monster was dizzying, and Danny now doubted the chances of his survival. He would collapse soon, and even if the creature took Lynn first, it would certainly come back for him, especially as he would be unconscious in less than a minute or two. Clearly Lynn had been wrong about it taking only one person per cycle—after all, here it was again—so it was almost a certainty that Danny wouldn’t be leaving the beach alive either.

  “You know,” he managed.

  Lynn swallowed and stared back at him, her eyes now fixed with an expression indicating she may be open to his offer. But the look lasted only a moment. She smiled at him now, as if tickled that Danny would have had the audacity to try yet another trick.

  “You can’t help me, Daniel Lynch. It’s over. Your words are those of desperation. What wouldn’t you say to convince me to let you go?”

  Danny said nothing, knowing that pleading against this particular point would only reinforce it.

  “I know you believe me to be crazy. And I understand that thinking. The fact is, I am a bit crazy. I’ve lived alone for so many years now that I must be. But I’m also right. You saw it yourself.”

  The creature was now standing directly behind the woman, towering above her like a tree. Its eyes were narrow, slanted in an expression of pain and struggle. The rain was bouncing of its smooth black head, and its mouth was moving up and down in a slow chomping motion, steady and wide, as if stretching its jaws for the impending meal.

  Danny never let his eyes waver to it completely. “I did see it, Lynn,” he slurred, that’s why I want to help you.” He paused. “It was amazing. The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I want to see it again. And you’re the only one that knows how to summon it.” Danny stood motionless now. He’d done what he could do, almost impossibly keeping this act alive.

  He watched the creature open its arms wide, stretching them completely out to either side of its body.

  “It would have been possible once, Danny. But it’s too late for you now. It’s too late fo—”

  Danny watched the gun fall from the woman’s hand as the God grasped its prey. “No Lynn,” he said, “it’s too late for you.”

  The creature gripped his victim by the sides of her head, and Danny watched in wonder its long fingers nearly envelop Lynn Shields’ face. It pulled her effortlessly away toward the water, and Danny had a sudden vision of his wife’s death.

  How I wish I could see that again, he thought, and then he blinked the idea away in shame.

  “No! How?”

  Lynn’s eyes appeared for a moment between a gap in the thing’s fingers, and Danny almost smiled at her expression of helplessness. He’d never felt anything close to what he was feeling. He couldn’t take his eyes off the carnage.

  The power of it. The purpose.

  With every step the creature took, Lynn Shields was pulled farther from Danny’s vision, so he took a step forward each time the creature stepped back, ensuring he kept the beautiful massacre within viewing distance. He wanted this sight—this feeling—to last forever.

  Danny watched the struggle dwindle, with Lynn Shields head narrowing as the bone that was her skull began to give. But she said one word before the final crush, before her eyes exploded from their sockets to the sand below.

  “Women!” she shouted desperately. It was a haunting word, and one that would possess Danny from that point on.

  Women. He had it figured within moments.

  The creature had taken Danny’s wife, and that’s why it returned. That was the difference between this feeding and every one before it. Lynn Shields had always used men. Why else would she have screamed that word?

  Danny formulated a few more thoughts in his mind, and began to approach what could perhaps become a working theory—one that could guide him going forward in his new life.

  But before all of the pieces had locked into place, he collapsed to the ground, the wound in his shoulder leaking blood like a ruptured oil tanker as the rain fell all around him.

  Chapter 19

  Sarah saw him first from the landing and immediately called 911.

  “Are we too late?” Tracy asked. “Is he dead?”

  Sarah walked slowly down the steps, almost too afraid to find out the answer to Tracy’s question.

  “Was that the Ocean God that did this?”

  Sarah hesitated. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. I don’t think he would be here at all if it was the...” She knew the sighting was real now, but wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge it by name. “Whatever it is.”

  The two women reached the sand and then sprinted toward Danny’s body. Sarah immediately placed her hand on his neck beneath the chin and took a huge sigh. “Get your shirt off,” she ordered, removing her own jacket and pulling off her blouse. “He needs something dry to put around this wound.”

  The sirens were screaming in the distance.

  “Who did this?” Tracy asked. “He’s shot? What is going on?”

  Sarah placed the two shirts on either side of Danny’s body, the bullet having entered and exited at his shoulder. Sarah was no doctor, but she got the sense this was a good sign. She looked up at the young girl. “It’s your aunt, Tracy. There’s something you need to know about her.”

  Chapter 20

  Danny twisted the cap off the green Heineken bottle and tossed it into the recycling bin near the door to the lanai.

  He had made a few minor adjustments to the outside of the house since moving in—a coat of paint here, a plant there—but for the most part, it was the same as when Lynn Shields lived in it.

  He thought back to the morning of his shooting and about how close he’d come to dying—dying in a way that was much different from the way Lynn Shields did, perhaps, but dying was dying. Sarah’s investigative spirit and Tracy’s recounting of childhood stories were the only reasons he was alive. Had they not come looking for him, who knows when someone would have eventually made it out to the beach?

  It had been over a year now, and his shoulder still hurt like hell. The doctors had told him it would likely hurt forever, and, a propos of that fateful morning, even more so when it rained.

  The police had questioned Danny for a couple hours in the hospital about the injury, but he’d simply told them he couldn’t remember anything that happened. Call it amnesia, or whatever, but he had no recollection of how he got to the beach or anything about a shooting. Thankfully, his friends had found him there in that condition, and the bullet had been kind to miss any major organs or arteries. The last thing he remembered was leaving his ho
me to meet up with them for an early breakfast, and he wound up face down in the sand on Rove Beach. Must have been a mugging gone wrong.

  There was no weapon, of course, and no descriptions of suspects, which meant there wasn’t much to go on as far as cracking the case. There were a few follow-up interviews, which Danny participated in voluntarily, but, of course, nothing new was revealed from those either.

  Lynn Shields’ disappearance, the part of the story Danny had assumed would be the biggest obstacle in the cover up, wasn’t much of one at all.

  “Hey Danny.” Tammy opened the screen door and walked out to the lanai, tossing a towel on the chaise and opening a bottle of sunscreen. “You coming out to the beach today?”

  Lynn Shields’ house had been left to Tracy in her will, but Danny’s subsequent offer to purchase it had involved too much for Tracy to turn down, both in terms of cash and conditions. For her home, Danny had paid almost one and a half times the appraised price. And, so that the real details surrounding Lynn Shields’ death remained a secret, Tracy was allowed to live in the home rent-free. And, in the event of Danny’s death, whenever that occurred, the house would be returned back to her.

  It was perfect.

  There was also the issue of Tammy’s disappearance, but Danny had no answers for that either. The two of them were having problems in their marriage, he lied, so it wasn’t impossible she’d simply left. Maybe the whole ‘Rove Beach Monster’ thing had gotten to her, and she couldn’t deal with his obsession anymore. He didn’t know. She just left one day and never came back. It happened. That lie he’d even told to Sarah, and though her suspicion was palpable, she never questioned him about it anymore.

  Danny thought about his interviews with the police on each of these matters, and despite their suspicion of him and his involvement in at least one of these mysteries, they never once questioned the validity of the creature and the pictures he’d taken. Why wouldn’t they at least consider the possibility that it was real?

  He thought of Tammy again. He rarely spoke of her anymore, as even now it was a painful memory to vocalize. But he thought about her constantly, paying particular attention to the dark morning of her death.

  When he’d first witnessed the glory of the God.

  By Danny’s calculations, tonight was the first night of the new cycle. Sarah would be arriving for dinner soon to attend the trio’s monthly get together.

  And the grotto was ready.

  Sarah would be offered tonight, Danny decided, and Tracy would go tomorrow. The sedatives had already been diluted into the wine.

  He would try to find one more before the week was out. Prostitutes were exceptionally easy to find only a few miles outside of town. Or maybe he’d offer that jarhead Mark—no doubt he’d be poking around in a few days looking for his gal.

  Would a week would be too long? Would the God move on if he didn’t feed it consistently after the first night? If it did, Danny would have to wait for another cycle. Another fourteen months.

  But he would wait. And learn. Just as Lynn did.

  Danny walked to the dunes and sifted through the beach grass, his fingers finding the stiff Play button of the nineties-era boombox. He pushed it until it clicked into position, and then stood tall, listening to the mating call of the minka whales as he stared out over the Atlantic.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Christopher Coleman lives in Maryland with his wife and two children. He received his degree in English Literature from the University of Maryland and has been writing professionally for over five years.

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  More from Christopher Coleman

  Gretel (Gretel Book One)

  Marlene’s Revenge (Gretel Book Two)

  Hansel (Gretel Book Three)

  Anika Rising (Gretel Book Four)

  They Came with the Snow

  Sample from Gretel (Gretel Book One)

  Chapter 1

  She’d never gotten used to the taste. Even with the life and strength that teemed in every molecule, the russet fluid always went down heavy and crude. Like swallowing a fistful of thin mud that had been lifted from the bottom of a river.

  There was a time in the early years of her life—this second life—when she was forced to mix the liquid with soup or tea, or to stir it into the batter of the sweet confections and pies that even today she took pleasure in baking. She had experimented relentlessly with temperatures and combinations—using ingredients she wouldn’t have otherwise fed to a cockroach—hoping to create a formula that, if not tasty, was at least palatable enough to override the involuntary rejection by her mouth and throat.

  But she’d had little success, and soon began believing the more she tampered with and diluted the delicate recipe, the more the regenerative effects were diminished. Her nails and hair didn’t seem to grow quite as quickly, and her teeth, though they were restored, felt as if they had just a bit less length and severity.

  Of course, it was plausible she was entirely wrong about the effects of the tampering, and she accepted the possibility that her observations were paranoid inventions of an overprotective mind. But she also wasn’t taking any chances, and over time she had trained herself to drink the mixture straight. After all, it took mere seconds for the solution to make it over her taste buds and down to her belly. After that, it was ecstasy.

  The mixture usually began its rolling boil within seconds of reaching the acid that lined her stomach, before shooting into her blood stream and picking up the platelets in perfect stride. From there the journey through the body took less than a minute, administering almost instant relief to pains both bitter and dormant alike. There was a sense of rejuvenation in the bones and ligaments that went beyond simply where they joined. It was cellular.

  The feeling in those first few moments was literally indescribable. On the rare occasions she had tried to explain it aloud, she always found there was simply no adequate experience with which to compare it. The benchmark didn’t exist. Sex—usually the standard by which all great feelings were measured—didn’t come close. Though it had been decades since she’d had a man, and in her lifetime had little experience with them generally, she knew even with the greatest lover in history, sex was a laughable comparison. As was the feeling elicited by any other potion, and potions she knew. What she lacked in bedroom prowess, she made up for in a long resume of chemical experiences.

  But the physical feeling, as glorious as it was, was inconsequential. A minor side effect of the greatest treasure the Old World had ever produced, and one that she had captured and preserved in the Northlands for centuries. Whether she alone was in possession of the knowledge she couldn’t be sure; it certainly wasn’t impossible that another had been given the precious gift to which she had clung so tightly for the last three hundred years. But if she did share it with another, she would likely never know; her isolation had become almost absolute. The Age of Transmission had transformed her existence from that of a private villager—having few social connections other than in passing and commercial exchanges—to one of complete withdrawal. There were no neighbors to speak of, and any mail or necessary supplies were delivered to the receiving station she had built for herself just over a half-mile from the cabin.

  The woman picked up the large, stone container and swirled the liquid into a clockwise vortex, careful not to lose any of it over the top—though caution was mostly unnecessary, since what remained of the potable would have fit easily into a jigger.

  This sip was different, however, and her careful attention was not without cause. This swig was the last of her batch. It was the final priceless ounce. She knew in her core it wasn’t really enough for full revitalization; it would replenish for another year if she limited her ene
rgy, even two if she did nothing but sleep. After that she would decline quickly. And since the elixir didn’t spare her from the necessary provisions of all human beings—food, heat, and so on—languidness and hibernation were no more a possibility for her than they were for the woman she was in her old life. In fact, she would need to exert more energy than most people, since she was not surrounded by the accommodations of a modern world. She would need to farm and gather, and even hunt if the harvest didn’t last through winter, as well as keep an ample supply of kindling and wood. And she wasn’t the youngest maiden in the court when she began the regimen—certainly past sixty years as she recalled—so though the potion sustained her and kept her strong, what was done was done: the contaminations of time did not reverse.

  The woman raised the stone cup, which was little more than a small bowl, careful not to breathe the rancid aroma. As it reached her lips, the woman hesitated. This was it, she thought, this last drink would drain her supply, leaving her cabin empty of the fluid she’d come to worship over the many decades.

  She willed a pragmatic moment into her addicted mind. Maybe she could hold out for a few months longer. Just a few, until she identified the source of her next supply. There really wasn’t the urgency to drink today, she still felt strong and capable. Why, just this morning she had restocked the wood pile after several hours of brisk chopping. And besides, it had only been fourteen months since her last dose. Certainly she had gone without for much longer.

  All of that was true. But the reality was that the effects had diminished over the years, and she needed larger doses now than in the past. As it was, her last drink had been meager, having been divided in half to leave today’s swallow. No, she needed it today, all of it, and if it was enough to sustain her until the end of summer, she would be lucky. The woman figured by June she would need to be blending.