“Hey,” Jodi said after a few minutes, looking up. “Isn’t that one of the boys from the restaurant last night?” I looked in the direction she was and, sure enough, there was Matt, Dale’s brother, and their friend Mark walking up the beach and, from the looks of them, they had just come out of the water.
“Oh my god,” Steven said when we all stopped. “No way they were swimming in this?”
“Looks like,” Jodi said, and I could feel the shift in the air between the three of us. I was moving first again, trying to get over to them before they were out of sight. I realized they were walking up to the paid parking lot and only then did I realize how far the three of us had been walking before we saw them. “Crap, we’re gonna lose them if they get to their car before we get to them,” Jodi said and quickened her pace.
“Matt!” I yelled, cupping my hands around my mouth to make my voice carry. I was pleased to see him pause and turned to look in our direction. Although we were still too far away to be sure, I thought I saw a look of shock or fear flicker across his face when he saw me. I could almost taste the tension resonating off of him as we got closer, and I had the distinct impression that it was taking more self-control than should be necessary for him to stand there and wait for us to catch up to him.
“What’s up?” he asked when we got close enough to hear normal level voices. His face was a contracted mask of confusion as he looked directly at me, as if he didn’t even register that Jodi and Steven where there too.
“Oh, uh,” I said a little lamely, taking the few seconds I had while we closed the distance between us. “We were at the restaurant you and your family were at last night.”
“Oh, right on,” he said nodding slowly.
“We saw Dale,” I said, quickly coming up with the ruse to talk to him.
“Yeah?”
“He looked terrible; is he sick or something?” I asked, watching his face, and saw something move across the reflection in his eyes, like a shadow swimming in the irises, but it was gone too quickly to scrutinize.
“Oh yeah, uh.” He looked away from me, out to the water as if looking for the answer there. “I think maybe the red tide or something.”
“But weren’t you two just in the water?” Steven asked, and Matt shot him a glance, seeming surprised to see him standing there. “Weren’t you and your buddy in the water?” he asked again when Matt didn’t answer.
“No,” he said slowly.
“Um, bro?” Steven said, tilting his head to the side. “You’re wet.”
“What?” Matt asked, still looking intently at Steven.
“Wow, you okay, man?” Steven asked, reaching out a hand to Matt’s shoulder. I don’t know what made me do it, but I reached out quickly and grabbed Steven’s wrist, holding it before he could touch Matt. Don’t touch him, I thought at Steven. Something’s not right. I looked past Matt and saw that Mark was sitting ramrod straight in the passenger side of a car, not at all concerned with how long Matt was taking to get to the car.
“Okay then!” I said brightly, taking a step away from Matt, pulling Steven with me. “Well, give our best to your brother.” I continued to walk backwards, putting more distance between us and Matt. He took a few more moments to realize we were leaving and shook his head before he turned away from us without a word and walked to his car.
“Come on!” I said in an urgent whisper. “If we get to our car quickly enough, maybe we can follow them!” I turned and ran towards the Surfer’s Point parking lot, hoping that Matt would take his time getting out of the long, paid parking lot because he would have to drive by the one we were parked in to get back to town.
We were all out of breath by the time we were pounding to a stop on the sidewalk as we reached the parking lot and I was fumbling with my keys to get the doors unlocked. We threw ourselves in and I gunned the engine to life with a roar, and a few of the men standing around the other cars turned to smile at me, appreciating the loud rumble of a muscle car. I reversed out of the space and turned onto the road as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see Matt’s car in either direction, so I drove us down the road to the stop sign. I pulled up and looked down the road in front of us that would lead to downtown and didn’t see anyone.
“There!” Jodi all but yelled, pointing to our right, down the road that led to our neighborhood. And sure enough, I could see the retreating form of a dark car that looked like it could be Matt’s. I turned and raced down the road, catching up with them at the next stop sign and saw as we got closer that it was in fact Matt’s car.
“So what are we gonna do here?” Steven asked from the backseat as I followed Matt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think whatever happened to Dale is happening to Matt. But Mark looked strange so I want to see where he lives.”
We were pulling into the extended part of our neighborhood and driving down a road I rarely went down because it was in the opposite direction of everything else when you left my house. I drove past the house that Matt pulled over in front of and pulled against the curb half a block down. Mark got out of the car and walked up the yard and disappeared inside the house. I glanced at my rearview mirror and realized we were just around the corner from Dale and Matt’s house.
“So who do we keep an eye on?” Jodi asked.
“Matt,” I said quickly and spun the steering wheel, pulling away from the curb and turning around to follow Matt out of the neighborhood. “We know where Mark lives now. If nothing comes from following Matt, we can come back for Mark.”
“Hey,” Jodi said, “where is he going? Doesn’t he live right there?” She pointed out her window as we drove by Matt’s street.
“I don’t know,” I said. I had to gun it down the road and roll as quickly as I dared through a stop sign to catch up with Matt or else lose him through a traffic light. I was surprised to see him retracing our steps right back the way we had come and was leading us back to the beach. We drove past the hotel and the high-rise luxury apartment buildings, the first of the three parking lots surfers used, turned at the fairgrounds, and continued on until he was turning into the paid parking lot.
I slowed down as we turned past the fairgrounds and crawled into the paid parking lot to put a little distance between the two of us. I gave the girl in the wooden booth the two bucks and pulled in, watching Matt’s car cruise through the parking lot, passing plenty of open spaces.
“What’s he doing? Parking at the very end?” Jodi asked as I followed him.
“Looks like,” I said. I decided to play it safe and pulled into a space half way down the lot in case Matt looked back to see us tailing him. We all climbed out of the car and hurried over to the sidewalk and walked down, watching for where Matt parked.
“There!” Steven pointed suddenly, and we saw Matt stepping out of the parking lot onto the sidewalk a hundred feet away from us. We all stopped, unsure what to do suddenly. But Matt didn’t look our way; as a matter of fact, he didn’t look anywhere but at the water. After a short pause, he walked on, climbing down the few feet of rocks on the other side of the sidewalk and down to the sand. We watched, totally shocked, as he waded back out into the water.
“What the hell is he doing?” Jodi said, her blue eyes wide.
“I have no clue,” I said, watching as Matt was far enough out to be waist deep and dove forward into the water and began swimming farther out.
“What the hell, man?” Steven said, and we all started jogging down the sidewalk to where Matt had been and turned to watch him give one last good kick and dove under a wave and didn’t come back up.
“Um…” Jodi said slowly as we continued to watch the water for a sign of Matt. “Are we just going to stand here and let him drown?”
“He’s swimming of his own free will; I don’t think that counts as drowning,” Steven said.
“How do you know it’s of his own free will? Those things grabbed Shay and dragged her just like they did to that little boy she went after.”
“Right, and they didn’t try to drown either of them. What makes you think they’ll drown Matt this time?”
“Shay?” Jodi turned to look at me.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I know I don’t want any of us to go out into that water; we’re sure to get sick.”
“But we can’t just stand here and let him die either!” Jodi said a little more frantically. We waited, Jodi and Steven’s agitation eating away at my nerves.
“Oh my god…” Steven said, his mouth hanging open and his eyes going wide. Jodi and I turned to look and saw Matt surface a few hundred yards out to sea. He broke the surface with speed, coming half way out of the water up to his waist, the water coming up in a fountain around him. He settled back as easily as a sea otter, whipping his head around, water spraying out of his hair before he reached his hands up to smooth it back. He leaned forward and began an easy stride back towards shore, swimming as casually as if he were doing laps in a pool.
He swam into the wave sections like a dolphin cutting through the water, rising with the crest of the waves only to fall back and then burst through the smooth glass of the wall to dive back under the next wave. Finally, when the waves were nothing but foam and rolling slowly towards the shore, Matt rose to his feet and sloshed his way back to the shore. He stood there for a moment. A look of complete sadness came over his face and he turned back to face the water and, even from this distance, I could feel his desire urging him to swim back out.
“Oh my god…” Steven said again. I looked away from Matt’s back to Steven’s face and followed his gaze past Matt, out to the open water, and saw, floating there, the dark outline of a head and shoulders of a figure. From this distance, it looked very much like the slender figure of woman, just floating there.
“Is that a woman?” Jodi asked.
“Sure looks like it,” I said as the figure raised an arm out of the water and held up a hand, waving it slowly. I felt lost suddenly, like my heart was breaking and it was harder to breathe. I gasped, holding my hand to my chest, just above my heart, and tore my gaze from the floating figure in the water to Matt and saw that he was standing exactly the same way I was. I slipped my feet out of my flip flops and wriggled my toes into the sand and pebbles and called up the energy of the Earth and fed it into my shields, severing the growing connection my empathetic abilities were building between me and Matt.
“You okay?” Jodi asked as she laid a hand on my shoulder, searching my face with a look of concern.
“Wow, something really has a hold of him,” I said and was finally able to take a deep, cleansing breath.
“What?” Steven asked, watching me intently as well.
“Matt,” I said, nodding towards him. “He’s in so much pain it actually pulled to me this far away.” I blew out another deep breath and shook my hands, trying to shake away the odd feeling that still lingered.
“Should we,” Steven stopped, covering his mouth with one hand as if afraid to continue. “Should we go get him? You know, get him out of the water?”
“Sure?” Jodi said, making it sound like a question.
“I mean, I know he’s probably already infected or possessed or something,” he said, “but maybe it gets worse the more he’s in the water? So maybe we should get him out.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, nodding and leading the way down the rocks. Amazingly, after Jodi followed me, Steven followed her. Since Matt was still standing in knee-deep water, I really didn’t expect him to come willingly, even if it was his idea. We stepped onto the sand one at a time and all hesitated like we were doing a choreographed dance. I could feel the tension thrumming through us all like violin strings pulled too tight.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Jodi said and took a step forward. I put a hand on her shoulder to hold her back.
“Wait,” I said softly, watching Matt the entire time. “Matt!” I called out to him, knowing my voice would still be muffled by the distance and the crash of the waves and wash of the water over the sand. His head jerked a little, like he wanted to look to where my voice had come from, but he didn’t turn to actually look.
“He so heard you,” Steven said next to me.
“Do you want to wait here?” I asked him without looking at him.
“I’ll get a little closer, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get into the water.” I thought about that one terrifying moment when he went to take a step further into the water and nodded my agreement.
“Let’s go, babe,” I said to Jodi, taking her hand in mine and took that first dreaded step. Before I could blink, we were out of our flip flops and in ankle deep water. I could feel the power of the ocean swirling around me, calling to the power inside both of us, but even though the ocean’s power was so wild and forceful, there was something latent within it, making it feel sour, polluted.
“What is that?” Jodi whispered.
“Power,” I said, and for once I wasn’t smiling at our internal magic.
“Matt?” Jodi called out as softly as she could, and I could feel that she was scared of startling him. I could feel the sudden tension tightening his shoulders as we got closer and the water washed up our calves and he still didn’t look around at us.
“Let me try,” I whispered to Jodi as we stopped within a few feet of him, stopping her before she could say his name again. I took a deep breath and focused on the power that was swirling between us, around us, and within us and called on it. I felt my palms heat up almost instantly, and I opened my free hand and held it up in front of me, towards Matt. With a push, I sent it out to him, reaching for him only to be stopped just inches away from him. I had to push against it and felt it, whatever it was, fight against me.
My hand holding Jodi’s flared with renewed heat as I felt the extra push of power Jodi was lending me and I was able to use it to break through the barrier around Matt and find him. He was cold; that was the first thing I felt, and his heart rate was much slower than your average teenage male. I pushed against him and against whatever it was that was holding his attention so captive. He turned his head an inch in our direction and blinked rapidly a few times before turning to face us.
“Matt?” Jodi said again, and he took a moment to nod. “You okay?” she asked.
“Let’s just try to get him out of the water,” I said to Jodi when Matt didn’t answer her. We walked slowly over to him, closing those last few feet between us, and each took one of his hands and tugged gently when he didn’t immediately respond to us. I felt a shock of pain run up my arm to my elbow and an echo of anger resonated in my mind.
“What the hell was that?” Jodi asked with a gasp, careful not to let go.
“I think it was her,” I said, looking out to the water, even though I couldn’t see past the rising waves. I pushed the still swirling power into Matt and down through the connection that was searing both our hands and felt a tremor in the ground beneath us. Jodi gasped, but was careful not to let go. I pushed again until I felt the pain recede down my arm and out of my fingers and heard a rumble of thunder in answer to my call for power. As soon as I heard Jodi sigh in relief, I knew I had broken the connection.
I pulled gently on Matt’s hand again and he took one reluctant step towards the beach. Jodi and I unclasped hands so we could each hold on to one of his arms with both our hands and guide him to shore. We splashed up on to the beach where Steven was standing and, when we were finally out of the water, Matt’s face began to clear and a little more warmth returned to his skin.
“Dude, what were you doing out there?” Steven asked bluntly as soon as he thought Matt would respond.
“I, I,” Matt stuttered for a moment before shaking his head and blinking again. “I had to see her, she called to me,” he said, turning to look longingly out to sea again. “I had to answer,” he whispered. “I love her.”
Chapter Seven
It was slow going getting Matt off of the beach and back up into the parking lot. I
wanted to keep walking until we put miles and the first rise of hills between the water and us. I opened the passenger door of my car and pushed Matt down to sit, his feet still on the ground in front of him. I grabbed a bottle of water from the flat I kept in the trunk. I held the bottle in my hand and whispered as softly as I could, “Spirits of Water and Air, hear my call, use this water to stop this evil’s course, banish it and turn it back to the source.” I felt the bottle grow warm in my hand almost immediately, and then cool again.
“Here,” I said, unscrewing the cap as I came around to Matt, “drink this, it’ll help.” Matt took the bottle from me without really looking at it and took a long, gulping drink.
Did you just- Jodi started to ask me as her arm casually touched mine.
Yes, I answered quickly, before she could even finish asking, so she’d stay quiet while I watched Matt’s face, waiting for a reaction. He gasped when he finally stopped drinking; he had gulped down almost half of the bottle. He was staring blankly ahead of him, just as he had been before taking the water, but color slowly began to creep back into his face and life into his eyes.
“What the hell is going on?” Matt asked, his words slow and halted like he was having a hard time taking a full breath.
“What’s wrong?” Steven asked.
“I feel-” Matt started to say, stopping to look at his empty hand and flexing his fingers. “Odd,” he finished.
“You feel odd?” Jodi asked. “Odd how?”
“My fingers,” Matt said, and then he began to open and close his mouth as if he were trying to pop clogged ears. “And my mouth; they feel tingly?” He looked up at us as if looking for the answer to this new development.
“Tingly?” Steven asked and looked at me, confused.
“Crap,” I said and fought the urge to stamp my foot.
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