Cristina

by Jake Parent

  The path was now completely covered in fog. She no longer had any way of knowing how Jack was progressing toward the tide pools. And given that he’d been so much more surefooted than she was when they walked the route together, it was obvious he had the advantage.

  She wondered if Canfield would even be able to get a shot.

  What if he couldn’t? What was she going to do then?

  Whatever it takes, she told herself.

  Although she was filled with plenty of doubts, there was one thing she was certain about. She would gladly give her own life to save her daughter.

  By the time she made it to the tide pools, the fog had condensed into some of the thickest she’d seen since moving to Pleasure Point. It was difficult to even see her hand as she planted it on the next rock.

  There was no way Canfield would be able to shoot from where she’d left him, perched with a rifle on the cliffside. She was on her own, at least for the time being.

  Nearby but unseen, wave after wave thundered like the steps of a marching giant.

  She pulled herself up onto the tide pool platform. The fog was thick enough that Jack could have been five feet away and she wouldn’t have known it.

  She listened, but heard only the deafening waves.

  Continuing on hands and knees to avoid falling, she made her way forward, navigating around small pools filled with anemones and other creatures.

  A spray of icy saltwater poured down on top of her, soaking her clothes and hair.

  She heard Anise cry out from somewhere in the foggy darkness.

  “I want to go home!”

  “Quiet!” Jack told her.

  Between the waves and the blanket of clouds, it was difficult to tell which direction their voices were coming from, but she crawled toward where she thought they might be.

  The rock platform hadn’t seemed all that large the first time Cristina walked out onto it, but it now felt endless.

  After several painful movements across sharp rock, she heard Jack’s voice again. At first, she thought he was talking to Anise, then realized it sounded more like he was talking to himself. And it wasn’t English. He appeared to be incanting some kind of evil-sounding ritual in a language she didn’t recognize.

  His voice was deep and gravelly, reminding Cristina of someone from one of the shows Tío Alberto liked to watch about people being exorcised from demonic possession.

  She continued crawling forward, inch by inch.

  With her focus on pinpointing where Jack’s strange words were coming from, she accidentally thrust her hand into one of the pools, splashing water loudly.

  His voice stopped.

  “Who’s there?” he said, sounding startled, and then regaining the same psychotic chill he’d shown in the basement. “Is that you, Cristina? It is, isn’t it? Come to see your little girl off?”

  She could feel her heart beating in her chest, ticking off seconds in the darkness.

  A wave shook the rocks.

  Without warning, Jack jumped out of the fog and onto her back.

  Her face slammed into the rock, barely missing a sharp point that could have easily impaled her skull. As it was, the impact made her see sparks.

  Then Jack’s stout body was smothering her.

  With each breath, she took in less air. Fear and panic grabbed hold. Fear that she would pass out and never see Anise again. Fear that Jack would throw them both into the ocean to drown.

  She imagined hearing Anise flailing her arms in the water, splashing unseen but close by, screaming for her mother to help, and Cristina being unable to do anything as the two either floated apart or were broken against the rocks.

  The vision gave way as Jack’s strong hands took hold of her hair, once more slamming her face into the rock. Another set of bright flashes, followed by a shocking sense of awareness as he lifted her head and thrust it into a pool of frigid water.

  The sticky tentacles of a sea anemone latched onto her face. A hermit crab, trapped between the rock and her ear, wiggled as it tried to get free.

  She felt the vibration of the waves through the rock.

  The cold, salty water began to overcome her, creeping into her nostrils and mouth. Her brain begged for oxygen. Her arms waved desperately, trying to find something to latch onto.

  Then, in a brief moment of clarity, she stretched her arm, trying to reach the back pocket of her jeans. Her fingers came close, only an inch or two away. She could feel the top edge of the pocket’s seam. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t seem to slip her fingers into the opening.

  The last of her strength was fading. In the next few seconds, her brain would shut down. She could feel terror turning into a smooth, drifting calmness. An acceptance of the situation.

  With one final effort, she reached the knife, grasping it with the tips of her fingers. A hold so slight she nearly lost it.

  With precision gained from practicing for years in the corners of dark drug squats, Cristina used one smooth motion to slide open the knife and flip the blade so it faced upward. Without hesitation, she thrust the sharp steel toward where she imagined Jack’s face to be, managing to hit him directly in the center of his left eye.

  He screamed and fell on his side.

  Cristina’s lungs gasped in a greedy breath as she lifted her head from the water.

  The waves continued to explode around them.

  “You fucking bitch!” he said, writhing on the ground next to her, grasping the air in a vain attempt to pull the knife from his eye. Blood ran down his face and soaked into his beard, then trickled into a pool of water, clouding the anemones in darkness.

  Cristina took a few more desperate breaths and finally rolled over. She looked around, trying to gain her bearings. Listening for any sign of her daughter.

  “Anise!?” she weakly shouted. “Chica, are you there?”

  A wave filled the air with its fury. As the sound subsided, Cristina heard nothing but Jack whimpering, his brain cavity no doubt slowly filling with blood.

  She worried the victory would be worthless.

  Where was Anise?

  She once more felt overcome by fear and pain and loss.

  Her mind returned to the shores of that dead ocean in a dead land.

  A future without Anise.

  Another wave hit. Behind its dying echo, she heard the end of a trailing cry.

  “mma . . .” it said, and then started again. “Mamma!”

  “Anise!”

  The sound had been close.

  Cristina stumbled toward it through the fog.

  At that moment, Jack’s hand reached up and grabbed her ankle, throwing her off-balance and slamming her back down onto the rocks.

  “Please help me, mamma!” Anise yelled. “The water’s going to get me.”

  Jack’s hand held tight.

  Cristina struggled, but he somehow continued to maintain an inhuman strength that refused to let go.

  Then she stopped trying to get away.

  Instead, she calmly turned and saw his face looking back at her. The knife still protruding from his eye socket. His beard now completely soaked in blood. Lips pulled back in a twisted, evil smile. Tongue lolled out of his mouth, it too dripping blood.

  With patient precision, she leaned forward, expecting him to lash out at any moment. But he simply stared with his one good eye, grinning as if he’d won.

  Then he spoke, blood gurgling from his mouth along with his words.

  “You’ll never get out. The waves are too high already. They’ll take you and Anise and . . . the new world will finally be born.”

  As if reinforcing his prediction, the strongest wave yet crashed against the rocks.

  For another moment, she stared into Jack’s face. A part of her felt sorry for him. For his loss of sanity. That part of her could understand how someone could look at the world they lived in and believe in the presence of evil. In the necessity of some supernatural force to come along and defeat it, whatever the cost may be.


  Then, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the blade and slowly pulled it from his eye socket. Blood poured out, covering the damaged white orb before gushing down his face and onto her hand.

  Jack’s body spasmed, but his grip held.

  Cristina pressed the point of the blade against his throat and pushed. She felt the steel penetrate the thickness of his windpipe, enter an open space, and then poke into the other side. She twisted the knife, trying to do as much damage as possible.

  Jack gasped.

  He finally let go.

  She bounded away while he twitched and fought for air, grabbing at his neck and the knife.

  “Anise?!” she shouted. “Anise!”

  When there was no response, Cristina was sure the last wave had taken her.

  But a second later, hope returned. She spotted her daughter lying unconscious and soaking wet on the rock. The wave had indeed hit her, but by sheer luck her foot had lodged itself in a crevice, holding her in place and preventing her from being pulled into the backwash.

  As Cristina tried to free her daughter, another wave crashed. The surge of water covered them both and receded, pulling Cristina along with it.

  She tried to hold onto the rock, but soon felt her grip slipping.

  There was nothing she could do now.

  She had tried her best and failed.

  Then a hand grabbed her wrist. Thinking it was Jack, somehow still alive, she tried to fight it off, even as the ocean refused to stop pulling her in the other direction.

  The sea wanted her badly.

  For a moment, she nearly let it take her.

  EPILOGUE

  A Summer BBQ

  The Fourth of July, a beautiful summer day in Pleasure Point, California.

  It had been almost nine months since Cristina nearly lost everything she ever cared about, including her own life.

  Thankfully, when the fog had become too dense to execute their original plan of taking Jack out with a rifle shot, both Casey and Detective Tony rushed toward the tide pools.

  If Casey hadn’t grabbed Cristina’s arm at that exact moment, if he hadn’t held on with all his immense strength as she fought to escape, she surely would have been swept away.

  As it was, they almost all drowned trying to return to higher ground. The rising tide had almost completely flooded the path before they reached the safety of the stairs. But, in what they all later agreed was some version of a miracle, the water ebbed just enough to clear a temporary path for them.

  Anise, who’d hit her head hard against the rock, didn’t seem to remember anything that had happened.

  For that, Cristina was grateful.

  It made moving on with life a lot easier.

  Not that anyone ever gets over an experience like the one they all went through. But, as with every other challenge Cristina had faced in life, she knew that the key was to never quit. She just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  A lot had happened since that day.

  In the spring, Casey asked her to marry him. He proposed at the end of the pier. She pretended to think hard about it, just to mess with him, but then answered with an emphatic yes as she jumped into his arms. They weren’t sure when they would do it, or where. And they didn’t feel in any rush to decide. As long as they were together – the three of them – life would work out.

  That’s not to say everything had been perfect.

  Casey ended up losing Bula’s Surf Shop.

  With a team of high-priced lawyers, the Pleasure Point Development Association sued and countersued until they got a judge that saw things their way. Casey was given a month to vacate. Cristina’s boss at the art store, too.

  The whole area was going to be torn down, including The Wharf amusement park. The Development Association planned to build condos alongside a beachside mall, complete with a Target and an Applebee’s.

  Casey and Cristina didn’t talk much about the shop anymore. Doing so just made him sad. He would end up going on about how horrible it was that the culture of an entire town could be wiped away in the name of almighty profit. And, in the end, dwelling on it wasn’t going to change anything anyway.

  They were thinking of moving to Fiji, or maybe Aruba. Some place with a slower pace of life, and people who were interested in actually enjoying it.

  Besides, they didn’t need money.

  Although he’d been unable to save the store, the talented Danny Dee had secured for Cristina a settlement of $10 million from Anthony, more-or-less securing them for life. On top of that sum, the majority of Anthony’s other assets – totaling almost $50 million – were being put into a trust fund that would be available to Anise when she turned 25.

  Dan refused to take even a single penny for his efforts.

  As for Anthony, he’d finally run into the wrong man in Judge Peterson. Despite endless motions and appeals, Peterson sentenced him to the maximum sentence of ten years in San Quentin.

  By the time he got out, Cristina, Casey, and Anise would be thousands of miles away, living a peaceful, happy life.

  Of course, she would miss Tío Alberto, and was hoping to get him to come live wherever they decided to settle. But she doubted she could pry him away from his church community and his work. She’d given him a million dollars to keep for himself, and he still woke up and mowed lawns every day of the week except Sunday.

  Aba had passed away. She died peacefully in her sleep just after Christmas, a couple weeks after getting the chance to see Anise play an elf in her school play. Cristina was sad at first. But part of her also felt like her grandmother had been, in a way, happy to be done with what was a difficult journey through life.

  The hardest part about her death was explaining things to Anise. Ultimately, Cristina ended up telling her that Aba had gone to live in the world we go to when we dream. After an endless stream of questions, Anise was eventually satisfied with that answer.

  Before deciding where to move, the three of them were going to spend the summer traveling.

  “Weighing their options,” as Casey put it.

  To say goodbye, they invited all the people they cared about over for a BBQ, and to watch the fireworks if the fog didn’t come in.

  The guest list turned out to be relatively small. Cristina, Casey, Anise, and Tío Alberto, of course. Dan and Jordan were there. As were the ex-employees of Bula’s Surf Shop, and Jacklyn (who turned out to be a great babysitter). Rounding out the attendees were a few surfing buddies of Casey’s, including the long-haired, one-of-a-kind Jerry “Hound Dog” Parker, who brought over his collection of roman candles and almost lit the hillside on fire. Jeremy (nine months clean) made it. Along with Cristina’s ex-boss, Detective Tony, and even Officer Washburn.

  And, of course, Michelle. She was the life of the party, telling joke after joke, until the entire group was gasping for breath. She and Cristina had really reconnected, a bond that was crucial in helping Cristina recover from the trauma of everything that had happened. Despite the distance between them, the two talked every day, got together at least once a week for coffee, and on weekends for meetings.

  There was, perhaps, no one Cristina would miss more.

  When the burgers had all been eaten, the fireworks watched, and the goodbyes said, Cristina put Anise to bed in their Pleasure Point home for one of the last times.

  Afterward, she told Casey she was bummed Agent Canfield couldn’t make it, saying that if it hadn’t been for him, neither Anise nor herself would be breathing.

  “Did you invite him?” Casey asked.

  “Yah, he didn’t respond. I hope everything’s OK.”

  “I’m sure he’s just hella busy. I imagine the FBI keeps you on your toes.”

  Cristina brushed her teeth and was about to head back into the bedroom when she checked her phone – a flashy new one she’d just picked up. It had all the bells and whistles, although she hardly ever used any of them, except the camera for taking pictures of Anise.

  The
phone flashed with an email alert and she flicked down on the screen to check it.

  From: Special Agent James R. Canfield, Federal Bureau of Investigation

  To: Cristina Rodriguez

  Dear Cristina,

  Sorry I couldn’t make the party. They have me stationed in Texas hunting down drug smugglers. It’s too hot, but other than that I can’t complain.

  Thought you might like to see this memo I submitted to the file we have on Jack. In particular, the bio section.

  I could get in big trouble for showing you this, so please keep it to yourself. But I thought it might help give you some closure.

  Good luck in the future.

  And take care of that little girl of yours. She’s a cutie pie.

  Best,

  Jim

  Cristina clicked open the attachment.

  It was a formal memo, beginning with a bunch of technical jargon about how the information was gathered, a timeline, a part about how the suspect died (including mention of the fact his killer had been found to be acting in self-defense). All followed by a paragraph stating that no body had been recovered, the remains having presumably been washed out to sea.

  She skimmed past most of this to the section marked Suspect Biography.

  As she read through it, she learned that Jack Benning was born Jonathan Krauser. He spent thirty years living a double life. As a teacher of history and civics, and as the founder and invisible leader of the New Horizon cult.

  Her jaw dropped a little when she read the next part.

  Earlier in life, Jack had been John, a teacher happily married with two young daughters. His wife and both girls were killed when the old apartment building the family lived in collapsed. John was away at a teaching seminar when it happened. Apparently, many warnings had been made, by John and others, about the structural integrity of the building. All of which the landlord – a shady development company – had done nothing about.

  Following the collapse, John spent several years trying to find a legal means of holding the company responsible, ultimately to no avail. Sometime in his mid-thirties, John gave up, apparently lost his mind, and formed what would become New Horizon.