by Blake Crouch
Rufus Kite and his five-year-old son had started after lunch, and now, six hours into the project, it loomed over the beach like the ruins of a Scottish castle. They’d constructed a moat all the way around—two feet wide and a foot down to the water table. Luther had even put a crab inside as a stand-in for a real monster. The tide would be upon them anytime now, and already the noise of the surf was getting louder as it inched closer. Luther sat in the middle of the castle, surrounded by two-foot walls, digging trenches and passageways while his father dripped wet sand along the top wall. It looked like disintegrating masonry.
Ten yards behind the castle, Luther’s mother and sister reclined in beach chairs under the shade of an umbrella, Maxine tearing through the last fifty pages of a Ludlum novel, Katie curled up sleeping in her chair, the eight-year-old a deep bronze—the only member of the Kite clan who could catch a tan.
They’d driven onto the beach eight hours ago, the kids riding in the back of the old Dodge pick-up truck as Rufus drove all the way out to the southern tip of the island—a spit of sand jutting out into the sea.
At this time of day, they had it all to themselves.
A man had been fishing a few hundred yards up the beach for the last several hours, but he was gone now.
A fishing trawler loomed like a ghost on the horizon several miles out, nearly invisible through the haze.
“If we build it big enough,” Luther said as he packed the damp sand, fortifying the wall, “maybe the tide won’t knock our castle down?”
Rufus grinned at his son.
“If we built this thing taller than me, the ocean would still bring it down. There’s no stopping it.”
Luther scowled. “But we worked so hard. I like it. I don’t want it to fall.”
“Just enjoy it while you have it, son. By the way, that philosophy works for more than sand castles.”
Luther came to his feet just as a breaker crashed twenty feet away.
Sea water raced up the sand, stopping just shy of the moat.
He turned around, glanced back toward the dunes.
The sun was just sliding down behind the live oaks on Ocracoke Island.
Only a few hours of daylight left.
It had been such a perfect day, and Luther felt a glimmer of sadness at the thought of it coming to an end.
He could see the ocean beginning to swell again.
Another wave coming.
He looked up at his father, saw Rufus smiling down at him, sweat beading out across the man’s forehead under the jet-black bangs that stopped just above his eyes. The boy would always see his father like this, even in his old age.
Young. Fit. Strong and happy.
The breaker crashed ashore.
The sea foaming and fizzing like a bottle of spilt soda.
Rufus put his hand on Luther’s shoulder.
“Here comes the first attack, my boy. Man your battle station!”
Luther stepped up to the front wall and watched the water race toward them with a lump in his throat.
When the sun was gone, they got a bonfire going and roasted wieners over a bed of coals that Maxine had spread out in the sand.
Luther and Katie sat together eating hot dogs as the tide went out, the sound of the breakers now growing steadily softer.
When he was finished with supper, Luther leaned against his sister and stared into the flames, his belly full, watching the fire consume the wood of some ancient shipwreck. He could feel the accumulation of sunlight in his shoulders—a warm, subtle glow. His eyes were heavy.
“You tired?” Katie asked.
“No.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“It’s okay to be tired, Luther.”
“I know.”
She kissed the top of his head. “Sorry about your castle. You still sad it’s gone?”
Luther said nothing.
“It was really cool, buddy,” Katie said. She craned her neck and looked him in the eyes, must have seen the tears welling, shining in the light of the fire. “Luther,” she said, “you’ll get to make another one. I bet it’ll even be bigger next time.”
Luther glanced up through the flames at his father and mother, Maxine wrapped in a shawl and cuddled up between Rufus’s legs nursing a cold beer.
The heat of the fire felt good lapping at his face. He could’ve fallen asleep to it.
Gazing up into the sky, he watched the sparks rising toward the stars.
Smelled the residue of suntan lotion on Katie that the sand hadn’t worn away.
Coconut.
He filled with a sudden and profound warmth for his sister.
Only three years older than he was and yet she understood him better than anyone else. Better even than their mother.
He’d just started to reach for her hand when he noticed the light.
For a moment, he mistook it for a lightning bug—it had that floating, bouncy quality—but then he realized it was the bulb of a flashlight moving toward their fire.
Still thirty or forty yards away, and he couldn’t have known how often he would dream of that image. How thoroughly the fear of it would come to define him. So innocuous—just a speck of brilliance coming toward him in the dark.
His mother must have noticed the diversion of his focus, because she said, “What’s wrong, boy?”
Luther jutted his chin toward the light. “Somebody’s coming.”
“Probably just someone out for a late-night stroll,” she said.
“Can we spend the night here?” Katie asked.
“I don’t think so,” Rufus said. “I need a shower.”
Maxine chuckled. “And a soft bed, sweet-sweet.”
“Absolutely.”
“But it’d be fun!” Katie whined.
“Another time, princess,” Rufus said. “We didn’t even bring our sleeping bags.”
The light had nearly reached them now, Luther watching it approach and listening to the oncoming footsteps in the sand.
“They’re coming over here,” he said.
Now Maxine sat up and looked back over her shoulder.
Luther held up his hand to shield his eyes from the firelight.
Saw a man’s legs standing ten feet away—hairy and thick—that ended in a pair of muddy work boots.
Rufus was struggling to his feet now.
Luther heard his father say, “Hi, there.”
Luther glanced up into Katie’s face, didn’t like what he saw—an intensity, a concentration he didn’t fully comprehend. He was missing something. Events unfolding on some frequency beyond his experience.
His father spoke again, “Evening.”
“What are you folks doing here?”
The man’s voice sounded strange to Luther—southern but not local. Not friendly either. It contained a hard-edged, metallic rasp.
“Just having a campfire,” Rufus said.
“You live around here?”
“We live on Ocracoke. How about you? You visiting?”
The man laughed as if Luther’s father had made a joke. “Yeah. That’s it. We’re visiting.” The man came forward three steps and turned off his flashlight. In the firelight, Luther studied him. He wore a heavily-stained white tee-shirt covered in a thousand tiny rips. The man’s substantial body odor was evident even from ten feet away. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, his jaw covered in a salt-and-pepper stubble. His eyes shone wild and glassy and they didn’t stay on one object for more than several seconds at a time.
“Well,” Rufus said, “we were actually just getting ready to shove off, so—”
“I didn’t say anything about you leaving.”
The man’s statement festered in the air for what seemed ages.
No sound but the surf and the crackle of driftwood in the flames.
Maxine came to her feet, stood behind Rufus.
“Ya’ll best sit down now,” the man said.
Maxine wrapped her hands around Rufus’s left arm. �
��Let’s go.”
Rufus shot a quick look over at Katie. “Get you and Luther in the back of the truck. Right now.” He turned back to the man.
Katie jerked Luther onto his feet.
“We’re gonna take off,” Rufus said. “I got my kids here. I don’t want any trouble with you. You understand that, right? We were just out here having a day at the beach, and now we’re going home.”
Katie pulled Luther toward the Dodge.
The man said, “You ain’t going nowhere.”
“What’s happening, Katie?” Luther whispered.
“I’ll tell you later. Hop into the—”
“Young lady!”
Katie froze.
“Did you not just fucking hear what I told your daddy? Get your ass back where you was sitting, or by God—”
“Don’t you dare speak to my—”
Luther saw the man swing his flashlight into the side of his father’s head.
Rufus’s knees buckled, hit the sand, blood streaming out of a gash above his left eye.
The man drove his knee into Rufus’s face, and when Maxine rushed forward he caught her with a right hook that snapped her head around.
His mother fell facedown in the sand, out cold.
Rufus climbed back onto his feet.
Luther realizing the warm sensation he felt was piss running down the inside of his legs.
“He hit mom,” Katie said, crying. “Why’d he hit mom?”
Rufus flung a handful of sand into the man’s face and rushed him as he clawed at his eyes, scooping the man under his massive thighs and slamming him down on his back in the sand.
Luther had never seen his father this consumed with rage, watching as Rufus hit the man six times in the face, his knuckles getting bloody.
Rufus finally rolled off him into the sand, gasping for breath.
The man lay moaning on his back, his face a purple wreck.
Maxine was sitting up now, holding her jaw which looked swollen.
Rufus grabbed her by the arms and hoisted her up onto her feet.
“My teeth,” she moaned, spitting a tooth out into the palm of her hand.
Rufus hawked a lugie of blood and helped Maxine toward the truck.
“Get in!” he yelled at Luther and Katie.
Luther grabbed the side of the truck and stepped up onto the rear tire.
Katie let out a brief scream, Luther on the verge of asking what was wrong when he saw the second man standing on the other side of the truck bed, grinning at him.
He was tall and wide-shouldered. Had eyes so vividly green Luther could see their color in the lowlight. Wore a blue linen shirt with a long number across the lapel pocket. Dark stains down the front of his shirt.
“Been watching you all afternoon,” he said. “That was some sand castle you and your daddy built.” His eyes cut to Rufus and he swung a pump-action shotgun toward him. “You can stop right there. I swear to God. You all right, Ben?”
The man Rufus had hit was trying to sit up.
“Motherfucker hit me.”
“I saw. That was embarrassing.”
“I’m gonna kill him.”
“Plenty a time for that.” The man with the shotgun stared at Luther. I want you over by the fire like you was.”
“Sir, we just want to go home,” Rufus said.
The man smiled. “I’ll bet you do.”
“Let my wife take our kids. They don’t need to be a part of any of this.”
The man laughed. “How am I supposed to fuck her when she ain’t here? That make any sense to you?”
The man named Ben rose to his feet, wiping blood out of his eyes.
“Ben, you hear this guy?”
“I heard him. Dumb fuck, is what he is.”
Luther stepped down off the truck and looked up at his father.
“Dad?” he said. “Is it gonna be okay?”
Rufus’s hands shook.
“No, little man,” Ben said. “It ain’t gonna be okay. Get your ass over there like I told you.”
Luther looked at Katie.
His sister had tears in her eyes.
“I’m scared,” he said.
“Come on, Luther.”
She took him by the hand and led him back over to the fire.
They sat in the sand.
The man named Ben started toward Rufus.
“There’s some rope in the truck bed,” his partner yelled.
“Bring it, Winston.” He stopped a foot away from Rufus and Maxine, and shovel-punched Rufus in the gut.
Luther’s father doubled over.
Maxine clutched his back, trying to soothe him.
Winston walked over with the shotgun and a coil of rope that Rufus had used just three weeks ago to stabilize a bureau he’d bought in an antique store in Hatteras for Maxine’s thirtieth birthday.
Winston stopped several feet away, leveled the shotgun on Rufus and Maxine, and tossed the rope at their feet.
“What’s your name, cutie?” he asked Maxine.
“Please,” Rufus said, still gasping for air, a tremor moving through his lower lip. “You guys can clearly do whatever you want. We’re at your mercy. I recognize that. And I am begging you to let us go. You have that power.”
Winston swept his long, greasy hair back behind his shoulders.
“But we been watching you all day, laying up there in the bushes behind the dunes. If you’d gone home with everyone else, our paths would never have crossed. But you didn’t go home like everyone else. You stayed. So you know what I think that means?”
“What?”
With the tip of the shotgun’s barrel, Winston slid the shawl off Maxine’s shoulder, and smiled at the yellow bikini underneath, at her washboard stomach.
“That this is fate. Now what’s your name, bitch? Don’t make me ask again.”
“Maxine,” she said. “Please don’t hurt my children.”
“Maxine, I want you to take that rope and tie your husband up. I’m gonna check when you’re done, and if it ain’t picture perfect and tight as fuck, there’s gonna be hell to pay. Even more than what’s already on the schedule.”
Luther watched his mother lift the rope.
Crying and trembling, she wrapped it around Rufus’s waist and started to bind his wrists together.
“It’s gonna be okay, Max,” he said. “Don’t cry. We’ll get through this.”
Winston tugged a pocket knife out of his pants and cut a ten-foot length of rope which he tossed to Ben.
“Tie them.”
With his knife, he motioned to Luther and Katie.
Ben lumbered over to the rope and snatched it up. When he smiled at Luther, there was still blood stuck between his teeth.
Luther watching, a sinking jolt of terror flooding through him.
A siren wailing between his eyes.
Knowing on some base level what he could not allow to happen.
The man was three steps away when Luther jumped to his feet and took off toward the trees at a dead sprint, his bare feet kicking bursts of sand in his wake, the men shouting as he scrambled up the dunes, Winston screaming at Ben to catch the little fucker.
Luther glanced back, saw Ben galloping toward him, Katie crying, his parents screaming at him to run, don’t stop, while Winston held them at bay with the shotgun.
Luther tore down the island-side of the dune and ran for the line of trees in the distance.
He could see the lighthouse a mile away in the village of Ocracoke , its beacon shining just above the treetops.
Another glance back.
Ben ten steps behind.
A sharp burn spread down out of Luther’s stomach and into his legs.
Lungs on fire.
He couldn’t keep running like this.
He punched through the treeline into a wood of live oaks, roots and thorns ripping at the soles of his feet, branches tearing at his bare arms and chest.
Much darker here in the trees with the starlight ob
scured, and Luther could only make out the profile of Ben pushing after him through the shrubs.