“Are we there yet?” More whining from the back seat.
Their father ground his teeth and said, “Yeah, we're there, why don't you step out and have a look around.” He immediately mashed the child lock button in case one of the little smart asses wanted to be funny and try to take him up on his offer. He gripped the wheel tighter and drove on into the blinding sun. His head was pounding. He frequently got tension headaches when he had to drive long distances. That, combined with the unrelenting sun, made for a particularly excruciating migraine. It was, in fact so distracting, he missed a large orange sign that said: “BEACH CLOSED due to TOXIC SPILL”.
About five minuets later, their mother stirred from her half-conscious nap feeling slightly less rested than when she had dozed off. Her hands went to the bulging paunch of her pregnant stomach and she looked out the window. “Oh, look at that” she mused, “we're almost there. Did I tell you kids I used to come here all the time when I was a little girl?” It was the main reason why they were heading to Ellison Beach. Her question yielded no response. She turned to look at the kids in the back seat, they were coiled like springs, tense to the point of bursting.
Daniel looked eager, while his brother looked bored and little Sissy slept with her head against the window.
Huge dunes loomed on either side of the drive that led to their little rented beach bungalow preventing Daniel from seeing the ocean. The piles of sand looked harsh and dull, like dirt with sparse weeds poking through haphazardly and littered with sharp rocks and pieces of shell. It was not the soft, golden sand he had imagined. This sand almost seemed mean.
“This is us.” His father announced as he pulled into the drive.
Their bungalow was a dingy blue that had faded to a dull gray with peeling paint on the shutters and a rickety staircase that led to the front door. It sat in a row of rental houses all facing the ocean. They were all abandoned.
As soon as Daniel set foot outside he bounded for the water with his big brother close on his heels. He peeled off his shirt and kicked off his shoes as he ran, determined to be the first one in the water. But as he got closer, something forced him to stop. He stood on the beach looking out over the shimmering ocean. It was enormous beyond comprehension. It stretched out into infinity. There was something terrifying about that placid blue eternity. Some nagging voice inside of him warned that if he set foot in the water, the sea would keep him. It would swallow him up and take him to its darkest depths, never to return. It would keep him.
Cameron flew by him at full speed and flung himself into the water. Daniel could only watch from the shore, standing on the wet sand with the tide pulling the surf to his ankle, back and forth, as his fearless brother crashed into the waves.
Daniel's mother, father, and little sister walked down the beach toward him. “Wow,” he heard his mother say “this place is a ghost town. Isn't that odd for this time of year? I wonder where everyone is.”
His father's long arm stretched to point out a small island, maybe a mile northeast, “That's why no one's here.”
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“That's Peach Island. Home to the Peach Island Biological Research Laboratory.”
“What's that?”
“Well, that's the thing. They don't want you to know. If you were a little closer, you'd see that the whole island is completely sealed off with a ten-foot razor-wire fence. They got armed guards patrolling the perimeters, too in case anyone gets nosy. Probably cameras with motion detectors, dogs. Yep, nobody's getting anywhere near that place.”
“But why?”
“Because, they do experiments there. Like a mad scientist's lab where they make viruses that could wipe out whole countries.”
Daniel was confused. “You mean they want to make people sick?”
“Yes they do, son. Probably because it's easier than shooting people. But the germs are just the stuff that everyone knows about. They do other things there too. They do animal experiments. They can make a dog with octopus tentacles or a bat with a monkey head and kangaroo feet,” he said, reaching out to grab Daniel's little sister in mock menace.
Sissy giggled, but Daniel thought of snarling dogs with hundreds of tentacles pulling at a chain-length fence. Horrible things that want to escape and maybe play with the boy across the sea. He felt a chill in the pit of his stomach and shuddered.
“Alright, that's enough from the National Enquirer for now. You don't want to scare them,” His mother said.
“Maybe they ought to be a little scared. You know these places aren't a-hundred-percent foolproof. Stuff gets out. Where do you think these new diseases no one can cure come from, huh? Where do you think AIDS came from? How do you think Lyme Disease showed up? I'll tell you where they came from, the fucking Island of Doctor Moreau over there is where. Jesus, no wonder this beach is deserted. Maybe next year we could vacation at Chernobyl.”
“Well, if we find any Monkeys with shark fins swimming around I guess I'll owe you a Coke or something, okay?”
Sissy tugged on her father's swimming trunks. “Daddy, will you take me in the water now?”
He took her hand and they went to the edge of the water. Sissy gave a high yelp when the sea water splashed against her legs and she ran back onto the beach. She repeated this several times, but at her father's patient coaxing she made her way into the shallows.
Daniel, however, remained on dry land and sat on a blanket next to his mother, who was reading a paperback between intermittent glances at her husband and daughter splashing in the water. His gaze cut across the sea to the island: that evil place where monsters were born, and wicked men made disease and plague. He couldn't stop thinking about what his father had said, "Sometimes stuff gets out."
“Don't you want to go swimming?” His mother asked.
Still staring at the island, Daniel said, “No, I'll just stay up here, work on my tan.”
A slight smile curved her lips at his weak excuse. “Danny, all that stuff your father told you was bullshit. I know he's your dad and it's hard to believe, but he doesn't know everything. Some people make up stories, and that's bad, but whats sometimes even worse is when people believe those stories and it changes how they act. Do you think if your dad really believed half the things he said, he would be in the water right now?”
“I guess not.”
“That's a pretty good guess.” She tapped him on the back with her book. “Don't waste your vacation sitting on the beach, go play with your brother.”
Daniel shoved his hands in his pockets and made a resigned shuffle, once more, toward the sea. But, like before, he could only manage to make it as far as the edge where the surf just barely washed over the top of his feet. Cameron rose from the water in front of him. “What's the matter with you? How come you don't want to swim?” He asked.
Daniel shrugged. “Dunno, just don't want to.”
“Are you afraid?” Cameron said, and splashed water on him.
“Quit it.” Daniel said in that perfect annoyed tone that could do nothing but encourage his brother.
“Why don't you come here and make me?” Cameron taunted, splashing him again. He checked to make sure he was outside of earshot of his mother before adding, “I think you're scared of the water. I think you're a little faggot who doesn't want to get wet.”
“Don't call me that.”
“Don't call you what, faggot? Don't faggots like to know that they're faggots? "Here,” he said offering his hand, “if you're not getting in, I'm getting out, help me up.”
Daniel took his hand and watched as a malevolent grin spread across his brother's face. He knew what was coming but was powerless to stop as his brother turned his own inertia against him and pulled him into the ocean. He let out a surprised yelp and inhaled cold seawater as he crashed down. He rose in a panic and came up coughing while still trying to call for help. Waves crashed over him when he opened his mouth, forcing more water into his lungs and he went under again into that silent and cold hell b
eneath the waves. He bobbed to the surface once more and he felt his brother's hands forcing his head under. He struggled for dear life, wrestling himself away from his brother's grasp. His chest burned and his eyes stung, but he remained below. He kicked beneath the waves and swam as best he could away from his brother. His head broke the surface of the water and he sucked in precious air. He looked back and saw that he had swam much farther than he intended in his panicked state, and the current continued to carry him out. He was alone, bobbing in the ocean, being pulled away from his family and drifting out to nowhere. No, not nowhere, he realized. The current was pulling him directly toward the island.
He could see it much more clearly than from the beach. His father was right about the high security fence. It wrapped around the whole island, tall, chain-length, topped with razor wire. Instead of a beach, it had clusters of jagged rocks and huge boulders, the waves heaved against them and smashed into foam. He didn't see any dogs or armed guards, but he imagined some hidden sniper watching him through a rifle scope, waiting for him to pass the imaginary line that separated him from his safe family vacation and carried him into a territory where alarms wailed while guard dogs howled and trespassers were shot on sight.
From the shore, his father cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Daniel, that's far enough! Quit screwing around and come back, Now!” His father's voice snapped him out of the island's magnetic lure.
He turned and began to paddle back against the current. He kicked hard, but despite his struggle, he only seemed to be staying in place. He took in as much air as he could and dove beneath the waves, attempting to swim under the current. He emerged breathless and found that he was farther out than when he had began. It was almost as if the island had its own gravity that he could not escape. He forced his tiny muscles to the point where they began to burn with the agonizing fire of exhaustion. And still he pushed himself harder. He tore at the water, every inch he gained he felt like he was pushed back two. But he was advancing. And then his right leg seized up. He felt a knot twist in his calf like a hard fist trying to punch through the back of his leg. He sank like an anchor. He was beyond struggling anymore. He could only wait, buried alive in this soundless tomb, until his body screamed for that last fatal gasp that would fill his lungs with salty death. The sea had laid claim to him, and it would keep him.
And then he felt himself rising. Strong arms carried him to the surface, his father's arms. He lifted the boy as if he were weightless. Daniel was astounded to see that he had made it mere feet from the shore before his body betrayed him. His father waded through the surf and laid him down on the sand.
His father's figure towered over him, making him feel somehow more helpless than when he was drowning. “You shouldn't play around like that, son. You could have caused a lot of trouble if there was anyone else or a life guard around. Or what if, God forbid, you really are drowning next time, and I just think you're playing a game?”
Daniel was too shocked to explain. He just lay on the beach, beneath his father's shadow, and mumbled, “Okay... I'm sorry... okay.”
He had almost died, and instead of sympathy and reassurance, his ordeal was discounted and written off as a childish game. He remained on the shelter of the beach for the rest of the day. He found comfort in the hot sand. He knew he wouldn't sink into it, it would not swallow him up, he could open his mouth without fear of the sand rushing in to suffocate him. With just that single excursion that lasted only minuets, but felt like a lifetime, he grew to abhor the sea and everything in it. He vowed never to set foot in that water again, and in his short life he would only enter the sea one final time.
The sun's bright glare had faded to a dull Orange as it began its descent beneath the horizon. Daniel, who had long since grown tired of watching his family frolic in the surf and build sandcastles and have fun, which he now considered obnoxious in the wake of his near-death experience, was taking a plodding, self-pitying walk along the shore. He looked on at the crabs and shells, tangles of seaweed and various flotsam with disinterest. He gathered pebbles to fling at flocks of gulls to watch them scatter. The farther he walked down shore, the more he started to notice a peculiar odor. He caught faint whiffs of it on the breeze at first. A smell like rotting flesh, or spoiled fish. It grew stronger, more pungent, the more he walked on. Maybe, he thought, it's a beached whale. But that was ridiculous, he could see far down the shore and he didn't think he would miss anything as massive as a whale carcass. As he continued, he had to hold both hands over his nose and mouth to block out the smell. It was so strong now it was actually making him woozy.
And then he saw it. The source of the smell. The tide had half-buried them in the sand. There were maybe half a dozen in all. Some on their backs with their bellies up and long neat gashes through their throats. The wounds were deep and some were nearly decapitated. They were seals. Long dead and rotting in the fading sun. They looked deflated and he could see one had been shredded along its side where the flesh hung in ruins. The skin had been torn away from the right side of its head and all that remained was one huge black eye that seemed to stare out at him from the sun-bleached skull. He could see into the seal, through the ribs poking out of its eviscerated side. It was full of crabs and flies that buzzed so loud he could feel their collective vibration in his skull. He saw another that had been smoothly separated from its hindquarters and tail. The little circle of spine made him think of the bone in a ham. And worst of all, a few yards away, another that looked like it had exploded. It was so torn apart he would not have recognized it as a seal had it not been for the others. It was completely bifurcated from snout to tail and lay on the beach like a costume someone had shed.
Daniel had never seen anything so awful. All this death, the stink of rot, was overwhelming. But what made it unbearable, was the horrible buzzing of the flies; the non-stop hum that screamed inside his skull like an insane prisoner.
Daniel's knees buckled and he collapsed on the beach. He forced his hand over his mouth to try and quell the rising vomit, but it was useless. Partially digested bologna sandwich and chocolate covered raisins sprayed around his hand like a hose nozzle with a thumb over it. He retched again and again until he felt an emptiness inside of him like his stomach was grinding against itself. He felt exhausted. He crawled on his hands and knees toward the ocean. He soaked his shirt in the splashing water and wiped himself down with it.
And then Daniel saw something odd wash up on the shore; something he could not identify. It was gray and nearly translucent. He could see a twisted trail of veins running through it. It had something like a spine through the length of it, but it was humped in places where the spine broke free of its body and plunged back in again. It had crooked gashes of varying sizes that Daniel could only assume were mouths. Some of the mouths were crammed so full of teeth they spilled over and were set into its flesh like disgusting filigree. It had random flippers along its sides, more on one side than the other and no two the same size. Some seemed half-formed as if they had melted into it. Its body was like one awful lump of clay, round and bulging at one end and tapered at the other until it ended in a sort of flat tail. The complete asymmetry of the thing made it hard to look at. Yet he couldn't look away.
What was most captivating and disturbing, was what Daniel thought of as the eye. It was black and enormous and planted squarely in the thing's head, it looked like cells during mitosis, something round trying to split in two.
He could see himself reflected in it. His face appeared bulbous and disfigured, inhuman. What he saw reflected in the eye was monstrous and twisted, not unlike the creature itself. He wondered if this was how it saw him.
And then the eye moved.
It didn't blink. And it didn't saccade or diverge like any eye he had ever seen. It moved out. It began to pull away from the head entirely; forming a point that grew toward the boy. Without thinking, he reached for it. He moved his hand slowly, with one finger extended to make contact with the bizarre, mer
cury-like peak. He touched it.
His hand exploded in pain that echoed all the way up his arm to his elbow. He immediately felt an intense heat that subsided to a sharp throb and buzzed like an alarm throughout his entire body. He looked down at his hand. It had began to swell and turn a bright red. The tips of his fingers were a bruised purple color. His stomach churned when he saw what looked like black viscous blood pouring from his finger. It took him a moment to realize it wasn't blood at all. And it wasn't pouring out of him, it was flowing in.
He was heading back toward the little rented beach house, doing an awkward shuffle uphill, trying not to drop the ice chest. The top had come undone and freezing water was sloshing out onto his chest and soaking the front of his shirt. He was about to throw the goddamned thing down and just leave it outside. It wasn't like there was anyone around to steal it. He had almost made it to the top of the hill when he saw something that did make him throw it down.
He saw his son, walking quick and stiff-legged, clutching his hand to his chest. Little Daniel was out and out bawling. Not the cloying, sob for attention he had heard so many other times, but this was a cry of genuine anguish. He ran to him. He covered the distance so quickly he never felt his feet touch the ground.
“Daniel, oh my God, Daniel, what happened?” He looked into his son's beet-red face, his eyes crinkled from the tears, mouth wide and pulled down into a frown. Daniel could say nothing. He inhaled in short, chaotic bursts that never seemed to fill his lungs. His father gently took his injured hand to examine it. The light was fading but he could see the fingers on his right hand were swollen to grotesque proportions. “Daniel, buddy, I need you to breathe, okay? You have to calm down and tell me what happened so I can help you.” He still refused to respond. He just stood there hyperventilating, looking up at his father with glassy eyes. “Just breathe, goddammit!” he shouted. His voice rang out over the empty beach, it surprised them both. They stood there for a second longer. The only sound was the constant lull of the ocean.
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