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“Take off your shoes, Janie,” Richie said. “We don’t want to get them dirty or Mom will know we were here.”
So I took them off, and we left them in the reedy grass at the edge of the beach. And under the brilliantly shining moon that seemed to light up the world, moonlight twinkled atop the ocean.
The sand was cold. There were no dead children on it. There were no spectral footprints. Just more words. “Welcome, Richie and Janie,” in big, bold, grooved letters. “Never do we tell a lie,” it continued. “Onward to the water, for a show in honor of Richie’s father, esteemed war veteran.”
When Richie saw this, his eyes lit up. He tore off his shirt, and went barreling towards the calm ocean. I stayed behind and watched as the sand-writing filled itself in. The slits in the sand that made up the letters didn’t just get covered over; it was as if the sand bubbled up from beneath.
I knew — regardless of whether or not dead is synonymous with badness — that these ghosts were bad.
What felt like fingers tickled the back of my neck. It was wind, a steadily increasing and whickering wind. Above me, a sudden-onset storm gathered, its dark and viscous clouds readying themselves for the show, the fireworks show. The thunderhead blotted out the moonlight.
And then sand beneath my feet began to grow warmer.
“Richie!” I shrieked, as hot, sandy fingers poked at the soles of my feet, hard, almost tickling but jabbing so hard that it hurt. “Richie!” And I turned to run from this lunacy. “Com’on! Get out of the water!” I took four steps, and in those steps, the sand under my feet went from hot to blistering. My feet sizzled and burned, those phantasmal fingers still poking as if they were trying to puncture. I screamed and jumped backwards toward the ocean.
More tears welled up in my eyes. A few of them escaped, leaving long, salty trails on my cheeks before tumbling towards the roasting beach.
The sand was cooler where I stood now, but it was heating up. Even through my throbbing, bloody feet, I could feel that much. The beach had turned into something of a heat gradient. The farther from the water I was, the hotter it got. And I couldn’t run north or south, because I would be met by the toothy rocks or the brushy bushes. They were forcing me into the water. Elizabeth and John, they were funneling me over the sand.
Beach grass and seaweed on the sand flashed in tiny, rupturing flames that lasted only seconds before burning away. The grass left red, tapering steaks of ember. Higher up, near the reedy grass where our shoes lay, a long piece of driftwood burst into fire.
Too hot — the sand was too hot to stand on anymore.
“Janie!” Richie yelled from the water, as I stumbled into the first of the waves. Maybe if I could just stay in the shallow water, it would all be okay. Maybe the water would keep the sand cool. “Are you all right? What’s happening?”
The salt water was hell on my raw feet. Walking on knives is what it felt like. And as I stood there, the water near the shore began to sizzle, began to spit, and then began to boil, sending large plumes of foggy vapor into the air.
And I swam. I swam as if my life depended on it.
Richie was crying when I reached him. “I’m sorry,” he moaned. “I’m so sorry.”
I looked back at the beach. Nothing. The driftwood was no longer aflame. The water’s edge no longer boiled. Had it ever? My feet screamed up at me with the answer.
“We’ve got to get out of the water,” I said. “We’ve got to get home!”
And we started paddling towards shore.
We didn’t make it very far.
By now, the wind had picked up. It skipped along the ocean’s surface, kicking the water into waves. The huge thunderhead that had gathered above us lashed forth a long, crackled bolt of lightning. Thunder boomed, and then the rain began.
Richie cried harder. He wailed.
No part of me wanted to cry. I was through with that nonsense. “Com’on! Swim!”
The tight clamp of something around my ankle. Bursts of irrational thought erupted in my head like flashbulbs. An alligator! A shark! An eel!… A ghost! And I went under. At first I didn’t go deep. I thrashed, just under the surface, my eyes open, screaming a salty pain. Just inches from my face, the water rose and fell with each successive wave. I could see the impact of each raindrop — they were like bombs.
That something that had clamped on my foot — that something that felt suspiciously like a hand now — pulled harder, and deeper I went. I stared up, screaming and watching my bubbled breath rise out of the ocean. The storm above had gone psychotic up there. Lightning flashed wildly. From below the curtain of water, the blurred flashes looked green and powerful, looked almost like fireworks.
In the water, I could hear sounds like gurgling voices, as if things were down here, things holding council.
And then there was Richie. I saw him, in a burst of lightning, a second before being slammed into the ocean floor. The look on his face. Richie — the boy who had never failed in beating me to the beach — was dead, his already paunchy hands at his throat. Eyes bulging, lifeless. His hair flagging around his head like a clump of seaweed.
And then he grinned at me.
The sandy bottom met me with a powerful blast, and the last of the air that was in me rushed out. I sucked in two lungs worth of water. I kicked and choked. I felt my foot connect with something. Something soft. Something like Richie. And then that clamp — that hand — on my foot was gone.
I rushed upwards, my lungs burning and heavy. And when I burst through the surface, gagging and coughing up ocean water, the storm was gone. Just the moon again, the brilliant moon in a perfectly calm night sky.
I let the waves carry me ashore. Feeling the cool sand against my body, I broke down. I cried hard and I cried long. I watched as my tears fell into the dark sand, watched as the ocean came up with each wave and stole them away. My lungs and my feet ached. My eyes ached. My heart ached.
It took a few minutes to stand up. And when I did, I saw sand-writing: “This secret shall within YOU die,” in elegant lettering. And there were footprints. Running past the sand-writing, two set of footprints, neither Richie’s or my own, wound into the crashing surf.
I almost fell back upon seeing this. I almost did, but –
“Janie,” came Richie’s voice from the ocean. “Are you all right?”
I spun around to look, and there he was. His arms dangled slackly at his sides. His legs walked him sluggishly out of the breaking waves. And I ran to him on feet that felt on fire.
“You made it!” I said. “You’re not dead!”
“No, not dead. I’m alive.” He looked down at himself, as if checking to make sure.
We stood there for a long while, not saying anything, just staring off into the horizon. I would have liked to hug him. I think, but he didn’t offer, and neither did I.
As we walked off the beach, I noticed something else. The sand-writing that I had seen was messy now. Someone had run through it — I could see the prints. I followed them with my eyes, now just one set. I traced them up and off the beach, traced them towards those jagged and toothy rocks.
About Tony Dvorak
