Flashback

Not a school. He was standing in the middle of a damn jellyfish bloom. Hundreds of them were bobbing en masse by the rock. The cove was infested with them.

In the dimming light he could make out his clothes on shore, the legholes of his jeans beckoning him to slip back in and pull them up. They looked a mile away.

Where the hell did they come from?

What if these were stingers?

But aren’t there a hundred different jellyfish species, and only a handful that sting?

He thought about putting his foot in to test. That would be fine if he got no reaction. But if he got stung, then what? Wait out the storm so lightning could turn him into a charcoal briquette? Besides, in an hour, the rock would be underwater, and jellies would be streaming over his feet. Jesus!

He estimated the black expanse separating him from shore. His best high-tide time was one minute twenty seconds. But that was when he was eighteen years old. He was thirty-two, and at best he could reach shore in two minutes. Two little minutes, but the thought of swimming through water thick with jellies was repulsive. And if they were stingers, the trip could be nasty.

But they’re no bigger than a baseball and probably eat minnows.

True, but doesn’t their venom paralyze their prey like that?

But you’re not a minnow.

No, but a hundred hits could balance the books.

Sweet Jesus!

The sky lit up in a sickly green, then a high-metal crash exploded the air. With the incoming tide and the onshore wind, he could possibly make it in maybe a hundred adrenaline-driven seconds.

(His mind lit up with Aunt Nancy grinning on shore with a stopwatch. Three, two, one. Go! George was two years older, but Jack was the better swimmer.)

One hundred measly seconds.

The water was dark, but the jellies seemed to occupy the upper foot of surf. Jack could dive deep and swim half the distance just above the bottom, then he’d only have to stroke maybe another twenty feet to the shallows and go the rest of the way on foot.

He tried to tell himself that they were just harmless blobs whose mucus coating would slip by his body—that it would be like swimming through a tide of silicone gel bags.

Don’t think, just get your ass to shore. Three … two … one.

The sky exploded again, strobe-lighting the cove. His heart almost stopped: The water was flecked with jellies all the way out. He uttered a silent prayer, filled his lungs, and dived into the water.

But he was wrong. These jellies had three-foot-long invisible tentacles.

And they were stingers.

Jack kicked his way for maybe thirty feet, then shot to the surface.

In those first microseconds of awareness as he sucked for air, Jack could not determine the epicenter of the pain. The tentacles had slashed his arms, back, and legs and made a repulsive mucus mat of his head.

“Don’t rub.”

He brushed the things out of his hair, their spaghetti strands cutting across his face and ears. He screamed so loud that his throat nearly shattered. He was on fire, as if he had been caught in a hotwire mesh.

“Don’t rub. Don’t rub.”

In the chatter of lightning, he could make out a woman looking like Aunt Nancy waving to him from shore.

But it was too late, his hand was ablaze with poison. And his shoulders and back felt as if he’d been gashed with machetes. Jack had never known that pain could be so exquisite. He gasped in more air, closed his eyes, and kicked to get under the creatures. Pumping blindly, he could feel the blobs ripple by his face, cross-slashing his body.

He shot to the surface sucking for air, his mind screaming against the horror, fighting to focus on making it to shore no matter what, before the toxins began paralyzing his muscles.

On shore the woman had disappeared, and in her place a large white seabird pecked at his clothes.

Somewhere thunder crashed, but Jack did not register it. He did not register anything but the pain flashing across his body. It was like swimming through eddies of molten lava.

With a porpoise kick he shot ahead.

He was halfway there. On the hill above, the Sherman mansion glowed against the black sky. Even if he could find the voice to scream, it wouldn’t reach that far. And he could not summon the air. So he concentrated on pumping his legs and arms and keeping his face out of the water.

Your eyes. Close your eyes! his mind screamed.

Don’t want to go blind. Can take the skin burns, but, God, you don’t want to lose your eyes.

He pressed them shut. A tangle of tentacles made a partial noose under his right ear, searing his skin.

“Never rub.”

But in reflex he swiped them off, making it all the worse because that smeared the toxins into his ear and across his jaw and lips. God! The stuff was in his mouth, burning his tongue and throat as if he had swallowed hot water. He scraped his fingers on his bathing suit to remove the slime.

“NEVER RUB!”

Now both hands were on fire, like the rest of his body. And in that slender margin of sanity, he knew that his shoulders, back, and legs would be crosshatched with blistering welts—and that if he got out of this alive, he’d be a mess.

In the flickering light he made out the shore and the bird watching him. Maybe forty feet. He was in five feet of water. But he couldn’t wade in. So he pressed shut his eyes and kicked furiously, trailing his hands because they were useless balls of agony. He did all he could to keep his face up. But his eyes were beginning to burn. God, don’t let me go blind. Please.

As he kicked, he could feel jellies slip over his skin, the hot-poisoned strands streaming across his torso.

At maybe another twenty feet, he snapped open his eyes to see the waves crash on shore just a few body lengths ahead. Acid tears flooding his vision, but he could still make out the pile of clothes. And he locked his eyes on his shirt and pants which that bird picked at like some carrion vulture.

With every scintilla of muscular will he had left, Jack Koryan kicked.

Suddenly the burning began to fade.

Thank you, sweet God.

It was miraculous. His arms and legs were rapidly cooling. Maybe the toxins had worked their evil and were being neutralized by his body’s natural defenses. Or maybe he had somehow adjusted.

He tried to stand up to wade in, but he could not feel his feet touch ground. Nor could not even right himself up. He tried to continue swimming, but his legs did not obey the command.

God in heaven! His body was going numb, as if his blood were hardening wax.

He was maybe fifteen feet from shore, but he could not move. He was paralyzed in a dead man’s float, bobbing in the surf, staring at his running shoes and clothes, just this side of the finish line, some dumb seabird gawking at him, its milky eye flicking in the lightning.

Then coming down the sands from the cottage was that woman beckoning him with open arms. She was Aunt Nancy and she wasn’t Aunt Nancy.

My mind. My mind is going. The last delusions of a dying man.

He looked at the bird and felt a fog fill the sacs of his brain like a miasma.

The bird let out a long harsh cry.

This is my death.

In the surf, just a few feet from home. Three … two … one.

Those were Jack Koryan’s last thoughts before his brain went black.

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