“And they didn’t steal anything?”
I sighed. I wished Sykes had come up with me to explain everything.
I fed her my questionable story. She looked worried, but I don’t think she had a predetermined parent- protocol for this particular situation. She put her hand over mine and offered me the glass of water again.
“Drink. You’re not hungry, baby? It’s probably been a whole day since you ate.”
My stomach, still and quiet, asked for nothing. I hadn’t thought about it, but she was right. I took a sip of water and wondered if shock or terror stole your appetite.
“Officer Sykes took me through a McDonalds,” I lied. “I was starving.”
She nodded, satisfied. I didn’t think a cop would take you through the drive-thru, but then again, Sykes wasn’t the average cop. Not as far as I had encountered, anyway.
I frowned. I told my Mom I was tired, and she let me be. I took another gulp of water, set it on the coffee table, and lay back down. Sleep felt far away, a distant dream, an abstract concept like time travel. Behold my surprise when it grabbed me in seconds and pulled me back down into the dark.
I woke up at the beach.
Chapter Four
The sweet and sour smell of the ocean flooded my senses. The taste of wood smoke, the salty air cutting my skin like an icy blade. Summer days with my parents, splashing through the shallows, daring myself to go out further. To jump the waves and go further still. To go until the big one hit me and rolled me and dumped me out on the beach with about three gallons of saltwater down my throat. Then, of course, to start all over again.
Summer nights, beach parties, lit by the murderous orange glow of an obscenely-sized bonfire. Bundled in sweatshirts, watching the boys in the group wrestle in the sand or toss a football, making fun of them or taking bets.
My eyes flicked open. Grey. Lightless yet oddly lit grey. A haze without an end.
I held my hands in front of my eyes. Not blind. Charcoal grey sand, wet and clumpy, stuck to my fingers. I sat up in surprise.
I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that right away.
The dark grey sand unraveled up and down a long, featureless coastline. The surging grey soup of the ocean beat against the shore, cresting and falling in meager impressions of waves. The sea stretched on forever, with only the distant glimmer and the far-off ringing of what had to be a long line of abandoned, rusting buoys. A sky the color of ash, devoid entirely of clouds, empty of the warmth of any visible sun, cast a weird indirect glow on everything. Nothing bright, nothing dark. Just a miserable granite color in all directions.
I turned around, away from the featureless ocean. The charcoal sand crested into a ridge that blocked anything in that direction from sight. Sand, in undulating dunes, stretched out to the left and right of me, paralleling the shape of the coastline.
“Hello!”
My voice didn’t echo. It stopped where it left my mouth, as if it died the moment it hit oxygen.
“HELLO!”
The same effect, only louder. I winced.
I looked around again, trying to soak in the strange environment. It was cold—wherever I was, I was still wearing the skirt, boots, torn shirt, coat combo I’d had on for far too long. It wasn’t Alaska cold, just beach-cold, but it was enough. I thought about the bonfires we’d had freshman year and
My legs were damp and my skirt felt soaked-through. It clung to me like a second skin, no flex, no slink, all friction. It was the feeling of wet socks all over, and I resisted a disgusted shudder.
No, I wasn’t dreaming. I’d never felt anything so vivid in a dream. Besides, in dreams, didn’t things…happen? Friends, loved ones, horror-movie slashers. Something. Not featureless grey and disquiet.
I stood up and nearly snapped my ankle. If I thought running in boots sucked, standing in wet sand was murder. My high-heeled boots may have looked sexy-tough, but at that moment I wanted nothing to do with them. I reached down, navigated the long and gruesome task of unlacing them around my calves, and tugged them off. I tied them together, wrapped the laces around one finger, and tossed them over my shoulder. I stripped off my black socks with one hand, doing the one-foot-dance all the while, and tucked them into the boots.
My bare feet sank into the moist sand with a
“Time to get movin’, Luce,” I said to no one. “Because this is pretty damn weird.”
I marched up the hill, away from the ocean. My toes fought for purchase in the silt. Jaunty steps mirrored my light heart—my light heart, unfortunately, mirrored nothing. The emotion was difficult to pinpoint. It reminded me of the way sunlight made me feel—inexplicably nourished, even if it did eventually burn my skin to lobster-like shades. I really do wish I had the capacity to tan.
Trudging through wet sand was better than a
The sand hill became a slide of gravel, all the way down to the guard rails of a freeway.
Beyond the six lanes of the empty highway the countryside, a mixture of chaparral and ash, rolled on out of sight. Distant mountain shapes broke the sky into ragged lines.
The highway angled toward a distant glowing dome of indistinct light. A city, I guessed, though it easily could have been a football stadium or God or a big fat nightlight.
I knew the response I’d get before I even bothered.
“HELLO!”
My voice stopped at the edge of my lips. Again. I sighed and tucked my free hand into my pocket, a ward against the cold if nothing else. The empty bullet casing touched my fingertips.
I rolled the shell-casing around in my fingers. It felt even colder than usual, like a cylinder of ice. I pressed my skin against the sharp edge of the hole where the bullet used to be.
“HELLO!”
The ground rumbled underneath me. I sucked in a gasp and tried not to tumble down the slope. It shook again, and the sand rolled under my bare feet. I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound, but it came from every direction, every pore in the sand.
I turned.
A dot on the horizon. A ball of white on the ocean. Bigger. Growing larger.
I pivoted and booked down toward the highway. I came down the slope too fast, track star that I am, and my ankle twisted and shot hot sparks of pain up my leg. I vaulted the low guardrail with one hand and landed on the blacktop with a crunch, one that unfortunately took place in my ankle. I tumbled to the ground, my ankle dunked in molten lava.
The ground bucked again but with less power—more like an impact than an earthquake. A deep-seated fear welled up within me, uncontrollable, unexplainable. I hobbled across the three empty lanes, crawled over the center divider, and dropped to my hands and knees. The highway shook, and a bright light lanced over the divider, illuminating the grey countryside with unnatural glow. My heart raced, my lungs billowed, and my ankle shouted obscenities at me. I was shaking all over, like I’d just been pulled out of a frozen lake.
I couldn’t hear anything—whatever thing that had come from the ocean, whatever thing that now stabbed
