The Twilight Swimmer (35 page)

Neither of them sensed that the Swimmer was near, that he was treading water effortlessly and watching them. Even in blinding sunlight, they would scarcely see more of him than a white flash of skin touching the surface, easily mistaken for the frothy crest of a low wave. He could slip beneath the water and disappear in its depths before his true identity would register. On a night like tonight, under cover of darkness, he knew there would be no need to make a quick escape.

So he floated. So he watched.

It happened so quickly. The change. The girl laughed aloud. The boy set down his oars. He spoke to the girl in a low tone, uttering his words slowly and deliberately. A gust of wind carried their voices away from the Swimmer, robbing him of their words. But he could still see them, and clearly. The boy leaned toward her as he spoke, extending one arm to place a hand on her knee. She covered his hand with her own and leaned closer. They leaned together, the dark silhouettes of their heads melding into one as their lips touched, their arms and legs tangling as they came together. They slid low inside the boat, causing it to roll precariously for a moment with their imbalanced weight. The Swimmer moved closer, anxious to interpret the noises they were making. There were no words that he could understand, but there was emotion in the sounds they made. There was passion. The Swimmer had heard these noises before, always from pairs of people who thought they were alone. He suspected that had they known he was there, had they known anyone was there, they would have returned to speaking normally. He felt something like guilt for intruding. But he gave in to his fascination on every occasion, including that night.

That night.

And then heard a word that he could understand.
No
. The word ‘no’. It was the girl who spoke the word. Softly, so softly. Then more of the passionate noises that so intrigued the Swimmer as he swam closer, closer, closer.
No
. She said the word again. Not so softly this time. Through the water, the Swimmer heard the scrape of her shoes on the belly of the boat as she scrambled out from under the boy’s weight. He slipped below the surface just in time as she popped upright in the boat, pulling herself to her seat with one arm slung over the side. The Swimmer floated up on the face of a short swell. It lifted him just high enough that he could see them. The boy was sitting in the bottom of the boat, looking up at the girl, now gripping each of her knees with powerful hands. She tried to pry his hands away, but he was too strong. The swell dragged the Swimmer down, into a trough, masking his view of the boat and the boy and the girl. But he could hear the boy’s voice rising in volume. He could hear the boy yelling, the words masked by his anger. By the time the Swimmer rose up on the next swell, the boy had risen to his feet, looming over the girl, and was slipping an oar out of its lock.

No, said the girl. No. No. No!

The boy raised the oar above his head. He said something to the girl. Two syllables. It could have been a name.

The Swimmer rose up out of the water, unsure what he intended to do.

The girl caught sight of the Swimmer, turned toward him, locked eyes with him.

In a panic, reflexively, the Swimmer slipped back under water and dove, dove, dove until the pale light of the moon was no light at all, until the layers of water wrapped him in darkness like layer upon layer of blue and black silk.

He heard her strike the water, but he could not see her. Not at first. The same black layers that shielded him from their eyes, shielded her from his. But then her form cut through the blackness and he could make out her torso, her long limbs, her hair flowing behind her head like the gossamer fin of a reef fish as she came down, down, down toward the Swimmer, toward the darkness, toward a depth from which she could never hope to return.

Her eyes were open when he swam up to meet her. There was still life in those eyes. Her lips were pressed together so tightly that her entire face quivered. She flexed her fingers methodically, as if trying to squeeze a single breath from the water, so cold, so cold, so cold. There was no breath to be found here. Only the gray eyes of the Swimmer, staring back at her. And she opened her mouth when she saw him. In a greeting or a plea or a scream, he couldn’t be sure. She opened her mouth and the ocean rushed in. And the glimmer in her eye, the last glimmer of life, blinked out.

He studied her lifeless body for what felt like hours, but could only have been seconds. He had never seen a human so close, had never even seen one of his own kind so close, and was astounded by the intoxicating detail of her frozen features. There was a trickle of blood in the water, from a gash at her hairline where the boy had struck her with the oar. Had the blow knocked her over the edge of the boat? Or had she jumped off the boat to escape him? Had she chosen to dive, dive, dive until she was deep enough that nothing could touch her, nothing could reach her, nothing could hurt her?

She was brave. She was beautiful.

She was gone.

He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her down here, in the depths, to be taken apart by the myriad scavengers who prowled these cold waters. He couldn’t bear the thought, and he wouldn’t allow it to happen. He took her in his arms and he swam up, up, up until the dark water went blue. As they broke the surface, the moon slid out from behind the smoky black clouds. The Swimmer looked across the water for the boat and the boy. He caught sight of the boy on the beach, where the rocks were flattened under the weight of his pickup truck. He was hoisting the boat from the water, in a terrible rush, muttering frantically under his breath. He threw the oars in the bed of the truck and scrambled around to the front door. He dove behind the wheel, slammed the door, and brought the engine to life with a terrific roar.

The Swimmer never saw his face.

He was too distracted by
her
face. He could not take his eyes off of hers as he swam her toward the same rocky beach, as he strode up the shallow incline until he was standing in water only ankle deep. His legs were unsteady beneath him, but he managed to hold her aloft as he marched up the beach, just to the line of high tide.

He set her down on her back, beside a cleaved rock that formed a massive, flat table. He brushed her hair from her face. He placed her hands on her chest, in a pose that looked, to the Swimmer, very peaceful.

Morning would not be long in arriving, and with it the cruel, hot sun. As much as he desired to stay with her, he knew that he could not. He allowed himself to touch her hand for a long moment, a final moment, then backed into the surf. He watched the water crawl up the beach and erase the faint prints his feet had left beside her body.

He swam away, but not far. In the last moments of her life, the girl had captured some part of him. He couldn’t quite understand the way she had made him feel, but he wanted to feel it again.

Jenny
. The boy in the boat had called her Jenny.

As the Swimmer left the recreation center, finally convinced that Brandi would not return, he could hear the boy’s voice as clearly as he heard it that night. He could hear the accusation in his voice as he said her name.

Jenny.

He walked though the dark streets of the sleeping town. He walked toward the inviting slap of waves on the same rocky beach where he left Brandi’s sister in her peaceful slumber. He walked across the uneven ground and paused for a moment, just a moment, before stepping into the surf.

He dove into the water and disappeared, desperate to push Brandi out of his mind long enough to swim beyond the range of the power she had over him, so much stronger than the power her sister had. If he didn’t leave now, he never would. He would swim along the lonely coast, listening for her voice, dreaming of her face. And with each passing day, blinded by his tormented longing for her, he would fail to notice the ice pack from the great frozen North as it moved down from the Arctic, as it forced his kind to the warmer waters. If he didn’t leave now, he would die waiting for her.

And so he swam. Legs together and pumping as one, arms pinned to his side, gills flared to allow the oxygenating rush of water, he swam.

He swam away. From her.

              “I loved your sister. I loved Jenny,” said Dallas.

He was at the closet door, systematically stripping the closet wall of the evidence of his obsession. His dual obsession with the Vine sisters. His gun was ominous in its holster, but it was Dallas’s hands that frightened Brandi the most. They looked so strong, those hands. And the way he flexed them, the way his fingers flexed, gave his hands such menace that Brandi had to look away. There was a window above his bed, but it was too small for her to climb through easily, and she could not possibly get through before Dallas would grab her and haul her back inside the room.

“You told me you hardly knew her,” said Brandi, her voice shaking.

“What else could I tell you? If she kept me a secret from you, from her own sister, there must have been a reason. If she kept it a secret that she went out to meet me every night—”

“You killed her,” whispered Brandi, so softly it was almost inaudible.

Dallas rushed forward and dropped to a crouch beside Brandi, his dangerous hands up and open. Brandi recoiled, bracing herself for the cold touch of those hands around her throat.

“You’re not listening! I
loved
her! I would never hurt her!”

“I don’t believe you,” said Brandi with a scowl. “I don’t believe you!”

“She jumped in the water. There was nothing I could do. She jumped—”

“Why, Dallas? Why did she jump out of a boat and drown herself?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know!”

“Yes you do! If you loved each other, why would she do that? Why would she want to die? She didn’t want to die! She wanted to get away from you! She would rather die than stay with you on that boat!”

With a burst of violent strength, Dallas took hold of his mattress and wrenched it off the box spring. He hurled it up against the wall and let loose a guttural groan. “I never touched her!”
              “Her head. The wound on her head. They said it was from the surf throwing her up against the rocks—”

“Yes, the surf!” Dallas insisted.

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!”

She screamed with such volume, with such force, that Dallas cringed and looked away. But he quickly regained his composure and turned back to Brandi, his eyes gone narrow and dark, his teeth clenched tightly, his heartbeat visible in a jaw line vein that pulsed angrily.

Dallas threw all of the photographs and newspaper clippings into a metal trashcan. He struck a match and tossed it in, watching with real grief in his eyes as his collection caught fire and began to burn in earnest. Staring into the flickering flame, the corners of his mouth turned up in a subtle grin: a moment of inspiration. “We’re going for a drive,” he said.

False dawn.

There was just enough light for Brandi to make out the barren tree branches on both sides of the road as they traveled inland. Dallas hadn’t said a word since he tied her feet together at the ankle and tied her wrists with rubber tubing. He had carried her to the truck and gently settled her in the passenger seat, careful to move her legs out of the way before closing the door behind her. She tried to get her bound hands to the door handle before he walked around to the driver’s side, but there wasn’t enough time. She gave up when he slipped inside the truck and turned the ignition. As he piloted the truck around the outskirts of town, she tried to track their progress, to retain her sense of direction. But she wasn’t sure where they were headed until she saw it up ahead.

The burned shell of the warehouse, still in disarray from the fire.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

“I told you to stop talking. I don’t want to have to jam a rag in your mouth.”

He pulled the truck into the gravel parking area behind the ravaged warehouse, slid the gear stick into park, but didn’t turn off the engine. He gripped the steering wheel for several seconds, staring through the windshield at nothing at all.

“It didn’t have to be like this,” he whispered.

He left the engine running as he loosened the binding on her feet. She had just enough mobility to walk on her own around the warehouse perimeter. She looked to the west, where the sun would soon rise above the horizon and bathe this fragile building in beautiful morning light. She knew she wouldn’t be alive to see it.

“Why not take me out to sea, take me out on your boat, and kill me the way you killed her? They’ll say the same things. They’ll say I was depressed. They’ll say I was a burden on my poor parents, that they couldn’t control me, couldn’t keep me from sneaking off and harming myself. They’ll say I drowned. You can hit me, and they’ll say that the bruises are from the surf throwing me up against the rocks.”

“If I take you to the water,
he
might be there. That’s what you’re thinking,” said Dallas. He took hold of her arm and steered her through the warehouse entrance. “A rag in your mouth won’t make any difference. They’ll see the bruises on your wrists and they’ll know it wasn’t a suicide. Nothing I can do about that now, but out here they’ll think it was drifters. I don’t want to make this harder for you than it has to be, but I will. Keep talking and I will.”