The Twilight Swimmer (5 page)

Then she saw his eyes. Gray, but a warm gray.

The young man strode toward Brandi and knelt down in a stand of tall, dead grass. He laid Kelly’s limp body down with easy grace. He was wearing nothing, his muscular legs bare and the rest of him… but there was no time to think about that. Kelly wasn’t moving.

The pale young man looked up at Brandi, his eyes mournful. Then he leaned over Kelly, opened his mouth wide, and pressed it over hers. His jaw seemed almost to unhinge, as if he meant to swallow Kelly whole. But the effect was not grotesque or even frightening to Brandi. It was remarkable. When a pale pink line below his jaw began to flutter, she inched closer. He was
breathing
through the fluttering opening in his skin. More important, he was drawing something from Kelly and bringing it into his own body. And as he consumed the smoke and soot that clogged Kelly’s chest, he converted it, somehow, into a murky fluid. It ran out from the line below his jaw. He shuddered, almost choking, but did not relent until Kelly began to wriggle in the grass.

The young man lurched away from Kelly, clutching his neck, in obvious pain. He coughed violently, dark fluid spilling from his lips.

On the far side of the warehouse, now fully ablaze, two police cars and a fire truck had arrived. The spinning light from their shrill sirens illuminated the grass alongside the building.

“Where did you come from,” asked Brandi in a hurried whisper.

The young man coughed again and wiped his mouth. His gray eyes were wide with sudden fright at the sound of slamming vehicle doors and footfalls. He staggered away from Brandi and turned, running for the shallow water nearby, wading through tall reeds that obscured his nakedness. Brandi took a few steps as if to follow him, but the pale man dove beneath the water. She watched as his long body stretched horizontally under the surface and darted away from the shore, torpedo-like.

Brandi let out a long-held breath and dropped down beside Kelly. “You’re okay, Kelly. Just breathe.”

Kelly struggled to draw air into her lungs, but she was conscious and agitated. A good sign, Brandi thought. A minute earlier she was… she was… Dead? But no, it couldn’t be. None of what Brandi had seen had actually happened. She was dizzy with fright. Confused. And Kelly?

Kelly was passed out inside an inferno. Kelly
should be
dead.

Before Brandi could give the strange events any more thought, a young policeman rounded the corner of the warehouse and ran toward them with his radio at his mouth.

“Two girls, teens. Get an ambulance out here.” He was in his early 20’s, his face clean-shaven and handsome, his hair cropped short. Brandi recognized him as one of her father’s deputies. “Are you injured? Are you hurt?”

Brandi shook her head ‘no’ and gestured toward Kelly. “She was inside.”

“For how long?” the policeman asked as he once again brought his radio to his mouth. “Hurry up with that ambulance. Smoke inhalation, possible burns.” He reached for Kelly’s wrist to take her pulse.

“Maybe ten minutes, after it got bad,” answered Brandi.

The young policeman was about to ask another question, but it caught in his throat when he finally looked at Brandi’s face. “Oh god. Brandi Vine?”

Brandi nodded.

The team of firefighters had taken up position outside the warehouse. They ran one hose from their truck and arced water onto the warehouse from above. They submerged a second, larger hose in the estuary and pumped water through it, spraying a thick stream into the warehouse entrance, trying to beat back the inferno and create a path inside.

The young policeman waved over a paramedic who had arrived on the scene and gestured for him to look after Kelly. Then he rose and grabbed Brandi’s arm. “Your Dad’s on his way. Let’s get you out of here.”

They took back roads, winding first through marshland and then through woods still heavy with summer foliage. The young policeman kept his headlights on low beams and didn’t speed, wary of grabbing the attention of anyone they should pass on their way back into town.

Brandi sat in the passenger seat, hugging her stomach. She felt ill, from the stress of the evening and the smoke to which she had been exposed.

“The smell from those clothes will be a dead giveaway,” he said. “Get them in the wash first thing in the morning.”

“My mother will be suspicious if I’m doing laundry at dawn.”

“A plastic bag, then, maybe. Until all this blows over.” He ran his hand along the steering wheel, his forearm flexing. She was studying the knob of his elbow for no particular reason and he turned quickly enough to catch her. “If your Dad asks why I left the scene, I’ll tell him…” He trailed off, then laughed nervously. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

“You were chasing the pyromaniacs.”

“Yeah, that’s good. Except I never called it in on the comm.” He tapped his dash-mounted radio, biting down on his lower lip. “Maybe my radio was on the fritz. Bad reception out there.”

Brandi reached for the radio and turned it on. Static wheezed from the concave earpiece.

“Hey, don’t mess with that.”

“I’m not six,” she groaned. She used her fingernail to unscrew the radio’s casing. The wires inside the casing were tightly bunched, but she managed to work loose a green strand. The static abruptly stopped. “Now it’s on the fritz.”

“Where did you learn how to do that?” he asked, both impressed and concerned that she damaged police property.

“How to break things? Not really something you have to learn, is it?”

They rode in silence for a short time, passing several early morning commuters headed out of town and into nearby Boston. The community was waking up, and Brandi could feel her energy waning. While the fire blazed, her heart had been pounding so hard she thought it would never return to normal. And when she saw
him
… It amazed her to find her eyelids feeling heavy, to find sleep pulling her close.

“I knew your sister,” he said.

Brandi struggled to open her eyes again and turned toward him, her head tilted as if to ask a question.

“I mean, I didn’t know her well. But we’d met. Talked a few times. She was the year behind me, I think. At school.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand. “Seemed like a sweet girl.”

“That’s what everyone thinks,” said Brandi. “That’s my house. Let me out here, please.” Her words were polite, but her tone was ice cold. She didn’t bother looking at the young policeman as he slowed the cruiser and rolled to a stop by the curb.

CHAPTER FOUR

Brandi had had this dream before. Many times.

The sun disappears over the horizon, and she floats upright, slowly, through her neighborhood. Down dark asphalt roads. Past dark houses, sedans and minivans standing sentry in their driveways. Past the high school, with its baseball diamond and tennis court. Past the police station where her father went each day, awaiting bad news through the dispatch radio.

She floats.

Toward the darkness in the East. A few inches above the ground. Her bare toes just grazing blades of grass and the folded petals of sleeping flowers. And all the while, the force, whatever it is, drags her toward the water’s edge. Toward the familiar inlet and the familiar rocky beach where she sometimes docked her kayak. Toward Flat Rock.

Toward the body of her sister Jenny, lying on the rocks. So peaceful in death. Hands folded on her stomach. Like she’s sleeping. And Brandi floats toward her, wanting to look away, wanting to stop moving forward, but unable to stop herself or even slow down.

And soon she’s floating directly above Jenny’s body, her dangling toes almost touching her sister’s cold hands. Her eyes are flooded with tears as she looks down at her sister’s lifeless face, the corners of her mouth turned up in the barest of smiles. She tries to lean forward, to stoop over, to reach down to Jenny and touch the face she knows so well. But she’s held aloft by the force, whatever it is, and cruelly unable to free herself.

Jenny’s eyes open.

Brandi is startled, even though her sister’s eyes always open at this point in the dream. And her fingers always unlace, and reach up, and touch the bottom of Brandi’s foot. None of this should surprise Brandi, but she is asleep and all of this still seems, somehow, like the first time. Her sister coming back to life beneath her, reaching up, smiling coldly. And Brandi trying to pull her foot away from the icy touch, but held suspended, paralyzed. Cold wind from the sea whips her clothing and her hair, but cannot wrest her from her strange levitation.

Below her, Jenny begins to slide across the rocky beach, feet first, toward the water. As if the water is drawing her in, magnetically. She tries to hold onto Jenny’s ankle, to stay on shore, but her grip is too weak and the sea is too strong. Her feet disappear in the surf. Her knees. Her hips. She reaches back toward Jenny, her pale hand grasping, her white lips mouthing desperate pleas, but soon her entire body is under the water and sliding deeper.

Brandi is moving too, now. She is floating off the beach and across the edge of the waves. Cool spray tickles the bottom of her feet and she slides farther from shore. And directly below her, through the water, she can see Jenny. Still horizontal, still looking up at her with pleading eyes, still reaching. But Brandi remains helpless, fixed upright in the air above the water. Until…

She sees a pale figure cutting through the water, swimming upward toward Jenny. At first the form is unrecognizable, but Brandi soon recognizes broad shoulders and a hairless head, arms pinned close to a slender torso, legs kicking hard.

It’s him.

He gathers Jenny into his arms. He pauses for a moment to look up through the water at Brandi, his gray eyes gleaming. Then he dives.

Brandi screams. And with her scream, she is free of the force that holds her aloft. Miles from shore, now, she plummets from the safety of the night air and plunges into the icy cold water. She sinks fast, still paralyzed, struggling to hold her breath as the sea swallows her whole.

Down, down, down.

The light is stolen from her eyes as the oxygen flees from her lungs. The cold hand of oceanic pressure is squeezing her chest. Currents are tossing her left and right, but always the downward momentum. The inescapable sinking.

The disappearing.

She didn’t wake with a start. She didn’t wake gasping or clutching her chest. Somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, her body remembered that the dream was only a dream. That she wasn’t really cold, or sinking, or drowning. And so she opened her eyes as she would any morning, with a flutter and a gentle rub, and turned to face the window. Light pushed against the shade, lining its edges in yellow. Too bright for morning. She’d slept late.

She fought through her grogginess and got dressed in loose fitting jeans, a long sleeve tee shirt and a green hoodie. The clothes from the previous night were lying in a pile by the hamper. Apparently, she’d been too exhausted or distracted when she came in this morning to heed the police officer’s advice and hide the aromatic items in a plastic bag until she could wash them. She took his advice now, however, and stuffed the pungent clothes in a white plastic shopping bag.

On cue, her mother’s insistent knock sounded at the door. “Brandi, honey, why are you home?”

“I live here, don’t I?”

“I thought you were spending the night with the girls?”

Brandi heard the doorknob turning and quickly stuffed the plastic bag under her mattress. It left a peculiar raised area, but her mother was already through the door and she couldn’t do much about it now. Instead, she pulled schoolbooks from her bag to give the impression she was about to study. “Candace got up early to go garage sale-ing, so I just came home. I don’t like garage sales, and besides—“ She held up a textbook to finish her sentence visually.

Her mother was dressed for public consumption in a long summer dress and cotton shawl, despite the fact she was at home and it was a Saturday. She even wore flats instead of slippers. Brandi wasn’t sure her mother even owned slippers. “It’s a nice day, Brandi. If I’d known you were here we could have, I don’t know. We could have gotten out there and made use of the sun while we’ve still got it. Next thing you know, it’ll be galoshes and mittens for us.”

“I was right here. You could have knocked.”

“But I didn’t know you were here. That’s the point. Oh, nevermind.” Her mother took another look at the textbooks, sighed aloud, and backed through the door. Before closing it, she poked her head back inside the room. “Your father isn’t at home. He got called away last night. To a fire, if you can believe it.”

“A fire? Where?” Brandi did her best to sound surprised instead of panicked.

“One of the old canneries, I think. Kids being kids. Although honestly, since when do normal, well-adjusted kids light the whole town on fire?” She jammed her fist into her hip for emphasis, then shook her head for additional emphasis.

“The canneries are nowhere near town.”

“Not the point.” Her mother shook her head again, this time directed at Brandi’s quick tongue, then pulled the door shut behind her. “I’m glad you’re here, actually. I need you to take your brother to the library. Don’t argue. Just do it.”