The Jetty

by Jay Brandon

  now there was nothing. There were no elaborate candelabra, no intricately carved bar counter. The few pieces of furniture floated like boats without moorings in the vast empty rooms. Michael called out, but his voice echoed in the canyon-like foyer.

  Leaning against the wall of the alcove was a scuba tank, recently used, still wet, its cold gray steel canister like a gun barrel. The scuba gear’s presence in the house puzzled Michael, its modernity in stark contrast with the rest of the house. But he hurried on, running up the stairs two at a time. The once luxurious bedroom suite was now a dusty expanse. The once full closets were now vacant.

  He mounted the second stairway, and scurried up the ladder to the widow’s walk. Expecting to find someone there, he was initially disappointed. The wind blew across the lofty perch; the dark night and clouds were like a veil across the sky. He went to the balustrade and peered over it – peered down to the beach, over to the channel, across to the town.

  “Michael,” said a voice, and his heart froze.

  He turned back to the ladder and saw Vivian standing in front of him, near enough to touch. The widow’s walk, deserted only a moment before, was now like a theater stage dominated by some dark magic.

  Vivian’s eyes lit up, stoked by some internal fire. She was like some demonic beacon. Michael recoiled from her in terror.

  Lightning flashed. Michael looked down again from the balustrade. “Kathy!” he cried helplessly into the wind, and turned back toward

  the ladder.

  “You’re too late,” Vivian said, stepping in front of the ladder, blocking his way, taking hold of his arms. He broke free of her, turning back toward the railing.

  “Don’t you see?” she cried. “We’ve done it before!”

  Done it before. Suddenly, the events of the last days took on a different and sordid and even diabolical nature. Done it before? The execution of an elaborate plan or scheme? Jack’s pretending to be Michael’s friend,

  Vivian’s arranging the meeting with Kathy, Jack’s subtly appealing to Kathy’s interest in history, music, literature, her love of extravagant things, her sadness, all the while making Michael look weak and useless, isolating him from Kathy, making her vulnerable to Jack’s advances.

  “It was all a charade, a drama,” Michael said, in disbelief. “You’re certain?” she said.

  “I’m not certain of anything anymore,” he admitted. “The giant at the cottage. Was that an act for my benefit? The demonic Jack at the church – arson?”

  He remembered Kathy’s words: He walked into the ocean, Michael. He walked in and didn’t come up.

  “And the disappearance into the sea,” Vivian said, as if reading his mind. “It’s the best of all.”

  Michael thought of the scuba gear downstairs, still wet. A scuba tank? Hidden in a specific place off shore, its hiding place indicated with say, a beach umbrella. Perhaps with a flashlight attached to the sunken tank to make it visible. Might a strong swimmer go under, don the breathing apparatus, and never come to the surface within view?

  “It could explain things, couldn’t it?” Vivian asked. She watched him with a strange expression, slightly earnest, more than slightly amused, like a gourmet savoring an appetizer’s aroma before biting into it.

  “But why the act? Jack really is a . . . ”

  “Some ghosts want to be human, Michael,” she said, “and a few pretend to be. For Jack, it’s his ultimate . . . recreation.”

  “And you?”

  She smiled, a slow smile that stretched her lips. “I like to watch the drama unfold.”

  The boy who drowned. “Antonio?” Michael said.

  “He drowned himself,” Vivian said languidly. “Trying to swim after me, trying to catch up to me, trying to save me, which is just silly . . . but sweet, don’t you think?” There was a serene smile on her face, but her

  eyes were lively, as if watching again the thrashings of a young man so infatuated with her that he floundered helplessly through the sea trying not to let her get away.

  “I grew tired of Antonio. That’s what always happens. I get bored. Then Jack gets bored, and ultimately, he comes back to me. At least, he always has until now. Until this Kathy.”

  Michael broke past Vivian and started down the ladder, only to see the dog below. At the sight of Michael, the dog seemed to go berserk, growling, howling, futilely trying to scale the ladder.

  Michael turned back to the widow’s walk, back to the balustrade. “Kathy!” he screamed again.

  Vivian embraced him from behind, pinning his arms to his side in what seemed like an iron vise. Michael grabbed the balustrade to resist her. Over the railing of the widow’s walk he could see the ground far below him in the dark. He fought desperately against her. She was amazingly strong. Vivian had cast off any illusion of fragility. He broke free, and losing his balance, went over the side. He dropped headfirst, then when he was about to go over the lower roof grabbed a protruding downspout.

  He clung for dear life, but the downspout was coming loose, peeling

  away from the house. Suddenly, he was falling again.

  Michael pushed himself off the ground to a kneeling position. He wasn’t sure how long he had been lying there. He was in a side yard of the Lefflers’ house. The ground was soft, moist sand; some shrubbery had also helped to break his fall. Above him, three stories up, he could see the ledge where he lost his grip, the downspout ripped loose from the wall. He rose from his kneeling position, and stood, aching in every part of his body. Then he ran, stumbling, around to the front of the house.

  The good news was that he had survived the fall. The bad news was that there was a police patrol car in the Lefflers’ front drive, its motor running and lights on. Off to the side of the house, Michael saw the

  long darting beam of one flashlight, then another. Two patrolmen were

  examining the ground in the yard.

  A flashlight beam landed on Michael. “Hey, you!” yelled one of the policemen. Michael saw him pointing in his direction.

  Michael ran, legs and arms flailing, back around the side of the house, ran for the beach, toward the sound of the ocean. There was only darkness in front of him, the sound of the waves in front of him. He heard the policemen calling for him to stop. He heard the desperate sound of his own breathing.

  A storm was coming. The sky darkened with a massing of clouds. The wind rose, a cold wind. The knee-high salt grass waved wildly, lashing his legs. Sand came at him, carried by the wind. Michael held up his hand to shield his eyes.

  He ran faster. He had to get to Kathy. The sound of the policemen’s shouting grew louder. When Michael looked back over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of them far behind him. They lumbered slope- shouldered in pursuit and Michael imagined their eyes – sunken, glittering with hostility, their mouths stretched wide in anger.

  Michael looked quickly away, caught in the childish illusion that if he didn’t see them they weren’t there. He crested a dune, so he was momentarily conspicuous on the landscape, then he dropped down on the other side, bent even lower, and ran again.

  Behind him there were sharp intakes of breath, the sound of lungs working, and grunts of effort. Michael ran faster, plowing through the sand. But the running was like a nightmare; he couldn’t make much progress. Sand cascaded out from under his feet. Running uphill, he dropped to all fours, using his hands to help pull himself up. Once, he fell flat on his face as the loose sand gave way under his feet. Falling, he rolled, as if he were on fire. Sand encompassed him like a translucent cocoon, he couldn’t tell which way was up. He flailed in all directions until his foot struck solid ground. He scrambled to his feet and ran again, but he was momentarily lost.

  The dunes were growing taller, like the dunes near the cottage.

  He didn’t dare look back again. He might be paralyzed by another sight of his pursuers. The sounds of the police were bad enough. Their breathing didn’t change, it remained loud and steady, while Michael’s breath was coming in s
hort gasps. His lungs felt half-filled with cement.

  He tried to get his bearings, recognized a high-rise hotel rearing up in the background, and realized he was back near Sanders Street, not far from the cottage. He had executed a huge loop, from the cottage to the Lefflers’ and back to the cottage. He heard the sound of a car passing on the street beyond the dunes. Perhaps Kathy had returned to the cottage by now. It was possible, wasn’t it? That she had returned? That she was there waiting for him.

  From the top of the next dune he saw lights on the road; it looked a hundred yards away. It was harder going now through the taller dunes. Michael kept slipping sideways and falling down. He was using his hands as much as his feet, grabbing handfuls of sand to haul himself up, then flinging the sand behind him as if they were pellets.

  He chanced a look back and the sight almost made him fall over in a faint. The police had closed to within twenty yards of him. He had to get off the dunes before he was caught, get back to the street. He stumbled toward the sound of the traffic.

  Another car went by. Michael tried to flag it down, but the car swept past him. He crossed the street and struck off into the dunes on the other side, thinking if he went at a diagonal he would come out somewhere on the private road to the cottage. He was close to the cottage now; he wouldn’t have to go far through the loose sand. He hid for a moment behind a small house and tried to catch his breath. The police emerged from the dunes moments behind him, in time to see the disappearing red tail lights of the car Michael had attempted to flag down.

  “Maybe he hitchhiked,” said the first policeman.

  “Maybe,” said the other. “Or maybe he’s doubling back on foot to get his Subaru.”

  “I’ll go back to the patrol car and radio for some back-up,” said the second policeman, and headed back in the direction of the Lefflers’, leaving the other policeman standing alone on the side of the road, his hands on his hips, still exhausted from the chase.

  Michael crawled down a culvert till he was out of sight of the road, and made his way back to the cottage. He realized that only officer Cates knew where he lived, and he took some comfort in that. With luck, he could check the cottage before the other policemen figured it out. Please be there, Kathy, he thought. Please be there. He felt the first drops of rain. He managed to reach the cottage in only a few minutes over open ground.

  But when he reached the cottage it was still empty. No one there. No one at all. However, this time, there was something different. Kathy had been there. Michael could sense it. Kathy had been there. ‘I should have stayed put,’ he thought miserably, ‘I should have waited for her.’ But he realized that no good would come from agonizing now. Kathy had been there, that much he knew, and he knew that she had not left alone.

  No, Jack was with her. He could sense that too. It was a certainty he felt with a sudden sixth sense. Kathy and Jack had left together. And if they weren’t at the cottage or the Lefflers’ house, there was only one place they could be.

  Michael heard a car pull up outside the cottage. He went out the back door to the porch, leapt to the sand and crouching down ran in a long loop around the yard. Police flashlight beams wavered in front of the cottage. He crossed the road again, and made his way back to the dunes. He fell to his knees in the heavy sand and watched and listened. But he saw nothing, no police, no one else either; he heard nothing but the sound of the waves. There was no time to waste. He started running again, running in the dunes, out of the reach of the highway streetlights – up one dark dune and down the next, sliding, slipping, running – running toward the lights of the town – back toward Kathy.

  At the top of a dune he saw a sight more welcome than the Gulf. The

  boardwalk rose from the dunes not far ahead of him. He looked behind him. He seemed to have lost the police. He took a deep breath. He was going to make it after all.

  Suddenly, above the noise of the approaching storm he heard behind him a growling sound with almost an anticipatory edge. The sound sent a brief thrill of fear along the skin of his back and neck, but he mocked his own fear. He was reacting just the way Jack would have wanted. But Jack’s warnings had been nothing but a bid to drive Michael off the island so Jack would have Kathy to himself.

  Then, suddenly, along his spine he felt a rush of air as though an enormous paw had taken a swipe at him and missed. He looked behind him. Bearing down on him was a huge black creature, the same creature he had seen days before on the way back from Mrs. Gaford’s. The Beast, a wild creature loose in the wilder weather, some descendant of the mythical animal in Holroyd’s story. Michael leaped down the next dune, almost falling backwards, but he wouldn’t let himself fall, he jerked forward and kept running.

  The snarling growl was almost in his ear. Michael veered sideways, still not looking back. He stopped running up and down the dunes and ran around them instead, following a winding course of least resistance. That seemed to gain him some lead. He couldn’t feel the hot breath any more.

  Then he realized the Beast wasn’t trying to catch him. it was toying

  with him. Biding its time.

  But the weaving also made him unclear of his direction. He was afraid he’d turned in a wide curve, when abruptly he rounded a dune and saw the support beams of the boardwalk directly in front of him. Michael leapt like a monkey, higher than he thought he could, caught the floor of the boardwalk, and hung there for a moment. He pulled, found a purchase for his scrabbling feet, strained up and caught one of the rails of the boardwalk, and pulled again. He got his feet up on the outer edge of the walkway and heaved himself over the hand rail.

  He landed in a heap, rolled until his feet were under him, and ran again. It was no longer a nightmare run. On the rough boards of the boardwalk he felt himself out-flying the wind. Escaping, he risked another look back.

  The Beast vaulted up onto the boardwalk, out of the dunes and arching over the handrail. It hadn’t seemed to use its front paws at all, it just seemed to fly up out of the sand and onto the boardwalk. It squatted there for a moment, glaring after its prey. Its outline rippled as if it were wearing a cloak, or its fur being combed by the wind. Still it was such a shape that Michael couldn’t see its details clearly. Only those glittering eyes. Then it leaped forward, covering almost half the distance Michael had already run.

  Michael put his head down and ran, so hard that when he reached the end of the boardwalk his feet didn’t touch any of the steps, he just went flying straight out and landed with a thud that cost him his breath in the loose sand. He inhaled some of the sand as he gasped for air, and hacked a choking cough as he recovered himself and ran.

  The air was crackling. It had that ripped, raw, clean feeling of wind cleansing the earth. With the grumble and bang of thunder, the rain fell. The rain was gentle at first, welcome on Michael’s sweating face. His running had become frustrating again, he slipped in the loose sand at the edge of the dunes. He heard a growl behind him, the little brother of the thunder, and instinctively veered toward the wetter, hard-packed sand close to the water.

  There were people scattered along the beach, even a few crazy ones in the water, storm groupies lifting their faces to the raindrops. A few turned to look curiously at Michael.

  He glanced back and saw the dog loping after him, silently, confidently, sure of its eventual triumph. The dog was toying with him. Michael grimaced and ran even harder as he reached the beaten-down sand at the water’s edge. He was making good time again, but he had

  no goal. Far ahead of him, more than a mile, he saw the fishing pier and remembered its shop and gatherings of fishermen, and the beach patrol station a little farther down the beach from the pier. He couldn’t possibly elude the dog for that distance. Between Michael and the pier he saw nothing but a couple of empty lifeguard perches.

  His breath was tearing his throat with every inhalation. His chest was heaving with effort and his legs were growing stiff. There were people about, curious beach-walkers, but no help. They just stared a
s Michael came toward them and passed. Couldn’t they see what was happening? Couldn’t they see the Beast? Michael stumbled and almost fell, and then the Beast’s powerful force slammed into him, sending him staggering into the water.

  The room was full of light. No: constructed of light, the walls and ceiling and floor of it, blazing with light, so powerful it should have been painful, but wasn’t. It was soothing. Figures began to take shape in the light. Amorphous as they were, he knew them. He leaned toward them.

  But a shadow fell across the room, making the figures draw back. He cried when he realized that the light was ebbing away, because something was blocking it.

  Michael turned and retched onto the beach. He choked and threw up again. It felt as if all his insides were pouring out through his mouth and nose. But he wasn’t pouring out. He was pouring back in; reinhabiting his body.

  A hand pounded his back. A voice with a cranky sound to it even in triumph said, “Go ahead. Get rid of all that seawater.”

  Michael saw his hands splayed on the sand. They looked like a stranger’s hands. It was only after he realized they were his own that he could feel the sand beneath his fingers. He grasped handfuls of it. He felt in danger of rising up off the planet.

  He got his breath back. It smelled foul, this air, smelled of corruption.

  He turned and sat up, and saw the circle of strangers around him. “What happened?” His voice was a gurgle. He coughed again, and spat.

  “You were almost a goner, that’s what happened.” A middle-aged man, adjusting his fishing cap, leaned down toward him. “Pretty dumb stunt you pulled.”