by Jay Brandon
Jack grew even paler. He was no longer a brightly burning torch. The feel of his fingers on Kathy’s arm had tightened. He was no longer pulling her, he was a burden weighing her down.
He grew even heavier, his head dipped below the surface. He was
going down, and he was taking Kathy with him.
Michael lunged, not toward Jack but away. He still held Kathy’s arm, and with his other hand he strained and caught the life preserver as it skittered through the water a few feet away. Michael had stopped the boat’s motor, but he hadn’t killed its momentum. It was still coasting onward, pulling the life preserver on the rope. Michael held the cork ring, feeling himself pulled apart, one hand holding the life preserver, the other clinging tightly to Kathy’s arm. He wouldn’t let go of anything. He stretched, got his legs around her waist, and pulled her closer to him.
Jack’s hand skittered down her other arm and caught on her hand. But she had already made that decision, back on the jetty. She didn’t change her mind. She opened her hand and let Jack’s fingers slide down hers. He grasped for purchase and failed. He was gone.
Michael pulled her again, until she was close enough to grab the life preserver herself. He put the ring around her, then began pulling on the rope, pulling them back to the boat. His face showed the strain, and his knowledge of the danger. Jack had caught them before when they’d been racing, and now they were barely moving.
Kathy helped him pull. Both of them expected a hand to fall on their shoulders at any second. It seemed a lifetime before they pulled themselves to the boat and Michael grabbed the rail. As they tried to hoist themselves up onto the boat, in a confusion of hands and feet and slippery deck, they looked back for the first time.
Jack was atop the water again. He was paler than ever. Raindrops pierced him. He stood just watching Michael and Kathy’s frantic efforts to elude him, as if he pitied their weakness.
Kathy and Michael sat on the deck at the stern of the boat, panting. “Jack!” Kathy tried to shout, but could barely manage a whisper.
Jack was no longer looking at them. His head was cocked upward, as if he heard or saw something they couldn’t. Kathy and Michael naturally
followed his gaze upward, but saw nothing but storm clouds.
Michael moved in front of Kathy, to shield her from Jack’s view. He
felt again his sense of mission. To save her. To save Kathy.
“Kathy!” There came a ghostly echo across the water, and when she looked again Jack had grown dimmer. He held a hand out to her. She felt the attraction, and the pity. But not the allure of death. She didn’t step out from behind Michael. After three long beats of her heart Jack dropped his hand. He looked upward again. He was faded almost to nothing. His eyes, always the palest she had ever known, lingered, it seemed they would burn an impression on her skin.
A moment later there was no trace of him.
Michael, after making sure Kathy had a tight grip on the rail, scrambled forward and pushed the throttle as far as it would go. The Bacchus’s engine choked as if it resented his haste, then sputtered into life. The boat chugged forward.
Michael went back and helped Kathy to her feet. She was still looking backwards, but there was nothing to see, at least to his eyes. Michael’s skin was tingling. He’d seen Jack fade away before, only to reappear.
The clouds were no longer the bunched mass they had been. They were drifting apart, revealing paler patches above. There was even a hint of blue, far off.
Kathy came to herself and realized for the first time the implication of where she stood. “Michael,” she said, reproachfully and wonderingly at the same time. “You stole the boat?”
“Borrowed it,” Michael said distractedly.
Michael was testing himself. He was no longer staring backwards, he was looking all around. He was trying, with that sense that had awakened in him after he woke from death on the beach, to feel Jack’s presence. He couldn’t. Jack was gone or Jack’s presence was gone. Michael felt weak, hollowed out. But it wasn’t the weakness of unreality, it was simply the exhaustion of his body after his ordeal. He could feel his feet solidly bound to the deck of the boat. He gazed at the lightening sky, a mystery. He couldn’t see behind the sky. The world looked brand new to him. Everything was a wonderment.
Kathy was shivering. Her face was wet. She hugged herself, but it didn’t help. She stepped back, against Michael, and they both felt the shock of contact. Flesh against flesh grew warmer as they shielded each other, like a hand cupped around the glow of a match. Kathy leaned into Michael so he would hold her even more tightly. Her legs pressed against the length of his. She put her hands on his arms and felt him tremble, but also felt his strength.
Kathy was looking back at the island, that seemed to be receding from them faster than the boat could carry them, growing so tiny she could blot it out with her hand.
Kathy could feel his warmth. She turned and put her arms around him, reveling in the closeness.
“I came back too, Kathy,” Michael said. “I came back for you.”
And she felt for the first time in so long her own warmth come alive, that sense of peace that started deep inside her and spread through her like a narcotic. She could finally identify that warmth.
The familiar sound of the clanking chains signaled the departure of the ferry from the island. But this ferry boat, unlike the rusty clunker of their arrival, was sleek and modern, part of the new fleet. The crew raised its ramp and set its gate. At last, the boat was floating free – taking Michael and Kathy back to the mainland.
Kathy stood at the railing, Michael just behind her as if shielding her, protecting her. Unexpectedly, she turned toward him, still held in his embrace, her head against his chest as if listening for his heartbeat. Michael looked past her, past the wake of the boat, back to the island, looked back long enough to see the figure of a woman dressed in white walking along a seaside cliff followed by a fierce wolf-like creature.
About the Authors
Jay Brandon is the accomplished author of fifteen novels. His novel, Fade the Heat, was a nominee for the Edgar Award. He has a Masters Degree in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a law degree from the University of Houston. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Joe Labatt started writing fiction as an undergraduate at Princeton University. He has a Masters in Teaching and a law degree. He lives in San Antonio, Texas where he is the President of Corona Publishing Company.
