Chapter 11
Danny awoke to the sound of crackling, and he opened his eyes to find a small fire burning off to his right, illuminating a small cave that seemed at first glance to be manmade, a small opening in the dirt that had been hollowed out and reinforced with a skeleton of wooden beams.
He was sitting against one of the cave walls with his hands low, tied separately on either side of his body to one of the boards that ran along the wall behind him near his lower back. His arms and body formed the shape of the letter M. He could see that the ground below him was a mixture of sand, dirt and sea grass, and that it had been bloodstained brown from the wound in his leg.
His eyes were also caked with blood, presumably from the blow that had been delivered to the middle of his head, and a bandana was laced through his mouth and was tied tightly around the back of his head.
The memory of Tammy came to him within seconds, and Danny gagged a silent scream, trying audibly to chase away the mental picture of the creature killing and decapitating his wife and then dragging her body to the endlessness of the ocean.
But the memory of the slaughter lingered, and he began to feel a vague comfort from it.
Danny cried softly, fighting the thoughts of the creature feeding on his wife, trying desperately to remember a time when she was alive and vibrant. He finally settled into a peaceful memory of Tammy on their wedding day. She was beautiful and glowing that Saturday in April.
Danny allowed himself a few more moments of these reflections, and then he re-focused, assessing his surroundings while trying to work out how he ended up there. Was there anything about the woman that could help him escape from this bunkered prison? And where was he exactly? He could smell the ocean and hear what sounded like the screams of children and bursts of laughter.
He initially concluded that the woman who had hit him must have had help to bring him here, otherwise, how else could she have moved him, unconscious, to the place he was now? Unless he was so close to the spot of his assault that she’d only needed to drag him the shortest of distances. This last theory started to seem like the right one, as it coincided with what he could see, hear, and smell.
Danny studied the fire for a few moments and noticed that, although it was burning inside of this cave, it seemed to be venting nicely, the flame pulling up towards the earthen roof and the smoke disappearing to the world beyond it. It probably had a few more hours at best, and then it would need to be re-kindled.
With this collection of clues, it didn’t take long for Danny to put the pieces together and draw a conclusion about his situation: this place was not only his prison, it was a holding cell, the place where Lynn Shields kept her victims before feeding them to the beast of the Atlantic. It was a beachfront dungeon, one adorned with a bonfire and coastal sounds instead of hanging skeletons and screams of torture, but a dungeon nevertheless.
But escapable, Danny thought. It had to be.
He knew he wasn’t very far from freedom, otherwise there would have been no need for the gag. And if he could hear the sounds of people coming from outside the cave, it reasoned that they would have the ability to hear him; though it was certainly a possibility that his muffled screams might barely penetrate the walls, only to dissipate into the sea air.
Danny looked to his left, following the corona of light formed by the fire, and saw a path of sand and dirt leading away from him, glowing out to a distance of about twenty feet or so, tapering off into a cul-de-sac of what appeared to be a narrow tunnel. The dead end of the short runway was shrouded in darkness, but through the last reaches of the fire’s light, Danny thought he could see grass growing up and around it, sticking wildly out at various places on the walls and ceiling, vaguely forming the shape of doorway. That was the exit.
For the first time since waking, he tested the restraints of his bound hands, tugging on the ropes lightly at first, and then with all of his force. He pushed his back against the dirt wall and pulled his arms outward, feeling the burn of his shoulders and biceps. It was useless. He had no leverage to give any real challenge to the knots of the ropes, and even if he did, Danny didn’t think it would have made much difference.
Panic was beginning to set in, and suddenly Danny’s mouth felt as dry as the sand beneath him. His tongue was being pushed back by the bandana, clumping up against his windpipe, and it seemed to be swelling by the second as the moisture was sucked away by the cloth restraint. Danny shook his head wildly now, tears of desperation forming in his eyes as he considered that he might be in the initial stages of suffocation.
Relax.
He closed his eyes and bowed his head forward, and then lifted it, focusing his eyes on the dancing flame before him. Stay here, Dan. This is where you are now, so stay here. You’re not dying. You are a prisoner, but you’re not dying.
WHEN HE AWOKE AGAIN, the fire was out and the cave was completely dark. The sounds from outside were gone, and Danny could only hear the drone of cicadas from somewhere in the heavens. Or crickets, he reminded himself, and katydids.
The memory of Tammy entered his mind again, but the overwhelming grief of her death had passed, and this time Danny smiled through the gag, imagining he must have looked a bit deranged with his teeth bared that way. He was tending toward delirium now, he thought, and his thirst was maddening. It had been a full day he calculated. A full twenty-four hours since he’d seen the thing that had butchered his wife and the woman who sliced his leg and smashed his forehead. And he’d not had a drink of water since a few hours before that. And without the fire burning, the only thing Danny contemplated now was whether he would die of thirst or exposure.
He leaned back against the wall and craned his neck up slightly toward the cave ceiling, a movement that was half attempt to get as comfortable as possible before dying, and half prayer. Danny had recently labeled himself a spiritual atheist—whatever that was—but he was open to a full religious conversion now, and as he looked down the tunnel that led to the grassy arch and saw the glow of light shining through, so bright it was blinding, he thought perhaps this last ditch effort at religion had paid off. Maybe he was going to the afterlife after all.
Suddenly, the light dipped slightly and Danny could now see the outline of a figure moving towards him, crawling beneath the low ceiling of the tunnel, arms stretched out in front, crablike in its walk. It was human, Danny assumed, though after the week he’d had, that detail was certainly no longer a given. In one hand the being held a flashlight, and in the other a long staff with an immense blade on the end of it.
The figure was now only feet from Danny, and he could tell by the weapon that it was the woman. As she reached him, she dropped the scythe to the sand and reached out to him, her fingers shaped in a claw, grasping. Danny tried to scream, but the gag and aridness of his mouth produced nothing audible.
She reached toward his face, and Danny braced himself for the suffering that was certain to follow. But instead of touching him, she reached between his mouth and gripped the gag, maneuvering it past his chin and down to his neck, thus freeing his tongue and lips for the first time in what felt like a week. He gasped for breath, sticking his tongue out straight, stretching it, feeling the air like a serpent.
“You must be thirsty.”
The woman was now kneeling in front of Danny, but he could only see the bottom half of her, the light of the flashlight not reaching her torso or beyond.
“And cold, I would imagine.”
Danny began to whimper softly at the woman’s first statement, simultaneously moved almost to tears by the idea of water, and distraught at the notion that the woman may only be torturing him with the possibility.
The gag was gone, but the lack of saliva in his mouth still prevented Danny from speaking, so instead he simply nodded once, squeezing back any tears that threatened to fall.
The woman had brought with her two large bags, the straps of which were slung across her shoulders, crisscrossing her chest in the middle between her breasts. The
satchel portions rested on the ground on either side of her. From one bag, Danny could see large pieces of wood sticking out high in every direction.
The woman reached into one of the bags and brought out a full bottle of Dasani water, and then twisted to the left, snapping the cap free of the safety seal. It was the most glorious sound Danny had ever heard in his life.
“Open up.”
Danny lifted his chin high and opened his brittle, sticky lips as if about to take communion.
“Swirl it in your mouth first,” the woman said, pouring in a small amount of the warm water. “You have to get some lubrication in there or it will spill out.”
Danny ignored the advice and swallowed the water immediately, tipping his head back to let gravity bring it into his body, careful to keep his lips closed so he wouldn’t lose a drop. Once it was down, he moved his mouth back to position, silently beckoning for more of it. Beckoning for all of it.
The woman continued giving Danny small sips until the bottle was about a quarter full. “I know the thirst you feel,” she said finally, twisting the cap back on. “I feel it every year. All year.”
Danny blinked twice at the closed bottle, desperate for more. He couldn’t see the top half of the woman, but he shifted his gaze toward where the woman’s face would be, and considered for the first time since her arrival something other than his thirst.
“But you’ve seen it too now. The miracle. You’re the first I’ve ever known—besides myself—to have witnessed it. Some of the sacrifices too have seen it, I suppose, the ones who were conscious upon its arrival. But they had only seconds to bask in it.”
“That was...” Danny coughed, the dryness of his throat still resisting him despite the majestic relief the water had brought. But he fought through it. “...my wife. That was my wife.”
The woman set the flashlight down flat on the ground now, and Danny could only see her feet as she shuffled over in the direction of the fire. He heard the sound of wood being unloaded, and within a minute, a new flame had sprung to life, and heat was returning to the cave.
The fire illuminated the room, and Danny could now see the glow of the woman’s face. It was the same one he’d seen on the beach only days ago, yet the concern and angst were gone. There was only peace there now. Contentment.
“It was to be you,” she said. “Not your wife. You were the one destined for this cycle.”
Danny sensed dismay in the woman’s voice, but he knew it was more to do with the failure of her plan than the fact that it was Tammy and not he who was taken by the thing.
“It was only fate that brought me here—to the beach—at just the time that he emerged. Otherwise I would have missed it again. It is just more proof that my God is so.”
Danny noted the ‘here’ in the woman’s sentence, and was now convinced that he was indeed at the place of the sighting, though he couldn’t have said where exactly. And although he wanted to stay focused on his escape, the questions about all of this—this creature that he had seen on the beach last Thursday and that had now mauled and killed his wife—were overwhelming. “What is it?”
The woman smiled. “Going for the big question right off the bat, huh?”
Danny said nothing, his eyes narrowed and unblinking.
“I can only tell you the origins as I know them for me. That is as close as I can get.”
Danny nodded.
“I was twenty-five when I saw it for the first time. It was the year my parents were killed. Traffic accident. A delivery driver for a beer company fell asleep at the wheel and smashed into their Buick head on. I was in graduate school at the time, studying to be a teacher—high school science—but after a hefty inheritance and an even larger settlement from the insurance company, I wasn’t going to have to work again. So I didn’t. My sister took the main house, but I had always wanted to live at the beach, so I moved here. Started living a life of leisure I guess you could say.”
Danny closed his eyes as he listened to the story, thankful for the heat of the fire and the moisture in his mouth. His stomach rumbled just at the moment of Lynn Shield’s pause.
“Of course,” she said, and reached into her bag, bringing out a granola bar and a small container of almonds. “I’d intended to give this to you immediately.”
She fed Danny the food, laying the almonds in her palm and raising them to his mouth like she was feeding a goat, and then followed it up with a few more sips of water. Afterwards, the woman laid a blanket across her prisoner’s shoulders. She’d no intention of letting him leave, Danny thought, and it was a very likely possibility that she was saving him for the next round of sacrifices. But if that was to be his finale, at least he had these moments until the end.
“Back then, when it was warm enough, I used to sleep outside on a cot out on the dunes—that’s where you are now by the way, underneath the dunes. You’re only steps from the beach as the crab crawls. In any case, I had started taking up the practice of listening to sleep sounds on my radio. I had a tape that would play on a loop to drown out the buzzing of the insects, which was a sound that was always a little bit discomforting to me. There’s something too high-pitched in the whirring that never relaxed me. Some people like the cicadas, but not me.”
Danny considered correcting the woman, but thought better of it.
“And then one morning, just before dawn, I woke to the crash.” The woman stopped for a beat and stared off into the fire, and then focused back on her captor, her eyes gleaming. “It was the one you must have heard this morning?”
Danny nodded.
“I knew that it had come from the ocean, the sound—where else, right?—so I walked down the dunes to the beach, down the path that leads right from my house. And I saw it immediately. It was still dark, so I could only see the outline. But I...”
The woman began breathing heavily, and a grin streamed across her face as she shook her head slowly, as if still not able to believe what she saw that first night.
“It was just...standing there, staring up towards me. At first I thought it was a man—some person in a frog suit or costume or something—but then it moved. It was slight, the movement, just a turn of its body toward me, but I knew instantly it was no man. It was something else. Something new.”
There was another pause as the woman reflected on that first encounter, trying to summon up the feelings again, but, undoubtedly, falling short.
“I couldn’t figure out what it wanted or why it was there, but it seemed to be expecting something. Something from me.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why was it expecting something from you? Why did it come out at all? It just happened to be at the spot on the beach where you were sleeping?”
“Yes, of course. That was the question, right? I thought the same thing. And, like you, I didn’t know at first.”
The woman was getting excited now, her speech increasing as she recounted the events, including the feelings she had had about them as they unfolded at the time.
“I thought it may just have been a coincidence, that this creature appeared here randomly, accidently stumbling in front of my home. Me just as likely as anyone else, right?”
The woman nodded at Danny, waiting for a reply. Danny shook his head once and shrugged. “Right.”
“But something deeper inside of me told me that wasn’t right. It wasn’t there randomly. It had come for a reason, and I was determined to find out what it was. So the next night, I repeated the same thing I had done that night before. And it returned the next morning.”
She stopped again, forcing Danny to follow up. “Why?” he asked finally. “What did it want?”
The woman gave a wry smile, her eyebrows raised as if the answer was so obvious she shouldn’t have to explain it. “It was the sounds. It was lured by the sleep sounds I was using to fall asleep.”
The woman was smiling genuinely now, pleased by the cleverness she’d had and her power of deduction.
; “So you can call this thing whenever you want? Just by putting on those sounds outside?” Danny was keeping to the facts, showing no signs that he was impressed by the woman’s discovery.
The woman scoffed, seemingly irritated by the simplicity of the question. “Not whenever I want. No! After that second morning, it...it didn’t come again. I called for it.”
The woman was pleading with Danny now, her eyes expressing to him that it hadn’t been her lack of effort that was the reason for its nonattendance.
“And I continued calling for it, playing the sounds every night. It came once more that cycle, a few mornings later, but then never again that year.”
“So... then how did you know it was the sounds? Maybe the sounds had nothing to do with it at all.”
“It was to do with it!” The woman almost growled her rebuttal, spittle flying from her mouth. She wiped her lips and chin, composing herself, and then placed another log on the fire. “The next time it came was over a year later. Fourteen months to be exact. I had played that sound every night without fail for the entire time—never once missing a night—and then it appeared again, just before dawn, fourteen months later, just as it was that first time, standing and staring up at me. It was like it had been waiting for me. But then, just as before, it walked off, back into the ocean. I...felt like...I was dying. I would have offered up myself to it to keep it from leaving again.”
Danny ignored this last part, knowing this level of desperation was probably more than the woman had intended to reveal. He stuck again to the story. “How is it that no one else has seen this thing? Aside from you?”
“Oh, plenty have seen it, for centuries. All you have to do is spend a little time on the internet and you can find dozens of writings about it. Why it made itself known to them, I don’t have any idea, but I do know the reason that I saw it, the reason it came to me. And it was by pure chance. As I said, it was drawn to the sounds that I happened to be playing those nights when I first moved in. I later learned that the sounds on those tapes were made by the mating calls of the minka whale. The God has an affinity for minka whales, perhaps; it could be its source of food, its sustenance during the rest of the cycle, during the times when it’s ocean bound. Or perhaps it hears the same sounds as it ascends the shores in some other part of the globe, some place where minka whale calls come from the shore line, just as they do at my house.”
The Sighting Page 7
