The Sighting

by Christopher Coleman

  “Stuff like that?”

  “Mythical creatures, I guess you would call them. Bigfoot and pygmies and things of that nature.”

  Sarah considered informing Tracy that pygmies were, in fact, real, but she let it go. “Really?”

  “She’s crazy, I’m telling you.”

  Sarah nodded politely, trying to keep the urgency she felt inside from surfacing. She’d been up most of the night with worry, and as the morning approached, she now truly suspected Danny was in peril. Perhaps even dead.

  But she also knew that girls like Tracy sometimes got spooked when pushed too hard. Just ease her in, she thought. Don’t get too Jane Detective on her. “Cool. Well, listen Tracy, I’m doing a follow-up story on the sighting and—”

  “You’re a reporter?”

  Sarah smirked and shrugged, and then shook her head with a dismissive shiver, as if ‘reporter’ were too lofty a title for what she did. “A freelancer. Just a hobby really.”

  Tracy studied Sarah for a few beats and then nodded approvingly. “Cool. I mean I don’t know much, just stuff Aunt Lynn told me over the years. What do you want to hear?”

  “I’d love to hear some of the stories she told you as a kid. You know, as long as you weren’t sworn to secrecy or anything.”

  Tracy shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t care. They’re just stories; there were never any secrets behind them as far as I know. And most of them are kind of silly.”

  Tracy’s stories were actually quite riveting, and the young woman was a far more compelling storyteller than Sarah would ever have suspected. Sarah considered this was because she, Sarah, now had to consider the truth of at least one of them.

  The first few Tracy told were to do with witches and spells, fantasy stories about mastery of the elements and that type of thing. But it was the story of the Ocean God that got Sarah’s attention. This is the one that matched up quite well with the story of Danny’s sighting.

  “‘He comes every year plus two,’ she would tell us, meaning fourteen months, ‘marching from the depths of the sea toward his sand-bound victim, who lay helpless and ignorant, placed there by his master of the shore.’” Sarah snickered. “She would tell it just like that, real old-timey and mysterious, like she was sitting around a bubbling cauldron with steam rising up around her.”

  Tracy laughed aloud now at this descriptive notion, not seeming to consider that the story she was recounting contained a character very similar to the one in the picture on her kitchenette table.

  “‘Lured by the cries of the minka’” Tracy continued, ‘“It is drawn at dawn each day for not more than two weeks, taking one victim and one alone. Once sated for the season, it returns to the Atlantic, where it begins its wait again.’”

  Sarah felt the bulge in her throat and a chill spill down her back, one which expanded out to the rest of her body, nearly freezing her with terror. “At dawn?”

  Tracy shrugged. “That’s how the story went. Are you okay, Ms. Needler?”

  Sarah checked her watch. It was five minutes after seven. “What time is sunrise?” she asked rhetorically, and with far more frenzy than she’d intended.

  “I don’t know. It’s still pretty dark out because of the rain, but probably soon. But...wait, do you believe in this? You think the Ocean God story is about that thing in the paper?”

  Sarah was on her feet now, gathering her notes and shoving them into her bag. “Thank you, Tracy, you’ve been a big help.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Um...I have to get back to the office. I have a deadline to meet for this story.”

  “What ‘office?’ I thought you said you were a freelancer.”

  “They...uh...sometimes let me use their office for writing.” Sarah was at the door now. She turned to Tracy and extended her hand. “Thank you again, Tracy.”

  Tracy calmed her expression now and looked at Sarah sternly. “Is this a real thing? Because if it is, I want to see it.”

  Sarah held her stare for a moment and then walked out the door, Tracy following behind her.

  Chapter 17

  The bottle landed squarely on Lynn Shields’ jaw, and the resistance in Danny’s hand was ecstasy. He absently wondered if that was the first time in his life he’d ever struck another human with all his force, and then decided it was.

  The sound of distress that erupted from the woman’s mouth was a mixture of startle and pain, and the result of the blow opened the only window Danny was going to get. If he missed this opportunity, he was dead; there was no room for hesitation.

  Through the beam of the tumbling flashlight and the dim glow of the nearly-risen sun, Danny watched Lynn stumble backwards from the boat and then instinctively run several more yards in retreat, creating as much distance as possible between her and her assaulter. Dawn had almost reached the beach, and he could see that she hadn’t entirely lost her balance and was still on her feet, facing backwards, less than ten yards away from him.

  Danny also noted that the gun hadn’t discharged, which suggested she had dropped it along with the flashlight. But it was still a guess, and since he couldn’t see the firearm in either her hand or the sand, he had to assume she still had it. His instinct was to continue attacking the woman with his water-filled sack, to beat her with it until she was bloody and unconscious. But he couldn’t take the chance if she still had the weapon. All he could do now was run.

  Danny’s legs were weakened from lack of use during his short time in captivity, and the heavy wet sand made running a nightmare. But he gave his full effort, relentlessly fighting the burn in his thighs and hips, and as he slowly progressed past the boat, trudging south toward the pier, he coughed out a tiny laugh, knowing that just a few more yards and he’d be at the next beach access and only a few seconds from escape.

  And then came the shots.

  One, two, three, four, five. They came in such rapid succession that Danny never knew which one of the bullets hit him, but the force on his upper back and right shoulder felt as if he’d been blindsided by a wrecking ball.

  He fell to the sand instantly, as if he’d tripped over a hidden wire that had been extended from the dunes to the water. His left cheek was buried in the sand, arms in arrest position beside him, and Danny watched in horror as cloudy red rivulets of water flowed chaotically past his eyes, desperately making their way from his shoulder to the sea.

  He tried to rise again, but the instant he lifted his torso, two more rounds whizzed above him, collapsing him back to his stomach. The impact on his injured shoulder sent sheets of cold pain through his body, and for the first time in Danny’s life, he said a prayer of death.

  SHE’D PUT SEVEN ROUNDS in the gun, a move she thought of as especially prudent at the time, never imagining she’d need to fire even one. But now the last had been fired and the gun was empty.

  Lynn was irritated with her last reaction—there was no reason to fire those final two shots, especially from that distance and with as little visibility as she had in the storm—but she could see the runner attempting to get to his feet and she panicked.

  It didn’t matter though. She knew that he’d been hit with at least one of the shots and was now hurt. Hurt and emotionally beaten. And there would be no dropping of her guard this time; she’d been fooled once and thus not again.

  Lynn looked west toward the sky in the distance and saw nothing but blackness. The clouds hung like soiled drapes, indicating the storm was likely to last for several more hours. It was a blessing, of course, since the heavy rain would keep any beachgoers and deck viewers away for the bulk of the morning. But all it took was one set of eyeballs; she needed to get her prisoner off the beach soon.

  A giant crash of thunder exploded to the east, startling her to its attention. Lynn pivoted and looked to the ocean. She stood staring in awe as she watched the waves, enthralled by their battle with each other and the ferocity with which they jockeyed for position as they fought toward the shoreline. Even if everything
had gone as planned, she thought, without the attempted escape of Danny Lynch, there would have been no way to get the boat anywhere close to the distance necessary to dump his body in a place where it would disappear forever. It was foolish for her to have even devised it, considering the forecast.

  But none of it mattered now. With one swing of a satchel, her plan had collapsed, and her only current option was to bring the runner back to the grotto. There she would have to accomplish things in a more traditional way. His corpse would deteriorate quickly in the cave, and the smell, she knew, was likely to become an issue, possibly exposing the existence of her dirt dungeon once the weather cleared and people returned to the beach. But she wouldn’t allow him to sit more than a day or two. The next calm day would see her out on the water hours before dawn, the body of Danny Lynch in tow.

  Lynn walked toward the man lying on his stomach, fighting against the wind and rain as she approached, and then stood over him with the gun—empty and impotent—pointed at the back of his head. “Turn over,” she said, speaking as loudly as she could above the sound of the storm.

  No movement.

  “Turn over!” she repeated. She was screaming now, her body leaning forward with her shoulders back, neck craned.

  Slowly, the runner extended his left arm into the sand, straight above his head, and then rolled over onto his left side. His right arm followed reluctantly, flopping limply to the sand and producing a tortured scream from the man.

  “Now stand up.”

  Danny Lynch took a deep breath and then grimaced as he sat up, hanging his head between his knees before finally rising to his feet. His head was bowed as he stood there, his eyes on the ground at his feet, but as he looked up and faced Lynn, she thought she detected a flicker of terror in them, just a flash really, instantaneous in its length, some look of dread that went beyond the certainty of his own, momentary death. It was the delirium again, she figured. She would think of that look only once again, and the thought would last for only a fraction of a second, just before the last air of life left her body.

  Danny moved to his left, sideways, almost stumbling, and then he stopped so that his back was to the dunes and he was facing the ocean. Lynn moved the quarter circle with him, squaring him off, remaining face-to-face with her hostage, her back now to the ocean.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I can’t blame you for that attempt; though, of course, you will have to pay for it.”

  “I thought we were going for an outing.” Danny grunted, holding his left elbow with his good hand, pinning the wounded arm against his body.

  Lynn recognized that if she didn’t get the man of the beach in the next minute or two, he was going to collapse from blood loss, and at that point she would be forced to drag him. “We’re going to head back to the grotto, Danny. It seems this wasn’t the best day for a boat ride after all. Let’s go.” She waved the gun in the direction of the dune cave.

  “I need a doctor.”

  “You’ll need a medical examiner.” Lynn snapped out her reply almost before Danny had finished his sentence. She could feel that her eyes were wide now, crazed, and she was no longer interested in her own restraint. She just needed to get him back in the grotto, that was priority one; once he was back in control, she would head up to the house to find another bullet. The death shot had to come now, this morning, while the storm was still raging and the report would be muffled by the cacophony of the storm.

  “I want to see it with you. I can help you.”

  Lynn wasn’t entirely sure she had heard the words correctly—the man was barely audible in the wind—but she responded as if she had.

  “You can help me with what, Danny?”

  The runner stared at her, his eyes half-open, his jaw clenched as if anticipating a shot from a needle. The dripping rain from his hair and face made him look like a madman. “You know.”

  Lynn swallowed and stared back. She had heard him correctly, and her eyes were now fixed on him, eager. She imagined she must have looked like a child on Christmas morning. Finally, she broke herself from the spell of possibility, the thoughts of having a partner in the miracle of the God. She’d considered it once before, with her lover and once future husband, but that had ended like all the rest of them.

  Lynn replaced her somber, hopeful look with a wide smile. “You can’t help me, Daniel Lynch. It’s over. Your words are those of desperation. What wouldn’t you say to convince me to let you go?”

  Danny stayed silent.

  “I know you believe me to be crazy. And I understand that thinking. The fact is, I am a bit crazy. I’ve lived alone for so many years now that I must be. But I’m also right. You saw it yourself.”

  “I did see it, Lynn, that’s why I want to help you.”

  Lynn studied the man’s face, his eyes were wide, and his breathing was heavy and labored.

  “It was amazing. The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yes,” Lynn whispered.

  “And I want to see it again. And you’re the only one that knows how to summon it.”

  The runner stood like a statue in front of her, the sheets of rain so thick around him that his very presence had become a blur.

  “It would have been possible once, Danny. But it’s too late for you now. It’s too late fo—”

  “No Lynn. It’s too late for you.”

  The first thing she felt was the warmth on the side of her head, followed by darkness as the long, crusty fingers wrapped around her eyes and forehead. She tried to run, to break the grip, but she was immediately pulled backwards, her feet now dangling above the sand. “No!” she screamed instinctively, and then followed it with a more tempered, “How?”

  The God spread his fingers slightly, to get a better grip on her skull, Lynn presumed, and she could see the runner standing unmoved from his position. His eyes were fixed on the event happening in front of him, and Lynn knew instantly the feeling he was experiencing.

  He was drifting farther away with every second, and Lynn felt the pressure at her temples as she was being dragged down toward the water. How can it be back? she wondered.

  But the answer came almost instantaneously. It was supposed to be him. But it took the woman instead.

  The first woman.

  “Women!” she screamed into the dawn air, feeling some primal obligation to reveal this secret before she died.

  Lynn Shields had one more revelation—that the look she had detected in the runner’s eyes just moments ago wasn’t delirium at all; it was from the monster approaching her from behind.

  It was her last thought before her skull and brain were crushed by the force of her own God.

  Chapter 18

  Despite the thunder, Danny recognized the crash in the ocean instantly. It was the same one he’d heard several mornings ago, during a time when his life was still one of idleness and routine. The weather that day had been tranquil, and there had been no thunder for the sound to compete with, but Danny knew it was the same sound. He’d never forget it.

  “Turn over.” The voice was a whisper in Danny’s ears, and he first thought it may be the wind. “Turn over!”

  Danny obeyed the command this time, managing to fight through the pain in his arm and the dizziness in his head to get his back to the sand and then forward to his seat. With what he imagined was nearly the last of his energy, he rose to his feet. Any more effort beyond that was going to take a miracle.

  And then he saw it, and the miracle he needed was suddenly produced in his body in the form of adrenaline.

  Rising from the ocean like an ancient deity, something devised in the mythology of the Greeks perhaps, or maybe something more eastern—Japanese or Indian—was the mysterious animal of the sea, the one that had changed the course of his life in mere seconds.

  Danny felt his eyes flicker, but there was little more that escaped him in terms or a notable reaction. Had he been fully coherent, healthy and properly nourished, he never could have maintained the subtlety
of his response to the approaching beast. But as things were at that point, so close to death anyway, Danny managed to allow only the smallest trace of fear to show.

  The massive creature was approaching Lynn from her back, but also slightly to her side on the left. Even if could stall the woman long enough for the thing to reach her, she would eventually see it coming from the angle at which she was currently standing. To mitigate this possibility, Danny took a few steps to his left, and, thankfully, Lynn mimed him, thus maintaining the proper coordinates. She now had her back directly toward the creature.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I can’t blame you for that attempt; though, of course, you will have to pay for it.”

  Danny wasn’t sure what better ‘payment’ he could give than his very life, which this lunatic was clearly planning on taking, leaving his body to be torn apart by lemon sharks somewhere off the coast of Rove Beach. But his goal now wasn’t to debate semantics; what Danny needed to do now was keep her on the beach. For just another minute or two.

  “I thought we were going for an outing,” he said, the words coming out garbled and weak. Danny assumed this was a result of his light-headedness, which itself was a result of the blood he was losing from his shoulder at a frightening rate. Perhaps the thing approaching wasn’t real after all and was just a hallucination. Danny felt a twinge of sadness at this thought, praying it wasn’t the case.

  “We’re going to head back to the grotto, Danny. It seems this wasn’t the best day for a boat ride after all. Let’s go.”

  Danny ignored her wave of the gun and stood his ground. “I need a doctor.”

  “You’ll need a medical examiner.”

  Danny could hear that whatever sanity was left in the woman was quickly draining. If he continued stonewalling, passively resisting her commands, he’d be shot where he stood. Lynn Shields had certainly done crazier things in her life than shoot a man in cold blood. In fact, according to her, she murdered someone at a rate of almost one per year for the last twenty years or so.