by John Everson
“I love you,” he had said eventually.
“Yes…” She sighed and rolled on top of him.
Joe shook the daydream away. He had found someone special on Terrel’s Peak last night, but it wasn’t who he’d gone there looking for. And that woman might be in great danger now. He had driven by Angelica’s house on the way to work, and she hadn’t returned home. Her phone remained unanswered. Where had they taken her? What were they doing to her?
And what would they do if they found her child before he did?
Steeling himself to run through his checklist of today’s stories as quickly as possible, Joe opened a blank Word file and began to type. He wanted to get over to the registrar’s office before five.
CHAPTER SIX
Angelica’s back bounced painfully against the steel floor of the van as the vehicle turned off Main Street to head out of town. She knew where they were going, and there was nothing she could do about it. Rhonda and Monica had bound her hands as soon as they got in the van. She had struggled against them, but she was no match for Rhonda’s weight—and pure-bitch mean streak. The woman had always had a bitter fire in her that was best left alone. Beefy hands had gripped her shoulders like pincers, and Angelica had thrust a shoulder at Rhonda’s face and connected with a satisfying “oooff” coming from the target. Teeth closed on the shoulder then, and Angelica had screamed. Rhonda had let go and laughed.
Had the bitch drawn blood?
Angelica couldn’t see out the back windows, but she knew where they were going. She could feel Him getting closer with every mile.
The van lurched suddenly, and then tilted off balance, hood facing forward. The back end bounced unsteadily with a heart-skipping lurch, but then, just as quickly, the vehicle evened out again. They had reached the beach, she knew in an instant.
After a few minutes of listening to the engine whine and moan as the tires spun their way through gullies of sand, the van finally came to a sliding stop and Karen killed the lights and motor. The side door slid open and two hands reached in to help Angelica out of the van.
“Let’s go,” Rhonda growled, and pushed Angelica up from the seat. With her hands behind her, it was difficult to step down from the van, but Monica and Karen held her arms and half pushed, half dragged her down to the sand.
They herded Angelica through the dark, eerily swaying tall grass near a scattering of heavy boulders, and then down along the water. She recognized the spot instantly. It was the cove beneath the cliff, where six girls had once come on a hot sunny day in 1981 to swim.
And then there were five.
The tiny mountain loomed above them here. Its shadow blotted out much of the sky, but there was still enough light to pick their way through the rocky shore. They were headed toward a cave that was only accessible at low tide.
They had all been there once before.
A car passed on the road, growing higher and farther above them, and Angelica watched the pale nimbus of its headlights ascend to the top of the cliff. But instead of passing on, it stopped just before the peak and waited. Then the lights went out.
Somebody was parked up there. Probably some high school kids making out in the backseat, she thought as they trudged along the beach below. It was the perfect necking spot, if you could ignore the history. If she could just break away long enough to get on the path to the top…
Rhonda pounded at her back to shove her forward, and Angelica took the opportunity. She exaggerated the effect of the blow and fell into the backs of Karen and Monica. Karen lost her balance and had to catch herself on hands and knees on the sand. They both turned to rail on Rhonda.
“Take it easy, Rhon,” Monica squealed.
“I’m only giving her a taste.”
Attention momentarily diverted, Angelica ducked from beneath Rhonda’s guiding hand and leapt from her crouch to run back toward the van. The path was easy to see beyond it; the grass of the road broke where the gravel curved down to lead to the beach.
She had had the advantage of surprise, but was hampered by not having the use of her arms. Her feet slipped and sunk in the loose sand, and it felt as if she would lose her balance and fall forward to eat the beach at any moment. But she ran hard, determined to make it to the road, where she could scream for help from whoever had stopped up at the cliff. She had to get closer though. Nobody would ever hear her cry here above the crash and wash of the surf.
Angelica passed the van, her strides lengthening as she grew more accustomed to running without elbows pumping at her sides. She was going to make it!
She set one foot on the slippery incline, then another. Her head topped the rise and she was on the road that led either back into Terrel or up to the top of the cliff.
And then something heavy slammed into the back of her head, and she did, indeed, taste the ground.
The floor was cold and damp beneath her hands.
From somewhere far away she could hear voices. They were talking about her. The quiet one said, “Jesus, Rhonda, did you have to hit her so hard?”
“Yeah,” a high-pitched one added. “What do we do if she doesn’t wake up?”
“She’ll wake up,” a third voice answered, and suddenly something cool and salty splashed across her face.
It ran down her nose and into the back of her throat and Angelica coughed. Her eyes fluttered open as she struggled to breathe, choking out blood and salt and the grit of sand from her mouth.
“Told you.” Rhonda grinned. The chunky woman was kneeling above Angelica, a flannel shirt twisted up in her hands. She wrung a few more drops of water onto Angelica’s face.
The fortune-teller shook her head, and rolled away from Rhonda to find herself staring at the knees of Karen and Monica.
“Anything more you’d like to tell us about Andi?” Karen said. She sounded sad, somehow. Angelica could see in her eyes that she didn’t want to do this. Rhonda, on the other hand…
“I told you, I couldn’t do anything if I wanted to.”
“All right then.” The other woman sounded resigned. “We’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we’d love to stay and chat about the old days”— Rhonda smirked— “but the tide’s coming in. Pretty soon this cave will be closed off by the ocean. A perfect cage for our little Rachel. You understand. But you won’t be totally alone. You’ll have Him to keep you company.”
Karen cut the other woman off.
“Come on, let’s get out of here. We’ve done enough.”
And with that, the three women rose and walked, single file, out of the rocky room and into the passage that led back to the ocean.
“Does the water fill up that room during the day?” Angelica heard Monica ask as they hurried out of the cave.
“I don’t know,” Karen’s voice echoed back. “For her sake, I hope it does.”
She sounded beaten.
Angelica writhed and twisted, but succeeded only in grinding loose dirt down beneath her belt and into her underpants. That just added to her discomfort.
They had brought her back here, after all these years. To the sanctuary.
To the site where they had forged their “Covenant.”
Across the room, tucked into a crevice in the rock, a candle burned. Its flame guttered wildly as she watched, throwing eerie shadows up the wall to scrabble and scratch long fingers of light across the ceiling. She could almost see the silhouette of Him coming to claim her. If He’d been human, she knew just what He would do before He killed her. Unconsciously, she locked her knees together. But that wasn’t what she had to worry about at the moment. He wasn’t human, and He couldn’t have his way with her physically.
No.
The way He fucked you was much worse. He fucked with your mind. Made you want things. Do things. Made you sign away your future…
She was eighteen again and her name was Rachel.
“Rhonda, come over to the rock!” Rachel called, pushing a wave from in front of her with interlaced fingers. She lov
ed to watch the water break against her hands, rolling around them and splattering her with salt water. Mom warned her against swallowing the sea foam. “You’ll catch God knows what sort of germs or slimies if you go swallowing that dirty water.” But Rachel never paid the warnings much mind. She licked the spray from her lips and smiled. The taste stuck to her tongue, a near-oily residue of life. Well-salted life. Tears in a cup. Sweat in an ocean. The water was her place, her womb. And she dragged her friends here whenever she could.
“I really should get back soon,” Rhonda complained in that familiar “let’s wrap this up” tone. If the ocean was Rachel’s life documentary, it was just a short sitcom for the rest. Jump in, have a few laughs and get out without getting anything wet deep down. Soul deep. Rachel came out here to play, but the gang never seemed to totally understand that there was more. When you sat on the rocks out in the middle of the bay, you could stare into someplace beyond. Some days, she thought the whole town was really more like a pier. Just a place where you could dive off into the water, if you were brave enough. If you wanted to see what was beneath the dark, rushing waves. That was where reality was, she thought. That was where life began.
Rachel thought maybe she had skimmed the surface of those secret primordial depths, if not dove in. Her friends showed no interest in doing more than strolling out along the pier…and then turning back.
“It is getting late,” Karen chimed in. Her freckles stood out more in the dying light. She never seemed to tan in the sun, only grow paler around the freckles. Her hair hung in a long hemplike braid, its natural orange fire dulled to a sodden brown. Karen followed Rhonda in everything. And Melody, Monica and Bernadette were usually not too far behind. The bigger girl had a way of getting what she wanted.
“One more lap?”
Rhonda rolled her eyes.
“C’mon, it won’t take too long,” Bernadette offered, taking Rachel’s side for once. Rachel flashed her a smile and dove into the deep green-blue water, heading over toward the foot of the cliff. There were more shells to find there, where the rocks jutted like pylons from the water, and held on to the refuse that the tides dragged in from the depths of the ocean.
The splashing behind her increased as her friends followed. They had already piled a stash of sea treasure on the bank, but one more run wouldn’t hurt. Who knows, maybe they’d find something cool from a ship. They’d brought in a long fiberglass shard earlier today that Rachel was sure had belonged to some kind of boat.
“Maybe the pilot’s body is wedged between one of these rocks,” Rhonda had suggested drolly. “Maybe the next time we go down, we’ll find his skull.”
Karen had splashed her in the face and the whole group had struck back to shore for a while. But sunset wasn’t far off now. It was time to head home. Missing dinner was a capital offense. But Rachel really hated to go home. Any excuse that she could think of to stave off that torture…
“By tomorrow, if there is anything else left of this boat, it will all have been pulled back out to sea,” she called over her shoulder. The other girls didn’t need much prodding, however. They all had dreams of sunken treasure chests and long-lost strings of pearls in their heads.
Rachel reached the spot where they’d found the long piece of fiberglass and turned to the others. “Let’s start here. Anything you find, pile up here on the rock, okay?”
The others nodded, and split off to the surrounding boulders, taking deep breaths and then plunging their heads beneath the surface to scan the murky ground beneath.
The treasure hunt was on.
It was Bernadette who found the cave. She’d gotten quite close to shore, beyond where the rest of the group was trawling for broken clues from a broken boat. Chances are, the boat hadn’t even sunk near here, but had been washed up by the tide from miles away. All sorts of strange debris had piled into Terrel Bay over the years. Its deadly currents were legend on this coast.
“Hey, you guys! Over there.” She pointed at the base of the cliff, just a few steps of sand up from the rock-strewn water. “Is that an opening?”
“Could be,” Melody said, nodding. “Let’s check it out!”
The girls trudged out of the water to convene on the beach once more, and shaking and squeezing the water from their hair as they went, walked over to the small opening in the mountain. It was only three feet wide, but that was plenty of room for Rachel to stick her head inside.
She whistled, and the sound echoed for what seemed like miles.
“It gets bigger and bigger,” she said, pulling her head out. “It looks like a huge cave in there.”
“How come we never saw it before?” Bernadette asked, her naturally sloe eyes squinted even tighter in wonder.
“It’s probably underwater most of the time,” Karen said. “Look at how close the tide is to it now.”
“Can we look inside?” Bernadette pressed.
Rachel knew that if she had asked, Rhonda would have said no. Absolutely not. Time to go. But instead, the bigger girl turned and ran down the beach.
“I’ve got a light on my bike,” she called over her shoulder in explanation.
Ten minutes later the six bikinied Terrel High seniors were tiptoeing beneath the cap of Terrel’s Peak. A smooth rock path wound up and away from the ocean into the bowels of the mountain.
“We should follow this for only a few yards or we could get lost,” Rachel warned.
Rhonda shushed her. “Just watch out that you don’t step on any creatures from the black lagoon. We go straight in, we go straight out. It’ll be fine.”
They stepped, single file, up a slow, smooth incline. And then the path opened into a room.
Without warning, Bernadette screamed.
The other girls reached out for her, but the girl was already in motion, running across the width of the cavern into the dark.
“Bernadette, wait,” Rachel called, and the girls began to run forward after her.
Rhonda shone her light around the room, revealing glistening gray walls, but no sign of Bernadette.
“Bernadette, what the fuck?” she growled, and then her light found the girl, huddled up in a ball against the farthest wall of the cave. Her face bobbed back and forth, as if looking for something. In the light of the flash, her narrow eyes seemed to have bulged to twice their normal size.
“Did you hear him?” she whispered as the rest of the girls gathered around her.
“Hear who?” Rhonda asked.
“He said…He said he’d been waiting for us.”
“Quit screwing around, Bernie,” Rhonda barked. She always called the younger girl Bernie when she was annoyed. “We should probably get home.”
“I heard a man,” Bernadette insisted, but the rest of the girls ignored her.
“Probably just the ghost of a pirate.” Rhonda laughed. “Trying to keep us from getting at his gold. Maybe it was the guy from the boat.”
“Hey, what’s this?” Rachel called. “Shine the light here.”
She was just a few feet away, and something sparkled at her feet in the yellow light from Rhonda’s bike light. Rhonda moved closer with the light, and then they all saw it. It glinted like treasure in the light.
A box just a little bigger than a cigar box. Bits of its lid glittered silver in the light of the flash, though most of it had corroded and darkened to turn black and green from the salt air.
“Open it,” Monica squealed.
“No!” Bernadette cried.
But Rachel did. There was no lock on the fastener. Ignoring Bernadette’s warning, she tried to pry the simple metal clasp off its peg. The lid wouldn’t budge at first, but then it did, lifting off with a pop that put Rachel off balance. She fell backward to land unceremoniously on her butt, and the contents of the box spilled out onto the ground.
It was a strange collection to have hidden away in a box.
There was an artist’s thin paintbrush, its wooden handle stained a variety of dark shades. And there was a jagged charcoal
sketch pencil. A small leather-bound book. A necklace, with two horned, coupling figures. And the broken, yellowed key to a piano.
The girls all squealed with delight. They’d found it. After years of getting goose bumps and blue skin from diving and fruitlessly pulling up muck around the rocky beach, they’d found buried treasure at last! Well, a treasure chest with old junk, anyway.
“Look at this,” Rachel said, opening the pages of the book. “Whose do you suppose it was?”
“What does it say?” Melody asked. “Is it a diary?”
As they each grabbed and passed around the box’s bits of refuse, they all heard the voice that had sent Bernadette stumbling.
“So glad you could come,” it said.
This time, Bernadette didn’t scream. But the girls all looked at one another, eyes wide as if to say, “Did you hear that too?”
“It’s been so long since I’ve had the pleasant company of young women!” the voice enthused. “Please, don’t be afraid. Take what you want from the box. Each piece will bring you something special.”
It was Bernadette who’d voiced what they all were thinking.
“Are you…a…genie?” she’d whispered, her voice trembling as she looked around and around at the blank gray walls. Nobody else was in the room. Nothing moved.
“In a manner of speaking,” He’d replied. “But I don’t give wishes away for free.”
Rachel absently hung the erotic necklace around her throat, fingering the horns on its figures’ heads. Karen toyed with the paintbrush, swishing long curved lines in the sand. Each of the girls found their hands drawn to one of the pieces from the box.
The voice began to laugh. “Yes,” he said. “It has been a long time.”
Rachel felt warmth spread through her body, a tingling sensation that made the world seem fine, fine, fine. It was like being drunk. At first it felt good, after the hours they’d been in the water. But then it grew uncomfortably sunburn warm. Hot, sweating, but in a weird way. She felt excited. Dirty. She looked at the figures of the pendant at her chest and licked her lips in thirst. But not a thirst for water.
