The End of Never

by Tammy Turner

  The necklace he had given to her was a medallion of a figure, half-man and half-dragon. As he sat on the beach, it washed up on the shore from the depths of the rocky seabed. “She gave it back,” he said, crying, his heart breaking for the life and love stolen from him. “But you promised forever!” he shouted. Only the sea could hear him.

  22

  Bad Moon Rising

  “What a way to end the summer,” said a tall, tanned, young man in khaki cargo shorts and a pumpkin-orange Polo shirt. Brad Chesley was standing on the swaying deck of a sailboat named Miss Alex. His bangs, dirty blond and shaggy, hung in his hazel eyes and over the tops of his sunburned ears. He mentally created a list of what he had to do. He needed a haircut. He had to pack for the fall semester at Vanderbilt University. His parents told him to make the Dean’s List or his motorcycle would come home and stay there permanently after Christmas break.

  But what he wanted to do was to sail. June Peyton never minded him taking the Miss Alex into the harbor whenever he wished. Sometimes she accompanied him, but most of the time, she did not.

  He loved the spray of the water on his skin, the sting of an ocean breeze in his lungs, and the red sunsets that lit the water on fire in the evenings. What Brad hated was studying pre-law. “What’s so bad about not wanting to be a lawyer?” he asked the waves lapping the sides of the docked sailboat. He kicked a pile of sopping, mucus-green seaweed from the deck back into the ocean.

  As he stowed a life jacket inside a deck bench, his mind wandered to Alexandra’s shy, freckled face. He wondered when she’d be back. He would not mind seeing June Peyton’s granddaughter again, not at all. “She’s cute when she’s angry,” he recalled.

  If she had not left the island so soon to escape the storm, he was sure that she would have eventually told him that she did not like the ocean. He could tell that the endless expanse of waves frightened her, especially because she did not know how to swim.

  Leaning over the deck railing, he smiled at the rising tide. He remembered his sail into the harbor with Alexandra and her blonde friend, Taylor. That was before the hurricane warnings, before the girls had to go back to Atlanta to school. On that sail, she had fallen head first into the choppy Atlantic. She swore she saw a shark, even though he never saw a fin break the surface. He smiled about how mad she was after he’d pulled her out. He assumed, with a sigh, that she’d never want to sail again.

  Nevertheless, Brad wanted to take her sailing if she ever came back to the island. He wanted to see her again, even if she did not want to go sailing.

  Jumping to the dock, he double-checked the knotted ropes securing the sailboat to the wooden pier, just in case. As he recalled, Hurricane Emily had snuck up on the island. Only a few days before the storm had struck, Edisto Island was not predicted to be in the path of her fury. The weather forecasters on television swore she would not make landfall anywhere south of Virginia.

  The marina had weathered the storm with little damage. None of the sailboats needed any more than a scrub-down to get rid of the globs of mucky seaweed littering their decks.

  Too bad Alexandra can’t stay longer, Brad had thought at the time. But with the hurricane looming, June Peyton told her granddaughter to go home to Atlanta, which was three hundred miles inland. June repeated this reasoning again to him when she called to thank him for taking Alexandra and her friend Taylor sailing during their abbreviated visit to the island.

  In the empty marina parking lot, Brad shoved his motorcycle helmet over his head and revved the engine on his sleek, silver Ninja street bike.

  Maybe I should check on Miss June, he considered. He had to pass her driveway on Black Hall Trail to reach his parents’ beach-front estate. Just to be neighborly, in case she needs help after the storm, he told himself. Then, of course, he might ask about Alexandra.

  At the calm horizon, the ocean drank the last drops of sunlight as the sky faded from red to black. A full moon glowed above the tops of the magnolia and mossy oak forest along the lonely strip of asphalt named Black Hall Trail. The headlight on the front of the motorcycle cut through the twilight as Brad pushed the bike fierce and fast down the unlit road, his pulse racing as madly as his tires.

  Rounding a bend, he passed an ancient oak, a gaping hole scarring her wide trunk. It was then that he saw a truck in the driveway. The storm had tossed a pine tree on top of the iron driveway gate and had bent the frame toward the ground. Brad took his thumb off of the throttle and eased his purring motorcycle toward the bumper of the truck. The rear door had been rolled up, and inside, crates and reels of chain and nylon rope lay strewn across the plywood floor.

  “Hello?” Brad called at the open driver’s door. Lowering the kickstand of the bike, he shut off the engine.

  When he removed the helmet, he had to wipe sweat from his forehead. He listened patiently for an answer. “Anyone here?” he yelled.

  Peeking inside the empty truck cabin, he saw the keys still in the ignition. Something is not right, he thought.

  A low, angry growl shattered the silence.

  Their eyes met through the windshield as Brad glanced up at the broken gate. Snarling, with his lips peeled back from his yellow fangs, a mottled-brown wolf stalked the gravel driveway on the other side of the fencing.

  Slipping backward from the driver’s seat, Brad fell, rear first, to the rocky path. Scrambling to his feet and to the bike, he felt the piercing black eyes of the growling wolf boring into the back of his skull.

  Shoving on his helmet, he hit the accelerator, the rear tire fishtailing back and forth on the gravel as the motorcycle fought for traction. Hitting the paved asphalt of Black Hall Trail, the tire squealed as Brad fled toward home.

  Alone in the driveway, Cyrus pounced into the trees. He sprinted over gnarled tree roots, where, under a canopy of moss-drenched oak branches, he found Jasmine. She was resting on the rotted, termite-eaten porch steps of her crumbling shack.

  “Cyrus,” she sighed when the wolf approached from the shadows. In her lap rested a snow-white wolf pup, his belly swollen from a dinner of squirrel and rabbit.

  Nudging her elbow, Cyrus rested on his haunches and licked her wrinkled face. “Ya done a mighty good, Cyrus,” she told him and scratched his back.

  Cackling, she petted his forehead. Inside the shack, their hostage, bound and gagged, slept on the dirty wood plank floor without a stir or whimper.

  Exhausted from dragging his prisoner through the woods, Cyrus yawned happily. He preferred his wolf form.

  “Good Cyrus,” Jasmine purred, her hand scratching his upturned belly as he rolled his back against the dirt at her feet.

  He remembered and howled. His frail human body—his wrinkled flesh and straining muscle—had stopped the truck in front of the storm-damaged gate at the mouth of the Peyton Manor driveway and yanked his hostage into the woods.

  Jasmine had waited patiently. The hostage could not walk fast. Limping, his knee crushed and his hip bruised, he had collapsed at her bare brown feet when he saw her.

  “Johnny,” the witch sang and clapped her hands together. Securing his binds, Cyrus threw the hostage to the floor of the shack just before the beast inside his frail human body burst through his pale, drooping skin. The wolf reclaimed Cyrus’s body and soul for himself.

  A full moon rose above the trees. A steady ocean breeze wafted from the Atlantic toward the shack. Sucking the salty wind into her chest, Jasmine howled. With a grin on his muzzle, Cyrus wagged his tail and joined her to serenade the moon.

  By this time, Brad was parking his motorcycle outside the three-car garage in his parents’ driveway. Brad heard their song, carried well by the wind, and cringed.

  There’s another way, he thought. Miss June’s home sat on the beach a few hundred yards south. He decided to walk there along the shore.

  Alone in her bedroom, June heard the hellish howls from the woods. “Jasmine,” she said, raising the window to listen to the feral cries, “and Cyrus.”

  In the
study downstairs, Ian snored loudly enough to shake the dust from the fireplace mantel. June suspected he might not wake up for days.

  “For a retired doctor, sometimes he’s not very clever,” she said.

  Slamming the window down, she cringed as the bellows of the beast and his wicked mistress swelled in fervor and zeal, their cries racing through the treetops with the rising of the moon.

  “Ian should have known better,” she said, shuffling from her room.

  Outside the door in the silent hallway, Dixie whimpered and whined at her feet until June scooped the poodle into her arms. Tucking the dog under her robe, she carried her slowly, patiently, down the hallway toward the attic door.

  Ian had not crushed her sleeping pills as he should have before he hid them in the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he served June for dinner. She had hidden the capsules under her tongue until he excused himself for a cigar on the veranda. Ian never suspected she had spit the pills into his glass of whiskey. As the cubes of ice danced in the glass of bitter booze, the pills dissolved slowly, waiting for Ian to finish his cigar and return to the study.

  “Thank you, darling,” he told June when she handed him the drink. Five minutes later, he had collapsed into a worn leather armchair by the fireplace, his glass slipping from his fingers and shattering as the crystal clattered to the floor.

  June did not want to eat or sleep. She was horrified that her granddaughter might be in danger because she had failed to protect Alexandra from family secrets.

  Dixie scrambled from her arms as they approached the staircase door. The dog remained a cautious step behind her mistress while June nudged the door open to the attic steps. One by one, they climbed the creaky steps until they found the attic landing. A shaft of moonlight illuminated a mattress and army locker, the only furnishings in the bare room.

  In the moonlight, June kneeled and opened the locker. Dixie growled, pawing frantically at the wooden floor. “Hush,” June scolded the frightened dog.

  “June Bug,” someone whispered. “What are you looking for in there?”

  June stroked the scratched, olive-green helmet on top of a heap of uniform clothing. The name Peyton was still clear in the white-painted letters across the back. “Joseph,” she said softly.

  “June Bug,” the voice called to her again.

  Slowly turning her face to the window, she saw Joseph in the moonlight. He was tall, handsome, and smiling. His army uniform was pressed and his boots had been shined. Her big brother beamed at her.

  “I’ve seen him,” he told his sister.

  June did not speak. She did not move for fear of startling the animated apparition. Hiding in the shadows, Dixie whimpered and waited.

  “Who, Joey?” June asked as she raised herself timidly to her feet.

  “Jonathan,” her brother answered.

  With a moan, June crumpled to the mattress. “No,” she murmured. “Please, no,” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Her brother’s face evaporated into a glowing mist of sparkle and haze.

  “June Bug.” She heard her name again.

  Closing her eyes, she rested her head on the mattress and curled her legs up to her chest. The ghost was gone and Dixie decided she could crawl from her corner. Snuggling close to June’s back, the dog drifted to sleep, as fear and exhaustion thrust June into unconsciousness.

  She saw Alexandra as a youngster. “Baby girl,” she murmured in her sleep, and dreamed of a summer’s day a long time ago.

  In June’s dream, Alexandra cradled a skinny blonde doll in her arms and grinned. Giggling, she stuck her tongue through the hole in her mouth where her two front teeth had been.

  “Five and feisty you are,” the cook said, approaching the table on the veranda, a tower of chocolate-chip pancakes wobbling in his hands. “Here we are, little missy,” said Patrick. He laid the butter-drenched, maple-syrup-soaked breakfast platter in front of the little girl. “Dig in while they’re hot, Miss Alex.”

  “Thank you, Misser Patrick,” she said, smiling. Behind her, the sun rose over the ocean. “Can Princess Britney and Bob eat some, too?” she asked, tucking her blonde doll and toy dinosaur into her lap. She grabbed a fork in her fist.

  “Of course,” Patrick agreed, retreating across the wooden porch. “I’ll fetch them each a plate. Would they fancy some bacon, also, do you think?”

  Alexandra glanced down at the faces of her guests and vigorously nodded her head yes. Diving into the pile of pancakes, she rubbed her belly.

  The round Irish cook returned to the table on the veranda with a platter of crispy bacon and two fresh plates. “For you, Sir Bob,” the cook said, setting a plate for the plastic dinosaur. Then he turned to the blonde doll. “And for you, your highness,” he said, heaping pancakes on the guests’ plates.

  “Misser Patrick,” Alexandra said, tugging on his apron. “May I please have some juice?” she asked, poking out her bottom lip.

  “Oh look at me now!” Patrick told her. “I’ve gone and forgotten your juice, lassie. I’ll be back in two shakes of a leprechaun’s fist.”

  Alexandra giggled, her long strands of ringlets cascading down her shoulders and into the syrup-smothered plate of pancakes. Straining for the platter of bacon, she dropped a handful of crispy strips into the red sand pail resting at the foot of her chair.

  “That’s for the birdies over there,” she said to her toys. She pointed her chubby hand to the beach, which was beyond the high sand dunes at the foot of the backyard. Peyton Manor was quiet; only Alexandra and Patrick were stirring so early in the dawn.

  “Let’s go,” she said hurriedly. She slid from her perch. She was wearing a neon-pink bathing suit with a silver star stitched across the chest.

  Throwing the dinosaur and the doll into her red pail with the bacon strips, she scooted across the veranda to a set of wooden steps and jumped to the grass. Skipping across the backyard, she reached the sand dunes and glanced back at the porch. She did not see Patrick, who was still inside, looking for juice. Ahead of her, she saw the sandy shoreline and choppy ocean. A light breeze lapped the low waves against the beach.

  Scampering across the sand dunes and to the beach, Alexandra hunted for a sand castle she had built the previous afternoon. Not one sign of her triumph remained. The mighty castle had been knocked down overnight when the full moon washed the high tide ashore. Plopping herself in the sand by a driftwood log, Alexandra stuck out her bottom lip and pouted.

  “It’s gone,” she sniffled, her chubby fingers gripping the handle of her sand pail.

  The smell of fresh bacon soothed her worries. She sucked on a fatty strip and rested her toys on the beach beside her. Humming to herself, she gathered her yellow shovel and commenced a fresh excavation.

  Bob the Dinosaur and Princess Britney stared at her in silence as the hole at her feet grew larger. On the veranda across the dunes, the cook realized his guests had abandoned breakfast.

  “Alexandra!” Patrick called into the air, his hands cupped around his mouth.

  Determined to rebuild her castle, Alexandra dug furiously on the sun-soaked beach, her back to the sea. Dig and toss. Dig and toss. The dry sand flew into the air.

  Suddenly she shrieked and dropped her plastic shovel, startled at what she had found.

  Her soft voice carried to the edge of the shore. There, the waves lapped against the shins of a silent man. His khaki pants were damp from the waves. He had been gazing away from her, toward the rising sun on the horizon. His hair was thick, with wavy, blond strands. At his temples were silver streaks. He turned his head in the direction of the innocent squeal.

  “Let me help you,” he said solemnly. As he rushed to help, his bare feet trampled Bob and Britney.

  “It’s okay, misser,” Alexandra said. She held a plastic army man to his eyes. “Some boy mussa lost this guy.”

  The man smiled and knelt beside her. “May I?” he asked. His gray eyes locked on the tiny green figure.

  “My name
is Alexandra,” the girl said, smiling proudly.

  “That’s a big name for a little girl,” the stranger told her. “My name is Joseph,” he said, bowing to her. “It is a pleasure,” he said, offering his hand.

  “You look sad, Misser Joey,” the girl said, shaking his hand softly as a frown spread across her pink, freckled cheeks.

  “I’m lost, you see,” he explained. “I cannot seem to find my way home.”

  “That’s my Granny June’s house over there,” Alexandra said, pointing to the roof peeking above the sand dunes.

  “My sister is named June,” the man said, kneeling beside the hole in the sand.

  From over the dunes, her grandmother called, “Alexandra, where are you?

  June stalked across her backyard, fear seizing her heart. Could her granddaughter have fallen into the ocean? With a determined but trembling step, she mounted the top of the dunes and spied Alexandra talking to herself across the beach.

  “There she is. There’s my Granny,” Alexandra said, waving her arms. “See?” she said, turning to the stranger. But the man had gone. She looked up and down the wide shoreline, but he had disappeared.

  Racing across the beach, Granny June swallowed the girl in her arms and held her tight. “You scared me, Alexandra. Don’t ever run off like that again. Promise me.”

  “Okay Granny,” Alexandra said, sniffling. “I just wanted to feed the birdies,” she explained, pointing her fingers at the bacon bits that she had spread across the sand.

  “Who were you talking to just now?” Granny June asked.

  “He’s gone,” Alexandra said, glancing at the ocean. “He told me his name was Joey,” she said, plopping back down next to the hole she had begun digging in the shifting sand. The tiny toy army man lay on his back, his rifle aimed at the cloudless blue sky. “He said he had a sisser named June. Just like you, Granny.”

  A fire kindled in the woman’s heart. Granny June retrieved the plastic army figurine from the sand. “What else did he say, Alex?” she asked, petting her granddaughter’s auburn ringlets.