The Last Night at Tremore Beach

by Mikel Santiago

  Jip and Beatrice came running up the seawall, and when the applause finally died down, we sat in the front row of chairs. Jip sat on my lap and Beatrice squeezed in next to Judie. And when the first movie started, I wanted to forget about all the bad stuff and just focus on that moment of pure joy. Maybe I should start playing in front of the public regularly again. Get a band together and go on tour. I felt better about this idea than any new melody that might occur to me. And maybe, just maybe, the muse would return to me.

  Before all that, however, there were still issues to resolve.

  TWO

  THERE WAS one last thing to take care of. And that night was the perfect moment to do it. The kids would be staying with Judie at the hostel. So no one would be in danger, except, perhaps, me. The house on Tremore Beach was calling me. It had sent me a clear and concise message that I should go there alone to learn its final secret. I knew it in my bones, the way I simply knew I shouldn’t have gone out the night of the storm a few months back. The same way I knew my mother wouldn’t live longer than a year the last time I saw her dressed in a hospital gown, as the hospital doors closed on her.

  After the movie, the party moved over to Fagan’s, where everyone insisted on buying me a pint. I graciously accepted every offer, while the children drank sodas with their new friends, sitting on barrels in the back of the pub, joking and laughing. Beatrice was proud to have a famous dad and her two friends, the English girls, shyly came over to ask for my autograph. “Beatrice said you wouldn’t mind.”

  Leo and Marie came by, too. I was surrounded by the social club ladies, Donovan and his clan, even the flirtatious mail carrier, Teresa Malone, pressed her ample bosom up against me. But I managed to wriggle free and step off to the side with Leo. He unleashed one of his trademark smiles, which made his whole face light up, and he clapped me on the back.

  “You were superb, Peter. Your music touched all of us.”

  “Thanks, Leo, really. Look,” I said, lowering my voice, “I owe you an apology.”

  The gracious Leo Kogan patted my cheek like a kid and smiled.

  “Forget it, Peter. You’re already forgiven.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts. I’m serious. You made a tiny mistake—maybe not even a mistake, at all. I know you’re a good friend. And that means more to me than some small indiscretion. As far as I’m concerned, it’s forgotten.”

  “Okay. But at least let me buy you a beer.”

  “You read my mind. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve sat on your back porch in the afternoon, tossed back a couple Belgians, and fixed the world’s problems. Besides, that fence is going to need a second coat of paint pretty soon. . . .”

  My smile faded a bit at the mention of the fence, and I nearly told Leo about what had happened that afternoon. But I still hadn’t allowed myself to believe it had happened. Don’t screw it up again. Just leave it alone, I thought. Instead, I promised I’d go to Derry that week and bring back a few Tripel Karmeliets I’d seen on sale. And we’d drink them watching the sunset, fixing all the world’s issues, as friends, the way it should be.

  We chatted for a bit longer, and then Leo and Marie said goodnight. The kids were spent, too, and around eleven, I told Judie we should probably get going. She still had a couple of things to take care of, so she gave me the keys to the store and told me to make myself at home. “I’ll sleep in the office so I don’t wake you,” she said.

  I put the kids to bed. We lay down and talked a little bit about their trip on the boat and how a crab had climbed up on Jip’s leg. Beatrice seemed taken with Seamus, who’d piloted the boat around the lagoon. She told me how he’d taught her to dive headfirst off the bow of the boat. I seem to remember him being a little old for Beatrice, but I guess he was a more attractive option than the O’Rourke boys. Besides, the older kids always seem to get all the attention. I figured I was about to watch a “made in Donegal” summer romance unfold.

  They both fell asleep, and I lay watching them for a while, wondering if I should let myself fall asleep and forget all this business about returning to the house.

  Judie arrived around twelve-thirty. I heard the door to the hostel open and shut and listened to her footsteps across the floor. Just as she said, she headed off to sleep in her office. That would make slipping out easier.

  My watch read two-thirty when I decided it was time to go. The hostel was quiet. The children were asleep. Their steady breathing and their small bodies lying gently under the covers filled me with tenderness. I kissed each of them goodnight.

  I dressed in the bathroom and tiptoed down the stairs, trying not to make a sound. It would be hard for Judie to hear me leave from the back of the store.

  The town was fast asleep after its big night. The street was plunged in darkness. Windows shuttered, cats asleep on rooftops, the distant sound of some night owl’s television set.

  The Volvo was parked down by the port. I started it the way you tear off a Band-Aid: quickly and without hesitation. Someone likely would have heard the car start up. Maybe some neighbor even peeked out his window out of curiosity. I drove slowly up the main drag until I’d passed the last of the houses on Main Street. One mile down the road, I turned up the narrow road that led toward the beach.

  Nighttime seemed even blacker on that dark stretch of road through the countryside. The sky was clear. Stars shone like silver buttons against the void. The bog on either side of the road was a wrinkled shroud of darkness over the earth. My headlights illuminated dried, twisted tree trunks, the occasional nocturnal bird perched on their branches, and the suddenly twisting highway. It was a good thing I was driving slowly that night.

  Eventually, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out the horizon. A golden beam from a distant lighthouse sailed over the dark ocean toward the western sky.

  It wasn’t long before I reached Bill’s Peak. My headlights swept over the old lightning-singed elm. I turned left and started down the slope. My house sat dark and still. As I approached, I saw the downed fence. I’m not sure what would have been worse: to find the fence intact and realize my mind was still playing tricks on me or to find it broken. The way it was. Demolished on the ground.

  It hadn’t been my imagination, after all.

  I parked the car a few yards away from the house. The scene was exactly as I’d seen it in my visions. Except that there was no storm overhead that night.

  I stepped out of the car and stood in front of the house, ready for whatever came next.

  A gentle breeze blew in, rustling the tall grass, a cricket singing its song somewhere in the yard. But nothing else.

  I stood there for nearly thirty minutes, smoking a couple of cigarettes outside the car. Maybe I was supposed to do something else? Well, the visions had started when I was in the house. Okay, then. Let’s do it. Let’s go inside the house.

  I opened the door like I was an intruder. Everything was as I’d left it that afternoon in a rush. The box with the electrical gear was on the living room floor with its contents of cables and other technical equipment strewn around it.

  I sat on the couch. Outside, the crashing waves were the only sound. I flipped through the magazines on the coffee table, and I was even tempted to turn on the television. This was stupid. . . .

  Maybe I was wrong, after all. I’d thought I had the power to make the visions come at will. Where did I get such an idiotic idea?

  I got up and went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. Then I climbed the stairs and checked every room. The beds were unmade, and clothes and books were strewn on the floor. I picked it all up. The drive out here shouldn’t be a complete waste of time.

  I headed to my room. My bed was unmade, too. I lay down, pillow folded behind my head, and kicked off my shoes. I sat the ashtray on my stomach and grabbed a cigarette. Only three left, now. I lit it, took a deep breath and blew a long puff of smoke into the darkened room.

  Time to go and stop being such an idiot, Peter
Harper. Nobody’s coming. Not tonight. No Marie in her nightgown. No van full of murderers. Better to spend what’s left of the night with Judie and your children, and forget about all this shit. Tomorrow is another day. And who knows? Maybe the visions are gone for good.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Judie and that night a few months ago when we were alone in this very bed. Her on top of me, grinding her hips. No one could hear us way out here in this house on the beach, and she loved that. She liked being able to moan as loud as she wanted.

  I took another drag.

  God, I wish she were here right now. . . .

  And that’s when I noticed it. The throbbing. Growing stronger inside my head. It started like it usually did, a gentle beating in my temples, a sort of fluttering in my veins, until the pounding spread all over the inside of my skull, and what felt like a pair of headphones grew louder and tighter against my ears.

  I opened my eyes and snuffed out the cigarette. It was about to happen.

  In a few seconds, the throbbing became the blinding pain I’d felt too often before, that railroad spike that pierced one ear and all the gray matter in between until it came out the other side. I covered my ears and howled in pain, as if a dentist were drilling a rotten tooth without Novocaine. I writhed in bed and fell to the floor along with the ashtray filled with ash and burned out butts. Just as I opened my mouth to scream, the spike in my head suddenly disappeared. The pain dissolved into thin air. I lay panting on the bedroom floor.

  Then, I heard a door slam out in the yard. A car door.

  Outside, the wind had begun to howl. Rain pattered against the windows.

  Abracadabra. Hocus-pocus. It worked. . . .

  I lay in silence on the floor, my ears wide open.

  I heard the sound of an engine. And voices. They’re here. Again. Out in front of the house.

  It was magic. And I was in charge of it. I nearly burst out laughing in my excitement. I had to contain myself and cover my mouth. Now, all that mattered was what happened next.

  I dragged myself along the carpeted floor to the window. It was hung with pale yellow curtains I’d never really cared for, but that night I was glad I never threw them out. I pressed up against the wall and slithered up it like a reptile until I could peek out the window. Voilà! There were my old friends. Here we were, all of us reunited again.

  Down by fallen fence, parked next to my Volvo, was the GMC van with the chrome rims, shining in the darkness like a UFO. Its two headlights and two fog lights lit up the front of the house like Christmas.

  Well, here was a new scene. Something which I hadn’t seen before in other visions, but which made perfect sense. The pudgy guy and the evil John Lennon dragged a body toward the van. The woman was either passed out or dead, her bare feet twisted inward as she was dragged along the ground. The men lugged her by her limp arms. Her head hung down, and she was wearing the same outfit as the first time I saw her. It was Marie. The men sat her on the ledge of the door and flipped on an inside light.

  Now I could see she was still alive but completely out of it. She swayed as if she were drugged and kept mouthing something to the men. She was pleading, crying.

  The other woman appeared from the side of the house. I couldn’t make out her face, just her dark hair gathered up in a ponytail. All dressed in a black outfit, she headed right for the van and stood directly in front of Marie. She grabbed Marie by the hair and yanked it to lift her head. She slapped her twice across the face, hard. She yelled something at her that I couldn’t make out and hit her twice again.

  “Goddamn evil bitch . . .” I whispered.

  It was time to stop being a coward and do what I’d come here to do. These were my visions, I had to remind myself of that. I’m in control here. . . .

  But my body felt heavy. The ground felt like quicksand, and it was hard to breathe. I was scared. Truly afraid.

  I turned away from the window. I crawled along the floor and out the bedroom door. I stood up in the hallway. The one good thing about having this crazy hallucination more than once was that I knew there were only three of them, and they were all outside. I hurried downstairs, determined to do something—but what that was, I wasn’t quite sure yet.

  Things were different in the living room, too. My box of tech gear wasn’t spilled on the ground. The door to the terrace was wide open and the storm was blowing in. The curtains fluttered like the gown of some shapeless phantom, and the floor and television were covered in rainwater. The coffee table was knocked over, the magazines strewn across the floor, the couch cushions rumpled and scattered.

  There was a familiar scent in the air. I recognized it immediately from the fireworks that filled the sky in Amsterdam on New Year’s Eve: It was the smell of gunpowder.

  Doors slammed shut outside. I wasn’t about to let them get away. I rushed to the fireplace and grabbed the poker.

  Maybe they’ll shoot and kill me, but this is a dream, isn’t it? You can’t die in your dream, can you?

  I ran up the hall with the poker in the air like Excalibur, screaming like a man possessed, “SONS OF BITCHES . . . !”

  They were just getting into the van and shutting the doors. They must not have seen me or heard my war cry. I leaped down the front stairs and over the shrubbery, racing toward the van. But the sliding door shut with a thud, and the van’s engine roared to life. It swerved and banged into the side of my Volvo, and then pulled away in a cloud of exhaust and sand.

  “STOP!” I yelled as loud as I could, but the van was already racing up the hill without slowing.

  No, it can’t end like this. We’re going to finish this, wherever it leads. You know where they’re taking her: to her house. And that’s where Leo will be—dead or alive. Get in your goddamn car and follow them!

  I tried to open the door to my car, but it was locked—even though I distinctly remembered leaving it unlocked. Right, this didn’t happen today. The keys should be on the hook inside.

  I ran back into the house. I looked in the key holder, but it was empty. Why? I rushed to the wrecked living room. The gunpowder smell was stronger here—stronger still as I reached the kitchen door. What the hell had happened here? The lights were off, but the reflected light off the stainless steel appliances was enough to reveal three people sitting around the table. Sitting still in the dark.

  A man and two children, about the ages of thirteen and eight.

  I stood frozen in the doorway. The sound of the fireplace poker falling to the ground seemed to reverberate for miles around.

  I opened my mouth to say something, anything, to these three motionless figures who sat so still in the darkness. But I couldn’t say a word. What would I have said, if I could?

  Jip’s eyes were open. He looked straight ahead, emotionless. His arms were resting on the table, his wrists duct taped together. He was shot diagonally through one side of his forehead. The hole looked enormous against his tiny head, a wound that barely bled. However, the back of his head was blown open like cruel jack-in-the-box, matter hanging out of the gaping wound and spattered against the back of the chair.

  Beatrice was no longer Beatrice. She was slumped backward and didn’t have a face. I couldn’t tell her mouth from her eyes. She was a jumble of disfigured features. Her hands were also bound with duct tape, her legs beneath her twisted at impossible angles.

  Finally, I looked at the man who could be none other than me. Somehow, I was standing face-to-face with my own corpse.

  The body had slumped forward, leaning against the edge of the table. His mouth was half open, as if he’d wanted to say something the instant someone put a bullet through one of his eyes. As if he were cursing the slug that was about to burrow through his skull.

  I approached the table and closed Jip’s eyes. His cold eyelids fluttered closed like the wings of butterfly. My last shred of sanity drained out of me in a single tear.

  I avoided looking at Beatrice again, her face a jagged void. It was too horrible to contemplate. I th
ought maybe I should put a plastic garbage bag over her. I didn’t want anyone to see her this way.

  Then I looked at my deceased self. At the eye that was still intact and looking straight ahead, as if still alive. I felt myself sinking, sinking, disappearing down a dark and endless rabbit hole. . . . Fade to black.

  HE’S OVER HERE! Pete, Pete! Oh my God!

  Is he . . . ?

  No, he’s breathing. Quick, help me get him into the car . . . !

  SIRENS. SIRENS. SIRENS.

  I’m sorry, Clem. I’m so sorry. Our babies. Our babies!

  Easy, Pete.

  He’s hallucinating. Poor lad.

  It’s better if he just falls back asleep. Does it have to be so noisy in here?

  Sirens. Sirens. Sirens.

  THERE WERE COPS HERE. The cops who were guarding the bodies in Dad’s newspaper. I was suddenly surrounded by them. Strange faces who stared down at me impassively. They were taking me somewhere, and all I wanted was to see my kids. But they just kept saying, “Your kids are fine, Peter,” as they groped for my arms. Why would they keep saying that, when I knew it wasn’t true? I jerked my arms away. I wanted to go home, back to the house, back to my babies. But the arms clamped down on mine and wouldn’t let me go. I fought back. I punched the air to get free and hit something that felt like bone. Someone screamed and then hands were all over me again. I fought even harder, swinging wildly. Then, there was a hive, a cloud of wasps all around me. “Goddamn wasps, leave me alone!” Then someone grabbed me by the throat and held me down. I could barely breathe. One of the wasps stung me on the arm, dug its stinger deep into me. And I sank back into my darkened hollow.