The Origin (The Sighting #2)

by Christopher Coleman

  “No, not exactly.”

  “I must have misread it then.”

  “You’re calling me from the Wickard Beach Detention Center, so let me guess, you need money?”

  “Not exactly.”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Okay, yes, I need money. But it’s just for bail, so you’ll get it back.”

  “Yeah, that makes it so much better. You really do love me.”

  Danny sighed. “Listen, there isn’t anyone close by I could call. You know, being new here and all. It’s kind of the reason they won’t just release me, I think. They know I’m renting my place and I guess they figure if they let me go, I’ll flee. Just move on to some other town like some transient.”

  “Yeah, I don’t blame them. That seems to be your M.O.”

  Danny’s suspicions of Sam from the other morning resurfaced. She seemed to know more about him than he’d revealed to her.

  “Anyway, you were the first person I thought of. But obviously I understand if you won’t help me. Or can’t. I don’t expect you to be able to get your hands on that much cash at a moment’s notice.”

  “Well, I don’t know how much you need, Danny, but before I make a decision in either direction, I think it’s fair to ask what you’ve been arrested for.”

  “Obstruction. And I’m no lawyer, but I know that charge is a joke. They had to throw something generic at me to detain me, but they’ll never make it stick. It doesn’t even make sense.”

  “So there was some other reason they wanted to lock you up then? Or are you just claiming general small-town cop harassment of the new guy in town?”

  Danny paused. “The sheriff thinks I killed someone.”

  Sam was silent for a moment and then asked calmly, “Wow, really?”

  “Yeah, but I guess he wasn’t ready to go that far with the charges. Not just yet anyway.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Who died?”

  “Well, I guess in fairness, they don’t know for a fact the guy is even dead, they just...I found an arm on the beach outside of my house this morning. They printed the hand to the father of a kid I saved from drowning yesterday. Two kids actually.”

  Danny could hear how rambling he must have sounded, but all of it was the truth, and he figured the truth—as far as his arrest was concerned—was the right thing to tell at this point, especially to a relative stranger from whom he was asking for cash. He said nothing else though, waiting for Sam either to ask what the hell he was talking about or just to hang up, both of which would have been reasonable reactions.

  But she didn’t miss a beat in following the story, and, in fact, seemed up to speed. “Yeah, I think I heard something about that,” Sam said finally. “The kids from the other morning, I mean. A friend of mind has a knickknack shop on the boardwalk and she said there was quite the to-do. I didn’t realize that was you.”

  “Just trying to make a splash in my new city.” Danny could almost see Sam roll her eyes at the pun.

  “How much do you need?”

  “Five-grand.”

  Sam chuckled. “Five grand, huh? Is that all?”

  “I said I understand if you can’t help.”

  “You don’t have that much on a credit card or something? Big shot songwriter like you.”

  “Bail doesn’t work that way. You need to have cash. Or a check. And silly me, I left my checkbook at home. Didn’t think I’d be led off to a jail cell when they invited me to come down to the station and talk this morning. Again, Sam, I don’t really expect you to help me with this. There’s an ad for a bail bondsman staring back at me as I speak, so I have other options. I just thought—”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have to make a few calls first though.”

  “Really?”

  “What the hell?”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh, and another thing.”

  “Sure.”

  “The only person whoever called me Sam was an uncle that I despised. My name is Samantha.”

  Danny smiled. “Samantha, it is.”

  “Don’t go anywhere, Danny.”

  Danny hung up the phone and was immediately escorted back to his cell, which he entered with a new feeling of relief. He walked to the lone bed and sighed as he sat down on the thin mattress, placing his back against the cold, white, concrete wall that was in bad need of a new coat of paint. He closed his eyes and thought of what he needed to do once he was released, which, he’d been told, wouldn’t be until later that evening, even if Sam arrived in the next hour.

  He would need a good lawyer, he supposed, especially if he was arrested again for murder. More importantly, however, he needed to capture the beast once and for all. Not on camera, as he’d done before—there were too many modern tricks that any amateur could use to make the fake look real. No, he needed to capture it for real. And kill it.

  Danny’s heart started to race at the thought of a direct encounter with the creature. The black and purple man.

  Danny’s instincts had been sharp in bringing him to Wickard Beach. He’d learned from the drowning reports and how to analyze the trends, and he’d followed his nose as well as any big-game hunter. But now that he had tracked down his trophy, things were spiraling out of control. A man was dead; it wasn’t Danny’s fault, he convinced himself of that, but there was certainly more he could have done to prevent it from happening.

  Danny sat with his head against the prison wall for several hours, searching for a plan that never quite materialized, whispering words of a strategy one minute, only to denounce it as absurd a minute later. The facts were, without knowing where and when the creature was going to appear, there was nothing to plan. He needed a clue. He needed help.

  By sundown, his head began to bob forward, and just as he was about to fall asleep, Danny heard the clicking sound of the deputy’s key.

  “Danny Lynch. You’ve made bail.”

  Danny didn’t rise immediately, now half-wishing he could have a couple of hours to sleep before leaving.

  “You coming?”

  Danny scratched his head with both hands and then rose, following the deputy to the front desk of the station where he signed out his wallet and keys, the only two possessions he had on him at the time of his arrest.

  As he was leaving the station, he passed Officer Benitez who was entering. He caught her eye for a moment, but she quickly shifted her gaze forward.

  Danny didn’t look back as he walked out the front door, feeling the cool air of freedom fill his lungs. The things he took for granted. Thoughts of prison suddenly flooded his mind as he stood on the wide stoop of the Wickard police station. That was his fate if he didn’t find the creature.

  Before the fear of life in a penitentiary fully enveloped Danny, his attention was taken to an interior light from a car parked on the opposite side of the street. The door opened quickly and within seconds, Samantha was out and leaning against the fender, standing beneath the street lamp, waving ironically.

  Danny descended the steps, walked to the car, and gave Samantha a tired, shame-filled smile.

  “Hey there, felon,” she said.

  “Charged, but not convicted.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Details, details.”

  Danny took a deep breath. “Thank you, Sam. Sorry, Samantha. My court date is next Wednesday, and I have every intention of showing up.”

  “Well, that’s very noble of you.”

  “I’m just saying, you trusted me enough to risk five-thousand dollars, which I’m not sure why exactly, but I’m not going to skip on it. In fact, I can get you the cash when the bank opens tomorrow morning. First thing.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I know you aren’t going anywhere, Danny.”

  Danny squinted and shook his head. “And how do you know that?”

  Samantha shrugged. “You’re here for a reason. Same as me.”

  Danny nodded, studyi
ng the woman. “What do you think you know, Samantha?”

  Samantha dropped her look for a moment and then re-captured Danny’s gaze. “Let’s take a ride, Danny. Probably don’t want to raise any more eyeballs than are already up and gazing around, right?”

  Danny nodded and then made his way around the front of the car to the passenger door, keeping his eyes fixed on Samantha the whole time. He entered the car slowly, and sat tall in the seat, staring out the front windshield. “So what is all this about?”

  Samantha shifted the car into drive and pulled away from the curb, and within a few minutes, she pulled into the large parking lot of the boardwalk, having not spoken a word the entire three miles. “It’s about that thing out there. That thing you saw a little over two years ago in Rove Beach.”

  Chapter 20

  “It is so dark, Samuel. How will we ever find the woman you are looking for?”

  Samuel and Sokwa were less than a half-hour into the trek, a trek that Samuel estimated would take just under three hours, and he could see early on that the Algonquin girl’s doubts were justified. The sun was down now, and with his eyes not yet adjusted, he felt nearly blind walking the single island road. And ‘road’ was a generous term for what it was. In truth, it was little more than a narrow footpath that had been carved through the forest decades ago and had been maintained very little. In many places, it was overgrown to the point of invisibility, and in no place was it wide enough to avoid the tickling pine needles on either side of the path.

  But Samuel knew his own positivity would be key to completing his mission. Sokwa was daring, that was true, but she was also a child, a girl, and without the drive of purpose that Samuel possessed, he knew her enthusiasm for the adventure would eventually die.

  But not now. It was far too early.

  “We’ll find her, Sokwa. We must find her for Nootau’s sake. And I know we will as long as you ensure we stay on the path south. I’m depending on you for this, Sokwa.”

  Sokwa checked the sky again and nodded and then pointed up to the heavens just off to their left. Samuel could see only the outline of her figure, but the whites of her eyes glistened in the moonlight, and there was a devoted focus in them as she scanned the dark canvas above. She quickly found the beacon and lowered her finger. “It is the South Star,” she said, almost as if to herself. “It is dim, I cannot point it out to you, but I can see it. We must continue in this direction.”

  For the next two hours, Samuel and Sokwa walked at a brisk pace, fighting their fears of the screaming foxes and hooting owls, shrugging off the branches that grabbed for them as they carved their bodies through the forest, each step requiring a faith that was quite literally blind.

  Samuel told a story of fiction as they walked, quickly inventing parts to the story, and then backtracking on them when they contradicted, acting as if the trauma of the day had been too much for him to remember it all accurately. He gave Sokwa vague details about this western woman, whom he’d obviously never met, explaining how she had met him and Nootau at the ocean beach on the day of Nootau’s disappearance, and that Samuel believed she had lured the boy to the cave they were heading toward now.

  “But why did you make up the story of the shark?” Sokwa asked. “And Nootau’s death?”

  “He had wanted to push himself. To explore and grow as a man, the way his father had encouraged. But he was supposed to be gone for only half of the day. I told Nootau I would stay away from the village for as long as possible, so as not to be questioned about his whereabouts. And when he didn’t come back, instead of admitting I was complicit in the plan, I panicked.”

  Samuel knew his story made little sense, but Sokwa didn’t sound overly suspicious, asking only two or three more challenging questions which Samuel answered with similar confusion. And whenever he felt she was getting a bit too close to cornering him, Samuel would sway wildly off the path, forcing Sokwa’s attention back to positioning them in the proper direction on the road.

  But by the third hour, Samuel was the one losing faith in the mission. He was exhausted, and his head was heavy with a thumping pain, a result of not eating supper for two days. The thought of food suddenly stirred a growling in his stomach.

  “I am hungry too, Samuel,” Sokwa said in the darkness. “We should stop to eat.”

  “We’re almost there,” Samuel snapped. “Let us just keep going.” Samuel paused and then said, “I’ve brought no food, Sokwa. I am sorry for that. And of my tone.”

  “I have,” Sokwa replied.

  “Have what?”

  “Brought food. Not much, but there is enough for us to share.”

  Samuel felt the sting of a tear in his eye, both at the thought of filling his belly and from the sweetness of this young girl, a native who trusted him and whom he had lured along to serve his purpose. He had vowed to destroy all of them with his new god, but at that moment, he decided he may reconsider Sokwa.

  Samuel began to agree to the idea of camping for a few moments to rest and eat, when his attention shifted back to the forest around him. “Look at that,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t you see?” There was a new light suddenly, both around and above him, and he had a new feeling of space.

  “Look!” he said, spreading his arms wide and jogging eight or ten paces down the road. He looked up at the sky. “Look!” he repeated. “The trees are thinning. I can see the whole sky.” He kicked his feet. “And the ground is filled with sand.”

  “We are nearing the Wishalowe waters,” Sokwa said, an unmistakable surprise in her voice.

  Samuel was smiling. “What does that mean?”

  “Wishalowe? It is our name for the western sound. The Wishalowe is what you call ‘alligator.’ We are certainly close now. I can smell it.”

  Samuel could smell it too, and he had to contain himself, tempering his desire to release the laugh he felt inside.

  “But I don’t know of any caves to the west. I don’t know who you are looking for.”

  Samuel took a few more steps down the path, and could soon see the first glimmer of water, and with that sight he began to run at full speed, and when Sokwa reached him a few moments later, the laughter that Samuel had been restricting was now on full display. In front of him he could see across the western sound to the big island that Kitchi had referenced. They were in the right place; now he just needed to find the cave.

  “We are at the water,” Sokwa said, and Samuel could sense the pride and pleasure in her voice. “We have made it.”

  “Yes, we are, Sokwa,” Samuel said, not taking his eyes from the sight of the large landmass that now seemed almost close enough to touch. “And you are the reason why.”

  “But I don’t know where to go now.”

  The two children said nothing for a moment as they stared out at the western sound—the Wishalowe waters—and then, somewhere on the wind, a piercing sound entered their space. Samuel and Sokwa looked at each other, their eyes wide. They were statues now as they listened.

  The sound came again, this time louder, shriller, off to the north.

  There was no mistaking it. It was screaming.

  Samuel brought his face up to Sokwa’s, so close that his nose was barely a pebble’s width away from hers. His eyelids were half-closed and a smile curled up his cheeks. “I will lead us from here, Sokwa. I know where to go.”

  Chapter 21

  “How...how do you know about that?”

  Samantha laughed. “It was in the newspaper, Danny. Remember?”

  “Yeah, the Rove Beach Rover. Not exactly the New York Times. Who the hell knows about the Rove Beach Rover outside of Rove Beach?”

  “Sheriff Calazzo, for one.”

  “How do you know about—”

  “I’m following it too, Danny. That’s how.”

  Danny was stunned, like he’d been punched in the belly. “Following it? From...where? Why? Who are you?”

  “That’s like twelve questions, Danny.
Just slow down. Let’s take a walk.”

  “Who are you!”

  Samantha gave Danny a long stare, her eyes glaring and her mouth flat. “Let’s walk, Danny. We’ll get to it.”

  Danny didn’t move, instead waiting for Samantha to exit the car entirely before he finally opened his own door and followed her reluctantly toward the beach. He kept at least three paces behind her at all times.

  Samantha scoffed. “For Christ’s sake, Danny, I’m not going to hurt you. We slept together the other night. If the plan was to hurt you—or kill you—which is what I’m sure you’re really thinking, I could have done it then.”

  They walked to the edge of the boardwalk parking lot that bordered the beach and stopped just off to the side of a dimly lit street lamp. “So what is this then? You’re obviously into me for more than my body.”

  Samantha didn’t crack a smile. “You knew a woman named Lynn Shields, I presume.”

  Danny felt his bowels rumble at the sound of the name.

  Lynn Shields.

  He thought of the woman every day of his life since he first saw her on the beach at dawn on the morning of the sighting. She had been masked by the early sunlight and the tall grass of the dunes that day, staring like some predatory bird into the vastness of the ocean, a look of calm anticipation draped across her face. At first, she hadn’t noticed Danny, so engrossed was she in the crashing symphony of the sea, even though he stood watching her from less than twenty yards away. Danny hadn’t yet seen the Ocean God that would appear to him only minutes later, but this steady concentration by the woman had intrigued him nevertheless.

  And when the Ocean God did emerge a few moments after—and the woman was suddenly nowhere to be seen—Danny quickly made the connection between the beast and the woman.

  In the terrifying week that followed that first encounter, Danny would see the death of his wife and come to learn that the woman—Lynn Shields—was some type of master to this sea beast and seemed to be the only person capable of summoning it. And during his imprisonment in the woman’s grotto, he would further find out that she had dedicated decades of her life to feeding this creature, and that it began a new cycle every fourteen months.