Revel (6 page)

I sat down at the little wooden table. “But I have questions. A lot of questions.”

“Hmm?” My grandmother slid a cast-iron skillet roughly the size of a tire onto the stove, then picked up a paring knife and began to peel a potato with rapid, practiced motions.

I’d been waiting so long I wanted to shout it, but I didn’t. In fact, suddenly, it was hard to speak. I slid a sugar bowl in the shape of a duck toward me and focused on sliding the yellow lid off and on as I spoke. “Why did my mother leave? Was it because of my father? And is he still here? Is my father on the island?” I looked at my grandmother, almost afraid to hear the answers or see something bad in her face. But I
couldn’t read anything in her expression, except maybe McGovern stubbornness.

“You can’t push a rope,” she remarked, shaking her head. “You gotta give me time with the questions. Right now I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“Again with the safe thing. You’re going to scare me.”

“Well, that won’t hurt you,” said my grandmother calmly as she reached for another spud. “But it won’t help either.”

“Okay.” My grandmother had some fierce skills in being cryptic. Obviously she wasn’t going to tell me any more tonight.

I watched her silently for a moment. “I do have one thing I
really
have to know.”

She eyed me with a look of exasperation. “What’s that?”

“What do I call you?”

She looked at her potatoes and smiled. With this smile I could finally see the Maisie. She was Maisie all over.

“Call me Gran,” she said. “I’d like that.”

After supper I tried to use my cell to call Mrs. Russell, my caseworker, again. But my phone had no signal. Zero bars, no matter where I stood.

“Maybe I should go outside.” Over the top of the curtains, I glimpsed the dark evening sky.

“No, you can’t,” Gran said quickly. “I mean, it’s no use.
No reception. We don’t have cell phones or computers here on Trespass. No telephones. Heck, sometimes I don’t even have electric if the propane generator acts up. Guess you’d say we’re kind of old-fashioned.” She peered at me. “You okay?”

I must have looked a little shell-shocked. No cell phones and no computer access? How was that possible? How did these people
do
anything? This wasn’t old-fashioned. This was … I had no words for what this was. “I’m fine,” I finally managed.

After directing me to my mother’s old room and putting fresh sheets and a softly faded patchwork quilt on the bed, Gran said good night in the doorway. “You’ll sleep well,” she assured me. “There’s nothing like the sound of the waves for a lullaby.”

Again the similarity to my mother’s voice struck me. Despite this strange, new place, that familiar voice wrapped around me and brought me into a safe haven. A place I didn’t want to leave. “About tomorrow, Gran,” I began.

“Hush. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.”

This time I reached out and hugged
her
close. It was hard to let go.

Two-thirty in the morning. And I was still awake.

A rectangle of moonlight glowed on the floor and a sweet scent billowed through the open window. Sea roses, Gran
had told me, were the pink and white flowering bushes I’d seen on the roadsides and on the dunes.

I rolled over. The ocean at night wasn’t like a soothing lullaby at all. It was completely annoying. I would’ve much preferred car horns and sirens to the faint, insistent shooshing of the waves.

It almost sounded like strange voices out there, murmuring beneath my window.

Gran was going to pack me off in the morning as quickly as she could. I still didn’t understand why exactly. Except that it had to do with the people on this island. And yet I sensed Gran actually
wanted
me to stay. What was she so afraid of?

I heaved a sigh and twisted in the narrow twin bed. From my new position I saw a picture in a seashell frame sitting on the lower shelf of a little bookcase. I got out of bed, put my glasses on and clicked on the lamp.

The picture was of Mom. She laughed up into the camera, a dazzling grin on her face. The picture must have been from when she was about my age or maybe a bit younger. Sun sparkled off the rippling water around her like a jeweled tiara, making her look like some kind of fairy-tale princess. But there was something wrong.

It took a moment for it to click. My mother was in the water. The edge of a weathered dock beam was visible at the corner of the picture; she was in the
ocean
. I set the picture down carefully. So Mom hadn’t always been terrified of the water.

Something had
made
her afraid.

Maybe she’d had an accident or gotten frightened by something in the water. I remembered the cold wet touch on my hand that Old Ben had insisted was seaweed, and the unseen thing under the dock, and involuntarily gave a shiver. It wasn’t hard to imagine that kind of thing terrifying someone. But whatever it was must have happened to her after this picture was taken.

I went to the window and drew the white curtain aside. There was a full moon tonight, and below I could see the pale glimmer of a sand-covered path between two grassy dunes.

Suddenly the beam of a flashlight cut across the yard, and I drew back from the window. A figure appeared. It was my grandmother, carrying some kind of bundle. She hurried across the lawn with long, purposeful strides and disappeared over the rise of the dunes, heading toward the water.

Where on earth was she going? The sudden thought flashed into my head that maybe she had ignored my request and was taking Mom’s ashes down to the water.

I grabbed the quilt to throw over my shoulders.

I was going to find out.

CHAPTER 4
 

T
he insistent hiss of the surf was loud as I slipped from the house, the path to the beach clearly visible. Moonlight cast a bright, metallic sheen over everything. Cool sand whispered between my bare toes as I walked. The sea roses hung on both sides of me, and the sweet smell was so heady, it was as if you could lie down and get drunk on the scent. The path ended on top of a rise and I could see a slice of beach, its sand gleaming silver-white. Beyond, the water was a black mirror reflecting one long beam of moonlight.

I clutched the quilt closer. I thought my grandmother had come this way, but there was no sign of her. I’d also checked the mantel over the fireplace, where she’d placed the urn of my mother’s ashes. It was still there, so whatever strange purpose Gran had for being out here at night, it wasn’t that.

As I walked toward the water the packed sand felt as hard as pavement. When the first lick of cold water splashed over my toes, I gasped at the shock.

I sat down on a low outcropping of black rocks and decided to wait. Hopefully, Gran would come back this way.

Had my mother ever sat in just this spot? Probably. It was nice here. Nestled in the quilt, a pool of quiet water swirling gently at my feet, I almost felt like I could fall asleep. The only thing that prevented it were the faces, images and snippets of conversations from the day whirling in my head. Old Ben Deare’s odd predictions, Gran’s warnings.

It’s not safe here.… Keep your eyes open.… A monster …

Dipping my heels by turn into the water, I found myself humming. Maybe it was because I was a little freaked out by this place that I chose to sing something silly from when I was little. I sang softly at first, as I tried to remember the tune, then a little louder, pleased with the way the cool night air lifted the sound up and away. This was almost as good as the shower. The notes vibrated in my chest and tingled on my lips.

“Down by the bay,” I sang softly, “where the watermelons grow …”

There was a loud splash.

My eyes flew open. A few yards away something surged through the water, raising a sharp plume of spray. It was a huge fin with fanlike segments glistening iridescent in the moonlight. It came directly at me, cleaving the water like a missile.

I screamed and jumped up. And found myself in knee-deep, cold water. The tide had come in. I felt a surge of panic and splashed backward, stumbling onto the sand. The giant fin veered away at the last second, disappearing beneath the water.

What the hell was that? And how had the water come up so fast? Maybe I’d dozed off for a little while and not realized it. I stood up, clutched the quilt close to me with shaky fingers and paced back and forth on the sand, searching the water for another glimpse of that gigantic fin. What kind of a fish swims toward the beach?

I’d heard of whales or dolphins beaching themselves, but that fin hadn’t looked like it could possibly be one of those. It had been strange, with long spines delineating each segment. Almost prehistoric-looking. Immediately I thought of the thing I’d seen earlier in the waters near the reef. Not just seen. Felt.

Right
, I told myself.
Maybe Trespass has a sea monster. Like Nessie. Only not so shy
.

Get a grip, girl
.

I was about to head back to the house, when something else broke the surface of the water. Too shocked to scream this time, I just stood behind a shelter of rocks and stared.

It was a young man. Moonlight gleamed on the wet contours of his muscled chest and arms. His skin was so pale he looked like a marble statue rising from the water. He strode forward through the waist-high water and whipped his head
to clear a long hank of black hair from his face. The water coursed over him like … well, I didn’t know what … but something hard and wet and very well made. He moved easily through the water, barely splashing at all. He stood still for some seconds, then began to wade parallel to the beach. It was too dark to make out his features, but by the slow, deliberate movements of his head he seemed to be searching for something.

“Um. Hello?” I called. “You should get out of the water. I just saw something out there. Something big.”

He spun around and spoke into the darkness. “Reveal yourself.”

His deep voice cut through the night air, clear and distinct, as if he were next to me instead of ten feet away. There was an impatient, authoritarian note to the voice, and I found myself stepping out from my hiding place without thinking.

I looked around the little inlet, but it seemed very quiet now. “You should get out of there,” I told him. “Some big fish just tried to attack me.”

“You were attacked,” he repeated, breathing hard. “By a big fish.”

I wished that I could see his face. It sounded as if he’d just swum a long distance. And also as if he thought I was crazy.

“Yes. Well, no, not exactly
attacked
,” I admitted. “It scared me. Aren’t you freezing? You’re swimming out here all by yourself?”

“I
thought
I was,” he answered in a clipped voice.

Okay, so it was obvious from his tone I was intruding. I turned and began to walk away.

“I heard something,” his voice called out after me. “Were you
singing
?”

I stopped short. “What? Singing? Um. No.”

As if I would admit to anyone that I was belting out Raffi tunes a capella, never mind to a complete stranger on a dark, isolated beach.

The lights and darks of his sculpted body were visible, but his face was in shadow. He was still half covered by water, and the thought suddenly came to me that maybe he didn’t have swim trunks on.