Scary Out There (24 page)

But the cove was so far distant. Too distant. It was rapidly becoming a black dot.

As she stared at it, something to the left caught her attention. She turned her head; beneath the moonlight she saw the shape again. Her heart caught.

“Hey!” she yelled, or tried to—the saltwater had made her hoarse. She rasped out another cry and then splashed the water hard. She was moving; she could feel it.

Moving farther off.

Then the figure raised its head. She couldn't make out any features, or if it was a man or a woman, but it was alive. And it seemed to be looking at her.

Then it swam toward her.

“No, stay back, I'm caught in the undertow,” she said, or rather, planned to say, but what she actually said was, “Help. Oh God, please help.” She detested herself for her whining, pleading whimper, but there really wasn't anything this person could do about it, unless they were wearing a life jacket or had a flare gun or had planned a meet up with a lifeboat. They wouldn't be able to save her any more than she could save them.

Weariness prevented her from waving her hands to warn them off. The person kept swimming toward her. She burst into tears and rode the swells, passively waiting, barely able to keep herself upright because she was so exhausted.

Maybe it's a hallucination,
she thought, and then:
Maybe it's Marie. Her ghost, coming for me.

A thin thread of horror wove through her tiredness. The figure moved into and away from the moonlight, still too far away to make out any features; Anya wasn't sure she would still be above the waterline by the time it reached her. Her teeth were chattering and her muscles were locking up. Treading water then was as difficult as pedaling a bicycle up the steepest mountain in the world, at the highest gear.

The swimmer neared. Its right arm rose out of the water and the moonlight glinted off it. It was pure white, and Anya tried to make sense of that. Was it wearing a white wetsuit? A jacket?

Then she saw its face. Or rather, where its face should have been.

It was a skull, smooth and white and skinless.

Its arms were bone.

It was swimming toward her.

She shrieked, dunked below the water, and nearly strangled, then tried to kick herself out of reach as the thing gathered her up in its arms and lofted her back to the surface. Anya wanted to struggle, but she was limp in its embrace. Her head lolled backward and she drew in air, staring up into empty eye sockets.

There was no face, no expression, unless you counted the macabre smile of its lipless mouth. Without eyebrows or facial muscles, it still seemed to glare at her with demonic glee. Its jaw dropped open, and its teeth clacked.

Her shout of terror was more of a sigh, her struggle, a spasmodic twitch. Now, when it counted, when she was in imminent danger, she was too worn out from her other struggles to fight.

“Help,” she whispered. Or thought she did. She couldn't hear herself. Was this the thing she had jumped in to save? “Marie?”

It laced its bony fingers around her neck and pushed her head
under the water. Anya's back arched; she tried to raise her arms to save herself, but it was like being paralyzed. She couldn't move.

It's killing me.

She needed air; she was going to inhale and that
would
kill her—

Don't do it don't do it oh God I have to

The bones around her neck tightened their grip. Her thoughts dissolved and floated away. She lost all sense of who she was, what was happening. There was only blackness. There was no sound. Everything was about air.

Her lips parted from the strain. Her nostrils flared.

Just as she started to draw in a greedy gulp, her head shot out of the water into the night. She coughed and gasped crazily, wildly, and then something grabbed her under her arm and around her chest and hauled ass. Swimming hard, fast, life or death; churning the water with powerful, awkward strokes.

“Help me!” the something bellowed.

And it sounded like Marie.

Anya didn't know if it was, couldn't puzzle out what was happening. She didn't know if the thing that had her now was the same thing that had captured her; if it was rescuing her or making sure she died. But she helped as she had been ordered, using every last ounce of strength to kick her legs. The effect was futile, maybe an inch back and forth, but it was all she had left, and she gave it.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

It was Marie's voice.

A hand seized Anya's right ankle and tugged. Marie screamed. Water splashed all around and she kicked harder. The hand tugged again, prying her slowly out of her rescuer's grasp. As Marie's fingers slid downward, Anya glommed onto them.

“Get away, damn you!” Marie yelled. The water churned and frothed and someone else shouted, but Anya couldn't make out the words. They were swimming again, she and maybe-Marie, and she found new reserves inside herself. Kicking now, paddling, getting away

—from it—

—with it—

She was hyperventilating, gasping, eyes rolling, plunging one arm into the water, saving her savior, saving herself. They were moving in concert now, and as more oxygen hit her brain, she looked back over her shoulder to see the skeleton swimming after them. Its teeth were clacking and its eye sockets were full now, of . . .

Oh God, what is that?

Death.

Dead things.

Death was slimy and gross and not looking peaceful. Death was rot. Its eyes brimmed with rot. She could smell it, almost taste it. And why not? It was the thing she had craved for a year, wasn't it? To rot?

“Go faster, Marie!” she yelled.

Then she was rolling in the white water, thrown around like a dead body, forehead smacking the sand, seeing gray and yellow bubbles. She heard the clacking, and Marie's screaming, and got onto her back through a supreme effort of will. The angle of the breakwater afforded her a view downward; in the surf Marie was on her back too. She looked exactly as she had the last time Anya had seen her, from her bikini top to her long, black hair. The skeleton was looming over her, then crouching low, grabbing her, picking her up.

Marie kicked and shrieked as it dangled her overhead, then threw her into the water. She went under.

Anya pushed herself upright. She tried to stand but succeeded only in falling back down on her hands. The skeleton stood waist-high in the water, bones clicking, no skin or flesh anywhere. All bone; and on some of that bone, barnacles grew, and there were snails. Seaweed dangled from its mouth and in its right hand, oh God, in its hand—

A frisson of horror rooted Anya to the spot.

Marie's head was dangling from its fist. Marie's eyes bulged, but Anya couldn't tell if Marie saw her. Marie's mouth opened and shut as if she were trying to speak, but there was no sound. Seawater streamed from her lips.

The monster advanced, lurching from the sea on skeleton legs, moonlight sparkling on its smooth ivory and in Marie's eyes. Anya scrabbled backward as waves raced through its leg
bones and frothed around her on the beach. She could hear herself whimpering.

Marie's head swung from side to side as Death shambled out of the water; Anya kept scooting away on her butt. The overhang she had knelt on stretched above her head, and she realized that she was literally backing herself into a corner. It was too late; if it came after her, she was trapped.

“Marie,” she said, steeling herself to look at the head, “help me.”

The head swayed; the eyes stared sightlessly.

Then the skeleton raced up to Anya and thrust its skull at her. Fish swam in its sockets, and moonlight danced. Its jaw dropped down and a voice slashed at her:

“It's not your time.”

Then its jaw unhinged and it became a maw, swooping Anya's head into it. And she saw—

Oh, she saw . . .

•  •  •

Dawn.

And Anya was bobbing in the water, her shoulder rhythmically tapping a large rock rising about ten feet above her. She grabbed at it with bloody fingers. Her nails had torn away.

Something in the swirls and eddies bobbed against her, and then fingers quite distinctly gripped her arm. She screamed. The grip tightened, and attached to it was dead weight. A figure popped to the surface beside her, black hair waving like seaweed.

She took a deep breath, then gently poked at the body. It made a half turn, the hair draping the face as if determined to conceal its features. Her insides churned. She sucked in a shuddery breath, then determinedly smoothed the hair away.

Marie's face. Smooth and beautiful,
normal
, attached to her body. Anya jerked her hand just as Marie's eyes popped open. Glassy, unfocused, light bouncing off them; Marie's hand clamped on to her. Marie looked not at Anya but through her. Her fingers were squeezing Anya's arm so hard that it felt as if her fingernails would slice right into Anya's flesh. Then a long, low sigh pushed out of her mouth as if she were deflating.

Anya's heart was beating so hard she was afraid it would pop. She glanced shoreward, astonished to find that she was maybe forty yards from the cove. She looked down at Marie. At her
ghost.

She remembered the skeleton and scrabbling beneath the overhang and what it had said to her. That it was not her time. She hoped so very much that that was true.

Then Marie sucked in air and consciousness blazed in her expression; she smiled very faintly at her once best friend.

“Anya.” Her voice was a thready whisper.

Anya's skin crawled. She clung to the rock and drew back a leg to kick at the ghost. At
her.
But she remembered that Marie had tried to save her.

Marie's smile faded. “You need to get out of the water
now.
”

“Because of the . . . the monster?” She didn't know what else to call it.

“Yes,” Marie said. “Because of me.”

Frozen with fear, Anya gripped the rock with both hands. Could she make it to land?

“You came because of me,” Marie said. “And it nearly got you.”

Anya swallowed. “It . . .”

“The thing that got me. Got
us.
”

She gestured with her head toward the ocean beyond. Anya looked. Gasped.

The sea was littered with floating bodies, perhaps two dozen, facedown, arms outstretched. They rode the swells like pieces of debris. Anya found she couldn't scream; instead, she was overcome with a deep, burning pang of overwhelming grief. Something loosened inside her, but not too much. Everything inside her had been clamped down tight for way too long.

“I went swimming that night after the guys left me, and it came after me,” Marie said, and her voice shook. “It killed me.”

“
I
left you,” Anya said, and the something loosened a little more. She stiffened as a body rode the waves toward her. But as it bobbled closer, the figure sank and disappeared. “I was scared—” Her throat tightened. She couldn't breathe.

Marie shook her head and took her hand. She did a breaststroke with her free arm toward the cove, bringing Anya with her. A chorus like one long wail rose from the ocean, keening, mourning. The sound became the tolling of a bell; she and Marie were passing a red metal buoy about six feet tall bobbing on a rubbery platform. The top of the buoy was a bell; on
the center of the buoy was a sign that read
DANGER. NO SWIMMING. RIPTIDE. NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY.

“I didn't see that sign,” Anya said.

“If you had stayed, it would have gotten you, too,” Marie told her.

“You wouldn't have gone swimming. I wouldn't have let you,” Anya said.

Marie turned her head. “You think you could have stopped me? I
did
see the sign. And I went in anyway.” She started to cry. “That was my life then. I went in anyway.”

“No,” Anya insisted. “No, Marie.” And then she said in a flood, “I've been holding my breath for a year. Ever since you . . . ever since. I never confessed. No one knew.”

“There was nothing
to
know,” Marie said.

•  •  •

Night.

The cove, the full moon, and the bonfire.

Marie was belly dancing. The guys were leering and hooting, throwing alcohol bottles into the bonfire to make them explode. Comets of glass shards sprayed the night sky with new stars. Beyond, the ocean rolled black and silver beneath the moon.

Anya gaped and made a little circle of her own. Had it been a dream? A hallucination brought on by a contact high with all the weed? Anya touched her face, her hair, her arms. All dry. She looked out at the ocean.

And saw the floating bodies listing over the waves like
body surfers in slow motion. Into and out of the light. And among them, something white swimming from one to the other like a sheepdog checking on its lambs.

Her blood froze. Then clouds swallowed up the moon and swathed the ocean in inky black. Opening the coffin lid.

“We have to go,” she half shouted at Marie. Marie raised her brows, turned around, and shook her ass at Anya. The guys cheered, and one of them struggled to his feet, aided and abetted by his friends. He staggered toward Marie with his arms opened wide. With a triumphant grin, she shimmied toward him. As Anya watched, the white skull glowed through his skin. Evil blazed in the empty eye sockets where bloodshot brown eyes had been.

Then it was gone, and he was just a slightly too old guy who was way too drunk. Maybe he had killed Marie that other night. Maybe that was what Anya was seeing. Maybe the entire year had not happened, and her suicide attempt—

—
I never got that far; I jumped in to save someone.
 . . .

—Didn't I?

“Marie, we have to leave,” she said, crossing over to Marie and planting herself between her best friend and the drunk guy.

Sparks flew as Marie shook her head, black hair a nimbus, soft and floating in the night breeze. “No way. I'm having too much fun.”