Hearts of Avon

breath smelt of smoke. “Or I’ve got an old car battery in here. I could give that a try. You know, you shouldn’t have been out on the road in this.”

  “Trust us, we didn’t want to be,” Eva laughed. “Could you give us a ride to the van and try the battery? We should at least get some of our things, if we leave it there.”

  The man looked past them into the storm. “Alright. Come in out of the rain while I get the battery and put on my boots.”

  As they drove back toward the van, in the man’s car, Caroline watched the storm raging outside. The wind pummeled the shore and she would see large waves in the moonlight crashing against the stilts of houses near the water. Something large was being pushed in the waves in the distance, some massive black thing. A boat? she wondered.

  After working on installing the battery, the old man was able to get their van going again. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait through the hurricane at my house?” he asked.

  “No,” Eva said. “Thank you so much for helping us, though. The news called for the severe part of the storm to hit in the morning, so we should be able to get out in time.”

  They followed his car down the road until he turned off, flashing their lights to thank him, then drove on in the darkness, their headlights illuminating the barren road ahead.

  Waves leapt out of the sea, breaking over dunes and battering houses blocks away from where they drove. The roar of the wind was all Caroline could hear.

  She watched the ocean and the sky, wondering if the two would come together and swallow her family whole. She had never had a strong faith, but now she closed her eyes and prayed. Keep us safe. If someone out there is with us, be with us tonight.

  A boom echoed in the air as a blast of wind rammed up against the van, shaking it and trying to roll it on the road.

  Eva did all she could to hold the steering wheel straight. She cursed loudly, but was barely heard over the roar of the wind and sheets of rain cutting across the road.

  Caroline took a death grip on the safety handle above her and held on tight. “We should pull off or go back!” she shouted to her mother and aunt over the rain.

  “What?” Suzie shouted back to her.

  “We need to turn back and find shelter!”

  There wasn’t time to react, to answer, and they could barely hear each other in the chaos. Towering waves decimated the stilt legs of a house on the edge of the ocean as they neared the end of Rodanthe, the thinnest stretch of land for miles. The house crumbled into the ocean and was consumed by the jaws of the waves.

  “Turn around!” Caroline shouted, afraid of the water pummeling across the land, toward them. Then, in an instant, the other body of water to their left, The Sound, rose up and over the land, a cliff of water like she had never seen before. It slammed into their van, throwing it on its side and knocking the air out of her with her seatbelt.

  Darkness. Her mind was gone for moments. Then, as she shook awake, she watched in horror as the car was thrust clockwise in a massive flood of waves. Water seeped in through the pores of the van. “Help! Help!” she screamed in terror.

  “Take your seatbelt off and try to escape!” Her mother called out to her from the front as the van flipped in the waves.

  Suzie was eerily silent.

  Caroline reached for her seatbelt, trying hectically to unlock it but being too nervous to find the button. Click. She found it and began taking it off.

  “I’m so sorry honey, I love you.” She could barely hear her mother up front.

  “I love you too, mom. We’ll be alright.”

  An angry wave of the ocean’s maw cracked against the windshield, shattering it and sending shards of glass like daggers across the van, then flooding the vehicle completely.

  The last thing Caroline saw before the darkness was blood. Was it her own?

  15

  The beast of a storm raged outside The Seaman’s Watch, shaking its walls and the floor beneath him as Ben bunkered down in a shelter-like room. He hadn’t expected Irene to hit with such force, or this soon.

  “Do you think they made it to the mainland before this?” he asked Mason, who was taking pictures off of the walls around them. The power had gone black, but a lantern illuminated the room.

  “They should have. They had plenty of time, and Avon may be getting the brunt of the storm.”

  Something in Ben’s gut told him Mason was wrong. He only hoped they were safe, no matter where they were. Why didn’t I try harder to get her to stay?

  The crash of something large hitting the side of their house startled him, causing him to instinctively duck and grip onto the leg of a chair close by. The truth was, if waves took their house down, no amount of instinct or caution would be able to save him.

  The sound of waves licking up against the bottom and sides of the house sent an ominous sound through it.

  “How high do you think the water is out there?” Ben asked.

  “Let’s hope we won’t have to find out until after the storm,” Mason said as he sat down next to him. “Here, put this on.” He handed Ben a life vest and put one on himself. “Not that they would save us, but just in case.”

  The roar of wind pierced the house’s walls, sending adrenaline through Ben’s body, making him want to flee. His heart raced in his chest.

  Then, in the depths of the roar, he heard the faint sound of someone screaming. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  “I…” Mason listened for a moment. “Yes.”

  “What do we do?” Ben was on his feet, headed for the room’s door.

  “You can’t go out there.” Mason stood to follow him. “They’re as good as dead if they’re in the ocean.”

  Ben couldn’t leave whoever it was. What if it were Caroline? he thought. “I have to go, to try to save them if they’re in the water.” He opened the room’s door and made his way toward the upper deck and their painting room. Its windows were boarded with two layers of wood planking, inside and out. A flashlight he picked up off the counter was the only illumination in the room.

  “That’s madness!” Mason called after him. “I won’t let you! You’ll kill yourself! Is that really worth it?”

  The scream shattered Ben’s hearing, after being silent for long moments. “I’m going,” he told Mason. “Either help me or don’t.” He tightened the straps of his life vest and grabbed a thick rope off of the wall. “Tell Caroline I love her, if I don’t make it back.”

  “I’ll tell her you’re a fool,” Mason said, but came to the door and hugged his son.

  Together they used crowbars to pry planks of wood away. The door flexed from the wind as they finished, then ripped from its hinges and burst into the room. A deep howl deafened them as wind and water whipped in through the structure’s open wound.

  Ben forced his body through the pummeling wind, grasping the doorframe and pulling his body out on the deck as he scoured the moonlit fangs of the raging ocean. There, beyond their house in the smashing waves, was the body of a boy, his arm stretching upward feebly before a wave crushed down on him and took him from sight.

  “Help!” his neighbor’s voice called from her porch next door. “My son was pulled off our deck in the wind!”

  Ben turned to the woman as stinging rain beat his skin. He leapt off his deck without hesitation, crashing into the battering waves, his breath being forced out of him as he hit the water.

  Darkness.

  Booming echoes filled his senses. He would have to swim upward to breathe, to be of any use to this boy.

  His hand crashed against a plank of wood as he surfaced. A nail in it gashed open his hand and he took a gasping breath before being covered by a heavy wave.

  Ben opened his eyes as waves thrashed him back and forth under the ocean’s rising maw. It pulled him downward, dragging him out into its belly. Then, as his heart raced and currents tried to force the air from his lungs, he saw the boy in the stomach of the tide with him, being pulled out to sea.

  He could barely thi
nk, was afraid to lose his breath and drown at any moment, but used all his strength to swim against the ocean currents toward the boy. With a thrust he grasped the youth’s wrist and kicked upward.

  He took another breath as they emerged into the air. Wind from the hurricane battered his ears, deafening him. They had been pulled a good distance out to sea.

  “I’ll save you!” he shouted to the unconscious boy as he struggled to keep both of them afloat. Salt water thrust into his throat and he gagged, almost being pulled under again.

  Suddenly a roar consumed his hearing from behind him, louder than the storm around him had been. With a panicked glance out to the dark, writhing ocean, he saw a goliath of a wave thrusting his way. It engulfed him within moments, tearing the boy’s wrist from his hand and dragging him in its rolling currents, forward.

  He resurfaced to see the porch of a nearby house give in to the wave, crashing down into the ocean’s fangs. Before him, he saw the boy’s limp body being pulled his direction in the retreating water. He reached for the boy’s wrist and missed, before clutching hard on the youth’s ankle.

  A looped rope crashed to the ocean behind him. He clutched it with his free hand as the wave rushed back, taking the remnants of the deck he had watched crumble, with it.

  “Hold tight!” He could barely hear Mason’s voice as he clutched hard in desperation to survive.

  Soon he was being pulled up out of the raging waves, their teeth reaching up for him as the hurricane’s air-stream gust against his and the boy’s bodies, causing