The realization that she was going to get away with it made it worse. Guilt weighed her down, gnawed on her bones, picked away at her heart. And it never got better. The months and weeks and days stretched into one silent scream. She couldn’t live with herself any longer. Couldn’t bear this horrible tension of waiting for it to be over. It was never going to be over.
Until she ended it.
“You’re such a chickenshit,” Marie had flung at her that night, when Anya had pulled on her hand and told her that they had to leave now. “A little goody-goody.”
Anya was stung. “Who talks like that? Are we in a fifties sitcom?”
“Blow me,” Marie sniped.
“You’re such a bitch. I’m going to leave you here.”
“Yo, I’ll drive you wherever you want,” one of the boys had called, and Marie had smirked at Anya. Then she had wordlessly turned her back on Anya and taken a swig from the bottle of tequila the same boy held out to her.
By then Anya had been so furious that she had driven straight home. Her parents were doing something, she didn’t remember what, and they registered that she had beaten her curfew, but that was all. Maybe if they’d asked her how her evening was, shown some interest—but no, that wasn’t fair. She hadn’t asked them how their evening was, either.
After Marie’s body was found, Anya still didn’t tell anyone that she’d been there, didn’t come forward as a witness. She kept her grades up and still played soccer and didn’t drink or cut like Marie had. Marie had sent out calls for help. Anya didn’t deserve help. To ask, she would have had to say what she needed help for. She was the most functional suicidal person in the world.
She read obsessively about drowning. What it felt like, what you looked like. Often, you didn’t realize that you were in trouble. Maybe you’d tumbled out of a boat or you had gotten too far from shore or you were drunk in a pool. You could drown in six inches of water. For a while you tried to keep your head above water. Most people didn’t think of flipping onto their back and floating, which could save you.
If you didn’t think of floating, you dog-paddled and called for help, and then you bobbed down, came back up. You kept sinking and forcing your way to the surface. Each time you went deeper. You started to get confused. You couldn’t remember how to get to the surface. You couldn’t make it anyway. Panicking led to big mistakes, like opening your mouth and sucking in water, maybe seaweed, maybe a tiny fish. It was choking to death anyway.
If the water was rough and the beginning struggles were worse, then it all happened quicker, down to the suffocating. That was why Anya had thought about trying to drown herself in the pool at school. To prolong her own agony. But it had to be here, the scene of her crime.
Marie had been so out of it that she might not have ever realized she was drowning. She might never have struggled. But Anya had been drowning for a year. Tonight, she was going to let herself open her mouth. It had been closed for far too long.
I killed her. I knew I shouldn’t leave her here. I was so petty.
She couldn’t make up for it. She never could do that. But she could end it. She wanted to. She was ready. She had rehearsed this moment so many times that part of her felt as if it had already happened, and right now she was just watching a rerun.
Feeling in the pocket of her sweatshirt, she got out her flashlight and smeared watery yellow over the crashing waves. The swells raised forward, then trailed back out like someone hurriedly unrolling a carpet. Or like a group of dancers. Everything about the ocean was rhythm, a gigantic heartbeat. She was sick of listening to her heartbeat. She wanted to make sure she did it right. She didn’t want to jump in too close to shore, in case she lost her nerve and swam back in. She didn’t want to fall against the rocks and break something, because Marie hadn’t broken anything. She wanted to die like Marie, only not drugged up, because she needed to make sure she wasn’t rescued.
Moonbeams sparkled on the vast black expanse, silver mingling with the gold of her flashlight’s circle. She started timing the rushing of the waves.
Then a seal darted in and out of the light, as if chasing it. It made no noise, just wriggled across the blackness, and she pondered the likelihood that she might hurt it when she jumped. Narrowing her eyes, she tried to figure out if it might swim away anytime soon. But it continued to laze back and forth.
And then she realized that what she was looking at was not a seal. It was a human floating facedown in the water, arms out to the side, head invisible. A swimmer? The ocean swept it forward, back, forward, forward forward forward. Then a giant wave rose up and crested over it, churning it under the dark surface.
“No!” Anya shouted, and without another thought she jumped in.
The water was cold; it was a shock. She went under and immediately plummeted; holding her breath, she struggled to peel off her sweatshirt. Her flip-flops were already gone, and as she sank, her bare foot hit something hard. It was a rock. She pushed down on it, propelling herself back toward the glimmering silvery moon.
With a gasp she broke the surface and flailed and wheezed for a few seconds, then pulled herself together. As she scanned for the other person, a rolling wave dragged her away from the cove. The dark, churning water was brushed with patches of moonlight that rippled like neon as she reached for the sand and saw it recede from her grasp.
“Hey!” she shouted, treading water in a circle, spewing out saltwater. “Hey, where are you?”
No answer.
Coughing, she kept treading water, ears cocked, scanning. Facts about surviving in water scrolled through her mind like a science fiction data stream. I’ll stay alive just until I find this person, she promised herself.
She spied a dark shape about thirty yards to her right, which was even farther away from the cove. Wishing so very much for her flashlight, she stroked through the water toward the black blob. Then something physically grabbed her leg. Yanked. When she opened her mouth in surprise, her assailant hauled her an inch or two below the waterline and dragged her along so fast she was almost hydroplaning. It didn’t hurt. There were no teeth. Or else she was going numb.
She fought, trying to kick, but all her attention was focused on not choking. Her back arched as she tried—and failed—to lift her face out of the water. Whatever had hold of her kept hold. All she could do was keep her mouth closed.
But she was running out of air.
This was the turning point, when people’s lungs burned and the impulse to expel the old air and suck in new was nearly irresistible. She went limp, losing focus. Her arms trailed over her head. Classic instinctive drowning response.
Don’t open your mouth. Don’t do it.
Her lungs were about to explode. Blurring, she tried to figure out what was gripping her, how she could force it to let her go. Gathering every last ounce of her strength and concentration, she crunched her body sideways and snaked her right arm down her body, then shot it out at a forty-five-degree angle from her waist.
She made contact with nothing. Then, as quickly as it had started, the dragging ceased. The sensation of being restrained was gone.
She bobbed to the surface and sucked in oxygen in huge, starving gulps. A hoarse, near soundless scream tore out of her constricted lungs, then another, and although she told herself that her chances were better if she stayed on her back, she popped up to a vertical position, pumping her legs to stay in place, and examined her surroundings.
The cove was a lot farther away. A lot.
And then she realized that she had been caught in an undertow. A riptide. It had dragged her out to sea.
Oh my God, my God, I really am going to die.
But the peace she had been seeking did not come with that realization. Because of the figure, she told herself. The one she had jumped in to save. That was why she was freaking out.
But had there been a figure? Had she imagined it?
No. She knew it had been there. But by now whoever it was had to be dead, right?
&
nbsp; Except that she wasn’t. One of the ways to prolong your life if you were stuck in water was to do the dead man’s float to rest, then flip over onto your back to breathe. Maybe that’s what that person had been doing. Was doing right now.
She felt another tug. Tingles of fear prickled like gooseflesh. She was back in the undertow, then. She remembered what to do: swim parallel to the land rather than toward it. That way you didn’t fight the riptide, didn’t waste valuable energy.
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 t
o 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.