Seaward

Screaming that something was wrong.

   She holds her head up; tears hesitate, wobble and slide down brown cheeks, flushed red as if she's just returned from a run. "Something's wrong."

   "What happened?” I go to her with the intent to comfort but she shrinks from it. Near enough now to feel her body radiate warmth and sweat; the windows in our small kitchen seem to fog.

   "My father, he's ..."

   That old man.

   "He's run off!"

   "Was he drinking?"

   "... yeah."

   "Scotch again?"

   "... yeah."

   "He'll be back, baby. Probably just sleeping it off somewhere."

   "It's different this time," she says, back turned toward me, both arms folded tightly across her stomach like a corset, white painted fingernails clasping at the edges of a grape colored cardigan.

   "How so? He always does this: drinks too much and acts a fool, then your good mother does that most appropriate thing and gives him the boot."

   "He left a note."

   That old codger. "Well? What did it say?"

   Her eyes, blue flame within a puffy and pink corona. She's staring out the window but, the way the sun is setting, I can see her reflection. "It said--it said he was going to meet someone: a man from his dreams."

   At this I could understand her distress. Though her father was not very wise he had, until this point, projected a sane disposition.

   "Did he say where he was going?"

   "To the ocean, is all it said."

   "Well, my dear, we shall go there and find him. By the time we arrive he's sure to have slept it off on the beach. No one will bother him there."

   "But what of the man?"

   "Which?"

   "The one from his dreams that he said he was to meet!"

   And now I realize that she must believe this incredible thing lest her frame of reference on this world be set askew.

   "Oh, him."

   "In his letter, he described the ... man ... in detail."

   "How so?"

   And she's recounting for me what was in the letter: a nightmare vision, a portrait of a fiend, a little too realistic, and I gain more appreciation for her fear. But surely it's nothing. An old man's scotch induced hallucination.

We're driving down the only two-lane road to the ocean, headlights exposing that little bit ahead as if all that exists is just us and that lingering precipice of asphalt, with a yellow dotted line down the middle, with white solid lines on either side; and we aren't actually moving at all, just dangling there, holding our breath, waiting for someone to wake us up.

   She says something about how, maybe, we should have brought the gun, and I say that's nonsense. This town we've known our whole lives, the beach we're headed towards, that ocean. Its waves are mine, each tiny bit of white sand, mine. But now something in her voice, that lilting, it's making me doubt.

   She says maybe he's not even at the beach, and maybe he's home now sleeping soundly like an old coot should be at this hour. But I say we've come all this way so we might as well check.

I can hear the waves now and smell the salt air in the night's chill. The window's rolled down and she's complaining that it's cold, but I say it's helping me stay focused. In the distance I can see the gnarled wooden fence of the parking lot, and then the codger's pickup truck, old as he is, sitting there, empty.

   I park next to it, pulling up the brake, and its click-click doesn't comfort me like it should; like maybe the entire world is about to get turned upside down and then parking brakes won't be of much use.

   She's already opened her door but, I can tell, she doesn't want to leave this known, this clam shell that so willingly and hurriedly carried us out here. And then her eyes widen.

   She's looking straight across that first dune, straight toward the undulating sea, and now I see them too: the silhouettes standing apart from each other on the sodden half of the beach. Every hair on my head stands on end as I remember the description. "Stay here. I'm sure it's nothing, but just in case ..." I hand her the keys.

   "Shit!"

   "Stop. Just stop. Calm down. It's nothing. Your father's crazy, you know that don't you?"

   "What is he doing!"

   "I'll find out. I'll get him. We'll be back on the road in no time." I'm rolling up the window.

It's hard to walk in dry sand when trying to focus on something ahead of you. I feel it seep into my loafers and it's uncomfortable, but the silhouettes are morphing into men. One is the geezer, who doesn't move, and the other ... is turning toward me.

   What it's wearing is a ragged cloak, like crow feathers; I can see its many tattered edges flapping in the wind but I cannot see a face.

    "Uh ... hi."

    No response from either.

    "Look, uh, don't want no trouble, uh, that old man there's my father in law, and well, you see, it's way past his bedtime so, you know, it's time he headed home."

   While I'm saying this the crow man has taken out some necklace or beads, and he's shake-shaking them slowly, up then down. The sound the beads make, it's like one hundred chattering teeth in unison, and I'm staring into that blank spot where a face should be but still glimpsing none.

"Tom!" I'm yelling to maybe snap the old fart out of it; I'm yelling so the crow man doesn't come any closer, but that's not working so well. In the wet sand behind it I can see a trail being formed toward me, with footprints unlike any I've seen a human make; then I remember the description in the letter and I want to run. Far away from here--as far as my legs will take me.