Midnight Dolphin

MIDNIGHT
DOLPHIN

___________________________

By James
Carmody

Originally
published in ebook format in 2014.

Copyright ©
2014 James Carmody

The right of
James Carmody to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright
Designs and Patents Act 1988

Smashwords
Edition

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this author.

For
Jill

Chapter
One:

When Megan
Ames slipped quietly out of bed in the holiday cottage where her
family were staying, her six year old sister Bethany silently
opened her eyes to watch as her older sister pulled on her
favourite flared jeans and blouse. The bed covers were pulled up to
Bethany’s face and she lay there as still as possible, trying not
to attract any attention. Megan was twelve but seemed so much more
grown up than Bethany, who was only half her age.

Megan opened
the door as quietly as possible and slipped out of their bedroom.
The door creaked slightly as she pushed it closed. Bethany sat up
in bed now that she was alone and looked around her. The early
morning light was creeping around the curtains. Nothing seemed to
stir in the holiday cottage and Bethany could make out the low
sonorous rumble of her dad’s snoring from her parent’s room next to
theirs.

Bethany pulled
back the sheets and ran to the window. She climbed onto a wicker
chair and put her head through the curtains. The walls of the
holiday cottage were old and thick and there was a wide ledge on
the inside of the window. She leant across it and peered down
through the small square panes of glass. She could hear the
occasional call of a seagull and further away the low sound of
waves washing onto the beach. The front path snaked through the
tidy little garden to the front gate. Just then she heard the front
door click and she saw her sister’s back as she walked briskly up
the path. Megan glanced around, almost as if she knew her sister
was watching her, and Bethany shrank back into the folds of the
curtain for fear of being caught spying.

Beyond the
cottage was a place to park cars and then there were some trees.
Between the trees Bethany could see the start of the board-walk
which led through the sand dunes towards the wide sandy beach where
she loved to play.

Bethany was
wearing a light cotton nightdress and had nothing on her feet. It
was summer, but the cottage had a musty old smell and the thick
stone walls made it feel cool even on a summer’s day. She opened
the door of their bedroom and made her way down the narrow wooden
stairs as quickly but as quietly as she could. She was determined
to follow her older sister and find out where she disappeared to
almost every morning. Every step she took seemed to make the stairs
creak and she was convinced that her mother would hear her. Bethany
half wished that she would and that her mum would sweep her up into
her arms and take Bethany to snuggle up in bed with her, but she
reached the bottom step undetected.

There were
thick flagstones on the floor downstairs that felt cold under her
bare feet, but at least they did not creak, and she ran across them
to the front door of the cottage. She felt terribly daring when she
opened it and the bright early morning light dazzled her eyes.
She’d never been out of the house without her mum knowing about it
before. The sense of adventure made her feel giddy with
excitement.

Bethany knew
which way her sister had gone and she ran up the front path of the
garden and opened the front gate. There was a piece of rough ground
where their car was parked and the ground was full of sharp pine
needles from the trees which hurt her bare feet. Then she got to
the board-walk which holiday-makers used to walk across the dunes
to the beach. The worn wooden slats were easy to walk on and
Bethany was glad to run up them. Sand tipped across the boards in
places and felt soft between her toes.

The board-walk
rose and dipped as it followed the line of the dunes. Bethany kept
worrying that she would run into her sister who would angrily send
her home in disgrace to their mother. Instead she couldn’t see
Megan at all and began to worry that she’d gone in the wrong
direction. It seemed like an awfully long way from home now and
Bethany began to feel a little scared.

Then finally
the board walk ended in a wide expanse of yellow sand and there was
the sea. The tide was in and the gently lapping waves were much
closer than normal. There to the left, next to a tuft of spiky
grass at the edge of the dunes, Bethany could see a small crumpled
heap of clothes. They were Megan’s. Bethany didn’t dare risk being
seen by Megan and hid behind the tuft and peered out. She shivered
in the early morning breeze.

Bethany
couldn’t see her sister at first, but then she spotted her wading
out into the waves in her swimming costume. Her legs looked pink
with the cold. Then Megan was swimming out into the sea. Bethany
knew that the water was shallow there and that when the tide was
out the sand seemed to go on forever. She decided to scramble up
the dune behind her to get a better view. At the top she laid down
and scrunched up her eyes to see her sister. Megan was a strong
swimmer and she was already quite a long way out. Bethany thought
about telling on her to Mum and Dad. She knew that Megan shouldn’t
be out like this so early. Mum and Dad were always telling her to
be careful and made Bethany stay in the pools of shallow water
trapped in the sand when the tide went out. Bethany didn’t really
mind. It was warmer in those pools and she was scared of being
stung by jellyfish.

Bethany lay
there on the top of the dune peering out towards where Megan was
swimming. She was beginning to wonder whether she should turn round
and go back home when a fin appeared close to where Megan was
swimming. Bethany gasped and involuntarily put her hand over her
mouth in surprise. Then she saw a second fin, and then a third. At
first she thought they were sharks, but Megan seemed to swim
towards them not away from them, so she knew it wasn’t anything
dangerous.

It was hard to
see what was going on over the low waves and Bethany would have
stood up to take a better look if she’d dared. The fins came in
close to where Megan was swimming. Megan seemed to be putting out
her hand and touching the creature, whatever it was. It didn’t look
scary at all. Bethany squinted to see better. One of the creatures
put its head up over the surface of the waves. Bethany gasped
again. It was a dolphin!

Lucy Parr
groaned as the alarm clock went off and she blearily knocked it
with her hand, hoping to put it on snooze for another five minutes.
She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. It was Monday
morning and she still hadn’t quite finished her homework even
though she’d started it on Friday evening. She’d have to finish it
over breakfast, she thought.

Sometimes when
she had just woken up, Lucy would imagine that she was back in her
Aunt Bethany’s studio in Cornwall. It didn’t overlook the sea, but
it was less than a mile from the tall cliffs that towered over the
ocean. Every day down there seemed ripe with adventure and
possibility. Bethany was an artist and lived in a studio she
created from an old farm outhouse. Light flooded in from the
south-facing windows which looked out over the fields. The studio
took up most space but there was a kitchen area and up some steps
was a sort of platform which was Bethany’s living area and where
her bed was. When Lucy stayed there she slept on a camp bed at the
foot of Bethany’s own. It was all quite basic but Lucy loved it and
she felt happy when she stayed there. In the summer Lucy would go
outside when she’d woken up and let the morning sun warm her
face.

Life back home
seemed full of grey inevitability in comparison. She could hear the
patter of rain on her window and sighed. There was a hole in one of
her school shoes and it let the water in. She’d have a cold soggy
left foot by the time she got to school. She had to get Dad to buy
her some new ones.

Even the
prospect of Christmas in a couple of weeks didn’t cheer her up. It
would be just her and Dad, an over-cooked turkey and the Christmas
film on TV. Nothing to look forward to then.

There was
something more though that made her feel miserable and sad. For the
past three days she hadn’t been able to reach out and speak to her
dolphin friend Spirit. Back in the spring Lucy had realised that
there was something more to the dreams that she’d always had of a
pod of dolphins swimming in the sea. She’d discovered that they
were real and that she was able to communicate with one dolphin in
particular called Spirit. It meant so much to her after she’d lost
her mother. For some reason that Lucy didn’t understand, her father
was against her connection to the sea and to dolphins. He had been
really strict, but in the summer he’d allowed her to go down and
stay with Bethany. The day after Lucy had helped save Spirit’s
mother from her imprisonment in a lagoon, Dad had told her that
she’d grow out of her gift, as though it was an illness like acne.
Instead of being something bad, Lucy felt that discovering her gift
with dolphins was the most beautiful and special thing that had
ever happened to her. From what Dad said, losing it was something
inevitable that she couldn’t escape. Lucy wasn’t so sure
though.

Ever since
then, even though Lucy had to go back home and far from the sea,
she’d taken every opportunity to reach out to Spirit with her mind
and spend as much time as she could with him. Lucy reckoned that
the more she did so, the stronger she’d become and the better she’d
be at it. It was like working out to get better at gymnastics she
thought. She was determined to prove Dad wrong and keep the gift
that meant so much to her. The fact that she’d not been able to
communicate with Spirit for the last two days scared her though.
This had never happened before. Was she losing her gift as Dad had
predicted?

Lucy pulled on
her school uniform, washed her face in the bathroom, and stomped
downstairs.

‘
Looks like
someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning’ observed Dad
wryly as he stood at the kitchen counter spooning cornflakes into
his mouth. ‘What’s up with you then?’

Lucy wasn’t
going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right by
telling him how worried she was about not being able to reach out
to Spirit.

‘
I’ve got to
finish my homework’ she mumbled as she poured out some cereal into
a bowl and opened her maths exercise book in front of her at the
kitchen table. She had just five more questions to go.

Dad was
already wearing his suit. He gave the impression that he was
perpetually late for some appointment or other and was keen to get
out of the house, into his car and away.

‘
You’ll be
okay if I head off now won’t you Luce?’ he asked her as he patted
his pockets absent-mindedly to check that his keys were still
there. Lucy nodded without looking up from the equation she was
working on. He planted a kiss on the top of Lucy’s head before
making for the door. Lucy could tell that he wanted to give her a
hug as well but she continued to stare fixedly at the exercise she
was doing and he gave up on the idea.

‘
Bye then!’ he
called, just before the door clicked shut behind him.

As soon as
he’d gone, Lucy put her exercise book to one side, and started to
focus in the way that she’d learned to enable her to reach out to
Spirit with her mind. The trick was to focus her mind and then let
it relax, so that she could find that door at the very edge of her
consciousness that would enable her to tumble through into Spirit’s
world of water. Lucy’s worries made it difficult though and after
ten minutes of trying she gave up. She glanced at her watch. It was
later than she’d thought and she scooped her things into her school
bag and got ready to set off.