Authors: R. L. Stine
Silence everywhere else. Ira was swimming at Ethan’s house. The twins had pulled on their swimsuits and hurried off to join him. Roz had dropped Elena and Ruth-Ann at the Bridgehampton mall. Roz and Axl were . . . He wasn’t quite sure where they were. So hard to keep track of everyone.
So maybe the illicit nature of this rare chance increased his expectations.
No. That wasn’t it. Sure, he was eager. He hadn’t seen her in a week. And in a way, he wanted to reassure himself that they were okay. That he hadn’t screwed up anything.
No.
You’re thinking too hard, Mark.
She had welcomed him with that little sigh from deep in her throat that she always made when he entered her. And he felt the same surge of joy as they began. But it didn’t take long to realize that it was different.
Numb.
Such a strangely out-of-place word. But as he moved on top of her, the word invaded his thoughts.
Numb.
And he realized he was doing it all and she was just accepting. She had her arms around his neck and then his waist. But she didn’t grasp him with the strength she always had.
And her eyes . . . gazing over his rolling shoulders. Yes, she seemed distant. Numb. She wasn’t reacting, and she wasn’t trying to hide it.
When he finished, she murmured, “Nice,” and her eyes settled on him for a moment before losing their focus and settling back into what seemed to be a hazy world of her own thoughts.
“Lea? Is everything okay? You seem so . . . far away. I could see on your face.” He took a breath. “You’re still on that island, aren’t you?”
It took her a long time to respond. And then she nodded her head, her gaze not on him but at the ceiling. “Yes. Still on the island.” Whispered so that the words sent a chill down his neck. “Still on the island. Still back there.”
A long sigh. “So many nightmares. Every night. Nightmares pulling me there, pulling me into all that death and horror. I can’t get the wailing out of my ears. The wailing and the moaning and the crying. It’s like I’m still there. Still there.”
She squeezed his hand. “But . . . I want to come back, Mark. I really do.”
And then an abrupt move. To break the sadness? Pushing him
aside, she stood up. “The kids will be home soon.” It was still a thrill to watch her walk naked across the room. She vanished into the bathroom, and he thought of Autumn.
I can’t keep her around. I don’t want to ruin my life.
And what could he do to help Lea? The things she saw on that island. He felt as if he could see them, too, in her eyes.
Numb.
She had gone numb.
That will just take time.
He felt a heaviness lower over him, his eyelids suddenly heavy. What a luxury a Saturday-afternoon nap would be. He pulled the quilt up, shut his eyes, and sank into the pillow.
He drifted off. For how long? He didn’t know. A gentle tapping sound woke him. He lifted his head to see Lea at her rosewood desk, her head a silhouette in the glow of her laptop monitor, leaning toward the screen and typing rapidly.
She moved her lips when she typed. So cute. It always made him smile. But her back was turned and he could see only the bobbing of her hair, pulled back in a loose ponytail, and the fingers of her right hand tap-dancing over the keys.
“Hi,” he called. “How long did I sleep?”
“Not long.” She didn’t turn around. She was wearing a light green beach cover-up.
Mark pulled himself up. “It’s a beautiful day. Feels like summer. Maybe we should round up the kids and drive to the beach. Sagg Main?”
She shook her head. “No. Think I need to get this written.”
“The island? Are you getting your experience there in writing?”
She kept typing. Her head nodded toward the screen, then pulled back. “I’m not writing about that.”
“What?” He stood up quickly. The breeze from the window tickled his skin. The short sleep had revived him. He did three or four knee bends just to show off to himself.
He walked to the dresser and pulled out a red Nike swimsuit. Tugging it on, he stepped up behind her. “What are you writing about?”
“Something different.”
He chuckled and cupped his hands over her shoulders. “You’re being secretive?”
“Yes.”
He leaned over her shoulder to read what she had written. “You don’t have secrets from your husband, do you?”
He thought of Autumn.
She lowered her hands to her lap. “I just . . . have some new ideas.”
He squinted at the screen and his eyes scanned her last paragraph:
Tibet’s inhuman climate and hard, stony ground makes burial nearly impossible. This is why Buddhists there choose a sky burial. Upon death, the body is chopped into small pieces which are mixed with flour. Then the remains are spread out over a tree to be eaten by scavenging birds.
Mark stood up and released her shoulders. “Lea, what is this? Dead Buddhists in Tibet? Sky burial?”
She turned and raised her face to him. The light from the laptop monitor bathed her in gray. “Death rituals,” she said, just above a whisper. “I’ve been doing some research.”
She hadn’t said anything funny. Why did she have that strange, guilty smile on her face?
“Your blog,” he said. “You’re not going to write your travel blog?”
She shook her head. The strange smile remained. “I’ve kind of lost interest in that.”
“But . . . you’ve put so much time and effort—”
She shrugged and turned her face away. “I can’t write it anymore. It’s just not interesting to me. You know. I have to write what I’m interested in. I’ve always been that way.”
He blinked at the screen. “But, sweetheart—death rituals? Why death rituals?”
“It’s all so fascinating. Did you know there’s a province in Madagascar where people pull the dead out from their graves and dance with them? Every seven years, Mark. They dig up their relatives and dance with them. Isn’t that sweet?”
Sweet?
He took a step back. He watched her type. She leaned toward the screen as if she wanted to dive in. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration.
As if I’m not here.
“Sky burials? Dancing with the dead? Lea? Should I be worried about you?”
“H
ey, how’d you get here?” Ira raised his head from the fat blue inner tube and squinted at the twins as they pulled back the gate and stepped onto the deck.
“Walked,” Daniel answered.
Samuel had never seen anything as beautiful as this pool. It was long and wide, nearly the length of the house. The pool walls were a light blue. Sky blue. The water sparkled with little patches of sunlight.
As if little chunks of the sun had fallen into the pool,
he thought. He wanted to dive in and scoop them up.
He just wanted to sink into the water, immerse himself in the clear, clean cold. Be clear and clean himself. But he knew Daniel had other plans.
“You guys know how to swim?” Ethan sat on the edge of the deep end, blond hair as bright as the sunlight, leaning down to fill a yellow-and-red plastic water blaster.
“We swim,” Daniel said. “We lived on an island, remember, lad? Sammy and I swam before we could walk.”
“That’s cool,” Ethan replied. Samuel had never seen a boy so pale, nearly as white as the fence surrounding the pool deck. He could see Ethan’s rib cage poking out from his chest.
He’s puny for twelve. The boy needs to pump up.
Maybe we can help him. If Daniel doesn’t drown the lad today.
Ethan dipped the blaster under the water. Then he raised it and shot a lazy spray of water across the pool to Ira. Floating drowsily on his tube, luxuriating with his eyes closed, Ira didn’t even notice.
“Is the water warm?” Samuel dropped to his knees and ran a hand through it. Under the surface, he could feel the spray of cold water shooting into the pool. “Nice.”
Ethan aimed carefully and sent a long spray of water into Ira’s face. Ira spluttered and dove off the tube. Ethan laughed. He had a dry cackle of a laugh.
Like an old witch,
Samuel thought.
Ira floated beneath the surface. He rose up in front of Ethan and spit a long stream of water onto his legs.
Daniel grabbed the chrome ladder and lowered himself into the water. He pushed himself away from the wall and paddled toward Ira. “How long can you stay underwater?” he asked, bobbing in a spill of gold sunlight.
Ira’s head sank into the water again. He rose up and spit another mouthful onto Ethan’s legs. Ethan gave him a blast between the eyes with the plastic squirt blaster.
“How long?” Daniel insisted, following Ira across the pool.
Samuel’s body felt sticky and drenched with sweat from the walk to Ethan’s house. He held his breath and leaped into the deep end. The shock of the cold water made him gasp, and he came up to the surface spluttering.
“Ira can stay underwater for a whole minute,” he heard Ethan tell Daniel. “I’ve seen him.”
Daniel eyed Ira. “A whole minute?”
Ira shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Yeah. I guess.”
Samuel didn’t want to listen. He knew the routine. He ducked underwater and swam the length of the pool. It felt so fresh and cold, and made his body tingle.
Alive
.
I feel alive.
When he resurfaced, Daniel was continuing his act. “Do you have a timer?” he called to Ethan.
Ethan set down the water blaster. “There’s a stopwatch on my dad’s iPhone.”
“Go get it,” Daniel ordered. “You can time Ira and me.” Ethan
started to the house. His swimsuit hung on him, down to his knees. “Wait. Ethan, you want to be in the contest?” Daniel’s voice made a ringing sound over the water.
Ethan turned back. “I don’t want to swim. I have a scrape on my arm. From the cat. And the chlorine makes it hurt.”
Ethan is not a superhero,
Samuel thought, snickering. He made himself heavy and sank to the pool bottom, then kicked back up.
I could live in the water. Only place I feel alive.
The kitchen door slammed behind Ethan. Samuel slid onto his back and floated, gazing up at the sun-streaked sky.
“I think I can stay under longer than a minute,” Daniel told Ira. The two of them held sides of the tube, bobbing with it. Samuel spotted another inflated float leaning against a green chaise longue. Shaped like a big, gray whale.
That would be fun to ride. But Daniel has his own fun in mind.
“I can maybe do longer than a minute,” Ira said without much conviction.
“Want to go first?”
Ira shook his head. “Why don’t you go first?”
“Why don’t you both go under at the same time?” Ethan said, reappearing on the deck with iPhone in hand.
Daniel slipped off the tube and swung himself around to face Ethan. “No. I want the Ira lad to hold me under.”
Ira made a kind of squawking sound.
“What?”
“Hold my hair,” Daniel instructed. “Push me under. Hold me down, okay? You have to hold me or I’ll float to the top, and you’ll win.”
Ira slid off the tube and pushed it toward the side of the pool. “You really want me to hold you under?”
Daniel nodded. “Just grab my hair and push down on my head.”
“But how will I know when you want to come up?”
“No worries,” Daniel told him. “I’ll give a signal.”
“You sure?”
Daniel grinned at him, dimples flashing. “Yes, I’m sure. Sure I’ll win.”
Samuel sighed. He dove under again. Peaceful down below.
Daniel should have been an actor.
Samuel surfaced, shaking water from his thick blond hair.
“Go!” Ethan cried from the deck, eyes on the phone in his hand.
Daniel let Ira push him under the surface. Ira gripped Daniel’s hair and held his head down.
“Hold on tight,” Samuel said, bobbing closer. “Don’t let him come up.”
“He . . . said he’d signal,” Ira said, obviously not sure about this contest.
Samuel floated in a circle around Ira. Ira kept Daniel down with one hand, paddled the surface with the other.
“Push him,” Samuel said. “Keep pushing.”
“But—”
“One minute,” Ethan called. He dropped onto the edge of a deck chair, concentrating on the phone. Samuel could see that Ethan’s slender shoulders were already pink. Sunburned.
“It’s kind of hard to keep him from floating up,” Ira said.
“Keep pushing,” Samuel told him. “He has big lungs. He can stay down a long time.”
“He hasn’t signaled,” Ira said.
Samuel watched his brother float under the rippling water, his arms limp and relaxed at his sides, legs not moving.
“Two minutes,” Ethan called.
“I . . . I think your brother wins,” Ira said. “Two minutes. Wow. I can’t—”
“Hold him under,” Samuel said. “Don’t ruin his turn. He gets angry if you ruin his turn.”
“Did he just signal?” Ira very tense now. The strain showing on his face, pale, his features tight. “I thought I saw him signal.” The muscle in the arm holding down Daniel quivered.
“Not yet,” Samuel said.
Underwater, Daniel floated perfectly upright, arms limp and relaxed.
“Three minutes,” Ethan called, jumping to his feet. “That’s
enough, right?” He stepped to the edge of the pool, gazing down at Daniel’s unmoving form. “People can’t stay under this long—can they?”
“He . . . hasn’t signaled,” Ira said in a wavering voice.
Samuel and Ira both watched a string of bubbles float up from Daniel’s mouth.
“Is that the signal? He said he’d signal.”
“Four minutes. Are you sure he’s okay?” Ethan lowered the phone. “I mean really. Is he okay? Four minutes?”
They all saw Daniel’s head slump forward under the water. His head bent and one last bubble slid up to the surface. Then his legs suddenly splayed, and his arms floated limply to the top.
“Let go of him!” Samuel screamed. “Something’s wrong, Ira. Let go of him—now!”
Ira gasped and swallowed a mouthful of water. His hand flew off Daniel’s head.
Released, Daniel’s body rose to the surface. His face appeared for only a moment, eyes closed, water spilling from his open jaw. Then his body tilted forward and he dropped facedown, arms outstretched and limp.