Chapter 1

Ginger Mallowan

 

 

June 27, 1986

 

 

I couldn’t see the man’s face through the veil of twilight closing on Bloodson Bay Beach, but I could feel his stare. The stranger had been following me and the boys along the surf as we walked toward 64 Beachside Drive, our humble clapboard home that sat beyond a large sand dune on the sixth block. Not far up ahead our dilapidated boardwalk jutted out, cutting through the grassy mounds, and I quickened my step.

As a single mother with two rambunctious boys, I doubted my shadower wanted to Take My Breath Away following a proper date. Considering my poor taste in men, I was better off Dancing With Myself to Billy Idol anyway. The way the man followed just far enough behind to blend in with the dusk, but still keeping up with my increasing pace…this stranger was up to no good.

I could feel it in my bones.

A vicious gust of wind ripped the beach bag from my hand, spilling the leftovers of our picnic dinner across the sand. Benny and Cole scampered ahead together, chasing seagulls that had descended on the food scraps while I chased a flying Tupperware lid. I smiled as I watched them play, each clutching their action figures—Hulk Hogan for Benny, an Optimus Prime Transformer for Cole. Their matching He-Man shirts blended in with the night.

I remembered being terrified to raise boys after their births, cradling each one’s tiny pink body, wondering how I could nurture them to be better men than their father. It didn’t take long for each of them to become a moon to my tide, pulling me with a maternal force. They were mine, and I was theirs, so I willingly gave myself over to them, and them to me. Since then I couldn’t imagine anything different. My boys were my boys. They were my whole life and made my life whole.

“Benny, Cole, don’t wander too far. It’s getting dark.” I glanced behind me, but the man was gone, as far as I could tell. Daylight was too scarce to know for sure.

“Mommy, guws!” Benny shrieked with delight, pointing to the seagulls.

“Mommy, guws!” Cole parroted his older brother.

While almost three years separated the brothers in age, Benny’s language development had recently become severely delayed. Our physician speculated that it could be the newly popular diagnosis of “autism,” a disorder that remained a mystery to me—and our doctor as well, it seemed. Though I blamed the disappearing act of Benny’s father six months ago. The day his dad left was the day Benny stopped talking. It took every bit of effort to coax him to speak, and what words did come out were more befitting of his year-and-a-half-old brother. I was doing the best I could under the circumstances. At least that’s what I told myself when the sense of failure crept in.

A particularly daring seagull swooped down, picking up one of the mustard yellow container lids. Shooing it away, I chased down the rest of the Tupperware that had flipped across the beach, collecting everything back in my straw Bermuda bag. A zap of lightning cracked the sky far down the shore, briefly illuminating the endless stretch of horizon. I caught a glimpse of a herd of wild horses that roamed the coastline, the only true natives that remained here. A distant whinny told me even the mustangs knew better than to stick around for the storm.

A rip of thunder echoed, and based on my counting, the storm was about four Mississippis away. In other words, about four miles, giving us about ten minutes to take cover.

A gust yanked on my color-block windbreaker. I slipped on my neon pink Jelly shoes I had been carrying, and held out the tiny red sweatshirt I’d bought from Wings beachwear shop.

“Cole, come here, honey. It’s getting cold, bud. Let Mommy put this on you.” I grabbed his wrist as he tried to skirt around me, and pulled the sweatshirt over his head, threading his arms through each sleeve.

“No!” Cole screamed, wriggling against the shirt. He hated long sleeves almost as much as I hated fighting him over long sleeves.

When’s Cole’s head popped through the neck of the shirt, he patted the tender spot on his forehead where he had scraped the skin in a tumble on the pavement earlier this week. It was already starting to scab over into a heart-shaped scar.

“Kiss owie,” Cole insisted.

I brushed my lips against the boo-boo, then kissed all over his face as he tugged up the hem of the shirt.

“Just wear it until we get inside.” I waved Benny over. “One quick picture of you two boys before we head in.”

“Mommy, no picture!” they both whined.

“I’ll be quick, I promise.”

The Diaper Duo, so nicknamed because Benny had yet to potty-train and Cole still had a ways to go, struck a silly pose while I lifted the Kodak Instamatic I’d brought with me. The flash blinded them for a moment, but capturing those cute smiles was worth “torturing” them.

Freeing them to go play—for five minutes, then inside!—I dropped the camera in my bag as a flurry whipped my hair in a frenzied halo.

“Benny, stay with your little brother while I put this away,” I reminded him.

“Okay, Mommy.” Then Benny tapped Cole in an impromptu game of tag. “Hey you guys!” he screamed as he took off.

“Hey you guys!” Cole echoed. The boys had worn out their VHS copy of The Goonies and both could do a pretty decent imitation of Sloth’s signature line.

The yellow glow of the back porch light guided me to where the boardwalk met the sand. I dropped the beach bag on the wooden planks and turned back to find the boys. By now it was nearly pitch black as I blindly called for them.

“Benny! Cole! Come on in, boys! A storm’s coming!”

The wind was too loud to hear my own voice, let alone their reply.

I fought the gale with each step as I searched the shore for my sons, worried that my roof would be left shingle-less after this storm was over. While my father had regaled me with stories of how our home’s strong bones withstood 100-mph winds and a four-foot storm surge during the 1933 Outer Banks hurricane—which my young father watched from within our boarded-up house, his parents refusing to evacuate, the crazy bastards—I wasn’t so confident the foundation would survive another one.

A gush of panic hit me as I searched the strand, finding nothing but empty beach and flapping plumes of pampas grass. Again I called for the boys. Again no one came. There was no way I was going to find them in the dark, so I ran up the wooden walkway to the house, rushing through the back door into the kitchen, straight for the junk drawer where I kept spare flashlights. It took three flashlights before I found one with working batteries, then I hurried back down to the beach, aiming the light every which way, screaming the boys’ names as I searched.

Soon the pale white beam passed over a moving figure, and I sprinted toward it. Little Benny, holding two action figures now. He heaved breaths between words as he tried to talk over the squall. Relief flooded me as I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around him. After a moment I realized he was alone, without his little brother who was always at his side.

“I told you not to wander off!” I scolded. “Where’s Cole?”

Benny shrugged. “He wiff wadey in wadew.”

I leaned in close. I couldn’t understand him.

“What, honey? He what?”

“Wadey in wadew.”

I stood up, skimming the flashlight beam across the crashing surf. “Buddy, I don’t know what you’re saying. He was wading in the water?”

Benny shook his head, pointing down the beach. “Wadey in wadew, Mommy!”

My boys knew the sea well, took first steps on her shore, bathed in her salty waters, learned young about her delights and dangers. I had reinforced the rules daily. There was no way Cole could have been taken by her…could he?

I scooped Benny up in my arms, positioning him on my hip while I followed where he pointed, passing the light across the beach, along the dunes, over the whitecaps. The storm raged on around me, inside me, every crack of thunder stealing my breath and fueling my panic.

After what felt like forever, I saw a blink of red as I passed the light over the water, and I ran toward it. By the time I reached it, I already knew what it was.

Floating on the waves was Cole’s red sweatshirt. The white printed words Bloodson Bay bobbed along the breakers toward me. I knelt down and picked it up, pressing the seawater-soaked fabric to my chest as I screamed out my son’s name. Benny covered his ears as my screams turned to sobs, and my sobs turned to curses. But Cole was nowhere to be found.

As the foamy surf receded, I felt it happen all at once. My old life, the one that revolved around my two boys, a life full of water gun battles and Teddy Ruxpin bedtime stories and Micro Machine races, detached and floated away. Darkness replaced the void, along with an endless hunger to fill it.