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I splashed out into the water, heedless of the biting cold, and flung myself forward into the oncoming waves. Even as I spluttered and shouted, I watched in horror as a sizable wave surged forward and crashed right over the motionless child’s head. I plunged toward him, reaching out my hands to pluck him backward.
As my fingers closed over the little arm, the child’s entire form dissolved in my grasp. I felt him melt away like a dream at dawn and looked down to see a handful of wet sand sliding through my fingers and taken by the sea. Another wave battered against me, sending me tumbling backward, still flailing and feeling for a small being that had vanished into nothing at all. I sucked in a desperate breath just in time as the wave tumbled me like a stone. I slammed into the sandy bottom before being rolled and buffeted until I was dizzy. I couldn’t tell which way to swim; the world was a cold, rough tug-of-war and I was the rope, moments from snapping. My lungs burned for air, and my eyes burned with salt as I opened them in desperation, trying to see my way to the surface, but seeing nothing but murky blackness. The last of my air bubbled out in a scream as something closed tightly around my wrist.
I had one last thought, a thought that felt as though it had been whispered in my ear.
And now the sea shall take you as it was always meant to do…
My head broke the surface into the night air, and I rasped out a gasping breath, tears and saltwater stinging my eyes.
“Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing?” came a breathless, agitated cry.
I tried to answer, but all I could manage was a wet cough that brought up about a gallon of sea water into the damp sand, where I was now slumped after being dragged to the water’s edge. I squinted through stinging eyes and saw Zale in the sand beside me, dripping wet and drawing ragged breaths as he glared at me.
“I… there was…”
“You chose a hell of a time for a nighttime swim. Hasn’t anyone told you about the undertow at this beach?” he gasped.
“I… didn’t…”
“Damn it, Wren, I thought you drowned!” A second voice joined in now, and I looked up to see Eva throwing a towel around my shoulders.
“Should we call an ambulance or something?” Nova stood a few feet away with a handful of other gawking kids, shifting her feet nervously in the sand, her phone halfway out of her pocket already.
“Don’t be an idiot, Nova,” Zale snapped. “She’s talking and breathing, why the hell would she need an ambulance?”
“I dunno, Zale, maybe for a psych eval?” Nova snapped right back. “Because you’d have to be bat-shit crazy to do something like that?”
I tried to sit up, but my arms were shaking badly. Eva helped me into a sitting position, rubbing my back while I continued to cough and blink the salt out of my eyes. Within a few minutes, the other kids drifted away up the beach, evidently deciding I was no longer interesting enough to gawk at now that it was clear I wasn’t going to die.
“I thought I saw a little boy in the water,” I said, the words grating out like sandpaper in my throat.
“What?! Oh my God, I didn’t see—” Zale was stumbling back toward the water again in a panic, but I reached out and caught the hem of his shirt.
“It wasn’t… it wasn’t real.”
He turned to look at me again, bewilderment all over his face. “What do you mean it wasn’t real?”
I opened my mouth to tell him: the way the child had been eerily silent, the way he had never turned no matter how loudly or desperately I called after him, the way he marched inexorably forward into the water, like his only purpose was to lead me there…
“I… I made a mistake,” I finished lamely.
Zale bit his lip. “Are you sure?”
I nodded even as I struggled to swallow a sob. Now that the shock was wearing off, I was starting to tremble and my heart to pound. I turned away from Zale’s incredulous expression to find Eva looking intently at me, like she was trying to read something reflected in my eyes.
“You made a mistake like it was a plastic bag or a log or something?” she asked, the words snapping out, each one pointed and edged with anxiety.
I met her eye. “No.”
She nodded once, grimly. “A vision, then?”
I shrugged, stifling another cough. “I don’t… maybe?”
“Have you ever had one before?”
“No, I…” but I paused, considering. What had the presence in the garden been? Or the figure in the catwalk at the theater? Surely they hadn’t been real, and yet I’d experienced them seen and felt them as if they had been.
Eva interpreted my hesitation. “You’re not sure?”
