Chapter 34
Rough Waters
Austin
Iwanted out of whatever this was. I wanted to go back to my little blue box, but an invisible hand kept pulling along through the past. One moment I was standing in a cemetery, the next, I was in an alley, watching a scrawny teenager pick through a garbage can.
He turned and looked right through me. Aside from the stench of old food, there was a brininess to the breeze that overtook the stagnant air.
Adam grabbed what looked like a half-eaten hoagie and gave it a sniff.
He could still pass as human, but there were obvious signs.
Slightly pointed ears, dark gray taking over the whites of his eyes, the dim glow of his orange irises, even his once smooth forearms looked a little hairier.
This must have been at least a year before I met him, but I’d had no idea he was living like this.
“Still good,” he growled before furiously scarfing down the sandwich like he hadn’t eaten in days.
He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a while either.
Taking another bite, he stepped out of the alley, looking both ways then darted toward the sound of waves crashing.
Now that I could see my surroundings in the light of the full moon, I recognized this place.
Like a frantic shadow, Adam dashed between the streetlamps until he was finally on the beach.
There was a bonfire in the distance and the sound of a guitar, but Adam stayed in the darkness, sitting on the sand while watching the moon’s reflection on the ocean.
I’d never been here at night during a full moon, but it was pretty to see.
“What are you doing?” I asked, sitting next to him. I knew he wasn’t going to answer, but if I didn’t say something, I was gonna pop. “Living like a bum when you have a nice house waiting for you. It might not have been perfect, but it beats eating out of the trash. Dumbshit.”
A car door shut behind us, and I turned toward a police officer holding a flashlight. Adam jumped up and ran to the water, narrowly evading a beam of white light. Why were the police looking for him?
A couple walked by, and the officer flagged them down.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for a teenager. Black male, about seventeen, showing signs of lycanthropy. He was last seen in this area.”
“We just got here,” the man said. “We haven’t seen anyone like that, just a werewolf up the beach.”
“All right, thanks.” He turned off the flashlight and grabbed the radio from his shoulder. “He’s not here, and the lifeguard hasn’t seen him.”
“Ten-four,” came a staticky male voice from the speaker.
As the officer got back into his car, frantic splashing came from farther out in the water. In the moonlight, I watched helplessly as Adam struggled to stay on the surface.
“Adam!” I shouted, jumping into the turbulent blackness.
This was just a vision, but it was real to me.
He was screaming and choking, and I had to do something.
He was the only thing I could touch, so I could pull him out.
But it was too late. He’d already been swallowed by the waves.
It wasn’t long before I was pulled into the undertow as well. Could I drown in this?
I held my breath until I couldn’t anymore, struggling to get to the surface. No matter what I did, though, something pulled me further down. This was it. Reflexively I gasped, and it was still air. I was breathing air in the ocean.
Looking around, I tried to find any sign of Adam.
The moonlight was just bright enough to illuminate the area ahead, and I saw him.
He was still, lifeless, just buoyant enough not to sink further, but not enough to surface.
A large, dark figure several feet below me grew larger, frantically trying to get to the boy.
The shadow would go up, sink, come up, reach for Adam, then sink again. It doggy-paddled and flailed, but I couldn’t make out what it was until it got closer. The shadow morphed into a huge man with a shark head, a shark tail and a dorsal fin. Despite all that, he couldn’t swim worth a damn.
With a final jump, he grabbed Adam, pulling the boy as he seemed to skip along the bottom of the shallower part of the ocean shelf. He was hydrodynamic enough to run like he was on the surface of the moon, his tail propelling him forward as he finally emerged, carrying Adam in his arms.
The fucker was as big as me, but he had this wide, sad stare. The shark man wore what looked like a pair of Darryl’s red shorts, and a necklace made from bone and driftwood with a seashell in the middle.
“Oh no, oh no,” he said in a high-pitched panicked voice, pacing back and forth along the sand. “What do I do, what do I do?” He turned toward the bonfire and the sound of a guitar, then took off toward it like a ghost crab.
“Darryl, Darryl,” he shouted. He had a strange way of speaking, always repeating himself, his tone alternating between high and low.
In the distance, Darryl threw his guitar aside and ran over to examine the commotion.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. He was in the water, but he’s not breathing. He’s not breathing.”
“Calm down, Bobby. Lay him on the ground.”
Bobby did as he was told, and Darryl went to work administering CPR.
After a few chest compressions, he sealed his mouth around Adam’s, breathing into him.
It went on like this for another minute before Adam coughed up a mouthful of water.
Darryl turned him on his side, pounded his back to get the last of the fluid from his lungs.
“That was close,” he whispered, checking Adam’s pulse. “It’s a little weak, but I think he’ll be okay. I need to call an ambulance, though.”
I had assumed these visions were Adam’s memories, but he never would have remembered something like this while unconscious. Maybe Darryl wasn’t making this sharkman shit up after all.
“Oh good, oh good. I was scared,” Bobby said, holding his hand to his chest.
Though he terrified the shit out of me, that monster was kinda cute in a weird way. From the sing-songy way he spoke to his slightly higher pitched voice, he was the opposite of his appearance.
“You saved his life, Bobby. Lucky you were there to find him.”
Bobby’s face brightened, and he grinned, rows of sharp teeth glistening in the moonlight. “I was out looking for pretty shells, and I saw him and got scared. I got scared. I was going to leave him alone, but he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving.”
“Did you swim?”
“I tried. I tried. I ran though. I ran through the water.”
Darryl patted the huge creature on the back. “You tried. That’s what matters. We’ll keep working on it.” He looked down at Adam who was still unconscious. “This is the kid the police were looking for.” Darryl knelt again, slipping a finger behind his slightly pointed ears. “Ah, shit. Poor kid.”
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?”
“He’s a half-turn.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s gonna turn into a wolf man, like me one day.”
“You mean, people can turn into wolf men?” His eyes went wide and glassy. “Could I… turn into a wolf man? Could I?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Darryl said, prompting a teary response from Bobby. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“I’m useless. What kind of shark can’t swim?”
“The kind of shark I like.” Darryl gave a flirty grin before turning his attention back to Adam. “I don’t have to worry about taking him to the hospital. Whatever damage was done will heal. I don’t want to risk anything until I know why they’re looking for him.”
“Are they like the humans looking for me? They have harpoons!”
“You need to stay away from those boats,” Darryl scolded. “And no, they’re not the same.”
Bobby’s eyes darted from side to side as he heard people talking farther up the beach.
“They’ll see, they’ll see. I need to go.” He turned toward the water, but Darryl wrapped his arms around him from behind.
“Come to my house tomorrow night.”
“I can’t, I can’t. Family’s been suspicious. Gotta spend the day with the family.”
“Well come back soon, okay?” Darryl kissed the sharkman on the nose, and even though it was dark, Bobby’s face darkened like he was blushing. Was it even possible for a shark to do that?
“I will, I will. I promise.” He ran to the ocean before disappearing into the black water.
This vision was so off-the-wall bizarre that I started to question what I was seeing. Considering what had happened to Adam, I had my doubts this even took place. It could have been brain damage caused by his near-death experience.
Darryl scooped the teenager up off the ground and carried him back to his shack.
Night turned to day, and I was inside, watching Adam sleep on Darryl’s oversized bed while the werewolf lay on a tall inflatable mattress, reading a book next to an open window.
This place always had a calming effect, but I never allowed myself a moment’s peace whenever Adam and I visited.
There was still a lot of unresolved animosity between me and Darryl, and all of it was my fault.
A groan came from the bed, and Adam slowly sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“Good morning,” Darryl said, licking his index finger before flipping the page of his book. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was run over. Who the hell are you?”
“Well let’s see. For some reason you were in the ocean and you nearly drowned. Oh, and the police are looking for you.” He looked up at the teenager’s widened expression. “I’m Darryl.”
“Please don’t tell anyone I’m here. I’ll do anything you want.”
“First tell me why they’re looking for you, then I’ll decide what to do.”
Adam jumped out of the bed and sprinted for the door, prompting Darryl to drop his book. With a few steps, he easily caught the boy, grabbing him by the nape of his neck.
“Don’t be stupid, kid. You can’t run from a werewolf.”
“Let me go!”
“How ‘bout you sit back down and start talking?” He dragged Adam to the bed and forced him onto the mattress. He glared, arms crossed for a few minutes before the teenager started to speak.