Dark Tide

By Elizabeth Ann Forrest

A man. A woman. A monster. What could go wrong?

Something dark and hungry and unnatural haunts Pacific Crest, bringing death to the northern coast of California.

Decades earlier, Parker Solomon swore never to return after an accident claimed his childhood, his memories, and his best friend's life. A work project demands his presence. Now he has no choice.

What he hoped he'd put away rises again as nightmares locked away begin to emerge and come true…

 

"One of those big, scary, colorful adventure stories…the real stuff, a rare pleasure." – Dean Koontz

 

Content warning: this book contains sensitive material for mature audiences, SVL. Bad things happen to good people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhondi Vilott Salsitz
• Release date: Sep 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781950300457

Book preview

Prologue

Awakening

---

Marianas Trench In the Philippine Sea, 15.00N, 147.03 E

Aug. 6, 1945

It stretches more than 1,400 miles long, along the edge of the Pacific plate. It bisects almost perfectly in two, the distance E and SE, the Japanese islands from the Bikini Atolls. Most accurate recorded depth, 36,201 feet. Ocean canyon walls formed its tomb, uncaring of the war in the Pacific or any other time since the beginning of humankind’s feeble crawl across the face of the world.

Until the bomb dropped in Hiroshima and it shuddered.

Aug. 9, 1945 Nagasaki

The ocean depths rang again with the shockwaves of destruction. Mankind came calling.

Knock, Knock...

March 1, 1954

Bikini Islands

Approximately 60 more atomic tests in the Pacific Proving Grounds.

The trench shuddered again as the H-bomb exploded.

Its rest finally and inexorably ended, the uninvited woke from its slumber.

Who's there?

As the PT boat nudged into the gem-blue wash of Pacific waters, the water began to lighten along the shallows, from dark blue to turquoise. Seaman Kowalski rode the bow, where the slap of waves and spray from the boat’s speed lessened. His suit was dappled with saltwater and he looked into the shallows as sweat ran down his back inside the suit, funneled from his pits down his ribs. Even his groin smoldered uncomfortably in the tropical heat.

Costumed like a deep-sea diver, he felt choked inside the protective gear and, worse, he could not wipe his eyes clear. He blinked them fiercely from time to time to fling off the sweat that ran from his brow. He was not happy, and he had not volunteered for this run. Nor had the four other men at his back, one officer and three seamen.

He wanted to be back with his wife on the California coast.

The PT caressed the curve of the atoll where the ridge of island barely peeked above the shoreline, its crescent shape a beige and green punctuation of the turquoise shallows. It was beautiful, Kowalski thought, like his Martha, lush and uninhibited, a deserted isle.

He would have liked to have been there under other circumstances, marooned with Martha for a day or two, just the two of them and the tropical waters and warm sand ... "a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou ..." and have I got a loaf for you.

She was not like his mother, who’d been strict in religion and demanding of him that he be the same, that he know all the books and their interpretations until he had finally bolted the household by enlisting. Martha had saved his life, he thought.

To his further irritation, he grew hard. His penis knotted in his shorts and he was unable to free himself. Kowalski grunted in discomfort and swiveled his head about. This was an itch he could not scratch. This was no time to think about his girl, not when she was over six thousand miles away.

Seamen Kowalski’s glance met that of the officer—who was not Navy but Army—the man’s impassive brown eyes clearly visible behind the faceplate of the protective gear. The officer shuttered his eyes slowly as if worried that Kowalski might read something in them.

Cold-hearted son of a bitch. Kowalski hitched his shoulder up and did a half-dance step, trying to shake himself into a more comfortable position. The maneuver was partially successful and he settled at the bow again, watching as the PT boat swung away from the crescent atoll and headed toward a more serious line of islands. It was a wonder any of them were still above water with what had gone off here several days ago.

The officer tapped Kowalski on the shoulder. Get your Geigers and recorders ready. I want an accurate count when we make this sweep.

Kowalski nodded and reached for the instruments. Already the waters and sands looked pure, swept clean, but the rapid-fire click of the Geiger and its hysterical needle told him differently. Only decades would cleanse this island.

He kept his thoughts silent, but privately he regarded it as a crying shame that they’d blasted these atolls. Though most of them were uninhabited because of lack of fresh water, there were still a few which had had native populations before evacuation. Spoils of war, he guessed, and it was better than setting off the H-bomb in downtown Queens to test it, but still ... the place sure had been pretty.

As the PT trolled the shoreline, he could see ground zero. Palm trees at the fringe of the blast, stood shredded and crisped. Sands, melted. No sign of the tower which had held the device. He wondered grimly why he’d even been looking.

Send your detail out, the officer said flatly as the PT beached and the boat rocked to a halt. He jumped over the side. A spray of water obscured Kowalski’s faceplate for a moment. He wiped it down with a clumsy glove as he turned and set the others about their duties, clipboards in one hand and sweeps in tire other.'

The pilot watched him jump off into the shallows before anchoring the boat. For a moment, cooler water laved his suit soothing Kowalski’s temperature. Then he was crunching on the sand and the Geiger needle continued its jump.

He took his clipboard and registered the measurement on the grid the officer had given him. He wondered what difference a few hundred rads made at ground zero.

An hour or so later, he longed for the water again. His feet within the boots were and inch deep in sweat, his socks wrinkling and cutting into his skin. His neckline was drenched and chafing. And his clipboard was filled with notations. Kowalski checked his watch. He’d had to buckle it over the suit sleeve, which had bunched up under the strap. He’d been told he would have to give the watch up when they got back aboard ship. It would be too radioactive for him to use again.

Even with gear on, their time was nearly up. He looked across a cleft cutting into the shoreline, yielding a cove and lagoon. What would it hurt if he went wading for a moment? The officer and the rest of the detail were out of sight, but they’d come straggling back as they checked their own watches and realized how close to the limit they were.

He wouldn’t get a cool, refreshing swim, but he would get some relief. He jumped a downed palm tree, its fronds half-green and half-crisped by the lethal wind which had blown it over, and crossed the pink-white sands. Dead fish littered the shore, and sea birds, kites and gulls, came plunging in for the carcasses, fighting and picking among them.

He thought that the beach would sure be pretty when the scavengers had gone. The water lipping at the cove’s end was the purest azure he’d ever seen. He’d have to remember it so he could tell Martha about it, for she was a romantic and once he had her snuggled in his arms, she would melt when he told her about this place.

Of course, he could never tell her why he’d been there or what they’d done to it.

Sharp rocks hugged the cove. Kowalski laid the Geiger and clipboard on a jumble of them, then eased himself into the water. Black shadows pierced the azure shallows, shadows cast by the rocks against the tropical sun. The coolness pierced even the suit’s protection.

Ahhhh Kowalski closed his eyes for a moment, feeling heavenly relief.

His eyes snapped open as his right boot slipped on a bit of unstable sand and skidded away from him. He tried to catch himself from going down.

His foot kept on moving. Kowalski jerked. Something had him. There was an icy ring he felt even through the suit like the grip of steely fingers. It pulled back.

Jesus Christ! Kowalski grabbed at a rock, hopping on one leg and wrenching his right foot back but he couldn’t free it. His breath came in rapid gasps. The faceplate fogged from the inside. He couldn't see through the sudden damp mistiness. The exhalation of his breath ran in rivulets down the mask. He blew on it heatedly. Goddammit!

Thoughts of giant squid tentacles flooded him. The mask cleared. Facedown on the rocks, he saw the pitted lava mock him as he slid slowly down it His knee socket popped as though his leg might give way before the sea took him. The pull was steady, inexorable, his captor invisible in the sea foam churned up by the struggle.

Kowalski twisted and clung to the rocks with all his might but his gloves kept pulling and crumbling away without anchoring him. His left foot lost purchase on the ocean floor and Kowalski realized he was flying from the rocks like some damned banner.

He pulled and twisted and kicked. His captor relented and Kowalski scrambled to his feet. With a string of curses, he started to clamber out of the water and up the rocks.

It came at him from behind. The heavy protective hood peeled off and Kowalski found himself bareheaded, gasping and swearing in the open, sucking in the radioactive air.

He was as good as a dead man now with the rads his Geiger had been ticking off, unless he got the hood back on immediately.

He threw a hand back to catch up his gear.

Something caught his hand with an inarticulate growling murmur, its touch as cold as ice.

Kowalski felt his heart skip. He slid down the face of the rocks and landed neck-deep in water, his suit flooding, his hand still captive. Slowly, he turned to see what it was which gripped him.

His heart did a skip-beat and then froze. Kowalski sucked in a last lungful of air.

He used it to scream.

Chapter One

Summer of ‘96

They rode cheap mountain bikes that had been junked, and they’d straightened out the best they could, better bikes none of them had or could beg parents for, but envied that summer with all the passion a twelve-year-old boy’s heart could hold.

They traversed the sloping concrete hills of old Pacific Crest, barreling through the unfenced side lots of clapboard houses and jumping curbs. The great earthquake of 1933 had buckled the sidewalks into makeshift ramps from which they could seek the air. Once, they jumped so high in tandem that Pat was certain they would soar into the ocean itself until their fat tires thumped to the asphalt with a jolt that rattled his teeth in their sockets.

The heat of summer and the dust of the street tickled his nostrils as tires hummed. It was as though he’d settled into a well-worn skin which welcomed him eagerly. This, this, was where he lived best, in his childhood past. He remembered the ramp they’d built behind Donald’s house, in the alleyway of Sixth Street. Sixth Street ran parallel to the beach. It was the highest street cresting on a hill. Fifth through First Streets, and then the Boardwalk, all descending into the ocean from Sixth. The ramp was calculated to send them soaring midway into the vacant lot behind and swishing onto Fifth Street as though jet-propelled.

Ready? Donald asked, looking at him, their feet firm upon the ground as they sat astride their bicycles. Pat did not question how he came to be there, or why. He was back, he was home, and he threw himself into the quest of boyhood.

Ready!

Donald hit the pedals a second sooner than he did. They took the ramp with all the speed their pumping legs could muster. He threw his head back and a wind tainted with sea salt tossed his hair back from a sweetly unlined forehead. The ramp catapulted them skyward. They hung in the air, bikes tilted beneath them, and all he could see was the Boardwalk and the Pier and seedy, marvelous Pacific Crest Amusement Park, and the deep purple of the ocean beyond the pier. The very, very dark ocean beyond. The water gleamed as if it were a malevolent eye staring at him. Remembering him even as he remembered and relived these moments.

His heart raced. He could not look away from that piercing stare, could not still his drumming pulse, could not see the asphalt looming close in descent He flew like an arrow toward the heart of something which gripped him with terror.

Parker, listen to my voice. You are not in your twelve-year-old body, you are an observer. You are safe and calm. Give yourself to the moment. Let yourself go. Breathe deeply.

A voice echoed inside his head, abruptly shunting the panic aside, but it did not take him outside the body he wore. He would not relinquish it. Instead, he took the professional calm and comfort, wrapped it about his shoulders like a cape, and faced the pooling ocean watching him.

Parker, I’m going to count down to one. When I reach one, you will remain calm. You will listen far my voice as I awaken you, alert and refreshed.

Yet another voice reached out and took up his soul with a single boyish shout a voice he had not heard, even in his dreams, for decades. Yahoo! Donald crowed with exhilaration. The freckles on his face stood out like tattoos. He grabbed at Pat’s hand.

With startling accuracy of sensation, Pat could feel the sweaty fingers gripping his with fervency. His own begrimed, sweaty fingers laced tightly into the other’s. He had not been with Donald for years. Warning shot through him. He could not look at the ocean any longer. The ocean caught the gleam of the sun within its black-sapphire pupil. He pried his eyes away, turning, inch by inch, his neck as stiff as a rusty bolt, forcing his gaze to one side.

Donald was no longer alive, he thought, and did not want to loosen his grip. His heart began to thump wildly again and his lungs squeezed tight as he reluctantly turned to face his friend. Achingly, his gaze swung around.

Breath shot from his throat with a gasp. Pat could feel his eyes bulge with shock. He opened his jaws to scream, but there was no air, nothing to make a noise with, and all he could manage was a tiny, squeaky sound as a grinning skeletal face looked back at him.

The fleshy fingers he held in his turned to bone.

He felt naked and frightened, teeth-numbingly scared, with all the terror a grown man who’d faced mortality could hold, a grown man temporarily stuffed into the sausage casing of a twelve-year-old’s consciousness. He dropped his friend’s hand and heard it clatter to the skeleton’s side, bone rattling upon bone, the frame of the bike seen eerily through its many gaps.

Parker, damnit, breathe! In his ears, the calm professional voice no longer confident, exhorted him, heard from far away, muffled by another lifetime. He did not think he could obey that voice.

He looked instead at the dark water waiting to swallow the two of them up. It lapped at the foot of the hillside, a tide rising to inundate them. Then, with a blink, like a wisp of cloud lidding it, the eye of evil closed.

As it shuttered, his friend became flesh again, smiling, freckled, shirt rippling in the sun. He looked at Pat with sparkling eyes and again shouted, Yahoo!

But Parker knew what he had seen.

He had to tell Donald, had to warn him. Death waited. But the words froze inside, the cords of his neck straining, his jaws bulging with utterance of prophecy he could not speak. He could feel himself, his true self, a prone form floating at the edge of his consciousness, begin to thrash.

Parker, I want you awake and with me now. But he could not answer the call.

His clenched jaws pried open a notch. He groaned with warning, with alarm, with helplessness to keep Donald from his fate. Surely the other must see it, must notice that his boyhood friend had suddenly become possessed by an adult. This moment of theirs hanging in time; their passage stretched until Parker thought he faced infinity.

He gave himself to the second of weightlessness. They arced as one, sailing off the top of the hill. They were airborne, plummeting toward the pier and the fathomless ocean below it

Pat! shrieked Donald with hysterical glee. Hot shit, man!

Too breathless to answer, he felt himself nodding. The pit of his stomach dropped. The bikes began to descend. He felt a plunging moment, of falling without hope. The ocean and pier disappeared. A line of tiled roofs and then stuccoed walls of the two-story bungalows on Fifth Street became their horizon. And then, suddenly, they landed, not in the empty lot but much farther, at the street’s edge, tires ga-whomping—and Donald’s exploded, sending him sliding sideways to a stop.

His battered black and white Vans dug into the asphalt. His round face echoed the o of his mouth. Wow. Holy shit, he added. Gramma’s gonna kill me. I blew my tire.

Pat slewed his bike around and they ruled the street together. Don’t tell her. You’ve got your allowance, don’t you?

Well, yeah, but if I spend it on a new inner tube, I won’t have enough to go to PCP with you.

I’ve got enough for us both, Pat said quietly. His heartbeat had grown steady at last, and then he realized that he had no heartbeat. It had fallen still within his chest. It seemed odd that he could still talk, but he had something he had to say to Donald and feared saying it worse than he feared what was happening to himself.

I can’t let you do that. You worked hard for that money.

Damn right he had. Lawns and ironing and washing dishes till his knuckles wrinkled like old prune raisins. And getting it from his arguing parents had been like pulling teeth, but it shamed them to leave him at his Aunt Edith’s without money, and he’d finally gotten them to fork it over. Doesn’t matter. I was gonna treat you anyway. You’re my best friend, right?

Donald’s face flashed a grin. Right on. Written in blood and branded with fire! Pat’s voice joined his in mid-sentence until they shouted the last together.

Pat looked away. He could not see the old amusement park through the row of bungalows on Fifth, but he knew it was there, mirrored by the marble ocean below it.

Waiting for him.

All he had to do was ride his bike back up to Sixth, to the crest of the sloping hill and there, through any side yard or alleyway, he could see it again. The chilled thoughts of his grown self warred with the memory of his childhood.

The hairs at the back of his neck prickled, what hair there was left over the cut Aunt Edith had had old Walt down at the barbershop give him. Don't want any long-hairs in my house. He glanced back at Donald and saw, gleaming in the hollows of his face, the skull head looking back at him. Flesh, then bone, then flesh again. Pat swallowed for air.

The momentary calm invading him faded abruptly. He had something he had to tell Donald, something that would break his best friend’s heart, and his own as well, but he had to do it, had to, even though his teeth bit down on the bitter words and would not let them through. Donald, I can’t, I— And then his friend looked toward him, looked with that oval face with freckles and tousled hair and eyebrows that curved in earnestness and concentration over everything.

The war within him erupted again. He knew what he was going to say, what he’d said on that summer’s day in 1996, but he knew what he had to say now, decades and more later, was ultimately more important. It was more important than the beating of his own heart within his body. He had to warn his friend, had to tell him of the death that approached, and yet he could not get the old words or the new out of his mouth.

What is it, Pat? Donald’s face crinkled into a puzzled expression.

He could feel his heart begin to pound again. His hearing felt muffled except for the dreadful pounding of his heart. His chest swelled, and he thought, Well, all right, the words will burst out of me, and then Donald will know. A shadow fell across Donald’s face, from behind them both, a shadow of glistening black-red, a menacing crescent of evil falling across them and a scream rose from the back of Pat/Parker’s throat.

Then everything exploded in a brilliant white light.

---

Present Day

As if from a great distance, he looked up into the distraught face of his therapist, Neal Shapiro. The psychologist leaned over him intently. Parker’s shirt was torn open, his chest sore and aching, and he coughed to get his breath back.

Sweet Jesus, the psychologist said. I was wondering how to dial 911 and keep up CPR. He pulled his hands from Parker’s breastbone and straightened.

Unable to speak, to continue relating his memory as he’d relived it, Parker sat bolt upright on the couch. His throat sobbed and he grabbed at his chest. The man sitting next to him put out a restraining hand, like one did when driving a car and coming to an abrupt stop, instinctively protecting the passenger, heedless of seat belts and air bags, as though that hand alone could keep away tragedy. Parker would have clutched at it like a safety line, but he could not.

The office came into sharp focus, expensive walnut furniture, Oriental rugs on the floor, Joan Miro paintings on the wall, well-polished silver pieces on a bookcase that smelled of lemon oil and wax and leather. Outside the window, a panoramic view of skyscrapers and brilliant blue sky laced with clouds. He wondered vaguely how long it might have taken paramedics to get to the twenty-second floor and if he would have been alive when they’d gotten there. Beyond the skyscrapers lay the darker glimmering of the lake, but it evoked no primitive emotions from him.

Shapiro sagged abruptly into the chair beside the couch. I couldn’t bring you back. You wouldn’t respond to my voice. We can’t go on like this. First you jump trance, and now this ... Parker, I swear your heart stopped.

Parker gulped for air that his lungs had suddenly become convinced was not available. He inhaled deeply, forcing the soreness out. He turned and swung his feet off the couch, not meeting the gaze of his therapist immediately. He fought for composure, for the mask of appearance which he normally adopted, his shield for survival.

Are you all right? I should get a doctor up here?

No! Parker’s throat felt raw. He cleared it. No, no. I’m fine now, he got out.

Shapiro picked up his notebook and pencil from the office carpeting. His hand shook a little as he gripped them. Hypnotic regression doesn’t work like this. The therapist looked as pale as Parker felt.

I’m sorry. It was—it must have been Donald.

The pencil went to work. He s a young man, didn’t he?

Yes.

What happened? Accident? Illness?

I don’t remember. Parker began to put himself back together. He smoothed a wing of hair away from his temples, began to fasten his buttons. His chest ached.

You haven’t mentioned many friends over the past months. The loss of even one must give you a disconnected feeling. Apartness. It must have been a shocking experience.

I wouldn’t know.

Neal paused, as though afraid to probe a raw wound. What about the amusement park? I noted some stress in your voice when you talked about that.

A warmth came back into his client’s voice. We loved that old place, responded Parker. Back in the eighties and nineties when PCP stood for an amusement park and not a drug. Pacific Crest Park. We used to go there all the time. They’d close it down, fix it up some, re-open in the summer and let it get all run-down again. He smoothed his shirt and reached for his jacket, which was lying across the end of the deep burgundy leather couch. There wasn’t anything there that wasn’t supposed to be there to terrify a kid. A ride worth its salt was supposed to turn your spine to jelly. I don’t remember any phobias.

Something made you bolt from the hypnotic state. You nearly went into full arrest.

Parker checked his sleeve cuffs. Neal, I’m fine. I don’t know what happened just now. Maybe you were the one who panicked.

Shapiro’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.

Parker was the first to break the uneasy silence. He picked a nonexistent piece of lint from one cuff. I was trying to tell Donald he was going to die. I couldn’t do it.

His psychiatrist gave him a sympathetic look. Regression isn’t time travel. You can’t change history.

It doesn’t matter anyway. That was then, this is now.

His therapist sat back in his chair, an expression of non-belief being carefully absorbed into one of neutrality. Parker, until you started coming to me three years ago, you didn’t even have memories of that year.

Parker stood and shrugged into his jacket. Maybe, he said. You’re the doctor. He pulled his handkerchief from a back pocket and mopped his forehead. His lingers touched two worn grooves etched into the skin. For a startling moment, he retained that crystal clear sensation of having the unlined face of youth and it did battle with what his sense of touch told him. Then it flickered away. A sweep of a comb and the businessman’s facade was in place again, the frightened twelve-year-old locked away.

Shapiro watched the transformation almost as if he had not seen it before. Then, realizing he was staring, he cleared his throat, moved to the desk, and picked up his briefcase. Something you need to remember when you’re under. I’m here for you. If I can’t maintain a guiding and trusting relationship with you, we’re going to have to forgo the hypnosis. I’m here to help you, not harm you.

Parker stepped away from the couch as Neal Shapiro surrendered his post behind the wooden desk and they exchanged positions.

Parker straightened his tie. I’ll keep that in mind, doctor. He leaned forward and shook hands good-bye. I’ll see you next time.

The psychologist watched him seat himself behind the desk. A million dollar personality in a thousand dollar suit, he thought. A suit of armor without a chink. He mentally jotted down a thought to consult with a friend about disassociation and multiple personalities disorder.

The relatively new field of study about a personality splintering to protect the original subject from trauma beyond endurance did not seem to apply, for there was no known molestation, but he exhibited several of the other symptoms. Born Parker Solomon, he’d always been called Pat by friends and family until that summer of his twelfth year which he could barely remember. Afterward, he’d abruptly asserted his birth name as if Pat had never existed. There had been no counseling then. They’d learned that much together.

The therapist had never encountered such an incredible mental block outside of traumatic incest victims and MPD. The resiliency of the human spirit was incredible, but even it had a breaking point. He wondered what he would find when, and if, Parker Solomon let himself remember.

Shapiro cleared his throat. It’s not as neat as that, Parker.

His client looked up from paperwork which had already seized his attention. He flicked a look at his watch. We’re out of time.

I’d like to consult a colleague about your therapy, if you don’t mind.

A concerned expression passed over Parker’s face, then he nodded. All right. Rules of confidentiality still apply?

Always.

Let me know. Parker was already looking back down, at his desktop, at the file in his hands.

I don’t think you’re ready to go back to Pacific Crest, Shapiro offered gently. He knew the advice would bother his client It was to avoid such a conflict that they had begun therapy.

But Parker’s expression stayed bland. There’s no choice for me to make.

But you do have them. We all have options. The mind heals at its own pace. Parker, listen to me. What you’re forcing yourself to do can put you at unnecessary risk. It can undo all we’ve accomplished. What he left unsaid was, It can force you to the brink of catatonia, complete withdrawal from a reality you are not ready or willing to face. It can possibly even kill you.

His client stood up. Neal, I have a board meeting in fifteen minutes, and I need time to prepare for it. Do your consultation, decide on the course of action, and let me know.

Shapiro found his jaw hanging open. He shut his mouth firmly, then added, See you, then. He slipped his notebook into his briefcase and left.

Parker looked up as the black walnut doors closed. He studied them for a moment, wondering if they might reopen, but they remained shut. He buzzed his secretary. Natalie, please continue to hold all calls. I want to make my meeting.

He got up and rounded the end of his desk. The door to an adjoining conference room was shut as always during his therapy session. He opened it now and stood on the threshold, looking down at the low table and the massive model it held.

PACIFIC CREST MARINA AND BOARDWALK

REDEVELOPMENT,

TAKAHASHI INC.

Vice President Parker Solomon in charge

Row after row of condominiums and luxury marina apartments glittered on the coastline. Boutiques, restaurants, and small entertainment businesses bloomed along the old Boardwalk. On the streets above the shore, multilevel housing for all incomes stacked the hillside.

The eye of the hurricane of development was an amusement park, different from American concepts of amusement parks. There were a few rides, but the main purpose of the park was to realign the mind, to celebrate the spirit and its renewal. Like the famed Tiger Balm parks of the Far East, the Japanese sponsor Dragon Oil would want the park to have a near-Zen orientation.

Beyond the boundaries of the development was another area on the map-board with no models yet but many drawings. Another marina, this one more exclusive, a golf course, private homes and condominiums on the fairway and on the inlet. This area was marked Point Dabu Naval Base. Its availability should be verified soon. Then the little models would be glued in place, along with the back bay development which was planned.

The time had come—as inevitable as it had been since Takahashi first assigned him to this project a little over three years ago—for him to return to Pacific Crest. This was the pinnacle of his career, the culmination of all that he’d worked for. Rising to bis position in a Japanese-held company was nothing less than miraculous. He knew it. They knew it. And though the Japanese economy had stabilized after its recent boom and bust, Takahashi was not flush enough to take a failure.

The redevelopment had to be enthusiastically welcomed by Pacific Crest city government. To ensure that, he had to be there, shaking hands, sharing the vision. The need for his presence would be confirmed in today’s meeting. His hidden memories could not be allowed to get in the way.

Parker stood in the doorway and felt the palms of his hands go damp again, a queasy, breathless feeing sweeping through him once more. 1996, he thought.

That was the summer the Olympics were bombed.

And though every fiber of his being wanted to deny it, there was something else he did remember about that time. That was the summer his best friend Donald Frasier died.

He had not talked to his aunt since. She had been an oasis in the dry dusty life of his childhood, she who had given him green grass and ocean spray summers away from the baking heat of Fresno and Bakersfield and the constant, unhappy bickering of his parents. She’d meant comfort to a lonely child who’d been moved from neighborhood to neighborhood and school to school almost on a yearly basis. She had been his one anchor. Yet she was no longer a part of him. Parker was not Pat for reasons he could not endure to remember. He reached out and closed the double doors.

Chapter Two

Pacific Crest 2012

---

The bow of the boat slapped into the ocean, cutting cleanly across the incoming tide. Steve Rollie sat to the fore, looking over the dark blue-gray water, his hair brushed off from his forehead by the acceleration. His back was to the other man in the boat. He thought he saw a pair of Pacific blues, those sharks which ranged all the way from the Philippines to California, their sleek fins slicing the whitecaps, hunters crossing the ocean depths to wherever the prey was best. And the hunting had to be good off the coast of California, Rollie mused.

The water did not give up its enigma to his prying eyes. The blue-gray surface, broken only by its own turbulent action, might be as solid as concrete for all that he could see into its depths. There must be a tide which pulled all of the deep and secret hunters from the mystery of the ocean floor and pitched them against the shore in the ancient fight of death against life. Then Rollie twisted sideways, breaking his reverie, his attention shifting back to the man who sat at the outboard.

Glad you could come with me, the pilot shouted. Rollie nodded. The clean, sharp scent of the water cut the stink of diesel and sweat from the other man, who did not seem to smell his own stink. He wore bright orange rubberized overalls over a grungy denim jumpsuit, and there was as much grime settled into his seamed face as ground into his clothes. As Carey steered the boat, Rollie looked at hands that would never be clean, shuddered, and looked away.

He shouted back over the roar of the outboard, Glad I was on hand. Problems like this need to be taken care of.

Carey nodded. His lank brown hair flopped forward on his head. Rollie thought to himself that he must not underestimate this man. He was a crew foreman. Some intelligence was implied in that.

Carey sent the boat chopping through a rising breaker. Company’s not gonna like it. Not going to like it at all. We’re already three weeks behind schedule.

Rollie shifted his weight in the boat. He wore cotton Dockers, gloves, a silk-screened T-shirt, and a windbreaker, but the wind still cut at him. He tried to ignore the rising gooseflesh on his arms and set his teeth against chatters. The half-built form of a platform oil rig dominated the horizon. The helicopter pad was empty. Rollie sucked on a tooth. It figured. If there’d been a bird available, they’d have had the body taken off that way.

The platform was one of two scheduled to be built off Pacific Crest. The oil soundings here were not as plentiful as in the area off Santa Barbara, but it looked like PC was finally going to get its due. Rollie grunted with satisfaction at that thought. Money was going to begin being pumped in. Money with no muss, no fuss, once the platforms were built. Getting permission for this one had been like pulling teeth.

He hugged his chilling body. What was it you said happened? he asked, as the oilman cut the motor back a little, slowing their approach. The ocean was not calm, never glassy off this part of the coast but the waves were barely breaking.

Never saw anythin’ like it the oilman said. He had a wad of chew stuffed in his cheek. It bulged like a cancerous tumor. He turned his head and sent a stream of inky liquid squirting over the boat’s side. Art was wearing his harness and hangin’ off the south side, welding. Most of the other guys’re off today, but the cook stayed in. He’s asleep in the galley. I was on top. I heard the seals come in, five, six of ’em, barking and yappin’ their heads off, like they were afraid of something. Y’know, ever’ once in a while we get one of them seals trying to get on the platform, to rest like. Can’t do it, of course. They’ll circle and yap to get our attention—beggars, all of ’em, once they find out there’s food or scraps to be had—and when they get tired, they swim to the shore or to the channel islands.

Rollie half-listened, shuddering, watching the sentences punctuated with a squirt of tobacco juice and drool, planning what he was going to do to handle the situation. He was lucky he’d been down at the dock tinkering with his father’s boat when the oilman had landed, hair and eyes wild, looking for help. Equally lucky the man hadn’t rejected him for his youth.

The city council wouldn’t like trouble at this juncture, and neither would he.

You see a lot of strange things out on a boat, he said, aware that the oilman had staggered to a halt. Carey nodded sadly. He cut the motor back a little more, swinging around in a docking pattern. But nothing like this. Those crazy seals came in hollering like their flippers were on fire.

Sea lions, said Rollie. We don’t have seals around here.

Whatever. Art gave a shout because they were under him jumping and raising a ruckus. I heard and leaned over from the deck—there, and Carey pointed. And that’s when I saw it. Now I worked off Puget Sound, so I’m used to seeing ’em up there, but not this far south. Water’s not cold enough. You jist don’t see ’em this far south.

What? asked Rollie, his voice devoid of curiosity, as if he knew what it was the foreman had seen.

Orca, said Carey, his voice dramatically low. Killer whale, all ebony and white death, hunting those seal thingies. They were frantic to get out of the water. Art hadn’t been real careful with his harness, and he was hanging off those lower beams, see, over there— The oilman pointed as he began to sidle the boat up against a temporary dock lashed to the side of the oil rig.

Rollie looked, even though he was not particularly interested. The lurid sight of crimson splattered along the dock caught his attention. He said flatly, You’d better get that hosed down before the rest of the crew comes back out.

Yeah, answered Carey. Yeah. Anyway, one of those damned seals got, I don’t know, tangled in the harness lines. Art let out a squawk like he was real mad. I heard him cussing. So I leaned down to point out the whale, y’know, because it was gliding under the Waves toward the platform, sleek sides ... Carey stopped as if momentarily confused. Don’t know about the fin on top. Can’t remember that.

Rollie said, What happened to Art? though he already knew. That was why he was here.

Carey blinked once or twice. His jaw had fallen slack, tobacco juice dribbling out of one corner. It got him, the oilman answered. Harness rig an’ all. I don’t know why he didn’t use the welder on it. I would’ve. Maybe he just didn’t think. It all happened so fast. The seals were squealing, the water was all worked up into a foam, and the killer struck. It cut through all of them. The spray went up like a curtain of ketchup. Art let out one shriek and that was it. Carey swallowed. I got what’s left of his body rolled up in that tarp there.

The boat bumped to a stop, the oilman threw out a line, and Rollie jumped onto the dock. The wrinkled and filthy tarp had seen a lot of time on oil rigs. It looked empty, as though nothing filled it but here and there greasy, dingy spots of rust had leaked through. Crates of equipment were stacked on the dock, ready to be transferred to the platform. Cinder blocks held other tarps in place against the ocean’s wind and movement.

How much of him did you find? asked Rollie.

Most of him. A leg and an arm got tore off. Part of his face. The rest is there. Carey secured the line and stood up.

I just made foreman, he said mournfully. "Art and I worked real hard all our lives, seen hard times and good times with th’ company. A rigger’s life ain’t easy.