Dark Water (Cooper M. Reid Book 1) (7 page)

“Why at night, though?”

“In just about every paranormal case I’ve ever been on, there’s always more activity at night. Seems clichéd, I know. But that’s just the way it is.”

Cooper came to a stop several feet away from the stones. Being so close to them, he was able to truly appreciate their size. The one closest to the beach stuck out of the water, reaching at least fifteen feet into the air. It was jagged at the top but seemed to have softer edges on the way down until the sea covered it up. The second rock sat directly behind this one and now that he was this close to them, Cooper thought that the two shapes might be part of the same rock formation.

He sat down on the beach, mentally kicking himself for not bringing a towel. Of course, when he’d left his motel, he hadn’t thought that he’d be brining Stephanie with him. But she sat down on the sand next to him without complaint. She removed her shoes and instantly stuck her toes into the sand, making tiny holes.

They sat that way for several minutes, not speaking and staring out into the night-covered sea. Cooper didn’t know why, but the sea at night spooked him a bit. During the day, there were always glittering caps and peaks to the water no matter how far out you looked. But at night, there were entire sections of the sea further out that looked to be pitch black, like the night sky was being devoured. It was easy to picture sea monsters and other unspeakable terrors lurking down there in the black depths.

That brought his attention back to the two large black rocks. He stared at them, watching how the water sloshed and violently crashed around their bases. Sea water churned between them, spitting up foam in sheets as the tide was interrupted and pulled between them.

“This silence isn’t like us,” Stephanie said.

The comment surprised Cooper—not just because it broke his concentration from the rocks, but also because it was a very un-Stephanie thing to say.

“I agree,” Cooper said. “But I honestly don’t know what to say. I feel like I need to apologize, but I’m not quite sure what I’d be apologizing for.”

“Maybe for disappearing on me?”

“I really couldn’t help that. I didn’t
want
to disappear.”

“Well, what about the two months between the last time you and I saw each other and the day you left for Kansas? What about that little period of time?”

She wasn’t angry, but the questions seemed barbed nonetheless. Stephanie had always had a very acute way of being able to ask painful and tricky questions in a harmless way. It had been infuriating when they had been dating and Cooper found it no less irritating now.

“I let work control me,” he admitted. “I wanted to finish the new book ahead of schedule and take a month or so off to do nothing. If it helps, I wanted to take you with me to do that nothing.”

After a moment of silence, she said, “It helps a little.”

“And then when I decided I was going to try this whole…
thing
with the Blackstocks, I knew you were the only person I could call. I felt like a jerk, calling you out of the blue like that. I really did.”

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I still don’t understand what it is that you’re trying to accomplish,” she said. “All jokes aside, but the way you explained it to me when you called, it sounds like you’re setting out to be a ghostbuster or something.”

“No, nothing like that. It’s difficult to explain. When I came back from wherever I was, I started to get these really strange feelings deep down in my gut. I’d get them when I went online or read an article about the paranormal. These were the same sorts of things I was researching before my disappearance, but this time I had a different feeling about it. And when I read the story about the Blackstocks, I felt like something had kicked me in the stomach.”

“So you think you’re being…what? Summoned by something?”

Cooper stared out to the sea, watching a wave destroy itself and then inch up the shore. It stopped a few yards away from their feet and was pulled back out. He peered out to the darker folds and thought of

(dark water)

all of the monsters that could be lurking down there. He tried to come up with a suitable answer for Stephanie but couldn’t find one that felt right.

“No, I don’t think I’m being summoned,” he said finally. “I don’t know how to explain it. All I know is that when I got those two flashes in the Blackstock’s house today—the visions or whatever the hell they were—it was confirmation. I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be doing this.”

“And you’ve never had visions before?”

“No. Well…there was that time I did peyote with that tribe in Arizona. But I don’t think that counts.”

“Yeah, not so much.”

Cooper felt another silence descending on them and did not want to give it time to ruin the flow of conversation. So he opened his mouth and let the first thing on his mind come out.

“I missed you,” he said. “I really think before all of this happened, we could have had a pretty good shot.”

Stephanie tilted her head, considering. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Maybe we
still
have a shot?” he asked.

His heart seemed to deflate as soon as the question was in the air. He looked down, slightly embarrassed and very afraid. He watched her toes, still digging into the sand.

She smiled, but didn’t look at him. “I think you need to get all of this sorted out first. I think you need to—,”

She stopped here, as if looking for the right words. Once the quiet had reached an awkward lingering silence,, Cooper looked away from her dirt-covered toes and to her face. She was looking towards the two large rocks, her eyes narrowed and inquisitive.

“What?” Cooper asked.

But then he looked in that direction and saw. She didn’t need to answer him.

There was a human figure standing on top of the rock furthest out.

The shape was only slightly darker than the rock itself but stood out against the moonlit night fairly well. It was motionless, but was unmistakably a human figure. When Cooper had glanced out to the rocks less than a minute ago, it had not been there.

“You see it?” Stephanie asked in a whisper.

“Yeah.”

“What the hell? Is it a man?”

“I don’t know.”

Cooper slowly stood up, his eyes locked on the figure. He shut his eyes tightly for a moment and then opened them again. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t simply the varying shades of black playing a trick on their eyes; the night, the rocks, and the figure itself created a dark yet distinguishable tapestry.

But the figure was still there. And now it was moving.

It seemed to slowly be moving to the edge of the rock, crawling down into the water. It moved with an eerie fluidity that Cooper had seen before. It was the movement of something that didn’t have the physical restraints of flesh and bone.

“Cooper, that man wasn’t there two or three minutes ago,” Stephanie said. “And no one has come down the beach.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Cooper reached down and took the flashlight. He then took two steps forward but was stopped by Stephanie tugging on his pants.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Going to check it out.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Slightly. But what’s it matter? It’s just a person, right?”

“Did you see the way it moved?”

“I did. But you don’t believe in ghosts. Remember?”

She didn’t answer. She did, however, stand up with him. She stood very close to him and he noticed that her eyes showed a touch of concern.

“I never said I didn’t believe,” she said. “I said I was on the fence.”

“Well then come on down to the sand on my side,” Cooper said with a nervous smile as he cut on the flashlight. “We’ve got some exploring to do.”

9

When they were standing on the beach directly in front of the two large black rocks, the figure was no longer there. Its absence didn’t matter, though. They had both seen it and even Stephanie, in her skeptical stubbornness, wasn’t willing to say that it was just a trick of the night on their eyes. She had seen it; it had chilled her so badly that the hair on her arms was standing on end, and she wasn’t about to flat out deny what she had seen.

In fact, as Cooper shone the flashlight onto the rocks, she seemed downright scared. Cooper, on the other hand, was used to these sorts of things. In the time he had spent working for the government and more prominently during the time he had worked on his own (much to the government’s very vocal dismay), he had seen more than his fair share of anomalous events.

Cooper had seen more than twenty of what he considered to be legitimate ghosts. He had seen a dozen UFOs, three of which had been less than fifty feet from the ground. He had seen an old man levitate and had watched a priest exorcise three demons from a teenager’s body. And that was just scratching the surface.

So a ghostly figure standing on top of a rock out at sea during the night didn’t really spook him. He had to admit, though…it was pretty damn cool.

He aimed the flashlight at the rock farthest out. The light didn’t shine quite that far, so it barely illuminated it at all. Not only that, but the rock closest to them was catching most of the light and blocking it from the one behind it.

“Hold this, please,” Cooper said, handing Stephanie the flashlight.

When she took it, he leaned down and started to roll up his pants legs. He had packed a few pairs of shorts but hadn’t wanted to wear them out to dinner. And of course, he hadn’t anticipated some late night water-wading when he had gotten dressed.

He managed to roll his pants legs up to his knee with a little bit of effort and then took off his shirt. It wasn’t until he had his shirt coming over his head that he realized that he was getting partially undressed in front of Stephanie. She’d seen him naked many times before, but he wasn’t in the same shape now. He assumed she wouldn’t care and then flushed those thoughts out completely when he realized what he was about to do.

Priorities, Cooper…priorities,
he thought.

He started walking towards the water and only made it two steps before Stephanie stopped him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to wade out and see if there’s anyone out there.”

“That water is easily over your head. You really feel like going for a night swim?.”

“Jenny Blackstock said that there are sandbars all over the place around here. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“And maybe you’ll drown.”

“Can you swim?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then come save me if you think I’m drowning. Do you want to keep the flashlight up here?”

She looked to the left and then to the right and saw that there was no one else nearby. Much further down to the right, back towards the Blackstock’s house, a man was walking a dog but he was headed in the other direction.

“Yeah,” she said. “If you don’t mind. Just please hurry up and be careful.”

He nodded and started walking out into the water. It was much chillier than he had remembered from earlier in the day when he had stuck his feet in. It took his breath for a moment, but the feel of the water wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

He got out to his knees and had to put forth a little effort to wade against the small oncoming waves. He kept going out, the water now up to his thighs, when he felt the sludgy sand beneath his feet start to rise. He had come to one of the sandbars that Jenny Blackstock had mentioned. He walked further out, rising up out of the water. The sandbar levelled out and he found himself in water up to his calves.

He looked back to Stephanie and gave her a thumbs up. Even in the darkness, he could sense her eye-rolling. She pointed the flashlight in his direction, but it did little good. When he turned back towards the rocks—the first one now no more than a dozen or so feet away—he peered out to the abyss-like darkness of the sea ahead. He cringed, not liking any of his body in that water, even if it
was
just his feet.

He looked away and stared dead ahead. A bit of the flashlight’s soft beam could be seen in the water ahead of him, so he followed it. Stephanie was keeping it aimed directly in front of him, tracing out a path to the rocks. He kept his eyes on the point where the beam faded out, flush against the side of the first rock. The sandbar remained level and he was able to cover the few feet with no problem.

When he reached the first large rock, he peered up its side and thought he could possibly climb it if he had to. But if this sandbar remained level, he thought he could likely just walk around it and directly to the second rock where they had seen the figure.

“Anyone out here?” he called out.

His only response was the soft slushing of water around the base of the rocks and the gentle crashing of small nighttime waves.

He walked to the right in order to slink around the first rock and felt the sandbar drop off. There was no gradual decline to the sand, but a complete drop. He realized this too late, though. His right foot went plunging off of the sandbar and when he reached out to the first rock to catch his balance, he fell over.

He went under the water for a moment and when he popped back up, he was ashamed to realize that he had been utterly terrified when he had gone down. He set his feet down, found the ocean floor, and stood. The floor beneath his feet was rocky—part of the large rocks that loomed over him to the left, he assumed. The water was now up to his shoulders and he had to stand on his tiptoes to prevent water from slapping him in the face.

“Are you okay?” Steph called out from behind him.

“Yeah,” he said, spitting out salty sea water. “Ran out of sandbar.”

He reached out to the left and found the surface of the first rock. When he pulled himself around to the back of it, he found an empty space between the rocks that was much smaller than he had expected when he had viewed them from the beach earlier in the day. Behind the first rock, it almost looked as if the rocks overlapped beneath the water. He also saw that the water that flowed between the  rocks swirled in a weird path before finally escaping the stone clutches and continuing its journey to shore.