Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

‘All right, but it’ll be both our butts if we miss lunch.’ Arlen seemed simultaneously amused and concerned at his son’s antics, but he followed Mark up the dune regardless.

‘It’s just up here, Dad,’ Mark said. ‘We need to shove this stone-’

The table was gone.

Out of breath, Arlen pulled himself up beside his son. ‘What is it, sport? Pirates? Cowboys? Not the New York Yankees!’

‘No, Dad, it’s- It’s nothing, sorry.’ He checked the sandy hilltop, then crossed to the marsh side and looked down into the tangle of brush and rotting foliage. Maybe I pushed it hard enough, he thought. Maybe it was sliding a bit and I didn’t notice.

But the marsh had disappeared as well, no humid maw of foetid organic decay, no swamp filled with coral snakes, banyan trees, or mutant tadpoles, just the scrub pine and scraggly brush that lined the boardwalks of Jones Beach State Park.

He was home.

Behind the sea of beach umbrellas, blankets, sunbathers and children digging in the sand with a rainbow array of plastic toys, the roads were crowded with big sedans and slat-sided station wagons. It was the height of summer in New York. Beyond the stone tower in the middle of the roundabout several big trucks turned in to the amphitheatre. There was a concert tonight.

For a few seconds everything was frozen in a sun-baked tableau. Only the breeze moved, brushing sand from his clothes and hair. Beside him, his father was young and strong, a fit, healthy thirty-year-old, the Arlen Jenkins Mark knew only from glimpses of black-and-white memories. Now, with his father’s arm around him and the sea breeze caressing his tired limbs, Mark felt the tension, the anxieties and fears, the anger and especially the hopelessness of the past several months begin, slowly, to seep away. He started searching the beach in front of the Central Mall, looking for his family’s yellow umbrella. It was eight feet across, difficult to miss, even on a crowded beach. His mother would be there, and his sister, and, presumably, a four- or five-year-old version of himself, another Long Island kid digging for China.

‘Can we go back?’ he asked himself.

‘Of course,’ his father answered, ‘getting down off this thing’s going to be a lot easier than climbing up. But you go first.’ He ushered Mark towards the windward side of the dune. ‘I think your mom’s got tuna in the cooler. I do love a tuna sandwich with a cold beer.’

‘I know,’ Mark said, checking once more for the missing table. It should have been there; it couldn’t have disappeared in the two minutes that he was away. Something was wrong, but being home had eased his sense of foreboding until there was just a faint trace of discomfort.

‘Come on, Mark,’ his father said, sliding through the sand, heels first, his beer can in one hand, ‘and after lunch, we’ll go and find some ice cream.’

Mark followed, entranced by the gentle grip of deja vu. As he passed, people talked, radios clamoured, children shrieked, he even heard a dog barking; the summer fugue clouded Mark’s senses and dragged him further from his marsh prison and the Larion spell table.

Gerrold Peterson, his high-school German teacher, sat in a collapsible nylon-web chair reading a dog-eared Gunter Grass novel. He looked old, even here, in whatever year this was: 1981 or 1982. He wore the same buttoned-down short-sleeved shirt he had worn every Friday of every week of every year that Mark had attended Massapequa Heights High School. He lifted his pointed sunscreen-smeared snout far enough over the edge of his book to frown and say, ‘Wie ist die Suppe heute, Herr Jenkins?’

Mark didn’t answer. Hurrying to keep up with his father, he caught sight of Jody Calloway, looking as she had when Mark had known her in high school. Jody, trapped in the taut young body of a fifteen-year-old, was in a bikini and playing volleyball with some friends. Mark thought he would slip past her unnoticed, but Jody tossed the ball to him, smiled an alluring grin and waved him over. She was every bit as sexy as Mark remembered, as buxom as a woman, yet still as thin as she had been as an adolescent. He was nearly twice her age, but he toyed with the idea of taking Jody up on the offer; if this was a hallucination, the sex would be sandy, perverse and exciting, a far cry from the clumsy fumble they had shared behind the columns in the Schonbrunn Gloriette.

‘Of course, that’s a felony,’ Mark told himself. He rolled the ball back and waved. Maybe next time, he thought. Jody’s body, like Herr Peterson’s old shirt, would remain unchanged in his memory for ever.

‘You’d better move along,’ a familiar voice warned from nearby. ‘That girl is too young for you now, soldier.’

‘Who’s that?’ Mark searched the beach. His father was disappearing into the throng; there wasn’t time to waste.

‘I’m over here.’ The reply came from several places at once.

‘Brynne?’ he said, hesitantly, ‘Brynne, where are you?’ He turned a tight circle, praying one of the beachgoers would transform into the attractive knife-wielder.

‘I’m here.’ She was behind him now, closer to the water.

Mark took a last look at his father and ran for the surf. ‘Brynne!’ he shouted, ignoring the irritated sunbathers. ‘Brynne! Where are you? Please, Brynne, wait!’

‘I’m here, near the waves.’

‘I can’t find you!’ Mark jogged into the foam. ‘Brynne?’

A young girl in a bright yellow bathing suit kept pace with him. She couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. She had a head of rowdy curls that blew hither and yon in the breeze. ‘Do you want to watch me swim?’ she called as she splashed into the breakers.

‘What? Who?’ He was only half-listening.

‘Who? You, silly,’ she cried and ducked beneath a rolling wave. When she popped up, she brushed the hair from her face and said, ‘I can do the scramble!’

Mark moved along, still searching the myriad faces for Brynne. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ he said, ‘but you shouldn’t talk to strangers. This is Long Island. Where’s your mother?’

‘Watch this!’ she shrieked, paddling excitedly towards Galway, but fifty yards out, she ducked beneath the surface, then emerged again and turned back towards the beach. She made a halfhearted attempt to stay calm, paddling and kicking tenaciously, then disappeared again.

‘Hey!’ Mark stopped. ‘Hey, kid! Hey!’ He ran a few steps up the beach, pointing and calling, ‘Anybody know that little girl? Anyone? Out there, in the yellow!’ A few sunbathers heard him, lifting their heads and looking around, but no one replied, and no one went in after the girl.

‘Ah, shit,’ Mark spat. ‘Shit and shit. I don’t have time for this.’ He kept an eye on her while shrugging Redrick’s tunic over his head. She was in the throes of a panic attack now, clearly drowning in the undertow. ‘Brynne,’ he called into the crowd, ‘stay here. I’ll be right back.’

He sprinted into the waves, diving over incoming breakers and towards the struggling child.

Milla ran until the waves reached her waist. She dived beneath an incoming breaker, holding her breath and paddling furiously for deeper water. The ocean here was icy and rough and her body felt like it was being stung with a thousand prickly needles. When she finally went numb, it was worse, because then it was nearly impossible to get her arms and legs to keep going. She was cold and scared and she sank twice before giving up and casting a spell to warm the water. She knew she shouldn’t use magic here; they’d all told her she mustn’t, but it was too cold to go on otherwise. Beyond the breakers a man struggled, drowning, flailing and shouting for help.

‘Look at me, Hannah,’ Milla said, but she wasn’t sure anyone could hear. ‘I’m doing the doggy-scramble.’ Her tangled curls matted on her head in twisting coils; she kicked her way towards the drowning man.