Blake Crouch: Birds of Prey

At this time of day, they had it all to themselves.

A man had been fishing a few hundred yards up the beach for the last several hours, but he was gone now.

A fishing trawler loomed like a ghost on the horizon several miles out, nearly invisible through the haze.

“If we build it big enough,” Luther said as he packed the damp sand, fortifying the wall, “maybe the tide won’t knock our castle down?”

Rufus grinned at his son.

“If we built this thing taller than me, the ocean would still bring it down. There’s no stopping it.”

Luther scowled. “But we worked so hard. I like it. I don’t want it to fall.”

“Just enjoy it while you have it, son. By the way, that philosophy works for more than sand castles.”

Luther came to his feet just as a breaker crashed twenty feet away.

Sea water raced up the sand, stopping just shy of the moat.

He turned around, glanced back toward the dunes.

The sun was just sliding down behind the live oaks on Ocracoke Island.

Only a few hours of daylight left.

It had been such a perfect day, and Luther felt a glimmer of sadness at the thought of it coming to an end.

He could see the ocean beginning to swell again.

Another wave coming.

He looked up at his father, saw Rufus smiling down at him, sweat beading out across the man’s forehead under the jet-black bangs that stopped just above his eyes. The boy would always see his father like this, even in his old age.

Young. Fit. Strong and happy.

The breaker crashed ashore.

The sea foaming and fizzing like a bottle of spilt soda.

Rufus put his hand on Luther’s shoulder.

“Here comes the first attack, my boy. Man your battle station!”

Luther stepped up to the front wall and watched the water race toward them with a lump in his throat.

When the sun was gone, they got a bonfire going and roasted wieners over a bed of coals that Maxine had spread out in the sand.

Luther and Katie sat together eating hot dogs as the tide went out, the sound of the breakers now growing steadily softer.

When he was finished with supper, Luther leaned against his sister and stared into the flames, his belly full, watching the fire consume the wood of some ancient shipwreck. He could feel the accumulation of sunlight in his shoulders—a warm, subtle glow. His eyes were heavy.

“You tired?” Katie asked.

“No.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“It’s okay to be tired, Luther.”

“I know.”

She kissed the top of his head. “Sorry about your castle. You still sad it’s gone?”

Luther said nothing.

“It was really cool, buddy,” Katie said. She craned her neck and looked him in the eyes, must have seen the tears welling, shining in the light of the fire. “Luther,” she said, “you’ll get to make another one. I bet it’ll even be bigger next time.”

Luther glanced up through the flames at his father and mother, Maxine wrapped in a shawl and cuddled up between Rufus’s legs nursing a cold beer.

The heat of the fire felt good lapping at his face. He could’ve fallen asleep to it.

Gazing up into the sky, he watched the sparks rising toward the stars.

Smelled the residue of suntan lotion on Katie that the sand hadn’t worn away.

Coconut.

He filled with a sudden and profound warmth for his sister.

Only three years older than he was and yet she understood him better than anyone else. Better even than their mother.

He’d just started to reach for her hand when he noticed the light.

For a moment, he mistook it for a lightning bug—it had that floating, bouncy quality—but then he realized it was the bulb of a flashlight moving toward their fire.

Still thirty or forty yards away, and he couldn’t have known how often he would dream of that image. How thoroughly the fear of it would come to define him. So innocuous—just a speck of brilliance coming toward him in the dark.

His mother must have noticed the diversion of his focus, because she said, “What’s wrong, boy?”

Luther jutted his chin toward the light. “Somebody’s coming.”

“Probably just someone out for a late-night stroll,” she said.

“Can we spend the night here?” Katie asked.

“I don’t think so,” Rufus said. “I need a shower.”

Maxine chuckled. “And a soft bed, sweet-sweet.”

“Absolutely.”

“But it’d be fun!” Katie whined.

“Another time, princess,” Rufus said. “We didn’t even bring our sleeping bags.”

The light had nearly reached them now, Luther watching it approach and listening to the oncoming footsteps in the sand.

“They’re coming over here,” he said.

Now Maxine sat up and looked back over her shoulder.

Luther held up his hand to shield his eyes from the firelight.

Saw a man’s legs standing ten feet away—hairy and thick—that ended in a pair of muddy work boots.

Rufus was struggling to his feet now.

Luther heard his father say, “Hi, there.”

Luther glanced up into Katie’s face, didn’t like what he saw—an intensity, a concentration he didn’t fully comprehend. He was missing something. Events unfolding on some frequency beyond his experience.

His father spoke again, “Evening.”

“What are you folks doing here?”

The man’s voice sounded strange to Luther—southern but not local. Not friendly either. It contained a hard-edged, metallic rasp.

“Just having a campfire,” Rufus said.

“You live around here?”

“We live on Ocracoke. How about you? You visiting?”

The man laughed as if Luther’s father had made a joke. “Yeah. That’s it. We’re visiting.” The man came forward three steps and turned off his flashlight. In the firelight, Luther studied him. He wore a heavily-stained white tee-shirt covered in a thousand tiny rips. The man’s substantial body odor was evident even from ten feet away. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, his jaw covered in a salt-and-pepper stubble. His eyes shone wild and glassy and they didn’t stay on one object for more than several seconds at a time.

“Well,” Rufus said, “we were actually just getting ready to shove off, so—”

“I didn’t say anything about you leaving.”

The man’s statement festered in the air for what seemed ages.

No sound but the surf and the crackle of driftwood in the flames.

Maxine came to her feet, stood behind Rufus.

“Ya’ll best sit down now,” the man said.

Maxine wrapped her hands around Rufus’s left arm. “Let’s go.”

Rufus shot a quick look over at Katie. “Get you and Luther in the back of the truck. Right now.” He turned back to the man.

Katie jerked Luther onto his feet.

“We’re gonna take off,” Rufus said. “I got my kids here. I don’t want any trouble with you. You understand that, right? We were just out here having a day at the beach, and now we’re going home.”

Katie pulled Luther toward the Dodge.

The man said, “You ain’t going nowhere.”

“What’s happening, Katie?” Luther whispered.

“I’ll tell you later. Hop into the—”

“Young lady!”

Katie froze.

“Did you not just fucking hear what I told your daddy? Get your ass back where you was sitting, or by God—”

“Don’t you dare speak to my—”

Luther saw the man swing his flashlight into the side of his father’s head.

Rufus’s knees buckled, hit the sand, blood streaming out of a gash above his left eye.

The man drove his knee into Rufus’s face, and when Maxine rushed forward he caught her with a right hook that snapped her head around.

His mother fell facedown in the sand, out cold.

Rufus climbed back onto his feet.