1
Cathy Potter ran toward
their little cabin as fast as her feet would carry her, stumbling several times
along the way. The adrenaline coursing
through her body was more than overcoming any cries of exhaustion that her lungs
and legs were transmitting to her brain.
The only thought on her mind at the moment was making that 911 call, and
getting back to her husband as soon as she could. She laughed hysterically at the thought of him telling her to
change first before returning. He could
just kiss her pretty little wet ass when she got back, she thought to herself
as she reached the back door of their rented bungalow.
They had left the heat on before
they left for what they had thought would be a leisurely stroll down an empty
beach, and the heat almost overwhelmed her as she dashed to the phone. She picked up the receiver and quickly tried
to dial 911. In her hurry she messed it
up twice. 991. 912.
"Dammit!" she
cursed.
She forced herself to slow
down, and got it right on the third try.
The phone rang three times on the other end before there was an answer.
"Long Beach Police,
please state your name, address, and emergency," came the monotone reply.
"My name is Cathy
Potter, I don't know what the address is, but I'm staying at a cabin a few
miles north of Long Beach. There's been
a…”
"Ma'am,
I need to know more than that. Do you
know how many cabins there are on this peninsula?"
"No, and I don't give a
rat's ass either. There's been a plane
crash on the beach, and unless you get a medic unit down here in the next few
minutes, you can add a couple of fatalities to your list!"
"Calm down, miss. Now just where, exactly, on the beach are
you?"
"Look
mister, I don't have time for this. I
know you have a job to do, but I'm a nurse, and so do I. I’m doing anyone any good yapping on the
phone to you, so… Wait, this might
help."
Cathy
noticed a business card lying on the nightstand by the phone.
"Cranberry Cabins,
Pacific Beach," she blurted out, following it with the address.
"That'll work,"
came the reply with a little more enthusiasm.
"You say the plane crashed on the beach?"
"Yes."
"North or South of
where you are?"
"About
a half a mile south. I've got to get
back there, can't talk anymore. Please
hurry," Cathy pleaded quickly.
Then she hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.
She pulled the covers off of
the bed they had used and rolled them up into a ball. Then she turned to the still-made second bed and struggled to
remove the blankets from it. She
realized it was more than she could carry easily, and decided it was worth the
extra time to roughly fold them. Once
that was done, she grabbed both their bathrobes and threw them on top of the
pile. That would have to do for now, she
told herself, grabbing the bundle in both arms and running out of the cabin.
The
cold air felt terrific to her as she left the heated cabin, but she was amazed
at how much the wind and rain had picked up.
She was afraid the CARE package she was carrying would be totally soaked
by the time she got back to the crash site so she quickly ran inside again.
"Mark
was right," she said out loud, "we should have brought the damn
tarp."
In the blink of an eye she
relived the conversation they had gone through while loading up the car. There had only been so much room, and Mark
had wanted to bring a tarp to take out on the beach and make a lean-to in case
it rained. She had insisted that she
wasn't going on a damn camping trip. She
was going on a second honeymoon. He had
barely talked her into the cabin. She really
wanted to stay at a plush motel with room service.
She
thought of using a garbage bag, there was a box under the sink, but she
realized they would be too small. Then
she saw her answer. She ran through the
open door to the bathroom and began ripping the plastic shower curtain off the
rings that held it to the curtain rod.
A minute later she had bundled her load in the curtain and was running up
the trail toward the beach.
2
Mark Potter had been
kneeling by the unconscious woman for a couple of minutes, trying to shelter
her from the wind and rain as best he could.
He was afraid to move her in case she had back or neck injuries though, as
far as he could tell from just looking at her, she had escaped without a
scratch. He couldn't help but notice
that she was a strikingly beautiful woman, even in her rain drenched
unconscious state. He gently reached
down and pulled back the soaked hair that had plastered itself to the side of
her face when she began to stir.
"Jonathan?"
she muttered, eyes still closed.
Mark
wasn't sure what to do, but he had the feeling if he could get her to wake up
it would be for the best. He bent down
closer to her ear.
"My name is Mark. Can you hear me?" he said loudly over
the wind, not quite shouting.
"Joe?" she said
this time.
Joe, he asked himself? Oh God!
Please don't tell me there was a third person in that plane.
"Joe, is that
you?" she asked again, rolling her head to the other side.
"My name is Mark,"
he repeated, feeling like some kind of kid's doll repeating a few random
phrases when the string was pulled. 'My
name is Mark. My name is Mark. Can you come out and play? My name is Mark.' Maybe he was really the one in shock. Would he even know if he was, he pondered? He would have to ask Cathy about that one
sometime, he thought to himself. Where
is she, anyway? He refocused on the
problem at hand.
"Lady,
if you can hear me, you need to wake up, okay?"
"Joe?"
Mark was thinking about
whether he should shake her a bit to wake her up, when Sara's eyes opened on
their own.
"You're not Joe,"
she said with a start, her teeth chattering from the cold.
"The name's Mark,"
he said with a chattering smile of his own.
"Where's
Joe?" she asked, trying to sit up.
"Not so fast
lady," said Mark, forcing her to lie back down. "You've been through too much to be jumping up and back out
on the dance floor."
"Where's Joe?" she
asked for a second time, closing her eyes again.
"Was
he in the plane with you?"
"The plane, yes,"
she replied, trying to get up again, "the plane!"
"It's okay! It's okay!
Just lie still. Joe will be
alright," Mark lied.
"I'm
so cold" she said with a shiver that seemed to shake her whole body.
"We'll have you warmed
up in no time," said Mark, wondering just what in the hell was taking his
wife so long. She hadn't been gone more
than a few minutes, he reminded himself, but every second was feeling like an
eternity. He looked up just in time to
see her running out between the dunes and towards him with a large bundle in
her hands. Mark was a big fan of old
Western movies, but the cavalry had never looked so good to him as seeing Cathy
stumbling down the beach at a full run.
Although
he knew she could see him, he began waving his arm back and forth. He thought he could hear her scream out his
name, but the wind had picked up so much that it was impossible to tell
anymore. Then he heard a sound that was
loud enough to override the wind and surf.
It was faint at first, but steadily increased in volume until there was
no doubt what it was he was hearing.
The steady 'wop-wop-wop' could only be a helicopter. He turned his head toward the south and could
see the sleek red and white Coast Guard rotary aircraft coming up on them at
full speed, lights flashing, a mere hundred feet off the ground.
"General
Custer, eat your heart out!" shouted Mark, as he turned his head to Sara, just
stared at him as if he were the one in shock.
3
Janice
continued to travel Highway 26, only doing about five miles an hour above the
speed limit. It was killing her to go
so slow but she couldn't risk another run in with the State Patrol. Granite was silent, always watching out the
front window, totally oblivious to what was going by him along the side of the
road. That was way out of character for
him, and she decided he must be as anxious to get this over with as she
was. In some ways, it surprised her
that he could be so intelligent as to know what was going on, and she wondered
just how much he really knew.
"Granite,
you amaze me," she said to him as she downshifted to swing around an old
Chevy truck doing only fifty in front of her.
"I sure wish you could
talk to me, you big old stud, but I guess there's only so much I can do with
this gift of mine," she went on, realizing to herself that she had never
really tried.
She turned her head to look
at him while signaling to get back into the right lane. His head was still forward, held high, as if
he was deaf, dumb, and cast in stone.
She continued to ponder the fact that she had never really tried to
communicate with anyone until today.
She had played around with the levitation thing, and smoked a few
charcoals in her time, sure, but now she knew she could talk with Eddie and
Jonathan, God only knows what else she might be capable of doing. If she ever got through this crap with Eddie
in one piece, she would have to do some serious experimenting.
“And I'll start with you
when I do, Granite,” she thought to the dog and turned her wipers to full speed
to keep up with the ever increasing rain.
“No talk. Drive,” came a low broken voice in her head.
"Well I'll be dipped in
shit!" exclaimed Janice as she realized that her dog had actually answered
her.
“Smell better than perfume,”
came the answer again.
"Jesus Granite, you've
even got a sense of humor!" she shouted as she almost drove them off the
side of the road.
“Not joke, perfume smell
bad.”
"I'll never wear it
again, Granite, I promise you," she said, as tears of joy began to form at
the corners of her eyes.
“Good girl,” he said.
"Good girl! Ain't that something! Good girl!
Just like when I tell you good boy!
God, I can't believe it!"
“No talk. Drive.”
"You're right,
Granite. I'll drive. But it'll take me a while to get used to you
telling me what to do, okay?" she said as glanced at him one more time.
He turned around and licked
her on the hand, then went back to his statuesque pose of staring forward out
the window.
“No talk. Drive,” came the message again, calm but
firm. Janice did exactly as she was
instructed, but her mind was racing a thousand miles an hour now. There was so much to question; so much to
test. She didn't know where to
begin. She felt somewhat irritated at
herself for not realizing all of this sooner.
Eddie had, a lot sooner. She tried
to recall when she first knew he had the power.
It
was tough at first, since she had blocked out most of her later childhood for
so many years. But she knew the answers
were still in there. Her trip to the
psychiatrist had made a believer out of her on that one. She wondered if she could bring back some of
those memories by herself, without the help of a Sigmund Freud. Today.
Now.
Might
as well give it a shot, she thought to herself. Granite is obviously not in a conversational mood right now. As she continued to wind down the backside
of the Coastal Mountains towards Highway 101, she let her mind drift to a time long
forgotten. At first, everything seemed
so blurry, as if viewed through an unfocused wide-angle camera lens. As she concentrated harder, the unconscious
side of her brain finally focused and everything came rushing back as if it
were yesterday.