The Happening at Malaquite Beach

The time clock made a buzzing noise and spit Chris’s card back out. He studied the blocky numbers that showed how much of his life was traded for money in the last week. Seven in the morning to twelve a clock for the day. Eighty-eight was the final count, very nearly a new record, just missing the mark by a mere five hours. The building around him hummed with the compressors of fridges and the air conditioner. Ice tumbled in the ice machine, gravity making space for new ice. Even two hours after closing, the restaurant’s chorus sang.

With a great sigh of exhaustion, he looked around. It wasn’t clean enough, it never was. It couldn’t be. When he cleaned one thing, another went dirty; like a never-ending argument of who could be the filthiest thing. It taunted Chris on a minute-by-minute basis. A bit of hot sauce splashed on the wall caught his eye when he made his way to the alarm keypad. For a moment he contemplated getting a towel and wiping it off, considering it in silence for longer than he meant to. By the time he decided to leave it for tomorrow, he could have cleaned it three times over.

He chewed nervously at the inside of his lip. Tomorrow was never very far away. It was always right on the edge of now. He hit the keys on the keypad to turn on the alarm, setting it just as his phone began to ring. With a start, he pulled it from his pocket and hit his hand on a counter sending the phone crashing to the tile floor. The ringer stopped as the phone skidded under a fridge.

A pocket of anger welled up inside him, like a bubble drifting to the surface. He popped it before it could reach his lips. He reminded himself getting angry at a small inconvenience helped no one and decided to instead take a breath so deep it made his head spin. With a few punches on the keypad, he turned the alarm back off. His knee popped as he bent down to his hands and knees to look under the fridge. A tortilla, hard as a plastic frisbee after who knows how long sitting there, sat taunting him under his phone.

After grabbing his phone and the tortilla he strained to stand back up. Clicking the side button on his phone, the screen illuminated to show a web of fresh cracks. Another bubble began to rise, but he popped it too. It couldn’t be changed; it couldn’t be helped. He had to just accept it and move on to deal with more important things. Caller ID labelled the missed call as spam, but he knew it was the hospital calling to collect for his daughter’s delivery bill. If it wasn’t that, it was something else; there was always something else.

With the disc of dried tortilla in hand, he reset the alarm and made his way to the front door, throwing the tortilla in the trash on the way. He went out into the cold rain of a Texas winter. He spat out a curse at the sudden blast of cold air as he locked the door behind him and turned to run to his car. Needles reminded him of the jacket now locked in the office.

Inside the car the muffled sounds of rain pattered the roof. He wiped the water from his face and closed his eyes, leaning back on the headrest. Exhaustion washed over him, and his stomach growled. Dinner was forgotten in the busyness of the day, but his stomach did it’s best to remind him as soon as he got a chance to relax.

With a sigh he opened his eyes and pulled out of the empty parking lot on to Main Street. The water-streaked world slid past as he drove through the empty street. He’d always liked driving at night and he especially loved it in the rain. A downpour always washed away and cleansed everything. A fresh start.

The thought of parking on the side of the road to get out to stand in it came over him. It would be freezing, but how long had it been since he just stopped and let the rain hit him? He pushed the thought away; people would think he was insane standing in the grass in the middle of the night like that. Maybe he was insane. What kind of man would be at work thirteen hours a day seven days a week? What kind of man would sacrifice his time with his family for a restaurant? He could close the restaurant and get a normal nine to five with benefits and everything. He shook the notion out of his head. He and his wife Marie had worked too hard to throw it all away. Whatever the cost was, the kid’s futures would be worth it.

He gasped as a car honked, pulling him from his thoughts and forcing him to swerve the car back into his lane. The line between deep thought and sleep was so blurred there wasn’t a way to tell how long he’d been nodding. His heart thrummed in his chest pumping out adrenaline and a headache. With a slight push on the break the car slowed. If he was going to fall asleep at the wheel, hopefully he would do less damage going thirty instead of the speed limit of forty-five. The notion to pull off the side of the road and rest came back but he dismissed it again. He could relax when he was safely at home. If he stopped he would fall asleep on the side of the road, and who knew what hell that would lead to.

A few minutes later he pulled up to his house and parked in front of the garage. Eyes closed, he put his head back and listened to the patter of rain after turning off the car. Marie and the kids were surely asleep. They probably had been for hours. He could afford a few minutes of solitary and relaxation before having to sneak up a flight of stairs.

“I’m waiting for you,” a small voice whispered somewhere in the back of his thoughts. “Come to me.” Chris stood on a beach looking out over an inky ocean. Behind him, hundreds of lights in a row sat on a small grassy hill overlooking the beach, illuminating the hundreds of people standing on either side of him. Too many to count lined up shoulder to shoulder in a perfect line down the beach as far as he could see.

A woman to Chris’s right shuffled her feet and caught his eye. She was a petite woman, at least ten years younger than him. Short blonde hair fell to her shoulders framing a terrified face. Chris tried to ask if she was okay, but no sound came with the movement of his lips. She shuddered, wiped her eyes, and took a step forward.

The buzz of his phone shot Chris back into his car. His head pulsed with the rhythm of the voice echoing somewhere deep inside him. He tried to calm down. The echo began to fade. The rain had stopped.

The phone stopped buzzing just as he looked at it. One missed call from Marie. His breath caught when he read the time, two forty-five. No wonder Marie was calling him. With a quick press to the garage door remote, he got out and rushed inside. Quietly, he emptied his pockets into the dish by the door and took off his shoes, shirt, and pants. On his way to the stairs, he deposited the bundle into the washing machine and tiptoed up to his room. Marie was sitting up in the bed on her phone anxiously tapping at it.

“What the hell Chris, where were you?” she asked frantically when she saw him. “It’s three in the morning! I wake up and you’re still not home and then I call, and you don’t answer? God, I almost called the police! I was calling your mom just as you walked in and had to tell her never mind right when she answered. I woke her up just to tell her I didn’t actually need help. How do you think that makes me look Chris, calling your mother at three in the morning like that?”

“I got home at eleven thirty and fell asleep in the driveway Marie. I’m sorry okay? You think I meant to? Like I sat in my car and decided to mess with you by closing my eyes and dozing off?” Anger bubbled up in him faster than he could catch it. Marie’s face went from anger to concern in a split second, stopping the bubble just before it hit the surface. With a deep breath he lowered his voice. “I’m sorry okay? I didn’t mean to. I leaned back and closed my eyes to listen to the rain, and I guess I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m sorry.”

Marie’s expression lightened. “You work too much. You need a break.”

“I don’t need a break; I need some rest. I can’t take a break even if I wanted to and you know that. No one can handle what needs to be handled like I can. Maybe someday I can train someone, but even if I could we couldn’t afford to pay them enough to keep them around,” Chris responded as level toned as possible as he slipped on his shorts for bed. “It’s just the way it is for now.”

“Maybe you could call Grant? Maybe he could help for a few days and let you rest?”

“I’m not calling Grant. He’s gone. He sold his half because he didn’t want to do it anymore. I’m not calling Grant. Please stop telling me that.”

Marie deflated. With a huff she put her phone down and crawled back under the covers. Chris decided to leave it at that. There was no reason to push an argument, it was too late anyway, he had to be back at work in five hours. His head still throbbed with each pump of his heart, but the softness of the bed tempered it a bit.

He was back at the beach before he knew it. The row of lights behind him were blinding as he turned to look at them, trying to catch his bearings. The woman to the left of him was gone, replaced by an older man with a balding head and a nightgown. He looked just as terrified as the woman before.

“Come in. I’m waiting,” the same voice whispered. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Outside of his head and inside of his head at the same time. Soothing and terrifying. He knew deep in himself that all it wanted was for him to go into the water; to take a step forward just like the blonde woman had. His foot began to lift before he realized what he was doing. The older man’s head shot over to him with so much fear in his eyes that he thought the man might scream. Chris quickly put his foot back down. Time passed by slowly. There was nothing he could do but stand there. Everyone around him looked terrified, but no one dared take a step. The voice got louder and more urgent, repeating its mantra in his head. After what felt like hours, he bit the inside of his lip and took a step.

Chris sat up in a flurry of covers. Marie grumbled and turned to her side. His hands shook and sweat poured down his face. The memory of being on the beach was so clear, and the smell of salt still lingered in his nose. With a sniff, he rubbed his eyes. Red numbers showed three fifty-two in the darkness on the clock on his side table.

He laid down again and closed his eyes. His head throbbed with each beat of his heart again. Within a few minutes he was back on the beach again, the row of blinding lights behind him, and hundreds of people in a straight line in either direction. The whisper in his head was louder than before. It called out for him to enter the water. Chris considered taking a step.

A different man was where the old man had been, looking into the deep black ocean with wide, horrible eyes. On Chris’s other side was a child, frantically looking around for anyone to help her. Every few seconds she would lift her foot to take a step, but quickly place it back down. Her mouth moved with words, but no sound came out. Tears streamed down her face.

Chris’s heart broke at the sight of her. Without a thought, he stepped toward her to help, but immediately woke up in his bed in another sweaty rush as soon as his foot touched the sand. Four thirty-four showed bright on the alarm clock. Marie opened her eyes and squinted at her frantic husband.

“What in the world is going on with you? Will you stop doing that?” she seethed, before rolling over and going back to sleep. Chris closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His feet ached and his back was killing him. Every inch of his body was uncomfortable and exhausted. The thought of going back to the beach turned his stomach. He could still see the little girl when he closed his eyes. After an hour of sitting in the silent dark, his eyes closed, and the rest of his life began.

Two months of sleepless nights spent jumping from the beach to his bed followed. After a week of it, Marie moved into the guest bedroom. She begged him to get help, but he refused. After a month, she moved out with the kids. The restaurant fell to pieces. Employees became concerned and then nervous around their sleep deprived boss. Once he became erratic in his enervation, every employee quit, and he was forced to close. Bills began to pile up, as everything around him began to crumble.

Every time he fell asleep, the voice got louder. With every visit, the call to come into the water grew until it was screaming, but every step he took sent him back to his bed. Sometimes he would resist the call for what felt like hours, only to see someone else take a step, hurling him back to his bed. Before long, he refused to look anywhere but forward, doing his best to ignore the voice, but was always eventually sent back with only an hour or so passing. Exhaustion filled every part of him at every moment, asleep or awake.

After three months of sleepless nights, he sat alone in his house. Enough was enough. He would fall asleep one last time and do anything he could to find any hint of where the beach was. One last ditch effort to end his suffering. With a deep breath, he laid his head down. He stood on the beach seconds later.

If he could remember where it was when he woke up, maybe he could go there. If he could find the beach, maybe he could take a step into the water and find a way to end the nightmare. The row of lights behind him where as blinding as every other time, but he forced himself to peer past them for any evidence.

His eyes stopped on a blurry sign reflecting the light. Squinting, he found the words he was searching for, Malaquite Beach. Over and over, he repeated it in his head. He had no idea where it was, or if it was even a real place, but he had to remember it. The voice screamed for him to enter the water. The lights behind him were so bright, they made his eyes ache. He screamed out the name of his beach as loud as he could, knowing no sound would come from him. As soon as he thought he had it memorized, he listened to the voice and took a step.

Chris sat up straight in his bed. Sweat poured down his face as he looked down at his shaking hands. His mind searched for the words he needed to remember. Reeling, he rubbed his face. It started with an m; he could remember that for sure. Words and names starting with an m rolled through his mind. Like a snapping rubber band, his mind locked onto a word that came from the darkness, Malaquite.

Desperately he ran downstairs and opened his laptop. He knew the name. He finally had something to go off of. In a few seconds, he found it. Three hours away, in the Gulf of Mexico. His throat caught as recognized a picture on the screen that looked out over the ocean. After three months of insanity, he’d found it.

Within the hour he was on the highway speeding through the streets toward the ocean. Exhaustion pulled at his muscles and his head throbbed, but adrenaline kept him awake. If he stopped, he was sure he would be asleep in seconds. He had to drive straight there, no stops. Every minute that passed was one minute closer to rest.

He saw the cars before anything else. Hundreds of cars lined up, all with their lights on pointed towards the ocean. One spot was still open: a space right in front. Slowly, he pulled into the spot. His headlights showed down on to the beach where hundreds of people stood in a line looking out towards the ocean.

His entire body shook as he opened his car door and made his way down to the sand. A space between two silhouettes was open, inviting him. Everyone stood still as he took his place between them. Everything was as it had been in the dreams, other than the absence of the screaming voice telling him to go into the water.

He considered taking a step, but fear gripped him. There was no voice. He considered the possibility he was dreaming. The idea of taking a step and finding himself back in his bedroom was almost as terrifying as taking the actual step. The people with him stood in silence, looking to each other nervously, waiting for someone to make the first move. The voice boomed all around them. Every one of them cringed at the sudden sound.

“Come to me,” it called from everywhere and nowhere. Chris shuddered, but knew it was time. Something deep inside him told him the time had finally come to break him from the loop. Like a team of synchronized dancers, everyone took a step with him. Each person in the line, hundreds in each direction, walked down the beach in unison. No one broke stride as they hit the water.

Chris shivered as he stepped into the cold black. The voice boomed again in his head. He wondered how far he would need to go to appease it. After a few seconds he could no longer touch the sandy floor and was forced to swim. Still the voice called to go further. His exhausted body heaved and fought him with every push deeper into the darkness. His arms burned and his legs went numb. The voice boomed again.

There was only the voice, the cold, and the need to keep moving forward. Chris swam until he could swim no further. His body began to reject his commands. The voice boomed louder. His arms stopped pushing him up. His mind screamed for him to turn back. The voice filled every sensation in his mind. His legs stopped kicking. The voice roared for him to keep going.

His heart sunk as his body did. Flashes of his wife and children came in between the voices calls. His family and business. Everything he worked so hard for. The sacrifices he made. He sank into the black depths in total despair. Somewhere deep inside him he hoped he would wake up and the nightmare would be over.

The sun rose on a single car’s headlights shining across the sand of Malaquite Beach.