"What school?" Perry asked.
"Manor House School. It's just up that way."
Perry's broad forehead creased and he shook his head slowly.
"I don't know it," he said. "But I don't really know this area. I go to a school called Manor also—though I don't know you from there. I was just out walking... ." He glanced at Annie, who had turned her head as Allan spoke, as if noticing the hill for the first time. "Do you?" he said to her.
"I don't know either school," she said. "But this area is mine—I mean, it's very familiar."
"It's interesting you both have American accents," Allan observed.
At this, both of them stared at him.
"Why shouldn't we?" Annie said then. "You do, too."
"Where do you live?" Perry asked suddenly.
"Charleston," she said.
He shifted from foot to foot.
"There's something peculiar about this," he said. "I was having a dream this morning before I came walking here, before I found this place—"
"Me, too!"
"Me, too... ."
"—almost as if I were already here with someone: You two."
"Yes, so was I."
"I was, too."
"I hope I'm not still dreaming."
"I don't think so."
"It feels a little strange, though," Allan said, "as if it's real in a very special way."
"What do you mean?" Perry asked.
"Dip your hands in the water," the other boy told him.
Perry leaned to the side and obliged.
"Yes?" he said then.
"Sea water is never that warm," Allan answered.
"Well, it's been sitting in this pool for some time, and it had a chance to heat up."
"The sea's the same way," Allan answered. "I felt it earlier."
Perry rose to his feet, turned away, began running toward the water. Allan glanced at Annie, who laughed. Suddenly the two of them were running after.
Before long, they were splashing about in the ocean, laughing, dunking each other, waves boiling about their legs.
"You're right!" Perry called out. "It's never been this way! Why should it be like this?"
Allan shrugged.
"Perhaps it's warm because the sun's shining on it hard someplace we can't see. Then the waves are bringing it to us that way—"
"That doesn't sound right. Maybe it's a current—like a river in the sea—"
"It's warm because I wanted it to be," Annie interrupted. "That's why."
The boys looked at her and she laughed.
"You don't think this is a dream," she said, "because it's not your dream. It's mine. You remember getting up this morning and I don't. I think it's mine, and this is my place."
"But I'm real! I'm not a dream-thing!"
"So am I!"
"I invited you, that's why."
Both boys laughed suddenly and splashed her. She laughed, too.
"Well—maybe ..." she said, and then she splashed them back.
Their garments grew wet and were dried several times over, as they felt compelled to verify the sea and its moods on several occasions. Slowly, between baths, a new castle grew beneath their hands. This one, larger and more ambitious than that with which Allan had collided, sprouted towers like asparagus branches, its thick walls climbing and descending the rolling sandscape, rippling inward and outward, sprinkled and dampened from the pool where small crabs, bright fish, and hidden molluscs dwelled amid the glitter of stone, shell, and broken coral. Impulsively, Allan reached forth and took Annie's gritty hand within his own. "It's a wonderful castle you thought of," he said. Even as she began to blush Perry had hold of her other hand. "It is," he said, "and if it's a dream, you're the best dreamer yet."
He could never be sure how their time on the beach ended. There was a great sense of amity with Perry, as if the two were—somehow—brothers, though his feelings for Annie were different and he was sure that Perry loved her, too. The light around them was gray, and sea-green, and pearly with the mist. The sun rarely appeared. The sea and the air were timeless, throbbing warmly beside and about them.
"Oh, my God!" said Annie.
"What's the matter?" both boys shouted, turning in the direction of her wide-eyed gaze.
"In—the—water," she said. "Dead—isn't he?"
The fog had parted. Something wrapped in tangles of seaweed and a few tatters of cloth lay half in and half out of the water. Here and there a patch of swollen, fishbelly white flesh showed. It might have been human. It was difficult to say, wrack-decked as it was, tossed by the surf, strands of fog drifting past it.
Perry rose to his feet.
"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't," he said. Annie had covered her face by then, and was peering between her fingers. Allan stared, fascinated.
"Do we really want to know?" Perry continued. "It may just be a mess of weeds and trash with a few dead fishes caught in it. If we don't go and look, it can be whatever we want it to be. You know what I mean? You want to tell your friends you saw a body on the beach? Well, maybe you did."
The fog moved between them, hiding it again.
"What do you think it is?" Allan asked him.
"Seaweed and rubbish," Perry replied.
"It's a body," Annie said.
Allan laughed. "No, you can't both be right," he stated.
"Why not?" Annie said suddenly.
"The world just doesn't work that way," Allan said.
Allan rose and began walking through the fog in the direction of the body.
"I think that sometimes it can," he heard her say, somewhere behind him.
The fog churned, parted once more. Through a sudden rift Allan caught sight of the heaving mass, now drawn entirely back into the water a few paces offshore. This could be resolved in a matter of moments.
He strode forward, simultaneous with the shifting of a wall of fog to a position directly before him. But he was not about to let the vision escape. He plunged ahead. Any moment now he should feel the water swirl about his ankles—
"Allan... ." Her voice seemed distant.
"Where are you ... ?" Perry called, also, it seemed, from afar.
"A moment," he answered. "I'm near it."
It seemed that they called again, but he could not distinguish the words. He pushed on. Suddenly, he seemed to be moving uphill. There were dark shapes about him once again. The ground seemed to have grown harder. From overhead came that strange bird cry.
"E-tekeli-li!" it seemed to sound. He began to run. He stumbled.
And then. And then. And then.
Bright splash in the pool of my vision, up from the sand, against my brow, falling, fallen, then.
I was on my way back to the fort when it happened, returning from Legrand's hut. I did not even suspect that my life had been permanently changed. Not that my life before had been devoid of visions. Far from it. But this time I experienced none of the premonitory sensations or perceptions with which the visions were wont to announce themselves.
When the golden beetle flew up from somewhere and struck me in the face I could not have known that this signaled a change in everything for me, forever. I sought it as it lay on the sand before me, a remarkable and brilliant gold in the lowering October sun. I knew that certain chafers had something of a metallic color, gold or silver, and might be very beautiful. But this... . This was an unknown species, unknown at least to me. As I knelt to regard it more closely, I was amazed by its markings. The black spots on its back, I suddenly realized, were so situated as to result in its likeness to a golden skull.
I pulled a large leaf from a nearby plant, brushed the gleaming insect onto it, wrapped it carefully and put it into my pocket. Legrand, I was certain, would be extremely interested when next I visited him. If not a disquisition, an intriguing speculation would doubtless result.
I trudged on along the sandy beach, depressed despite a pleasant afternoon, an interesting find. I studied the dark cloud formations on the horizon while petitioning an inordinate boon of destiny, all unknowing that it had—in a way—already been granted. Just inland, to my right, a dense, almost impenetrable thicket of evergreen myrtle covered most of the ground. Graveyard flowers, I've heard them called, giving full and easy coverage. It was such a strange thing—to see a dream after years of dreaming, to realize of a sudden that it was, somehow, of a piece with life. Then, at the instant of the spirit's triumph, to have it snatched away before any understanding might follow. Left, left and bereft then, mystery proved but reason fled, a piece of my own life seen, as it were, for the first time, in a new light, then torn from me with no means of recovery. What evil hap might grant one's fondest wish against all odds, then snatch it away but moments later? I kicked at a stone, listened to a distant roll of thunder far out over the water. It was not only that my entire view of life had been altered in a few minutes—I am not so introspective and inclined to metaphysic as to be paralyzed by this—but that it should occur in such a fashion as to portend a doom and me powerless to defend the beloved ghost against it.