SLEEP DIDN'T COME for me last night. It was now dawn and I still laid restlessly on my bed, staring at the ceiling as I had done all night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I would see the waves crashing above me as my body slowly sunk to the bottom. Every time I relived those minutes spent under the waves, I became less sure of what actually happened.
I tried to recall every detail of the event. I definitely remembered Hunter throwing me in, the crushing and burning pain of drowning, and the surprisingly peaceful feeling of dying. But some parts of my memory were skewed.
I saw images of my mother, smiling and reaching out to me, which I know was definitely a hallucination since it couldn't possibly be real. I also remembered the feeling of loosing consciousness, when I was still far beneath the surface. Which, I suppose couldn't be true either since somehow I had managed to make it to the surface.
But there was something else.
When I closed my eyes, I imagined the cluster of stars. The way they glimmered as they moved through the ocean, like a spirit.
The image brought back a memory. A memory of when my mother and I had just finished a whole day of surfing. We laid with our backs on our boards, floating in the water as we watched the sky. It was dark, and the stars reflected against the ocean like a billion lights speckled around us.
That night my mother told me about spirits.
She said there were spirits all around us, in the moon, the stars, and especially the ocean. She believed the ocean was a spirit, that the ocean blessed people with fish and life. Majestic and beautiful like the night sky above us.
I wondered if she still thought that when the waves crashed over her. The once vibrant blues and greens turned a dark black, suffocating force, holding her under until she took her last breath.
Suddenly, another memory flashed before my mind. The memory of my body sinking to the bottom of the ocean as I closed my eyes, giving into the darkness. Then, out of nowhere I felt my body wrapped in warmth as the water began shifting around me, as if the sea itself was lifting me up from death.
The rational part of me tried to deny it. I tried to just say I was lucky. That the tide had managed to carry my body to shore. But something inside me believed otherwise.
The undeniable fact was that I was too far out to have caught a current strong enough to bring me to shore. Not to mention I distinctly remember loosing consciousness at the bottom of the ocean, making the theory that I had swam to shore myself, impossible.
That said, I had room to believe that something other than me was in that ocean last night. That something brought my unconscious body back to shore and something was definitely watching me from under the waves when I left.
Perhaps my mother was right, maybe the ocean was a spirit, and I was lucky enough to be deemed worth saving.
Either way, I was struck with a curiosity. For the first time in my life, I wanted to return to the ocean. My fear was still there, but I was now more determined than ever to get answers.
If there truly were spirits in the ocean, why save me and not my mother?
That thought made me furious. It wasn't fair that I had been spared, yet she had to perish under the waves. I didn't care what it took. I wanted to find out who or what saved me, and why.
I also wanted to learn more about what Austin was about to say last night about the escaped subject, before Hunter had dragged me away from him. There was something suspicious going on at the compound too, and for some reason I believe it could help me figure out what happened last night too.
And with that thought, I got out of bed and started getting ready.
I needed answers, and I knew exactly where to get them. So whether I wanted to or not, I was going back.