Saturday 3:45 p.m.
WARNING: This chapter mentions the word "pedophile". It also discusses suicide but not in great detail. If you feel suicidal, please seek help. You can always call the national suicide hotline at (1-800-273-8255)
When we finally pulled into Main Beach parking lot, the ocean was as gray as the overcast afternoon sky. One thing they didn't advertise about the sunshine state is that it rains most every afternoon.
"What now?" Jess asked as Hector parked the car. The place was almost empty, but apparently, even a magical apocalypse couldn't fully separate man from beach.
"Let's head to the gazebos," I suggested, "never know when it'll start to pour."
There was a silent agreement, and we began walking, stopping at the first one we came to. I plopped down on one of the wooden benches lining the sides. The smell in the air was nothing less than divine. The ocean before a rain had always felt powerful, no magic required.
"So we just wait here for that dragon kid?" Hector rolled his eyes.
"Yeah." I shrugged. The idea made me nervous. We were literally sitting ducks if he decided to turn us over to whoever had kidnapped Sy. My eyes stung with tears at the thought of Sy, somewhere alone and afraid, waiting for help and we were all he had. Once upon a time, I could have counted on help from my father, but that was no longer the case. Perhaps that man had never loved me. Had only watched over me because I was something too dangerous to be turned loose in an unsuspecting world. I turned my head and pretended to watch the waves. I wiped at my eyes as though the saltwater was stinging them. And it was true as far as it went.
"My parents don't love me either," Hector's sympathetic voice came out of nowhere.
"What?" Jess pried.
"I'm just saying, it's a hell of a thing to find out when you first read minds."
There was heavy silence, and I turned my head to gape at him.
"I thought they cared, you know?" He shrugged. "In their own way. But my father just had kids because my mother wanted them. And my mother wanted them because they meant my father can't get rid of her without paying a lot of money."
"Wait. Wait. I thought you said your dad was out of town and your mom was on a cruise." Jess was trying to remember what he had told us when we first adopted him from by the side of the road.
"I lied." he shrugged. "I just didn't want you to call them because I couldn't stand reading their minds anymore. It was so awful. To hear how I was unwanted by the people who made me. A burden to them both. They buy me things to keep me out of their hair."
I had nothing to say to that. Nothing that would possibly console him. Part of me wasn't sure why I would even want to. By the look on Jess's face, she was stumped too.
"I hate brains so bad," Hector said, and he stood and began pacing.
Jess and I shared a glance. I felt for the first time that maybe I got why Hector acted out so much. Here I thought he was a kid who had it all.
"I thought you had it all," he told me, scoffing.
"Me!" I jerked at the absurdity.
"Yeah, you. Everybody always gave you so much attention cause of your disability. They were always so worried about you. Nobody ever worried about me like that."
I literally had no words. Did this moron actually want my life? Did he want all those surgeries and hospital stays? I had nothing to say to him. I turned back around to calm myself before I just started saying horrible things. Things that would have been wasted on him because he so clearly didn't get it. I closed my eyes and listened to the ocean, and I breathed. In. Out. In. Out. My self-soothing was interrupted by Hector's own chanting.
"No. No. No. No. Nope." Hector was muttering under his breath. His shadow falling over me at intervals.
I huffed out a breath and looked up at him. "What now?"
He didn't answer me at first. He seemed to be miles away.
Jess snapped her fingers at him, "Planet Earth to Hector."
He finally looked back at us, eyes still glazed over a bit.
"This is awful," he stated, "That man's brain is awful and loud." He pointed to a man down on the beach who looked to be gathering shark's teeth.
"Hector," I heaved a sigh. "You can totally control your abilities," I stated with confidence. Hadn't he said I helped him before? My ability helped him control his ability? Something like that? So, maybe he just needed a booster shot.
"Well, of course I can! That's not the problem!" Hector turned to look at us as if he was making perfect sense.
I looked at Jess. She shrugged.
"Uhhh..." was all that came out of my mouth.
"I'll just take care of that then!" Hector declared as if it was obvious what the hell he was going on about.
"What's with that dude?" Jess threw up her hands at Hector's retreating form. "Do you know?" She turned to gaze at me with some unspoken accusation.
"I don't know!" I assured her. "Hey! Hector! Come back!" I yelled after him.
"Ooooh!" He groaned in frustration as he came marching back to us at my apparent command. "You need to let me take care of that."
"Nobody knows what you are talking about right now," I told him. "And you are kind of scaring us," I confessed.
"Speak for yourself," Jess said. "I'm not scared. I'm just aggravated."
"Ok. Then, I'm scared." Hector was too freaking big to be stomping around with crazy eyes. Might as well be honest about that. I gave him a sideways stare. One wrong move, and I'd kick him in the balls.
"Do not kick me!" he protested.
"Do not make me nervous!" I countered, my hands on my hips.
He took a deep breath, "Fair enough." He sat down, and I too could breathe a little easier.
"What the heck are you going off about?" Jess asked him, moving to sit next to me, where she could stare at him properly.
"I... I need to take care of that guy."
"What guy?" I started looking around.
"How many guys you see?" he answered.
There were indeed only two. One in the surf, on a boogie board, bobbing up and down in the waves. The second was on the shore. He was dressed in a blue tee-shirt and seemed to be looking for shark's teeth, walking back and forth at a snail's pace, eyes low, every so often stopping to pick up a shell or item to examine.
"Just the two," I told him.
"The guy on the shore." He huffed out, "That's the one." His leg started jiggling like he was agitated again and he ran a hand through his hair.
"OooooKay." Jess was trying to get to the point. "What about him?"
"He's gotta be stopped."
"From hunting shark's teeth?"
"No!" he almost growled at her, "From being a God-damned pervert."
"Ah. Ok. You don't need to scream at me. And I still don't understand your problem!" she yelled back.
"My problem is that guy's brain!" Hector was still loud, "It's messed the hell up, and it won't stop being loud! He can't stop thinking about those kids over there and what he wants to do to them. What he's already done to other kids like them. It's so vivid and graphic and loud! All of a sudden, his brain got so loud." He whisper-shouted the last word and stood again. I was too shocked to say anything as he began to pace again, "I can see things. Pictures... I have to shut that man up. I have to make him stop, okay? Not just for my peace and quiet, but if you saw what I saw, you would grab some shovels and help me dig a hole for that guy. You'd help me bury him so damn deep." He turned to look me in the eye. "I know your brain." He turned to Jess, "Yours too. Neither of you would let a man who did that, who made children cry for help... beg and plead for him to stop. Neither of you would let that man get away with it."
My throat felt tight. Hector's hazel eyes were moist, pleading. But what could I do? I fumbled my words.
"I'm not... we can't just..." We couldn't just go all vigilante justice on some random guy at the beach. That wasn't how things worked. We weren't Vince and Travis at The Quickie taking advantage of the chaos. Why was this even a question right now?
"We're not going to go all Batman on that guy, Hector. You can't just go beat him up. We'll call the cops." Jess's voice sounded clear and voiced what I was trying to say.
"Haven't we already discussed that they are too busy?" Hector countered, frustration making his voice crack. "Who is going to save those kids?" he stretched out his arm toward the children.
There was silence in the gazebo.
Hector sat back down, defeated. "I hate that guy."
"You can tune him out, Hector," I said softly. "You can tune out anybody you want to. You are strong. You can control your ability."
"I know. Thank you." He seemed to regain his composure. His gratitude seemed sincere. This day was genuinely surreal.
"You go tell the guy not to." Hector leaned forward, eyes boring into mine.
"What?" My shock could not have been more absolute.
"You." He scooted forward some more. "You go tell that guy he can't touch any more kids."
"Uh..."
"I'll go with you," Hector encouraged further.
"Yeah, sure. Me too." Even Jess was looking at me with wide, bright eyes.
What? Did they think I was a superhero now? We didn't want Hector to go punch the guy into the dirt, but sending me to go give him orders was OK?
"Uh..." It seemed to be the only thing I could say.
"You'll be fine," Hector insisted, "but he might hurt those kids today." When I still just stared stupidly, he added, "You didn't see what I saw."
I turned to look, and as I did, it happened to be just as the would-be shark tooth hunter cast a glance over his shoulder toward the kids making the sandcastle. It could have been a nothing glance. But given what Hector had told me, I heaved a sigh. This idea was terrible. We were supposed to be waiting on Gabe. Yet, high on my success at The Quickie, I stood and led our small procession through the sand down to the shoreline. I stumbled a little, my ankle boots sinking deeply, my braces not letting my ankles bend was a real headache in the thick, sugar sand. What an unlikely hero I made.
My heart hammered in my chest as we headed closer toward the man. He looked up as we approached.
"Hello," he greeted.
"Hi," I started. How awkward. I didn't mince words, "We uh... we just came over because my friend here is a mind reader." I pointed to Hector, who waved. "And I can make people do what I say."
The man laughed and cocked his head,"Really now?"
"Yeah," I affirmed, "Today has been weird," I added a nervous laugh.
"It has indeed." The man tossed me a rather creepy smile at me. I shivered and shook my head. Goosebumps broke all over my arm, but I forged ahead.
"I wanted to say that you, under no circumstances, are to ever touch a child sexually again."
"No child porn either," Hector whispered in my ear.
A feeling of terror washed over me. It was getting hard to breathe, and I wasn't sure why.
"And no child porn either," I gasped out through ragged breaths. What was happening? My heart was racing. I clutched my chest.
"You absolute bitch." The man was still smiling at us. Soon though, it wasn't his smile I saw. My vision faded. I was somewhere else. I heard the laughter of kids in PE class when I tripped for the hundredth time. I felt the prick of an IV needle from one of my many childhood hospital stays. I saw nothing but darkness surround me, the deepest blackest darkest place where ancient monsters lived. Terror circled my brain. There was no rhyme or reason, only the increasing thrum of my heartbeat and a distant screaming. I didn't know how long I existed in that place of nightmares, only that one second was too long. When I finally came out, the leering man was gone, and the person screaming was me. Jess was in front of me as I knelt on the ground, her hands on my shoulders crooning, "You're OK. You're safe." Over and over and over.
I stopped shaking. I stopped screaming. I leaned into her, and she threw her arms around me. "Oh! Thank God you're back!" she pressed her face into my hair, "I didn't know what to do!"
"What? What happened?" I choked out.
"That pervert had some hoodoo of his own." She pulled back to look at my face. "Hector read his mind and saw that he was using some kind of emotion power on you."
"I was afraid." My voice was still trembling and scratchy from my screams. I sounded like a child to my own ears, and I was a little disgusted with myself.
"More than that," Jess said, "I think he could have killed you with it." Jess sank into the sand.
"Where is he now?" I looked around anxiously, my heart hammering like Freddy Kreuger himself was about to slash me to shreds. I could never run fast enough to get away. The thought hit me, and I choked on a sob.
"Uh... about that..." Jess pointed out toward the water where Hector was now staring.
"Where is he?" I asked again, still not understanding. I stumbled as I rose in the soft sand. I would go down fighting.
"Technically," Jess made a rolling hand gesture, "he killed himself."
"Oh God!" My mind tumbled over itself. Dead? That was good, wasn't it? Or was it bad? "But the dead guy?" I looked up and whispered.
"In the ocean," she whispered back
I looked again and noticed the family with the kids went home too.
"Yeah. They're gone. Turns out, he was using his mojo to make them feel comfortable and happy to come out to the beach on a crazy day like today. He wanted to watch the boys play. Then, I guess when he was done, he was going to take them and do... whatever."
"Oh, my God!" I repeated. Still at a loss for words. What was wrong with humanity?
"Yeah, and when you put the whammy on him, he fought back. Hector had to do what he had to do."
"Which was to kill the guy?" I hissed. Why was everything so confusing right now?
"Well, he was kind of using the emotion thing on us too. According to Hector, the guy was focusing everything he had on you, , because he figured if you died... Like if your heart rate got so high that you died, your magic would leave him alone. So you got the worst of it. But anyway, we were having issues too. But Hector used his own ability. He kind of put a thought into the perv's mind that he should take a walk into the ocean. And it worked. He drowned himself."
"He'll be washing up soon." Hector's voice startled me and I jumped. I guess I still had adrenaline going. "We maybe shouldn't hang around for that."
"I guess not." I shivered at the thought.
"And I guess maybe we shouldn't go trying to play hero again either. I'm sorry I got you into that." He offered me a hand to get up.
I didn't take it, but I did appreciate the apology. I hoped he knew that. I smiled at him, still unsure how to feel about a dead pervert that we were responsible for. Should I have felt bad? Good? Somewhere in between? Mostly I just felt sick.
The three of us clambered through the sand back up to the gazebo and to the parking lot.
"Ya'll, we should not stay here to have whatever discussion, ok?" Hector's words were emphatic and edged with the note of urgency that said a pudgy pervert in a bright blue shirt might be washing up on shore wherever the current took him, any minute now. None of us knew how this worked. And nobody had aqua powers to ask a shark to eat his body. Oh, wouldn't that be convenient? And how far had I fallen that I wanted to speak to aquatic animals as a means of corpse disposal?