Below Pier 33

A child witnesses something horrible on a trip to a California beach that will haunt his dreams forever...

Below Pier 33

It was long ago and I was very, very young. My parents and I had set out that morning toward the beach for what would become the first time I had ever seen the ocean. The whole ride there I had my faced glued to the side window, trying with desperation to see through the dense foliage. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the gray-blue saltwater that lay just beyond.

I had grown up a country boy in the state of Arkansas. The ocean was something the people of my town knew not much about and so therefore it remained, for the most part, out of conversations. I too had not given it much thought, that was, until my parents announced that this year’s summer vacation was going to be on the California coast. Then it was something I couldn’t keep quiet about. For the remainder of that school year I had read books, drawn pictures, and asked just about every grown-up in Williamsburg what I could expect to experience.

Now, here I was. Just a few more miles of broken asphalt and I would be ankle deep in the crisp, blue seawater.

My mother looked over her shoulder and said from the front seat, “Remember Toby, you aren’t leaving the parking lot until I get you covered in sun screen.” She faced forward and continued to talk to my father about how different the UV rays were here. How they acted on fair skin much more intensely. I paid no attention and became sickened at the thought sunscreen.

We rounded the final turn on the mountain and finally everything washed in through the windows of the car. My eyes hurt from the brightness of it all, but I didn’t even let go a blink. The dense jungle peeled away like the curtains on a stage. Pure marbled sand so white it reminded me of the moon’s color on some nights back home. The ocean, so blue, I couldn’t recall another instance in my life where I had seen such a vivid color in nature. It all gently covered by the blue sky and white clouds that had became infuriatingly bright due to the large yellow sun far above.

My mother gasped, “Oh, well, geez! Would you look at that!” 

“Whataya think, Son?” My father asked, slightly twisting in his seat.

I finally began to blink and turned to my father to say that it was beyond anything I had imagined. And so it was. The ocean that day in California was the only place on Earth with that much beauty, and even as a child, I was sure of it.

 

 

 

She said her name was Carla. She was my height and perhaps my age. Long brown hair that spilled past her shoulders and dark brown freckles peppered her cheeks and nose. She also had these shimmering green eyes that I would not soon forget.

“Yea, I live here. My parents live up the road, behind the ice cream shop. Have you been to the ice cream shop? It’s good. We live right behind it and everyday I go to school I walk right past it. I wish I could stop and get some before school, though. I do sometimes but my parents, they would get angry if they found out. Hey! You wouldn’t tell them would you?”

I shook my head vigorously. I was still nearly covered in sunscreen even though an hour had passed due to how much my mother had layered on me.

“Good! ‘Cause they would probably not let me go there anymore.”

Carla and myself were standing on the boardwalk just where it touched the sand. The pier was to our left and where my parents were was just to the right, not far at all. The beach was completely covered in bodies. It was definitely the busy summer months here on the coast.

“Follow me, there’s a place where turtles always are. They swim up to lay eggs; but you can’t mess with the eggs.”

We started running down the boardwalk until it curved off on the other side of the pier, the opposite side of where my parents were. They would soon grow worried but I was much too excited to tell Carla about that. We leaped off the boardwalk and into hot sand. The san burnt and I could tell that Carla picked up her speed because of it. We soon reached cold sand that had been in the shade of the pier that rose thirty feet above our heads. Long wooden polls jutted out in support of the massive structure and I soon realized I was in a totally different part of the beach. Here it was damp, cold and dark. There weren’t as many people on this side either, but the worst was the smell.

We ventured further until the wooden beams surrounded us. They were covered in seaweed and sharp barnacles. Even the ocean that washed up gently looked black now. I instantly regretted coming here and was just about to tell Carla I was going to head back when she yelled at me.

“Come here! Oh my gosh, come here!”

My heart began to race and I ran past a few wet wooden trunks until I saw her crouching over something. I was instantly relieved to see that she was looking at an enormous shell. It was a conch shell. I had read about these in a book we had read in class. A group of children had used it as a means of power.

“So cool! Have you seen one before?”

I shook my head no and picked it up and placed it to my ear. I heard the ocean. The slow, ominous noise of the ocean.

“Lemme try.”

She placed it to her ear and then without notice through it down and took off running closer to the waters edge. I followed in close pursuit despite the strong urge to turn back. Suddenly, however, I caught up to her because she tripped.

“Ow… What is that?”

I was unsure at first what she was looking at for she was staring at her foot, which seemed normal. I shrugged and then seen the crimson color of blood appear just above her heel. Then I saw the fishing line that had become wrapped around her ankle tightly, turning the tan skin white where it was wound. The rest of the fishing line, not attached to her, was wrapped thickly around one of the wooden beams of the pier. My heart began beating again and the tight grip of fear pinched my lungs. It must have shown on my face because Carla started laughing.

“You big dumb-dumb, get it off, it’s just a cut!”

A single hook had cut her ankle, drawing little blood. I forced a smirk and began trying to unwind it, but it was much too tight. Every loose line I tugged on made the whole mess tighter. I could see the skin becoming more pressed as I tugged and soon my hands began to shake and I could feel sweat creeping down my forehead.

“What? It won’t come off? Ugh, I’ll do it. Ouch… Geez how much of this stuff is there?”

Her hands worked smoothly at first, until no progress was made, then they became frantic and shaking. I could see now that she was getting scared herself. The whole scene had paralyzed me with fear and I wished it to be over, but the fishing line wouldn’t let it be over. It wound tighter and tighter around her ankle until it even started to get tangled in her hands as they worked. Her face grew red with frustration and tears were forming on her eyelids.

“Help me get it off. It won’t come off!”

I bent down to help but my muscles were shivering in my skin. Another moment later I became aware that I had grown very cold. Then I realized the ocean water was splashing around my knees. I saw Carla look around as the water began to rise rapidly. The tide was coming in.

“Why won’t it come off? It hurts!”

My vision was blurred with fear and soon I had to back away from the water, as it was now up to my knees. Carla and myself were trying so desperately to get the line loose that our fingers were getting sliced, the pain thick.

Without warning she began to weep deeply. They were loud and unexpected wails followed by a torrent of tears. Seeing Carla so helpless caused me to freeze up. I stood erect and took a few steps back, the water splashing at my waist. I could no longer see her tangled foot nor her tangled hands because they had vanished into the blackness. Carla, with gasps of breath barely making surface, was becoming exhausted. Just a few seconds later, only her head was visible above the water.

“I can’t get it off… I just can’t.” Carla said, with gasping breaths.

I stood still as the wooden beams surrounding us. I didn’t run for help and I didn’t yell at a passerby. I just stood there as the cries became muffled under the inevitable growing tide.

Soon I felt the ocean creeping up my body. As I regained control of myself I looked down at where Carla had been, but she was now just a mess of floating hair sitting on the waters surface. I reached down to touch her, but I knew what had happened and I knew that it was too late. Tears broke free and streamed down my face.

I swam back to shore and met up with my parents. We left that afternoon, ate dinner at a dock house and then departed California the next morning. I said nothing about what had happened.

 

 

Many years had passed before I returned to the beach. It was an obstacle I had thought about my whole life. I knew I would have to return one day.

Returning to Arkansas the year it happened left me empty. I was a transformed kid, and everyone took notice of it. All the people who knew how excited I was to finally see the ocean never brought it up in conversations more than once, seeing that I didn’t have anything to say. I never truly got over what happened and most of the reason why was because I saw Carla everywhere.

She was drifting out on the lake on those late nights my father and I would go fishing, her hair, just breaking the surface, gently floating towards me. She was at the bottom of my best friends swimming pool, looking up at me, green eyes shimmering lightly. She was in the reflection of the television when I turned it off, the figure standing in a shadow just in the far reaches of my peripherals, the person hidden among large crowds of people… staring.

Carla had turned my dreams into nightmares. Such a beautiful young girl that I could picture just as clear in my mind right now as I could have the day after it happened. I knew I was just scarred and being haunted by my own trauma. I was young and the event I had witnessed was horrific. It had felt, however, as though her soul had possessed me; damning me to live with her ghost.

I was driving my car down the same hillside in California as my parents and I had done all those years ago. It was so nostalgic that I cracked a small smile. The way the deep ferns hid the view of the ocean. I could see myself as a kid again, trying desperately to catch a glimpse through dense ferns.

As I rounded the final curve that emptied the road of foliage I was shocked at how empty the beach was. Not a car parked in the parking lot and no person on the beach. There were a few fishermen atop the pier, sweating over the side, waiting for a fish to take bait. A jogger was running up the coast with a pair of German shepherds. But it was nothing like that summer day of my memory.

            Nonetheless, it was just as magnificent as it was decades before.

I parked and stepped out onto the beach. My panama hat nearly blew away by the fierce breeze. I took a few moments to take in all the smells; sweet and sour. Just as I remembered.

The dock was much older now, but still in fine shape. I began walking towards it when I noticed it was low tide. A sliver of coldness ran up my spine and goose bumps sprang up along the back of my neck. It became apparent that not all of the nostalgia I would receive today would be pleasant.

I ducked underneath the pier and began to walk further towards the middle. It was cold, damp and smelled of decay and seaweed. Raw smells that forced you to take small quick breaths until your nose got used to it. The sand sank under my feet as I got closer to the waterline and I had an eerie sense that where I was standing was the exact spot I had been standing when it happened.

I took a moment to glance around and seen that nobody was around. I couldn’t hear any noise from the fisherman above and even the strong wind from earlier began to subside. I peered out at the ocean and thought about Carla. Her long brown hair, her freckles… A young girl so young and so sweet. Her death would rattle the rest of my life.

I took from my coat pocket what I had brought from Arkansas to give Carla. It was a small, purple bellflower. I had brought it because my mother had planted some over my grandmother’s grave some years ago, telling me that the flower gave everlasting love.

I peeled away a small layer of sand and stuck the flower in upright. It swayed in the slight breeze and I could see that the tide would take it soon, as it was beginning to rise. I smiled and turned to walk away, when something caught my step. I looked down to see that thin fishing wire wrapped around one of the wooden beams had become entangled with my ankle.

I jerked and pulled at it for a moment before I realized that it was not coming loose and that struggling with it made it much tighter. Calmly, I pulled from my coat a pocketknife and cut myself free. Then I cut the fishing wire free of the wood. I sighed in anguish, hoping that the wire was not the same that had ended Carla’s life. I stared at it for a moment and then began to walk away.

This time, it was a much more firm grip on my ankle, one that nearly tripped my step. It was tight and quite painful, but I assumed that it was just more fishing line. I grabbed for my pocketknife and gasped as I peered down to see what had ahold of me.

A hand, no larger than that of a small child’s, had risen from the sand and grabbed around my ankle, just above my shoe.

I kicked and stomped until it released and then stood in horror as it clawed at the sand. Reaching and grabbing for me, but I was just out of its reach. The hands flesh was covered in seaweed and sand, like it had lain there for many years. The fingernails black and the skin had long openings, some to the bone. I ran only turning around once when I reached the part of the beach where the sand meets the boardwalk. Looking back under that pier to see that two hands were clawing free and that the body of that little girl was scratching and ripping at the earth to free itself.

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

Author's Note

May be some grammar errors, please inform me if there is! Enjoy!