Chapter 7: 7 – A Rescue

Dr. Pendle was born and raised on the Isle of Skye, in the far north-western corner of Scotland, and when his parents died he inherited the family home. For the past three summers, the MFIT has come here ostensibly so that we can carry out investigations in this part of the country without the long journey from Glasgow. We work hard when we’re here, but there’s an overall holiday feel to it all, too. The house is perched on a hill overlooking Loch Dunvegan, and I lose myself in the view from my window several times a day. Right now, I’m staring out at the shimmering opaline waters of the loch, contemplating a swim as soon as I’ve finished writing the section of my dissertation I’m struggling with.

There’s a sharp knock on my partially open door. “Working hard, I see?”

It’s Ondine, who joined the team last summer, and is the smartest person I’ve ever met. She’s also categorically not interested in me that way, to use her exact words. I can’t help it, though – every time I see her all I can do is grin. “It’s called thinking time. I need to give this huge, overworked brain of mine some time to sift through all of the information I feed into it all day long.”

She tilts her head to one side, and I brace myself for whatever torrent of sarcastic abuse might come my way. “Thinking time – right. Well, if what you were thinking about was whether to go for a swim or not, let me know if you decide to go. I’ll join you.”

Ondine has never come swimming with me before. In fact, the only time we’ve been out anywhere together has been part of the team. “I was thinking about that, as a matter of fact, and I’ve made a decision – let’s go.”

Ondine smirks and says, “Don’t tell me – you do your best thinking at the beach. Okay, give me ten minutes.”

I throw on my swimming trunks, grab two towels, and slap together two cheese sandwiches. Ondine’s favourite filling is grated cheddar, some finely sliced red onion and pineapple, mixed together with mayonnaise. It’s surprisingly tasty, and easy even for me to make. I fill two water bottles and step outside to wait for her.

The day is like a treasure from the weather gods – full sunshine, the smell of honey in the air from the flower beds that Dr. Pendle says were his mother’s pride and joy. This part of Skye has the feel of a tropical island to it, and even more so down at the coral beach, with its white beach and turquoise waters.

When Ondine joins me she’s surprisingly quiet – no good-natured banter today – and we walk in silence for the first ten minutes. I get the strong sense that she’s got something she wants to say to me, but when she does speak it’s to ask, “Do you think you’d get tired of all this beauty if you lived here year-round? I mean, would it become commonplace?”

“No.”

She snorts. “You’ve clearly thought about this already.”

“It would be impossible to get complacent about this landscape, I’m pretty sure.”

“Even when it’s the middle of winter and blowing a gale and sunset is right after lunch?”

I laugh. “We came up here to celebrate the new year and it was amazing.”

“True – it was.” After another spell of silence, she asks, “Did you think it was a bit odd that all of us came up here together to celebrate Hogmanay? I mean, we work and study together all year and then we’re together for one of the biggest celebrations of the year.”

To me, it had seemed natural that we were all together, but then I don’t have any family here to spend the holidays with. “I thought it was great, actually. But I can see where it might strike the casual observer as strange.”

Ondine laughs. “Just a wee bit, maybe.”

This would be a great time to ask her about her family, get to know more about her, but I’m fairly sure she doesn’t want me to ask, and also it would mean opening the door for her to reciprocate with a question to me.

“Do you like living in Scotland, then?”

“It’s the best – I love it.”

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“Canada must be amazing, though.”

The angry grey waters of The Wash flash into my mind, the ridiculous main street of Juniperville, trying hard to be something that it’s not. “It is, yeah, but I grew up in kind of a strange place. I was glad to get away, to be honest.”

“Strange in what way?”

Suddenly it feels like telling her about The Wash is as personal as talking about my family, so I just say, “Claustrophobic is maybe the best way to describe it. I want to say it’s an iconoclast, but that makes it sound more interesting than it really is.”

She’s giving me a look I’ve never seen before – one that suggests that she actually finds me interesting. Gone is the usual wall of sarcasm and aloofness and I’m both happy and disconcerted, because I don’t want Juniperville to be what she finds interesting about me.

We arrive at the beach, the sun glinting off the pristine whiteness, the water so inviting I decide just to run in – partly because it looks so impossibly beautiful, and partly because I want to escape any more talk of my home town.

I pull off my shirt and am rushing towards the water when I hear someone shouting. There’s a woman, further along the beach, running into the sea, yelling for help and yelling at something I can’t see in the water. And then I do see it: a tiny head bobbing above the water, and then disappearing again. I know that part of the beach, where the sand shelf drops off suddenly. The child is struggling to stay above the water line and is on the verge of drowning. Without knowing what I’m about to do, I raise my hand and, with a flick of the fingers, the child’s head appears again. I flick my fingers backwards, and the child is standing on the sand shelf, back in shallow water.

The woman reaches the child, both of them crying, and Ondine says, “Wtf, Thom? How did you do that?”

My whole body is shaking – whether with nerves or adrenaline or the effort of what I’ve just done, I don’t know. My lower back is tingling so much it’s like someone has touched a red hot poker to it. I continue staring at the child and hear my voice, quiet and quivering, say, “I have absolutely no idea.”

I turn and walk quickly away from what just happened, wanting to put space between me and whatever that was. “Thom, wait!” Ondine shouts.

I don’t wait; instead, I start to run. I hear her footsteps behind me, so I run faster. “Please wait!” she calls out, but the adrenaline is coursing through me, still, and I don’t.

I’m rushing up the front path to the house when she catches me. “Thom – please – I think we should talk about it.”

I turn to face her, and see that she looks concerned. “Not now, Ondine. I just want to be alone.” I walk away and this time, she doesn’t try to stop me.

I lock my bedroom door and sit down heavily on the bed, cupping my head in my arms. My entire body is coursing with an energy that tingles from my skull down to my toes. I know this feeling, from my dreams. The dreams in which I’ve stood on the banks of the cold, dark lake, controlling what lies under the water with my hands. All along I’ve thought it was my helplessness transforming into the power to bring Rufus back manifesting in my dreams, when actually it was my subconscious telling me – warning me – about this power.

Had it just been me on the beach I’d have thought I’d dreamed it. But Ondine was there. She knows, too.

I can feel it still, the strength in my fingers, the relentless pulse of whatever it is that courses through me. I hold out both hands and spread out my fingers, pointing them towards the desk. I’m trying to lift up my notebook, the pot of pens, my laptop, but everything stays exactly where it is, inert. I remember how it felt when the little boy was rising up out of the loch, as weightless as a velvet ribbon at the end of my fingers.

I close my eyes and try again, but nothing on the desk moves.

Water. In all of my dreams, I was manipulating the surface of the water – shifting it, moving it so that I could see what was beneath it. And then came the rising – the pulling of someone or something out of the water. In every dream, these were faceless, shapeless forms. In every dream, it was Rufus I searched for, hoping to lift him out of The Wash and bring him home.

The Wash is giving up its secrets. They’re sending down a dive team, to try to find him. Five years. Rufus has been in the lake for five years, and all that time, I might have been able to save him.

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