Swimmer by Graham Masterton

of orang-utans, would you?’
    â€˜I don’t know. You should meet some of my friends.’
    Susan came up to Jim and linked arms with him. ‘I’ll tell you something, Jim. Michael helped to save my life when nobody else around me cared anything at all. I don’t know what you taught him when he was in college, but he’s always been so considerate. And gentle, too.’
    â€˜Well, you amaze me,’ said Jim. ‘I always had him down as a grade-A smartass.’
    â€˜He even wrote that on my report,’ said Michael, with a grin.
    Susan said, ‘You know, we should try another spirit-trace on the beach where this other boy drowned. What was his name? Dennis? If we do that, at least we’ll know what happened for sure.’
    â€˜Well … it’s up to you. But I don’t want to put you in any danger.’
    â€˜I think I can handle a water spirit,’ said Susan. ‘We were all sent into this world to help each other, weren’t we? And to protect each other from the next world, too.’
    Jim checked his watch. ‘It’s still light; maybe we should start off by the beach.’
    Jim drove them down to Will Rogers State Beach, and they parked and walked across the sand. The sun was shining in their eyes, and the afternoon was windy and warm. ‘He drowned right out there,’ said Jim. ‘According to his friends, he was fit and raring to go and he hadn’t had anything more to drink than a couple of beers.’
    Susan stood still for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she took off her sandals, handed them to Michael, and walked right down to the edge of the surf. Jim followed her, and stood beside her while she stared out over the glittering ocean.
    â€˜There’s still something here … some redolence. I can feel it.’
    â€˜I can’t feel anything.’
    â€˜Yes you can. You’re a sensitive, just like me. Look at the light. Listen to the seagulls. They’re calling out to you, telling you that something happened here, something tragic.’
    The way the seagulls were wheeling and keening, it was easy to believe that Susan was right. Although children were still running along the shoreline and laughing, and dogs were still barking, there was a sense of loss in the air, a sense of tragedy. Maybe it was nothing more than the end of another day. But Dennis Pease had drowned here, late last night, and he was never coming back.
    Michael opened the bag that he was carrying on his back, and Susan took out her crystal. She knelt down, set it on its stand and started to spin it. It caught the sunlight, and multi-colored diamonds danced across the sand. A small girl stopped in her tracks and stared at it, entranced, and a dachshund that had been yipping and snapping and chasing its tail stopped right beside her, and stared at it too with black beady eyes.
    Jim couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was nothing more than the sun going down. But the afternoon seemed to darken, and the color of the sky grew more intense. The sound of the surf rasped ever more sharply in his ears, like sandpaper. Above his head the gulls continued to circle and cry, around and around, as if they couldn’t leave the flickering light around the crystal, no matter what.
    Down by the shoreline Jim saw six or seven boys, their images jumping and fading like a worn-out movie. They were laughing and tumbling, and kicking water at each other. Then two of them picked up surfboards and rushed into the waves. One of them had lanky hair, tied back with a bandanna, and a large, triangular nose. Even though he was only intermittently visible, Jim recognized him at once as Dennis Pease.
    â€˜
Don’t do it, Dennis
,’ he said, under his breath, although he knew how futile it was. If there was only a way to turn the clock back to yesterday night. But Dennis’s carefree image went on bounding into the water, and Jim could even hear the faintest echoes of