So I caught up with them as they ran the final block to the beach. Kate led the way. Her blonde ponytail danced as she dodged between eager visitors pressing towards the ocean and wild-eyed mourners leaving.
“What the hell are so many people doing here?” Gabe asked as a sobbing woman collided with him and drifted away. “And why are so many of them crying?”
I almost told him. If I could catch them one by one and explain it to them, there was a chance they’d believe me and agree to leave – but then we reached the dunes.
Even Kate fell silent at the sight of the beach. The pale sands were coated in black. Hordes of people with flashlights crisscrossed the beach, so many that their voices almost drowned out the surf, the flashlight beams slicing across the pitch-dark sands. The noise was alternately hellish and jubilant.
“Was there an oil spill or something?” Angela asked.
“It’s the black tide.” All three stared at me. “Once a year, during the harvest moon, millions of black jellies wash ashore. No one’s ever been able to figure out what they are, or even if they’re alive or dead. We just call it the black tide. My parents always kept me inside whenever they came ashore.”
“Why?” Kate kept glancing back to the crowds. “Because of all the crazy people?”
“Because of the jellies themselves; because one time, ages ago, people tried eating them.” My stomach turned, roiled by fear and disgust. “About half of them died instantly. Just dropped dead where they stood.”
Kate wrinkled her nose. “And the other half?”
“They’re probably still here,” I said. “They lived forever.”
They stared at me for a moment, then Gabe barked a laugh. “Come on. Is that your town’s version of the Jersey Devil story or something?”
“It’s true.” I pointed. “Just watch them. They cluster around each other and egg each other on and wind each other up until finally someone is brave enough to pick one up and try it. They come with friends and family and they all swear they’ll keep each other from doing something stupid, but secretly they hope it’ll work, that they’ll be one of the chosen ones. And then they’ll go home with a parent or a sibling or a spouse who will never die...or they’ll go home alone. Just watch them.”
We inched down the dunes, afraid to get close to that slimy black mass but drawn by its possibility. Though I knew I shouldn’t, though the thought made me shudder, I wanted to touch one, to finally understand what made them so tempting.
A man, his triumphant face lit by a half-dozen flashlights, dragged the blade of a pocket knife across his bare chest. Blood poured down, but the wound sealed itself in the blade’s wake. Angela gagged; Kate gaped. I covered my mouth and found my cheeks were wet: I was crying. For all I knew, I had been crying since I saw the tide.
“I didn’t know it was tonight.” Was I asking preemptively for forgiveness? Or was I praying, or perhaps planning what I would say to the parents of whoever might succumb to the temptation? “If I’d known it was tonight, I’d never have let us come out here.”
“Don’t worry about it. None of us are stupid enough to take that risk,” Angela said.
“Really? I was going to say none of us are stupid enough to turn it down.” Gabe stooped and came up with a handful of jewel-black organisms. I lashed out reflexively and struck his wrist before he could fully straighten up, sending the black spots spattering.
But it was too late: the crowd, alert for anyone making the attempt, gathered tight around. Led by the newly immortal man with the bloody chest, they pressed in. My feet were stepped on and an elbow jabbed my side. No apologies followed: their attention – their will, even – was fixed on Gabe.
“Are you going to do it?” The hushed insistence came swiftly, an uninterrupted susurrus of temptation, the voice of the Serpent itself. “He’s gonna do it. Is it worth the risk? Do it, man. What’ve you got to lose?”
One last bit of black slime still clung to Gabe’s index finger. He squinted at it, turning it to catch the light from the jittery flashlights. I was too far away to stop him. He tossed his head, making his bangs dance to one side: his nervous tic whenever he didn’t know the answer to a question.
“I mean,” he said softly, “I’m only 18. I haven’t done jack, so it’s not like it would be a waste. On the other hand...I haven’t done jack yet. That’s worth living for.”
“But you could have forever to do it.” I recognized the woman who spoke. Her name was Nancy and she had been 33 since before my parents were born. She liked to demo her immortality by letting visitors shoot her in the head. In lean years, she charged ten dollars each for the opportunity.
I hated her.
Gabe raised his finger.
I couldn’t reach him, but I couldn’t cry out, either – my throat was frozen, clenched tight. I hated the tide, I hated Nancy, I hated myself.
Fresh screams broke out just a few feet away. I jumped. The flashlights swept off Gabe and cast a white circle on a gray-haired woman cradling the body of a younger woman. The daughter’s eyes were brown. They stared up at the moonlit sky, her face a death mask of desperate hope.
Safe in the shadows, Gabe flicked the black from his finger.
“Let’s get out of here.” Angela touched his shoulder and drew him away from the force of the hissing circle. “Grab Kate. We’re going.”
I felt a fresh churn of panic. “I don’t see her.”
Fresh cheers erupted, closer to the waves. Angela led us toward the sound, and sure enough, there was Kate. Somehow she’d gotten a flashlight and now she stood in the front lines of a crowd which surrounded eight people, each lit by flashlights like performers on a stage. Each pinched a sliver of black between their fingers. The crowd – Kate, too – was chanting, faster and faster, a single syllable: Eat! Eat! Eat!
The hands went up, the heads whipped back, throats convulsed, and five people dropped to the sand. The crowd rippled as individuals broke loose to weep over the dead, while the three victors turned, fists raised to roars of triumph. Their relieved loved ones embraced them; awestruck onlookers unwilling to take the risk themselves reached out to touch the newly immortal.
I expected Kate to be one of them, but I couldn’t see her in the crazed paths of the flashlights. I saw Nancy, though, laughing and kissing the cheeks of the survivors. Her neck and chest gleamed red, and I remembered how Dad said some years she let people slit her throat instead of shooting her.
The crowd shifted, seeking the next attempt. I knew there would be many more tonight; I remembered how few of my classmates still had both parents, their grandparents, their teachers. As we got older, we lost each other, too: the high school lost three in one year when I was a sophomore.
I also remembered how many spouses outlived not only their partners, but their children. I remembered Mallory Watkins, who waited until she turned 18 to try the tide and was rewarded with eternal youth.
Somehow, I could still see Nancy. She seemed to be everywhere, like a good hostess, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find Kate.
I turned back to tell the others. Only Gabe was there. I opened my mouth to scream for Angela, but she emerged from the crowd, her face set.
“We’re going back to the car.”
“What about Kate?”
“She says she’ll meet us there.”
“We can’t leave her here! She could—”
