Page 32 of The Sister's Curse

I couldn’t see anything underwater but bubbles and gritty sediment. The boy screamed, muffled by the water. I kept my grip on his arm, kicking with all the force I could muster at whatever it was that grabbed me from below. I struck once, twice, three times with the ball of my foot.

Suddenly, the grip slackened, and I kicked away. I cast about for the boy.

He was windmilling yards from me, and a man shouted: “Stop fighting, and lie still!”

At that familiar voice, a sense of calm settled over me. FredJasper was here. Jasper was rescuing him. He immediately towed the boy to shore, and I followed.

Jasper placed the boy on the beach. His chest was bleeding. He was pale, and twitching like a fish caught on a line and flung up onshore.A good sign,I thought distantly. He turned over on his stomach to throw up water. Jasper rolled him onto his side to make sure he wouldn’t choke.

“Miss Koray!” A Girl Scout grabbed me by the hand. “You’re bleeding!”

I looked down at my leg. Blood dripped from my calf into a puddle in the sand.

Tisha wrapped a towel tightly around my leg and ordered me to sit down. She elevated my leg on a cooler.

“Aunt Monica called an ambulance,” she said, very seriously, offering me bottled water.

I put my hand on her shoulder. A kid who could keep it together in an emergency was going to be a helluva doctor or soldier someday. “You just earned your first aid merit badge, kiddo.”

Tisha beamed, and I grinned back at her.

Maybe it was moments like this that kept me in Bayern County.

—

The paramedics insisted on taking the boy and me to the hospital. I refused initially, but Tisha insisted that I go in the ambulance, so I did. Trying to be a good example and all. The other troop volunteers told me they had all the girls accounted for and would call their parents. Monica barked orders for the sheriff’s office and the Department of Natural Resources to gain control of the scene and make sure no one was allowed back in the water.

“It’s a good thing you were here,” I told Jasper. “You saved that boy’s life.”

Jasper sat next to me on the beach. He was unnerved by the near drowning; his hand shook a bit. “Just lucky timing. I was checking the buoys cordoning off the swimming area. Got to make sure everything’s ready for the Fourth.”

I nodded. “What happened out there?”

“I don’t know. I just saw him splashing, saw his head going under. I knew it wasn’t horseplay. We need to mark off where the deep water begins better, to keep things like this from happening.” His gaze fell on my bleeding leg. “And we need to do a sweep for debris. That looks nasty.”

I frowned. “It didn’t feel like debris. It felt like an animal of some kind—sharp…”

“Let me see that leg.”

I showed it to him, still oozing blood.

“Yeah, that looks like a tooth or something. Maybe a snapping turtle? Water snakes don’t attack like that.”

“I can’t help but think about the wounds on that other kid who almost drowned, Mason.”

Jasper nodded. “I see it, too. I think we should broaden our horizons. I’ll talk to DNR and see if they have any reports of invasive species going on here. I mean, Maryland has found snakehead fish, and those buggers have teeth.”

I made a face. “There’s something creepy about fish with teeth.”

“Right? If I’m honest, I gotta say I’m creeped out, too.” He stared out at the water. “I know what’s usually down there, but if there’s something new, we need to know, to protect the public. Especially with the Fourth coming up.”

“Let me know what you find out,” I told him. Maybe the monsters here were invasive fish, an ecological disaster. There was something about a fish invasion that made it more comforting than the alternatives.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics strapped the boy down on a backboard and carried him up to the road. A group of teen boys followed him, carrying his personal effects, muttering quietly among themselves. I was last, limping along. I didn’t like to admit it, but that cut began to smart once the adrenaline wore off.

I sat in the ambulance, propping my foot up on the gurney while the paramedics got an IV line started on the kid and a medic stared at his eyeballs with a flashlight.

“What’s your name?” the medic with the flashlight asked.