Page 3 of Tourist Season

T HE WIND CARRIES THE GRIT of salt from the sea. I take a deep breath and let it flood my lungs. We always think the scent of the ocean refreshes us. Cleanses us. There’s a rightness to that for humankind. We say it gives us peace when it’s really the smell of death and decay.

A smile lifts one corner of my lips as I look across the water. It’s true, I do feel reinvigorated by the scent of death.

And I can’t wait to bring my vengeance to Cape Carnage.

I head to the trunk of my rental car and grab my bags, and with a final glance toward the ocean, I make my way up the steps of the Capeside Inn.

My knee is stiff from the long drive. My elbow too.

When I tilt my head from one side to the other, the vertebrae crunch and crack and pop.

I mentally rearrange my schedule for Day One.

First, check into the hotel. Second, go for a walk to loosen things up. Maybe find a sandwich. Third, start hunting down that bitch to give her the slow and painful death she deserves for making me suffer immeasurable grief and pain and torture and indignity. Fourth, hot tub.

My grin widens as I enter the lobby.

Every year on the anniversary of the crash that killed my brother and nearly took me too, I claim another life. She’s the final prize of my annual expeditions for justice. My most coveted trophy.

This is going to be a fucking amazing vacation.

There’s no one at the desk when I drop my bag on the crimson carpet, but a gentle snore comes from a darkened room to the left, behind the counter.

I clear my throat, but nothing happens. The snores continue.

I say, “Excuse me,” but there’s still no response.

That’s when I notice the framed sign next to a little brass bell.

RING THE BELL OR I’LL KEEP SNORING , the sign says in large print.

And below it in smaller font: I’M NOT LYING. RING IT OR YOU WON’T GET YOUR KEYS .

I ring the bell.

There’s a snort in the dark. And then, “I’m here. Hold on to your britches.”

Shuffling footsteps come from the direction of the room.

A short, elderly woman makes her way to the reception desk, breathing on the lenses of her glasses to polish them on an embroidered apron as she draws closer.

Her cloud of white hair sways with every sliding step, her smile carving trenches into her sepia skin.

When she finally stops at the desk, she slides her glasses on, then lets her cloudy eyes travel over the details of my face.

Everything takes her longer than it should.

Every blink. Every breath. She clears her throat.

Audibly swallows. And finally: “Checking in?”

“Yes,” I say, passing my license and credit card across the counter. “Reservation for Nolan Rhodes.”

The woman takes my cards with crooked fingers and sets them down as she opens a leather-bound book. “Welcome to Cape Carnage,” she says, flipping through pages. “I’m Irene.”

“Nice to meet you, Irene …” I reply, though Irene doesn’t really acknowledge my words. She starts repeating my name as she trails a finger down the ledger. She leans closer to the book, and closer, and closer. Then she picks up a magnifying glass and leans closer still.

“Nolan Rhodes,” she says with a note of triumph as she finds my name. “Checking out July fifteenth. Room one-seventeen.”

“That’s the one with the hot tub, right?”

“Yes, indeed.” She turns away to a board on the back wall where keys hang from brass pegs. “You’re here on holiday?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come to see the Carnage ?”

I cover my snort with a cough. “Something like that, ma’am.”

“Water’ll still be pretty cold, but it should be clear. Wallie rents winter wetsuits if you don’t have your own. You’ll find Wallie’s Watersports by the marina. Take Harborside Road along the cliff and then follow the signs, can’t miss it,” she says as she points in the general vicinity of the sea.

I know the map of the town by memory, and she’s definitely not pointing in the right direction, but I just nod.

Satisfied, she passes me the key. “Breakfast is served daily from six to ten in the dining room. There’s a kitchenette in your suite, but there are some good spots to eat out at too.

” She slides a pamphlet across the counter, then rings up my credit card, declaring that she’s given me the off-season rate because she “likes the cut of my jib,” whatever the fuck that means.

I just take my cards back with a bright word of thanks and then grab my bags, heading down the hall to my room.

Though run by someone who’s truly ancient, the inn gives off a traditional but sophisticated, timeless vibe.

My room is a suite with pale blue walls and mahogany furniture and French doors that face the sea.

There’s a small patio with a privacy fence and a hot tub that gurgles beneath a cover.

I stand outside and face the cliffs for a long moment before I head back into the room, stop in front of the bed, spread my arms wide, and flop down onto the plush duvet.

The handle of the knife strapped to my belt knocks against my ribs, a reminder of the amazing time I’m about to have.

I wrangled a whole fucking six weeks off.

Not an easy feat when you work in Search and Rescue, by the way.

I’ve imagined this trip so many times over the last four years.

And now I’m finally here, about to grasp the one thing I’ve been hunting for.

The thing that kept me going in the darkest hours: revenge.

I pull the blade free of its sheath and turn it over, testing the sharpness with my thumb. When it nicks my skin and a bead of blood appears, I smile.

“You can’t hide from me. Not anymore.”

I set the blade on the nightstand, and I get up to fish a Band-Aid from my luggage before I unpack. I set out fresh clothes. My wash bag. My laptop and charger. And then, with a last glance around the room as though someone else could be watching, I pull out my prized possession.

My scrapbook.

I flip to the first page. I’m not the kind of guy you’d look at and think, Yeah, he’s into scrapbooking .

But when you spend two months in the hospital consumed by sorrow and suffering and the need for revenge, sometimes you take up new hobbies.

The first pages are a little haphazard. Photos and memories glued down with ripples in their edges or bubbles beneath their surface.

Laid down by an unsteady hand. But as the pages go on, the work becomes cleaner.

There are photos of my first steps as I relearned how to walk in rehab, me standing with a walker next to my sister and parents.

I remember what my dad said that day with tears in his tired eyes.

“We’re proud of you, son. There’s no one on this earth more determined than Nolan Rhodes. ”

Perhaps it was a little hyperbolic, but he’s a good dad, and that’s the kind of thing good dads say when their son survives a hit-and-run. And he’s got a point about determination—I definitely have a lot of that. Maybe just not the way he would expect.

Most people will probably tell you that you need to find light in the darkness to recover from the kind of suffering I endured.

They expected me to embrace positive ideals that would keep me moving forward after my life-altering accident.

Like acceptance of things I couldn’t change.

Liberation from hurt and anger. Catharsis.

Forgiveness . But the idea of forgiving anyone was repulsive.

That is not what I did. Hope and positivity were not what drove me to wean myself from pain medications, or to relearn to feed myself, or to overcome the indignity I felt at having others bathe and clothe me. They’re not what helped me survive what I lost.

I never found light in the chasm of pain.

What I did find was the deepest, most lightless void in myself. A place where the man I once knew faded away, and a new one took shape.

Why should I forgive the four people who were in the car that night for crashing into me and leaving me to die a slow and painful death alone in the dark? Why should I forgive them for the brother they took from me?

“Billy.” I press a hand to my chest where it still aches every time I say his name out loud.

I hardly ever do anymore. Every time my brother’s name passes my lips, it’s not our childhood memories that appear first. It’s not the sound of his lighthearted laugh.

It’s not the image of his smile that I remember.

It’s his unseeing eyes fixed to mine. It’s the crimson rivulets that drip from his mouth to pool on the asphalt. It’s the quiet hiss that escapes from his parted lips. Just a final whispering breath to warm the blood in the night.

No, I will never forgive them.

So I cling to the dark. I nurture it. I give it all my bitterness. All my hate. And in turn, it nurtures me.

It gives me purpose. Strength. A goal to work toward. A mission to fight for.

I turn to the next page of my scrapbook.

Marc Beaumont.

His face is not just stamped on the page of my scrapbook.

It’s imprinted in my memory, an image forever branded like a scar across my thoughts.

Just like the warmth of the summer breeze, or the last light of the evening sun, or the smell of the pine needles on the steep trail that led from the beach at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland.

I remember the way they crunched beneath our boots as Billy and I hiked up to the road.

It was Fourth of July weekend. A quick and easy vacation to see my little brother.

He’d moved to Baltimore a few months prior and I still missed him immensely.

I remember thinking how good it was to hear his laugh again as I looped an arm over his shoulder.

He was talking about the beers we were going to share when we started to cross the road to return to the campground.

But we never made it back there. Not when that car careened around the sharp bend and struck us both.

And that moment is the brightest of all. I can still see Marc Beaumont’s shock from the passenger seat of the car. I can still hear the screech of tires the instant before the blinding pain. I can still hear my brother’s scream as he called out my name, the last sound he ever made.

It took me months to recover from my injuries. Several more to build back my strength. I spent every spare moment picking up new skills, learning how to hunt a different kind of prey. And on the first anniversary of the crash, Marc Beaumont was the first man I came for.

“Tell me the names of the two men in the car with you,” I whisper.

It’s an echo of memory. I might be sitting in my room in the Capeside Inn, but it’s the terror in Marc’s eyes I see.

I trace a numb fingertip over the photograph of his face.

I can still hear his muffled pleas when I close my eyes.

I remember the satisfaction I felt at ripping the duct tape from his mouth.

“Tell me their names and I might let you live.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, please , let me go.” The fear in his voice was an awakening. A revelation. It’s what made me realize that the vengeance within my grasp was exactly what I needed. A drug that would soothe me. One I would never get enough of.

I'd already had an idea who was with him that night in the car, but I had to be sure. Marc had claimed in the police reports that he was at home alone and not with his girlfriend when she barreled into us, even though he’d been seen with her at a party not even an hour before the crash happened.

He said he didn’t know anything about the accident that claimed my brother’s life and nearly took mine.

The one that supposedly claimed the driver’s life, too, when she took off but crashed a short distance away from where she left us to die, the car tumbling over a cliff and into the sea.

But I knew the truth. He was there. Sitting in the passenger seat, with two men in the back. I remember it, their forms and faces blurry in the distance as they got out of the car and argued about whether to stay at the scene or drive away.

It took only moments for them to decide to run away while the driver got back into the car and tore away with a squeal of tires. The only thing I remember from the brief moments before pain consumed my consciousness was my brother’s lightless eyes staring back at me as I screamed his name.

My gaze shifts from Marc’s photograph to the opposite page of my scrapbook.

“Trevor Fisher,” Marc had finally confessed after only a few punches. “And Dylan Jacobs. He works at the Instinctive Ink tattoo parlor in Graywood.”

I’d bound his arms to the chair and I remember the way he looked down at his forearm when he’d said it. When I twisted his skin, the lettering was still crisp, the edges healed but clean. The tattoo couldn’t be more than a year or two old.

Memento mori.

“Let me guess,” I’d said, releasing my hold on his arm. “Dylan and Trevor. They have the same tattoo, don’t they?”

“Y-yes.”

“That’s good.” I’d turned away toward the table of tools waiting to be christened with blood. “I knew I’d need a trophy.”

I take a deep breath and blink away the memories, returning to my room at the inn.

I look at my knife where it now rests on the nightstand, the blade as sharp as the day I’d used it to take my first trophy.

My first justice . And then I look down at the patch of thin leather, the uneven edges bound to the page.

Memento mori.

Remember, you must die.