Free Halfway House by Weston Ochse Page A

in elasticized filaments that snapped back to the water’s surface.
    He considered just floating for a while, but he felt an imperative to discover what the light was and with no breeze and no tide, he’d never get there without paddling. So he lay his body upon the board and steeled himself for the alien feel of the liquid. Dipping his arms up to his elbows, he began to pull his way through the water with dramatic difference. The light drew closer. He could make out a structure. Within minutes he realized it was the halfway house on South Pacific. He’d never really given the place much notice, other than it was where he drove by every day on his way to the cove. If this was the afterlife, then why was that his destination? Where was heaven? Where was hell?
    Suddenly his fingers scraped against something beneath the surface of the water. With a howl, he jerked them free, the effort almost overturning him. He examined his fingertips as if they’d reveal what he’d just touched, but they were as silent as this strange universe. It wasn’t that the mysterious thing had caused him pain; it had merely surprised him.
    Tentatively he dipped his fingers back into the brine and felt around. He pushed his hand deeper until he finally felt something hard and unforgiving. It felt like a stick, but when it moved and wrapped itself around his fingers in an implausible grip, he knew it couldn’t be a stick.
    It felt like a hand.
    Dez jerked his arm, but it wouldn’t come free. He tried to adjust his position for better leverage, but found the position precarious as the surfboard rocked beneath him. The last thing he wanted was to land in the water and meet face-to-face with whatever was attached to the hand that was, even now, gripping him tighter and tighter.
    But he couldn’t free himself from the mysterious grip. He paddled around it, hoping that like a fishing snag, there was an angle in which it would come free. Finally, with one great jerk, his hand was once again his own, but with the ponderous momentum of a nightmare, he felt himself overbalancing. His arms windmilled for a panicked moment and he hit the water, face-first and sinking.
    His eyes shot open and beheld a vivid green universe of underwater carnage. Gone was the murkiness of brine, replaced by a green-hued landscape of the damned, as clear and succinct as vision at high summer noon. An army of the dead greeted him, waving with the tide like seaweed. Legs disappeared into the rocky bottom, seemingly held there like metal sunk into concrete. Some were mere skeletons. Others were decomposing, clothes reduced to rags from the ebb and flow of the water. All of them seemed to watch him, their multitudinous examination filling him with terror.
    He spied his board on the surface and pushed toward it, but got no more than a foot before he felt a tug at his ankle. He pushed against the water again and felt himself held fast. Looking behind, he spied hands from a tiny form grasping his left ankle like it was a baseball bat. He pulled at his leg, but couldn’t gain any traction in the water. What was it that had him? Fear unhinged him as he realized it was the decomposing form of a child that could be no more than two years old, its feet anchored in the soil.
    He flailed madly. Air escaped his lungs. He kicked at the dead child with his left foot and watched as his heel intersected with the tiny skull. Once. Twice. Three times. The grinning face fell to the side as the neck broke. What was left of a cheek rested on the child’s shoulder, but it still wouldn’t release.
    Dez clawed frantically to reach the surface, his chest burning with the desire to live. But he was finally forced to inhale and let the water surge down into his lungs.
    Though he was prepared to die, it never happened. He found that he didn’t need to breathe. He glanced around and saw the child receding.
    Of course. He was already dead. Why did he need to breathe?
    Before he reached the surface, a hand