The Vacation of a Lifetime - Runner Up

[carnage_lee]

The Vacation of a Lifetime


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We’d been married 10 years and had two kids; my twin girls, bright beautiful Jesse and my raven-haired Francis, aka ‘Frankie’. My wife, Kala, and I were preparing to go to her family’s annual summer beach bash in New England when my boss called.

“Jim, it’s Gary, we’ve got a network down and need you to come in. I apologize but Sarah is out sick and I don’t have anyone else to cover” Sarah was my partner at work and together we managed a global wide area network for our company. It paid very, very well but the trade-off was that I was always on call for emergencies.

“I’ll be right in. Give me 30 minutes.” I put on my coat and grabbed my keys.

“See you then.” He hung up.

Kala understood, this was our life and my calling.

“We’ll be fine” She said. “We’ll stop at Chesapeake House like we always do and I’ll take my time. If we need to check into somewhere along the way, we will. Don’t worry. Now, go and do a good job!”

With that I was off and 30 minutes later I was frustrated and happier than at almost any other time of my professional life. I love what I do for a living; I have the biggest set of electronic tinker toys that connects points from all over the globe to talk to each other and when it breaks it can be frustrating and full of pressure and the purest form of enjoyment to fix something so complex. It took us 12 hours to narrow a problem down to a service provider in India who was telling the world that he was the authoritative source for all of our traffic here in the US. It took almost another 6 hours to get someone who could speak adequate geek to get it fixed.

Exhausted, I went home, got a shower and crashed for about 5 hours. When I got up, it was mid afternoon and I puttered around and played online for a couple of hours and then it hit me how quiet the house was. I hadn’t been alone in years; Kala was always a homemaker and then a homeschooling parent so she and the kids were always present. It’s kind of weird how the energy of a person can occupy a place and, with three females, my house was full of energy all the time.

Well, I had 4 days more to kill. I could hang out here and level my character to 90,or I could just kill my vacation and go back to work or I could make that hellish drive to New England on my own. Now why don’t I fly and rent a car? Mostly because where Kala’s family has their place is hours off of the beaten track anyway. They live on the beach but no interstate road or airport is even close to them. When were first married, I tried to fly in and drive in from a conference I was attending and got wickedly lost on my way there. After a couple of calls and returning the rental, I only got there after Kala’s dad drove out and picked me up. That, of course, was pre-Internet and Google Maps.

After looking up the address on Google maps and not finding it, I decided to see if I could just pick it out form the terrain features and go from there. It took a bit of looking but I found the inlet and could just barely make out the collection of bungalows and the main house. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking a Kennedy-type compound here but Kala’s family isn’t exactly poor, either. Her dad had been into fishing and was a supplier to the suppliers for some of the toniest restaurants up and down the New England coast. Every night was lobster and crabs and whatever else you could possibly want from the ocean; I called it my yearly ’seafood fix’ because everywhere else I ate seafood after that never tasted right.

Google wouldn’t map to the exact street but I was able to find a small town nearby that it could map to. The weird part is that in 10 years, we’ve never been into it and I hadn’t even known it existed. I guess with all of the food, conversation, and family I hadn’t paid attention to the daily lives of my in-laws. They were healthy and called once a week or so, visited at Christmas and pretty much left us alone any other time, so blissfully ignorant I stayed.

Well, if I was going to do this I’d better repack and leave early. The Google map said the drive was over 12 hours. I remember it being six or seven at the most but then the kids and I always slept on the last half of the drive; Kala always insisted on the final leg and after fighting through AM and PM rushes along the East Coast, I was usually happier to let her take the country leg of our journey.

At 4 AM the next day, I started the car and drove north. I also stopped and bought one of those GPS devices that help you find things. (It also told me that the address to my in-law’s place couldn’t be found but it successfully mapped a route to that little town)

To be truthful, I actually like to drive and at 4 AM, it’s nice to be almost the only car on the road. The trip was fine, I made it through Virginia, hit traffic in DC, then Baltimore, then Wilmington, then the tail end of it in Philly. A few hours later I was coming out of New York and into Connecticut when my tire blew. I called roadside service and found that the spare was dead, too. 4 hours later and nearly $300 lighter on my wallet I was back on the road with two new tires. I was hungry and tired and decided to check into a hotel for a meal and a couple of hours of naptime.

The meal was fine but the nap turned into too long of a miasma of weird dreams. I woke up much later than I’d planned, showered, paid for the room, and got back on the road. There wasn’t much traffic until I hit Boston and got through that with the usual delays and was through Portland soon after.

By midnight, I’d found my way onto local roads and heading towards the little town that I’d mapped to. The GPS died on me sometime thereafter and I got lost. Fortunately, I’d printed out the map and was able to figure my way onto what eventually became the road into the town. Did I call my wife? No. This was going to be my surprise to her and the kids.

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I was on a back road at midnight pulling into a town that looked like something out of the early 1800’s. The problem with that is that it looked like it had never been repaired since.

Right away it struck me that there were no lights of any kind; no streetlights, no houselights, no car headlamps. There were cars on the street of course, all parked neatly and most of the models were from the 60’s and 70’s and there was even what I thought was an original British Cooper Mini.

As I continued through the town I noticed that a nearby church was lit with glowing candles in the glass-stained windows. The doors were closed and I might have parked and gone in if I hadn’t seen something cross the street first.

I am a rational man; I make decisions that affect the livelihoods for 20,000 workers and their families across the globe. I use logic and reasoning daily and take pride in it. What crossed the road defied my logic and my reason itself.

How do I describe the indescribable? The short answer is that you can’t and what crossed the street and through my headlights was exactly that. Amorphous isn’t quite right because it had a shape – several of them, actually. It didn’t even seem to notice that I was there or had slammed onto my brakes to not run it over. It crossed the street and into an alley and was as if it had never been there.

I accelerated through the little town, past the docks full of nets, and a sign for Dougherty Seafood – Kala’s family company.

More than a little scared and shaken, it was a few miles out of town that I managed to find a road that looked very familiar and was soon on my way to my in-laws home. As I pulled through the gate to the road, I debated with myself over what I’d seen - or had I? It could just have been a dog or something. I was exhausted. I just needed to see Kala and the kids but I couldn’t walk in on them at midnight and wake everyone up. (We always stayed in the ‘big house’ while her brothers and younger sister along with various aunts, uncles, and cousins took the bungalows.) I decided to sleep in the car with the doors locked.

That lasted a whole 10 minutes. I kept seeing this glow behind the houses and over the dunes and while it wasn’t enough to keep me awake it was enough to have the caveman in me want to seek the protection of what seemed to be a pretty big bonfire.

I left the parked car, put on my windbreaker, and walked across the gravel and into the sand of the dunes. All of the houses were dark. I smelled something in the wind, something sweet almost and it made me hungry.

As I crested the dunes, I was still in shadow and in front of me was a massive bonfire. Dancing around the bonfire was my wife, my children, and her family. Naked but also not; my in laws seemed to be wearing diving suits of some kind. They shined with an odd rainbow of colors. My wife seemed to have taken the top half of hers off as her legs were shining with the same material. My children were just nude and laughing as the chanting and dancing went on to a weird rhythm that seemed oddly but faintly familiar.

The circle began to shift as the music intensified and I saw that other members of the family were equally garbed and the two oldest aunts seemed to be wearing an odd headdress of some kind.

Abruptly the music stopped and a bizarre cry came from the sea. It was a pitch of low tones alternated by high ones. The small crowd walked to the shore and, led by the aunts, began to wade in. Kala turned and said something to the girls and they stopped. Frankie obviously wanted her way. Though I couldn’t hear the conversation, I could tell that Kala made it very clear where Frankie was to stay and she and her sister returned to the shore and sat near the bonfire. Kala then turned, walked into the deep surf, and dove under the waves.

Kala doesn’t swim; that is, every time we’ve come here, she refuses to go into the water with me. She always has an excuse for the entire week we’re here. I usually have a blast.

Almost three minutes have gone by and Kala still hasn’t surfaced. Meanwhile the girls are whispering to themselves and pointing to the ocean. They put their hoodies on and cover up with a blanket.

I don’t know what I’m witnessing but I am very aware of the time since Kala went under. At 5 minutes I decide to make my to the girls and the fire.

“Girls, its daddy”

They turned their heads and looked at me with stolid expressions.

Jesse said “You should go inside daddy. You really, really should.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Grandpa will get very mad and he’s scary when he’s mad. We don’t want him mad at you” said Frankie

Now I’m confused. Bill has been the best in-law and a father to me since Kala and I graduated college together. He and Jane have been nothing but the best. I’ve never heard the man raise his voice or know of him to lose his temper.

“I don’t know about that but how about you come with me? It’s cold and I could use some company.”

It’s been 7 minutes since Kala went under and I’m getting worried.

The girls reply in unison, “No daddy, mommy told us to stay here until the sun comes up full”

I couldn’t believe what I just heard and now really wanted the girls inside so they don’t witness their mother’s suicide by drowning.

“Francis Alexandra and Jesse Elizabeth, get your butts up and come with me now!” I said in a hiss. Something about this situation seemed to not lend itself to a full throttle yell.

The girls broke. They stood up, started to cry, and came to me and clung on. We started to the big house and I got them in and covered up on the couch. Within what seemed seconds, they were fast asleep.

I looked at the clock and pretty much knew my wife and her entire family had killed themselves in the surf.

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I waited an hour and then went back to the beach. The bonfire was just collapsing into a pile of deep embers. Like I said earlier, I am a man of reason who had a bad shock and wasn’t sure about what was reasonable anymore. Seeing my wife’s entire family commit mass suicide was top on my list of the 5 of seriously unreasonable things in life.

I began to cry. I haven’t cried since I was a kid when I got beat up in the neighborhood by a gang of kids and spent overnight in the hospital. When my parents divorced I didn’t cry. When we moved to the middle of nowhere, I didn’t cry. When my mother died, I didn’t cry. Kala and her family were the only family I had, and now, seeing what I just saw, I began to cry. 32 years of pain, suffering, and a renewed sense of loneliness just came out like an exploding boil. I wailed, I cursed, I pounded the sand and, at some point, passed out in the sand with a full sense of grief.

The early sun woke me up through the mist I stood up, shook the sand off of me, and went back inside to check on the girls. They were fine. I got a quick shower, got dressed, picked up my cell phone and took it back down to the shore to see if any of the bodies had washed up. None had. I called 911.

“911. This is Dispatcher 214. What is your emergency?”

‘My wife and her entire family drowned themselves”

“I’m sorry, sir, can you say again?”

“They walked into the surf and drowned themselves last night”

“Hold sir, I need to talk to my supervisor”

911 put me on hold?

It was at this point that I noticed that something was moving in the water; about a dozen, in fact. Sea otters? Sharks? Whatever it was, it was heading to shore.

As the crest of the first wave broke, I saw a walking sea monster. The Saturday morning ‘Creature Feature’ on Channel 17 had nothing on this thing and more like it in the early morning mist were coming out of the surf.

This thing waded ashore to the remains of the bonfire and moved the blankets where the girls had been sitting. It soon gave off a great keening sound. Suddenly to the right of me, the screen door slammed shut and my daughters were giving an approximate return sound as they raced across the beach to the creature. They ran to the creature and it hugged them!

More of the creatures were coming out of the surf and gathering around the girls. Soon a conversation of high pitched squeals and low bursts were heard. Then, all at once, they turned and I realized I’d been noticed en masse.

I’d love to say I freaked, grabbed my daughters and ran back into the house but I didn’t. I stood still like a deer in headlights.

The creature that had hugged my daughters walked (waddled?) towards me as I stood perfectly still. It was over 6 feet tall; broad shouldered and had scales. It smelled of the ocean and something sweeter. Its face was not quite utterly fishlike and it looked somehow familiar as if I’d seen it in a dream.

A great clawed, webbed hand reached out and it took my cell phone. It put it to its face and began a series of squeeks and squeals, waited a second or two, nodded its great head and then closed it. It handed the phone back to me and spoke with a rasping voice, “Go inside, Jim. There is much we need to discuss”


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In then end, I was given the choice of keeping their secret or exposing them to the world. After all of the shock and grief I’d experienced, I knew that they were my family and that I’d do anything to keep them and protect them.

I came to understand a great deal more about what I’d married into; their ancient history, what would happen to my wife, what would happen to our kids - not all get ‘The Gift’ as they call it - and what the summer event really meant to them.

They worshipped a god called Dagon and it was every summer they and others like them - I was told there are many, many others who are out at sea and can no longer live on land or have chosen not to anymore – come to an ancient place to have a mass call for his eventual return.

They apologized for not trusting me and my wife confessed to drugging my oysters every year so I’d fall asleep while they all went down to the beach. That caused a minor fight and we made up for the better. She swims with me now and I understand the reason she didn’t before – it was to save me from embarrassment! She is so fluid and so amazing in the water and the girls are getting more like her every day.

With trust come better things within the relationship. I can’t say that after 10 years some things in our marriage were lacking but the shine was wearing off. After that, well….let’s just say that explaining the claw marks on my back at the gym got Kara some admiring looks from my some of my coworkers!