Frannie kicked and tried to rise and the ghost held Frannie’s hands with an impossibly tight grasp.
Come on. Get free.
And the ghost held—she started to scream, and the ghost only stared and held her. It intended to let Frannie tire and drown.
I feel sorry. I do, Frannie thought. You were innocent and you loved a man and you were hurt and you were killed. But I don’t deserve to die. It’s not right!
Then a voice in her mind, in the water, in the black circle eyes: what does right have to do with anything?
Come on! She fought. She couldn’t breather. Don’t panic. She kicked. The ghost held. The air in her lungs grew toxic. Don’t panic.
Please!
The ghost grinned.
Frannie fought and rolled back and closed her eyes and the Blanks filled her vision, the stories hidden there and then she rolled forward in the water and said:
Ver dershtikt, ver dershokhtn
A regular curse, a curse anyone might use, but the words were bodies and she was filling them with Hod, with glory—
Ver dershtikt, ver dershokhtn, get strangled and get stabbed,
Ver dervorgn, get choked, and she saw the ghost looking at her, wonder creeping into those angry eyes,
Ver tsezest!
Explode!
Water filled her mouth as she screamed the words. She heard her voice burbling, the jumble of numbers on her chest burning against her, the last bit of air in her lungs bursting forth in bubbles.
The Hebrew words flowed. She felt herself encased in warmth, she felt power seep through her body as she locked eyes with the ghost.
“Ver dershtikt, ver dershokhtn, ver dervorgn, ver tsezest, get strangled, get stabbed, get choked, explode!”
And the ghost began to scream.
I banish you! By the power of the wise one, by the Holy of the Holies, I banish you! Be gone, angry and misbegotten thing!
And the ghost faltered, the motes of dust suddenly visible through her. The ghost didn’t so much loosen her grip as lose her solidity.
Frannie kicked and broke loose.
“Seek peace, ya crazy lady,” Frannie screamed as she rose in the water, hitting the surface and gasping for air. She opened her eyes and saw a wall of wave coming and dove.
She went deep, looking for the ghost again, but saw no glow, no motes of dust in the brilliant shimmer. Frannie bobbed under the water and saw nothing of the ghost, then swam back up to the surface as the wave passed, to look around.
“Newp!” she called. “Hooky!”
She heard a splash and a scream.
Newp’s scream underwater brought a gush of water into his mouth. And as the tiny birds flashed in the water, one of them flitted before his eyes, glowing and with tiny words he could not read. The water undulated and thrummed with the beating wings, and he swore he heard a voice.
You are their friend, aren’t you? You will make a vessel to be proud of. Perhaps I will even return your thoughts, embedded somewhere in the minutest part of your sin, perhaps I will even ride the waves with your friends. And when I find the Blanks, we will enjoy them together.
Newp fought, stuck underwater, screaming no more, he clamped his eyes shut and felt cuts along his back
GOD NO
Then—light.
There was light blazing beyond his closed eyelids. He felt the birds suddenly lurch, scattering, ceasing their biting, and he forced his eyes open. The birds were moving away from his face and body and he saw fire.
A flare, underwater, a signal flare burned and spewed, as a figure attacked the birds and came closer. Newp saw the muscled form of Hooky, lit up in a red glow beneath the waves, as he stabbed at the wave of birds. He set some to flame, and as they broke off and scattered, Hooky grabbed Newp by the shoulders, digging in his fingers and dragging him up.
They struck the surface and Newp gasped for air, spreading out his arms and lifting himself aloft.
Hooky and Newp spun around, calling in all directions as Hooky waved the flare. “Frannie! Where are you?”
Newp coughed and Hooky threw him a glance as they treaded water. “You okay?”
“I think so.” They started to swim for shore, body surfing, letting the waves help until they hit the beach.
###
Not far away, Frannie fell in the sand, exhausted. She rose on her elbows as she heard them come ashore. “Guys!” They found her in the edge of the surf, crawling and exhausted. Now that she had seen them, she regained her strength. She rose and ran to them, whooping as she threw her skinny arms around them.
“I got your ghost, boy,” Frannie said to Hooky. “That lady didn’t want to share you. But I don’t know, I think I just rattled her. She got away.”
Newp nodded. “Bookman did too. But look at this damage.” He held out his arms and showed her the paper cuts all along his skin.
Frannie winced. “Ooh, do those hurt?”
“Like crazy.” But Newp gestured at Hooky and laughed. “Hooky licked the birds, though.”
Hooky’s flare was dying but still casting a red glow on their faces. They looked down the beach and Frannie realized they were half a mile up from the luau. She pointed out the hut, where tiki torches still burned as surfers still went in and out of the water.
“That thing knows us now,” Newp said.
“Yep,” Hooky said. Then he clapped Newp on the back. “Come on, let’s get you some iodine.”
“Kids!” came the voice of Saul, who appeared at the top of the cliff, running down a stairway with what looked like blanket in his arms. “They got loose!”
Frannie laughed out loud. “We noticed! Your dybbuk box must be a lemon; I’d take that thing back.”
As Saul reached them on the beach, he dropped the blanket he was carrying. It unrolled, and Emmett the golem stood, smoking and looking annoyed—his only look, really.
Frannie crouched down in the sand and gave the golem a peck on the cheek.
“Ugh. We lost our boards,” Newp said.
“You are not safe!” the golem intoned.
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Frannie said.
Hooky laughed, folding his arms, a god-man against the night sea behind him. “Boy, he never lets up, huh?”
And then there was no time to scream as a great column of milky white paper birds burst from the water, split into two and clapped itself around Hooky. Just time enough for Frannie to give a short cry as the birds yanked Hooky high and shrinking into the distance, disappearing into the endless distance of waves and night.
Chapter 43
“Hooky was short for Hookele,” said Newp. “Big Chief.”
The night after the luau, Newp stood surrounded by torches in front of Hooky’s hut, and in the distance fireworks began to wind into the air and burst, the first hints of the July 4th celebration. Hooky’s Legion gathered in silence, each with their boards, standing like sentries. He saw “hot curl” boards with their bottoms shaved on either side, Hawaiian-style boards with no fins, new boards with two fins, even an experimental quad-fin that Go-Go had fashioned, given up on and sold for a song to Crainiac.
Newp went on. “I’ve been surfing here at Laguna for two years and Hooky was here already. He built that hut with his hands from old lumber and license plates, and he was chief from the start.
“He had a name: Cliff Carmichael. But he left that name in Korea, he said, and I only learned it when I found an old picture of today that he kept on the little dressing table next to his bunk. He was here when we all got out first finned board; he was here to test the first press-treated composites. He showed us how to survive on clams and fish and the bread we earned from the day trippers. Well, not me.” Newp smirked. “Some of us had jobs.”