The Summer With No Tourists

The first time my mother said there would be no tourists that summer, I repeated her words out loud to confirm it wasn’t some sort of a joke.

“No tourists?”

“They’ve stopped all the boats...” Mother shrugged. Her face contorted into an unconvincing smile. Waring emotions pulled her expression two directions at once.

“So… no one will come to the parade?” My happiness was short-lived. The more I mulled it over, the worse the idea sounded.

“We can have our own parade.” Mother’s face twisted again. She wasn’t expecting that question. After managing to force her features back into a calm facade. “We’ll invite Scott and Clara! I’m sure Mason and Lucas will come too. Oh, and baby Stella…”

“But, what about Travis? When will Travis get here?” My own expression must have looked as desperate as I felt because Mother immediately crouched down and pulled me into a deep hug. My face squished into her cotton shirt, she was holding me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe.

“Oh, Sweetie,” she said in a voice so sad it set off all of the panic receptors in my brain at once. “I don’t think we’ll see Travis this summer. But don’t worry, you can see him again next year, once things get better…”

“Why?” I demanded. Mother’s reassurance wasn’t enough.

“All the boats have stopped Sweetie, no one is coming out this year.” She repeated it as if hearing the same thing twice would suddenly make me feel better. It didn’t.

“But he can use our boat! Dad can go to town and pick him up.” In spite of the oncoming panic and urge to cry, I spoke as calmly and rationally as I could, hoping my grown-up voice would be convincing enough. This time, it didn’t help. Mother just pouted.

“We can’t use the boat, Sweetie. Your father is putting it away after tonight. We can’t go into town, not for a while...You’ve still got your brother, Clara and Scott, and Mason, and Lucas to play with!”

This suggestion angered me more than anything. None of them were Travis, none of them was my best friend.

“I don’t want to play with Hunter, he always ruins everything!” Hunter was five and a major pain in my butt. “Lucas is too old, and Mason smells bad!”

I broke away from my mother’s smothering hug, sprinted up the stairs, and slammed the door to my room. I cried and wallowed in self-pity for a while– making sure to stomp angrily from one end of my room to the other– to ensure that Mother fully understood the kind of torture she was putting me through by not letting me see Travis. Of course, back then I didn’t really understand that my mother was not in control of the situation and was actually doing her best, despite my under-developed conspiracy theories.

I continued sulking until I was called downstairs to help Father unload the boat. By the time I walked my short legs to the end of our dock, he had already unloaded most of the grocery bags onto the sun-bleached wooden planks. The bags were stacked in a massive heap. It was roughly five times the amount he would typically bring back from town.

“Hey, Kiddo!” Father greeted me in his usual fashion as he hefted a giant bundle of paper towels over the edge of the boat and placed them on the dock in front of me. His hair was frazzled and he looked exhausted. “Think you can manage?” He chuckled as he watched me wrap my little arms around the bundle. I was still small for my age and the sight of me trying to lift something even that light must have been pretty amusing.

As I half-dragged the paper towels up the lawn, Mother came down with Hunter in tow and quickly got to work bringing the bags up to the house. Hunter was tasked with carrying one small bag of apples, and he couldn’t even manage that without tripping over himself and bruising half the bag. We must have made about ten trips back and forth across the lawn before all the bags made it into the kitchen.

Mother and Father toiled away for hours that night, long after they read us our last bedtime story. From the cracks in the old wooden floor, we heard them unpacking downstairs, and speaking in feverish whispers. At the time, I thought Mother must have been angry at Father for spending so damn much on groceries. When their whispers crescendoed into shouting, Mother started to cry. Hunter snuck out of his bed and crawled into mine. When I asked him why, he said it was because of the creepy tree outside his window, but I knew it was because of whatever was going on downstairs.

For a while, the weeks passed quickly. Our pathetic little 4th of July parade came and went, but no boats did. Mother dressed me as a fisherman and Hunter as a fish. It was predictable and unimaginative, but despite the obvious lack of effort when compared to previous years, we managed to win first prize: A bucket shaped like a sandcastle. Then, we marched up the dirt road and down to the island’s main dock, as was customary. With a fraction of the normal crowd, the parade wasn’t as exciting as usual. Rather, it became painfully obvious how few people remained on the island that summer. Baby Stella, dressed as a sunflower, cried almost the entire time, and so did Hunter when Mother said he wasn’t allowed to go swimming.

Then, Lucas jumped in.

Susan, his mother, screamed and hissed a string of curses as Lucas emerged up the ladder, dripping wet. He shrugged and smiled, but eventually, her barrage of angry words broke down his cocky demeanor and Lucas hopped on his bike and sped away.

The whole thing fell apart after that. The crowd of about fifteen people dispersed and we all went back to our respective places of residence until it was time to gather on the beach and watch the fireworks… Of all the bad decisions made that day, this idea proved to be the worst.

When the sun finally sank below the horizon, the handful of year-round island families gathered on the edge of the shore and waited. I sat with Clara and Scott. The three of us squished onto one beach towel and waved sparklers around in circles to keep ourselves amused and ward off mosquitos while we waited. Mason and Lucas set off a couple of rounds of barely legal Roman Candles, then we waited some more. Nothing. Instead of fireworks, we sat and watched the city across the bay fall dark, blanketed by a terrifying silence. Most of the lights twinkled out and a perpetual plume of smoke rose from some unknown source over the horizon.

“Why are we still waiting? You know nothing is going to happen.” Lucas rose to his feet and kicked sand off his pant leg.

“Sit down. Just wait a little bit longer.” Susan pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. It was clear she had been struggling to control the two boys since their father hadn’t returned home after the last boat left town.

“It’s fucking pointless, they’re all dead anyway,” Lucas muttered as he dropped back down to the sand.

“Lucas!” Susan hissed.

“Don’t say that–” Mason joined in scolding his older brother.

“Why? You know it’s true, just like Dad.” Lucas kicked at a clump of dried seaweed.

“Shut up, idiot!” Mason lunged at Lucas and the two began to wrestle in the sand, throwing as many punches and kicks as they could manage before Susan pulled them apart.

“Boys!” Susan shouted and shot to her feet, then froze.

We all stared in shocked silence when the first firework cut a gleaming red path across the sky with a loud crack that echoed across the dead silent bay. It exploded in a burst of red and blue. Father tucked his beer in his arms and began to clap. Everyone joined in, cheering and clapping until one more sparkly gold bust of light exploded in the sky and slowly crackled, fading once again into a spooky silence. The clapping stopped.

“Was that it? Is there more?” I looked up at Mother pleadingly.

She just shook her head for a long time before whispering, “I don’t know, Sweetie, I don’t know…”

It was then that Susan lost it. She broke down in loud sobs and collapsed onto the beach. Mother ordered Father to take us all back up to the house. I watched from my bedroom window while a small group of women sat around Susan doing whatever grown women do to comfort each other, and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.

In the days following, Mother began to threaten us with “home school,” if we were caught trying to go for a swim. That was enough to convince me not to. Playing with my friends on dry land was leagues better than being forced to sit inside in the sweltering summer heat, reading whatever boring old books Mother could find. Hunter, on the other hand, was practically leashed after his third attempt to make it to the beach. Whenever any of us asked why we weren’t allowed to go swimming, “because it’s not safe,” was the only answer we were given. All of the adults on the island would repeat this phrase as if they had met one day and rehearsed it.

That summer Mother spent the majority of her days sprawled out on the lawn chair reading. Once I saw her sneaking into our neighbor’s empty house through the back door. She came out a short while later carrying a stack of books. She probably figured they wouldn’t mind as long as she returned them before next summer. But in all likelihood, they wouldn’t mind because they were already dead.

By the end of July, Scott and I had explored almost every nook and cranny of the island. Except for Devil’s Cove.

Devil’s Cove was on the far end of the island and surrounded by sharp cliffs. It could be accessed, somewhat safely, only at low tide. But we were always warned not to go there. If the tide came in too fast, there would be no way to get out. Of course, this didn’t stop Mason, the most snot-nosed, dirty-shirted kid I’d ever met, from egging us into going.

“I’m scared,” Clara whispered to me as we neared the towering cliffs that surrounded the cove.

“Come on, chicken-shits.” Mason barreled toward the last outcropping of rock that stood between us and Devil’s cove.

Stupidly, we all followed. The tide was low, which meant we only had to crawl over several medium-sized rocks and wade in ankle-deep water to get there. I wasn’t sure if this counted as swimming, but Mason seemed so sure it didn’t and we had nothing better to do. So, we went.

I peeled off my shoes and socks, shook out the sand, and set them on a rock a good distance from the water. Then proceeded to follow Mason who already had both feet in the water.

“Holy friggin-shit!” I heard Mason shout when he entered the cove. “Guys! Come see this!”

We all rushed forward at once. The force of our curiosity and excitement was enough to knock Mason off balance. He tumbled forward and fell onto his hands.

“Shit, you idiots.” Mason pulled himself up one foot at a time. One of his knees was bleeding from colliding with a barnacle-covered rock below the surface, and the front of his shirt was soaking wet. “My mom’s gunna kill me.” Mason wiped his wet hands on the dry part of his shirt, whipped around, and punched Scott hard on the arm, simply because he was the person standing closest to him at the time.

“Ow! I didn’t push you, dog-breath!” Scott rubbed his arm.

I might have felt bad for him if I had not been busy noticing the thing on the beach that Mason had seen first.

“What is that?” I asked no one in particular.

“Oh, no.” Clara immediately turned around and began walking back the way we came. “Help– Mommmyyy!” She started to cry as she went sprinting up the beach in the direction of her house.

“Clara!” Scott called after her, then turned back to us. “Let’s get out of here. This is bad.” Scott began backing away.

“No flippin’ way.” I stared in disbelief at the grayish mass of crab-chewed cloth and decaying flesh that lay sprawled out on the beach, not far from the tide-line.

“Wuss.” Mason said to Scott, or maybe to both of us, and started moving closer.

For some completely inexplicable reason, I followed. Scott did not. He stood ankle-deep in the water for a minute while I advanced, then turned and chased after Clara, shouting wildly just like she had. Mason’s morbid curiosity proved much stronger than my own and he walked right up to the decaying corpse. Then, he bent down to examine it more closely.

“Holy crapola,” he said, “It friggin’ stinks!”

I crept cautiously around the body, keeping a good ten-ish feet between me and it at all times. The flesh had been peeled back from around its fingers. It looked like it had been chewed off, or maybe rotted, exposing the bone. What skin and tissue matter was left around its face, and the exposed parts of its stomach had turned a putrid gray and sunk in. My stomach started to turn. Flies crawled around the gaping black holes where his, or her, eyes should have been. A reeking stench permeated the hot summer air. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand and swallowed down a scream. Most of the skin around the person’s face had either melted or fallen off, leaving spots of exposed skull. Half of the corpse’s mouth had been torn away, forcing its dead expression into something of a sideways snarl. Blackish-green goo had leaked out from its mouth, forming a large puddle of sticky-looking liquid that surrounded the upper half of the body.

Mason looked around for a stick or something to poke it with. I started backing up when I saw him reach for a rock. Sweat began to bead my forehead when I realized what exactly he planned to do. I had flattened myself against the edge of the cliff by the time Mason pulled up a baseball-sized rock from the sand, held it over his head, then released it. The rock seemed to fly through the air in slow motion and landed in the middle of the corpse with a dull, sickening, splat.

I felt the bile rush up from my stomach and head straight for my throat as a collection of goo-covered crabs and a spray of sand-fleas scurried out from in, under, and around the corpse. That was enough for me. I turned and ran without saying anything, leaving Mason, the whole mess, and my shoes behind. I ran toward my house with tears in my eyes, screaming just as wildly as the others had.

Things got hectic after our first and only adventure to Devil’s Cove. The next day, Susan showed up with Mason and Lucas in tow. The second my mother saw them approaching, she told me to take Hunter upstairs.

“Why?” I whined. “I want to play with Mason,” I lied. I didn’t actually want to play with Mason at all, I just wanted to know how much trouble he had gotten into after our trip to Devil’s Cove.

“Take your brother upstairs now and play with your Legos or I won’t let you see Mason for the rest of the summer!” Mother grabbed me hard by the wrist and pulled me and Hunter to the front door, then pushed us both inside. “GO!” She demanded and pointed to the stairs.

I took Hunter’s hand and we both went upstairs, but we did not play with our Legos. Instead, we both crept to the window in our parent’s room and watched a strange scene play out on the front lawn.

“That’s far enough.” I heard Father say. He rose from the porch and went to stand beside Mother in the grass.

“Give us the boat,” Susan demanded. She looked pale and her arms were visibly shaking.

Mason’s head drooped to the side. He appeared to be looking somewhere far away, completely oblivious to his surroundings. He didn’t look like the same Mason I saw the day before. His skin was ashen, his lips were pallid and his arm dangled limply in his mother’s grip. He looked like a hollow shell of the stocky, ruddy-cheeked bully who I reluctantly called a friend.

If Mason was a hollow shell of himself, Lucas was a shadow. Lucas, who was tall and lanky to start, was disheveled and bone-thin. His skin was a few shades darker than Mason’s, but not with the usual tan from the summer sun. His arms were a cool gray and his eyes looked as if they were on the verge of turning black. He swayed on his feet and let out a pathetic moan.

“I can’t do that.” My father crossed his arms and stared back at Susan.

“Goddammit, Vince! They’re sick! We need to get to the hospital. Ava?” Susan shouted.

“You can’t– Sue, if there was anyone left over there, they would have sent a boat by now...” Mother tried to reason with her, but her words fell on deaf ears.

“It’s in the fucking water, Ava! It’s only a matter of time before we’re all dead anyway!” Susan reached into her purse and pulled out a pistol. “Now, get me the goddamn keys to the boat! I have to get to the hospital, I have to try!”

Hunter began banging on the window with his chubby little hand. “Momma, Momma!” he cried. I grabbed his hand, pulled him away from the window then dragged the curtain across it.

“Shh!” I covered his mouth with my hand. Hunter dropped to the floor and started crying. I left him there and peeked out from the very edge of the window.

Father had his hands up now and Mother had brought hers to her mouth.

Lucas let out another low moan and collapsed to the grass.

“Lucas!” Susan shook her lifeless son a few times until a gooey black liquid began to seep from the edges of his mouth. Susan whipped her head around and pointed the gun at Father. “Now, Vince, now!”

Father nodded to Mother. Mother ran into the house. Below, I heard her sprint into the kitchen and grab the boat keys from the key hook in the kitchen.

Hunter was still sobbing. “Mommmeeeey!” he cried.

“Stay put!” Mother hissed as she rushed back out the door. From the porch, she tossed the keys into the grass next to Susan. “Here. Now get the fuck off our property!” she shouted and went back inside.

Father stood with his arms crossed and watched as Susan scooped up the keys and hefted Lucas over her shoulder.

“Mason, come.” She demanded as she marched off in the direction of our dock.

Mother came up the stairs and picked Hunter off the floor. I bolted for the door, she called after me but I didn’t listen. I reached the porch just as Mason reached the edge of our yard.

“Mason!” I called out to him. I wanted to say goodbye, or good luck, something, anything, but when he turned his head and stared at me, I could see his eyes had gone completely white. The words I wanted to say died in my throat and I shuddered. Father picked me up and carried me inside. Soon after, our little boat disappeared from view, taking Susan, Lucas, and Mason along with it. That was the last time we ever saw any of them.

A month passed. Summer started to fade into fall and the island fell into a quiet routine. Almost everyone kept to themselves, but I did still see Scott and Clara on occasion. A general gloominess stuck around that none of us could seem to shake. I missed Travis more than anything. I missed him so much, I decided to start writing him letters. I told myself it was because he deserved to hear about what happened to Mason and Lucas, and the body we found in Devil’s Cove. But in actuality, I never told him any of those things in the letters.

Then one day, a boat appeared on the horizon.

Scott came racing across our yard. His house was closest to the island’s main dock and they had seen it first.

“A boat! A boat is coming!” Scott shouted through our screen door then sprinted away to join the crowd that was already gathering on the dock.

Father grabbed my hand and Mother carried Hunter as we all went down to the dock to wait for the ferry.

“Is it over?”

“But the TV’s still out.”

“Is that a ferry?”

“It sure looks like one.”

“Is it headed this way?”

Excited and nervous chatter rose from the crowd as we watched the boat drift closer. After what felt like forever, the ferry floated in our direction. A deafening silence fell over the crowd. The boat was full of people. So full it looked like it was about to burst. Arms and legs hung over the railings, bodies were pressed tight against the windows. Every hair on my body stood on end as the now too familiar stench of rotting flesh carried across the water.

They were dead. Every single one of them.

We all just stood there, watching, as the ferry drifted closer. No one was steering. The thick ropes that usually tethered the ferry to the docks on the mainland hung frayed and broken. They dragged in the water behind the ship as it moved onward, slowly being pulled out to sea by the current. When the ferry drifted a few yards from where we all stood, we stared in silence at the blank-eyed, black-lipped, gray-skinned passengers. We stared at them. They stared at us. Everyone stood stone-still, fearing to move, fearing to breathe. And then I saw him.

“Travis!” The name escaped my lips before I could think to catch it.

Travis was standing on the deck in his favorite green rain jacket. My hand instinctively jerked back and forth in a slow wave. Then, he turned his head in my direction. I instantly regretted calling his name. A chill turned the blood in my veins to ice water when he opened his mouth and a thick, blackish-greenish goo poured out of his mouth and dripped down into the sea.