Blood Games

    A beam of light, angling downward, swirled through the darkness just to her right. It cast a bright disk on the floor. Scooted about. Settled on the extinguished lantern.

    A second beam started flitting around.

    Two people with flashlights?

    And Abilene almost laughed as she remembered Finley and Vivian.

    What if it’s not them?

    ‘Who turned out the lights down here?’

    It was them, all right.

    ‘Get down here quick!’ Cora called.

    Abilene turned her head. Though the flashlight beams were on her other side, they provided enough brightness for her to make out the dim shapes of Cora and Helen. The two stood only a few feet to her left, just in front of the wall, Helen hanging onto Cora’s arm.

    She gave the pool area a quick scan, saw no one, then watched as Cora pulled away from Helen.

    ‘Do you think it was a false alarm?’ Abilene asked.

    ‘I don’t know.’ Cora watched the water as she hurried toward Abilene. Helen, right behind her, kept a hand on Cora’s shoulder.

    ‘What’s going on?’ Finley asked. She was still out of sight, but the light beams were jumping around and Abilene heard feet thumping down the stairs.

    ‘Is everything all right?’ Vivian asked.

    Abilene rounded the corner just as Finley and Vivian, side by side, stepped off the bottom of the stairway.

    Cora rushed toward them, leaving Helen behind. ‘What took you guys so long?’

    ‘I thought we were pretty snappy about it. Why’s the lantern out?’

    ‘Somebody’s here.’

    ‘Holy shit. Someone’s here nowV

    ‘Think so.’

    ‘Oh my God,’ Vivian said.

    Cora snatched the flashlight from Finley’s hand and swung around. Rushing toward the pool, she flicked the beam to the right and left, making sure nobody had followed them out.

    Abilene went after her. She heard the others approaching as Cora began to sweep the light over the water’s surface.

    She saw cut-off jeans.

    With a gasp, she lurched backward. Collided with someone. Dry hands grabbed her sides. She felt skin against her back. Bare breasts. Finley.

    Then she saw that the cut-off jeans were empty.

    Nobody in them.

    Another flashlight joined Cora’s. Both beams searched the water.

    As Finley stepped around to her side, Abilene saw that the pool was littered with floating and submerged garments. The cutoffs that had given her such a fright were her own, sinking toward the bottom. Finley’s safari shirt drifted nearby. Deep beneath the water were Vivian’s sundress, Cora’s shorts, Helen’s blouse and her own. Cora’s T-shirt, puffed with air, bobbed on the surface like a Portuguese man-of-war beside a floating bra. Panties hung suspended like flimsy, limp rags. Finley’s tan shorts lay at the bottom, along with several shoes and socks, towels and the three flashlights that they hadn’t taken with them when they entered the pool.

    Except for the lantern, everything they’d left behind now seemed to be in the water.

    The flashlights searched the rest of the pool. Farther away, the beams weren’t powerful enough to penetrate the depths. They lit little more than the surface as they skimmed the middle, darted into the corners, and swept along the far side.

    They criss-crossed again and again.

    ‘If he’s still in here,’ Cora whispered, ‘he must be holding his breath.’

    ‘He might be anywhere,’ Abilene said.

    Vivian turned, swinging her light toward the open space and bar beyond the end of the pool.

    ‘Want me to check back there?’ Finley offered.

    ‘No,’ Vivian said.

    ‘We stay together,’ Cora said.

    Vivian, stepping back away from the edge of the pool, turned completely around as if to make sure nobody was sneaking up on them.

    ‘He didn’t go up the stairs,’ Finley said. ‘We would’ve run into him. Might’ve ducked into one of the dressing rooms, though.’

    ‘I don’t think he left the pool. Not over here, anyway.’

    ‘Yeah,’ Cora said. ‘We’d have heard him.’

    Both flashlights returned their beams to the water.

    ‘Maybe he snuck out through there,’ Cora said, pointing her light at the archway to the outer pool.

    ‘We’d better check behind the bar,’ Abilene said.

    Cora and Vivian led the way, continuing to play the beams of their flashlights over the water. The others followed close behind them. When they reached the bar, Cora knelt on one of the stools. She stretched over the counter top and shone her light down behind it.

    ‘Not here.’

    ‘So he’s either still in the water,’ Abilene said, ‘or he’s gone.’

    Cora climbed off the stool.

    For a while, they all stood motionless at the end of the pool. They listened and watched as Cora and Vivian swept the surface again and again with their flashlights.

    ‘I think he’s gone,’ Finley said.

    ‘Guess so,’ Cora finally agreed.

    ‘Are we still planning to spend the night?’ Vivian asked.

    Cora let out a sigh. ‘No. I think this does it for me.’

    ‘Same here,’ Helen said.

    Abilene felt almost giddy with relief.

    ‘Let’s get our stuff and hit the road,’ Cora said.

    They started to walk back along the side of the pool, it was probably that kid,’ Finley said. ‘He must’ve come back, after all.’

    ‘Why’d he want to throw our things in the water?’ Abilene asked.

    ‘Pissed off at us?’ Finley said.

    ‘Maybe to scare us away,’ Cora suggested.