Jimmy bumbled along the shoreline, his 'Sword of Destiny' occasionally probing into the damp sand. A handful of late-summer tourists sprawled on their towels, pretending that the wind was refreshing instead of verging on icy. If they noticed the boy at all it was with a distant smile. A young lad, no more than eight, playing at treasure hunting, who brought back fond childhood memories.
Jimmy was actually ten and he was on a mission. He knew the driftwood branch in his hand was not really a sword but he had a good imagination. Imagination was all that was keeping the panic at bay. He paused, a wavelet rolling over his trainers as he stared along the two miles of coastline. It wasn't only panic that was making his heart beat a little faster. Every time his 'sword' hit something in the sand he felt a little frisson, delicious and like heat in his blood. He knew that tingle was excitement mingled with the incipient panic.
Short for his age, a wearer of glasses and with intelligence to spare, Jimmy was the perfect target for bullies. He knew the taste of fear in his mouth when Johnny, twice his size and making up in muscle what he lacked in smarts, stalked toward him across the hopscotch grid. He also knew that tingle. Scared as he inevitably was, and it felt new each time, the fear was accompanied by that tingle. Somewhere deep in Jimmy's brain a voice was shouting 'This time! This time you'll hit him'.
Of course he never had and probably never would but that thrill of possibility was familiar and he knew it now. His stick smacked against something that resisted, buried beneath the sand. He probed deeper and noticed that his hand was shaking. A part of his brain screamed at him to walk away, phone the police, tell his parents; anything but discover what was down there. He ignored it.
The object turned out to be a tin can and the reckless part of Jimmy, the side of him that desperately wanted to be someone, to be recognized and hailed as a hero instead of derided for being 'too clever by half', sighed disappointedly. He tucked the can into his backpack, hating himself for his actions as he walked on. Everyone thought him odd. Even his parents didn't understand his need to do some things.
If he saw litter he simply couldn't resist the urge to pick it up and throw it in the trash. Pencils had to be in neat rows and sharpened to a point. His clothes had to be in color and size order. Things had to happen on time and in the right place or he felt uncomfortable, like his brain was itching. Jimmy didn't know about OCD but he would eventually learn and find a species of peace in naming his habitual behavior.
For now he carried on down the beach, sword-stick probing back and forth before him like a blind man's cane. In a way, he was blind. He wasn't really seeing the beach but the scene from his bedroom window at 3am the previous night. Tormented by nightmares about his personal nemesis, Johnny, Jimmy had woken in a cold sweat, heart hammering in his chest and blankets twisted so tightly about his slender frame that it had taken him a couple of minutes to untangle them.
Fully awake and with the thought of returning to sleep and yet more dreams making him shiver in fear, he'd grabbed his latest book from his bed-stand and padded softly across the room to settle on the window seat. It was one of his favorite places to shut out the world and drift into the universes in his head. The window was deeply recessed and the sill turned into a seat with the addition of several large cushions. The heavy drapes could be pulled across to create what Jimmy thought of as his dreaming room. Hidden by the drapes on one side and the drawn blinds on the other, he could see no-one. More importantly, they couldn't see him and he was free to dream.
Last night he had settled with his book, currently he was deeply enamored of boys adventure stories, preferably set in some remote rainforest or lost desert, and then decided to open the blinds. His house overlooked the beach, useful considering his parents ran a bed and breakfast, and he liked to watch the sea on moonlit nights. Storm nights were good too, watching the foamy white horses galloping to shore; their heads tossing in wild abandon, but last night had been still and lit by a moon on its way to full.
Leaning his overheated body against the cool paintwork, Jimmy had gazed out toward the beach. It was deserted. Even the town drunk, usually curled up asleep under the pier, was missing. Jimmy had watched the waves for a while, letting the ebb and flow work its hypnotic magic on his mind, feeling his body relax. He'd idly scanned back and forth along the shoreline, a habit he'd developed when he'd first read about the idea of messages in bottles. He hoped one would wash up and lead him on an adventure just like the one in his current book.
Just as he'd looked away, about to open to his bookmark, something had moved, caught in his peripheral vision. His attention had snapped back to the beach and two figures in the distance. They were too far away for him to see clearly but he had felt certain they were a couple, the man taller, broader, the woman slender and a good foot shorter. Curious, he had watched them, imagining some courting pair about to take advantage of the empty beach.
The taller figure suddenly moved a lot closer to the second. He seemed to bend in the middle and Jimmy had one of those moments where his adolescent self clashed with the child. He envisioned the man burying his face in the woman's breasts and immediately felt a strange spasm in the pit of his stomach, pleasurable but uncomfortable. On the verge of closing the blinds, he heard a distant thud and saw both figures fall to the floor.
A third figure had come running across the sand, clouds of fine dust marking his passage. There was no doubt that the figure was male. He'd been completely naked, unmistakable in the dim moonglow. A flash of silver had arced away from his hand as he'd fallen to his knees beside the couple. Seconds later he had begun dragging the pair across the sand, gradually moving further away until he was lost to sight. Jimmy hadn't taken much convincing to believe that he'd just seen a murder.
That delicious feeling of having a secret had been the deciding factor. The possibility of being a hero had kept him silent when his conscience had urged him to speak to an adult. This need to be recognized had sent him out to the beach just after dawn with his stick and the burning desire to find the truth. His mind played multiple scenarios in his head. In one he was honored by the mayor. In another he was made an honorary cop and Johnny had been arrested for daring to bully a hero. In yet another he was given a massive reward and interviewed on the national news over his part in breaking a gangland murder plot.
His stick hit something, yielding but firm. A quick glance around informed him that he had moved a long way from the house, which was a distant blur, and reached the area of rockpools and caves carved into the cliffs. He looked down and suppressed a scream as a hand stared back at him, balled into a fist and sticking through the surface of the water in the pool.