Skeleton Sea

CHAPTER 30

A small crowd was coalescing on the waterfront.

We were up above — on the outdoor deck of Fresco, Tolliver's favorite cafe — and I could not get a full view of what the crowd down below was examining.

Something in the water.

I nearly rose from my chair to see but then Tolliver said, “Anybody want dessert?” and I returned my attention to the table.

After leaving the Shoreline half an hour ago Walter and I had met up with Tolliver at the cop house. We'd dropped off the black garbage bag, which Tolliver dispatched to the county lab for fingerprinting. He'd had no idea what to make of the paint; we'd said we were keeping the float until we could consult with a specialist. Then we'd headed to the waterfront for lunch and further updates. Tolliver's only news was that the divers he'd sent out to Cochrane Bank this morning had found no sign of Robbie Donie's body, either at Target Red or Target Blue, and that he'd not yet learned who installed the instrument array. And so we'd spent lunchtime discussing the puzzle of the red float with the strange paint job.

I heroically declined dessert and Walter sighed and followed suit and Tolliver said, “You sure? They make an olallieberry pie that'll knock your socks off.”

I was sure the pie was all that he promised. The main course of smoked fish tacos would have dislodged my socks, had I been wearing socks. My stomach full, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on my shoulders, I could understand why Tolliver was fond of this cafe. I could understand why he was fond of the entire town, of the picturesque waterfront and the shining blue water and the muscular tower of rock guarding the harbor. I could see why he was fond of the sea beyond, of his patch of blue ocean. I could darn near picture myself living here in a shack by the sea, kayaking through the gentle waters of the channel.

“Look at ‘em all.”

The shout drifted up from the waterfront.

I could definitely picture myself having a look this time.

This time, all three of us rose and moved to the deck railing and gazed down at the channel.

The water was lumpy.

Walter left two twenties on the table and we hustled down the stairway to the waterfront.

There was no reason to be afraid.

There had been no reason to be afraid yesterday on the swim through the eddy to the tunnel, when we had been engulfed in a bloom of comb jellyfish.

Comb jellies didn’t sting.

I stared down into the water.

“Moons,” Tolliver said.

Four nights ago I'd kayaked through this channel, paddling through a garden of jellies that looked like saucer moons and fried eggs and blue flowers, but here and now there were only moons.

Thousands of them. Swarming the channel. The bloom stretched out — back the channel toward the bay, and up ahead toward the harbor — and right in front of us the jellies clumped into a nearly solid mass.

They were pretty and lacy and their translucent bells were the shape and size of large saucers stamped in the center with four-leaf clover designs and they jostled one another at the surface and in the few patches where they weren’t carpeting the surface, they were visible down below, a vast and pale moon army.

Two kayakers, farther out in the channel, were heading over to have a look.

I nearly shouted a warning, watch your paddle, don’t hook one of those suckers and flip it into your boat.

Even so, there's no reason to be afraid.

When Violet Russell gave us her slideshow of two warming-seas winners — Humboldt squid and moon jellyfish — she assured me that Aurelia aurita delivered only a mild sting.

Still, a word came to my mind. A whispered word—devils. Lanny had been speaking about moon jellyfish. Or so I thought. He’d denied saying devils. I could have misheard.

Tolliver suddenly spun to look upchannel.

I looked where he was looking. What?

Anchored boats bobbing.

A couple more kayaks on the water.

The sunlit water shimmied and dimpled along at a brisk pace and the drifting moon army rode the outgoing tide toward the mouth of the harbor.

Walter said, “Doug?”

Tolliver raked his pompadour. “I’ve never seen a bloom like this.”

I said, “I assume they’re coming from the back bay. Given the direction of the tide.”

Tolliver turned to look downchannel.

He said, “Oh shit.”

We all piled into Tolliver’s Dodge Charger and he drove above the speed limit up the road that paralleled the waterfront and then curved with the channel along the causeway out toward Morro Rock. As he pulled into the parking lot he muttered, “This is my goddamn beach, I bring my sister and her kids out here all the time.” He slammed the car into park and we all piled out and Tolliver led the way down to the pocket beach.

Déjà vu all over again. Walter and I had been here a week ago, tracking the sand from Robbie Donie’s duffel bag.

This time, it wasn’t the beach sand that demanded attention.

It was the water.

Sheltered between the jetty and the Rock, the water was inviting and on this bright sunny day it was being used. There were a dozen or so swimmers in the water and more at the water's edge getting their feet wet.

They didn't see what was coming.

The leading edge of the moon jellyfish army rode the outgoing tide through the channel toward this swimming hole.

And then two teenage boys kicking a boogie board along the wet sand took notice. They halted. Pointed.

Tolliver shouted, “Get out of the water.”

He didn’t need to explain it, I got it — even though moon jelly stings were mild, there were a lot of moons and lot of tentacles.

People on the beach heard Tolliver. They got up from their blankets, they abandoned their beachcombing and castle building, they all swarmed down to the wet sand at the water’s edge. They all started to point and shout.

One swimmer, just deep enough to wet her chin, began to thrash toward shore.

Others, farther out, took forever and a day to take notice of the commotion on the beach, or of what the tide was bringing their way.

Tolliver and Walter and I swarmed down to the water’s edge along with everyone else, shouting along with everyone else.

Out deeper, now, heads were turning.

From where we stood it looked like a tide of luminous crystal saucers sliding toward the swimmers — a crazy image, really, because jellies were the opposite of solid dishware, not hard but soft and viscous, and they wouldn't knock into you, they would deform around you, engulf you, embrace you, encompass you.

Somebody out there screamed.

A man with a long wet ponytail dipped his head into the water, his back humping up, and it looked as though he was trying to see what was going on under the water, what was wrapping around his torso and legs, or at least so I thought, imagining trailing tentacles of the oncoming tide embracing bodies. I knew the surprise of being embraced. I remembered tiny comb jellies gloving my body, miraculous in their beauty and then overwhelming in their numbers.

These jellies, here, had tentacles.

But their stings were mild, next to nothing on the toxin scale.

Then why were the swimmers churning up the water, shrieking?

Okay, they were panicking. Who wouldn’t?

Brushed by tentacles.

Who wouldn’t freak out?

And now the heads were lost in a sea of saucers. The bloom of Aurelia was riding the tide out of the channel to sea and the poor swimmers were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It had gone quiet here, at the little pocket beach.

Nobody on the beach was screaming a warning anymore. No need.

Nobody in the water was screaming. No longer any breath to spare, I guessed.

And then the first swimmer to self-rescue thrashed into shallower water and stumbled up onto the beach. She was a gray-haired woman in a black swimsuit, lean and wiry and fit and she likely swam laps every day, but now she collapsed onto the sand, wheezing and gasping.

Her arms and chest were crisscrossed with thin red welts. One rash crawled up her neck and slashed across her mouth and wound around her cheek and her mouth was swelling, ballooning into fat lips.

She grabbed her side, beneath her right arm, lifting her right arm, and I saw that a clump of pale membrane clung there to her skin.

She tried to pull it off but she was too weak.

One of the boogie-board teenagers rushed to her. Knelt beside her. Plucked at the clinging membrane — just as Tolliver shouted no! — but it was too late and the teenager recoiled yelping and waving his hand like it was on fire.

Stung.

The nematocysts of the jellyfish tentacle still carry a punch, I had read, even when detached from the rest of the body.

But it should be just a tiny punch. The sting of Aurelia should be hardly noticeable.

I didn’t get it.

More swimmers were dragging themselves toward shore.

Farther out, the ponytailed man floated face down.

Another swimmer got him around the shoulders, managed to flip him onto his back, managed to hook an arm beneath his chin in a classic lifeguard move and started to tow him toward shore.

Tolliver was on his cell phone, calling for EMTs.

The woman in the black swimsuit lay on her back, limbs feebly spasming.

Walter made a move to go to the woman but I grabbed his arm — did you not see what happened to the boogie board guy? — and anyway you don’t know the first thing about treating anaphylactic shock and you don’t have an epi-pen so what are you going to do when you get to her? But Walter being Walter shook me off and went to her anyway and knelt beside her and started talking to her, something soothing certainly, and I felt selfish and stupid and helpless and scared.

The boogie board guy was now doubled over, vomiting onto the sand. His buddy hovered over him, helpless as me, hands over his mouth as though he too might vomit just from sheer panic.

Astonishingly, a man ran over to the vomiting boogie board guy and opened his trunks and peed on the guy’s reddened swollen hand.

Yeah yeah, I’d read about that, urine is supposed to ease the pain of a jellyfish sting but not now, not this one, maybe pee works on the stings of some jellies and not others.

But Aurelia stings should not need treatment by pee or anything else so what the hell was going on?

Swimmers were staggering out of the water. Marked with rashes. Crying softly. Collapsing.

The lifeguard swimmer towing the ponytailed guy reached shore and tried to drag the ponytailed guy onto the sand but the guy looked like dead weight, and then somehow I was there beside them, getting my sandals wet, looking for a clear patch of arm to grab hold of, watching out for bits and pieces of jellyfish, and Tolliver was there too, and the three of us dragged the ponytailed guy up onto dry sand but our rescue was too little too late because the guy was staring dead-eyed at the sky and his red welted chest was rigid as stone.

Tolliver started chest compressions.

The lifeguard swimmer collapsed. His back twitched. Spasms in his back. He yelled ouch ouch ouch oh my god oh my god oh my god. And then he stopped yelling and started gasping and his breathing became shallow and his skin, which had started to dry in the warmth of the sun, turned slick with sweat.

I heard the wail of sirens.

I shot a glance at Walter. He was sitting back on his heels. Slumping. The woman in the black swimsuit was still, gone.

Tolliver sat back on his heels, giving up on the ponytailed guy.

Four dead.

Seven unconscious, being tended by three EMT teams.

Five welted and stung but upright, being tended by another two EMT teams.

The onlookers sat huddled on their beach blankets.

Sand castles had been kicked into oblivion.

In the water, the bloom had thinned to stragglers riding the current out through the mouth of the harbor.

I tried to make sense of it. I couldn't.

Tolliver was working his cell phone, voice like a blade, cutting through whatever confusion was on the other end of the line, demanding information, and then he was on the horn with the Coast Guard talking ocean currents and local tides, and then his sweat-streaked face went gray and he hissed, “Diablo?”

Walter said, “Diablo?”

Tolliver put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Diablo Canyon, the nuclear power plant down the coast a few miles. They ran into some trouble.”

I went cold. Last summer Walter and I had encountered troublesome nuclear material. Again, now? I couldn't understand why a bloom of jellyfish riding the currents — even this extraordinarily toxic bloom — posed a threat to a nuclear power plant.

But, diablo.

Now there was a word that raised an alarm.

I had a little Spanish and I knew that word, the Spanish word for devil.

When Tolliver got off the phone I explained the translation.

He said, grimly, “Let's go have a look.”