Midnight Dolphin

MIDNIGHT DOLPHIN

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By James Carmody

Originally published in ebook format in 2014.

Copyright © 2014 James Carmody

The right of James Carmody to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Smashwords Edition

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For Jill

Chapter One:

When Megan Ames slipped quietly out of bed in the holiday cottage where her family were staying, her six year old sister Bethany silently opened her eyes to watch as her older sister pulled on her favourite flared jeans and blouse. The bed covers were pulled up to Bethany’s face and she lay there as still as possible, trying not to attract any attention. Megan was twelve but seemed so much more grown up than Bethany, who was only half her age.

Megan opened the door as quietly as possible and slipped out of their bedroom. The door creaked slightly as she pushed it closed. Bethany sat up in bed now that she was alone and looked around her. The early morning light was creeping around the curtains. Nothing seemed to stir in the holiday cottage and Bethany could make out the low sonorous rumble of her dad’s snoring from her parent’s room next to theirs.

Bethany pulled back the sheets and ran to the window. She climbed onto a wicker chair and put her head through the curtains. The walls of the holiday cottage were old and thick and there was a wide ledge on the inside of the window. She leant across it and peered down through the small square panes of glass. She could hear the occasional call of a seagull and further away the low sound of waves washing onto the beach. The front path snaked through the tidy little garden to the front gate. Just then she heard the front door click and she saw her sister’s back as she walked briskly up the path. Megan glanced around, almost as if she knew her sister was watching her, and Bethany shrank back into the folds of the curtain for fear of being caught spying.

Beyond the cottage was a place to park cars and then there were some trees. Between the trees Bethany could see the start of the board-walk which led through the sand dunes towards the wide sandy beach where she loved to play.

Bethany was wearing a light cotton nightdress and had nothing on her feet. It was summer, but the cottage had a musty old smell and the thick stone walls made it feel cool even on a summer’s day. She opened the door of their bedroom and made her way down the narrow wooden stairs as quickly but as quietly as she could. She was determined to follow her older sister and find out where she disappeared to almost every morning. Every step she took seemed to make the stairs creak and she was convinced that her mother would hear her. Bethany half wished that she would and that her mum would sweep her up into her arms and take Bethany to snuggle up in bed with her, but she reached the bottom step undetected.

There were thick flagstones on the floor downstairs that felt cold under her bare feet, but at least they did not creak, and she ran across them to the front door of the cottage. She felt terribly daring when she opened it and the bright early morning light dazzled her eyes. She’d never been out of the house without her mum knowing about it before. The sense of adventure made her feel giddy with excitement.

Bethany knew which way her sister had gone and she ran up the front path of the garden and opened the front gate. There was a piece of rough ground where their car was parked and the ground was full of sharp pine needles from the trees which hurt her bare feet. Then she got to the board-walk which holiday-makers used to walk across the dunes to the beach. The worn wooden slats were easy to walk on and Bethany was glad to run up them. Sand tipped across the boards in places and felt soft between her toes.

The board-walk rose and dipped as it followed the line of the dunes. Bethany kept worrying that she would run into her sister who would angrily send her home in disgrace to their mother. Instead she couldn’t see Megan at all and began to worry that she’d gone in the wrong direction. It seemed like an awfully long way from home now and Bethany began to feel a little scared.

Then finally the board walk ended in a wide expanse of yellow sand and there was the sea. The tide was in and the gently lapping waves were much closer than normal. There to the left, next to a tuft of spiky grass at the edge of the dunes, Bethany could see a small crumpled heap of clothes. They were Megan’s. Bethany didn’t dare risk being seen by Megan and hid behind the tuft and peered out. She shivered in the early morning breeze.

Bethany couldn’t see her sister at first, but then she spotted her wading out into the waves in her swimming costume. Her legs looked pink with the cold. Then Megan was swimming out into the sea. Bethany knew that the water was shallow there and that when the tide was out the sand seemed to go on forever. She decided to scramble up the dune behind her to get a better view. At the top she laid down and scrunched up her eyes to see her sister. Megan was a strong swimmer and she was already quite a long way out. Bethany thought about telling on her to Mum and Dad. She knew that Megan shouldn’t be out like this so early. Mum and Dad were always telling her to be careful and made Bethany stay in the pools of shallow water trapped in the sand when the tide went out. Bethany didn’t really mind. It was warmer in those pools and she was scared of being stung by jellyfish.

Bethany lay there on the top of the dune peering out towards where Megan was swimming. She was beginning to wonder whether she should turn round and go back home when a fin appeared close to where Megan was swimming. Bethany gasped and involuntarily put her hand over her mouth in surprise. Then she saw a second fin, and then a third. At first she thought they were sharks, but Megan seemed to swim towards them not away from them, so she knew it wasn’t anything dangerous.

It was hard to see what was going on over the low waves and Bethany would have stood up to take a better look if she’d dared. The fins came in close to where Megan was swimming. Megan seemed to be putting out her hand and touching the creature, whatever it was. It didn’t look scary at all. Bethany squinted to see better. One of the creatures put its head up over the surface of the waves. Bethany gasped again. It was a dolphin!

Lucy Parr groaned as the alarm clock went off and she blearily knocked it with her hand, hoping to put it on snooze for another five minutes. She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. It was Monday morning and she still hadn’t quite finished her homework even though she’d started it on Friday evening. She’d have to finish it over breakfast, she thought.

Sometimes when she had just woken up, Lucy would imagine that she was back in her Aunt Bethany’s studio in Cornwall. It didn’t overlook the sea, but it was less than a mile from the tall cliffs that towered over the ocean. Every day down there seemed ripe with adventure and possibility. Bethany was an artist and lived in a studio she created from an old farm outhouse. Light flooded in from the south-facing windows which looked out over the fields. The studio took up most space but there was a kitchen area and up some steps was a sort of platform which was Bethany’s living area and where her bed was. When Lucy stayed there she slept on a camp bed at the foot of Bethany’s own. It was all quite basic but Lucy loved it and she felt happy when she stayed there. In the summer Lucy would go outside when she’d woken up and let the morning sun warm her face.

Life back home seemed full of grey inevitability in comparison. She could hear the patter of rain on her window and sighed. There was a hole in one of her school shoes and it let the water in. She’d have a cold soggy left foot by the time she got to school. She had to get Dad to buy her some new ones.

Even the prospect of Christmas in a couple of weeks didn’t cheer her up. It would be just her and Dad, an over-cooked turkey and the Christmas film on TV. Nothing to look forward to then.

There was something more though that made her feel miserable and sad. For the past three days she hadn’t been able to reach out and speak to her dolphin friend Spirit. Back in the spring Lucy had realised that there was something more to the dreams that she’d always had of a pod of dolphins swimming in the sea. She’d discovered that they were real and that she was able to communicate with one dolphin in particular called Spirit. It meant so much to her after she’d lost her mother. For some reason that Lucy didn’t understand, her father was against her connection to the sea and to dolphins. He had been really strict, but in the summer he’d allowed her to go down and stay with Bethany. The day after Lucy had helped save Spirit’s mother from her imprisonment in a lagoon, Dad had told her that she’d grow out of her gift, as though it was an illness like acne. Instead of being something bad, Lucy felt that discovering her gift with dolphins was the most beautiful and special thing that had ever happened to her. From what Dad said, losing it was something inevitable that she couldn’t escape. Lucy wasn’t so sure though.

Ever since then, even though Lucy had to go back home and far from the sea, she’d taken every opportunity to reach out to Spirit with her mind and spend as much time as she could with him. Lucy reckoned that the more she did so, the stronger she’d become and the better she’d be at it. It was like working out to get better at gymnastics she thought. She was determined to prove Dad wrong and keep the gift that meant so much to her. The fact that she’d not been able to communicate with Spirit for the last two days scared her though. This had never happened before. Was she losing her gift as Dad had predicted?

Lucy pulled on her school uniform, washed her face in the bathroom, and stomped downstairs.

‘Looks like someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning’ observed Dad wryly as he stood at the kitchen counter spooning cornflakes into his mouth. ‘What’s up with you then?’

Lucy wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right by telling him how worried she was about not being able to reach out to Spirit.

‘I’ve got to finish my homework’ she mumbled as she poured out some cereal into a bowl and opened her maths exercise book in front of her at the kitchen table. She had just five more questions to go.

Dad was already wearing his suit. He gave the impression that he was perpetually late for some appointment or other and was keen to get out of the house, into his car and away.

‘You’ll be okay if I head off now won’t you Luce?’ he asked her as he patted his pockets absent-mindedly to check that his keys were still there. Lucy nodded without looking up from the equation she was working on. He planted a kiss on the top of Lucy’s head before making for the door. Lucy could tell that he wanted to give her a hug as well but she continued to stare fixedly at the exercise she was doing and he gave up on the idea.

‘Bye then!’ he called, just before the door clicked shut behind him.

As soon as he’d gone, Lucy put her exercise book to one side, and started to focus in the way that she’d learned to enable her to reach out to Spirit with her mind. The trick was to focus her mind and then let it relax, so that she could find that door at the very edge of her consciousness that would enable her to tumble through into Spirit’s world of water. Lucy’s worries made it difficult though and after ten minutes of trying she gave up. She glanced at her watch. It was later than she’d thought and she scooped her things into her school bag and got ready to set off.

Lucy was what her Grandma called a latchkey kid now. More often than not she left an empty house to go to school and let herself back into one afterwards. At least she was old enough now that she didn’t have to go into the after-school club till Dad picked her up. She had her own key and her own mobile phone and felt quite independent. She liked it that way and was glad that Dad wasn’t there to ask her stupid questions about how her day had been when she got home.

Lucy banged the door shut behind her and walked briskly up the garden path. It was cold and wet and even though she was wearing a winter jacket over her school uniform, she shivered. Lucy quickly began to feel the moisture penetrate through the crack in the sole of her shoe.

When she got near her friend Amy’s house Lucy sent her a text and Amy quickly emerged to walk into school with her.

‘You reckon it’s going to snow then?’ asked Amy conversationally. ‘You know, for Christmas. That’s what my Mum says. She say’s we’re in for a cold snap.’

‘Oh it never snows at Christmas, it just drizzles instead’ said Lucy cynically. ‘Those Christmas cards are a lie’ she added.

‘You’re a cheery one this morning’ replied Amy. What’s up with you then?’

‘Oh, you know’ replied Lucy. Even if she hadn’t felt so worried about Spirit, the idea of Christmas without Mum there just made her feel miserable.

At assembly the Head of Year talked about the Christmas Play, an adaption of Dickens’ Christmas Carol and about how they all had to try and sell tickets to make it a success. Dad had already said he couldn’t make it to the performance and since Lucy wasn’t actually acting in it, she didn’t really mind. She’d helped design the programme for the production though and was quite pleased with some of the drawings that she’d done for it. There was a sense of anticipation amongst the children in the school. Everyone liked having a couple of weeks off school for Christmas but the build up to the big day did make it feel special. Classes were being decorated and people were exchanging Christmas cards.

A couple of her luckier classmates were off on skiing trips over Christmas and others were going away to visit relatives. Lucy would have liked to go down to Cornwall to see Bethany, but she knew that wasn’t an option, not after her last trip down there over the summer. It had been so blissful to stay with Bethany and to swim with Spirit. Lucy had even felt happy when Dad had come down to join them; at first at least.

It was true that Lucy and Paul had to be saved by the lifeboat. Lucy could see that Dad had every right to be upset when that happened, but neither of them had been hurt and there would never have been a problem if Paul hadn’t got it into his head that he would turn into a dolphin if he swam out into the stormy sea at night time.

It was the next morning in hospital that things all took a horrible, deadening turn for the worse when Dad told her angrily that she would grow out of being a Dolphin-Child and that it was just a phase. He said it was just a matter of months and that she’d stop being able to communicate with Spirit at all, and that if she ever saw dolphins after that, it would be from the safety of a boat. Lucy couldn’t bear the thought of it. She and Paul had been let out of hospital later that same morning, but the rest of the holiday had been a disaster. Lucy and Dad had a huge shouting match. She knew that he thought he was just protecting her but she didn’t want it, she didn’t need it. He said it was for her own good and that he loved her, but she didn’t care.

Lucy looked to Bethany and Thelma, the local woman that had befriended them, for support, but they too had sadly told her that most Dolphin-Children grew out of their gift by the time they entered their teens. It was all part of growing up they said. Lucy couldn’t believe it. She had thought that Bethany and Thelma were her friends, her allies. Now she wasn’t so sure. Lucy had a feeling that Bethany had wanted to say something more to her, but Dad was watching her like a hawk after all the drama with Star-Gazer and if Bethany had wanted to tell her something, she certainly didn’t get the chance.

He’d allowed her to swim with Spirit a couple more times but only with adult supervision, and then he’d announced that they’d have to cut short their holiday and drive home. Lucy hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to Spirit properly. It was as though Dad was afraid to let her stay down there any longer. He came up with some excuse about work but Lucy didn’t believe him. She was so angry with Dad that she’d practically refused to talk to him all during the long drive back home. In fact, she’d barely spoken to him more than was necessary for weeks afterwards.

The thing was that if Lucy lost Spirit as well as Mum, she didn’t know how she’d be able to go on. Dad just didn’t seem to care.

After assembly that morning they had French and then it was Eng Lit with Mrs Penhaligon. Her English teacher’s family were from Cornwall and Lucy had been amazed to bump into her in Merwater over the summer holidays. Mrs Penhaligon knew about the local folklore and the strange link between the local people and dolphins. After she and Dad had come across her in the local minimarket, Mrs Penhaligon had told her to come and visit her in her sister’s gift shop where she was helping out. Lucy hadn’t been able to do so though until after she and Paul got out of hospital.

Lucy had broken down in tears when she’d told Mrs Penhaligon what Dad had said about her losing her gift. Her teacher had put a comforting arm around her while she cried, but didn’t dispute what Dad had told her. It seemed as though the whole world had been in on the secret except her. Thelma, Bethany, Mrs Penhaligon and even Dad seemed to know; everyone but her.

Now that she and Mrs Penhaligon were both back at school, Lucy felt that she had to be careful about what she said to her teacher in case the other kids began to talk. She knew that Mrs Penhaligon couldn’t be seen to treat Lucy like she was a favourite. Lucy felt less open than she had been when they were both in Cornwall. Even so, she would sometimes catch her teacher looking at her with a thoughtful look in her eyes.

At the end of the lesson, Lucy hung back whilst the other children left, scraping their chairs noisily on the floor as they made a dash for the exit and lunch. Lucy was so worried about not having been able to reach out to Spirit these last few days that she was desperate to talk to her teacher about it.

‘Mrs Penhaligon?’ she said warily, ‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’

‘Yes of course Lucy, what is it?’ Mrs Penhaligon replied, turning her full attention towards Lucy.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know who else to speak to. It’s just that, well, I’ve not been able to speak to Spirit for two or three days and I’m getting really worried.’ Mrs Penhaligon leant against a desk and regarded Lucy sympathetically.

‘And you think that you’re losing your gift?’ she asked with a soft voice.

‘Yes, yes I am’ replied Lucy. Mrs Penhaligon paused for a moment to compose her thoughts.

‘You know I’d like to be able to tell you that it’s not true Lucy, and that you’ll regain your gift as before. But I’m not going to lie to you. It might be happening. I really don’t know. I know the stories about Dolphin-Children, but I’ve never actually met one before. I know that most Dolphin-Children do lose their gift at about the age that you are now, but I don’t believe that they all do. You’ve inherited your gift from your mother haven’t you? What was her experience like?’

‘I don’t know’ admitted Lucy. ‘She never spoke about it before she died. I wish she had. I really do. It would make such a difference to me now. Dad just refuses to say anything.’

‘What about your aunt, would she know?’

‘I suppose she would’ replied Lucy. ‘She’s never really told me either though.’

‘I think you need to speak to your aunt or your father’ said Mrs Penhaligon decisively. ‘They’ve got first hand experience of how it was for your mother. I think that you need to be told as much as possible about something as significant as this.’

‘I just can’t talk to Dad’ replied Lucy. ‘I suppose I’ll have to speak