D.G. Driver

Words didn__ come. I couldn__ formulate a thought. I was too startled. These three figures lying in the sand in front of me weren__ surfers at all. They weren__ even people. From their facial features and upper torsos, they looked kind of like women, but all three of them had silver-colored skin. They were bald, with strange ridges marking their skulls. None of them seemed to have ears, only holes in the sides of their heads. No nose was visible, not even a bone or nostrils filled that space between their eyes and mouths. Although their mouths seemed to be moving, they were actually breathing through what looked like gills in their necks. And if that wasn__ weird enough, instead of legs, their upper torsos stretched out into long, scale-covered, silver fishtails. If I had to say what these things stranded in front of me, splattered with oil, appeared to be, I__ say mermaids. And no, they didn__ look like they__ start singing songs or granting me wishes. They looked a little bit scary__ut fragile too. Most of all, they looked like they were going to die, and no handsome prince was there to kiss them and keep them from turning into sea foam.

Now tell me what you__e afraid of.___ncle Nathan is right about this tree. It__ got some kind of spirit in it. And it doesn__ want me to leave._ I saw my dad smile and shake his head. ____ serious, Dad. You can__ send those guys up here again. The tree will try to kill them before it lets them take me down. Didn__ you see it happen?___ saw a couple of accidents___nd Ronnie fell yesterday, but somehow I__ able to be up in this tree no problem. I got up here without any ropes or ladders. Don__ you find that mysterious? Uncle Nathan doesn__. Grandfather doesn__.___hey are both superstitious, that__ all.___ know,_ I said. __nd what about that, Dad? You__e spouted all your legends and myths at me my whole life, and now you suddenly don__ care about them? That doesn__ make any sense.__e sighed so deeply I could hear it. __ study those legends to get to know our culture, our heritage. I don__ believe that they are literal truths.___ut what about the mermaids?_ I pressed. __emember the big story you told about the singing boat and the killer whale? It was you who told me that maybe the story was wrong and it wasn__ a singing boat; it was a mermaid under the boat.___ remember, but I had a real mermaid staring me in the face at the time. There isn__ anything like that going on right now.___ hear whispers coming from the tree. It moves on its own. It is warmer than it should be___ou__e been up there too long. You__e delirious.__ grunted at him. __t started before I climbed up!__ad rubbed a hand over his face. __ don__ know what you want me to do here.__ turned on the camera and flipped the digital pictures until I found that one with the face. I stuck it in the bucket and lowered it down to my dad and told him to take a look.__s that as good as a mermaid right in front of you?__e studied the picture a moment and then replied, __ always see faces in the knots of trees. Who doesn__? I think that__ why so many people create horror stories about them.