The Games by Ted Kosmatka Page B

this all for you.”
    “How did you know how?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “You like building things?”
    “Yes. This sea has kept me busy.”
    “It’s truly beautiful.”
    They ran in the waves, and Evan enjoyed the heat of the sun on hisback as they played. He picked up the laughing child and tossed him into the water again and again. For a short while, Evan was able to pretend that there was nothing else, that this was his true life and the lonely fat man that existed in some other universe was merely a bad dream from which he had awakened.
    The boy wiped the water from his eyes and found his feet somehow in the surge of waves. He stood, pulling back a little so Evan wouldn’t grab him up and toss him again. “There is so much I want to show you.” The boy’s eyes were black and piercing. “And so much I want to ask.”
    The boy extended his arm, palm down, and the waves suddenly smoothed themselves out. In the space of a heartbeat, Evan found himself standing thigh-deep in a sea that was calm and flat—a single unbroken pane that stretched to the horizon. The only sound was the wind blowing in from offshore, but after another moment, that, too, quieted. He looked down at the boy.
    “I’ve made life for the sea,” Pea said. “I call them fish.” The boy pointed.
    In the distance, an imperfection formed on the flat surface, a ripple, small at first. But the ripple gradually grew into a wave. Evan looked back at the boy, feeling the first stirrings of unease.
    “I couldn’t wait to show you,” the boy said.
    The wave swelled as it moved toward them, across the flat sea. The sound of rushing water filled his ears. At a hundred yards out, Evan saw the shape. It was dark and huge, and it roiled wildly behind the growing white wall of froth. An enormous black fin appeared, thick and fleshy, and large as a man. The bulging tail flexed in the surf, and water splashed high into the air. The sea broke away as the thing fought into the shallows. It was a distorted monstrosity, low and flat, with a wide, gaping mouth filled with ragged teeth. Its eyes were white and sightless, extending from stalks at the sides of its head. It ground its belly deeper into the sand with each powerful thrust of its tail, getting closer. Forty yards now. The fleshy fins paddled at the surf, dragging the creature through the shallowing water.
    “They keep changing over time. That’s something I didn’t expect,” Pea said.
    Evan watched as the thing finally ground to a halt, still twenty yards out—a huge hump of flesh jutting above the water. The eyestalks swayed as the mouth worked open and closed.
    “I’ve made life for the air,” Pea said. “I call them birds.” The boy pointed again.
    Evan followed Pea’s outstretched arm upward into the brilliant blue sky. There, triangular forms pinwheeled in the air currents like shiny red kites, their long, thin tails trailing behind them in the wind. As Evan watched, one of the larger creatures swooped down onto a smaller one, enveloping it and severing its tail. The wounded animal screamed and, separated from its stabilizing tail, fell spiraling to the ground in the distance.
    “I’ve made life for the land, too,” Pea said. “But I haven’t decided yet what to call them.” When Pea gestured toward the shore, the dunes themselves began to shift and sag. Something moved beneath them. Something big. Evan heard a sound like sandpaper on steel, a low, corrosive lumbering that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
    As he watched, a thing writhed free from beneath the dune and struggled onto the beach. It was huge and pink and formless, with a maw at the front that opened and closed spasmodically against the hard, wet beach. There were no eyes, no obvious sense organs at all, just the single gaping feature at the front—an all-encompassing hunger, a mouth like the end of the world. In the seconds that Evan watched, its skin burned and blackened in the bright sunshine. Within a