Sand Hand

SAND HAND

It was a beautiful sunny day to spend at the beach overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean with my wife, our son and daughter, both toddlers. We mostly had a part of the beach to ourselves. We got set up with a blanket, cooler and an umbrella stuck into the sand like an umbrella tree. The wife and I were relaxing in the shade under the umbrella. My daughter was about halfway between us and the water playing in the sand and my son was at the water line, but not in the water, with his little sand shovel digging away. I looked away for just a second and I was not paying that much attention to my son until I heard him holler “Daaad, help me”! My wife continued reading her book and barely looked up. I got up and walked down to where he was digging and saw that he had dug a pretty deep hole in the wet sand and had put his hand into the hole nearly up to his elbow. Since most of us have had the experience of putting our feet in the wet sand and letting the waves go over your feet then have the suction the wet sand creates makes it very difficult to pull your feet out of the wet sand…that is what I thought he had done with his hand. “Dad I can’t get my hand out of the sand. It feels like it’s trying to pull on my hand” he said pitifully. I laughed a little and started digging the sand away from his hand with my hands. The waves had just barely come up to where he was digging. Just a little bit of water had filled the hole he had dug so I figured that digging the sand away from his little arm would just take a second so I could pull his arm out. But as I got close to his wrist another wave came up just far enough to fill the hole in again with sand and water. My son started to whine. I saw another wave coming and it was obvious to me that the tide was coming in. This wouldn’t normally matter. I started digging with more urgency now and he said he didn’t want his hand in the sand anymore and that he wanted the sand to let him go.

My wife and daughter were paying no attention to us at all. They were oblivious to what we were doing.

I got enough sand away from his arm, almost to his wrist and I thought I would just pull his arm out of the sand instead of digging any more so I grabbed his arm with both of my hands and pulled gently. I didn’t want to dislocate anything and thought it wouldn’t take much to pull his hand out anyway. But then just as his wrist started to come out of the hole I saw something gray around his wrist. I said to myself “what the hell is that”? I pulled a little harder but something pulled back. Here comes another wave, higher up now and hit us a little harder. The hole filled up with sand and water again. I dug it out faster this time. I pulled his arm harder this time and a wave hit us. Water got in his mouth this time and I could tell he was close to panicking. I couldn’t believe I was pulling that hard and his arm still didn’t come out of the hole. Before the next wave came, I gave one hard pull and he yelled “DAD”! Then for just a split second I saw what looked like gray fingers around his wrist. I didn’t say anything out loud but I thought, what the hell was that? It looked like dead fingers holding on to his hand and wrist! Here comes a bigger wave! I pulled hard and we both fell backwards as the wave hit us. Then I saw it but I couldn’t believe what I saw…those gray, dead looking fingers came out of the sand for just a second groping for his little hand then disappeared back into the sand. Fortunately, my son didn’t see what I saw. He was laying on his back. I quickly picked him up and stared at what was left of the hole he had dug. I’m sure my eyes were huge and I was stunned by what had just happened. I snapped out of it quickly and thought…we are getting the hell off this beach now!

As fast as I could without alarming my son, I got up holding my son and hurried back to where my wife and daughter were and said “who’s ready for lunch? Let’s go down to the pier for lunch”, I said as more of a demand than a question. My wife looked surprised at my insistence but grudgingly agreed and started slowly picking up our belongings. I thought about telling her what I just saw and what happened as we were walking away but I thought…she’ll never believe me.

As we were walking away from our spot on the beach, the kids were walking ahead of us now, my son says, “wait I forgot my sand shovel”. My wife and I both stopped, turned around looking towards the beach. My wife took a step like she was going to go get it for him but before I could stop her we both saw that hand with gray fingers come out of the sand, grab his little sand shovel and pull it under the sand as another wave consumed the hole and the hand in the sand. She gasped, looked at me wide eyed with her hand over her mouth as she tried to speak clearly and said, “leave the shovel, we’ll buy you another one”. We stared at each other for a second in disbelief and hurried off the beach.

Over the years I made up excuses why we would not go back to that beach and my wife always agreed with me but we never spoke about the hand in the sand.