Black storm clouds hover over the beach, like dark smudges on a white page, darkening the afternoon sky. Spiky waves crash over the sand where just the day before, bathers sat in the warm sun before a calm ocean.

Irene stays inside working, drinking homemade tea from a red mug she probably made in a pottery class. Her new book is on pteranodon. I look over her shoulder at an article she's reading. Their wing span ranged from twelve feet to eighteen feet.

"It is big as a plane!"

She smiles. "And particular scary because  they have clawed sharp hands and feet" She points to a picture. "Imagine him swooping down searching for prey."

"Are you writing fiction or nonfiction?"

"I haven't decided yet. I have to see where it goes."

I read in the living room for most of the afternoon, but Joy needs to go out so I volunteer. As we passed the lifeguard's chair I look up, half expecting to see him there in spite of the upcoming storm: god of the beach watching over his domain.

But the chair is empty.

I unclip Joy's leash and let her run free.

What does a lifeguard do on his days off? I don't see him hunched over Twitter reaching out to friends. He doesn't seem like the type to have thirteen hundred of them - not that he wouldn't if he posted his picture. I can't imagine what type he is at all. He isn't like anyone I've ever met before. I climb up the side of the chair and sit in his seat to view the world from up high. I want to see the world through his eyes, and know what it feels like to be him. I look around. Did he leave anything behind that will give me hints about who he is?

Nothing.

And everything.

A dark blue plastic bottle. Sunblock, SPF 45. I unscrew the top and I flooded with his sweet, enticing scent - coconut and citrus. I cup my hand and fill it with the milky lotion, rubbing it into my face and neck.

Now I'm like Joy who rolls on things to absorb their smell. I'm cloaked in his scent, his essence, so as I stalk my prey I won't be seen as an outsider. I place the bottle back where I found it and make my way down the side the chair. His chair.

I examine the chipped, white weathered wood like a scientist who studies trees to learn about past events in history and changes in the climate. Only this chair isn't parting with its secrets. It's as inscrutable as he is, high above the ground, confronting the water. It reminds me of a still life about natural forces and isolation. The chair is the only clue of humanity. Like Irene's house, does it have ghosts? What kind of stories would they tell?

Joy barks at me. She's jealous of whatever has stolen my attention. I take a tennis ball out of my pocket and throw it. She runs for it and then races back to me, dropping it at my feet. I toss it again and again. Joy never tires of the game. Just to see what she does, I flip over and walk on my hands. I've studied gymnastics since kindergarten after Eomma took me to the circus. I watched acrobats walking on their hands and doing flips and I came home determined to do it too.

Joy tilts her heard to the side.

"You're not the first one who doesn't know what to make of me." I kept walking on my hands, studying the world turned upside down - the way it feels to me.

° ° ° ° ° 

The sky darkens as we start to walk home. I hear distant thunder and walk faster, ready to break into a run. Joy inhales something in the wind and hurries along with me. She senses danger and doesn't want to get caught either. Moments later there's a deafening clap of thunder. In minutes the heavens come down and we break into a run. A wall of water washes over me and I looked as though I've been swimming in my clothes. Joy turns into a drowned rat and I looked at her and start to laugh. She tries to shake to water off her head so she can see, but she realizes how futile it is. We start to cross the street, but it's nearly impossible to make out whether any cars are coming because everything is shrouded in fog and my eyes are being washed with rain.

But off in the distance, I could make out a yellow haze. Very slowly as it becomes brighter. The glow of headlights, I realize, as a car approaches slowly and cautiously. It looks like it's going to pass us, but it stops. The window on the passenger side rolls down.

"Get in. I'll give you a ride."

Does he patrol the beach by car when he's not on duty?

Without hesitating, I pull open the door and get into the front seat. Joy bolts into my lap. The side window closes and the air inside the car becomes as heated and heavy as the night air in Gwangju.

I inhale his sweet smell of coconut and citrus - it must be in his blood by now. Water drips from my hair, soaking the seat. Joy shakes her whole body, showering the both of us, and nervous laughter bursts out of me uncontrollably. I feel wired, my pulsating blood pounding my head.

"Are you sure you want us in your car like this?"

His face breaks into a half smile. "I'm not afraid of water." He reaches into the backseat and hands me a towel and I begin to dry my hair. He glances over at me a few times. I watch him back with the strange feeling that drying my hair has assumed some greater meaning and significance.

"So what do you do when you're not saving people?" I say to fill the silence.

"That's . . . more than a full-time job."

"Thanks for picking us up. I thought we'd have to swim home." I start to giggle again for no reason. If he thinks I'm insanely crazy, he doesn't show it. To do something with my hands, I take the towel and dab the water off the front seat.

I steal glances at him as he drives, his left hand on the wheel, the right lightly resting on his jeans, fingers spread slightly apart. Like a video camera, my eyes record very last detail and imprint it all in my brain's hard drive. I absorb every bit of information I can from studying him, as if seeing him up close will let me understand who he is and what's in his head.

Every part of him is perfect. The strong shoulders. The swell of his biceps, half hidden by the soft edge of his white T-shirt. Long, slender fingers. Smooth, even nails cut short and rounded. I fight the urge to reach out and feel his skin.

The car stops suddenly and the engine dies. Where are we? I looked up surprised as if I'm awakened from a dream. In front of Irene's. Already?

I don't want to leave.

We sit for a moment without talking, mesmerized by the rain pouring. Joy's wet, doggy smell competes with the coconut and citrus, like reality at odds with fantasy. In the warm, moist space of the car my senses feel overloaded.

He leans his head back and stares at the windshield. "Like being in a car wash," he says.

It's almost impossible to see out. I drop my eyes to the orange poop bag wrapped around the handle of the leash, like a scarf around the strap of a designer bag. The rain pounds like hail on the roof of the car. Everything ordinary now vibrates - what it must be like to be high on acid. What is it about being next to him that does that? Every breath I take feels super-saturated with energy and oxygen, making me excited and on edge. Does that happen to everyone around him, or is it just me?

"Do you want to come in for a drink or something?" is what I come up with to break the silence. "Just to get out of this?" It's lame, but I can't help it.

He smiles. "I have to go, but thanks."

"Thanks for the ride."

"Stay safe," he says.

We run from the car and his eyes are on me - I can feel them. And then for the first time, it occurs to me.

I don't even know his name.

° ° ° ° °

Joy and I race into the house and I go upstairs to change, slipping into a dry T-shirt and shorts. I sit on the edge of my bed and replay what just happened.

There's no way he would've come in. No way. What was I thinking, that he'd want milk and cookies and we'd hang out and watch TV or play video games like kids?

I shouldn't have asked him. I should've just shut up and acted cool. Now I feel stupid.

What else is new?

We have soup for dinner. Irene's pot of Ox Tail could feed twenty. After we eat I go upstairs and turn on the TV. She never watches so she doesn't have the cable stations we have at home. For lack of anything better, I sit through a rerun of Dream High. My head is back on the pillow and my eyelids start to flutter.

That's when I begin to hear them.

Strange sounds. At first I think they're part of my dreams.

Only they're not.

I sit up totally awake now, but they don't stop. They're eerie. Not animal, not human, and then a disturbing higher frequency whistling. It sounds like the howling the wind makes when there's a tropical storm so strong the window frames whine and you can feel the vibrations in your bones, like nails on a blackboard.

Only now it's not the wind.

It's something supernatural and less benign.

Only what?

I lean forward and turn down the TV. The sounds seem to stop. I ease the volume back up and it starts again. Joy is next to me on the bed. I swear she's lifting her ears straight as though she hears it too. Then I spot Wendy, the most obedient of Irene's cats. She's curled up in the corner, eyes wide and shocked and shining like glass. Is it my imagination, or does she look spooked too?

I hold my breath. Is someone or something playing with me? or does it just feel safer, protected, when other house sounds muffle it?

"It's freaky, right, Joy?"

Her ears shoot straight up again on high alert, but she hasn't processed what it is. She tilts her head slightly as if she's picking up something curious out of human range. I leave the TV on and edge to the staircase. Joy bolts after me.

"Irene?" I break into a run down to her office, yelling out to fill the air with the reassuring sound of my own normal voice and presence.

She looks up, concerned. "What's up, Suzy?"

"Can I ask you something?"

She leans back in her chair and turns around to face me. "Go ahead."

"I'm hearing these . . . sounds . . . form upstairs."

She reaches a hand up to the side of her jaw and rubs it, nodding.

"Do you know what . . ."

She nods knowingly again.

"Are they always the same?"

She takes her glasses off. "Not always, why?'

"Do you think the ghost is trying to tell us something?"

Her face softens. "I don't know if it's true or not, but there's a story about a woman who lived in this house. Her husband had a fishing boat, I heard. Supposedly one day he went out to sea and never came back. Nobody ever found him or the boat so the story that people started telling was that the voice was his wife's and she was crying out for him. They said she'd never stop until she found him."

"When do you hear it?"

"When the weather's bad . . . They say he left when there was a bad storm approaching."

"Do you believe that?"

"I can't not believe it, even though I'd be hard-pressed to find valid evidence."

I feel an icy draft on my neck at that moment. But how is that possible? The house isn't air conditioned and it's hot outside. Is it my imagination? Tiny goosebumps suddenly rise up and dot my arms. Irene watches as I rub my hands up and down my arms to warm myself. "Is it cold in here?"

She shakes her head. "That happens to me sometimes too."

"Omo."

The chill finally passes and I try to take a deep breath. "Have you ever seen . . . it?"

She makes a face as if to say, hmmm, that's a hard one. "I haven't actually seen what comic books show you ghosts look like, but once or twice at night, when it was raining hard, I thought I saw a white light, or something like that fly down the hallway."

"Did it scare you?"

"the first time, a little, but now, no . . . I feel sorry for her in a way, so I'm glad I can share my house with her - or that she lets me share her house."

"You're so cool about it. If Eomma were here she'd run from the house screaming."

"I've come to accept that there are things about this world that we'll never nail down . . . never know about for certain. And in some ways I enjoy the mysteries - and the possibilities. But I do believe there are different kinds of life and spirits or ghosts, or whatever you want to call them. But -" She stops and her face softens, "fortunately we seem to share our little universe with gentle ghosts. So, no, I don't worry about it too much."

° ° ° ° °

I hold that thought as Joy and I climb back upstairs. I can't help thinking of a story I read in the local paper just before Halloween about a real haunted house that was supposedly built on the sit of an old cemetery. There was a place in the backyard where the owners of the house insisted that their dog refused to go. One day when the police came to the house to investigate, they brought cadaver dogs. They immediately went to that exact spot and stood right there like they knew bodies were buried below. And inside the house, all kinds of creepy, unexplained things used to happen. Light went on by themselves, so did the TV and the water faucets. Upstairs, doors shut when no one was there. And even though the owner's dog wasn't white, there were white dog hairs around the house. A white dog had lived in the house, but it was many years before.

The scariest thing of all, though, was the picture of the upstairs bathroom the local paper took and used with the story. If you looked at it closely, you could actually make out the evil-looking face of a man with dark piercing eyes.

Only the bathroom wall was bare. There were no pictures of any kind on it, and no one at all could identify the mysterious image that appeared for the world to see.

"Do you decorate your house with spooky lights or decorations for Halloween?" the report jokingly asked the owners.

"No," they said. "To us it isn't funny."

The wife took pictures in the house and when she looked at them she could see little white disks she called orbs, floating in the air. They resembled tiny flying UFOs.

I opened my drawer and take out my camera. I snap pictures of one part of my room and then the other.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Then I look at the pictures, examining them carefully.

Nothing.

I let out a breath, relieved, and toss the camera aside. I lay in bed studying the pictures. A few minutes later, I pick up the camera again and shoot more pictures.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

I walked to the edge of the bed and turn on the other lamp. I sit down and study the pictures again in the brightness. 

And that's when I see them.

The faint, white circles.

They're everywhere.