The boardwalk was still open then, and sparse screams from the nearly empty rides accompanied the vigils. The boardwalk lights splashed the evening marine fog cotton-candy pink and green. A few serious vigil keepers stayed through the night, even during the flyovers while the rest of us hid indoors or under bridges or doorways and tried to sleep.

As the form grew more distinctly human, some reasoned that this must be a body and that what looked like growth was an illusion caused by the sand receding around it. We should dig, they insisted. This is some sort of crime scene. But the lead vigil-keeper, a drummer and spray paint artist named Janus, refused to let anyone touch the figure. “This is not death!” he proclaimed, his red hair glowing in the setting sun. “We are witnessing a birth.”

By October, the boardwalk was shuttered. Captain Avery changed frequencies every few days as interference flooded the channels with static and scraps of angry voices from somewhere. Captain Avery played the song “Memories” over and over, interspersed by “The Way We Were” and “Yesterday.” A sense of nostalgia gripped all of us and filled us with a debilitating homesickness. But we could not remember what or where, exactly, we were homesick for. Our memories were failing. How did things get the way they were? They were different once, not long ago, but when we could not say. We could determine only that we missed those times, whatever and whenever they were.

Our words, too, slipped away. We used nouns like “the thingy” and “the youknow.” Our hands gestured vaguely into the shapes of the items we meant to refer to: a cup, a cat, a mystery novel, a pillow, a packet of sugar, a suitcase filled with someone’s clothes, perhaps our own – we had no way of knowing.

By the winter, there were fewer of us. Where we once heard our neighbors digging vegetable gardens or crying in their yards, we heard only the rustling of bushes, the scolds of crows, and the moanful grievances of Canada geese.

Through static, Captain Avery reported that the form began to move. Those of us who were left in Santa Anastasia went to watch. The drummers formed a line to keep us back. This is a delicate time, Janus said. We can’t crowd it. We must not make noise. So we watched from afar. We were quiet. A few pairs of binoculars circulated through the crowd. We did not have accurate words to describe what we saw. We whispered, “Its whatchamacallit is wiggling around” and “I just saw his thingamajig lift out of the … youknow.” Janus played raspy notes on an ocarina. The tune was familiar. We knew there were lyrics that went with it, something about lovers, or maybe a battle. We thought the song perhaps included a tree and a mountain.

We waited for hours and shivered in the afternoon wind and fog. The sky and the bay blended into the same steel color. As the sun finally sank and touched the water, we witnessed the figure stand up. We were quiet and still. Janus stopped playing his ocarina. The drummers held the line, keeping us back, but we would not have approached the man under any circumstances. We watched as the sun disintegrated into the horizon and the sky turned the blue of glass and bruises. In that light, the sand man was just a silhouette. We could not see his face, but we recognized him. Or, rather, we remembered him, and remembering filled us with the searing pain of a phantom limb.

The sand man sat on the beach with his legs bent and his chin resting on his knees, the posture of a contemplative child. It became too dark to see. We left him and the drummers. The planes came before we could get to our homes and hiding places. They flew longer than usual, going out onto the water and circling back over the town. We took cover in doorways and under the outdoor tables that were once used by the restaurants downtown. The hum of the planes was a shard of metal.

When the flyover was over, we ran to our kitchens or our camp stoves and warmed up our cans of food. We went to our beds and pallets. We began to remember. There had been news that came quickly, at first in spurts that made us wonder what was real. It was fast and not believable. Events tumbled on top of events. The news became a dreamlike hodgepodge of blockbuster movie plots with new kinds of weapons, poisonings, reality TV personalities, and then there was no more news.

We went outside and banged pots and pans. Those of us who were still around banged back. We turned on the radio and searched in vain for Captain Avery’s voice. The static sounded like a cough heard through a bedroom window on a quiet night. In the morning, we went to the beach. The sand man was lying on his back. Janus held a finger up to his mouth. His copper red hair was fading to rust. His cheeks were thin and lined. His black T-shirt hung on his boney shoulders. He mouthed, “Don’t say a word.”

A noise came from the beach. At first, we thought we heard sea lions barking, then broken cart wheels on a concrete floor, but we soon realized what we heard was weeping. Janus let us move closer to the sand man. Our steps on the beach made the silence of polite whispers. In the morning light, we could finally see him clearly. He was larger than a person but not notably so. We saw then why he looked so familiar. His face was our own faces. Tears darkened the sandy surface. He met each of our gazes. He said something. We could not hear him. Some of us leaned close to him, some of us brushed our cheeks against his rough hair and asked questions. He must have answered because after that, before the sand man stood up and walked into the breakers, we knew what we had to do. The path revealed itself with terrible clarity.

We watched the sand man crumble and sink in the waves and become just a damp lump. Janus threw jasmine sprigs into the water. He played a tune on the ocarina, this one with a military rhythm. It was a march. We would follow him. Something was coming, and we knew then we had no choice.