beast - scratch

Daniel scrambled backwards now but failed to move, his legs encased in mud up to his shins. The row boat accelerated toward him and Daniel yanked his foot out of the mud, clawing at the shoreline grasses and finally scrambling up onto solid ground. 

Just as he turned back to the water, the boat drifted to a stop at the edge of the waterline where he was standing a moment before. He cautiously trudged back through the mud and peaked inside the boat to find nothing but a few inches of water pooled at the bottom of the hull. He listened for a long moment, trying to make sense of what he had just seen, but bay beyond him was silent now.

—

Returning to the marina early in the afternoon and shaking the water from his drenched clothes, he heard the familiar rumble of the fishing boat engines. Climbing up onto a small stone wall he saw the entire fleet motoring back into port, all 18 of them, no songs were being sung this time.

Jay’s boat was the first to touch down and Daniel sprinted for the dock, racing up to the boat and looking around the rear deck, scanning for any sign of his dad. Jay stepped out of the cabin and looked up at Daniel. About to say something, he instead pointed at a messy pile of rope on the dock and asked Daniel to toss it.

“What happened? Did you find him?” Daniel blurted out. Jay tied the rope to a cleat on the dock and then looked at Daniel for a long moment. “No,” he said, “We didn’t.” 

“Well… where did you look? Did you find anything??”

The sound of the diesel engines quieted as the remaining 17 boats docked and shut off their motors. Jay pinched his brow and cautiously explained that they had searched everywhere that they could for the day.

Jay stepped up to a bulletin board behind Daniel and snatched a marker from a tray beneath it. At the top of the board was a notice in large print.

DAYS SINCE LAST ACCIDENT: 562

His hand moved quickly as he scratched out 562 and filled it in with a ZERO, picking up his duffel of gear and walking away from Daniel. He grabbed another fisherman by the shoulder as he passed, delivering an approving nod before crunching across the gravel toward his pickup truck in the marina lot beyond. A quiet fell across the marina and Daniel looked out at the water for an answer, maybe something the search party had missed.

Then a clunk resounded from the end of the dock. He whipped around to see one last fisherman, a young guy, only eight years older than he was, standing motionless at the end of the pier, staring out at something in the bay. 

Daniel recognized the twenty-some year old man immediately and ran toward him.

“Steve!!” 

The young fisherman didn’t move until Daniel was at his side. “What happened man?” Daniel blurted out, “Did you find anything?” 

Only twenty four years old, Steve swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a minute. He shook his head no,  they hadn’t found Chris’s boat, but they had searched pretty well. He admitted that search parties always feel like finding a needle in a hay-stack. Steve finally looked at Daniel and recognized the expression on his teenage face. This brush with death was common on the island, not unlike a right of passage, but for it to be so immediate and with someone so unfamiliar with island culture, that was something that didn’t happen often.

“Did you look everywhere?” Daniel anxiously blurted. Steve thought on his words and looked out at the water again. Whatever he was thinking about before Daniel approached had caught back up with him. 

He looked around the marina beyond them and spotted Jay still packing up his pickup truck with one eye watching the two of them on the dock. Steve nudged Daniel and indicated for him to follow.

A dilapidated plywood door creaked open and Steve led Daniel inside a small fishing shanty built at the end of the dock. He slid a few tools aside on a plywood work bench, knocking a razor blade off the edge. Daniel watched it clunk to the ground and fall between the planks into the water below.

Steve unfolded a utility fishing map of the island and surrounding waterways, his finger scanning to the south end of the island and landing on a circled area of water just off-shore from the southernmost point of the island. 

“Do you know what this is?” he asked. Daniel shook his head no.

Steve was careful with his words, trying not to say something that would upset Daniel further. He explained quietly that when you grow up on the island you learn at a young age about this place called Bloody Point. It’s a part of the water that is never fished, and also, never searched when someone goes missing. 

“Why?” Daniel pressed. 

Steve thought again on his words. “Honestly bud, it’s just the way it is. Folks here think that part of the water is possessed by some weird stuff. They won’t go near it. I don’t know if I believe it but…” He stops himself. 

Daniel leans in. “What??”

“I’ve seen things down there that I just couldn’t explain. My wife has too. And I got a daughter now and...”

A long silence hung between them and Daniel considered Steve’s words. Suddenly though, footsteps thumped softly on the dock outside the shanty. Acting quickly, Steve folded up the map and handed it to Daniel to keep. Daniel slipped it under his sweatshirt and followed Steve out of the shanty. 

Rounding the corner back onto the pier, they saw Jay ten feet away, quietly coiling up the ropes at Chris’s boat slip, his ear pointed toward the shanty. Daniel hesitated, unsure if Jay was eavesdropping and had something to say but Jay only briefly looked up at them before turning back to his work. “You both better get home,” he said.

Steve nodded at Daniel and they headed down the dock past Chris’s boat slip. Jay watched closely, spotting Daniel holding something under his sweatshirt.

— 

When Daniel walked in the front door of his house, Michelle’s footsteps were already booming down the wooden staircase. He stepped into the kitchen as she rounded the corner and nearly crashed into him. 

“Where are you going mom?” He said, spotting the warm jacket she was wearing. She checked her watch anxiously and beamed at him, explaining that the phones on the island were out from the storm and she had to go to the mainland and to get help from the coast guard. She promised Daniel that his dad would be okay and instructed him to stay home and wait for Reverend Claire, who would be stopping by to make him dinner and would spend the night.

Daniel nodded obediently and she kissed him on the forehead, but before leaving, she looked deep into his eyes and commanded his attention.

“Listen to me, I know you’ve made friends here, and I know your dad likes it here, but while I am gone, do not trust anybody except the Reverend okay?”

Daniel nodded hesitantly and then looked up at his mom.

“Where could dad be?” he said to her.

“Honey,” Michelle said with full conviction in her eyes, “you remember what dad says about when you get in a situation you’ve never been in before? You look for the best, best outcome and you don’t stop until you find it. Since he and I met in high school, I’ve seen him wreck two fishing boats, both times do you know what he did?”

Daniel shakes his head, no.

“He swam for shore, and when I found him, he had a smile on his face and said, I was overdue for a new boat.”

Daniel finally smiled. Michelle kissed him again and then darted out the door. The house fell silent and Daniel walked into the kitchen where a photo of him and his dad was framed on the counter. They were both smiling big from the back of Chris’s boat, each holding a massive shucked oyster in their hand.

The house hadn’t been quiet long before there was a knock at the door. Daniel answered it to find a tall woman in a pastor’s collar and a long black overcoat standing there.

“Hi sweetie, my name is Reverend Claire… I guess we haven’t actually met yet since y’all moved in. Your mom asked me to whip you up some supper while she’s off island, that okay?” Daniel examined the woman. She had an easy warmth about her that made it hard not to feel comfortable around. He nodded.

“I thought maybe we’d take a walk first. You want to? Get to know each other a bit.”

Daniel was still a moment and then she nudged him. “C’mon! I want to show you something.”

He shut the door behind him and reached to lock it but his hand was stopped by the Reverend’s.

“We don’t lock the doors here sweetie… Not that kinda place.” He nodded obediently and stepped off the front porch, following her down the driveway toward the street. He watched her walk a few feet ahead — a distinct cool about her long stride and regal black coat. 

“Where we goin’?” Daniel asked.

“How ‘bout a proper tour of the island! We don’t have new folks move out here too much so…” she looked back at him, “I been practicing my lines in the mirror so you’ll have to tell me how I do…” Daniel nodded, somewhat hesitant and Claire pointed at the next block over where a white chapel poked above the trees. “Let’s start at the church… did you know it’s been re-built six times? It burned to the ground, then they rebuilt it, and it burned to the ground again…” She looked back at a him, “And eventually, they decided it would be a good idea to stop making bonfires inside.” Claire laughed at her own joke and Daniel eked out a smile.

As she continued, his gaze drifted to a field a ways beyond where six local teenagers were playing football. The air was so quiet on the island that he could hear their voices from fifty yards away. It was three in the afternoon and life was continuing as normal, as if seven hours ago there wasn’t a search party that occupied the entire island’s fishing fleet.

—

Nearby at the marina, the sun was sinking down to the horizon and making the few lingering storm clouds glow an ominous dark orange. The entire boat yard was motionless until a shape appeared from the neighborhood beyond. Steve approached the main pier with his head down. He was deep in thought and hunched his shoulders up to keep the cold breeze off his neck. 

Cracking open the door to his fishing shanty, he stepped inside, wobbling slightly and setting down a Natural Bohemian can on the work bench. He swayed in place for a minute before he reached for a photograph of him, his wife, and their 2 year old daughter. Eying it tenderly, he finished the beer and crushed the can, dropping it into a waste basket. He set down the photo and reached into a drawer to find a brand new map, unwrapping it and spreading it across the table. He grabbed a red marker from the bench and pressed it to the paper, drawing something.

Stepping back, he eyed his new fishing chart. Bloody Point was circled in fresh red marker just south of the island. He closed his eyes and stood in place, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth the way a therapist might suggest but the ramshackle decor around him suggested that that this twenty four year old had never visited a therapist. The sound of paper crinkled and Steve crunched the map up in his hands. He spun on his heels with a slight wobbly and left the shanty, quickly lumbering toward his boat. What he failed to notice was that beyond him, a figure was watching from the driveway at the far end of the pier.

The man standing there was Jay, and he remained motionless, watching Steve start up his boat and motor away from the harbor and out into the darkening bay. After a moment, Jay shot a quick glance at the gravel lot behind him and then stepped into his own boat, firing up the diesel engine and following after Steve.

—

The heavy church door swung open and Daniel followed Reverend Claire into the dark cavernous space. The dusk sky was just barely illuminating the stained glass window panes high above the altar and he could somewhat make out the vast congregation hall. It was way too much church for the tiny island and clearly a relic of a time in the past when the town had been prosperous and the promise of the fishing business there had been incentive for hundreds of families to relocate to the island. But Daniel’s family had relocated for a different reason. While the island’s marshlands were slowly eroding and the fishing business was dwindling, Chris had relocated them there because property was dirt cheap, far cheaper than the waterfront fishing town on the mainland where they had spent that last two decades and where they had been forced to leave by a rent-seeking developer. Lucky for Daniel, the island had recently been rezoned by the state and he was still be able to attend the same high school.

The Reverend led Daniel toward the far side of the church and lit a storm lantern. She held it in front of her face and smiled at him. “I want to show you something.”

He stood motionless and watched her reach up to a bookshelf and trace her finger along until she found what she was looking for. The lantern clanked as she set it down on a small table beside a wall of stained glass and welcomed Daniel to sit in front of her. The book cracked as she pried it open and sorted through the pages. Daniel craned his neck to try and get a sense of what was written on the pages, looking up at the Reverend for a clue. She was staring right at him.

“I know it must be scary what you’re feeling today… with your dad being out there so long.” Daniel hesitated, unsure what to say. Claire told him that as long as he was a member of the community, it was her job to make sure he’s comfortable and feels safe and most importantly, make sure he understands what it means to be an islander. 

“The moms around here have started to get worried too, Daniel, you’re not alone,” she said. “Their kids have gotten older and it’s been harder to raise a family out here in this magical place, what with the internet in everyone’s lives and kids growing up so darn fast. But ya know, all those things that are so important to the new world, they’re gonna become relics before we even realize how much they distracted us from what matters.”

“I don’t understand,” Daniel said.

“Our relationship with nature. With this place. Believe it or not, you’re a special one. You’re different from everybody else here. You have a responsibility.”

“I do?” Daniel said hesitantly. Even at fourteen, he could sense a distance forming between them. 

“You’re different because your family chose this place, and you know what the rest of the world is like. All the other kids here, they don’t, and that just makes them curious and hungry for it.” Daniel nodded slowly. “You want me to tell you something that none of them know?” She said.

Daniel nodded again, leaning in. Claire looked at the book and ran her fingers down the page until they stopped at a long paragraph. Gathering her thoughts for a moment, she started to read.

“We’ve been on our return journey for three days now and I’ve clutched to my pen like a sword, thumbing it nervously in my pocket when I’m with my crew to the point that my thumb has been blackened by the ink. As we approach the mouth of the Chesapeake at the tail end of our fishing voyage, I fear my men are growing anxious. The bars have moved this year and the shallow water threatens our deep-drafted ship. The words of Lord are running through my mind, as I know that this water is a sign of the Holy Spirit and I am just a reflection of sin. “The water takes and the water gives” I remember my father saying, and I share this with my men who are praying like they always do that before we reach Bloody Point, God will deliver us our safe return. The seas are most turbulent and confused and they churn us with both the force of the swell and the wind and for the last three days, I have dead-reckoned our course as best I can but I fear one thing. If I am to be the sole navigator of this vessel and my instincts and wits are to guide us all to our island home, will my fear of the waters we encounter ahead cloud my ability to intuit us to safety? Will we sail over Bloody Point or will I steer us into the mouth of the beast that has consumed my kin for generations. The answer, I have not, but I pray to be delivered.”

Claire fell silent and slowly cracked the pages closed. The crinkle of the large book echoed through the church and Daniel sat in silence. “Who wrote that?” Daniel asked.

“My great great grandfather,” Claire said with a smile.

—

The small digital screen on Jay’s navigation computer clicked to life. A small arrow indicated his direction of travel and showed a map of the bay around him and a depth reading of the water underneath him. He zoomed out with a pinch of his fingers and his location became clear. He was motoring south down the western shore of the island, approaching the southern tip — the scale of the vast tidal region that comprised the southern half of the island was even more ominous when displayed on screen. As the diesel motor rumbled forward, Jay zoomed the screen in to the southernmost tip of the island where an array of three channel markers just south of the shoreline created an upside down triangle and a distinct area of open water. 

Jay stepped out of the cabin as the boat kept motoring, nearly tripping over a cache of gear collected up against the cabin wall. He lowered to his knee to tighten down a strap securing a row of four SCUBA tanks and then resumed his task, reaching up to the roof above the helm and fiddled with a wire running up to a spotlight. The fresnel bulb burst to life and a beam of light shot out ahead of the boat. When he returned to the cabin, the water ahead of him was illuminated clear as day.

Jay eyed the navigation screen again as his position indicator showed he was closing in on the upside down triangle just south of the island. When he returned his gaze to the windshield, he squinted, focusing on something through the grimy coating of salt on the glass. A glimmer of reflected light bounced back to his face and he realized what he was seeing.

Without warning, the navigation system beeped and he looked down at it. His boat had crossed the threshold into the triangular area between the three southernmost channel buoys. He returned his gaze quickly to the windshield and slowed the boat’s motor. The cabin was glowing brighter now as he drew closer to whatever the search light was reflecting off of.

—

Claire looked around the church with soft eyes, leaving Daniel to wait in uncomfortable silence.

“The water here, it gives us almost everything we need to survive and it has for a very long time. But it also takes things. It makes us hungry, angry… and do you know why it makes us so scared?”

Daniel shook his head. Claire returned her gaze to him and leaned in.

“Because we don’t really know what’s out there… of the entire muddy bottom of this bay, we’ve only ever seen a bit of it with our own eyes and best be sure we barely know what’s living in it.”

“You mean like fish?” Daniel said. Claire nodded slowly.

“Do you know how I got this journal that my great grandfather wrote?” She said without waiting for Daniel to answer. “His second in command, who was a thirty-six year old named William, washed ashore one day on the south shore of the island with a stoney look in his eye and the Captain’s journal clutched tight in fist… It had been seven days since my great great grandfather’s vessel was due back to port and William, a boy who had been a spark of light before that journey, was plagued by darkness for the rest of his life. He never spoke a single word again but one thing. One thing, he said to my grandmother after the funeral for the twenty five men that were lost with the ship. He said to her, beware… those who look within, the thing you fear will deliver you, but it won’t save your soul... And for the next twenty five years, until the day he died, William never spoke another word to another person.”

Daniel was nervously wringing his hands now, listening to Claire’s words. He hadn’t spoken in some time and all he could mutter was a slow nod to indicate that he somewhat understood what she was getting at.

“Remember that as you go through the next few days Daniel. I know it will be scary as we wait for your dad, but just remember that there’s a reason we do things the way we do here and it goes back along way, long before you or I.”

“What happened to your great great grandfather? To his boat?” Daniel said quietly.

“I think only William had the answer to that… and he took it to his grave to protect us all.”

—

Jay’s gaze pierced the cabin window as he approached what he could now see was Steve’s boat. He shut off his motor as he pulled up next to it and raced out the cabin door with a flashlight in hand. Again, he tripped over the scuba tanks and sent one rolling to the back of the boat.

“FUCK” He blurted under his breath.

Without stopping to tend to the loose tank, he roped off to Steve’s boat and climbed on board, looking around with the flashlight. 

“Steve??” He called out. But the boat and the bay beyond were silent. “STEVE??” He yelled again and bashed Steve’s cockpit hatch open. He shined the light down inside, illuminating a messy splay of fishing gear and life-vests. He whipped open the engine hatch but there was nothing down there. Looking over the side of the boat, he searched the water around the craft with his light, pacing around the full perimeter of the boat until he heard his foot crunch something.

A crumpled beer can was under his right foot and five more were scattered around the entire rear deck of the boat. Jay reached down and picked one up, dumping out a few drops on his fingers and noticing their remaining fizz. He scanned the water again and then climbed back onto his boat and reached up to the cabin rooftop. He pivoted the spotlight in a 360, scanning the water for any sign of a body. Unlike the night prior, the bay was glass-flat now, not a ripple in sight. Despite the ease with which Steve could be spotted if he was anywhere inside a quarter of a mile, there was no sign of him.

Jay recoiled from the light and clenched his fists, circling the deck and scanning the water with his naked eyes. He noticed the scuba tank that had rolled free and picked it up. His thick wetsuit was draped over the tanks still on the rack and next to it he found the BCD and regulator. Eying the gear, he looked over the side of the boat and considered the dark water.

The abyss before him was glistening like motor oil as it bobbed his craft up and down with a playfulness that concealed whatever sinister will it kept beneath the surface. His thoughts raced behind his eyes and he shook his head, stepping back from the edge. He set down the wetsuit and re-secured the tank, then roped Steve’s boat to the back of his own and piloted back to shore in the direction from which he had come.

—

Claire and Daniel walked in silence back up the street back toward his house and as they passed the field where the teenagers were playing football an hour prior, Daniel spotted the boys again. They were silhouetted against the dusk now and a glow in each of their palms held them captive. Each of the six boys were silent, each fixated on a phone in their hand, and none of them moving. The crickets chirped loudly despite the boys’ indifference to their surroundings and Claire’s gaze had landed on them too. She stared at them like a mother staring at her son behind bars for a crime she knew he had committed and would serve time for, and when Daniel looked up at her, she took no notice of him for a long moment. Not until they had rounded the next corner did Claire look back at Daniel and force a smile back to her face.

—

Jay’s boatyard was a solitary piece of property on the outskirt of the smaller of two neighborhoods on the island. Rhodes, the larger neighborhood was on the northern half of the island and Monroe, the smaller of the two was three miles to the south and looked out at the ten miles of marshland that stretched all the way to the southernmost shore and Bloody Point. A narrow channel of water hooked past the neighborhood of Monroe and straight up to Jay’s bulkhead where a half dozen fishing boats were dry-docked at his boatyard for repairs. He motored his vessel slowly and quietly up the waterway and past his neighbors houses until both his and Steve’s boat were safely in the private confines of his marina.

Securing both vessels to a row of pilings, Jay stood back and shined the flashlight into Steve’s boat. He looked around the marina anxiously, listening for footsteps or for the hearty laugh of one of the islanders that lived nearby. But there was no sound to be scared of except for the wind rustling the dry grasses surrounding his boatyard. Eying Steve’s 25-foot boat, his nervous eyes indicated the vessel would have to be hidden and he looked up at a large crane that strattled between two finger piers just to his right — the travel lift. It was device he used weekly for hoisting the large wooden dead-rise fishing boats from the water for repairs. By his quick estimation, he would be able to put Steve’s boat on blocks within ten minutes, pending of course the intrusion from one of the nosey fishermen that lived within earshot of the crane’s noisy two-stroke engine.

A short while later, Steve’s boat had been lifted from the water and was sitting on blocks in a two-story ‘boat barn’ next to Jay’s house and workshop. He shut off the travel lift in the driveway and snatched a large brown tarp from the ground, dragging it into the barn and hoisting it over the boat, pulling it all the way to the stern and dropping a weight on the corner to keep it tight.

Jay slid the two massive sliding barn doors slowly shut, trying to keep as quiet as he could, and the light from a nearby lamppost illuminated his face as the doors closed in around him. Uncertainty was plastered across his brow as he processed the decision he was making. Whatever road he had taken to arrive at this point in his life had all but washed over and was turning back into sea.

By the time the sun had risen the following morning Daniel was already wide awake, climbing into warm clothes and thumping down the stairs. He stepped into the kitchen to find yet another note on the table. This time from Reverend Claire. It was wedged under a plate of cold scrambled eggs and read;

Good morning! I will be back soon. Made you eggs.
- RC

Daniel dropped the note and split out the front door, hopping on his bike and wizzing out of the driveway. The neighborhood streets were empty and he passed a dozen or so houses with shut front doors. As he neared the last turn before the marina, a scream echoed out from the docks beyond.

Daniel screeched to a stop on the gravel marina driveway to find a frenzy of twenty fishermen gathered around the dock with their wives and several children crowded in behind them. One woman was standing far beyond the group, halfway down the dock next to Steve’s empty boat slip. It was Steve’s wife, Margaret, and she was on her knees hugging their four year-old girl, Sophie tight to her chest. Daniel slowly approached the crowd and observed a half dozen of the fishermen quietly peeling off from the back of the group and following Jay, who had approached the crowd from the far side and was gesturing for a few men to follow him to the Town Hall building a little ways down. Daniel set down his bike and padded quietly across the gravel after them.

When he stepped into the front foyer of the Town Hall, he immediately heard Jay’s voice booming from the back. 

“How long y’all wanna live your lives bound by this bullshit?? You think Steve got killed by a fuckin’ fish? Huh??”

Daniel heard a clamor outside the building and saw through the front doors that the crowd of townspeople was moving across the marina driveway toward him. He hustled down a hallway toward the back room where Jay was pacing in front of the six fishermen of about his age.

Daniel entered quietly and stood just out of Jay’s sightline listening to Jay’s feet thud across the linoleum tile that was clearly constructed over a thin plywood floor. Jay eyed the men one by one.

“I asked each of you a question. Do you think Steve was killed by a fucking fish?”

One of the men nodded slowly and looked up at Jay. “Somethin’” he barely muttered out, “Somethin’ got him Jay, for sure. How else he just gonna disappear like that?…”

Jay heard the clamor of townspeople entering the Town Hall’s foyer beyond and lowered his voice to address the fishermen earnestly.

“We have lived our entire lives in fear… of something that we have never seen,” Jay nearly whispered to them. “And we are about to make the grave mistake of teaching that fear to our next generation.” The fishermen all nodded slowly, finally aligning with Jay, just as the double doors at the back of the room burst open and the entire town seemed to crowd in.

Daniel slipped into the crowd and moved toward the front of the room, watching from a distance as Jay put up his hands to calm everybody down.

“HEY,” he boomed, “bring it down a little bit, let’s—” But he was cut short by a loud slam.

The crowd fell silent and pivoted their attention to Reverend Claire who had just dropped a heavy bible on the table behind Jay. She looked him dead in the eye and commanded him to stand down with her eyes. He gritted his teeth and shook and took a step back so she could address the townspeople.

Claire scanned the group and then spoke quietly. “What did y’all see this morning?” She said, eying the front row of the crowd and pointing to one of the teenagers who had been playing football. His name was Joe and he cleared his throat and replied in a respectful tone.

“We saw Steve’s gone missin’.” 

Claire nodded in response. “Right. That seems to be the information that we have.’ Her eyes drifted to Joe’s friend, a 15-year old girl named Rose who was standing just behind him and urgently scrolling through her cell phone.

“You got Steve on speed-dial there, Rose?” the Reverend said, prompting Rose to immediately pocket her phone and give Claire her attention.

“No ma’am. The cell towers are still down.”

Daniel watched from behind as Joe shot a concerned look her way and she slinked behind him. Claire turned her attention to the rest of the crowd and put her hands in her pockets.

“For four hundred and fifty years, y’all know how many people have prospered on this island? Sixty thousand over all that time. And do you know how many people we’ve lost at sea?” The crowd was silent and waited for her answer. “Fifty one,“ Claire said. “Fifty one unexplained disappearances and over sixty thousand happy lives lived, thousands of children growing up living a life better than you can find anywhere else.”

Jay’s voice cracked out behind her. “Right.” he murmured barked to himself. Claire turned slowly and looked at him.

“Do you have something to add, Jay?” she scolded him, but he just bit his bottom lip as hard as he could and shook his head. As she turned her attention back to the crowd, Jay spotted Daniel standing in the middle of the group and they stared at each other for a long moment, Daniel growing more anxious by the second under Jay’s gaze.

“Right then,” Claire said. “So what now… I leave it up to you. Y’all wanna go on a witch hunt? Bring back a big fish? Think you found what you’re looking for?” The fishermen in the crowd looked around at each other and two men at the front of the group looked at Jay for approval.

“The thing you fear, will deliver you. Ain’t that right.” She said confidently to them all. “But only you can save your own soul.” The fishermen stirred and the sentiment among them seemed to be shifting away from the battle cry of only a few minutes prior. Daniel saw Jay growing frustrated and squirming in place behind Claire. She looked back at him for a moment then returned her attention to the crowd who she now had under her finger, “I will never stop y’all from going and finding whatever it is you need to find, just like I won’t stop your children from going off to the big city. But I will always do whatever I can to remind you the circle that you are an integral part of.”

Without saying much more, Claire buttoned up her coat and stepped forward to leave but the sound of a shuffle in the crowd made her stop.

“I saw something,” Daniel’s voice cracked out, instantly parting the crowd to form a path between him and Claire and Jay at the front of the room. Daniel saw Steve’s wife standing to the side, tears in her eyes and he turned his attention back to Claire. “I saw something. In the water. Yesterday.” 

The expression on both Claire and Jay’s faces shifted to curiosity. “What did you see?” She said.

“Umm… I don’t — I don’t know exactly. But it was — there was just this, like, sound. And this little boat that was there, and it was moving all around and stuff like a shark had grabbed onto it or something.” 

“You saw this yesterday, sweetie?” Claire interjected. 

“Yesterday morning.” 

Claire nodded slowly and faced the crowd, her voice booming with anger now. “So, we’ve had two accidents in two days, and while you all are rallying a witch hunt, we have a child out wandering the shore by himself following your example. Is that the lesson you want to teach to our children?”

“The boy ain’t a child, Reverend. He’s a fisherman’s son.” Jay muttered to her, commanding her attention for a moment. Claire nodded and looked back at the crowd and then down at Daniel. She held her words in and nodded to the group with intense disapproval before turning for the door and exiting.

Jay took a step forward and looked right at Daniel, the crowd forming around the two of them.

“What’d exactly you see out there, bud?” Jay said.

Daniel shook his head. “I’m not… I’m not sure,” he said. Jay nodded.

“Didn’t I tell you to come find me if you found anything?”

Daniel nodded and Jay considered his last words. “Well I’m telling you again…” he said quietly, “If you see something, you come find me.”

—

When Daniel the Town Hall had emptied out and Daniel was the last to step out the front doors, he was expecting to hear the fleet of engines starting up. But, the grounds were silent. A door slam echoed across the street and he turned to see a half dozen fishermen all retreating to their homes. Front doors were closing quickly. A fearful silence draping the town. 

“Danny…” A soft voice called out from behind him and he turned to see Margaret standing there, Sophie cluthced to her leg. Margaret was only twenty four years old and she was had a worldliness about her that made Daniel feel a bit more comfortable. She was too pretty for this town too, and she spoke with an air of sadness that rang of a lingering regret for setting up her life on the island and going away to college.

“Can I show you something?” She said to him.

—

The wooden door to Steve’s fishing shanty opened and Daniel followed Margaret inside. She shut the door behind them and turned to Daniel, pulling a radio from her pocket and handing it to him. 

“I don’t know what was wrong with Steve, but he knew something that he wasn’t telling me, and we tell each other everything…” She said quietly. “He and I have been best friends since we were ten years old and he’s never kept a secret from me.”

Daniel looked down at the radio she handed him. “He didn’t take any of his gear out last night,” she said, motioning to a pile of fishing gear laid out to dry inside the shanty. “He wasn’t working, I know that for sure.” 

Margaret motioned to the radio. “We always talk to each other on Channel 3, and… I’m not asking you to find him but — “

“I’ll find him” Daniel said, cutting her off. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to find my dad.”

Margaret let out an exhausted sigh and hesitantly nodded. When her eyes landed on Daniel again she was ready to reveal something. “Something is going on, Danny,” She whispered. “Nobody will believe me but I know it. The only thing that would come between Steve and me is Sophie, and I don’t know what it is but I know she’s involved.”

Daniel turned on the radio and clicked it to Channel 3 to hear only static. He turned down the volume and looked back at Margaret. “Can I borrow the Whaler?”

She nodded quickly and fumbled open into her pocket, pulling a key with a float off her keychain. She placed it in Daniel’s hand and closed his fingers around it.

—

Jay opened the front door to his house, stepped inside, and closed it quietly behind him, breathing heavily in the darkness of his foyer. He stood with his hand on the doorknob for a moment and then crossed the living room and pulled a key from his pocket, sticking it into the doorknob of an interior door on the far wall and continuing into a back office surrounded by dirty greenhouse windows. Jay slowly lowered to an old metal swivel chair and dropped his elbows to his knees in a slouch. His gaze slowly raised and he scanned the wall before him. A cork-board took up most of the wall above a wooden door that had been turned into a desk. Across the cork-board more than a dozen faded newspaper articles were tacked up. The headlines jumped out at him.

Lost At Sea? Search Party Called Off.

Captain Loses Wife In Storm.

Island Tradition Ends Search Party Too Soon.

Another Tragedy At Sea. Another Family Ruined.

Jay’s eyes drifted to the right of the articles where a large search map was tacked to the board. Twenty-five distinct zones had been drawn out across the map in black marker, covering the water that surrounded the island. Each of the zones was numbered and each of them had been crossed out. But at the bottom of the map, just past the southern tip of the island, one zone had not been crossed out.

Daniel stepped down into the old Boston Whaler motorboat, dropping to the ground just behind the wooden bench seat and spreading the fishing chart Steve had given him across the bench’s platform. He traced along the shore on the west side of the island with his finger. Past the town, past the southern access road, a few miles down the coast until he stopped. He snatched the red sharpie from his pocket and identified the location with his finger. That was where he had to go.

The boat’s twenty-five horsepower motor screamed as he pushed down the throttle. His precise handling of the small craft was a demonstration of just who he was and who his family was — people of the water. The boat screamed out of the harbor channel and past the northern barrier that protected the town from storms. Banking hard to the left he straightened out the stiff cable-driven steering wheel and flew south down the west coast of the island.

The wind whipped his face and he watched the shore fly by to his left. Something caught his eye. Two fishermen had hauled a metal channel buoy onto the marshy shore and were muscling a new chain onto it. They stopped their work and stood up straight, watching Daniel pass as if his presence or the boat’s speed was an unusual intrusion to this part of the island. But before long he lad left them behind. Rounding left around a small marshland peninsula with a craggy graveyard of dried out old pine trees, he straightened out the boat and looked ahead at the journey that lay in front of him. The southern tidal flats. 

Whereas the northern half of the island was a clear entity, the farther south he traveled, the more the island flattened out into seemingly unending marsh, only navigable through a labyrinth of waterways and channels that the islanders referred to as guts. Some had names, some did not. Daniel kept his gaze fixed on a patch of trees that signified the southern most tip of the island. If nothing else, he could arrive there and motor into the bay and navigate the more turbulent bay swell miles back north to the town.

Daniel slowed the boat to half speed and looked at the map on the floor beneath his feet. Eyeing the shape of the gut near where he had marked off his indicator, he scanned the shore on his left again. He knew where he was because the mud and sand beach along his left side had not yet completely turned into labyrinthian marshland. He spotted a familiar looking patch of shoreline ahead and finally slowed the motor, beaching the boat on the mud. Shutting the engine off he spied the gas tank beneath the seat and shook it. There was barely enough petroleum in the bottom to even slosh about and the look that shot across his face meant he knew his ride home would be a abbreviated.

Slogging through the mud up onto the marshy soil, Daniel eyed the stretch of shoreline where he had stood the day prior. He searched around for the row boat that washed up there. The tide had been consistently low for the twelve hours prior so it was unlikely that the boat could have drifted far, but soon enough he realized the boat wasn’t the reason he was there.

He walked south, listening, scanning the water and the wetlands. A few hundreds from where he started, he passed what looked like a cache of old engine blocks. Six of them, all rusted out and stacked up where no one would find them. Crab-pots were mitered everywhere, busted open so their wire frame shot upward like church stalagmites. Eventually he stopped and listened. The air was silent. 

“Dad???” He yelled out. “Steve???”

His huffed and looked at his shoes, covered in mud, then back toward the boat a quarter mile behind him. Suddenly a groan resounded across the water and he whipped around. On the once empty tidal water before him, there was now floating a heavy metal channel buoy. It was about two hundred feet away and it bobbed slowly. He looked around, suspicious and then eyed the body.

“Dad…?” He quietly beckoned. “DAD??”

The buoy knocked over on its side and the metal chain beneath it groaned. Daniel stumbled backwards in shock. The buoy rocked about almost playfully and then settled to a stop. 

“HELLO??” He yelled at the inanimate object. 

It was still a moment before knocking over again in response to him. The steel buoy settled back to stillness and an animalistic groan rumbled up from beneath it. It was the sound he had heard the day before and his face lit up. 

Thinking quickly, he eyed the hundred feet of mud flats before him and the 100 feet of water after that, then looked back the way he came. Making sure the buoy had stopped moving, he made a decision and took off at full sprint. Leaping over hedges of bay grass and muddy tidal embankments, he finally returned to the Whaler and slid it back into the water, firing up the motor and burning through the remaining fuel as he pinned the motor. The boat sped down the waterway until he saw the buoy ahead and slowed the boat to shut it off. But he didn’t have to turn the key because it sputtered itself out.

With just enough momentum to propel him, the Whaler coasted to a stop fifteen feet from the buoy. Daniel held his breath so he could listen carefully to the water around him. He looked over the side of the boat, searching for any sign of movement beneath him, then returning his focus to the buoy which was now floating idle. He retrieved an oar from the floor of the Whaler and paddled the boat closer until he was bumped up right next to the buoy. 

He put his hands on the large metal object. It was rusted and heavier than he expected, the entire thing rising at least three feet from the water at its peak. Carefully he rocked it on its side and examined the chain at the bottom only to find a usual smattering of seaweed and grime. Letting the buoy rock back to its resting position he gathered his thoughts, realizing how far from shore he was and without a method of propulsion other than his own arms.

A splash echoed out behind him, like a bird had dove into the water for a fish. He turned around to see a ripple dancing across the butter flat surface. Then another splash. He whipped back around to see the remnants of a tiny splash reverberating outwards. Before Daniel could survey his surroundings he saw a third splash break the surface of the water out of the corner of his eye but this time it did so again, and again. The little splashes continued as if something under the surface was flicking the water up, not ten feet from his boat. Daniel leaned closer, bewildered, when a second simultaneous splash rang in his ear and he turned to see the same phenomenon on the opposite side of his boat. The two splashes alternated in unison creating an organic dance-like rhythm. 

Before long a third, then a fourth, then a fifth tiny splash burst from the water and Daniel scanned his entire surroundings as the tiny disturbances increased in number until there were more than a dozen. Daniel smiled at the strange and mystical occurrence. It was hard not to be captivated by the gentle power of the entire thing, such careful and seemingly intentional manipulation of the water’s surface as if for his viewing only. The rhythm increased in speed and complexity as if to impress him and he looked around the boat wildly until all of a sudden it stopped. Silence fell again and Daniel sat back. 

He sat motionless, waiting for the splashes to start again at any moment. His gaze subtly turned toward the water beside the boat and without making too much noise he leaned closer, peaking slowly over the side. The water next to him was calm, a silty haze preventing him from seeing anything more than a few inches beneath the surface. He reached over the side and extended his hand, flattening his fingers and lowering has hand to the water’s surface. He let it rest there for a moment as if it were pressed against a pane of glass. Then his breath stopped. He had to stop himself from recoiling his hand and his eyes went wide, feeling something pressed up against the palm of his hand just beneath the water. 

He breathed cautiously, trying to see beneath the surface through the sensation he was feeling in his hand. Then something from beneath pushed up against his palm, hard enough that it raised his hand from the water. He looked closer to see the glisten of slime raising from the water beneath his hand but before a moment longer he realized what it was and lifted his hand up so he could see it. The buoy’s heavy chain was propped up to the water’s surface as if floating. Daniel wrapped his finger around it and grabbed it, nearly falling overboard as whatever was supporting its wait all but vanished from beneath it.

He dug his foot in for support and heaved the chain partially onboard the whaler to examine it. A moment after doing so, the chain clanked over on itself and the buoy yanked hard away from him. Daniel grabbed the chain as the buoy started to move and his purchase against it all but dragged the whaler in a 180, knocking a life-vest overboard along with the loose end of a coiled rope. He held on for a moment as the buoy gathered speed down the length of the channel but his Whaler was traveling stern first and water was flooding over the motor well. Daniel let go, dropping the heavy chain back into the water and scrambling to bail out the water that had pooled on the floor. A ways beyond him the buoy stopped. 

Returning his attention to the buoy, he heard a thump under his boat. Before he could react the coiled up rope that had fallen overboard yanked taught. Daniel grabbed onto the railing just in time for the boat to pivot in another full 180 and accelerate down the channel. Daniel watched the buoy disappear to the rear of the boat’s path, behind it the last of the sandy beach and the end of his walking path home.

Daniel’s nerves caught up with him as the boat accelerated up to what felt like at least ten miles per hour. He carefully inched toward the front where the rope was secured to a cleat. Thinking through his actions, he looked around to see no solid land closer than two hundred feet. Ahead though, the marshland gut was approaching its return to the bay. He gripped the railing tighter and crouched down behind the highest part of the bow. The boat started to thump as it left the gut and bashed through the first bay job. The cleat squeaked as the rope shifted, and the boat banked slightly to the right. 

Daniel looked ahead to see the outcropping of ancient pines that demarcated the southern tip of the island. The whaler was nearing the shore again and when he looked overboard he could see the shallow water only twenty feet from him. He snatched the map from the steering console and estimated his location, pin-pointing himself on the western side of the island not a half mile from the southernmost tip of land and Bloody Point just beyond that. The boat started to slow and Daniel thought quickly, biting on the map and taking off his jacket. He eyed the shallows now 10 feet away and heaved himself overboard toward them. 

He thrashed as hard as he could through the water, scrambling toward ground he could touch. When he felt it, he clamored to close his distance with the dry land beyond. Sucking in breaths as he worked extra hard to yank each step out of the muddy sea-bottom beneath him. When he finally was free of the tidal flat he spit out the map and looked down at his feet to make sure they were still there — they were. To his surprise, the whaler hadn’t raced away from him. It was still moving, but slowly and had only made it another 100 feet down the shore. Daniel backed away from the waterline now to a safer distance and cautiously pursued his boat. Before he reached it the boat turned inland, yanked forward one more time and then the rope went slack, sending the 13-foot craft drifting right up onto the shore. 

Daniel proceeded toward it carefully. The shore where the boat had scuttled was hardly a shore at all. It was the edge of what looked like a hundred yard wide stretch of tidal mud that seemed to create a buffer zone between the southern most point of land on the island and the deeper water of Bloody Point beyond. Daniel took a moment to tighten his shoelaces and then trudged through the shin-high mud toward the craft, crossing nearly 90 yards of sludge to reach it. He located the bow-line rope that had trailed under the hull and hauled it toward him when suddenly the sound of a man’s gasp cracked through the air and met his ear. 

Daniel whipped around, expecting to see a man standing behind him. But there was no one. Then he heard it again and zeroed in on the sound. Halfway back the way he had come a small mound was protruding from the mud. Daniel’s heart raced as he trudged toward it, tripping and scrambling on his hands and knees to find a mud-coated arm slowly reaching from its encasement in the earth. Daniel grasped the person’s hand and craned himself forward to see Steve’s face half sunken with the rest of his body. His eyes were closed and his lips were chapped, his entire body shivering. Daniel screamed his hame and gripped his hand tight, pulling him out of the mud. There was a gash on Steve’s head and he could barely respond to Daniel’s voice. 

“Steve can you hear me?? Are you okay?”

Steve barely opened his eyes to see Daniel before the shivering overcame him again. Thinking fast, Daniel dragged Steve up onto dry land and then raced back to the whaler where he found his jacket and a small tool box. 

Wrapping Steve in the jacket, Daniel dragged him up onto higher ground and looked scanned the area. He caught just enough of detail of something in the distance to know what it was. Leaving Steve for a moment, he raced up onto a higher berm and saw it. At interior apex of  small cove was a dilapidated Sears Roebuck house. Its foundation was surrounded by tidal mud and its roof nearly caving in, what looked like a once magnificent waterfront view, now more of a terrarium for aquatic animals. 

By the time Daniel had dragged Steve to the entrance to the house, the sun was already setting. He kicked open the front door to find a dry wooden floor before him. Hoisting Steve into the hollow living room space, he sat him up against a corner by the fireplace and wrapped the jacket tight around him. The decades old furniture was scattered about, evidently moved by the highest tides every full moon.

Daniel kicked aside a pile of debris from in front of the fireplace and then scoured the interior for some dry wood. Building a small heap on the hearth, he located a lighter from his tool box and ignited a fire. Dragging Steve closer, he propped him in front of the flame and wrapped the jacket tight around him. Steve’s shivering was starting to subside but the gash on his head was still ominously present. Steve muttered something and Daniel leaned in closer to listen.

“Thank… you…” Steve said.

As the fire took shape and Steve fell asleep, Daniel looked around the interior of the house. The sun was just about to disappear beneath the horizon and the last direct sunbeams cast a harsh orange glow across the eastern walls of the house. Daniel’s eyes landed on a collection of faded photographs in the south eastern corner of the house. The photographs were adorned in black and gold frames, hung to the wooden walls, several of them fallen to the ground and cracked. They were black and white silver gelatin prints and from the looks of it decades old. Each photograph was of a small group of men holding a massive fish across their arms. In one case the group of men pictured had a 12-foot shark on a hoist next to them. In another, a giant squid was strung up from a crane, its tentacles dropped on the ground. In the last photo, a massive gray whale had been laid out before their feet.

The sun finally slipped beneath the horizon and the orange light illuminating the photographs left them in darkness, the fisherman’s faces becoming nothing more than charcoal smudges on the decaying wooden wall. A glimmer caught Daniel’s attention as the rest of the house fell dark. He turned to the the southern side of the house where a corridor led to a back room with a small window approximately four feet square facing the water just beyond. Before the window was a surveyor’s tripod with a brass telescope atop it. The telescope was immaculately polished and its shine is what had caught Daniel’s eye.

He inched closer to it and examined the eye-piece. Etched around the brass ring that supported the eyepiece were a few words.

BEWARE, THOSE WHO LOOK WITHIN

Daniel hesitantly pressed his eye to the glass but the view through the lens was hazy. The circular portal showed a single patch of water nearly a half mile off-shore with a field of view revealing an area not more than a hundred yards wide. He didn’t blink, watching carefully for the promise of the etching to reveal itself. But nothing came. The water was flat and the sky nearly dark now.

Pulling away, Daniel returned his attention to the fire crackling in the other room. Sitting down next to Steve he stared into the flames. Steve had stopped shivering and was asleep and Daniel lay down and wrapped his sweatshirt tight around him. He stared at the ceiling above and for the first time in two days he was overcome by emotion. The silence of the room around him was deafening, the crackling fire not so much soothing as it was a stark reminder of how far removed he was. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, thinking of his dad.

Better than being stuck in traffic. 

His dad’s words rang through his head and he saw him sitting there on the edge of his bed, his unshakeable smile beaming at Daniel. 

Want to come with me?

Daniel kept his eyes closed and tried to fall asleep but the crackling static of his VHF radio penetrated his thoughts. His dad’s cry for help. The abbreviated last words he had heard from his father.

—

Jay’s gaze pierced through the windshield of his dead-rise fishing boat as he motored west, straight toward the sunset where the last glimmer of color was painted across the horizon. He looked to his stern and saw the harbor a ways behind him, then banked hard left and headed south down the western shore of the island. 

When he reached Bloody Point, his navigation system beeped furiously and he eyed it, staring for a long moment at something on the screen before silencing the device and shutting off the screen. He threw the boat into neutral and shut off the engine. There was a deep sense of focus about him, as if he had persuaded himself to do an impossible task and now auto pilot would carry him through to completion. 

Jay stepped out of the cabin onto the rear deck and retrieved a heavy anchor from a removable panel in the floor.

When he heaved it overboard, its splash could be seen through the brass telescope in the abandoned house on the point. His boat was perfectly centered in the circular portal, the telescope zoomed in with enough power to nearly make out Jay’s facial expressions.

Jay flicked on a flashlight and walked around the rear of his boat, looking at the water. He listened, closing his eyes and slowing his breathing. But the bay was silent. The gently lapping of waves against his boat’s hull was peaceful and it supplanted the notion that he was floating over a graveyard of sunken ships and dead sailors. When he opened his eyes he scanned the water around him one more time with the flashlight and a conviction came over him.

Returning to the navigation system, he flicked on the depth-sounder and a blinking light flashed at the top of the device. The screen showed a scan of the bottom with a depth indicator. Dead center of the screen was solid black shape that looked like the profile of a boat from the side. Just to the left of the shape, the depth reading read 65 feet.

Returning to the rear deck, Jay changed into his wetsuit and readied one of the air tanks from the rack. Testing his regulator, he pulled a mask onto his forehead and stepped up to the exterior wall of the cabin. A faded family photo of him, his wife and their daughter was nailed to the wall. He eyed it for a long moment and then stepped away.

The outline of Jay’s boat was like a large black shadow lingering on the water’s surface above. When he plummeted into the water next to it, we got a real sense of the craft’s size. 40-feet in length and 12-feet in width dwarfed Jay’s silhouette. He flicked on a scuba lamp and descended down the boat’s anchor line. 

He looked around through the murky blackness, fear coming over him, then closed his eyes momentarily and looked downward, focusing his attention only on the next ten feet of descent. The depth indicator on his wrist bleeped out 40ft, then 45ft. 

From a distance, Jay’s flashlight was nothing more than a spec of light in the pitch black water. He was descending quickly too and whatever presence had seen his spec of light amidst the darkness from such a great distance began to close in on him, drawing closer.

Jay reached out his hands as his depth reading hit 65-feet. His feet eventually touched down onto the sea bed and he scanned the light around but its luminosity only created glare in the silty water so he turned it down to its lowest setting. Feeling his way around the bottom, he felt something at his feet and reached down. A cylindrical object lay across the bottom and he had touched down with both feet strattling it. He pressed his hands to the object noticing its size, maybe 24-inches in diameter and butter smooth. Perhaps the mast of a sailing vessel that had wrecked there, Jay thought. He slid his hands along the length of the shaft when suddenly, the shaft slid in the opposite direction. He recoiled his hands and stared through the darkness as whatever object lay beneath his feet slithered out from beneath him. 

Jay sucked in air from his tank, snatching his light and looking around through the blackness. He kicked with his fins and accelerated forward through the silt but he hadn’t covered much distance when his knee slammed into something with a clunk. The familiar sound of a wooden clunk was like music to his ears. He reached out to find the starboard rear corner of a boat and without looking behind him, he swim over the gunwale of the sunken vessel and approached the cabin door. Turning the brightness on his lamp back up, he spotted it. The photograph plastered to the exterior wall of the cabin was that of Chris, Daniel and Michelle. 

He opened the cabin door and entered. Chris’s jeans and hoodie were floating in the small interior space of the cabin. He eyed the steering console, the keys still in the boat’s ignition, the throttle set to neutral. The boat had a magnificent steering wheel, hand carved and freshly varnished. He eyed the unmistakeable inlaid bronze in the center of the wheel and noticed the four flat-head screws that secured the wheel to the steering shaft.

Locating a multi tool on his belt he undid the screws and lifted the wheel from the console. He snatched Chris’s hoodie and jeans and tied them to the wheel, turning for the cabin door. He hesitated before exiting the sunken craft, the abyss continuing endlessly beyond the dark cabin door frame that he felt protected inside of. The silty blackness twisted and turned, calling him to enter it once more.

The ferry ride back to the island was silent. Michelle gripped tight to an exterior railing and stared into the cold wind whipping around the boat. That morning she was the only passenger on the early ferry and the pilot looked back at her once or twice to make sure she was okay. She retrieved a business card from her pocket and eyed it. It was a coast guard contact card and it had only a few words scrawled in pen across the back. A voice distracted her from reading the card.

“They didn’t give ya the time’a day did they?”

The ferry pilot was twisted back toward her. She looked at him a long moment, not totally unfamiliar with the man but by no means friendly enough to pour her guts out to him.

“No,” she said.

“They give you the old 48-hour run around?”

Michelle looked at the card again. The pen scrawl on the back read, CALL AFTER 48 HOURS. She looked back at the pilot and nodded. 

“It’s ain’t cause you’re African American,” The pilot blurted out without mincing words. “They don’t trust any of us out here, think we’re a bunch a boonies gettin’ in over our head and pulling’ ourselves out. They don’t wanna waste the resources sending a chopper unless they really have to.”

Michelle nodded slowly. “Thank you,” she said. “But will they send a chopper? After 48 hours?”

“They’ll scramble one for sure. Not sure when it’ll get here.” The pilot already had a radio in his hand and was twisting back to the helm, readying the boat for approach. “Terry this is the Henrietta here, we’re coming in.”

Michelle saw the northernmost point of the harbor entrance approaching beyond and watched the town dock come into view as they rounded the point of land. The pilot caught her attention again. He was radioing to island dispatch again.

“Terry you copy me?” He looked back at Michelle briefly. “He’s probably gettin’ coffee”

As the boat neared the dock, Michelle spotted something unusual. The Reverend was standing at the end of the ferry dock, watching them approach. As they drew nearer, Michelle saw Claire’s face. 

“Is everything okay?” Michelle said. “Where’s Daniel?”

“He’s asleep. You should come with me.” The Reverend said, nodding for Michelle to follow.

—

Claire walked quickly with Michelle in tow, stepping off the ferry dock and rounding a sharp corner toward the town square in front of the church. The buzz of townspeople echoed over the pavement and met Michelle’s ears before they arrived. Claire didn’t look back at her until they had rounded the last corner and could see the town square beyond them. 

The din of townspeople’s chatter subsided and Michelle stopped in her tracks, her gaze fixated on something before her. She looked at Claire briefly and clenched her teeth before stepping toward the town square. 

Michelle passed two dozen island fishermen and their families who all stood in silence as she approached the dead center of the town square, stopping in front of a pool of water. The steering wheel from Chris’s fishing boat was laying there. Waterlogged and covered in seaweed. 

Michelle looked around at the group for an answer but they were all silent. “Who found this?” Michelle sternly called out.

The fishermen looked at each other, all seeming to be wondering the same thing. 

“Who found this?” Michelle boomed out at the crowd, scanning their faces and then looking straight at Claire. “Claire, who found this?”

Claire was silent for just long enough for another voice to boom back at Michelle. 

“I did.” 

Michelle whipped around to see Jay walking toward the crowd. He was holding something else in his hand and with each step he took, it dripped onto the ground beside him. The fishermen watched Jay step into the middle of the circle, right next to the wheel and extend his hands to Michelle. She retrieved two soaked pieces of clothing from Jay, stretching them out in front of her. Chris’s cotton sweatshirt and jeans. 

“Where’d you find these?” She muttered to Jay. He looked around at the crowd and then back to Michelle. 

“I found these on the bottom of the bay at Bloody Point. I retrieved them with my own two hands.” 

Michelle let out a weighted sigh and looked at the clouds above her for a moment. Claire shifted behind her, eying the crowd as they all started to chatter. She looked back at Jay to see him beaming at her with fury.

“I dove there last night to get the answer that you all were too scared to go looking for. So, how many of you want the next generation on this island to grow up living in fear. Hmm? Do you want to raise your kids like that?”

“Jay —“ Claire called out. But he cut her off. 

“With all due respect Reverend, this is a matter for fishermen not clergymen.” 

Another fisherman spoke up from Jay’s right side. “What do you propose we do?” 

“Well y’all I’ll be honest with you, when I dove there last night, I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just me in that water. Sure as hell there’s something that lives in Bloody Point. I can’t tell you whether it sunk Chris’s boat or not, but I can tell you it’s there. And you see me standing here, so you know we have a fair shot at hunting and killing it whatever it is.”

The crowd stirred and Michelle closed her eyes momentarily, gathering herself. A woman’s voice cried out a few words from the back of the crowd and Michelle opened her eyes and looked for her.

“Did you find Steve??” Margaret called out as loud as she could. The crowd fell silent again and Jay fell silent too. Margaret walked forward, tears in her eyes. The emotion welling up in her put the fervor of the crowd at bay, reminding everyone that what was at stake was families. Margaret stopped a few feet from Jay. “Did you find Steve?”

Jay thought for a moment, looking at the fishermen around him all waiting on baited breath. 

“No,” Jay said. “But I saw his boat. It was sunk near Chris’s”

Hearing this, Michelle cocked her head, thinking. Something about what Jay just said wasn’t sitting right with her and she eyed him apprehensively. 

“Are you sure?” Margaret called to him, trying to hold herself together.

“Yes,” Jay said. “I’m sure.”

“How many dives did you do?” Michelle called out.

“What?” Jay said, turning to her.

“Bloody Point is sixty feet deep. How many dives did you do there?”

“I did…” Jay clenched his teeth, frustrated. “I did one.”

“So you found Chris’s on sonar? And you dove on it?”

“Yes. That’s exactly right,” Jay said sternly.

“It’s a silt bath there, you can’t see anything. Are you saying you dropped down right on top of Chris’s boat, and Steve’s boat happened to be right next to it? And you could see it there in front of your face, in the middle of the night?” 

A flash of hope shot across Margaret’s face and she looked at Michelle. Jay was silent and looked back at the crowd.

“I can tell you this much,” Jay quietly said to her. “I did something that nobody on this island was willing to do. And I found the proof you all were afraid to find.”

Michelle fell silent and watched Jay, retreating slightly from the conversation and examining him like a human lie detector. He looked at Margaret for a long moment before muttering I’m Sorry to her.

She dropped her head and started to shake, tears running down her face. The Reverend stepped up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, beaming at Jay. 

Something caught Michelle’s ear and she cocked her head. listening. The sound of a motor was rumbling into the harbor and she peeled off the back of the crowd to see the northern entrance to the harbor. A brand new center console boat was motoring quickly down the harbor channel, blasting hip-hop from its onboard speakers. Four teenagers were milling about at the stern and Daniel was standing on the front, watching the dock approach. 

Before the islanders could discern where the music they heard was coming from, Michelle had raced away from the dock. 

Margaret’s voice was the first to scream out. “STEVE!!!” She yelled, before taking off at a run. “He’s alive!!!”

Michelle followed Margaret and ran to the ferry dock to see Daniel helping Steve walk off the front of the center console and push the teenagers back off the dock. Steve was still shivering and pale as a ghost. He collapsed into Margaret and cried. She wrapped her arms so tight around him she practically disappeared into his mud soaked clothes. 

The hip hop music blasting from the teenagers boat faded into the distance as Margaret’s sobs filled the dock and the fishermen closed in around Steve. Michelle walked up to Daniel and looked him up and down, incredulous. Without any words for him, she turned to Margaret.

“Let’s get you home.” She wrapped an arm around the two of them and led them through the crowd.

Fishermen started to mutter at Steve. What happened, Steve?… Yeah, Where were you man?

“LEAVE US ALONE!” Margaret screamed at the entire crowd. “PLEASE!” 

Michelle carted Margaret’s urgency through her own gaze, scolding the fishermen with a silent look as they parted the crowd and passed through to the driveway. Daniel followed close behind and was caught by Jay’s glare. He looked away and followed close after his mother. 

Jay returned his attention to the crowd of men standing around him. The men had all stepped away from their wives and from Reverend Claire who had recoiled to form a second crowd lingering farther from the men. Jay looked at each fisherman with a dead silent stare. The conviction in his eyes communicated that there was a conversation that needed to be had but that it couldn’t be had here. The men’s hesitancy was obvious, but one by one they started to come around, nodding at Jay. 

Claire watched silently from the background, observing each fisherman’s silent communication. Her attention shifted to four children dispersed throughout the mothers of the group. The kids ranged from seven to twelve and all watched anxiously, unsure of what exactly was going on. 

—

It wasn’t more than an hour later that Daniel followed Michelle down the driveway toward their house and into the front door. She was silent and thinking to herself and told him to sit down at the dining room table. He obliged, pulling off his muddy jacket and sitting while Michelle climbed the stairs and entered Daniel’s bedroom. She saw a teenager-sized mound under the covers and whipped the quilt back to find the cache of pillows arranged like a sleeping 16-year-old.

When she returned to the dining room, she stopped in front of the table and stared at Daniel. She was speechless, frustrated and exhausted. Daniel looked at her with a mixture of guilt and urgency on his gaze and eventually Michelle relinquished and sat down. 

“Mom, I think dad is out there somewhere.”

“Stop, Daniel.” She said quietly.

“I’m serious mom. I found Steve just washed up on the shore.” Michelle pinched her brow. “Did could be somewhere down there in the same place.”

“DANIEL. Please.” Daniel recoiled and fell silent. Michelle eventually looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Your father is gone baby.” Daniel shifted in his seat and Michelle continued, trying to keep her words clear. 

“He got a tip… and he wanted to try a new fishing spot. He meant to come back before the storm got bad.”

Daniel looked at the placemat on the table in front of him, eying its embroidery — a caricature of a whale broaching the surface of the water. “Where did he get the tip from?” 

Michelle shook her head and raised her eyebrows, “I don’t know.” Looking at her son for a long moment. “Where were you last night?” Daniel looked at his hands. 

“Right after you left yesterday, everyone was freaking out cuz Steve was gone too. And I went to find him. I thought maybe he was looking for dad.”

Michelle nodded slowly. “Mom?” Daniel said. She looked up at him. 

“Did dad ever tell you he saw anything weird while he was working?”

“What are you talking about?” Michelle said. 

“Did he ever see anything… in the water? Like something he couldn’t explain?”

Michelle looked down at her own placemat now to see another embroidery of a whale looking back up at her. She placed her hand over it, covering the image and then looking out the window, tears welling up in her eyes. Daniel watched her and sensed her pain. 

He stood from his chair and stepped up to her, wrapping his arms around her. She pressed her chin in to his shoulder and held herself back from bursting into tears. On her other shoulder, Daniel looked out the window beyond. The look on his gaze was not one of pain, but of conviction. 

By the time the sun had set on the night of Steve’s return, Daniel had asked his mom if he could go for a walk and he had left the house as quickly as possible. His gaze traced along the ground as he rode his bike through town, occasionally glancing up to see a townsperson on their front porch watching him pass. There was still mud on the backs of his hands and the events of the day prior were racing through his mind. 

As he passed the town chapel, he looked up to see Reverend Claire walking up the church steps. She heard the whisk of his bike tires as he coasted and turned back to see him. They locked eyes for a moment as if they shared a secret and Daniel kept riding. He finally stepped on his pedal to brake when he got to the western side of the island, riding onto the grass and dropping his bike. He trudged through the grass to the shore and stopped by the water. His eyes darted around the seascape surrounding him and the apparent distance between him and any other human on the island at that moment. The wind started to pickup and blew his hood back. As he looked into the breeze, the cold weather dried his eyes and made them water. He gritted his teeth and tried to hold back his tears. Out of the cold air, a man’s voice resounded from behind him.

“Hey… if you see Marker 17 come find one of us will ya?”

Daniel turned to see an old man with a thick beard standing a hundred feet back. 

“What?” Daniel said. 

“The channel buoy… seventeen… it’s gone detached, probably washed up. If you see it out here, tell someone”

“Uh— Okay” Daniel quietly said back to the man, who turned without saying much more and prodded back toward the nearest fishing shanty a hundred yards inland.

Turning away from the cold wind, Daniel retreated to his bike and rode it home.

—

The house was silent that night. It was the type of silence that hangs in the air when a home recoils from the loss of one of its inhabitants. It was a heavy silk cloth of a silence and it suffocated both Daniel and Michelle as they lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Michelle had tears in her eyes and the sheets pulled up to her chin. Daniel was laying on top of his quilt and he was thinking. After a moment passed, he turned to his night stand and examined the VHF radio sitting there.

As soon as Daniel rolled over and tried to close his eyes, he heard a ping at his window. He cocked his head to listen and another ping smacked the window pain — a pebble thrown by someone on the ground below. Daniel climbed from bed and slide the window open, staring into the darkened yard outside the house.

Steve’s voice whispered loudly, “Hey, come outside,” and Daniel saw him standing near the driveway. 

—

“I need to tell you something”

Those were the first words out of Steve’s mouth as soon as Daniel had stepped off the front porch.

“I’m not sure if this will make sense but I need to tell someone”

“You can tell me” Daniel said. Steve looked up at Daniel’s house and motioned for Daniel to follow him a little ways away. The fading lightbulb from the nearest streetlight case a warm glow on the pavement and Steve paced under it, thinking through his words. 

“I didn’t mean for anything to happen the other night. I didn’t go looking for trouble, I was just — I was thinking about my daughter and about Maggie. And after your dad — “ He looked up at Daniel. “I just had this voice in my head telling me I need to prove there was nothing to be scared of.”

“Where did you go?” Daniel said.

“I went to Bloody Point. Just to look around, but… I was drinking man and, I guess I slipped. I don’t really remember it happening but I definitely smacked my head real hard.’ Steve rubbed a bruise on the side of his forehead. “I guess I fell overboard.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

Steve nodded to himself slowly, then looked at Daniel with eyes that spoke every word he was about to say. “This is going to sound crazy but I don’t think I swam to shore. My boat was way out there when I fell overboard and then… I was just on the beach. Where you found me.” 

“How did you get there?” Daniel said.

“I remember something, but it’s fuzzy. It was this presence in the water. I don’t know what it was, but it was massive and I just remember this sound it made. It wasn’t like anything I had heard before. It was like deep, and it had almost a personality to it.” Steve looked at Daniel for a long moment. “I think the stories are true. There is something out there in the water. And it’s… far bigger than anyone can imagine.”

Daniel stepped closer and whispered to Steve. “Did you see it?” 

No. Steve shook his head back. “I just… I can’t shake this feeling that it saved me. Whatever it is… I don’t know how I got to shore other than that thing saved me. And I think there must… I think whatever it is, it’s misunderstood. I know this sounds batshit crazy because it’s just based on a feeling I had but I needed to tell someone.”

Steve and Daniel lock eyes for a moment. “Did you see anything else?” Daniel asked. “Before you fell overboard? Did you see my dad’s boat?”

Steve shook his head slowly. “There’s something else though… when I was like six years old, I remember when I first heard about the beast. It was me and a few other kids on the island, they’re all gone off to college now but, we were together then, and they took us to the church and sat us down and told us this story. The story lasted all night and they just kept us there and ever since then I’ve just accepted that to be fact. I mean, I can’t tell you how many guys have disappeared out there over the years and we just don’t look as good as we could.”

“Do you think you could have saved them?”

“I think more than one of them wound up just like I did and we never found them because we never looked. I think they died in the mud out there in that wetland hoping somebody would break the rule and come looking.”