Tidepool

by Nicole Willson

  “That’s it? People stay because of weather and fish?”

  “Oh, no. Mrs. Oliver’s protection goes beyond just saving us from the Lords Below. I’ve heard tell that during the Civil War, she paid the fees for the men here who didn’t want to go off to fight. The folks here would never have been able to afford that on their own. And when an agent came nosing around here trying to bully young men into enlisting… ”

  Balt didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

  “And what about me? Am I next? She already tried to finish me off today.”

  His voice grew stern. “If she’s had just about enough of you, it’s because you and your friend don’t understand a thing about Tidepool, and your constant threats to bring in more outsiders are putting the entire town in terrible danger.”

  Sorrow stood up again. Something burned inside her.

  “Mrs. Oliver should have thought about that before she chose my brother as one of her ‘sacrifices’.”

  To her surprise, Balt nodded.

  “And I told her that. It’s unlike her to be so reckless in her choice of sacrifice. A wealthy person from a major city who was sure to be missed struck me as a very unwise target, and indeed, I was right.”

  Balt’s impersonal words, as if Henry had been an object rather than a human being, bothered Sorrow. “My brother, Mr. Cooper. You’re talking about my brother.”

  “I understand. She warned me that the creatures in the water grow restless, and she has no choice but to obey them. Although I don’t know exactly what happened to him, I do fear that your brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  The tears that had been threatening on and off all day returned to Sorrow’s eyes as she thought about Henry spending his last days in this horrid place, and the things he might have endured here. Had Mrs. Oliver truly turned him over to that revolting Lucy creature in her basement, or had he simply been slashed to ribbons and left to wash up on Tidepool Beach, his flesh stripped from his skeleton like a picked-over carcass after a meal?

  “Miss Hamilton, I am truly sorry for your brother’s disappearance. I know you didn’t believe me when I told you this before, but it’s the truth. I know what you must be feeling, and I know it is not easy.”

  “You can’t possibly know what this feels like,” Sorrow snapped.

  “But I do. My own older brother disappeared and then washed up on Tidepool Beach ten years ago. He was a drunkard who abandoned his wife and children. I hated the thought of losing him to the creatures in the water, but he refused to change his ways. I wasn’t terribly surprised when he caught the eye of Mrs. Oliver. Indeed, I had tried to warn him it would happen.”

  Sorrow nearly felt faint. “What? And yet you still allow Mrs. Oliver in your tavern? You treat her like an honored guest, not a murderess.”

  “She is an honored guest,” Balt remonstrated. “Especially to Naomi and me. When Naomi and I first fell in love, well, some of the folks in town weren’t happy.” Balt shuddered visibly at the memory. “Not happy at all. Called me some pretty horrible names. Threatened to burn down my inn. And they talked about the terrible things they wanted to do to Naomi, too. She was afraid to leave our rooms.

  “But Naomi was kind to Quentin, and Mrs. Oliver liked that. She let it be known that anyone who tried to start trouble for me and my wife—that’s what she calls Naomi now, even though we can’t really get married—would answer to her. And she’s been as good as her word.”

  The room started to waver around Sorrow. It occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since her unappetizing breakfast, and yet she could not remember a time when she felt less like eating anything.

  “This entire town is insane,” she said.

  “This entire town is safe. Your continued presence here is putting that all in jeopardy,” Balt said.

  “My continued presence here was hardly my idea, Mr. Cooper, as you well know. Your very own marshal ordered us to stay put. I believe you were there when he did so.”

  Balt rubbed his forehead, as if he were trying to work something out.

  “Miss Hamilton? You have not asked for my advice, but I offer it anyhow. Take the Sherman fellow who came here for you and leave as soon as possible. Tonight, even.”

  “Do you think we haven’t already tried? The stables won’t give us a buggy. The marshal told them not to.”

  Balt thought about that for a moment. “I’ll speak with Thomas tonight. If I explain the danger we are all in at this moment, I’m sure he’ll be willing to look the other way. And I’ll deal with Lewis tomorrow.”

  His voice grew stronger.

  “Go back to Baltimore and tell your family that you found no trace of your brother here. And for your own sake, and for all our sakes, let the matter rest there.”

  Sorrow shook her head. “Mr. Cooper, I cannot just accept that my brother was slaughtered like some sacrificial animal here.”

  “You have no choice but to accept it, miss, as painful as it must be. Your only choice now is to ask yourself if you are willing to doom an entire town just to get justice for him.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  SIMEON OLIVER TAKES A WIFE

  Mrs. Ada Oliver

  1817-1851

  * * *

  I always hated being by the water, even before I drowned in 1851.

  My fear of water began when my mother, intending a brief swim, was swept away in a river by our Virginia home shortly after Quentin was born. After her death, my father, who worked long hours to maintain the wealth he had built up as a banker, entrusted us to a succession of governesses. Although we still lived close to the river, I struggled and screamed whenever anyone attempted to take me there, and they eventually gave up trying.

  And then my father was thrown from a carriage and died of his injuries in my sixteenth year. Quentin, only ten at the time, and I were alone in the world.

  But not for long.

  My father, who had been young and healthy, had made no provisions for our care. He had dismissed our governesses when I turned fifteen. And neither of our parents had any living relatives who were in any position to take us.

  I believed that I would be raising Quentin and myself with Father’s money, but that changed when one of Father’s friends, Mr. Simeon Oliver, began paying us regular visits. His wife had died of consumption some years before, and he had spent many hours with Father, Quentin and me since that sad day.

  He showed up at our door bringing meals and other provisions for us, and he claimed to be quite concerned about how the two of us would get on without Father or any other sort of parental figure in the house.

  I always found Mr. Oliver quite handsome. He had long wavy black hair he wore swept back from his face, and very intense dark eyes. I had known him since I was a child, but his attentions to me after my father’s death felt different. The way he looked at me made me feel both bashful and beautiful.

  He came to us one Christmas morning laden down with gifts: a beautiful red dress and jewelry for me and wooden toys for Quentin, who showed no interest in them. Quentin had always been odd around other people; no matter how many times Father chastised him for his poor manners, he simply did not understand how to behave in public company. He and I doted on each other, especially after Father’s death, but he wanted little to do with anyone else.

  Mr. Oliver, who had become used to this behavior from Quentin, seemed to pay it no mind. He watched us open our gifts and then asked us to sit with him.

  “Ada? Quentin? I have been speaking with my sister Ellen, and we were hoping that perhaps you would come live with us. We know we cannot replace your parents, and we would never try, but I believe your father would have wanted us watching out for you.”

  A new family for Christmas? I warmed to the idea immediately. I had been feeling quite lonely and sad in our large house and liked the idea of moving in with the kind, handsome Mr. Oliver.

  Quentin, however, took more persuasion. He felt safe in our home. He liked his routin
es. He didn’t welcome the thought of them being disrupted. And he had never taken to Simeon Oliver.

  Perhaps even then, he sensed what I did not.

  Whatever his eccentricities, Quentin has always been extremely perceptive when it comes to the character of others. When he takes a fast dislike to someone, he has his reasons, even if it takes a while for me to figure them out.

  But after some persuasion from both me and Mr. Oliver, Quentin agreed. We moved into Mr. Oliver’s large house, close to the Atlantic Ocean; he handled the details of the sale of our family home. I did not like being so near the water, but I reassured myself that nobody would ever force me to visit the beaches.

  Ellen Oliver was thin, drab, pinch-mouthed, and tended to blend into the walls, and she did not seem pleased to have young people in the house. I sometimes wondered if Mr. Oliver had truly sought his sister’s consent before moving us in. She was superficially pleasant with me, but avoided Quentin entirely except to scold him for annoying her and banish him to his room.

  If I had known anything about the world of men and women, it would have been apparent to me rather quickly that Mr. Oliver’s interest in taking us into his home was motivated by far more than a sense of obligation to our father. It had never occurred to me that he could be after more than a makeshift son and daughter. But then he began flattering me, holding my gaze, sometimes taking my hand as we walked together through town.

  As I found him so attractive, I was not at all unhappy with his increased attentions. Perhaps I encouraged them, as I did not yet understand what they might lead to. He particularly liked the color red, and I often wore the elaborate dress he had given me for Christmas. His dark eyes always lit up when he saw me in it.

  Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, after a lengthy and polite courtship, he asked me if I would marry him. Having no idea what a marriage to him would entail beyond the hand-holding and flattery and gifts we had already engaged in, I said yes.

  We were married that fall in a small, quick ceremony attended only by a surly Ellen and an anxious, fidgeting Quentin. Despite their obvious displeasure, I could not have been more delighted that day. I now had a handsome, kind husband. My brother and I were safe in a stable household. The tragedies that had marred our early lives were far behind us now.

  I went to bed in my own room as usual on our wedding night. I was quite surprised when Simeon appeared at my door and ordered me into his bed, telling me that this was what married couples did. But I complied. He’d been married before; he knew the way things were supposed to be done, I reasoned.

  I was even more shocked when he pushed me into the bedroom and began removing my clothes in the dark.

  “Whatever are you doing?”

  “You want children, don’t you, Ada? This is how we get them. Did no one ever tell you?”

  “No.” My father always stammered and left the room if I asked how people had children, and nobody else had been around to explain it to me.

  He grumbled something and continued removing my clothing until I was naked in front of him. His actions were rough, and all his usual charm and warmth were gone as he stripped me. I shivered, not only from the chill of his bedroom.

  Alarm rose in me as he pushed me onto my back on his bed. As I was about to question the need for him to do such a thing, he removed his own trousers, lay on top of me, and arranged himself between my thighs. I could smell the liquor he’d imbibed that day in celebration; it gave off a sour and stale odor.

  The sudden searing pain between my legs felt like it would tear me apart from the inside. He pushed himself up and struck me hard across the face when I cried out.

  “Enough. I won’t put up with such noise, Ada,” he whispered in the darkness. And then running footsteps sounded in the hall and Quentin began pounding at our door.

  “Ada? What’s happening? Are you all right?” He tried the handle, bless him, but Simeon had had the foresight to lock it. And then I heard Ellen Oliver speak to him in a low voice. Their footsteps disappeared down the hallway.

  Not wanting to be struck yet again, I kept my lips pressed tightly shut and whimpered as Simeon continued.

  I spent that night awake and crying. The next morning my lip was bruised where he had struck me, and my inner thighs ached so much that I could barely walk. Ellen Oliver would not meet my eyes as she served us a breakfast that I did not want. Quentin looked between me and Simeon, mystified and frightened.

  Simeon repeated his rough and painful attentions the next night, and the night after that. Although the pain of this routine lessened over time, I found the experience unpleasant and tedious. I was astonished when I realized that this brutal ritual was the same physical act written about with such rapture in literature. There was no poetry whatsoever in Simeon’s attentions to me.

  And my husband, who had been so warm when he was courting me, became cold and forbidding. I was meant to manage the household and give birth to his heir, and beyond that he wanted little to do with me, although he seemed to enjoy displaying me at social engagements.

  Having little knowledge of my own body, I wondered that summer why my clothing was growing tighter around my middle when I scarcely ate enough to keep myself alive. A visit from the doctor confirmed that I was expecting our first child.

  Simeon was pleased enough to kiss my hand when I gave him the news. Ellen frowned and looked disapproving. Quentin simply seemed confused; I am sure he had even less idea of how babies were conceived than I did. To tell the truth, I would be surprised to hear that he knows much more about it now.

  I was not sure I wanted a child, although I knew this duty was expected of me. I ran my hand over my taut, swelling belly and tried to feel a connection with the life growing inside of me, but all I felt was numbness.

  But Simeon left me alone at night while I was with child, and that was a decided advantage. I would have been content if he had never touched me again.

  I was not even particularly unhappy on the afternoon that I felt tired and returned home early from a social engagement to what should have been an empty house, only to hear moaning coming from the parlor.

  When I hurried down the hall, wondering if someone had taken ill, I discovered my husband entwined with Mrs. Emma Willis on our velvet couch. Mrs. Willis had paid us many a call over the last months, and as I watched them rut on our sofa, I finally understood why.

  The adulterous lovers were so intent on what they were doing that neither one of them saw me watching in shock. One of Mrs. Willis’s breasts had worked loose from the top of her dress and bounced rhythmically as she moaned and panted and cried out his name, while his bare backside moved vigorously between her spread thighs. Her cries were entirely unlike my own cries of pain on my wedding night.

  So some women did enjoy this act? So much so that they would seek it out with people who weren’t their legal spouses? I left the house again under the cover of their groaning and panting, not wanting them to know I saw what they had done. Part of me understood that I had witnessed a great sin, an utterly outrageous betrayal, and that I should be terribly upset. Mrs. Willis’s behavior towards me had always been warm and friendly, and I would never have expected her to slip into my house and pursue an affair with my husband.

  And yet I could not quite bring myself to feel anger. I would have been happy to let Mrs. Willis engage in such acts with Simeon forever after if it meant I never had to do it again.

  But our child was stillborn, and after a short period of time suggested by the doctor, Simeon resumed intercourse with me. As he labored over me night after night, thrusting roughly and grunting, I pictured Mrs. Willis in her ecstasy, wondering how she could seem to find this same brutish act so pleasurable. How could anyone?

  Our second child was also stillborn.

  “Ada, if you cannot give me an heir, I will have to find another wife,” Simeon said coldly as I recuperated after the birth.

  His cruelty at such a moment shocked me, and in my state of exhaustion I did not sto
p to think before the next words came out of my mouth.

  “Perhaps Emma Willis can give you an heir,” I snapped.

  His eyes widened and he struck me hard in the face. And that night, he began his attentions again.

  I lost one more child, but I was trapped in that hellish marriage for many years before the night in 1851 that he killed me.

  On that evening, we stood together on the deck of a visiting tall ship, touring it with several other members of our community. Mrs. Emma Willis was there, and I did not miss the furtive, charged looks she exchanged with my husband as her own husband, a rotund and amiable fellow, explored the deck and exclaimed over the sails.

  Understanding that I was supposed to be angered by my husband’s behavior with a married woman, I stalked off to the bow of the boat and stared out at the ocean, watching as the moonlight danced over the waves. Now that my own daily life was so bleak, I no longer feared the water. Indeed, I sometimes wondered if my mother’s drowning had truly been accidental. Perhaps she had found her life as stifling as I now found mine. And perhaps she had seen the water as her only escape.

  Simeon approached me and told me to come meet some friends of his. I had no interest in doing so, and I told him that perhaps he would rather introduce his friends to Mrs. Willis.

  His eyes widened, and after glancing around to see if anyone was looking our way, he struck me hard across the face. The water was choppy that night and the deck unstable. He knocked me off balance easily, and I tumbled over the rail, striking my head against the bow as I plunged into the water.

  My already-heavy dress became waterlogged and pulled me down, the cold salty water poured into my nose and mouth and filled my burning lungs, and the moonlight shining over the ocean grew darker and fainter as I died.

  A new one.

  Whispers sounded around me. I opened my eyes and saw my own hair floating around my head, which ached where I’d struck it when Simeon knocked me overboard.