The Mermaid

by Shane Scollins

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

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  The

  Mermaid

  By Shane Scollins

  THE MERMAID

  Copyright © 2017 by Shane Scollins.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: July 2017

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-

  ISBN-10:

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the dreamers, the believers…those that see magic in the world and refuse to let it die.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

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  The sea, once it casts its spell,

  Holds on in its net of wonder forever.

  ~Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Chapter 1

  Jake

  Every night for three weeks, it’s been the same routine, with the same outcome. He puts the gun to his head, and he fails to pull the trigger. The worst part is he can’t even understand why his finger betrays him. The wick has burned, the trigger is light, the grip is firm, the gun feels right.

  His mind was never going to set him free. Being a prisoner of your own self-inflicted anguish is exhausting to the point of demise. The untimely end is all that seems fitting. Yet this exercise in futility itself has become cumbersome.

  It was impossible to forget the sounds of screeching tires, crunching steel, and shattering glass. But the worst sounds were the moans of agony issuing from the human bodies that endured the chaos. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t getting the sounds and images out of his head without the help of the memory-cleansing bullet from the dark chamber of this pistol.

  Jake had second-guessed himself about a thousand times since that night. There was no way around it, the fault rested squarely on his shoulders. The frayed rope of his sanity had unraveled. He’d run out of time, energy, and money. It was time to get this over and done with.

  This was Cassie’s favorite place in the world, the large stones that formed the breakers at Fort Fisher. After leaving the beach, she’d always wanted to come here and climb the large rocks. Jake always tried to discourage her, not because of the large signs that said, ‘Keep Off,’ but because it was dangerous. There were large gaps one could slip into and easily break an ankle, sprain a knee, or worse.

  That ironic fact was not lost on him. Jake had always been the smart one, the safe one. He didn’t take stupid chances or put himself in danger. At least not since he was a teen, which is what made his actions that night even harder to understand.

  There was no point thinking anymore. He was done. His brain was just too tired, too worn down. This was a fight he no longer wanted, a battle of attrition with no winner.

  Just like the previous nights, he slid the pistol out of his pocket and glared at it in his hand. The black weapon looked menacing just sitting still. The lethal power was resting silently in the chamber, a twitch of his finger away from killing him. It seemed so easy to access. But easy was never simple.

  Tears formed in his eyes and slid down his cheeks. If Cassie could see him now she’d cry too, she’d beg him not to do it, not to end it. But he just couldn’t take the pain anymore, it was too hard. The loneliness was so palpable it shook him in fits of cold shiver. He’d loved Cassie with every bit of his soul and he knew in his heart he’d never find that again. Life was not worth living without her and that was that.

  He looked at the nearly full moon. Swallowed his tears behind a spray of seawater and put the gun to his temple. The finger on his right hand would not betray him tonight. It was happening and he didn’t have the will to stop himself this time.

  With his finger pressed to the trigger, he screamed at the moon, into the night. A soft squeeze didn’t get it done, and he was about to do what he’d failed to do so many times before. In that brief silence before death, a soft voice said, “Please no, please stop!”

  Jake let up and blinked away the tears. He searched around for the source of the voice, looked down. At the edge of the rocks, lapped by waves and touched by the moon’s light, he saw a beautiful blonde girl in the surf.

  He couldn’t find a single word. He could see her clearly enough to see the sparkle in her eyes and the apple cheekbones. Was this even real? Had he already pulled the trigger?

  Then he managed to utter a raspy, “Hello?”

  She didn’t reply with words, only a smile, the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. But when he stood up and saw her entire form, his jaw fell open, wordless.

  Her smile quickly faded and a look of panic struck her. In one move, she dove off the rocks and into the water. With one swift flip, she was gone.

  Jake stood there; he didn’t even realize at some point he’d dropped the pistol into one of the deep fissures between the huge boulders. But what he’d just seen was something he could not explain. And even if he could explain it, he couldn’t possibly tell anyone about it without sounding like a psychotic.

  He slumped back onto the rock and looked across the waves. There she was again, bobbing out
in the breakers like a surfer waiting for a set.

  Jake started down the rocks, running toward the sand of the nearby beach to his right. He chugged over to the loose soil and saw her. He wanted to yell or something, but no sounds formed for his tongue to sculpt. Instead, he stuck his arm up to wave. After a brief moment, she sank under the sea and was gone.

  Jake was unable to move for several seconds, or perhaps it was minutes, or even hours. Time ceased to exist. Finally, he decided it was time to get back to reality with a long shake of his head.

  After an extensive search for the gun, he was unable to find it. That was bothersome because he worried it would end up in the wrong hands. In the morning, he’d come back and return to the search effort.

  Right now, he just sat in his car trying to understand what he’d seen. With his phone in hand, he started doing some searches for mermaids. He knew they weren’t real, or at least he’d never believed they were. They were a child’s fantasy, certainly not a real thing.

  Maybe his eyes had deceived him. Maybe there was never anything there at all. If his body had released some sort of pre-death hormone that caused him to hallucinate, he’d believe that more than the fact he’d just seen a mermaid.

  With nothing left to think, and no gun with which to blow his brains out, he started his car and headed home.

  Chapter 2

  Sleep didn’t come easy. He’d spent the entire night tossing and turning as usual. But there was one significant difference. He didn’t spend the night thinking about Cassie and the accident. Instead, he spent the night thinking of the girl on the rocks, the mermaid.

  He wondered who she was. It was more likely that she was not a real mermaid even if she was real. He’d seen those girls that train professionally for shows; they had very convincing costumes and practiced for years to be fluid in the water.

  He laughed at himself as he kicked his feet off the bed to the floor. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and laughed again. On the bright side, he hadn’t laughed in months. He was clearly cracking up with insanity.

  After climbing into a black t-shirt and some blue board shorts, he headed down the hallway. In the living room on the dingy mocha-colored couch, his roommate Tom sat, eating a giant bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.

  “Morning,” Jake said as he opened the fridge.

  With his mouth half full, Tom replied, “Did I just hear you laughing?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

  Tom didn’t look up from the cereal bowl. “That’s different.”

  Jake cracked open a bottled iced coffee drink and took a long swig. “Yeah, it was a different night.” He swung the door of the old fridge, covered in stickers, closed.

  Tom slurped from his spoon. “What time did you get home?”

  “Around one-thirty.”

  “Wanna go out today? The boards are waxed and that hurricane in the South-A is stirring up some killer sets. Gonna be going off all week.”

  Jake sneered at him. “You’ve asked me every day for four months if I want to go surfing. I haven’t gone once. Why do you keep asking?”

  “Faith, bruh, faith.”

  “Faith in what?”

  “In the sea…in humanity.”

  “Humanity?”

  Tom turned to look at him briefly, his shaggy blond hair in his face. “You are human, aren’t you?”

  Jake shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “So you’ll get over this tragedy and be back to yourself eventually. We all do.”

  “That’s optimistic.”

  “No, that’s faith, bruh. Time deals all pain a complex hand…doesn’t make it gone, just makes it easier to live with, my friend.”

  Jake nodded thoughtfully. Tom was a very sage-like guy and often had nothing interesting to say for days at a time. But then he’d spout off something that you just had to listen to and think about. His shaggy blond hair and sculpted tan body screamed prototypical surfer and beach bum. That is exactly what he was.

  “Hey, Tom, let me ask you something. What do you know about mermaids?”

  Tom didn’t glance up. Instead he tipped the bowl to his mouth and drank the milk from the bottom with a sip. After draining the contents, he burped and then stood. “Mermaids? You mean those little surf babes that hang out at the pier?” He shrugged. “I mean, they’re cute, but way too young.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about real mermaids, the mythical ones.”

  Tom scrunched his face. “I don’t know, man. Why’re you asking about mermaids?”

  “Just curious. Do you think something like that could be real?”

  Tom moved into the kitchen and placed his bowl in the sink. “I think there’s a lot of stuff in the world science can’t explain.”

  “But you believe in UFOs and Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and all that stuff.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “So what about mermaids?”

  Tom shrugged. “I dunno, man. I’ve spent a lot of time in the water. I think I’d’ve seen one by now. I mean, if I’d spent as much time in Loch Ness as I have the ocean, I bet I’d’ve seen the monster by now. Shit, we’d probably be buds by now. He’d like come up and I’d like scratch his belly and shit.”

  Jake nodded. “That’s fair.”

  Tom took hold of an apple from the bowl on the counter. “Why the sudden interest in mermaids? Did you see one?” He chuckled.

  Jake just shook his head. “No, man, just thinking about stuff.”

  “Well, ponder away. I’m heading out to catch waves. If you’re ready to stop being a capo, you know you’re welcome to tag.”

  “What beach?”

  “Going up to Wrightsville to meet Megan. She texted me last night and said it’s going off up top.”

  “What’s the deal with you two? You’ve been together like every day for the past three months.”

  Tom took a few steps down the hallway and stopped. “Hadn’t really thought about it. She’s a cool chick with a hot body who likes to cut waves. Why does there have to be a deal?” He continued down the hallway and closed his bedroom door behind him.

  Jake didn’t really have an agenda today. The fact he wasn’t dead was about all the excitement he could handle. For the first time in months, he wanted to do something other than mope around the house and wait for nightfall so he could blow his brains out. So that was different.

  After putting on some blue Nike sneakers, he grabbed his keys and headed out to his old-ish, faded red Volkswagen Beetle. The car started and drove well, but it looked like it was getting tired. It had well over one hundred thousand miles and probably needed about a thousand dollars in work to get it back up to full operating order. But he didn’t care. He didn’t get much money from his insurance company to replace his car and this was all he could afford. Plus he didn’t want anything nice ever again.

  After he stopped going to work, he burned through his savings, mostly on alcohol. But his original plan was to just kill himself once he was out of money. He’d been out of money now for a few weeks. A visit to the pawnshop to sell some of the jewelry he’d gotten for Cassie had given him enough to get by for a while.

  He’d gotten her a few nice pieces for the wedding, a gift to wear as she walked down the aisle. She’d never gotten the chance to wear any of it.

  Selling her jewelry made him feel like garbage. It was just one more nail in his coffin that he didn’t really need. But in the end he decided there was no point in leaving it to anyone else. There was no one really to leave it to, anyway. It’s not like he was going to leave it to his parents. They didn’t really need money, and they never graced him with any siblings.

  After a few moments of contemplation, he finally started the car and headed toward Fort Fisher. He wanted to find that gun before anyone else did.

  The roads swam under his car. He didn’t really drive down them anymore. He used to love driving. It was one of his favorite things. Whenever he and his friends went out, he’d always
driven. He’d rather have driven and let them all drink than trust anyone else behind the wheel.

  As he passed by the road that led to the intersection of that fateful moment, he couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in his eyes. He’d cried more in the past year than he had in his entire life. The pain was not really receding as the experts indicated it would.

  Time heals all wounds, or so they say. But so far time wasn’t even making a dent in his agony. It was constant and he just felt like it wasn’t going to get any better. Ever.

  Wheeling into the parking lot, he shut off the engine and got out. The summer sun was at mid-morning position, hanging over the ocean and cooking the landscape. It was going to be a hot North Carolina summer day.

  After surveying the scene, a few cars parked in the lot to his left, he strode toward the rocks and stepped up on the first one, carefully navigating his way up to the top above the water. To his right people on the small cove beach scampered. He took no joy in their playfulness. In fact, he hated them.

  A few surfers bobbed out in the waves, he hated them too. He hated everything and everyone. But he didn’t want some kid to find that gun so he started searching.

  Chapter 3

  The afternoon sped by with incredible rapidity and his search for the missing pistol had come up empty. It was probably time to just give up and resign himself to the fact that some kid had found it, and was probably going to accidentally kill his baby sister while they ate their breakfast. The only hope he had was to pray that his luck did not turn into anyone else’s bad luck.

  He slumped down and sat on one of the flat rocks, letting his feet dangle over the softly spraying surf below. Though he didn’t want to, he kept thinking about what happened last night. At the risk of going insane, he wanted to see the girl in the water again. Simultaneously, he thought that if he’d found that gun, tonight would finally be the night.

  Clearly, he was losing his mind anyway, there was no reason to stick around and go crazy. It would be a step too far to suffer the indignity of ending up in a psych hospital jacked full of Geodon and Seroquel.