Night Tide

by Kory M. Shrum

  Officer O’Reilly stepped into the hallway, ushered in by Tanner.

  “Are you ready?” she asked, when she saw Abigail.

  Abigail patted her pockets as if she’d forgotten something. “I guess so. I didn’t really have anything on the beach, did I?”

  “We might’ve left things in Landon’s car,” Grayson said. It had been Landon who’d driven them to the beach.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Una said with another tight smile. To his parents she said, “Thanks for letting Abby stay.”

  “Of course,” his parents said in unison.

  “Abby is welcome here anytime,” his mother added, lifting her coffee mug to her lips again.

  “I thought nothing could get into the cove because of the rocks,” Tanner said. He was looking up at Officer O’Reilly with a strange expression on his face. “It’s got that rock barrier, right?”

  Una’s lips pinched.

  “Why do you think something was in the cove?” his mother asked. “We said he drowned.”

  Una frowned. “It was rough seas last night. A storm rolled in really quick.”

  Tanner’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, we saw it. Will and I were in the backyard catching fireflies and then all of a sudden it was lightning and thundering.”

  Officer O’Reilly lifted the pile of Abby’s clothes from the bench. “Where does Will live?”

  “Cliffside,” his father answered. “Near the east lot.”

  “That’s North Beach. Very close to the water.” Officer O’Reilly shrugged as if to say there you go.

  “Yeah, we walk down to the beach and catch crabs. Will’s dad cooks them. Alive.”

  “Are you going back to work?” Abby asked.

  “For a few hours,” Una said. Then she clamped a hand on Grayson’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Happy belated birthday.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tanner pulled open the door, holding it open for them.

  “Such a gentleman,” Una said and stepped out onto the porch again. “Thank you again.”

  Abby hesitated in the doorway. Her gaze fixed on Grayson. “Call me later, okay?”

  “I will.” He’d already planned on checking on her at least a hundred times today.

  With a weak smile, she descended the porch steps to the waiting unmarked car.

  “Bye,” Tanner said and shut the door. He met Grayson’s eyes and frowned. “That was awkward.”

  Curiosity Books was on the corner of Apple Street and Magnolia Street. He parked at the curb outside the old Victorian building. The bookshop was purple with light brown windows and trim.

  The sign in the yard read Curiosity Books, Treasure For Those Who Seek It. And below that, Used Books and Oddities—just in case those treasure seekers should get the wrong idea.

  “Grayson!” Ms. Monroe exclaimed. She stood on the porch, her key in one hand, her mouth gaping. “What are you doing here?”

  “My shift is from two until eight,” he said. He hesitated on the step, wondering if he’d gotten it wrong. A lot had happened in the last 24 hours. It was very possible.

  “Yes, but I didn’t think you’d come in today. Not after what happened last night.”

  “You heard about that?” he asked, stuffing his hands down in his pocket.

  She pulled at her tangle of necklaces around her neck. “Yes, well. It might’ve come on over the scanner.”

  Grayson had never asked his boss why she had a police scanner in her upstairs apartment, or more specifically, why she thought she needed one. It was possible that she was only nosy. But sometimes he liked to imagine that she’d come to Castle Cove to escape a life of crime. The idea was so ridiculous that it amused him to no end.

  Ms. Monroe’s hair was crimped, and stood out from her head in all directions. She wore a scarf across her head and coke bottle glasses so large that her eyes gave the impression of really drinking someone in. Her clothes were bright, flowing fabrics of wild designs and her neck always had at least five or six necklaces hanging around it. Despite their tendency to tangle, she seemed committed to wearing them.

  She looked like the garden variety cat lady, though she had no cats. Well, if one didn’t count Pumpkin—an orange tabby who strolled Midtown at her leisure. But it was as much a patron of the other shops as she was of Curiosity Books.

  Since Grayson had received strict instruction to always let Pumpkin in, should she come calling, he often had the chore of vacuuming the cat hair that seemed to accumulate in her wake.

  “I thought work might take my mind off things,” he said. “But if you’re closing—”

  He looked at the key in the door and her hand still on the handle.

  “Oh, yes, well I’m meeting someone for tea and so I thought I’d just close early. But if you really want to be here...?”

  “I do,” he insisted, adjusting his messenger bag on his shoulder. “If it’s okay with you.”

  “Of course, of course.” She unlocked the door, pushing it open with her hand.

  “I just want to keep busy,” he said.

  “Yes, I like to rearrange my spice rack when my mind gives me trouble.” She checked her watch one more time and then stepped into the shop after him. “There’s a big pile here that needs to be reshelved. You could also vacuum. Pumpkin was here earlier.”

  “Okay,” he said, removing his jacket and throwing it over the wooden chair behind the register.

  “Oh, and you could call about these books.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. She smoothed it against the table top so he could better read it.

  He reviewed the list, seeing the description of each and the ISBN and telephone numbers beside it.

  “We had a lot of special orders this week,” she said, gesturing to the list. “Just find out if the stores I’ve listed are carrying any copies and at what price we can get it for. Then you can call the buyer and ask them to commit.”

  “All right.”

  Ms. Monroe seemed to hover for a moment. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right here alone?”

  He forced himself to smile. “I’ll have Gladys.”

  Ms. Monroe arched her eyebrows instead of laughing at his joke. “Dear, the dead aren’t good company.”

  “I’ll be fine.” If he didn’t say it, he was sure she wouldn’t leave.

  With an awkward pat on the counter, she turned to the door. “I’ll be back around seven or so, but if I’m not, just lock up when you leave.”

  When she pulled the door closed after her, the overhead bell rang. The air vibrated with the twang, then fell silent.

  For a long time, he only sat there, feeling the chair against his back, his fingers picking at a hole in his jeans.

  Then when the silence began to feel alive, almost as if it were breathing down the back of his neck, he got to work.

  He started with vacuuming, angling the ancient contraption through the narrow stacks. More than once he clipped a pile of books and sent it tumbling. He restacked them the best he could and kept on.

  After he reshelved the pile by the register, he dusted. There were limitations to what one could accomplish in this old shop in terms of dusting. Running a light feather duster over the exposed spines was about as much as one could do.

  Cleaning had only taken him about two hours, so he decided it was time to make the phone calls. He called the listed book sellers and dutifully recorded the prices. Then he called the customers who’d requested those items and confirmed that they would pay. When he was finished he sent an update text to Ms. Monroe. She instructed him to buy them all.

  He did so using her business credit card, locked away in the register for exactly such purchases.

  He’d just written out the total and put it in the register when table legs scraped overhead. He smiled. There was something comforting about Gladys the ghost being her usual restless self. Then for the first time he wondered if he might see Landon again.

  How would it feel to see ghost-Landon?

/>   And what if something did develop between him and Abby? Would ghost Landon be okay with it? Or would he haunt them for the rest of their lives—breaking their dishes or windows and shaking their bed whenever they tried to have sex?

  Grayson listened to the legs catch on the wood floor above. Then nothing. When it seemed she’d completed her task, he called out to her.

  “Gladys? I could use a book recommendation.”

  For a moment, he sat perched on the chair, listening to the ringing silence in the shop.

  Then he heard the soft shuffle of a book sliding from the shelf, followed by the hollow thump of it hitting the floor.

  Grayson stood from the chair and followed the narrow aisle, searching the floors for the fallen book.

  He’d made it almost to the biographies section when he turned a corner and saw it.

  He bent and picked the book up, brushing a hand over its cover. Maybe the book had been red once, but now it had faded to a burnt orange. The binding was frayed and the exposed pages were stained yellow with age.

  “A Siren Song,” he read aloud. “The history of Atlantis’ survivors.”

  Grayson’s heart rocketed in his chest. His pulse built to the point of painfulness. It pounded like a war drum in his temples.

  He saw movement in the corner of his eye and turned. Farther up the row, another book was sliding out of its place on the shelf. It inched forward once, twice, and then tumbled onto the floor.

  Grayson crossed to the fallen book and picked it up off the floor.

  “The Dark Mother and Her Children,” he said. He opened the cover and was surprised to see it was published by the Castle Cove University Press over a hundred years ago. He flipped page after page until he found an old pencil etching of a young woman about to enter a dark wood. The woman had long black hair and wide dark eyes.

  Eyes peered at her from the darkness, yet she didn’t seem deterred. She was about to enter the woods anyway.

  He closed the book and ran his hand over the cover. His fingernail caught on the embossed tree stamped into the leather. In the tree were six birds. He knew the species. Any wood scout would’ve been able to name them too: a crow, a heron, a hawk, an owl, a blue jay, and a swan. But the swan was black, not white, as evidenced by its inked-in body.

  A shiver ran up his spine.

  Of all these books in the entire shop, what were the chances that Gladys would pick a book about sirens at random?

  Grayson returned to the desk and opened the inventory file on the computer. There were only six books on sirens in the whole shop. Six out of nearly seventy thousand titles. The chances seemed small indeed.

  “So if it isn’t random,” he said, aloud. “Then what is the connection between the sirens and The Dark Mother?”

  He spoke aloud but there was no answer. No more books slipped from the shelves to the floor. He strained, listening intently to the hum as if expecting an answer.

  His phone buzzed suddenly and he yelped, squeezing the books to his chest.

  “Come on,” he muttered. He lifted his phone from the desk and saw Abby’s name above the incoming text.

  He opened the text and read: Hey, how are you?

  He took a breath, and tried to steady the wild hammer of his heart. Same. You?

  Same. This sucks, she wrote.

  Yeah.

  What are you doing?

  At work. You?

  Lying in bed staring at the ceiling like a weirdo

  He looked at the books on the desk. He opened the cover again and stared at the woman entering the menacing woods. He counted those eyes watching her.

  It made him think of the stories he’d heard about the Western Woods. West of the territory line, the forest was supposed to be full of old, ancient creatures. Dryads for starters, who craved human flesh and who would eat a person while they were still alive. Wendigos did much the same, but also dragged people to their underground dens. Then they overwintered, snacking on their captives until they went aboveground again.

  As a tenured professor at CCU, his mother would know more about this book and its stories. He would ask her later what she thought the connection between The Dark Mother and the sirens might be.

  He typed, we should find out what happened.

  We know what happened.

  I don’t think we do, he replied.

  ?

  There was the storm and the sirens came into the cove. What if there’s a reason for that?

  ?????

  They’re not supposed to be in the cove. What made them come in like that?

  You think there’s a reason?

  Yes, he wrote. Not just a reason but probably someone to blame.

  Abby didn’t seem to have a response for that.

  Don’t you want to know? What if it saves someone’s life?

  Not Landon’s life. Landon was dead and even in Castle Cove, he would probably stay that way. But Grayson was thinking about the next time someone was in the cove and the sirens broke the boundary of Heart’s Rock. What then?

  He typed out, For next time.

  It seemed like she wouldn’t write back. For minutes he stared at the screen. He put the phone down and searched the computer for the other book, The Dark Mother and Her Children. There was no listing in the computer. He checked his spelling twice, but nothing.

  How many secret treasures—like a hundred-year-old book—were hidden in this old dusty shop? Grayson couldn’t help but wonder.

  His phone buzzed.

  Sure, she wrote back. I’d want to know. But my mother will shit a brick if we start “investigating.” She’s already on the case.

  Do they have a lead?

  He traced the embossed tree with his fingers. His hand kept going to the blue heron.

  Not yet, she wrote. Promise you’ll take me with you if you plan on “investigating.”

  He smiled at her incessant use of quotation marks. What her mother did was no doubt investigating without quotation marks. Whatever sleuthing they would undertake—tomorrow or next week—certainly merited that distinction. They were not professionals.

  His phone buzzed again but it wasn’t a text message. It was an alarm for closing time. He powered down the computer and checked all the windows and back door to make sure they were locked up. He saw a book sitting open on a stool. A page turned.

  “Don’t stay up too late reading, Gladys,” he said and smiled to himself. “You’ll be dead tired tomorrow.” That was the one problem about making jokes with ghosts. One could never tell if they were appreciated.

  At the register, he wrote a note for Ms. Monroe, officially “checking out” the two books that Gladys had recommended. This was the shop’s policy, that he was allowed to borrow any book from the shelves that he liked, as long as he brought it back in the same condition he’d found it and made sure he recorded what he took.

  He always did.

  He flipped the open sign to closed, and with the two books under his arm, he stepped out onto the porch. His keys clanked against the wood as he locked up. He drove home in silence with the radio off, the two books sitting in the passenger seat beside him.

  When he got home, he found a note from his parents on the kitchen table.

  Gray,

  Took Tanner to his game. Might be back late, especially if they win. Pizza! Pizza! Leftovers in the fridge. Text us when you get home so we know you’re okay. Someone came by the house looking for you. See the note. Call us if something comes up.

  Mom and Dad

  A twinge of disappointment tightened his chest. He’d forgotten about the baseball game and he never missed Tanner’s games. Even when his parents couldn’t make it, Grayson was always there. He hadn’t even thought about the game. It wasn’t like him to have something so completely slip his mind.

  That’s what happens when your best friend dies, he thought. The mind vacillates between forgetting it happened—pretending nothing had changed—to being slammed with the reality of it again and again.


  Like a body tumbling in the moonlit surf.

  He sank into the dining room chair with tears in the corner of his eyes. He felt the image pressing in on him again. He bit his lip so hard that it bled. But at least the image was gone and he was in his body again.

  He texted his parents.

  I’m home. Tell T I’m sorry I missed the game.

  His mother wrote back almost instantly, as if she’d been holding the phone at the ready exactly for this moment.

  He understands. Are you staying in tonight?

  He practically heard the plea in her voice.

  I’m home for the night, he wrote as if throwing her a bone. He slid the books onto the table. I’ll be reading.

  Eat something. Call me if you need something. ANYTHING, she instructed.

  OK. And that was the end of it.

  Grayson left the books on the table and went into the kitchen. He made himself a plate of leftover Chinese, wanting to eat it cold this time, and added a heap of salad too.

  He didn’t look at the second note until he sat down at the table again.

  “Reese,” he read aloud, forking noodles into his mouth.

  Neither the number nor the name were in his parents’ handwriting, both of which he knew by heart. That meant the note must’ve been tacked to the door or stuffed in their mailbox while they were at work.

  So who was this mystery person? He didn’t know anyone by the name of Reese. If it was a cop or someone wanting to follow up on Landon’s death, wouldn’t they just have called him? Or maybe this was a reporter. There were two newspapers in Castle Cove.

  Unlike the rest of the country where the newspaper was dying a slow, bloody death, they were doing just fine in Castle Cove—both the respectable paper, The Cove Chronicle, and the gossip rag, The Daily Bite.

  The only problem was that Grayson detested speaking on the phone. He certainly wasn’t going to call some stranger for a chat.

  “Here’s hoping this is a cell phone,” he said. He typed in the number and opened a new text message.

  This is Grayson H. You came by my house?

  No answer.

  He finished his dinner, rinsed his plate in the sink and when he opened the dishwasher to slide the plate into the rack, he heard the phone buzz on the kitchen table.