Tidepool

by Nicole Willson

  The next wave of creatures to emerge from the churning ocean were on foot. These creatures would have looked quite familiar to anyone who had ever seen the late Lucy, although they were significantly larger than Lucy had been. One of them tore open the door of the marshal’s office and claimed Marshal Lewis, who finally woke from his stupor just as the thing began to tear him apart and feast on his flesh. He did not have time to scream before he died.

  Another monster reduced the church where Tidepool residents first learned of the existence of the Lords Below to a pile of splintered planks, claiming the remains of its ancestors to return to the water for proper, respectful burials. The Lords found the display in the church insulting, blasphemous.

  These creatures moved much faster than the first wave had, and they were able to chase down many of the unfortunate souls who had been sensible enough to flee Tidepool, but hadn’t begun their escapes quite fast enough.

  Although the innkeepers did not see what exactly had happened to Mrs. Oliver, Balt and Naomi Cooper knew that it was time to run when they heard the unearthly bellows, saw the churning ocean, and guessed what those things meant for Tidepool. They fled the inn, planning to take their horses from the stables and flee to Ocean City.

  But Naomi couldn’t run very fast, especially not when she was faced with the steep hill of Water Street. Her aching knees throbbed with every hurried step, and her lungs burned from the exertion. Her husband gripped her hand and tried to pull her along as well as he could. But behind them, a tall, green, scaled creature began to catch up far too quickly, its onyx eyes fixed on the lagging, struggling Naomi.

  Balt ultimately threw himself between Naomi and the creature, pushing his wife ahead of him. His last words to her were “Don’t look back!” And she did not. The sounds she heard behind her were horror enough.

  Balt’s sacrifice was not in vain. Naomi staggered up the hill, trying hard to block out the noises of her dying husband behind her and the burning pain searing through her knees. And then Jean Evans, an older woman who ate frequently at Cooper’s, rode her buggy out from a side street and spotted her. She hauled Naomi into her buggy and carried them both safely out of Tidepool.

  Naomi eventually found employment in Ocean City, but to the end of her days, she fantasized about traveling to Baltimore, finding Sorrow Hamilton, and making that wretched girl pay for the death and destruction she’d brought to all their lives.

  Detective Burnett, still standing where Sorrow had stabbed him with her mother’s hatpin, refused to believe anything was wrong even as endless screams carried through the air from the lower reaches of the town. He prided himself on never frightening easily; one simply couldn’t in his line of work. Monsters that lived in the ocean and emerged to feast on the living were superstitious nonsense as far as he was concerned. That murdering Oliver woman and her Tidepool accomplices had sold the gullible townspeople a load of nonsense to cover up the woman’s own depraved practices.

  He tended to the wound in his upper arm as best he could, wrapping a handkerchief around it to staunch the bleeding and wondering if he would be able to ride a buggy all the way to a larger town with better medical care. Puncture wounds could mean a terrible infection, he knew.

  Sorrow Hamilton’s father had damn well better pay him a substantial extra fee for this, Burnett thought, jerking the makeshift bandage tighter. He wouldn’t hesitate to see that little bitch of a daughter locked in another jail cell if it came to that.

  Then again, the opal-tipped hatpin he’d pulled out of his arm looked old and quite valuable. Perhaps he’d just keep it. If the Hamiltons wanted it back, he’d gladly sell it to them–for an extremely high price.

  So intent was he on bandaging his wound that he did not pick up on the difference in sound between the running feet of the fleeing Tidepool inhabitants and the running feet of the Lords taking their vengeance on the town. He failed to notice the creature heading for him until it was almost on top of him. He looked up into large, glossy black eyes as the thing seized his neck with its heavy claw-tipped fingers. The creature ripped his throat wide open with its rows of teeth and his own hot blood poured down his chest. He tried to scream, but could no longer make any sounds.

  As the creatures dragged the corpses of the people they had caught back to the water, the tide rolling into the beach began to turn a distinct shade of pink.

  The third and final wave of creatures summoned by the death of Ada Oliver stood twelve feet high. Although they walked on two legs, they had multiple tentacles instead of two arms, and because they lived in the depths of the ocean, they had no eyes. But they could smell, and the odors of blood, offal, and fear helped them to track down their targets.

  Whereas the previous waves of creatures had mostly contented themselves with chasing down people trying to run from the town, this final wave of monsters focused on destroying buildings with their long tentacles and retrieving the humans they smelled inside. It was simple work for them to smash apart the dilapidated wooden structures and seize the occupants.

  The people caught by these creatures were not immediately torn apart and devoured as their predecessors had been. They were caught fast by their necks or limbs and hauled to the water. A few of the townspeople fired pistols or rifles at the monsters or attempted to strike at them with whatever implements they could grab as they were pulled to the ocean.

  But that did nothing to slow the creatures down. Indeed, it only made them more aggressive as they grabbed up entire families. The people they carried drowned as they were pulled into the cold, dark depths of the Atlantic.

  By late afternoon, the town was empty of living people. The ones who had not escaped floated in pieces in the surf, or lay much further out at the bottom of the ocean. Those bodies would provide food later on, when the Lords began to hunger again.

  And the tide continued thundering into the beach; the pink foam was now distinctly reddish brown, and the water stained the wet sand with blood. Thunder and lightning boomed across the sky as the wind howled and a cold rain fell over the town. Waves, growing ever higher, crashed into the ruined buildings, knocked down the docks and the few other structures that had remained standing after the onslaught of the Lords, and washed all the debris out to sea.

  Fishermen who arrived the next day found the ruins of what had once been Tidepool floating under a sunny, tranquil sky. They couldn’t fathom what might have happened to the town or its inhabitants. They would have known if a hurricane were coming in, and any storm that could wreak that much destruction on the town would surely have been seen and felt in other areas along the coast. Tidepool had seemed oddly sheltered from other such storms in the past. But no more.

  The fishermen fled the ruins of the town after they discovered severed limbs floating with the driftwood in the tide. All that remained of Tidepool was the mansion looming at the top of the hill, and that place fell into disrepair as the years passed.

  Whatever had happened there, Tidepool was gone. The question of how the place might have met its sudden, brutal end preoccupied people in the surrounding areas for years afterwards, and Tidepool took on the aura of a mythical place. Survivors of the destruction sometimes spoke of the things that had emerged from the water to feast on the townspeople, but those who heard the stories disregarded such talk as tall tales, or demented raving.

  Curious people who attempted to find Tidepool could no longer figure out where it had once been.

  And as the people who survived the massacre or remembered the town in any way died off, it was as if Tidepool had never existed at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  RESURRECTION

  Quentin Ramsay

  * * *

  Quentin fled the beach soon after chasing Sorrow away for the last time. He ran up the hill along with the first wave of fleeing townspeople, although he knew that he himself was in no danger from what was to come.

  He reached the mansion he had shared with his sister and tore down to the basement, nearly losi
ng his footing and tumbling down the steps in his haste. He shut himself into Lucy’s old room and huddled on the floor, crying. Although the cellar blocked out a good bit of the noise in the town, he believed he could still hear screams of agony coming from men, women and children alike as the ancient lords of the water claimed them. He smelled blood. He smelled death.

  Even if few people in Tidepool had ever been particularly kind to Quentin, he had never wanted any of this. He clapped his hands to his ears and banged his head against the cellar wall as though he could knock out all the sounds of suffering, and yet he still heard flesh tearing, blood spilling, the pain of the dying. Sobs wracked his chest. He hoped desperately that Sorrow had escaped in time, cursing himself for not doing more to be sure she’d gotten away from this wretched place before the Lords rose.

  He wept until he could cry no more, and he remained curled up in a miserable ball on the cold floor of the cellar. His own breathing was so loud that at first, he couldn’t tell when the sounds of the massacre finally began to quiet.

  Quentin lay in the awful stillness, wishing he could rejoin the newly dead of Tidepool. He had been so close, so at peace for just a few glorious moments…

  And then the front door of the house opened, and his heart began thundering in his ears. Footsteps made the floor upstairs creak as someone headed for the cellar. A hinge squealed as the door upstairs swung open.

  Quentin rolled himself into a tighter ball as the footsteps moved down the cellar stairs. He could smell the intruder now. It reeked of ocean water and human blood.

  Someone pushed the door of Lucy’s room open, and lamplight spilled across his body, revealing his hiding spot.

  “Quentin?”

  Ada stood in the doorway. Illuminated by the lamp, she looked like a specter risen from the dead, which Quentin supposed she was.

  As was he.

  Sea water still dripped from her hair and clothing. There was a small nick on her face where one of the detective’s bullets had struck her, but no other sign of the wounds that had caused her death.

  What if she really was a ghost? He looked away from her and curled yet more tightly into himself, alarmed by his sister’s appearance.

  “Quentin, get up off that floor right now. It is time for us to leave Tidepool.” She still sounded like herself, at least.

  Quentin didn’t want to get up. He thought again of the few blissful moments earlier that day when he had been dead, finally free of this endless nightmare.

  And then another idea occurred to him: What if I were to kill her? If she died again, so would he. And there was nobody left here to put her in the water and bring her back. Even Lucy was dead.

  He had considered murdering his sister before, but he knew he would be dooming many people to a horrible fate if he killed Ada, and that knowledge had always stopped him. Once he’d gotten to know—and even like—a few of the people of Tidepool, he couldn’t simply ignore what her death would mean for them.

  But now the worst had happened. Tidepool was gone, as were those who had lived there. The people of whatever town Ada might be called to next were mere abstractions.

  Ada took a few more steps towards him.

  “Quentin? Did you hear me? Are you all right?”

  He never entirely understood what had happened to his sister on the night her dreadful husband had disappeared, not even after she had explained it to him.

  But as terrifying as her new abilities were, she was still his sister. She had often been the only thing standing between him and torment from others. She had even bound him to herself for eternity rather than lose him.

  And he knew that no matter how much he hated the life he now led, he would never be able to raise a hand against her.

  Himself, yes.

  Ada? Never.

  “Quentin.”

  That tone was not to be argued with, and Quentin hauled himself to his feet and followed his sister out of their Tidepool home for the last time.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE GHASTLY APPARITION

  Winslow Hamilton

  * * *

  On a chilly October night, Winslow Hamilton saw a ghost.

  The being standing in Winslow’s dimly-lit foyer certainly looked like his daughter, but he feared it might be a malevolent spirit’s poor imitation of Sorrow.

  Sorrow had sent him one last letter, a deeply alarming message claiming that she and Charles Sherman were being prevented from leaving Tidepool. He’d assumed that Burnett and Warner, the two fellows he’d hired to go there after them, would straighten that out quickly.

  But then they too had fallen out of contact.

  Winslow went to the pier at Light Street twice daily when the steamers from Claiborne came in and the passengers disembarked. And twice daily, he returned home alone.

  He was making preparations to go to Tidepool himself to learn what had become of his family on the night she finally reappeared.

  The apparition smelled of the sea, of salt and sweat and blood. A bright red gash ran across the woman’s face, burning through her white, freckled skin. It started above her right eyebrow and nearly reached the left side of her mouth. Her right eye was red and badly swollen. Even in the dim nighttime light, the wound looked vicious.

  And in her uninjured eye, Winslow saw no trace of his daughter’s personality, neither the sunny kindness she had shown to so many nor the fiery defiance she usually displayed to him.

  She wore a dress so caked in filth that it was impossible to determine what color it had been. The brown stains along its front and its hem might have been mud, or they might have been something else. Surely his fastidious daughter would never have appeared in public in such a state.

  But Winslow did not, as a rule, believe in ghosts. Was it possible he was seeing his daughter again after all?

  “Dear God, Sorrow. Dear God, you frightened me.” Winslow held a shaking hand to his chest. He had been of a mind to upbraid her for disobeying him and disappearing, but her woeful appearance put all harsh words out of his head. Was this truly his child?

  “Hello, Father.” The girl spoke in a flat, lifeless tone.

  “Your face. What on earth happened?” He stepped closer to her and reached a hand out to her cheek. She ducked away from his touch.

  “Just an accident.”

  “What sort of accident would produce a wound like that?” The girl looked as if some animal had taken a swipe at her.

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  He withdrew his hand.

  “I was at the pier today, Sorrow. I didn’t see you come in on the steamer.”

  “I didn’t take the boat. I took a carriage from Claiborne.”

  “A carriage?” He shook his head. “That trip must have taken ages. Why on earth would you do that?”

  “I… didn’t care for the boat.” Her tone was still listless.

  He peered around her. “Where is everyone else?”

  She shook her head, staring at the wooden floor. “Charlie went to look for Hal in Ocean City. Those fellows you sent followed them there.”

  He sensed even then that she wasn’t being truthful.

  As the days went on, Winslow wondered if he was indeed in the presence of a wraith. This pale, morose stranger who sat at meals and picked at her food, who resembled his daughter but behaved nothing liked her, unnerved him deeply. When before she’d filled the air with talk of a newspaper she wished to work for, or harsh disagreements with Winslow over what he thought she should be focusing her life on, she rarely spoke now.

  She refused to see a doctor for that horrifying wound, no matter how much Winslow tried to persuade her. The injury began to heal as the days progressed, but a scar would traverse her face for the rest of her life.

  Only in her sleep did she display any emotion.

  Winslow awoke one night to screams that pierced the darkness and rang through the upper floor of the house. His heart racing, he stumbled out of bed and struck the doorframe with a shoulder a
s he hurried towards Sorrow’s bedroom, expecting to find an intruder hovering over her bed.

  But she was alone, fully dressed on the still-made bed and writhing as she let out one shout of terror after another.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and shook her until she gasped awake, bolting upright in the darkness.

  “Hal?” she whispered. “Is it really you?”

  “It’s your father, Sorrow. You must have been having a nightmare.”

  She let out a moan and fell back into the pillow.

  Sometimes when he woke her up, she’d ask for the Sherman boy. When she realized again it was only Winslow standing over her, she would turn to face the wall, with no words for him.

  Winslow lingered in the hallway after these episodes, feeling ashamed and useless as his daughter choked back sobs. He knew she would never open up to him, never tell him what she saw in her nightmares that inspired such unholy terror. This was the sort of thing Hal had dealt with; he had always known what to say to Sorrow to calm her when she was distraught, and Winslow had been content to let Hal deal with the girl’s emotions.

  But now all she had was him.

  Nellie, their housemaid, came to him one afternoon, gnawing at her lower lip.

  “Mister Hamilton? I found this under your daughter’s pillow.”

  She pulled a plump hand from her apron and held up a large, sharp butcher knife that belonged in the kitchen, not in the girl’s bed. Winslow swallowed hard.

  “She’s been acting mighty strange lately, sir,” the maid observed. “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Winslow did mind, but he didn’t have the energy to scold her. It wasn’t as if Nellie were wrong.

  “Please put that back where it belongs in the kitchen. I’ll have a word with her.”

  But he did not. He had no idea what to say to her, no idea of how to banish the terrors that filled her mind.