The Sirens Gift

Chapter 6.

I ran my fingers through my hair as I walked along the sandy beach that led to the lighthouse. The sun warmed my face, but the breeze cooled where the sun touched almost instantly. The mile walk felt longer than normal and the wind tousled my long, wavy brown hair back over my shoulders.

Sabrina sat and brushed the knots that formed in my hair over my three days of bed-ridden depression and pulled the top half up into a neat ponytail.

I slipped on a pair of pink tennis shoes and a grey pullover sweater and black leggings on top of my black two-piece bathing suit before grabbing my bag and heading out the door. Sabrina agreed to cover my shift once again so that I could get away for a while.

I crested the top of the hill which separates me from the dock on the opposite side of the light house. A small boat teetered back and forth in the water, calmly listing side to side as the wind pushed waves beneath it and below the dock. A man was moving buckets onto the small motor boat. As well as a cooler and a bag of what seemed to be tools. The side of the boat was silver and red, it looked worn as if it had been a well-loved craft. On the side I could see numbers and then the words “Jack of Hearts” in fading letters.

The man was gruff, older, with a thick dark beard and mustache with greying strands and hair to match. He had on a dark hooded sweater and jeans that looked to be covered in red fluids and bits of pink gunk.

As I neared I smelled the undeniable scent of chum. Mushed up fish meat muddled in a steel bucket which, for some reason, always amplified the copper smell of fish blood. I pinched my nose as I neared to stifle the gag that threatened in the back of my throat.

“Howdy…” he said, shifting another bucket neatly into his boat.

“Howdy…” I mimicked back in a similar tone as I stepped up to the end of the dock.

“I’ll be on my way shortly. Was just… getting some tools…” He reached into a pile of netting, it was bundled up in a tight pile curled in on itself. He tossed it into his boat before patting his hands together.

I nodded, “Uhm… you know chumming is illegal right here… right?” I asked, motioning toward the lighthouse. “They don’t want sharks near the bays… even in winter…”

He looked down to the buckets in his boat and shrugged, “What they don’t know won’t hurt em…” He responded, a threatening tone laced in his deep southern accent.

“Well… they have shark sensors out… and they investigate… so…”

“I think you should just mind your business, little lady.” He responded, winking a blue eye at me.

“It’s seriously not safe to lure the sharks in…”

He paused and I could see his eyes roll as he peered down the dock at me. A tired look warped his face into annoyance. “I got a big fish tank with carnivore fish… it’s easier and cheaper to make my own chum for ‘em than to buy it at the store.”

My stomach twisted, his tone seemed off. Something about the way he spoke made my skin prickle.

“Well… don’t let the coast guard catch you… they wouldn’t believe that story.” I responded.

“I ain’t got caught before.” He responded as he unfurled the rope, keeping his boat tethered to the dock. “Long as you don’t go tellin’ on me.” He gave a short two finger salute from his eyebrow. He kicked himself away from the dock, “Be seein’ you, little lady.”

With that, he started the small trolling motor on his boat. It sputtered to life, giving out a low humming noise as he situated himself in the seat beside the steering shaft as it started and he slowly followed the curvature of the lighthouse's cape out of sight from me.

His disappearance calmed me, but our interaction had concerned me.

“The net…” I started, looking toward the cape “Was that…” I trudged through to sand over the small dunes. I could see the marks of heavy boots headed from and toward the dock leading into the alcove beneath the lighthouse.

The boot marks stopped where the merman had been tangled in a very similar net to the one the man had thrown into his boat. It looked as though there had been a deliberate effort to disturb the sand where the merman had sat. Our handprints and the indents where my knees had dug into the sand as I cut out the strands of the net had been scuffed out.

The skin prickled on the back of my neck and I looked back out toward the water for a moment, listening for the trolling motor. But the wind forced any noises from the bay to be incomprehensible.