Page 6 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
No splash. No movement. Just…gone.
“What the actual—nope. Nope.” I scramble off the wreck and back to shore like it’s on fire.
I don’t stop until I’m on dry land, lungs burning, heart trying to do gymnastics in my ribcage.
“Okay. Cool. Love that. Just a totally normal maritime hallucination. Very seaside chic,” I mutter, pacing in tight circles. “Wasn’t a ghost. Could’ve been a fisherman. A really...dramatic...drenched, possibly cosplaying fisherman.”
A gull screams overhead, probably mocking me. I flip it off on principle.
I’m about to haul ass back to town when I hear footsteps. Not mine. Not casual, either—deliberate. Soft. Wet.
I whirl around, ready to throw the key like it’s a dagger and I’ve suddenly trained for that.
There’s no one there.
But the wreck creaks again.
This time it sounds like laughter.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“People don’t usually visit this time of evening,” a voice says suddenly from behind me.
I yelp, spin, and nearly clock the speaker with my elbow.
It’s a woman. Mid-fifties, dressed in a tattered orange slicker, holding a thermos and a fishing net. She’s got sea glass eyes and a grin like she knows exactly how nuts I look right now.
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry. “Didn’t mean to startle. You okay?”
“No,” I say. “But I’m excellent at faking it. You a local?”
“Grew up here. Name’s Clary. You Jonas’s girl?”
I pause.
God, I hate how people say it like that. Like I’m just an extension of his madness.
“Yeah,” I admit. “Unfortunately.”
She nods like that explains everything. “He used to come out here all the time. Talked to the wreck. Called it ‘her’ like it was alive.”
“Sounds about right.”
“You see him too?”
I blink. “Him?”
Clary takes a swig from her thermos. “The man in the surf. Shows up sometimes. Not always. Always gone by the second glance.”
My skin crawls. “Is that a local legend or are we just leaning into the mental breakdown together?”
“Both,” she says cheerfully. “But I bring him tea. Just in case.”
“Right.”
She shrugs and starts walking away. “Careful, girl. Some ghosts don’t want company. But some? Some been waiting for it a long, long time.”
I stand there long after she disappears into the mist, staring at the wreck.
