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The docks looked ominous in the waning sun, each boat a misshapen skeleton against the skyline. Once again, Miriam and Macy stood on the wooden planks beside Madre’s Mayhem. Popeye, the black cat that had judged them from the top of the ramp, lazily cleaned himself on the bow. Other cats meowed at their feet, one of them snaking around Miriam’s legs. They seemed hungry.
“Mr. Bark!” Miriam yelled up the ramp.
Nothing.
“Guess he’s not here,” Macy suggested. “We should come back tomorrow. In the daylight. When it’s not so creepy out here.”
Miriam would not be deterred this time. Whether or not Bark was here, she meant to get on his boat and have a look around. Though the most useful information surely existed in Bark’s head, Miriam imagined that some scrap of useful, material evidence might be found somewhere in this hull.
“I’m going up. You can stay here if you want,” Miriam said.
Macy exhaled sharply, placing her hands on her hips. But she didn’t say anything. Not this time.
Miriam stepped up the ramp, causing Popeye to stop his bath and consider her, his tongue frozen in place as he sized her up. She didn’t resume her climb until the cat continued licking his paws, as if his approval mattered more than propriety. The ramp creaked with each step, but the docks were nearly empty. No one seemed to care that she was there.
Once on the deck, she took in the view of the old, dilapidated planks stretching across the floor. Everything seemed dirty. Ancient. On the verge of disappearing into dust. A thump startled her— a cat had landed from a perch somewhere above. It ran down the ramp with its tail tucked between its legs.
The topside seemed starkly appointed, with very little that Miriam could even consider evidence, so she made her way up to the small, enclosed cockpit just above her entry point. Unlike Newt’s Mama Jean, the cockpit had no door. She ran her fingers along the instrument panel as she crossed through it, looking for anything suspicious, but she came up empty again.
Though it felt more invasive and harder to justify, Miriam decided that her only course was the hold. She made her way back to the deck and found the wooden square frame with a knotted rope sticking out one edge. She pulled it up and gingerly flipped it back to ensure that the bang of the hatch against the deck didn’t make too much noise. She considered that a need to be quiet meant she’d crossed a line, but then she forced herself to think of Tanner, causing her to push on.
The stairs down into the dark room below were steep, but Miriam navigated them deftly, quickly descending until she found even footing. The light from above only lit a few feet in front of her, causing the hold to seem dangerous and unsafe. Her heartrate spiked. She should have brought a weapon.
Without the help of her eyes, she listened intently for anything that might represent a threat. Only when she could ensure that she wouldn’t need her hands for defense did she fish her phone from her pocket.
The light illuminated the room’s corners. While the deck was clean, the hold was filled to the brim with stuff: boxes, nets, tools. An empty table sat in the middle of the room, its legs bolted to the floor with steel brackets. The smell of fish down here hung heavier than in the salty air above.
Miriam spun around in a slow circle to get a sense of the size, unveiling another door slightly ajar. Where to start? She decided on the room, pushing gently on the door until there was resistance. With ease, she slid her thin body through the narrow opening.
Smaller, this room was as an office, with a metal desk bolted against the wall and a folding chair in front of it. Pictures hung along the walls. Rubbermaid file boxes sat behind the door. A map unrolled across the desk, each corner duct-taped down.
Miriam pulled the chair out of the way to stand over the desk, shining her light on the worn map. Somewhere along the way, Bark must have laminated it, but water stains wrinkled the paper inside the plastic, implying that it hadn’t always been that way. Miriam studied it, taking in the coastline and the waters of Cape Madre, fixating on the inky scrawls drawn over the plastic covering.
As she tried to make sense of it all, she became aware of steps above her. Someone had come aboard Madre’s Mayhem. She quickly turned off her phone light and folded herself into the small space under the desk. As gently as she could, she dragged the chair back so that it sat in front of her.
As her heart pumped wildly, she became aware of the sound of her own breathing. Miriam tried to calm herself by closing her eyes and focusing on her extremities, her chest, and, finally, her lungs, just as her father had made her practice hundreds of times. With no weapon, her only option would be to hide and wait.
The steps moved around on the deck but zeroed in quickly on the hole leading down to where Miriam hid. The more she studied each step, the more she began to relax. Bark’s feet would surely make louder sounds than she now heard.
“Mir?” a fevered whisper rushed into the room, confirming Miriam’s suspicions.
Relieved, she squeezed out from under the desk and made her way to the bottom of the steep wooden staircase. Macy’s wide eyes peered down into the hold.
“Everything ok?” Miriam asked, mirroring Macy’s whisper.
Without an answer, Macy turned around backwards and started down the stairs, using the framing to steady herself on the descent. Miriam stood aside to make room for her.
On flat ground again, Macy hissed, “What are you doing? I thought you were just gonna see if he was here!”
Miriam could feel the nervous energy pouring off her best friend, but she refused to let it stop her investigation. She turned the light back on and motioned for Macy to follow her into the tiny room. Neither girl had any trouble slipping through the narrow crevice, but Miriam imagined that Bark would have to wriggle and squeeze to have any hope of making it through. Why make it so hard on himself?
“Look at this,” Miriam said, abandoning the whisper.
Macy stood beside her and looked at the map. Miriam could tell that Macy wasn’t really studying it, but Miriam’s mind went to quick work correlating the marks, trying to make sense of what they all meant.
Miriam pointed at a circle drawn in black ink. “This here. I think it’s the vortex. And here.” She pointed at an X drawn in green nearer the shore. “I think this is where Emma got attacked.”
Macy touched the X and whispered, “Why would he be tracking that?”
Miriam shrugged, but on some primal level, it made sense. Bark knew something about the kraken. Something that no one else had figured out. Miriam didn’t know what yet, but she intended to discover the truth. Because the truth would lead her to Tanner.
Macy pointed at another green X, far off the coast but nowhere near the black circle. “What’s that, then?”
Miriam didn’t have the answer. Joe Hampton, maybe? Miriam had assumed that his attack had taken place in the vortex just like Tanner’s, but maybe not. If it had come to shore for Emma, maybe it also lurked in other parts of the water.
Or maybe there was more than one.
Of course there had to be if the species had survived all this time, but Miriam pushed that frightening thought out of her mind. She had no evidence for that yet, and until she did, she preferred to focus on only what she could account for.
“Maybe that’s where Joe got attacked?” Miriam offered.
Macy nodded, her red curls causing strange shadows to bounce around the room. “And the red Xs? What are those?”
The hastily-drawn red Xs covered the blue ocean region. The sheer volume of them sent a chill up Miriam’s spine. If each X corresponded to some encounter with the kraken, then that meant its appearances were more prevalent than she would have guessed. But did they mark attacks? Sightings? Or maybe something else that she hadn’t considered.
Miriam eyed the markers in the plastic case affixed to the wall, fighting the urge to mark a new X for Tanner. Though all of this felt wrong, she did admire Bark’s careful attention to detail, and once she figured out the meaning of it all, she felt confident that this map held secrets that she would need to kill the kraken and save Tanner.
“You should take a picture,” Macy suggested.
Already on it, Miriam used panoramic mode to scan over the entirety of the map. Though dark, she’d be able to edit the photo to bring out the most important bits once she got to a computer.
That done, Miriam scanned the rest of the room. She didn’t want to press her luck by going through each box.
“Let’s check out the other room,” Miriam said as she led the way back through the doorway.
Once through, Macy turned on the light of her cell phone as well, bathing the hold in a more reasonable amount of cold, white light. Though Miriam would have dutifully fanned out to cover more ground had she been with Tanner, she could tell that Macy had no interest in leaving her side. They inched along, their backs to the center of the room so they could study the stuff lined against the walls.
“It smells like ass down here.”
Not the description Miriam would have used, but it did smell bad. Worse than she would have imagined, even for a fishing boat. It didn’t surprise her, though. Based on the outer image of the Madre’s Mayhem, Bark clearly didn’t spend a lot of time cleaning.
They moved along past wooden crates full of ropes, rusted tools, and five-gallon buckets. As they swept their lights past a handheld scale, they both stopped their lights on the unexpected sight of a plastic yellow backpack. It sat atop a black roller bag with a red ribbon around one of the handles. Both seemed misplaced among the hold’s other accoutrements.
Miriam crept forward until she could see the tiny red-and-white Pokeball emblazoned on the outside pocket of the backpack. Bark did not seem like a Pokemon fan. Miriam’s mind started to form a theory, but it still eluded her conscious thought, manifesting only in her quickened heartrate and clammy hands.
Kneeling next to the roller bag, her eyes followed the red ribbon and found a luggage tag attached at the other end. Miriam looked up to Macy and then turned it around so that she could read the name.
Emma Chu.
“What does it say?” Macy asked, her voice shaky and unsure.
Miriam shot to her feet. “It says we need to get out of here.”
She didn’t know exactly why, but every impulse shooting through Miriam’s veins told her that something was horribly wrong. Maybe he had found it, she reasoned, and taken it aboard for safekeeping. With Emma in the hospital, Bark might not know how to return it to her. But that didn’t feel right.
Eager to leave, but still curious, Miriam swept her light around the room, past the table and to the other side of the hull. She saw more luggage, hidden under a large net. Surely, Emma Chu hadn’t brought this much luggage for one week in Cape Madre. Bikinis didn’t take up much room.
She tried to keep a tally in her head as she counted off the bags. She guessed there were enough for at least two people. And if Emma was one of them, who was the other?
Macy stood nervously at the bottom of the steps. “Come on. We should go. You said so.”
It’s true. Miriam had said that, but she needed more information. She needed something more concrete. Something that could bring the confusion into sharp focus.
She spun, trying to catch a glimpse of anything that could help. As her light drifted past the floor, she noticed the wood beneath the table was dark and stained. She stopped and lifted the light, her eyes following the legs of the table until she could make out the unmistakable color of blood splattered across the table.
Bark was a fisherman. It could just be from fish, right? Miriam tried to tell herself that she was blowing it all out of proportion. Bark was a nice man. A man of the people, by all accounts. Most likely, the darkness and adrenaline of trespassing had just spooked her. All of this could be explained. Somehow.
“Come on!” Macy insisted.
The light glinted back at Miriam, reflecting off something new. Something shiny. Something metal.
A saw. Specifically, a bone saw. A big one that would be capable of sawing apart large fish, of sawing easily through bone and tissue. The teeth of the blade were stained blackish red.
Yes, maybe Bark had used it for sawing apart fish. Or maybe...
“Go!” Miriam shouted as she ran towards Macy.
Macy climbed up the stairs awkwardly and slowly, causing Miriam to push against her butt to hasten their exit. When they both emerged on deck, Miriam took a deep breath and searched the docks. She didn’t see anything other than the outlines of the boats and the furry shadows of the cats.
Macy helped her lower the door into place, then they sprinted down the ramp and across the docks and into the parking lot of the Shady Shark Motel. Macy leaned against the car, gasping for breath, as Miriam replayed all they’d seen.
“Let’s go,” she said, nudging Macy to get into the car.
Only when they were safely on the road did Miriam finally take an unencumbered breath.
This was bad.
Her mind reeled with possibilities. Bark had sawed off some guys leg. Almost certainly. Maybe her passing thought at the medical examiner’s office hadn’t been as fanciful as it’d seemed.
As she put it together, her hope that Bark might have fished Tanner up and saved his life evaporated. No, if Bark had found Tanner, then it would surely be too late.
Miriam yelled at Macy, “We need to go see Detective Wallace. Now!”
