In Search Of and Others by Will Ludwigsen

Author:Will Ludwigsen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fantasy, literary, weird fiction, ghosts, short stories, author collection, imaginative
ISBN: 978-1-59021-166-3
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2013-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

She Shells

She’d been down there for days, her long brown hair washing back and forth with the tide.

The best the men could tell, she’d somehow gotten lodged in the colony of mussels clinging to the seawall, and repeated proddings with long poles and hooks hadn’t managed to get her free. The current was swift and more often than not, the best you’d do was jab her in the face. If you got the hook around her neck, the head would seem to slither out of it. Tommy and Harold got a rope around her waist, but they couldn’t pull her free even with six more of us pulling along behind them. Even connected to the front bumper of Garrett’s Ford, that rope preferred to fray and give way rather than get her loose.

Oxwell the coroner was for just letting the body break off naturally in a few days on account of nobody coming out to claim her, but that didn’t seem right. Maybe she had kin up the river a few miles. They’d be sure to wonder where she was, and when they came down to ask us, it might be nice to have something more than a story to give them.

So we got Frank outfitted in his diving gear and sent him down to see what was what. Usually, Frank did repairs to our boats and piers in the good season, and he was the best in the business. A real no-nonsense guy: go down, get it done, come back.

We set him up a ladder and compressor rig while he put on the thick gray suit and its heavy brass helmet. We helped him tighten the screws until his breath fogged the little circle of glass, and he gave us the thumbs up as he climbed down the ladder.

We had some limited communication from him through the hose apparatus, and his breathing was calm and constant all the way down into the water. He called off six feet and then twelve feet, and then he got real quiet.

It was almost a minute before he spoke. “She’s in here real good,” he said. “These shells are almost up to her waist.”

“You be careful down there!” Tommy shouted, as though his voice would have to carry through the water. “Those will cut you right up.”

The next thing we heard after several grunts of effort was a whisper. “What the hell is that?”

“What is what?” Tommy said, and we all leaned over the seawall to see what we could see. The body was still gently swaying in the current, and the hair was caressing his helmet.

“Jesus,” Frank said next. “Jesus Christ.”

We watched him helplessly as he reached for the ladder. He’d gotten one hand and one foot on it before something pulled him back. We could feel the solid thunk of his helmet against the concrete through our feet, and the dark cloud blooming was unmistakable.

“Pull him up! Pull him up!” Tommy was drawing the hose up hand over hand when something pulled back against it.

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