Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural mystery novel, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Eight of Season Two. Start Here.
Previously, the team came together to finally capture the mysterious beast in Mothwood Forest…
In this episode, Caroline wrestles with the secrets she’s keeping, and a haunting at a grocery store leads to a dangerous revelation…
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
Water—cold, dark, surrounding, pulling, suffocating.
Caroline fought a vicious tide, reaching with her arms and kicking out with her legs, as though she might find a barnacled spire of stone, or the wall of a pool, but instead she found only more water, more emptiness. She clawed, opened her mouth to gulp air. Clouds roiled above her, rain falling in sheets.
I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. This isn’t real.
But she couldn’t wake, because the island had taken the dream and held it aloft the way it does, sometimes, the way it holds everything it deems vital, like a breath. An angry prophet, unsatisfied in its wrath until the pupil’s lesson is learned.
One wing of the endless spiral of a wave pushed Caroline’s body, weightless, up into the sky before cresting to draw her back down. But before she submerged again she saw it: a shape, in the distance.
Land. It was land, a dark smudge on the horizon.
She applied every ounce of her energy to that shape, to that hope, pulling desperately at the water like bedsheets, trying not to cry. She drove forward, riding the backs of the waves like a herd of spitting horses stampeding on, unaware of her. The smallness of her.
In the vastness of an uncharted world, she was so, so small.
When she finally touched the rocky beach she lay on it, coughing, shivering. And when she looked up, there was nothing but empty coastline and thick, watchful woods, and an overwhelming feeling that she was as utterly alone as any human being can be. She pushed herself up onto her knees, so exhausted she couldn’t think, and called out for help.
But her voice wasn’t hers. Not her hands. Not her body.
Who am I? Whose dream is this?
She had never been so alone.
Caroline woke, sobbing, on the floor beside her bed, the sheets tangled up around her, trying to choke the life out of her. She kicked them off with something like disgust and hugged her knees to her chest, unable to stop crying, though she hardly knew why. The feeling of emptiness was palpable.
Her sobs only calmed when she felt the softness of a shape curling up beside her, and she looked down to see nothing there except a ripple of air as the cottage ghost made itself comfortable in her arms, an invisible weight.
She lay like that, cradling the ghost with no name in a nest of blankets on the floor, and drifted back into a shallow sleep.
*******
By the time the rest of Seavend was up and about, the commuters heading to the ferry and the tourists out for their morning walks down the marina paths, Caroline had been awake for hours already, sitting blearily at her kitchen table with an untouched cup of cold coffee.
Her mind was so loud. Ever since the kiss, her mind had been so, so damned loud.
She felt she was being punished. That her theft of Reyville’s memories, unlike the other visions she had seen with the Sisters’ gift, were actively trying to spread through her brain, her nerves, eat away at her from the inside out like a parasite. They were carnivorous.
Reyville had told her once that he had repeated some version of life five times.
Five times. Six different Reyvilles, leaving their footprints through history.
But at the time, Caroline hadn’t done the math. She had known on some intellectual level that this meant he had died five times. But it hadn’t occurred to her that not all of those deaths occurred after a ripe old age. That some had been untimely, premature…violent.
She shuddered, felt her face go cold with nausea.
There were things in her mind that she could not unsee.
An unexpected knock on the cottage door startled her so badly that she tipped the coffee mug, the cold dark wave spreading fast over the tabletop to drip on the floor. She groaned a curse, leaping to her feet to get a towel, calling out, “Who is it?”
“It’s Flora,” came the response. “Are you okay?”
Caroline weighed it out, and realized that she didn’t much care if Flora saw her in a state of mess. What did it matter?
“Come on in. It’s open,” she said, mopping at the spill.
Flora entered, taking it all in with a very quick look.
“Oh,” she said. She set down her bag and crossed to the place where the paper towel roll hung beside the sink, grabbing a few sheets and taking on the spilled coffee on the floor. “I hope this isn’t my fault.”
“No, no,” Caroline said. She laughed in spite of herself. “I’m just clumsy. Brain is kinda…uh…full.”
“I know how that is.”
For a few minutes the two worked in silence, cleaning up the rest of the coffee, Caroline spraying the table and floor down with cleaner so it wouldn’t dry sticky, and then she insisted that Flora sit while she brewed a fresh pot. “Thanks for that. To what do I owe the honor?”
Flora smiled. “Oh, well, I hadn’t heard much from you since you left the Clinic, and I just wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing, after the whole spider business. Your foot.”
“Ah.” Caroline hardly even thought about it. It seemed so small, compared to everything else. “Healing just fine. It wasn’t serious. Just gets a little sore when I stand for too long, but not a big deal.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” Flora lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, then said, “Caroline, I’m really truly sorry. About what happened.”
Caroline felt a flicker of frustration run through her, mingled with empathy. Flora had apologized to her so many times already—both in person and over text—that she felt it was becoming a habit more than a sincere sentiment. “I’ve told you, Flora, it’s okay. I’m okay. No harm was done.”
Not by you, anyway.
But Flora shook her head. “I know, I know. I just…I was so scared, when the Captain picked you up and hurried you out of there. I really thought…”
She bit her lip, paused, then said, “He really does care about you, you know. I knew the two of you were professionally close, but until that night, I hadn’t seen…well…”
She let the words hang in the air, uncaught. She seemed distracted by something, holding something in.
Caroline brought the freshly poured coffee for each of them to the table, set Flora’s mug down in front of her and clutched her own in her fingers. She shrugged, trying nonchalant on for size. “We’re close, that’s true. We’ve worked together for a while now. Been through plenty.”
I almost lost him. Thanks to RUMOR, I almost lost him.
Flora sipped her coffee. “Have you two ever…you know…?”
Caroline felt something pinch between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t entirely sure what Flora was asking, but the implication in her words was enough to put her on alert. “Uh, not in so many words, no.”
Flora nodded, face betraying nothing, but her tone of voice was strange. Seeping, searching for something. “I understand. It would be too difficult. With your working relationship, and…all the rest.”
“All the rest?” Caroline shook her head. “What do you mean?”
Flora was still Flora, but some secret knowledge had turned her brown eyes tilt, silt, soil.
“I mean…the good Captain is special, isn’t he?”
Caroline blinked. “Special?”
“Unusual.”
The steam from Flora’s cup wafted up, caught in the draft of her breath. Caroline’s brow furrowed and a cold chill fluttered through her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Flora seemed to step back, even though she sat very still. “You know, it’s interesting…sometimes I see the journalist in you come out. Like when you’ve questioned me before, about my work. I think you’ve suspected for a long time that I’m interested in more than fishmaid communication and robots that can talk to trees.”
Caroline nodded slowly.
“It started with plants,” Flora said. “I’m a botanist, so when I got to the island, I was all about finding plants here that don’t grow anywhere else. And I found birdmint. Did you know that it withers and dies once it leaves the island? That’s insane. That’s impossible. So I started to study birdmint, trying to find the mechanism that makes it do that. And I found out that there are lots of things like that, here. That this island interacts with things—plants, animals, even people—in indescribably bizarre ways. Ferris Fever, often debilitating to those born here who leave the island. Animals with strange migration patterns. Plants with bizarre behavior. Not to mention all the secret things, the unnatural things…”
She paused. “So that’s my secret study, Caroline. I’m trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle, just like you are. How does this island work? Why does it do what it does?”
“That’s not the puzzle I’m solving, though.” Caroline felt she was being misrepresented in the conversation, but didn’t know how to fix it. “Not…not how, really. Just…we try to help people.”
“Yes. By meeting this island head-on. By not shying away. We do the same things. You go out to seek answers, and I go deep. Cell-level deep.”
Caroline tilted her head. “What does that have to do with Reyville?”
Flora’s eyes softened, almost sisterly. Despite it all, Flora was her friend. She truly believed it. She felt it.
“Everything,” Flora replied, quietly. “Caroline, you know it has everything to do with Reyville. Because this isn’t the first time he’s been here, is it?”
Caroline couldn’t breathe.
“I recognized him from day one,” Flora said. “I’ve seen his face in my grandmother’s old books. He was Captain Frederick Nestor once, a long time ago. This island never ceases to amaze, but never surprises me. It can do anything. It can bring something back from the dead, if it wants. I’m not surprised at all. I’ll bet it’s happened more than once. I’ll bet it keeps happening. I bet Reyville keeps coming back.”
She didn’t want to, but Caroline found herself nodding her head. The visions of Reyville’s pasts were still visceral, playing out in real-time as if just outside the cottage window. Reyville in uniform, gunned down on a battlefield in France. Reyville drinking himself to death in an apartment in London. Reyville in a field hospital. Reyville on a ship. Reyville drowning, desperate, alone in the empty sea…
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. She felt the question pulling at her tongue, spilling out before she could stop it, like the dark wave of the coffee spreading across the kitchen table.
“Is there a way to make it stop?”
Flora’s gaze widened, brown and hopeful. “It does repeat, then. Amazing. Does he want it to stop?”
“I don’t know.” Caroline heard her own voice shaking, studied her cup as if the answers would float to the surface if she looked hard enough. Flora was her friend. She knew it. She had to be. Why else would she admit to any of this? “I don’t want him to suffer anymore. Is there a way to make it stop? Have you…have you found a way? In your research?”
Flora sighed. “Yes. Well, maybe. There could be. I would need to study him. If you…if you can convince him, Caroline, to let me study him. It would be nothing invasive. Simple as a blood test. Then…yes. There could be a way to end it. To let this life be his last. If that’s what he wants. If that’s what you both want.”
The way she put it—as if Reyville and Caroline were lovers, sufficiently united to make that decision together—made Caroline feel even more ill than she had before. It felt like stolen valor, like she was wearing a costume and calling it love.
But she did love him. And the idea of him being forced to return again and again haunted her even more deeply than any ghost she could ever encounter.
Her phone, sitting on her desk, buzzed with an incoming text. She apologized to Flora and jumped up to check it.
It was from Reyville:
Heya - new job. Haunting at Hoodman’s Grocery. See you in an hour?
She texted: yep and then turned to Flora.
“We’ve got a job. I’m sorry, but I need to get ready.”
Flora waved off the apology with a generous smile, stood and brought her mug to the sink. “Say no more. But…think about what I said. Talk to the Captain. I promise…it would be no trouble at all, and could solve everything. Just let me know.”
Everything. It could solve everything.
The words lingered like perfume long after Flora left. Caroline dressed, ignoring the ever-fading rings on her arm in the mirror, the weight of what she had done sitting heavy on her collarbone.
Once, she had raged at Reyville for keeping secrets from her.
Somehow, without paying attention, she had betrayed him.
*******
Hoodman’s Grocery Store was a Port Salish institution. It was the largest privately-owned grocer on Ferris Island and out-muscled every big-box chain store that attempted to take root through one fact alone: it was the only grocer entrusted with shipping the Brack’s orchard exports. The Brack’s proprietary fruit varieties and products were big business, and no one else was allowed to move it from the island out to artisan shops and restaurants all down the Washington and Oregon coast. Only a small fleet of red Hoodman’s trucks and a special team of truckers were given that well-paid opportunity.
Caroline had shopped at Hoodman’s plenty of times when she lived in her apartment in Port Salish, and she always loved the old building, a big, renovated brick antique with the black dog-paw logo over the automated front doors and the corral of red-handled shopping carts. She imagined the building had once been quite a striking sight back when this property sat on the outskirts of town. But these days, Hoodman’s formed the beating heart of the Port Salish business district up the hill from downtown and was now surrounded, not by farmland, but by the island’s only Starbucks, a credit union, an injury lawyer’s office, and a pet store.
Reyville was standing just inside the double-doors as she walked in, studying a rack of celebrity gossip magazines, hands in his pockets. Her heart leaped. Aside from check-ins over the phone, she hadn’t seem him much since the Clinic.
She still felt the echo of his lips on hers. If she was honest, she longed for more...and felt like a glutton. Hadn’t she already taken enough?
“Anything interesting?” she asked, walking up beside him to stand at his shoulder.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “That’s what these rags are for. If they weren’t interesting, no one would buy ‘em.”
“I’m not sure people do buy them. They just do what you’re doing; look at them in the store, then leave.”
He smiled down at her. “I suspect there are a few folks around who’d like to know who’s kissing who. Some seem to make an art of it.”
She felt color rise to her cheeks, struggled for words for a brief moment while her heart caught up. “Smooth.”
“Thank you.” He winked at her. She never had decided whether she liked that. But today, it felt unearned. Like he was in on the joke…but she knew that he wasn’t. Not entirely.
She wasn’t able to form a response before a nervous man in a red Hoodman’s polo and a receding hairline walked up to them, a tag on his shirt declaring in no uncertain terms that his name was NICK and he was the STORE MANAGER.
“Captain Reyville?” he said, extending a tentative hand. “Nick Harris. We spoke on the phone.”
“Mr. Harris, pleasure to meet you. This is Caroline Phelan.”
Nick shook Caroline’s hand warmly, but there was a flicker of doubt behind his eyes. “I really do appreciate you both coming here to check this thing out. I…well…I feel like I’m going a little crazy.”
“If nothing else, we hope we can put your mind at ease,” Caroline said. “What’s the trouble?”
Nick gestured for them to follow him. “Walk with me,” he said. “I’d rather we not be overheard. I really, really don’t want this place to get a reputation. The last thing I need is a bunch of kids trying to break in at night and go ghost-hunting for social media clout.”
“Nightmare,” Reyville agreed, idly, as they walked side-by-side with Nick around the perimeter of the store. It was quite full for a weekday, mothers wrangling their distracted little ones in and out of the cart seats, teens on summer break deliberating over snack options, nurses from the nearby hospital loading their baskets with energy drinks.
“The building is old,” Nick explained as they walked. “Hoodman’s relocated from a smaller location, moved in and fully renovated it back in the fifties, and while we’ve experienced the odd old-building problems—electrical issues, bad plumbing, that kind of thing—for the most part, it’s all been easily fixed. But in the last few months…I dunno, I’ve just noticed some stuff. Stuff I can’t easily explain.”
In a back corner of the store, where a small selection of automotive supplies gathered dust on the shelves, Nick looked around to make sure no one was listening and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He opened his photo gallery, swiping through the images.
“I’m the last one out of here at night, and I get here real early in the morning,” he said. “And sometimes when I get here, even though the whole place is locked tight and there’s no sign of theft, I see stuff like this—”
He turned his phone so that they could see. It was a photo of the store floor by the entrance, the linoleum pattern recognizable, and a scattering of muddy footprints.
Caroline blinked. She didn’t want to discredit Nick’s concerned expression, but…they were just footprints.
“And…there’s no way anyone could have made those? By accident?” Caroline asked, gently.
Nick shook his head. “I oversee the custodial staff myself. They do a stellar job of mopping up, buffing the floors, and I lock up right after. There’s no one in the building after that. It’s my job to make sure.”
Reyville asked, “Is that…all?”
“No. No, it’s not.” Nick pulled his phone back, swiped the screen a few more times with his finger, then showed it again. This time, in the photos, there were scuffs and swipes of something on the floor that looked…like blood. Like something had been dragged, bleeding faintly, across the floor.
Caroline’s neck went cold. Ghost or not, blood was never a good sign. “Did you go to the police with this?”
“Of course,” Nick replied. “I thought we were being pranked or vandalized. But you know how the island police are. They prefer the easy answer. Anything more complicated and they get—”
“Superstitious.” Reyville completed the thought, staring at the blood, his scarred lip giving his serious expression a sneering look. “Mostly prints and marks on the floor, yeah? Did you catch anything on the security cameras?”
“That’s just it,” Nick said, quickly. He was getting a little bit nervous, now, clearly afraid that Reyville and Caroline were going to write him off. “There’s interference with the cameras. The screen goes fuzzy and loses connection, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for an hour or more. And…I’ve even heard…voices…on the store’s audio system.”
“Voices? What do they say?” Reyville asked.
“I can’t fully catch it,” Nick said. “Too muffled. It just sounds like conversation between a few people. Just normal talk.”
Caroline nodded, kindly. “It could be radio signals, coming through somehow. You did say that the building is old.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Nick said. “I thought you two did this stuff.”
Reyville said, “No offense meant. But…usually we’ve got a little more to go on, that shows it’s truly supernatural. This just seems like you’ve got a prankster making your life a misery. Does anyone besides you have access to the store’s keys?”
Nick shook his head. “After all this started, I restricted key access. I’m the only one with a master key, and I give it out in rare situations, but never overnight. Are you saying you can’t help me?”
“Not saying that at all,” Caroline said. “How about this: let us take a little look around, do our usual investigation, and we’ll let you know if we find anything. Is that alright?”
Nick nodded, a flicker of hope returning to his eyes, posture lifting. “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You have full run the of the place, wherever you want to poke around. Just let me know if I can help.”
After Nick had wandered off, Caroline turned to Reyville. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “It’s odd, I’ll allow that. But it doesn’t strike me as particularly ghostly behavior.”
Caroline pulled Scully out her bag, looped the strap over her neck. “Only one way to find out, I guess.”
So they started off, walking a slow circle around the store, pausing to take pictures: of the floor where the footprints had been, near the entrance. Of the security cameras. Of small dark corners untouched by the long decades of renovation, cobwebbed utility rooms, anything remotely of interest.
And with every photo, Caroline started to notice that the photo slideshow, the buzz and pain in the welts in her arm, was significantly lessened. The soreness after a punch in the arm, rather than the white-hot blaze of a stovetop.
Reyville was quiet while Caroline worked, but finally said, “Have you been feeling better?”
It was a sideways question; it wasn’t what he actually wanted to ask. Caroline nodded. “Sure, yeah. Definitely.”
“Good.” He fell silent.
Her heart squeezed. He had been the brave one last time, asking her about their relationship. It was her turn.
“Reyville,” she said, “I hope you didn’t…mind. The kiss, I mean.”
“Mind it?” He shook his head with a relieved chuckle. “I sure hope it didn’t feel like I minded it.”
It hadn’t. It certainly hadn’t, not at all. She could still feel his hair under her fingers…
“I just…I know it wasn’t expected. I just wanted to make sure it was okay.”
He pinned her with a look, then, that she found difficult to read. A patch of smooth water, the potential of something hiding under the surface.
“Caroline Phelan,” he said. “If I spend a lifetime I don’t think I’ll ever figure you out.”
That hurt. He said it in his normal jovial way, but it wounded, right below the diaphragm. She smiled at him, but could not respond.
Somehow, a lifetime doesn’t feel as long as it should…
Caroline lifted Scully to check the photos she had taken. And with each one, she felt more and more sure: this had nothing to do with ghosts. There were no hidden messages, no smudges of light and shape denoting a ghostly presence, no strangeness of any kind. Just linoleum and old ceiling tiles, just a modern business in an antique shell.
They looped around, heading toward the entrance. But in a back corner, between the produce and the meat section, Caroline recognized the patch on the floor where Nick had taken the photo of the bloody streaks.
It was right in front of a small door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Caroline tried the door, but it was locked. As if on cue, an old man in a red Hoodman’s polo passed by, slight hunch to his back and wisps of white hair on his head that he had carefully combed down with pomade. His nametag read HANK.
“Excuse me, sir,” Caroline said, waving him down. “What’s in this room?”
He blinked at them through thick glasses. “That there’s just the cleaning closet for spills and such. Can I help you with anything, ma’am?”
“Nick asked us to take a look around…” Reyville began, but the old man’s heavy chuckle cut him off.
“Oh, yeah, Nick’s ghosts. I know, I know. No idea why he’s so concerned about that. I’ve worked here for over thirty years and never seen a ghost. There’s plenty strange about this place without talkin’ about that.”
“Strange how?” Reyville asked.
Hank graciously accepted the invitation to explain. “Oh, well now…you know what this building used to be, don’cha?”
To their shaking heads, he said, “It was a tuberculosis hospital. A private sanatorium. A small one, I grant you…not like Firland, over there north of Seattle. But it housed the island’s sick for a fair few years. The ones who could afford it, anyway. Nick’s always been jumpy about that, ever since he learned the history. I think he’s been looking for a reason to call it haunted for awhile, now. Wouldn’t really surprise me, but I’ve never seen evidence of it. Me, I’d be more spooked by the tunnels, myself.”
“Tunnels?” Caroline said.
Hank nodded, his eyes widening behind his thick glasses. “The hospital had a big ol’ tunnel system connecting the main building to the smaller surrounding ones to make it easier to transfer patients and supplies from one building to another without exposing ‘em to the elements. They’re still down there, even though Hoodman’s sealed up the entrances when they moved in. Damn things give me the willies, though. If there’s something creepy about this place, I can guaran-damn-tee you, it ain’t ghosts.”
Caroline asked, “Do you know where the entrances are? To the tunnels?”
Hank indicated the EMPLOYEES ONLY door with a tilt of his head. “One’s in there, matter of fact. The others, couldn’t say.”
“Could we take a look?”
Hank shrugged, shuffled over to the door and pulled out his small ring of keys. “Nothing much to see,” he said. “Like I said, they’re all sealed up.”
But he unlocked the door and pushed it open for them anyway, flipping on the light.
It was just a closet. Small, lined with metal shelving stocked with cleaning supplies, brooms and mops and other implements well-organized for ease of use. Just a closet in a grocery store.
But Hank pointed to the back wall opposite the door. “That used to be wide open. A hallway, I think. Sealed over, now. It’s hollow behind. Test it for yourself.”
Reyville obliged, crossing to the wall and giving it a firm knock. Hank was right; it was clearly only a thin piece of drywall, the sound of Reyville’s fist thudded emptily in the space beyond, potentially endless.
Caroline considered: if one of the other entrances had been opened, it was more than possible that someone or something was passing in and out of the store at night, only getting caught when it got sloppy.
But where did these tunnels end?
“Caroline.” Reyville said her name quietly, in such a way that it froze her blood to hear it. “Look at this.”
She joined him at the wall, peering through the shelving, moving bottles of bleach out of the way for a better look.
Printed on the drywall, clearly intentional and recent—as with spray paint and a stencil— was the silhouette of a lion’s head in black paint, about the size of a man’s palm.
Caroline stared at it. She had seen it before.
For one wild moment she was transported back months before to the stakeout in the water, a borrowed boat, watching the RUMOR private harbor, keeping an eye on the shadowy movements of the poachers and hired security muscle. Some of the crates on the dock had the RUMOR dragonfly printed on them, but some…some of them had this lion. This black lion.
What does it mean?
That was the night she lost Scully. The night the mysterious voice on the phone told her to stop looking, to stop chasing, that RUMOR would solve the matter internally.
“Whimsy suits you better, Songbird.”
“Sorry folks, but my break’s over,” Hank said from the doorway, pulling Caroline back to the present. “Gonna have to lock this back up. Got what you needed?”
“Thank you, Hank,” Caroline said. She looked up at Reyville, but he had gone pale and very still.
Hoodman’s wasn’t haunted, after all. At least…not by a ghost.
Thank you for reading! 📸
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Hnnngh. Caroline. You *gotta* tell him what's happening. What happened after that kiss. What you know. CAROLINE. **face desk and whimpers**
Flora...friend or foe? I really can't tell with that one! She makes me nervous at this point!
Flora has a few cards close to the vest, yet. She definitely wants a DNA sample. Looking to see if the Captain is a long lost ancestor, perhaps? Which would explain a few other things she's hiding??