Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural mystery novel, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Seven of Season Two. Start Here.
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Previously, Caroline and Reyville pressed a little harder on Flora’s intentions, and investigated a haunting in an unexpected place…
In this episode, the team comes together to finally capture the mysterious beast in Mothwood Forest…
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
The border of Mothwood Forest was sun-drenched and abuzz when Caroline pulled up to the unused access road and parked her car. There was already a handful of other vehicles there, along with a white van emblazoned with the RUMOR dragonfly logo. Reyville and Andy Yun stood together to the side, holding paper to-go cups of coffee and watching as Flora oversaw a small team of techs in their RUMOR uniforms unpacking equipment from the vehicles. It was organized, coordinated, professional; a strange sight, foreign beside these wild trees dripping with moss and secrets.
Caroline got out of the car, walked up to Reyville and Andy. Reyville gave her a smile and handed her a cup, still hot. She was careful to avoid touching his fingers with her own. Not here. Not yet.
“Morning,” Reyville said. “See this lot, here?”
Caroline sipped, nodded, looked at the RUMOR machine doing its thing. “Impressive. Puts our little gum-and-paperclips operations to shame.”
“You get things done, though,” Andy said, clearly uncomfortable with the RUMOR presence in the woods. “And you care. That’s more than I can say for…you know. All that.”
“This won’t be an ongoing thing, I promise,” Caroline said, trying to catch Andy’s eye, to reassure him. “We’re only bringing RUMOR in because this one eluded us, that’s all. Did you tell Druid to stay out of the way?”
Andy nodded, solemn. “Yeah, but I’m not sure he understood me. I told him that RUMOR was coming, and that they would take him away if they saw him, but he just kept saying Family, the way he does. I dunno. I hope he got the message.”
“It’ll be fine.” It was Reyville’s turn to sound reassuring, though he was obviously having difficulty convincing himself. “By the end of the day, let’s hope we bag a beastie and put this whole thing behind us.”
Flora walked up then, holding a tablet and letting her professional demeanor slip, ever so slightly, betraying her enthusiasm. “Well, we’re ready! You show us where you want us, and we’ll get this show on the road. Exciting, isn’t it?”
Andy sighed vaguely and turned away, but Reyville and Caroline nodded.
“Always a thrill, this bit. The start.” Reyville winked at Caroline. “Before the mess begins. On we go.”
Reyville led the way down the old road, pockmarked concrete and overgrown trails, deeper into the woods to the place where Longshank’s little cabin stood. When they reached the clearing there was no one around, but the shed was still full of Longshank’s belongings and frosted with glimmering silk, dewey in the forest shade.
Flora took in the whole area with an appraising look, seemingly unfazed by the web-covered shed, tapping at something on her tablet. She gathered the RUMOR team around her, showing them the screen, then pointing at different areas of the clearing, giving orders in a clipped voice.
Caroline couldn’t help but feel a thrill, watching the precision with which the RUMOR techs did their jobs, striding across the clearing to the different places Flora pointed out—some leaving the clearing entirely—and unpacking their equipment. It was certainly a far cry from the way she and the Captain usually did things; their homegrown methods, their wing-and-a-prayer attempts at solving the paranomal, the strange. The scope here was larger, the possibilities more expansive.
But Andy’s words echoed in her mind: And you care.
And she did. Maybe more than she should.
One tech crossed to the center of the clearing and set a steel case down on the mossy turf, flicking open the latches and pulling out a small, glimmering object.
It was a drone, or at least it looked like one to Caroline. The tech set it carefully down on the closed case as a launching pad, then waited for a signal from Flora.
She gave it, and the drone launched into the air, straight up in a humming column. It rose up and up until it nearly disappeared above the treetops, and then it froze in the summer blue, hovering overhead.
In the meantime, the techs stepped back from their stations. From Caroline’s view it didn’t look like they had done much of anything at all, but each gave a signal to Flora, as if some success had been achieved.
“Okay,” Flora said, smiling, and beckoned to Caroline, Reyville, and Andy. They complied, Caroline standing at one of Flora’s shoulders and Reyville at the other, so they could see the screen. Andy stood apart, arms crossed over his chest.
“Here’s what we’re up to,” Flora said.
At first it simply looked like a static image of the woods. But then Flora moved the screen with her finger, manipulating the image, and Caroline realized what she was looking at: it was a navigable, 3-D map of the woods around—and including—the clearing. And it was in real-time, too; a bird flew through frame, past the camera, and a squirrel climbed a fir, unaware it was being watched.
“Now that’s interesting,” Reyville said, true admiration in his voice. “How are you doing that, then?”
“The sensors,” Flora explained. “The techs placed a perimeter of sensors around the areas we want to surveil, then the drone turns the data into an image that I can use, like a satellite. The sensors work like a trail cam. Right now we’re simply transmitting, but they will alarm and trigger the drone to record when given certain parameters. In this case, we’ve set them to alarm to any movement of an object larger than a certain height and weight. That should catch your monster.”
Caroline didn’t pretend to understand any of that. But she was impressed, and Flora’s enthusiasm for the tech was contagious.
“Now what?” Reyville asked.
“Now, we wait,” Flora replied. “The sensors will alert when something matching the parameters passes through the area, and the drone will record it. We’ll be able to get a sense of what we’re dealing with, here—”
Suddenly, the tablet in Flora’s hands chimed, and Flora looked down in undisguised surprise. “Wow. That didn’t take long.”
Reyville and Caroline both peered into the screen, which had automatically maneuvered to the view that revealed the movement that had triggered the alarm: it was something heading for them. A mossy-bodied something. On three jointed legs.
Druid.
Caroline looked up at Reyville, but he was already jumping to stall Flora.
“Looks like a deer,” he said. “Probably nothing.”
“That’s not a deer.” Flora was staring hard at the screen. “What is that?”
“That’s definitely not our monster, whatever it is,” Caroline said. “Maybe we should—”
But before she could say anything else, the underbrush parted at the far end of the clearing and Druid stepped out into the clearing, clutching his walking stick in his good hand, robotic head swiveling to take in the scene.
The RUMOR techs stopped, stared.
Nobody moved except Andy, who made a strangled sound and tried to shoo Druid away, to stand between the techs and his friend, but the robot would not be deterred. He pushed past Andy and headed straight toward Flora.
The researcher’s grip on the tablet had weakened and she lowered her arm, staring at Druid as the gap closed between them. For a long moment, they were eye to eye, and neither moved. But Flora did not seem afraid, nor did she seem surprised.
“Flora Burnside,” said Druid.
Flora stepped forward. Caroline had never seen that look on her face, before.
“Hello, Druid,” Flora said, and reached out to touch the top of Druid’s head gently. “It's good to see you.”
Caroline's mind raced. How does she know him? But of course…Dr. Ernie Hawkins. Flora had said she had worked with Dr. Hawkins before. Had she been involved in the Druid Project, too?
“Druid, go back,” Andy said, but his voice was small, desperate. “Go back into the woods.”
One of the techs spoke up, called across the clearing. “Is everything okay, Miss Burnside?”
But Flora waved her hand, softly. “Everyone stay where you are. There's no danger.”
The robot’s three-eyed gaze did not leave Flora’s face.
“Family,” he said. “Family, Flora Burnside.”
Flora nodded, as if an understanding had passed between them.
“Go home, Druid,” she said, softly.
And the robot went, swiveling its head to each face in turn, crawling back across the clearing, and then vanishing into the trees.
The breath that Caroline had been holding she let out in a silent breeze. Flora watched the robot go, tablet still hovering by her side, forgotten.
Andy turned to her. “Thank you. For not…taking him back.”
Flora continued to stare at the place where the robot had gone, a secret smile and a look of quiet satisfaction in her eyes.
“Well, that would be a strange thing for me to do,” she said, glancing at Andy and raising the tablet, slowly putting her professionalism back on like a coat. “Because I’m the one who let him escape in the first place. Can’t really take it back now, can I?”
*******
It was late afternoon, and Stevie Nicks was singing faintly on the stereo. Caroline stood before the closet-door mirror in the little bedroom of the cottage in Seavend, wrapped in a post-shower towel, her clothes for the evening’s stakeout laid out on the bed. She didn’t usually make a habit of studying herself in mirrors, but something had caught her eye.
The welts on her arm—the gift from the Sisters—appeared to be fading.
She couldn’t be sure. But there was something about the way the edges were softening, the raised circles were flattening, the redness was not nearly as vivid…
Caroline ran her fingertips over the welts, conflicted. It was a gift she had not asked for, and seemed only to arise at the worst times, painful and shocking.
And yet…there was so much she still wanted to see.
Uninvited, the memory of Reyville—but not Reyville—sitting in that dark apartment, the smell of despair, the rain lashing against the window, rose up into her mind’s eye and then away again, leaving a trail of sorrow behind.
Aside from that, the Sisters had seemingly given her the visions for a reason. But why, she didn’t know. And if the power was fading, then she didn’t have forever to figure it out.
Caroline sighed and met her own eyes in the reflection. Behind her mirrored shoulder, she could see the ripple of the cottage’s ghost hiding under her desk, an eerie testament to unanswered and unanswerable questions.
She thought of Flora and Druid, meeting like that in the clearing today. There was a reluctance in Caroline to consider it, but something did bother her about that exchange.
Flora was a consummate professional. RUMOR through and through. Watching her work with the techs earlier proved it to Caroline. She knew her stuff, and they saw her as an authority figure.
But she was also the individual responsible for Druid’s escape from the facility. She let him go, against every protocol. A clear flouting of the rules. Wildly out of character for someone who seemingly lived and breathed RUMOR.
The discrepancy disquieted Caroline. People contain multitudes, of course, and Caroline knew that if she had been in Flora’s position she almost certainly would have done the same thing. But it was a bold move for someone so confident in the institution she spent her days serving.
It fell to this: if Flora was the kind of person who was willing to quietly bend the rules—or even outright break them—where else could that lead? Even if the cause appeared to be just. Even if the ends seemingly justified the means.
As a journalist, Caroline had seen a lot of people express a lot of motives for a whole slew of crimes. Some more understandable and sympathetic than others. But none were so destructive as a firm belief in a cause.
That the right thing justifies anything.
Maybe that wasn’t correct to think, of Flora. But it was difficult to shake.
The ghost interrupted her thoughts by jumping up onto the desk, the movement like a breeze, knocking a small pile of papers askew. A receipt fluttered to the floor.
Caroline sighed. There are some things you just can’t know, visionary gift from ancient undersea gods or not.
“Well then,” she said, aloud. “I guess I need to have my fill, before all the fun stops.”
And she turned away from the pensive look in her own reflected eyes, reaching for her clothes.
*******
Caroline leaned up against an obliging tree, cradling a cup of tea in her hand from Reyville’s stakeout thermos, and peered up at the snip of stars through the branches above. It was a clear night, windless. Waiting.
That evening, the stakeout was different. It felt almost festive, an air of excitement added to the apprehension. For one thing, there were more people there. Flora had returned from RUMOR with a slightly different team of about six or seven researchers, and these were trained to subdue and capture live animals. It was clearly her group from Project Sea Lion, because she was more relaxed around them, a little bit more casual, yet every bit as focused. They were positioned around the clearing in strategic places with more equipment, more tech for Andy to feel edgy about. Caroline could hear their quiet chatter in the walkie talkie Flora held in her hand, sitting nearby.
Andy had been called back to the Clinic that night, so Caroline and Reyville sat side by side in the dark, listening for movement, but feeling very much like they were interlopers in a process that had gone beyond them. This was RUMOR’s operation, now, and they were simply there to oversee, to keep an eye on things.
It had been over an hour of waiting in the quiet when Flora’s tablet chimed softly, and she turned, beckoned to Caroline and Reyville, who shuffled forward to look at the screen.
The drone had switched its camera to night vision, and the trees were ghostly pillars, and something was striding between them. Something tall, and thin.
“It’s Longshank,” Caroline whispered, not sure whether to be relieved or not. “The old guy squatting in the shed.”
Flora studied the image. “Just a person, then?”
Caroline wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she turned to Reyville. He murmured, “We do think he’s involved. But can’t say how. When we confronted him, he wasn’t too forthright. Strange bloke…”
As they watched the screen, Longshank continued to walk at a calm pace, hands in his pockets, unconcerned. Looking up into the trees, as if taking it in. Did Caroline hear his whistling tune, or did she imagine it?
But then, he paused. Tilted his head, as though listening. Turned to look at something off to his right.
“Oh,” Flora said, quietly. “That’s…”
Longshank strode toward the nearest tree, studying something invisible on the bark.
Flora whispered. “There’s a sensor there. But he can’t have seen it…how is that possible…?”
Suddenly, so quickly that Caroline could hardly believe what she was watching, Longshank’s body twisted, contorted, thinned, stretched, and cracked into articulated pieces until a spider-like creature with long, long legs and a thin body the size of a bicycle stood there, instead, legs quivering. Within seconds it dashed one appendage against the tree where the sensor had been placed and the image on the screen went flat, static, interrupted.
Caroline felt Reyville shudder beside her, mumbling something to himself.
“Damn,” Flora hissed, but they all continued to watch as the sensors followed the spider-thing to the next area of the woods with working sensors.
Methodically, scientifically, the Longshank-beast destroyed each sensor in turn, long-limbed scuffling through the brush to each tree, the tablet screen fizzling, distorting as he did so, and then, finally, the tablet defaulted to a blank screen with the ominous message: NO FEED TO DISPLAY.
Flora picked up the walkie talkie, whispered, “We’ve got company, everyone. No visual. Stay alert. Last seen in Zone 4.”
The only thing worse than seeing a spider…is not seeing a spider.
The hairs on the back of Caroline’s neck stood up. The night was suddenly very dark, the woods very close, very cold. She felt—and not for the first time—that Mothwood was laughing at them. So small, so temporary, so fragile. There are older things in this world. Things that don’t think twice about us. Things that merely bat us aside, survive in spite of us.
“It could be anywhere,” Reyville muttered. “It could be bloody anywhere.”
“Stay calm,” Flora said, but the tremble in her voice betrayed her fear. “My team can handle this.”
They sat, the night-noises closing in around them, the crickets and frogs conspiring to close up the silence, make it harder to hear a shuffling of spindly feet, a shivering up the side of a tree. Was that a flutter of wings, or a flicker of spider jaw-parts?
Caroline turned to look past the brush, into the clearing where the low half-moon did next to nothing to illuminate the space. And, as she watched, a piece of night detached itself from beside the shed, creeping around the little building and then climbing on top of it, where it stood still, watchful. Did she imagine it? Was it just a trick of the light? Was it another animal, something harmless?
Carefully, she stood up and reached into her bag to pull Scully out. There was one piece of tech in this forest that she knew wouldn’t fail.
She made sure the flash was off, raised the camera, braced herself, clicked the shutter.
Snap!
The welts on her arm lit up hot and burning, and the buzz of visions flew fast through her mind like spinning on a too-fast carnival ride. Caroline caught herself against the nearest sapling as they flew by, willing them to pass so that she could focus on the task at hand.
As they subsided, Caroline shook her head to clear it and studied the photo she had taken. Sure enough, Scully had done her work, and done it well: atop the shed stood the spider-beast, multiple eyes glowing as it perched there, waiting.
She tapped Flora’s shoulder, showed her. “There, on the cabin,” she said.
Flora looked, even peered through the gloom. The shape was still there, standing so still it would have been impossible to notice otherwise. “What is it waiting for?” she said.
“If it knows it’s being watched, then it’s probably waiting for whoever is doing the watching to show up,” Reyville murmured. “But if the team shows itself, I’m betting it’ll bolt.”
“We need to draw it into the clearing,” Flora said. “If it’s in the open, we can subdue it easily.”
Caroline considered this, slipped Scully back into her bag and handed the bag to Reyville. “It’s a matter of bait, then. I got it.”
“What? Absolutely not,” Reyville grabbed her arm, gently but firmly, and Caroline was relieved that she was wearing long sleeves. “I’ll do it.”
“No, you won't. The thing hunts livestock. Like it or not, it wants something it can pick off easily. I’m small enough to fit the bill.” She patted his shoulder, met his eyes, insistent. “I’ll be fine, Captain. You know I will.”
“My team will be standing by,” Flora said. “Once you pull the thing toward you, I promise the whole thing will be over fast. It shouldn’t even get close.”
Caroline believed her. Regardless of Flora’s intentions, she believed the researcher was good at her job.
Reyville wanted to argue. He wanted to object. But they had been through so much already, together. They had already taken so many risks. What was one more?
He trusted her. That was enough.
“Please be careful,” he said, and let his fingers fall from her arm.
Caroline nodded, then slipped through the underbrush and hunched over, making herself seem smaller than usual. As she left the treeline she adopted a slight limp, looking as weak and helpless as she could. Like a fly, struggling in a web.
She shuffled into the center of the clearing and sat down, hugging her knees to her chest, looked everywhere except the place where the shadowy shape crouched atop the cabin. She wanted it to think she hadn't noticed it.
There was a stillness. The spider-beast did not move. The woods held their breath.
It needed more. It needed something else, to draw it out. But what else?
Caroline, not sure what even gave her the idea, started to quietly sing to herself. She wasn’t even sure why the song was in her head. Faint stereo. Classic radio. Old record spinning. Memories. Pasts.
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?
The trembling sound invoked something in the creature, then. Some predatory instinct pushed over the edge to follow. It left the cabin, moving stealthily around the side of the clearing, circling warily. Caroline tried to ignore it, tried to keep singing, but her throat constricted with fear and strangled the sound into barely a breath.
There was a moment.
And then it struck.
The speed took everyone by surprise. Caroline heard shouts as the spider-beast crossed the clearing in a tumble of legs, a horrific beeline, and there was frantic movement all around the clearing as the team emerged from their hiding places and sprang into action, equipment flashing, some mix of netting and tranquilizer guns and other barriers.
But not fast enough. Caroline was forced to scramble backwards as the spider-beast—its face was all wrong, not like a spider at all, what is it?—was upon her, loomed over her, eerily silent as it stamped one leg down on her foot to hold her still and the spines on its strange limb stabbed through her shoe into the flesh.
She cried out as the pain in her foot matched the pain in her arm; the welts lit up again, throbbing horribly…
…and she saw into Longshank’s past.
A tall white-haired man in tweed, a traveler, arm in arm with a wild beauty of the woods, long gold hair and steady healing hands. Long decades ago, Mothwood’s history, when these woods were full of cabin-smoke and chickens and the humming of bees in the gardens. The woman didn’t suffer fools, knew his strangeness and she loved him anyway; she was strange enough herself. She made offerings to the spirits of Mothwood. She accepted the woods for what they were.
It was never going to last forever. But they loved and loved and loved beneath these trees while they could. They turned time to gold.
Has Mothwood ever borne witness to love?
Yes. The answer, yes. So much. So much...
Caroline felt the world going black, unable to grab onto reality and pull herself out of the vision, agony yanking her backward. But there was one thing she knew: Longshank wasn’t a visitor to this island, not at all. Not a stranger.
Mothwood had been his home, once. He was merely returning.
*******
The murmur of quiet voices brought Caroline out of her heavy sleep, along with a horrible thundering in her head and an aching in her foot. When she opened her eyes she was in an unfamiliar room, lying in an unfamiliar bed, but the faces around her were familiar enough: Andy, standing at the bed’s foot. Flora, lingering in the back of the room. And Reyville, sitting right beside her, those blue eyes heavy with concern, scarred lip downturned.
“Hey,” Reyville said, as her eyes opened. “Hey, Caroline? Are you with us?”
She nodded. Her mouth was so dry. “Yeah. Yeah. Wow…that was awful.”
Uncertain chuckles from everyone in the room.
“I’m so sorry,” Flora said. She looked like she had been crying earlier, eyes puffy and red, but her voice was steady now. “I’m so sorry, Caroline. We didn’t realize it would get to you that fast. We did our best, we really did.”
“There was venom in the creature’s spines,” Andy explained. “Reyville acted fast. Got you here as quick as he could. You were lucky.”
“We both were,” Reyville said, quietly.
It was the Clinic. That’s where she was. Caroline glanced over at Reyville, but he didn’t look like a lucky man. Just a relieved one. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn't want her to make a grateful scene in front of everyone, so she gave him a smile and changed the subject.
“What happened to Longshank?” she asked.
“We got him,” Flora replied. “Tranquilized and under control. We’re going to process him at RUMOR and then make sure he makes his home somewhere else. I’m sure the farmers along the lake will be relieved.”
Caroline was too tired to think about what process him at RUMOR meant.
“I’m glad it worked out,” was all she said.
“We’re going to keep you overnight to be safe,” Andy said. “The wound on your foot was fairly superficial, but we want to make sure there are no other effects from the venom. By tomorrow you should be good to go.”
He turned to Flora and Reyville. “We should let her rest.”
Flora dutifully complied, following Andy from the room, but Caroline reached out to Reyville.
“Wait,” she said. “Stay for a minute.”
He sat back down on the bed, no questions. She was reminded of another time, months ago, in this same Clinic. When the roles were reversed—she was sitting at his bedside—and this scar-lipped Captain admitted his curse to her, golden light eavesdropping from the window. That was when Caroline first thought that, perhaps, loving him was a mistake for both of them.
How things can change.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” she said.
“You never have to thank me for that.” He sighed, smiled. “But you’re not indestructible, you know.”
“I know.” Outside, the night was aging fast, time ticking by in the match-strike of cricket legs and the bellows of frog-throats. The image of Longshank’s past still lingered in the space between Caroline’s eyes, an image superimposed over the present.
But time makes you bolder Even children get older I’m getting older, too…
Longshank was immortal. His lady was not. They knew it couldn’t be forever, but they loved anyway. Immortality would flatten it all into the same tide of moments, for him. But he had decided that she was worth lying down with, for a while. Worth raising a monument to in the long sea of the years.
Maybe…just maybe…
“Reyville,” Caroline said.
He met her eyes.
What she wanted to say was We’ve known each other for a while, now…
Or, There’s something I’ve always wanted to say…
Or, Is it possible that I’ve missed something…?
But instead, she said, “Would you kiss me?”
And, as though he had been waiting for the invitation for decades, Captain Reyville—every single moment of his strange and unnatural life, every ghost and every grief and every grace—pulled forward without hesitation to grant her request.
Their lips met. Her hand slipped behind his head, cradled his hair, soft under her fingers. The world slid, earth falling away, the depths rising to meet them.
And the visions appeared, as she knew they would. As she hoped they would.
She sank into them. She drank his memories like wine. Every bit as intoxicating, and every bit as dangerous.
When they finally pulled away, her cheeks were wet with tears. She was in love. And she was a thief.
Some secrets are meant to stay hidden.
Thank you for reading! 📸
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**screaming** Oh, oh no. Caroline. This secret is gonna bite you in the rear if you keep it from him and you're stealing Reyville's memories. OH NO. Nononononono. (but oh please yes, they FINALLY kissed!)
The kiss! Yes! A loving moment, long-anticipated, even as the mystery is compounded. Now we have two love stories between the mortal and the immortal -- fascinating. And there’s much more to Flora than meets the eye. Eagerly standing by for next week’s episode!