Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural novella, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Twelve. Start Here.
Previously, Reyville recovered, secrets were revealed, and some plans were made.
In this episode, Caroline and Reyville face a deeper danger, a sacrifice is made, and a new start is offered...
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
The stars wheeled wild overhead, watchful, as Caroline peered through the camera lens to close the distance between herself and the RUMOR dock, yards off and unlit.
She had enhanced Scully’s built-in zoom with an attached telephoto lens, hoping that the extra bulk wouldn’t dilute the camera’s strange magic. It had been nearly an hour of continuous watching, hoping to catch a photo or two of the shadowy figures that lurked in the water-level warehouse, and though she kept readjusting her hands, her fingers were beginning to cramp.
Reyville sat nearby at the steering wheel of the small uncovered boat, borrowed from the Harbormaster’s aging fleet, his arm still in its sling. In his good hand he held a cup of tea from the thermos perched at his feet.
“Anything?” he murmured.
Caroline shook her head faintly. “No, no movement,” she said. “Maybe no one’s home.”
“Oh, they’re there, alright. Just playing hard to get,” he said. “Take a break. Here.”
She lowered the camera into her lap, her arms sore and complaining, and took the offered cup of tea, warm in her chilled hands.
“Thanks,” she said, and meant it. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, it’s that there's no point in having a stakeout without tea.”
Reyville replied, solemnly, “There are few things that tea can’t improve.”
Caroline sipped and peered through the dark at him, the only light the dim glow of the boat’s running-lights. Even without the Princess of the Weathers Reyville was every bit the sailor, comfortable at any helm even with his arm in a sling, that scarred lip giving a deeper seriousness to his face that hadn’t been there before. Not for the first time since learning his secret—or, at least, one of several—she wondered if, perhaps, his past selves had been serious, too.
Without any further details about any of them, she didn’t like to think about his past selves for too long. Multiple lives meant multiple deaths, and the idea left her queasy, unsettled.
“So,” said both in unison, attempting to break the silence, and they laughed quietly at their clumsiness around each other. They were still trying to regain some footing that had been lost, trying to remember a rhythm that had been briefly but sternly interrupted.
Reyville went first. “Dan told me something, not sure if it’s true.”
“Oh?”
“That you’re thinking of moving back to Denver.”
Caroline couldn’t read his eyes in the dark. “Oh, well…yeah. I had been thinking about it. Going back home and seeing family got me dreaming a little, that’s all.”
Reyville nodded, thoughtfully, sipped his tea. “Are you…still thinking of it?”
She shook her head. “No. No, I’m not. I mean…I don’t think it’s wise to ever say ‘never’ about anything, but…no. I have a life here. A home. Friends.”
She tried to put extra meaning into the word, but it wasn’t clear whether he caught it or not.
“Friends count for a lot in a place,” he said. “More than family, sometimes.”
“I imagine you’ve had more than a few, in your time. Friends, that is,” she said, stepping boldly into the subject in a way she hadn’t, yet.
He shrugged. “Yes and no.”
“I think you’re being modest,” she said. “I can’t imagine Captain Reyville without seeing him surrounded by a great cloud of compatriots.”
He smiled, sadly. “I've known a few people well, and fewer still have known me. When you know that you’re going to leave them all behind, to live again without them after they go…to start over with new faces…”
He shook his head, left that hanging in the air between them, an unfinished testament to a lonely life of repetition. How many skeletal hands clung to Captain Reyville’s shoulders, his waist, his heels, as he dragged them through time with him, haunting every new decade in turn? How many friends, lovers, colleagues, partners? Family, even? How many people could it be? How many memories? The very idea was overwhelming.
“Then you’ve…never loved anyone?” Caroline asked.
Reyville did not answer, his silence a chilling response, full of questions. It was not a yes. But it was not a no, either.
That silence told a dreadful story. For the first time, Caroline’s heart was seized with the ghastly thought that—perhaps—loving Reyville would be the cruelest thing she could ever do to him.
And she was surprised that he didn’t seem to hear the audible snap of something breaking, deep within her soul, at the revelation.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, rescuing her from the moment, and she fished it out.
It was Dan.
“Hey, you two, got anything yet?”
“Nothing,” Caroline said, trying to keep her voice level.
“Well, come on back to shore. I’ve got someone in my office I’d like you to meet.”
*******
The Harbormaster’s office was ablaze with light despite being after hours as Caroline and Reyville made their way up the dock. Upon stepping inside the artificial brightness, they were greeted by Dan and, seated across from her desk, a man who looked dimly familiar to Caroline.
As they made their way toward him, something in her memory clicked.
It was the man who had taken Lyla, the little Bracker child, and meant to cast her into the sea.
He looked entirely different from the version of himself lying in a pool of blood and seawater on the floor of the Fishmaid’s Wake, babbling about the Turning and the Shag all those weeks prior. His dark hair had been trimmed and was graying around the ears. He was still thin but had gained a bit of weight, and he was dressed in a simple sweatshirt and jeans, no longer the Bracker linen. He wore glasses. He was clean shaven. If Caroline had ever stood behind him at the bank or passed him in the grocery store, she would never have thought twice. Just a regular man.
“Caroline Phelan, Captain Reyville, this is Tim Bloom,” Dan said. “I imagine you might remember him?”
Caroline nodded, reached out to shake his hand. “Mr. Bloom, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he said, returning the gesture with tentative warmth, flicking his gaze between the two of them. “I’m told that it’s because of you two that the, uh…that the little girl is safe and sound.”
“We had help,” Reyville said. “But yes, the child is safe with her family.”
Tim nodded, relieved, and they all found places to sit.
“So,” Dan said, “I’ll level with you all: when I went looking for Mr. Bloom, I wasn’t sure what I was going to find. I didn’t have a name to go on, so I called all over the island authorities, even Seattle PD. No one knew what I was talking about until I reached out, finally, to the Bracker liaison. He was unusually helpful, this time. Told me that the Brack had decided not to press charges in the little girl’s kidnapping, and that Mr. Bloom had been allowed to go home.”
Something prickled at the back of Caroline’s neck. That kind of magnanimity was unusual, for a group that were typically quite defensive of their own.
“And,” Dan continued, “Mr. Bloom doesn’t work for our infamous poachers. But I do think you’ll be interested in what he has to say.”
Tim, taking his cue, said, “Oh. Yes, well…yes. So, I’m a trucker. At least I was, for a long time. I had a regular contract to pick up fruit and goods from the Brack and deliver them off-island, all down the west coast. Artisan bakeries and restaurants, usually. Big money in those Brackengold apples, the proprietary variety over there. I would usually be gone for two weeks or so at a time. Anyway, during one of my trips over to the Brack to pick up the supplies, I was…I was taken. Grabbed.”
Reyville sat forward in his chair. Caroline said, “By whom?”
“I don’t know, I never saw their faces,” Tim said, swallowing hard. “But they threw me in a truck and took me to some kind of facility. Clean, like a hospital. Buzzing machines, white walls. I don’t know how long they held me there. They kept me pretty well drugged up, so my memory is fuzzy. But I remember there were a lot of…lessons. They were trying to…trying to drill something into me. Trying to get me to remember something.”
“Like…brainwashing?” Caroline offered.
“Yes, brainwashing. Yes. And it must have worked, because I became absolutely convinced that…that there was a dark god in the sea, and it needed something to eat, and that I needed to be the one to feed it.”
He grimaced, like the words in his own mouth tasted bitter. “I’m not…I’m not the kind of person to…I would never hurt a child, you see, never. I have two of my own. I know there are plenty of bad people who have families, but I…I could never…”
“It’s alright, Mr. Bloom,” Reyville said, softly. “What else do you remember?”
Tim collected himself briefly before continuing. “The whole thing is a bit of a blur. One minute I was drugged up in that hospital type place, the next I was back on the Brack, dressed in someone else’s clothes, with a mission pounding in my head, overpowering everything else. And I didn’t really snap out of it until I saw that…that thing, that dark bird on the water. Still not sure whether I imagined that or not.”
“You didn’t.” Reyville, again. “That creature is called a Shag, and it was there to save the child. You’re lucky it didn’t kill you in the process.”
“I don’t feel particularly lucky, all things being equal,” Tim murmured.
“What happened after?” Caroline asked. “Were you arrested?”
“Detained, for a while, at the Port Salish Hospital, while the drugs wore off and my arm got worked on. The clearer my head got, the more I was sure I was going away for life, or at least for a long time. I wouldn’t even have blamed anyone for that. Drugs or not, I’m the one who took the little girl, I’m the one who nearly…you know. But a week or so after, I was told that the Brack wasn’t going to press charges. They were dropping it. And I was sent home.”
That prickle again. If the Brack had chosen not to press charges, it was because something must have alerted them that all was not as it seemed with this case. That Tim Bloom was innocent, and they were certain enough to let him go.
“While you were in the…facility,” Caroline said, slowly, “is there anything you remember about it? Anything at all, that could identify the building? The room? The people?”
Tim shook his head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could remember. There’s nothing to grab on to, really. White walls, white ceiling, linoleum floor. Beeping machines, hospital-type bed. I was high as a kite on whatever that crap was that they kept giving me, I just don’t know. There were all kinds of people in and out of that room, but they wore surgical masks and I couldn’t see their faces clear. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Bloom,” Caroline said, smiling in a way she hoped was encouraging. “You’ve been through something terrible, and we’re just relieved that no lasting harm was done.”
Tim said, “No lasting harm, no. Just…nightmares. Bad ones. In fact…well, no, it’s not important…but there’s one thing. I don’t know if it’s even real. But I can still hear the voices of the people in the surgical masks, talking to each other. And I remember hearing a repeated phrase. Something like…dark line. They said it an awful lot, but I couldn’t tell you what it means, or why they said it.”
Caroline glanced at Reyville, who had gone very still.
“Dark line?” she said. “Are you sure?”
“No, no, I’m not sure,” Tim said, quickly. “It’s just…it’s probably nothing.”
Caroline could practically hear Reyville’s mind racing, but he did not volunteer his thoughts, so she simply said, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Bloom.”
While Dan walked the man out of the office to his car, Caroline turned to Reyville.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.
“Dark line,” he replied, quietly. “That’s interesting.”
“Does it mean anything to you?”
“No, not really. But…” Reyville paused. “I don’t know. I still feel like there’s something there. That we’re close.”
Caroline nodded. “I agree.”
She felt the heft of Scully in her bag, checked the time. The night was still young.
“What would you say to going back out?” she asked.
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. Right now.”
Reyville shook his head, but his eyes glinted. “Two stakeouts in one night. Seems a bit mad.”
“Maybe. But what if this is the one?”
Reyville seemed to consider this.
Caroline nudged him with her elbow. “What do you say, Captain? Shall we try again, for old time’s sake?”
Reyville smiled, shrugged. “If we leave soon, I reckon the tea will still be hot enough.”
*******
The night was pure dark, no moon, as they arrived back at the place they had been earlier in the night, at a safe distance away from the compound. The waves were calm, and the RUMOR campus was quiet.
Reyville cut the engine and Caroline lifted Scully again to her eye, peering through the viewfinder. She had removed the telephoto; it felt too ungainly, like Scully was wearing a sweater three sizes too large, and every image came out blurry as if the camera herself was under protest. There still wasn’t any movement on the dock, nor on the water-level storage space, but Caroline snapped the shutter anyway.
When she pressed the button to look at the photos, she raised the screen to Reyville so that he could see.
“Incredible, the detail,” he said. “Scully is a wonder.”
Then, he pointed. “Those crates. Do you see those?”
Caroline looked at where he was pointing. A stack of storage crates piled on the dock, emblazoned with the RUMOR dragonfly.
Except for a few of them, near the back. These bore a different logo, something she couldn’t make out, even with Scully’s precision.
“What is that?” Caroline said, but Reyville shook his head.
“No idea.”
“Can we get any closer?”
Reyville hesitated. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Those security cameras they’ve got aren’t quite at Scully’s level of detail, but they would definitely see the boat if we got too close. And I wouldn’t want to tangle with those guys again, especially with you here. Once was enough.”
He bore the scars to prove it. But Caroline said, “We’re together, this time. Remember? It’s not going to be like before.”
Reyville considered this, preparing to argue. But then, he kicked on the trawling motor to push them slowly and quietly closer to the hulking RUMOR compound and the yawning mouth of the water-level warehouse.
As they closed the gap, Caroline raised Scully, pointing at the piles of crates.
Snap! Snap!
She looked at the photos, quickly. And two things became clear from this closer vantage-point.
The first was the unusual logo on the crates: the black silhouette of a lion’s head.
The second was movement, as figures emerged from the darkness, heading toward the end of the dock.
An angry cry rang out, thin across the water, and Reyville muttered a sharp, inaudible curse.
“They see us,” he said. “Dammit.”
He kicked on the boat’s engine, just as the echoing sound of another engine rippled across the water. The security guards in the warehouse were jumping into their boat, ready to make chase.
“Shit,” Reyville said, louder this time. “Hold on.”
He gunned the outboard and it roared to life, Caroline lurching backward, tucking Scully safely into her bag to keep from losing her grip on the camera.
But when she turned, she was shocked to see the security boat gaining on them, its new engine far superior to the one on the old Harbormaster boat. Reyville’s eyes were steely on the water ahead. He was heading for the reef outside the fishmaid sanctuary, a terrible echo of his own previous wreck, hoping to lose them in the maze.
Then, all of a sudden, Caroline was thrown against the gunwale at the bow of the boat, knocking the wind out of her, and she heard Reyville cry out in anger as the boat came to a sudden and unnatural stop, the engine guttering and growling ineffectually.
The pursuers had fired a hooked line. One had become lodged against the stern, holding fast, and one had become tangled in the propeller of their outboard.
They were dead in the water.
Reyville eased off the engine to a stop, rising to place himself between the approaching boat and Caroline as the pursuers towed the two boats together, gap closing quickly.
It was at that moment that Caroline’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out with shaking fingers: an unknown local number.
She answered the call.
“Miss Phelan,” said a woman’s voice on the other end, unfamiliar yet calm. Almost musical. “If you and your captain want to survive the night, I suggest you don’t try anything stupid.”
The boat drew closer. Caroline’s heart thundered, a pulse in her ears.
“What do you want?” she asked, fear constricting her throat.
“Please don’t be afraid. You’re safe, as long as you listen.” The woman’s tone was sympathetic. “No one is interested in causing any harm, tonight. We’re aware of your inquiries into RUMOR, and we’ve given margin for it, but tonight…it’s too far.”
The pursuing boat drew up alongside, figures in black with drawn weapons pointed at the two of them. Standing by.
“It’s time to leave this particular investigation alone, Miss Phelan,” said the woman. “RUMOR will handle the matter internally. You and the Captain may return to hunting ghosts and rescuing children. It’s what you’re good at. But we ask one thing of you.”
“What?” Caroline asked, breathless.
“The camera.”
One of the figures in the boat held out his gloved hand. Waiting.
Caroline reeled backward, Reyville stepped forward, defensive, though he didn't know what was being asked of her.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Your camera, Miss Phelan. This will all be over when you hand over the camera.”
“No, it’s…” Caroline felt tears stinging her eyes. “Please, I’ll delete the photos. I'll do it right here, in front of them, to prove it. Please don’t take the camera.”
But the woman did not reply, and the figure in the boat held out his hand.
“What do they want, Caroline?” Reyville asked. “Why do they want Scully?”
The helplessness, the terrible weight of it.
“If you don’t give him the camera,” the woman said, quietly, “we will be forced to kill you both. I’m sorry. But there’s only one way to keep things tidy.”
Reyville. Caroline could only think about Reyville. About starting over. The pain of starting over.
What would happen to her? She didn’t know. Would she haunt the waves like the Shag, or would she simply drift on the wind like a spirit? Or would it simply be nothing, just nothing? Or was it Heaven? What could a paradise possibly look like, at the end of all this?
For Reyville, it would be a long road back…and remembering. Of carrying this, as his last memory of her.
Caroline reached into her bag, pulling Scully out, the weight of her beloved camera heavy in her hands. She gripped it tightly for a moment, trying to memorize that feeling, trying to ask for forgiveness. A whimper of sorrow escaped her lips, without permission.
And then she stepped forward, reached across the dark gap, and placed Scully in the figure’s outstretched hand.
He pulled the camera away, obscured by the night, and Scully was gone.
“Very wise, Miss Phelan,” said the woman’s voice on the phone. “As I said: RUMOR will handle this matter internally. I wish you godspeed on your new adventures. Whimsy suits you better, Songbird.”
And then the call ended. One of the figures leaned forward, cutting the lines holding the two boats together. Within minutes, the engine of the security boat roared to life, and the dark figures were gone, back to RUMOR.
Caroline stood, stricken, the phantom weight of Scully still in her palm.
“Caroline,” Reyville said, quietly. “What…what was that…?”
But she couldn’t speak. Her tool, her first partner, her eyes in the dark, gone.
Gone, in the shadows.
Suddenly her bag felt so light. So empty.
So, so empty.
She sat heavily down on the seat at the boat’s bow, too grieved to cry.
*******
It was all over the local news, the following morning.
A researcher, a project lead at RUMOR, dead from an apparent suicide. Documents discovered in his office revealed a plethora of sordid details, including money skimmed off of other projects and used to pay for all kinds of extracurricular experiments. A raid on one of the smaller, unused labs exposed his playground. Receipts from hiring his own mercenary security service demonstrated his dedication to remaining hidden, secretive.
The small and superstitious crew of the Ferris Island Police Department weren’t used to such luck. An open and shut case, and it didn’t even require a belief in the supernatural forces of the island to understand it. Just plain old-fashioned greed, followed by despair. Fortune smiled!
After her shift was over, Caroline sat in the booth of the General Store, scrolling through the news story on the Port Salish Chronicle’s blog, the phrase orgy of evidence on a loop in her head. The man’s face and name were unfamiliar to her.
He was just some guy, a passionate scientist, allegedly married to his work to the point of taking it too far, and now he was dead.
The implication in the story was clear: he was just plain crazy.
An easy excuse, lazy shorthand. In all her years as a journalist, Caroline had never known “crazy” to mean anything concrete. Mental illness was a tapestry, a quilt, complex and multi-faceted and threaded through with dynamics. Plenty of mentally ill people never hurt anyone. Plenty of “sane” people did. Calling someone “crazy” was a convenient out, to avoid dealing with the difficulty of the human mind.
She could still hear the woman’s voice on the phone.
It will be handled internally.
What an amazing coincidence.
The door of the General Store opened, and Reyville walked in. He ordered two coffees and two slices of pie from Noah, and came to join her in the booth, taking off his coat and his hat, sliding in across from her, careful of his arm.
When he saw what was on her phone, he gently reached out and lowered the screen.
“Don’t,” he said. “We both know there’s nothing of use, there. It won’t help, reading that stuff.”
She sighed, set the phone down face-first on the table, closing her eyes against a wave of something. A budding headache. Frustration. Disappointment.
When she opened them again, there was Reyville. The grizzled pirate captain, his scarred face a mask of concern.
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” he said. “About Scully.”
She shrugged. “It was just a camera.”
“We both know that isn’t true.”
“It’s a small price to pay for our lives,” she said, tracing lines through the circle of condensation left behind after a previous sweating water glass was placed and lifted there. “But…yeah, Scully was special. I won’t deny that. I’m not sure how to…keep doing what we were doing, without her.”
“Does that mean…you’re done?” Reyville asked, quietly.
Caroline didn’t know how to answer that. Ghost hunting seemed like such a small act in comparison to the horrible, shadowy things they bore witness to the night before, the threat on people’s lives, the clear scapegoat in this ill-fated researcher, a perfect rube.
Whatever dark deeds were being done at RUMOR, the perpetrator was still out there, and had certainly figured out how to cover their tracks.
Only a few days prior, Caroline would have seen this as the perfect puzzle, the ideal mystery, a chance to go deeper. But not anymore.
Without Scully to see in the dark, what did they have? Without the Princess of the Weathers to cut through the storms, where did that leave them?
Plenty to know, and no way to learn it.
Plenty to fix, and no way to repair it.
“I don’t know,” she replied, truthfully.
Movement, out of the corner of her eye, as a wind-clean seagull landed and settled on the walkway railing outside the window, fixing Caroline with an intelligent stare. A stare with an untold ghost story in it. A wild, ancestral stare. Stirring a memory of not so long ago and yet lifetimes, lifetimes…
Months prior. Sitting in this booth across from this man, secretive and unscarred, watched by another seagull—or, who knows, the same one—when they shook hands over what seemed like a frivolous agreement, in hindsight.
Get me enough material for my book, she had said, then it’s a deal. At least for now.
The book? A long-dead dream. Too much had happened, since then.
But Reyville’s frank gaze was staring right through her to the wall behind, not a cloud in sight, as he said, “If you want to be done, Caroline, I’ll certainly let go. Because I never want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. But…”
He paused, glanced at the seagull, who regarded them both impassively.
“I hope,” he said, “that you’ll keep going. With me. There’s still so much to do. Questions to answer. Things to repair. And…there’s no one I would rather do it with.”
And he was right. What more could the singing woman and the sailor do, once the big blue trawler was repaired, once the money from her aunt arrived, once the cottage ghost deigned to reveal its face—camera or no camera—and the sea chose to give up its secrets?
This island is small, and yet so vast.
Reyville placed his good hand on the table, his calloused hand, a perfect gentleman.
“Please, Caroline. I…need you. I need my partner.”
I love you, I love you, I love you…
And she did, no matter how cruel it would be to admit it to him. She could carry that, at least for the both of them. She could be the one to hold on to that. Maybe for a time. Maybe forever. Maybe until she died, someday, and he started over.
After all, there was room in her bag, now, where Scully used to be. It was so empty. There was space for something heavy and secret. A ghost story she could never tell.
She glanced out the window at the seagull.
“Hello,” she murmured.
Then, as Noah arrived at the table with the coffee and the pie, Caroline raised her eyes to look into the face of the Captain, reached across to place her hand on his.
In response to the movement of her hand across the table, the seagull rose from the railing with a self-satisfied cry, a song of hope wind-rasped and sea-shrieked, climbing into the air, calling out its news to the skies and the stormclouds and the spring, the spring, on its way.
O, feathered prophet! O, winged witness! O, screamer! O, sacred songbird of the sea!
Hovering like the Spirit of God over the island, this strange island, where a singing woman and a sailor can know and repair, know and repair, and always return to the beginning.
Where every song has a start, and an end, and a place to start over.
A place to try again. And again. And again.
Caroline smiled up at Reyville, tipping her coffee cup.
“So,” she said. “Got plans tonight?”
—END OF FREELANCE and FISHMAIDS, SEASON ONE—
STAY TUNED FOR SEASON TWO, COMING SUMMER 2024!
(Got questions? I imagine you might! Please drop any and all questions about the future of Freelance and Fishmaids below, and I’ll try to answer them all in the upcoming issue of The Weekly on Tuesday!)
Thank you for reading! 📸
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I like how nothing's tidy in this ending. The heroes didn't win it all. Sully's MIA. Who knows what's going on with RUMOR...
It captures the inimitable sweet melancholy of the sea. It's mysterious, cruel, beautiful. A true "sailor's tale".
Will season two still follow Caroline and Reyville (which is a great team name, now that I say it aloud)?
Season 2 they get the camera back, yes? Yes? Or...Druid retrieves the camera! Druid and Scully! Go team!
Maybe, I'm just spit-balling. This really was beautiful.