Joshua Comstock should have known the day would go south when he saw the full moon on his morning drive into work. If he had noticed it, he would have mentally prepared himself for a day of stolen purses and teenage drinking. The beach was always a mess the day after a full moon.

“All the crazies want to take a little beach day when the moon’s out,” said Joshua’s commanding officer. “Something about the tide being high or whatever. Brings ‘em out like werewolves in sunhats and bikinis.”

But Joshua paid no mind to the skies this morning, and even if he had, they would not have adequately warned him of what was to come. 

He pulled into the Grand Haven beach patrol station at 6 a.m., coffee in hand, eyes only half open with all the ignorance of a man who is blind to signs.

“Morning Cumstock!” came a voice from another man in uniform. 

“Bradley,” Joshua nodded. “Always a pleasure to have some light workplace harassment first thing in the morning.”

“Same every day!” said Bradley

“Oh, I know Bradley, I know.”

“Well, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?”

Joshua made his way to his desk, dropping his haphazardly packed lunch and logging onto his computer to begin the morning’s routines, which unfolded without any of the chaos he had come to expect after a full moon. Joshua had an intern this summer. A skinny, pimply kid with a buzzcut who wanted to be a cop when he was a big boy. Joshua called him Simmons. He couldn’t remember his first name. The kid reminded Joshua of himself at that age and for that reason he did not like him very much. Around 8 a.m. Joshua drove the two of them around the beach in their air-conditioned Kubota, picking up trash, enforcing their no-dogs policy, and generally trying to disillusion the kid from law enforcement—to no avail. 

By 10 a.m. he was back sitting in the office, applying another layer of sunscreen and eating his mid-morning banana. He alternated between watching the minutes tick away on the wall clock and scrolling through his phone, wishing—in a way he would come to regret—that something would happen, give him a task to do.

At 11 Joshua’s wish was granted in the form of a phone call. 

“Is this beach patrol?” It was a woman. Her voice quivered slightly, like a struck tuning fork. Joshua thought she must be either old or anxious; possibly both.

“Yes ma’am, this is Officer Comstock. What can I do for you?”

“Hello Officer. My name is Mary, Mary Peters, and I, well, I’m not at the beach, but—” she continued to stutter through an explanation. Joshua caught pieces of it. “I’m sure it’s fine. I feel silly even calling, but—”

“Ma’am, is there something I can help you with?”

A pause.

“My husband, John, he’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“I think so.”

“How long?”

“He left to fish on the boat at six this morning. We have a small center console, it’s white, the boat has a name, on the side, we call it Amphitrite, and—” Joshua rolled his eyes. 

“Ma’am, I’m sure he’s fine. We don’t consider a person missing for at least 24 hours.”

“Right, right,” she deflated. For a moment he felt guilty. “It’s just that John said he’d be back before noon.” Joshua was trying to figure out a way to hang up that expressed care but not action. Sending out a search party took time and officers. Officers who would otherwise be patrolling the beach, not the waters. Search and rescue was better left to the Coast Guard; though, in cases like this, where the search in question was a small excursion, the officers on duty made small trips in the runabout— a practice they called “scanning.” Sort of a safety measure to avoid alerting the Guard unnecessarily. 

“Well, ma’am, it’s only eleven. If he isn’t back by one, you call me.” Joshua conceded before hanging up the phone. 

At 1 p.m., the phone rang again.

***

The runabout seated four people comfortably, but for this mission Joshua only took Bradley. The intern had begged in a sort of whine to go on the journey, but Joshua sentenced the kid to beach duty. The two officers had almost no information to go on. Mary didn’t like to go on the boat, being afraid of water. She had no nautical expertise, only knowing the type and color of the boat and a brief description of John, who seemed as commonplace as his name. If John was really lost, he wouldn’t have gotten far. Fishers usually stayed close to the shoreline. They would probably find this John taking a midday nap in the cabin of his boat, letting his line run off the side. 

The two officers circled the waters in vain. Above them clouds were forming, and it looked like a storm was moving in from the northeast. Boats were already starting to come into the marina moving together like a flock of pelicans. John Peters was not among them. Joshua and Bradley found a John Barson and even a John Adams, but no Peters. And neither Barson nor Adams had seen the John in question. But who could really pick them apart out here in these waters? Boats looked like boats and men looked like men—all with varying degrees of size and shape, but each to each indistinguishable.

When they returned to the station, it was 2 p.m. Joshua was feeling tired and already regretting his desire for more excitement. He had the unfortunate task of calling Mrs. Peters and asking if John had turned up. He hadn’t.

“You mean you didn’t find him?”

“Not yet, ma’am, but we have our best officers on it.”

“Oh, God, I’m coming down there.”

“Ma’am, it won’t do any good to worry.”

“Find him, dammit! I need my husband back. This isn’t like him, you don’t understand!”

“We’re doing what we can.” Joshua wondered if this was true.

“Do more!” Mrs. Peters hung up.

Joshua returned to his seat and put his face in his hands. Two other officers had taken over the scan. He was opening the report when the intern came to his desk at a fast walk, panting.

“What is it? I’m busy.”

“There’s been a missing person reported.” He said this as if there was a waterspout outside and he was trying to get Joshua to evacuate. 

“I’m aware, Simmons. Christ, what do you think we’ve been doing for the last hour?”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir. I mean a child. A kid’s gone missing.” He was still panting.

“A kid?” Joshua was standing now. “Where’s the family?”

“On the beach.”

“You left them? Bring them in, Simmons! It’s protocol!”

“Yes, sir.” He started to turn.

“Not now, Simmons! Hell, just take me to them.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

The Marrons couldn’t have known patrol would be so busy on the day their daughter went missing. Not that there was ever a convenient time to lose a child, but this day was especially unfortunate. While half of the patrol team was working on finding Mr. Peters, soothing the understandably worried Mrs. Peters, or holding down the fort, Joshua was striding across the sand with Simmons following painfully close. He meant to shake the kid so he could get some actual work done, but he followed cloyingly. 

The Marrons were a young couple. The husband was in his mid-30s, in good shape but starting to round in the middle, and wearing a pair of sport sunglasses and beach shorts that touched his knees. The wife was presumably the same age and wearing a giant sun hat and a sheer covering over her bathing suit. She had hair the color of the sand and tears running down her slightly burnt cheeks. When Joshua approached them, it was the wife who met him.

“Sophie. Come here, baby.” A small child in a pink one-piece ran obediently to her mother and was hoisted up into her arms. “Are you the officer?”

Joshua had been at this for eleven years, but even now, he felt that familiar pit in his stomach every time he had to approach a lost child case. What if he couldn’t help? It was likely that Mary’s husband had docked somewhere remote and fallen asleep for too long. It was unlikely the same was true for a little girl.

“Yes ma’am. I’m officer Joshua Comstock. Do you want to tell me what happened?” The husband moved to join them, holding the hand of another little girl, slightly older than the one being carried. He was sweating, having already searched up and down the beach. 

“Our daughter, Lily,” she choked.

“She’s missing, Josh. I went up and down the beach already calling her name and I can’t find her anywhere. We think, maybe…someone might’ve…,” the husband trailed off, refusing to speak the worst.

“When was she last seen?” asked Joshua, sounding empathetic but trying not to seem worried.

“Almost an hour,” the wife answered in a strained voice.  But she’s just a little kid, she’s only five, she has no way of knowing where to find us if she’s lost.” Even as she said this, she squinted her eyes and scanned the beach between tears.

“Have you searched the water?” Joshua shifted his attention in that direction in search of any panicked splashing. But the waves were strong and choppy from the incoming storm, making it impossible to distinguish any signs of drowning.

“No, we haven’t. She—”

“She hates the water, Josh. I mean she really hates the water. We come here often, and she’s never once gotten in the water,” said the husband.

“Even so, we need to search. Simmons,” he turned to the intern, “have the lifeguards send out a signal for the swimmers to get out of the water so they can search for any stragglers.” He turned back to the couple now. “What does Lily look like?”

After all of Joshua’s questions were answered, a report was sent to the local police, and Joshua drove the Marrons along the beach to search for their daughter. It was 4 p.m.

***

Where Lily was, was in fact nowhere the Marrons would find her. What they had said about Lily was true: Ever since she was an infant, Lily despised getting wet. Even at five the Marrons found bath time a particularly dreadful event. It wasn’t just that she was fussy. Lily would scream, she would scratch, she turned into another girl completely, one acting on survival and instinct, rather than the docile daughter they were used to when dry. If she had the language for it, Lily would tell them it was something about the feeling of being wet, not the water itself. She was never afraid of what was in the water—what swam in the depths of Lake Michigan that could drag her down to its dark abyss, or what lived under the drain in their porcelain tub. It was simply the touch of water against her skin, the way it rolled down her arms that made her feel almost … itchy. 

What she did like, however, was the sand. And for that reason, the whole Marron clan could make a trip to the beach comfortably. The youngest at three, Sophie, would splash around in the water with the ever-attentive parent close by. At nine, the oldest girl, Mo, would run in and out of the water, giggling chaotically and pretending to be a mermaid. But Lily would build a home for herself in the sand, complete with turrets, seashell princesses, and a moat. On this particular day she had built herself an impressive fortress, extending her structure from its usual two-by-two bucket design to a new five-by-five. In the center of the courtyard she built a mound that, before she went missing, was being sculpted into a watch tower of sorts. 

There was a pond, owned by friends of the family, that the Marrons sometimes visited. When Lily built her sandcastles on that beach, she’d have her older sister plunder the depths of the pond for clay which Lily would use to make her princesses, complete with seashell bodices and green seaweed curls. But today, she settled for the dolls she brought from home, some of them haphazardly wedged into piles of sand like bodies on a battlefield. With all her architectural instruments, her dolls, and her sand, Lily had enough to keep her busy the whole family beach day. But that was not always the case. On other beach days, when boredom struck Lily, she had to make do with other forms of entertainment. 

On one such day, Lily’s father had taught her how to lure seagulls. Lily was amazed by how much power her dad possessed, the way he could bend the will of the environment. So, when her parents were splashing in the water with the baby, or snorkeling with the oldest, Lily would sometimes dip her sandy fingers into the family cooler and pull out the bag of Cheetos they always brought to the beach. She’d walk just a little down the shore and toss a few in the air like confetti, waiting for the seagulls to swarm and dive for their treasure. As children do, Lily learned to test the limits of this invitation by holding a single Cheeto out into the air like the Statue of Liberty with her torch, and then wait for her prey to be summoned by instinct. She would squeal if it got too close, its beak nipping her tiny fingers. But Lily believed she was in training, like a lion tamer at a circus or a snake charmer in a storybook, Lily was training to be a bird woman. She was working herself up to her ultimate trick: the seagull’s kiss. 

Lily believed that the true test of her bravery, the true test of her fellowship with the birds, would be to hold a Cheeto between her lips and allow the seagull to swoop in front of her, beak to beak—an act of trust between seagull and girl. Each depending on the other to do no harm if they could help it. Today, she knew, was not that day. Maybe when she was a grown up. Today, she settled for arranging the chips in a star formation, entertaining the idea that maybe she could train her birds to swarm with some sort of synchronicity. Or have one of them create a star with its excited footprints. She saw herself as being in front of a live audience, in a sort of arena around the beach, watching her set the formation with anticipation. And then, when the star was laid out, she waited.

Nothing came.

It seemed impossible. On a normal day she could barely finish the figure before getting bombarded.

But still, nothing came.

She searched in frustration for the nearest seagull and found one sitting pretentiously several yards away. It didn’t look over at her. In fact, it almost seemed to notice everything but her, staring straight out at the water, or looking up the beach, but never in her direction. 

Lily grabbed one of the powdered points of her star and approached the ignorant bird, but upon getting close the bird hopped farther down the beach. Lily stopped, frustrated, but strangely, so did her bird. It was a dance. The closer she got, the farther the bird went, perfectly mimicking her steps. She had never played this game with them, and yet, the bird was a perfect pantomime. Every time Lily would pause, so too would the seagull. And every time she would break out in a sprint, her companion would flap its wings up shore in the same fashion. They continued their game for several yards, stopping and starting in perfect harmony, Lily testing its alertness with sudden starts and stops, sudden runs or dead breaks, the seagull always in tune, until finally it stopped completely, and Lily was permitted to approach. She was almost disappointed that their game had come to an end. The bird seemed not to mind and continued to divert its attention to the water, like it was searching for something, its beak a compass pointing due west to Wisconsin. 

As was their custom, seagulls would fly away if you got too close. Lily expected this law to still apply. But the bird didn’t budge until finally Lily was standing directly above it, watching it stand still as a statue, fixed on a point out in the water. Was it broken? 

She followed its gaze to the water. A thick fog had suddenly covered the entire beach now and it seemed like a storm was coming in, except for the fact that the water was completely still; not a wave in sight. It was only then that Lily realized the beach had become absolutely quiet. She turned to see where all the noise had escaped to. All around her the beach was entirely empty. She looked back up the shore where she had started her journey, scanning the lake for her father or mother or sisters. When she couldn’t find them, she moved her gaze to the rest of the beach looking for umbrellas, coolers, beachgoers throwing Frisbees through the fog. But all was empty, empty and still. 

It never struck Lily that she should be concerned in the way that it never occurred to children that things could go horribly wrong. Somehow, the seagull reassured her, made her feel less alone. The bird let out a high-pitched squawk as though it were calling out for something in the foggy water. When nothing returned its call, it moved forward, not up the beach but out on the water.

It seemed ordinary until Lily remembered that birds could not walk on water. And yet, the seagull stood with its two legs clawing into the still lake like it would the sand. Finally, it looked at Lily for the first time. She jumped, having grown accustomed to being ignored. After a pause, the seagull squawked again. It was calling to her, she realized. Lily approached the shoreline, pausing before her toes could touch the water. She hated getting wet, and she had never learned to swim. Still, the call came. 

Tentatively, she stepped out, bracing herself for the icy grip at her ankles, the prickly sting of cool water spreading to consume her whole. But that sensation never came. When Lily looked down, she saw that her foot rested only a quarter inch in the water, then stopped as if on a solid slab. Cautiously, she leaned all her weight on her front leg to see if the water would hold her or break its charm like a sheet of ice. When it remained solid, she let her other foot fall, and before she knew what was happening, she was once again following the seagull.

***

Endlessly the water went on. Through the thick fog, Lily could see nothing but the bird in front of her, never looking back to make sure she was following. Only stopping when she stopped but paying her no mind otherwise. She understood she was being led some place. Somewhere little girls weren’t allowed to be unless invited. She never stopped to consider how long she’d been away from the beach. If she had, she would realize that hours had passed. Lily walked for miles it seemed. Although she had no approximation of how long a mile could be, only that she had traveled very, very far. There was no diversity of scenery to break up the monotony of the journey. Even miracles become mundane. Below her feet was still water, in front, the gray slate of cloud meeting the surface, with no hint of sun in the sky to signal the passing of time. 

At some point Lily grew tired and laid down on the cool water. She sank an inch into its clutches, ripples spreading out from her body and dissipating.  In her dreams, Lily was back on the beach. She walked hand in hand with her family and led them to the spot on the beach where she began this walk. She stepped her little toes out onto the inky water, showing them all that she could do. They applauded her abilities, and she ushered them to join her. There was no seagull to guide them. It was Lily who led. They trusted her, and they followed her out onto the water, farther and farther until she heard splashing behind her. She turned with a jolt. The magic had run out for them and she watched as her family struggled to stay afloat, splashing and flailing. The littlest sank first and one by one they followed until it was only her father’s hand reaching out from beneath the deep and Lily clutching it, trying desperately to pull him, to pull them all, onto what? There was nothing to support them now. Her father’s grip slipped into the black tide and when it was only Lily, sitting there, unsure of what to do next, she woke up to find her real self in the exact same position: Alone and unsure.

But still she pressed on, until finally, she heard the call of a thousand shrill seagulls crying out like banshees of the sea. Their cries blurred together until they were a continuous ring in Lily’s ears. Who were they calling to, she wondered. To each other? To her? 

The sound grew louder with each step, indiscreet and foreboding until their destination emerged from the fog like a magician in a cloud of smoke. Lily stopped a few yards shy to take in what she was looking at. It was some kind of boat, white, with its bow sticking out of the water, its stern mid-capsize, and wedged precariously in a distinctive looking rock formation. It was sinking. Or it had been sinking until it paused its submersion. The ship sank no further; it corrected itself no further; it was stuck between air and water, life and death, as if frozen in ice. All over the boat were seagulls, flying to and fro and landing along the bulk of the vessel and along the rock formation, defecating over every inch of it until it was magmatic. Each gull took a turn noticing the small visitor and squawking in either alarm or jubilation; Lily was unclear which. What was clear was that the rock had been their home, but that home had been disturbed by this vessel.

Lily inched her way to it and put her hand on the mucous membrane of algae, rust, and bird droppings. It looked old, like it had been sitting here, perfectly stuck between drowning and not drowning for decades. Her guide came close to her and began to cry violently until its call was the only one she could hear, distinct and familiar. Look, look, it seemed to say, notice. So, Lily searched, playing a game of hot and cold with her guide. Cold, it said, when she tried to touch the top of the stern, cold. The ship was turned slightly so that its underside was more visible than the cabin, and Lily ran her hand gently, almost tenderly, alongside its slimy belly. Maybe it needs me, she thought, but what for, she couldn’t say. Colder, said her gull. Lily shifted her attention towards the cabin. Over half of the cabin was submerged in water, and because the boat was tipping, the space was dark and eerie, blocked from even the minimal amount of sun in the gray sky. Warm, squawked the bird vigorously. Warm warm warm. But she could see nothing. 

Written along the side of the cabin, beside the door, were the letters A, M, P, H, I, and T. Lily could tell others had been written there, but they had eroded long ago. Lily climbed precariously onto the cabin’s side and hoisted the door upward. All the while the bird screamed from below. She stood at the side of the entrance staring down when she noticed a pair of legs completely submerged in the depths of the cabin below. 

All at once, every bird called out until the roar of them was deafening. Lilly put her hands to her ears to block out the noise. “STOOOOOOP!” she screamed, as high as her voice could go. And still the birds did not relent. In droves they began to fly toward her. Lily could see them each taking tiny steps in her direction at first and then flapping into the air. The first gull struck at her shoulder as it flew past, the next went through her legs, and in a second, every bird on the boat was circling around her. A group of them had taken the special task of tugging at her hair. Throughout the attack their cries never ceased. Her ears felt like they would burst as the birds perched atop her head and shoulders screamed loudly in her face. Lily threw up her hands trying to swat them away like a swarm of mosquitoes, but they were relentless in their ambush and would fly immediately back to her. “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?” she yelled. And taking a step to the right, she felt her foot slip on the slimy lip of the entrance before losing her footing completely and tumbling for a brief moment through empty space. She braced herself to come crashing into the pool of water and drowning through the opposite window. But the water remained solid as glass when Lily hit the bottom, and she was greeted by immediate silence as if the walls around her were soundproof. Lying on her side, she checked herself for scrapes, but she saw no signs of injury, despite feeling some pain. She felt like she might cry but overcame the urge before remembering what had forced her attention here in the first place.

On hands and knees, she crawled as far as space would permit to the far end of the cabin. It was dark and crowded, and her back was up against the left wall. She hadn’t imagined the legs. There they were—a man’s, she thought—bare to the knee in the green water, covered in hair, and ending in a pair of feet wearing sandals like the ones her father wore. In an instant, she remembered her dream, saw her father’s hand slipping beneath the surface. Frantic now, she craned to look up the body to ensure it did not have her father’s face attached, that she had not predicted—or worse, manifested—his demise. The space grew smaller the farther she went until she was forced to army crawl, and then lie completely on her belly and slither like a snake into the farthest corner where the walls of the cabin met the solid water and there was nowhere else to turn. All was darkness now, her body completely blocked any of the small traces of light that were able to slip through. Still, she cupped her hands together and searched the murky water below, the way she might look through the glass at an aquarium.

The legs, she could just see, were connected to a torso. Whoever the man was, he wore cut-off shorts and a plaid short-sleeve shirt. A surge of relief shivered through Lily when she saw that, unlike her clean-shaven father, this man sported a scraggly beard. But whatever relief she felt quickly withered as she studied the rest of the man’s dim features. In motionless terror he stared back at Lily from the dark depths below, his face green and sallow. Lily got a flash of a scene from a scary movie she had watched one night while pretending to sleep on the couch. Whatever the plot, it was lost on Lily, but the zombified creatures looked just like this man, mouth agape, eyes glassy and gray and opened wider than she’d ever seen eyes open before, like they were searching for mercy. His skin was wrinkled, either from the water or from age. Wispy strips of white hair swirled ominously about his forehead and his ears.

Lily wasn’t sure why, but tears were coming from her eyes and dropping in tiny ripples on the surface of the water, obscuring her vision. If she had been older, if she had language for it, then she might have known that it was the cold sting of death that caused her tears, the grief of losing a member of the collective, one of her own, no attachments required. A grief that could swallow you whole, especially if you studied it under a microscope. She threw her fists down, but the water would not budge. She punched at the floor of water splashing her face, mixing with her tears. “HEY,” she cried “I’M HERE NOW, I’LL SAVE YOU. JUST SWIM TO ME. SWIM TO ME, PLEASE.”

His two eyes stared vacantly into hers with no response. For what seemed like an hour, Lily laid in that small dark space and stared at the man, thinking of how to help him, wondering if she could. If it even mattered now. But it had to. Why else would she be brought here? Or was all of this for nothing? She just happened to meet the seagull, and it directed her to the boat to show her its home and nothing more. Stop in, have some tea, meet the wife and kids, one living being inviting another into a shared space. Well, Lily was done. She wriggled her way backwards hoping that she would not suddenly sink or be caught on any of the rusted iron above her. She emerged from the cabin amidst the continued hailstorm of sound, flapping wings, and bird calls, but the seagull that had befriended her stood out immediately. He was familiar now. When the two met, he quickly hopped down from the boat and began to lead her back through the fog to the beach. 

She looked back only once. She hadn’t seen it before, but with the addition of the boat, the rock formation took on the silhouette of a face, almost feminine. Yes, she could see the capsized vessel acting as the smooth, rounded forehead, dipping into the water where the eye would be and then rising to the crest of a nose, which, with the formation of the rock, even had a slight nostril. And then, of course, jutting out further down were two rounded humps, like lips kissing the foggy sky. Finishing the image was the chin, which dipped subtly back into the water. Lily imagined that it continued into a neck, traveling down to the chest and abdomen, that somewhere beneath the water was the rest of a large lake goddess, emerging from the water to tell her something. But what?

She left the goddess behind and followed her muse. Only, the journey back was much different. Lily had only walked maybe a hundred yards in the billowing fog when it unfolded itself and she was standing on solid ground once again, sand between her toes, waves now lapping at her ankles. She heard voices. The fog continued to part and she saw, in the mist, various beach goers, kids and families running in and out of the water, people making sand castles. And now the seagull was nowhere in sight. It may have wandered off and joined the many other birds standing along the shore begging for scraps. 

“Lily?”

She looked about. There, far off down the beach was her mother, running to her frantically.

“LILY!”

Suddenly her mother’s arms were around her, smothering her. She held Lily out in front of her, a hand on each shoulder.

“Lily, where were you? Where did you go?”

“LILY!” a man’s voice this time: her father’s. He ran to her and picked her up in his arms. He was damp with sweat and smelled salty. Over his shoulder, Lily saw two men in uniform looking simultaneously annoyed and relieved. Her father set her down and squared her shoulders so they were face to face. “You can’t just run away like that, you hear me? We thought something really bad had happened to you. Something bad could’ve happened to you!”

“Did something bad happen, Lily? Where did you go?” asked her mother, a tremor in her voice.

Lily stared blankly up at them. How to explain? But then she only knew how to explain things one way: honestly.

“I was out. On the water.”

Her parents gave the man in uniform an accusing look.

“I assure you, we searched the water thoroughly,” he said. “We evacuated swimmers from the water for an hour while we searched but there was no sign of her.”

“Well,” Lily could feel herself beginning to explain, preparing herself for their disbelief, “I was really far out.”

“You don’t swim honey. I’ve never seen you swim. How far did you go?” 

“Well, she couldn’t have gone far, ma’am, she’s only a child, and she’d have to swim out miles away for us not to see her.” The man in uniform knelt down to talk to Lily. “Are you sure you didn’t just get lost on the beach, hon? Maybe you went with someone you thought was your mom, and got lost with all the people around?”

“No!” She was getting defensive now, “I was on the water.”

“But it doesn’t look like you got in the water, honey, you’re still dry,” her mother said.

“Not in. On.”

“I don’t follow…” 

“I walked on the water, right on top of it, like Jesus, and I went really far out. Like really far.”

Her mother turned her attention to the officer now, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, she’s normally not like this. She doesn’t usually make up stories.” She looked down at her daughter severely. “Lily—”

“But I’m telling the truth! There was a boat, a sunk boat! There was a man inside.”

“Okay, Lily. We need to go home now.” 

“He needs me, though! He needs my help, the man in the boat. He’s right out there, right where I’m pointing,” she said, pointing out at the lake. “There’s a big rock— it looks like a face. The seagulls can show you!”

Her father’s fear was turning into impatience. He reached down and grabbed her hand, as if to pull her away, and turned to Joshua. “Thank you for all of your help. We’re sorry to have wasted your time.”

“No, no,” said Joshua. “This is my job. I’m just glad she’s alright. You guys have a good night and be safe.”

“You too, Officer.”

Joshua watched them go, considering what Lily had said. A thought appeared deep within the caverns of his mind: Did it have a name? Did the boat have a name?

“Lily” he called suddenly. The Marrons turned, now halfway up the sand dune near the parking lot. But what if the kid just had a bad dream, got lost on the beach and fell asleep? Or what if she just had an overactive imagination, how would the Marrons feel about him playing into her fantasies?

“Yeah?” She called back in her soft voice. Joshua could see, even from across the beach, that she was crying.

Did it have a name? Just ask.

“Officer?” said Mrs. Marron.

Just ask.

“It’s nothing. Have a nice night.”

“You too,” they called.

And then they were gone, driving away in their minivan, away from the terror of the day. Tonight, Lily would dream about the day. About lost ships and drowned men; seagulls and goddesses. She would wake in the middle of the night feeling like there was something she was supposed to do, something she should’ve done. But when she woke in the morning the feeling would be gone. Maybe the whole day would be lost to her soon, sinking into the ocean of her mind like a sandcastle being washed away. The memory always fading, until there was no trace of its turrets and buttresses and seashell doors. 

Joshua turned to face the water now. Yes, she would forget. And maybe she was right to do so.  Still, looking out at the lake, devoid now of swimmers, he thought about her words: a sunk boat with a man inside… But she was a child, and what would he do, ask the seagulls as she suggested? 

He walked back up the dune toward the main office. Simmons was waiting by his desk. 

“We found the girl, should we still be looking for the husband on the boat still, John?”

“It’s getting late. The moon is high. Call the guard.” Simmons began to walk away. “Oh, and Simmons, call Mrs. Peters too. Tell her…tell her we weren’t able to find him.” 

[Cullin Morgan is a writer based in Nevada where he is working on his first short-story collection. His writing focuses on the meeting place between the strange and the unusual and the ordinary and mundane. He hopes to publish his collection in the coming year.]