FICTION BY JEFF PARSONS

In addition to Jeff’s two short story collections, The Captivating Flames of Madness and Algorithm of Nightmares, he is published in The Horror Zine and also in many of their anthologies. He has been published in Aphelion, Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, Fireburst: The Inner Circle Writers’ Group, Amazing Stories, Tales of Galactic Pest Control, and in many anthologies. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first full-length novel titled Tomorrow Will End, a sci-fi/ horror adventure.

WHAT THE TIDE BRINGS
by Jeff Parsons

Funny how a dead body could ruin everyone’s day.

The sunrise breeze caressed Derik Sander’s young face like the fleeting promise of an intimate relationship. A clean smell—fresh, never touched by anyone else—traveled across the Pacific Ocean. The water cycled in and out, like breathing, as waves reached onto the sandy beach, almost touching him, then retreating.

Terns ran along the sand, chasing the rhythm of the frothy wavelets in search of fresh gobbets from the bountiful sea. Seagulls wheeled on the thermals above, watching omniscient, as if judging him.

Looking to his left, the slight smile within his neatly trimmed goatee vanished. A shred of police tape stuck out of the sand.

Thoughts of anger cooled to calm. After the event, maybe I’ll have a talk with the maintenance chief. Damn. No, best to not stir up anything. After all, don’t want to look bad before the executive committee. But the tape has to go ASAP.

Like the ever-annoying public at large, the body washing up on shore was completely unpredictable.

Luckily, he was there early yesterday when it happened. He’d been inspecting the site, getting out of the office for once, wearing his steel-toed workboots, new blue jeans, lumberjack shirt, and the requisite blinding-orange safety vest. The corpse just floated in with a large wave as if the seas vomited forth yet another complication in his plans for the Annual July 4th Party-In-The-Park Festival.

He had to make a decision when that happened. Not a harsh one, or technically illegal, but gray enough to bring his motives from the shadows into the public spotlight, if it got out. He needed for this body to be processed quietly, after the festival, and all publicity hushed until then.

Feeling strangely uneasy, not like himself, his thoughts wandered to yesterday’s potential Public Relations nightmare: a dead person associated with the town’s money-maker festival would obviously be a bad idea.

It was fortunate that the maintenance man with him, Jake Chambers, understood how the town’s future revolved around this quiet discretion. Derik also arranged for their town police and the coroner, in a nearby town, to keep a lid on it, for now. The most difficult prospect was the County Bugle newspaper, a persistent bi-monthly thorn tearing into the town’s government with no end to the negative press. They, of course, found out. Derik promised them full disclosure as long as they explained in their story that for reasonable unanticipated circumstances, the process of reporting the body was delayed. Also, the threat of increasing local taxes and revised zoning ordinances persuaded them to be cooperative.

Derik looked away from the scene of death back to the distracting reassurance of the tide. The sea had been there almost since the beginning of the earth. It hid many secrets and, in this case, gave up one in the form of a dead man most likely in his early twenties, bloated from the sea and shredded by fish. Not much to go on, really, just a speckled gasbag of mottled blue and kelp-strangled mockery of human existence, covered by red crabs taking their due toll.

Drifter. Not welcome here. Passing through, drunkard or meth-head, breaking and entering, robbing the decent folk of this community was the usual modus operandi. No loss. Nothing better to do than getting high and going for a fatal swim with the undercurrents.

Derik mentioned that intuitive leap to the coroner’s assistant while the body was being extricated from the sandy grave. An affirmative grunt in return sounded agreeable.

No problems there.

He wouldn’t let a dead body ruin this event for the town. Or himself! Imagine the questions about whether the event was safe, what happened, what are they doing about it… blah, blah, blah endless insanity.

The event goes on. And, so does life. 

He lost himself in watching the waves with the rising sun peeking above the distant horizon. Meditative and relaxing, despite his relentless mind wandering.

The endless progression of the terns followed the wave fronts. The crabs seemed very territorial for something smaller than your pinky. He didn’t come to the beach often, so he wasn’t particularly surprised that he’d never seen them before. Ecosystems shifting – damn Climate Change. Claws and pincers held high, they actually skittered across the wet sand chasing the must faster terns to no avail.

Must be pissed off that their meal was taken away from them yesterday.He grimaced at his own dark humor – sometimes he could be taken for cold and humorless. Not true.

Hope nothing else comes in with the tide.

That thought soured his disposition. Sometimes, he wished he could walk away from this job. Sometimes. The pay for being the town’s event planner was phenomenal, and otherwise, the work was light duty, just making sure everything else happened smoothly in a small town with big aspirations of making an obscene amount of money from this event. Some of which secretly funneled into his pocket.

A clinking noise drew his attention away from the sun dappled water rolling onto the beach.

Almost like an unsettling afterthought, the noise followed the rhythm of the splashing waves. Looking back to his left, the police tape had vanished. Hmm…

Beyond that, the noise came from the other side of a low ridgeline of kelp-encrusted rocks, almost as tall as he stood.

A curious sound. Unnatural. Like metal hitting on stone.

Sighing, he felt resentment being distracted from his reverie, but also compelling was his need to get ‘in the dirt’ as his father would say. Even being at the lofty position of town planner didn’t exempt him from the feeling that others perceived him to be an office-errand-boy, never doing anything practical.

As lame as he knew it was, he wanted to get sand on his boots and salt-crust on his pants. Then show them off, especially to the maintenance crew. He smiled, a genuine smile, sadly related to his pitiful need to get people to respect him, even people he didn’t care about. 

He walked towards the ridge, dignity be damned, as water splashed up to his knees with each incoming wave. His boots sank into the pliant sand with each step, feet sucked deeper and outward with the ebb of the flow as the terns avoided him, but not the crabs. He kicked away those that got in the way. Hope the environmentalists didn’t see that.

Suddenly he laughed. He realized that he actually enjoyed this romp in the surf. He felt like a kid again. He wanted to sing but didn’t remember any songs. Then one came to mind, from the beginning of his elementary school years, when he was still young at heart and not yet disillusioned by the reality of life.

They used to sing the song, a circle of them holding hands, laughing, falling down to the ground at the end. Not trusting his scratchy voice, he decided to whistle the song off-tune instead, even as the words resonated in his mind…

Ring-a-round the rosies,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.

Frikkin creepy plague song. All fall down. Like the body dumped into my event area.

A hint of worry threatened to bother him. What happened to that guy? How could he be so stupid? Going for a swim with his clothes on?

A sudden flashback of the man’s face haunted Derek: open eyes clouded, thick tongue extending from the wide-open mouth as if screaming, jawline rigid, flesh bloated, a bluish-white color, pastel like exotic porcelain china, dotted with red welts, and other things…he’d been in the briny water for some time; the sea and its occupants weren’t kind to him.

The tinkling sound was louder at the rocks. The ridgeline reached into the ocean like a spread of greedy fingers. The sound originated out of sight, about twenty feet away where the water rushed to and fro within the dark rocky crags.

Climbing the uneven rocks wouldn’t be safe. The wet surface was slippery with algae and kelp and sharp barnacles waiting to tear into him if he stumbled and fell. He could walk around, in the surf…

Do I really want to do this? he thought, then smiled, yes, at the notion of getting fully baptized by the sea. He could imagine the looks on the maintenance workers faces. Respect. Or, at least, less crap about being a desk jockey.

Glancing inland, he saw a town truck pull into the distant parking lot. Some maintenance people were already arriving. They had a lot of work to do, the day of the event, plus they also had to coddle the vendor’s egos, mostly with the final setup of booths. The structural and electrical work was done, but there were always some last-minute problems that came up. Part of why he was first on-site today.

He brought his focus back to the ocean.

He walked deeper into the surf. It rose above his knees in depth but splashed up to his chest. And it was cold! Wow! He was glad he’d chosen to do this himself rather than ask one of the maintenance people.

Not feeling fake like he was role-playing anymore, the cold stirred his quest to find out what that constant tingling noise was. After all, he didn’t want the event beachgoers displeased by the annoying sound of disgusting trash clinking about on the beach rocks.

The sandy sea bottom was difficult to see as the water’s foam and seaweed swirled about, but the rock line didn’t appear to extend too far into the water…it shouldn’t be too deep. The sand gave way with each step but didn’t suction away his footing like on the beach shoreline.

Past the first tip of the ridge, he saw nothing unusual. Seaweed, barnacles, some urchins, and more crabs. He’d have to ask the cleanup crew to sweep the crabs away. The beachgoers wouldn’t like being pestered by the little buggers.

His legs were getting cold. His underwear was soaked…crap, didn’t think of that.

Holding onto the jagged rockface for balance, he moved sideways, body swaying from the waves. His feet slipped once and threatened to completely submerge him. He regained his balance, now almost completely drenched, as water sluiced down his face. Despite the chill, saltwater in his mouth and eyes, and underwear riding up, he laughed. This is fun!

Around the next knife-edge ridge point, he saw a large submerged lump of green wedged between the inner fingers of the ridgeline, rising and falling with the wave action, clanging against the rocks. Slogging closer, careful to avoid the more obvious sharp rock edges and maintain his balance, he realized what the mystery shape was. A backpack. The metal rim connected to it was a support frame.

Must’ve just washed ashore.

Curious, he reached for the bobbing pack. Dead weight, it was difficult to pull closer and lift into place up against the exposed slimy rock surface.

I wonder if this belonged to the transient. Probably. I wonder if I can open it?

Worries of tampering with evidence were quickly dispelled by his political clout with the local authorities. I can close it up after. No one will know that I messed with the backpack.

His feet were steadily anchored in the sand as he zipped open the main compartment. Swatting away some stubborn crabs, he cracked open the bag and saw clothes. Shirts, pants, underwear, and socks.

He opened a small leather case. There was shaving gear in there, toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash. Some nail clippers, too. Nothing unusual. Opening the side pockets, he found other, more personal items: pictures, family pictures at that, of a happy man with an attractive woman and two children, a book titled Hiking the Northwest, a birthday card tucked inside the book, and… a wallet.

Momentarily hesitant, he cracked open the wallet and saw credit cards, about a hundred in cash, and the ID of a 26-year-old man, Robert Collins, only slightly older than Derik, not so different from Derik really. In the backpack, no drugs, no booze, no paraphernalia of a troubled life.

If he wasn’t high, how did he end up in the water? Those welts? Was he sick? Caught something traveling on the road? Oh no… The plague was like that. You could sprout buboes undetected on your skin, groin, or armpits, walk to the next town, never knowing you were ill until it was too late.

Hands shaking, Derik dropped the wallet and shuffled away from the backpack. Fear building, a cry gurgled in his throat. His thoughts became as slow as his movements. Got to get out of here.

He could barely feel his legs in the chilling surf, pin pricks spiking on them, but this new feeling was different, it was a coldness settling deep into his body core. He had taken advanced first aid once, so he recognized that he was going into shock, probably from the cold water, but maybe because…What if the guy had the plague or something?

And I touched his stuff…

His eyes burned from the repeated splash of wave droplets into them. He felt clumsy, feet trembling, unstable, and when he looked down, he realized that crabs were crawling up his body. Wild panic set in…the crabs were stabbing their pincers into him!

Through the murky waves, he noticed his legs were completely covered with crabs, crawling up from the sea bottom in a frantic pyramid shape upon his jeans. Swatting them off his upper body was futile, for every two or three sent into the water, ten or twenty more quickly scurried upward.

He saw welts, red welts, appear on his skin when the crabs stung his exposed and shivering hands. Like an allergic reaction, his body was swelling. He began to stumble and his breath became tortured as his airways constricted painfully.

He tried to scream for help. Only a strangled groan came out.

As much as the pain of the stinging continued, attacks now up to his head, the paralytic numbing thereafter was worse. Dizzy, he slipped when he tried climbing up the rock face.

The water closed over his head as his hands flapped uselessly, the tide gently easing him outward. Going into deep shock, the fading rational side of his brain realized he was dying, the crabs were killing him, and that at today’s event, a great many people would also be in danger. They’d never find him in time.