Siren Call - 1. The Town of Wiccamore

It had been a long while since the town of Wiccamore saw any tourists. The local fishermen on the docks, seeing me disembark from the ferry that made a trip to and from the continent only once in a blue moon, said that I was the first to visit in perhaps two or three years. Other than the captain, I was the only person to have arrived on the ferry. The men promised to crack open a fresh one in my honor, yet even as they said it, they didn’t sound surprised or excited by my sudden appearance.

“Enjoy your stay, new blood.” With that, they left me to my business.

Like anyone else born after the Wiccamore disaster of 1965, I only knew a fraction of the small island's story. According to old newspaper reports I found in my home library, an underwater volcano in the Atlantic Ocean, once assumed to be dormant, had very suddenly exploded, triggering an earthquake and then a subsequent tsunami in the local region. It seemed like the only reason people even discovered the small town was due to meteorologists picking up on the phenomenon via the then recently launched NASA weather satellite, TIROS-1.

Rescue teams across the world had sent aid in droves out of pity. By some miracle, however, they discovered that most of the island’s residents had somehow survived the chaos. The town itself, on the other hand, had been utterly pancaked, leaving behind only broken remnants of what once was. More than fifty years later, the island was still too poor to restore itself to its former glory, trapped in a time long before the advent of color television, cell phones, and the internet.

From the fire blue shores littered with the obelisk remains of the old town to the pier speckled with an eclectic mix of dilapidated and well-maintained shopfronts, clues of what happened in Wiccamore were laid bare everywhere one looked. There was a certain culture of organized chaos to it all, like gazing upon a collection of scattered puzzle pieces that you couldn't help but feel belonged to different puzzles altogether.

One thing was certain. Out here in the middle of the ocean, there was only nature and man’s apparent struggle to keep pace with her.

Just like on the day the tsunami struck the island, the skies were sunless and mute of color. The humid fragrance of approaching rain hung thick in the air, clogging the atmosphere with a gossamer mist. I’d read that the weather here was fickle due to the chaotic relationship between the evergreen mountain ranges and the trade winds, but even with that warning in mind, I’d only thought to pack a single hooded jacket and umbrella with my usual traveling affects. I rarely did venture beyond my own city on the east coast of the United States and, like the spoiled American I was, assumed there would be at least one big box store I could conveniently pick up my needs from. (Hint: there wasn't.)

At some point, I paused in my journey across the pier as a tall, shadowy figure appeared in the greater distance before me, slowly revealing itself with a touch of wind. Reaching into my backpack, I pulled out a postcard from a freezer bag of important travel documents and held it up before me.

A lighthouse stood on a rocky black coast, characteristic of those built throughout the eighteenth century. The picture on the glossy postcard lined up perfectly with the scene of the lighthouse, down to the rich cobalt blue of the shores in the foreground. Seeing it match up so perfectly brought me a small sense of victory.

I’d read the back of the postcard from my fiancé a thousand times. Even now, I could recall the words from the top of my head.

The weather is dreadful, but darling, I think you’ll find it beautiful here. You always did say you loved the water!

-With all my heart, CC Milo

The card was postmarked on March 1, 2002. A year on the dot had passed since I last received that postcard. Cyrus—the first C in CC Milo—had sent so many before, but for whatever reason, they had simply stopped coming after this one. We had never been the type to send emails, seeing as Cy was a bit of a technophobe, but I tried nonetheless. He had never answered a single one, and believe me, I checked every day. Cy never did leave return addresses on his mail, either.

As the days continued to tick by without a phone call or a letter, I thought Cyrus had outright abandoned me. I thought that despite our passionate love for one another, perhaps I didn’t know the man after all. Maybe I'd been the poor victim of some narcissistic bastard who flitted from one fling to the next. Maybe I'd just been a hopeless fool in love.

But as even more days ticked by still, I couldn’t fight the growing premonition inside me. Something had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Deep down inside, my instincts were telling me that I was sorely needed. Even now, I kept our promise ring on my finger, desperately clinging to the hope that he was waiting for me.

“Pretty as a picture, as they say,” came a voice from behind me just then.

I whisked around, my heart thumping. An older looking man with peppery gray hair and leather brown skin sat on a rocking chair near the entrance to an inn named Moors and Spirits. His arms were covered in beaded bracelets and leather straps that were likely made by hand, some of them shining with pretty sea glass. I hadn’t seen or heard him earlier. His abrupt appearance immediately unnerved me.

“It is,” I replied curtly, cautious.

“Wiccamore’s full of pretty sights, if you know where to look.”

“I'll bet.”

I glanced around. The mere idea of pretty sights brought Cyrus to my mind at once. He always used to say that wherever there was beauty, he was sure to follow. When he first used that line on me, I let him follow me right into my apartment. Looking back on it now, I should have known it was just his way of saying, “I’m a heartbreaker.” Never one to stay put, he often left me behind to satiate his wanderlust across the world, sometimes sending postcards, other times sending love letters.

Why on Earth did I propose to such a whimsical person, as if it even mattered? And why did Cy have to be crazy enough to accept and get my hopes up?

“What’s a pale-skinned kid like yourself doing in our humble little town, anyway?” asked the old stranger. His English was so perfect that even I with my white-washed speech seemed to have more of an accent than him.

“I’m thirty-six,” I corrected at once. There was no way anyone with working eyes could miss the stubble covering half my face and the wrinkles in my forehead. The pale skin part, I didn’t bother to comment on.

“Aha!” the man pointed. “So that means you’re old enough to handle your drink.”

Damn. So it was a trap. A lame one that I had fallen for, at that.

The man continued, “How about it, Mr…?”

“Victor. Beckett Victor. Either Beck or Vic is fine.”

“Last name, first name?”

“Last name first name, first name last name,” I tried to explain.

“You from the States? America, I mean.”

“I am.”

The man held up a hand, and I realized after staring at it that it was meant to be a handshake. I took his hand, and he held it more firmly than necessary. He smelled of dried fish, burned incense, and tobacco.

“My name is Hawk,” he said. “My ancestors migrated here from the states some hundred years ago. Could be we have more in common than we think. Why don’t you come on in and have some of my famous Mermaid’s Spit, Beck?”

Hawk rose from his rocking chair then, and my jaw dropped to the floor as I quickly realized he must have stood at least seven and a half feet tall. That was most definitely taller than me, and I easily stood above six feet. The petite bell on the inn’s entrance gave a soft chime as Hawk withdrew inside. Picking my jaw up, I attempted to peer through the window front, but the glass was too yellowed and dust-laden for me to see inside. Seeing as I had no idea of where to go (hotels and bed and breakfasts didn’t exactly exist on Wiccamore), I figured no harm could possibly come of it.

The Moors and Spirits was not as roomy as its exterior suggested. Much of the inn was occupied by an extensive array of seafaring artifacts ranging from strange, twisty seashells to life-sized statues of mermaids. They certainly weren’t the princess types, but those that immediately filled the viewer with a sense of dread. Wherever I walked, their fish-like eyes seemed to hound me, hinting at a world of darkness from deep within the cavities of the unexplored seafloor.

Oddly enough, crusty old books had been precariously stacked on the roof’s beams, somehow managing to maintain their delicate balance. Eager to take my mind off the mermaids, I stare at the books as I sat down on a bench, half wondering what secrets they kept and half worrying they might fall on my head at any moment like a stray coconut.

“Ran out of space to put them,” said the old man, appearing at my table with a mug of something gold and foamy. The Mermaid’s Spit he’d mentioned earlier, I supposed. Couldn’t be worse than a Jägerbomb on an empty stomach.

After my first sip, I immediately took another swig. It was surprisingly hoppy and fresh. There might have even been a hint of honey in there. If not for the taste of alcohol, I could have sworn I was drinking a well-brewed tea.

“I’m guessing you don’t get a lot of customers?” I asked absentmindedly.

“What makes you think that?”

I didn’t want to be rude, but I looked around as if it should have been obvious. Besides his mermaids, we were the only ones there.

“It’s the middle of the day,” he said, sounding offended. “Naturally, my patrons only come bump in the night after a hard day’s work.”

“Oh. Of course.” It was his inn and his town, but somehow, I still wasn’t convinced. I decided to shift subjects before I risked offending him more by mistake. “Is there any chance there’s a place to sleep around here?” I asked.

“Sleep?” Hawk repeated, as if it was the most confusing thing someone could ask for. “You planning on staying?”

I nodded without going into detail. I wanted to hear what he had to say first, but Hawk was clearly a sharp man. He leaned forward, narrowing his golden-brown eyes at me just as I gave an involuntary yawn. The ferry ride had taken no less than six hours, and in my nervous state I'd only gotten perhaps three hours of sleep the night before. My body was really starting to feel it.

“I guess this is where you answer my earlier question,” said Hawk in that perfect, accent-less English of his. “What brought you to Wiccamore, paleskin?”

I stared at him. Maybe it was the gentle brown eyes with the laugh wrinkles on the corners. Maybe it was the way he slouched his shoulders and leaned his fist against his cheek when he spoke, suggesting he was more comfortable around a stranger than a stranger was around him. Or maybe it was just the fact that I’d been hankering for some friendly company for ages now. Whatever it was, I just couldn’t bring myself to be weary of Hawk.

I said at length, “Someone special to me passed through here some time ago. Maybe a year or two. I haven’t heard back from them since.”

“Someone special, you say?” Hawk straightened his spine as he glanced at the silver ring on my finger. Suddenly, he didn’t look like the friendly old inn keeper. Now he really looked like his namesake, broad-chested and sharp-eyed in the way he studied me. “I hate to break it to you, Beck, but you’re the only real visitor we’ve had in more than a decade.”

At that, the both of us fell silent; him waiting for me to respond, me trying to register what he’d just said.

Hawk’s words should have stunned me. I knew they should have jolted my insides into overdrive and caused me to lash out in confusion. But they didn’t. Like a car stuck on neutral, my thinking mind seemed to separate from my body, leaving me to operate on whatever was left of me. And whatever was left just didn't seem to have the energy to panic.

I yawned again, covering my mouth with a fist.

“That can’t be true,” I finally said, my eyes drooping at the same time the rest of my body grew heavy. “The fishermen, they said it themselves…someone…something…was here…”

Wait. That’s not what they said. Is it? What did those fishermen say? I couldn’t remember just then. And I had a feeling that Hawk wasn’t about to help me remember, either.

“Trust me, Beck. You’ve been the only one,” Hawk said again.

If he said anything else after that, I didn’t hear.