KATIE MARIE

It came ashore on a June night.

 “…southern nights. Have you ever felt the southern nights?” The cigarette held between my teeth made a mockery of my attempted bumbling along to the song.

 Smoke danced up from the grill, bringing with it a smell of summer. At least I am told it’s a smell of summer. I wouldn’t know. I lost my sense of smell five years ago while undergoing cancer treatment.

 “You’ll burn that if you’re not careful.” I turn in time to accept a beer from Sue as she tucks herself under my arm. 

She shivers, but it’s just for show. The towering hedges around the edge of the garden have created a still oasis. A sanctuary from the coastal breeze and the sounds of the town down the hill. Our evergreen guardians of the garden glitter, each wound with a throng of solar-powered fairy lights. 

“It’s not burning.” 

“Not yet, and you wouldn’t know if it was.” She flicked my nose. 

The music cuts out. The fairy lights and the lights inside the house flicker. The stillness in the garden no longer feels comforting. Every working nerve in my body fizzes. I drop the tongs.  

“Dad!” I turn at Peter’s shout and peer back into the house. “The internet’s gone down, and-” 

A wall of sound, a cacophony so loud it could have been the world ending, cut him off. It thumps into the house, and I lose myself. 

When I open my eyes, I’m on my knees, my hands clasped over my ears. Sue is next to me. There’s blood on her face. I reach out to her and shake her shoulder. I know I’m shouting, but I can barely hear my voice over the ringing in my ears. Sue looks at me, panic on her face. She says a word and even though I can’t hear it; I know. 

“Peter.” 

I race into the house. Peter is in the living room, crouched on the floor. I stumble on my way to him and hear the cup as it tumbles off the table to shatter on the floor. 

“Peter?” I can’t keep the relief out of my voice when he looks up at me, afraid but unharmed. 

“I’m, ok.” He’s shaking. “What was that?” 

“I don’t know.” I help him to his feet, turning Sue has come in behind me, kitchen roll held to her bleeding nose. “I’ll go check the house.” 

By the time morning comes, it’s apparent that apart from a few broken windows, the house is fine. The power and internet come back on at 7am and the community WhatsApp group explodes with activity. A mess of misspelt panic and emojis. I scan through the chatter and glean that something might have exploded down on the harbour. 

“We need milk,” Sue said when I told her. “So, it wouldn’t hurt to take a walk down the hill.” The gleam in her eye is familiar to me. It’s the ‘I want to know what’s going on’ gleam. I’ve never won an argument against it. 

Which is how we end up amongst the crowd of onlookers at the beach. The beach, while closed to the public, is small, and it’s easy to see what’s caused the commotion from the road. 

“This is horseshite. They can’t expect us to believe this, surely?” 

“What do you mean?” Sue frowns at me. 

On the beach is a shipwreck, an old-looking shipwreck. I’m no expert, but you can’t live in a coastal town and not pick up a bit of information if you care to. The ship beached in front of us was old, probably made around the mid-1800s. It was wooden and had the remains of a couple of masts. 

“This exploded last night? Does that look exploded to you? Does it look like it could explode?” 

“Maybe there was something-” Sue stopped when one of the local police stepped forward and started yelled at the crowd. I turned back to the wreck. 

Something was not right. Never mind that a wreck that age had no right just popping up on my small-town beach, never mind that it was very much unexploded. There was something else. 

It took me a moment, but then I realised it was not one thing, it was lots of little things and the moment I spotted one; I started spotting more. Like a magic eye picture coming into focus. The name on the ship was SS Wreck. There was a rudder on the front and something dark was leaking from the hull. People said it smelled like fuel. Around where the liquid poured was bright coral. You expect rust, barnacles, and general sea life to grow on a wreck, but this was growing on the wreck and the surrounding beach. Like the wreck has been there for years rather than hours. 

Men in luminescent coveralls bearing the title of coastguard were scurrying around on the beach. I frowned; I’d never seen the coastguard in hazmat suits with masks before.

“Come on, they’re sounding pretty mad.” Sue tugged on my arm. I glanced at her and then back at the increasingly irate police officer. Yeah, it was better to leave. We started pushing through the more stubborn elements of the crowd. 

“Here.” A disposable face mask was thrust at me. I took it on reflex before looking at the stout man in a luminescent coverall. He was sweating profusely in the June heat; his eyes were wide and afraid. 

“Um, thanks.” I nodded to him. 

“Don’t take it off.” He leaned forward, but before he could said anything else, a gloved hand took his shoulder and pulled him back. I couldn’t hear what the second ‘coastguard’ said to him, but the rushed mutterings didn’t sound good. We went back up the hill, forgetting the milk. 

I worked from home the following day, so I noticed nothing wrong until Sue came home the day after our beach trip with the groceries. I went out to the car to help her unload as she excitedly told me the news.  

“It’s absolutely beautiful, if a little strange.” I nodded and made a noncommittal sound of agreement. I’d missed the first part of her excited comment and was trying to piece it together from context clues. “It’s growing all over town. Hasn’t made its way this far up yet, but I hope it does. It would look beautiful in the garden.” 

“I bet it would.” 

“I took pictures. I’ll show you.” I followed her back into the house and put the bags down while Sue fished her phone out. She brought up her recent pictures and handed me the device. 

Oh shit.