The Bay of Roanoake by Rebekah Phillips

The Bay of Roanoake is lined with shingle. No one ever goes there, not even in the summer, because the water is always cold and the current is strong. From a distance, the water seems inviting, pleasing, even; that is how it lures in its victims. People who do not know any better come to the bay, and later policemen fish their bloated purple bodies out of the sea. The villagers know to stay away. There are eerie legends about the bay, of ships that had wrecked themselves on clear nights and sailors who, while safely docked in the harbor, had seen something in the still water. Those sailors had taken to the bottle and never returned to sea. No, the bay is not for swimming.

If one wants to swim in the ocean, it is better to travel to the harbor up at Portsbellow and see the beaches there. Those beaches are alive, the sand warm under the summer sun, and if you go to town, you see a working harbor, with ships rocking gently on the waves. The Bay of Roanoake has not been in use since the 1800s, since the lighthouse-keeper mysteriously drowned. After that, the fishermen of Roanoake adopted new trades, or else they moved to Portsbellow and took up work there. The sailors who used to stay in town while their ships were in port went away in search of better seas. Roanoake has moved on from the mariner days, but the bay remains the same.

Few have ever heard of Roanoake or the abandoned lighthouse on Carlisle Cliffs. It has been many years since a tourist came, even in passing. In many ways, it is still the sleeping little sailing village it was when the lighthouse gleamed like a midnight sun, and three-sailed vessels flew boldly into port. Very little has changed. But Roanoake is a dying town. Each generation, more and more people move away to Portsbellow or other quaint, seaside towns. Some go on to the big cities, where they take up a life quite different from the one they left behind. One day there will be nothing left in Roanoake save a crumbling lighthouse and the steady sound of the tide washing over the shingle. Already it is a ghost town, where the presence of the past oppresses all who live there.

Yet despite the ebb and flow of time and the changes it brings, there is one person who will not leave. She is an oddity, for each day she takes the weed-strewn path down to the bay, and she stands there for hours, staring off into the distance. One day she will walk into the water, and her body will never be found. That day has not yet come, however. Now she only stands on the shingle, waiting for something to happen.

In Roanoake she is known as Cathy. She is a living legend, a successor to a legacy no one quite understands. All they know is that one day she and her friends went to the bay, and what happened there…well, it’s really anyone’s guess. Cathy does not talk of it. All that is certain is that one afternoon, on November 14, three girls went down to the bay and only two came back.

No one speaks of it now. Every year on November 14, the family of the girl goes down to the graveyard, and they brush the dead autumn leaves away. They bring flowers and grave blankets, brushing their fingers over the cold headstone. But it is a vain and empty gesture, for the grave of Marissa Delancey is empty.

Cathy does not join the procession. She goes down to the bay as she always does, and she waits.

There was once talk of putting up a gate between the village and the shingle or sending policemen to patrol the area. But all of this talk has come to nothing. If parents want to keep their children away from the bay, they only have to tell them the story of Marissa Delancey and show them the haunted figure of Cathy walking to and from the bay, and they will stay away.

The observant reader will have noticed that there were three girls at the beach that day. One, of course, was Marissa, whose body was never found. The second was Cathy, who waits by the sea. And the third was Anna, who no longer lives in Roanoake. Her family moved shortly after Marissa’s death, and no one has heard from her since then. Cathy has found she has almost forgotten what her friend looks like.

To the villagers, it seems as if Cathy’s madness is unwavering. She will always go down to the bay in the morning and return in the evening. They take this as a matter of course, especially the young children, who have only ever known Cathy as a ghost.

But there are days, looking out onto the empty, gray ocean, when she thinks of leaving, going in search of Anna. Cathy can hardly bear the loneliness. There are days she thinks it was all a dream, that she is mad and ought to be locked up. On these days she longs for Anna to sit with her and say, “Yes, I was there; I saw what you saw, and if we are mad, we are mad together.” But Anna has her own cross to bear, just as Cathy has hers. Perhaps they are not meant to have a Simon help them on their way to Golgotha. And Cathy knows, Anna’s cross must be hard to bear. For Anna was the one to suggest they go down to the beach.

It was usually Marissa who suggested these things. She had always been loud and energetic—and, if we are to be honest, bossy as well. She and Anna were a good fit, for Anna was just as loud and energetic, and they challenged each other. No one was ever sure why Cathy chose to associate with them—mild, quiet Cathy, who would rather have had her nose in a book. Marissa would suggest breaking into the old lighthouse, and Anna would one-up her idea, by saying they ought to do it at night. Marissa would decide they should all learn to cook, and Anna would add that it was a good idea to steal some wine and practice drinking. Cathy would follow behind like a mouse, and would end up breaking her arm in the lighthouse and getting sickeningly drunk when Marissa insisted she drink more wine.

“They bully that child,” the women of the village would say sometimes, when they saw Cathy scampering behind Marissa and Anna.

“She’s got to learn to say ‘no’ sometime or other,” the men would say, and the women would sigh and nod.

Yet that day it was different. They were sitting in the parlor at Cathy’s, and they were bored. For the past three days it had rained heavily in Roanoake, from dawn until dusk, but now the weather was clearing up. The sun was still covered with thick gray clouds, and the wind darted fiercely through the trees, but Anna was restless. Cathy could sit quietly and read, but Anna could not. She knew Marissa felt the same. They were both slouching in their seats, but they were twitchy, energetic. Cathy’s calmness only made it worse. She sat there, reading, turning the pages slowly, as if there was all the time in the world to go out and explore!

“Hey,” Anna said, “I know what. Let’s ditch and go down to the beach.”

Cathy licked her finger and turned a page. Marissa rolled her eyes. “Anna, Portsbellow is two hours away. By the time we got there, we’d have to come back.”

Anna leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. Cathy knew that shine, and she looked up, her heart sinking. “Not that beach. Our beach. The bay.”

Marissa smiled. “Let’s go,” she said. “Cathy, put the book down. We’re going to the beach.”

“But it’s dangerous!” Cathy burst out.

“Oh, whatever. It’s not like we’ll go swimming.” Anna stood up. Marissa was already inching towards the door.

“What if it rains?”

“It won’t. Relax,” Marissa said. “Come on, Cathy. Come here.”

“But what about all of those stories—”

Anna nodded. “Come on,” she wheedled, “we won’t stay long. Okay?”

Cathy put a bookmark in the book and put it down on a side table.

“Good girl,” Marissa said. Slowly Cathy rose to her feet, and followed the others.

It was not a far walk to the bay. Anna and Marissa walked ahead, laughing and shouting, their voices carried to Cathy on the wind. They tripped over the jagged stones on the weedy path, and then picked themselves back up again. Soon Cathy could hear the pounding of the surf, and a few seagulls crying out. Marissa climbed the last hill on the path, and she stood there like a conqueror, surveying her kingdom. Anna followed, and Cathy scrambled up beside them.

The ocean seemed to go on forever. It was a dark blue, and the waves were wild and tall. They crashed into the jagged rocks out in the bay, and Cathy imagined she could feel the spray blowing into her face. Off in the distance, easily visible at the top of Carlisle Cliff, was the lighthouse they had broken into years ago.

Cathy shivered. “Okay, we’ve seen it. Can we go now?”

“Not yet,” Marissa said, running down across the shingle, sidestepping the larger rocks. “Do you think there’ll be seashells?”

Anna darted after her. “Maybe.” They combed the shallow end of the bay for seashells, crouching low on the ground, their hair entangling. Cathy watched them for a long time, listening to the wind and the waves. Her fingers were cold, and when she rubbed them together they smarted and turned red.

“Can we go?” she finally called, a pathetic, broken plea.

Marissa looked up at her. She had discovered something that looked like quartz, and was eager to see if there was any more of it. “No. Stay there.” Then she turned and whispered something in Anna’s ear, who giggled. That was what broke Cathy. She had been dragged out of class to be ordered around as if her opinion meant nothing. She went down to where Marissa and Anna were, and looked at the thing Marissa held in her hand. “That’s sea glass,” she said, “not quartz.”

Marissa did not hear her. Anna had just shouted that she had found something, and had drowned out Cathy’s voice. Marissa went to Anna’s side, and Cathy stood there, quivering. Stay there, Marissa had said, but she would not. She would go home, and drink tea, and finish reading her book. It would all be like a bad dream. Cathy turned back to the trail, but saw she had gotten turned around. Somehow they had gone farther than she had realized, and she was no longer sure how to get back. Summoning her courage, she walked back where she thought they had come from, trying to find the path that led home. Cathy was a child, hurt and angry and cold, and she was blind to reason. Cathy did not know where she was going, only that she was leaving, and in the heat of her anger it took her a long while to notice that the beach had changed, and Marissa and Anna were nowhere in sight.

The main beach curves gently, like the sickle moon, but that day Cathy found herself surrounded by the large cliffs that led to the lighthouse. Waves attacked the jagged rocks, and now she could feel their spray on her face. It was a tight little spot, where only a rowboat could have gone, and suddenly all of the legends of the bay came back to her. Cathy remembered the names of the ships that had gone down nights when the moon was full, and the lighthouse-keeper stood sentinel, the yellow light of the tower piercing through the darkness. She remembered the stories of sailors who claimed to have seen things in the water—and the story of Elisabeth Widow, who had jumped off of the pier with her four-year-old son clasped tightly in her arms. The doctors had diagnosed her with insanity, but whispers had spread that it was a suicide—that she had seen something so frightful she no longer had any desire to live.

Now every rock face was carved in the shape of a mocking demon, and the waves seemed to harbor vindictive thoughts. Any moment she would see something hideous and deformed, a decaying body or a large shark. Cathy wanted to scream, but it caught in her throat. She was terrified, and she was alone.

“Marissa,” she squeaked, but the sound could be heard by no one.

Just turn around, she thought, but she found that her limbs were locked with terror. The hair on her arms and neck rose. Something was watching her—someone had their eyes upon her—she was not alone.

“It’s only Marissa,” she whispered to herself, “trying to scare me—but I won’t give her the satisfaction,” and slowly she turned around, and saw someone there behind her on the shingle.

It was not Marissa. It was not Anna.

Cathy did not think it was even human.

There was a scream building up inside of her, but it caught still in her throat. Cathy was afraid that if she moved at all, or screamed, that the thing would pounce and kill her.

It looked remarkably like pictures Cathy had seen of seals, only with a longer tail and fins. The skin was a mix somewhere between green and gray and purple, and the texture seemed odd, even judged by the distance between them. The creature was low to the ground, and seemed to have hands like she did. It was watching her with large black eyes. But the worst part was the knowing in the creature’s face. Sharks did not look at humans like this; no creature looked at humans the way the creature in front of Cathy did. There was fear in the creature’s eyes—fear, and a little bit of the fury that comes with the territory of fear, that if one is going to die, one must go like a hero.

Cathy breathed slowly. It was possible she was imagining it, but she did not think she could have imagined something like this. She stood there, and hoped that it would go away, but it did not. Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid it would follow her, so she continued to watch it. Like her, the thing’s ribcage moved up and down as it breathed. Its eyes darted around, taking in her every minute movement and the crashing of the waves beside them.

At last Cathy whispered, “Hello.”

The thing hissed, and Cathy flinched. “I won’t hurt you,” she said, holding up her hands. “I…I don’t think I could, actually.”

It regarded her carefully, and then slowly, using its hands, propelled itself towards her. It was remarkably quick; Cathy had to hold herself carefully in case she stepped back and frightened it. The creature now sat directly in front of her, and it gestured with webbed hands for her to bend down. Slowly Cathy knelt, absolutely terrified, but the creature only put its cold hands to her face, tracing her eyebrows, her nose, running its hand through her hair, tugging at her ears.

She had expected its touch to repulse her, but it was not as bad as she had been expecting. Its hands were rough and cool, but they were not slimy. In fact, it seemed as if it was trying to be gentle. That thought bolstered her, and she was able to look closely at the thing in front of her. The creature had eyes, just like her own, and a mouth, as well as a smaller version of her nose. But it had no hair, and no ears that Cathy could see. But it looked human—could it be a deformed human? Or was it…something else?

It made a strange noise, and then it smiled and nodded. It was a terrible smile. The creature’s teeth were pointed and gray, and Cathy felt sure it could rip her limb from limb. She forced herself to smile back, and was rewarded by the creature’s face suddenly looking queasy. Perhaps square, flat teeth were as terrifying to the creature as pointed ones were to her.

“Cathy,” she said, pointing to herself.

It echoed her strangely, but instead of butchering her name, it came out sounding like music. Cathy was not sure how she knew it was saying her name, but she knew it was her name, somehow. It nodded, and then spoke again in that musical voice, and she again knew instinctively that it was his name—his name. He was a boy, and he had a name, but he was not human.

“You’re a mermaid,” Cathy said. “Er—merman. Aren’t you?”

His powerful tail smacked the ground. Pebbles scattered everywhere, and Cathy felt her heart stop, but after a moment she realized that it was praise, the merman’s way of clapping his hands. It could understand her, too.

Now she reached out her own hands and stroked the merman’s face. It was cold and slightly rough under her fingers, but not unpleasantly so. He let her stroke his face for a moment, and then took her hand, comparing it to his own. His fingers had no fingerprints, and he stared, awed, at the design and feel of the ones on Cathy’s hand. Cathy was equally amazed by the fine webbing between his fingers, which at first seemed to be easily breakable, but were actually strong and flexible.

Then he broke away from her and went to the water, slipping in gracefully. His head popped up out of the water, and he smiled again; he waved one webbed hand at her, urging her to come closer. Cathy followed him, not realizing that she walked into the stormy water up to her knees. She did not feel the cold or the wet. He had sung to her in his language, and he had put his hands to her face. She felt as if he had claimed her somehow, and that she had claimed him in return. She went to him, and he reached for her hand.

Perhaps he would have dragged her under, not realizing that humans cannot swim as mermen can swim, nor knowing that humans need air to breathe at every moment, unlike the dolphin and the whale, who can survive for long periods underneath the water without it. Cathy had no way of knowing, but he was a very young merman—just as she was a very young girl. But Cathy never knew what he was intending, for the moment he grabbed her hand Marissa shouted from the shore: “Cathy!”

Cathy turned back around and saw Marissa and Anna standing on the shore. Anna had her hands to her mouth in horror, and Marissa’s face had gone white. Cathy had never seen either of her friends afraid before, and it astonished her that they should be afraid while she was not.

“They’re my friends,” Cathy said to her merman, and she stepped towards shore. Marissa’s hand had bunched into a fist. He reached out to grab Cathy’s ankle, but a rock fell on his wrist, and he fell back, screaming. Cathy looked back to the shore, and saw that it was not a fist Marissa had been making. She was clutching rocks and tossing them at the merman.  

More rocks came towards them. Cathy screamed, “Stop it!” but Marissa continued to throw rocks at the merman, even after he dove under the water.   

“Come here! Hurry!” Anna cried.

Cathy came, but she did not run, as her friends had expected. She tackled Marissa and started trying to wrest the rocks from her hands.  

“What are you doing!” 

“It was going to drown you!” Marissa struggled, trying to throw Cathy off of her.

“Please, let’s go, before it comes back…” Anna was crying. “Oh, please, let’s go…”

“You hurt him!”

“It’s only a monster.”

“He’s not a monster!”

Cathy scrambled to her feet and glared down at Marissa, whose eyes narrowed into slits.

“That monster is responsible for all of the ghost stories about this place. You remember them. The sunken ships, the drowned women, the sailors who saw things moving in the water? They were the whole reason you didn’t want to come here. Let’s go. Now,” Marissa said.  

“You can’t make me!”

“What’s gotten into you?” Marissa spat, standing up and moving to go. “Come on, let’s just go home.”

Her back was turned, and so she did not see what Anna and Cathy saw. Out of the sea came five merfolk, none of them the familiar face of the merman who had stroked Cathy’s face. Most carried spears and all looked angry. One spoke, and the words did not sing, like her merman’s had done. They boiled and raged inside of her, and Cathy realized that he was saying, Get her.

“Marissa—” Anna and Cathy cried.

But it was too late. With the same agility of Cathy’s merman, they leapt out of the sea and grabbed Marissa, who screamed. Anna ran forward and tried to pry one of the mermen off of Marissa, but he turned around and stabbed her with his spear. It caught her leg, slashing through her skirt and creating a large gash in the skin. Blood cascaded down onto the shingle. Later Anna would say that she fell and hit a rock. It would scar.

Marissa struggled. She screamed, but the merfolk clasped their webbed hands over her mouth. She kicked, but they stabbed with their spears, and in seconds they had won, and dragged her into the water.

Cathy followed them. She struggled to say the name of the merman she had befriended, but the name would not come to her. She could not say it. It was the language of the water, and she was a daughter of the land. But if she could not call for help, she would go for help herself.

“Cathy!” Anna cried, “Don’t—” but Cathy did not listen and dove into the cold water.

That day she swam farther out to sea than she ever had before. In Portsbellow, there are buoys that keep their swimmers from going out too far, but there are no buoys in the Bay of Roanoake. She swam until land was just a small speck in the distance, but the merfolk had gone.

When Cathy gave up, she was exhausted, and floating uselessly in the cold water. Her body was numb, and there were goosebumps all over her arms. I’m going to die too, she thought dully, but I don’t care. It was her fault, after all, that Marissa was gone.

She was thinking these things when a pair of arms encircled her. They had come back for her. They were taking her to Marissa. Cathy found herself oddly grateful that it would end like this. But as she turned to see the face of the creature that held her, she saw it was her merman, and not one of the warrior party.

“She was my friend,” Cathy said thickly. “I want to go with her.”

He did not answer, but started swimming to shore, carefully holding Cathy above the water. In moments they had made it to shore—moments, when it had taken Cathy minutes to swim out so far—and he put her down gently on the shingle. “Please,” Cathy said, “take me to Marissa.”

He made a small sound, like a sigh, and then disappeared under the water for a few minutes. When he reappeared, he was holding Marissa’s handkerchief in his hands, and he spoke again in his musical voice. Cathy listened, and she understood. He was very sorry, but Marissa was dead. Whoever harmed one of their kind must die. He did not make the rules. There were so few of them left, nowadays, that this rule was sacred.

“I want to see her,” Cathy said.

He could not do that. They had taken Marissa down to the bottom of the sea, where she could not go. But he would bury her there, and he would honor it for her sake.

“I want to see her.”

He sighed and stroked her face and hair again. He could not do that. But—he could make her a promise. He would come back for her one day, and he would take her down and show her Marissa’s grave, and he would bury her next to her friend.

There was a long call, from far across the ocean, and he turned his head to listen. They were calling him home again.

You will be waiting? He asked.

“I will be waiting,” Cathy said.

Her merman dove into the waters. Cathy lay there for a long time until the policemen came. Anna, brave Anna, had run to the village and gotten help. The policemen wrapped Cathy in a warm blanket and diagnosed her with shock. Her parents came and cried, and Anna’s parents came and cried, and then Marissa’s parents came, and they cried, too. Cathy could not cry, and neither could Anna, but what was worse was that neither girl could meet the other’s eye.

Cathy and Anna never spoke about what happened. Anna moved away later that year. Cathy watched her go. Cathy still could not look Anna in the eye, but she could watch the car that took her friend away from Roanoake. It was about that time that Cathy started going to the bay again and staring out at the horizon. Then it was done intermittently, but now she goes every day, without fail. The children see her go on their way to school, and they watch her come home from the parlor windows. 

She is standing there right now. If you look for her you will see her, standing beside the cliffs where she last saw Marissa. The wind blows the spray into her face, and the sun tans her skin. She wonders how long she must wait. She wonders whether she should go and find Anna, if she should learn to live again. Cathy does not know it yet, but she will stay. One day she will walk into the water, and her body will never be found. That day has not yet come, though. For now, she stands, and she waits, for the merman that will come out of the water.