you are here
No Country for the Tide
adventure◐ Mature5 contributors · 5 paragraphs deep
Halloran climbed out of the pit and kept going. He had no time for ghosts. At the church he dug up the iron box, but the lid was rusted shut. He hammered it with the bell's clapper until it sprang open, spilling out a ledger of names and one brass key tagged "the door."
Halloran read the ledger as he ran for the boat. The names weren't victims. They were the settlers who'd left, alive, each one paying for passage with one child given to the door. The key in his fist suddenly felt like a debt someone expected him to pay. He rowed away fast and never spent a night near the coast again.
What happens next?
0 ways forwardVote share across the top 0 branches
No futures yet — be the one who decides what happens next.