The trawler stank of diesel and old fish. Halloran stood at the rail, a dead man's notebook tucked in his coat, watching the spot on the chart where an island should be. Low tide would uncover it for six hours, then drown it again. Six hours to dig up whatever the Meridian settlement had buried before the water took it back. The captain spat over the side. "Mud's showing," he said. "Go now or go home."

Halloran took the dinghy and rowed for the gray smear of mud where the island was rising. The notebook said: dig at the broken church, ten paces north of the bell. He hit the flats and ran, boots sinking in the muck, the clock already ticking in his chest.

Before he reached the church, Halloran nearly fell into a pit. It was an old grave, dug long ago, and the bottom was lined with dozens of small shoes. Children's shoes. A cold feeling crawled up his spine. Whatever Meridian buried here, they hadn't done it quietly.

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.