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.

He found the church, half-sunk and roofless, its bell lying green in the mud. Ten paces north, his shovel struck wood. He dug fast and pulled up a sealed iron box, heavier than it looked. The tide was already turning, water creeping back across the flats toward his ankles.

Halloran sloshed back toward the dinghy, box under his arm, water now at his knees. He forced the lid. Inside was no gold. Just a ledger of names, hundreds of them, and a single brass key tagged "the door." He looked up at the hill rising from the center of the island and understood the box was only a clue.

Halloran took the key and climbed the hill. The iron door waited, sealed with salt the dead man had warned him never to break. He fit the key, turned it, and the salt cracked. Behind the door, something that had waited forty years for the tide to bring a visitor opened its eyes. He never made it back to the boat.