A Letter to Sarah: The Sea is Calling

LAST DISPATCH: ARCHIE'S FARM

RECOVERED FROM A SEALED GLASS BOTTLE, SOLOMON ISLAND

Sarah, my love,

If you're reading this, the Fog has finally taken the house. I can hear them outside—the Draug. They aren't just fish-men, Sarah. They’re the ghosts of every sailor who ever died wishing for home. And they’re so very, very hungry.

The Polaris is calling. I can feel the vibration in the floorboards. It’s the Ur-Draug. It’s not just a monster; it’s a gravity. It pulls at the salt in my blood. I tried to stay, I really did. I even lit the old hurricane lamp, but the light just turned green and started to smell like rot.

"The sea doesn't want our prayers. It wants our silence. It wants us to walk into the surf and forget we ever had names."

Don't come looking for me. Stay in the cellar. Keep the salt circles tight. The bees told me you’d be safe if you didn't look at the moon. I’m going to the harbor now. I have to see what’s at the center of the Fog. I think it’s beautiful, in a horrible, wet sort of way.

Goodbye, Sarah. I’ll see you in the dreams of the deep.

— Yours always, Elias.

The Ballad of the Sunken Bells

THE BELLS OF KINGSMOUTH

A LOCAL TRADITION (TRANSCRIPTION)

[Scribbled on a soggy napkin found in a booth at the Kingsmouth Diner. The handwriting becomes increasingly erratic toward the end.]

Oh, don’t you go down to the harbor tonight,
Where the fog is a blanket of grey and of white.
The Lady Margaret came home with a chill,
And the bells in the steeple won’t ever stay still.

"One for the sailor who walked in the sea,
Two for the secret he brought back to me.
Three for the hunger that never will end,
And four for the fog that makes foe into friend."

The Draug are a-knocking with fingers of bone,
They’ve come for the hearts that they once called their own.
The salt is a poison, the oil is a stain,
And the sea only gives what it takes back in pain.

The Polaris is groaning, she’s stuck on the reef,
With a hull full of madness and pockets of grief.
So bolt up your windows and turn out the light,
For the bells of the sunken are ringing tonight.

— Recovered from a waterlogged notebook, Solomon Island. Note: The ink smells faintly of dead fish and ozone.

The Ballad of the Fogwood

(To be sung to a simple, mournful tune, like a sea shanty)

(Verse 1) Old Man Hemlock went a-walkin' Where the pine trees meet the bay, Said he'd find a fallen giant, And be back by break of day. He kissed his wife, he grabbed his axe, And walked into the wood, But the fog rolled in like ocean foam, And took him where he stood.

(Chorus) Oh, the fog comes down on Solomon, It's green and thick and slow, Don't you listen to the whispers, son, Don't you follow where they go. For the wood ain't wood and the sea ain't sea, When the fog comes down to stay, And the men who walk the fogwood deep, Don't see another day.

(Verse 2) The search party went out lookin', Called his name out to the mist, Found his axe beside a clearing, But of Hemlock, nothing twist. Just a piece of blackened timber, Carved with barnacles and salt, From a ship that sank a hundred years, Brought the searching to a halt.

(Chorus) Oh, the fog comes down on Solomon, It's green and thick and slow, Don't you listen to the whispers, son, Don't you follow where they go. For the wood ain't wood and the sea ain't sea, When the fog comes down to stay, And the men who walk the fogwood deep, Don't see another day.

(Verse 3) Now they say on misty evenings, When the air is damp and still, You can hear a lonely chopping, Coming from up on the hill. It's Old Man Hemlock, still at work, With his axe and ghostly might, Chopping wood for phantom ships, That sail on through the night.

(Chorus) Oh, the fog comes down on Solomon, It's green and thick and slow, Don't you listen to the whispers, son, Don't you follow where they go. For the wood ain't wood and the sea ain't sea, When the fog comes down to stay, And the men who walk the fogwood deep, Don't see another day.