Chapter 1
The town of Blackwood Cove was hard to find on any map, due both to its small size and the remoteness of its location.
Positioned along a stretch of the New England coastline not often seen by anyone but the hardiest of fishermen, the Cove, as the locals called it, was nestled up tight between two rugged and forbidding cliffs. Even if you happened to pass by it on your oceanic travels, you might be hard-pressed to distinguish many details, for the town was shrouded almost continually in a cold, clammy blanket of sea fog. Even at the height of summer, the Cove rarely saw temperatures in excess of seventy-five degrees. And in winter, the residents often joked they were trapped inside a snow globe. Trapped, with no way out.
There was only one road in and out of the Cove. A two lane stretch of asphalt, crumbling from the endless cycle of frost and thaw, meandered in curving switchbacks up the relatively gentle slope behind the town. It then became lost in dense and shadowed forest, stretching for over fifteen miles before it reached the next settlement.
Nearly a hundred years ago, Blackwood Cove had been an important fishing and shipping location. However, as the coastline further south was built up and added onto, the Cove became less and less vital. Now it made most of its money either through tourism or the generous contributions of wealthy, older folk who had decided to make it their very own retirement community.
Home to over two thousand at its peak, Blackwood Cove was now host to a mere eight hundred and fifty souls, as its oft-edited welcome sign announced. It was a strange sight for the traveler to behold as they came coasting down out of that primeval and seemingly endless forest. A scattering of ancient buildings set in terraces that sloped toward a gray and dismal beach, fog curling through the streets, filling the empty paths where once a never-ending stream of shoppers had strolled.
It was currently autumn in the Cove. Winter was just around the corner. The few deciduous trees around the town, including the ancient oak on the town commons, had lost all but a few black, curling leaves. The evergreens stood tall and proud, ready to accept their tonnage of winter snow. It wouldn't be long, no more than a couple of weeks, before the town of Blackwood Cove entered the long slumber. Short days and long nights. Frosted window panes and screaming sea winds, driving frigid air beneath their doors.
But for now, there was still a little bit of life left in the place. The local school, a building the size of the average middle school in a larger town, housed every grade from preschool on up. As the clock wore on toward the afternoon, less than a hundred students stared out the windows and urged time to move faster.
In the sleepy residential streets across town, along the populated stretches past the boarded-up homes of long-gone people, nothing much was happening. A cat ran across Ivy Road, pausing halfway along to glance toward a slow oncoming car with its ears erect and its eyes wide open. It then continued on its journey, toward home or toward some hunting grounds, and vanished along the brick foundation of an abandoned house.
A child, too young to be in school, was pedaling a tricycle along at a painstaking speed on the sidewalk of Foghorn Drive. The boy's mother walked along behind, smiling and laughing even as her cheeks turned red in the bracing air.
And on Main Street, under the glow of a half dozen OPEN signs, a trio of old women were walking along. Bundled up in their cold weather gear, they set their sights on the next shopping destination. And further ahead of them, where the street widened into a broad cul-de-sac, stood the town commons. A library, the oldest building in the Cove, held council over the broad and windswept grounds. Near to that was a town hall, barely more than a tool shed in size, as well as the large manor where the mayor lived with his wife.
Down by the seashore, bouncing along on the brackish waves in the small harbor, there was an expensive-looking pleasure craft. It stood out like a sore thumb from the more conservative boats around it, including a mossy old canoe that had been tied up there for almost two decades, never having been claimed or used by anyone.
And, standing outside her parent's home on silent Temple Street on the northeastern fringe of the town, a young woman named Jasmine Moore was contemplating the future.
At nineteen years of age, it seemed like an entire universe of possibilities was open to her. But the longer she stayed here, on the misty boulevards of her home town, the more content she felt just to wallow forever in the familiarity of it all. Yet, she couldn't help but feel there was a greater destiny waiting for her. It was a paradox of feeling that every human being had felt at one time or another... though Jasmine, being young, naturally felt like she was the only person in the world who was dealing with it.
But this feeling came from a place of logic. After all, she knew for a fact that she was unique in at least one way.
"What are we waiting for?" a gruff, friendly voice asked from somewhere near her right knee.
She glanced down and saw Luffy there, using his back right paw to get at an itch behind his ear. He put his foot down and looked up at her with wide, brown eyes. Eyes that were excited, but not expectant. Eager, but patient.
"Well," Jasmine said with a smile, patting him on the head, "it's only 12:41."
"So?" Luffy asked, cocking his head.
"So," Jasmine added, "it only takes me fifteen minutes to get to the Nook. There's no reason to leave until quarter to one."
"There's nothing wrong with being early," Luffy pointed out.
"And there's nothing wrong with being exactly on time!" she replied. "Don't try and push me, mister. I know your angle. You think if we set off early, we'll be able to do a lap around the commons."
"Walking is fun," said Luffy.
"Walking. Right."
He cocked his head again. "What do you mean?"
Jasmine laughed. "We both know all you want to do is pee on that big old oak tree."
"It smelled wrong the last time we were there," Luffy replied in a defensive tone. "I still have that smell stuck in my nose. I need to get rid of it."
"Well, we'll swing by after my shift. How does that sound?"
Luffy barked once, wagging his tail to show that her suggestion was perfectly fine by him.
And then they waited. In the silence, as a foghorn blared somewhere out at sea and echoed eerily through the town, Jasmine experienced a moment of realization. It was not normal, by any definition of the word, to be able to talk to your dog. Sure, every dog knew a few words in the language of their human masters. Walk, food, bath, dish, et cetera. Speak, shake, sit, roll over. Play dead. But what she and Luffy had went far beyond that. And it was only with him. She could talk to Luffy, and Luffy could talk to her... but she had no such connection with any other canine.
When she was younger, when she first found Luffy stranded on the beach, she had thought she was a freak. Some kind of mutated creature that would never fit in to society. Sometimes she still felt that way, like she wasn't quite human. These thoughts were the only thing she ever hid from Luffy. He was the innocent party in all this. He was nothing but a faithful friend, a confidant, someone who was always there for her. He did not deserve her burdens, as much as she knew he would carry them gladly if only to save her a shred of pain.
"Okay," she said, glancing at her watch. "Let's go."
Luffy pranced along behind her, bouncing excitedly. He knew the way. He could run there on his own with a blindfold on. But he knew the rules. It was a two-way bargain. He didn't need to wear a leash, as long as he stayed close and let her lead.
"It's a nice day," Luffy remarked, sniffing at her hand.
"Yeah, real nice," she replied sarcastically. "Forty-nine degrees. Wind blowing at about, I dunno, twelve miles an hour. Pretty much the perfect conditions for sailing, come to think of it."
"I bet Mrs. Carter will be going out onto the water today. Maybe we can tag along. I love sailing. I love it!"
"Sure thing, Luffy. We'll just walk right up to the mayor's wife and ask if she wouldn't mind us tagging along on her latest expedition. I'm sure she'd love to host the weird dog girl and her pet for a day."
"What do you mean? I'm sure she thinks we're cool," Luffy said.
"I doubt it. She likes Barry, remember?"
That took the wind out of Luffy's sails, so to speak. At the mention of Barry Brock's name, he growled deep in his throat.
"Down, boy," Jasmine said. "We're not going to hurt Barry. Right?"
"Right," Luffy agreed. "I love people. Most of them."
The rest of the walk passed in silence. Luffy moved out a foot to her right, sniffing grass in every lawn they passed. When it was time to cross a street, he tucked in by her side again for a brief moment. Not that there was much need. This time of day, the Cove was silent and dead. They might as well have been the last two remaining residents in a ghost town.
***
The Book Nook proudly claimed, according to a hand carved wooden sign in the front window, to be BLACKWOOD COVE'S PREMIER BOOKSHOP. Though the sign looked new, having been maintained and retouched on an annual basis by the proprietor, it was actually nearly as old as the store itself. And it told a long story of competition with another store which used to occupy a boarded-up husk standing at the other end of Main Street.
The Nook itself laid claim to one of the oldest and most elegantly decorated store fronts in the entire commercial district of Blackwood Cove... and as dubiously impressive a claim as that was, the owner took it very seriously. The red bricks of the facade were re-pointed once a year. Cultivated ivy was allowed to grow on some of it, having been shaped and culled into a desirable curtain shape. The ancient windows, paned with glass that was foggier than the average morning in the Cove, let out streams of warm, amber light and smeared visions of stacked books and cozy ambiance.
It was easily Jasmine's favorite place in the entire world. Even before she had been lucky enough to get a job there, she spent many hours of her life lost in those wonderful stacks of books, basking in the rich smells of old pages, reveling in the knowledge that endless stories stood all around her, just waiting to be discovered.
Having made good time on her walk over, courtesy of a strong wind at her back, Jasmine stepped inside the shop at 12:58. Her feet fell on oak planks that were older than her father, squeaking as her weight settled on them. She wiped her feet on a nearby rug and then stepped in past the vestibule, into a narrow alleyway between shelves of books that had once been double stacked but were now triple stacked, overflowing with volumes. At last count, another activity which the proprietor performed obsessively, the Nook had been home to over ten thousand books. Impressive, considering its cramped size.
Jasmine looked around for a long moment, taking a deep breath and steeping in it all. Like a tea bag sinking to the bottom of a cup and luxuriating in the rich depths. New books were well and good. Sometimes you had to read them if it was something that had just come out. But to Jasmine's mind, there was nothing more magical than a room jammed floor to ceiling with dog-eared treasures, cracked spines, and yellowed pages. Even the occasional staining or mold growth or mysterious sticky object between two pages could not dissuade her in her love for used books.
"Jaz, is that you?" a voice called from somewhere in the teetering maze walls of the book shop.
"Yes, Patrick," she called back. "I'm just hanging up my coat."
"Well, join me back here once you're done."
Luffy padded along behind her as she navigated the narrow aisles. She found Patrick Walker in the science fiction and fantasy section, on his knees with bags of books positioned around him.
"That neighbor of yours just dumped off another truckload," he grunted. "I guess she thinks we're running the Library of Congress here. Like we've got unlimited space! Here, help me shove some of these down..."
He seemed to be trying to insert books into an empty space on the shelf. However, the unsupported books to either side kept trying to tip over and fill in that space. Jaz pulled them aside and held them in place while he inserted a pre-sorted stack of volumes.
"That does it," he said. "Look at that. It's a whole series. Almost. We've got books one through five now. Except there's six in all. It's not like the last book didn't come out yet. It was published in '89, for Pete's sake! What's she doing, holding onto it for a rainy day?"
"'89, huh?" Jasmine asked. "How did you know that?"
"Well..." Patrick looked up at her with an almost shameful look on his face. "I'm getting old now, Jaz. My eyes aren't what they used to be. Heck, neither is the rest of me. And we've got more books than we've ever had before. So, I finally let that Watson kid help me out with getting the internet hooked up. You know, that no-good coworker of yours. And I guess it isn't so bad. There's a lot of information out there."
"Did he say internet?" Luffy asked.
"I can't believe it," Jasmine replied, grinning and gently knocking her boss on the shoulder. "I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks."
"You're not talking about me, are you?" Luffy asked.
"To use the old cliché, I guess you can," said Patrick. "Teach an old dog new tricks. I wonder how many of the books in this place have that same line in them? Maybe you need to get some new material, Jaz."
He stood up, lifting an old hardcover from the top shelf. It was at the front, which meant he had only just stocked it. The corners were dented in and the spine seemed to have scoliosis, it was so crooked. It was beautiful.
"You see this?" Patrick asked. "I read this book when I was just a kid. I forgot it even existed at all before your neighbor brought it in. Funny how life is, sometimes."
"Yeah," Jasmine said. "Funny."
Patrick stared at the book for a long time, his eyes going distant. Finally, he slid it onto the shelf and let out a sigh.
"Well," he said, "I guess I've got you for the next four hours, so I might as well put you to work. Would you rather stock shelves or tend the register?"
She knew how he got about his shelves. If someone else did them, Patrick would always end up redoing them.
"The register's fine," she said. "Luffy can keep me company. Right, boy?"
"Jeez, Jasmine," Luffy replied. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm a dog."
***
While the nook was certainly receiving more trade-ins than ever before, it was far less profitable than it might have seemed. For one thing, the increasing number of books was an indicator that people were buying less. Though Patrick Walker outwardly acted as though nothing was wrong, he had nevertheless been a ball of nervous energy for the weeks and months leading up to this fateful week.
Jasmine Moore, Jaz as most in the Cove called her, was aware of none of this. She whiled away her shift at the counter, reading and talking quietly with Luffy in between customers. She enjoyed a soda from the mini fridge under the counter, daydreaming as time passed by.
And time did pass, faster than anyone in Blackwood Cove ever could have expected. It was winding down, drawing toward the last moment of peace the town would know for quite some time.
Because someone out of that population of eight hundred and fifty was about to come up dead.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
