She headed to the back, feeling her way past the mounds of blackberries. She turned into the neglected backyard.
More mussel shells were strung across the back door.
She looked up. There were strings of shells dangling from the windows.
The market door jangled behind her. The bench where the old-timers had coffee was empty. It was just the teen girl, behind the counter, and the sounds of her mother in the kitchen.
“I’ll take a breakfast biscuit, please,” Amanda said.
The girl nodded, and fetched one of the foil-wrapped sandwiches from the hot case. Amanda loved them. Inside each giant biscuit was a homemade elk sausage patty, a hard-fried egg, and a slice of Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese. Amanda tucked the biscuit into her pocket, then poured herself a cup of coffee and paid for the meal.
“I just went up to Brightwood,” she said, sipping her coffee.
“In the fog?” The girl looked startled.
“Sure. Why not?”
“You shouldn’t go out in the fog.”
“Why’s that?”
“That’s when Sasquatch comes out.”
Amanda couldn’t tell if the girl was kidding.
“Sasquatch?”
“He lives deep in the caves in the mountains. He only comes out in the fog. People have seen him, but no one has ever caught him. Some say he’s really a man, but demented. That’s why people disappear in the fog.”
Amanda stared.
“That’s why the fishing boats don’t go out either. He can swim. He has a mouthful of teeth and—”
“Aspire. Stop pulling the lady’s leg.”
It was Gertrude, speaking sharply from the kitchen door. Amanda could see the outline of her short, curly hair.
“Sorry,” the girl said, suppressing a giggle.
“Someone put strings of shells up at Brightwood,” Amanda said. “All around the doors and windows. Any idea why they would do that?”
Gertrude’s face came into view. She looked shocked.
“That’s an old sea tradition,” she said.
“What does it mean?”
“It’s to ward off evil,” Aspire said, and this time her mother didn’t disagree.
Larry was up early, too, hearing the foghorns echoing up and down the coast. He opened his door to a solid wall of mist. He closed the door and decided to make coffee. He poured a cup, then opened up his old, battered laptop. The newspaperman had been right. The internet service of Eagle Cove—and the rest of the coast—was chancy. The mountains broke down signals like the storms broke down trees.
But today was a good day. Maybe the fog helped, of all things. At least it dampened the wind.
He opened up the state police website. It held the clearinghouse forinformation about runaway and missing kids in the state. The reports went back decades, for cases both solved and unsolved. Larry had been called for a lot of runaways in his time. Most of them turned up, safe and sound. They called from a friend’s house, hungover and ashamed, or walked home from a ditch where they’d crashed the family car. But sometimes they did disappear, and years later, he might meet them in the back of his patrol car while running their name. Those cases were never good.
He opened the search function and typed. He took a drink of coffee, frowned, and typed again.
There were no runaway reports listed for Brightwood.
