The Footprints That Ended at the Centre Line

Chapter 1: April

The first time I saw the wet footprints, they ended in the middle of the road.

There were six of them, dark against the pale pavement, leading up from the bay side. They looked like the prints of narrow bare feet. The last one rested directly over the yellow center line.

Beyond it, there was nothing.

No return trail. No marks toward the houses. No sign that anyone had stepped onto the sandy shoulder.

I noticed them one morning in April while walking to work. By noon, the sun had dried the road, and they were gone. I told myself someone had crossed when the pavement was wet, though I could not explain why the prints stopped.

At the time, it seemed like the sort of small mystery a person could afford to forget.

Five years later, I learned what had made them.

Or at least what was still trying to.

I grew up in Bellweather, a narrow beach town built between the Atlantic and a gray working bay. In summer, tourists crowded the ice-cream shops and carried striped chairs toward the ocean. In winter, plywood covered half the storefronts, and the wind pushed sand into the streets.

The bay side was quieter.