Dark Sea, Shadowwater II

By Wendy Shreve

A year later, Lili Ribault has become obsessed with all things “osprey”, to the point where her friends worry that she has entered the Spirit World and has become possessed by the sea raptor. But her lover, Cal, “Sitting Crow” Green and the Nausequoit tribe will use all their wisdom and power to see that Lili doesn’t cross the line and be lost forever. Meantime, seemingly idle threats from new visitors could expose the tribe’s secrets and bring an end to the “magic” that is Cape Cod.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wendy Shreve
• Release date: Mar 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311960559

Wendy Shreve

Wendy Shreve, a native New Yorker, grew up in the wilds of the Lower Hudson Valley, climbing trees; connecting with nature. With New York City at her doorstep, she found a launching pad to new horizons. Whether teaching ESL in Singapore during the Persian Gulf War, taking a school group across ravines in the jungles of Belize, going solo in Bali, or drinking a toast to Picasso with a taxi driver in Provence, Wendy has never settled for the ordinary. Wendy Shreve brings to SHADOWWATER a unique and memorable lifetime of adventure and "magic."She received her BA at Smith College and MA at University of Montana. Along with teaching ESL at schools and universities in Europe, Asia, and the United States, her professional experience has included working as a freelance consultant, publicist, and copy writer for organizations such as the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, MA, and Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro. Cape Cod has inspired her to write the short story, Lamentations, published by Hamilton Stone, Fall 2011 for their Quarterly Review, and her novel, SHADOWWATER.Among her many interests are environmental activism, fishing, painting watercolors, photography and writing.

Book preview

DARK SEA

Shadowwater II

Wendy Shreve

GREEN WAVE PRESS

Cape Cod, MA

Shadowwater: Dark Sea is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919666

Green Wave Press/Wendy Shreve, Orleans, MA

ISBN-10: 0692290907

ISBN-13: 978-0692290903

Copyright © 2014 Wendy Shreve

All rights reserved.

Interior design by WriteIntoPrint.com

Dedicated to Candida & Edward Franklin for their friendship. And to my newest muse and man of my heart, Brave Bear.

Acknowledgments

To Edward Franklin for his excellent contributions regarding all things nautical. Myles Stephens, a gifted storyteller and purveyor of anecdotes. Beth Minear, weaver extraordinaire of rugs and tapestries, for allowing me to use one of her beautiful pieces for a scene in the story. Friends who have given me constructive feedback on Shadowwater and advice on the sequel, particularly Margaret Burdick and Lynne Roderick. Thank you to my editors.

And, to my benefactors who helped make this sequel possible: Lynn Crevling, Robert Early, Chris Gray, Charles G. Houghton, III, Larry & Beth Minear, Harriet Rzetelny, Eileen Stanton, Myles Stephens and Lisl Vaillant-McDonald.

One final note: to the Cape Cod community in all its manifestations which has given me the opportunity to find a life worth living and to continue to get better. You know who you are.

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.

Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Chapter One

Cape Cod. June. One year later.

Auto-pilot OFF. Until this moment, he’d replayed in his head the running battle with his father about working this summer. Only nineteen. He wasn’t an adult in most states yet. Sure, working with the professor was an honor. And his father had paid good money to secure his son’s job as a lab assistant, but … the warming sun and cooling blue water of Cape Cod Bay, the girls in their micro-bikinis...A familiar voice bellowed inside the pilot’s head, FOCUS!

Remembering his cargo, the teenager sat up, determined to land his Cessna in Hyannis before his 5:00 pm pick-up. He banked west to head back to the airport when he spotted a gaggle of geese above an inlet. They had been flying their usual V-formation until they dove, like Spitfires heading toward their target. Beneath them was a small cottage. A woman with blazing strawberry-blonde hair and wearing a long, white cover-up which revealed her figure and ivory skin, stood outside her screened-in porch. The pilot followed the geese, spreading them everywhere, when the woman’s arms rose as if she were praying, and a light so powerful … BUMP. The pilot’s cockpit window was doused with streams of blood intermixed with sticky black, brown, and white feathers—he had no idea how many geese he’d hit, startled. Now his hands on the yoke began to shake and perspiration ran down his forehead. He wiped his brow and tried to breathe as he noticed the windshield had patches left uncovered, he wasn’t flying completely blind, when a red light flashed and a dissonant noise warned that the plane was in trouble. The young man pulled his wheel with all his upper-body strength, and then spotted a field. Not my destination, but it’ll do. As the kid got closer and closer to the ground, Here goes nothing, he grabbed the wheel tighter and pulled. And then there was—nothing.

***

After wiping off the endless daily deposit of tree pollen from the side mirrors of his Volvo, Adam Grey cursed as the wind picked up and more shook from trees. He—as his wife reminded him—had forgotten to put his car in the garage, distracted by mumbled jumbles in his head, an expression he as a seven-year-old boy had proudly proclaimed to his older sister, whose laughing eyes hadn’t caught up with her tight lips. Today, Adam’s usually crowded agenda had been postponed; he had the welcome duty of picking up his cousin, Cal.

He pulled onto Route 28 from his home in Falmouth, resolved to keep his thoughts at bay as he paid attention to the road, but being post-Memorial Day weekend, as with most summers, the traffic hadn’t abated. So, his mind rewound like an old videotape to the year that had passed since Cal left for college.

Four months ago, the owner of the house opposite the reservation’s property had relented and sold his place to Dick Cooke the developer, who subsequently gave up his fight to claim the abutting forest; the owner didn’t stand a chance anyway, Adam thought. Thanks to Adam’s persuasive skills: The traffic is getting worse … you wouldn’t want to live next to a noisy wind farm if Cooke did win the property battle … and the press hasn’t let up since Rachel ‘Little Fire,’ Green’s unnatural death. Adam had made calls to reporters, including Rusty Keenan, to keep up their snooping, with the proviso they stay off of Nausequoit property. Cooke had been so grateful that the seller sold, he offered Adam a job, which the lawyer tactfully declined. A year later, however, wind farms had become increasingly unpopular, and without public support and the EPA fighting the turbines due to increased bat and raptor killings, the project was scrapped. Cooke, not beaten but only temporarily wounded, decided it had been time to take a break.

Another reason for Cooke’s change of heart had been his daughter’s remarkable survival after being kidnapped and almost killed by Cooke’s mentally deranged maintenance worker, Howard Millerton. Strangely, Dick Cooke didn’t hold the same rancor toward the equally involved Helen Millerton Ward, Howard’s sister. She got off easy, according to the prosecutor, when Cooke decided not to press charges against her, via the prosecutor’s agreement, as an accessory to the kidnapping. The Feds did get Helen for bank fraud, but with good behavior, she’d be released in three years. And when Cooke’s daughter, Diana, had married her fiancé and left for Africa, Cooke had found a new life. In his mind, the tragedy last year was behind him. However, Adam knew there had been at least one victim of the entire Diana Cooke ordeal: Lili Ribault.

HONK! Sod off, Adam yelled to the indignant driver behind him as Adam sat at a green light. Adam’s wife, during her pregnancy, had developed a crazy craving for all things English—scones, Downton Abbey, tea (herbal, of course), etc., and to his unpleasant surprise, Adam had begun using some of the vernacular. Of Portuguese descent, he found his wife’s sudden Anglophile behavior amusing until he’d learned Rusty had told Joana Grey about the British series. Another Rusty Keenan practical joke that Adam needed to avenge. From outright loathing of anyone from the press, to a new-found respect for at least one reporter, to his playful friendship with Rusty, Adam had begun to unwind his bias against the press. Adam took a deep breath and regained his composure, although he’d use some more slang as his trip continued.

***

With the exception of The Times, the local paper on Cape Cod, Rusty Keenan had gotten exclusive rights to the Diana Cooke kidnapping and Millerton’s gruesome death from the teeth of a conveniently lurking Great White at the end of a Chatham pier. Rusty had regained his premier status, and realized he’d missed the good life and so had begun to be discriminating about his stories. He wished he had an excuse to return to Harwich before the summer rush and work on SWEET SUE, his boat, but he had been smart enough to know sensationalism was what the public wanted, from Rusty for his blog.

He put down his paper to think about what he’d read, a story updating readers on last year’s Millerton case. Helen Millerton Ward would be up for parole in two years, and Rusty wasn’t so sure she shouldn’t get psychiatric help. He had been certain, however, that another woman he knew personally did need therapy. Cal had called, occasionally, to keep Rusty up-to-date on Lili, knowing Rusty’s fondness for Lili.

They had met one year ago, Rusty, a has-been e-zine writer, had been at the center of what they used to call a front page story. Actually, there were two. The one he posted and the one he didn’t. Lili Ribault had agreed to pursue the latter: the unnatural death of Cal’s sister Rachel. And, Lili had become more than a helpful researcher. Then Millerton’s bloody death, with Lili being an eyewitness, began to cause collateral damage. Combining Rusty’s protective instincts with the fact that he was the father of a young woman about the same age, he had become worried about Lili’s emerging PTSD. And now, Rusty wondered if he should have been there more often over the last year. They’d lost touch. He blamed himself for neglecting her.

Rusty was contemplating what he should do about, or for, Lili from the privacy of his bachelor pad. His fourth-floor walk-up in Cambridge, a step up from his tiny room in Southie with his second-generation Irish family; it was a bare-bones, one bedroom apartment which didn’t reveal too much, but enough, if the perceptive visitor knew where to look.

Rusty’s place was not disheveled: books were neatly stacked; dishes washed and put away; and newspapers set in a neat pile on a small end-table. In the living area scattered furniture included a brown, suede-like sofa bed; a bridge table with a hinge which opened for visiting friends and an occasional poker game; and two brown-cushioned chairs. His most prized furniture piece was the recently reupholstered lounge chair in soft, black Corinthian leather, which sat in the corner across the room from the wide-screen TV, laptop, and his CD player. His daughter had happily burned several CDs for Rusty over the years and tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to go digital.

He had conceded to making some modern upgrades since losing his position at a Boston newspaper two years before: down-sizing, new blood, they called it. Ol’ Blue Eyes had finished singing, One for My Baby as the new BOSE CD player began blaring the latest U-2 hit. After all, Rusty did believe in keeping up with today’s music. Then he heard his computer beep an alert. (Another convenience which Rusty grudgingly accepted. Yet, if a story ever came along at 2:00 am, he’d pass.)

5:30 pm. BREAKING NEWS. Single-engine plane crash. Forced landing at small airstrip in Barnstable County, Cape Cod, MA. Pilot presumed dead. More details to follow.

Normally, Rusty would leave the item to a cub reporter at the local paper, but Keenan’s rumbling stomach, a reliable omen or his ulcer, either way, Rusty listened. He was convinced that this tragedy wouldn’t be another senseless death written up for a day then forgotten except by the grieving family. Forced landing was enough to move Rusty into second gear and grab his duffle—reminding himself to buy a suitcase on wheels—as he finished packing his clothes and gadgets and tried to lift the hefty bag. Weight, burden, Lili. I have to see Lili, he thought. Then Rusty wiped his eyes: what if his own daughter had seen what Lili had? He tightened his girth, stepped outside and locked the door.

***

Minutes before the plane crash, Adam drove along Route 6 toward the Barnstable bus stop, thankful the day had been uneventful and un-stormy. Adam wanted to be at his best to pick up his cousin, Cal Green, who had become like a young brother to Adam. Normally, Cal would’ve gotten off the bus at a stop before the bridge, but the two men agreed to meet in Barnstable so they’d have time to recap their news before other tribal members and friends swarmed upon Cal.

Sitting Crow must be anxious to spread his wings after such a long confinement. Had Adam voiced this comment publically, the listener would assume that Cal had been in a monastery or imprisoned, but Adam Anakausuen Grey and Cal, Sitting Crow, Green were both members of the Nausequoit tribe, an indigenous people who had settled on Cape Cod long before the Puritans. They maintained their traditions as best they could in a modern world and regarded life away from the tribe as untethered.

Attending Northeastern had not been easy for the younger man. Not his studies, for Cal was more serious about learning and didn’t find classes demanding, but his slowness in making friends and adapting to city life. Adam, when he had attended college, had worn blinders and had used his simmering anger at the staring eyes and taunts to be the best student in his class at Harvard. Cal had a tougher time dealing with anyone except his roommate, who was slowly becoming a friend. James, who hailed from Dorchester, had endured similar hazing in his mainly white neighborhood but had learned to handle it.

You should hear him, Adam. He’s a natural comedian.

The cousins had been talking on the phone making plans for Cal to return.

"One night, outside the computer center, an annoying prep school kid, I recognized the insignia on the blazer, was walking by us when he saw James. The boy started making baboon sounds and scratching his armpits.

James, he hates ‘Jim,’ said, ‘Hey, you’ve got it all wrong. Baboons raise their asses when they’re agitated.’

And you can guess what the boy did next. He looked so stupid that James and I couldn’t stop laughing. I took a pic with my phone. You couldn’t see the kid’s face, so nobody would know who it was, but I nixed posting it on Facebook. Anyway, the ignoramus saw the camera and fled.

Adam laughed for a few seconds until he resumed being the adult and scolded Cal for taking the obscene picture. You’ll never get hired if your future boss saw such nonsense. Glad you got rid of it. Cal made a crude comment about Enewashims (Wampanoag for male animals) and hung up the phone, not knowing his cousin Adam had resumed laughing until he almost choked.

As Adam pulled into the Park & Ride, he watched regional and commuter buses coming and going with passengers waiting under cover in an orderly line. A rest-stop as well, cars packed that parking lot as visitors went inside for their fast food fix.

Then he saw Cal. The kid was dressed in khakis and a long, untucked button-down shirt, though his long hair—pulled back today—had not been sacrificed. Adam’s cousin had finally started to dress, if not for success. Cal sat squatting awkwardly, his right foot in front of his left, as if he were going to take off any moment. And that’s when they each heard it. Adam slammed on his brakes, relieved no one was behind him. Cal had fallen off his suitcases and was brushing the grit and dust off his new pants. S**t!!! What the f**k was that?!! Adam raced up to Cal to see if he was all right.

The cousins shared a heightened sense of hearing. Did you hear that bang? Cal asked.

More muffled, but unmistakable. A crash. Sounded like…

… a plane. Bad. Hope there are survivors.

Adam felt more concerned about the memories. Cal had been seven when his parents were killed in a car accident.

Listen, Sitting Crow, I know we said we’d go for a bite to eat. But if you want to go home…

Adam suspected Cal’s pride wouldn’t go for Adam’s well-intentioned suggestion to leave.

Actually, Anakausuen, that’s a good idea. I’m beat. You can close your mouth now.

They walked to Adam’s car, which had ended up over the curb of the entrance to the lot when he saw the plane coming down.

Getting old, huh? Cal kidded. Adam slapped his cousin’s head and they got in the car. Before Adam started the engine, both said, Rusty!

Yeah, he’ll be here before you can blink if there’s anything to the crash. Brace yourself, Cal, we’re in for another ride. They laughed nervously, both praying inwardly the pilot’s family would survive the tragedy. Cal’s Christian grandmother and Adam’s father, the tribes’ shaman, had instilled compassion for all people, even those they didn’t know. Learning the pilot had been around Cal’s age made processing the tragedy harder.

Adam had chosen to take the Mid-Cape instead of local roads, knowing emergency vehicles would slow traffic to a crawl. While the car rolled along, Cal recalled the mosaic of Nantucket Sound, the aroma of pine needles in the forest near his home, and birdsong. He relaxed his shoulders and drifted back in time.

***

Lili awoke from a short nap on her damask couch. She’d had a restless sleep. During the preceding several months, Lili’s focus had turned at first to working on her next story. She had stopped and started many times, trying every conceivable trick to get inspired: from walking and taking notes everywhere she traveled, to doing the laundry and hoping her empty mind would fill with ideas as she watched the dryer spin and spin in her landlady’s basement.

This morning, Lili looked at her screen—He came to her like a rush of wind across the water—and deleted that sentence and the paragraph before. Transference. Her body and soul had been swept away with Lili’s avian friends. But the surging energy that morning which had pushed her outside and swept up her arms, like wings about to lift to the sky, had left her spent. Even feathered creatures had to rest, regain their strength. Like the misty bay outside her window, her eyes felt heavy; her mind foggy. Then Lili, still dressed in her black and white-striped cotton pajamas, remembered Cal would be returning today, and she needed to change her clothes.

On the way to her bedroom, Lili replaced the cordless phone on its cradle, and it instantly began to ring. Trying to avoid the irritating, high-pitched clamor, Lili put her hands over her ears, thinking, it’s my publisher, again! Ever since Lili was a witness to the Diana Cooke kidnapping, she has been bombarded by her old publisher to come back and write another novel. You’ve got the makings for a great horror story. Stephanie Kane, Cape Cod, shark attack…

Lili ignored the e-mails, changed her cell phone number, and kept her cordless phone nearby to screen calls, while turning down the volume at night. She wrote large letters on a sticky note and stuck it on her hallway mirror: YOU CAN DO THIS. The motivational reminder didn’t work. Since that horrific day when Howard Millerton was killed, Lili had had other priorities. Writing was too docile an activity. She needed what spare time she had to re-charge. However, Lili’s publisher had been correct about one thing: it was time for Lili to get back to work, if only for a paycheck.

Except now the thought of Cal’s return from Northeastern for the summer shot electricity through her body. She picked up her brush and stroked her hair at least a hundred times as she anticipated what she would say or what they would do; the brushing slowed as shivers of desire traveled down her body. She was remembering last summer.

***

Adam turned to see his cousin drifting to another time. Cal’s wry smile suggested Cal was thinking about Lili.

Cal had postponed his trip to Boston to work at his summer job before he started college to be with her. He had noticed Lili wanted to focus more on their sex life and less on their relationship. Cal, felt relieved from the emotional burden, but believed Lili’s predatory behavior, would be temporary PTSD. He had been unknowingly misguided in that assumption.

As soon as they had a chance, Cal took Lili camping near the Moors of Truro at the end of May. Though still cool at night, Cal had found a secluded spot to pitch a tent where they could experience the sight of seemingly meandering bogs, with their salty, peaty smell, familiar to denizens. Lili teased Cal about the creature comforts of home. In reality, each felt blessed that some areas of the Cape remained, untouched.

A large section of Truro was now a developer’s paradise, especially near the bay and inlets, but it had once been home to the Pamet Indians, who, like the Nausequoit and others, helped settlers when they arrived by providing corn seed. Eventually, what was once known as Pamet became Truro at the beginning

Reviews for Dark Sea, Shadowwater II

[kevin_peter-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Spirit Rider – A review of the novel ‘Dark Sea’“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes” - Arthur Conan DoyleAll of us are connected to each other in one way or another, through pain and pleasure, through life and death and through the rational and the unexplainable, there’s a link that joins our lives with the others. And when we all come together, a very special connection occurs.Author Wendy Shreve’s new novel, ‘Dark Sea’ is the sequel to the highly successful first book ‘Shadowwater’. Taking off after a year since the incidents described in the first book occur; this novel brings back all the major players and introduces a few new ones. Lili Ribault, the highly successful author of supernatural stories is now leading a quiet and existentialist life trying to come to terms with her alternate identity. Meanwhile her soul mate Cal Green struggles to find a balance between his love for her and helping her find herself. And when a couple of outsiders are thrown into this mix with their insatiable greed and varied interests in the myth of the land; Cape Cod needs quite a few heroes to help save the day.The charm of the book lies in the fact that it takes you to a small town setting with lots of characters all of whom seems to know each other very well. And privacy isn’t much of an issue here and they needn’t depend on social media status updates either, for everyone already knows what is going on in other people’s lives. The narrative of this novel is in many ways reminiscent of one of those new age story driven video games, you have to work through the mystery and play through all the levels to get to the end to find out the big secret, to revel in the finale. That being said, I would seriously suggest everyone to go out and read the first book first so that the introduction and acclimatization to the various characters and the setting will be easier, as otherwise it does take quite a bit of time to get used to the various characters and the pace of the book. This is especially so because ‘Dark Sea’ is written as the second half of the story told in the first book and isn’t necessarily a standalone new novel, but if you are willing to spend some time and invest yourself in the first couple of chapters then you should be able to get right into it and you will get sucked into its wordplay.Wendy Shreve has a wonderful prose which when it needs to be is highly poetic. In many ways the entire novel feels like reading a movie script and except for the places where the author shows off her prose skills, in the rest of the book, the way the scenes are contrived, planned and executed and the way each scene cuts away smoothly to draft into a new one all reminds you of a cinematic experience. It also seems to be professionally edited; the unseen presence of a very skilled editor can be felt throughout the novel. Wendy has also blended the myth and folklore with the mystery element quite nicely. And speaking about mystery, while the character of Rusty goes about silently investigating the plane crash mystery in the background, we get to see the rest of the characters act out their complicated lives in front of us while subtly revealing even newer mysteries to us. In fact, the mystery element is always kept alive by postulating newer details and bringing it forth into the foreground every now and then but at the same time, the reader is never allowed to get ahead of the narrative in trying to uncover the truth either.The main romantic pair, Cal and Lili’s relationship graph is handled brilliantly, their ups and downs, their longing and their break away, have all been captured nicely by the author. She actually has a winner of a romantic couple; the kind readers would want to see get together at the earliest. But then the author plays God and interferes in their lives and keeps them apart for the time being, playing on the reader’s emotion and making them wait for the next book to see if they end up together. This and the cliff hanger end ensure that the wait for the third book will be a pure guilty pleasure.