Chapter Five : Full Moon

[Ashford Cove - 1903 - Morning Hour]

The mist hadn’t lifted yet. 

At first light, the water in the cove didn’t shimmer blue like it usually did. It lay flat and black, thick as oil, swallowing the sky whole. A smell clung to it — brine and rot and something metallic underneath. 

Then the shapes came into view. 

Bodies. Floating slowly, bumping against the pilings, drifting with the tide. Too many. Men, women, a child with a blue ribbon still tied in her hair. None of them moved. 

Two women were walking the riverside path on their way to the Grill. They stopped dead when they saw it. 

“God help us,” one whispered. 

The other didn’t answer. She grabbed her friend’s wrist and they ran, skirts caught up in their fists, breath tearing in their throats. 

By mid-morning, the news had teeth. 

It started at the docks, passed between fishmongers gutting their catch.

“The bodies that were washed up… their mouths were filled with seaweed,” one said to another, voice low.

“And their eyes were opened,” a dockhand added, wiping his hands on his apron. “Opened like they saw something scary.” 

From there it jumped. 

The baker told the milkmaid. 

The milkmaid told the schoolmaster. 

The schoolmaster told his neighbor over the fence, hands shaking around his pipe. 

“Their eyes were opened like they saw something scary,” the neighbor repeated to his wife, and she crossed herself twice. 

By noon, every street in Ashford Cove had the same story. 

Black water. 

Silent bodies. 

Eyes wide open. 

And no one could say where they’d come from.

The bells of St. Catherine’s didn’t ring that morning. 

They didn’t need to. The whole of Ashford Cove was already in the streets, voices low and frantic, all of them staring down at the cove where the water still sat black and unmoving. 

The Reverend pushed through the crowd, his coat flapping, face pale under the brim of his hat. He stood on the stone steps by the wharf, raised both hands, and his voice cracked over the murmurs. 

“God’s wrath!” he called out. “This is judgment for our sins! The Lord’s hand lies heavy upon us!” 

Some nodded. Some wept. A few didn’t look at him at all. 

Down by the water’s edge, the old Portuguese women stood in a tight circle, shawls pulled tight even though the air was warm. Their lips moved fast, Portuguese spilling out in low, urgent bursts. They crossed themselves again and again. 

One of them, Señora Mendes, gripped the younger woman’s arm hard enough to bruise. 

“Tidewalker,” she whispered. The word felt wrong in the morning air. 

“Tidewalker,” another echoed, and the name passed between them like a curse. 

When the younger woman asked what it meant, Señora Mendes didn’t look up from the black water. 

“They say,” she muttered, eyes fixed on the bloated hands floating just beneath the surface, “when too much blood hits the water at once, the ocean remembers. And when summer burns hot enough... it comes back to drink again.” 

A silence fell over the circle. 

Out in the cove, the black water rippled. No wind. 

And somewhere beneath it, something shifted.

[Present Day]

Ashford Cove High School, behind the gym

The bell had rung five minutes ago, but Sarah and Jake were still leaning against the brick wall where the cameras didn’t reach. 

Jake was trying to keep his voice casual. “So you’re telling me the thing in the cove… it’s not just some local ghost story?”

Sarah glanced over her shoulder, then dropped her voice. 

“It’s born when enough people die in the same body of water and the heat + desperation + blood basically cook up a curse,” she said. “Ashford Cove had a shipwreck in 1903. Hundreds drowned. Every bad heatwave since, the Tidewalker gets restless.”

“Restless how?” Jake asked.

Sarah’s jaw tightened. “Like it wakes up hungry,” she said. “Old women here still call it by name. Tidewalker. They say it remembers blood. And it remembers when to come back.”

A gust of hot wind rolled through the parking lot, carrying the smell of the ocean. Even a mile inland, it stung like salt. 

Jake swallowed. “And it’s a heatwave this week.” 

Sarah didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. 

The forecast on his phone said 98°F by Thursday. 

Across the lot, the cove glimmered under the sun. Too still. Too quiet.

Suddenly there was an outburst, a good number of students hurrying out of school, all of them moving in one direction toward the lower fields. Voices overlapped — half questions, half panic.

Jake turned, his casual look gone, eyes fixed on the chaos erupting across the quad. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, but it came out more to himself than to Sarah. 

A girl came in behind the gym, breath ragged, hair stuck to her forehead. She nearly knocked into Sarah before skidding to a stop. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Sarah grabbed her arm to steady her. “Why the sudden outburst?” 

The girl’s eyes were wide, unfocused. “They found a body at the river,” she blurted, then yanked free and hurried out, already being swallowed by the crowd. 

Jake and Sarah looked at each other. 

Then Sarah started moving, shoving past the wall, following the rest of the students. Jake didn’t hesitate. He fell into step beside her.

At the river, the crowd was thick along the bank.

An ambulance sat idling on the gravel path, red lights casting dull flashes against the trees. Students clustered in groups, some filming, most just staring. The county sheriff stood near the water’s edge with two deputies, face set hard, talking fast into his radio.

Kyle’s body was on the grass, already in a body bag. The zipper stopped at face level.

Jake and Sarah pushed to the front and stopped. 

Kyle looked wrong. Skin pale and bloated, hair matted with river water. His mouth was open, black strands of seaweed caught between his teeth. Eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

Jake exhaled sharp through his nose and turned to her. Their eyes met. Neither of them said it out loud.

Then came the scream. 

“KY-LE!” 

Bonnie tore through the crowd, shoving people aside, running like she didn’t feel the ground under her feet. She dropped to her knees behind the body bag and grabbed at the plastic with both hands, sobbing his name over and over. 

Two deputies moved fast. One pulled her back by the shoulders, the other stepped between her and the body. 

“Let me go!” Bonnie thrashed, voice breaking. “That’s my boyfriend! Let me see him!” 

They held her anyway, murmuring low, trying to keep it calm as they led her away. But she kept twisting, kept looking back over her shoulder at the bag on the grass, at the face she wasn’t allowed to see one last time. 

A deputy stepped forward, zipped the bag the rest of the way. 

The sound of it was final. 

Two EMTs lifted the stretcher and carried him toward the ambulance. The crowd parted without being told. 

After that, people started leaving in ones and twos. Phones went dark. The river went quiet again. 

Sarah didn’t move. Her eyes stayed on the spot where the bag had been. 

On the water, the surface was still. Too still. 

Jake’s voice was low beside her. “That makes three this week.” 

Sarah nodded once. The Tidewalker wasn’t restless anymore. 

It was feeding.

                                 ***

The moonlight had been quiet.

Then it wasn’t. 

It started in his bones. A deep, grinding ache that made him sit bolt upright in bed. His skin felt too small, stretched tight over something restless underneath. The air in the room went heavy, metallic, like before a storm. 

Jake clawed at his shirt, ripped it open. His pulse was hammering, too fast, too loud. In the mirror, his eyes were already shifting—iris bleeding out to molten golden-yellow.

The house was silent. 

Aunt Marisol was fast asleep. 

The thought hit him wrong. Prey. Safe. Close.

He didn’t mean to move. His legs moved first. Door creaked open, bare feet silent on the hall floor. The change was still tearing through him, bones resetting, nails thickening into claws, but his mind was clear enough to hate it. 

He stopped outside her door. 

The knob turned under his hand without a sound. 

Aunt Marisol lay on her side, blanket pulled up to her chin, face soft and loose in sleep. The lamp on her nightstand cast a warm circle over her hair, silver at the temples. Her breathing was slow, soft. Snoring. Barely more than a whisper. 

Kill her. It'll be quiet. She won't fight.

The voice wasn’t his. It purred from behind his teeth. 

Jake’s hands shook. Claws dug into the doorframe, splintering wood. His jaw ached with the need to open, to lunge. 

Then she snored again. Soft. Familiar. 

Something cracked in his chest. 

Suddenly he was eight years old, sitting on her kitchen counter while she made pan dulce, flour dusting her nose. She’d caught him staring and said, “You’ve got that serious face again, mijo. What’s on your mind?” 

He was twelve, sick with fever, and she’d sat up all night with a cold cloth on his forehead, humming old songs in Spanish he didn’t know but didn’t want to forget. 

She was the one who’d packed his bag when his mom couldn’t, who’d said “Time are rough, but you’ve got me now” and meant it. 

Kind. Always kind. 

The monster in him snarled. The human part of him snarled back. 

Jake’s knees hit the floor. His forehead pressed against the doorframe as he fought it—muscles locking, breath tearing out of him in ragged gasps. Sweat dripped off his chin onto the carpet. 

“Not her,” he choked out. The words felt like they were being torn from him. 

The golden-yellow in his eyes flared once, violently, and then faded. 

He shoved himself back, away from her door, away from the sound of her breathing. His claws caught the wall as he turned and bolted. 

The front door slammed behind him. 

Footsteps pounded down the driveway and into the dark toward the cove. 

In the room, Aunt Marisol stirred. She stretched once under the blanket, muttered something unintelligible—maybe Spanish, maybe just sleep—and rolled onto her other side. 

She didn't wake up.

                                ***

In Sarah’s Room at 12:19 AM. The book in Sarah’s lap had gone cold. 

She’d been reading the same paragraph for ten minutes without taking it in. Tidewalker rites, blood offerings, lunar circles. The words were starting to blur together. 

A shift in the light made her look up. 

The moon filled her window. Full. Swollen and white, sitting low over the cove like it was watching. No clouds. No movement. Just that dead, silver glare spilling across her desk and onto the floorboards. 

Sarah closed the book with a soft thud and marked her place with her finger. Her hands felt clammy. 

She got up, crossed the room in three steps, and yanked the curtains shut. The fabric muffled the light, but not the feeling. It was still there, pressing against the glass. 

She flipped the switch. 

The room went dark, except for the faint outline of the curtains where moonlight leaked through the edges. 

Sarah lay down on the bed, book set aside on the nightstand, staring up at the ceiling. 

Outside, the cove was silent. 

Too silent. 

She told herself it was just a full moon. That everyone felt weird on full moons. That Jake was probably asleep three blocks over, fine. 

But her pulse wouldn’t slow down. 

And somewhere, far off, something howled.

                               ***

The moon was high and broken by branches, casting splintered light across the forest floor.

Jake moved through the woods.

Fully transformed, he wasn’t running on two legs. He was low to the ground, coiled muscle and claws tearing up dirt with every lunge. His breathing was gone, replaced by a low, ragged growl that vibrated the air. The smell of human was all he could track. Close.

Up ahead, a path.

Two kids—maybe ten, maybe eleven—stood frozen by a fallen log. A boy and a girl, flashlights trembling in their hands, faces white with panic. They’d wandered too far off the campsite trail.

Jake saw them.

His body coiled, hind legs digging in. One more push and he’d be on them. The boy stepped in front of the girl instinctively, too small to matter.

Then headlights exploded through the trees.

The deputies’ cruiser tore onto the dirt service road at the edge of the woods, patrolling for stragglers after the lockdown call. They saw the movement first—something inhuman, fast, low.

“Contact! Go! Go!”

The driver didn’t hesitate.

The cruiser slammed into Jake at 40 mph.

Metal hit bone with a sound like a tree splitting. Jake was thrown sideways into the underbrush, a snarl cut off into a wet, gurgling roar. The impact bought seconds.

The passenger deputy was already out, yanking the kids behind the car. “Get down! Now!”

The girl was crying, the boy shaking but trying to shield her.

From the bushes, Jake thrashed, fur matted with dirt and blood, eyes locked on the kids even through the pain. He tried to rise. His front leg buckled.

The deputy raised his weapon, but didn’t fire. Not with the kids in the line.

“Back up! Get in the car!” the driver shouted, keeping the engine running, keeping the car between Jake and the kids.

The deputy grabbed both kids and shoved them into the backseat, slamming the door. As the cruiser peeled out, Jake lunged one last time and caught only air, claws scraping asphalt.

Behind them, the forest went quiet again. Except for the growl, fading into the dark.