At some point during the last 45 minutes, Amelia’s feet had led her to the cliffs. So much for escape. Just being in this area hurt her. Here, it was impossible to tell herself any other story. The reason she’d left Baybrook, the real reason she’d left, hadn’t been because of school or money or opportunities at all. It was because of him. Benjamin. The boy that nobody remembered.
The town had secrets. Horrible, dark secrets that she only knew a fraction of. All small towns did though, didn’t they? Cities had secrets, too, sort of. Was it really a secret, though, if hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people knew about it? Amelia shook her head. It wasn’t the same. The only people who knew about Baybrook’s secrets were the inhabitants of Baybrook. And even then, it wasn’t all of them. The town, like so many along the coast, emptied during the winter. Those rich enough to afford a second home here were definitely rich enough to winter somewhere with nicer weather. There were the tourists who stayed away during the off-season, and, of course, the seasonal workers who only showed up to eke out a living from tourism.
The locals, those small groups of people who lived here year-round, were the ones who collectively knew of the strangeness of this area of the world. No single townsperson knew everything. But every single one of them had a story—either something that had happened to them, to a friend, or to a friend of a friend. There were enough similar stories that everybody who grew up here believed.
At the edges of her memory, Amelia faintly recalled a childhood friend. She took off the watch she was wearing and flipped it over. Engraved was the name Benjamin Sullivan. It was there so she wouldn’t forget. She had repeated his name daily for years in an attempt to sear them into her brain. But even still, she sometimes felt the memories escaping, like grains of sand through an hourglass. Ben had been her best friend. She couldn’t forget her best friend. Everybody else could. Everybody else had! But not her.
She remembered most vividly the day that he had died. A tear slipped down her cheek as she approached the edge of the cliff. It had happened right here. One minute, he had bent down to kiss her, and the next, before their lips had a chance to make contact, he was falling. She still didn’t know how it had happened, just that it had. The memories came to her.
Twelve years ago, the first thing that she had done was look to see if he was hurt. Carefully stepping up to the edge, she looked over and saw nothing but jagged rocks and ocean below. Relief washed through her—maybe he had hit the water and would resurface. When he didn’t, she called 911. She repeated the events of the night to police officers and search & rescue teams as they came up, one by one, to ask her. But the first officer was the one who stood out to her.
“Benjamin Sullivan? Any relation to Frank and Emilia Sullivan?”
“Yes, he’s their son,” Amelia answered shakily.
“Strange, I didn’t know they had a son.”
The officer made the call before returning, shaking his head. “I don’t know who you were with, but it wasn’t the Sullivan’s kid. They only have a daughter.”
Amelia was shocked; too stunned to speak. She had known Ben her whole life. They attended school together, although he was one year behind her. His parents had held him back in kindergarten so he could adjust to his cochlear implants. She remembered that detail. How could she remember a detail like that if he wasn’t real? But nobody would believe her. Eventually, she started questioning her own description.
“Sullivan? Related to Frank and Emilia?” they’d ask.
“I don’t know,” she’d respond. Maybe she didn’t know, maybe she was misremembering the last ten years of her life.
The search and rescue teams were out nonstop for three days, but never found a body. The city didn’t have any records of a boy named Benjamin Sullivan. No other boy matching the description had been reported missing. A rumor soon started that Amelia was making it all up for attention. When her parents asked about a fine for wasting government resources, the officer in charge had taken one look at Amelia’s tear-streaked face and then dismissed their concerns. “Weirder things have happened on my watch. I’ll continue to keep an eye out for the boy. No fine.” And then he left.
Her parents were understandably worried about her. Remembering a boy that didn’t exist, and then grieving the death of the boy that didn’t exist, was strange behavior, even for a struggling small-town teenager.
Looking back, she was surprised that they hadn’t taken her in for a psychological evaluation. At 17, she hadn’t been too young to start showing signs of schizophrenia. Even if the entire story had been made up for attention, surely that warranted a trip to a therapist to determine why she had felt the need for that level of attention. But mental illness wasn’t quite as accepted then as it had become in the last few years—and it was still only discussed in hushed tones in the rural parts of her home state.
The only positive memory associated with that time was telling her grandmother what had happened. Grandma Carol had nodded sagely, in that way that only elders could, and told her, “The mist does strange things. This isn’t the first time.”
Her mother had entered the room and stopped the conversation almost immediately, and Amelia hadn’t gotten any further information from her grandmother. Even eavesdropping in on conversations between her parents, all Amelia had heard from her grandmother were variations of “it’s the mist” while her mother tried to shut it down.
“You can’t be telling Amy things like that!” her mother would say. “You’ll fill her head with all sorts of ideas, and she needs to be focusing on her studies.”
The conversations about anything mystical, and the lack of clarity when her grandmother did mention anything about Baybrook’s secrets, drove her mother mad. She wasn’t from the town; she didn’t know. Even now, having lived there for most of her adult life, her mother didn’t know. This was something Amelia agreed with her grandmother on. It was something you had to be born into to understand. Something in your bones, the secrets of the mist.
And one of the most frustrating secrets was that everything was eventually forgotten. Ben’s parents didn’t remember ever having a son. Her parents had completely forgotten not just Ben, but the entire night spent looking for him. They had forgotten the months of mourning and even Amelia’s missed graduation ceremony. Everybody had forgotten except her. There was something inside of her that wouldn’t let her forget. Something inside of her that refused.
Sometimes she thought it would be easier if she didn’t have that something.
When the rain that hung more than fell in the air had soaked through all of her layers and the cold had seeped into her bones, Amelia realized that she would need to go back to her parent’s house. Even as used to the cold, damp weather as she was, she knew that she was straining her body by being out in it for too long. She was cold and she was tired. Wet socks squelched in her shoes as she walked. It was dreary, matching her mood perfectly. Amelia sighed deeply. She had missed the rain. Not that it didn’t rain in her new home. But the coastal rain, with the angry ocean beside her, was a thing of beauty. A terrifying beauty, with the winds and waves strong enough to make even the bravest feel small.
The tips of her fingers had gone numb and her feet had swollen from the freezing moisture by the time Amelia finally returned to the basement. She immediately stripped out of her wet clothes, frozen fingers fumbling with the laces of her boots, and drew herself a bath. She also went to the kettle that was left down here and started heating water for tea—good to warm herself up from the inside as well. Her fingers burned as she grabbed the mug, feeling slowly returning to them. When she lowered herself slowly into the warm water of the tub, her entire body also tingled as it adjusted to the new temperature. After the cold of the outdoors, the warmth felt heavenly.
Amelia put down her tea and grabbed some soap, creating a lather rich enough to hopefully scrub the day away. She hummed a wordless tune, tinged with sadness, as she washed off the trip home, the long walk along the beach, conversations with her mother, and… There had been something else. There was a reason for her melancholy. She glanced at the vanity, where her phone sat next to her watch. Benjamin. That was probably it. Not even 24 hours back and the rain was doing funny things to her memory. No, not the rain, the mist she heard in her grandmother’s voice. Always the mist.
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