Daughter of the Tide

Everyone in Bernig Has a Secret

"I'm saying that you'd be surprised by how believable some stories seem to be," she said with a wink. "Nerina, you're own grandfather claimed to have contact with a mermaid at one point. Old Joe would be the one to talk to about that."

"My grandfather?" I asked her.

"Sure," she replied, "everyone thought he was crazy, which is why he only fished with his close friends."

"Are there any more people?" Ryan asked, propping his head up on his hands. Polly looked between the two of us again and sighed.

"I will admit, I've seen a few strange women walking around the shore before, but I don't have any proof that they were mermaids," she told us.

"They didn't have tails?" I wondered.

"No, not on land," she waved us off as if the idea was ridiculous. "You might also find a good story in Frank Hikinstitch." I made eye contact with Ryan. Frank was rumored to be crazy and as children, we were taught to steer clear of his little house, which was far away from anyone else's and sat at the base of our old lighthouse. He'd lost his daughter at a young age and had become secluded after that. Some people walked in and she stood from the booth. "Well, back to work I go. You two stay out of trouble." She was gone as quickly as she'd come, a whirlwind of smiles and color racing through the shop.

"Frank Hikinstitch or Old Joe..." Ryan covered his face with his hands and groaned.

"If we talk to Joe, he's likely to tell our father's that we've been asking him things," I pointed out. Ryan uncovered his face and looked at me with wide eyes.

"Wow... you were very quick to find a reason to rule him out." I shook my head but found that he was right. I'd never been allowed to speak to Frank and maybe the town thought he was crazy because he'd seen the same thing that we'd seen.

"I think we should go speak to Frank," I stated, "he might have some useful information."

"Rina, how many times were you told as a child to leave Frank alone? Because I know that I was told every single day," he reminded me, "why would we try to go willingly talk to him?"

"Because he might be the only one with answers who won't relay everything back to my father," I explained, "and you even said that my father would shut it down as quickly as possible. We have to go." Ryan let out a sigh of defeat and removed some money from his pocket and set it on the table.

"Then what are we waiting for?"

Bernig always seemed run down and disorganized, but the further we walked away from the center of the town, the more scraggly it became. I'd only ever walked this way a few times in my life, with Ryan when we were younger. I'd seen Frank's house once, a small grey building that might have been blue at one point. It sat near the lighthouse because he was the caretaker, even though it didn't work anymore. When we got closer, Ryan stopped and looked at it from a distance.

"Come on," I urged him forward. He looked down at me and continued forward. "You're not scared of him, are you?"

"Of course not," he replied almost instantly, "but those stories had to have been born from something... he's probably bonkers." I rolled my eyes and walked up the cracked stone path to his front door. The paint on the door was chipped and peeling, revealing the cream-colored primer beneath it. I opened the screen door and looked over at my friend.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Maybe we should just—" I knocked, interrupting Ryan. The sound seemed to echo off of the door and into the empty space behind us. I couldn't help but wonder if a guy like Frank ever became lonely, shut inside his house so far away from anyone else. The door opened to reveal a guy no older than fifty, with strands of grey hair mixed in with dusty brown and a five o'clock shadow. He didn't look crazy, in fact, he looked well kept.