Summer was coming but it hadn't quite arrived yet. Clara walked down the narrow side streets of Breach Point toward the ocean, camera case in hand. She passed little shops selling cheeses and chocolates, a stationery store, and an oral surgeon's office. "Who would get their mouth operated on in a little tiny place like that?" she thought as she remembered the pain she'd felt when her wisdom teeth were removed last year.
The ocean smell grew stronger as she crossed the next block. She could hear the waves, too. It was nice. Very different from her town, where the few big businesses were more industrial, and clustered in areas that you'd never just wander past.
Clara passed a small alcove with a sign that read "Funeral Arrangements" and wondered where people were buried on the island – if they were buried here at all. They probably had to send them to cemeteries on the mainland where the ground was less saturated with water.
The entrance to Brumbaugh's Drug Store stood just past the Funeral Arrangements place. Clara pushed open the stubborn door. A rusty chain of jingle bells nearly hit her, but she ducked out of the way before it could make contact.
"Watch yer head," said a miserable-looking cashier behind the counter.
"A little late with the warning," Clara thought as the woman rang up two kids buying sour candy.
Clara turned slowly, taking in the drug store. It must have been there for fifty years. At least fifty. Items in the center aisles were laid out on flimsy card tables, making the store feel more like a flea market than an actual retail shop.
She made her way into one of the aisles, eyeing up the saddest toy selection she'd ever seen. The action figures, paddle ball sets, and lawn games reminded her of products she used to see advertised in the back of her father's old magazines. "And they were already old then," she thought.
Clara heard the bells jingle again and headed back toward the front of the store. Miserable cashier gave her the minimum obligatory eye contact.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"Yes. I was wondering if you develop film here?" Clara tapped on her camera case for emphasis.
Miserable held one gnarled finger toward Clara and cocked her head to the back of the store.
"Phil! We still send out rolls of film to get developed?" she asked.
An equally unpleasant voice from the back answered: "Yeah. I do it when the old people ask."
Miserable turned back to Clara, who noticed that one seemingly-missing tooth had actually just migrated over to its right, nearly covering its neighboring incisor. "And an oral surgeon just down the street," Clara thought.
"Yeah. We can do it for you if you want," Miserable snarled.
"Oh great," Clara said.
Miserable wrinkled her mouth. She seemed annoyed – permanently annoyed.
"Well? Ya got 'em?" she asked.
"Oh, no. Sorry, I haven't taken them yet." Clara chastised herself for the apology – she hadn't given the cashier any reason to think that she had film to develop now. The misunderstanding was her own fault, not Clara's.
"Awright. Bring 'em in when they're ready," Miserable said. "Should take a week and a half to get the prints back – if yer lucky."
Clara faked a smile. "Thank you. I will."
She gave a little nod and walked toward the front door when something on the bulletin board at the end of the counter caught her eye.
Amidst the tattered "musician wanted" requests, local high school production posters, and cheap business cards was a retro-looking flyer printed on flecked red paper, peeking out from the bottom. Clara pulled it free.
It read "Breach Point Castle – Festival Reunion" and gave information about a nighttime party on the beach with food and live entertainment by "Original Cast Members". The black-and-white illustration at the flyer's center showed a creepy fortress-like structure with its front gate drawn to look like a fanged mouth. Clara was intrigued.
"That wasn't a nice place," Miserable piped up.
"Oh really?" Clara went against her instincts and didn't turn toward the woman. She didn't make any effort to sound interested, either. This was her version of rudeness – vague disinterest.
"Nah," Miserable continued. "The whole pier was a block north at the end of this street. Brought in busloads of out-of-towners who liked gettin' scared by freaks in rubber masks. Then they'd get drunk and piss on our lawns. It was hell."
"You are hell," Clara wished she'd said.
"I haven't even heard of it," Clara actually said. "So it was a haunted ride?"
"Not a ride," Miserable said. "It was a big spookhouse. You had to walk through it." Her neck fat continued jiggling after she stopped speaking. "Best thing that ever happened to this town was that rat trap burnin' down. The city council brought marshmallows when they heard it caught on fire!"
Clara turned to Miserable now, squinting to show her displeasure at the comment. She knew that if this horrible woman hated the Castle, it must have been an amazing place.
Without saying anything more to Miserable, Clara swung the front door open. The sleighbells slammed against a dark spot they'd worn in the wall. She stepped out of Brumbaugh's and quickly felt better.
Clara aimed herself toward the sound of the waves. She couldn't see them yet, but she knew they were close.
As she crossed the last block of buildings on the island, the shops thinned out. These were really just the sides of stores now – stone and wood beaten down by years of brutal weather variations. Clara found it comforting. Even the dingier parts of this town had their charm.
At the end of the block, she started up a long concrete ramp. No one else was around, making it feel like her own private moment. As she climbed, Clara finally saw the Atlantic Ocean – and it was magnificent. She stood at the top of the ramp and took in the endless expanse.
She moved further toward the ocean, noting the stores on each corner of the street's end for future reference – a pizza place and a trinket shop. Clara remembered Miserable's directions and headed left.
She'd seen the boardwalks of the Jersey shore in so many movies and reality shows that it felt unreal to actually walk on one of them. Clara wondered if the people walking past could tell that she wasn't a local. After a jogger caught her staring at the sand dunes in the distance, she decided that it must be obvious.
She noticed that the stores quickly began repeating themselves and wondered how many t-shirt shops and ice cream parlors one town really needed. "But they wouldn't still be here unless they had customers," she thought.
At the end of the next block, Clara reached a point where the street parallel to the boardwalk ended and the rest of the town angled inward, away from the ocean. She climbed a few stairs that led to an elevated sidewalk. The buildings to her right ended and she was staring at pure sand.
There was no one on the beach, though she could see fresh tread marks from a few trucks. She was surprised that vehicles were allowed on the sand.
The sidewalk came to an abrupt stop. Nothing left but shoreline. Clara pulled off her shoes and carried them as she crossed over the dunes and tall grass. The ocean filled nearly all of her vision now. And as her eyes scanned the few details of the pristine shoreline, one thing stood out, not far off: pilings. Wood pilings from an old pier, going from dry sand to wet sand before fading into the ocean.
Clara pulled her camera up to her eyes and looked through its viewfinder. That motion always felt so comfortable. She aimed her lens at the shoreline, hunting for the best angle of the pilings. She knelt and turned her head until she'd found a satisfying composition.
Clara focused, imagining the Breach Point Castle sitting atop those pilings, as families from the past made their way from the boardwalk onto its pier. She had a strong vision of herself running between the pilings, straight into the surging ocean – a vision that came on its own.
As those images washed over her, Clara became aware of soft footsteps in the sand behind her. She stumbled up from her knees, barely catching the camera before it hit the sand. And as she rolled onto her back and steadied herself, she looked up to the figure above her, trying to make out his face as her eyes adjusted to the blazing sun behind him.
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