Prologue
St. Ives, Cornwall — December 14th, 1986
The morning tide came in grey and reluctant, pushing cold sheets of water across the black rocks below the St. Ives lighthouse. A fog, thick and heavy, lay over the sea. From a distance, the lighthouse looked suspended in clouds, a tower rising out of the clouds.
John, had been fishing around these path for 30 years, still gives him the creeps. Locals have always avoided going near the light house but its where he gets most of his fishes, he rowed down the cliff path with a coil of net over his shoulder. He hated mornings like this. Too quiet. Too still.
He paused halfway down to light a cigarette, he lit a match and it lit for a brief second before the wind snatched it. He tried again, cupping it with cold hands. The cigarette barely lit.
Then he saw it.
A shape — dark, wrong — caught in the rocks where the tide broke.
Not driftwood. Not seaweed.
Something… human.
He dropped the cigarette and rowed towards the rocks . The closer he got, the more the figure sharpened into the outline of a woman.
John stopped short when he reached her.
He didn't touch it.
He couldn't.
His breath shuddered out of him, steaming in the frigid air.
John stumbled back and looked up the cliff toward town, swallowed in fog. "God help us," he whispered, voice lost in the crash of the waves. "Not here. Not her."
Above him, the great lighthouse loomed shrouded and silent, its lantern dark despite the hour. It should have been burning — it always burned before sunrise. But tonight, it had gone out.
And in St. Ives, nothing good ever happened in darkness.
John turned and ran, nets forgotten, lungs burning, shouting for the constable as he rowed to town.
Behind him, the tide crept slowly upward, washing cold foam toward the still, pale hand of the women.