> “Her hair was red like sunset,

>

> Her eyes as blue as the sea.

>

> She stole the heart of boy, lad, and sailor,

>

> But in the end, she was taken by the sea.”

>

> The Ballad of Sarah Jane, Unknown, Savage

Scout had eaten his breakfast and changed into a pair of jeans and a gray sweater. After watching his parents and sister leave the driveway of their seaside cottage and drive down the one road towards town, he turned and walked in the direction of the shoreline.

It was a gray day with a chilly wind. It was nothing like one thinks when they imagine what living on the beach must be like. The sand was far from sugar white. Instead, it was more like tiny pebbles, and the water, murky…blue…like an eye with a cataract.

Scout walked along the small inlet of maybe 20 yards of shoreline before sitting down on the coarse sand. He looked out over the surf and sighed deeply. Like it or not, this was his new home.

It was desolate.

It was depressing.

It was…weird.

Weird. That’s the only word Scout could use to describe how he’d felt ever since they’d gotten to town. Something had changed in the very atmosphere the moment that man, that farmer, arrived on the side of the road when he and his family had lost a tire. It was an anxious feeling that hung heavy in the stomach, and yet, simultaneously there was another feeling. A feeling of power. An energy that was buzzing at a low grade within the very veins of Scout, even if he didn’t realize it yet.

As he sat on the shore watching the waves roll up just a few feet ahead of him before being pulled back into the surf, he felt the hair on his arms begin to stand on end. He realized he’d sat down just a few feet away from where’d he’d seen that…thing from his bedroom window. There was nothing there now though. Aside from the overcast weather, the beach was clear and picture-perfect. Completely free of any subterranean monsters that might have washed ashore.

Some seventy years before, around November of 1949, were the last days of a lighthouse that once stood just off the rocky point where Scout sat below. Before the lighthouse and its attached Keeper’s quarters were washed off the rocks in a fatal squall, there had been a Lighthouse Keeper who lived there. A widower he was, alone with his daughter, Sarah Jane. And she, she was the jewel of the town, beloved by all that saw her.

While her father was gruff and solitary, and would surely alienate himself from the townsfolk with his surly disposition, his daughter was a charmer. Her fire-red hair and piercing blue eyes arrested anyone who found themselves under her gaze.

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As the young girl grew into a young woman, every boy from the village lined up to ask for her hand. Despite the many offers though, there was only one whom she really loved, Jeremiah Crawford. He was the son of the local inn owner and a catch in a town of Savage’s size.

Once they’d found each other they were inseparable. All the other young men were jealous, but the couple didn’t care. They were happy and in love. If they weren’t walking through the streets of town arm and arm they were down at the small cove north of town just below the lighthouse.

Perhaps it was because she’d given Jeremiah her virginity the night before down on the beach, but she found herself incredibly worked up over the fact that he was 20 minutes late to fetch her for the evening. They had plans to go walking out in the country and then…who knows….but the weather was turning poor and if he didn’t get there soon there would be no hope for them as the rain would surely ruin their plans.

Still, 8:20 passed on the clock, then 8:30, and 8:40…Thunder roared outside and rain began to pelt down hard upon the roof of the Keeper’s Cottage startling the young woman. She wished her beau would arrive soon, or at the very least that her father would get back from town. The storm seemed far worse than anything that had been expected.

Half a mile away, Jeremiah had been tossed from his bike after running upon a patch of sand on the road throwing his front tire into a skid. He’d gone head over handlebars into the thicket on the side of the road and now sat on the curb nursing a bloody nose and a knee with rather a bad road rash. That’s when the rain began to pelt down upon him.

The rain quickly turned to hail and the pressure of the air dropped. Jeremiah pulled himself into the brush beside the road to shield himself from the golfball-sized ice chunks falling from the sky when his eyes turned to the sea just off the coast.

The waves rolled, they were dark and black. Jeremiah, who’d lived in Savage his entire life, had never seen anything like it. The sea churned and seemed to audibly roar above the storm. Whitecaps boiled and waves grew taller and taller until…

Lighting struck in a ravishing display like fireworks reflected across the ocean. Simultaneously Jeremiah on the road and his love in the Keeper’s House saw the rogue wave rise up out of the ocean. Backlit by the strobe light of lightning one could imagine a hand of sorts within the wave reaching toward the surface, but imaginations aside, the massive, monstrous wave, rose from the sea and overtook the craggy cliff upon which the lighthouse and the house of its keeper stood for generations.

Then, as if it had never existed, it was gone. It and everything inside it were pulled from the cliff and into the devastating sea. Everything. Everything and everyone was now ruined on the sandy ocean floor.

Jeremiah could only sob. The night before, after they’d made love he’d asked Sarah Jane to marry him. She’d said yes. He’d been en-route to steal her to elope when the wave tore her away from him forever.

Now, decades later, Scout pushed the hair from his eyes and took in a deep breath of salty air. Despite the odd feeling in the pit of his stomach, he had to admit that being outside at least gave him a slight sense of relief, The salt and the sound of the waves was relaxing.

Scout stood and brushed the sand from his pants. He took two of three steeps as he stretched his arms overhead before his eyes spotted something a couple yards away. There was no sun to reflect off of it, but juxtaposed against the gray of the sand, the gold color was hard to miss.

He walked over and bent down. For a moment he brushed away the sand from the sides of the object, but before long it was clear he’d found a ring. A simple band of gold with a tiny diamond fixed to it.

As Scout held it in his hand, he could feel a vibration from it. He didn’t know what it meant, or if he even understood what was going on. Still, he held the tiny ring up the sky and examined it as if in a trance.

Then, sliding it on his pinky finger, the only one upon which it would fit, he immediately passed out.