The tall shadowed figure waved his hand at the communications room monitor. “Show me another.”
A boat is on the shingle, gray, just above the waterline. Hard to see. A longboat. No one in the village put it there. Night is falling.
A man peers out his cottage door, then slams it shut. Night is coming faster than it should, a sudden darkness that covers the land quickly, like a black sheet. The wind blows from the waters, making a hollow booming sound. The old folks know what day it is.
A dim fire burns on the horizon, like a hand holding a torch. All else is night, but there are no stars.
There is a figure standing on the beach, dressed in a long black coat, with a flat black hat. Was he there before? He is towing, behind him, an empty cart, with a lantern on the end. The creaking of the wheels can be heard throughout the village. His hair, in the flickering lamplight, is dead white.
It is Brittany, the Baie Des Trespasses. The 17th century. This is a rural hamlet of fisherfolk, used to the prodigies of the sea. Hard people, among treacherous sinkholes and forests barely tamed. But tonight, no one walks outside. Tonight, all the doors are closed.
The figure walks down the midnight beach. Who is watching? Who can? Slowly, painfully he makes his way down the row of rude huts, and knocks on one door. The man who comes out, shaking, he is a well-known man, and well-liked. But no one knows him, right now. No one will speak for him, now.
Together they walk down to the boat. The man in the black coat is so tall. He leaves no footprints in the sand, nor the cart he drags still, behind him. The torch in the sky flickers as if caught in the wind, the waves whip up into white caps. The sound of them on the craggy rocks is like footsteps.
The two drag the boat out into the water. The man in black leaves the cart on the shore—and as he steps into the boat, it sinks in the water, lower, and lower, as if it were full of passengers. He seats himself at one end, he doesn’t say a word. The chosen man begins to row.
Miles and miles over a sea like black glass, but it seems like it takes moments, just seconds. Like a dull shadow there rises before him a coastline he does not know, he, who has sailed these waters since he was a boy. There is no moon, but if there was, he could see that the face under the flat black hat is no face at all. Just then, the water begins to foam.
The tall man rises from the boat, and steps onto the shore. The wind, blowing steadily since the voyage began, suddenly dies. All is still, so still even the sounds of the sea cannot be heard. And then, from the great darkness, a voice rings out, calling a name. And then another. And another. And the boat rises slowly in the water, as if disembarking passengers.
The dead ones go to the one who waits for them, and knows them each by name.
At last, the voice falls silent. The man still in it looks, but there is no one on shore, not the tall man, not any sign of human life. Tentatively at first, but then with speed, he raises his oars and fights back the way he came. The wind begins to blow.
When he looks over his shoulder, the coastline has disappeared. He doesn’t look back again, the whole way home. No one asks him where he’s been. They know.