Page 3 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

SIENNA

T he fog clings to me like an old lover I didn’t want to see again. It curls around my boots, sneaks under my jacket, slips cold fingers along my spine as I cross the rocks toward the beach I swore I’d never set foot on again.

Wrecker’s Bay hasn’t changed.

It’s still jagged cliffs and bone-colored driftwood. Still smells like brine and heartbreak. Still has that cursed wreck squatting half-drowned just offshore like a rotting carcass waiting to be picked clean.

I breathe through my nose and try not to remember the last time I was here. But the tide does it for me—pulls at my memory with the same rhythm it pulls at the sand.

Dad brought me here when I was ten. Said we were chasing history. All I remember is the sound of the waves slapping the rocks like the sea was trying to spit something out.

“Okay, old man,” I mutter, stepping over a tide pool. “I’m here. What now?”

The map’s in my pocket, corners soft from overhandling. The key’s around my neck on a leather cord because I don’t trust it not to vanish the second I look away.

I’ve got zero plan, zero backup, and about four percent belief that this is anything more than a grief-induced scavenger hunt.

I don’t believe in ghosts.

I do believe in obsession, though. And Jonas Vale was nothing if not consistent.

The tide’s out just far enough that the wreck is exposed—its ribs jutting out of the surf like the spine of some long-dead leviathan. The Ruthless Maiden , according to Dad’s notes. Sunk a hundred and fifty years ago under “mysterious circumstances.”

Yeah. So mysterious the whole town whispered about it like it was still bleeding.

I step onto the first slick rock and curse under my breath when I nearly eat shit. Graceful. Super professional. Totally normal for someone who used to rappel into underwater caves with a flashlight between her teeth.

By the time I’m standing at the edge of the wreck, my boots are soaked and my mood is somewhere between murderous and why am I like this?

Something creaks inside the wreck. Could be the tide. Could be an echo. Could be a crab hosting a haunted house party.

I pull the map out and scan the markings. There’s an “X” scratched into the prow. I climb up over the broken hull, cursing every splinter that tries to make me part of the scenery.

That’s when I see him.

A figure.

Standing knee-deep in the waves just past the wreck.

Tall. Broad shoulders under a long coat that whips in the wind like he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Hair dark and messy. Boots half-submerged. Face shadowed. Still.

Still like death.

“Hey!” I call out.

He turns.

And oh, gods—his eyes.

They’re stormwater gray, cut through with moonlight and something older. Something ruined . His mouth moves but I can’t hear him over the roar of my pulse in my ears.

I blink.

He’s gone.

No splash. No movement. Just… gone .

“What the actual—nope. Nope.” I scramble off the wreck and back to shore like it’s on fire.

I don’t stop until I’m on dry land, lungs burning, heart trying to do gymnastics in my ribcage.

“Okay. Cool. Love that. Just a totally normal maritime hallucination. Very seaside chic,” I mutter, pacing in tight circles. “Wasn’t a ghost. Could’ve been a fisherman. A really...dramatic...drenched, possibly cosplaying fisherman.”

A gull screams overhead, probably mocking me. I flip it off on principle.

I’m about to haul ass back to town when I hear footsteps. Not mine. Not casual, either—deliberate. Soft. Wet.

I whirl around, ready to throw the key like it’s a dagger and I’ve suddenly trained for that.

There’s no one there.

But the wreck creaks again.

This time it sounds like laughter.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“People don’t usually visit this time of evening,” a voice says suddenly from behind me.

I yelp, spin, and nearly clock the speaker with my elbow.

It’s a woman. Mid-fifties, dressed in a tattered orange slicker, holding a thermos and a fishing net. She’s got sea glass eyes and a grin like she knows exactly how nuts I look right now.

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry. “Didn’t mean to startle. You okay?”

“No,” I say. “But I’m excellent at faking it. You a local?”

“Grew up here. Name’s Clary. You Jonas’s girl?”

I pause.

God, I hate how people say it like that. Like I’m just an extension of his madness.

“Yeah,” I admit. “Unfortunately.”

She nods like that explains everything. “He used to come out here all the time. Talked to the wreck. Called it ‘her’ like it was alive.”

“Sounds about right.”

“You see him too?”

I blink. “Him?”

Clary takes a swig from her thermos. “The man in the surf. Shows up sometimes. Not always. Always gone by the second glance.”

My skin crawls. “Is that a local legend or are we just leaning into the mental breakdown together?”

“Both,” she says cheerfully. “But I bring him tea. Just in case.”

“Right.”

She shrugs and starts walking away. “Careful, girl. Some ghosts don’t want company. But some? Some been waiting for it a long, long time.”

I stand there long after she disappears into the mist, staring at the wreck.

At where he stood.

At where I stood.

At what the hell I’m supposed to do now.

I turn back toward the water, trying to convince myself I imagined the whole thing. That my brain, steeped in too much sea air and not enough therapy, conjured a gothic hallucination. That it wasn’t real.

But the fog shifts again.

And he’s there.

Not farther out now—but closer.

Half-shadow, half-man. Eyes locked on mine with a weight that pins me in place. The wind carries a voice to me—barely louder than the waves but sharp enough to slice through every logical excuse I’ve got lined up.

“Sienna.”

Just that.

My name, spoken like a vow.

My stomach drops. No. No, no, no. He shouldn’t know my name. Hell, I barely belong here anymore. I’m not important. I’m not?—

“Sienna,” he says again, and this time, the sound isn't in the air. It's in me .

I don’t think. I run .

Sprint off the beach like hell itself opened up behind me. My boots slip on seaweed, and I nearly face-plant into a tide pool, but I don’t stop. I don’t stop until I’m halfway up the cliff trail, lungs screaming, heart punching at my ribs like it’s trying to escape too.

Only then do I look back.

The beach is empty.

The wreck sits in silence.

And the fog is as thick as ever.