Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
“Off what?” Alex sits up, shields his eyes, follows Raff’s pointed finger to the fuel tanks in the distance. “No.”
Raff nods. “I heard talk about it, a few years back.”
“When did this happen?”
“I dunno. Before I came here.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Alex stares at the big round barrels, at the metal walkway near the tops of them. “Very sad,” he says, letting the image go.
Raff shrugs. “I tried to look it up online, but I couldn’t find anything. It’s probably an urban legend, like the Shearwater Carver.”
Alex shudders, he hates that story. A man so overcome by the spirits of the dead that he took a knife to all the researchers in their beds, killing them one by one. It can’t be true, surely, but it is disturbing enough
that the story exists at all, that there is such a presence here that anyone who comes tries to make sense of it.
He thinks of the weekly psych sessions they’re each required to complete, check-ins to make sure they aren’t suffering any mental health problems due to the nature of their isolation.
“Why does everyone here love saying the place is haunted?” he asks. Halloween is always celebrated with more gusto than Christmas or New Year’s.
Raff’s mouth quirks. “To laugh, instead of being disturbed.”
He supposes that makes sense. Hates thinking about any of it, so turns his mind ahead.
“There’s a botanic garden just outside Chicago,” Alex says.
Raff looks at him and grins, knowing exactly what he’s doing. “And I’m sure he’d love it. But it’s a long way from the sea.”
“Alright, where, then?”
“Vancouver Island,” Raff says without hesitation. “The most whale sightings of any place in the world.”
Alex smiles and thinks about this. “Loads of orcas and humpbacks there.”
“And seals and sea lions.”
“Vancouver Island it is then.”
They laugh, but the laughter trickles away, both aware of how unlikely this plan is to happen. Still. It is nice to lie here in the grass and the sun and daydream.
“A few years ago,” he tells Raff, because Raff loves whale stories more than anything and Alex is always searching his mind for things to tell him, “researchers watched as several orcas attacked a gray whale and its calf. The orcas killed the calf. But then something happened that nobody had expected. Humpbacks arrived on the scene, more than a dozen of them. They ignored the krill-rich feeding waters around them and instead put all their energy into fighting off the pod of orcas, stopping them from eating the dead calf. The humpbacks spent over six hours protecting that baby and it wasn’t even their own kind.”
Raff looks at him.
“There’ve been hundreds of accounts of humpbacks helping other
species,” Alex says. “Some of them even include humans. It defies reason. Some scientists say it’s because they’re attuned specifically to the sound of orcas as a threat to their babies. But that doesn’t explain all the stories.”
“Then why?” Raff asks.
“They feel empathy,” Alex says.
When Hank makes the announcement to all the researchers gathered in the mess, it’s like a lifeline for Alex. Three extra months here on Shearwater. Three extra months with Raff. And during these months Raff will turn eighteen and then maybe Alex will not feel so guilty for the things he imagines doing with him.
Despite the excitement that blooms at the thought, Alex waits to see what Tom thinks about staying on another season to help Hank categorize the seeds in the vault. Their team leader has asked for three extra sets of hands.
He is lucky, then, that Tom has fallen in love with Naija, the base doctor, who wants to stay and help.
On the morning of Raff’s eighteenth birthday, there is a storm brewing.
Things have started to get very bad on Shearwater, but Alex wants to give Raff one good day to forget all the rest, all the shit with his family and with Hank, just one.
Alex, Tom, and Naija are living in the red field hut and spending most of their time in the vault. It is a strange experience, and at first Hank made them take a lot of breaks, insisting that so much time underground, specifically under this ground, with this particular task and all its complicated tragedy, could very well make them loopy. So he was on them all the time, checking they’d eaten, checking they’d slept well, checking they’d been up and out for fresh air. This task was asking a lot of them.
All of that stopped when Hank began to change.
But in any case, for Raff’s birthday, Alex has a plan.
They’ve never spent a night together. With Raff sharing a lighthouse with his family, and Alex sharing a tiny field hut with two other scientists, and their whereabouts always needing to be accounted for, there’s no privacy. But there is an empty field hut, with a green door.
On this stormy morning, Tom is drinking instant coffee in the kitchen. Alex makes himself a cup and silently rehearses what he will say.
“You and me on first shift this morning, Al.”
Alex nods. “It’s Raff’s birthday.”
“I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about any of it.”
“Nothing’s happened,” he assures his brother quickly. “But I won’t be sleeping here tonight. I’m gonna stay in the green hut.”
“Shit.” Tom rubs his eyes. “That’s dumb. It’s not safe.”
Alex rolls his eyes. Gives his brother a look. “We’re leaving in a couple of months. And then that’ll be it. And everything here is nuts and I just want him to have a nice birthday. That’s all.”
Tom shakes his head. “I really don’t want to know.”