Rising Tides Read online

  Rising Tides

  Carrie Humphrey

  Copyright © 2020 by Carrie Humphrey

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, May 2020

  www.facebook.com/briarberryestate

  Photograph on cover used with permission: Katie Goodwin Photography

  Isabelle

  “Are you packed and ready to go?” Charlotte asked, her voice bouncing with excitement.

  Isabelle smiled and let out a small snort. “You know I’ve been packed since Wednesday.”

  “I mean, have you repacked? Like, ten more times?” her best friend asked.

  “Only twice. When are you coming to get me?” Charlotte knew that if it were up to her, they’d have left already. There was nothing wrong with being early for vacation. However, since Charlotte’s parents agreed to chaperon, they would leave whenever they were ready, which would be later than she’d want.

  “Mom is ready, actually. That’s why I was calling. We’ll be there in a few minutes,” Charlotte squealed. This would be a long drive to Florida, though it wasn’t the first time the four of them would be trapped in a car together for an extended period. The only difference now was the promise of rest and relaxation at the end of the trip, not a teeth gritting, nail biting computation.

  “Wow, I’m impressed. See you in a few,” Isabella said and ended the call. She grabbed her suitcase and backpack, checked to be sure she had her camera and power cords for all devices and scrambled down the stairs, nearly missing death by a half an inch when she lost control of her luggage and missed a step.

  Groaning, she righted herself and dashed into the kitchen where her mom was awake and sipping on coffee. “Headed out?”

  “For once Charlotte and family are semi on time,” she said with a smile. Her mom set the coffee down and walked over to Isabelle, giving her a hug.

  “Be safe, be smart, try not to fall in love with the islands and leave me for another country,” her mom said with a grin. “But I mean, if you do, just remember that I come with you, wherever you go.”

  Isabella laughed. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” her mom lied. Isabelle knew better than to think her mom would not worry. It's what moms do. “Here,” she said as she handed an envelope to her daughter.

  “What’s this?” Isabelle asked as she opened it and saw money inside.

  “Emergency souvenir money,” her mom said. “Buy something cool as long as it's not an animal or drugs.”

  Isabelle snorted a laugh at the same moment her phone chirped. “Charlottes here!” She leaned in and hugged her mom once more. “I’ll let you know when we board and when we get off.”

  “Thanks. Love you,” her mom said as she waved Isabella off and out the door.

  “Love you too,” Isabelle shouted, just loud enough for her mom to hear and not wake the neighbors.

  Charlotte jumped out of the car and tackled her best friend, who only stayed on her own feet because her suitcase was holding her up. “Oh My God, we’re cruising!”

  “We’re cruising!” she said with a laugh. Once she got her suitcase in the trunk, they both crawled into the back seat of the van while saying hi to Charlottes parents. Neither of them had coffee in hand, which meant she hadn’t missed the early morning coffee run and that was the best news in her eyes.

  “Carla stayed the night at Mary’s, so only two more stops before we head to Florida!” Charlotte said with a giggle.

  “Have you had coffee without me?” she asked, noticing that her friend was far wilder than her normal chipper self in the morning.

  “I wish, but no, we waited for everyone. It will be a long ride and you’d think my parents would want us to sleep and not be jittery, but alas, they are weird.”

  “I heard that,” Charlotte’s dad said from the driver’s seat.

  “Your daughters weirder than you guys, don’t worry,” Isabelle snorted as they took off towards Mary’s house.

  It didn’t take long before their two best friends joined the traveling wagon, then with coffee in hand, they headed south for the long journey to Florida. Surprisingly, the trip down to their hotel was an uneventful one. They stopped more than Charlotte’s parents liked, but coffee and snacks led to bladders that were full and jitters that needed to be run out.

  Hours later, with the adults nerves shot, they arrived at the hotel and it didn’t take long before all four of them were in the pool. With the cruise leaving the following day, they could hang out and enjoy the Florida weather, which Isabelle had been looking forward to for over a year. This vacation she got to check off several things from her bucket list and visiting the sunshine state was one of them.

  “Hey, teenagers,” Charlotte’s dad shouted from the gate to the pool. “I was told that if I don’t feed you by eight, you turn into the nastiest of gremlins. I don’t need that in my life, so let’s go.”

  All four of them laughed and shot out of the water, shocked to realize it had been hours since they been in. Playfully doing their best impressions of a gremlin, they ran to the room and got dressed quickly. Charlottes dad wasn’t wrong, they would be cranky if not fed, it was programmed into their DNA.

  They ended up a bar and grill that sat over by the water with perfect views of ships coming and going. “Which one is ours?” Mary asked over a mouth full of food.

  “I don’t know, maybe that one?” Charlotte said as she pointed to the biggest ship they could see.

  “Oh, that would fantastic. Look at how huge that ship is! I bet it's got all kinds of stuff we can get into,” Isabelle laughed as they looked over at the ship in question. It wasn’t their ship, the name was different, but it would be similar. It was the same company as who they booked through.

  Dinner went by as they continued to talk about the ships, their plans, and who they wanted to meet. None of them had boyfriends, and all expected to have a whirlwind romance at sea. What happens at sea, stays at sea; their current motto for the trip. At least, they was the wish. Isabelle wasn’t a hopeless romantic like the other woman. At least not that she would admit aloud. Deep down she believed in soulmates, in destined souls, but hadn’t a clue what that would look like if it came to pass.

  “Can you guys believe we graduated high school? Like we actually did it,” Carla commented.

  “I know, right? I still can’t believe we walked a week ago. It seems to so crazy,” Mary muttered, her eyes misting over.

  This trip was more than just a graduation present for the four of them. It was a chance to say goodbye to their high school selves and hello to being college students. This wasn’t the last trip for them, but the first of a new age of trips to reconnect through the years.

  No one wanted to talk about it, and they so far had managed to not say a word, but everyone knew the time was coming. For now, though, they would enjoy an entire week of being silly and doing everything they wanted to do. They’d probably end up doing a few things they didn’t want to do. It was all about being in the moment.

  “If any of you cry now, none of us will stop. So, let’s change the subject,” Isabella commented as she pulled out her phone and pulled up Snapchat. “Come on, let’s post pictures and see who misses us!”

  They all laughed and gathered into a tight hug, snapping the first of many pictures they would take on the trip. Isabella knew that their cameras would be full, their social media’s would be bombed with updates on their vacations and not a single one of them would regret a m
oment of it.

  Theo

  “I’m bored,” Theo whined as he paced the bed of the sea.

  “You’re always bored,” his best friend, James, muttered from the rock he was perched on.

  “Yeah, but I’m really bored.”

  “Maybe if you stopped pissing off the boss, you wouldn’t be confined to this part of the ocean.”

  “It’s not my fault he doesn’t like me,” Theo droned out, annoyed that that this wasn’t the first time he had made the statement.

  “It is your fault. You may be cursed, but you don’t have to pick on the boss like you do. It's been thousands of years and still you get under his skin like you did when he first cursed you.”

  “He really needs a hobby.”

  “You are his hobby,” James laughed while absently whittling at a piece of driftwood with a broken shell. Theo couldn’t understand how James remained so calm about being trapped in the Atlantic. There was only so many times you could swim the length of this section of water before needing something, anything, to change.

  “That old man wouldn’t know a hobby if it bit him on the ass,” he groaned as he stopped pacing and laid down on a bed of kelp. He wouldn’t sleep, he never did, but at least he could pretend. Sometimes. The passing of time meant nothing to him. The only thing he knew was that he’d been cursed to roam the seas for thousands of years and only when the boss thought his heart had changed, would he be released to sleep in death peacefully. Or something along those lines. He really wasn’t sure.

  “You know, that old man is a God, right? A powerful one and you keep talking about him like he’s lower than you. No wonder you’ve been here for so long.”

  “Yeah, well, that explains me, what about you? Never once have you talked about why you’re here. Ya can’t be the saint you play now if you’re still under the ocean,” he challenged at his friend.

  “Maybe I want to be here?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Whatever. I mind my business, and I hang out with losers like you. It’s my pastime.”

  “Ugh, boring.” Theo stood up and began to pace, again. There had been nothing for him to do in ages. Haunting the ships above got boring, he couldn’t go on land, and there was only so many times you could try to ride the various undersea creatures without them trying to eat you.

  “Do you ever think about your old life?”

  “I try hard not to,” Theo muttered, refusing to let his mind wonder back to the past. His upbringing was less than fantastic, his mother even more so, and he only got to live on land for eighteen years.

  Diving into the past would only make things worse.

  “I need to do something before I go crazy.”

  “That ships already sailed.”

  At the mention of a ship, he perked up. He had gotten tired of haunting the ships above, but it had been years since he’d been on the surface, so things could have changed. He had heard of large boats carrying thousands of people and hadn’t ever believed the stories. After all, dolphins were terrible at telling the truth, a lesson he had learned the hard way on more than one occasion.

  “You know what? I know what I’m going to do. You coming?”

  “Depends. What are we doing?”

  “We’re going to check out those ships that hold thousands of people. I don’t believe the dolphins, but what if they're right? Imagine the amount of trouble we could cause.” One of the few loopholes in the curse placed upon him was that he was bound to the sea, but it did not include the things that traveled on it. Ships, barges, anything that floats was fair game.

  James stood and launched the spear he was working on into a dead piece of coral, a hundred feet away. Theo looked up with a cocked eyebrow, saying nothing. His best friend was a mystery and though they had known each for nearly as long as they both had been dead; he still knew nothing of James’s past.

  “Let’s go,” James said and shot off the sandy ocean floor, heading towards the surface. Theo grinned and launched himself after, excited to finally have something to do. At least for a little while, assuming that the dolphins hadn’t led him astray. Again.

  Isabelle

  “I can’t believe this thing can stay afloat with how big it is,” Isabelle said as they walked to the bow of the boat. “Pictures did not do it justice.”

  “Right? This ship even has bumper cars and an ice-skating rink. And did you see that rock wall at the very top? Holy crap!” Charlotte exclaimed. After discovering that ice cream was readily available, they all grabbed a cone and headed to explore the ship, discussing all the things they wanted to do.

  The list was longer than the hours they knew they had, though that didn’t seem to bother anyone. “The rock wall is first on my list. I wonder how late it's open. Wouldn’t it be so creepy to be up on the wall at night, with nothing but the stars and ocean around?” Mary commented with a sly grin.

  “Yeah, not sure that’s for me, but we’ll see,” Isabella laughed. She looked out on the ocean, watching the remnants of land fade into the distance. The thought of being surrounded by nothing but ocean was suddenly an uneasy one. She wasn’t sure if it was the lack of something solid to escape too, or the mysteries of the ocean itself, but something was starting to not settle right.

  “Did you guys hear that boats traveling to the Caribbean are haunted? But only on days where you were at sea, because the souls that haunted the ships were cursed to never go on land.” Carla said with a twinkle in her eye. She loved a good ghost story and loved to create them. Her talent lay in the realms of fantasy, and what she could make people believe to be true. And she was darn good at it.

  “Carla, come on. No one here has heard that,” Isabelle said, her friends nodding in agreement.

  “Actually,” a stranger interrupted. The woman had on a crew member uniform and wore the same mischievous grin that Carla got when stories were being told. “She’s not wrong. They say the ghosts of those cursed to the sea come to the ships to have a little fun. I’ve been sailing for twenty years and I can tell you, they are absolutely true.”

  All four of them stood stock still and looked at the lady who was speaking. Isabelle wondered if Carla had spoken to her previously, but the look on her friends debunked that theory instantly. Ghosts didn’t bother Isabelle. She believed, which was why she choose to steer clear of messing and communicating with them. However, she’d bet money that the other three would insist on ghost hunting on deck later in the evening.

  “Just a thought,” the woman said as she began to make her way towards a set of stairs that led below deck. “If you see anything, be sure to say hi. You never know what extraordinary things you may learn.” She winked at them before going below deck, disappearing like the very ghosts she warned them about.

  “Well, that wasn’t terrifying,” Mary groaned.

  “I don’t think she meant to be,” Isabella said.

  “I don’t know, she was pretty convincing.” Carla laughed then shook her head. “Who’s coming out on deck at midnight to see who shows up?”

  “Knew that was coming,” Isabella muttered as she finished her ice cream. “Charlotte, you’re too quiet.”

  “I’m freaked out, not going to lie. But, as long as you guys don’t let me be taken by an angry pirate, I’ll be here,” Charlotte laughed nervously. “Now, however, you’re following me. If I don’t get in the pool soon, I’m going to cry.”

  Isabella smiled as they raced back towards their room to change. She was grateful because the four of them had their own room, so they could come and go as they please. Not that Charlottes parents didn’t have rules. They were only next door and insisted that they a meal a day together. It didn’t matter which, it just had to be one. They also had to check in from time to time. Nothing unreasonable.

  Once changed, they all went for the pool area, the one at the back of the ship that wasn’t as crowded. As she sank into the water, letting the stillness of pool drown out all other noises, she relaxed. Eighteen wasn’t a hard age,
but it was a crossroads. She was nervous for college, leaving her friends and her family, but excited to see if she could make it out on her own.

  She just felt like there wasn’t enough time to decompress the rigors of high school before the intensity of college began.

  Popping her head up and looking out towards the ocean, Isabelle let her mind wander. The sea had always been a mystery to her, though it was never a mystery that she thought of as dark or scary. It was the unknown, the unrevealed, that got her thoughts churning.

  The sun was lowing itself into the horizon, the sky shifting from a brilliant cloudless blue into shades of red, orange, pink and purple that blended together like a watercolor painting.

  Raising her hand upwards, she imaged her hand as a paintbrush and with fluid movements, she could swirl the colors to create designs of her own.

  Still staring out in the distance, she brought her arms to the edge of the pool and rested her chin while kicking her legs slowly to stay in place. Squinting, she continued to search the horizon for any signs of life on the surface of the water. It would be cool to see a dolphin, or a whale, or anything that showed the vastness of life beneath them.

  She was about to give up when shadow caught her eye. It looked as if something had shot from the water, then disappeared just as quickly. A second later, she saw it again, only this time it was a different color and closer. “Did you guys see that?”

  “See what?” Charlotte asked as she swam up beside her.

  “Something jumped out of the water. Two somethings. It didn’t look like a dolphin or a whale, though I can’t tell you what it could have been.”

  “I haven’t seen anything. Maybe your more spooked about what the lady told us than you think. You know, you get like that. Your mind wanders, big time.” Carla laughed as she and Mary swam up and took the other side of her, resting on the edge of the pool.

  Isabella shook her head and sighed. Maybe they were right. Maybe she was imaging things. It had been a long day and she couldn’t remember the last time she ate something solid, so there was a good possibility she was hungry and tired and that made her mind conjure up imagines she couldn’t explain.