kingofthedark-
The sea took the town first-its paint, its wood, its future-until only the people remained, clinging like barnacles to a coast that did not want them. Blackwood was the kind of place where boys were raised hard and fast, where fathers ruled with belts and silence, and where every street reeked of fish, salt, and secrets.
In the summer of 1983, four boys broke into a condemned café on Fifth and Alder. They brought nothing but warm beer and bad intentions. But when one of them began carving symbols into his own flesh-symbols that seemed to move even after the bleeding stopped-what followed was not rebellion. It was revelation.
Dragged to the station, punished by fathers and sheriff alike, the boys swore to forget what they had seen. But some things don't stay forgotten. Whispers seep into dreams. Shadows grow shapes in the fog. And beneath the town-beneath the sea-something vast and ancient waits, patient as tide and stone.
Now, decades later, one man-the last of those boys-climbs a lighthouse stair to end his own bloodline. Before he throws himself to the rocks below, he will tell the story of what came to Blackwood, what it took from them, and why some truths are too terrible to survive.
Because some things are not meant to be remembered.