Black Wave

Preface

I moved to New York City in 2008 on the eve of the Great Recession. Disoriented, broke, and haunted by my questionable life choices, I would often wake up screaming in the middle of the night, paralyzed with fear and convinced that there were specters in my room. A doctor told me I had a sleep disorder normally reserved for children and that perhaps I should calm down, do some yoga. I wrote a novel instead. It’s made entirely of hallucinations, Ouija board conversations, and dreams.

Prologue

As she watched her body wash up on the beach that morning, Darthilda Crossing knew she looked like a fallen reveler, drunk on brine and flashing her bloomers at passersby. Even the policeman shook his head at the sight of her, nudging her ribs with his dirty boot before finally lifting her arm to check her pulse. Looking down at her body from above, Dar was in no position to defend her virtue.

The officer let her arm plop to the sand. He hadn’t found a heartbeat. That would explain why Dar didn’t feel any warmer after he’d draped a blanket across her bloated limbs. She wanted to tell the coroner kicking his way through the sand to do something about her hair before he showed her to her next of kin. But before she could say anything—not that she could’ve—the two men lifted her into the coroner’s buggy, and that was that.

Separated from its earthly vessel, Dar’s soul scrambled like a hermit crab without its shell. For as wriggly and vulnerable as she was, what most concerned her about her untimely death was the nagging sensation that she’d been left behind. She certainly hadn’t been the only person on the beach that night—so why hadn’t his body washed up next to hers, entwined forever in a kelp valentine? She scanned the shore for a pair of feet, a lock of hair—any sign of him poking from the rubble of seaweed and driftwood and broken bicycle wheels. How would she tell him where she was? The waves had wiped most of the letters off her Ouija board. And who was left to send a telegram on her behalf? All along the south side of Cape May’s peninsula that night, rows of sweet gingerbread houses had fallen to the sand, leaving behind a pitiable thicket of turrets reaching up like hands folded in prayer across a vast field of ruin, their window eyes pleading.

A lighthouse blinked from the horizon. Dar knew she should follow the beacon to where loose souls go to yawn and stretch awake after their bodies had been laid to rest. Instead, Dar turned to the sand, desperate for another set of footprints.

She couldn’t go to the Other Side.

Not without him.

Chapter 1

The ‘Other Side’ of Cape May: Tricky Medium Exposes Senator’s Secret Lair!

by Clark Cummings

CAPE MAY, NJ: Jun. 25, 1893—A psychic has confirmed the rumors that New Jersey sen. Robert Digges is conducting backdoor deals from his seaside resort, the White Cottage Inn, and the answers have indeed come from above. Darthilda Crossing, psychic medium and heiress to the Crossing Railroad Inc. fortune, conjured a scandal when Washington attorney Alfred Jones was nearly crushed to death by a hotel employee who crashed through the ceiling of her séance room, exposing the secret room’s entrance for all to see.

The timing was unfortunate for Miss Crossing, who claimed to have channeled the spirit of President Harrison’s goat, Old Whiskers, when she heard a bleating voice and a series of loud bangs. The “polter-goat” proved to be Stewart Goldstein, a desk clerk, who narrowly missed Mr. Jones as he descended feet-first to the ground below, raining plaster and paint chips on the other guests’ heads. Mr. Goldstein reportedly landed on a table, scattering a deck of tarot cards and smashing a crystal ball while Miss Crossing shouted “Oh, fiddlesticks!” and other phrases that did not meet our editorial standards. Mr. Jones is expected to recover.

Lottie Digges, the hotelier’s wife, assisted Mr. Jones back to his room, assuring her startled séance attendees that Mr. Goldstein had taken a wrong turn while cleaning the hotel’s ventilation system—a statement the man was too dizzy to refute. But our sources tell us another version of events.

Lottie snickered as Dar read the article aloud. “Stewart does have whiskers like a goat,” she said with a shrug. “I suppose, though, that we should have waited until after the séance to have him dust the vents.”

Dar, however, gripped the copy of the Washington Weekly Affairs in her hands, her fingers shaking with rage as she flipped through several pages of conspiracy theories, advertisements for whalebone corsets, and reviews of miracle cures to find the second half of the article. She located it on the second-to-last page, unfortunately placed next to the summer cottage listings for Cape May.

For years, our sources have told us that the guestrooms of the White Cottage Inn are connected to one another through a network of overhead tunnels. Could it be that Mrs. Digges uses them to spook her guests and send them running with their wallets open straight to Miss Crossing’s séance room? Or do they lead to the secret room where Senator Digges conducts his backdoor deals? Rest assured, Mrs. Digges, we will keep digging, so to speak, for the truth!

Locals describe Miss Crossing as comely but eccentric. Said one guest, who did not wish to be named: “She’s wasting her nights lifting pennies from the eyes of corpses. What she really needs is a warm body!”

“Lifting pennies?” Dar repeated. “Who would say such a thing to a gossip reporter?” But she knew the answer.