ghosts and devils come calling

REMI

then it went dark

The first sign of him is the shifting weight beneath the water—a pressure deep and slow, the kind that rouses seafloor silt and sends fish darting toward safer tides. Nothing visible at first. Just the subtle strain of ropes creaking taut and the groan of wood adjusting under something unseen.

Then the Northaven lurches.

Not sharply, but insistently, the stern began to edge away from the Ahi coastline as if answering some unspoken summons. The motion is smooth but purposeful, like the slow drawing of breath. Like the tug of a tide that doesn’t belong.

Beneath the surface, far out past the shallows, an enormous tentacle curls around the anchored weight of the houseboat. Another unfurls like a lazy ribbon through the current, steadying the movement as Remi drags the vessel back toward deeper water. He doesn’t know that his husband’s thoughts are a tangle of mud and regret and fatigue. From where Remi is, all he sees is a figure near the rail, sunlit and still.

The pull grows slightly more theatrical as Remi wonders when Ronin will realize that the Northaven is being stolen from beneath him.

& it rained
and rained and rained