Prologue
I didn’t know what her arrival meant, not really, not then. I was just a lovestruck kid who became a shaky bundle of nerves when November Riley came to Old Orchard Beach. How was I to know she was a monster?
It started the summer of 1986. I was fifteen. Unlike the vast majority of people in our small beach town, we, me and about six thousand other people, were year-round residents. That number easily doubled in the summer. We weren’t too far from Portland. In fact, the Amtrak Downeaster ran constantly to and from both Portland and Boston, delivering all sorts of summer people.
We had plenty of things that drew the tourists to us like flies to shit. For the kids, there was Palace Playland, an old-school seaside amusement park, complete with roller coaster and Ferris wheel that stood seventy feet tall. Or they could travel fifteen minutes over to Saco to Funtown, the bigger, newer (if 1960 qualified as new) amusement park on Route 1. Funtown, however, lacked the carnival-like charm of our place. Plus, our dual arcades beat their one lame one every day of the week.
If rides and games weren’t your speed, Old Orchard Beach was also home to the Cleveland Indians Triple-A team, the Maine Guides. The Ball Park, yes, that was and still is the actual name of the field, also opened up for rock concerts on the nights between games. My older sister, Julie, brought me to see Foreigner there at the end of summer in ’85. That first concert experience also supplied me with my first contact buzz from what Julie called Mary Jane. I had a smile for miles and wound up kissing a tall brown-haired girl up from Virginia. I can’t remember if I ever got her name, but I’ll never forget her kiss.
For the grownups not wishing to headbang, go on thrill rides, or watch a ballgame, the pier offered a plethora of bars. Places like Duke’s, The Gin Rail, and Barbara Ann’s were packed full of rowdy drinkers from afternoon through well after midnight. I can’t count the number of times I was woken up by motorcycles and trucks cruising by my bedroom window out on East Grand Avenue. The loud blats of Harleys and big-wheeled Chevys stole me from dreams of flying, chasing ghosts, and kissing Heather Thomas or Madonna one too many times. I always envied Julie for choosing the room on the other side of the hall. She was up and ready for the day, while I met my cereal and cartoons bleary-eyed, and in a daze, as if I’d been the one partying on the pier all night.
It was a morning after one of these long nights of listening to my Walkman in my room that I met the girl who would change my little seaside world. That’s the day I first ran into the girl of my dreams…or at least my girl of that summer.
Chapter One
Screams, cheers, and laughter rang out before eventually fading as the hours barreled toward midnight. By one in the morning, the bars near and around the square were the only sound. Rock music, motorcycles, and jeeps revving. Mustangs growling and bellowing through the beachside community as tyres squealed on the still-hot blacktop.
The roller coaster and Ferris wheel of the amusement park had both gone dark for the night as their shadowy silhouettes loomed over the beach and pier like sleeping giants. The smells of fried dough, burgers, and fries lingered in the air, scents that he knew had a way of sticking around until after all the tourists and kiddies packed up for the season and went back to their normal lives.
Craig Sheehan had been drinking since work let out at the shipyard. He couldn’t believe Darlene had dumped him. Darlene, his fiancée of the last two years, told him last night that she was done. They were finished. After five damn years of devotion, she’d had enough waiting around.
Drown your sorrows. That’s what Craig’s old man had always said. And hell, the man practiced what he preached. Drank himself into the grave, gone three years now.
“Like father, like son,” Craig said aloud.
“What’s that?” Duke asked.
Duke was a good guy. He was the reason Craig drove down here rather than going to one of the old haunts up in Bath. Duke was a stocky, tan, barrel of a man with a long black ponytail and a huge smile. The guy was straight out of Hawaii and drinking at his new place here in Old Orchard, surrounded by the tiki torches, the tables skirted in straw, the ukulele music; it made Craig feel like he was in an episode of Magnum P.I. Plus, Duke really was a great dude.
“Nothin’, Duke,” Craig slurred. “Just nothin’.”
Duke walked over, wiping down the bar as he did.
“Let me call you a cab, huh, Craig?” he said.
“I ain’t got enough money for a cab back to my house.”
He didn’t want to go back home. There was too much of her there. Everywhere. Her Snoopy coffee mug, her uncomfortable wicker sofa, her flannel sheets.
He was crying before he knew it.
“Shit, Craig,” Duke said. “I’ll take care of the fare.”
Craig shook his head and then downed the rest of his beer. “I don’t…I don’t want to go home tonight.”
“Why, bud? What happened?” Duke asked.
“Dar…Darlene….” He sobbed like a child. “She left me, Duke.”
Duke leaned down and gave Craig’s forearm a pat. “Hey,” he said. “Let me finish closing up, huh? I’ll put you up at my place for tonight. Sound good?”
Craig clamped his lips tightly to keep himself from bawling and nodded.
After a few minutes watching as Duke put the chairs and stools up for the night, he felt tired. So damn tired. He just needed to put his head down for a minute.
“Okay, bud,” Duke said, startling him awake as he patted him on the back. “Let me go take a leak and then we’ll head out, okay?”
Craig nodded.
As soon as Duke disappeared into the bathroom, Craig climbed off his stool and stumbled for the door. It wasn’t Duke’s job to take care of him.
No, it’s – it was – Darlene’s.
Craig hurried down the pier, passing a few drunk couples necking. He managed to make it to the ramp before his stomach rejected the last three beers. He heaved over the railing. Knowing Duke would be looking for him, he forced himself onward. He shuffled down to the beach and found a cool place in the dark beneath the pier. Duke might come looking for him, but he didn’t think the guy would come all the way down here. Nice guy or not, he’d probably figure Craig had drifted off in the dispersing crowd and stumbled down the road.
As if on cue, he heard Duke calling his name. The voice never came close and only faded, until he stopped calling completely.
Craig dropped down onto the cold sand, briefly wondering if the tide came in this far. He couldn’t recall. He doubted it but wouldn’t that be something, to pass out now and wake up dead in the sea?
* * *
His eyes shot open. The water hadn’t come for him yet. He listened as the waves lapped the shore. He must have passed out. Luckily, his stomach hadn’t revolted again. He climbed to his feet and realised he was still hammered drunk. He braced himself with one of the pier posts and rested his forehead against the back of his hand.