The Scent of Salt and Sorrow

The cardboard boxes in the center of the living room looked too small to contain a life, but Elias dutifully folded his mother’s woolen sweaters into them anyway. Outside, the wind battered the coastal Victorian house, throwing sheets of freezing rain against the leaded glass windows. It was ten o'clock at night. The house was a drafty, salt-stained monolith perched on the edge of a jagged cliff, and tonight, it felt like a tomb.

Elias paused, his hands burying themselves in the soft, lavender-scented fabric of his mother’s favorite cardigan. A fresh wave of heartache seized his chest, tightening his lungs until he had to close his eyes and gasp for air. It had only been three weeks since the illness took her. It had been fast—horrifyingly fast. The doctors had been baffled by the fluid in her lungs, by the way her skin had taken on a pale, translucent sheen, like the belly of a deep-sea fish.

The floorboards groaned in the hallway. Elias hastily wiped a stray tear from his cheek and turned.

Silas stood in the archway of the living room.

Elias’s stepfather was a tall, gaunt man who had always possessed a quiet, unassuming nature. But since the funeral, there was a profound wrongness about him. Tonight, Silas wore a dark wool suit that looked heavy and misshapen, clinging to his frame. More disturbingly, the fabric was damp. Dark patches of moisture bloomed across his shoulders and knees, and a single drop of water gathered at the hem of his sleeve, falling to the hardwood floor with a soft *splat*.

"You shouldn't be packing her things," Silas said. His voice was entirely devoid of inflection, a flat, dead sound that scraped against Elias’s nerves.

"I can't just leave them here," Elias replied, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "It hurts too much to look at them."

Silas stepped fully into the room. The air temperature seemed to plummet. The faint, comforting smell of lavender was instantly obliterated by the overpowering stench of rotting kelp, ozone, and stagnant seawater.

"You should stay awake with me tonight," Silas murmured, his eyes glassy and unblinking. He reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a heavy silver pocket watch. The ticking was abnormally loud in the quiet room. "We must honor her memory. Midnight is approaching. The tide is turning."

"I'm tired, Silas," Elias said, taking a step back. Silas’s skin was a sickly, mottled gray in the dim lamplight, and his eyes seemed entirely too wide. "I'm going to go upstairs."

Silas didn't move to stop him, but his gaze remained fixed on the face of the pocket watch. "The deep does not sleep, Elias. Neither should we."