The Tide Doesn't Forget

Greetings, Earthlings.

Most people think beaches are cheerful places.

Sunshine. Sandcastles. Umbrellas flapping in the breeze.

That only means they've never visited the shore after midnight.

A few summers ago, Barry and I were walking along the beach near Panama City. The tourists had long since disappeared. The boardwalk lights glowed faintly in the distance, and the Gulf stretched before us like a sheet of black glass.

I enjoy late-night investigations. Barry claims he doesn't.

Yet somehow he always comes along.

Around one in the morning, we noticed something odd.

Footprints.

A single line of footprints emerging from the water.

Not leading into it.

Leading out.

The tracks appeared fresh. Each print was sharply defined in the wet sand. They began at the edge of the surf and continued up the beach toward the dunes.

There was just one problem.

The tide was rising.

Any footprints made earlier should have been erased.

Barry suggested someone had recently come ashore.

I pointed out that there were no return tracks.

Whoever made them had walked out of the Gulf.

And never gone back.

Naturally, we followed.

The footprints continued for nearly half a mile.

Moonlight glimmered in small pools left by the retreating waves. The beach seemed strangely quiet. No gulls. No insects. No distant music from the hotels.

Only the sound of our footsteps.

And another sound.

A wet dragging noise.

Slow.

Steady.

Just beyond the dunes.

Barry heard it too.

Neither of us mentioned it.

The footprints eventually ended at an old wooden lifeguard stand that had been abandoned years earlier.

The final print stopped directly beneath the platform.

Nothing beyond it.

No sign that anyone had climbed up.

No sign that anyone had walked away.

The trail simply ended.

Barry shined his flashlight beneath the stand.

There was nobody there.

Then we heard a creak overhead.

The kind old wood makes when something shifts its weight.

Very slowly.

We looked up.

A figure sat on top of the platform.

At least, I think it was a figure.

The moon was behind it.

All we could see was a dark silhouette.

It seemed impossibly thin.

Its arms dangled over the edge.

Its head tilted slightly, as though studying us.

Neither of us remembered hearing anyone climb up there.

Neither of us remembered seeing anyone there a moment earlier.

Barry called out.

No answer.

The figure remained motionless.

Then the smell arrived.

Saltwater.

Rotting seaweed.

And something older.

Something that reminded me of a box of forgotten photographs found in a flooded attic.

The silhouette slowly raised one arm.

Not waving.

Pointing.

Toward the ocean.

We turned.

Far out beyond the breakers, dozens of pale shapes floated on the water.

At first I thought they were buoys.

Then they moved.

One after another, they drifted beneath the surface.

Gone.

The beach fell silent.

When we looked back at the lifeguard stand, the figure had vanished.

No footsteps.

No sound.

Nothing.

Just an empty platform and the creaking of old wood.

The next morning, Barry and I returned.

The footprints were gone.

The lifeguard stand had been removed months earlier according to a nearby maintenance worker.

He even showed us photographs.

The structure wasn't there anymore.

Hadn't been there for quite some time.

Barry says we must have mistaken another stand for it.

I would agree.

Except for one thing.

When we got home, there was wet sand on my shoes.

And tangled in the sand was a small brass tag.

Corroded.

Green with age.

Stamped with a date.

July 14, 1957.

The tag belonged to a lifeguard tower that had washed into the Gulf during a hurricane decades ago.

The very same tower that supposedly no longer existed.

Sleep well, Earthlings.

And if you ever notice footprints emerging from the sea after midnight...

Don't follow them.

Stay curious,

Dale T. Doll