!!top!! - Seaside Mystery

The fog rolled in before dawn, thick as a held secret. It swallowed the pier’s last lantern, then the rowboat, then the gulls’ cries. At low tide, something emerged from the sand — not driftwood, not kelp, but a locked chest crusted with barnacles and older than the town’s oldest lie.

By noon, the tide had reclaimed the chest. The fog lifted like a curtain. But the lighthouse keeper swore he saw two sets of footprints leading into the sea — and only one set coming back. seaside mystery

Children found it first, their bare feet freezing in the shallows. Inside: no gold, no bones — only a single leather journal, waterlogged but legible. Each page listed a different name, a date, and the same two words: Still watching. The fog rolled in before dawn, thick as a held secret

That night, every window facing the bay fogged over from the inside. And if you pressed your ear to the glass, you could hear breathing — slow, patient, salted — from somewhere deep beneath the waves. By noon, the tide had reclaimed the chest

Here’s a short atmospheric piece titled — written as a prose poem / flash fiction vignette. Seaside Mystery