The next afternoon, under a sky the color of a dull grey bruise, they went back to the scene of the crime. To shield her eyes from the intense lights, Frankie wore a hood and sunglasses. A little sunblock helped, but the heat made her skin itch.

  This journey to the beach held no joy. It marked a mission.

  Every step toward Black Rock Cove looked different this time. The path over the rocks, treacherous before, now felt menacing. The wind, whipping in from the stormy sea, didn't just whistle; it seemed to whisper their names in a low, mocking hiss. Frankie sensed the change most acutely. Her senses, now a constant, low-grade torture, were on high alert. The smell of the salt sharpened, the cry of the gulls grew harsher, and the cold of the rocks seemed to leach directly into her bones.

  When they finally dropped into the cove, silence greeted them, not just quiet. It hummed with hostility.

  The place, already creepy, now felt malevolent.

  The black cliffs no longer looked like teeth; they looked like fangs, sharpened and waiting. The tangled knots of seaweed didn’t look like drowned hair; they looked like grasping, bony fingers reaching for them from the sand. The heavy air seemed to watch them, to press in on them with a silent, waiting hunger.

  “I hate this place,” Ted said, his voice an indistinct murmur, swallowed by the oppressive quiet.“I officially hate this place.”

  “It feels…” Dee Dee started, then trailed off, shivering despite the mild air. “It feels awake now.”

  Frankie knew exactly what she meant. She could feel it too. A low, predatory hum in the atmosphere that hadn't been there before. Or maybe it had been, and she only now tuned to its terrible frequency.

  Her eyes remained fixed on the spot at the base of the cliff. The spot where she had knelt in the sand. The spot where she had pried open the box and let the nightmare out.

  She walked toward it, her friends trailing behind her like shadows. Her feet were heavy, as if she were wading through deep water. She knew what she would see. The chest. Open. Empty. A desecrated tomb.

  But when she got there, she found nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  The smooth, damp sand, washed clean by the tide, showed no hole, no indentation, no sign that anything had ever been there.

  The ancient, sea-worn chest, gone.

  “No,” Frankie whispered, the word a puff of disbelief.

  She dropped to her knees, her hands plunging into the wet sand, digging frantically. Maybe the high tide had just buried it.It had to be there. It had to be.

  “Frankie, stop,” Ted said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  “It was right here!” she cried, her voice cracking. “I know it was! We all saw it!”

  Ted and Dee Dee exchanged a look of pure dread. This somehow proved worse than an open and empty chest. An empty box offered evidence. This? Nothing. The entire event seemed erased, vanished.

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  “There are no drag marks,” Ted said, his voice clinical as he scanned the beach. “No footprints other than our own. It’s like it just… vanished.”

  The implication terrified. Human hands had n’t moved it. The tide had n’t washed away it. It had simply ceased to be there. As if it had been an apparition all along.

  The doubt, the one she had fought so hard to conquer, came rushing back. What if Dr. Harris was right? What if we all just… imagined it?

  But she knew they hadn’t. The ache in her gums a constant, throbbing reminder. The hunger in her gut a coiled serpent, waiting. The monster real. Which meant the chest real. And something had taken it.

  A wave of utter despair washed over her. Their only lead, their sole piece of physical proof—gone. Back to square one, with nothing but a crazy story and a curse slowly, inexorably consuming her.

  She slumped down in the sand; the fight going out of her. “Now what?” she asked, her voice hollow.

  Ted and Dee Dee didn’t have an answer. They stood there, a grim little trio, the silence of the malevolent cove pressing in on them. They were lost.

  They scoured the small beach, a desperate, hopeless search for… something. Anything. A splinter of dark wood. A flake of rusted iron. A shred of proof that they weren’t all losing their minds. They sifted through the damp, grey sand. They poked at the slimy clumps of seaweed. They overturned rocks.

  Nothing.

  The hope they had brought with them to the cove evaporated with each passing minute, leaving behind only the cold certainty of their doom.

  “This is useless,” Ted said finally, straightening up and wiping his sandy hands on his jeans. “There’s nothing here.”

  As Frankie looked, she smelled something metallic, like the coppery scent of old blood mixed with the tang of sea salt. Then Dee Dee yelped in pain.

  “Are you okay?” Frankie asked, her voice dull with defeat. “I smell metal.”

  Dee Dee grumbled, rubbing her toe. “Stupid rock. I’m gonna find this stupid thing and throw it into the ocean.”

  “No, wait,” Frankie said, and walked over to the spot where Dee Dee stubbed her toe. She knelt, her nose inches from the wet sand. “It’s strong right here.” She pointed at the spot.

  Dee Dee bent down, her expression one of annoyance, and dug at the spot in the wet sand where she’d stubbed her foot. She dug her fingers in, and then she froze.

  Her expression shifted from annoyance to confusion, and then to a kind of breathless awe.

  “Guys,” she said, her voice a whisper. “This isn’t a rock.”

  She worked her fingers deeper into the sand and pulled. Slowly, she unearthed a small, dark object. She stood up and held it out in her palm.

  A coin.

  But unlike any coin Frankie had ever seen, this one carried a surprising density. Darkened by age and saltwater corrosion to an almost black hue, it felt strangely, unnaturally cold to the touch, as if resting in a freezer for a hundred years.

  Frankie took it from Dee Dee’s hand. Its weight in her palm both comforted and terrified her. It felt real. Tangible. It offered proof.

  She wiped the grime and wet sand away with her thumb, revealing the crest stamped into its surface.

  And her blood ran cold.

  The design featured intricate and nightmarish detail. It didn't depict the face of a president or a king, nor an eagle or a coat of arms.

  It showcased a monster.

  A monstrous kraken, its immense, coiling tentacles wrapped with crushing force around a three-masted sailing ship. You could see the ship’s masts snapping like twigs, its hull splintering under impossible pressure. The image was one of absolute oceanic fury, of brutal, overwhelming power. A picture of a slaughter.

  This signaled more than just currency. It delivered a warning.

  They stared at the coin in Frankie’s palm, the three of them huddled together against the cold of the cove. The wind seemed to whisper a new word to them now. A word they couldn’t quite make out, but which sounded ancient and full of hunger.

  They did not know what the coin meant. They didn't know which ship the kraken destroyed, or who would mint a coin with such a horrifying image.

  But they knew, with a chilling, gut-deep certainty, that they were holding the key.

  And that it unlocked the door to something terrible.