Shadow in the Water

Chapter 2

Three days later I was staring up at a bookshelf holding a thick, dusty smelling book in my arms, debating whether it was really worth buying. I had enough on my plate as it was, but I hadn't been able to get my mind off of what I had come across in that mythology book the other day. Something nagged at me, urging me to pursue the strange theory. I thought I was going crazy. Of course Atlantis didn't exist. It had been a tale told by a philosopher, a place created solely to carry the themes Plato enjoyed spinning his stories around. Throwing the Irish gods into the mix made it even less believable. But... what if there was some truth behind the legend? There often was, wasn't there? A small grain hidden among the embellishments told by storytellers?

Could it have something to do with the crash? Or about the man who saved you?

"He isn't real," I muttered to myself.

The plane crash was real, you can't explain that away. No one had any answers as to why it went down. No one had any answers about why you were the only survivor....

There has to be an answer.

I scanned the shelf one more time. I was sure that there was a book here that talked about local myths. As a tourist attraction, there were bound to be some souvenir books for tourists on our own local legends and myths. I wanted to see if any of them mentioned the Tuatha De Danann, or Atlantis itself.

"Are ye looking fur anything specific, lassie?" my elderly boss asked me in his thick burr.

"Do we have anything on local myths and legends?"

Mr. MacLean chuckled, his eyes shining mischievously. He hadn't needed to ask, I'd been standing in this section for nearly ten minutes. He was probably waiting to see how long it would take me to realize things had been moved. "Aye, I just had Christian move evry'hing over t' th' display window," he said, gesturing over to the big bay window at the front of the shop that had definitely changed since yesterday, and I had completely missed it.

"Thank you," I said and hurried over to check out what we had in stock. Christian was my coworker that rarely seemed to speak. Tall, handsome if you liked sharp angular features, and oftentimes brooding, he worked quickly to get things done and was usually finished with all of his objectives for the day before I even arrived.

The display looked nice. Christian wasn't sloppy with his work, no matter how fast he got it done. A three tiered table sat about three feet behind the window. On the top there were several kids' picture books about the stories of Ferryhill, the Kraken, mermaids, and the Dark Waters. The latter of the list was what the townsfolk commonly called the area of the Atlantic just off the West coast of Scotland, as there had been many reported supernatural sightings in the area over the centuries. The shelf below it held all sizes of figurines, toys, and plushies of pirate ships, mermaids, squids and other sea creatures. The final shelf held old textbooks, journals, and newspaper clippings that were more for browsing than for sale. These were the ones I was interested in. I put the books that I already had down and scanned the titles.

Atlantis: Fact or Fiction?, The Kraken: the Truth Behind the Myth, and a local author's own The Dark Waters caught my eye, whereas Mermaids Exist! and the Legend of Blackwater Town seemed a bit too corny for my taste. I picked out the ones I thought would be useful and carried them up to the front counter.

Mr. MacLean's salt and pepper bushy eyebrows climbed his forehead when he saw the books. "Christ lass, ye're gunna break yer back lugging those things around."

"I'm fine," I smiled as I placed the stack next to the register. "Do you have a piece of paper and a pen that I can borrow?"

He rolled out a long slip of receipt paper from the cash register and handed me a pen, then began to ring up my purchases. I strode back over to the display and scribbled down the headlines and dates of the old newspapers, several of which dated back to before I was born.