“She sells seashells by the seashore,” Miranda said matter-of-factly. “She doesn’t talk much though.”
Matthew only heard his sister’s words as a distant echo as he watched the girl on the beach. She was using a large flat stone like a table to display her assortment of shells, and seated atop a smaller stone with her legs gracefully out to the side. As though feeling his stare though, she glanced up at him and stared back. Before he realized it, he was wandering down the rocky slope towards the shore.
The girl’s beady black eyes locked onto him as he approached, and her oddly-pointed teeth flashed in a grin once he was near. Her inky black hair appeared to be soaking wet, and her skin looked strangely… Scaled.
“See anything you like?” she asked, though it came out as more of a hiss.
“Odd, my sister said you didn’t talk much,” Matthew said, dumbfounded.
“Not to her, perhaps. But you look like someone worth talking to.” She straightened a few of the shells in her display. “You’re new here, Matthew. I’ve not seen you before,” she said casually.
Matthew looked at her in surprise, well aware that he had not given her his name. “Well, yes, we just moved into one of the beach houses last week. But, what was your name?”
“Melody,” she said. “For a long time, all the people in those beach houses have polluted this part of the ocean,” her voice seemed to be getting sharper, angrier, “Be it their garbage, chemicals, nets, the stink of their piss and sweat.” By the end of her list she was almost in a spitting rage, but then her features softened and went right back to being ever-cheerful. “But I don’t suppose you’d be anything like that.”
“N-no, ma’am,” Matthew said, growing a little uneasy. But it was something in her eyes and voice that kept him there. Something soothing, like a sweet, dark lullaby.
Melody was silent, looking him over and continuing to grin with those teeth like a shark’s. “Well,” she eventually said, “I suppose you’ll be wanting something here from my collection of bones, yes?” she asked, gliding her hand over the display of shells.
“Bones?”
“Indeed, bones of the sea. Seashells.”
Matthew slapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, that actually makes sense. Yes, but I haven’t quite decided.”
Melody looked down to the display and scanned over them for a moment. “Ahh,” she breathed softly before delicately plucking one up; some sort of clamshell, as black as a starless night. “This is a good one.” She held it out to Matthew.
He gently accepted it, but as he did so, the thin silver chain attached to the shell freed itself and dangled like a noose on the breeze. He thought nothing of it, and after a moment of looking the shell over in his hands, he slipped the chain around his neck.
“Good, it suits you well,” Melody said cheerfully, looking him over once more, then stood and held out her hand to him. “Now, come with me, Matthew.”
Without thought or hesitation, Matthew took her hand in his. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought her hand was oddly wet, just like the hair on her head. But still, he allowed her to lead him into the sea. First his feet, then up to his waist, and it was around this point that she had dived under and yanked him down along with her. He went along, paying no mind to the fact he couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t even noticed his own vision going dark.
No one would have thought much of the small patch of bubbles one could just barely see from the shore. There was no struggle, not so much as a bobbing head crying out for help. When a man’s half-eaten body turned up along one of the shorelines, everyone had assumed it was a shark attack. It wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t be the last.
But no one paid any mind to Melody. She just sells seashells by the seashore.