Horror/Mystery
Date Published: 06-24-2024
Publisher: Shadow Spark Publishing
Surfside City, New Jersey. 1966. Cub reporter Harman Bass is cutting his teeth in the fast world of local journalism and getting out-scooped by the competition. Facetious, cocky, and always quoting Nietzsche, Harman isn’t making any friends both in and out of the newsroom.
All that changes when the daughter of a prominent family is found dead on the beach, handing Harman the juiciest news story of the year. But she wasn’t any old beauty pageant queen; she was his high school girlfriend. Harman’s dogged reporting into the young woman’s death reveals pushback from the authorities and pulls the newshound into the resort’s darkest corners.
After one of his sources is murdered, the routine story becomes dangerous and personal. Something watches Harman from the shadows, something ancient and hungry, worshipped by powerful men who kill to keep their secrets. Harman’s job and life are soon threatened, and the once brash reporter must battle his boss, rival journalists, and his own sanity before filing what could be his last story.
THE OCEAN HUGS HARD is a mystery with the salty whiff of the ocean, a tinge of nostalgia, and a dollop of mind-shattering eldritch horror.
Surfside City, New Jersey 1966
Harman Bass sprinted along the boardwalk towards the dead body on Sunburn Beach. Racing past the Ferris wheel that loomed overhead like a steel colossus, he searched his pockets and made sure he had his gear.
Press pass? Check.
Notebook? Check.
Ballpoint pen? Check.
Binoculars? Check.
Cub reporters had to get it right or they’d wind up exiled to the features desk, a place colder and more desolate than Siberia. News reporting was all about projecting competence, and Harman risked blowing it when the tip of one of his Florsheims caught the edge of a partly warped plank. He planted face-first in front of the reporters who cackled at his misfortune.
His Ray-Ban Wayfarers skittered across the boardwalk, along with his pen, press pass, and notebook. Thankfully, he’d managed to hold onto his binoculars. He rubbed the scrape on his chin and gathered his belongings before limping to the edge of the ‘walk. Harman inspected his gear and found that his pride was the only thing that had been damaged. He brushed his sandy blonde hair from his eyes, adjusted the trilby on his head, and kept walking.
That summer was a hot and humid monster lousy with greenhead horse flies. Greenhead bites were like the Devil himself pinching you.
Harman hated the greenheads more than he hated the beach. He peered through his binoculars at the body sprawled on a colorful towel on the sand. The lifeless bikini-clad woman only made him detest the beach even more.
The victim appeared to be in her early twenties. Her blonde hair spilled over her face, hiding it from everyone. Were it not for the police gathering on the beach around her, she could have just been sunbathing.
But something told Harman this wasn’t a pleasant seaside snooze.
A crowd of curious onlookers on the boardwalk gawked at the body, leaning over the railing past the dunes, where the beach sloped into the darkness of the ocean. A caterwauling gull cut through the sound of distant waves crashing against the rocks. Police officers shambled along the cordon line and made sure that the public didn’t get too close. A detective knelt over the woman’s body and plucked her white, plastic sunglasses off her face, revealing dead eyes, fixated on the sky. He handed the sunglasses to another officer.
Harman scrutinized their faces and analyzed the detectives’ subtle body language. The way they moved reflected their doubts—one scratched his head while another jotted a few notes. He turned his binoculars to the pad of paper in the second officer’s hand, but couldn’t make out the chicken scratch handwriting.
Murder was unusual in Surfside City. The resort was “America’s Seashore Playground,” according to the large signs that fronted the ‘walk. It was a slogan crafted decades ago to entice tourists to the barrier island. And it worked. Surfside City was ice cream and amusement rides, surf and sun. The kind of upstanding place where people didn’t lock their doors at night and neighbors helped each other out. Murder only happened far away in big cities, where switchblade-slinging muggers robbed unsuspecting commuters on subways.
Certainly not in Surfside City, “America’s Seashore Playground.”
This woman, whoever she was, was an anomaly, and anomalies meant front-page news.
Harman swatted away a greenhead fly, pushed his way through the throng to a different part of the boardwalk’s railing, and pressed the binoculars to his eyes. The wind tossed her hair around and he almost caught a glimpse of the dead woman’s face.
“It’s a cruel thing, isn’t it, Bass?” Harman turned at the sound of Chuck Duffy’s voice.
Duffy looked the part of a veteran reporter in his faded fedora, wrinkled suit, and striped silk necktie. He peered past Harman, pulled out his notebook, and scribbled something furiously in shorthand. Duffy worked for a rival newspaper, the Mainland Times, a popular daily that was printed seven miles off the island on the mainland.
As far as local journalists went, Duffy was a legend. Lean, with a square jaw, tortoiseshell glasses, and bags under his eyes from a lack of sleep, Duffy was the consummate dogged reporter. A newspaperman for thirty-five years, mostly for dailies in Philadelphia, Duffy had plied his trade with the Mainland Times since ‘61.
About the Author
ERIC AVEDISSIAN is an adjunct professor and speculative fiction author. His published work includes the novels Accursed Son, Mr. Penny-Farthing, Midnight at Bat Hollow, and the role-playing game Ravaged Earth. His short stories appear in various anthologies, including Across the Universe, Great Wars, and Rituals & Grimoires. Avedissian received a 2024 Fellowship in Prose from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and a ridiculous number of books. Find him online at www.ericavedissian.com if you dare.
Contact Links
Twitter: @angryreporter
Instagram: @ericavedissian
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