Whisper of the Sea

Chapter One

Whisper of the Sea

By CP Bialois

Copyright 2018

Chapter One

Brian's gaze drifted to the palm trees and sand lining the right side of the road as he neared the beach. This was his first time ever going to a beach or beachside town, and he still didn't see anything special about it. For years, everyone he met or knew had told him how beautiful the beach was, and how the fresh air would invigorate him. He'd been within spitting distance of the beach for an hour, getting glimpses here and there, but so far, she didn't see or smell anything that impressed him.

After spending his life around the trees and fresh air of the mountains, he doubted sea air could compare. It wasn't that he disliked it, but the fishy-salt scent reminded him of the lakes where he was from, though the sea's scent was gentler. Despite all of his arguments to the contrary, he couldn't explain the pull the ocean had on him at the moment.

He assumed it was due to chasing stories of the local legends seaside towns were famous for. Much like the small towns in his native Pennsylvania, each town had their boogey man. The only difference was, instead of the legend surrounding someone killed in a battle or wishing to protect their family, seaside towns tended to lean toward pirate tales or sea spirits. The latter were usually based on a shipwreck or other tragedy that cost several lives.

One thing he had learned over his four year odyssey to investigate and write about paranormal hotspots as all the legends had a flair for the dramatic. Because of that, he often wondered if his meager pay was worth the belittling he faced from the public on the few occasions someone recognized him.

While he resented the returns he received for his efforts, he had developed a cult following thanks to his engaging writing style. After he decided writing for a living was his destiny, he had a few short stories published in various magazines, but his fame, or bain, as he called it, came from horror magazines.

Growing up, he'd read all the classics like Treasure Island and Sherlock Holmes. He even read H.G. Wells and Bram Stoker just to see what the rave was about and round out his tastes. In truth, he had little use for anything horror or science fiction. They were the works of great minds, corrupted by the pressures of the world around him and had very little literary appeal to him. They were sellouts and traitors to their craft. The idea he felt the need to taint his pallet by reading them still irked him, but those genres had a hand in helping him ply his craft.

And how he hated them for it.

Following the sales of his stories bottoming out and being rebuked by magazines and journals, he bit the bullet and took the first job he could find that would allow him to write. Now, four years later, he had become one of the world's leading "investigative" writers simply for snaring readers in the macabre world he wrote about.

He never considered his work worth anything but a way to pay the bills, but he had also learned not to question why they liked him. As much as he hated what he did, as long as he could write, he refused to risk losing the position he'd attained.

He'd become what he hated most.

I'm a sellout. The idea had always been with him, and he accepted it early on. One did what they had to do to survive. No one held a judgment against a lion taking down prey, did they? No, at least, not too many.

What helped to rub salt into the wound was how everyone classified his articles as fictional stories. To him, they were, but they were real to those he interviewed. When he added his gift for flamboyance to the local flavor, a nice, blood-curdling story was born.