The Ironwood Yew

My name is Elena Marsh, and I grew up in a small coastal town in Maine called Grayhook. The town was built around a massive shipyard that had been abandoned for decades, and the only thing that remained was a rusted crane and a dry dock that filled with seawater at high tide. My father, a shipwright by trade, was the last man who cared for the old ways. He stayed when the shipyard closed, refusing to leave the town where he had buried my mother and where he had taught me to tie knots before I could write my name.

I left Grayhook when I was eighteen, not out of anger or fear, but because the town seemed to be slowly dying. The houses were being swallowed by salt and moss, and the only businesses were a bait shop and a diner that served the same chowder for forty years. I moved to Boston, got a degree in maritime history, and took a job at a museum. I never looked back. I told myself it was a practical choice, but the truth was that Grayhook felt cursed, and I didn’t want to be there when it finally sank into the sea.

My father stayed, of course. He lived in the same salt-bleached house on the point, with a porch that overlooked the harbor and a bedroom window that faced the old dry dock. We talked on the phone every Sunday. He would describe the fog rolling in, the sound of the tide, the way the gulls cried like they were mourning something. He never complained, but I could hear the loneliness in his voice. And I felt a familiar guilt, the same guilt that had driven me away in the first place.

It was March when the calls started to change. He would pause mid-sentence, as if listening to something outside. ‘Did you hear that?’ he would ask. But there was nothing on my end. He said it was a scraping sound, like metal on concrete, coming from the dry dock. I told him it was probably a loose cable banging against the rusted crane. He said the crane had collapsed years ago and was now a heap of tangled girders. I told him to call the police. He said he had, but they just told him it was the wind.

The last time I spoke to him, he was whispering. ‘There’s a man in the dry dock. He’s wearing a yellow raincoat. He’s just standing there, staring at the water.’ I asked if he was a fisherman, but my father said no. ‘He’s too still. And his face, Elena… I can’t see his face. But I know he’s smiling.’

I booked a flight to Portland, then rented a car and drove the two hours up the coast. The road was slick with rain, and the GPS kept losing signal as I approached Grayhook. The town appeared out of the fog like a memory: the same peeling signs, the same boarded windows, the same feeling of being watched. When I reached my father’s house, the porch light was out, and the door was unlocked.

He was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of cold coffee. He looked older than when I left, but that wasn’t what scared me. It was the way he didn’t look up when I said his name. ‘Dad?’ I said. He finally raised his head, and I saw that his eyes were red and puffy, like he hadn’t slept in days. ‘They told me you were coming,’ he said, but he didn’t sound happy.

He told me everything that had happened. The scraping sounds were getting louder, and now they were accompanied by footsteps. He had started sleeping with a shotgun by his bed, but he hadn’t fired it. ‘It’s not a man, Elena,’ he said. ‘It’s something that wears a man’s shape. But it’s been waiting for this tide.’ When I asked him what he meant, he just pointed at the calendar. It was the first full moon of spring, and the tide would be the highest in years.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my old room, listening to the water. Around 3 AM, the scraping started. It was rhythmic, like a blade on stone, and it was coming from the dry dock. I got up and looked out the window. The fog had thinned, and in the moonlight, I could see the dry dock. There was a figure standing at the edge of the dock, wearing a yellow raincoat. It was motionless, but I could feel it staring at the house.

I went downstairs. My father was already in the living room, holding the shotgun. ‘Don’t look at it,’ he said. ‘It’s been feeding on the town’s memories. It’s been growing stronger.’ I didn’t understand, but then he told me the secret he had kept for thirty years. When my mother died, it wasn’t a heart attack. She had gone to the dry dock on a night like this, and she had never come back. He found her body the next morning, pale and drained, with a peaceful expression on her face. The police called it a drowning, but he knew better. He had seen the yellow raincoat on the security footage.

I realized then why I had left. It wasn’t just the town; it was this place. I had always felt a pull toward the water, but also a dread. My mother had tried to warn me, but I had buried the memory. Now the thing was back, and it was stronger because I had returned. ‘We need to burn the dry dock,’ my father said. ‘It’s the only way. The wood is old, but it’s still attached to the town. We need to sever the connection.’

We took cans of gasoline from the shed and walked toward the dry dock. The figure didn’t move as we approached. When we got close, I saw that it wasn’t wearing a raincoat; it was the raincoat, empty, filled with something that moved like smoke. The air around it was cold, and I could smell brine and rot. My father poured the gasoline in a circle around the dock. He was chanting something in a language I didn’t recognize. Then he lit a match and dropped it.

The flames exploded, and the creature let out a sound that was not a scream but a shriek of rust and water. It began to dissolve, but as it did, it reached out a hand of mist and touched my chest. I felt a cold that went through my ribs and into my heart, and then it was gone. The dock burned for hours. The fire spread to the rusted crane, and the whole pier was a conflagration. By morning, nothing was left but ash and blackened stumps.

We stood at the edge of the water, watching the smoke rise. My father put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s over,’ he said. I nodded, but I didn’t feel free. I felt a weight, like a stone inside me. Over the next few weeks, I began to hear whisperings, never words, but the murmur of the tide in my ears. And at night, I would sometimes see a yellow flicker at the edge of my vision. I knew then that the thing had not been destroyed. It had transferred to me. The dry dock was gone, but the memory was not. And as long as I was alive, it would have a way back.

I couldn’t tell my father. I packed my bag and left Grayhook the next day, but I didn’t go back to Boston. I drove west, as far as I could, and I ended up in the desert. There was no water here, no dry dock, no ocean. But the whispering was still there. It followed me, growing louder each night. And I knew that I would never be alone again. The thing wears a new raincoat now, one made of my flesh. And when I look in the mirror, I don’t see my face. I see a smile that is not mine.