They loaded into Nathan's Buick. The grey hunk of metal badly needed a paint job. It still had windows with manual cranks and the backseat didn't have seatbelts. Nathan told Lacey to take shotgun. As the engine turned over, the Buick shook and got warm like it was coming to life. Nathan backed out of his driveway and took off down the road, tires kicking up gravel.

"No CD player?" Lacey complained as they were pulling out of the neighborhood.

"It's an old car."

"How old?"

"87."

"Jesus."

She sifted through his cassette tapes. After criticizing him for owning anything by Coldplay, she tried to throw his Bob Dylan tape out the window. Tom had to hold her down from the backseat until Nathan could take it away from her. Finally Lacey decided the soundtrack to the David Lynch film Lost Highway was "totally cool." Trent Reznor took control of the musical ambience.

Nathan always got an eerie feeling when he drove out to Asbury Park. The whole town was rumored to be cursed. In the 1930s, a cruise liner called the Morro Castle wrecked just off the beach. People came running out onto the boardwalk, too far away to do anything to save them but close enough to see the flames and hear the screams as the passengers burned alive.

The fires died down eventually, the bodies washed ashore and the ship was abandoned there. It became a tourist attraction that boosted the local economy. Asbury Park was a hit. People started making day trips and would pay to go aboard the burnt out shell of the Morro Castle, where they would walk around and steal pieces off the ship or even jewelry left behind by deceased passengers.

The ship was eventually removed, and the town suffered a series of economic depressions. People said it was because of the Morro Castle. When the 1970s riots left Asbury Park in ruin, nobody cared enough to fix it for years. It was coined the Dark City, because the lights had gone out, and nobody cared.

Nathan parked a few blocks from the pier amidst the posh beach homes. Nobody actually lived here. Only now were there inhabitants due to the season.

The shiny steel side of a police cab passed up ahead at the intersection.

Nathan opened his car door and climbed out. He told his crew to "stay frosty," which they probably didn't understand.

They crossed the boardwalk and went down the stairs onto the beach. Tom and Lacey kicked off their shoes, while Nathan cursed under his breath, not quite ready to take his chances in the sand. The tide rushed in and pulled on the earth.

"Nathan?" Tom said.

"The sand is too much for me."

"It's okay. We can just hang out here."

Nathan looked out at the black waves as they crashed against the shore.

"I guess I should just say some stuff about her, right?" said Tom.

"Yeah," Nathan said.

"I don't know what to say."

"How long were you together?" Lacey asked.

"A little over six months. I know it's not long now, but back then it felt like we were married. I used to tell her we were gonna move to L.A. together. She wanted to be an actor too. It's fucked up she never left this town," Tom said. "Course, neither did I."

The sounds of raspy laughter echoed from the pier, overlapped by the sound of the ocean and the warm breezes coming in off the water. Orange speckles glistened in the night from the pier dwellers' cigarettes.

Nathan climbed the steps and followed the wood planks that led out. The front of his prosthesis pinched his knee, but he fought through the pain. As he got close, the people quieted. They hunched down into their coats and hid their faces. A salty breeze mollified the stench of cigarettes and piss, but the subtle notes were there all the same. A haggard young woman with wiry hair and crooked teeth stepped forward.

"You got a cigarette?" she asked. "Some change?"

"Hey Nathan," Tom called from a little ways behind him. "We should go."

A man who hadn't seen a razor in years dumped his cigarette into the ocean and stepped up to greet Nathan. He wore an old jacket from the corps and his white beard was stained yellow around his mouth. The man nudged the tattoo on Nathan's bicep, the sketched image of the eagle, the globe and the anchor. "Where did you serve?" he asked.

"Afghanistan. Helmand Valley."

"Vietnam. Third battalion, third Marines." The man flashed a smile and offered his hand. "Semper fi, Mac."

"Semper fi." They shook hands. "You see this girl?" Nathan reached into his pocket and took out the newspaper photo of Hannah Saunders.

"That your honey-pie?" The old man laughed with a hiss.

Nathan shook his head. "She died here, right next to this pier."

The man frowned, took a closer look and nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I seen her. You got a cigarette?"

Lacey came forward and offered him several. The man handed them out to his friends and then pursed one between his lips and lit the end, mumbling through his teeth. "I've seen some shit in my life, but nothing like what I saw that night."

As he exhaled a cloud of smoke, the rusty scent made Nathan's heart ache with nostalgia. He remembered those long nights on patrol that seemed to last forever when he and team would wait for dawn, talking and smoking cigarettes until their throats were raw.

"The girls never screamed," the old man said. "That was the strange part."

"Girls?"

The old man nodded. "Two of them. It was like they came here to die. Your girl in the picture was shooting up. The Night Man banged her."

"The Night Man?" Nathan asked, clenching his jaw to hide the discomfort in his leg. The old man nodded.

"People have been sighting him for over a hundred years. One of the girls tried to take pictures of him with her phone. I left. I didn't need to see them coupling with the devil. It's ill-advised to look upon the Night Man. They say if you see him, you go wacko."

Nathan looked at the other homeless. They nodded in agreement.

"What did the Night Man look like?" Nathan asked.

"He's big and pale with eyes as black as pits."

"Any distinguishing features?"

"A scar runs down above and below his eye."

"Come on, Nathan. Let's get out of here," Tom said.

The old man shook his head and called out to Tom, "You see him, you run! You'll thank me later!"

Nathan opened his wallet and handed the old man his only bill, a twenty. "Thanks for the information." The man tucked it into his shirt pocket and bowed his head.

They left the pier, heading back across the boardwalk.

"That guy was high," Tom said. "Whatever happened to Hannah was probably a party that got out of hand."

"They left her for dead," Nathan muttered. His knee throbbed and he felt a twinge of phantom pain in toes that weren't there. He instinctively adjusted his gait and suddenly his stump sank deeper into the bottom of his brace. The prosthesis ground into his flesh. He cried out in agony, and dropped.

Tom tried to ease the impact of his fall, catching him under his arms and guiding him down to the curb. "Whoa! Easy."

"Shit!" cried Lacey. "You okay?"

Nathan scrunched up his eyes, pressing down on his knee. Tom supported him until they reached a bench. Nathan sat down while Tom knelt in front of him rolled up his pants leg.

"Let me." Nathan waved him away and adjusted the appendage himself. "I didn't want Lacey to find out like this," he said.

"She already knew," Tom said.

"You told her?"

"Yeah."

Nathan finished securing his prosthesis and pushed himself up on both feet.

They crossed the shadowy streets between houses. Nathan noticed that his friends were keeping their distance behind him.

The instant they got to his car, he shut the doors and said, "Don't tell anymore people about it, okay? I've worked really hard learning to walk around like everybody else."

"It's not something you need to be ashamed of," said Tom.

Nathan started the car and got out of the parallel park job. "I told my mom to be discreet and I'd ask the same of you guys."

"Did you tell Alex?" Tom asked.

"That's none of your business."

"I need to know so I don't mention it to her.

"All right. No. I didn't tell her. And I'm not going to."

"Okay," Tom said. "That's your choice."

Nathan ignored him. The somber music resumed and a haze of distortion and wandering chord progression descended upon them like an opaque midnight fog. Nathan imagined the Night Man wading into a quiet ocean. The face was gaunt, grey and white, the figure tall and slender, and the fingernails were jet black and hard like glass.

_______________________

Music: "Videodrones: Questions" Trent Reznor

It's not Muse, but I thought I'd include it since that's what they're listening to. There might be a few chapters where I use other artists.