Kraken attacking a sailing ship design

The harbour wall has been counting days since Tuesday, and I have stopped pretending I am not counting with it. Mrs Pascoe at the chandlery says the Estelle Mary was seen off the Lizard with her topsails reefed, which is what Father always said a ship does when she has something on her mind. I told her to hush. You know what the men say down the Quay when the fog comes in green.

Old Harold swears he saw it the night of the storm, the thing that takes ships. Not a whale, he says, nor a shark. Arms as thick as mainmasts, coming up out of the water slow as a tide, wrapping the rigging the way ivy goes over a wall. He drew it for me on the back of a tide table, the sails lashed in pencil and some orange ink where the lamps were. I pinned it above the stove so the damp will not get at it. It looks more like a bad dream than a ship, if I am honest.

Yesterday a boy came up from the slipway with a bottle that had a note in it, soaked to pulp but readable: four words in Tom's hand, Hold fast, it is loosening. Then nothing. The sea has been flat as a plate all week, and I cannot make sense of that.

So I am writing to ask you to come home for the weekend, and bring your good coat. I will meet the bus. If the tide is out when you arrive, walk the rope path past the lighthouse steps, because from up there you can see the whole bay, and I have decided to look at it every morning until something comes round the point.

Love, Mary