Story Spotlight: “The Code” by Annie Reed

In Annie Reed’s “The Code,” a ghostly enforcer bound to the ocean’s will haunts a dying seaside bar, waiting for a man who broke the oldest law of the sea. Some debts can’t be settled in coin—and the ocean never forgets.
cannot be paid with coin, and every storm remembers the name of the thief.

Killian was once a pirate. Now he’s something else—a spectral judge who walks between worlds, summoned when someone violates the code that has governed sailors since ships first left shore. When a ruthless modern-day pirate murders his own crew to steal their vessels, Killian brings him to a reckoning in a crumbling restaurant overlooking the waves.

Reed crafts a chilling, atmospheric tale where the past bleeds into the present. The Lucky Clam, with its plastic sea creatures and waterspotted windows, becomes a courtroom. The ghosts of drowned sailors crowd the shadows. And the sentence, when it comes, is as old as the tide.

The product wasn’t electronics or drugs or weapons, or even money. The product was death, and the man had dealt in death for years.

Not that the sea cared if the man was a killer. The sea had always attracted hard men who killed to survive.

But the man called himself a pirate. The sea had rules for pirates, and the man had violated those rules. Sentence had been passed for his crimes before the man even knew he was on trial in the only court that mattered to men who called themselves pirates.

A gust of wind hit the side of the building, rattling the plate glass window next to Killian’s table.

The man twitched, the first indication that he felt something was off. Killian felt the icy depths of the ocean crawl up his spine, and knew it was time.

About the Author

Annie Reed has been called “one of the best writers of her generation” and for good reason.

She’s a multiple Derringer finalist whose stories have appeared in five year’s best mystery and crime volumes, including an amazing three years in a row in the prestigious Best Mystery Stories of the Year from series editor Otto Penzler. She received a Silver Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future, a Literary Fellowship from the Nevada Arts Council, and her holiday romance story “A New Home for Christmas” was chosen to appear in study materials in Japan for students preparing for college entrance exams. She’s a frequent contributor to Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Mystery, Crime & Mayhem, and Thrill Ride—The Magazine. Her novels include Road of No Return, Guardians of the Bay, and Gray Lady’s Gambit, part of the Gray Lady series co-written with Robert Jeschonek.

Find Annie at: anniereed.wordpress.com

Read the Story

You can find “The Wind Witch of Weird Water Harbour” in the Haunted Waters anthology.

Buy the book from your favorite store

If you liked…

• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003 film)—for its ghostly pirates bound by supernatural law
• The Fog (1980 film)—for its spectral sailors returning to claim what’s owed
• The Fisherman by John Langan—for its deep-sea dread and layered storytelling

…then you’ll enjoy “The Code,” which exists because the sea is vast and unforgiving, and those who sail it need to trust each other. Break that trust, and the ocean itself becomes your judge.