Ghost crab in October

A different fish, a different day, the same look.

October creeps forward.

The shadows, lengthening in their ominous beauty, remind those paying attention that we are of the dust, and the dust will take us back.

For a few hours each year, the world of those already taken (human and otherwise) opens to the world we know. Samhain approaches, again.

I took a walk on the edge of the bay--a stiff breeze was blowing in from the northwest, the waves a controlled fury, stark grays and whites on the water, flashes of pink on the underbelly of clouds. No one else was on the beach.

A dead bunker, flesh still clinging to its partially visible skeleton, mouth agape, washed up at my feet. Through death it looked stunned. A few minutes later a lone gull struggled to get it down its gullet.

The Jersey shore shares this same theme every fall, for anyone who cares to brave the beach breeze. But the stories change.

And today's story was about a ghost crab on the edge of both worlds.

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Ghost crabs live in burrows on the beach. Though experts tell you that they are nocturnal, ghost crabs apparently do not read (or trust) their words, and can be seen scurrying about the beach pretty much any time of day in the warmer months.

What you won't see, however, is a ghost crab crossing a street.

When I got back to my bicycle, I found it there directly below the pedals, its eye stalks retracted, perhaps dead, perhaps not, wavering between this world and the other.

I picked it up--it barely moved--and walked back across the street, down the path to the bay, set it down by the bay's edge, and a wash of foam reached up and took it.

Maybe not a story meant for anyone else.
But it was meant for me.

The other world is meant for all of us.