Slack Water

What it looks like, and what it does

A pale wet beach at dead low water. A long, low pale shape on the sand like a person's outline drawn in water. Birds standing facing seaward without moving. The tide line frozen mid-ripple.

Appears at the turn. Lies facing the sea. Disappears with the first movement of the water.

What is known

At Scarth Bay the water “stands” for about four minutes at each turn. In 1962 a shape was photographed on the sand in the standing water.

It is not an animal or a person, but it takes the form of whichever the observer was thinking of. While it is present, clocks and tides stall and people on the shore stop mid-step. Observers return a few minutes late for no reason.

What it can do

• Takes the form of what the observer was thinking of
• Pauses a shoreline for the length of slack water

Where it stops

• Exists only at the turn of the tide
• Cannot be touched; the hand passes through wet sand

An encounter

Penhale watched his own mother lie down on the sand fifty metres out. She did not move. His watch stopped at 05:12. When the first ripple came, the shape was gone, and the watch read 05:16. “Four minutes,” he said later. “I lost four minutes and I kept my mother.”

Ivor Penhale, coastguard, Scarth Bay, the low flats, The spring ebb, 05:12

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Coastguard watches stalled at slack water in nineteen of twenty-three recorded sightings.
• rumor: That it is the tide's own memory of what it carried out.
• incomplete: The 1962 photograph shows a shape, but the negative cannot be found.

Still unresolved

Everyone who has seen it describes it differently in every respect except one. It is always lying down, facing the sea.

Where it has been recorded

• Scarth Bay (confirmed) — Recorded by Ivor Penhale, coastguard.

Connected entities

• Pietro Salt — Both are fixed to the turn of a tide. Pietro rises with it. Slack Water lies down at the moment it holds still.
• The Inland Tide — Both are tides that arrive where there is no shore. One lies still at the turn. The other turns into a cellar.