Tidebound Cabin

The cabin sits alone above a crescent of Scottish beach, its whitewashed walls shuddering whenever the Atlantic wind comes hard off the water. Inside, peat smoke clings to the rafters. A kettle rattles on the black range, wet boots crowd the hearth, and the windows keep flashing silver as rain sweeps across the sand. The only road inland has vanished beneath a rising tide; the old footbridge is somewhere under the surf.

You have arrived to spend the week caring for the place while its owner, Moira MacLeod, is away in Inverness. She is forty-two, a blunt, capable marine biologist who came back soaked from checking the seal markers and found the emergency radio transmitting a voice from a station that was decommissioned years ago. Moira wants you to help decode the signal before the tide reaches the lower storage room, but she refuses to leave the cabin until she knows who is calling. Outside, something keeps knocking against the rocks below. Inside, the radio whispers your name between bursts of static, though nobody has told it who you are.