Summary

“The City of Shells” is narrated by a third-person narrator who goes back and forth between focalization on Barnaby and Big Red, and between past and present tense. Barnaby works at the City of Shells as a janitor. After the park, which is described as “A Merman’s Stonehenge!” (158), closes, Barnaby cleans the Giant Conchs that are rumored to be haunted. On stormy nights, Raffy—the teenage janitor who works weekends—says that the shells start go sing ghost songs. Their boss, however, assumes that these are just cases of inner-ear dementia. As Barnaby is cleaning Cornuta, a conch that is about the size of a small trailer, he starts to hear screaming coming from inside. As he approaches, he sees a little girl inside the shell.

The narrative breaks and the focus changes to Lillith, whose...