Thing Bailiwick

by Fawn Bonning

  He looked to Pam. She stood holding a hand clamped tightly over her mouth, and when she looked to him, her eyes were wide and frightened.

  Garth Brooks was still crooning about rain.

  “Uncle Ray?” Justin’s sunburn had faded, the blood having left his face. He jammed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a trembling hand.

  “Took him,” Rene babbled. “It took him.”

  Spurred into motion by the shock in Rene’s voice, Ray hurried to the opposite side of the boat, shining the light over the side.

  Nothing. Only the line where it disappeared into the black waters. It was diving, and the line was cutting a neat groove in the rail. It was taking Carl to the bottom of the sea.

  Rushing back to the rod, he disengaged it from its holder.

  “Ray, what are you doing?” Pam whispered, sounding numb with shock.

  “Get the spear-gun, Pam,” he whispered as he began to reel.

  “You’re bringing it back up?”

  “It’s got Carl! Damn it, Pam, hurry! Nick, shine the light out there!” he barked as he slipped the rod into an unoccupied holder and began to wind like mad. A high-pitched voice was blaring in his brain, screaming at him to bring Carl back up to oxygen.

  “Uncle Ray,” Nick spoke up tentatively, “you’re going to snap the line.”

  Nick was right. Reluctantly, he ceased to struggle against whatever it was on the end of the line, engaging only enough drag to slow it down. “Did anyone get a good look at this thing?” he asked as he wiped his brow on his sleeve. “What are we dealing with, here? Rene?”

  “I…I wanna go home,” she mumbled.

  “I saw it,” Justin spoke up on his left.

  Pam returned clutching the spear-gun, and suddenly the mad dash to the depths ceased.

  “Okay, I’m bringing it up,” Ray said, beginning to wind. “Justin?”

  “I…I think you should just cut the line,” he suggested

  “Justin, you—”

  “We should get the hell out here, right now, Uncle Ray!” he insisted, his voice raising a few decibels.

  “Justin, damn it! What is it? A giant barracuda? Help me out, here.”

  “No. Not a fish.”

  “Not a fish,” Rene parroted behind them. “No, no, no, not a fish.” She had seated herself on a lounge chair that had managed to remain upright, and was clutching herself as she rocked. Garth Brooks was now singing something about being ‘too young to feel so damn old’.

  “Justin?”

  “I’m not sure what it was. I only got a glimpse but…it had legs…like a lobster, sort of. A giant lobster. But no shell. It was soft-bodied. And it was purple.”

  “Bullshit!” his brother snapped. “You’re such a moron!”

  “Nick!” Ray barked. “Hold the light steady.”

  “It has to be a barracuda, Uncle Ray,” Nick insisted. “What else could it be? Don’t listen to—”

  “Nick, please. What else, Justin?”

  Justin pushed the glasses back up his nose. “Well…it looked…I don’t know. It had these huge eyes.”

  “Huge,” Rene repeated.

  “But they were at the end of…of…I don’t know, these long stalk things, you know, kind of like a hammerhead. And it had a long tail. And I’m not really positive, but at the end of its legs…I thought I saw…well, they must be arms because I thought I saw…well, it happened so fast, I’m probably wrong, but it looked like…like…”

  “Hands,” Rene eeked, then abruptly began to sob.

  “Yeah,” Justin said. “I think I saw fingers. I’m pretty sure.”

  Ray halted in his winding to gape at Justin, he along with Pam and Nick.

  “Well…I might be wrong,” he offered.

  “You are wrong, you idiot!” Nick barked. “You need a new pair of glasses. It’s a Barracuda, isn’t it, Uncle Ray?”

  Ray shook his head slowly and began to wind once again. “Don’t think so.”

  “But, you said—”

  “I don’t know of anything that could do what this thing just did,” he stated numbly.

  “Honey, let’s wait until help gets here, please,” Pam pleaded.

  “Did you radio?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going right now. I’ll radio the coastguard. Ray, please, just let them take care of this.”

  “I have to pull him up!”

  “He’s gone, Ray,” she said, and then quickly brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.

  “I can’t. I just…I can’t, Pam. What if it was one of the girls, or Nick, or Justin?”

  Pam’s eyes were resonating fear…before she closed them and nodded.

  Ray looked over to Carl’s lone sneaker. The sight of it made him feel sick to his stomach. He felt as if he were on the verge of losing it. He couldn’t do that. He was the captain of the ship, the man in charge. He had to pull himself together and take control. Though it was tempting beyond belief to follow Pam’s advice, he knew he couldn’t. Carl had been in his care, his responsibility. He couldn’t just let this thing drag him to the bottom. As long as he had this thing on the line, by God, he was going to bring it up. Put a spear right between its two huge eyes. Pull its purple ass up on deck and stomp on all its damn fingers.

  Maybe Nick was right. Maybe Justin’s imagination was just in overdrive. How could he possibly have seen so much in mere fractions of a second when he himself hadn’t seen a damn thing? Just a dark shape was all he’d made out. The way it had shot out of the water…

  He felt a shudder run through him as he continued to wind steadily. Just the thought of something even loosely resembling what Justin had just described made his skin crawl.

  Justin was a pretty level-headed kid. Not one prone to blowing things all out of proportion. And then there was Rene. She’d obviously seen something that really had her rattled. She seemed to concur with Justin’s description.

  Yes sir, something strange was down there. Something that went beyond his comprehension. Something that could drag a one hundred seventy-five-pound man across twenty feet of deck in mere seconds.

  God! Carl! Carl was gone. Gone! Damn it! Damn!

  Bracing a foot against the side, he strained backward with the rod and then quickly wound in the slack as he inched it forward again.

  They were just trying to catch a fish, for God’s sake. Not some damn…sea monster…with hands. Hands! What the hell was that about?

  “Okay, listen up, everyone,” he said as he continued to pull and wind. “This is what we’re going to do. We still have this thing on the line, I can feel the son of a bitch. Nick, I want you to take over my spot. I want you to reel him in, nice and steady, understand? Justin, take the light. Keep it pointed at the surface, okay? I don’t want any more surprises. If anybody sees anything, anything, yell.”

  Taking the spear gun from Pam, he hefted it a few times, feeling its weight. “This baby can do some major damage, so I want everyone to try to relax. Rene, can you please turn off that radio?”

  Rene pulled in a shuddering breath. She had her face buried in her hands, weeping and muttering something about going home.

  “When this thing surfaces, I’m gonna nail it,” he said with much more confidence than he felt. “Whatever this thing is, we can deal with it. If we stay calm and keep our wits about us, we can do it…together. It’s going to take teamwork. Honey, go radio for help. Let them know how urgent this is. Man lost overboard, okay? We need help ASAP. Don’t give them any more information than that. We don’t want to sound like a bunch of raving lunatics. They may not take our call seriously.”

  “I’ll handle it. Ray, please…be careful, okay.”

  ~~~~

  Gripping tightly to the spear-gun, Ray kept his eyes glued to the deceptive waters before him, viewing the sea through entirely different eyes. His rose-colored glasses had been swept overboard along with Carl. The striking surface swathed in shimmering moonlight before him belied the horrors that lie within the mu
rky depths.

  “Uncle Ray,” Nick said, looking pale as he continued to pull and wind. “It’s not fighting me at all.”

  “You’re doing fine, son. Just keep at it.”

  It had taken just that one initial dive. It was making no further attempts to get away. None at all. It was tired. After Carl’s long struggle, it was bound to be.

  The thought of Carl made his stomach clench. Wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt, he repositioned the spear gun. It was close now. He could feel it.

  Justin was holding the light as steady as he could, aiming it at the point where the line disappeared into the waters, and occasionally skimming the black surface.

  Nick was winding, his breaths deep and measured, in through his nose and out through his mouth, pacing himself, a skill picked up from years of weight training.

  Ray stood tense, the spear-gun poised and ready, scanning the water for any signs of movement. Behind him, Garth Brooks was singing an upbeat song about never losing in love, a catchy tune accompanied by fiddles and steel guitars.

  It was inappropriate background music. They needed something darker, more sinister. Heavy metal, or something. Black Sabbath or Def Leppard, something to set the proper mood. Garth singing about ‘never being blue’ just wasn’t cutting it. Bad score choice. Really bad. Except this was no movie. This was happening. Carl’s prize catch was a giant purple lobster monstrosity with hands. How quickly the tables had turned. The fisherman had instantly become the trophy. It was—

  Justin gasped as a rippling marred the surface.

  Nick froze in mid-wind.

  Rene whimpered behind them.

  Justin’s light wavered.

  Ray took aim…and then hesitated as it broke the surface.

  It was a hand! Shit! Justin was right. It looked exactly like a human hand. How? How was it possible? He could understand some kind of freakish, mutant sea-creature surviving for centuries undetected at the bottom of the sea. He could buy that. But human hands? The human hand didn’t belong in the sea. It was strictly an earthbound appendage. Not one creature of the sea had anything even closely resembling the human hand. Not as far as he knew.

  He took aim…and then hesitated when he saw something glitter, the reflection of something metallic…and then it dawned on him. It was Carl’s Rolex.

  Something pale floated up beside the hand. A shirt. A white Polo shirt. And then a head bobbed to the surface. Ever so slowly, the body rolled and Carl’s face came into view, his eyes wide and vacant, his face set permanently in surprised shock. His hair was floating eerily about his ashen face. And then the face was lost in darkness as Justin threw his head over the railing to vomit.

  There came a faint thump on the side of the boat.

  “Justin, the light!” Ray whispered urgently, and Justin stopped in mid-heave to shine the light frantically down at the boat hull, searching for the source.

  “Honey,” Pam came up behind them. “I radioed and—”

  “Shh!” Ray held up his hand to silence her and pointed to the tape player. Garth was now singing something about ‘peaceful dreams’.

  Pam hurried over and clicked it off.

  The immediate silence was ear-shattering. Even Rene stopped her sniveling. She sat rigid in the lounge chair, her head cocked, listening.

  Justin scanned the waters for movement, and then moved the light back to Carl’s body.

  Pam gasped at the sight. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she attempted to muffle the moans.

  Carl’s arm was bloody. It was caught in the thick fishing line that was embedded in his skin, cutting into his flesh. “Nick,” Ray whispered, “pull out the rod and see if you can’t work the body closer to the side. Justin, keep the light on him. Honey, bring me the gaff.”

  Working together, they maneuvered the body toward the boat and then heaved it onto the deck.

  Choking back vomit, Nick wacked the fish line at Carl’s wrist until he was free. “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned and lurched to the railing.

  Ray stared numbly down at what remained of Carl. The fishing line had cut so deeply into his arm that it was nearly severed in several places. But the most disturbing discovery was that Carl’s other sneaker was missing now as well, along with his foot and half the leg that went with it, sheared clear off at mid-thigh.

  Justin came up beside him and stood peering down at Carl’s body. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and ran his hand through his hair. “What…what do we do now, Uncle Ray?”

  “We get the hell out of—”

  He froze as a thump sounded near the bow of the boat.

  Rene began to whimper.

  “Pam, get Rene to the cabin,” Ray whispered.

  “I’m not leaving you, Ray!”

  “Shh, listen.”

  More indiscernible noises came from the bow—a thump, a sliding sound. Ray felt his heart flutter.

  It was onboard!

  Motioning for Nick and Justin to stay back, he crept cautiously toward the bow, griping the spear-gun tightly in front of him. Would it be enough to bring this thing down? And just what was this thing? As he made his way slowly around the helm, he had the distinct impression that he was about to find out.

  It was glistening in the moonlight.

  It took his brain a few seconds to process what his eyes were relaying. It was bigger than he expected, at least ten feet long where it sat perched on the nose of the boat gazing out toward the water, and that didn’t include the tail that was curved backward nearly to its head. Situated thus, it evoked images of the old Viking ships with their carved wooden sea-maidens, their ample bosoms thrust outward and heads held high.

  There sat his sea-maiden. Not some phony wooden carving either. There sat the real McCoy. Justin hadn’t been too far off the mark, either. Except he’d failed to mention that its tail had a mass of thin tentacles trailing off the end, these now undulating above its head as if they were still under water, a slow, mesmerizing drifting. And he hadn’t mentioned the fact that it glowed either. Its opaque skin was being faintly illuminated from the inside, the colors pulsing gently. Though the primary color was a deep purple, there was a luminous swirling of other colors mixed in, blue and yellow, pink and green. The most concentrated colors were on the floating tentacles that were strobing stridently, like a neon sign drawing him in.

  Just a minor oversight, he thought oddly as he stood transfixed by the luminescent figurehead poised so gallantly before him. It was the most amazing creature he had ever seen.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Nick whispered as he sidled up to his right.

  Justin didn’t say a word, merely releasing a long, low moan as he appeared to his left.

  An extended eye-stalk craned backward, riveting a glossy black orb on the paralyzed trio.

  They instantly became animated again, crowding closer together as the thing scuttled like a crab, pivoting in place to face them, moving much too nimbly for a creature of its size.

  With an unsteady hand, Justin lifted the wobbling beam to its face, and both eyes recoiled from the path of the harsh light, the stalks retracting back into its head in a sea-creature squint. Its skin flared dark purple as it crouched low, and an angry hiss revealed a mouth unsettlingly shark-like, one perfectly capable of taking off a man’s leg.

  Ray’s brain was spinning. This thing had just been winched up from twenty thousand leagues under the sea. It should be lying like a blob, its bladder inflated, its organs being crushed by gravity, not looking like it was ready to pounce like a damned tiger.

  With sweaty, trembling hands, he aimed the spear gun down the hissing throat…

  He was prepared for it to leap, but not straight up like a gigantic flea.

  There was a shriek on either side of him as the boys dove for cover, and he pulled the trigger, even knowing his aim was off.

  In an instant he was thrown to his back, the force knocking the air from his lungs, and he did the first thing that came to mind when he saw gaping jaws diving for his face—wedged t
he spear gun in between.

  Piercing pain shot through his forearm as teeth clamped down, pain worthy of a blood-curdling scream. But with no air behind it, all that squeezed out was a thin whistling wheeze. Any opportunity to draw in breath was immediately squelched as a pair of cold, clammy hands clamped around his neck. While a thin screech leaked from his throat, he pummeled at the snout with his free arm, then went for the eyes, but these were quickly hoisted from harm’s way, the stalks stretching high.

  Justin had been right about the eyes. And about the hands now clamped around his throat, the rubbery fingers digging in. He was a good kid. Smart. He and his brother, both. Frank and Alicia had raised up a couple of decent young men. And they were both probably going to die this night right along with him.

  His brother’s face appeared, floating before his vision, gray and fuzzy and distorted…until a flash of movement drew his attention to the right—a knife arcing downward. The eye-stalks shifted and the strangling hands lifted and he gasped for air—just as Nick was sailing through it, catapulted by the powerful whip of a deadly tail. His cry trailed off into the distance where a splash sounded.

  A heated hissing ensued, and the beast dropped down, its belly crushing him to the deck and compressing the newly acquired air from his lungs. He felt something inside give way, heard the snapping of bones—a rib or two.

  He clamped onto the rubbery eye-stalk put so conveniently within his reach, attempting to wrench it from the creature’s head, but a hand encircled his wrist and ripped it away with ease.

  He struggled to hold on to the spear-gun lodged in its jaws, to hold on to consciousness, all the while wondering what it was that kept slapping him in the face. Something was dangling from its mouth, seaweed or something caught in its teeth. It entered his mind that it could be Carl’s flesh, and his stomach clenched. He hated the sound coming from his own throat, a cross between an undignified yodel and a strangled hiss. He couldn’t breathe. It was crushing the life from him, making the world spin. He couldn’t feel his fingers. The nerves were being severed. Warm blood was running down his arm, splattering on his face. He tasted liquid copper when it found its way between his clenched teeth.