Before I continue, please tell me dear reader, are you superstitious? Do you believe that the dead can come back? I never did until tonight. There is a legend around these parts, which tells of a group of restless spirits who roam the oceans and seas in search of folk who are ready to die. The spirits are known as the Band of Souls, and are truly real. I know for I have seen their faces in the mist that surrounds me. They know of the wicked thing I did, God help me. They know that I murdered Jonathan while he slept and stole his food and water. When it was all gone, I tried eating his flesh to sustain me but I could not, even though I was so hungry.
I must hurry as they are waiting for me. I will seal this account in a bottle and fling it out of the window if they will let me. I trust God to deliver it to a deserving quarry.
Remember, death is not the end. Maybe it is but a gateway to a better place, though I think not. Perhaps it depends on how you choose to live your life. If so, then I am damned and deserve to burn in hell for all eternity. I am not fit to live among men any longer. Goodbye and good luck, dear reader.
Yours faithfully,
Henry Blake
The old man had been sitting at the table for over an hour, reading the letter over and over again. His entire body aching and stiff, all except for his legs, which were numb through lack of use. His doctor maintained that loss of feeling was common amongst senior citizens, poor circulation did it, but it was doubtful whether that was the correct diagnosis. The doctors garbled broken English and quirky air of indifference was infuriating, it was painfully obvious that he couldn't care less whether the old man lived or died.
At first, he had not believed the letter. It had to be some kind of elaborate hoax. It looked authentic enough but the years had made him wary and skeptical, he no longer took anything at face value. The entire episode was too surreal and far-fetched to say the least, and some aspects seemed to have been too contrived. Could the bottle really have been floating around aimlessly for all these years? And all that scare-monger nonsense about ghosts, life after death and lost souls. The old man didn't even believe in God. It had to be a joke.
He refused to believe, until he caught sight of a face peering in through the cabin window at him. He was alarmed at first, and who wouldn't be? He panicked. A detached sense of disbelief washing over him in waves while at the same time terror and revulsion consumed him.
He had hurried to the tiny cabin porthole, hoping against hope that his eyes had been deceiving him, that it was merely a trick of the light or something equally as mundane. Trembling with fear, he pressed his own contorted face against the thick glass. The sight that met his anxious gaze caused him to gasp harshly. He felt weak and nauseous, the shock threatening to overwhelm him. Outside, a thick mist had settled, coming from nowhere it seemed. In the swirling mist were dozens of disembodied human faces. Not heads exactly, just faces. They floated and danced in the air, bathed in ethereal light in much the same way as angels probably were.
Could they be angels?
As he watched, dumbstruck, they seemed to take turns in coming up to the glass as if to introduce themselves. Some of the faces leered at him offensively, some appeared to be laughing, some were frozen in masks of horror, and others simply stared blankly.
The old man thought he must be asleep and dreaming. He kept expecting to be woken up by the shrill cry of his alarm clock or the crunch of his boat floundering on rocks. These faces in the mist couldn't be real, yet there they were.
The comings and goings made the old man uneasy at first, he felt like the star attraction at a circus or a zoo. Then he started noticing how peaceful they looked, how gracefully they moved. In its own way, each pale face was the image of serene beauty. Suddenly, he was no longer afraid. The faces weren't exactly menacing, and didn't appear malevolent or malicious in any way. They looked happy enough. Or perhaps content would be a more fitting word.
In fact, after watching the strange but fascinating display for some time, the faces, and the uncomplicated world they seemed to inhabit seemed positively appealing. A timeless world without feeling, totally devoid of emotion of any kind. No pain, anger, frustration, fear or guilt (though it was slowly becoming obvious that the faces possessed some kind of playful intelligence).
Only one thing bothered him, and that thing had been weighing on his shoulders more than ever tonight, like an immovable lead weight pushing down on him. His wife's death. It had not been a result of natural causes, and had not been an accident either. He had murdered her. Sneaked up behind her one morning while she had been slowly making her way down the stairs and shoved her. Hard. So hard that he had almost tumbled down after her. Mercifully, she had died instantly. Poor, loyal, dependable Alice. He had no way of knowing that he would miss her so much until it was too late.
He tried telling himself it had been a mercy killing, that dear Alice was too old to enjoy her life anymore. But that was a lie. When the end came she had clung to life like one of the limpets on the bottom of his boat and he had been forced to bang her head on the wooden floor until she finally succumbed. Only then, did it occur to him that you leave this life the way you come in…kicking and screaming.
He had done it for the money. The insurance money. And her meager savings, of course. How stupid and amateurish he had been, he might have known that things wouldn't go according to plan, they seldom did. Life was like an un-plotted minefield. He should have done his homework. The damned insurance company refused to pay out pending an inquiry, and the bank followed suit, freezing their joint accounts. The money grabbing bastards.
The inquiry concluded that Alice's death had occurred under suspicious circumstances, and therefore the insurance company wasn't obliged to pay out. Miraculously, he was not considered a police suspect. They had interviewed him. Twice. And taken endless statements. But he was a good actor when he needed to be, and they seemed satisfied with his story. They said they were considering the possibility that an intruder had been responsible.
A single line from the letter kept repeating itself in his head, over and over again. "Perhaps it depends on how you choose to live your life".
Did the faces know about Alice? He thought maybe some of them did, he could see it in their cold, fish-like eyes. How much did they know, and where did it leave him? He could see no expression on their placid features. No harmful intent, no anger, nothing. Looking into their eyes was like staring deep into an infinitely black sky. It brought on a swimmy, faraway feeling, as if everything was just a tedious, insignificant game and not real at all.
How bad can it be? Could death and whatever follows really be worse than living life itself? Recently, the old man had been persecuted by grief and guilt. Each morning when he awoke from his light, troubled sleep, it was there. There was no escaping it. He had even considered ending it by his own hand a few times, but lacked the nerve. He couldn't go on like that. And here he was presented with a chance to go quietly and peacefully, without shame. An opportunity to make his peace with this world and the next.
For once, his out-of-control mental roller coaster slowed to a shuddering halt. The two imaginary voices that had struck up the earlier argument concerning the fate of the bottle seemed to grow weary of ravaging his overused mind, and they too fell silent. There was nothing left to say. For probably the first time in his long wretched life, the old man was sure of something. Absolutely positive, beyond any lingering doubts.
The faces seemed to be growing restless now, impatient. Their activity had increased tenfold; they no longer hung in the air but zoomed through it, almost frantically, without rhyme nor reason. They ducked, dived, and occasionally passed through one another. Their image of serenity had gone to be replaced by one of anxious longing. They were getting tired of waiting. Just like he was.
On trembling, aching legs, the old man made the short journey from the table to the cabin door. With one last painful pang of regret echoing around his empty heart he unlatched the door, swung it outwards, and embraced the faces with ope
n arms.
AFTERWARD: Extract From Local News Report
"... A search is underway for George Griffith, aged 76, after his fishing boat was found abandoned off the Welsh coast near Porthcawl early this morning. Griffith, who has a history of psychiatric problems, was wanted for further questioning by police investigating the murder of his late wife, Alice Griffith, who was found dead at their home ten days ago. More details to follow..."
A THOUSAND THICK AND TERRIBLE THINGS
David Mickolas
Let me tell you why I was afraid of the ocean.
Maybe afraid isn’t the right word. I was afraid of all the normal stuff as a little boy—the dark, strangers, getting lost. But the ocean, I was terrified.
The first day I saw them I was maybe six. I remember the clouds were low and almost green on the bottom. Like it was ready to pour. It didn’t matter though, Brigantine Beach was packed.
“Just…come on,” my dad would say, frustrated, dragging me toward the waves. “I’m not wasting my time trying to get you to go in,” he’d tell me, clamping down on my hand and pulling me along like a reluctant ragdoll.
I pointed to the foamy green water. “There’s, there’s things in there.…”
He laughed. “Of course there are. Lots a stuff in there, boy. The big things with teeth though, they’re far out there, so don’t worry about them.” He chuckled, thinking he was scaring me.
But I wasn’t afraid of fish, of crabs, or even sharks. This was something different.
I could see them. Close. Thick, wriggling, semi-transparent worm-like things that swam just under the surface, waiting to attach themselves to my father’s legs once he waded in. All down the shoreline, hundreds. Maybe more.
“So, let’s go.” My father pulled me toward the waves, and I erupted in a wail that could be heard the length of the beach. He turned his head away and let go of my hand, cursing as he held his ear, and my little feet padded across the sand to the safety of my Transformers towel.
He walked up a minute later. I played with my Hot Wheels cars in the sand hoping that he wouldn’t say anything. Of course, he did. He knelt down beside my towel, and I had to put my hand to my eyes to see him against the sun. He talked through clenched teeth.
“You ever pull a goddamn stunt like that again and I’ll whoop your ass in front of every goddamn person on this beach.” His angry silhouette pointed a finger at me.
“What is it, Donny?” My mom was too far away to hear. She leaned forward in her beach chair and held her hat to her head as the wind tried to take it away.
“Nothin’. Just talking to Will. Go back to your book.” He turned, spraying sand on me, and went back to the edge of the surf.
He hadn’t seen what I had. No one had. And everyone was out there, having fun, unaware, not realizing that a thousand thick and terrible things swam around them. Just looking for the right moment to latch on and suck.
* * *
I always dreaded those annual trips to the shore. I kept my distance from my dad during our vacations and I was constantly on edge, thinking that at any moment he would scoop me up and run over the sand with me screaming in his arms until he threw me into the surf and the snakes would curl around me and take me away forever.
* * *
And then one summer, I saw it happen. A couple of teenagers were throwing a tennis ball far out where the waves weren’t breaking yet. I don’t know what caused me to look, but I saw it nonetheless, a huge tendril, as thick as my father’s thigh, shot upward out of the water and back down on one of the teens, pushing him under and holding him there.
His friend was right next to him. But he hadn’t seen what I had. No one had. What looked to be ten to twelve feet of plump, writhing tentacle remained invisible to everyone, including the friend, who was being sprayed with its twisting and coiling. If anyone had seen those things when they entered the water, they would have run the other way.
I scrambled back on my towel, looking and pointing and saying something under my breath, while a hot ball of dread filled my stomach.
The boy’s friend was laughing and looking around to see where his buddy went, expecting him to pop up next to him somewhere. But he eventually stopped laughing, gave up waiting and went back in.
Ten minutes later, his dead friend was washed up by the waves, rolling over and over until the ocean deposited him at the edge of the foamy surf, limp and blue.
That’s when the screaming started.
I never went back to the ocean again until my mom was dying.
* * *
The exterior of Ocean Breeze Retirement Home was bleak and washed white by the salt air and constant wind from the sea. The gulls liked to circle it, caught in the updrafts from the horseshoe shape of the two-story gothic structure, maybe waiting to see the patients as they were wheeled out from time to time on sunnier days. Today wasn’t one of them.
Brigantine Station lighthouse was lit, though it was three in the afternoon. Its bright shaft cut through the fog and created brief, unnatural shadows of the building against the dunes that surrounded it.
I wheeled my mother outside, and though the skies were dark with low hanging clouds, getting away from the stuffiness and smell from the interior was a relief, even if it was a little chilly. She had a knitted shawl around her shoulders that she pulled tight.
“See Mom, not so bad.” She didn’t respond. She rarely did anymore.
The surf crashed just below us, beyond the cliff that the home sat on. It echoed up to us, mixed with the sounds of the circling gulls, and created a loneliness that is hard to explain. I wondered if my mother felt the same.
“Why did you take me outside?” she asked, slightly turning her head back to me as I wheeled her along the sand blown path.
“Just to get some fresh air Mom. That’s all. We’ll go back in a bit.”
“I’m not your mother.” I inhaled slightly. Here we go. I hated this part.
“I’m William, Mom, your son. You have two sons. Brian isn’t here, but he visits, too.”
She laughed in her wheelchair. “I don’t have any sons.” When she stopped chuckling she said, “Let me look at you.”
I wheeled her to a bench, and the wind blew her hair over her face. I turned her to me, locking the wheels, and sat on the cold wood. Her long bony fingers brushed the hair from her eyes and after a short moment of looking at me, her face changed. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
She looked at me for a long time, maybe a minute. I let her look. I let her come back. And then, with the smile still on her face she said, “Don’t go in the water, Will.” My blood froze inside of my stomach.
“What?” I asked. Her eyes began to lose focus. She looked through me now, out to the ocean.
“Don’t go into the water. Tell your brother. Don’t go in there. I’ve seen them. “Now her finger pointed at my face but I knew she wasn’t pointing at me. She was pointing out there, to the grey sea beyond the cliff. Her hair covered her face now. “It reached out and grabbed a surfer last month. I saw. From my room. I saw, Will. October second. At three-thirty in the afternoon. Miss Ayanna didn’t believe me but it did. I told her.”
Her brittle black hair spun wildly.
“Like snakes,” she said, “like long, watery snakes…”
I grabbed her hand and slowly returned it to her lap. “Mom. How long? How long have you been able to see them?”
“See what?” she said behind the mess of her hair. “What have you done with the remote? I can’t change the channel without the remote, you know that!”
* * *
I sat in a pizza shop on the deserted boardwalk, the only thing open besides one small souvenir shop that sold t-shirts and magnets and seashells and whatever type of paperback you wanted, as long as it was from the 1980s and had a faded cover. Nursing a weak coffee, I stared out to the cold beach below.
They were still there, the worms. I watched them float lazily in the surf, half-transparent, their long forms stretching far in
to the surf until they disappeared in the darkness. Were they all attached to something? A monstrous mountain of black fish flesh that sat submerged in the dark depths, letting its millions of tendrils seek out and find, graze and taste, clamp and take?
So she saw now, too. I wasn’t crazy. Or, maybe I just was as crazy as my mother.
Mom got dealt a bad hand. Both the Alzheimer’s and the cancer were taking her. But the cancer was faster. Eating away at her intestines. Just as these things did, but from the inside out. Which was worse? I didn’t know anymore.
“I’m just ready Will, that’s all,” she told me from her bed the week before. “It’s all so tiring. And it hurts, so bad sometimes. Not even the medicine helps. I know everyone here tries to take the pain away, but they can’t, not really. Because when it doesn’t hurt, I’m not here. I’m in a different place where you’re not, just like when I can’t remember. I don’t like feeling like that, I’d almost rather have the pain. And I know you’ll miss me, but when you leave there are nights when I just cry in my bed and I can’t take it Will and no one understands that, and I am just so ready, that’s all.”
The hospice doctors had told me another week, but they wouldn’t be surprised if it was that night.
“Do you want me to help you?”
“Yes, please. Help me.”
She disappeared after that, when she thought I was a cab driver, come to pick her up.
Because of the state my mother was in, I had unrestricted access to her during her final time. This was the best care facility her money could buy in this area, and she chose well. I helped her withdrawal from the trust fund her grandfather had left her, so many years ago. We were always somewhat well off, but it was always mom’s wish to live comfortably. Not beyond the means that my father and she provided, but comfortably. Once she was gone, the money would go where she wished. But I’d give it all to get my mother back.
My cell phone buzzed on the table. I flipped it over. A New Hampshire area code. Though I never typed in his name above the number, I knew immediately who it was.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 31