“A couple things that didn’t make sense,” Hoop continues. “One, where were the bodies? He couldn’t have jettisoned them, because if he opened that hatch the pressure would’ve turned him into a meat cloud in a blink. So…what happened to the others?” He clicks the playback one frame at a time until a white shape of some kind freezes at the very bottom of the image, within feet of the airlock. “And two…what’s that look like to you?”
I look at the playback, and a pair of wide eyes look right back, wreathed in the shadowy abyss like smoke. I look, and I feel a cold blade dragging up the length of my spine, sinking deep into the small of my back, short-circuiting my unsteady legs. In the darkness, in that impossible crushing realm, I see the hard sharp angles of a face rising up out of the depths. The face of a man so pale it’s impossible that he had ever seen the light of the world. A face locked in an eternal rictus, its lips peeled back over its teeth, its mouth stretched open mid scream. At first I think it’s the face of a dead man—a corpse or something, one of the drowned crewmen—but then it moves. The face twists in the blackness and opens and closes its mouth like the jaws of a dying cobra, like the wide feathery gills of a diseased fish, and it looks up toward the viewport, at the shadows writhing therein.
And the floodlights go out.
[End of excerpt]
* * *
Evidence item U-33 CN# 24-001387
Victor Rhodey Video Interview #62 [original video recording, pre transcription]
Master: not for distribution, under penalty of law.
August 20, 2023
Begin playback:
The recording cuts into focus and Edgerton can be seen sitting cross-legged in front of the thinner man, placing an 8x11 photograph at his feet. The photograph is of Francis Hoop pulling a blindfolded Victor Rhodey out of the Deepsea Meridian. Rhodey’s mouth in the photograph is agape, full of flesh and pouring blood. His hands and arms are also covered with sleeves of brown black fluids and viscera.
“Those men had children,” Edgerton breathes, tilting his head to meet Rhodey’s eyes.
The thinner man draws up and refuses to look at the photograph.
“Wives, and families,” he continues. “They have a right to know what happened, don’t they? Rhodey? So now’s your chance to do what’s right…the right thing, right now…and tell me what happened.”
Rhodey is silent, tucking his head between his pulled up knees.
“I mean, tell me it was self-defense,” Edgerton says, opening his hands. “Tell me there was only enough oxygen for three men for 60 hours. 120 hours for two men. 240 hours for one. Tell me there was no food or water…tell me that you had no hope of ever seeing the surface again, and that you were operating on some animal instinct to prolong your life as long as humanly possible…for Christ’s sake, tell me something!”
Edgerton calms himself and gently places a hand on the thinner man’s knee.
“Look, I’m not your judge,” Egerton says, starting over. “I’m not here to tell you what’s right or wrong. I can’t possibly presume to know what you went through. But I’m here to try and understand. I’m here for you to finally talk to somebody, to tell your side of it. Because if you don’t get it out, I can’t help you. And it’ll never heal. It’ll always be with you, festering inside like cancer.” He bends lower, gauging whether or not he’s getting through. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“He made me choose,” Rhodey whispers, his mouth pressed to his knees as though he would gnaw his own flesh.
“Who made you choose?” Edgerton asks, “Sayvor? Goodman? Did they do something to you—?”
“The pale man,” Rhodey says, lifting his face. “The man who came up out of the darkness.” He stares with a deep pain in his eyes. “He made me choose between my flesh… and theirs.” He stops and raises his hands helplessly, trying hard to keep from screaming. “What would you have done?”
Edgerton pulls back and shakes his head sadly, clenching his jaw. He stands and steps back toward the table, and leafs out another photograph from the file. He returns to his spot on the floor, and lays it down on top of the first photograph.
“Rhodey,” he says quietly. “I want you to listen, because it’s important and I think you need to hear it.”
He reaches forward and grasps the smaller man’s shoulders with both hands, pulling him gently up out of the safety of his knees.
“There was no pale man in the chasm,” He says softly, looking deep into his eyes, “No monster…no leviathan…no demon…just you, Rhodey.” He shrugs gently, “Just you and them, and the darkness.”
Rhodey welds his eyes shut, fighting his own breath, fighting the tears streaming over his lips. We see now that the second photograph is the last image recovered from the crew capsule’s SD card, captured right before the onboard batteries died. It’s hard to tell at first, but we can see the silhouettes of two arms reaching out of the darkness, digging their thumbs into the pulped bloody eye sockets of another man.
End Playback.
CANNED CRAB
Nick Nafpliotis
Late afternoon had always been Joe’s favorite time to walk the beach of Sullivan’s Island. The waves crashed against the shore with a serene fury while the sun was set low enough so that it didn’t feel oppressive. The day was done, the night had yet to arrive, and the tide was out just far enough to gently wash his unfashionable Auburn University crocs as they treaded across the white sand.
So when Joe’s friend Clay suggested that they go for a run on the beach, he’d initially been all for it. Exercise wasn’t really his thing, but the act of minimally burning a handful of calories (which his doctor had been hounding him to do for some time) seemed much more appealing when it wasn’t on a treadmill or trudging across the Ravanel Bridge. What Clay failed to mention until the day before, however, was that their jog would be taking place at the ungodly hour of 6:00 A.M. Joe was ready to back out right then and there, but the promise of being treated to a McDonald’s breakfast had been enough to make forgoing a couple hours of sleep a worthy sacrifice.
Around 2:00 AM that night, however, Joe’s salvation from early morning cardio appeared to arrive in the form a freakishly strong and quick storm. For five straight minutes, lightning flashed and thunder shook his entire apartment, easily waking him along with anyone else who didn’t happen to be dead. Torrential rainfall lashed against building’s walls and windows, soaking the surrounding area in a way that hadn’t been felt since Hurricane Gaston in 2004. Then as quickly as it started, the storm stopped, leaving a handful of fires from the lightning strikes and a small amount of flooding downtown. The eerie calm was soon broken by the sound of emergency vehicle sirens, but their incessant wailing was no match for Joe’s desire fall back asleep.
When his alarm went a few hours later, he turned on the news to see if there was any information about the storm. The local media seemed to be just as perplexed about its origins and intensity as he was. The storm cell had initially popped up over Gold Bug Island, swelling to near hurricane force intensity while managing to stay localized to the Mount Pleasant and Charleston areas. Five minutes later, it was gone. The system hadn’t disappeared or severely weakened in a short amount of time; it had completely disappeared off the radar all together.
Joe wasn’t a weather expert, but he’d lived in Charleston long enough to have watched his share of The Weather Channel during hurricane season. What happened last night was like nothing he’d seen before. Before he could spend much time thinking about it (or make his way back into bed for a quick snooze), Clay pulled up outside and began honking his car horn. Joe hastily threw on the clothes he normally played basketball in, charging out the door without brushing his teeth or shaving. By the time he’d gotten out the door and reached the door of Clay’s idling jeep, his friend was holding the horn down without pause or mercy.
“I have neighbors, you dumbass!” Joe hissed as he slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. “Why the hell
can’t you just go up and knock on the door like a normal person who isn’t an asshole?”
“Because I knew you’d pretend to still be asleep and make me wait outside for you,” Clay answered matter-of-factly. Joe glared at Clay for a moment before finally turning away and fastening his seatbelt. He was normally game for putting up with his friend’s abrasive personality, but that was after being awake for a few hours and fortified with at least two cups of coffee.
“It’s times like these that I wish more of my neighbors owned guns,” he muttered. “Let’s just get out there and get this over with so we can hit up the Golden Arches before work.”
“And don’t forget, it’s my treat,” Clay said, flashing that smarmy grin of his.
The two men rode in silence at first, save for the nerve shattering cacophony of the morning DJs chattering and cackling over Clay’s speakers. Joe waited for a couple minutes before reaching over and angrily switching the radio off. Clay started to protest, but thought better of it, allowing his friend to rest his head against the passenger side window in peace. “Did you hear about what happened last night?” Clay asked.
Joe kept his eyes closed, and his head resting against the window as he answered. “You mean the mini hurricane that kicked our asses in the middle of the night? I’m pretty sure everyone heard about it when the storm woke them up.”
“No, not that,” Clay said. “The crazy old lady who lives in that shack near the cove got arrested again.
Joe opened his eyes and sat up. The woman to whom Clay was referring was something of a local legend. No one knew her full name, although some long-time residents of the island claimed that her first name was ‘Roberta.’ Rumors about her being a witch had proliferated ever since he and Clay had been in grade school, with some people even claiming that they knew someone (or had a friend of a friend) who’d dared to drink one of the magical elixirs Roberta allegedly brewed inside her home. It was never the actual storyteller who’d experienced the old woman’s dark magic, of course. That, combined with the fact that Joe considered anything mystical in nature to be complete crap, meant that he simply classified her as crazy old lady.
There was absolutely no debate, however, about the ‘crazy’ part. In addition to the large black hood she constantly wore (even in the summer), Roberta was violently territorial of her property—which was a whole other oddity unto itself. Her house had somehow managed to defy all zoning laws, sitting almost directly on the beach, and isolated from any other neighboring structures. There was no clear property line delineating where her land actually was, but Roberta seemed to consider herself the guardian of any beach area that lay within sight of the cove. This often brought her into conflict with tourists and college students. When her dust ups with these ‘trespassers’ made the news, it was almost always due to her exhibiting some type of behavior that straddled the line between hilariously insane and genuinely terrifying.
A couple weeks ago, a bunch of frat boys had been drinking and acting like a bunch of idiots on the rocky beach landing right next to her shack. According to witnesses, Roberta came out and began screaming at them while pointing to the cans that they’d carelessly tossed next to her house. The frat brothers predictably reacted in ‘drunk bro’ fashion, laughing and refusing to do as they were asked. She responded by walking back inside and retuning with a Grim Reaper-worthy, full-length scythe. Roberta then proceeded to chase them, swinging the blade at the littering douchebags, who quickly went from macho catcalls to squealing like scared little children as they retreated to their oversized trucks and SUVs.
No one was hurt, but the incident still resulted in a visit from the Sullivan’s Island police department to arrest Roberta on assault charges. As the officers hauled her off, she’d screamed something about how ‘The Beach will avenge this!’ while pointing a boney finger at the pack of onlookers. Joe wasn’t sure how a ‘Crazy Roberta’ story could get much better than that, but he was now fully awake and eager to hear what his friend had to say.
“So Roberta was released from jail last night,” Clay began. “She went back to her home, got out a bunch of crazy witchcraft stuff, and began performing some type of ritual. People back on Jasper Boulevard called the police about weird blue flames popping up from the beach where her house is. When the police got there, Roberta had made all these symbols in the sand and lit fires everywhere.”
“That is pretty weird, but I don’t think it’s illegal to practice witchcraft as long as its in your own yard.” Joe said.
“I guess,” Clay responded. “But when rich old white people get spooked about something, they tend to get their way, especially around here. The police arrested her again. But get this: As the officers were hauling her off, lightning started coming down out of nowhere all over the beach. That’s when the freaky storm started last night.”
“Damn,” Joe exhaled. “That is pretty messed up. Was she trying to cast a spell or something when it happened?”
“Didn’t hear,” Clay said. “Police buddy of mine got it second hand. But he did say that the guys who went out there to arrest her were on the verge of shitting their pants when they got back to the station. According to them, the last thing Roberta yelled before they put her in the squad car was ‘The Beach’s reckoning will rise tomorrow!’ After that, she went dead silent for the rest of the night.”
“And now we’re headed there ourselves. Awesome,” Joe deadpanned. “Next time you decide to drive us into a mystical death trap, can we move it back to the afternoon, at least?”
“Oh please,” Clay said, rolling his eyes. “If magic were real, then the hex I cast on your fantasy football team last year would’ve worked. And besides, the closest she’s ever come to hurting anyone was slashing at some drunk frat boys who probably deserved it. She’s back in jail, anyway, so you’re not getting out of this.”
The pair parked at their usual station and made their way out to the beach, which was bustling with people and their dogs despite the early morning hour. Pets were allowed to be off leash until 10:00 AM, so humans and canines alike were frolicking everywhere, leaving tracks of feet and paws in the tide soaked sand. The sun’s golden rays helped create a gorgeously picturesque setting…if you were willing to ignore the trash and fulgurite encrusted rocks that littered the entire beach.
The intense lightning from the night before had managed to fuse portions of sand into what at first glance appeared to be glassy pieces of gnarled driftwood. While the phenomenon wasn’t at all uncommon, there were usually only a few of these rocks to be found after the most violent of storms. Now there were twisted rocks to be every few feet, indicating that the ground had been struck an alarming number of times. The formations were also much larger than usual, with some rivaling the size of the smaller dogs that ran in between them. The beach trash, on the other hand, was something that both residents and visitors of Sullivan’s Island had become all too familiar with.
“Look at that,” Joe said, motioning to a pile of empty Bud Light cans. “There’s a freaking trashcan two stations down. Is it really that hard for these fratholes to walk a few feet and throw their shit away?”
“How do you know the litter bugs were male?” Clay asked as the pair began to jog along the shoreline.
“No wine cooler bottles,” Joe panted. He was already starting to feel out of breath.
“See, this is what really chaps my ass,” Clay grumbled without a trace of the fatigue in his voice. “I get why the police might have a problem with a crazy woman lighting fires and screaming like banshee in the middle of the night, but what about the tools who are constantly tossing their empty beer cans everywhere? Seems like that would be a bigger priority.”
“Most people aren’t too eager…to call…the police on their own…spoiled kids,” Joe spit out through labored breaths.
As the two continued along the beach, the amount of cans littering the ground in front of them went from the expected handful to an alarming quantity. After half a mile, both men stopped an
d stared in bewilderment at the blanket of multi-colored aluminum that lay before them.
“What the hell?” Joe gasped. “There aren’t even this many cans on the beach during the weekend or after a holiday. Where did they all come from?”
Clay and Joe stepped gingerly around the discarded containers, noticing for the first time that many of them seemed actually embedded into the beach itself. Others were washed up from the steadily receding tide. Some of the cans looked like they’d been buried under shallow ocean water for years.
Other beach goers walked between the few pathways of sand that remained amongst the garbage. Some had started collecting the cans and taking them to nearby recycling bins, while others just stood and stared in perplexed bewilderment. The dogs, however, were fascinated by the alien objects that surrounded them, sniffing and barking at the cans with relentlessly. A few of the four legged beach goers seemed scared, darting back and forth in desperate pleas for their masters to follow them back towards the marsh.
“Hey, check that out,” Joe exclaimed.
Lying on the ground directly in front of them was Samuel Adams beer can. That was strange enough on its own—Sam Adams could normally only be found in bottles—but the can was also wobbling and shaking on its own. A few seconds later, eight spindly legs and two claws extended out of its top, tearing through the aluminum to accommodate the creature’s frame.
“Beer can hermit crabs,” Clay said. “The only cool thing about people throwing their shit all over the beach. Can blame the little guys for using whatever they can for shells.”
“Little?” Joe asked. “Dude, that thing’s the biggest damn hermit crab I’ve ever seen. Its body is practically ripping the can in half.”
“I’ve seen them even bigger than that when I lived in Florida.”
“Yeah, well, I’d prefer it if the ones around here stayed the size of a golf ball or smaller,” Joe said with a shudder. “Crawly things creep me out.”
“At least you’ll see this one coming,” Clay replied with a smirk.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 38