Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans)

by Richard Chizmar

  From off in the distance, a loud female scream cut through the air, snapping Joe and Clay’s attention from the hermit crab still toddling at their feet. A girl who looked like she was in her late teens was running away from one of the recycling bin sand holding her hand. Blood streamed from between her fingers.

  “Wasn’t she just picking up cans?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah,” Clay sighed. “I guess these little guys are feeling a bit feisty this morning.

  “…or drunk,” Joe added.

  At that moment, a group of cans near them began to shift and roll over, exposing five more hermit crabs. After righting themselves onto all eight of their legs, the cluster of creatures began to head in the direction of the screaming girl. As Joe’s eyes followed their path, another group of cans emerged from the marsh. These moved with a bit more purpose, following a middle-aged housewife jogging in the other direction.

  A few yards away, a cocker spaniel puppy jumped and barked incessantly at a can cluster that had made its way towards the middle of the beach. After deciding that its attempts at intimidation weren’t working, the dog reached down and bit into an empty Bud Light Lime container. Before the animal’s teeth could puncture the can, the other ones swarmed on top of it. The dog’s horrified yelps were quickly overpowered by metal crunching over it.

  “Holy shit!” Clay shouted as he and Joe backed away.

  The two friends turned toward a wooden walkway that led back to the boardwalk. Before they could retreat, Clay yelped and back spun around. A claw extending from a Coors Light can was pinching his right heel. Three more cans scuttled toward his other foot, which he used to kick them all away. They tumbled a short distance and rolled to a stop. A freakishly long, oddly textured hermit crab emerged from the opening. The creature flailed its claws and legs in the air for a moment before righting itself along with the others. Then they all charged toward them.

  “Run!” Clay screamed.

  The two men scrambled toward the walkaway. Behind them, the pursuing cans clinked and clattered as they picked up speed. Joe soon realized that they wouldn’t make the boardwalk before being overtaken. It was time to make practical use out of his rarely worn running shoes. He spun around to face the oncoming creatures, then lifted his foot high into the air, and brought it down hard into the middle of the cans. Two of them instantly crunched flat, blue blood and yellow guts squirting out onto the sand. Another one caught the end of Joe’s heel, causing it to skid behind him and roll down the beach. The occupants of the other two cans, however, were undeterred. They leapt onto the top of his foot began to climbing his leg, pinching and biting the whole way.

  Joe cursed and swatted at the crabs, sending them flying through the air. They landed in a newly formed, large cluster of red and white cans. The creatures quickly regrouped and charged forward, sending Clay and Joe scurrying again towards the wooden walkway. This time, however, they had enough of a head start to reach it before their pursuers could close the distance. They climbed up on top of the railing, getting their feet off the ground just before clattering metal and pinchers could reach them. The red and white of cans, which Joe and Clay could now see were Budweisers, proceeded to ram themselves against the wooden post repeatedly with no effect.

  “Good thing we got chased by the domestics,” Joe said, motioning with his head down to the next station marker.

  A family of four had climbed on top of a nearby picnic table. They screamed in terror as cans of Newcastle and Guinness piled on top of each other in a much more intelligent (yet ultimately futile) attempt at reaching their prey. Unfortunately, the portly father panicked and lost his balance, tumbling forward towards a small ravine in the marsh below. The vast majority of the crabs that had been harassing the family immediately turned and scurried towards their fallen prey.

  “OVER HERE!” Clay yelled, frantically motioning for the father to come over where he and Joe were standing.

  The father quickly got to his feet and began climbing up the tiny hill with a speed that belied his ample girth. Behind him, cans were falling over each other into the ravine. A wave of aluminum crashed down under the tall grass, spilling and piling so fast that the crabs overtook the man’s left leg in a matter of seconds. The father screamed. Blood leaked through the shuddering metal as it crept up toward his waist.

  “Just keep moving!” Clay shouted. “We’ll pull you up!”

  The father grit his teeth and continued climbing towards Joe and Clay. The rest of the cans behind him and swarmed over the edge of ravine, moving with angry purpose as they closed in at a sickeningly rapid rate. The man reached up and grabbed Clay and Joe’s outstretched hands.

  “Pull!” Joe shouted.

  They tried to lift him up, but something pulled even hard in the other direction, so strong that it nearly dragged Joe and Clay down from the wooden railing. Below them, the cans had now swarmed and piled around the father’s other leg. He cried out as the crabs bit and pinched his pale, uncovered legs.

  “Keep pulling!” Clay shouted, struggling to maintain his balance on top of the rail.

  Joe wanted more than anything to try and save the man. It had started to become bleakly evident, however, that if they didn’t pull him up soon, they would have to let go or risk being dragged down themselves. But before he could determine when the appropriate time was to let the man to die, the decision was made for him. The father’s voice, which had been wailing like a human car alarm, went silent. At the same time, the rest of his body went completely limp. Clay and Joe nearly fell backwards as the man’s torso, now free of its bloodied and partially devoured lower half, flung up onto the railing.

  “SHIT!” Clay exclaimed.

  They immediately let go of the father’s upper half, watching in horror as it fell into the pulsating pile of cans below. The man’s glassy eyes stared lifelessly up at the sky while the rest of his body was swarmed and devoured.

  Back on the beach, cans of all different colors and beer brands moved across it in rapidly expanding pods. Each living creature they came in contact with, both dog and human alike, was quickly and violently overtaken. Their screams and yelps mixed with the sound of crunching aluminum, creating a lurid symphony of metallic anguish. The beautiful sunrise behind it all made the horrifying scene appear even more surreal.

  “What the hell do we do, man?” Joe asked. “We can’t just stand there and let this happen!”

  Clay stared blankly out at the beach and shook his head. “Well, unless you’ve got a weaponized trash picker or a military grade recycling program, I’m not sure there’s anything we can do. Give me a flame thrower and some melted butter, though, we might be in business.”

  Despite Clay’s attempt to make light of the situation, Joe could see that his friend’s eyes were wide with a mix of fear and shock. He was also pretty sure (and desperately hoped) that they didn’t know any of the beach goers being attacked by the can-shelled crabs, but watching people and animals die before their very eyes still easily ranked as the most awful thing he’d ever seen.

  The crabs’ initial victims were now in the process of being abandoned for fresher prey. The formerly thrashing humans and dogs had been replaced with lifeless, partially devoured corpses. Blood dotted the white sands as the ravenous creatures scuttled away, leaving red trails that crisscrossed from the marsh to the edge of the tide. Those who’d managed to avoid the first attack had attempted to escape to both areas with wildly varying degrees of success. Many had kept their heads enough to find high ground like Joe and Clay, including some of the dogs. Some had even found refuge by fleeing into the ocean. Those that simply ran straight into the marsh, however, were now disappearing under the tall grass. Their futile cries for help quickly morphed into screams before giving way to the sound of metal clinking together.

  Joe looked over at older woman barely maintaining her balance atop a signpost. “Why the hell are the hermit crabs going apeshit like this?”

  “You’d be pretty pissed off too if your hom
e was a light beer can that some douchebag couldn’t be bothered to throw away,” Clay said. “But I’m guessing their transformation into a homicidal species has something to do with what’s happening over there.”

  Joe looked where Clay was pointing. The crabs were abandoning the people on walkway railings and signs en mass to the middle of the beach. Cans crunched together in a gigantic, colorful metal cluster, which swirled like a vortex around a three foot tall lighting rock jutting out of the ground like tree branch. The crabs below Joe and Clay’s feet ceased snapping up at them at scurried off to join the others.

  “It looks like they’re all circling the same place,” Joe said. “Except for that pocket of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans wandering by themselves near the lighthouse.”

  “I guess man-eating hermit crabs can still be hipsters, too,” Clay said with a smirk.

  “Dude, this isn’t funny!” Joe shot back.

  “Neither is that,” Clay said.

  He pointed toward the mass of cans again, which had stopped swirling. They were now crackling with electric blue sparks. The lighting rocks around the beach all began to glow blue, acting has conduits for the electricity as it intermittently zapped over the entire the area. Seagulls that had been hovering overhead squawked in alarm and took off. Droplets of white feces plunked down onto the cans as they began to merge and fuse together into an unidentifiable mass. As the blue zaps increased in frequency, the aluminum bent and molded itself into the shape of a gigantic, unshelled hermit crab. The currents melded together in a final blue flash as metallic monstrosity groaned to life, pushing itself up on all eight legs so that it towered over the one and two story homes in the distance.

  “Holy shit,” Clay breathed.

  The giant crab’s claws, which both seemed to be made entirely of Corona Lite cans, gleamed in the sun as they flailed above its head. A pod of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Natural Lite cans scuttled over from the lighthouse to join it. The metal crab angrily swatted them aside, sending a shower of spinning aluminum and waving black legs through the air.

  “Well, at least we can all agree on that,” Joe said under his breath. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Clay followed him as he jumped off the railing onto the walkway. People were running past them toward the boardwalk, where curious onlookers had begun to wander forward to see why everyone was screaming. Upon seeing the giant metal crab, they began to scream, as well. The creature threw its head back and unleashed an ear shattering noise, like a lion’s roar mixed with a car crash.

  Joe and Clay spun around and joined the retreating masses, their feet slapping loudly on the wooden walkway leading from the beach. By the time they reached the boardwalk, the giant crab had begun to move forward, its metal legs grinding like nails on a chalkboard as it bore down on the various restaurants lining the other end of the marsh. It reached one with a crab on its sign and tore into the building, creating an explosion of wood and plaster.

  The creature emerged from the haze of debris into the parking lot on the other side. Glass crunched and car alarms blazed. People screamed and fled in all directions as the crab moved onto the boardwalk with alarming speed, snapping its silver metal claws at anything that moved. Joe watched in horror as an older man who’d been jogging with his headphones on was snatched up into the air.

  “C’mon!” Clay yelled, pulling Joe behind him.

  The old man’s screams rose above the car alarms and emergency sirens that were now wailing in the distance. The claw drew his flailing body towards a dark spot on the creature’s head where the mouth should be. The area was filled with overturned hermit crabs, all writhing and wriggling with excitement as their meal moved in. Seconds later, nothing was left of the old man but a bloody skeleton. The giant metal crab lifted the man’s remains and tossed them down towards an oncoming police car, causing it to swerve and crash into a street lamp Joe and Clay had just passed. The other police cruisers skidded to a stop. Officers poured out and took cover behind them while drawing their weapons. Gunshots clinked off the massive aluminum beast’s hide. It let loose with another angry roar that nearly caused Joe to fall over.

  Clay, who was a few feet ahead of him, turned to say something. His voice was immediately drowned out by a squad of helicopters thundering above them. He then pointed emphatically toward the Ben Sawyer Bridge, which would lead them off the island back to Mount Pleasant. Joe nodded and pushed himself to catch up. As they turned off Jasper Boulevard onto the bridge, Clay reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “There’s a lesson here, you know,” he shouted over the distant gunfire and screams. “Litter really does hurt everyone.”

  “Especially…when…it’s…drunk…and…pissed…off,” Joe added between breaths.

  “And running…sucks!”

  ON ULLINS BANK

  John Linwood Grant

  There should have been a new moon over us, but the cloud-cover was too heavy, charcoal smears above the pitch-black waters. All around lay the midnight of the North Sea, not a wave crest to colour that vast, empty sight.

  We were the only star in the darkness. Aboard the Gull, the searchlights glared, wardens of our filthy work. The skipper was already out of the wheelhouse, ready to pull his weight.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” he sang out as the winches smoked, and the trawl net rose, the dripping, weed-encrusted otter-boards showing above the flat sea.

  “High up!” said Henrikssen, grabbing one of the steel ropes.

  “High up!” The rest of us gave him an echo, and hauled.

  “Set back on him!” The skipper checked the winches, and the boy Charlie fed them oil from the tin. “And again. All together...”

  “Oh-ho!” we gave him, shoulders tight.

  We hoisted the cod-end on board, and flipped the catch into the gutting-hold as it came, kicking dogfish across the deck as we worked. Those rough-skinned buggers had a bite on them, though we saw few enough here.

  This was our second day in the new fishing ground, a bank the skipper had only told us of when we were at sea. Ullins Bank, he called it, but there was no mark on the charts. A day off the coast, yet the sea seemed empty. Working as a single-boater, we'd seen no-one apart from a Swedish yacht, far away.

  “We'll trawl after dark, lads. We don't want others finding this one, believe me.”

  It made no difference to us, so we fished the bank at night, only using the lights when we had to, and trying to keep them down.

  I slid into the open hold, where the catch was being gutted and crated. A hell of a catch it was as well, fat fish in their hundreds. I picked up my knife and began to work. I didn't need to feel my fingers, so the cold made no difference. They did their job, twenty years of memory locked in those sinews. Grab by the gills, slice and twist. Then into the crates with such as ice as we had left and roped down ready for the voyage to market.

  Charlie, who was between the crates and me, took the fish as Bill Cabett and I gutted them. He was fifteen years old and skinny, some cousin of the skipper's. Now and then, he stopped to lift up a bucket of entrails and chuck it over the side for the seabirds—though I'd not seen any recently. The dogfish would be happy enough, anyway.

  “Almost full, Mr Kell.” Charlie whistled. “Every crate.”

  “Pack them down, boy, and our fortune's made.”

  In truth, this was the best fishing we'd had all year—a month's catch in two days. Small steam-trawlers like our Gull couldn't compete with the fleets. We worked on. There must have been a stench to the hold, but after so long as a trawlerman I could no longer tell. Bacon burning on the stove below, yes, but fish?

  Bill paused, cod guts dripping down his smock.

  “We'll be wearing silk waistcoats, Harry my lad.” He grinned at me. “Never seen such catches.”

  “That's true enough.”

  “Luck at last, eh?”

  I held back on that one. Bad luck is what you notice; good luck is rare and has a price. That's what my father used to say, the gl
oomy bugger. I had a touch of my father in me, maybe, and I couldn't grin back.

  “How are your hands, Charlie?” We'd brought up turbot and cod, plus some haddock good enough for top price.

  “All right, Mr. Kell.”

  Which was probably a lie. Trawling was hard on a body. What made it harder here was the weed, or sponge, or whatever, that came up with the gear. It was Charlie's job to pluck it from the nets and the guide-ropes, though we helped him when we could. Kelp and bladder-wrack were common nearer the coast, but out here it was sea-chervil. Except the weed wasn't that, either.

  'Dead-man's fingers', Henrikssen called it. It was pale, gelatinous and slimy, in swollen lengths up to a foot long. He'd seen its kin off the Swedish coast, he said, though not quite the same, or in such quantities. No one liked the stuff, or the name. Tom Parvitt's brother had hands which looked like that when he washed up, long after the MacDonald foundered off Filey Brigg. The colour of a wet grave.

  This stuff came up in bucketfuls, stuck to the edges of the otter-boards, which held the trawl net open, clinging to the steel ropes, tangled in the rough netting itself. We all had a touch of rash on our hands and forearms, red welts, which itched, but nothing much to worry about; Charlie had the worst of it, even when we shared the cleaning of the gear.

  “Dogger Bank itch.” Bill Cabett wiped his fingers on his smock. “Not more'n that.”

  I had seen Dogger Bank itch. A nasty rash that soon went away with calamine lotion and a week or two off the nets. The men of the trawl fleet off the Dogger had it often. This was worse, though maybe it too would pass when we'd been ashore a while.

  On the way home, we off-loaded some of the catch to a Hull carrier, half full from one of the fleets. When they saw the fine, prime fish we had, they were happy for the extra weight.

  “No showing off now, lads,” said the skipper, as we turned for the coast. “Unload quiet when we get back, and keep the whooping down, else others will be on our tails.”