by Micah Castle
The boat rose and lowered, rose and lowered, it creaked with the waves of the sea. I could hear the water slosh against the sides, hear the ship moan as it drifted. There was another noise, one uncommon in the dead of night, a slapping sound. As if someone had hit the ocean’s surface with an open palm, it happened again, and again. The sound rose and filled the atmosphere, as if millions of fish were flying up into the air and crashing back down into the water. The sound transitioned into the sound of wood being hit, and something wet being ripped from the hard boards. I thought perhaps that the legends of the Kraken were true, and the monstrosity had risen, and its giant tentacles were coiling around the White Sea. When I turned my head and peered over the deck, I saw something, not just one, but dozens of things that were far worse.
VIII
They were coming over the top of the bow and the top deck. They poured out from the water in droves. Silvery white, with large, egg-shaped, pale blue eyes; slits for noses, mouths long, gaping, that dragged across the wooden floor, filled with rows upon rows of jagged teeth that looked more like a bottomless bucket filled with broken glass than anything else. Arms, thin and ghastly, crawling across the deck, carrying themselves forward, for they possessed no legs, only curvy tails, like that of a tadpole.
Neither the Captain or the crew moved or spoke, as if nothing occurred. The sea-demons slid across the deck, over the black circle that illuminated as they passed, and up the mainmast. Tears dampened the white cloth in my mouth, urine soaked my trousers, and my jaw burned fiercely as I clamped down on the gag, holding back the screams lodged in my throat. For God's sake! They slapped the mast, the sound of suction cups once again echoing as they climbed, then they were on the poor man.
It all became a blur of white and milky moonlight atop the mast. At least a dozen of them had pulled themselves over the man, covering him completely. Blood dripped and drizzled down the wooden pole, as the sounds of shattering glass filled the air. I faintly heard the man’s muffled screams, but my own filled my head. As if time stood still, the crew and the Captain watched the man be devoured. At last, if by some miracle, it ended. The sounds of crunching glass stopped.
Suddenly, each sea-demon appeared to melt together. Their aqueous forms plummeted from the top of the mast, crashed to the deck, and flooded the inside of the painted circle. The black marks were holes and the white fluid drained into them. Once the sea-demons were gone, and all the milky water drained into the unknown, I looked up with wide eyes to find nothing remained of the crewman, not even his clothes.
The Captain took a step forward to the outer rim of the circle, knelt, and placed his hand into the hole. He scooped out a handful of what was once the sea-demons and sipped from it. It dribbled and fell from his chin, but as he drank, the markings carved into his flesh began to ebb, ripple, pulsate with whiteness. They rose out of his skin, gradually fading from black to the Captain's skin tone, then they were gone. He straightened himself, his back to everyone, and wiped his hand on his naked thigh.
The men released the gag and threw me forward. I staggered to my feet and faced the Captain.
“What the hell was that! What were those things? What is the meaning of any of this!”
He faced me, his blue eyes now paler, and said. “This sea needs sacrifice for passing. To go to the Island, the fee must be paid. I feed them; they soothe me. Soon, I will land ashore and it will all be over. Es wird herrlich sein…”
My mind was not fazed by what maddening events occurred, as if holding them back until a later time. I strode up to the Captain, only standing a few inches away, glaring.
“What about those men you tie up on the mast?” I screamed. “What about these men here, are they going to be sacrificed to your sea-demons as well! What about me? What is to happen with me?” Those were the only questions I asked, despite the many others raging in my mind. What was the bottomless holes painted on the floor? How were the carvings in the Captain's flesh healed so quickly? The sea-demons, where did they come from? What were they? There were so many more, but I was far too angry to ask any more.
I turned to the crew, shouting. “Why do you not fight back? Why do you allow this to happen?” Their wide, terror-filled eyes and tightly closed lips were the only answer I received.
Before I could turn to the Captain again, his hand gripped my throat and he raised me off my feet. His ghostly blue eyes, slowly transitioning back to a piercing azure, locked onto mine. Through gritted teeth, he spat.
“This is my ship, these are my men, you are my property on my ship. I will do what I want, the crew will do what I will, on my ship. You might have been special where you come from, but not here, Müll. I will do what I must to get to the Island. This sea demands a fee, and I pay.”
He turned, still gripping my throat, and held me over one of the endless holes. I felt the tips of my toes dangle over nothingness. Another flood of urine ran down my leg.
“I could drop you. You would live with them, forever.” He threw me over the hole. I slammed into the mainmast and dropped to the floor. “But you would be useless to me down there.
“Men!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Mop the deck, raise the sail and jib, then return to your bunks!” Captain Ritcher strode off into his cabin once his orders were given. Silently I sat inside the circle and two men came out with mops and hot soapy water and began to scrub the deck. I was too exhausted to ponder how the queer holes were drawn or, as I watched, removed so easily.
Once the circle, waxy water, and blood were removed, I returned to my cabin. A sharp pain ejected up my spine with every step, my throat burned, and the taste of blood coated my entire mouth. Everything was in a haze.
When I slowly got into my bed, resting on my side, I closed my eyes and instantly fell asleep. Unfortunately, the thoughts of the sea-demons, the melting of their bodies, the man being devoured, the things my mind held at bay came back tenfold in my dreams. I woke the following day to find my clothes soaked in sweat, and my face covered in dried tears.
IX
I laid there for some time, staring aimlessly at the ceiling. What was I to do? Trapped on a vessel with a madman for a Captain, and demons looming underwater. I could not escape and return to America. We had to be at least a hundred miles away from any sort of land, and if I so dared to swim, what would become of me if one of those sea-creatures got a hold of me?
Another idea bloomed in my mind. What if I were to light the ship aflame? No, that would not work either. Be adrift on sea with no ship, everyone, not just myself, would perish under the unrelenting sun. Also, the sea-demons would drag us down to God knows where.
The last idea came after a few moments. What if I were to kill Captain Ritcher? Kill him, take his boat, and get back to the States. He is clearly mad, and although he has done things that are unnatural and unexplainable, he is still human. But how could it be done? I own no firearms, no weaponry, not even a Swiss army knife like so many possess inland.
There must be a firearm on board. The vessel originally was planned to be used for seal hunting, so some of the crewmen must have brought weaponry of some kind.
I had never even come close to killing an animal, let alone another person. The idea of watching a man's life drain out of existence provided an eerie feeling. I felt tingly and numb at the same time, and my heart rapidly beat against my chest. It needed to be done, not just for my life, but for the entire crew. But was I the man to do it? Did I have the ability, or even the drive, to kill a man? I was a writer of no fame, born and bred in California, raised in a middle-class home by well off parents. My hands knew no hardship, nor had my mind.
Uncertain still, I hesitantly came to the decision to go along with this ludicrous plan. Captain Ritcher had to be murdered.
X
The following morning when I went to leave my cabin, to speak to some of the crew about any potential firearms they may possess, I found that my door had been locked. No matter how much I pushed or pulled, it
would not give. Fear sprang up from my spine and settled over my mind. Was I locked in? Did the Captain know of my plan before even I did? What was I going to do in the cabin, with no food, water, or even a toilet? Pounding on the door, I shouted for help, for anyone to open the door!
“Ah, you want out? You will be released once we have arrived at the Island. You will be the only one who will see the Island. Armer, armer, mensch…” He said through the door, then walked away, the sound of his footsteps slowly fading into the distance.
I screamed at the wooden barrier. It was not only that I was trapped, but it was that I was trapped and had no food or water! The irony of this situation briefly lingered in my mind.
After some time, I returned to my bed, my knuckles and hands bruised, throbbing with dull pain, and my throat hoarse. I examined the room to find anything that could help. There was the wash bucket; if worse came to worst, I could drink the soapy, murky water. There were the bare, wooden walls and, except for the bed I sat on, the window, bolted through its steel outer rim into the wood, was impossible to open.
When I opened my bag to write down my will, for I was certain I was going to die, I discovered that I still had three snack bars left. I jumped at them, forgetting my will, tore open their foil covering, and devoured them. I saved one and a half, for a later time. Eventually, I laid down and drifted off. At least until night fell, when the screams began.
XI
How can I properly describe the feeling of utter madness? Sitting in that room, day-in-day-out, without any real food, or clean water, or place to do my business. Every night I would be in cold sweats, crying, gripping my head, covered in shaggy oily hair, in hopes that it would not split when it began. It being the screams the crew released as they were devoured by those sea-demons. Although it only took fifteen minutes — I have counted several times, second by second — it felt like an eternity.
No one spoke to me, no one even seemed to breathe in the direction of my cabin. After the eleventh day, the room seemed to swell up. It became overwhelmingly musty, damp, and unbearably hot. The smell of urine and fecal matter in the once wash bucket blanketed everything. My skin cracked, bled, scabbed over. A short beard hung from my jaw, glistening with sweat and grease when the sun pierced the gloom of the room each morning.
When the thirteenth day came, I had forced myself to drink my own urine. With no soapy water left, and survival being forefront in my mind, it had to be done. The taste of warm, salty, oddly tangy liquid coated my mouth, my throat, all the way down into my stomach. It seemed, even now, the taste never left my tongue.
On the fifteenth day, the door swung open. Daylight blared into the room, stinging my red-rimmed eyes. Moving my arm away from my vision, looking up once I grew accustomed to the abundance of light, I saw the Captain standing in the doorway. I stumbled to my feet from the corner of the room, heard my knees crack, felt the brittle bones that were my legs ache.
“We have arrived, Müll.”
He turned and left. As he did so, I realized he was nude, not even his undergarment was on. The carved symbols were only faint gray on his back, and I suspected that no more men remained on the ship.
XII
Hunger and thirst were like demons raging inside me, devouring every part of my mind, urging me to find any kind of nourishment. I did not even bother to look beyond a few feet when I left my room. The sun felt blazingly hot on my pale, dry flesh, and without the ceiling to lessen the brightness, my eyes burned as well. I did not care, hardly had noticed, when I lurched forward from the deck to the stairwell, then up into the kitchen.
The cook was gone, but some of his food remained. A cold stew sat atop the unlit stove, which I poured into my mouth, most splashing down my chin and over my stained shirt and trousers. I found two boxes of biscuits in the cabinets above the stove, and a small package of dark chocolate; a bunch of grounded up ingredients, like barley, onion, and sweet pepper, and a half empty bottle of rum. Ignoring the ingredients, I devoured the biscuits, consumed the chocolate, and chugged the rum until the glass bottle was empty.
In another cabinet, nailed to the rear wall, I found a large canister of purified water. I nearly vomited as I tried to gulp down the entirety of the canister, but I held the rancid tasting liquid down. Once the water had been nearly depleted and all the cabinets were checked and emptied, I fell onto my backside, reclined against the wall and fell into a lull.
A dull, drunken haze enveloped the world, the colors of the dirtied metal kitchen blurred. I glanced around, stopping when the wooden block near the far side of the room came into view. Poking out were the handles of knives; long, whetted, sharpened blades. I stumbled to my feet, moved to the block, and wrenched a blade at random. It was a fillet knife; thin, long, arching, so razor-sharp that I believed if I wanted to, I could split a strand of hair in two.
I found a belt with a hilt in one of the larger cabinets underneath the counter, fumbled with it until it was secured to my waist, and like a sword, shoved the knife into the hilt.
The rest of my venture I can hardly remember. I did not know where Captain Ritcher went, likely jumped ship for his Island, but after a few hours of resting, I still went about my duties with caution. I shaved, cut my hair, washed, and clothed myself in new clothes found near the crew’s bunks.
I laid out on deck as the sun set, feeling the openness of the world, the fresh, evening air filling my lungs, and the sound of the ocean lapping against the back of the ship. The shade of the sky turned from an azure to a soft darkened violet, and everything surrounding me seemed to breathe new life into my body. I drifted off quickly.
XIII
It was nearing noon by the time I awoke, the sky above a vast, soft blue, not a cloud in sight. I got to my feet, stretched, and thoroughly searched the crew’s bunks. I found some food and water under their hard mattresses and behind their pillows. I ate some of it, still quite full from the day before, then kept the rest for later. Then, I returned to the deck. Passed the ship laid an island, the Island, the place that the Captain murdered dozens of men to get to.
It looked like a normal island, the shore composed from rich sand, lush greenery coming up from the soil further in, and tall palm trees. I did not understand how the sea-demons were tied to this place, or Ritcher; nonetheless, I made my way off the ship, jumping into the clear sea, and swimming inland.
The sand meshed to my feet, squeezing up in between my toes. There were footprints ahead, and I followed them. The shore ended abruptly a couple yards inland, where a rise of dirt took its place. Beyond were thickets, bushes, and overgrown knee-high grass, and further ahead stood a congested forest of palm trees. I came to, after exiting the forest, an opening in the underbrush.
Like a cave made from large green leaves, the leaves were plastered around the rounded rim of the opening. The sun trickling in through the canopy did not pierce the gloom inside, and when I shouted for the Captain, my words seemed to be silenced as they passed the cave's threshold. There were two options for me: to continue forth, find the Captain, and see why so many men were killed just to get here, or return to the ship, let all those men's deaths be in vain, and figure out how to steer the White Sea back to land.
The second choice, unfortunately, required a fee. For all I knew, the sea-demons still lie in wait for their offering, even to return. Even if I did possess a body of men, I would not dare sacrifice them to get back to the States…
With fear trickling down my back, and my hands and feet numbly cold, I concluded the only thing to do was to continue into the cave.
XIV
As I stepped across the threshold, I was immediately met with a blow to the back of the head. The world reeled around me, and my legs gave out, sending me crashing to the ground. My vision became circled by blackness even darker than the gloom, but before it encompassed everything, against what little light came in from the outside, I saw the Captain step out from the shadows, a thick piece of driftwood gripped in hi
s hand.
Flashes of consciousness ebbed for an unknown length of time. I felt the cold stone ground move against my back. In the next minute, I felt nothing; in another, I could only feel the talon-like grip around my ankles while I was being dragged. I wanted to scream out, I wanted to try to grab the floor and break away, I wanted so desperately to be free, to return to my home in California and never step foot outside again. But my body had become far too weak to move, and soon, I drifted off.
When I came to again, I stayed above the surface. No longer being dragged, or moved at all, I groped the floor, feeling the smooth stone. Gloom still engulfed the world, so much so I could not even see my hand an inch or two away.
“You can get up now. You got legs.”
A flash of light flooded the darkness, stinging my eyes. Once the sharp pained ceased, I looked over my chest to see Ritcher, knelt over a lit torch.
“You can try to run, ja, but you will not get far.”
The fiery glow pulsed over his nude body. His broad muscular back, his bulging arms, his trunk-like legs. The carvings had returned and had not been mended for some time. They were darker than charcoal and seemed to tighten like rope through his flesh down to bone. When he straightened himself, he moved slowly and rigidly, the flexibility of his body no longer what it was. I swear I saw him wince with pain, but it could have been just the queer shadows casted over his face.