by Weston Ochse
She stared at the spot as the tide danced around the corpses. The water had already washed away most of the offal, leaving what looked like flesh-colored balloons someone had stuck a pin into. She placed a trembling hand against her stomach. She thought she detected a ripple of movement, but it could have just been her nerves. She closed her eyes and blocked out the carnage on the beach. Not taking into account her ultimate fate, the idea of being full of life did not displease her.
The Dunpeal Trawler
S.T. Cartledge
Graham hauled his fish to market. He was there before dawn with the frost clinging to his rain jacket as the fog rolled in from the ocean's edge, grey water slapping on rocks. It would be hours before the first customers came through, but already he had worked up a sweat dragging crates and stacking fish. He couldn't feel the cold. He couldn't sleep, but he didn't want to wake Laura with his restlessness.
He passed an anchovy beneath the table to Hastur, his twelve-year-old Russian Blue. She took it gently from his fingers and pulled the meat precisely from its bones. Graham bent down and stroked her soft cheek, then continued laying out his fish for sale.
He sat with Hastur in his lap and watched the ripples in the dark ocean as a familiar ship rolled through the mist. It pulled up to port with its beautiful dark wood shining wet, and the silver lettering of its name floating there like a ghost: The Night Watchman.
It came here first some months ago, a trawler drifted in from foreign waters, its fishermen already calling Dunpeal home before they'd even docked. Graham watched them then as he watched them now, and he knew them only as bad omens for him. The fishermen of the Night Watchman were tall and silent, hairless and pale. Cloaked and perfumed in a musk which smelled like bleach and industrial glue, they always set sail near midnight and came back before dawn. They disappeared into town before the light could touch them.
The Night Watchmen had reserved a shaded corner of the markets as their own, with a right-angle forming out of the buildings they were backed up against and with a balcony set out directly above them. They had their own awning set up with thick canvas hanging down the side, cutting out all sunlight. If you didn't see them rolling up each week with their outnumbered barrels of fish, they blended into the walls so well you wouldn't think they were there at all.
They walked dead silent past Graham's stall, and he caught a good glimpse of their catch. The same damn fish they'd been catching for months, a silver-white creature that Graham had never seen in these oceans, looked like some deep-dwelling beast with giant yellow-white eyes like old cue balls. Fins tinged a burgundy red. Their flesh was blacker than anything he had seen before. And the teeth on those things...
His eyes tracked the men closely, took note of the way they walked, the slow trudge through the morning dark. He knew intimately their mannerisms, the way they talked with heads leaned in close and muttering quiet. Of what he heard, there were no loose words he could identify the language. It made no sense to him.
They sped up once they noticed Graham watching, but it didn't matter to him. He was always watching, always taking mental notes of their manner, their movement, their habits, their morning's catch. This morning was a repeat of all the others. Graham's stall was another disappointment at the markets. More time spent ruminating the mystery of these people.
Hastur hissed at the Night Watchmen as they shuffled back with the crates which held their fish no more. Graham stroked her coat and watched the men return the crates to their trawler. He wondered how they could have been here for mere months and yet they had miraculous fishing secrets that neither Graham, nor the other locals knew.
***
In the evening he went to bed with Laura, and again he couldn't sleep. His mind was troubled so much with the Night Watchmen that he hadn't truly slept in weeks. He didn't really want to sleep. He made like his restlessness was an excuse to move from the bedroom to the lounge, and from there he slipped real quiet into the cloudless Dunpeal night.
He walked with Hastur to the docks, where his skeleton crew were waiting for him. He boarded his boat, the Yellow Maiden, joining William and Phillip as they watched the Night Watchman pull out into open waters.
The Yellow Maiden was small, yet strong. It was quick and its motors were reasonably quiet. She moved slick and graceful through the dark water. She shone no lights as she followed the Night Watchman. Graham steered her, restless in his sleep-deprived state. The answers to his constant questions were out here in these waters, where this boat went, he would find the mystery fish and bring the secret to light. His body shivered with excitement. He could feel with each passing moment, the boat cutting through the water, there would be the truth and there would be the promise of many solid nights of sleep ahead.
If only he could find it.
From the dark water, in the clear, cloudless night, there came a thick cloud of fog rolling in, falling around the Night Watchman, and falling around the Yellow Maiden too. There were rocks rising up here with no lighthouse warning of them. William called out to Graham, the danger of the rocks. Phillip shone a light out into the water, but it was caught up in the fog. Graham slowed the boat right down, and then came to a halt. Floating there, bobbing in the gentle ocean, they let the Night Watchman sail away, its secrets still remaining just outside his reach.
The crew, fatigued, turned the boat around and headed back to the docks to return to their homes to sleep. They left Graham caressing Hastur, watching the ocean, and waiting for the Night Watchman to return with its nightly fill of fish. They would return here later in the morning when the fog was cleared and the Night Watchman was safe at the docks. They would have time to search the area without the fear of being watched by those mystery men with the air of violence wafting about them.
***
Graham marked out that portion of ocean on his map, forming a path to a patch of blue where they ran into the fog and rocks the night before. On the map there was nothing but clear water. The Yellow Maiden found her way back there, retracing her steps to the jagged rocks sticking out of the ocean. In the clear morning air the crew could see the rocks were vast and many. They circled around an unmapped island, which they surely should have noticed before, but maybe the rocks had kept people away until now.
William and Phillip saw the drive within Graham and knew it was pointless trying to convince him that the dangers weren't worth the rewards. The Yellow Maiden steered its way carefully around the rocks, unsure precisely where they were heading, but they knew there was nowhere else the Night Watchman could have gone.
The small fishing trawler curled its way towards the island, sailing through a natural archway formed out of rock and covered in moss. The archway brought them into a lagoon. There was a white sand beach curving around, with few trees surrounded by a steep wall of rock. The water was still, reflecting a mirror-image of the bright and healthy sky.
The crew released their nets and wondered how the Night Watchmen were the first to discover this place and reap its rewards. How could they catch the strange fish out of nowhere? How could they work only by the moonlight?
They cast their nets all morning and caught nothing. The water was a stunning blue, and so goddamn clear. They could see right through it to the bottom in some places, and there were no fish. Further out from the beach, the lagoon waters got real deep real fast, they couldn't see the bottom. They continued on into the afternoon and caught nothing.
Soon the darkness would set in and bring with it the fog and the Night Watchman. If they continued much longer, the midnight fishermen would catch them in their spot, and who knew what would happen then. There was no place to hide a boat inside the lagoon. There was no place near it amongst the rocks where it would be safe. There was nothing hidden here except the fish.
They came in to the docks as the evening was setting in and the Night Watchman was preparing to leave. Graham wanted to follow it again tonight, but his crew needed rest. He needed rest too, although he doubted that he would get it.
He circled around countless clues but found no answers.
***
Graham gave William and Phillip the next day off. They were overworked and underpaid, and while Graham struggled to make his own payments, there was still this taunting secret fishing spot haunting him. He couldn't let that tear his crew apart, but it was the sort of thing that would change his life, reinvent his failures as successes. If only he could find those fish.
He rented a small motor boat and took it out in the night-time. Again, he followed the Night Watchman. Again, he found himself moving through the fog on the water, trying to navigate the rocks on his own. The brightest torch he had was quickly swallowed up by the fog. He tried to follow his instincts, guiding loosely along the path, but he was unsure whether he should have been following the boat, or trying to recall the memories from the day before which guided them clear and safe into the lagoon.
The fog bred doubt. He knew where he was going. He had been there before. But if you cut out your own eyes, you can no longer see. Where you trusted so much on your sense of sight, you would find yourself doubting everything you thought you knew once the darkness set in.
Now, it seemed that everywhere he looked there was a jagged rock jutting out and blocking off his path. He couldn't remember if they were there before. It looked as though everything had changed, moved in the night.
The Night Watchman was gone somewhere into the lagoon, disappeared like a ghost ship, and Graham spent hours navigating from rock to rock to rock, getting nowhere, circling around all the ones he thought he'd passed before. He struggled to remember the way back home.
***
He knew the fish were there. He saw the Night Watchman disappear there with empty barrels and come back full of fish. The fish were there. They had to be. He had to search more thoroughly. He had to go deeper into the dark waters of the lagoon to find the fish hiding within.
This time he went in the day time, he went again alone in the small motor boat. This time he loaded up the boat with diving gear. One way or another, he would find those goddamn fish. He scratched Hastur's head and assured her that he would find the fish.
Again, by daylight, he navigated through the rocks with ease. He navigated his way into the lagoon with ease. He didn't know why in the night-time in the fog it became impossible. He pulled right up to the beach and laid out his things on the soft sand. Hastur curled up on a blanket in the sun while Graham changed into his diving gear.
He swam out into the cold water beneath the warm sun. Beneath the surface, through his mask he could see clearly through the water. The sand on the lagoon floor was so clear. There was nothing else here. He swam further from the beach, where the floor dropped into darkness. He lit a torch which penetrated part way through the water, but it wasn't quite enough to gauge the depth.
He dropped to the point where the lagoon floor plummeted. He grabbed the edge where the sand turned to rock and became a sheer cliff in the ocean. He held the torch tight and knew if he let go he would never see it again. He took a deep breath and plunged into the giant chasm.
At first he stayed close to the cliff face, holding on to it and using its grip to pull himself down. The cliff was wide as the beach, as the lagoon itself was wide. He wondered if the fish were hiding in pockets, little caves and crevices in the rock. He thought maybe they came out in the night time only to be caught in the Night Watchman's nets. He searched across the rock face for a hidden space like that but found nothing. It would take days, weeks, months to search the whole area section by section, he was hoping he would happen upon it by random chance, if they were hiding in a space like that at all.
He wasn't even that deep yet. The sun was clear in the light above, the water still a light blue, the bottom still invisible beyond his sight.
He could have spent hours down here. He went deeper and the water got darker, and it became harder to tell how much light was left in the day. He thought about coming up to check. He thought about what if he stayed down here too long and the Night Watchman came and the fishermen caught him in their nets? He would know the fish were here for sure. He would see where they came from, but he didn't like that risk very much.
He went deeper and found nothing in the cliff. It cut away in stages, the water coming in beneath the rock, beneath the island, and there the water turned black in the shadows. Beneath the cliff he couldn't see the sky, but the light shining didn't catch upon any fish either. There was still no sign of the bottom, and there was still no sign of life. Not even the smallest fish, or aquatic plant, or crustacean living here. Nothing.
He ventured out from the rock to explore the lagoon waters, to see if there was anything else besides the clear blue descending into nothing. He knew the fish were deeper. They had to be. They were hiding from the light. Perhaps they only came to the shallows at night. If the fish were hiding somewhere in the darkness of these waters, they were hiding deep and they were hiding well. Graham swam straight down, searching for that elusive ocean floor.
With each stroke and each kick, Graham could feel the pressure building against his body. His chest felt tight and his limbs felt heavy. His eyesight was plagued with the dark blue of waters the sun couldn't quite reach. In every direction there was that trap of not knowing which direction was which. He'd be lost if not for the bubbles rising with his every breath.
His head felt light and dizzy. There was nothing here. No fish. No movement. No life at all. As much as he wanted to dive deeper and search longer, he was already pushed beyond his limits. He slowly paddled upwards, still watching for movement in the water. From the surface, he couldn't believe the size of this place. Between the beach and the surface of the water, it seemed so small now, compared to what was beneath. It felt like he went hardly anywhere at all, and yet he had disappeared for so long.
Hastur was still curled up on her blanket on the beach. There weren't even any birds or insects for her to hunt. There was a strange silence here only washed through with the gentle sound of crashing waves outside.
Graham changed into a dry set of clothes and thought what could be happening here. Logic taught him that perhaps the Night Watchmen were so obsessed with the secrecy of their fish that they never really came to the lagoon at all. Perhaps they used the surrounding rocks as a disguise, to lose the tail of anyone who might be following, for anyone who might be after their secret fishing spot. As paranoid as Graham was about these people, he thought perhaps they were even more paranoid.
He wouldn't give up this easy though.
Graham and Hastur came back to town, and on the way Graham formulated his next plan. He couldn't sleep. These people were everywhere in his mind, gradually consuming every part of his waking life. Laura was a distant second. She watched from the distance of her front window, the man she married transforming into the shadow of a madman. She didn't see him, didn't talk with him, didn't get to hold his hands which smelled always of fish. Didn't get to kiss his scratchy, bearded cheek.
He didn't sleep at all. He didn't go back home because he knew it wouldn't do any good. He sat by the docks until dark, watching the Night Watchman and its crew going about their work. He had one more idea and he knew after this there would be no more. It was his connection back to Laura. It was the one thing that would bring this madness back to some form of functioning life. And he would have his goddamn fish.
***
Graham had watched the Night Watchmen for long enough to know their habits. He knew their mannerisms and their modus operandi. He watched them now and knew the drill. He waited for them to load up their supplies, and while they were checking the equipment, he ran as quiet as he could across the plank and disappeared below deck where the empty barrels were. Hastur ran silent in his shadow. Neither of them knew what would happen if someone found them. Graham made himself a little smaller and a little quieter, as thoughts began to creep into his head of what they might do if they found him here.
The boat began to move. He was trapped. Staring between the barrels
at the stairway to the deck, listening like hell for any small piece of information which might help him figure out this puzzle. He could picture the thick fog and the rocks in the dark water and the boat floating right through with ease. He could picture the captain navigating these waters with his eyes closed. He could smell the fish. Their scent was impregnated in the wood. So strong, he could almost taste them in the air. Hastur certainly could. She purred gently, leaning against Graham's lap.
He felt the shadows of the cavernous rock formation passing overhead as they entered the lagoon. Surely this was the place. The same place he dived before, now dark and thriving with fish. He wanted nothing more than to see it. To cast his own net and reel in those beauties for himself. This was everything he waited for, everything he needed.
The crew would all be working the nets right now. They would be focused solely on the water, Graham could go up top and watch from the shadows, and see first-hand for himself these goddamn fish in this goddamn lagoon. Hastur meowed softly at him like a warning not to go, but he couldn't come this far only to back out now. He could hear the fish slapping against the hull of the boat. An erratic rhythm which signalled to the few men on board that this was a school of many. He couldn't hear his own footsteps over the sound of drumming fish against wood. The crew wouldn't hear him coming either.
He climbed up top and out into the moonlight, the lagoon glistened, the dark water rippled with the silver of the night. He moved quick to squash himself flat against a wall covered by crates. There were slats wide enough to peep through, to watch the crew work.