Benson thought he saw one of them breach the surface. We stopped the boat and stared out into the water. It was eerie, an absolute flat calm. The silence was thick and we were grateful for the wind which rocked the boat as it drifted on the tide. We stared at the water for a while, half hoping that it was what we were looking for, half not. Something spooked the old man alright. You can see it in his eyes. As usual, only Stan seems unafraid. We might have stood there all day had he not started the engines again and set off on our way. We seem to be further out than usual. I asked Stan where we were headed and he mumbled something about deeper waters. That scares me. We all know that the deeper the water, the bigger these things are. Some people claim they grow to hundreds of feet in length. Some side effect of whatever the asteroid leaked into the water. Nobody I know has ever seen one that big. Stan said he saw fifty footer once, and that for me is plenty big enough. I did see a guy with a tooth once though. He claimed he cut it from a carcass somewhere near the coast (which by the way, if we were going by the pre asteroid map would be a good few miles inland). The guy seemed a little off, but as true as I sit here he had it. At the time I was traveling alone, and because I was curious, and asked him if I could see it. He took off his backpack and laid it on the floor, then untied the straps. The tooth was in several pieces in his bag. He said he had to break it to fit it all in. He laid it out on the floor there in the ash and pushed the pieces together like some kind of sick jigsaw puzzle. When he put it all together, there were no words that seemed right. All we could do was look at it. It was around three feet long, and around two and a half at its thickest point. The sides were smooth, but the guy said they had been serrated before he sanded them back to stop them cutting his bag open. I asked him how big the carcass was that it came from, and he gave me this look. To this day I still don’t know quite what that expression was.
Admiration.
Disbelief.
Fear.
Maybe a bit of all three. I pushed him again for an answer but he just shook his head and told me I wouldn’t believe him if he told me. That I didn’t like, as most people would be keen to share such a spectacular story. Not this guy though. He packed away his tooth and asked him if he wanted to join me. He asked where I was heading and I told him towards the coast. He shook his head and told me I was crazy to be going anywhere near the water. Without another word he threw his bag over his shoulder and walked away, heading inland. He never looked back, not once. I do sometimes wonder what happened to him. I wonder what he would think if he could see me now, in a boat heading further north than we have ever been before. We all know they are out there, those creatures. Down in the darkest, deepest depths. We can only hope that we can catch a smaller one and get back before they notice.
By the way, I tried talking to the kid, but whenever I try to get through to him he throws his guard up. It’s almost like if he doesn’t admit that he is scared, he won’t come to any harm. That’s not a bad outlook to have I suppose, but the downside is it will hit him really hard when we finally make contact. One thing I should point out which might be a sore subject when you come to read this. Just know that (hopefully) the world is a much better and less desperate time for you than it is for us now. Maybe for you, bait shops exist, as do other things to lure in our predators. For us, we have no such luxury, so we have to make use of what we have.
The key is to find a body that still has plenty of meat on them. They don’t seem to mind so much about the rot, as long as they are meaty. I know they were once people, but this isn’t a time where we can afford to be picky. Besides, we have to do something to draw them to us. Anyway, you can save your judgement. We do what we have to in order to survive. End of story.
God, I’m hungry. That’s the plus side of food being so scarce. We can’t afford to be picky. Believe me, I have wondered on more than once occasion if we are doing more harm than good by eating stuff that swims in these polluted seas, but then I also remind myself that we don’t really have much of a choice. It’s like the way a bear might chew through its own paw to escape a trap. Sometimes, you just have to do whatever you have to in order to survive. We are definitely going further out than usual. I hope Stan knows what he’s doing.
I intended to do this sooner, but my hands were shaking too badly. We saw…something. The right words for what it was are too hard to find right now. All I know is that it was bigger almost beyond my ability to comprehend. I’m not exaggerating here, when I tell you that it was at least two hundred feet, or at least the part of it that we could see was. It’s back arched of the water, and it was a mottled pinky brown. There was a half developed tentacle growing out of its back, squirming and thrashing as the misplaced appendage broke the surface of the water. It was as thick as the oak tree that used to be in our back yard when I was a kid, a memory that until I saw that hellish creature, I had completely forgotten about.
Stan is chasing it.
We all protested, but he screamed at us to sit quiet or he would throw us over board. He could do it too, he’s a big guy and more than a match for all of us. Besides, nobody else knows how to operate the boat, or get us back to land. For now, we are just helpless passengers.
The kid is crying. He’s trying to be quiet, but we can all hear it. The fact that nobody is trying to help him or offer comfort says a lot about the current mind-set of those of us who are left. We are living all of those clichés of old. It’s a dog eat dog world, only the strong survive etc. etc. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to help him. As I peek over the top of the pad as a write this, I can see him on the seat opposite me. Knees pulled up to his chin, head down as the boat crests the waves in pursuit of our creature. I think he would take that now, that comfort or reassurance. The simple fact is that I have none to give. I have my own problems, my own issues and my own fears, the most pressing of which is what we are going to do about our captain, who is now cackling and whistling as we chase this giant monster. Doesn’t he know that we can’t possibly hope to capture it? We aren’t experienced hunters or fishermen. Hell, we struggled to capture that fourteen foot eel last time. What the hell does he expect us to do if we catch up to this thing? I look at the others, and they meet my gaze. We are all thinking the same thing, and wondering if we should do something or just wait and let things play out. Either way, I feel sick and just want to get back to dry land. Maybe that guy I met with the tooth was right. We have no business being out here.
Toby is dead, even worse, I don’t think the rest of us are too far behind. I paused just after writing that and couldn’t quite believe it. The poor kid lost it, panicked and charged at Stan, demanding we return to dry land. They got into a fight, although that’s probably not the right word. Toby tried to attack Stan, and got the hell beaten out of him for his troubles. Stan dragged the kid out on deck and straddled him, hitting him over and over again. The sound was so loud, so raw that I will never forget it. He eventually stopped fighting, but Stan carried on anyway. None of us moved, none of us even tried to help.
I feel so guilty, but it still caused no reaction. Am I really that broken? Am I really so desensitised to this new world that I can’t even find a reaction to a grown man beating someone to death whilst we all watch?
Maybe this new earth is just what we deserve. We have become so barbaric that maybe death would have been too good for us.
We are under attack.
It keeps circling the boat.
We are all going to die out here.
Stan is quite mad. I’m sure of that now. We are really in a situation now. After he finished with Toby, Stan picked him up and tossed him over the side. He should have known how stupid that was. The fresh blood in the water must have been like a dinner bell, and that big thing we had been following turned its attention towards us. We started to panic, but Stan just laughed.
If I live through this, I will never, ever forget how that thing looked as it came towards us.
What the hell do we do now?
---
&
nbsp; Hahaha! You have to laugh. Not as dumb as they look these fish!!
---
Stan threw Benson over the side. He keeps looking at me and I think I might be next.
Creature still circling.
I feel like I should do something but I’m too afraid to move. I can feel his eyes on me, and when I glance up at them I can see the crazy. I don’t know if I’m more scared of him or this horrible thing that keeps circling us. Stan said as long as we keep feeding it, it should leave us alone, which is all well and good, but there is only me left. I get the feeling it’s going to come down to him or me, and I don’t think I can take him in a fair fight. Even if I could, what then?
This is all such a mess.
---
Clever girl!!!! Clever, clever girl!!!!!
---
For all the worrying, I didn’t even have to make the choice. Stan is gone, and now I’m alone. At least I am if you don’t count our circling friend out there. Some fishing trip hahahahaha!!!
I feel like Captain Ahab, only I’m way out of my depth. This has to end soon, so I suppose I should explain what happened to Stan.
I was trying to get him to return to land. There is no food or water on the boat, and it was this that I was trying to draw attention to, rather than the fact that he had killed two people since we came out here. He sat and listened, keeping those crazy eyes locked on me the entire time. He heard me out, then told me that I knew what had to happen. That they had to be fed to make sure they are kept strong. He said it was so they could breed and make sure there was enough food to go around for everyone. He stood up then, and I was sure it was my time.
That’s when the attack came.
The creature hit the boat from below. It could have easily, easily have smashed it into kindling, but it hit it underneath at the front, just hard enough to knock Stan over the side. He started to scream, and then laugh before the creature pulled him under.
I panicked then, because I was alone out there. I ran to the controls, not really knowing what I was doing but desperate enough to try. I can’t remember if I was laughing or screaming, but I was certainly making a racket. I managed to start the boat, and had angled back to shore when I felt another nudge from underneath, then a shudder as the boat stopped moving. The engines were on, but my forward momentum had stopped. I had no drive, and I think I know what happened. It seems these animals aren’t so dumb after all. It had hit the props, breaking them off before returning to that maddening circling and waiting. After all it was in no rush. Unlike me, it had eaten. Ha! The perpetual grey dusk seems to be mocking me as my skeletal shadow stretches out across the deck. Out there on the water, it still circles. Every now and again it will breach the surface, and I can see its milky eye as it watches me.
Well, let it watch.
I have decided to hunker down in here and wait for it to go away. I can be stubborn and patient if I want to, and this is one of those times where it will help me. Let it waste its energy out there if that’s what it wants to do. I’m going to stay in here and keep you all entertained.
---
Night came and went, and it’s still out there. I didn’t sleep much. Not because I didn’t want to, believe me I’m exhausted, but that thing out there keeps nudging the boat. Not hard enough to damage it, but just enough to keep me afraid and on edge.
I think it’s the fear that is making me so tired. The night was a never ending cycle of paranoia as I stared out of the window at the black waves. Even when it was too dark to see it, I could still hear it out there, breaching the surface and making its presence known.
Thoughts have turned to my own survival, and I really don’t know what to do. As I may have already mentioned, there is no food on board. Worse than that though, there is no WATER.
How ironic that the stuff surrounds me but it’s way too polluted to drink. Even if I could keep it down, it would kill me within hours. If I had some way to boil it, then maybe I would stand a chance, but I have nothing on me but this pad and pen I’m writing with. I suppose if things get desperate I can try to drink the ink haha!
In all seriousness though, I really am stuck here. It’s not like I can just call the coastguard and wait for help to arrive. It just nudged the boat again. I think it’s waiting for me, but I won’t give up just yet. I shall just have to try and ignore the hunger and keep my thoughts on writing. I’m going to go and search the boat again and see if there is anything I might have missed.
Spent the last two hours going over every inch of the fishing boat. The creature has gone for now, but just when I start to relax and thinking I’m safe, it nudges the bottom. I’m so tired. I really think I would feel better if it would just let me sleep. Either way, here is a list of exactly what I have on board here with me.
1 harpoon gun.
1 cigarette tin (Empty)
Ten feet of fishing net.
1 broken shard of mirror (I think it belonged to Toby)
1 putrid female torso (for bait)
1 pad (on which I’m writing)
1 pen (with which I am writing this!!)
That’s all. I don’t see anything there that can help me out of this situation, and I’m starting to get scared. It’s bad enough trying to get through the day as is, but stranded out here in such a confined space is hell. It’s almost a form of sensory deprivation. The only sound is the creaking of the boat as it drifts in the tide and my guts grumbling for some kind of sustenance.
Back at our camp, the others should have realised we are late back, not that they can do anything about it.
I’m so tired.
I might try to get my head down for a while.
--
Please, just let me sleep for a while. Just an hour is all I need.
--
Still no food or sleep. That fucking thing still keeps hitting to boat. I don’t think I can take it anymore. I NEED food. What I wouldn’t give for a nice cold glass of water. I think back to the days when we had water on tap and it feels like an extraordinary luxury. I don’t want to write anymore. I need to think. Every hour that passes saps my energy.
--
I think I heard my wife call to me in the night. I staggered out on deck, but I couldn’t see her. And why would I? She’s dead. Ha! The thing is still circling the boat. Why won’t it just leave me alone?
I’m so hungry.
Couldn’t help myself. It was meant for the fish but it has eaten recently and I haven’t ha! The smell made me gag, but I forced myself to keep it down. The trick was to pretend it wasn’t human. What have I become? Need to act now before it’s too late. I never expected things to end this way. My wife is calling to me from somewhere down in the water, and I just want to be with her. I’m so thirsty, and at least that soon will be at an end. I hope I can bring myself to swallow enough water before that thing out there gets me. The thought of feeling those teeth puncture my skin whilst I’m still alive is one that frightens me almost to the point of backing out. But if I’m going to do this, then I intend to do it my own way. I intend to tie the harpoon to my leg with the fishing line. It should be heavy enough to make sure I sink. This journal along with its collection of letters from strangers who were nothing more than ghosts of the past, I shall leave here. My voice shall be added to that of those who came before me. I shall leave it by the wheel of the boat. If by some miracle it remains afloat, if by some miracle you are reading this by the light of the sun, then I know at least that you are in a situation better than the world I am about to leave. I only hope that if you are reading this, those creatures died with us who remained on this planet, and the world you inhabit is safer, happier place.
It’s time to go now. It’s getting late and I want to do this before I lose my nerve. I hope this book finds you in good health. For me, it is time to go. Tell them if they ask where I am that I have gone fishing.
SCRATCHERS
[This one came about in the weird way things sometimes do. I was woken up early one morning by a strange sc
ratching sound. I thought it might have been a mouse or something, but it turned out it was just a bird up in the eaves. Either way, it sparked an idea which morphed into the story you are about to read. It was originally part of the individual kindle only stories in the Taste of fear series.}
I’M NOT CRAZY. That’s something I want to get straight right off the bat. I’m sure they will say otherwise of course when they get here – especially when they see the holes in the walls and the blood on the floor. But really, I’m not. I have already called the police, and I want to write this down before they get here. Consider it my confession if you want to. My name is Trenton Hughes, aged thirty-three. I’m a surveyor for a pretty big global firm. You have probably heard of them, but I’ll spare them the indignity of being associated with me after word of this gets out, although the chances of retaining any form of anonymity after this are probably already out of the window by now. No matter what you think when you (whoever you are) reads this, please know that I’m a good person, and have always tried to live a good life. There isn’t a good way to tell you about this other than to just come out and say it, even though it sounds as ridiculous to me as it will probably sound to you. Still, no time to stand on ceremony anymore so here goes.
Forgotten Fears Page 11