by M H Ryan
“I’m going to get close to it. There are more whale sharks left in that pod. They should distract that thing long enough for us to hit it and hit it hard. As soon as we’re in range, I want everything we’ve got thrown at that thing.”
I glanced at the shack, spotting Cass shaking inside of it.
“This is real?” Emma asked, hefting her spear in both her hands. “I mean, we could die doing this.”
“You haven’t lived until you’ve nearly died,” Sherri said, keeping her eyes on the monster in the water.
A few whale sharks were swimming around the creature now, showing their spiky back to it. The thing had another one of the sharks in its grip, but the others shot toward it. They struck the thing with the force of three whale sharks. The sheer weight of them forced the monster down into the water. The creature swung wildly and then snatched two more sharks. The one it had been holding got spit out and floated for a few seconds before sinking into the water.
“Benji, shoot for the eyes. The rest of you, throw those spears as hard as you can. It’s a blob of skin and guts. I think we’ll be able to stick it, but we need to penetrate to the organs it can’t live without. It’s translucent enough that I think we can aim for the heart, the brain… whatever you see that you can hit.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Sherri said, saluting.
Benji stood proud and held her bow high. “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
A few of the girls gave her confused looks, but I knew the reference and gave her a nod of acknowledgment.
A tentacle hit the water near us with a thunderous and splashed water over us. It dipped below the water and out of our reach. The sharks were giving us what we needed, a chance at getting close enough to the thing to hurt it. It had its tentacles full, trying to fend off the sharks around it.
The whale sharks were taking a heavy toll. The water around us was tinted red in their blood, but they kept fighting against it.
Another whale hit Anyck from below, pushing the thing out of the water a few feet. An arrow flew from Benji’s bow and struck the beast right in its big eye. It went into a spasm and dragged a tentacle across its face, trying to free the arrow from its eye.
“Nice shot, Benji,” I said.
I steered the boat, making sure we stayed to the left side of it. Sherri hurled a spear, and a moment later, they all launched their spears. The long, wooden spears flew with varying degrees of speed. The first spear hit the thing in the side and sunk deep into its body.
The thing reeled from the pain just as another barrage of spears and arrows flew at it. I grabbed the one next to me and searched for a vulnerable spot. I sent a thought to the whales below to push the thing up. They felt my urgency and pushed the monster higher out of the water.
Cass screamed from the shack, cowering in fear, and covered her face and ears with her hands.
“That things bigger than a pregnant hippo,” Emma said.
The Anyck’s body, nearly halfway out of the water now, was surrounded by a mess of flailing arms. It resembled an octopus, in a way, but was some monstrous version of one. A red-blackish blood spilled from the many spots we punctured on it. The translucent skin on its body made the spears visible even several feet into its body.
I spotted something near the middle of it, behind its large eyes—it looked like… the brain? A mass of red and pink blobs, with strings of pink shooting off in countless directions. I aimed and threw my spear. It struck the creature, sinking deep into its flesh, but missed the brain by a few feet.
“We’re out of spears,” Kara screamed, holding onto her ax.
She struggled, not wanting to throw it. Each one was countless hours of labor to create.
Before she could decide, a large tentacle went under our boat and came up from the other side, lifting the boat up foot on one side, tilting us toward it. The Anyck pulled us closer to its body. Its large beak became exposed as we got closer, and we all looked into the mouth of the creature. It was like looking into hell itself.
Chapter 19
Cass is shrieking hysterically now as the boat tilts toward the mouth of the creature.
We all hold onto the rope oh-shit handles on the boat. I touch my hip, confirming the presence of my knife.
“Everyone hang on,” I scream.
The boat creaked as the tentacle squeezed the craft. Luna tilted more as the tentacle lifted one side of the boat up higher. The mast tilted down low and hung just above the creature’s body.
I grabbed onto the rail and pulled myself along until I got to the tentacle gripping us. Benji had moved as well, and we ended up on either side of it. I swung my knife up and sliced through the tip of the tentacle hanging over the railing.
The chunk I cut off slid down the boat and hit the railing next to Sherri. I looked down and realized how far the thing was tilting Luna now. It wanted to eat us, and the craft was just a delivery method for it, like a taco shell.
Its massive beak snapped and made a sucking noise and then vomited out some water. It had hundreds of smaller tentacles around its beak, waiting for something to get close and be pulled in.
I reached to the sharks but they were still pushing the thing up and scraping the underside of the thing with their spikey backs. They didn’t have much in the way of offense. We were running out of options and time.
The mast hit the thing on the head as it pulled closer, and I had a terrible idea.
“Benji,” I said, as she hung onto the railing next to me.
I wanted to say so much to her—to all of them—but we didn’t have the time. I rushed to her and kissed her on the lips. She tensed for a moment and then kissed me back.
“I’m going to kill this thing,” I said. “Tell the girls how much everyone means to me.”
With that, I slid down the deck and yelled to Kara, “Toss me that ax.”
She tossed it, handle down, and I caught it as my feet hit the mast. I kneeled and grabbed the ladder with my free hand. I ran along the mast, climbing up and over the water and the tentacles. Its mouth was just below me but I kept moving fast. It wouldn’t be long before the boat reached that thing of nightmares.
I got to the crow’s nest and was just a couple feet over its head. If I had a spear, I could stab the creature right through the top until I hit the brain. Yet, all I had was an ax in my hand and a knife at my hip.
I glanced back as I saw the ship getting close to the end. The girls were all staring at me, looking horrified. I turned back to the monster and jumped. I heard the screams from them but I didn’t have a choice. I had to do something drastic to end this thing.
Ax held high, I swung down with both hands as I landed on the thing. My ax sunk into its skin, and I pulled it back, making a long slice along the head. It reeked of rancid fish, and red blood oozed from the slice I made. The brain had to be ten feet below where I was, and I could feel the creature reacting to me being on top of it.
I gave a last burst of thought to the few whale sharks still fighting to keep these things many arms busy, urging them to give one last push.
A tentacle swung over my head and I ducked, narrowly missing getting hit. It struck the mast, and grabbed hold of it.
That mast won’t last long. I swayed as the thing moved. It felt like standing on a mountain of rotten, fish-flavored Jell-O.
Shoving the ax into my shorts, I pulled out my knife. “And I thought they smelled bad on the outside,” I whispered, thinking of Benji.
I took a deep breath and jumped, headfirst, into the slit.
The cold mist from outside was replaced with the cool but gelatinous feeling of the inside of the creature. I gagged and almost gave up my lunch and my breath. Its muscles tensed around me. It knew I was inside it.
I cut deeper into it as I felt the creature moving frantically. I opened my eyes, the salty liquid making them burn. But I spotted the brain, just a few feet away. I cut through the thing, letting gravity take me down. I heard its heart pounding in the distance and
the slurping and crunching sound of its body and beak moving. I had a terrifying thought that it had reached the boat and was currently chomping it to bits.
Another foot down, and I felt a thick rope of nerves trailing from what I suspected was the brain. I gave it a vicious hack with the ax and felt the thing collapse on one side, a few tentacles falling to the ocean surface, never to move again.
I peeked another glance as I struggled not to breathe and saw the gray matter right in front of me. Closing my eyes, I stabbed and sliced, feeling the firm but gelatinous mass give way under my assault. In a few seconds, I felt the whole creature relax into a kind of slump.
The weight of its muscles and organs pushed against me, trying to press the air out of my struggling lungs. I flailed, trying to orient myself and then felt as if the elevator was going down. I pushed hard, trying to find the path I came in on. I ached for a breath, and then saw the top of the creature and pulled my head out.
Water rushed across my face and knew I couldn’t take a breath. Looking up, I spotted the white bellies of the shark carcasses and the bottom of the boat, which thankfully looked intact. With one final burst of energy, I freed myself from the creature.
The surface had to be fifty feet away, and I was already starting to see speckles in my vision, which began to narrow as unconsciousness tried to grab me. I screamed out, but only a few bubbles escaped my mouth as I swam.
I wasn’t going to make it. I was the person that was going to die.
A whale shark swam under me, and I recognized her gentle spirit—it was the mother whale shark. She settled her massive body under me and then pushed me up. I convulsed on her back, struggling to keep consciousness. My head felt as if it was going to explode, and the urge to breath overwhelmed me to the point that I considered death a welcome end to the pain.
Then I breached the surface.
I sucked in a breath, inhaling drops of water with it, which caused me to go into a coughing fit.
The girls were screaming at me, but I couldn’t move, consumed with the task of trying to breathe between coughs. Finally, I got to my hands and knees, still coughing and gasping for more air. The whale shark’s skin under my hands was rough like sandpaper but also had a softness to it just below the thick skin. The mother shark had placed me between rows of spikes on her back.
I reached out to the shark, and I realized that we had a great connection, so clear that I knew its thoughts as if they’d been spoken in my ear. It wanted me to live, and even though the approaching boat scared her, I knew she was willing to risk her life for me. This motherly connection to something so wild and different made me want to cry. It loved me, in a way, and it saved my life.
It saved all our lives.
“Jack!” Sherri screamed from the railing.
I sent a thought of gratitude to the whale shark, and it responded with happiness to know I was alive.
Why were we so connected? I touched its rough skin and realized that was the difference—we had physical contact.
“Get him!” Kara yelled as the boat bumped into the whale shark.
Many hands were on me, and with their help, I climbed over the rail and fell to the deck of the boat.
Chapter 20
The girls were all over me. Some were mad, while others were just crying. They were all shocked to see me alive. It wasn’t very often you dove inside a sea monster and lived to tell the tale. Most of what I did became a blur in my memory. I knew I’d jumped and sliced my way through it, and the amazing whale shark had rescued me from the depths, but many of the details escaped me.
Cass had come out of the shack visibly shaking and didn’t say a word all the way home. In fact, most of the girls were quiet. We’d come close to dying that time. Too close. At least the ocean had mercy on us, and the rest of the trip home had been smooth.
We sailed Luna right up onto the beach of our home island and dropped anchor.
I’d never felt so happy to be back on the familiar white sand, to have something firm under my feet and nothing that wanted to kill me. The girls jumped onto the dry land as well, with Kara laying on it, pressing her face against the white powder.
The sun didn’t have much sky left before it made its descent, and I knew we all were just physically and emotionally exhausted.
“This is your guy’s home?” Emma asked, staring at the house we built.
Looking up at it brought a smile to my face. “Yeah, we all helped build it.”
“Some more than others,” Aubrey said with a side-eyed glance at Cass.
I yawned and tried to rub the fatigue from my face. That didn’t work, so I gave myself a few slaps.
“Okay, we have new supplies and a new member of our group. I say we unload the lifeboat and Luna. Benji and Eliza, can you guys make us dinner while the rest of us unload?”
“Yeah, I can mix in the avocados, and I bet those chickens have eggs. Oh my God, the chickens!” Benji said as she rushed to the forest edge, where we’d placed the chicken coop.
Eliza was right on her heels. The three chickens came walking and clucking out from the forest, mildly interested, as much as a chicken can be, that the humans had made a return. Moshe strutted out, looking proud as she meowed.
“Good job, Moshe,” I said as she stretched on the sand, shaking some of the sleep off.
Eliza cooed at the chickens, picking each one up and giving it a hug.
Moshe jumped onto the boat and started investigating our load of supplies.
“I want to help cook,” Cass said, eyeing the heavy lifting that was coming up on the raft.
“Sure, okay,” Eliza said.
I sighed and headed to the boat.
It didn’t take us long to unloaded most of the boat, even the stuff in the shack. Whatever was left could wait until tomorrow. By the end, we’d all found a new level of weariness. It was as if that sea monster had siphoned our energy, our will. I thought of the black beak and the many tentacles surrounding it and shuddered.
Benji found that the three chickens had produced five eggs. It wasn’t enough for our expanding group, but she said she was going to make them stretch by mixing in some of the greens and fruits we had on hand, topping it off with some cracked pepper. I couldn’t wait to eat something. I had this bad flavor in my mouth I couldn’t get rid of.
We collected some firewood and set up a cozy fire near our house.
After I started the fire and settled in, Emma stood next to me and stared into my eyes.
“How did you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“You made those whale sharks do things.”
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t easy to explain something you had limited knowledge and experience of yourself.
“Since arriving on these islands, many of us have been given gifts.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that before, but to be honest, I didn’t believe it. What do you do? What gifts do you all have?”
I talked with her for the next ten minutes as the sun set. I tried to explain the feelings we each had on the gift we each held. She nodded and asked questions. Some of the other girls also chimed in with how it was for them, and eventually, Emma seemed to accept it, even if she still didn’t understand it.
“Is there anything you feel that seems unusual or new?” I asked.
“Well, this whole place is as queer as a three dollar bill,” Emma said. “But I can’t say that I’ve felt anything out of the ordinary as of yet.”
“We’re not sure if it’s everyone,” I said. “Cass hasn’t felt anything either.”
Cass looked over to us as she sat on her stump, waiting for the dinner she was supposed to be helping make.
“Well, I hope it’s something cool, like flying or some shit,” Emma said and laughed. “What you did today, Jack, was something incredible. When I saw that monster grab our boat like a pit bull with a chew toy, I was sure the devil was punching our cards.”
“Yeah, same,” Kara said. “Can I tell you al
l how good it feels to be back on this island?” She scooped up some sand and let it run out from her hand.
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned it a few times,” Aubrey said, with a laugh. “But it feels good. I can’t even imagine sleeping under a roof tonight.” She gazed longingly up at the house.
“You guys haven’t even used it yet?” Emma asked.
“Nope, little miss Eliza over here had us running across the ocean to find you. Said it was pretty much life or death for you,” Aubrey said.
“And we were thrilled to do it,” Sherri added. “I mean, that was beyond crazy what happened today. Where else in the world can we find these adventures?” She smiled and hugged herself in delight.
I wanted to be excited and thrilled to be back on the island, but I think the mental connections I had to make with the whales had wiped me out. All I really wanted to do was sleep in that house.
I swayed, and Emma grabbed my arm to steady me. She yanked back her hand, looking at me as if I was made of fire.
“Thanks,” I said. “Just got a little dizzy.”
“Yeah, when I touched you, I felt it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’ve never touched you before, right?” Emma asked.
I went through our encounters, and I couldn’t recall a time when we actually had physical contact. “I don’t think so.”
“Can I touch you again?” Emma asked.
“Sure,” I said.
She held out her hands, and I took them in mine. Her hands were rough and full of calluses, probably from swinging a bat her whole life. From the look of those arms, she was a weightlifter as well.
I gazed into her hazel eyes, the firelight danced in them and I got lost in her gaze. She studied me, taking long, slow breaths, with an unblinking stare. It felt like she was staring into my soul. The moment made me lose eye contact with her. As I looked away, I paused on her breasts, admiring them for a mere moment.
She let my hands go and smiled.
“I have a gift, Jack. I didn’t feel the girls when I touched them, but I can feel you. I can hear you.”