Merfolk

by Jeremy Bates

  Rad shivered at the memory and fell silent. She looked at Jacky’s face. Still alabaster, still serene, still…dead-looking. She felt her forehead. No fever; her skin was cool and clammy.

  What Rad wouldn’t give to be back on the Oannes, everything like it had been the previous night.

  To hell with mermaids. She wished they didn’t exist. She wished…

  Well, she wished Marty and Dr. Montero would emerge from the water right now. She would throw her arms around Marty’s neck and smother him with kisses and tell him that she loved him.

  That was something she’d never told him before, even though she’d felt it for some time now. She’d been too scared he wouldn’t feel the same way, too scared he thought she was just some crazy girl with a fetish for being strangled, fun to be around maybe, but someone he’d bring home to meet his parents? Someone with whom he saw a future? Someone more important to him than a sex buddy he called up every now and then?

  “My neighbor used to abuse me,” Rad said quietly, speaking more to Marty than to Jacky, even though he wasn’t there. “He would invite me into his house when my parents were out. He would give me chocolates. He would also make me play sick little games. I didn’t know they were sick then. I was too young. It wasn’t until I was twelve or thirteen that I realized them for what they were. I was disgusted and scared and never went to his house again. I still see him when I go back to visit my parents. He’s an old man now. He sits on his porch and watches me when I walk up the path to my parents’ front door. I want to yell at him, call him out…but I can’t even make eye contact. He scares me that much, even though I’m an adult now. It’s like I’ve developed a phobia of him or something. I’m just not myself. It’s so frustrating and infuriating because I’m not a weak person. But when I see him…I’m that little kid again, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t even tell anyone what he did. I can’t tell anyone because it’s Sri Lanka and women always cop the blame and people are going to say, ‘You didn’t say no, so it wasn’t really abuse, was it?’ But that’s bullshit. Because I didn’t know what sex was then or that what we were doing was sexual. And, well…it really fucked me up. But probably not in the way that you’d think. You’d think I’d hate men or something, but I don’t. It’s the opposite. I can’t be without a man, because when I am I feel restless and lonely and vulnerable. I understand women don’t need men to be safe. I understand women are stronger emotionally than men, and that dependence on men for security is so patriarchal. But, again, I can’t help it. Being around men is the only way I feel safe now. But you never wanted me around, did you, Marty? Or at least all the time. You wanted your space. And so I spent a lot of time with other men. Not to spite you. Not because I didn’t want to be with you. But because I needed to. I needed to feel safe. And this is something else you wouldn’t have known. The strangling, the submission and domination…I still don’t understand it exactly, but it lets me tap into the part of myself that needs to be healed, the part of myself that was abused. It’s cathartic because I’m allowing you to do it, I’m trusting you with my life. I trust you that much, Marty, and that makes me feel safe. Does that make sense?” She smiled affectionately. “I understand it makes you uncomfortable. You’re a sweetheart, an old-school sweetheart. And I know the strangling is what’s been holding back our relationship. I always wanted to tell you all this. But I just felt that it would be easier letting you believe I was some kinky freak with death fetishes rather than telling you I was abused…” She wiped a tear from her eye. “And now I can’t tell you the truth, can I? I’ll never be able to explain.”

  More tears came, hot, stinging, blurring her vision.

  Marty was gone.

  Dr. Montero, gone.

  Jacky…

  Rad glanced at her wristwatch. It was half past four in the afternoon.

  Two hours until dark.

  Chapter 36

  ELSA

  “Go away!” Elsa screamed at the merfolk. “I hate you! Go away, you bastards!”

  Their eerily human laughter continued.

  “Leave me alone!”

  “LEAVE ME ALONE.”

  Elsa stiffened. That had been her voice. It was dissonant and reverberating—almost electronically tinged—yet it had clearly been her voice. Only it hadn’t come from her.

  It came from the two merfolk.

  It’s the carbon dioxide, she thought. The buildup is making me hallucinate. Merfolk can’t speak, you goose.

  The merfolk were still there, in the pool, their glowing blue heads visible in the dark.

  They were silent.

  See! It’s all in my head. Thank God.

  Thank God? Carbon dioxide poisoning isn’t anything to thank God for, El. Sooner or later it’s going to lead to unconsciousness and then death.

  Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It would be peaceful. I’ll simply…fade away. That’s certainly a better death than drowning, or worse, being eaten alive…

  So is that it? Is that your decision? You’re giving up? Whatever happened to not going gentle into the good night? To raging against the dying of the light? You’re not a quitter. You’ve never been one. Yet now you’re simply going to throw in the towel?

  No. No, I’m not. Of course I’m not. I’m going to get into that water. And when the merfolk come for me, I’m going to fight tooth and nail, and I’m going to take at least one of the ghastly things to the grave with me.

  Then do it, now. No more putting it off.

  I can’t leave Marty…

  He’s not waking up! He’s as good as dead already! Stop making excuses!

  Elsa clicked on her light and zigzagged it across the still pool. The merfolk had disappeared below the surface.

  Or were they ever there? Had she imagined them just as she’d imagined the voice?

  She aimed the light at the rock next to Marty’s head, indirectly illuminating his face.

  “I need to go,” she told him. “I’ll bring back help. I won’t be long. You’ll be okay—”

  He moaned.

  “Marty!”

  His brow furrowed and his eyes moved beneath his eyelids a moment before he opened them. His pupils were dilated, and he seemed confused. He pushed himself onto his elbows. Blinking, he frowned at his wetsuit. He finally noticed her. “What…?” He cleared his throat. “Are we…?”

  “We’re in the lava tubes beneath Demon Island,” she explained quickly. It felt as though a year had passed since she’d spoken to him last. “Do you remember what happened?”

  Grimacing, he raised a hand to the back of his head.

  “You hit it on the rock.”

  His eyes widened. “The merfolk!”

  “It tried to kill you.”

  “It reached for my respirator…”

  “It was trying to kill you, Marty. Then it tried to kill me. You pulled me out of the water. You saved my life—”

  “I remember.” He looked around the small air pocket, assessing their dire predicament. “How long have we been here for?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of hours, at least.”

  “The air is still breathable.”

  “I figure we might have two days’ worth.” She exhaled heavily. “You don’t know how relieved I am that you’re awake, Marty. I didn’t know what I was going to do. What are we going to do?” She bit her lip in frustration. Marty regaining consciousness might be a comforting development, but it hadn’t changed anything: they were still trapped and in peril.

  Marty clenched his jaw. “I’m such a fool,” he muttered.

  Elsa frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I should have known. It was right there in front of my eyes. I refused to see it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Marty?”

  “I told you and everyone else that merfolk were likely mostly herbivorous.” He shook his head. “Did you see the merfolk’s teeth when it opened its mouth? They weren’t for gnawing down kelp and seaweed.”<
br />
  “You couldn’t have known that. Both merfolk skulls were missing their teeth—”

  “But I should have known. The sagittal crests meant they had powerful jaws—powerful jaws that were either needed to break down tough vegetation or to tear flesh from bone. I decided on the former explanation because it’s what I wanted to believe, because it reinforced my hypotheses that merfolk subsided on a largely plant-based diet similar to that of Great Apes and pre-fire hominins. But the evidence was pointing to the latter.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Both merfolk skulls that we’ve observed have been roughly the same size as a modern human’s.”

  “Why’s that significant?”

  “Because the size of an organism’s brain directly correlates with the amount and quality of energy it consumes. The human brain consumes twenty-five percent of our daily caloric intake. It wouldn’t have been possible for us to have evolved such a metabolically expensive organ eating a low-calorie, plant-based diet. Australopithecus had a cranial capacity roughly the size of a gorilla or chimpanzee. It was only when Homo erectus came onto the scene that brain sizes began increasing rapidly due to their mastery of fire and the advent of cooking.”

  “Better nutrition, more calories, bigger brains…”

  He nodded. “The fact the merfolk skulls have a braincase roughly the size of a modern human’s means they too have converted to a meat-rich diet.” He scowled. “So you see, it’s my fault we’re trapped here. If I hadn’t been so eager for the reality of merfolk to conform to my paradigm of them, if I hadn’t leapt to ad hoc conclusions—”

  “Stop it, Marty,” Elsa said sternly. “It was my decision to accompany you on this dive, my choice. And I probably would have made the same decision had you told me merfolk were man-eating monsters because, to be honest, I don’t think I ever bought into the idea that we would encounter one. So stop blaming yourself. It’s a waste of oxygen, something of which we have precious little. We need to figure a way out of the mess we’re in—”

  “LEAVE ME ALONE. LEAVE ME ALONE. LEAVE ME ALONE.”

  Elsa snapped her head toward the pool. She saw no merfolk at first. But then her light washed over two heads floating side by side. They had somehow turned off their bioluminescence, yet their mouths were once again open.

  “LEAVE ME ALONE. LEAVE ME ALONE. LEAVE ME ALONE.”

  One of the heads sank beneath the surface, followed by the second a moment later.

  Elsa looked at Marty, bewildered. “Tell me you heard that? Tell me I didn’t imagine that?”

  “They’re mimics,” he replied, grinning zealously. “Bloody hell, they’re mimics.”

  Chapter 37

  MARTY

  “Mimics?” Elsa repeated.

  “Absolutely remarkable,” Marty told her, trying to absorb the revelation, while at the same time berating himself for never advancing the hypothesis himself. “But it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Perfect sense?” She shook her head. “No. No, it doesn’t, Marty. Not to me. So please explain why merfolk speaking in my voice makes perfect sense to you.”

  Mimicry, Marty knew, is widespread in nature and crucial to the survival of many species. Often it’s an antipredator adaptation in which a harmless animal shares characteristics with a dangerous or aposematic one, deterring potential predators or competitors. Viceroy butterflies evolved to look like noxious and thus unpalatable monarch butterflies. Stick insects resemble the leaves and twigs on which they live. Nonvenomous snakes adopt the colors and patterns of venomous ones.

  Aggressive mimicry, on the other hand, takes a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing approach in which the opposite occurs: a dangerous animal shares characteristics with a harmless one in order to fool unsuspecting prey. Zone-tailed hawks look a lot like turkey vultures and soar amongst groups of the scavengers to sneak up on doves and lizards and other small animals undetected. Alligator snapping turtles wiggle their worm-like tongues to lure and catch fish. The European cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other species of birds to deceive the host parents into incubating the similar-looking eggs and rearing cuckoo chicks alongside their own.

  While visual mimicry is covered extensively in the literature of evolutionary biology, in recent years, acoustic mimicry has been gaining a lot of interest. Lyrebirds and mockingbirds can copy almost any sound they hear to both deter predators and attract prey. Margays imitate the call of infant monkeys to attract and ambush the curious adult primates. And most domestic cat owners likely don’t know their little fluffball is playing them as a dupe, having evolved a meow at the same frequency as an infant’s cry, which pulls at the heart strings and often gets them whatever they want.

  Using aquatic examples to appeal to Elsa’s sensibilities, he said, “The oceans are filled with copycat species that use mimicry to their advantage. I’m sure you’re familiar with the mimic octopus. To avoid predators, it impersonates the appearance and behaviors of a wide range of venomous or bad-tasting sea creatures. Contrary, to attract prey, the anglerfish uses its spiny protrusion and bioluminescent growth to lure and devour other small fish.”

  “And merfolk?” she replied dubiously. “They mimic other creatures to…?”

  Marty shrugged. “I don’t know if they would use some sort of defensive mimicry to fool larger predators in the oceans, but after hearing what we did, the way they imitated your voice, I’m quite positive they use aggressive mimicry for predation.”

  “You’re saying those two merfolk were imitating my voice in the hopes of luring me to the water’s edge?”

  “Or close enough to the water so they could strike with a spear. It sounds fantastical, doesn’t it? But there’s a historical precedence of merfolk-like creatures luring humans to their deaths. Look no further than Homer’s Odyssey. The sirens he writes about lured Odysseus’ sailors to their graves with seductive songs. Was that merely Greek folklore? Or was it based on some semblance of truth? Were the sirens in fact merfolk using not their songs—which would involve a comprehension and appreciation of music, which seems to be a uniquely human trait—but our songs, which they heard and stole from us?”

  Elsa began shaking her head, but Marty plowed on: “Look, this is all speculation. I haven’t thought it through. But damned if it’s not possible. And here’s something else: the ability to mimic prey would solve the riddle of how merfolk secured a meat-rich diet to evolve and sustain their large brains. They lack dorsal fins and flippers like dolphins and other marine mammals, which means they’re almost certainly not fast or agile swimmers. But if they could lure fish, squid, octopi, and other prey to them via acoustic mimicry…well, there you go! A constant, easy supply of protein.”

  Elsa was shaking her head again and said, “No, Marty. You might be right that merfolk use mimicry to lure prey to them. But I don’t think those two in the pool were trying to lure me to the water. I don’t think that was their intention.” She held his gaze. “They were laughing at me earlier—mimicking human laughter, I suppose, but laughing nonetheless. So I think…I think they’re intelligent, they know we’re trapped…and I think they were mocking us.”

  Chapter 38

  RAD

  The sun had set and the cavern was filled with inky black shadows. Little moonlight filtered through the rainforest canopy and skylight, and Rad could barely see a few meters in front of her. Thankfully she’d had the presence of mind earlier to scavenge about a dozen potato-sized rocks, which now sat in a pile next to her within easy reach. If the mermaid returned, its glowing blue head would serve as a warning and give her something to aim at. If it slithered up onto land to come after her, it would be slow and cumbersome, making pelting a stone in its face all the easier.

  Yet as reassuring as the projectiles were, they hardly guaranteed her safety, as the mermaid had a spear, which it could launch at her. What if she nodded off at some point during the night? She would likely wake up to a wood shaft protruding from her chest. Even if she remained vigilant until
morning, what then? She would have to sleep at some point. Which brought her thinking back to Pip. The French woman was still the only hope for Jacky. But where was she? On the Oannes, waiting for them to return? That seemed unlikely. They were several hours overdue. Pip would know something had gone wrong. Was she scouring the island for them then? Had she discovered the village? Was the chief leading her to the cavern right now?

  Rad pressed two fingers gently against Jacky’s neck, felt the faint pulse of her carotid artery, and was assaulted with more questions. Was it getting weaker? Was her body shutting down? How much time did she have until her shallow breathing ceased altogether? How would Rad even know if that happened other than by checking her pulse every few seconds? Jacky could fade away right before her without her knowledge. She would be dead and—

  And you could finally leave this hellhole. You could return to the ship. You could be back in Colombo by tomorrow…

  Rad banished the selfish thoughts, feeling small and ashamed of herself for entertaining them. Jacky would be watching over her if their positions were reversed. She wouldn’t be wishing her dead so she could high-tail it out of there.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, brushing a finger along Jacky’s jawline. Her skin was cold and clammy, almost rubbery. “I’m not going anywhere—”