Proriger
I don’t much care if you believe what I am about to say. I am 94 years old. I did my four in the Marines, earned my Purple Heart at Incheon, and I was a fireman for forty-two years after. When I was seven years old, I lost my father to a cave-in at the Nittany Mine, and when I was seventy I lost the love of my life to ovarian cancer. I’m a great-grandfather five times over, and I don’t care what you think of what I am about to tell you. But I have to tell you.
I am in the hospital right now with a broken hip. Slipped and fell while I was decorating the Christmas tree with my grandkids. The doc says it’s clotting in all the wrong places. I know the score. When I lie awake at night, trying to ignore the pain, I can hear the angels playing their harps just beyond the door. They’re close about me now, even as I write this. Very close. I sure hope they are angels, anyway. I’ve done my best to square my life to His word, after that night…
That’s part of why I’m telling this story now. To make things right, at least in one small way. Because my friends didn’t drown on the night of October 7, 1949, despite what the Coast Guard and the State Police said, and I know exactly where their bodies are.
There were six of us- Jack Ingersoll, Shirley Meigs, Joan Brinton, Cliff Berwind, Josie McKean, and myself. Jack and Shirley were going steady; Joan and Cliff weren’t yet, but they had the hots for each other and we were all thinking they’d formalize it real soon. And Josie… Josie was my girl.
We were young, just starting our senior year at Cardinal Dougherty High School, and we all decided on a whim to go down to Cape May for the weekend. We decided that on Thursday, after class got out and we were all hanging around in the parking lot by Jack’s blue Hudson Commodore before heading home. That conversation went something like this-
“I wanna go out this weekend.” That was Shirley. It was kind of a dumb statement- we went out every weekend- but it got the conversation rolling about where exactly we would go.
“Where to?” Joan asked, looking up from the book she’d been perusing. She was the bookworm of our group; every free period she lingered in the library, reading… well, anything. Today’s book was called Wonder Creatures Of The Sea.
Shirley looked down at the book- it was open to a big, two-page spread of a 19th century engraving depicting a whale being harpooned by men in boats who circled it like so many staghounds nipping at the legs of an elk. A jet of water spouted from the whale’s blowhole as it floundered on the surface, looking up from the pages with one big, sad eye as if beseeching the reader to help.
Shirley smirked. We loved it when she did that- the guys, I mean- because it made her look like a Hollywood actress, like a blend of Ava Gardner and Myrna Loy. Just a perfect mixture of seductive and coy. “How about the beach?”
“The beach.” Joan repeated skeptically. “In October.”
“Yeah, why not?” Shirley said, “We could all drive down to Cape May for the weekend. The weather’s nice and my parents have a place down there. It’d be such a shame not to visit one more time before winter.”
“I think it’s a swell idea,” Jack agreed. Every friend group has its own kind of unelected leader who everyone else gravitates around- Jack was ours. He was the tallest and fittest among us, captain of the football team, and the only one with a car. He tapped the blue hood of the Commodore appreciatively. “I’ll drive.”
“The water’s going to be freezing though,” Josie warned. As if anticipating the chilliness, she clutched her arms close to her chest and rubbed them up and down. She was… beautiful. Even now I can see her leaning back against the car, wearing that long pleated skirt and white sweater. She had big blue eyes and cupid lips and wonderfully plain brown hair, tied back in a high ponytail that bobbed after her whenever she moved even a bit.
“Ah it’ll be fine, Josie,” I said, putting my arm around her and rubbing her shoulder, “I’ll keep you nice and warm.”
She rolled her eyes in mock annoyance. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I certainly would,” I snickered. I looked around our little group. “We can all keep each other warm. I’m in.”
“Fine,” Josie sighed, “Fine. I’ll go.”
“I guess I can skip football practice for one day. Coach is pretty tough, though,” Cliff said, somewhat halfheartedly. He loved football, but just as a game. His dad was training him to be a mechanic to take over his auto shop when the old man retired. I think that was what he was more worried about, missing working with his dad. He loved tinkering with cars.
“Ah, don’t worry about it man,” Jack replied, “Coach is friends with my dad; we’ll work it out no problem.”
“I don’t know,” Cliff wavered.
“It’ll be fine, man,” Jack insisted, “If anyone asks we’ll just say we kidnapped you.”
Cliff laughed. “Alright, alright. I’m in.”
“What about you, Joan?” Shirley asked.
Joan looked up again from the book of sea life and regarded us all quietly, like she were weighing how much time she’d lose reading if she hung out with us for the weekend. She was a tiny girl but her eyes were enormous, like a fawn’s, and her pageboy hair was jet black. She glanced at Cliff, just a brief glimpse but I caught it. I’m not sure if any of the others did. “Alright, I’ll go.”
That was how we decided it.
We drove down the next day, right after the bell rang. We thought we’d get to the beach by six o’clock at the latest, but of course it didn’t work out that way. We stopped at a diner on the way down, which ate up an hour, and then we got a flat out in the sticks by a one-horse town called Manumuskin. Looking back, I wish up and down that Jack hadn’t had a spare tire in his trunk. Maybe we would’ve walked to the nearest farmhouse and asked to use the phone to call for a tow back to Philadelphia, and laughed about what a dumb idea it had been to try going down the shore in October, how the ocean would have been so cold anyway. It might have been…
As it was, we got the flat fixed and made it to Shirley’s place at around quarter after eight.
Cape May was mighty different back in 1949. This was over a decade before the Doo Wop boom that came with the construction of the Garden State Parkway. The shore towns back then were still sleepy fishing villages most of the year- they drew big crowds in the summertime, but were dead quiet in autumn and winter. Cape May was the only one of particular note with vacationers, and it was an old money town.
Well, Shirley’s family was old money. They had a huge, rambling Victorian manor over by Lake Lily, just half a mile from Sunset Beach. It was a short walk and a shorter drive- as soon as we unpacked our things at Shirley’s place, we zoomed over to go for a late night dip.
Sunset Beach is so named because it faces due west, making it a perfect spot to watch the sun dip down and sink into the bay. We got there well after dark, of course, so all we got to see was the light of the rising moon dancing upon the sea and casting its wan beams onto the wreck of the S.S. Atlantus.
The Atlantus is corroded almost to the waterline today, but back in 1949 the great moldering bulk of the two-hundred-fifty foot ship was still largely above water. She was an experimental vessel built during the First World War- steel was in short supply, so they made her entirely out of concrete. The only metal she had on her was rebar and rusty railings, the mere sight of which made one think about getting a tetanus shot. After the war she was due to be sunk as part of a slip for a ferry dock, but while she was being towed north, a heavy storm hit and she broke loose from her mooring line. She ran aground about a hundred yards offshore and no effort to free her had ever succeeded.
There she sat, listing like a drunkard, while we got ourselves situated.
Jack left his headlights on to illuminate the beach while Cliff and I gathered driftwood for a fire. There’d been a storm recently, so it wasn’t a hard job. We gathered a great brushpile of bleached branches to see us through a few hours of the night; whenever we were tired or drunk enough to go home. Did I mention that yet? One of my specialties- I was the rumrunner of the group. “Rumrunner Ron,” they called me. If there ever was a keg held between Fern Rock and Tacony Creek, from VJ Day until 1950, odds were pretty decent I supplied it. So we had a nice little stash in Jack’s trunk.
Once we got the fire going, we just sat on the beach wrapped up in our blankets, drinking and telling stories and watching the embers rush up to join the axle of the galaxy while the wind whiffled through the dunegrass, carrying with it a chill warning of the winter yet to come. I told a spooky story about the Jersey Devil that left Josie and Joan both looking over their shoulders back at the tall dunes and into the pinewoods beyond, and then Cliff started on about how he couldn’t wait to start really working with his dad, after high school was over. None of us could believe graduation was that close, but it was coming faster than we’d thought possible. Just a few short months away…
It wasn’t long before Shirley was crooning Doris Day and doing an admirable job of it- her voice was a tad too deep to pull the high notes, but Josie and Joan carried her as impromptu backup singers, while us guys just sat back and listened to them sing. There was something prehistoric about our comfort- warm around a campfire, a little buzzed, listening to the sweet voices of our girls ring out over the quiet beach while the sea sparkled in the moonwake. Perhaps this exact, primordial atmosphere should have been our warning sign to run, to run like hell and never return. But we didn’t.
Jack stretched contentedly and threw his arm around Shirley. He’d always had a thing for beguiling, Myrna Loy-esque vamps. You know the type- dusky, husky, and lusty. Shirley fit this archetype snugly. Likewise, Cliff and Joan had gotten sweet on each other during the ride down and must’ve been thinking of getting sweeter still because when I looked over at them, he had his arm around her and they were sharing a blanket. They looked happy. I mean happy, the kind of contented joy where you start to wonder why God had to make the world any different. I know I was that kind of happy, with my own arm wrapped around Josie, her head resting on my shoulder.
I suddenly felt a queer sensation of being watched, but when I looked around it was just Josie looking up at me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she purred, “Nothing at all.”
And nothing was. We were happy as a Christmas tree. Just sitting on the cool sand in front of the warm fire, sipping our beers and listening to Jack tell about how he and Cliff were singularly responsible for winning the championship game against Northeast High last year.
I suddenly sat up straight, forcing a pained expression onto my face.
“Are you okay?” Josie asked. Her lips pursed in worry and she reached out her hand to touch my arm while I continued the faux spasm.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I grunted, reaching under my leg. “I just… I think I sat on something.”
Her blue eyes danced in the firelight as I held up the object I’d hidden under my leg. “Oh, Ron, it’s… it’s beautiful!”
I grinned. It was beautiful. I offered it to her. “It’s a Cape May diamond.”
“Oh…” Josie mouthed as I placed the gem into her cupped hands. She stared at it in undisguised wonder. It was perfectly translucent, as clear as glass, bouncing the firelight off its smooth crystal sides. “Ron, where did you…?”
“Ah, I’m a bit of a beachcomber,” I replied. That wasn’t true. I’d discovered it by accident while Cliff and I were gathering firewood. It wasn’t really a diamond either- that’s just what people call them. Cape May diamonds are river quartz that washes up right before the current can empty it into the sea. Still looks real pretty though.
“Thank you,” she smiled, “Oh Ron, thank you.”
She kissed me then, and I considered that little sphere of quartz a worthy trade.
Eventually my blood was half liquor, and in that stupor the Atlantus looked very enticing. Enticing in a mocking sort of way, like the old, elephantine hulk was teasing us for not having conquered her yet. She was leering at us from out there on the sandbar, the breakers lapping around her concrete hull. Her windows yawned pitch black out of the empty bridge, her single smokestack jutting up into the air like a beckoning finger. Her prow curved up mischievously, daring some brave soul to board her.
“You know what,” I said, rising unsteadily to my feet, “I’m going sailing.”
“With what?” Jack asked. His voice was slurred too, partly from booze and partly from being buried in Shirley’s neck, underneath a thicket of her curly black hair.
“That-” I said, pointing out to the Atlantus, “I’m going sailing in that.”
“It’s a wreck, you idiot,” Cliff murmured. He was lying on his back in the sand, looking up at the stars. Joan was on her back, too; they’d been pointing out constellations to each other. “Can’t drive that.”
“You watch me,” I replied defiantly, “I’m going to swim out there and dive right off her deck. Just like a swan.”
“Ron, that water’s going to be freezing,” Josie warned as I shook off my pants. She sounded annoyed but I think it was more at the fact that I’d taken my body-warmth with me when I stood up. She drew the blanket tightly around her like a shawl. “You might catch pneumonia. You might have a heart attack.”
“I’m a track star, I’ve got the heart of a racehorse,” I retorted, starting for the water. I turned back and puffed up my chest and held my arms out wide, “And if you’re all too chicken to come in with me, I guess you can just stay on the beach and wait for the Jersey Devil to come and get you!”
It was a direct challenge, mostly to Jack and Cliff, and it worked. They looked at each other, then rose from their blankets, took off their pants and shirts, and headed for the water. Joan, surprisingly, came right with them. She took off her clothes to reveal a shockingly frilly little bikini, all dark blue with white frills around the cups and hips. It was the absolute last thing anyone would ever have expected her to wear, but there it was. She giggled at the slackjawed lookdown Cliff gave her, and after he recovered he led her by the hand like a puppydog and they ran eagerly to the surf.
“Come on, Shirley!” Jack called back. Shirley was staring down the beach at us; she glanced at Josie and they both shook their heads, probably thinking of how stupid we all were. Then she stood up and shrugged off her jacket, leaving her in a black, one-piece swimsuit. It was… magnificent.
“Josie, you’re gonna be aaaaall alooooone up there!” I taunted. I’d run down well past the wrackline. The sand was cold and wet under my feet. The surf lay just a few tempting yards ahead.
I was too far away to hear her grumble any discontent at my antics, but I saw her get to her feet and- I’ll never forget this sight unto my last breath- she reached up and took her clothes off, revealing a striped, two-piece bikini. We were more modest in the forties, so the bottoms were like a pair of shorts. The top was held in place by a ribbon around her neck that seemed to me to be far stronger than Atlas, for it held up two globes. She didn’t run like the others. She pulled her hair back to make sure it was out of the way, and smirked at me as she languidly stepped down towards the surf.
Josie was right- the water was freezing.
As soon as my toes touched it I felt like they were turning to ice. I hesitated a moment- most of my body was still firewarm, and looking back, the mellow, dancing flames seemed so wonderfully friendly. But with Jack and Cliff and the girls all coming at full steam right towards me, I couldn’t back out now. So, foolishly, I ran headlong into the cold water, cursing myself every step of the way as the frigid waves lapped up my legs. Once I got out to my waist I dove under to get it over with, and the shock washed me right out of my drunkenness. Clearheaded, I surfaced and heard the others gasping at their first feel of the surf. Then I began swimming out to the Atlantus.
It was high tide, and the wreck lay about three hundred feet offshore. The water was deep, deeper than I thought it would be, judging by how much of the ship was still above water. She must have stranded on a sandbar, the weight of her stabilizing the muck below, but not to her sides, and a deep gully had been carved out of the seafloor alongside her. I would wager the water was about thirty feet deep where we were swimming, but it could’ve been even deeper.
Boarding the ship was easy enough- there was a tall wooden ladder propped up against her starboard side, placed there by past swimmers. I clambered up it- God, the air was even colder than the water- right as Cliff and Joan were getting up to their waists. Jack had gone under completely and then went back to the beach, where he scooped up Shirley in his arms and carried her out to waist-depth before dropping her in, despite her kicking and screaming protests.
The ship had a pronounced list to port, so when I finally boarded I almost immediately lost my balance and had to struggle for a foothold on the concrete deck. There wasn’t any railing on the port side- it must have corroded or broken away during the years of relentless assault from the sea- and all that would have prevented me or anyone else from tumbling overboard into the dark water below was a little concrete lip.
I headed right to the prow, leaning forward into the steep deck like I were a mountain climber, while everyone else swam out. From up there, I saw Josie surface after diving. She shook her head like a dog, trying to dry her hair in some small way as the night air bit into her. It really was a dumb idea- I didn’t think we’d be in the water for very long.
As the others finally reached the side of the ship, I leaned over the railing at the prow and looked down at them as if they were my royal subjects.
“Salute your monarch!” I shouted.
“Ah stuff it,” Jack replied. He was starting up the ladder, and I knew the second he got up on deck he’d toss me into the sea just like Shirley, so I decided to go out on my own terms. Long ago, some enterprising visitors had pried away a section of the iron railing on the Atlantus’s starboard side to accommodate the exact stunt I now performed. I trotted carefully down to the port side, then ran back up the sloping deck and swan-dived headfirst into the deep, dark water below.
It wasn’t as cold the second time around. Downright warm, in fact, compared to the chilly night air. I rolled under the water like a seal, paddling instinctively to the surface with my eyes still shut tight to keep the saltwater out. As soon as I came up, I was immediately deluged as Jack and Cliff cannonballed into the sea simultaneously.
“Whoo! Just like going under again, eh Ron?” Jack laughed as I gasped for air.
“More like going into an icebox again,” Cliff said, his teeth chattering. “It’s freezing.”
“Ah, paddle around a bit,” I chided, even though I was just as cold, “You’ll warm up.”
“Should’ve drank more, Cliff old boy,” Jack said, floating on his back.
“Hey booooooys,” Shirley called. All our heads whipped over in the same instant to see a trio of sea nymphs atop the crested bow of the ship. Shirley in front, Joan on the left, and my Josie on the right. Their swimwear was soaked, and clung to their figures like odalisques.
“You having fun down there?” Josie called.
I nodded dumbly, my eyes affixed to her chest. I assume Jack and Cliff were in the same trance but at that moment I’d forgotten they even existed.
“Well, see how you like this!” she called again, diving into the water with the svelte grace of an otter. She made an enormous splash for such a seemingly small girl, soaking me once again and releasing me from the enchantment of her bikini-clad body. Shirley followed her a moment later, and then Joan squeaked in dreadful anticipation of the cold before taking her own leap.
As soon as Josie came up I was at her side, my hands around her. Something purely animal took control of me at the sight of her in that dripping wet bikini. I needed her, right there, right then. Needed to hold her, to kiss her, to…
She gasped as my hand found her breast, and then she pursed her lips indignantly and pushed my head under the water.
Underwater is an eerie place at night.
I took a deep breath as I went down, and then opened my eyes. It only stung for a moment, and when I looked up I was close enough to the surface to see all of my friends silhouetted starkly against the moonwake above me. Diving down a bit deeper to avoid their kicking legs, I could just barely make out rippling sand far below. The gully was wide and deep, and the Atlantus was perched precariously at its edge.
I swam down deeper. I had the idea to shoot back up and scare Josie by grabbing her legs. But when I twirled around to start ascending, my head hit against something hard.
I looked up and all was darkness.
My friends were no longer in sight. The Moon no longer danced on the surface of the sea.
All that lay around me was an abyss of inky blackness.
A wave of acid panic washed over me. I gasped in spite of myself, blowing out a column of bubbles like a train whistle. Then I kicked my feet and rocketed upwards.
I smacked my head against that hard, unyielding barrier again. I was trapped underwater and I really didn’t want to die. Not like that. Alone, surrounded by nothing but dark water. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest, both from terror and yearning for oxygen.
I tried swimming up again with my arms outstretched, clawing at the barrier, and this time it moved. It undulated from side to side, revealing the moonwake once more as it swished by. The object tapered down to a tall, pointy fin, and I realized with a start that it was the tail of some enormous sea creature. I estimated it- the tail, I mean- to be roughly fifteen or sixteen feet long, from when it first began to move until it passed completely over me. As it slithered through the water, I stared after it and saw that the flukes were vertical, like a shark’s, but upside down- the longer fluke was on the bottom, while the one on top, though still three feet tall, was only a third the length of its southerly counterpart. The creature moved away quickly, far too quickly for something so large, and disappeared into the black abyss.
As the leviathan passed overhead, I could again see my friends’ legs dangling in the quicksilver water, so close above me. My lungs burned for air, and my pulse sizzled painfully through my veins. My head felt as though it were being crushed by a hydraulic press. I was consumed by an overriding need to open my mouth, to suck in great gales of anything at all. My legs kicked frantically upward.
I breached like a dolphin, coming almost completely out of the water, sputtering and gasping and coughing as I filled my starved lungs. In the moment I was so single-mindedly focused on breathing I almost forgot how to swim, and flailed for a moment before I was able to tread water.
“Ron?” Josie asked. Her impudent tone had vanished. She just looked concerned. “Are you alright?”
I stared dumbly at her. Then I looked around. Everyone was scattered around the Atlantus. Jack and Shirley were the furthest afield, fifty feet from the ship, treading water as they clung to each other. There must have been a riptide in the gully, yanking us away from the safety of the boat.
“Where were you?” Josie asked.
“Big fish,” I stammered.
“What?”
“There’s a big fish or something down there.”
“You alright, Ron?” Cliff called out. He was with Joan, twenty or so feet away.
“Ron said he saw a big fish,” Josie answered on my behalf when the words refused to leave my tongue.
I looked her in the eyes long and hard until she again asked- “Ron, seriously, what’s wrong?”
My breath had finally returned, but my thoughts were still muddled by what I had seen down there. Images of marine creatures flashed in my head, each more vicious than the last, as my mind raced through the possibilities of what that tail might have belonged to. Whale. Dolphin. Striper. Orca. Octopus. Squid. Grouper. Barracuda. Shark. I was not zoologically inclined. All I knew was that whatever it was, it was big. And suddenly, the water below me seemed very, very deep indeed.
“I think we should get back to the boat,” I said.
“What? Why?”
“Swim,” I said, forcefully. I felt as if I were dangling over the gaping maw of death itself. “Just swim.”
“Ron, you’re scaring me,” she replied.
I didn’t let her argue. I grabbed her wrist and started pulling her with me as I made for the Atlantus. When she started protesting, I said firmly- “We’re going back to the boat.”
“Did you see the Loch Ness Monster or something, Ron?” Jack called, laughing. Shirley laughed too, a high, husky giggle. Jack pulled her in closer and raised his one arm up high, cupping his fingers over his thumb in pantomime of some great waterlogged dinosaur. He brought his hand down on Shirley’s shoulder like his shadow-puppet-osaurus was biting her. She laughed and laughed as he started tickling her. “Watch out, girls! Nessie’s in New Jersey, and she’s gonna getcha!”
I ignored him. Kept swimming. Josie broke free of my grip and swore at me for hurting her wrist, but my obvious alarm must have sufficed to convince her because she continued following me anyway.
“If there is a big fish right under us…” Joan started. I looked back at her and even at that distance I could see the mouse-like caution in her huge eyes.
“Oh, come on, Joan,” Jack laughed, “There’s no fish. Ron’s just spinning another yarn, that’s all.”
“I’m dead serious this time!” I snapped back.
“You wanna go back?” Cliff asked, still holding onto Joan. She nodded. He called out- “Alright Jack, you and Shirley can stay in the tub with Nessie. We’re going back to the boat.”
They started paddling our way. It was reassuring, but everyone seemed to be moving far, far too slowly. The water… it felt like molasses to my panicking limbs. I thought- if the tail was sixteen feet, imagine how big the rest of it must be. And I did. Oh did I imagine it. A hundred imaginary mouths full of gnashing, needlelike teeth threatening to engulf me from below, not one of them as terrible as what actually came out of the abyss. I looked back to make sure Josie was still there, still following me, that one of those figmented maws- or the very real one attached to that giant tail- hadn’t sucked her down without so much as a yelp.
She was there, paddling after me; Cliff and Joan weren’t far behind. I kept swimming. The Atlantus crept closer, inch by agonizing inch, as I felt the crushing pressure of a thousand seas roaring inside my head.
“Alright, fine!” Jack called. “It’s getting cold in here anyway. C’mon, Shirley. Let’s join the fraidy cats.”
The algae-rimed hull of the Atlantus loomed large dead ahead. Just one breaststroke away now. As I got closer to the safety of the wreck, the big tail seemed less and less real, and more and more silly. Some skeptical corner of my mind, silenced by the onrush of abyssal terror, began lecturing me- the “tail” was probably just a dense cloud of sand drifting overhead. Or maybe a school of much smaller fish moving in such a way that they seemed like a solid object. You’re being silly. They’re all going to make fun of you for this.
But no matter what my skeptical ego had to say, the most primitive, reptilian fear-locus of my brain whispered back a sepulchral reminder that I had in fact bumped my head on something solid. That wasn’t imaginary, nor any optical illusion brought on by the moonlit murk of the sea. Something was down there.
We made it to the ship. I reached out and pressed my palm against its concrete hull, my fear instantly dissolving at the touch. Almost felt like hugging the damn wreck even though it was coated in barnacles and brown algae below the highwater mark. I looked back and saw Josie swimming up right behind me. The others were coming slowly towards the ship in a staggered line- first Joan, then Cliff, then Jack, and finally Shirley.
“Josie, you go first,” I commanded. She looked at me, and then grabbed onto the ladder to start climbing.
She hesitated on the second rung, and looked back down at me. She chided me- “This is really silly Ron.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I reached up and pushed her butt to prod her along. “Go on, get up there!”
At this time, I was thinking we’d all probably climb back onto the ship, wait a few minutes- maybe explore its decks a bit, the pitch black interior- and then swim back to the beach and have a good laugh at how silly old Ron was so drunk he thought he saw a sea monster. I looked up. Josie was halfway up the ladder. The way her wet swim bottoms clung to her as she ascended put my mind far away from the thought of sea monsters. Right next to the boat, just a quick ladder’s climb from the dark water, the notion seemed as silly as unicorns or little green men from Mars.
A shrill yelp sounded across the water.
My head whipped toward the sound. It was Shirley. She’d stopped swimming. She was floating in place, looking around wildly. Then she jerked in the water. Like she’d snagged on a rock. Like something was trying to yank her down. She gasped.
“You okay, Shirley?” Jack called. We’d all stopped when she yelped and turned to look at her. We all saw it happen.
Before she could reply, she got jerked again. This time she let out a startled cry and went completely under.
We stared at the spot where she’d been. Just… waiting. Waiting for her to pop back up, to shout “Boo!”, to give us some sign she was okay. Nothing. The sea had closed silently as an eye over where she’d just been.
“Shirley?” Jack called. Loudly. I could hear a twinge of anxiety in his voice, something I’d never ever heard from him before. He started paddling back over to her last position. “Shirley? Shirley? Come on, this isn’t funny!”
“Shirley? Shirley!” That was Josie. She’d made it to the top of the ladder, was hanging onto it still with one foot up on the deck, and from this high vantage point she looked around as frantically as the rest of us. We all called her name to no avail.
When Shirley came up again, it was a few yards to Jack’s right. A frothing explosion of white water and rending screams.
“OH GOD HELP ME! PLEASE!”
She was being dragged through the water. No- not dragged. Pushed. Whatever had her was pushing her forward. I could see the bow wave the thing made as it trundled ahead just below the surface. It had her by the legs, lifting her almost completely out of the water. Like an undersea express train it chugged inexorably forward while Shirley screamed and slapped her hands down impotently at it.
“Shirley!” Jack shouted. He turned in an instant and propelled himself over to where Shirley was being shoved ahead. She reached out desperately for him across the water.
“GOD IT HURTS! JACK! JACK! PLEASE! PLEASE HELP ME!”
“I’m coming! I’ve got you, Shirley! Hang on!”
Jack caught her outstretched hand, but the moment he made contact he too was dragged through the water, as effortlessly as if he were a piece of paper caught on a locomotive’s cowcatcher. He held fast and with his free hand began punching at the creature’s snout. He looked back at me and Cliff and screamed- “For God’s sake, help me!”
I yelled at Josie to get onto the deck and began swimming back out towards Jack and Shirley to try to head off the unstoppable force that was dragging them through the water. I swam past Joan where Cliff had left her- she was treading water, staring in blank, gaping horror- and then I passed Cliff. Without a word, we started working in tandem, like it was a dreadful sort of football game. Cliff went to the right, I to the left. The creature was carrying Jack and Shirley directly towards me, fast as a jet plane. I braced for the strike.
Right before ramming into my waiting hands, whatever was dragging them turned sharply away, giving me a lateral, moonlit view of the creature.
It was big. Forty feet, at least. I could see the pointed, triangular head rearing out of the water almost four feet, the jaws clamped down like a vise on Shirley’ legs. The water welled slightly over its long, finless back. That’s how I knew it wasn’t a shark. There was no fin. The closest it had to a fin was a little nub at the very back end of the creature, barely protruding above the frothing wake made by the thrashing tail. The tail was long and swished powerfully from side to side, like an eel or a snake. The front of the body didn’t move much, it was the tail carrying the animal forward.
Shirley’s screams were horrible. A sputtering slur of prayers and pleas and sobs.
“IT HURTS! GOD! PLEASE! PLEASE NO, GOD! PLEASE!”
I swam as hard as I could to keep up but it was futile. Shirley coughed blood. Jack held her tightly, grunting and screaming, trying at the same time to kick the creature’s snout and pull Shirley free of its grasp. I kept swimming towards them. They were just a few feet ahead now, turning back towards me…
The creature dove underwater. Shirley and Jack were both sucked down with it, mid-scream, disappearing in the blink of an eye. I stared at the dark, lapping waters where they had just been. Silent. Silent as if life had never been, and the world was always cloaked under an eternal night divided only into sea and sky.
After awhile I was aware of someone else screaming. It sounded very far away and it took me a moment to recognize the source. Josie. Joan, too. Crying. Yelling for me and Cliff to get back to the boat. I could barely hear them. It was like listening to someone crying out from another dimension.
Jack surfaced a moment later. Gasping, sputtering for breath. He looked around wildly and locked eyes with me. Wide, red eyes. Red from the burning of saltwater and his own tears.
Shirley hadn’t come up with him.
“Jack…” I started. I didn’t finish. Didn’t know what to say. He just stared back hollow-eyed at me.
“Where’s Shirley?” Josie cried across the water. She was leaning over the boat’s railing. “Where’s Shirley?”
“She’s gone,” Cliff shouted, sounding like he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. “She’s… she’s just gone!”
“What got her?” Joan shouted hoarsely, “Cliff, what was that thing?”
Cliff screamed. Sharp and shrill, then suddenly silenced.
My head whipped over to where he had been a moment ago, and I saw only a slight ripple where he’d been swimming, scintillating in the moonlight.
I looked at Jack, and he looked at me, and we just started swimming. There wasn’t any time to grieve. We had to get back to the boat or die.
Joan was still just looking back in shock. She must not have seen him go down, just heard the strangled cry.
“Cliff?” she called.
“SWIM FOR THE BOAT!” Jack and I both shouted hoarsely.
Cliff came up again a moment later, right in front of us. Half of him. Everything from the chest down was gone. His eyes stared up glassily at the Moon, a thin smear of blood dripping from his open mouth.
Joan screamed. A sharp, piercing wail. She hid her face in her hands and just screamed.
Cliff bobbed on the moonlit surface, lifeless as driftwood, and slid beneath the waves once more. Pulled. He was pulled. The narrow, triangular snout poked out of the water again just enough to clamp down on his right shoulder. There was an awful wet noise as its teeth bit into what was left of him, and it exhaled contentedly. Two little puffs of vapor blew from nostrils placed far back on its head, like a dolphin’s blowhole. Then the creature slid back under the waves, taking Cliff with it.
“OH GOD OH MY GOD OH JESUS GOD OH JESUS!” Joan shrieked.
She was completely hysterical. Hands clasped over her eyes as she screamed and cried and tried to pray but just started crying again instead, all the while floating perfectly still in the water. A sitting duck.
“Joan, come on!” I shouted. I grabbed her arm and started pulling her and she wailed and fought my grip.
“Cliff! It got Cliff!” she cried, bashing her fist into my arm.
“I saw it! Now stop- stop it Joan! I’ll leave you here! I swear to God I’ll leave you! Knock it off! Come on! Swim for the boat!”
She stopped hitting me and went mute. Or maybe my brain just didn’t register her continued sobbing anymore. I just swam. Harder than I’d ever swam before. I didn’t know where Jack was, how far he’d fallen behind or if it had gotten him too. I just kept swimming. The Atlantus was horrifyingly far away and the monster’s teeth seemed to be nipping at my heels. Monster. It was the only word I could think of to describe the creature. It was no animal. It was evil incarnate.
Josie waved frantically at us from the upper deck, pointing to our left. I didn’t turn to look. It would have slowed me down and if she was pointing to the left it could only mean the creature was coming from that way so I just swam faster and Josie was leaning too far over the railing as she pointed and suddenly she was flapping her arms and…
She fell in. Into the water, right on her back. A titanic splash.
All I can remember thinking is- God please please please don’t let it get Josie, God please, please please PLEASE get Josie back up there safe.
She came up a moment later, gasping, and immediately scrambled for the ladder like she’d fallen into a boiling pot. Joan and I were coming up on it now…
I let Joan go and started pushing Josie up the ladder, grabbing her and lifting her back out of the water with an electric surge of terror-induced strength, while she scrabbled for a foothold. I held onto the ladder myself to support her.
Joan got yanked back.
“IT’S GOT ME!” she screamed shrilly.
“No!” I shouted. She reached out a plaintive hand towards me and I lunged for it and grabbed as tight as I could and started pulling her out of the water. The creature had her by her right foot. I could see the blood leaking from her calf where its teeth had raked over her.
“RON! RON! PLEASE! DON’T LET IT TAKE ME!” she sobbed.
The gray snout stuck out of the water mockingly, tugging at her leg while I pulled with all my might on her arm. I heard a dreadful pop and Joan screamed even louder. I’d dislocated her shoulder. Didn’t dare loosen my grip. The creature tugged again, more lightly than before. I thought it was losing its hold on her, but when I tugged harder and started pulling Joan back towards me, it halted my progress by tugging back just as hard.
It hit me then. Some corner of my mind that had remained perfectly calm and collected throughout the whole horror suddenly spoke up crisply- It’s playing with you. It’s enjoying this.
A deep, guttural roar of anguish and rage shook me from that dread realization. Jack had finally reached us, and launched himself almost fully out of the water and onto the creature’s back. He started beating his fists into the beast as hard as he could, jackhammering it like its hide were one vast punching bag. I’m not sure if it was wounded by his punches, but it must have at least been annoyed because it began pulling Joan again, and this time it put some thrust into it. Joan’s hand started to slip from my grasp even as she lunged for me with her other arm. Her leg spurted blood and she sobbed in agony.
“RON! PLEASE!”
“I got you!” I said through gritted teeth. The beast was pulling hard and Joan’s arm was wet and slippery. “I won’t let go. I won’t let go.”
And I didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Her hand slipped out of my grasp, and in an instant her screams were choked and muffled by the water. Jack punched down one more time and hit only open water and then he was floating again.
“Christ. Christ. Christ.”
That was Josie. Sobbing, collapsed to her knees on the deck.
I tried to collect myself. She was there… she was just there… Joan… I- I’d had her in my arms…
“Ron, let’s go!” Jack shouted. “Up the ladder! Get out of the water!”
I climbed. Mechanically. My arms barely had enough strength left to hold the rungs, but somehow I climbed and made it to the deck. I stopped once halfway up and looked back down at where the struggle had taken place and saw Jack coming up right behind me.
“Go on, climb!” he shouted. His voice was shaking. Enraged. Not at me, I know. But enraged all the same.
When I reached the top I fell to my knees and right into Josie’s arms. She fell into mine in kind and we just knelt there hugging each other tightly, and she sobbed her heart out and I tried not to spill my own. I wanted to fall to pieces too but we couldn’t afford it. I needed to be strong for her, for all of us. A maelstrom swirled within me- shock, grief, terror, relief that we were both safe and alive.
I recovered before Josie did. She heaved out a disgusting, racking sob and I held her head against my chest, running my fingers through her hair and trying to soothe her- “It’s okay, it’s okay now. It can’t get us. We’re safe. It’s okay.”
I looked back out over the water, just in time to see the creature surface, about twenty feet off the Atlantus’s starboard. Its head stuck completely out of the water then and it it just sat there perfectly still, basking in the moonlight. It sighed contentedly, blowing a little puff of vapor into the frigid night air from its blowhole. Its head was a full five feet long, dark gray on the top and white on the bottom. The tip of its snout was marked by alternating bands of gray and white, and its throat pouch was deeply ribbed like a whale’s. The throat bulged ominously. I didn’t want to think about it but I knew- that was Joan.
I didn’t want to watch, but I did. My mind was hijacked by some ghoulish fascination with the creature across the water, watching it as if it were merely a photo from the National Geographic magazine. The creature’s jaws seemed to distend, as if it needed to widen its throat to accommodate Joan’s dainty body. The head turned towards me slightly, and for a moment I thought it was sticking its tongue out. It wasn’t. Joan’s foot was sticking out of its mouth. First the right jaw popped wider, then the left, and her foot disappeared into that dreadful maw.
Her leg kicked.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Joan’s tiny foot kicked out, making a faint but distinct impression in the ribbed gullet.
Joan was dead. She had to be.
It must have just been a reflex, some last muscular synapse firing, causing her leg to spasm and kick at the inside of the animal’s throat.
Her leg kicked again.
As if it had been waiting just for this, the monster’s jaws snapped back into place. It gulped twice. When it was done, it opened its mouth wide to yawn at the far-distant Moon. Joan was gone.
I looked down at the rough concrete deck. It was spinning round and round and round.
“Ron, you’re hurting me,” Josie sobbed. I couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the ground, replaying what I’d just witnessed over and over again in my head. Joan’s leg… kicking feebly at the inside of the animal’s mouth...
I let Josie go and collapsed to my knees and vomited. The beer, the late lunch from the diner. It all came up and spilled down the listing concrete deck of the Atlantus, down into the dark water on her port side. Even after I’d given up breakfasts from days ago I continued to dry-heave for a long, long time.
It was unbelievable. What had just happened was not, could not have been real. But it was. I was not drunk anymore. The alcoholic buzz had been sucked away from me by the ice cold water. I wasn’t drunk and I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t hallucinating. It was real. It was all real. The concrete deck below me, the rusty railing I gripped for support, the bile at the back of my throat, the ringing echoes of Cliff’s and Shirley’s and Joan’s screams… all of it was terribly, ineffaceably real.
When I finally got my stomach back and my knees stopped wobbling just enough for me to sit up, I saw Josie kneeling on the deck sobbing. She had her arm draped around the railing so as not to slide down the side of the ship, and she just cried and cried and cried. Another streak of bile running down the deck told me she’d thrown up too. Jack was standing, leaning over the side of the boat and staring into the lapping sea. His jaw was set and his knuckles were white as he gripped the railing.
“What the hell is that thing?” Josie wept.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t know. It’s not a shark.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“It didn’t have a fin,” I replied. “And it’s too damn big to be a shark.”
“It didn’t have gills either,” Jack said.
“What?”
“When I jumped on its back… it didn’t have any gills. It had a blowhole, like a whale.”
“O-Okay, so it’s a whale?” Josie said.
“Maybe,” Jack said. “The skin was scaly though. I thought whales were supposed to be smooth. I think it’s… it’s like a lizard or something.”
“I don’t know,” I repeated. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, God,” Josie broke down, “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is,” she wept, “If- if I hadn’t fallen in, Joan would’ve made it…”
“Josie,” I started, but I trailed off. I bit my lip. She was probably right. Because if she hadn’t fallen in, I would’ve sent Joan up the ladder first. And then it would have been me kicking at the inside of the monster’s mouth. And- God strike me down- I felt a shameful spike of relief drive into the pit of my stomach, that it had been her and not me. I swallowed tightly. “Josie… it’s not your fault.”
Josie curled up into a ball and stared down the port side of the ship, resting her head on her knees. “If I had swam faster…”
“It’s not your fault.”
Jack bashed his fist on the railing. “God dammit!”
He paced the slanted deck purposefully. Gathering his thoughts while me and Josie sat there miserably, trying to hold onto our empty stomachs.
“Blaming ourselves isn’t going to help,” he fumed. “We need to think about getting back to the damn beach, so we can go get the Coast Guard to come out and kill this thing.”
“How?” Josie asked between sobs. “We can’t swim…”
“Alright, alright,” Jack said- I couldn’t tell if he was addressing us or talking more to himself- “This… this thing, whatever it is, it lives in the water, right? Can’t get us up here.”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“So we’ll wait for it to go away,” Jack continued, “It saw us in the water, but we’re not in the water anymore, so… it’ll go away, right?”
“Maybe,” I replied.
“Maybe? What do you mean maybe?”
“Well, what if it’s…” I heard Shirley’s screams echoing in my ears again. I heard Cliff’s choked yelp and Joan pleading for help. I felt my gorge rising again. “What if it’s not… full yet?”
“How would it know we’re up here?” Josie asked quietly. She must have cried herself out because her voice was bereft of sobs now. Just very quiet and dead. She sat curled into a ball, leaning back against the railing.
I thought- It saw us climb up the ladder. But I didn’t know if it would remember that action, or consciously associate climbing the ladder with us now, presently, being on the ship. I didn’t know how smart it might have been. If Jack was right and it was a lizard, well, lizards are dumb, right? I thought of Joan again. How long it took the creature to resurface with her in its mouth. Was it… watching us?
“I don’t know,” I said. No use scaring her even more. We were safe for the time being.
“Well we can’t stay here,” Jack replied. “We’re soaked and we don’t have any clothes. If we don’t get back to the beach the cold will kill us before morning.”
“If we go in the water again that thing will kill us before the cold can,” I said bleakly.
“Well…” Jack started, then trailed off. He cleared his throat. “Let’s just wait awhile and see what happens.”
We did. The three of us huddled together for warmth and stared out at the water, waiting for the creature to show itself. I’m not sure how long we waited. None of us had a watch, and in our wet, shivering misery, minutes seemed to stretch into hours.
“There!” Josie stammered, pointing out to sea. Jack and I whipped our heads around just in time to see it- yes, right there. A low hump on the moonwake, puffing a jet of misty exhalation before diving again. It seemed pretty far away.
“How far would you say that is?” Jack asked.
“About two-thousand feet, give or take a hundred,” I wagered. It was far and the sea was dark.
“I reckon about the same,” Jack replied. He took a deep breath. “I’m going to swim.”
“What?” Josie blurted.
“I’m going to try for the beach,” Jack repeated. “It’s only three hundred feet back to shore. I’ve got a good chance.”
“Jack, wait,” Josie said. “We don’t know how fast it is.”
That wasn’t entirely true. When it was pushing Shirley through the water… it was damn fast. Too fast for something so huge. I swallowed tightly and thought of the book of sea creatures that first inspired Shirley to suggest this awful mess of a trip. Joan might have known how fast it was, what it was.
Jack stretched and swung his arms back and forth. “Well, I’ll give it a run for its money and find out.”
“Jack, she’s got a point,” I warned. “We should wait a bit longer.”
“Ron, how long do you think it’ll stay over there?” Jack snapped, “It’s far away now.”
“But it might be swimming away,” Josie protested. “Maybe it’s all done, maybe it’s calling it quits.”
“Or maybe the next time we see it, it’ll be right next to the boat,” Jack said, “This might be the only shot we get.”
“But…” I started.
“Ron,” Jack looked me dead in the eye and his were watery, his voice low and quavering, “I’m the one who didn’t believe you.”
I sighed. He was right.
“Alright,” I conceded. “Make it count.”
I stood up shakily and followed him to the gap in the railing. I slapped him on the back. “Swim like the Devil’s on your ass. Cause he will be.”
Jack laughed. Not happily. Just a weak smile, a little chuff at the gallows humor. He turned to me. “I’ll dive in and push off the ship. That’ll give me a bit of a boost. Soon as I get to shore, I’ll drive right to the Coast Guard station. Shouldn’t be more than forty minutes before they get out here.”
I nodded. I hoped to God he was right. That he would make it. I just said- “Godspeed.”
He dove in. After the splashdown he resurfaced about ten feet away. Breaststroking hard. His form was perfect, like a machine designed to swim. I looked back over to where we’d seen the beast surface, but it had gone back under.
Josie and I just stared unblinking as Jack swam that stretch of perilous open water. He was far away now, his splashes almost indistinguishable from other waves.
“I think he’s going to make it!” Josie said, a twinge of excitement in her voice.
“I think so too,” I replied. I was excited too, and trying not to show it. He would make it. I knew he would. He was already halfway across…
The sea erupted as if an artillery shell had burst just below the surface. One moment we saw Jack swimming forward. The next, he disappeared in the froth.
Rising out of the eruption of seafoam was a vast, sleek creature bred to swim. As it breached, I was able to descry details I hadn’t been able to before. It was long and serpentine. A full forty feet, from tip to tail. It twirled in the air, showing off both its gray back and white belly as it spun. Its flippers were broad and leaf-shaped, unlike the bladed ones of a shark or whale, and it had two pairs of them, one set near the head and the other much further back by its tail. Its long, undulating tail had the same gray-and-white striping pattern as its snout, like some dreadful marine zebra. The tail came whipping out of the water with the rest of the animal, again showing the downturned fluke.
In its jaws we saw Jack. His arms and legs flailing back limply like a ragdoll’s. Giving no resistance at all. He must have been killed the moment the creature rammed him. No warning, just a sudden strike from below. Powerful enough to break his spine, to shatter his ribs, or maybe every bone in his body all at once before it even bit him.
The creature came completely out of the water and splashed back down, disappearing with just a swish of its tail. Only a vat of white foam was left in its wake.
Josie threw up again. I would have too but I didn’t have anything left in me. I just stared in naked horror at the churning sea. It was over in less than three seconds. One moment, Jack… the next, no Jack.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Josie wept as she wiped spittle from her lips. “Ron, Ron what the hell do we do now?”
I couldn’t answer her because I didn’t know. Four of our friends were just gone. This creature, if it had really been two thousand feet away, closed that gap faster than an eyeblink and killed Jack before he even knew what hit him. Just rammed him right out of the water, forty feet straight up in its jaws.
“Ron,” Josie repeated, weeping. “Ron, what are we going to do?”
I tried to speak but choked up. Jack… my best friend…
“We…” I sighed heavily and shuddered in another breath. “We are going to stay on the boat until morning. Then we’ll… we’ll see.”
It was the longest night of my life.
Josie and I didn’t talk. We huddled close together, seated on the sloped deck with our legs pulled up to our chests, arms wrapped around our knees. I don’t know what the temperature was. Fifty? Forty-five? I was in my underwear and Josie was in her bikini and we were both drip-drying. My teeth started chattering after fifteen minutes and I pulled Josie in close but her hair was still a wet mop and it only made me even colder.
We looked out over the water, dreading if the monster was still there. About an hour and a half into the night, I was startled to hear a splash below us. My head whipped around to look down the sloping port side and my heart leaped into my throat.
It was there. It was staring at me.
Its vast, triangular head jutted completely out of the water. Not like a crocodile, which sits flat on the surface. This thing was holding its head erect, completely out of the water, staring up the deck at us. I could see the scales Jack mentioned- rows of little bumps along the top of its head, and lining the sides of its closed mouth. It looked old and ragged and eternally hungry. Its giant eyes glew like lanterns in the moonlight, regarding us with the kind of piercing gaze that only a thinking being can wield. I knew- I just knew- it was watching us. Hoping we would fall in.
When Josie saw it she let out a strangled yelp. “Oh God!”
“It’s okay,” I said, putting my arm around her. “It’s okay. It can’t get us. We’re too far up, see?”
“What’s it doing?” Josie asked breathlessly. Her head was buried in my chest; she couldn’t bear to look. I was a long time replying, for I could barely believe what I was seeing myself.
“It’s just looking at us,” I assured her. Both her and myself. I prayed the monster wouldn’t try lunging up onto the deck. The ship had a heavy list but the port side didn’t dip all the way into the water. If it jumped onto the deck, it would get stuck; it might hurt itself or even die.
“Oh, Ron,” she moaned.
She hid her head in my shoulder and I felt a surge of protective adrenaline pumping through my veins. I leaned forward and shouted at the creature- “Yeah, bozo! You big ugly bastard! Can’t get us up here, can you? We beat you! Stupid fucking fish! Go on and get out of here, we’re not coming down for dinner!”
The creature’s only response was to flick its tongue out at me. It had a long, forked tongue, like a snake. That was when it finally clicked- reptile. Jack was right. It was a reptile. Some type of massive sea lizard or snake. It held its tongue out, testing the air, as if it wished to confirm by taste what its eyes already knew. Then it slowly sank back into the black water and the sea closed over it like a stage curtain.
“It’s okay,” I said, running my fingers through Josie’s sopping wet hair. “It’s gone now. It’s okay.”
“Oh, Ron,” Josie sobbed.
“It’s okay, it’s gone,” I repeated. I held her tightly, and that’s the only reason she survived what happened next.
The boat rocked violently to one side. Josie screamed. My hand shot out like a jag of lightning, groping for the railing, and I heard someone else screaming too. It took a moment before I realized it was me.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” Josie screamed. She clawed at me, trying to climb on top of me to put even a tiny bit more distance between herself and the deadly waters below.
“Josie, you’re hurting me! Josie, stop! Cut it out, Josie!” I screamed, trying to keep my own deathgrip on the railing. If I let go, we’d tumble down the deck and right into the water…
The rocking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. I heaved out a sigh of relief, and Josie continued weeping into my shoulder, clutching my arms like they were her favorite teddy bear.
I looked down to see the lizard staring at us again. Its eyes betrayed no emotion, but the quick flick of the tongue made me think it was disappointed.
It was trying to knock us off the boat. It understands it can get us if we’re in the water. If it can just get us in there.
That’s about what I was thinking, right before the lizard sank back under the water again. Seconds passed, perhaps a minute, and then the boat began rocking violently once more.
“Oh Jesus, oh God, oh Jesus, oh God!” Josie cried, clawing at me and the railing again.
“Josie, it’s fine! It’s okay!” I shouted, trying to console her while keeping my grip on the railing. It was really difficult not to lose my temper on her. I knew she was scared, but dammit, so was I, and I was keeping us both alive by holding onto her and the railing. If I lost my grip on either…
The rocking ceased and the lizard reared its ugly, pointed head again. Just staring at us. I wondered if it could hear us- Josie’s sobs muffled against my chest, my own heavy breathing. Or was it just seeing our heat signatures shining in bright infrared against the cold background of the concrete deck? It flicked its tongue out again, testing the air. Probably that was how it was detecting us, its sense of taste far stronger than its eyesight. Tasting the little hormonal particles of fear that must have been leaking off of our warm mammalian bodies. It could do that all night- pop its head up, confirm we were still there, and go back under to wait.
I looked around desperately. Our position was untenable. I couldn’t white-knuckle the railing all night. The Atlantus was only about three hundred feet from the beach. But the shore might well have been as far away as the silent Moon that watched over our plight with neither compassion nor remorse. The darkened windows of the ship’s cabin looked very enticing- as enticing to our stranded souls as the first cave must have seemed to the first beleaguered Cro-Magnon harried by a pride of sabertooths. It was far- about a hundred feet- but I didn’t see what other choice we had.
“Josie, get up,” I said. “Come on.”
“W-What?”
“We’re going to move slowly towards the cabin. We’ll be safe in there.”
She lifted her head. Her eyes were red from crying so much. She looked back at the cabin and then back at me and her eyes went wide and she shook her head. “It’s too far. It’s too far.”
“We can’t stay here.” I replied. “We’ll lose our grip and fall in.”
As if to punctuate to this warning, the lizard surfaced again a few yards away from the ship- just the back of it, coming up briefly to breathe, spouting a fume of mist before submerging again.
“Come on,” I whispered. I didn’t know if our voices carried over the water, or under it. The creature knew we were there, but I had an unshakeable dread that this was no ordinary sea creature. It could think. It was intelligent. Trying to knock us off the boat like that… that was smart. Scary smart.
We moved slowly across the deck. Inch by inch. I kept my left hand firmly around the railing, only sliding it forward without letting go so I could tighten my grip at a moment’s notice if need be. My other arm was firmly around Josie’s waist, and she clutched at it like it were a lifejacket, her pale hand tucked firmly into my right fist. She winced occasionally. I did too. The rough concrete deck chafed our soles. The deck took a considerable dip from the prow to amidship, and we had to scoot sideways down a set of stairs. We were halfway across…
The head came up again. That wicked forked tongue flicked at the air, and the animal opened its jaws and hissed at us- a deep, throaty growl. I’ve never heard a sound before or since that so thoroughly iced my blood. Not even the wailing of a MiG dive-bombing our lines in Korea approached this monstrosity on the soundboard of terror.
It splashed back under the waves, and almost immediately the ship began shaking again. Far more violently than before. Josie screamed. I thought- It’s trying to push the ship into the gully!
A dreadful cracking sound filled the air. It came from everywhere all at once- above us, below us, ahead of us, behind us- and I knew at once that the ship’s hull had buckled under the creature’s brute strength. How it didn’t give itself a concussion ramming its head into poured concrete, I don’t know. But it broke the ship in two. Cracks appeared in the concrete deck ahead, ominously snaking out towards us while the whole vessel groaned as if she were in her final death throes. I thought- This is it, Ron! It’s all over!
I was wrong. The lizard had indeed cracked the ship in two, but the Atlantus was a strong lady, and the parts of her stayed together. We couldn’t get to the bridge anymore though. The cracks between us and it were too big, too ominous.
The head came up again, directly in front of us. I held the railing tightly and gritted my teeth. It was a monster. It showed no more mercy towards us than a cat would show to an injured dove. I stared down at it in seething hatred and wished I had a gun to shoot that smugly flicking tongue right out of its mouth.
After this third attempt, it didn’t try to rock the boat anymore. Maybe it did give itself a concussion. I don’t know. Its head sank back down into the sea and came up again at intervals, on either side of the ship, like a housewife checking on her pot roast. Josie and I didn’t dare move. I white-knuckled the railing, my arm growing more tired and sore as the night dragged on. I couldn’t risk switching arms- with our luck, in the moment between grips, the creature would come bashing into the boat and knock me or Josie into the water. The muscle soreness continued to build until I couldn’t stand it anymore, but I did.
We were both exhausted. Terror and anguish and fear and grief all brewed into a terrible potion that demanded only one cure- sleep. I felt Josie’s grip on my arm slacking a few times throughout the night, and I jostled her- hey, c’mon, wake up sleepyhead. There’s a monster under the bed, except the bed is a boat. Haha.
I struggled not to doze myself. At one point, I let my eyes droop half closed and my chin nodded down onto my chest. I suddenly felt like I was falling a million feet straight down and gasped, clutching the railing in a surge of white-hot adrenaline. Josie gasped too. We’d both fallen asleep.
I looked down at the water and stared right into the face of the lizard.
It was uglier in the early light. Two white bands on its long snout. Its eyes, no longer casting back the moonlight, were revealed to be a very light, electric sort of blue, like glacier ice. They didn’t have an exact pupil- rather, the center was a rough rectangle of black that seemed to spill out diffusely across the rest of the eye like ink, blotching the blue portion with black swirls and spots. They lacked anything resembling warmth or compassion or mercy. All I saw in them was cold, reptilian cunning. Yes, no heart to them, but the mind was undeniable.
Josie gasped. I just stared. I was more angry than scared now- angry at being bested by a lizard. My friends dead, my girlfriend terrified, my arm sore, my mind dogtired- all because of a stupid lizard.
“Why don’t you splash some water up here to wake us up, asshole?” I called down.
The lizard considered my remark impassively, then slid back into the water.
I stretched my sore muscles and best I could and looked around- the sky was lightening in the east, over the dunes. We could finally see the shoreline again- the sand appearing bluish in the predawn murk. The dunegrass waved merrily at us in the breeze, as far away as the Moon which had long since sunken into the sea. It must have been just a bit after six. Maybe a bit before. I’m still not sure.
But I realized something else then. The Moon, as it disappeared below the horizon, had taken the sea with it. It was low tide. The shoreline, three hundred feet away at the start of this nightmare, was only a scant hundred and fifty feet away now. Maybe… just maybe…
Josie was looking across the foreshortened stretch of sea, too.
“I can’t…” she mumbled. “I can’t.”
“We’re not going to,” I assured her. I meant it, too, even though it was damn tempting to give it a try. My mind replayed the dreadful memory of Jack, swimming… swimming… caught.
“I can’t…” she repeated, over and over, like a broken record.
“Josie, it’s okay. We’re not going to,” I repeated. I rubbed her shoulders trying to calm her. She scrabbled to her feet in a flurry of kicking arms and legs.
“I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” she screamed, and ran to the prow.
“Josie!” I screamed. “No, Josie wait!”
She was gone by the time I got to my feet. I groaned in agony. My knees locked out on me, and I could only do a half-squat to move towards the prow. Trying to keep my grip on the railing the whole time- I turned and grasped for it with my right hand, and never did my left arm thank me so heartily.
When I finally made it to the prow I looked out for her. Josie. She was there, in the water, swimming as fast as she could. I don’t know how she did it, how her muscles were able to perform like that, having been curled up all night. Adrenaline is an amazing thing.
I watched her go in morbid fascination, wondering when the lizard would come surging out to grab her. But it didn’t show itself. She paddled, her legs kicking and her arms stroking powerfully at the water, fighting the tide that was still going out, trying to shepherd her back to the safety of the ship, but she swam on.
She swam, and swam, until finally… she stood! The water was only up to her waist! I couldn’t breathe. She was going to make it! She did make it! She staggered through the surf, the waves lapping at her ankles. She didn’t turn back to wave- she seemed to have forgotten me completely and must have just been elated to have made it to the beach at all.
There was a blur of motion to my right. At first I thought it was just another breaker rolling in, but it came at an angle nearly parallel to the rest of the waves. The water curved queerly, as if flowing over a vast log…
Josie yelped as the lizard slammed headlong into her, knocking her legs out from under her. I blinked, and when my eyes opened again, she was gone.
In her place was the lizard. It had surged completely onto the beach. Its broad, paddle-like flippers flopped on the sand, and its long tail swished powerfully at the surf, trying to turn to get back into the sea. As it veered laterally on itself, I saw Josie in its mouth. She was bashing her fists uselessly against its snout. It had already half-swallowed her; only the top of her chest protruded from its gaping maw. She screamed and cried and punched and clawed at the animal, and then she coughed a spray of blood and went limp. It must have bitten down and crushed her spine, her ribcage. Her head lolled and got smashed by a wave as the lizard turned back into the water. With another strong swish of its tail, it was gone.
I was all alone. I shook with fear and rage. I let go of the railing and balled my fists and smeared them against my forehead. My entire being seemed to compress into just that terrible sight- Josie, my sweetheart, coughing blood. The whole attack was over in an instant. The tears ran hotly down my face. I felt like a volcano, ready to explode.
When I looked up, the lizard was staring at me again. The white underside of its mouth was stained a faint pinkish red. It flickered out its tongue.
“HAVEN’T YOU HAD ENOUGH TO EAT?” I screamed. I couldn’t think. I just screamed at it. Some primal instinct consumed me. I looked around the deck- there was nothing I could use as a weapon. I balled my fists and stood up, taking an aggressive stride towards the beast.
Then I heard it. The most wonderful, amazing, precious sound of a foghorn from a passing ship. I stopped in my tracks and turned to look over the Atlantus’s starboard side. It was a trawler, coming down the Bay, heading out towards the sea. I just started jumping and waving and screaming, heedless of the monster behind me. When I did remember it, my left hand shot down to clutch the railing in a panicked flash, but I kept jumping, kept shouting- “HEY! HEY! OVER HERE! HELP! I NEED HELP! OVER HERE!”
The trawler- she was so close I could read her name, the Evangeline- her captain looked at me with the most confounded expression on his face. Then, the ship slowly, majestically, began to veer towards the Atlantus.
I looked back down the tilted deck as the trawler started to turn my way, and the lizard was gone. Not gone off a distance to breathe, or to try one more time at ramming the ship into the gully. Gone as in gone.
I don’t know how I managed to clamber across the rope line they threw me. I had nothing left. My muscles were deadweights, my energy all spent. But, somehow, I used my very last juice to get across, and collapsed onto the deck. A sobbing, sputtering wreck.
The trawler’s old seadog captain asked me- “Why didn’t you swim for shore? It’s not so very far…”
It was a long time before I could reply. I couldn’t tell him the truth. He wouldn’t have believed me. No one would have. They’d have had me committed. So, shamefully, I made up the lie right then and there, with Josie’s body still warm in the monster’s stomach.
“I swam out here with my friends last night, and…”
“You got stuck?” the captain supplied.
I nodded dumbly. “Riptide.”
“Where are the others? Your friends?”
I saw them all in my head again. Shirley, being dragged through the water. Cliff’s strangled yelp. Joan, kicking at the inside of its mouth. Jack getting punched straight up into the air. Josie, coughing blood. Tears ran hotly down my cheeks. I shook my head.
“Drowned, then,” the captain said softly. He crossed himself, and I looked out over the choppy waters of the Delaware Bay as the sun finally rose in earnest and kissed the waves, and I wished with all my heart that he had been right.
I told the Coast Guard and State Police the same story. My friends had drowned, and that was that. I knew what would happen if I spoke the truth of that terrible night. I couldn’t bear to relive it, to be mocked and reviled and called insane for daring to speak about what had really happened to them.
No bodies were ever found. That greedy, flippered serpent devoured them whole, leaving not a trace behind to wash ashore. The investigation came to roughly the same conclusion- after they drowned, my friends had been washed out to sea, where their bodies were most likely devoured by sharks or other fishes.
I attended the funeral services, all five of them. Each time I could scarcely bear to look into their parents’ eyes as I extended my sincere condolences. How could I, knowing that their child… ? But wasn’t it better that way? For them, I mean? To believe your child drowned at sea? An almost peaceful way to go, in contrast to the reality. No blood, no screaming, no choking, no desperate begging for help. Just an outstretched hand, sliding beneath the waves…
That night was not the last I ever saw of the creature, for it haunted my nightmares for years after. It still does, even now as I lay dying in this cot. I drift off to sleep to the low, eerie thrumming of harps, unsure if I will ever wake… in the next moment, I see those blue, inkspill eyes staring at me, a black maw full of jagged teeth lurching up to engulf me…
Two years later when I deployed to Korea, I met an Australian soldier who had a pet goanna. What madness possessed him to give such a cold-blooded horror the honored title of pet, I know not. But I damn near shot through the ceiling at the sight of it. Its head looked exactly like the sea-lizard’s. The shape, the scales… even something of the coloration was the same. I refused to sleep in its presence. Whenever its tongue flicked out at me, I was back on the Atlantus. More than once, I was tempted to cave in its skull with my trenchtool while its owner slept. I refrained only due to my camaraderie with the Aussie, who had saved my life on several occasions.
Much, much later, I came face to face with the creature once again, when I took my grandkids to the Academy of Natural Sciences. In the great hall of dinosaur bones, alongside the duckbills and three-horns and that mightiest of all meat-eaters, I saw it. A sleek, serpentine skeleton, the bones worn to a drab brown after baking in the kiln of the earth for untold eons. It had four broad flippers, scaffolded by five thin, knobby fingers that beckoned to me like the hand of the Reaper. Its skull was a massive, five-foot arrowhead with rows of curved, deeply rooted teeth as big as bananas. Sockets which hadn’t held eyes since before Noah let loose his raven over the flooded world regarded me with the cold neutrality of the dead, and I was immediately sick to my stomach. I needed to sit, my grandchildren rallying around me trying to comfort me and asking me what was the matter. I felt certain I would vomit but thankfully managed to hold down the dread nausea that had overtaken me. The beast had reared up again to haunt me, this time not from the sea but from the murky depths of prehistory.
When I recovered enough to stand, I took my grandsons and granddaughter over to read the placard in front of the skeleton. I had to steel myself with the assurance that the creature was, in fact, a skeleton, just the remains of a creature which had been dead so long its bones had been changed into stone. Trembling, I read the placard to my grandson- the creature was called Tylosaurus proriger. It was not a dinosaur, but a type of marine reptile called a mosasaur, most closely related to monitor lizards. It had lived in what is today Kansas during the Cretaceous period, until it went extinct along with the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago.
But the placard was wrong. It didn’t go extinct.
That selfsame creature, I swear upon the altar of God, was what attacked me and my friends.
I don’t know how such a massive beast could have persisted in secrecy for so long, avoiding detection even by the most dedicated whalers and fishermen. But it must have. In some dread refugia of forlorn atolls and scabrous reefs, its kind long outstayed their time in the world, until they bred that last fell specimen, which grew slowly and swam steadily, roaming the deep dark wastes of the world until one autumn night found it lurking in the waters off Cape May…
Despite it all, I still have the Cape May diamond I gave to Josie. I found it at our campsite on the beach when I led the police there. Our fire burned down to the charcoals. It was still wrapped up in the blanket she’d been wearing. Sparkling in the morning sun. I picked it up and held it, and I just cried and cried and cried, right in front of the policemen.
As I finish telling you of that dreadful night, I hold it in my hand. I kept it on my desk all these years, and asked my son to bring it to the hospital for me.
It… it brings me comfort. When I hold it, the harps of the angels seem to play just a little bit louder, and I can feel her near me, just a little bit closer…
POSTSCRIPT: This story was very loosely based upon an allegedly true sea serpent encounter reported by Edward Brian McCleary and published by Fate Magazine, in May 1965.
The author first heard this story reported on Dead Rabbit Radio- a daily paranormal, conspiracy, and true crime podcast- in Episode 419, titled “The Pensacola Monster Needs Human Flesh”. The author is indebted to Dead Rabbit Radio for providing the creative inspiration needed to write the tale you have just read. If you enjoyed this story or the show description interests you, please consider giving it a listen!
Additionally, there is a lengthy deleted scene to this story which I had to cut for the sake of flow. I have elected to publish this deleted scene here, for any interested readers.
I have also published a “WRITING OF” essay to accompany this story, for any readers who might be interested in the real historical and paleontological research that went into it:
A traditional kind of story, but a very well done one !
Utterly nail-biting story! You did such a good job!