Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

An hour later, I again climb out of bed. But George isn’t at the table. He isn’t anywhere in the apartment.

I throw on clothes and run into the hall, but it is empty and quiet. My mind babbles in static bursts, like a radio picking up desperate cries. We had talked about this. This was a possibility we’d considered.

In the grip of the Gibbet Virus, George could enter a trance and wander off. I’d found material about Bermuda and Holly Beach, suggesting the Gibbet Virus could be connected to the vanishing crowds. It struck me as unlikely when he’d suggested it, but I’d learned to take George’s paranoia seriously, if only to keep him grounded.

His cell phone. I call and get voice mail. I call again and again. The device is useless.

Except it isn’t.

At George’s insistence, we’d linked his phone to mine with a tracking application. If he has the phone, if it is receiving a signal, I can find him.

I run down the beach, the distance between the small blue dot on my cell’s screen and another green dot slowly diminishing. In the distance, I see people. They trudge through the sand, smudges in the night. At first I count only three, but as I draw closer to the light swath of sand, I make out so many more.

They converge from the west and north and south. They walk in unison, like robots programmed to a lazy march. Left. Right. Left. Right. Already a large group has gathered at the water’s edge. Their chant pummels the air. The violent syllables share no pitch, but the cadence is matched precisely. It is a tone-deaf chorus, casting their voices at the waves.

And I see George at the water’s edge. He has not reached the entranced throng. He is still thirty yards away from the growing crowd.

I catch up and move in front of him to block his path but he marches into me. His eyes are blank. His throat rumbles with the indecipherable mantra. I struggle with him, but he continues toward the gathering at the water’s edge.

With tears turning cold against my eyes, I punch him in the jaw, and then I tackle him, wrestle him to the sand. George grunts beneath me, voicing the primal chant. Wet, pasty sand grinds into my elbows and forearms.

As I attempt to soothe him, assuring him everything will be okay, the gulf itself rises up.

An enormous blister forms on the water. It forces waves to crash with greater force against the shore on either side of the entranced brigade. The blister keeps growing, but I can’t see what creates it. Maybe I see movement under the water; I can’t be sure. Violent waves crash over George and me, and as I splutter and blow the stinging salt water from my nose, the thing breaches the surface of the gulf.

Far down the beach on the other side of the entranced crowd, another witness screams. More shouts, only a handful really, climb into the air.

It rises, long and flat like the crushed fuselage of an airplane surfacing after years below the waves. The thing is transparent, as if its skin is cellophane encasing the enormous white organs throbbing inside it. My first thought is that it is a species of whale, but I’m quickly convinced it is something different. Something new or extremely old. Spines and lumps cover its back. Triangular fins like those of a giant manta ray lay out like sandbars eighty feet to either side of the bulbous, distorted body. Long black slits run near the center of the face. I see no eyes anywhere on it.

And there are lesser creatures, like crabs with beaked heads, scurrying over the clear, wet tissue. Their pointed legs jab into the meat of the thing for purchase as they panic in the chill night air. One of them skitters down the clear face of the monstrosity and plucks a vaguely glowing gelatinous wad, maybe a jellyfish, from between the black trenches, before racing back over the crown to vanish amid the protuberances and bristles.

As the water settles, the entranced begin to walk into the water, but they don’t submerge. They tread near the surface on a bizarre, glowing mesh, walking toward the monstrous creature as if being summoned. Their chant continues.

Maybe I have caught the virus from George, and this is the kind of horrifying thing he sees when he falls into his trances. Perhaps what plays out before me is not an example of mysterious nature, but rather an amalgam of sickening pieces, cobbled together by my infected mind.

Except it’s not, and I know it’s not.

Barry’s eyes grew wide as I described the Emergence. Certainly he’d seen the video clip one witness had captured that night, but the clip would be a pale, flat fiction compared to an eyewitness account.

“Then, George went crazy. He punched me and kneed my body and convulsed like he was attached to a live wire. I couldn’t hold him down. I tried so hard to keep him with me, but I failed. During the struggle he managed to kick my knee. I didn’t even notice the pain until I tried to stand. I fell on my face and started to crawl after him but I wasn’t fast enough.

“George made it to the bridge just before it broke the surf. The mesh rose into the air, but remained level. Beneath the rising bridge, the water again swelled as the creature notched its head back, like a ship in the final stages of sinking. Its lower jaw emerged from the waves then. Scooped like a canoe, only ten times the size, the creature’s mouth became apparent, and with this came the realization that the marchers who shared George’s affliction walked steadily over this nightmare’s tongue.

“I screamed. I think everyone who wasn’t infected screamed. I’m not sure. I was so focused on George.

“The glowing mesh bridge began to fray at the end and curl skyward behind your father. Filaments pulled away and whipped violently against the purple-black horizon. The crab-like creatures moved in a wave over the bulbous back to swarm the top of the creature’s head, driving their appendages into the face for purchase.

“Then the end of the bridge, the part that lingered near the beach, came fully apart. It unwove, or unraveled. Something. I don’t know. The ends began to snap through the night like a collection of glowing lashes. The bridge bucked upward, sending everyone flying, and the cords creating it came apart completely.

“As the victims fell toward the waiting jaw, the wiry filaments of tongue lashed them. But these strands didn’t just wound. They severed, slicing off limbs and opening torsos. I tried to keep my eyes on him, but George… h-he… remained whole for only a second. Half of his head vanished in a spray of blood, and then he came apart completely. The mechanical hiss of the whipping cords filled the night, but the creature’s food made no sound. Before the first piece of meat hit the thing’s mouth, the people that had marched over the gulf had been reduced to insignificant shreds.

“Standing on the mound of the creature’s face, the lesser crab-like creatures scurried about for bits of meat and drops of fluid cast off by the whipping threads.

“The tongue rewove itself and then retracted quickly into the mouth. Inside the mouth, a long, pale blue wad of tissue streaked through with purple veins rode the interior of the cheek like a blister. It was one of the globsters George had seen.”

During the story’s telling, I’d wandered the room. When it was complete, I found myself near the front door. I stepped to the wall and leaned against if for support as I struggled with the weight that had settled in my chest.

“Did you tell the police?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice cracked, breaking the syllable in two. “I told them.”

“No,” Barry said, shaking his head. “I’ve read every article about that night. You were never quoted.”