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

I flip the phone face down. Not now. “I’m not leaving,” I say. “Not until I know why she’s here.”

Gina stares at me in disbelief, her hair falling in front of her face. “Are you serious, Em? That thing just tried to kill us!”

“I noticed! But why is it here?” I rub my eyes. “Her skin should have been on her when she was cremated, not hiding in the beach house like a fucking horror movie monster. How is it even alive?”

“If it’s still alive, it’s going to come after us. So let’s get moving.”

My phone vibrates on the tabletop. Another text from Dad: EM, ANSWER ME.

Gina seizes my shoulders. “Emma,” she says, low and urgent. “We can figure this out when we’re on the road. I’m not staying in the house any longer, not with that thing. I’ve watched enough horror movies to know that if we sleep here, it’s going to murder the fuck out of us.”

“Then you go,” I say, surprising us both. “I need to stay and find answers.” Mom’s death is raw, and I know, with utmost certainty, that I need to know why she’s here. If I back out now and let other people deal with the skin creature, I never will.

“If you’re staying, I’ll stay too.” She glances at my buzzing phone and narrows her eyes. “People who love each other don’t leave them behind.”

We exhaust Google after a couple hours, and all that comes up are a bunch of Wikipedia articles about various mythologies. None are particularly helpful. I lean across the table and glance around the living room, lingering on the bookshelves against the walls. “Maybe there’s something in here that will tell us about… whatever that thing is.”

“Like what? All I’ve seen here are birding guides and encyclopedias about different kinds of shells. Your parents don’t have a copy of the Necronomicon.”

“Gina, my mom’s empty skin just tried to take my face off. At this point, anything’s possible.” I stand up, pushing my chair back. “We should go look. If there’s anything, it’ll be in their bedroom. They kept all their important shit there.”

Gina reluctantly follows me upstairs. The rotting fish smell lingers in the hallway, but when I push the door open, the master bedroom is dark and still. The closet door remains closed.

I remember that the skin has human hands. What if it knows how to work doorknobs?

I flick on the lights and advance slowly. We fan out and check under the bed, behind furniture, and inside drawers. We find nothing but empty cardboard boxes and stacks of old photos of my parents. There are more recent ones too, and Gina pointedly shuffles the ones that include Clayton posing with my family, his arm around my waist, to the back of the pile.

There’s one photo that catches my attention. It’s of Mom sitting on the wooden steps, gazing wistfully into the distance. The wind sweeps her hair out of her face, and I know she’s looking at the ocean. She loved the beach, but Dad never let Mom go swimming. I asked him why, once, and he told me that it was too dangerous. It would damage her skin.

I tuck the photo into my pocket.

“Em, look at this.” Gina holds up my dad’s old hunting knife. It’s the same model as his normal, current hunting knife, from the black blade to the serrated edge by the hilt. But this one is bent out of shape, wildly crooked. It looks like it was dragged hard across asphalt.

There’s a faint but steady scraping coming from the closet. I freeze, all the hair on my body standing on end. Gina hisses.

It’s the sound of acrylic nails raking against wood.

My eyes meet Gina’s. “Let’s sleep in the car tonight,” I whisper.

She grips the knife tighter. “Sounds like a plan.”

The scraping grows more frantic than ever, right before we shut the bedroom door.

That night, I dream that I’m standing on the porch in front of the beach house, and my mom’s skin is sitting next to me, carving a wooden bird out of a piece of driftwood. It turns its head, and there’s nothing inside it but empty space. I can see the pale flipside of the skin, shining like the moon on the water, through the empty eyeholes of her almost-face.

“Watch,” it says, and points its hollow arm at the ocean. I follow the glint of its knife down the long white expanse of sand. Two figures splash in the surf, a tall man with blond hair and a surfer’s build, and a woman whose curly black hair swings around her in a long, thick braid. In the distance, dark, sharp-finned creatures glide through the water, each as long as a whale, their massive, long-necked animal heads breaching the surface. I know, somehow, that these are my mom’s family. “See what he did to me.”

My parents look young, maybe about as old as Gina and I are. My dad’s swimming trunks have his fraternity’s symbols on them, the same as the ones on all of Clayton’s clothes. As I watch, my mom kisses my dad and then turns to face the ocean. Her pod, her family, waits many yards away, just close enough to see. She takes a breath and arcs toward the waves, and her skin ripples, growing gray and rough, her body expanding into a large, powerful shape.

He pulls his hunting knife from the back of his shorts and stabs her between the shoulder blades. He grips the hilt with both hands, and his shoulders flex with effort as he drags the knife down, sawing through her skin. She screams, and her skin ripples again, but he shoves the knife in harder, and as she thrashes it goes in deeper.

Her family howls from the water, surging closer, but Dad drags her onto the sand. Black blood surges from her wounds, fountaining over his hands, but he keeps going. As she struggles, he plants a foot on her back and drags his blade down her spine.

He saws all the way down her spine, tearing away her white bikini, and then he begins to peel her.

I can’t look away, and I can’t block out the sounds. I watch it all. I see everything.

When he’s done, he pulls a pale, wet-skinned thing from her carcass. It’s shaped like a human being, like a girl. She looks like the fish that Gina and I saw on the beach earlier, pulled open and exposed. Her naked flesh trembles. Each breath sounds agonizing. Even from this distance, I can see the fine, sharp ridges of her bones against the outline of her body.

He drops her on the sand and bends to pick up the gray, almost-person-shaped skin lying on the beach. It’s caught partway between beast and woman, with halfway fins and long, fluttery gills. A few acrylic nails cling stubbornly to each of its partially transformed hands.

He slings the skin over his shoulder. Its flat, sightless face stares at the sky. Once he has it, he lifts her up, too, like she weighs nothing.

Dad walks up the beach house’s wooden steps and past me without acknowledging me. My mom sags in his grip, her body dangling in his arms like a deboned fish. Her skin flaps behind him like an empty sock, slapping wetly against his back with each step. Her family wails, and the smell of ocean rot crashes over us like a wave.

I turn back toward the house and find myself looking into my own face. My skin stands empty, sand on its feet, hollow around the phantom shape of my body. It doesn’t have eyes, or teeth, or a tongue, but when it speaks I hear its words clearly.

Run away, Emma.

I wake in the backseat of the Range Rover, cold sweat pouring down my back. Gina’s arms wrap around me as she sleeps nestled against my side.

The texts from Dad keep pinging in, one after the other. The screen glows in the dark, through the pocket of my sweatpants. I swallow. I want to defend him, but I know him too well. My dad loved my mom the way Clayton loves me, which is to say, the way a man loves his favorite sports car. I can see him wanting to keep her with him, even after death. Just not… actually keep her empty skin.