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

The tattoos on her arms and legs lash, uncoiling across her belly and down her spine. Limbs and teeth and a skull and eyes like blue fire. Ana grips the box tight. She feels the suffocating weight of flesh, rotting around her. Around him. The thunder of blood not his own, constantly pounding in his ears.

It’s too hot. Sweat prickles beneath her armpits. She has to get out. Clutching the box, Ana staggers onto the deck. She’s at the rail without even thinking about it, then up and over, into the water.

The shock of cold slaps her awake. Salt water surges up her nose, she tastes it at the back of her throat. Light from her tattoos seeps into the water. It occurs to her she isn’t wearing her dive suit, her mask, her regulator. She shouldn’t be able to see so clearly. Her lungs should be screaming for air.

Something tickles the side of her neck. Before she can slap it away, it becomes a burning pain, like a knife slit across her skin. She chokes on a scream, thrashing. She wants to drop the box but she can’t; it’s seared to her hands. The skin at her neck parts, and she’s breathing through gills.

Her pulse jack-rabbits. She is a child in a room filled with tanks. She is a teenager on the streets, and a man with garlic-scented breath is threatening her. There is other skin beneath her own, slick and smoke-colored and drowned; her muscled limbs could tear a man apart, have torn men apart. Her teeth, needle sharp, have tasted blood.

There was a woman named Zarah, once, with burnt-wood skin, who smelled like oranges and dark chocolate and cloves. They drank, and danced, and Zarah called the marks on Ana’s skin beautiful. She traced them with the tip of her tongue, and Ana could almost pretend she was human. Until she woke to the sound of Zarah screaming and the bed drenched in seawater. When Ana tried to reach after Zarah as she fled, the arms that reached were slick-black like oil, and she fell in a squirming mass on the floor, seeing the angry, puckered marks on Zarah’s legs and back and arms.

What is she? A monster who will hurt those around her if she lets her guard down. Zarah. Theo. Even her mother, the first person the monster took from her. Rage floods her, and when the tide of it recedes, it leaves Ana hollow and cold. She’s still clutching the box, and she flips it open under the waves.

A voice booms; the words are thunder and bells tolling on drowned ships and ancient stones cracking under battering waves. They roll through her like lightning, writing directions on her bones. Corridors unwind around her. Massive statues loom at her from niches, larger than the pharaohs and even less human. The walls are stone, emitting light the color of a star, but they are also made of the body of a vast creature long-since decayed. Ribs arching, a nautilus, spiraling endlessly down, the echo chamber of a skull.

At its heart lies her father and a choice, and Ana wants to back away, but she hasn’t even moved. She’s still hanging motionless, her throat slit with gills, breathing underwater while the prince cowers inside her.

A shadow darts at the corner of her eye. Ana turns and it surges toward her, gray arms unfurling. Squid. Octopus. Shark. None of the words fit. The face is almost human, but the skull slants sharply upward, the eyes are flat back, and when the near-lipless mouth opens, it reveals rows of needled teeth.

Traitor.

Ana shoots upward, her head breaking the waves. She hauls in a gasping breath, and for a moment, she chokes on air as the gills fight her and her heart stutters and threatens to stop. She claws for the boat’s ladder, expecting webbed hands to close on her ankles at any moment.

Shaking, she collapses on the deck. Her skin seals itself, the flesh smooth as though it never opened. She’s no longer holding the box, but the word continues to pound inside her like waves against the shore. Home. Home. Home.

She can’t help but obey, but if she does…

Traitor.

Ana hugs her knees to her chest. In the space between her ribs, between her skin and bones, the creature sharing her body curls small as well. Together. Afraid.

“Once upon a time, a child sailed upon the waves.” Ana lies on her side under a pile of blankets.

Theo found her on the deck when he returned. He put her to bed, made her hot tea, fussed over her until she insisted all she needed was sleep. But sleep is the farthest thing from her mind. Her whole body is wired. The prince keens inside her.

When she was alone, when she was afraid as a child, the prince told her stories.

“Once upon a time,” she says, “there was also child under the waves who was very ill.”

Of course, she wasn’t there the first time the prince was placed inside a human body, but she tries to imagine it, and make it into a better story. A happier one. She makes it into a fairy tale, like the ones he used to tell her. Inside, the prince calms, listens.

“And there was a wicked magician who tricked the King Under the Waves into thinking a human body would cure his son.”

Ana’s muscles relax and un-cramp. She’s able to roll onto her back, but she doesn’t stop talking.

“The child who sailed upon the waves had always been in love with the ocean. He dreamt of it every night, as though his blood was half seawater and his heart a many-chambered shell. This heart called out to the King Under the Waves, its every beat a siren-song, a beacon.

“So the King became a storm. He found the ship where the child sailed, and fell upon the deck, shattering the mast. He tore the ship in two, ignoring the screams and the prayers of those on board. He found the heartbeat, scooped up the child, and drew him under the waves, but he did not drown.”

The story is prettier than the truth, even with the drowned sailors and the ruined ship. There are no needles, no blood, no pain, no terror. But right now, this is the story both she and the prince need to hear. Her tattoos still.

“There was a child under the waves, and a child above them. One loved the sea, and one loved the land. One sank, and the other rose, and after that moment, neither was alone again.”

“Here.” Ana slides the tablet showing a map and the coordinates for where she needs to go across the small table in the cramped galley. Theo turns it, frowning.

“That’s open ocean. There’s nothing for miles around.”

“Ships wreck in the open ocean all the time.” Ana shrugs, looking away.

Of course it’s not a ship she’s looking for, it’s a palace, a lost kingdom, but how can she explain it to Theo? How can she tell him a box in a dream and a voice inside her head are calling her home to a place she’s never lived, and she doesn’t know what she’ll find when she gets there?

“Hey.” Theo’s voice is soft. She looks up even though she doesn’t want to. “Tell me what’s going on with you?”

His voice is gentle, and there’s that concern in his eyes again. He peers at her to see beneath the hard edges. They’ve never really talked about it, but Ana knows Theo lost people, too. Why else would he have thrown his arm around her on the street that day? If sometimes she looks at him and sees home, then he must see it when he looks at her, too.

“I…” Ana falters. “I need to go there, and I’m not sure I’ll be coming back.”

It’s as close to the truth as she can get. The voice tolling through the waves, calling her home, is not a kind voice. She doesn’t know exactly what’s waiting for her, but she knows she can’t go on like this, afraid of herself, afraid for the prince, afraid of what she might do to someone who gets too close. If she ever hurt Theo…