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

The wave curls, and at its peak, it waits.

Ana is in the wave, and she is under the waves with the King, and she is on a boat, a frightened child, long ago. Time folds and unfolds around her, and she sees what is and what was and what could be.

In a time that isn’t now, a field of golden wheat turns bloody under the light of the setting sun. Theo stands on the porch of a house, surrounded by people Ana doesn’t recognize, except for one woman she maybe saw once in a dream. The wind howls, flattening stalks, and Theo shelters his eyes. The first drop of rain hits, and the people huddled beneath the edge of the roof look to the horizon, glad they are far from the ocean, and watch the storm rise.

Ana is that storm.

On a beach that isn’t now, but sometime soon, the magician’s priests and priestesses chant to call her from the sea. The tide hisses over wet stones, pulling back impossibly far. The sound is tumbled bones. The men and women sway. Their voices rise. They don’t notice the tide curling into a wave high enough to block the moon.

Ana unfolds and she is limbs and teeth and dead men’s bones. She is the wave curled above the beach, full of broken ships, splinter-sharp. She is a monster. She is a little girl clutching her mother’s hand. She is the heir to the King Under the Waves. Ana smiles.

Above the beach, the wave finally decides where it will fall. The sky is dark, darker, darkest, drowning the moon. By the time the cultists finally think to scream, it is too late. The wave crashes over, into them, through them. And the wave is full of terrible things.

Once upon a time, a child went under the waves and did not drown. Once upon a time, a child rose, a dripping, monstrous thing, climbing up from the waves again.

When I went to sleep, it was in my pink princess fantasy of a bedroom, canopied in taffeta and silver sparkles, head cushioned by goose down wrapped in the finest silk. It was all too young for me, and most of my friends assumed that it was somehow ironic, but I loved it. My mother’s hand was in every fold and unnecessary spangle. She was never going to hem my prom dress or fuss over my wedding favors; I could at least let her linger in the places where she’d already been.

When I woke, it was because a wave had slapped me hard across the face, sending salt water shooting up my nose and into my eyes. I sputtered and gasped, trying to snap out of this horrible dream.

I did not wake up. Another wave hit me, this time filling my mouth as well as my nose, and for one horrifying moment, I couldn’t breathe at all. The world was water, and water was the world, and I was so small in comparison to it. This was where I was going to die, choking on the waves that had replaced my breath.

My body felt like it had been wrapped in cotton, insulated from everything except the cold. I tried to raise my hands—like an open hand has ever done anything to fend off a wave—and realized I couldn’t move my arms, or my legs, or anything . Something was holding me in place. The world might be water, but I? I was nothing more than a disembodied head, somehow still alive, at least for the moment. Somehow freezing and drowning at the same time.

Even with my eyes open, there was no real light, apart from the silver spangle of the stars overhead. How bright they were, how bright and how beautiful. If I squinted, I could almost pretend they were the stars on my bedroom ceiling, the ones Mom had placed with such precision in the last few good months, before she’d grown too sick to balance on the stepladder.

“If you need me, look for the brightest star, and know that I’ll be watching you,” she had said, and I’d believed her, seven years old and too naive to understand that when mothers die, they die . They don’t Cinderella their way into the nearest hazel tree and live on as some intangible but positive influence. They go away, bones and rotting meat under the dirt that covers their grave, and they never come back, and they never come home, and they never help you repaint your bedroom. So it stays the color of roses and rainbow mornings, the color of a dead mother’s love, and whenever someone questions it, the answer is quick and clean and easy:

“My mother chose the color. My dead mother.”

Another wave hit me in the face, knocking my head backward against what felt like stone. Rough stone, like the edges of the volcanic tide pools that ringed the local coast. And just like that, I knew where I was, where I had to be:

Olympia Beach. Private. Secluded. Unsafe for the last five years, as the rising sea levels had knocked out the sunbathing and diving areas one by one, leaving only the rocky tide pools and the jagged edges of ancient lava flows. People think Hawaii when they think of lava, not coastal Washington, but we’re made of fire as much as anyplace else. Fire, and ashes, and the jagged edges where the water hits the shore.

“Help,” I gasped as the wave receded. I was starting to learn their tempo. Every time one of them hit me, I got a four-second gap to breathe. It wasn’t enough. I was going to be out of air soon, no matter what I did.

That wasn’t going to stop me. I breathed in, holding it as the next wave struck, and then howled, “ Help! ”

“Mmmm,” said a thoughtful voice from behind me, outside my limited range of vision. “I’m going to go with ‘nah.’ Hope that answer’s okay with you.”

My shock and outrage were enough to make me mistime the next wave. My attempt at a retort was swallowed by a wave of water, turning into so much helpless blubbering. I could feel the wave on the back of my throat, trying to shove its way further inside, further into me .

“Aw, wow, I bet that one hurt. If you stay calm, you’ll live longer. At least, that’s the theory. Maybe even… long enough.”

My sister’s voice moved as she spoke, going from slightly to my left to slightly to my right. Neither direction changed the fact that it was my own damn flesh and blood that had put me in this position. Another wave hit me. This time I managed to hold my breath until it receded.

“Maya, what the fuck ?”

“Remember last month when I had to go to the dentist, and I had that whole massive panic attack about it, until dear old Daddy agreed to let me see a phobia specialist?” Her voice came closer, malice and self-satisfaction dipped in a hard candy shell of hatred. “Oral conscious sedation, sweetie. Valium and Triazolam and you’re off to la-la land while the nice dentist fixes your ouchie tooth. Only I’m not afraid of the dentist. The nitrous was more than enough for me. I palmed the pills. Did you enjoy your chocolate milk last night? Was it delicious ?”

An image flashed through my mind as the next wave struck home: Maya, darling Maya, the sister I’d never been able to figure out or connect with, bringing me a glass of chocolate milk before bed. She’d sworn on our mother’s grave that she hadn’t spit in it, and foolish little me, I’d taken that to mean she hadn’t done anything to it. The thought that my own sister might drug me had never crossed my mind.

The wave receded. I gasped for air before moaning, “Why?”

“Why? Gosh, Tracy, I just don’t know .”

I thought I felt her fingers brush the top of my head, a fleeting touch that was gone as quickly as it had come. I thought she was leaning in close. If I had been able to feel my hands, move my hands, I could have grabbed her and pulled her into the water with me.