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

“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Ed.

I ignored him and his frantic yanking at the chain, then went belowdecks and opened the seacocks. As water started flooding into the yacht, I went back up top, the flare gun cocked and ready just in case he’d got loose.

He hadn’t. He was slumped on his knees, red-faced and exhausted. “What are you doing?” he said. “What?”

The boat was already wallowing. Water splashed over the decks. “Justice,” I said, then pointed the flare gun skyward and fired. The distress flare streaked up. I reloaded and fired the other one, too, then climbed over the rail. “Oh, and by the way,” I said, “your brother was a better shag.”

He started screaming when I went over the side. I struck away from the Emily , watching as she surged forward and went under, her own screws driving her down. Into the deeps. Ed seemed to scream for quite some time before he choked and gargled into silence.

Reluctantly, because I hated to lose them and replacements would be hard to come by around here, I kicked off my boots, feeling lighter as they sank. Out towards the coast, a flare burst in the sky. The lifeboat was on its way.

I’d need to find Daniela as soon as I could, get the letter back and burn it. Meanwhile, as my teeth started chattering from the cold, I rehearsed what I’d tell Clive. Most of it would be true, but I’d leave out certain things—and, of course, Edmund York would be the one who’d opened the seacocks and chained himself to the railings, in a fit of remorse. But only after firing the flares from the gun he’d been aiming at me to stop me interfering.

As some old comedian used to say, all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. Robin’s death was paid for, Clive wouldn’t know anything he didn’t need to, everything would stay in its proper compartment, and life would go on.

I told you: you do whatever it takes to protect the safety you’ve found.

The grey sea heaved, capped with foam. I looked a little longer towards the place where the Emily had been, then turned and struck out towards the shore.

Leaving my office on a cool autumn evening, I nearly collided with a woman dancing on the sidewalk. She wore a navy blue skirt-suit designed too narrowly for her plus-sized frame, and she moved in spasms as if in the throes of a standing seizure. Her hands flew into the air and then thrust toward the ground, pulling her shoulders with them until she bowed as low as her ample midriff would allow. Remaining bent at the waist, she launched her arms back and upward as if mimicking wings, all the while stomping her feet– left, right, left, left, right –against the sidewalk. She whipped into an upright position and glared at me. Though I considered the possibility the woman had missed a text changing the time or place of whatever flash mob she’d intended to join, I came to the more likely conclusion that the dancer was just plain crazy. Dilated pupils, black portals into a demented nothingness, noted neither me nor the real world I inhabited. After a beat of absolute motionless, the woman grunted a series of nonsensical phrases, directing them my way and sending me back several steps as the blunt syllables wormed into my head. She restarted her frantic, tribal dance while a meager crowd gathered around. Several members of the ad hoc audience had their phones out, but they were using the devices to record the performance. Admittedly, the spectacle was entrancing in its ferocity and unlikeliness, but the woman needed help, and no one seemed willing to offer it. I took out my phone and dialed for emergency, but the moment the operator came on the line, the woman’s dance ended.

When her limbs ceased their bizarre choreography, she looked around with clear eyes, seeming genuinely confused. A skinny kid with a scraggly beard that reached the military beret atop the image of Che Guevara on his T-shirt fell into a fit of laughter and clapped his hands viciously. Others in the crowd picked up the applause. The woman appeared terrified and rushed into the building.

Within a week, the dancers were all over the news. Most of the reports came from cities along the Gulf Coast, but a few trickled in from landlocked towns. Message boards and wiki pages filled with information about the afflicted and offered uninformed, often ridiculous speculation regarding the cause of what was being called “Boogie Fever.” One callous jokester set the video of an elderly man thrusting and stomping and contorting his emaciated form in the middle of a road to the Benny Hill theme song. The clip went viral: over a million hits in three days.

For many of the afflicted, dancing was the first symptom.

Three months later, I stood in the living room of the condominium I’d shared for a bit less than a year with a man named George Caldwell. George called the apartment his “divorce shack.” In reality, the place was a spacious and beautiful condo with a view overlooking Galveston Bay, and though it may have fallen short of the manse he’d spent thirty years of his life paying off, most people wouldn’t have complained.

The morning had all but vanished as I packed a few remaining mementoes and the items of clothing I considered necessary. My suitcase and two small boxes waited by the door. I procrastinated, checked drawers and cupboards, sifted through the closets one last time. I wouldn’t be coming back to this place.

Memories of George filled the apartment like the morning light, suffusing the rooms, pinging with painful glare from shiny surfaces. Before the dancing and the seizures, before the horrifying news reports, and the night he’d walked in a trance to meet thirty-six others on the sandy shore of Galveston Bay, I’d shared this home with a handsome, gruff, good-natured man, who would never again walk across its polished oak floors.

A remembrance of scotch set my tongue to tingling. The scent of his cologne momentarily filled my nose.

A marble-and-glass table ran across the center of the floor-to-ceiling window opening onto the patio and overlooking the bay. At the table, I placed a set of keys, George’s set, on a brochure for the trip he and I would never take. I reminded myself to contact the cruise line to inform them we would not be sailing from Amsterdam to Budapest on their luxury liner, and then I wondered if it was even necessary.

None of the cruise lines would stay in business. Civilians were avoiding the water these days.

The brochure held my attention. Covered in dust, it was like a funeral program, memorializing a future that was never going to happen. I’d looked forward to traveling with George. I’d looked forward to everything with him.

We met online through a hook-up app two years before the Emergence. George’s profile was typical for a “discreet” married man. No pictures of his face. No real information save for his sexual endowment and the things he liked to do with it. Our first meeting tracked a predictable course: an awkward “Hello,” followed by frenzied groping and undressing. After sex, we both rinsed off and engaged in a little more conversation-sans eye contact. Then, George presented me with a hurried “Let’s do this again,” before he fled my house, stumbling over the threshold as he dashed for the Mercedes he’d parked around the corner.

I chanced a look outside and saw the bay. The surface glittered under the early morning sun. The twinkling touch of sunlight on the surface would have been beautiful under different circumstances. But I could only see glimmering blades, metal shards. Teeth.