By Melissa Leigh
Sometime around 4 am on an empty night without moon or stars, Spencer crunches along the beach of Jericho on the hunt again. This is the third time this month he’s used his insomnia to throw him out of his comfortable bed, compelled to accomplish a task he’s still not sure will be doable. He cannot be certain if free will drives him to drag his boots through the wet, sucking environment, or if fate has a hand in it. He’s not sure he cares.
In his weariness, his penlight almost misses a reflector’s glint in a pile of seaweed. His energy surges as he scrambles across the squelching sand to his prize. Spencer is near giddy as he picks up the sneakers and knocks the grit off. Minimal wear and tear, size 10, not super waterlogged. They’re still heavy with the feet trapped inside them, whiteish indigo at the bloodless ankles. Are these the right ones? If Spencer can get Jamie the right pair, then everything will change.
Jamie. When Spencer closes his eyes, even just to blink, he sees the driftwood brown-gray skin, mottled with white like harbor seals, and the deep black eyes peering up from the dragnet. His skin crawls and exalts at the memory of soft, waterlogged hands brushing the loose black hair back from his scalp, a touch both terrible and hauntingly familiar. It can’t be the same Jamie he grew up with—Spencer knows this—but maybe this new version will make up for the one he lost. It’s what his father believes about his mom.
Spencer wraps the rotten feet in a thick plastic sheet and deposits them into a well-worn tan backpack still marked with the words I love you on the inside flap. The boot prints he leaves on his jaunt back to the parking lot are much lighter than the drag marks he dredged into the soft shoreline earlier. The sun is a red line as he puts his ancient Ford truck into drive, meaning he’s running late for the morning halibut catch. He needs to get out there as soon as he can. He knows Jamie is waiting.
When the boat casts off, the sun has grown from crimson to bright fish-roe orange. All other commercial vessels, the ones still left in the Salish sea, are already hauling catch. Captain Timmons doesn’t scold him, not anymore. It’s Spencer’s dad’s boat, and with the recent disappearances along the waterway, fishing hasn’t been as time-sensitive as it once was. Spencer stows his package in his locker, hoping the cabin’s warmth won’t make the feet smell like anything more than fish meat and seaweed. This is the third pair he’s stowed in as many weeks, but Jamie won’t come if they aren’t just right.
As his family boat, The Undertow, passes through the mouth of the harbor, Spencer dutifully steps to the port side and opens a vein with a small pen knife, saying a few words to ask for safe passage. Every time he does this, he’s near positive he can hear a cry, gull-like and distant, acknowledging his sacrifice.
Merv and Jeremy, the other crew on The Undertow, their arms smooth and white, look away when he bleeds along the harbor. He ignores them. They don’t understand. Some of Spencer’s oldest memories are tracing the marks on his father and grandfather’s arms with his fingertips while they spun tales of their travels between sips of whisky. Stories of kelpies, selkies, and the dangers of killer whales unspooled like cable yarn from a sweater. That’s what Spencer’s own scars remind him of—the thick ropey strands that bind them all together.
The spray kicks up as they make their daily rush out to the fishing grounds. The salt mixes with the tears streaming from his eyes, half drawn out from the speed they are traveling, half from sleeplessness. It tastes like home. Like belonging. Like history.
Spencer braces himself along the front rail and pretends he’s on a roller coaster, like the one in Vancouver. He still remembers the cloying heat of that summer he’d spent with Jamie—the real Jamie—working along the boardwalk. Jamie and Spencer, inseparable since middle school, determined to escape the life designed for them by being the children of fishermen. Jamie and Spencer, hiding the hands they’d hold in public, scrawling secret notes on each other’s backpacks. They’d only spent one day at the amusement park between jobs, but it was the best day of Spencer’s life.
Then there was the fight that drove Jamie out of the condo they’d been sharing. Hours of frenetic, guilty searching along the shoreline, passing flyers to friends and cops. He’d hoped and prayed and screamed at the sea for answers. Spencer was the first to spot Jamie’s shoes—size 10 beat-up Converse Allstars shot through with rainbow laces—and the bare footprints leading to the retreating waves. He’d known then he’d never see Jamie alive again. He hadn’t realized that there was so much more to it.
The following six hours pass the same way they pass every day. Spencer hauls catch with Merv and Jeremy. Captain Timmons keeps the boat steady. Spencer casually coasts to his locker when he has a chance, ensuring everything is in order. Even with the late start, today seems an exceptional day for fishing. Halibut practically jump into the nets like they’re escaping something from the depths. The crew is ready to motor back before sunset, which comes shockingly early this far north in November.
The engine dies inexplicably, sputtering to a stop mid-journey. Merv goes below deck to see what’s wrong, and Spencer follows, but only so far as the lockers. Merv comes back almost immediately, baffled by the engine failure. The rest of the crew discusses potential plans. Jamie’s sure he knows what is about to happen. The only part he doesn’t know is the final outcome.
A sickening thud hits the deck, and everyone freezes. Powerful black arms with mottled splotches of tan and white grip the side of the boat and haul over something—someone—powerful and terrible and beautiful all at once. Like the first time the creature was trussed up in the nets this summer, the seething being flops on deck and locks eyes with Spencer.
That time two things were made immediately, abundantly clear. First, Spencer was the only one who could move or interact directly with Jamie, the rest trapped by some unknown power or fear. Second, only Spencer’s stammered promises to do whatever Jamie wanted kept the crew from being killed. Suddenly reports of abandoned boats made so much more sense. And, equally abruptly, Spencer’s whole existence had a purpose again.
Jamie’s slick chest glistens in the dying light of winter, their scales shining like stainless steel hooks. Where fins and tentacles had once been, the blue-gray pair of Levi’s 501 jeans with empty ankles stagger sloppily forward. The same legs which showed up like chum in one of the nets on a sunny Tuesday in September. Almost immediately, Jamie returned, drawn to the boat by the smell of rotting human flesh. They’d taken the pants and what was within them eagerly.
Then they’d gently caressed Spencer’s thick arm scars, like tracing nautical maps to a home port. They’d dove overboard faster than an anchor drop, vanishing in the pitchy waters. Spencer would have assumed he was hallucinating if it hadn’t happened twice.
After that were the tries with the feet. Two other pairs had been presented, both rejected without Jamie ever climbing onto the boat. Each time the rest of the crew came out of a trance, behaving as if nothing strange had occurred. Each time Spencer remembered his father’s tearful speech about enough sacrifice bringing those lost at sea back to those who had faith. Each time Spencer believed a little harder.
Spencer presents his precious sneakers to Jamie, who stares at him with glassy black eyes like a horse’s or a shark’s. Jamie runs a wet, webbed hand with claws like deck screws reverently along Spencer’s left arm, his newest scar opening with a flash of pain against the salt encrusted on Jamie’s limb. Then Jamie takes the plastic-wrapped shoes and dumps them out on the deck.
Spencer stares dumbstruck as tiny, odd tentacles, all white and nearly translucent, emanate from the empty holes of Jamie’s pants and shiver along the deck. The tentacles grab awkwardly at the shoes, dipping into the slimy white flesh of the ankles. Jamie drifts into the air a few inches as the bones and sinew drag under the jeans, affixing themselves with popping sounds. All the while, the entire deck is silent, perfectly still. When Jamie stands, really stands, on two real human legs and two actual human feet in front of Spencer, he nearly weeps with joy.
Then Jamie’s mouth splits from ear to crested ear with the sharp teeth of a mako. There are still no words from it, but a strange and gull-like cry rakes out along the waves like a fog horn. It is answered from over the rail by a dozen more. Jamie runs the spiraled claws along Spencer’s face, and Spencer can only utter a few dry words at the creature he has most assuredly made whole. Make it quick.
Captain Timmons dies first, wordlessly, gouts of blood spilling across the deck like great fountains, and Jamie gorges themself on the Captain’s wind-raw pink flesh. Eyes wide with terror, Merv and Jeremy are disemboweled next and stand through all of it until their exsanguination is complete. Their bodies are tossed overboard by Jamie’s strong hands, and Spencer sees a dozen more mottled heads bob up from the surface in eager anticipation.
Once again, Jamie drifts those horrible nails along Spencer’s face in a familiar caress, and knowledge seeps into his mind without conscious thought. He is both terrified and excited. He knows what happens next.
Spencer motors back toward the beach of Jericho, engine trouble non-existent, confident it will be practically empty this time of year. There is only one person he wants to share this new knowledge, new faith with. The rest don’t deserve it.
During the hour spent heading to shore, the porpoising bodies of other creatures keep pace along both sides. He swears one of them wears his mother’s face. He hopes he isn’t just hallucinating it.
Spencer anchors in shallow water that will become land as the tide wanders out later tonight. His thoughts drift to the other abandoned boats in the harbor. Are any of them among the number of bobbing heads keeping pace?
Jamie pushes him overboard, and for a fleeting moment, Spencer is terrified he’ll drown. Then Jamie’s wet, cold, reassuring hand is along his back, and they swim under the surface, kicking in time with one another, to the edge of the breakers.
As the sun drops lower into the sky like a wound, Spencer and Jamie walk together, stinking of seaweed and blood, into the gray-yellow sand of Jericho. Behind them, floating in the tide, a pod, a collection, a family of Jamie’s kin bides their time. Jamie’s claws cut through Spencer’s sweater to draw blood on the walk through the dunes, but he no longer cares. This is what he wanted. Their footsteps beat a languid trek toward Spencer’s house. Where his father, etched with scars, waits for his reward.
* * *
Melissa Leigh is a horror and sci-fi writer who has been writing since she was nine. Despite how disturbed her English teacher was upon discovering Melissa enjoyed writing werewolf stories where her friends were devoured, she was encouraged to keep exploring the dark recesses of her mind. Honestly, at this point, she can’t be stopped.