By Jes Malitoris
Fourteen days after the sea had taken little Julianne, she came back. She and a few other kids had gone fishing in one of the little dinghies off the quay and a fog had come up. The town knew it came to a bad end on the rocks when the tide brought smashed wood and bits of rod bumping against the dock posts. Cora’s gut told her it was the girl’s grandmother who summoned the child back, and she would be damned before she let the opportunity pass.
Cora labored up the hill to the house furthest out along the cliffs that walled the town, leaning hard into her cane. Her knees had long stopped merely complaining of coming storms and instead screamed litanies of curses at each low-pressure front. Nevertheless, she pushed through. Julianne’s daddy would be back in a few days, and Cora had to hustle if she hoped to conclude her business before then. He didn’t truck with the kind of forces Cora had come to inquire about.
Curtains had been drawn across every window, and the house stared blankly back as Cora crested the rise into the yard, panting. She rapped on the door, and after a moment an exhausted woman opened it.
“Mrs. Ranier!” Julianne’s mother Barb beamed at her. “Sorry for the wait. Julie hasn’t been well since she got home.”
“Cora, please. Poor thing, I’m sure it’s been hard on you both.” She hoisted a gingham-wrapped dish. “You like casseroles?”
“You didn’t need to do that!”
“Nonsense. Your girl mighta come home safe, but I can’t imagine what kinda time you’ve had.”
“Come in, please.”
Cora accepted the offered seat at the kitchen table as Barb started the kettle and fetched her good cups for tea. Barb had bags under her eyes, and her dark hair was visibly greasy and unwashed, but she was smiling.
A voice very like Barb’s cut into the kitchen. “What’re you doin’ here?” Julianne’s grandmother shuffled in on faded pink slippers.
Cora swiveled to scowl at the woman. “’llo, Dolores. Brought casserole.”
“Shoulda brought one to Suzie down the way. Y’know her girl was lost.”
“Brought ‘er one the other day. Been making casseroles for all of ‘em. You know I ain’t got much else to do.” Cora threw Dolores a nasty look and turned back to Barb. “How’s Julianne doin?”
Barb set a steaming cup before her and took the seat across to sip her own. “Doctor Stephens said she musta washed a ways down shore and been walking all this time, tryina get home. No injuries t’ worry about, but she’s malnourished, an’ she hasn’t spoken yet.”
“Mm.” Cora shook her head and eyed Dolores over the rim of her teacup. “Can’t even imagine.”
There was a creak from the depths of the house. Barb bolted from her seat and into the living room, revealing only a sliver of darkness before the door closed behind her.
At once, Dolores turned on Cora. “The hell’re you doin’ here, y’old bitch?”
Cora lifted her cup to her lips nonchalantly. “Came to bring—”
“Don’t gimme that bullshit.”
“Fine.” Cora clanged her cup into the saucer. “Came t’ see you, Dolores.” She leveled her gaze. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
The other woman fingered a chip in her cup. “Whatcha mean?”
“Don’t get coy with me, I remember after your daddy died—”
“Quiet!” Dolores hissed, eyes on the door to the living room as footsteps returned.
Barb eased through the door once more. “So sorry, Cora!” she declared. She had her purse on one arm. “Julie’s hungry again ‘n’ I forgot t’ get groceries yesterday. Could you forgive me for leavin’ you?”
“Of course, sweetheart!” Cora started to her feet, but Barb waved her off.
“No, no, y’all stay ‘n’ catch up. Be home soon, Momma.”
Dolores returned the kiss Barb left on her cheek. She heaved herself up to watch Barb cross the yard. When her daughter’s footsteps had faded, Dolores snapped her glare back to the visitor. “Alright, Cora. Whatcha want?”
“You made the conjurin’ work,” Cora answered. “Show me how.”
Dolores snorted, eyes darting between the closed doors as some distant part of the house creaked. “You don’t want that.”
“Don’t talk down like you know better!”
“But I do!” Dolores lurched toward Cora, palms shaking the table as she leaned over her visitor. “You didn’t have the stomach for the conjurin’ when we tried to call my daddy back. I doubt you’ve built up the nerve since.”
Cora barked out a laugh. She banged her cane on the table and Dolores recoiled. “You think I ain’t any different from the scared little girl who ran home with ‘er palms bleeding? It’s been forty years, Dolores. And thirty-five of ‘em I been alone, because o’ you.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You cursed my husband! I know y’asked the sea to take ‘im from me.”
Dolores’s lip curled. “You stole ‘im from me! You knew I—”
“Yeah, sure, Dolores. I was a real bitch, and you ruined my life for it. Thirty-five years and I can’t be anythin’ but a widow in this town. Any other man said I was ‘damaged goods.’”
“Not my fault.”
“You’re lyin’ to yourself if you’re tryina tell me you didn’t know that’s exactly what’d happen.”
“Fine!” Dolores threw up her hands. “You’re right. And I’ve paid for that curse. The sea’s taken ‘er pound o’ flesh.”
“Well, where’s mine!?” Cora snarled. “You owe me!”
The floor creaked overhead and Dolores’s anger broke. She shivered, then leaned in to whisper directly in Cora’s ear. “You can have whatever you want if you help with one thing. Come’re.” Cora narrowed her eyes but followed.
They went together deeper into the house.
Dolores made Cora abandon her cane, to keep quiet. Unsteady as they were, the women leaned on walls and furniture and cursed at corners that bit their shins as they wove through the gloaming. Cora wondered at the darkness, the curtains closed in every window, the strange thickness in the air. The scent of mildew was so common in town she barely noticed, but this mustiness was different. Animal.
It grew stronger as they climbed the stairs.
Dolores took Cora’s hand as they gained the landing and this so unnerved Cora, she did not snatch it back. They leaned for support on each other. Their shuffling steps rasped on the carpet.
Dolores stopped before a closed door. The air was clearly rancid beyond mold, and as Dolores pushed the door open, Cora gagged.
Rot burned metallic in her nose. What light filtered around the curtains limned the furniture and a heavy cloud of dust motes. A shape on the bed, curled tight, must have been Julianne. Bedclothes lay strewn across the floor, and what looked at first like old laundry piles inhabited the corners. In the gloom, the details were odd. Cora squinted at the nearest, hesitant to cross the threshold. Her eyes were not what they had been, but the folds and crinkles of cloth resembled caked barnacles.
Dolores breathed in her ear, whisper barely louder than the sounds of her lips moving, “I need you t’see. You’re the only one who might believe me.” She cleared her throat, sweaty hand tightening unconsciously around Cora’s. “Julie, sweetheart,” Dolores said softly.
The body in the bed snapped open from its coil and spun to face them.
Cora caught a gasp between her teeth. She could hardly believe the doctor had claimed Julianne unharmed. The skin on the girl’s face had gone doughy and drooped slightly at her jowls the way Cora’s did. She had bags under her eyes to match the rest of the family, and lay almost entirely still, not even shifted by the rise and fall of breath. Her only movement was the rippling of hair on the crown of her head, where she seemed to be scratching intently at an itch.
But it was Julianne’s eyes that made Cora put a hand to the doorframe to steady herself. They were totally blank and unblinking, black holes in her face that seemed not to see the two women standing on the threshold but well beyond, perhaps to the space between the stars of the Mariner constellation.
“I’ve already checked the piles.” Dolores’s breath came to Cora’s ear again. “They’re nests. Dunno what creature lays eggs like that—Barb won’t let me look at ‘em proper.”
Cora continued to watch the girl, who continued to stare back at whatever it was she saw, unblinking. Her desperate scratching stilled.
Dolores’s whispers went on and on in a rush. “Dunno what that is, but it’s not my grandbaby, and I can’t bear to see my Barbara’s desperation anymore, can’t bear the stink of raw meat in this house. Better we’d been able to grieve and move on than whatever this is. You want the spell? You want the book? Whatever you want, you can have, if you’ll help me kill it. You’re the only one who knows anything about the conjurin’, the only one who can help.”
* * *
They agreed to meet after dark.
Cora could try to wriggle her way out of guilt as much as she wanted, the fact remained: She was selfish, and she would do whatever Dolores wanted for a chance at the kind of immortality that book could offer. It had been a long time since Cora had anyone to be selfless for, and she thought her desires were moderate: no eternal youth, simply the ability to go on. No matter how wrong that child had seemed, the fact remained that Julianne lay at home in bed when all her friends were fish food.
So, Cora found herself in the thick of the night pressed against the cliffside. The salt spray battered her harder the lower she went, soaking her hair and what of her skirt and stockings were not protected by her husband’s old fishing jacket. She dreaded the thought of her narrow cane skidding off the soaked stone stairs and sending her tumbling—either to smash her head on the rocks or into the waves to be broken on the cliffs—so Cora held fast to the wall with one hand and hefted her lantern with the other, for all the good it did.
The cliff was no one’s property, but it supported Dolores’s house and her family had used the littoral cave beneath it for generations before the two women, then girls, had tried to raise her daddy from the sea floor. A semi-circle of sloping stone floored half the cave, and a sheltered slice of the sea lapped gently at its shore. A prime ritual spot, and Cora supposed that was why the book had been in Dolores’s family.
The path down was treacherous and it was a cold night, so Cora found only Dolores below, pacing beside their prone victim. Julianne lay wrapped and still in filthy sheets, likely the very same she had lain upon that afternoon.
“How in hell didja get ‘er down here by yourself?” The waves did not crash so fiercely inside the cave, but Cora still had to raise her voice over their echoes.
“Mmm?” Dolores did not even glance up from the book in her hands. It seemed such an ordinary thing, even now. Unmarked brown leather, paper lightly moldy from constant humidity. Cora craned her neck to get a look at the interior. It made no immediate sense to her, sprawling with shapes and sigils, geometric patterns and constellations.
Dolores had a piece of white chalk in one hand and had already mapped out much of the design on the rough floor of the cave. “Watch yourself!” she snapped as Cora took a step closer. “Won’t have you ruinin’ the ritual like last time.”
Cora rolled her eyes. “What’m I permitted to do, then?”
Dolores pointed to a nearby chum bucket and returned to her chalk designs without another word. Cora thought of saying something nasty but decided against it.
Chumming the water was tough on Cora’s joints. The sight and smell of blood and chopped fish parts made her gag, but she endured. Dolores had promised she would pass the secret to her. Cora was not certain how far she believed, but whatever it was Dolores had done, Cora held fast to the hope that it would do for her, too.
Dolores’s other instructions were more arcane, but soon the two old women had arranged a suitably occult-looking ritual space. They heaved the astonishingly lightweight child across the chalk lines to a prepared space by the edge of the water. Julianne still did not move as they did this, and Cora almost, but didn’t, ask whether the child was alright.
Dolores drew Cora to the edge of the water. “Ready?” She flicked open her pocket switchblade.
“You’ve said nothing ‘bout what for, but sure.” Cora held out her hands, expectant.
Dolores slit Cora’s palms and then her own and tipped her blood into the water of the cove. “I dunno, either.”
Cora anchored one hand on her hip, blinking at Dolores. “You what?”
“Book don’t have a, ‘nevermind, take it back,’ spell. I’m tryina invert the conjurin’.”
“Y’can’t just stab ‘er?”
“This thing came by conjure, why’d a simple stab kill it?”
Cora sighed and held her slit palms over the water.
“Momma?” Barb’s voice filtered into the cave. “Thought I saw you come this way.” Cora winced; panic flitted over Dolores’s face, but it only spurred her to plunge onward. She flexed and squeezed her palms to increase the flow.
“O, Eater in the Dark,” she murmured, the waves bearing the words away, “Feaster at the Whale Fall, Abyss Keeper, Lord in the Deep, Come and Sup at the Table We Hath Set.”
“Momma?” Barb stood now at the gap in the rock. “Momma! Quick, Julie ain’t in bed, an’ I can’t find ‘er in the house.” She took in the scene and froze.
Cora bit her lip and busied herself emptying her palms into the ocean. Dolores went on chanting, words changing into sounds that were unlike any Cora had heard. Only when Barb wrenched her shoulder did Dolores stop.
“Momma! Miss Cora? What’re you doin’?” A sob swelled in her throat. “Tell me that ain’t Julie.”
Cora had not come to help Dolores confront her daughter. She shuffled to where her lantern lay and occupied herself with wrapping her palms in handkerchiefs. Guilt twisted in her gut again, but determination kept her from leaving. She realized, however, that the women no longer had to shout over the thundering against the cliffside.
“Wouldja look at that…” Cora murmured to herself.
The current had not taken their blood out to sea; there was no current to speak of. The sea had calmed, gone dead to a mirror shine, scarlet with what they had given it. Cora limped out to the base of the stairs and stared into the night.
Indistinct shapes flitted beneath the glass sea, swirling around the reflected stars in a frenzy as if anticipating food. Breath caught in Cora’s chest at sight of the sky, new constellations fitted into an unfamiliar grid, a logic converging at a point on the horizon.
Cora’s eyes were not what they had been, but something about that point made her brain twist round on itself. It also made Cora excited as she had not been before. Julianne’s strangeness had been crumbs to make Cora hope, but this horizon was a feast that the woman had not anticipated, and she turned back into the cave with renewed purpose.
The argument had escalated. Dolores and Barb grappled over the switchblade. Impatient, Cora called out to Dolores as she shuffled toward Julianne’s prone form, “What now?”
“Roll it into the water!” Dolores gasped, struggling to maintain a grip on her knife.
Barb whirled on Cora, seething. “I’ll kill you if you touch her!”
Behind her back, Dolores lunged for her grandchild. Barb spun with a yelp and seized her mother by the hair.
Cora hobbled onward, not caring for the state of the chalk lines. She wanted to see it: What would happen when Julianne, or whatever it was, hit the water?
But Barb, frenzied and howling, threw her mother aside. Dolores hit the stone with a gasp of pain and the switchblade spun out of her hands. Barb scooped it up and shoved Cora down. A spike of pain shot through Cora’s hip as she sprawled on the ground. The older women could only watch as Barb turned the knife on Julianne’s bindings.
The girl finally twitched as Barb set to work ripping through the rolled sheets. She was alive, then; Cora had begun to wonder. The blood curdled in her veins, though, as the girl’s face emerged. Her skin had gone greyish and drooped further, even away from her eyes, which seemed never to have ceased their unblinking stare at distant stars.
Barb hiccupped, great sobs pealing from her throat as she tore her child free. Dolores crawled toward her, arm outstretched, imploring. “Please, Barbara, sweetheart, I know y’don’t trust me, but please get away from it.” The words came too late.
Julianne twisted. Her torso should not be so long, should not be able to articulate like that—she curled under Barb’s arm and seemed for a moment to stare at her back. The thick hair on top of her head rippled as if disturbed by a hand scratching at the scalp, but Cora could see quite clearly Barb’s hands tight over the girl’s chest and Julianne’s own hands limp at her sides.
Then the hair, the scalp, the false face of dead flesh peeled open along clean lines. The crown of Julianne’s head unfolded into mandibles pink as tongue and smooth as baby’s skin and crunched through Barb’s skull.
Dolores wailed. She clawed her way toward her daughter, smearing chalk over stone. Cora panted, unable to take her eyes off the thing’s smooth movements. As it shed the skin it had outgrown, the creature uncurled limbs that had been folded as collarbones, ribs, hip bones, and grasped the dead woman with myriad hooked tarsi to feed. Barb’s body twitched as it slurped at her brain cavity.
As the shock wore off, Cora retreated. Her hip, likely shattered, screamed with every attempt at movement, but Cora dragged herself toward the cave’s entrance.
Dolores advanced on the thing, keening, trembling hands outstretched toward her little girl.
The creature finished. Its head snapped up, mandibles closing like blood-soaked origami. Dolores seized the switchblade from where Barb had let it fall and reared back with a cry of rage. Her slash went wide as the thing bolted. It shed the rest of its girlish exoskeleton and skittered for the sea, bearing down on Cora.
Pink chitin plated Julianne’s new shape, as long almost as she had been tall. Dozens of legs, vicious as scythes, rippled over the stone floor. Cora scrambled away as best she could from what seemed like a cold and unfeeling death, but the creature was no longer hungry. It sought the ocean, and in its haste, it caught Cora up with hooked feet. Together, they cracked the smooth surface of the sea and plunged into the deep.
Cora flailed and sank. Her arms lacked strength, and her one good leg could not buoy her alone. The creature detangled itself and joined its brethren, the other shapes that swirled and danced for joy of the water. Cora wanted to scream and cry, furious at looming death. She had come for immortality and instead the pit yawned open for her, cold and unfeeling.
But, after all, the conjuring had come this far. The shapes in the scarlet water did not swim at random—they swarmed toward something in the deep water.
Cora came to rest along the shallower bottom of the cove. Lungs burning for air, she kicked off best she could after the thing that had once been Julianne toward whatever awaited. As the creatures swirled away, they parted to reveal their god.
It was like a temple in the water, a ziggurat of burning crimson. The base of its triangle made the horizon, flat against the surface of the water, if it was water still. The symmetry of the temple’s shape was too perfect to be earthly, its reflection so complete Cora could not determine which was the thing itself, or if its being was both, a square balanced upon its point.
As if sensing Cora’s gaze, the temple that was not a temple opened. Along smooth lines a face identical to the bloodied mandibles of its offspring cracked wide. At its center, at the intersection of water and sky burned a single eye like the moon that reflected all light.
O Eater in the Dark, O Lord in the Deep…
Cora had none of the words Dolores had read aloud, knew only a fraction of the names the other woman had intoned, but as the being turned itself upon her Cora could only lift her arms sluggishly in supplication. So enormous a god, greater and deeper even than all the world’s oceans.
Cora had been lonely for so long. No mortal would have her. The other townsfolk barely remembered her. She would drown here and be eaten by the sea.
Unless it would take her. Cora had nothing to offer but her meat and her devotion, but she would give them for life, even if it came with a hungry shape whose eyes saw no closer than the stars.
She knew neither ritual nor incantation, knew only that her lungs burned and her vision darkened and her palms, open and offered to the endless deep, stung with salt as the ravenous sea lapped at her wounds.
* * *
Jes Malitoris lives in Durham, North Carolina with xer spouse and xer garden, balancing an addiction to fantasy and horror with a day job in books marketing at an academic press. You can find more of Jes’s writing in Bewildering Stories and The Crawling Moon: Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread (Neon Hemlock, 2024).