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The Song of the Night

2021: Halloween Horror Series: Beware a song you hear from water. Yes, there may be mermaids!!!

By Nathan CharlesPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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MUHAMMAD MOVED AWAY FROM THE GROUP TO TAKE A PISS. They had a bonfire going behind the food mart where Muhammad worked. He and his buddies did this every Friday — and sometimes Saturday night too.

“Mo, where’re you goin?”

“Gotta take a leak,” Muhammad replied. His friends, all white, called him Mo. At first he hated the nickname, but it had grown on him. At first he’d tried getting them to say his whole name. “It’s the most popular name in the world,” he’d argue. But it wasn’t in their world. He resented them a little for it at first. But then he realized that they all had nicknames for each other and it was their way of making him a part of the group. Besides, he could have had a nickname like “Stinky.”

There was a sound!

“Hello?” Muhammad asked the darkness as he crept into the bushes where the guys took turns relieving themselves. It was a retention pond disguised behind some carefully placed shrubbery and a few trees. The space was slightly neglected, like everything else behind the food mart.

There was a song…

“Hello?” He called again. He unzipped and let it fly. He habitually started to whistle — and the song turned into humming that fell into harmony with his whistling. He cut off his stream, “Hello? Is anybody there?” Recognizing that the guys were probably trying to play some immature trick on him, he smiled, “Guys! I know you’re there.”

Silence.

Muhammad finished his business and zipped up. “Guys! I know you’re there.” But the song continued. The humming morphed into words.

“Beauty is the night.

Come see me, tonight!

Let me look upon your eyes,

Like starlight…”

“Hello!?” He called into the night again, absently following where the sound was coming from.

“Hey Mo, you okay!?” One of the guys called.

“Yea, you better not be taking a shit!”

Muhammad ignored them. He stepped through the bushes and stepped to the edge of the retention pond. The voice — for, it was definitely a voice — was coming from there. “Hello?” He asked out over the water. The water rippled and Muhammad took a step back.

“Come closer…”

Muhammad moved closer and then thought better of it! There wasn’t anything in the water! What was he thinking!? He stepped back. “Guys, it’s not funny!” He called, but he knew they were all still back at the bonfire. He was alone at the water’s edge.

“Look closer.”

The sing-song voice was nearly impossible for Muhammad to deny. He knelt by the water, waiting. But for what? Then there was a face! It was beautiful and pale. It looked almost like the moon being reflected on the dark water, but it dark black eyes that seem to hold some sort of vicious glow. Muhammad scampered back. “What the fuck!” He cried. 
He wanted to run — but…

“Come back!

Come lap at my lips,

Sweet child of land-walking limbs.”

He couldn’t turn away from the song. He was captivated, yet something in the core of his human being, knew that he should run. “Help…” He cried weakly — and much too quietly for his friends to hear. He was lured towards the shore where sandy grass met dark black water. His friends would come looking for him soon. There was some hope.

A forehead crested the calm water. It was as pale as moonlight — but it wasn’t alone. There were two others. One with dark skin and the third was mottled with pearlescent white with splotches of brown that matched his own skin tone. They were all impossibly beautiful! Unlike anything he’d ever seen!

“What…” He tried to say.

But the creatures just stared at him. Their hair falling straight and wet on the sides of their faces. Their eyes were almond-shaped, but inhumanly elongated — and black, reflecting the little light that came from the moon and the weak streetlights that illuminated the back of the food mart so shipping trucks knew where to go — and to deter delinquents, like Muhammad and his friends, from doing drugs and other nefarious deeds in the cover of darkness.

“Come…”

The creature sung — and Muhammad replied by craning his neck over the water. The part of his mind that was free from the creatures’ spell knew that he was done for. It was the mottled one that moved like lightning. She struck like a snake, grabbing him with slimy arms, tipped with serrated claws that did not easily let him go. She yanked him into the water with a strength that was inhuman! The splash alerted Muhammad’s friends. They had assumed his drunk ass fell in the pond.

But the mermaids — for that’s all anyone could think to call them when they saw them — made quick work of Muhammad’s body. The pond was a thrashing mess of splashing water and struggle. And then blood. Like piranha, the mermaid didn’t leave anything of Muhammad’s body unconsumed — not even the bones.

The other two creatures in the pond were still hungry. They peaked their heads out, knowing more prey was coming. They sang:

“Beauty is the night.

Come see me, tonight!”

The mottled mermaid smiled and took her first steps from the water. Feasting on the bones of a man was necessary for its evolution. Before the guys came to find Muhammad, the creature slipped into the bushes and into the darkness. The cycle would continue two more times before the night was through. And maybe a thousand other times all around the world as mermaids gain their legs to walk among us.

Beware the song of the night.

Horror
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About the Creator

Nathan Charles

Enjoy writing sci fi, fantasy, lgbtq fiction, poetry, and memoirs!

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