A Waltz in the Undertow

Her bones washed ashore. She could still feel them dancing against her skin as the blade fell heavy against the wet, rough sand.

The sea was a greedy, formidable thing, cold and indifferent—but it brought them all back, piece by jagged piece. First her own left tibia, polished and smooth from weeks in the deep, briny waters. Then Chloe’s skull, her best friend, filled with saltwater and sea-weeds, pieces of her neck still attached and drifting along silently like a ghost, tangling into Marcus’s ribs, or what was left of them, like netting in the roiling tidal foam.

The bones of her friends floated silently past her, washing up into the same hellish nightmare.

Elaine Montgomery didn’t remember dying, not the way you or I would remember it. She only remembered the sounds—a heavy, wet THWACK that seemed to shake the ground beneath her. The blade cutting all the way through the floor boards of the empty shack with enough force to cause the sand to scurry away in fear. She wasn’t the first to go, no, he had saved her for last.

Dancing.

Slow, immediate dancing. The fastest concerto you ever heard, ever touched, ever witnessed, and it played to the keys of death.

Dancing. That is what it felt like when the blade came down that night. A chaotic, violent splitting of the skin. A pain so swift she couldn’t remember anything but fleeting images. A ballerina. Fire. Pain. Darkness. Nothing.

A few hundred yards out, the Siren's Glory sat dead in the water, floating aimlessly, just as their bones had. The luxury yacht was completely immobilized, listing gently to one side as it docked against a hidden sandbar. The engines were now completely silent, the low hum of the radio could still be heard into the pitch black of night. Not a soul was left on board. Nearby their floating coffin, Adam remained alive, but barely. She could feel his terror from across the water. It crashed into her like errant waves. He was trapped, watching from abject safety as he clung to the gaping hole in the side. Cover of night would keep him safe, for now.

None of the others had mentioned his name. Not even upon the threat of death. It was a death most virtuous, not a thing could be done to escape it.

Adam was a ghost, at least until daylight gave him up.

He watched his friends perish, their bodies being tossed out to sea in pieces, knowing he was next. The man had come aboard, checking for more victims. It was a miracle he missed Adam in all the chaos. His heartbeat alone could have summoned a shark. Elaine watched from the shore, her eyes resting on the tree line—or so she thought.

She had eyes but they didn’t work, not in the traditional sense. Now, just the sensation of sight took over. Like her spirit was guiding her to see all the things she hadn’t before. She watched him as he walked along the shore, feet away from where she lay, a mangled mess. He was average height, wearing pants and a dirty white undershirt, suspenders that hung loosely over his frame. His clothing was covered in a mix of fresh and dried blood, greasy dirt and grimy sweat. He walked with a hefty, impulsive gait. His eyes beady and dark.

He dragged a long blade behind him through the sand.

He paused, close enough to make out fragments of Marcus’s jawbone nestled in the sand like pale seashells, still wrapped in remnants of skin and flesh. For a moment, I expected him to pick it up and cast it into the tide. Instead, he simply offered an impatient smile and stomped the remains into smaller pieces with his heel—before kicking them into the surf.

**

Elaine felt something sharp cutting through her, a phantom pain ravaging her body, her skin, her bones. The man was watching, waiting for something, but what? She remembered the way the small shack smelled. The way it tasted. The way it felt. The blade falling against her body. Heavy. Precise. Calculated.

Dancing smoothly against the sounds of their bodies being broken and reassembled by the virulent tides. She tried screaming, tried distracting the man as his dark, beady eyes bore out to the spot Adam hid, but she had no throat. Only an empty, hollowed out place where her voice-box used to be. Her lungs, bagless and gone, had long left her body. One of the first to go as fish and larger prey swam up to the surface to graze on her body, ripping it further from its confines.

Only the rushing sounds of wind and tide rang out. There would be no way to warn Adam. No way to save him. The man picked up Elaine Montgomery’s skull, or what was left of it, turning it over in his weathered hands. Her jawline partially swinging open at the hinges. Remnants of metal plates and bolts held one half of her jaw firmly to her skull, the result of an accident some years before. Her teeth clanked together as he moved the jaw piece, pivoting it back into place, moving it up and down as though making it talk to him. His puppet.

In that moment, the soft, caressing, teasing way he held her bones enraged Elaine. She wanted to be whole again. She wanted to open her mouth, to scream, to tell him something, anything. Her family would have no way of finding them. No way of knowing what abject horrors this place held. This man would make sure of that, and soon enough, the Siren's Glory would be a ghost as well. A shell. A pile of bones left to rot and decay in the boiling sun.

The cause of her undoing carried her skull reverently up towards the middle of the beach where a pile of driftwood had been collected around a large flat rock. It was clearly a place he used for fire and committing various other vile sins. His eyes, still dark and beady, were the color of graying clouds. She could see the storms tempering within him, still ready to rain hell upon them, and whoever else washed ashore for his taking.

Here, he positioned her to face the emerging sun, her eyes falling onto the immovable yacht.

A warning, a beacon, a calling for Adam. She watched as Chloe and Marcus’s bones still bobbed into the smooth shoreline. Clumps of strawed sea-grass and algae clinging to their remains as he sat quietly in the sand. Soon the storm-tossed sea would dislodge the boat from the sandbar and Adam would have to join them. Elaine still felt the blade as it fell against her, over, and over and over again. The memory of it, the separation, the pain. She danced, trying to dodge each blow. Her body held together by strings, where whole muscles and tendons used to connect. Her bones, and the bones of her friends and other strangers melded and clicked in a maddeningly desperate symphony. Their music haunting ghosts in the sand, as they waited for the blade to start dancing again.