All in one night: Call of the Sea.

All in one night: Call of the sea.

A short horror by SanQuentez Wingfield.

The third night of my first assignment aboard the deep-sea trawler Miss Abigail should have felt like a victory.

Most green deckhands spent months earning a berth on a vessel like this. I'd been lucky. Two days out from Savannah, calm seas, experienced crew, a captain with a reputation for finding fish when no one else could. The kind of job sailors bragged about in dockside bars.

That evening, as we crossed into our fishing lanes, the Atlantic became unnervingly still.

No swell.

No chop.

No wind.

The ocean stretched to every horizon like a sheet of black glass.

It didn't look natural.

It looked dead.

The captain ordered the nets deployed. Massive steel booms groaned as we fed thousands of feet of cable into the darkness. Port side first. Then starboard.

The nets disappeared beneath the surface.

As the crew prepared the holding tanks for the first haul, I paused.

Something drifted across the water.

A sound.

A voice.

Soft.

Beautiful.

The kind of voice that reaches into your chest and squeezes your heart.

For a moment I forgot where I was.

Forgot the boat.

Forgot the crew.

Forgot everything except the overwhelming need to hear it again.

"Deck! Get the damn intake ready!"

The captain's voice snapped me back to reality.

The song vanished.

The ocean remained silent.

Too silent.

Then the alarms started.

"Port net's stuck!"

Everyone turned.

The boom was straining.

Steel cables groaned under impossible tension.

Whatever was down there wasn't moving.

The captain swore.

"Everybody on the line! Help the boom!"

Four of us grabbed the tow cable.

The vessel drifted to a stop.

The boom dropped into low gear.

Motors screamed.

Hydraulics whined.

Together we pulled.

And something pulled back.

The resistance wasn't dead weight.

It wasn't a snag.

It felt alive.

For several agonizing minutes we fought whatever waited beneath us.

Then suddenly...

It gave.

The entire net surged from the ocean.

Something enormous thrashed inside.

The mesh bulged.

Fish exploded against the ropes.

Silver bodies hammered themselves bloody against one another in pure panic.

The captain rushed from the wheelhouse.

"Get it over the intake!"

Nobody moved.

A spotlight swung across the deck.

Its beam settled on the net.

Something inside shifted.

Everyone froze.

I approached with my knife.

The fish were going berserk now.

Their scales flew like glittering rain.

The deck vibrated.

Then it happened.

A scream erupted from inside the net.

Not human.

Not animal.

Not anything that should exist.

The sound stabbed through my skull.

Several men collapsed clutching their ears.

Blood streamed from one sailor's nose.

The entire net convulsed.

I barely had time to react.

The mass launched itself across the deck.

The force knocked me flat on my back.

The tangled mesh snagged on a steel rigger.

The net ripped open.

Hundreds of fish spilled onto the deck.

And so did the thing we'd pulled from the abyss.

Silence swept over us.

No one breathed.

The creature unfolded itself from the pile of dying fish.

It was vaguely feminine only in the cruelest sense.

Like something had learned what a woman looked like after finding one drowned at sea.

Its skin shimmered deep cobalt blue.

Bands of green and pale silver pulsed beneath translucent flesh like bioluminescent veins.

Its head was elongated and wrong.

A crown-like dorsal fin split its skull from forehead to tail.

Wet strands of black hair hung between folds of slick scales.

Its eyes were enormous.

Featureless.

Dead.

Black as trenches at the bottom of the ocean.

Its arms stretched nearly to the deck.

Webbed fingers ended in curved claws that looked carved from obsidian.

Beneath it coiled a muscular tail longer than two men.

Glowing patterns raced across its scales.

Pulsing.

Flashing.

Communicating.

Calling.

Then the thing smiled.

Rows of needle-like teeth unfolded from its jaws.

And it screamed again.

The deckhand never even had a chance to scream.

The creature crossed twenty feet of deck in a blur of scales and flashing bioluminescence. One moment he stood frozen beside the intake hatch, and the next her claws punched through his chest.

Not into his chest.

Through it.

Her arm erupted from between his shoulder blades in a shower of blood and splintered ribs.

The deckhand hung suspended in the air, eyes wide with disbelief, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

The creature tilted her head.

Studied him.

Then smiled.

Rows of needle-like teeth unfolded from her mouth like the petals of some carnivorous flower.

She bit into the side of his neck.

The man finally found his voice.

The scream that came out barely sounded human.

Blood sprayed across the deck in rhythmic pulses as she tore away a mouthful of flesh. When she jerked her head back, tendrils of muscle and strips of skin stretched between her jaws and the dying sailor.

Then they snapped.

The crew erupted into chaos.

Another deckhand charged her with a gaff hook.

The steel point sank into her shoulder.

She didn't react.

Didn't even flinch.

Her tail lashed.

The crack sounded like a cannon going off.

The man's torso folded in half.

His spine punched through his rain jacket as he cartwheeled across the deck and vanished over the railing into the black sea.

The creature screamed.

Not in pain.

In excitement.

The fish scattered across the deck began flopping frantically, their bodies bursting beneath the pressure waves that came from her throat.

She launched herself again.

A third sailor tried to run.

Her claws hooked into his back.

The momentum peeled him off his feet.

I heard bones break.

Lots of them.

She dragged him beneath her body, and for a moment we could only hear wet ripping sounds and desperate choking cries.

When she emerged, half his face came with her.

One eye remained attached to dangling strands of nerve tissue that stretched several feet before snapping free.

The body twitched.

Then stopped.

The remaining deckhands attacked together.

Hooks.

Knives.

Lengths of chain.

Pure survival.

The creature welcomed it.

One man lost an arm.

Another lost his throat.

The third was still alive when she split his abdomen open from sternum to pelvis, spilling steaming organs across the blood-soaked deck.

His intestines wrapped around her tail as she moved.

She didn't appear to notice.

Or care.

By the time I reached the corridor, the deck looked like a slaughterhouse floating in the middle of the Atlantic.

Pieces of crewmen were scattered among hundreds of dying fish.

Blood washed through the deck drains.

The ocean below churned crimson.

And still she hunted.

---

"RUN!"

The captain's voice jolted me forward.

I turned.

The creature was squeezing through the corridor entrance behind him.

Her body bent in ways no spine should bend.

Vertebrae visibly shifted beneath her skin.

Cracking.

Popping.

Dislocating.

Then snapping back into place.

The captain stumbled.

That was all she needed.

Her claw punched through his back and erupted from his chest.

The force lifted him completely off the floor.

His boots dangled inches above the metal grating.

The captain looked down.

Saw the claw protruding from his ribs.

Then looked at me.

"Run..."

The word came out as a wet gargle.

The creature pulled him closer.

Her jaws opened impossibly wide.

Then closed around his face.

A single crunch echoed through the corridor.

His body spasmed.

The creature jerked backward.

The captain's head came with her.

The rest of him collapsed to the floor in a geyser of blood.

I ran.

---

The bulkhead handle screamed as I turned it.

Behind me, the feeding noises stopped.

Instantly.

One second there was crunching, chewing, tearing.

The next...

Silence.

My blood turned to ice.

Slowly I looked back.

She stood at the far end of the corridor.

Motionless.

Blood dripped from her chin.

Fragments of the captain's flesh hung between her teeth.

One of his fingers remained lodged in her mouth.

She bit down.

Bone shattered.

The finger disappeared.

Then she screamed.

---

I slammed the bulkhead shut.

Too late.

The impact threw me backward down the engine room stairs.

I landed face-first on steel.

Something snapped in my leg.

The pain was immediate.

Blinding.

I rolled over and nearly vomited.

Part of my shinbone had punched through the skin.

Blood poured onto the deck plates below.

The exposed bone glistened beneath the emergency lighting.

I tried to stand.

Collapsed.

Tried again.

Failed.

Above me came a familiar sound.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Claws dragging across steel.

Getting closer.

Her shadow appeared first.

Then her silhouette.

Then her eyes.

Black.

Bottomless.

Hungry.

The creature paused over me.

Studying me.

Watching me struggle.

Enjoying it.

Her gills opened and closed frantically now.

Working against the dry air.

Each breath produced a horrible wheezing hiss.

I grabbed a wrench.

The only weapon within reach.

For a moment I thought she looked amused.

Her eyes shifted to the wrench.

Then back to me.

A predator watching prey pick up a stick.

The tail struck before I could move.

The impact launched me across the engine room.

Ribs shattered.

Teeth broke.

I crashed against the aft engine and collapsed into a seated position.

My body no longer felt real.

Everything hurt.

Everything bled.

My vision was mostly red.

I wiped blood from my eyes.

Tore off part of my shirt.

Cleaned them as best I could.

One eye refused to focus.

The other barely worked.

Still.

I forced myself to look up.

And there she was.

Towering over me.

Her mouth slowly opening.

Unhinging.

Rows upon rows of translucent teeth unfolded deep into her throat.

Each slick with saliva and blood.

Her jaws stretched wider than the width of my shoulders.

Wider.

Wider still.

The darkness inside her mouth seemed endless.

I could smell the rot from her breath.

Old things.

Dead things.

Things that had sunk to the bottom of the world and never come back.

I looked up only to see her teeth, jaws, and throat...

...the crunch.

Fin