Maug

My sail split in the crowing wind, whose gales pushed the walls of my cramped craft, wobbling it against the shifting waves as water sprayed onto the deck. I had nowhere to go, I would be incapable of finishing the voyage to Guam.

In the distance I glanced the shadowy shores of Maug, with its triplet isles which had somehow managed inhabitation throughout the entirety of human history.

I would have to stop there; there was no other option.

The storm continued; the wind shrieked like sonar through the canals of my wet, throbbing ears, so cracked and stinging with exhaustion from days at sea. My wide eyes gazed ahead quivering at the sight of that dark figure. Was it real, or were the desires of my psyche fooling me?

Okinawa to Guam was to be my longest yet trip; I had prepared so well for the voyage. Weather is unpredictable; it cares nothing for plans or human achievement.

It rages, though in apathy.

I would sail only from Okinawa to Maug, I had come to grips with that unfortunate truth. What I would do from there was as yet unclear.

The current lapped at my vessel as I approached the trio. I can’t say I wasn’t excited; I had read about nearly every island in Micronesia, and the Maug triplets were among the most piquing—three islands composing the exposed rim of an underwater volcano. The severity of my situation could wait; my mind was agape.

Pulling shoreward onto the easterly island, one I knew as a lengthy, skinny thing, I fought with the jagged, ancient rock to avoid damaging my vessel.

The ocean was black, the land darkness; I found my way ahead only by shadow and touch. Surging forward onto the shore, my toe stubbed on an exposed rock, which sliced it spilling blood to the ground. That thick ooze colored the shadowy blackness more explicably crimson than I had yet seen.

I fell into the brush, pushing through the windblown savannah grass which sat sideways as if combed over like thinning hair on the flaky head of a giant who stood sleeping in the deep of the swirling ocean. Thunder cracked, lightning flashed and alit the sky so empty though so beautiful. I looked for stars as if searching for a friend among a crowd but I saw none. I wept like a bitch before covering myself in the abundant grass and falling asleep from exhaustion.

When I awoke it was sunny. I lifted myself from the cushion of my grass cot and saw crawling along the calloused skin of my knee an insect. It looked like a mosquito though it was green and had pink, dactyl-like wings. It looked at me and fluttered away whereafter it was scooped midair by a bird which I recognized as a red-tailed tropicbird. The bird flew skyward, its lengthy red tail serving as a rudder against the constant wind gusting up off the blasting coast.

I stood up. Sun shone and soured my face. I covered my eyes with my forearm like a visor and shuffled down the hill. Before reaching the shore, where I had planned to gather my boat, I saw standing on the rock a man.

He knew where I was. He had noticed my tracks from the previous night. I squatted, making to hide.

“Hey!” said the man, “C’mon down now. Ain’t no use trying for sneakiness; I know you there. C’mon down.”

I stood and looked at this individual. He was larger than me. Tanned, hardened skin from assured countless months unsheltered from the continuous clockwork of this beating sun.

“I got food for ya,” he said. “I know you hungry. Ain’t much eating up in that grass other than bugs and birds and you ain’t catching no birds weak as you are.”

I walked down the hill, momentarily sliding at the chalky dirt of its end as the folded lengthy grass, which leapt outward over the eroded cusp forged by the daily tide, slipped across my still damp feet.

“Pasha,” said the man.

“What?”

“That’s my name, dammit. Pasha.”

He didn’t make to shake my head, just stared at me squinting in the glare of the rising sun.

“Jan,” I said.

“Nice meeting ya, I reckon.”

Pasha handed me a prickly fruit gone soft from apparent boiling.

“What’s this?”

“Screwpine. Bout the only fruit we got here; this and coconut. I never liked coconut but been eating the everloving hell out of it since I wound up in this triplet shitheap.”

“Coconut sounds better than whatever that is.”

“It is, barely, but when you only got two options you goddamn well choose both options.”

“You catch fish?”

“Yeah, we got that. That and birds. Bugs and crabs. You can eat finely here.”

“Why are you here?”

“Need to get back to Guam but ain’t got no boat. Thought about thieving yours but figured I’d wait and see if you showed. That’s risky, you understand—waiting around for strangers on dessert islands. Put my ass on the line for your ass and I don’t know you from Adam. Hope you understand that.”

“I understand. How long you been here?”

“Months. Got no way of quitting the place. Didn’t reckon I’d be here this damned long but haven’t been able to attract the attention of passersby. Goddamn I’ve made some bigass fires, too. Them fuckers cruising around must can’t see for shit. Fired my flares; them bastards ain’t worth a goddamn neither.”

“How’d you wind up here?”

“Cruisin’. Mayhap the same as you judging by the size of your vessel. I moved to Guam on contracted government work, working on infrastructure in Dededo. Think the government is a bit embarrassed at the state of the city. They wanna take better advantage of all the Japanese tourists. I been there for several years now. It ain’t bad. Got an interest in sailing around; Micronesia being so many islands. Got a little bigheaded and figured I’d try Maug. Hell of a long trip but I was interested in the place, what with its triplet isles encircling a volcano. Thought I may as well see something unique while I’m out here in the Pacific. Made the trip no problem but didn’t stow away my boat safely enough like a dumbass. Sure as you already know, storm rolls in and blasts my shit out into god knows where. Damn boat is way the hell out there somewhere, probably them monk seals lounging on it already.”

“Monk seals? I thought they were only around Hawaii.”

“That’s what they say but it ain’t true—not from my experience, at least. Fuckers spread yonder this way. Shit, I’ve even seen them out in the caldera, down in the black pupil of this place.”

“You went out into the caldera?”

“Yeah, several times. Not much else to do around here. I’d say I’m an experienced diver at this point. Done plenty of snorkeling in Guam beforehand, too. Them fuckers come out to the caldera every damn day, though, just about. Swimming around, brushing against me and looking at me and shit. Now don’t get me wrong, I like wildlife, but seals I don’t trust. That’s one animal that can go from being your best friend one minute to attack mode in a split second, like some giggling sea hyena. These fuckers is guttural though. Sounds like they ate too much for dinner and can’t stop belching it up. Their voice sounds akin to bad gas. But yeah, they seem to be congregating in the caldera.”

“Wonder why?”

“Lord knows. I’ll show ya, if ya want. They’re usually active around this time—sunsplit of the late morning. We can try and venture off Guam-way after that.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

I can’t say I trusted this man, but his friendly nature and accent softened me to his presence. He was clearly from some southerly region of America. I’d guessed somewhere in Appalachia. Being from Kentucky, I felt a natural sense of companionship with him.

“Water gets warmer down there,” he said as we were scaling the side of the hill.

“What?” I said, sneezing and swatting savannah grass from my face. My hay fever was kicking in.

“Down in the caldera. Deeper you go, warmer it gets. Fish swarm cyclonic down there. That’s what brought these monk seals over from Hawaii, assuredly—these swarming fish and warm water. It’s like a damn jacuzzi buffet.”

Standing at the edge of the caldera I looked across the diameter of the place, across the pool to the opposite shore of the northern isle.

“Is the water bubbling?” I said.

“Hell no. Probably them monk seals out there feeding. You wanna swim out and take a look?”

“I thought you said you don’t trust them.”

“I don’t, but they’re preoccupied when they’re feeding. They’re comfortable with people in general, they just turn into dickheads sometimes when they get bored. They won’t be bored right now considering the buffet is open.”

Pasha then slid down the slant of the caldera edge into the water. There was a blade-like drop off; he fell into the water and dog-paddled while waiting for me to join him.

“Water is calm over here,” I said.

“It’s always calm here. Winds gotta be whipping up pretty damn good to much disturb these waters. Always warm, too.”

I joined him in the caldera.

“How deep have you dived? You noticed any volcanic activity?”

“Shit no. Not that I’d be able to, anyway. Caldera is deep as hell; Lord knows how deep. There’s twin lava domes out in the middle though—they ain’t so far down from the surface. Not so near that we can swim all the way down to ‘em, but close enough that we can see ‘em. That’s where the monk seal congregate; that’s where all the fish swarm.”

“Why do the fish gather out there? They finding food?”

“Must be, but I’ve got no earthly inkling. Maybe they prefer the warm water. It’s like a jacuzzi, I tell ya—I ain’t lying. Shit’s nice.”

We swam out toward the middle of the caldera. The radius was wide, but with the water so calm and heavily salted it wasn’t much of a taxing swim. I found myself taking relaxing breaks to bob amidst the slowly shifting gentle waves like bait. Reaching the middle of the caldera I began feeling the scaly bodies of flailing fish brush against my back and my calves. I was once even struck by a large animal which I identified as one of the monk seal. It hit me unintentionally—it wasn’t at all interested in my presence—after which it darted off after the swirling school of fish.

“We’re there,” said Pasha.

While kicking my feet gently to float in the water I gazed downward into the depths. The water appeared cloudy, murky as if mud from the earth had been wretched up from within the gurgling mouth of the volcano.

“Why’s the water so dirty here?”

“Never noticed that before, but you right—it is.”

“Can we dive down a bit and get a look at the lava domes?”

“Sure thing. We dive twenty feet or so and you should be able to see ‘em. See the shadows of their peaks, at least.”

We dove.

The fish and seal were so numerous that I had to push through them as if navigating a crowd. Wide mouthed the monk seal swam around unaware of where they were going, knowing they would inevitably gulp up more than a single fish.

As we continued our dive I after a time indeed saw the summit of those twin lava domes. They looked as if the horns of some ancient troll. I noticed plant life somehow growing along the sides of the peaks as if the sprouting hair on an ever-growing cyclopean beast. I pointed there and got Pasha’s attention, gesturing with my hands to communicate my confusion.

He confirmed that he too did not understand. Ejected bubbles from our nostrils swam shoreward. I glanced up and saw them traveling toward the light of the surface, for some reason jealous of their inability to prevent gravity from pulling them toward that event-horizon.

It was dark in the caldera. My lungs writhing for air, I looked to Pasha and pointed to the surface, swimming upward without waiting for his agreement. Blocking my path to the surface—we were probably about twenty feet down—I saw pushing against the surface of the water a wall of flapping fish. Breaking the surface I noticed several of them springing upward out of the water as if they thought themselves dolphins. They would then be yanked by gravity back to the water from where they would be thrown downward and mashed amid the ever-collecting horde.

Scales scraped against the skin of my sides. The monk seals soon surfaced as well, now for some reason unconcerned with the limitless buffet. Twisting their bulbous necks they looked at me as if for an answer. I gestured as if to communicate that I was just as confused as they.

“God dammit,” said Pasha, surfacing. “Holy mother.” He spat thick, mucus contaminated water out across the surface of the sea.

“What?”

“Some weird shit is happening down there. Something unnatural.”

“Volcano acting up?”

“No, not that. I said something unnatural. Some bizarre shit. Come look.”

“Shouldn’t we get the hell out of here then?”

“Maybe. You ain’t never gonna see nothin’ like this again though. May was well take a quick look.”

Pasha and I again broke the surface and reentered that cloudy abyss. Making our way to the twin lava domes, I noticed movement from within the murk. It wasn’t the fish or the seals though, there wasn’t any animal life in view. The water shifted as if alive.

The warm water increased in temperature to the point that it felt as if swimming in a scalding hot bath. The prickly water stung my face, the initial discomfort changing quickly into relaxation. Pasha pointed downward to the summit of the twin domes. They were shaking violently as if the trunks of two thick trees amidst a hurricane.

Twin lights split open groggily from well below the domes, slowly ripping the earth and the rock of the island apart. A yellow glow from the deep. I couldn’t turn away; neither could Pasha, who was now swimming in the direction of the two gargantuan orbs. I swiped at his arm to catch him, missed, and then swam after him. I at first wanted to stop him, but upon further bathing in the glow of those celestial orbs I found myself drawn toward them.

They blinked and the universe became void.

The eyes reappearing, I swam frantically toward them. Pasha did the same. We looked at one another, smiling. This was true happiness. My lungs were burning, but that sensation was secondary to that of the warmth of the orbs. The twin domes again shook, this time somehow detaching themselves from their roots at the base of the mountain. Those yellow eyes swam upward, past me, past Pasha and toward the wall of fish and seal at the surface of the water. Pasha, visibly frantic, swam after the orbs as if trying to save them. Upon his arrival, a black, twisted void opened spinning from just below the twin orbs. This dark maw inhaled Pasha like a horse sniffing a gnat through its quivering nostrils.

Pasha didn’t reemerge; he was gone.

My mind momentarily recomposed, I swam toward the surface. Continuous currents pushed forward by this uprooting titan threw me shoreward. I, along with a collection of lucky fish and seal, surfed involuntarily from the middle of the caldera back to the beach, where I gathered myself immediately upon my hands and knees and began retching into the coarse earth.

The crash of wave and the breaking of rock from across the caldera alerted my attention. From over there I saw climbing over the entire northward island some colossal beast indescribable in its alien nature. The twin lava domes sat atop its stone head as if a crown. It was wearing some sort of jagged shell forged of rock unseen by the light of the sun in millennia dwarfing exponentially the timeline of human existence. Twisting the eldritch root of its towering, gangly neck backward to me, its again opened its eyes and glared with those yellow orbs into my naked soul. I felt intensely comfortable amidst this mind-loosening, mythic fauna. The creature then turned its body to me. On the soft shell of its belly were clicking arrhythmically innumerable legs as if from a hungry carnivorous millipede. The beast, then using the primary, almost humanoid limbs of its primary arms and legs, crawled over the side of the hill of the island, into the ocean, and slithered away. The sharp shell of its back swayed back and forth into the distance as if a moving island. The creature moved eastward toward the black trench of Mariana.

Spitting into the sand I noticed crawling along the back of my planted hand a naked hermit crab scouring the beach for a new home. I was to it a giant; did it have any thought as to my purpose?

The caldera bubbled though no lava was present. The water seemed merely to be acknowledging the happening itself.

I looked for Pasha but couldn’t find him. I haven’t seen him sense; he most assuredly died. I have told none of what I saw, nor have I yet made thought of traveling back to Maug. I will though, someday. Some clue as to that monolith’s origin lies in the murk of that now-empty caldera.

It must.

End