The Siren

At night, the sea is a great and terrible goddess. Without the sun to keep watch, she roars louder, and her waves tower higher than before, encouraging the terrible wind to sweep and scream across the shore, dragging bystanders into the siren’s grasp.

I swore I saw such a siren, just the other day. She looked like an orca, with hair and scales of ivory, and ebony skin. She rested on a sandbar, her long tail whipping lazily. When her sharp eyes met mine my whole frame seized up in something like fear. In the next heartbeat, she was gone.

Hallucinations plagued my father, and his before him, just a few years before their deaths. I often wondered if something similar would be my own undoing. Several times, I thought I glimpsed shadows and hands in places they shouldn’t be. But nothing like this. The rational half of my mind warned that this siren was just a more extreme hallucination than the rest- That investigating would not only be dangerous, but a waste of time. My more powerful half ignored the voice, still shaken by the beauty and terror of the being I saw. Something about her eyes didn’t seem right, or human. Her tail seemed neither innocent fish or a trick of the light. Surely, no human mind could conjure an image so haunting.

So there I stood, on the shore of the untamed waves, with a jacket and boots over my pajamas. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, with the wind wailing as it was.

Was it the wind?

I swept my flashlight around the sand and rocks. Beside me, the black waves crashed and stretched forward, as if ravenous for any creatures in reach. My eyes played their usual tricks in the dark; hands, eyes, and whipping shadows. I rubbed my eyes. Maybe I was too tired for adventures like this. But I was too curious to go back. I ventured further along the shore, closer to the side of the beach where I saw her.

The louder the wind grew, the more convinced I was that the mournful, warning note I heard was not wind. While not quite singing, it did carry a tune; like a whale mimicking a violin.

My flashlight flickered, and grew dim as I walked. I found I could no longer see where the sand ended and the tide began, so I took bigger steps, letting my boots make loud splashing sounds when they hit the water. But now, I was more interested in the voice than anything else. It grew in volume the closer I was to the water, so I rolled my pants up and began wading along the edge.

It had to be her. I was sure of it. Like soulmates, I could feel her presence without seeing a thing.

I couldn’t see?

My hands were empty. I must have dropped my flashlight. My rational side said to turn around, in hopes that I had left it on, and I could find it again, but I knew I didn’t need it. Her voice was so much clearer than light, and easier to follow than the shoreline.

Cold water lapped at my hips as I continued, but I didn’t shiver. The cold woke me up, and filled me with an energy I hadn’t felt since childhood.

The melody was so melancholy and romantic. I thought of all the things I would say to her when I found her. Somehow, I’d dreamt up an entire life with her in the past twenty minutes, and the more I fantasized, the more real it seemed.

Then the singing stopped.

Suddenly everything was cold.

I looked around and saw nothing but blackness. Not the light from the house, or the frigid waves rising and falling all around me. Beneath my feet was only space. How long had I been treading water? My arms ached.

Someone’s chilly breath brushed in my ear.

“You.”

It was her. I turned there she was, a pair of white glowing eyes inches from my face. I wanted to scream, but my breath was gone.

Everything was so cold.

Her arm wrapped around my waist, and her touch was almost seductive. I couldn’t move or resist as she plunged me bodily into the abyss.

All sound disappeared as my ears filled with ocean water. Her tail propelled us faster than I thought possible, and her grip only tightened the deeper we dove.

I couldn’t tell how deep the water was. All I could see was her; she was achingly beautiful, even as she dragged me to my death.

How I held my breath for so long, I’ll never know. But eventually, when I could no longer tell which way was up and which was down, I saw white blurs in the distance. As we neared it, I could see their sharp, triangular shapes, and the massive circle they formed. Inside the circle, was somehow darker than everywhere else.

We swam closer, and that’s when I saw it.

The hands. Hands, shadows, and eyes, that I had seen in so many places for the last few years, all previously thought to be tricks of light, and the hallucinations, all coalesced in one squirming, hissing heap, surrounded by a gaping mouth.

At last, the siren stopped and held me by the shoulders. She smiled. She had such a sweet, honest smile. Then, with an even sweeter farewell, she kissed me.

Her kiss was eager, but all too brief. Before I could kiss her back, before I could pull her closer, or run my hands through her hair, her tail delivered a powerful shove into my abdomen.

I flew backward, into the jaw filled with the other victims, just as the teeth were closing in like a bear trap.

Just before the mouth closed, I saw the siren’s ivory tail whipping as she swam away, just as it did on the sandbar when I first saw her.