Sacculina Page 5

  Jack said nothing. They were all staring at the captain now, waiting for some guidance, some sense to come from all of this strangeness.

  “That table?” he said, meeting each of their faces. “That’s the amount of ocean you see on that little screen there. Right? Okay, now that almond?” He looked at Jim, then Henry. “That’s us.

  “We ain’t paddlin’ out of this, fellas. We ain’t no way getting away from whatever the hell this is. It’s like the ocean farted something wicked, and we’re sitting right on her asshole.”

  Chris snorted at this, and, incredibly, even Henry smiled. Jack paced from one side of the boat to the other, mind racing for solutions.

  “Ain’t this pretty as a peach...” the captain mumbled, lost in his own mind.

  Jim stared out at the water. Saw the flashes of sunlight in the crevices of each wave, the incredible breadth of its body. He strained his eyes, stared closely at the calmer patches of the surface. Did he see the cloudy dust of shapes filling each wave, or was he imagining it? Imagining what his brain was afraid to see but, in a twisted way, wanted to see? To see that the water was filled with billions of micro-sized creatures, gelatinous but alive, swimming, floating, waiting for something to latch onto, somewhere to live, somewhere to feed.

  He looked away, sickened, felt himself shaking. He put his head in his hands, willed the images to stop. If imagination was truly an invisible organ given to humans by God, like he’d once read, so that they might better understand Him, then Jim would have liked to have ripped the fucking thing out and thrown it into the sea right there and then.

  Because we fear the incomprehensible, we fear other life, he thought reflectively, recalling a lesson on evolution from high school. It’s defensive... the alpha species always looking over their shoulder, always afraid of what might come next in the chain...

  “What about radio?” Jack said abruptly, breaking Jim’s thoughts. “A beacon? Whatever. Can we get help to come to us?”

  The captain nodded. “Yeah, sure,” he said, sighing heavily. “I... I wasn’t expecting... but this is bad, yeah. I’ll get on the radio, start putting through an S.O.S. I’ll hit my emergency beacon. Coast Guard should be here within an hour, I’d imagine. Assuming...”

  The captain turned and went into the wheelhouse. He flipped open a small plastic cover, pushed a fat red button. Then he grabbed a mic from an overhead radio, flipped it on, and began relaying coordinates into it, steady and calm as you pleased.

  Jim grabbed Jack’s arm lightly. “Assuming what?”

  Jack frowned, but met his brother’s eyes. “Assuming we’re the only ones in trouble.”

  * * *

  As the captain radioed for help, the visible part of the emergency beacon strobed in a steady rhythm, bright-white flickers of light from the top of the wheelhouse settled below a massive, swaying antenna that flexed upward, silently beckoning for rescue.

  Jim went to his father, pulled at his arm, studied the gauzed hand. “You holding up, pop?”

  Henry nodded and Jim slumped down next to him. He fought the overwhelming urge to rest his head on his dad’s shoulder, so his father could do what he had done when Jim was just a kid with a scraped knee, a bee sting or had been abruptly woken from a nightmare, put an arm around him and tell him things would be okay, that he was safe.

  “This isn’t the trip we planned, I guess.” Henry said lightly, a faint, sickly smile on his face.

  Jim shook his head. “No, but at least we’re together again. And that’s something.”

  “Ayuh,” Henry said, nodding. “It’s been real good to see you and your brother together. Last night,” he coughed, his voice disturbingly weak, so quiet Jim could barely hear it above the stubborn waves and the captain’s steady calls of Mayday. “Last night,” he continued, “I was watching you guys. You know, during the game. Yeah, I was in and out a bit, but who could sleep through all that noise?”

  Jim smiled, nodded. “Just like old times.”

  “Yeah,” his father said, wistfully. “You know, your mother and I…” He stopped, as if gathering himself, sifting through the memories, categorizing away the landmines a road of memories lay down, each wrong step triggering the emotional damage all over again. “We would sit upstairs, at the dinner table, drinking coffee... or Bailey’s, or both!” he said, with a laugh. “We’d listen to you guys in the basement, yelling and screaming at the television, demanding the Kings win one... we’d just... sit there. We wouldn’t talk at all. Every... well, every now and then we’d look at each other and sorta smile, just enjoying all the life coming from down those stairs, all that nervous energy, the joy... the joy when the guys scored one. The exuberance.”

  Jim didn’t know what to say. His mother was not a topic they spoke of, rarely if not never, and his stomach soured at the confessional nature of his father’s words.

  Henry gripped Jim’s hand in his own good one, pulled him closer to him. Jim lowered his head on his dad’s bony shoulder, looked over and saw Jack staring at them both from across the deck, his face a blank.

  “The hardest part of losing someone...” Henry said in a whisper, then sighed, a deep-down pain in his voice. “Please understand, what I did after... the way I was. The way I am. It’s not the losing that hurt me the most, son...” He paused, patted the top of Jim’s head, gave a weary sigh. “It was the damned going on.”

  Henry let go of Jim’s arm, and Jim sat up, head bowed as Henry continued. “That’s what eats you up from the inside. A little bit every day,” he said. “Just like it did your mother.”

  Jim said nothing a moment, then put an arm around his father’s thin shoulders, gave him a gentle squeeze. “I know, pop. It’s okay.”

  As he embraced him, Jim’s eyes wandered past his father, toward the rear of the boat.

  A broken line of dark barnacles had now taken root along the bow’s washboard. He frowned, then twisted to look behind them, down toward the water, and could swear the rail of the boat sat closer to the surface of the ocean than it had only minutes ago.

  At least a couple feet closer, he thought numbly. And there’s no way in seven hells that’s a good thing.

  “I’m not feeling well, son,” Henry said, rather too loudly, as if pained. “I think I better lie down.”

  Jim stood, gave his father the bench. Henry lifted his legs and let himself lay down like a toddler taking an afternoon nap.

  “Are you warm? Do you want to take off your jacket?” Jim said, eyeing the blood-stained cuffs.

  “No, actually, I’m a little chilly. Wind must be picking up. Probably just a bit seasick.” Henry closed his eyes.

  Jim didn’t feel any wind. Felt only a light warm breeze with the faintest threat of a chill wisping through it.

  Jack and Chris were digging through the cooler. Jack pulled out two cans of beer, handed one to Chris. They cracked them, tapped cans, and drank heavily.

  “Any more?” Jim asked, not really wanting it but wanting something.

  “Last two, buckaroo,” Chris said, then held his out. “Happy to share.”

  Jim shook his head, looked at the water, the sky, his jailbird brother drinking beer with his best friend, Henry already breathing steady, the captain in his shelter whispering sweet need into the radio mic. Best settle in, he reasoned.

  There was a loud CRACK from beneath the boat, like a tree-branch splitting from the trunk. The boat tremored and the captain came running from the wheelhouse.

  “The hell was that?” he said, looking at the others like they were to blame.

  Jack squatted on the deck, placed the palm of a hand on the flat ruddy wood. “I think...”

  There was a loud belch, and all eyes went to Chris.

  “I think your boat is breaking, Captain,” Chris said, and chugged the last of the last beer.

  A half-hour went by, and no Coast Guard. Jim, needing space, hopped up alongside the wheelhouse, dared to walk along the outside of the boat.
He shuffled along the three-inch coaming while gripping the railing that ran atop the wheelhouse before dropping down in the stern. It was nicer up here. Tight, but dry and clean. He settled onto one of the cushions, tried to ignore the memory of what was growing all around them, under them, layers upon layers of something from the deep ocean, something sinister, something parasitic.

  He twisted his body. It was colder now and he’d already put his black hoodie on. He stared at the setting sun and listened to the steady breathing of the countless waves. The sunset looked massive, a large, bulbous ball of gas set to explode like a red bomb, break apart all over the world, erase them all with fire.

  He laid down, closed his eyes. After a few moments, exhaustion took him, and he fell asleep.

  * * *

  His mother waited for him in a dream. She was not young, not healthy, not beautiful. She had death inside her.

  She lay in her hospital bed, tubes running in and out of her so many places he couldn’t count. She’d been subjected to a third operation, a third mad attempt for—if not salvation—an elongation of her life... a third try.

  A third failure.

  He stood next to her bed. They were alone. Her hair was gone, her eyes deep black sockets, her cheekbones sharp and protruding beneath her yellowed plastic-wrap skin.

  “Jimmy?” she said. So faint, so weak.

  He went to her. Held her frail hand that felt like sticks wrapped in tissue paper. “Yeah,” he said, trying to smile.

  She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the tubes in her arms. “What are they putting into me, Jimmy? What is all this?”

  He looked at the tubes, filling her with fluids, painkillers, medicine, whatever-the-fuck they gave to dying mothers.

  “You need it,” he said, trying for a tone of confidence. “It’s for the pain, mainly.”

  She shook her head, lifted it from the pillow. He could see the stain on the case where she had sweat poison. “No...” she said, lifting her hands high into the air and the tubes extending with them. She looked like a featherless bird inspecting its broken wings. “No,” she repeated. “They’re putting something inside me, Jimmy. I don’t want it. It’s filling me up, I can... I can feel it.” She twitched her face toward him and stared at him with those dead black eyes. “I can feel it in my stomach,” she moaned.

  They’d removed so much of his mother’s intestines he was frankly surprised the stomach was still fillable with anything. She certainly wasn’t eating solid food anymore, had no appetite for it. She couldn’t keep it down anyway. Besides, her teeth had fallen out, her lips were black and hard, crusted with dry flakes.

  When had that happened? he thought.

  She pushed his hand away, reached for the thin hospital sheet with the baby-blue teardrop pattern, pushed it aside, revealed her skinny body draped within a stained gown the color of dead skin. Jim noticed a large wet patch by her crotch.

  “Mom,” he said, feeling sick, “let me get someone.”

  “No!” she yelled, with more force and will than he would have thought remained in her. “Noooo,” she wailed, “look at these goddamn tubes, Jimmy! What are they doing to me?”

  He eyed the cluster of tubes, followed them from her body to the IV bags hanging by her bed. He took half-a-step toward the rack that held three, four of the bags, hanging there like rotting fruit from a tree. He narrowed his eyes at one of the bags feeding into his mother’s right arm.

  The liquid inside was clear, but... there was something. He looked closer, his nose almost touching the sterile plastic of the bag’s exterior. Something, thousands of somethings, were floating inside the bag. Like dust motes caught in sunshine.

  “Well that doesn’t seem right,” he mumbled, resting a hand gently on the bag.

  The dust motes floated gracefully toward his touch. He watched, fascinated, as they migrated—as one—toward the palm of his hand on the other side of the plastic. He watched as they clumped, could almost feel the weight of them, pushing against the bag, reaching for his skin.

  He pulled his hand away, frightened and sick. He watched, repulsed, as the clumps separated, spread themselves out evenly once more. He saw them drift down the IV tube, diving with each drip into his mother’s veins.

  “Jimmy,” she cried suddenly, snapping his attention back to her. “Something’s wrong!” He started to reach for her hand, but she was sitting up now, clawing at the exposed flesh of arms, her knees, her thighs.

  “Mom.”

  She grabbed the hem of her gown, pulled it up over her crotch, exposing herself. Jim gasped, horrified and unsure how to stop her from whatever she was doing.

  Unable to stop himself, he stared down at her, at her bone-thin thighs, the skin blotchy and flabby where it fell away from the thick meat of muscle that was now gone forever. Her crotch was hairless below a distended belly that had swollen to the size of a soccer ball. How had he not noticed that? And where the fuck were the nurses in this hospital?

  He grabbed a call button tethered to the side of the bed rail, began pressing it frantically.

  “Hello!” he yelled, his own voice dying in the small, air-tight room.

  She clawed at her belly, rubbed at it frantically, her hands folded over, the flesh seared into hard fins. She was trying to push the thing out.

  “Jimmy, help me!” she screamed, her voice raspy and breathless. “Get it out!”

  Jim ran to the door, tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. He kicked it, looked at the window leading to the hallway but saw nothing but inky black, as if they were miles underneath the surface of the darkest ocean.

  “Jimmy?” she said, and he turned.

  Her eyes were solid coals, her skin mottled with open, oozing pores and blackened patches of dead flesh. She opened her mouth, pushed a white crab-like creature out instead of a tongue, gummed it. She pushed down on her swollen belly and it caved inward. He heard a gushing sound. Dirty seawater flowed over the edge of the bed. Heavier things floating within it slapped as they hit the floor.

  He stepped away from the rush of water, could see the gelatinous shapes swimming in the liquid, splashing across the floor. He looked up at her once more, saw her eyes were crusted over, heavy, blinded.

  She reached clawed hands, like those of a sickly, fleshy crab, toward him.

  “Mom?” he said, felt a chill racing up his back.

  “HELP ME!” she screamed, and reached one deformed hand to her tongue, ripped the thing out, dropped it, looked at him with a mouthful of blood and sea.

  The windows exploded inward. The ocean rushed in, filled the room. He had a moment to gasp in a last breath as his feet lifted from the floor. The room filled to the ceiling and he dared not breathe. The water was cluttered with debris but clear and deep blue.

  His mother’s body rose from the bed and floated upward, pale and white like a broken angel, her gown flowing around her like a ray’s cape. With a thrusting jerk of her bony legs, she surged toward him, her black acorn eyes never leaving his own.

  The cold slick flesh of her mutated hands went around his head and she pushed her mouth onto his and he gagged and choked and convulsed as his lungs flooded. Her icy blood-blackened fluid flowed down his throat and filled him.

  * * *

  Jim jerked awake, the nightmare evaporating, his skin crawling with damp chill. He shivered, wrapped his hoodie closer around him, his head heavy, his eyes pressed inward by invisible pressures. His mouth was pasty and dry and his stomach felt twisted and tight, his guts sour. No more puking, he ordered himself.

  He pushed himself up off the sodden cushion of the small bench, felt his back twinge from having lain at the odd angle... how long? He worked his jaw, rubbed at one eye that had been pressed into the thin coarse fabric.

  It was dark. Well, darker. He turned his head, grimaced at the crick in his neck, saw the sun dipped low in the bloody water, its innards spilling out onto the surface of the ocean, sliced open cleanly by the
horizon. The waves lapped at the side of the boat, slapping carelessly against the hull as the boat rose and dipped, creaky as an old ghost pushing a rocker.

  He stopped to listen. There was something else. Grunting. Exertions. He heard Jack curse softly, carried away by the wind before he could hear the words that followed.

  Jim gathered his wits, halting, resentfully remembering their situation. He tried to will it away into a bad dream, but reality washed over him despite his efforts.

  He looked over the front edge of the boat, not sure what to expect... but there was no more boat. Not anymore.

  The entire shell of the vessel was covered ass-to-lips in... what? Barnacles? Crabs? What was it? Too dark to see clearly now, but there was a lot of movement among the rocky black crust that had thickened along the side of the small vessel. Shuddering violently from the cold, from disgust, from fear, he carefully shuffled to the front of the standing shelter that divided the boat. He looked through the grimy windows. The wheelhouse was empty.

  He could see shapes, however, toward the bow. Bodies standing, struggling. He pulled himself up, gripped the cold handrail that ran along the top of the shelter, began the shuffle-step back along the side of the boat toward the rear deck. The wind whipped up in a sudden frenzy, blew his hood off his head and his foot slipped. There was a crunch as his heel dug into the black crustaceans that covered the surface of the boat. He pulled it up quickly, shook it to be sure nothing had stuck, then continued quickly toward the bow.

  Climbing down onto the deck, the first thing he saw was his father’s frail form, lying where he’d left him, on the bench along the starboard side of the deck. His eyes were open and his head lifted. He was reaching with one hand...

  The soles of Jim’s shoes smacked the wet deck. He looked from his father to Jack and Chris, who were at the other side of the boat, their backs to him. They had been moving, struggling. Now they froze.