Dwellers in the Depths

The boys ran down to the water, laughing and punching, goose-fleshed in the cold gold of hollow sunlight. Hopping gingerly like cranes over the sharp flints, they shoved and pulled, dragging and shrieking in the shallows; pale figures splashing through ripped bronze. Their voices clattered through the still afternoon like rowdy gatecrashers at a wake yet to notice the embarrassed silence.

“So the dude says ‘Jeez lady, I’m doing it as fast as I can’,” cackled Russell. “You get it? See, the kid’s name is…”

“I got in in the first grade, numb nuts,” Harry retorted. “I think I’ve got something sticking to…” At the realization of what had attached itself to him, he dashed out of the water screaming, “It’s a leech! It’s a goddamned leech!”

“Holy shit,” Russell muttered when he lifted his own arm out of the water to find three of the parasites feeding on his bicep.

“Aw, hell no!” Lenny yelped upon seeing Harry reach the shore practically covered with the segmented predatory worms.

They clamored out of the infested pond with haste, where Harry fished out a half empty pack of cowboy killers and an orange Bic out of the jeans he’d left strewn about haphazardly with the rest of the gang’s discarded clothing. “I’ll light a cigarette,” he said. “We can burn them off.”

“They’re all over my legs,” Russell cried. “I hate leeches!” Bobby growled as he peeled one of the wretched annelids from his forearm. “It’s okay,” assured Harry, passing a lit Marlboro to Bobby. “They’re coming off.”

“Aw, God, hurry up man,” Russ whined impatiently.

“Uh, hey, what’s up with Nate?” Lenny inquired staring back at the only member of their party who had not made any attempt to escape the blood-thirsty pests. “Hey! Nate!” Lenny called out. “Get out the water! It’s fulla leeches!”

Nate didn’t answer him. He simply remained afloat in a fixed position, motionless, having grown unnaturally pale with dull eyes glazed over staring at nothing in particular.

“What’s up with him?” Bobby asked. “Can’t he hear us?”

“Hey Nate,” Harry tried. “Come on man…” Still, Nate did not respond.

“I think he’s having a heart attack or somethin’,” Harry concluded.

“Oh shit dude,” blurted Lenny. “Under the water…I can see something.”

“Shut up! That’s just shadows,” Bobby objected.

“We gotta get him outta there,” asserted Harry. “We can’t just leave him.”

“No way man,” Russell protested. “There’s leeches. I can’t go back in.”

“Harry, I can see them!” Lenny ranted. “Under the water…”

“Shut it Lenny!” Bobby squawked.

“We-we better go and f-fetch somebody,” Harry stammered as they collected the piles of clothing they had left on the bank. “Listen Nate…We’ll be right back…Okay?”

Dark and rich, pumping through their hearts, laced with the silver of stolen adrenaline, they feasted as they saw fit, safe from the desiccating sunlight. Down there, the night went on forever. They were left to weightless twilight, shut out from the killing day. They breathed in stagnant water and breathed out roses. One by one they detached from the boy’s exsanguinated corpse and went down, down into the drowned town.

Submerged, the town’s mask eroded away to reveal the fascinating skull beneath. A sparkling current of fish threaded itself through a shattered wind-screen and blind things writhed down lightless avenues.

The whole place had gone bad around thirty seven years prior. Something old and thirsty came flapping down the interstate and settled there. After that, the town grew strangely silent, and whatever happened there happened after dark. Eventually, someone had cleansed the town by exploding the dam. A thousand-ton wall of iron-green, a whole city of water rolling across the fragile dollhouses of Trenton like judgment. It turned the pale things into bitter dust, then sliced the dust away.

“Russ, Bobby, listen, we’ve gotta tell somebody,” Harry pleaded. “Jesus Christ, dude, what about his folks?”

“No friggin’ way man.” Russell snapped. “We weren’t supposed to be swimmin’ out there in the first place. You don’t know my pops, he’d crucify me.”

“The cops would do worse,” Bobby added.

“We can’t just leave Nate there and not tell anybody!” Harry contested. “I mean, we took him out there. It’s in our hands.”

“That’s bullshit!” Russell vociferated. “It ain’t my fault he wanted to go there! I ain’t taking the blame. You want him so bad, you go back for him.”

“I ain’t going back.” Lenny muttered solemnly. “I seen ‘em. They were…”

“Len-ny,” a perturbed Bobby interrupted.

“Don’t ‘Lenny’ me! I seen ‘em! Under the water…and they were drinking him!”

Bobby’s right arm encircled Lenny’s neck, with the latter’s trachea at the crook of the former’s elbow. His right hand grasped his own upper left arm, his left hand placed behind Lenny’s head.

“You didn’t see shit,” Bobby hissed through clenched teeth. “You understand me? There wasn’t anything there! There weren’t no faces and there weren’t no fingers under the water, and, and…” He released his grip and allowed a breathless Lenny to go tumbling onto the ground. “And anyway, you’re all crazy. I’m goin’ home.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too,” murmured Russell, gazing upon a gasping Lenny sheepishly. “My pops don’t like it if I stay out too late.”

“I can’t believe this.” Harry expostulated. “What about Nate’s folks? We can’t just leave him back there, you assholes.”

“Aw, he was just actin’ up,” Bobby affirmed, extending an apologetic helping hand to Lenny in order to help him back to his feet. “He was probably trying to freak us out on purpose. I bet he’s back at home right now, laughing his ass off.”

“That’s where I’m going,” Lenny mewled. “Home.”

“Hey! Come back!” Harry demanded to his departing friends. “He wasn’t ‘actin’ up’! Russ, you saw him. He was white! His lips, his cheeks, they were all white.” His desperate appeal fell on deaf ears as the trio continued toward the path that led to the main road. “Okay, fine. You guys can go home an’ let mom tuck ya into bed! Why not? But I ain’t leaving Nate out there. You’re slime you know that? Just slime.”

Slime decorated her bridal veil, rotted artificial flowers clinging to the fish-eaten gauze. Decomposed and delicate, they carried it to the chambers where she waited for them in the dark; swollen, naked, white, and heavy with roe. Her time had almost come, and she was suffused with terrible beauty.

Once, back in the half-life that she endured while living in the dry lands, her name was Isabelle. She worked in a supermarket and worried about pimples, believing no man would ever want her. But now the unfulfilled aching was gone for she wasn’t Isabelle anymore. She waited, pale and magnificent in the heavy darkness, for the embrace of her first lover. They called her the Mother. Too massive to hunt, too cumbersome to feed, she hungered while their veins throbbed with purloined crimson.

With nails like pearl switchblades, they opened their palms, letting her drink deep. She was ultimately feeding for many. Behind her, her bridal train hung bent and twisted in the filthy waters. Gently, they guided her out through the lampless passageways; out to meet ecstasy-to meet death, in order to birth a new unique being.

For soon, the dark millennium would fall, and the world would be a different place, requiring a different species. Cataracts would occlude the sun, shutting out its hateful light and fabulous life-forms would flourish and struggle beneath the perpetual stars.

Her eyes were heavy and bovine, drugged with blissful maternity. She smiled at her congregation through the clouded waters. From her sea-changed body would come the new generation of their race, begotten in the depths, born in violence, and suckled in darkness.

“Nate? Nate, it Harry. I came back for you, like I said.” A sudden flutter overhead gave him a start. He turned his attention to the unexpected disturbance to witness a small bat snatch a moth right out to the cool evening air. Harry let out a sigh of relief just as he heard the sound of dry leaves and twigs being crushed underfoot accompanied by a familiar voice.

“Hello, Harold.” the voice greeted.

Harry spun around to face the intruder to see that it was none other than Nate himself. He was still pale and damp but apparently no worse for wear and certainly in better condition than Harry expected.

“Nate, oh man!” Harry cheered. “We were so scared. We thought you were dead.” He placed a hand on Nate’s shoulder and involuntarily recoiled when he found his skin cold and clammy to the touch. “Jeez, Nate, you better find your clothes. You’re freezing.”

“Not yet.” Nate replied. “I want to swim again.”

“Swim?” Harry entreated incredulously. “You’re nut man. It’s late. We gotta get home.”

“Swim first,” insisted Nate, aggressively grabbing ahold of Harry’s wrist. “Come on Harry. Down to the water.”

“Nate?” Harry beseeched as he struggled against Nate’s vice-like grip in his endeavor to pull his friend into the pond. “Whoa, look out! My shoes art getting wet! Nate, let go of my arm. This isn’t funny! I don’t like being out here on our own.”

“On our own?” Nate queried. “But Harold, we’re not on our own.”

Succeeding the utterance of those foreboding words, dark figures began to emerge from the pond. Illuminated by the muted radiance of the gibbous moon, he could make out greyish green skin pulled taut over emaciated frames, long sallow arms terminating in slender fingers tipped with vicious talons. The sharp points of slightly protuberant ears peaked out from beneath a mess of long, green slimy strands of kelp-like vegetation that covered their heads. Shimmering green points of light reflected from sunken sockets. Nate’s pealed back over gleaming fangs as he grinning menacingly.

“Oh God, Nate, please,” Harry begged.

Up above, near the shoreline, a violent splashing shuddered out through the motionless water. She smiled knowing that her offspring would not go hungry. As they led her out into the birthing place, her eyes grew bright and clear. He stood alone, waiting for her, so still, so silent, so impossibly calm.

“Nate, please!” Harry implored desperately as he was tossed belligerently at the feet of the horrors that emerged from the depths. “I came back for you, don’t…” Harry gargled his final adjurations in vain trying to petition mercy as he was hauled beneath the tenebrous surface.

In the center of the field, they released her, the momentum carrying her massive body forwards where her lover stood. They met, they touched, and they embraced. Then her great body bucked and heaved as the burden within was released into the clinging green water.

They stood, mute with wonder, at the grace of their convulsions. Her lover jack-knifed in the murk above the eggs; a single whiplash of white in the blackness and it is complete. They had both opened their bodies to the oxygen-bearing water now, the same water that had nearly eradicated their kind thirty-seven years before. Except the ones in the supermarket, in the air tight freezer units. It was just sunset when the flood hit and not all of them were awake yet. All they had to do was wait until the water stopped running and became still. They didn’t need air. It was the same reason they were able to survive in coffins underground. The taint of the nosferatu was anaerobic, after all. It was a wonder they had never thought of living underwater centuries ago. They only ever had one true disadvantage and that was their aversion to the lethal rays of the sun. Any gathering of them attracted the attention of men with stakes to let air into their bodies. That was why there were no organized vampire settlements before. Now, having made the final sacrifice, like salmon after spawning, they thrashed weakly, decaying even in life.

In dying, they were the greatest among them. Linking their hands, they honored them. They circled around, faster and faster they spun, a pale white carousel careening through the submarine dark. The lovers were quite disintegrated by then, a suspension of pale flakes in the churning water, but their death had served its function. They did what was required of them.

The eggs cast a milky and opalescent light, like the neon tumors of lantern-fish. Gray shapes twisted within them. New life, savage and unknowable. The shells bulged and rippled as the fetal blurs inside them spasmed with the joy and agony of existence. A membrane began to tear, and then another. The moment had arrived. It had begun.

Submitted February 02, 2019 at 05:00PM by D-P-Roy http://bit.ly/2RDyxDi