The Sea Creature

“He’s here,” my uncle said. “I can feel his energy. He’s very, very angry.”

What bullshit, I thought. But I kept it to myself because he’d already told me to keep my trap shut or I wouldn’t be taken along anymore. As if I was a child, not a sixteen-year-old girl.

The ocean was beautiful, at least. The air was warm, and the sun reflected off the water like spilled glitter. We were on a small strip of private beach on Monterey Bay, with a huge McMansion behind us, all glass and solar panels and tacky furniture. One thing I could say for my uncle, he was good at hooking rich clients.

“The townspeople cross over that wall of rock over there, and come onto my property, even though I have signs up.” Mr. McAllister said, pointing at the two tilted signs next to the rocks. Someone had blacked out the ‘no’ in no trespassing in black spray paint, and written, ‘OK,’ underneath, so that it read, ‘trespassing OK.’

“So, they come over here, think they can sunbathe and go for a swim. And then when they get far enough out, they just disappear. Like something’s pulling them under.”

“The current,” I said. “Or sharks.”

Uncle Jeremy glared at me.

Mr. McAllister nodded at me approvingly. “That’s what I thought too, but then I was up in my studio, searching for whales with my telescope, and I saw it.”

That caught my uncle’s attention. “Saw what? What did it look like?”

Mr. McAllister shifted from foot to foot and twisted his hands together. “It was, um, well, I can’t really say. It was just there and then gone. Looked kind of like a whale maybe, but smaller, and with bumpy skin.”

I looked down at the sand, so I wouldn’t roll my eyes. Our clients could never actually describe their encounters. Usually they didn’t even see anything, it was just loud knocking in the middle of the night, or a cold touch. The fact that he could describe it at all was impressive.

“So, what, it’s been eating people that trespass on your beach? Is that a bad thing?” I really had to learn to shut up. But usually if I thought something, it came out of my mouth.

“You’re right, it doesn’t bother me much,” the dupe continued, “because they’re trespassers. But a few weeks ago, I had a rather inebriated guest, who went for a swim and didn’t come back. And now his family is trying to sue me.” He gave a derisive laugh, with a small snort at the end.

“So, you want us to kill it and you want proof,” I said. Proof would be hard, considering the creature wasn’t real.

He shook his head. “I don’t need proof. I just need testimony that you saw it and killed it. If I can prove it was something I couldn’t have known about, I can’t be held liable.”

My uncle was nodding, practically rubbing his hands together in greed. “This will be difficult,” he told the mark. “But I’m confident we’ll be able to kill it.”

“Sure,” I said, gesturing at the ocean. “It’ll be easy. Just go out there and kill it.”

“That’s what I plan on doing.” He turned to me and smiled, making the crow’s feet around his eyes even more prominent.

“Unfortunately, I don’t swim.”

***

I cussed to myself as I pulled on my tight black wetsuit in the dupe’s ridiculously lavish pool house. I had known this was a possibility, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. I could refuse of course, but that would mean I wouldn’t get paid, and being in the ocean for fifteen minutes seemed too easy to pass up, even if there were sharks.

“What it sounds like to me,” I heard my uncle say from outside, “is a Tanystropheus, a leftover from the prehistoric era. They’re usually about twenty feet long with a stretched-out neck. There were lots of sightings of them in the 1800’s.”

What a moron, I thought. I would have to go into the freezing water and pretend I saw something, so Uncle Jeremy could pretend to kill it with the speargun he didn’t know how to use. Then we would charge this mark twenty-five thousand for solving his made-up problem. If people kept disappearing, we would come back, pretend it was another mythical sea creature and ‘kill’ that one too.

As much as Uncle Jeremy drove me nuts, he knew how to run a con. I would get fifteen percent, most of which I would stash in an old wooden chest under my bed. I would use the rest of it for my Funko Pop doll collection. So far, I had collected about eight thousand dollars and twenty-five dolls. My uncle thought it was a weird thing to do, but collecting things made me feel like I belonged somewhere.

We took a thirty-foot yacht out far enough that the shore was just a blue haze in the distance, Uncle Jeremy talking the whole time about what an amazing discovery this would be. He had to shout over the noise of the motor, as the mark piloted. He knew the more he talked, the more the mark would believe him, no matter how crazy it was.

The water was about one hundred feet deep here and I held on to a little orange float and started treading water. The strap of my goggles was digging into the back of my head, but I wanted to be able to see when I went underwater, just in case there were sharks.

The water was freezing, and I could feel goosebumps covering my entire body, even through the wetsuit. If rage could make you feel warm, I thought, then this would be no problem. Even though I didn’t believe prehistoric animals existed anymore, I still didn’t appreciate being pretend bait.

I knew what I was supposed to do, Uncle Jeremy had lectured me at length on the two-hour drive there. All I had to do was act normal and tread water for about fifteen minutes. Then I was supposed to give a little scream (not like last time, my uncle had told me, let’s not overdo it) and duck underwater for a few minutes.

“But you have to make it look like you’re being pulled,” he told me. “Not like you're just taking a little dunk, okay? Let’s try to be as authentic as possible this time.”

“Okay,” I said, making my face serious. “I’ll be as authentic as possible when I pretend to get pulled underwater by a prehistoric monster.”

He took his eyes off the road for a second, and we veered slightly to the left. “When did you turn into such a little jerk?” he asked.

“Same time you did,” I said.

***

My fifteen minutes was almost up, but the small waves from the boat kept forcing water into my mouth and I was getting more pissed by the second. Goddamn cryptozoologists. Goddamn rich douchebags who didn’t know what to spend their money on. Goddamn pretend monsters.

Something brushed my leg and I kicked, telling myself it was just seaweed. This part of the ocean was overrun with it now, thanks to climate change. I stared at my uncle until he finally stopped talking and noticed me, and he gave a little nod.

This was it, I thought. We’d finally get this over with. I’d do my little act, Uncle Jeremy would fire his spear gun into the ocean, I would swear I saw blood and that it was dead, and then we could take the damn boat back to shore so I could finally get warm.

Then the mark was screaming and pointing at the ocean like some kind of looney, and before I could figure out what was happening, I was being pulled underwater, fast, tiny bubbles rushing up the sides of my body. I could feel teeth in my leg, so deep I could imagine them touching the bone. It was a burning, numb sensation that was somehow worse than pain.

It was a shark, I thought. A fucking great white had gotten me, and I would either drown or lose my leg. I kicked with my other leg, and felt it connect with smooth, squishy feeling flesh. It didn’t loosen its grip though, just gave a jerk of its head and pulled me down further. At this point I was down so deep I would have a hard time making it to the surface, even if I could get loose.

I kicked again, harder this time, knowing I was screwed. I would be eaten, I thought, because that’s what humans were after all, just meat. Even if we liked to pretend we weren’t.

Something whizzed past me, skimming by my face, and the thing loosened its jaws just a little. A slight release of tension.

I kicked again and the spear whizzed past us again, this time lodging in the thing’s body. It made a kind of deep moaning noise that I figured was an underwater scream, and finally let me go. That’s when I got my first good look at it.

I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at, but it definitely wasn’t a shark. It had a strange, elongated dragon face, with thin yellow tendrils flowing out from the bumpy flesh. The face was a mottled gray and brown, and the body was thick and muscular, with a series of short but strong legs running down the sides.

Every nerve in my body was telling me to scream, my fingers tingling with fear. I wanted to claw to the surface, but some ancient instinct wouldn’t allow me to move. If I moved, I would become prey.

I’m going to be eaten, I thought. Fuck.

For a second we looked at each other, his globe-like eyes boring into mine. He’s kind of cute, I thought hysterically. And maybe we could be friends, like in one of those kid’s movies, where the monster turns out to be misunderstood.

And then it opened its mouth and lunged at me, its rows of large, serrated teeth going for my throat. The spear dislodged from its side, and I kicked at it. I got it in the head, stunning it for a second. Then I hurled myself towards the surface in a panic, breaking through the water in a sputtering rush.

My uncle reached out his arm to me but didn’t make a move to come and help me. “C’mon,” he yelled. “Before it reaches the surface.”

He seemed oddly calm, as if he still thought this whole thing was an act. I swam towards them and hauled myself up the flimsy ladder attached to the side of the boat, waiting for the monster to break the surface and drag me back under.

But it never even emerged, and now that I was back on the boat a part of me wondered if it had really happened. My leg was bleeding, but not as badly as I thought. I couldn’t even see any puncture wounds, just a couple of long, shallow cuts.

“You must have scraped it against the side of the boat when you were flailing around,” my uncle said quietly, wrapping the cut in gauze.

He walked over to the mark, a smug smile on his narrow face. “Well, we nearly lost Maura, but I managed to kill it,” he said. “And I doubt you’ll have any more problems. That type of creature is usually solitary, and only spawns once every twelve years.”

I stared at him, incredulous. “You didn’t kill it!” I told him, “You barely even injured it. And you don’t know if it’s solitary, because you don’t know what in the hell it is!”

My uncle strode back over to me and leaned over so he could peer into my face, as if he was concerned. He took my hand in his and squeezed, much harder than he needed to. “You are ruining this,” he hissed at me. “Just say you saw it die, so we can collect the money.”

“But it didn’t die,” I spat back. “Which means it’s gonna keep killing people.”

He pinched my hand so hard I could feel the bones rubbing together. “It’s not going to kill people, because it doesn’t exist, Maura. Jesus, it’s like I’m surrounded by morons.”

I yanked my hand away, but I knew I couldn’t argue with him, not when he was so focused on getting the money.

“There was a lot of blood,” I said, no longer whispering, the lies grating against the back of my throat. “And it was making weird screaming noises, so you’re right, it must have died.

My uncle nodded at me, satisfied, and the mark nodded too. Some people, I had come to realize, were looking for any reason to toss their money away, like it was a burden.

I looked out to sea, trying to peer through the murky water, see if it was still there. I couldn’t see jack shit, but I could imagine it down there, lingering at the bottom, waiting for its next victim.

***

“Are you on drugs?!” my uncle screamed at me on the way home. “I saw it, I saw it,” he screeched in a high voice, waving his arms in the air. “These things don’t exist, Maura. You, of all people, should know that.”

“It attacked me,” I said. “I could’ve died.”

He didn’t answer, just rolled his eyes, and kept driving.

I pulled up my jeans so he could see the large white bandage wrapped around my leg. “That thing pulled me under and bit me, and I don’t care if I almost ruined your stupid job. If the mark wants us to do another job, I’m not going to.”

I was expecting him to scream at me, rage that I was a spoiled brat and wouldn’t know a prehistoric creature if it bit me in the ass. Instead, his voice was calm, quiet, with a cold undertone that scared me more than almost drowning had.

“You’re going to do it,” he told me. “And if you don’t, you won’t get paid, and I’ll have to think about putting you in the foster system. Is that what you want?”

I didn’t say anything, just looked out the window at the long strip of gray road. We both knew I would do anything to avoid being put in the system. Not even being almost eaten by an ancient sea creature was as bad as that.

***

The mark called us back three weeks later, when two kite surfers disappeared.

“Your niece was right,” he had told Uncle Jeremy over the phone. “You didn’t kill it. I need you to either come back here and really kill it this time or give me a refund.”

“The kite surfers deserved it,” I said, on the way back to the mark’s McMansion. “Kite surfing has got to be the dumbest sport ever.”

Uncle Jeremy didn’t respond. Hadn’t talked the whole time we’d been driving. I’d never seen him this pissed before, this serious. I guess he really didn’t like people trying to take his money away. Plus, he’d spent it all anyway. Mostly on groceries, but also on porn sites I wasn’t supposed to know about.

When we were almost there, he finally spoke. “You’re going to take the spear this time,” he said. “If you have it in the water with you, you can get a point-blank shot. It’ll be more efficient than shooting from the boat.”

“I thought you didn’t believe it was real,” I said.

My uncle’s lips turned down, a sure sign that he was pissed. He didn’t like being wrong, and he especially didn’t like me being right.

“Well, if something is down there you can shoot it. And if there isn’t, which is much more likely,” he said dryly, “you taking the gun will make it look more authentic. We need to make this guy really believe it this time.”

“Fine,” I said. I had resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to get back in the water. I was hoping the monster was full from the kite surfers and wouldn’t want another meal.

***

The boat was stopped in the same spot as before and the dupe started ranting about getting his money back, and how we had failed the kite surfers.

“They died because of you, you know,” he told my uncle. “If you had done what you said you were going to do, if you had actually killed it, they wouldn’t have died.” He was more agitated this time, his wispy brown hair floating in the wind and making him look even more crazy.

My uncle crossed his arms and stared at Mr. McAllister, trying to look intimidating. “You didn’t actually see the monster eat them, did you?”

When the dupe didn’t respond, Uncle Jeremy nodded, smug. “There’s no proof it killed them. All we know is if it didn’t die, it’s injured from our last encounter. That means it’s going to be more difficult to deal with. More dangerous. That, or there’s another one.”

The dupe narrowed his eyes. “I’m not giving you any more money! I paid you for a job you didn’t complete. Now you have to remedy that!”

He stormed off towards the other side of his boat, and I watched him, feeling strangely distant from all of it. I held the spear gun in my hand, my muscles aching with the weight of it. The sky was covered in a thick layer of clouds, making the choppy water look almost black. The wind was cold against my bare arms and legs, the sun a hazy dot in the sky.

I’m going to die today, I thought. I could feel the knowledge pulsing through my blood, my body heavy with it.

“Maura, are you listening?!” my uncle yelled, snapping me out of my thoughts. “It’s time to go in. Don’t take a shot unless you know you’re going to hit it. We don’t want the thing to get even angrier than it already is.”

As I looked into the dark water all my resignation drained away. “I’m not going,” I said. “I saw it. It’s real. And I’m not going.”

He looked at me, his face twisted into a red mask of rage.

He grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the ladder. I didn’t fight, but when we got to the ladder, I grabbed the rounded handle and refused to move.

“You’re being ridiculous!” he spat. “How many times have you done things like this before? Just get in the water, pretend that something’s out there, and then pretend to kill it. I don’t understand why that’s so difficult.”

“It was never real before,” I said quietly. “You can put me in the system, because I’m not going in there.”

He grabbed my arm again, harder this time, and tried to push me down the ladder, but I fought him, using my other arm to try to poke him in the eye.

“You little prick!” he screamed, and slammed his hand into my face, pushing backwards, his fingers digging into my skin. I could feel blood running down my face, and an intense, burning pain at the bridge of my nose. He broke it, I thought. That stupid bastard broke my nose.

I was pissed now, a rage boiling through me and ripping out of my mouth in an animalistic scream. I grabbed his shirt and launched myself backwards, so that we both fell into the ocean. If we were in the ocean, I could get away from him, I thought. Not thinking about the monster, or what would happen if my uncle tried to drag me under.

The water was like a cold, stinging slap that immobilized me for a second as I sank, still holding onto my uncle’s shirt. Maybe I can drown him, I thought. Or at least scare him, make him understand the consequences of forcing me to be bait.

But he was still fighting me as he scrabbled toward the surface. I let go of his shirt, his frantic motions kicking up a cloud of bubbles, and pushing me down further.

It was okay, I thought. I could still reach the surface in time. I could see it above me, a shifting, shimmering blue that beckoned me towards it. I was clawing my way back up when a foot hit me in the side of the head, stunning me.

It would be considered an accident, I thought. That stupid bastard was going to drown me, and no one would even think twice. He would probably sue the dupe for wrongful death and make even more money.

My lungs were burning now, and I knew it would be less than a minute before my body decided to try to breathe.

I knew I needed to get air, but the surface was so far away, it felt like an impossibility. There was no way out of this. My whole life would be wiped away, and the only people who would remember me were my crackpot mother and my asshole uncle.

My hand brushed something, and I grabbed for it instinctively. It was rough and bumpy under my hand, and I could feel muscles moving under skin. I jerked my hand away, but realized it had my foot in its mouth, a gentle grip I could barely feel.

It was going to save me, I thought hysterically. It would bring me back to the surface because it was a kind, gentle sea creature that wanted to help. The way dolphins sometimes rescued people.

But I gave that hope up as I was tugged downward, water rushing around my body. I struggled at first, but the more I struggled the faster it pulled me down. My goggles had stayed on, so I could see everything, the light blue of the surface getting farther and farther away.

This isn’t fair, I thought. My uncle, who was a horrible person, had lived for thirty-nine years, and I only got sixteen. And it wasn’t even a good sixteen.

Eaten by something that doesn’t even exist. What a crap way to die. Maybe after he had eaten me, he would go back up there and finish off my uncle.

Why didn’t he just kill me already? I thought, still struggling to hold my breath, bubbles cascading from my nose. My chest felt like it was going to explode, the burning starting to become unbearable.

But he just kept pulling me deeper, the blackness of the bottom of the ocean reaching for me, light slowly becoming a memory.

I felt it before I could see it, the large plumes of kelp, tiny silver fish darting between the thin, brown fronds.

This is beautiful, I thought. A beautiful way to die.

But then I saw the skeletons, the bones picked clean, skulls and parts of spinal cord jammed into the kelp and swaying softly with the current. There were dozens of them, the skulls all looking in the same direction, the jaws pulled open in silent screams.

It’s a collection, I realized, my brain fuzzy from lack of oxygen. He drags people down here, alive, and makes them part of his collection. Just like my Funko Pop dolls. He probably likes watching them die and rot.

And then I was placed gently into a few strands of kelp that were twisted together, right next to a skeleton tangled in a large swath of red and white material. It was the kite surfer, I realized, the skeleton perfectly intact, tiny fish darting in and out of his eye holes.

Fuck, I thought. And I couldn’t help it, I screamed.

***

Jane Frankel is a children's librarian with a love for horror and science fiction. She studied creative writing while at Mount Holyoke College and belongs to the Northern Connecticut Writers Workshop. Jane shares her writing space with her husband, her dog, and a cat who occasionally gets trapped in the walls.