by Marco Etheridge
The sailing ketch Siren’s Call rides her anchor chain in a remote cove off the Sea of Cortez. Warm water laps her wooden hull. Jack Darris, the skipper, first mate, and cabin boy, laps lukewarm whiskey. He watches the last rays of sunlight dip below the ragged Baja horizon while pondering the merits of another whiskey. He does not think long.
Jack fishes the last ice fragments from the cooler beside his deck chair. Splashes whiskey into the glass. Most of the ice dissolves. He swirls the glass and sighs.
No cold nightcaps for a few days, old buddy. It’s fifty nautical miles to the next marina. But small price to pay, right?
Jack Darris floats amidst the realization of a life-long dream. Early retirement, a solo sailing adventure, and an isolated anchorage. The last light fades in the West as a gibbous moon rises in the East. The stars shine above. All the lanterns of heaven and not a single man-made light to spoil the view.
You wanted to be alone, Jackie boy. Congratulations. Mission accomplished.
He rests his free hand across the mound of his stomach. Fingertips tease the fur above his baggy shorts. It’s too dark now to see the flecks of gray. Thank goodness for small favors. Jack doesn’t feel so old under the moonlight.
That’s another benefit of sailing solo. No need to suck in his gut and no one to impress. Not that he looks any worse than any other sixty-year-old guy who spent too many years behind a desk. But that was then, and this is now.
He sips the whiskey. More than a sip. A loud splash breaks the silence. Jack lumbers from his chair and peers across the watery darkness. Just off the port side, he sees silver reflections dancing atop a swirl of ripples. A vee line leads away into the sea, marking the path of something swimming fast just below the surface. A shiver creeps down his spine, despite the warm air. He laughs it away and sits.
Just a sea lion, Jackie. Nothing to worry about. You’re getting jumpy in your old age.
He chuckles and reaches for his glass. Chides himself for being startled by a little splash in the dark. But a wisp of doubt tickles his reptilian brain.
Sea lions haul out of the water before dark, don’t they? Yeah, but lots of things go splash in the night. Maybe it was a shark or one of those Humboldt Squid. Sure, diablo rojo, the red devil. That’s what the locals call them. Big sonsofbitches attracted to lights.
Attracted to light, except the Siren’s Call is dark. Not even a navigation lamp. Jack chases the tail of a thought, but the fragment escapes his fuzzy brain.
Whatever, just a splash in the cove. Nothing to fret about, Jackie. You’re on a nice big boat. And you’ve got whiskey. Ha! Maybe they just want your booze.
It’s nearing midnight when Jack makes his way below deck. The air feels close and stifling. He leaves the hatches open. Starlight glimmers beyond the narrow portholes. He sags onto the berth and rolls to face the curve of the cabin wall. A few minutes later he is snoring.
Stars rotate in the night sky. The moon sails above the Sea of Cortez, charting a path from east to west. And aboard the Siren’s Call, Jack Darris floats in the nebulous waters between sleep and wakefulness. He hears a voice calling to him, sweet and sultry.
Jack… Jaaa-aack.
The voice teases. Jack feels the stirrings of an erection. Then silence. He grunts, rolls over, and slips down into a dreamless sleep.
Jack stands on the transom. Late morning, and the sun is already high. A painful glare reflects off the water. He pulls polarized sunglasses from above the brim of his hat and fits them over his tearing eyes.
An inflatable dinghy rides in the water. Jack lowers his bulk to the transom, his legs dangling. Using his feet, he pulls the dinghy beneath him and eases himself aboard.
Crawling to the stern, he reaches for the outboard motor. The starter cord zips, and zips again. Jack is already sweating. He curses under his breath, adjusts the choke, and tries again. The motor burbles to life. He swivels the outboard into the water, crawls back to the bow, and unties the painter.
Maybe two hundred yards to the beach. Jack could swim it if he had to. Ten yards out, he kills the outboard and tilts the prop out of the water. Momentum carries the inflatable onto the sloping shingle. Jack hops over the gunwale and onto the beach. He stumbles, rights himself, and grabs the painter. A grating sound as he drags the dinghy up onto the beach.
Jack looks north, his eyes searching the curve of the beach. No footprints, no keel lines gouged into the sand, nothing.
He walks the tideline as far as the cove’s rocky northern arm. Sees a few jellyfish rotting into the sand. The desiccated corpse of a stingray. No telltale sign of sea lions hauling themselves onto the shore. He retraces his steps, passes the dinghy, and continues south.
At the southern end of the beach, Jack faces the sea. Across the cove, the Siren’s Call gleams white and proud in the sunshine. He looks to the eastern horizon and sees nothing but the shimmering sea.
He’d worked hard to get here. Making plans, saving money, breaking out of the nine-to-five death shuffle. Now he stands on the shore of his dream, but the reality is sharp. His head aches. Sweat pours down his face. He shrugs it off.
Just a hangover. No big deal. You get back to the boat and down a few beers. You’ll be right as rain in no time. Or you could pull anchor and head north.
The thought takes him by surprise.
Sail north to what? A bunch of old gringos hanging around a Mexican marina, telling lies over their margaritas? Fuck that.
Right here, this isolated cove, this is the fruition of all his plans, the payoff for years of sailing nothing more than a desk he hated.
Mops the sweat from his face and turns to the arid landscape rising beyond the upper beach. Rocks, cactus, and more rocks. He walks up the shingle and clambers up onto a rocky shelf. Just a bit higher and he might be able to see more. Maybe a road or something. He scrambles up the rocks, doing instead of thinking.
A plate of rock tilts beneath his feet. His body teeters, limbs flailing for purchase. He slides sideways and just catches hold of a boulder. His left leg digs for a foothold and then a searing pain burns through his calf. Something is biting his leg off.
Still clinging to the boulder, he yanks his knee up. Craning his chin over a trembling forearm, he looks down. A forest of spines quiver in the flesh of his calf. Then he sees the branching arms of a wicked cholla just beneath his foot. He’s sure the evil cactus is trying to pull him down.
Sweat slicks his palms. He claws for a better grip and pulls for all he’s worth. Somehow, he drags himself up and flops atop the boulder. He is panting for breath and his leg is on fire.
The short climb down is a painful ordeal. Moving with exaggerated care, Jack inches his way back to the beach. Then he limps back to the dinghy. Two competing urges fill his angry brain. Get to the first aid kit and uncork the whiskey.
Jack tweezes cholla spines out of his leg and drinks. Both tasks take up a good long time. He stops only to slap together a sandwich and wolf it down.
The sun is riding down the western sky as Jack searches his inflamed calf for the last remnants of hair-thin spines. A few have broken off beneath the skin. He can feel the pointy bastards, but his tweezer hand is unsteady.
Fuck it. Douse the leg with antibiotics and call it good. Time for a nap. And tomorrow, it’s time to get out of here. Find another damn cove. This one sucks. Paradise to shit show with one misplaced step.
Jack smears goop on his leg and tries to repack the first aid kit. Giving up on it, he drains the whiskey glass and snuggles to his feet. The deck chair hits the deck. He stumbles through the cockpit and down the ladder to the galley. Drops the empty glass into the sink as he passes. Then he’s in his bunk, propping up his injured leg with a rolled blanket. His head hits the pillow, and the whiskey carries him away.
While Jack Darris sinks into unconsciousness, something rises from beneath the cove’s surface. A dripping head appears, riding the gentle swell. Not a curious sea lion. The skull is humanoid, backlit by the westering sun, and casting a shadow toward the Siren’s Call. Double-lidded eyes blink, blink again, then focus on the sailboat.
The head rises and sinks with the swell, watching the ketch come about on the outgoing tide. The Siren’s Call swings at anchor, stern to sea, and bow to the setting sun. The anchor chain tightens as the tide caresses the sailboat.
Inside the hull, Jack Darris snores. Outside, the humanoid head vanishes beneath the warm water. Moments later, it reappears at the sailboat’s stern.
An arm reaches from the water. Webbed fingers trace the umbilical line between the Siren’s Call and her dinghy. The swimming creature reaches the inflatable. For one heartbeat the line goes taught. Sharp talons flash in the dying light. The painter is cut. The dinghy floats free, but only for a moment.
Air hisses as the rubberized skin is sliced to ribbons. The creature disappears, resurfaces on the far side of the wounded inflatable, and rakes the surviving air chambers. The dinghy crumples in on itself. Water pours over the deflated gunwales. The outboard motor sinks into the depths, the remains of the inflatable trailing behind it like a shroud.
The red disk of the sun sinks beneath the rocky western horizon. In the dying glow, two strong hands grip the anchor chain and follow it to the bottom of the cove.
Jack lies dead to the world, but the world is not dead to him.
A vague sensation worms into the depths of his stupor, a sense of motion when all should be still. In a muddled dream state, he swims away, wanting to be left alone. Then a voice in his head.
Jack… Jaaa-aack.
The voice swims after him, chasing him deeper and deeper. He grunts, waves a hand in his sleep. The voice goes silent. An instant later, the quiet is shattered.
He is hanging from a rocky ledge. Boulders tumble past, threatening to smash him to bits. Rocks grate and splinter in a deafening roar. The world lurches like a drunken animal and he falls.
Jack is thrown against the bulkhead. He is wide awake now but can’t shake the nightmare. A horrible grating noise fills the darkness inside the cabin, the sound of a wooden hull grinding against hidden rocks.
He lunges from the berth, fighting his way uphill in the dark. The hull lifts on a swell, then sinks back with a sickening crunch of wood splintering against rock. Jack falls to his knees, scrabbles in the darkness.
What the fuck is going on? Why is it so dark?
His searching fingers find a light switch and stab it on. Nothing. He toggles the switch back up and down, but it does no good.
Following his hands, he gropes his way to the galley while the Siren’s Call groans in agony. Jack braces his body in the hatchway and runs his fingers up the wall. Another switch. Nothing. Sweeps his hand up, blind in the inky blackness. Snatches a flashlight from a wall mount and thumbs the thing to life.
The flashlight beam illuminates a tilting nightmare. There is no vertical, no horizontal. His tiny world is listing fifteen degrees in a way that is very wrong. Jack struggles to comprehend what he is seeing. The hull shudders again, snapping his brain back into the here and now.
Think, goddammit. She’s run aground and you’ve got no power. You’ve gotta do something. Check the engine compartment, for fucksake.
Jack pushes away from the hatchway and staggers the short length of the galley. He reaches the cockpit ladder and clings to it. On his left is a smaller hatch. He grabs the latch. The hatch swings open with the list and slams into the bulkhead. Leaning forward, Jack hears the horrible every sailor dreads, the gush of seawater pouring into a stricken hull. Shining the light into the depths of the engine compartment only makes it worse. Much worse.
The ladder at his feet disappears into a dark pool. Jack plays the light over the sloshing water. Rainbows of oil dance across the swirling surface. More water sprays in from an ugly gash in the wooden hull. The engine is half submerged, and the bank of marine batteries is drowned beneath the churning water.
Jack backs away from the maelstrom. His hand falls on the ladder beside him. One thought rockets through his brain. Out, he has to get out of here. He’s wide awake and trapped in a nightmare.
Then he hears the voice.
Jack… Jaaa-aack.
His feet move of their own volition, stepping onto the ladder and climbing. The voice is his salvation, leading him away from danger, up and out into the open air. He is horrified and attracted at the same time, but the pull of the voice is stronger than his fear. Jack staggers through the cockpit, looks to the stern, and sees that he is not alone. The flashlight falls from his fingers and rolls across the listing deck.
A woman is draped over the stern, her arms spread wide across the transom railing. Jack sees her from the waist up. The rest of her body is hidden below the transom.
Moonlight falls over her, darkening her raven hair, gleaming on her bare shoulders. Jack’s eyes feast upon the vision of her beauty. He is spellbound. She smiles at him, the most wondrous smile he has ever seen. She arches her head, and the glimmering light illuminates her naked breasts. She reaches out, her ivory fingers beckoning him. The power of her spell is as overwhelming as the tide. He takes one step nearer, then another.
In the darkness, his bare foot kicks an empty whiskey bottle. The bottle clatters across the deck. For the span of a single heartbeat, the woman turns her hungry gaze to the noise. Jack’s vision wavers. In a spasmodic flash, the image of a shimmering angel vanishes, replaced by a horrible reptilian monster. The ivory fingers transform into a taloned claw reaching for his throat.
The creature snaps away from the distraction and locks its hideous eyes on Jack. The raven hair is gone. Polished gray-green scales cover the thing’s hide. It opens its mouth and hisses, revealing a tangle of jagged fangs.
Jack recoils, his arms flailing. His feet tangle and he stumbles. The stumble saves his life, for the moment. The sweeping talons meant for his throat tear into the flesh of his arm instead. A spray of blood splashes across his face. Terror surges through his body and the strength of adrenaline. He half falls, half leaps for the safety of the cockpit. Behind his terror comes a blazing rage.
Come aboard my boat in the middle of the fucking night. I got something for you, honey.
He yanks a compartment open and pulls out a short-barreled shotgun. It’s a Marine 870 12-gauge. He’s only fired it once and the recoil bruised the shit out of his shoulder, but the bloodlust is on him.
Jack the newborn sea warrior wedges himself against the cockpit, thumbs the safety, and raises the shotgun. The monster bitch is clawing at the railing, trying to pull herself over. She raises her eyes and snarls. Jack sights down the barrel and pulls the trigger. The shotgun roars. The blast knocks him back into the hatchway. His eardrums pound.
He shakes his head to clear his vision. When he looks up, the monster is gone. So is a section of the transom railing. He pumps the shotgun, jacking another shell into the chamber. Weapon at the ready, he stalks toward the stern. He keeps the barrel pointed low, ready to blow the bitch’s head off if she peeks over the transom. Then he sees the frenzied splashing.
He centers the barrel on the bloody froth and fires. Pumps the shotgun and fires again. The thrashing ceases. A grotesque tail like a giant carp bobs to the surface and then sinks out of sight.
Ha-ha! The bitch is dead! I win.
Jack does an impromptu war dance on the tilted deck. Then he pans the muzzle of the shotgun back and forth across the dark water. That’s when he sees that the zodiac is missing. His moment of celebration fades. A swell pushes the Siren’s Call hard onto the rocks. The hull heaves and the stern settles lower.
She’s going down, Jackie, and you’re short one lifeboat. Get to the bow while you’ve still got a chance.
Jack snatches up a life jacket and slips it over his head. Clutching the shotgun in one hand and the wire safety railing in the other, Jack climbs along the high side of the Siren’s Call. Pulling himself up the railing is like climbing a steep ramp that’s trying to tumble to one side.
He’s gasping by the time he makes it to the bowsprit and wedges himself in. The bow rises as the stern sinks below the water. Ten feet above the waves now and nowhere to go but down.
Jack hangs on tight and takes stock. A year ago—hell, a month ago—he’d be giving up and crying like a baby. The Siren’s Call was sinking, but not Jack Darris. The boat was insured. He’d buy another one. He was a warrior now, and warriors survived to fight another day.
The boat might break apart but lots of stuff would float. He’d make a raft out of cushions and life vests, paddle that bad boy to shore. Couldn’t be more than a mile or two. Tough, sure, but he was Jack Darris, the monster slayer.
He looks up into the night sky, sees the moon riding high overhead. Hours to go until sunrise. Nothing to do now but wait. A drop of whiskey would hit the spot. Thinks about climbing down into the cabin for a bottle, but no. He needs a clear head.
His ears are ringing from the blasts, but he thinks he hears a splash in the water below. Jack peers down from his perch, scanning the dark surface. A shiver creeps down his spine but he pushes it away.
Just a wave on the rocks, Jackie. Nothing to worry about. You killed the bitch.
He tucks the shotgun close and settles his feet against the forward mast stay. Warriors don’t get spooked by a little splash in the dark. Then a mocking cry keens from somewhere in the water below. An icy stab of fear freezes his bowels.
Jack… Jaaa-aack.
Another cry echoes the first, coming from a different direction.
Jack… Jaaa-aack.
Somehow, he’s on his feet and screaming, one leg hooked through the wire railing. The shotgun is at his shoulder and he’s swinging the barrel back and forth, searching for something to kill. There, a shadow on the water! He aims and pulls the trigger. So long, bitch! Pumps another round into the chamber, pivots in his sniper’s nest, sees another target. The shotgun roars. Jack screams defiance into the night.
A shudder runs through the Siren’s Call. The hull slides deeper at the stern. The sea pours into the cockpit and higher. Then the dying sailboat catches on another submerged rock. The jolt almost pitches Jack into the sea. He’s tangled in the wire railing, the shotgun clutched in a death grip. The water is only five feet below his bare feet.
The night goes quiet. Swells lap against the hull. Jack does not hear the sound of the water. The shotgun blasts still ring in his ears. A stark realization begins to form in his brain. How many? He runs his memory backward, counting the shots. Three for the bitch on the stern. Two just now. Five. He has one shell left.
Jack sags to the deck, one arm crooked over the wire railing. He hugs the shotgun to his chest. A chorus rises from the black water below his feet.
Jack… Jaaa-aack.
Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in over one hundred reviews and journals across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. “Power Tools” is Marco’s latest collection of short fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor for a new ‘Zine called Hotch Potch.
Author website: https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/