Six Feet Underwater

The inevitable came closer, edging by degree. The boy walked slowly to the front of the room, each footfall bringing him one step nearer to eventuality. There, he accepted his paper fate. It came in the form of a note about somebody else’s fate, written by the dock police. His father’s fishing ship had sunk in a freak squall. None of his brothers had been recovered.

They had not been as lucky as the thing, whatever it was. Unlike it, their luck was not their own to make.

That night in his fireside bed, cold and alone, the boy dreamed only of drowning. The idol on the mantelpiece was all-seeing. Mouthlessly, it smiled. The curled tips of its tentacles pushed skyward, propping up the ceiling of an invisible world. It had already breached one surface, and now it threatened to puncture another.

The boy lurched from his dream. He came face to face with its cryptic expression. There and then, he decided that it had to go. What had happened to its former owner, the person who had tossed it away? Had they cheated death? He could only hope so.

Skinny arms straining, he dragged the box from its berth in a cupboard. By the firelight, the idol was nested back into its original socket. He covered it over with a corner of the cloth, as if this could do anything to render it blind. Then, he hauled the whole chest out of the house, pausing on the doorstep to recapture his breath. All by himself, this was going to be a long endeavour.

There were as many stars outside as there had been embers in the fireplace. Each one watched. Too many winked for the boy’s comfort. The chest grated along the cobblestones, protesting every yard of the journey. Finally, the boy reached the harbour. He hefted his burden out to the edge of the pier, and stopped.

He could throw it over the edge, but the water here was nowhere near deep enough. Certainly, it was deep enough that he, a creature of flesh and blood could not prefer it over a more lightless, watery abyss, but the depth was a question of degrees. What sufficed to suffocate him would not suppress the unholy figurine, and stop it from rising again. Even in its wooden sarcophagus, he was sure that it would gleam up from the churning darkness here, calling audibly to its next victim.

He needed to do the job properly.

So, how was he supposed to take it further out to sea?

He no longer possessed a boat of his own. After a long minute of listening to the waves slap against the jetty, he decided that the sin of stealing one would earn him a far more onerous punishment than he would receive if he did not. Besides, he could give the boat back. Technically, it would be borrowing.

Selecting a dingy slung low in the water, the boy lowered the chest into its hull. Shivering with more than cold, he wrapped his thickest coat around himself, and felt for the oars in their sockets. His hands were already numb in their gloves.

This is dangerous, said a part of him.

He had to admit that it was.

The sea was inky beneath the midnight sky, so that there was only blackness all around. He was such a tiny thing to be propelling a tiny boat, sandwiched between behemoth clouds and waves. There would be nobody but the wretched thing to witness him floundering if he capsized.

The boy knew that he would have to row a long way. He thought of the furthest distance he had ever gone with his own arms. It was not far. It would not be far enough. There was no point in doubling it, for he couldn’t dread something worse than the greatest exhaustion he had faced. Any additional strokes would be just as bad, and that was all that mattered. The bleak prospects of pain and isolation still weren’t enough to deter him.

With resignation as his only other passenger, he set out.

Quickly, he acquired a fourth passenger, his thoughts.

His thoughts were lively, telling many stories that did not make him more at ease. For his information, they replayed the episode where he had found the giant squid. It was a rare discovery, thought reminded him, even rarer because it was so perfectly preserved. It was that preservation of all of its strength and unnaturalness that made it real. That was what made it a beast.

Such was the essence of kraken.

His thoughts reminded him also of the odds against a squall erupting in the sunny bay. There was always warning of rainfall out here. They grey clouds amassed in the open sky, impossible to ignore. So, was it then the squall itself, or his family’s ignorance of it, that was the dark miracle?

Lastly, the boy recalled how his father and brothers had been almost hypnotised by the thing. They were being dragged to their deaths, or into doing its bidding. Perhaps both. Even as he hoped he wouldn’t be susceptible to the same manipulation, the boy couldn’t help but wonder what, if anything, the horror wanted them to find. Maybe he should look for it…

No.

He rowed harder, to resist the urge. Sweat beaded on his brow. The sea flung saltwater into his face. There was moisture everywhere, seeping into the bottom of the boat, and splashing over its sides. It all seemed to happen by evil’s volition.

There came a point where he could row no harder, even if he decided to make it back to shore. The weight of the chest was too heavy to bear. He could reach home, he knew, if only he could be rid of it.

His strength was restored, not sapped, when he rolled it over the side. The water swallowed it gratefully. His gloved hands, now covered in blisters, clinging to the oars, the boy watched as it sank deeper and deeper. It winked in the last of the moonlight as the sea took it. Hoping that some of what plagued him might escape through his mouth, he breathed a sigh of relief.

The sea took its cue.