Chachi strode into the rec room from the kitchen door, sniffing around the ping pong table, searching. The scent was strong.
The pit bull paused when his beak came upon a seashell, lying on the concrete floor. Shaped like a distorted asteroid, it was as big as a football, its spiny exterior blended white and brown with thin beige streaks. One end resembled a spiraled drill, swirling into a pinnacle.
The dog sniffed inside the shell’s large lemon-shaped mouth, the size of a pomegranate, Chachi’s beak partially inside. He withdrew it, picking up a crazy stench. He gave a short bark, snarled, faced the shell in attack position.
With spectacular speed, multiple weedy vines shot out from the shell’s throat. Wet, slimy green and brown vines splaying at the tilted-headed dog like a hundred long, wiry fingers. They seized his paws with a vice-like grip, the whimpering animal acting as a restless horse being tied, the strands remaining attached inside the shell’s mouth. More and more vines darted out, wrapping and tightening around the pit’s arms. The vines moved rapidly throughout Chachi’s torso in sporadic directions, like splintering cracks along ice or glass. The canine could only squirm, his bones pulped by the abrasive vines. His face next became ensnared, his high-pitched yelps silenced.
Soon, all that stood was a clump of slimy, crisscrossing vines in place of what used to be a dog. It wobbled, then toppled onto its side.
Smoke ascended from the vines, the emerald mass losing density, until the vine strands laid flat on the floor with nothing under them anymore.
The seashell sucked them back into its mouth, the way a rude kid sucks in spaghetti strands.
***
The frantic fall rain pelted the roof like bullets, streaking the window glass like tears streaming down a weeping face. The kind of 2 a.m. storms that make even adults want to curl up and suck their thumbs.
Wearing his Agent Chaos superhero pajamas, eight-year-old Eric lay nestled in the heavy covers, his puffy brown hair buried deep within the large marshmallow-soft pillow.
Thunder struck with unrelenting fury, and the cocoa-skinned child sat up with a shriek. A flash of lightning illuminated the entire guest room – a corner desk occupying homework papers; a suitcase of clothes for the weekend; the acrylic paintings of sea life along the walls, including a hammerhead shark.
Across the room, another flash of lightning revealed the large football-sized object on the floor, shaped like a star or asteroid. A smile formed on Eric’s face.
The seashell.
He was clueless as to how it had gotten into the room. He was certain he put it back where it belonged, in the rec room, after he had “borrowed” it.
But it didn’t matter. It was here now.
The seashell was the only thing in this house Eric liked, particularly at night when it was dark and he was scared. He cherished it more than his handheld video game console or superhero action figures during his weekends here. It wasn’t just its cool shape and texture and colors that fascinated him. It was its sounds.
Tossing off the heavy blankets, Eric prepared to jump out of bed, eager to retrieve the seashell. He had to hear its sounds.
But before his foot touched the hardwood floor, Eric quickly recoiled his leg. From under his pillow, he grabbed his red and purple Laser-Man flashlight, a stickered picture of the red and purple costumed superhero along the flashlight’s long handle. Eric slowly maneuvered his head over the side of the bed. Dangling upside-down, Eric shined the flashlight under the bed. Another flash of lightning assured him that nothing was under there, and he pulled himself back up.
He had to be sure.
Like when he was four, afraid of sharks under beds, ready to snatch him once he stepped onto the floor. Traumatized by movies like Attack of the Devil Ray or Mega Octopus vs. Jurassic Shark, in which the pre-historic, hairy shark had legs and terrorized on land.
“If you stay on dry land or on a boat, how can the sharks ever get you?” is what his grandma would tell the four-year-old whenever climbing into her bed, petrified of his under-bed shark.
Now eight, Eric understood her metaphor more clearly, as she often used Eric’s fears as opportunities for life lessons. He tried his hardest to be a good boy, staying out of trouble the best he could. Out of “deep waters”.
But there was now the possibility of an actual shark under his bed, this he was certain, and every day and every night this past week, he checked under his bed, whether in this guest room, or in his own room at home.
The coast was clear. He tussled out of bed, walked to the seashell. Grabbed it with both hands, the shell as heavy as a small alarm clock.
Eric climbed back into bed with the shell and, head on the pillow, laid it beside him, staring at it from the flickers of lightning. Fixated as if looking at one of his action figures or toy starfighters.
Its sounds always made everything right.
Murex Ramosus was the appropriate name for this class of seashell. Its rocky texture had multiple pointy edges and rows of short and long “fingers” and “arms” jutting in different directions. Its wide opening made him think of a laughing mouth without eyes, and he rubbed his finger along the smooth porcelain-like lip of the shell’s mouth. Both the shell’s rough carbonate exterior and smooth interior reminded Eric of something his grandma once said. The ocean is filled with God’s mean, ugly and nasty creations, showing us His wild, dangerous side. But it’s also filled with His kind and peaceful things, showing us His softer, gentler side. Nice creatures, such as dolphins and seagulls…good things that make bad things go away.
He placed the seashell’s oval mouth to his ear as though holding a phone, its smooth lip cool against his soft cheek. He heard underwater currents and movement of sea life. “Sounds of the ocean deep” his grandma would tell him of seashells’ inner noises (of course, Eric hadn’t yet learned that seashells’ “ocean sounds” are actually noise of the surrounding environment resonating within the shell’s cavity, and he would simply allow his imagination of underwater ocean roam free).
Eric burrowed his entire fist into the seashell’s mouth, reaching as far down the porcelain-smooth, cave-like passage as possible. As usual, the curious kid felt nothing, yet remained intrigued and joyful about his own private little ocean in his hands.
An irony, since the sea was a monster’s lair to Eric, filled with octopuses, killer whales, tidal waves, toxicities, and, most terrifying of all, sharks. But whenever he was with the seashell, all he experienced was the ocean’s warm cascade and cool suds tingling his toes, taking him away from monsters in and out of water.
Away from this house. Away from her.
Sitting up, he glanced at his math homework on the desk, unfinished. He shook his head, narrowed his eyes in contempt. His dad, his babysitters, even his nanny never made him do homework on weekends.
Eric glared at a framed photograph propped on the nightstand beside him. It featured a man cradling a woman from behind, his head beside hers, big smiles.
The man, mid-thirties, African-American, had textured hair with a clean fade, a well shaved goatee, a good athletic build – like a men’s clothing ad model.
Paul Stanson, Eric’s father.
The woman, late twenties, was quite striking. A light skinned Latina with long blondish hair, dark, deep green startling eyes. The kind of eyes that know you.
“Eric, I’d like you to meet dad’s special friend,” Paul had announced to his son six months ago. “Her name’s Anna Gloria – but she likes to be called AG.”
Both met up with “stupid name woman” (as Eric liked to call her in his head) at a McDonald’s before seeing The Offenders at a theater. And, of course, AG insisted on paying for everything, including a really cool Offenders souvenir superhero cup for Eric. Made that much needed first impression that practically all “special friends” of single parents feel compelled to make on their kids.
Turning off his Laser-Man flashlight (a gift from AG), Eric pulled the covers back over him. He reached over, lay the picture of AG and his father face down.
Good thoughts, Eric, he murmured in his head.
Staring at the seashell, studying its contours and colors – a unique blend of white and brown with thin beige streaks, pinkish blotches and striations all around – Eric’s eyelids slowly fell.
***
The rain stopped, everything now pin-drop quiet. As the seashell lay on the second pillow beside the sleeping boy, small creatures came crawling out from the seashell’s oval mouth, soundless as a mime. Sand crabs, several of them, encased in oval shells the size of grapes, their tiny wiry legs carrying them across the pillow, dropping off the bed, onto the floor. They skittered across the floor, like large army ants piggy-backing small rocks.
***
8:45 a.m. AG set down her paint brush, leaned back, examined her newest creation: an enormous Great White gliding throughout the murky depths, its awesome jaws opening like a spiked trap door on a cluster of small fish. With a slight tilt of her head, she gazed upon the painted predator in idolized adoration. Like her guest room, AG’s studio also showcased her acrylic artwork, mostly of sea life.
“He needs a mother,” AG stated, wiping off paint from her hands onto her stained T-shirt and jean shorts, continuing to observe her painting.
“He also needs a father,” Paul sulkily replied from AG’s cell’s speakerphone on a chair beside her. Crowds and PA’s from yet another software sales seminar blared in the executive’s background.
“Hey,” responded AG, getting up, grabbing the phone. “You’re a terrific father who tries.”
Paul sighed, soothed by his fiancée’s words.
AG entered the hallway, continued her convo with Paul.
She grimaced at Chachi’s neck chain on the floor.
She picked up the chain, found it wet with a few dangling seaweed strands. Brows furrowed, she glanced around, then proceeded down the hall. She would check on her little “puppy dog” later.
AG entered the guest room where Eric stayed.
“Eric opening up to you more?” Paul inquired.
Standing before a bed mattress that lay halfway off its frame, wet with water, AG replied, “I don’t know.” She observed torn pieces of paper and Eric’s homework pages scattered around, along with his clothes, Eric nowhere in sight. “It seems that no matter what I do or how hard I try, nothing seems to work.” Her sandaled feet stepped over small puddles of water, an empty bucket on the floor, turned over.
On AG’s first date with Paul, he shared with her how Eric’s mother was too unstable, too unequipped, too immature to raise a child, and together with a husband who traveled frequently, she eventually left the both of them. AG’s heart broke for young Eric.
And so, regardless of how the boy treated “dad’s dumb girlfriend”, AG desperately wanted Eric to have the home he never had. The kind of home she never had.
“Easy, hon,” Paul comforted. “Soon, Eric will realize what a nice, caring stepmom he’s gonna have.”
AG exhaled. “Hmm…gracias, amor.” She slid the wet mattress back onto the bed frame.
“Excellent idea,” Paul continued. “having him stay with you on weekends so the two of you can get to know each other. Can I talk to my lil’ superhero?”
AG glanced toward the backyard. “Well, he’s…outside right now.” Staring out the window, glaring at the tin tool shed across the yard, she added, “Playing.”
A pause. Then Paul exclaimed, “My Gen Alpha son’s playing outside?” He spoke away from the receiver, as speaking to someone beside him. “‘Scuse me. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind calling the Feds. I think aliens have cloned my kid.”
AG laughed.
The couple chatted a few more minutes, then exchanged their usual virtual good-bye kisses over the phone, ending the call.
AG gazed out the window, into the backyard. A vacant unblinking stare.
She looked down, then released a shrill gasp. Small creatures crawled at her feet, and she leapt a few feet away in fright.
They were the size of big roaches and resembled a cross between a potato bug and an earwig, except with large pincers at the heads.
AG shrieked in pain, brushing off one of the “bugs” from her foot, a nice size bite mark on her skin. She shuddered when the rest of the little creatures scuttled toward her with speed. She took off a sandal and went to work smashing her “visitors”, until all that remained was a cluster of brown and green mush, stuck to the wood floor.
An icy chill shot up her spine as she looked the dead creatures over with a twisted grimace, scooting around limbs, innards and pincers with her shoe and studying their remains closely with narrowed eyes.
Isopods? she wondered.
She’d been partial to the ocean long enough to know certain sea life when she saw it, and these “bugs” resembled just that – isopods. An aquatic order of crustaceans varying in size and shape.
AG’s face tensed even more when noticing how the creatures were wet with sea scum and underwater matter, as though just coming straight from the ocean.
***
Eric crouched in the middle of the tool shed, hugging himself tightly. He stared straight into the pitch black, eyes bulged, lips twitching and fluttering involuntarily. He shook and shivered, as if hit with a dose of electricity. Trembled from both the frigid air…and utter terror.
***
“Chachi?” AG called, opening the bathroom door, holding the dog’s neck chain. It was the last room she had searched.
She shrugged, figured he went outside, and tossed puppy dog’s chrome chain onto the floor.
As she turned to leave, she did a double-take at the floor. In the corner, beside the tub, lay the seashell.
The hell…?
AG glanced around, brows knitted together. She was certain she tucked the shell away in the indoor patio in her backyard.
Where the brat couldn’t find it.
She was certain of that. But how was it… here?
A swarm of thoughts stormed inside her head. Then a faint smile crept across her lips.
Chachi, AG pondered. Crazy little puppy dog. Always into things.
AG picked up the shell. Examined it. Its exterior. Its interior. Rubbed her finger along the smooth lip of its mouth.
She found the seashell a year ago while cleaning in her backyard indoor patio, shortly after she bought the house, left behind by the previous owner, Chad Hutchinson. “A university professor and doctor in Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences,” her realtor said of him. “Also a ghost hunter.” A skeptic, AG dismissed the latter, and simply kept the mollusk exoskeleton as an addition to her ocean-themed, garage-converted rec room. Where her fiancé’s little boy eventually discovered it, seated on a bookcase, during his first weekend at her house.
She set the seashell on the sink counter. Her green eyes narrowed, her upper lip lifted a bit, revealing a thin sheen of teeth.
Lousy kid better not ever touch my things again.
She turned on the tub faucet and poured soap for a bubble bath. She gazed at the bathtub’s wall, where one of her paintings hung. An acrylic Great White in a three-by-two-foot horizontal frame, the shark’s powerful gray body and threshing crescent tail catapulting out of the ocean. Into the air, like a dolphin, jaws aimed for a white seagull hovering over the water. An homage to that Great White she once saw as a girl.
She fished out the Laser-Man flashlight from her back pocket, held it a moment. Remembered Eric’s earlier stunt. “Maybe now he’ll learn,” she uttered softly, studying the flashlight, her angelic facade fading into the stoic stare of a Dragon Lady.
She glanced at the ceiling, listened to the hard thunder. The rain tearing at the house. A ghost of a smile formed at the corners of her mouth, as if by ventriloquism.
***
Eric continued to rock and hug himself within the tomblike blackness, sitting on the damp, dirty concrete. The smell of mildewing rags filled the boy’s nostrils, while the scuttle of roaches, Widows, and rodents sent shivers up his spine. Rain drops plunked his head, trailed his trembling forehead and mingled with sweat and tears along his winced cheeks. Trailed down his back, making the welts from last week sting all the more.
He didn’t dare make a sound.
And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop playing the morning’s horrific events in his head.
“Swash!”
He was awakened early that morning with a gush of water tossed onto his face, and while he gasped, opening his groggy eyes, the entire bed mattress was tilted to the side, sending him falling to the floor.
“Didn’t think I’d find these, did you?” she sneered, waving a pocket size video game console and a couple of superhero action figures before Eric, who gazed up at her like a spanked puppy. He quick-glanced at his suitcase, seeing it opened and on its side, clothes scattered about. She found them!
“They’re mine now,” she snarled, her face indifferent, eyes cold and glistening.
She shook a set of papers at him. “You had more than enough time to finish your math work!” She tossed the unfinished sheets of times tables at Eric. “And the answers you have aren’t even right!”
She grabbed a large object off the floor, held it out before him.
The seashell.
“And I warned you about taking my things!” She glanced at the shell. “I’m putting this where you can’t find it.”
Eric’s stomach dropped. A sob seeped from his mouth, watching the woman walking toward the door, shell in hand. He could do without his video games and action figures.
Not the seashell.
“No,” he wheezed.
He grabbed the Laser-Man flashlight, charged at her while her back was turned. He couldn’t let her take it.
She turned, caught his wrist before the wielded flashlight could strike her, her firm grip causing him to release the weapon. She looked upon Eric with her dark green eyes, gorgon-like, a sudden burst of fury coursing through the woman’s veins, an intense urgency to expel the little brat from her home.
She seized him by his bushy hair, marched him through the house, into the backyard. To the tool shed, opening its tin sliding door, shoving him into the murky tin room.
“Your home for the day!” she told the boy, shutting the sliding door with a thrust, locking him in the pitch black. “Remember what I told you last week, my darling dear,” he heard her say. Then she eerily hissed, “Under your beeeeeeed.”
Her words “Under your bed” echoed in his head over and over as they had all week.
But he didn’t dare make a sound.
***
Sitting on the closed toilet lid, staring into oblivion as if in a trance, AG slowly ran her hand along the smooth handle of Eric’s flashlight. Reminded of the flashlight used on her when she was a child. The flashlight, the broom handle, the extension cord. She massaged a scar on her wrist, from the curling iron.
AG paused, her face furrowing. She fixated on the floor, eyes widened. Little lights inside her head were turning red, and a dismaying tingle had begun to shake its way through her nerve-tree.
She turned toward the backyard, swallowing a large painful lump. A gnawing sensation lay in her gut. Her heart fluttered in her chest.
The Great White inside her was once again harpooned by Captain Conscience aboard the S.S. Reason, her “big fish” of rage and malice tugging and squirming and resisting.
Face tense, eyes on the floor, she pictured in her mind that child in her backyard, shivering. Visualized that little boy in her tool shed, in the cold rain.
She got up, reached across the tub, rubbed a trembling finger along her painting. Rubbed along the beautiful white seagull hovering over the water, her deep emerald eyes fastened on it.
Her eyes then veered to the Great White exploding out of the ocean, its mad hungry jaws aimed for the innocent bird, her finger gently gliding across the fish’s powerful body. And her face relaxed. Mouth formed a beastly grin. She peered down at the flashlight in her other hand.
“He needs to learn,” she murmured.
AG turned off the bath faucet. Ran a hand through the soap-sudsy water, spreading the cloud-like bubbles around. She kicked off her sandals, stared into the sink mirror.
Then, as AG was putting her hair into a bun, she heard sounds. Strange sounds, echoey and distant. She looked toward the sink, at the seashell, where the noises were coming from, and as she listened closely, she realized the sounds were voices, whispering.
***
The boy sat in the shed thinking bad thoughts about AG. Bad, hateful thoughts. He knew it was wrong to think such thoughts toward others. His grandma always told him so.
Eric’s grandmother, Paul’s mother, died two years ago when he was four, a victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and hardly a day passed without the boy thinking about the dear old woman. Her soft touches. The butter-with-bread she’d always make him. Her wise teachings.
“Stay on dry ground, Eric,” grandma always taught. “That’s the most important thing. Dry ground… and don’t ever let yourself get eaten by the sharks. Or worse – become one.
“That includes having good thoughts, too.”
So he thought good thoughts about AG. Played memories in his head, of his first weekend here with her a month ago. How they played “Go Fish” that Friday night, and how she made Eric’s favorite dessert – lemon meringue pie. The next day, AG showed Eric her most prized possession – her first paintbrush, given to her by an old Sunday School teacher. With the brush, she showed Eric how to paint, creating an acrylic Colonel Corruption vs. Radiation-Man, two of Eric’s favorite comic book rivalries.
His second weekend with her, she took him to the beach. Eric, afraid of the water, refused to go in. AG grabbed his hand, pulled him toward the water. “Stop being a wimp,” she snapped. The more she pulled, he cried, his screams irritating the woman. Like an enticed lion, she slapped the boy. Bystanders gawked.
She apologized repeatedly, kissing the boy multiple times on his red cheek, promising never to strike him again. Pleading with him not to tell his father.
He didn’t.
The following weekend, AG expressed interest in helping Eric with his poor math grades, implementing a new rule for the weekends: homework on Friday nights (that she would assign, since his teacher never gave homework on weekends). And no video games or any toys at her house until he got better grades.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Eric muttered at the dinner table.
His remark stirred the woman. Calmly, AG got up and took away his plate of taquitos and rice.
“Don’t care!” the boy exclaimed, sort of singing it.
AG dropped the plate, yanked Eric from the chair. With a long wooden spatula, she gave the boy a swat to the back, creating a welt.
The following night, driving Eric home, she said to him in a calm, soft voice, “If you ever tell anyone about any of this, especially your dad,” and lightly stroking his cotton ball hair, concluded in a whispery, serious tone, “I’ll be under your bed at night” and gently kissed his forehead.
Her words under your bed echoed in Eric’s mind all week. Though he said not a word to his dad or anyone else, he checked under his bed each and every night. He had to be sure.
As long as you stay on dry land and out of deep water, how can sharks ever get you? he remembered his grandma saying.
But why was the shark still able to attack him? He did his best to stay out of deep waters. Or was he actually a bad boy? Maybe that was it. Disobeying and mouthing off. Thinking bad thoughts. Picking up that flashlight.
He wondered if other kids had this sort of monster under their bed. Wondered what he did to get himself in these troubled waters. If there was anything to get him out.
Grandma was wrong. Sharks and other sea monsters can still get you – even when you’re on dry land.
All Eric could do – sitting there within the pitch-black shed, on the damp cold concrete floor, feeling vermin skittering along his shivering body – was to think about the seashell’s sounds. Submerge once again into the ocean’s Jacuzzi-warm depths, gaze blissfully at the sun’s aura seeping past lapping under currents, like flickering headlights in a rain-fogged windshield.
Pondering grandma’s words, Good thoughts, Eric.
***
For a while, there was silence, AG’s hands mounted on the sink counter as she stood before the Murex Ramosus the way a cat lies in wait for an evasive mouse. Listening…for the whispers. She heard noises again, from the shell’s mouth, this time giggles. Children’s giggles, echoey and distant, as if in a basement or cellar.
The bewildered woman grabbed the seashell, studied it, listened as the echoey laughing continued. Holding the shell closer, she peered into its wide opening. Her head jolted back as a gush of water shot out from the seashell’s mouth, splashing her face. Again, she heard the children’s smirks from within the shell, and she was unsure whether to be startled or annoyed.
Then, silence.
Grimacing with intense curiosity, she put the shell’s mouth to her ear.
There was the sound of the ocean deep – the actual deep – far different than any seashell AG ever held. The lapping and swishing of underwater currents, the movement and noises of marine life, similar to aquatic music played in Yoga classes, or therapists’ waiting rooms. She scuba dove enough times to know the sounds. AG could not believe what she was experiencing, could not understand it. At the same time, there was no sensation of losing her mind, no belief that she was dreaming or hallucinating.
Keeping the shell pressed to her ear, she heard whispers again, sounding like a little boy and girl. The sounds shifted, from echoey and distant to gurgling “underwater talking” sounds.
But curiosity switched to pain when AG felt a sharp, powerful clamp on her ear. She wailed in agony and terror as she pulled the seashell away and gazed into the sink mirror. Attached to her ear and lower cheek was a thick, slimy six-inch leech, its dark body as fat and as big as a baby fig banana.
Its anterior jaws were unyielding, hundreds of tiny sharp teeth slicing and digging further into the woman’s flesh and bone the more she tugged on the blood-sucking creature, while the jaws on the leech’s posterior end were equally stubborn. Extending from her ear almost to her mouth, it looked as if she held an old school flip phone to her cheek, blood now streaming down her jaw and neck.
She brought the seashell back to her agonizing face, the screaming AG again peering into its mouth, frantically searching the curvature of this shell’s throat for any other signs of life as confirmation that this experience was actually happening. She shrieked when thick, liquidy black-green sea sludge exploded from the shell, catching AG’s face.
An overwhelming stench of waste and chemicals assailed her nostrils. The entire left side of AG’s face was now covered in slime, a pain like fire on an opened wound. She dropped the seashell, shouting and falling to her knees, steam and smoke ascending from both the sludge and her melting, drooping face. Her cheek showed bone, while flesh dangled from her jaw like shredded meat. An actual hole formed in the side of her face, revealing molars. On the other side, the hungry leech dug deeper, producing veins. Her screams raked out of her throat and bolted from her mouth in howling spates.
AG looked at the seashell on the floor, watched another phenomenon. Small, insect-like sea creatures scurried from the seashell’s mouth, by the hundreds, like popcorn bubbling from a popcorn machine. Assorted species – crustaceans, mites, worms, parasites –quick and fast, campaigning toward AG. The crawlers went to work on the woman’s bare feet, ankles and legs, gnawing their prey, drawing blood, and whenever she brushed off creatures, more climbed onto her hands and arms, eventually her chest and neck. Soon, her face, still occupied by the relentless leech. By now, the sludge had dissolved nearly half her face, leaving it sagging and showing bones and teeth.
Sea snakes were next out of the shell’s mouth. Six of them, long and slender. Slithering, hissing like crazed cats.
Gawking with shrill cries, AG stood up and ran to the door, turned the knob, tried opening. But the door wouldn’t budge. She peered up and down, and clustered at the top and bottom corners of the door and door frame were groups of isopods. They clung to the wood like adhesives, the frantic woman kicking, pounding at the braced door.
She was stopped when two snakes struck her ankle and calf with powerful, venomous fangs. She backed away from the door, staggered across the room. Collapsed into the tub, into the soapy water, her wounds stinging like stabbing knives, her shorts and T-shirt bloodstained as crawlers continued to gnaw at her.
The half-face hollering woman, with the leech still attached to her ear and face, stood on her knees in the water and grasped the plastic shower curtain. Spreading her arms wide, she braced the curtain against the tub’s two-and-a half-foot porcelain barrier so that nothing might enter.
She heard and felt the sea creatures puncturing the curtain with claws and fangs and tentacles, saw them slither and crawl around, over, under, and through the defenseless curtain. AG squirmed to the end of the tub opposite the faucet, crouching in fetal position, her trembling body half in, half out of the sudsy water turned pink, smaller creatures crawling in and out of her gaping, squealing mouth.
She watched the curtain bulge from an object on the tub’s barrier. The object plopped into the water, the curtain trailing off to reveal a large black crab carrying the seashell on its back. The crab paddled a little on the water’s surface, then the shell sank to the tub’s base with a “clink”.
AG curled away from the shell as it sat by her knees, propped on its finger-arms, completely under water, facing her with its wide mouth.
Insane! AG shouted in her pulsating head. Attacked by sea creatures…on dry land! DRY LAND! Insane!!!
And there, while the maimed, deformed woman fixated sharply at her small star shaped predator, a memory of this most strange Murex Ramosus entered her mind like a searing hot needle. That day, a year ago, in her backyard indoor patio, when she first found the shell. Where she read the Fenton Harbor article.
She discovered the dust-dirty seashell within a milk crate while searching for picture frames, amid the folds and stacks of manila folders, notebooks, cameras, recording devices and other equipment. She took out one of the manila folders from the crate. Typed along the tab read Fenton Harbor – Hutchinson.
She opened the folder to a stack of clippings. Some dark brown, faded, preserved in strong clear tape.
The first clipping was a newspaper article, cut out, pasted on paper. Handwritten above was the paper’s name, The Bakersfield Barnyard, dated June 9, 1960. The headline read, Local Machinist Disappears Without a Trace. An accompanying photograph featured a fairly large man with thick eyebrows and mustache.
AG turned to the next clipping, an article from a tabloid-like pulpish magazine, its title at the bottom left corner: Astonishing Stories. The date at the opposite bottom corner stated September, 1958. The top headline read, Haunted Seashell Discovered. A photo within the text displayed a large man with thick eyebrows and a mustache – the same man in the previous clipping. He held a seashell, identical to the one in the milk crate. A caption below read, California resident Nick Axelson, who found this seashell while scuba diving at the bottom of Fenton Harbor, Oregon, says that his twelve-year-old daughter claims to have heard “children” from within the shell.
The next clipping displayed the front page of a 1933 newspaper, dark, stained and wrinkled, titled The Hancock County Sundial. A subhead below read Hancock County, Oregon. Tuesday Morning. November 16, 1933. A thin column was circled below:
CHILDREN’S CORPSES FOUND AT OCEAN BOTTOM
Two 7-Year-Old Twins Murdered, Tied to Heavy Rocks and Discovered at Ocean Floor.
Believed to Have Been There Two Years.
Fenton Harbor, November 15 –
Two unidentified twins, age 7, boy and girl, were discovered at the bottom of Fenton Harbor yesterday by Navy divers during a routine exercise.
The dark skeletal corpses were found with their hands tied behind their backs, ankles tied to heavy boulders. According to police and scientific experts, the children’s corpses have been in the ocean two years.
While no suspects have yet been found, police and port authorities detect that the crime was committed by the children’s parents, as there had been numerous such cases during the beginning of the country’s economic crisis…
AG continued to lay in the red and black soap-sudsy water, fetal position, her face resembling the hideous Two Face character from Batman. The hungry and abnormally sized leech still refused to let go of the “good” side of her face, which was now a purple turnip with thin sporadic veins that looked like streaks of lightning. The ocean creatures continued to claw and bite at her everywhere, the skin of her bloodied body cracked open in places and oozing thick tears of yellow pus.
Glaring at the seashell, AG opened her half skeletal mouth, first mouthing words, then stuttering them out in a low, soft tone as she wailed. “S-s-stop…p-please…s-stop…
“I-I d-didn’t mean t-t-to…I d-d-didn’t m-m-m-m-mean to h-hurt him…p-p-p-p-please. Pleeeeeeease…stop..!”
The seashell, still underwater, was quiet and still. It faced her with its wide mouth.
Suddenly, a flurry of underwater sea creatures exploded from the seashell’s mouth. Miniature puffer fish, jelly fish, moray and electric eels and blue-ring octopuses, small enough to fit through the shell’s softball-size opening. Swarming, attacking, stinging their screaming human prey, the water bubbling and swishing like a hot tub. A school of baby-sized viper fish and barracuda torpedoed out of the seashell, their knife-like teeth ripping and tearing the human meat before them, chunking and feasting on the woman like starved piranha on a skinned cow. The woman’s yells devolved into gurgles. Within minutes, she was not much more than a mutilated half skeleton that bobbed in red, green and yellowish soap water.
From its mouth, the seashell expelled a toxic substance throughout the tub, disintegrating the bobbing skeleton.
The seashell next expelled sea water from its mouth, overfilling the tub, spilling onto the bathroom floor, up to the door. Then, like an ultra-powered vacuum, the seashell began sucking the water into its mouth, controlling and manipulating any blood or fleshly remains throughout the watery floor as it retracted back to the tub. Every creature in the bathroom slithered or crawled into the tub, back into the seashell, like soldiers obeying their commander.
When it was over, the seashell rolled onto its mouth, and a set of black crab legs sprouted. Swiftly, the spidery limbs maneuvered the seashell out of the tub, onto the floor, and dragged it toward the door.
***
Eric, cleaned up and in fresh, dry clothes, sat hunched on the porch steps with his father, Paul’s arm around the boy, embracing him tightly. Still wearing his slacks, dress shirt and tie, Paul kissed Eric’s forehead. Placed his head on his kid’s puffy hair, gently rocked him, both gazing into the 11 p.m. night watching the two police officers return to their vehicle. Beside Paul and Eric stood a young husband and wife, AG’s neighbors, both looking upon the father and son with crestfallen faces.
It was the couple who had rushed to the backyard thirteen hours ago after they heard screaming from within the tool shed and banging on its tin walls. After receiving the neighbors’ message on his cell, Paul was immediately on a plane, leaving behind a griping and grieving sales team who would have to do without their top executive for a while.
Everyone was clueless as to the whereabouts of AG. Paul declared that if he ever found his now ex-fiancée, the police would return for something other than child abuse or missing persons reports.
“I’m just gonna get a few things, then we’ll go home, son,” whispered Paul. He gave Eric another kiss on his head, then got up, motioned to the couple to look after his boy, and sauntered to the front door.
“Dad,” said Eric, his voice sore and broken. “Can you get a seashell for me? It’s in the guest room.”
Paul nodded with a slight grin, stepping inside.
The husband and wife flanked Eric on the steps, placed their arms around him, softly. A Rockwell scene.
Inside, Paul entered the guest room. He looked around. Noticed ripped math papers along the floor. Saw the bed mattress hallway off its frame, his son’s testimony amplified. Paul’s face tightened and burned. He clenched his fists, letting them shake involuntarily, holding one out toward a nightstand picture – the photo of him and AG. A hot bubbling cauldron of rage stirred up inside him. He snatched the picture, tossing the squared frame across the room like a knife thrower.
Paul closed his eyes and mouth tightly. He held that position a moment. Then he released a gasp as though he had been underwater for a while, letting the tears trickle, his mouth hanging open.
God how could I be so stupid Paul repeated over and over in his head.
Mental pictures of him and his little boy flickered and flashed in his head. Their times together, when he was not working. Playing video games, his son blowing him up with a frag grenade. Tickling Eric to death whenever calling him fart breath. Evenings, his favorite times with him, tucking Eric in, lying with him in a bed not really big enough for two, telling his boy that he’s his favorite lil’ superhero.
Paul placed both fists over his eyes, taking a few more moments to sob.
When he finished, he wiped the tears, wiped his nose, exhaling.
He was statue-still for a good while. Stared into space. Took a hard, deep swallow.
He checked his watch, snorting mucus.
He could still video conference his sales staff. Get an update on the convention. Tonight, as soon as he got home. But that would be it for the weekend. That would be it. Eric needed him.
Yes, that would be it.
Giving his face one more wipe, he turned toward the dresser.
Toward the seashell on top of it.
On the porch outside, the young couple invited Eric to their house for some pie while they wait for his dad. The wife hollered to Paul at the front door, letting him know where they were going, Paul hollering back his acknowledgment.
As the three walked off the porch, Eric stopped, fished out an old gray paint brush from his pant pocket. AG’s first brush – her most prized possession. He took it from her studio shortly before the police arrived. His plan was to snap it in half, right in AG’s face when he saw her again. He held the paint brush before him with a blank stare. Lips pursed, brows trenched, his grandmother’s words echoed in his mind. Good thoughts, Eric. He remembered the seashell’s sounds. Its underwater currents, and his face brightened.
Eric walked to a swing chair on the porch. He set AG’s paint brush on it, unharmed, where she may find it. Then he rejoined the couple, the three walking off.
In the guestroom, Paul picked up the seashell.
He held its mouth to his face. His tear-reddened eyes scanned the smooth white curvature of the shell’s throat. Its rock-rough exterior, pebbly and sandy.
Grabbing Eric’s suitcase, seashell in hand, he approached the door.
Then he paused. Looked down at the seashell with a wince.
He felt something.
Something weird, tingly, on his hand holding the shell, on his fingers along the smooth lip of its mouth. As if a light suction from a mini vacuum.
And then a long drilling shriek uttered out of Paul from deep within his throat. A sharp jolt of agony shot through his hand, surged up his arm, pulsated into his brain as half his hand was sucked into the seashell’s mouth, his fingers jamming at the shell’s narrow cave-like throat, his index finger bent completely backward, the suction so powerful it was like his hand was caught in a small hole of a broken glass window of a ship in outer space, suctioned by an interstellar vacuum.
Bones popped, blood burst from the pores of Paul’s fingers and hand, and he could feel his flesh slowly being torn off piece by piece by the supernatural suck. Veins permeated throughout his arm, resembling multiple thin tree branches, his arm taking on a purple, bulging look as it tried to absorb the tremendous pressure being put on it as this “shell thing” hauled Paul’s hand down its tight curvature inch by inch.
He tried with all his strength to pull his hand out. He hammered the shell on the wood floor, banged it against the wall, swatted it against the dresser. It was not coming off.
Then he felt a deep burn, steam wafting from the shell, and he saw that its mouth was now filled entirely with thick sludge. Sludge spilled onto the floor, the wood burning with a “Tssss” sound, followed by smoke. His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets when he realized the vile, painful sludge was up to half his forearm, which meant his entire hand was suctioned and/or disintegrated completely!
Hundreds of thin weedy vines shot out of the shell’s mouth like hasty fingers, seized Paul’s arm, as if something straight out of an old Harryhausen stop animation flick where monstrous tree roots come out of the ground and get you. In less than a minute, the emerald vines ran up his arm in crisscross fashion, coating it entirely, as they did with Chachi (aka “puppy dog”). They moved past Paul’s shoulder. To his gawking face.
Where his shrill screams, like his skin, would eventually dissolve.
***
Entering the guest room with a slice of lemon meringue pie on a plate, Eric found the seashell on the wood floor, beside his suitcase. He wiped a bit of meringue foam off the corner of his mouth, put his plate down, his face furrowing as he looked around, wondering where his dad was.
He picked up the shell, looked over its exotic features in adoration once more. He put it to his ear, listened to its soothing sounds. He wondered if, even kind of hoped, one day AG would experience the same Jacuzzi-warm cascade and cool, blissful toe-tingling suds from a seashell’s mouth. He hoped.
Meanwhile, he thought of a person whom he wanted to give the seashell to. He would send it to her, anonymously, just as he had sent other gifts to her throughout the years.
Good thoughts, thought Eric. Good thoughts about the mean kids in school. About AG. About your “real” mommy who probably loves you and is sorry and is really gonna love this nice gift.
This story previously appeared in Timeless Worlds, 2012.
Edited by Marie Ginga
Mike Lera is a Los Angeles-based author, screenwriter and journalist whose horror fiction can be found in over a dozen anthologies, including Dark and Evil II, All Dark Places 2, Horror USA: California and Rod Serling Books’ Submitted For Your Approval. He currently writes for Horror Nation. Lera has found equal success in both the film festival and streaming service circuit with his screen work.
When not scaring people, Lera scavenges comic/martial art/horror cons for anything to wear, hang, tac, shelf and add to his geek shrine.
Visit Mike at his website Website: MikeLera.com, Facebook: @MikeLera.Author.Screenwriter, Instagram: @MikeLera.Author.Screenwriter, Twitter: @MikeLeraWriter, Blog: @mikelerasbogblog.blogspot.com