Horrific Fairy Tales #3

1
STORMY

Demetri flinched against a spray of seawater as a violent wave crashed into the ship. Salt stung his eyes. He wondered, not for the first time, what on earth he was doing out on this floundering vessel, in the middle of the ocean, miles away from the dry, safe shore. And in the dark, no less, for it was nearly midnight. Well, he knew what he was doing, Demetri thought, as the ship swayed over the churning sea. He was trying not to fall flat on his face.

​

It was his own fault. Demetri had adopted a new rule for his life. He’d tried to live by this rule for the past seven months, ever since he’d left behind the girl he’d loved and let go of the only life he’d ever known. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But in this moment, as he clutched the ship’s rigging, he cursed the stupid rule.

The rule was: Take every opportunity to try something new.

Well, hunting sharks was certainly a new experience. When Mason, a saltwater fisherman Demetri had recently met, offered to get him a job with his captain, Demetri jumped at the chance. It would be pleasant, Demetri thought, to be out on the water this summer, the sun blazing overhead, a gentle wind on his face.

Only there was no sun, as it was near midnight. Sharks, apparently, were more active at night. And the breeze was not so much a breeze as it was a howling gale. But, Demetri reminded himself, his new rule wasn’t the only reason he’d accepted Mason’s offer. He’d also accepted it for the money, which he needed these days. After all, he wasn’t a prince anymore.

Demetri had been a visitor in the Mountain Kingdom eighty years ago when a curse fell upon the realm, plunging everyone into perpetual sleep—a sleep that had turned its victims into living corpses. Demetri had not fallen prey to this curse, but he’d suffered a fate just as terrible: he’d been locked away to keep him from breaking the curse with true love’s kiss. An enchantment had frozen him in time, preserving his life and his youth for those eighty-two years. Most people would have considered that a blessing, Demetri supposed—except he’d been awake all that time, trapped, aware of just how helpless he was, helpless to save himself or anyone else…

And when he’d finally escaped, a lifetime had passed. The world had moved on without him. The Glen Kingdom, which Demetri should have ruled one day, had been conquered, passing into the hands of a new ruling family. That family had welcomed Demetri—well, some of them—but Demetri knew there was no life for him in the Glen Kingdom anymore. He needed to move on.

So gone were the days when everything was provided for him. Demetri had to work. He didn’t mind the work itself—not usually. He had to admit mucking out stables had its downsides, and working as a courier hadn’t been as interesting as he’d thought it would be. Or, well, it had been too interesting. He’d actually had to employ the phrase “Don’t shoot the messenger” once or twice.

Those jobs both had another downside—they were solitary, and Demetri preferred to be around people. He’d spent eighty-two years alone—that was all the solitude he needed.

As another wave broke against the ship, sending Demetri reeling, he saw Mason make his way towards him. The fisherman used the rigging to cross the deck, moving hand over hand along the length of rope. Mason was only about an inch taller than Demetri, but he had a broad chest and thick arms that gave him the appearance of a much bigger man. His white cotton shirt was soaked through, plastered to his skin.

​

As he reached Demetri, Mason grinned and asked, “What did I tell you?”

Demetri managed a weak smile. “Aren’t you cold?”

Mason laughed. “Aren’t you?”

He had a point. Demetri was not any warmer for wearing his sack coat. He was as drenched as Mason, the cuffs of his sleeves chafing unpleasantly at his wrists. It was nearly summer here on the coast of the Mariner Kingdom, quite warm during the days. But out on the sea at night, with a nearby storm bolstering the wind, Demetri was freezing. His fingers, clenched around the rigging, had gone numb. He couldn’t even feel the scratchy rope biting into his hands anymore.

“Cap’n says we don’t have to worry about the squall.” Mason nodded, indicating the black patch on the horizon. The whole sky was dark, but that patch to the east was like an inky splotch across a swathe of navy blue. Every minute or so, a blinding streak of lightning cracked through the black. “Heading north, it looks like. Shouldn’t pass over us.”

​

Demetri eyed the sky anxiously. Even if the storm didn’t pass over them, he still worried about it. Given that its proximity was causing these choppy conditions. The storm didn’t need to pass right over them to capsize the ship.

Trying to put this thought behind him, Demetri raised his voice and asked, “Any sign of the sharks yet?”

“Remy says no.” Remy was the ship’s lookout, a short, skinny girl with the bluest eyes Demetri had ever seen. “Anyway…” A dark look passed through Mason’s eyes. “That’s assuming they are sharks.”

“What else could be killing people besides sharks?” Demetri asked. That was why they were out here. There had been an uptick in shark attacks lately. People out at sea—sailors, fisherman, and bathers alike—had gone missing. Some bloodied body parts had even washed up on shore.

Mason cast him a glance. “Mermaids.”

​

“Mermaids?” Demetri stared at his friend, wondering if he was serious. Mason did like his jokes, almost as much as he liked doing reckless things—like hunting sharks out on the sea with a hurricane raging nearby. Demetri supposed he’d found a substitute Garrett. He wondered what that said about him, that he always sought out mad thrill seekers for company.

“That’s right, mermaids.” Mason ran a hand through his dark beard. “You haven’t heard the stories?”

“Can’t say I have.” Demetri wobbled, threading one arm through the rigging for more support. “But I haven’t been in the Mariner Kingdom long. I, er—” Demetri strove to keep the incredulity from his voice. “I thought there were no such things as mermaids?”

“So some say,” Mason grunted. “My mother always said different though. She said a mermaid killed my father.”

“I didn’t realize mermaids killed things,” Demetri mused. He still wasn’t sure how much of this he believed. Fairies and witches and rotting corpse creatures were one thing. But mermaids…? “I mean, I suppose they have to eat, but—”

“Listen,” Mason said, his tone serious, “being a landlubber, you’ve probably heard a lot of pretty stories about mermaids. Well, forget all that. There’s nothing pretty about them. People have spotted ’em before—people out on ships or along the coast. And a sighting is always marked by a disappearance or a gruesome death.”

Demetri opened his mouth to respond—not that he had anything more eloquent to say than “Huh,” because he wasn’t sure if he even believed mermaids were real, let alone vicious killers—but before he could say anything, the ship gave another lurch. Demetri gripped the rope so tightly, he thought his frozen fingers would fall off.

The ship teetered, dipping dangerously towards the water. A massive wave tumbled over the bow, breaking against the ship like glass shattering into a thousand pieces. Sailors shouted and scrambled to grab onto something, but when the bow rose up again, water billowing down the sides, there were cries of “Man overboard!”

Mason swore and ran for the bow. Some of the sailors began unraveling a life buoy to throw out. Someone else bellowed, “Stop the ship! Bring her ’round! Tell those boys in the engine room to stop the cursed ship now!”

Demetri followed the rigging as best he could, tottering down the deck towards the bow. Once he ran out of rope, he staggered to the side of the ship and gripped the sea-spattered iron railing. He half-ran, half-fell the rest of the way, wayward waves lapping over the side and drenching him more than ever.

As he joined the sailors at the bow, he addressed the one closest to him. “Where is he?”

The sailor pointed out into the jet-black water. Demetri shielded his eyes from the stinging sea spray and peered out. He couldn’t see anything at first, but then he spotted the man, a tiny white speck in the vast ocean. The clashing waves tossed him about like a feather in the wind.

The buoy was thrown out towards the man. Demetri was impressed to see how close it landed to him, considering how far the man was from the ship and how wildly the sea rocked around him. Along the railing, sailors shouted for their flailing fellow, waving and yelling encouragement.

Demetri squinted. It was hard to make out anything in the dark, with seawater pelting him like rain, but then a bolt of lightning flashed nearby, washing the sea in a sickly green luster. In that crack of light, Demetri saw the man paddling for the buoy, saw him fling an arm towards it—

Then he was gone.

Demetri wiped a hand over his face. Brackish seawater burned his nostrils. Had he just lost sight of the man? It would have been easy to do, but somehow, Demetri didn’t think so. It was as though something in the water had pulled the man below the surface.

“Do you see him?” Demetri said to the sailor beside him, raising his voice to a near-shout.

The sailor cursed in response. “He’s gone under. He was right there, and then—”

Whatever he meant to say next was drowned out by an ominous, earsplitting cr-a-a-a-a-ck. Something about the sound raised every hair on Demetri’s head. Then the ship pitched sharply, and Demetri mirrored everyone around him as he clutched at the railing. It felt as though the hull had caught on something, jerking the ship to a halt. Alarm rushed through Demetri, flooding every bone in his body.

“By the Gift!” the sailor next to him swore. His face was pinched and white. “That sounded like—”

He was interrupted a second time as the ship began to rattle, k-thnk-k-thnk-k-thnk-k-thnk. As though it sat upon a warped axle. Then there was another crack, louder this time, the sound as thunderous as the nearby storm. The ship gave another great lurch. Demetri fell to his knees.

“Breach!” someone shouted, and the cry cut Demetri to the core. “Breach in the hull!”

Sucking in a breath, Demetri reached for the side of the ship and looked up. Even amidst the thrashing sea, he could tell the ship had stopped moving, no longer cresting over the water. But the ship was not still. Instead, it shuddered around him as though resisting a great pressure. He could imagine the sea swelling into the cracked hull below, filling the ship with water.

It was a terrifying vision.

Screams rent the air as sailors dashed across the deck, rushing to save the ship. Demetri clambered to his feet, the port side of the ship—where Demetri stood—dipping perilously close to the sea. Demetri saw Mason running, shouting at him, but the port side dipped again, and Mason fell towards him. Demetri spun to avoid being flattened by the man, but he lost his footing as the deck heaved beneath him. He pitched backwards.

His head slammed into a sharp edge, and everything went black.

It couldn’t have been for more than a minute, but when Demetri came to, he was in the water, his head slipping beneath the surface.

Panic filled him, clogging up his airway. No, not panic. Seawater. He was in the ocean. For a moment, there was only darkness as the water closed over his head, as he stupidly struggled to draw breath and only choked on more seawater. It burned down his throat like acid. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything except the smothering weight of the ocean, tugging at him, crushing him as thoroughly as a pile of rocks. He couldn’t tell which way was up, which way was down.

He was going to die.

No. Some instinct deep inside him burst to life. Kick, it said. Kick. So he kicked, he kicked furiously, and he had no idea if he was going the right way, if he was going anywhere, or if this was all just futile. But he kept going, kicking and kicking and kicking, and then, suddenly, he broke through the surface of the water.

Demetri spluttered, retching as he struggled to breathe. He nearly went under again as soon as he’d come up, but he kept kicking, flailing his arms, trying to orient himself as he looked for something to save him.

Then he saw it. Bobbing in the water, little more than an arm’s length away. The buoy they’d thrown to the overboard sailor. Demetri struggled towards it, pushing his way through the sea. As close as it was, it seemed to take forever to reach it. The water resisted him, leeching all the strength out of his body, turning his muscles to jelly. He felt as though he had a brick tied to each ankle. But he finally reached the buoy, his fingers groping at its slippery edge, and then he had it, and he pulled his whole arm through and held on for dear life.

Relief was there and gone as quick as the tumbling currents, closing in on him and then pulling away. The buoy wouldn’t hold him forever, and he was still in the middle of the ocean. The ship. Something had happened to the ship, but if he could get back to it…. He wiped a hand over his eyes and blinked, circling around for some glimpse of the ship.

When he finally found it—a great, hulking shadow in the black night—it looked weird. The shape was all wrong. At first he couldn’t pinpoint more than that, and then, as his eyes adjusted, he realized.

The ship had broken apart. Cleaved down the middle, as though some monstrous sea creature, a leviathan from the depths, had sliced through it with gargantuan teeth.

The sight overwhelmed Demetri, his heart seizing in his chest. He couldn’t understand. He’d been on that ship, he’d just been on it, and for all that it felt like he’d been in the water forever, he knew it had only been a few minutes. He’d been on that ship, and despite the breach in the hull, it had still been whole—dead in the water, sinking, but whole. Now it was nearly in two separate halves, one part almost submerged, the other splintering before his eyes. Distantly, he heard screams, but the ship was too far away and the night too dark to make out anyone on board.

​

He had to think. He had to think. The trouble was, that was becoming more difficult by the second. Demetri’s head throbbed; belatedly, he remembered he’d hit it against something. He knew that wasn’t good, but he was having trouble focusing on why. He just had to think—he had to get out of the ocean—

​

Below the water, something bumped against his thigh.

​

Demetri froze, his flailing limbs going still. Fear gripped him as he thought of sharks, but as he was bumped a second time, he realized whatever it was had to be much smaller than a shark. He threaded his arm through the buoy so he could reach down into the water with his other hand. His fingers closed around something rough and bristling—the rope tied to the buoy. As he felt further, he realized the rope was tangled around something. Demetri grasped the object, foreboding prickling through him. The object had an eerily familiar feel to it, though it was slimy and nubbed on one side. It felt an awful lot like—

A hand.

It was a human hand.

Demetri choked on a scream and dropped the severed hand. Dark blood coated his palm, and now there was blood on the buoy, slick like oil. Suddenly, he felt as though the water around him was streaked with blood, and he didn’t know if it was real or just his imagination, running wild with fear. All he knew was he couldn’t stay here, hanging onto this buoy, he had to go, he had to get out, somehow, he had to get out—

And then he saw it. A boat. One of the ferrying rowboats from the ship, miraculously whole, miraculously upright. It sat calmly atop the tempestuous sea, swaying on the surface.

He had to get to it. It was his only chance.

He began to swim. It was hard, harder than it should have been. He tried to tow the buoy behind him, but it slowed him down, and the boat seemed to drift further away every second. Desperate, Demetri released the buoy and plunged through the water. He kicked until his legs ached, he swept his arms back and forth, feeling as though he was heaving the weight of the entire sea behind him. His head still throbbed and all this activity wasn’t helping; soon all he could hear was the pounding of his blood in his ears, blocking out the crash of the waves and the distant screams. But he kept his eyes fixed on the boat and pushed forward, forward, even when his eyes began to blur and his chest began to burn.

​

He was close—so close.

Then something latched onto his ankle and yanked him below the surface.