Friday Fiction: They Move Below (Part 2)
What lies beneath us?
Here’s this week’s Friday Fiction. Thanks to my paid subscribers, this post is open to everyone. This is part two (final part) of the eponymous story from They Move Below. Part one here. Let me know if you enjoyed the story! Does it tempt you to read the rest of the stories in the book?
They Move Below (Part 2)
He had already turned his attention elsewhere. “Have you ever seen … I didn’t know they could grow … Must be one of the deep sea ones, died and drifted up. Unbe-fucking-lievable.” He grabbed a long pole with a hook on the end. Leaned over the boat’s rail and prodded. The rod pushed the jellyfish’s skin down so even more water washed over the surface. The skin was thick and didn’t tear, and immediately buoyed back up again, sloshing at the edge of the hull. “What do you know? That’s some thick shit.”
“I don’t like it,” she said, shaking. “This is not a natural thing. It is not.”
“Could be that’s what happened to your papa, huh? Eaten by a jellyfish?”
“Don’t say that!” she screamed, tears in her eyes. “You know nothing, you foreign, you cruel man!”
“Lost your Eastern cool, eh? Now who’s the scared one? Not me.”
“You should be scared.”
“Of a dead jellyfish?” It sounded like water slapping against plastic sheeting as the rippling jellyfish body dipped and rose in the current. “I’m not scared of anything,” he said. “It’s jest … awesome.” He slapped his palm on the rail, making her jump. “Pics! Proof! YouTube!” He grabbed her camera, lifted the strap off her neck. She didn’t struggle. He jabbed at the button for recording video, then held it up to face her. “Say cheese!”
She span away, wiped her eyes, but he had been teasing, had already swept the camera over the edge of the boat, filming the bobbing horror, like a thick plastic sheet with body parts hanging from it. He was laughing, describing the size, saying it was the world’s largest jellyfish. “Ifin it hadn’t died it might have grown even bigger!” he added for emphasis. “I’m gonna be famous. Ya’ll will know my name now! Never bagged nothing this big afore. Wonder ifin I can tow it back?”
“Leave it!” she yelled. “It is part of the sea, not yours!”
“Yeah, yeah, princess.” He stopped recording. “You’re right though, in a way. They’re made of sea too. Over ninety-five per cent water. It’d break up ifin I towed it. Can’t see how I’d get a rope around it anyways.”
She could not take her eyes off it. The horror and fascination of nature. A terrifying creature that lived and died in the sea; was mostly made of sea; only existed in this environment … an agent of the sea.
“I don’t want ta swim with it,” he continued, as if to himself. “Even dead, it might still sting. Shame I’ll jest have video, it doesn’t show the scale of it. Damn, this falls into my lap and I have ta leave it!”
“Yes, leave it.”
“Shut your trap, you ain’t the boss of me.”
“It is so big.”
“Yeah, you said that. Wait a minute …” He picked up the rod in one hand while the other kept a hold of her camera, prodded the thick skin again. “Shit. That would be kinda awesome.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer. Opened a locker and took out a wetsuit and boots. Stripped down to his underwear and put the new gear on in the cockpit. She looked away while he puffed and strained; then he was done and came clumping over. The rubber was tight on him, curved around his too-large stomach.
“What are you doing?” She was nervous enough to grasp his arm but he just smiled, a wild look in his eyes.
“Gonna set a world first record. Get some scale to it too. You’re gonna film me.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna walk on that fucker. Won’t that be grand? I’m only in this mosquito-filled backwash country fer a few more months, why not do something no human has ever done before? I’m thinking that’ll have ta get me on international news! Walking on a jellyfish! The world’s largest! Wow!”
“There is something wrong with you! You are crazy!”
“Stop getting hysterical. You only gotta do one thing, and that’s press the record button. I jest need to take two steps, let go of the rail. Guinness Records, girl! I’m a darned genius!” He was speaking fast, unfolding the rope ladder while she stared in disbelief. He hooked it over the edge of the rail. “Need to do it now afore we separate. Good, it’s still there, see? Caught against the hull I reckon. And that thick pinky bit’s underneath it. Woo.” He took deep breaths through his nose. “Pick up the camera.” He sat astride the rail. She didn’t move. He suddenly seized her forearm, dragged her to him. She struggled but he was stronger. “Don’t fuck this up,” he hissed, holding her precariously near the edge. “And don’t get any funny ideas, or I won’t take you home. You’ll be swimming with the jellyfish instead.” He let her go, a switch flicked behind his face and it became a smile, as quick and false as that. She steadied her hands, picked up her camera, pressed the correct button, pointed it at him, trying not to think of what was floating nearby, it was nothing, just the sea, the open sea, blue and blue on blue …
“I’m the captain here, and I’m gonna to make history!” he said into the lens. “Bravest man in the world shit about to happen!”
He climbed down the ladder, placing feet carefully on each rung, a hairless gorilla with a red face. She had to lean on the rail to keep the image centred on him. The jellyfish rose and fell, rose and fell, its dead bulk the immense backdrop behind him. He hesitated at the last rung. Looked up. “Gonna be like walking on the moon,” he said, then swallowed. “Armstrong had it easy. One giant step …”
He tentatively reached out a padded boot, prodded the jellyfish skin, put more weight down. It sank, and he seemed about to change his mind but looked into the camera again. Clenched his jaw and inhaled. Let the water rise to his knee – then it stopped sinking. A look of pleasure on his face. “I got it,” he said to himself, lowering his other leg into the water. His arms gripped the rope ladder, taking some weight, but the water still rose to his groin. “I can do this.” He took a step back, still holding on. Let more weight go onto his legs. The jelly ballooned around him but held. Her throat constricted, breath trapped, feeling faint again but also mesmerised, morbidly fascinated, this was not the world, this was another world, another’s madness, but she could almost believe in it.
He let go.
Stepped away from the boat towards the centre of the jellyfish, and as he did it became more buoyant, more supportive, and he whooped for joy as each step got easier until it only sank as far as his calves and there he stood, a few metres from the bell’s centre. Gelatinous translucency surrounded him, pinks and blues and greens. He had done it. She watched his triumphant expression through the camera. An insect on a giant sea flower.
The camera moved, sending him to the edge of the viewfinder. Maybe it was the boat’s motion. It was difficult to know what stillness meant any more. She glanced over the top, past the long black lens. No, not the camera or boat – he had moved. His expression changed to fear, and she realised there was a pulsing motion. One vibration. Small. Then another, bigger, and the surface shimmered. He sank to his knees, slipped sideways, and tried to stand again, arms reaching out for the ladder, only two metres but the uneven moving surface gave no purchase, he sank into the water, up to his chest now. Another tremor in the jelly – it was rotating from the boat, starting to turn. He cried out, slid away from the ladder as the jellyfish tipped, scrambling and splashing in panic as he screamed that it was alive, slipping but moved by something bigger, something that weighed tons, a mass against which the man was nothing, and she felt madness pulling at her, watching the slow performance of the horror below. He reached up to her, called for help, words that hardly made sense as she watched the ripples lapping against the boat, waves caused by the monster’s convulsions.
She glanced around. The hooked pole was nearby. She picked it up, could hold it out to him, pull him in, perhaps.
Mebbe you’ll change your mind afore we get back.
Beware of a man’s shadow and a bee’s sting.
He reminded her of her father; the night-bed visitor who died before she could tell him she hated him as much as herself. Spirits harbour grudges but so do the living.
She laid the pole back on the deck by her feet.
Many seconds of frantic splashing passed, then the creature pulsed again and the bell contracted and expanded, enough to throw him into the water in front of it; his voice cut off as he gulped liquid in panic, tried to swim around the jellyfish but it was too big; a few mammoth contractions and it passed him, forced him under its bulk, but she could still see him struggling, kicking, mouth and eyes open in fear until she lost sight of them amongst the giant fleshy underparts which tangled him up. And the behemoth began to sink. She realised she too was screaming, and she dropped the camera, still recording; it plopped into the water and span down in a spiralling dive away from the light, beyond which the pale ghostly transparent mass sank, into darkness; she thought there was a glimpse of legs, or arms in the mass of tentacles which streamed behind it; the jellyfish’s weight sank down, the surface light making its body luminescent for a few seconds before it faded, a raw mass of beautiful alien sinking under the sea, under her.
She stared down at the nothingness that went on forever, blue, beautiful blue, home of ghostly giants, it went on forever in beauty, blue on blue on blue, like floating in the sky above Yangon, only a dive away from ending it all and discovering what there is in the black. She realised she’d been leaning dangerously far over the rail again, hypnotised by the pulsing, the depth, the vertigo. No. It was not her time then, and not her time now.
Deep breaths, eyes closed, she squatted and held the rail. Tried to calm the pulsing inside, the convulsing heart that reminded her of something else as it squished liquid inside her. Be practical. Be brave.
The sails were still in disorder after he’d been messing with them. “Unsafe,” he’d said. She didn’t understand how that all worked anyway, just a confusing tangle of material and cables. Luckily, she would not need them.
She walked to the cockpit on shaky legs and tried the radio. Still the hissing. A faint smell of burnt electrics.
The compass worked though. If she headed north or north-east she would surely reach land somewhere; if the radio wasn’t broken she could get help then. She had seen him work the engine and steer. It seemed easy enough.
The boat drifted fast, creaking as it turned in the current that trapped it and dragged it along.
She reached down to turn the key and start the motor. She would soon be on her way home. But the key wasn’t there. She tried pressing where it said “Start”. Nothing. She knelt and scrabbled through the items on the floor, in case it had fallen; then went through the pockets of his clothes. Many items, but no key.
No key.
When he got changed …
And don’t get any funny ideas, or I won’t take you home. You’ll be swimming with the jellyfish instead.
She rushed to the edge of the boat and looked over the side into that endless depth, depth that seemed closer, we’re taking on water, and she screamed, tearing her hair; the boat danced faster under the eerie sky, turned and groaned, heavy in the water, carried out to sea and descending slowly with each revolution, as if the seaweed rafts orbited her in endless space, airless, and dark down there with all the night-time dead things that waited, reaching up for company.