The Water is Warm

The glassy, black eye stared up at me, as if silently questioning why we were both there. It knew I shouldn’t be there as much as it shouldn’t be there, but neither one of us had the ability to do anything about it.

“Hey, you know I’m just a vet, right?” I asked, with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t know who exactly you need to call, but I don’t think it’s me. This guy’s already dead.”

Frank Kellerman laughed, adjusting one of the straps of his denim overalls. “Yes ma’am, I know, but I couldn’t think of anyone else. I called the deputy, but he told me to talk to you. Said they don’t deal with animals.”

Bridgepoint Lighthouse had stood on the shore of our small town for nearly two hundred years, a tall cylinder of ashen grey stone warning ships away from the shallow, jagged rocks extending into the bay. Since I’d finished veterinary school and opened my practice, I’d been out here a handful of times, and it was always for something that wasn’t quite my job. Every time, I tried to make it clear that I generally focused on pets, not wild animals, but when your town only has two police officers and three stop signs total, you end up taking on additional responsibilities.

I bent down over the onyx orb of an eye and examined the rest of the fish. The head was nearly a foot long, most of it mouth. It had long, needle-like teeth, and tapered for nearly five feet, resembling an exaggerated eel more than any type of fish I’d seen in the local market. It was covered in layered, metallic looking scales with a tall sailfin running down the top.

Standing up, I pulled out my phone and snapped a few pictures: one close up of the head, a wide shot of the entire thing, and another to show its size relative to the rocks on the shoreline.

“Yeah,” I said, turning toward the lighthouse keeper, “I don’t think I deal with this either. Truth be told, I don’t even know what the hell this is.”

Frank nodded, snorted, and hawked a wad of phlegm into the wind toward the sea. “You and me both. I ain’t never seen nothing like that in my life, and I’ve been working the lighthouse for near on forty years now.” His wispy grey hair and wrinkled leather face were a testament to his honesty.

We both stood, staring at the mystery creature for a long, silent minute, before I said, “So, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t quite know, I guess,” Frank said, eyeing the creature while shaking his head. Eventually, he turned his attention to me. “I guess I just wanted someone to come take a look at the thing.” He paused, glancing back at it. “You have any idea why it washed up here? You think the water’s bad?”

I shook my head in return. “Again, I couldn’t tell you. It doesn’t look like it’s sick in any way, but it’s far enough up on shore that it’s almost like it…” I trailed off as the rest of the sentence rattled around in my head.

Frank looked over the scene for another long moment before turning to me. “Yeah?”

I turned to look out at the softly rolling waves of the bay. “It’s like it swam up here on purpose.” As if to punctuate my thought, the water fifty feet out exploded as something broke the surface, sending a spray of water droplets into the air. They left behind a faint rainbow as they fell.

***

A week later, as I was hanging up my white lab coat and preparing to lock up the clinic for the day, my computer dinged with an email. I almost didn’t check—it was our anniversary and we had dinner plans that night—but after glancing at the subject line, I was drawn to it. I’d sent the images I’d taken of the mystery fish to the state university biology apartment, in hopes they’d be able to at least identify it. The email read:

Re: Unidentified sea creature

Hello Mrs. Flynn,

Sorry for the delay but thank you for reaching out! This is an exciting find. The fish shown in your pictures is an Alepisaurus ferox, more commonly known as a longnose lancetfish. It’s generally a deep-sea fish, colloquially known as a cannibal fish. They’re very rare to see washing up on shorelines.

As for why it would have washed up, there wouldn’t be any way to know. Oarfish (also called the doomsday fish) are known to do the same thing before underwater earthquakes, so it’s possible something scared them toward the surface.

I hope this helps!

Dave Baker, Director of Biology

Great, I thought, now we know what it is at least, but we still don’t have any idea why it washed up on shore. And the underground earthquake theory? It didn’t sit well with me. Although I had answers to my questions, they brought about even more unsettling ones.

I tried to focus on dinner with my husband that night, but the restaurant he’d picked was known for their seafood, and I couldn’t seem to find my appetite. My mind kept wandering to the scene at the beach, and what could have scared those deep-sea monstrosities.

***

Two days later, Frank Kellerman called me again, and again I found myself standing on the rocky shoreline in the shadow of the monolithic stone lighthouse. This time, though, the mood was arguably much more solemn. Frank stood nervously next to me, hands in the pockets of his overalls, shifting between one foot and the other as if he couldn’t find a comfortable position. He kept glancing toward the water, as if he was sneaking a peek at something he wasn’t meant to see.

“Whad’ya think it means?” he asked. From my periphery, I could see his eyes dart between the scene on the shore and my face.

I shook my head. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said, and it was the truth.

Littered among the rocky shoreline were at least five more lancetfish. They ranged from five feet to upwards of eight, and they all appeared to have beached themselves in much the same way as the first. The sand of the beach had divots carved into it, showing the fish had struggled to swim further even after they’d hit land. One was missing the lower half of its jaw, leaving just a gaping scream full of teeth. The rocks were stained with dark red splotches where the fish had battered themselves against them.

“Have you noticed anything odd in the bay?” I asked, hoping Frank would have some sort of insight into what was going on. “Maybe some fisherman doing something strange?”

Frank shook his head, having to pry his eyes from the shore to look at me. “Nothing that I can really think of, at least not from people.” He glanced out toward the water, squinted, and raised a finger toward the sea. “But that’s been happening the past two days.”

I followed his gesture toward the water and narrowed my eyes against the late afternoon sun. The water was calm, bobbing back and forth as it usually did, save for one specific area about one hundred feet from the coast. There, in a fifty-foot-wide circle, the blue layer of waves churned and bubbled, as if it was boiling. It reminded me of an aquarium aerator working overtime.

“What is it?” I asked quietly.

“Haven’t a clue,” Frank said, equally somber. His eyes were locked on the spot in the water.

From our vantage point on the grassy field at the edge of the shoreline, the reflections of the sun and the sky concealed whatever was under the water. As I stared at the rolling boil among the waves, I had an idea.

“Think we could see it better from the lighthouse?”

Frank stared toward the water. After a moment, he turned to me and shrugged. “Yeah, might be able to,” he said.

I turned and headed towards the stairs leading up to the lighthouse’s entrance. They were rough, crumbling stone, covered in a thin layer of algae from the moisture of the air. As I mounted the first step, I glanced back at Frank, who had moved his attention back to the shore and beyond.

“You coming? I assume you’ll need to let me in?”

He blinked, shook his head as if clearing the fog from it, and spat at the ground as he turned. “Yeah, sorry, got kinda lost in my head for a second,” he said.

We mounted the steps and Frank produced a large key ring from a pocket of his overalls. It jangled and clattered as he sorted through the keys. Eventually finding an old, tarnished skeleton key, he slid it into the lock of the door and twisted it, producing a loud clunk of metal. I grabbed the cold steel ring that acted as a handle and pulled. The door was heavy, waterlogged wood, and the hinges screamed against my effort. Cold air rushed out of the opening, assaulting my nose with the sharp smell of salt and mildew. A shiver ran down my back.

Inside, I almost expected torches to be lining the walls and leading the way up, like some medieval castle tower, but Frank stepped in behind me and flipped a switch. Halogen lights began to click and hum as they came to life, crudely anchored into the stone walls. Even with the lights, the inside of the building was draped in shadows. Every surface seemed to have a sheen from the misty, damp air, and patches of green moss grew up from the floor.

Frank gestured toward a set of metal, grated steps spiraling toward the top of the tower. “Stairs lead all the way to the lookout deck, you can’t miss it,” he said.

I smiled at him, chuckling. “You’re not coming with me?”

He shook his head, his face still as blank as it had been staring out to sea. “No ma’am, I’m sixty-three years old, I only go up those stairs if I need to change bulbs.”

“Alright,” I said, eyeing the ascent. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Wrapping my hand around the cold steel of the railing, I started up the stairs. Each footstep thudded, reverberating through the entire stone building. The steel grating was slippery under my shoes, and by the time I reached halfway, I’d started checking my footing on each step before committing. I glanced over the railing toward Frank and a wave of vertigo washed through my stomach. Normally, I wasn’t afraid of heights, but something about this building was messing with my perception. He seemed miles away. As I continued toward the top, the spiral of stairs grew tighter, the walls seeming to close in around me. It felt like I was going to walk until the walls came together, until I was trapped at the top of the tower. My breathing grew short, not from the exertion of the climb, but from an undefined paranoia that had crept into my chest.

Just as a full-blown panic attack was buzzing behind my ribs, I mounted the final few steps and came to another heavy wooden door. Thankfully, it was unlocked and swung easily on the hinges as I pushed it outward. My eyes recoiled against the bright, painful glare of the sun as it filled the twilight of the tower. Taking a moment to both let my eyes adjust and fill my lungs with fresh, warm air, I glanced back down toward Frank at the bottom of the staircase. Instantly, my head swam and my stomach dropped, and I turned away before even registering the ground floor. Instead, I stepped through the doorway and into the sun.

I circled the small deck until I was facing the bay and surveyed the land and water. First, I noticed a small figure standing in the grass, moving slowly toward the shoreline. His blue overalls stood out among the greens and browns of the field.

“Frank?” I yelled down, but I could feel the wind take my words before they were even near him. Maybe he’d grown tired of watching me climb the stairs, but why was he heading toward the water?

I turned my attention back to the sea and focused on what I’d come to see. From this angle, the sun seemed to pierce through the water instead of reflecting from it, giving a clear view of what was churning beneath the waves. It didn’t make sense. What I thought was going to be a shoal of fish, frightened by some predator and swarming to protect themselves was something else entirely. I leaned against the railing, squinting my eyes for a better view.

These were not fish.

A group of humanoid creatures swam back and forth in circles and figure eights, propelled by the large tailfin in place of what should have been their legs. Their upper bodies were bare, arms directing them through the water. Some held what appeared to be weapons, long metal rods with crystal balls affixed at one end. They circled around one another with the synchronization of a well-trained artistic swimming team, dodging and weaving seamlessly.

As I stared down, my mind trying to grasp for an answer to the sight I was seeing, one of the creatures—a female with long red hair trailing her head as she moved—met my eyes. My head began to buzz, my ears ringing with a noise that was not quite music, but melodic, nonetheless. Something about the creature caused my gut to turn, but as I continued to hold her gaze, the feeling morphed, more akin to butterflies in my stomach. Although they were nearly one hundred feet from shore, my vision seemed to magnify as I stared into the eyes of this woman. She was beautiful, her hair forming a silky halo around her head, her bare chest supple and seductive. In my head, the not-a-song continued to play, and my vision continued to draw closer to her.

“Come for a swim,” a voice said, from inside my head. The woman’s lips moved under the water in time with the words. She felt magnetic, and as my eyes stayed locked with hers, a warmth grew inside my body. Pleasure, passion, desire.

I climbed up onto the railing, my eyes locked on the woman’s, wanting nothing more than to be near her. To touch her.

“The water is warm.”

I dove.