I know I saw her.
Glenn Finnan stood on the rocky ledge staring out at the endless pool of inky black, searching the waves. The waters of the Atlantic churned with a violent force as gales, cold and reeking of salt whipped the man's yellow rain slicker. Rain pelted his face, echoing loudly off the hood of his poncho. The early morning light was barely visible through dark clouds gathering overhead.
A storm is coming.
He sniffed the air, letting the cold fill his lungs. The young man had too much on his mind to be only twenty-four. His imagination had never been allowed to flourish under the heavy weight of caring for a younger sibling while his mother was working a dead-end job and father was away working on a fishing boat. His childhood was cut short by responsibility when he was fourteen and his father had died, leaving himself, his mother, and his little sister.
Disappeared. He corrected himself. They never found Dad's body, and they don't know what happened to him.
Glenn went on to get his master's degree in marine science. He graduated top of his class and got a job in the area. He got a high-paying job so his mother could keep the house he had grown up in and could help put his baby sister through school. They had struggled for years, but now, he was content with his life.
Until he saw her.
Until he saw her pale white skin shining in the summer sun.
Until he saw her black hair pooling around her, spreading out like a blanket.
Until he saw the glistening purple of the fins on her arms.
That was four months ago, and the warmth of summer had turned to the rain and sleet of autumn and was now becoming the biting cold of winter. He had told his mother and sister about the woman he saw. His mother, Bonnie, had laughed and brushed her feeble hands through his curly copper hair while his sister just smiled and asked him to tell her more.
Moire Finnan, the youngest child, was a spirited, kind soul. Eyes like the calm sea lit up whenever her brother, thirteen years her senior, said anything. She clung to the tales of fairies and elves he had not experienced after their father died. The freckles on young Moire's cheeks would vanish into a blush when she read stories of knights and damsels in distress. Glenn loved his little sister and would do anything for her, so he glanced over his shoulder, looked her in the eyes and said, “I saw a mermaid today.”
She beamed with excitement as their mother set breakfast out on the table. The older woman looked at her son with a nervous smile. Bonnie had never approved of tall tales; she said it made people “flighty,” but Donald had always indulged, though. Devoted father that he was, he would read bedtime stories to his children any chance he got. Glenn noticed his mother's look and grinned back, the same smile his father had once worn, and Bonnie couldn't help but sigh and relent.
“A real mermaid?” Moire's cheeks burned red with excitement, and the fire behind her eyes was dazzling.
“That's right. A real mermaid.”
“What did she look like?”
“Well, she was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as mom but with the darkest hair I've ever seen. And it gleamed with purples and greens as it floated around her.” He waved his hands in representation of the weightless way the mermaid's hair had snaked around her like a halo.
“All right, Glenn, that's enough. You'll make the lass late for school,” Bonnie interrupted.
Moire grabbed up her schoolbooks, kissed her brother and mom on the cheek, and rushed out the door. It slammed behind her with a gust of wind and rain.
There was a long silence between the older members of the Finnan clan. Bonnie sipped her coffee, cupping the mug with two shaking hands. Her eyes cast down, staring into the black brew. Her thumbs caressed the sides of the cup anxiously as the words formed in her mind.
“Just come out and say it,” Glenn said with a soft resignation.
Bonnie glanced up from her cup, clearly lost in thought. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you, Mom. When you want to say something that's uncomfortable, you stare into your coffee until someone drags it out of you.”
She stared into her son's face. He was so much like his father. “You're right. You do know me and I can't stand that sometimes. Donald was the same way. Always talking about the mermaids and sea monsters. He never really grew up.” She trailed off and stared out the window at the gray skies of the coming storm.
“Then just say it. Tell me you don't like her hearing such wild stories so we can get over it and on with our lives. You've told me the same thing my whole life.” He rose from his seat to grab the coffee pot. Topping off her cup, he put the pot down once more. “Let her have a childhood, Mom. For me.” He squeezed her hand lightly.
“Just before he left, do you know what you father said?”
“You know I don't. You never talked about it when I was growing up, and I only asked once.”
She looked through him with her eyes like moss, the same eyes he now stared at her with. It was in that moment Glenn realized just how tired she looked. He noticed how the years had worn creases in her fair skin, running between freckles and past the corners of her mouth. His mother had never looked her age: her black hair had taken on a few gray strands and the outer edges of her eyes were marked with fine lines. But now, she looked like she had aged twenty years over a few moments.
She drew a long, shuddering breath before focusing her gaze on him. “He told me it would be his last trip. He was retiring but first he 'had to know for sure.' He never would tell me exactly what he needed to know, but I heard him in his sleep, whispering about sea monsters and other nonsense. I wanted to shake him awake and tell him not to go. But I didn't and I regret it every day. I wanted you kids to know the flighty, loving man your father was.”
He squeezed her hand. “Mom, you've got me and Moire. You can't blame yourself for letting him go. I remember Dad. He was too stubborn not to go chasing the sea's lure.”
“I love you, Glenn. You've always been a dreamer, or you would've been had I not been so heavy handed and let you use that bright imagination of yours. I'm so sorry.” She grabbed his face, kissing him on both cheeks before he smiled and stood. He planted a small kiss on her forehead and whispered that he loved her as well.
He took his keys from the hook by the door, and with a small glance behind him, he exited into the brisk air. He left her sitting in the kitchen at the little wooden table, tears forming in her eyes.
Storm or not, Glenn's research wouldn't rest. He had currents to map, climate changes to calculate, and organisms to survey. The coming storm only spurred his need to catalogue the bay's many ins and outs. The recent discovery of Volutopsius scotiae had driven him headlong into the sea's embrace to study the reclusive mollusks.
His work would begin that morning. As he drove his beat-up old van down the winding roads that carried him to the docks, his thoughts settled heavily on the conversation he had just had. He knew he would have to apologize to his mother but he couldn't yet. He was angry. He was angry that she was so stern with a young girl and angry that he never got the chance to act like a child and angry that he was angry. His mother only had her children's best interests at heart, but he couldn't stop the tide of frustration he felt.
Parking, he stepped out of his rust bucket. Bonnie had begged him to get a new car, arguing he could easily afford it, but he wouldn't have it. He and Rusty had been through too much together. He laughed as the wind whipped him in the face with his auburn hair. He pushed it back from his forehead, staring out into the gray. It was hard to tell where ocean met sky. The conditions were bad for diving, but he couldn't risk losing the colony of mollusks or seeing how this storm would affect them.
He breathed deep, holding it for a few seconds before exhaling slowly. In the boot of the car, he had his scuba gear. He would need to get suited up and on the water soon, and he still needed to check his equipment. Only one other boat sat tied to the weathered boards: a small, motor-less dinghy used by a few of the old men in town so they could get away from their wive
s. Glenn had never seen it leave the docks, and one of the old men had told him once, “Our wives know we're fishing and can't be reached. We don't have to be out at sea to fish and be left alone.” The two men had shared a laugh before going in their own directions of home.
Once he was suited up and the boat was loaded, he struck out into the slowly brightening sky. The mollusks were first discovered near the Rockall plateau but had recently migrated toward the mainland. It made his job easier and more difficult. He steered his motorboat west, toward where the ring of buoys bobbed. They signified where his dive would begin and gave him a place to hitch his boat. They had been set up for weeks in anticipation and marked where the snails last were in their trek. Perhaps the animals knew that the storm was on its way.
He rode for miles until the sun was beating down on him from overhead. Overcast clouds dulled its intensity, but he could still feel it on his wetsuit. It was uncomfortable, but the end was in sight; the final buoy had finally reared over the horizon. He slowed as he approached, careful to disturb the waters only as much as necessary. It was deep here, but nothing would stop the sound of his boat tearing through the choppy water.
He hitched the boat, donned his mask, hooked up his tanks, and plopped into the water with a soft splash. The water rushed onto his face, cooling it from the sun's weak rays. He made his way slowly down into the ever-darkening abyss. The bottom was about five hundred feet down, only half the world-record distance, but the pressure had already started to build around him.
The colorful marine life always took his breath away. Schools of silver and yellow haddock darted past him. He spun to watch them go by before continuing his trek downward. After several minutes, the ocean floor came into view, littered with stones and dotted with creatures scurrying across the sandy bottom. Coldwater coral in a magnitude of colors drew him near. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.
Volutopsius scotiae was an unremarkable creature with its brownish-pink spiral shell and murky brown body. What amazed the experienced diver was the thousands of them that moved silently along the bottom in a single, unified direction. Puzzled, he drew in closer, careful not to spook the mollusks. Over rocks and under coral reefs, they crawled toward the east.
Heading to the coast? But why? His thoughts were interrupted by a dim light emanating from behind him. It reflected off the mild iridescence of the snails' shells. Confusion settled over him, causing him to turn toward the source.
Mere feet from him floated the mermaid.
He blinked, hard and slow. The light she emitted was a dim glow that seeped through her smooth skin. As he stared, he took in every detail. Her dark hair haloed around her like an oil spill, shimmering and swaying with the almost imperceptible current. Every dark strand held more radiance, transforming from pink to blue to purple to green and back again in the blink of an eye.
Her eyes were solid black, ringed by long lashes and larger than they should be. They seemed to belong to a larger creature. Her nose was flat with three small slits on either side of a mound of pale flesh and sat above dark, full lips that curved upward in more of a grimace than a smile. It all gave her an otherworldly beauty that unsettled him deep down and simultaneously drew him closer.
Upon closer inspection, her skin was not just incredibly fair like he had once believed but was bleached white and mottled with pink and gray. It shone like abalone in the soft glow it emitted and trailed down over naked skin to her abdomen. She was still nude, and now that her long hair floated away from her body, he realized even more that she was not human. She had long, folded gills adorning her collarbone. Her breasts, though supple, held no defining characteristics, and the skin of her stomach was smooth, lacking dimples of any kind.
Of course, she wouldn't have human anatomy, she's not human.
He continued to stare, his eyes moving ever downward. Her pelvis slowly turned from smooth skin to tightly-woven scales. The very center, where her legs would part, was a stormy gray fading slowly out to a glittering black on the sides. Less dramatically, he saw that bisecting her entire body, from her head to her fins, was a color gradient. It radiated outward from her center line to darken on the edges—and he assumed, the back.
Like a shark's camouflage. Makes as much sense as any of this.
He mentally chuckled. She extended a slender arm and hand to beckon him with long, webbed fingers. When he moved toward her, she backed far away from him with a powerful flick of her tail. He pursued and she moved farther from him, backing away and luring him to her.
Glenn checked his oxygen levels. He wouldn't need a new tank for a couple of hours and his rebreather was in good shape. The thought of never seeing the mysterious creature again perturbed him. After a moment of internal debate, he decided to follow her.
He swam after her. Down into the deep dark they went, with him following only feet behind her, unable to reach out and touch her. When he would fall too far behind, she would slow her pace to lightly drift and spin through the dark carried by invisible tethers.
Her faint bioluminescence never left him in the inky black. They had gone far in the twenty or so minutes he had trailed behind her, but now she slowed, allowing him to almost touch her. His hands grasped at the water, desperate to caress her skin. Fish swam toward them, passing his head with a small gurgle of bubbles as their tales frantically carried them in the direction of the mollusks. He had no time to question it; he was entranced by her fluid, graceful dance through the dark.
Then she stopped.
And his hand finally made contact with her forearm. Her skin was taut and hard, colder than the water that flushed against his face. She turned to him with a smile full of jagged teeth that stretched across her entire face, splitting it in half to a disgustingly inhuman visage. He tried to recoil with a small push but found that he couldn't move. Her hand was wrapped around his wrist in an iron grip.
She began to glow brighter, her intensity growing to light the area around him.
It was blinding after so long in the near pitch-black surroundings. He squinted his eyes against the radiance before him but opened them wide when he saw the monster behind her. Huge and black, it stared with eyes the size of car tires. Its wide, flat mouth was partially illuminated, stretching five feet in either direction.
Teeth like great swords parted to reveal a maw that could swallow four men whole. Fear darkened his vision when he saw the tentacle-like protrusion coming from the base of the glowing woman's skull and attaching to the monstrosity behind her.
A lure.
Confession
Taylor Lexus Brown