The House Upon the Sea

The next morning the fisherman awoke to the horror of a most terrible discovery. Three fishermen went to sleep in one room, but only two woke up in it. One was missing. The two sprang up in a frightful, desperate panic. They immediately looked out the window. The tide was out. It looked as if it never had come. The window did not cradle glass within its frame. Rather, it was clean and open, allowing anyone, or anything to come into the room from the water’s height, which was about a couple feet under the bottom frame. There were no signs of entry from what the two could see. Before long, they came upon what they were looking for. The bedroom door, which they closed, was now wide open. Leading from where their mate slept on out into the hallway were white streaks amidst pools of seawater. They led out of the room and down the hallway and stairs. From this discovery, the two came to a ghastly conclusion. Someone, or something had taken their mate. Frightened, the two followed the trails, determined to find their missing peer. From the hallway they led down the stairs and around the corner to where they stopped at an adjacent wall. The trail looked like it had disappeared into it. Puzzled, the two looked at each other and negotiated the possibilities of what this meant. In their examinations they came to the conclusion that there was something beyond the wall that stood before them. They knocked on the surrounding paneling and then on the wall in front of them. The sound from the wall they stood in front of echoed in a deep hollow moan. There was indeed something beyond it. The two pushed and the wall became a door, swinging open to confess its secret. There, before them, was the mouth of a cavern that descended into darkness.

The two proceeded inside. There the smell of sea was much more potent. In the little light left they saw that the strange trail of white continue down into the cavernous depths. They had to crouch. The soil they stepped upon was more like that of the flats. It was cold and wet and stuck to their feet like mud as it gave under their weight. The two continued forward. Now past the limits where light could go, they were forced to guide themselves along the tunnel before them by probing the surrounding walls. They had no lanterns for light or no matches to light their way. The house contained no such sources, either. Blindly, they continued forward, determined to find their missing mate. Time seemed to stand still as the two continued on for what felt like forever. Their absence of sight heightened their other senses, which served to guide them. The smell of sea was pungent and amongst the silence of the tunnel, their ears soon picked up an eerie sound. It was like that of water. It sounded like the water was oozing and bubbling from somewhere in the cavern, as if it was seeping out of something somewhere close by.

The sound came in steady, lengthy gasps. It wasn’t like that any of them had heard, as water did not produce such an uneven irregular sound. It almost sounded like it was breathing. The two stopped and listened. The sound got closer. Accompanying it was the progressively deafening sound of their hearts as they beat harder and faster with each one’s increasing fear. Now the pungent smell of sea thickened and the watery breathing was louder. It was getting closer. It felt as though it was right…

One of the two stretched his hand out and groped within the darkness. He probed and reached out to touch what they feared stood before them, hoping, praying it was all in their minds. But it wasn’t. In his effort to confirm this, he laid his hand on something wet and scaly. They both screamed and ran in what they thought was the other direction. In their escape they lost their balance on the uneven ground of the tunnel and fell forward, sliding down a steep descending stretch of path. They slid with increasing speed, clawing at the soil and walls around them to slow their speed. But it was to no avail. As their speed increased, their screams echoed ahead of them. Suddenly, there was a change in their environment. They no longer slid downwards with dizzying, frightful speed. They no longer had contact with the soil beneath them. They were airborne, falling with the same frightful speed in which they had been sliding. As if immediately following their fall, something cold and hard rushed up to greet them.

The two fishermen woke up cold and numb. Their bodies contorted in agony and their lungs struggled for air. They had regained consciousness. At least they thought they had. It was still as dark as before with but one exception. There was a light in the distance ahead. Their minds had considered this an illusion. However, as their vision cleared and focused in on the light, it did not disappear like it would if it was indeed such. There was also something closer, reflecting the light. It looked statuesque in its stance. It appeared as though it were an object of rare design, an antique that looked real. An effigy to their dreams and myths, it wore on its metallic scales the same light that came from the proceeding tunnel ahead. Even the eyes, wide and white, seemed so alive that they even…blinked. It was alive! It breathed and sucked air in through its gaping mouth. The flaps that were its gills opened and closed tightly. It was neither fish nor mammal. It was indisputable that this was the thing they had dreamt of that night they laid upon those rocks and had encountered in the tunnels not an hour before. In the long, twisted claws of its webbed fingers it held the torn and tattered remains of their mate’s jacket. He was almost certainly dead. This, too, was undisputable. They stared at the thing before them as it just stood there, watching and waiting. They were paralyzed with fear. Would they be next? What gruesome fate would they succumb to at the fangs and claws of this hideous creature?

In their anger and fright something within them snapped and they threw themselves towards it. The thing shrieked and disappeared down the tunnel in front of them. The two were caught off guard by how fast it shot down it. From its labored breathing it had given them the impression that it was vulnerable on land. But this clearly wasn’t the case. On land, it was just as agile and formidable as they were. And though this surprised them, they shot down the tunnel in pursuit.

The light got brighter as the two ventured forward. The sound of its breathing was close and the increasing light revealed more white streaks along the tunnel’s floor and walls. The smell of the sea had now grown sour. It smelled of something decaying. As they turned a corner they came upon bones. They most certainly belonged to marine animals. They appeared too small to be human. Many fragments, however, were unidentifiable and would be anyone’s guess as to what they belonged to. Some even appeared transparent, like the membrane of a jellyfish. Truly alien, like that which ate them, like that of which they now hunted. Among the types of bones surrounding the two was that which looked as though they were made of stone. They were broken and sharp at the ends. The two felt it was best that they arm themselves with a sufficient defense. They intended to kill this thing and harsh language alone would not suffice. The two picked through the fragments of bone before their feet and selected fitting weapons.

With broken, serrated bones in hand, the two were in their most primitive. They were masters of the hunt, pursuing a monster of a most savage nature. They were animals, relying on scent and sight through movement. They honed their instincts and refined them for survival in a prehistoric world where the chain of dominance, predator and prey, was reversed. They now struggled for existence in a world where fish ate man. And they did not want to know what the fish feared. For something to eat a fish of such a size would certainly be of a physiological magnitude that would render useless a piece of bone as an instrument of sufficient defense. However, they felt as though they held dominance here. The creature had retreated. It seemed scared and was definitely outnumbered.

The two could hear it in the distance and the smell it emanated served as a trail, leading them to wherever it went. The two turned another corner. Its breathing got louder, deeper. Its scent was thicker. They stood in that illuminated stretch of tunnel. As they reached the end where another corner appeared, shadows danced and moved among the light against the wall. Its shadow disappeared around the corner and the two pushed on to what they knew would be the final stretch. They intended to close in on it along the next stretch. But, as they turned the corner, their plans fell before them. They stood on the edge of a cliff. Beyond the perimeters of it, the tunnel opened up to a cavern of mammoth proportion. Below them was the landscape and city of strange triangular symmetry. They were inside the paintings that hung on the house’s walls. It was an exact likeness. An ancient city, immortalized by brush and paint, was standing there before them. However, they had but one minute to savor its illuminating and hypnotic presence before the terror of reality set in. For before they knew it they had discovered the blurred, painted mystery of horror concealed by the sea. The breathing was louder now. It sounded as though it were all around them. They looked at each other, knowing that they no longer held dominance in this primitive world that they had been thrown into.

It was a savage and cruel world and it had become too much for them to handle.

The luminous bastion before them now dimmed and receded into the darkness.

For it was in another plane, and not this one, that they had reached fame, fortune, and repute.

For, there was their home and salvation. There was their Chessa.

END