Song of Scylla

The first fish seems innocuous enough. Dante calls for me from the shore, his slight figure silhouetted against the sunrise. Fish often wash up on the beach, their briny corpses lying in the sun until Dante or I can be bothered to do away with them. I stumble outside, still half-asleep, to see him pointing at a small, dark lump at his feet.

“Marlow,” he calls. “Look at this.”

Dante nudges it with the side of his foot, and from under the sand three black tendrils emerge. I lean closer, squinting in the weak light. It appears that they have burst forth from the creature’s back, tearing the scales asunder.

“Is it some sort of illness?” I ask him. “A parasite?”

“I don’t know,” Dante says, and prods at the fish again. “It’s nothing I’ve seen before. I’ll have to ask the other men.”

“Throw it back to the sea,” I tell him. “There’s nothing we can do for it.”

He picks the fish up and tosses it. As it sinks below the waves I hear a keening, almost like the call of a gull. It’s carried by the wind, tickling my ears as it tousles my hair. I turn to Dante, a half-formed question on my lips, but he is already gone.

I spend the day alone, as I always do. The fishing boats are a hard occupation, taking Dante away from dawn until dusk, but there are few other options. Someday we will leave, he tells me. Away from the nearby village, filled with dead gray houses and bitter people, away from the rocky shore. There are sunnier places, somewhere. It’s a nice thought. It keeps me company while I stitch by the window, hour after hour, and bake loaf after loaf of bread. I imagine fields and flowers, the sun on my face. Sometimes I imagine Dante with me; sometimes not.

At dusk I am standing in the kitchen, dinner in the oven, when I hear it again. A gull’s cry, but different, stranger, as if the bird were singing underwater. I walk to the window and pull back the curtain. The pink sky reflects across the darkening water, a shimmering mirage, but there’s nothing else to see. It came again, the cry, but louder this time, as though it were right outside the window. I shiver, every hair on my neck standing straight. I’m startled by the sound of the door opening behind me. The sound cuts off suddenly at the exact same moment. Dante wipes his boots on the mat. He plants a kiss on my cheek. Through the window I see a light in the distance, a red glow. Or perhaps it is only the dying sun.

The next morning Dante and I walk outside together at dawn and look upon

Brittany Grady

the corpses of hundreds of fish upon the beach, each with their own shiny black appendages.

Dante begins to lock the door at night. He hears it now too, the call, but it sounds more like a whistle now. Every night, like the sound of a passing train, it grows louder, then softer, then louder again, until it fades away just before dawn. Dante doesn’t like to show his fear but I can sense it in him, the growing unease with each passing morning, the mounting pile of dead fish outside. I want to comfort him, but his unease is earned, and it would only worry him to know I don’t share in it.

I unlock the back door, once, while Dante is sleeping. I hear the rush of waves outside, the tide only feet from our house. There is the whistle, too, louder than normal. It sounds like a voice. Or perhaps it is a voice underneath it, a slow drawl not unlike the sound of the sea. It sounds like my name. Marlow. Like the way Dante whispers it in his sleep. Marlow. He only calls for me when caught in a nightmare, his fingers twitching against the quilt. Marlow. It’s a cry for comfort. I stand in the doorway and watch the waves. Eventually dawn arrives, and I must crawl back to bed before Dante awakes. I close the door behind me and the call fades away, the last tone melancholy, as if it’s sad to see me go.

Dante still leaves for the boats every morning. There is too much work to do and he cannot abandon it to fear.

He rubs at his red eyes, dragging his fingers across the patchy stubble on his cheeks. I wonder how much he slept last night. I wonder if he heard me leave the bed. “I’ll try to be back before dusk,” he tells me. “There’s no need to worry. It does not come out in the daylight.” I’m not sure who he is trying to reassure.

I lie on the floor all day. I have chores to do, bread to bake, socks to mend, but all I can do is listen. I listen for the whistle, for the voice, for my name in the wind. But I only hear ordinary sounds, the call of seagulls, familiar and comforting, and the sounds of the tide. I close my eyes and urge the day to pass. I am impatient, but I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

Dante returns before sundown, and we sit down to dinner. It’s only cheese and day-old bread, a few odds and ends from the pantry. He is upset with me, I know, but his mind is elsewhere, too distracted to even mention his displeasure. I clean up the table while Dante settles by the fire. When the last of the light disappears, we wait in silence, neither moving nor breathing. Then it begins. It is so quiet at first that I think it is only the ringing in my ears. A whistle.

Dante sighs. He stands and pours himself a glass of whiskey. He drinks more than he used to.

“It has to stop eventually,” he says. “I cannot abide by this, night after night.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” I tell him. “Even if you were less afraid.”

He will not meet my eyes. Instead, he grabs the bottle of whiskey and storms away to bed. I sit in the kitchen with my eyes closed, listening. The whistle has changed, the pitch rising along with the wind. Now it is almost a scream.

Dante wakes me in the morning, his hand on the back of my neck. “This is the first time I’ve known you to sleepwalk.”

I am on the floor, curled up under the window, one hand gripping the edge of the sill. I look up at him, his face pale and drawn.

I stand and pull back the curtain. On the glass there are the faint outlines of eight small circles lined up in two rows, and there is something thick and transparent smeared underneath. My gaze drifts beyond the marks to the beach. All of the fish are gone—all of the hundreds of black tentacled bodies. All that is left is an indentation, a long drag mark leading from the edge of the water to just below our window.

Dante reaches around me and pulls the curtain closed.

“Do you want me to stay today?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him. “Go. It only comes at night.”

“For now.” He wants me to ask him to stay, to beg, to be afraid. I turn and button his shirt for him.

“Go, Dante. I don’t need you.”

He leaves without saying goodbye.

Once he is gone, I pull a chair to the window and settle down to watch. I trace the marks on the window, over and over, as though I am hypnotized. I close my eyes and lean my head against the cool glass. Then I whistle.

It is not a song. Just one long, unchanging note. I stop, out of breath, and then I hear it. An answering whistle, quiet but clear.

I open my eyes. Through my eyelashes I see movement. Something slices across the surface of the water, breaking through the dapples of afternoon sun. It’s far from shore but moving closer. I whistle again; again, it answers. Something dark flicks upwards, as if in greeting. I place my hand on the glass in reply, my fingers splayed, and then it slides back under the water and disappears.

The screaming starts before Dante comes home. He rushes in, cheeks red, hair disheveled, and drops to his knees beside me, still seated next to the window.

“Close the curtains,” he tells me. “I told you, didn’t I? It’s not even dark yet.”

“You don’t need to be afraid,” I assure him, but he closes the curtain anyway.

“We should leave, Marlow.”

I shake my head. How could I, knowing what I know?

“What do you mean, no? We don’t know what that is.”

“Exactly.” I smooth back his hair. “Why would you assume it means us harm?”

“It only screams. All those fish on the beach, the way they looked. How could that be anything but menacing?”

“Perhaps they were an offering.”

He gapes at me, silent. He doesn’t understand, just as I feared. I take his hand.

“We need to open the door tonight, Dante. As an invitation.”

“Enough.” He slams his hand against the wall. “This is foolishness.”

I do not reply. Instead, I stand and walk into the kitchen, Dante following at my heels. He watches me as I walk to the back door, the one that leads to the beach, and it is only when my hand is on the handle that he speaks.

“Marlow, stop.” He holds out a hand, and I can see that it shakes. “Don’t go out there.”

“Dante...”

“If you step out there, I will bolt the door behind you. I will not allow you in, no matter what.” His lips tremble. “I mean it. Stay.”

We stand there in silence, the only sound the wailing outside, and I know that it is not the time. I cannot leave him, not yet, at least. I take a step back, and Dante sighs.

“I haven’t made dinner,” I tell him.

“That’s alright,” he says. “Let’s just sit down for a while.”

He sits at the table, his hands clasped before him as if in prayer.

“Let me get you a drink,” I say, and before he can answer I am at the cabinet, the whiskey already in my hand. I pour it into a glass and hand it to him. He drinks it quickly and hands the empty glass to me for more.

By the time it is completely dark the bottle is nearly gone. Dante slumps at the table, rolling the glass on its side—up and down, up and down—the sound of glass against wood mingling nicely with the cries outside.

“Tell me something, Marlow.” He sits up, his eyes half-closed. “Why aren’t you frightened of it? I’d feel so much better if you were.”

I do not know what to tell him. How can I explain the yearning I feel when I hear it, like a mother reacting to her baby’s cries? He would not understand it. The song isn’t sung for him.

He stands up and walks to me, unsteady as a newborn doe.

“Do you want me to leave?” Dante asks me. He leans close, his breath hot. “Or do you want to leave me?”

I pour him another glass, the last of the whiskey drippling out in thick, wet drops.

“I do not.”

He swallows it, wincing as it burns his throat.

“But I shall, if I have to.”

He stares at me. There are tears in his unfocused eyes.

“Sleep, Dante.”

He takes a step towards me but stumbles, his knees hitting the floor. I gently push against his shoulder and he falls to his back. He opens his mouth once, twice, gaping like a fish, searching for words. But the whiskey does its trick.

Dante is heavy. My arms already shake by the time I reach the door and throw it open to the cool night air. I hold him under the arms as I struggle across the pebbles, my feet slipping on the wet rocks, but still, he doesn’t wake.

I bring him nearly to the water’s edge, where the sand is wet and heavy, and finally I release him. I wait. I don’t know what I am waiting for.

There is movement just below the surface. A tentacle writhes slowly out of the water and reaches forward like a thin, black finger. It probes the sand, searching, until it brushes against Dante’s leg. It investigates the still body like a hound, prodding it from every angle, and then suddenly retreats.

I see light in the water. At first, I think it is only the reflection of the moon but it’s too big, too red, glowing like hot coals. It is all fire, but I don’t sense anger or cunning. It wants. It desires. It is lonely, down where it swells in the dark. And it is watching me.

“Take him,” I whisper. “But be gentle. He means so much to me.”

The eye shifts, moving closer, and then disappears.

The black appendage springs up, wraps around his legs, and drags him forward. Dante’s eyes flutter open as the cold water splashes over him, and he opens his mouth wide in a yawning, silent scream until the water rushes in and chokes him as he disappears.

At first I think it has gone. I step forward, sending ripples across the glassy surface of the water, and it returns. I flinch when it touches me, but the touch is gentle, like a caress. I stand still as it wraps loosely around one ankle, then the other. The eye returns, now a dusky orange. A wail sounds across the water, first in anguish, then in celebration, a keening song. It does not call my name anymore. It doesn’t need to.

The tendrils pull gently, and I allow them to guide me into deeper water, my feet shuffling through rocky sand. As the water hits my waist, my feet lift from the sea bed. I am cradled, held tightly by my legs, arms, back, even my head, as I float away from shore. I taste salt as I open my mouth to laugh, as I am carried out, out, out to sea.