Chapter 8
Jack
I spin around to see Nerida is on her knees, one hand clutching the bathroom doorframe, the other scrabbling at her throat. The gray T-shirt I gave her is soaked through with sweat, but her skin…
God, her skin.
It looks like a dried riverbed. The beautiful, iridescent sheen is gone, replaced by a dull, ashy gray that seems to be flaking away before my eyes.
“Nerida!”
I’m at her side in a second, sliding my arms under her. She is burning up. Not the fever-heat of a human infection, but a dry, radiating heat, like a stone left out in the desert sun.
“Water,” she rasps, her voice a terrifying sound of grinding gravel. “Need… pressure. Salt.”
I scoop her up. She feels lighter than she did last night. It’s as if the moisture evaporating from her body is taking her substance with it. I kick the bathroom door open wider and practically throw her into the tub.
The water is still there from earlier, lukewarm and stagnant. I turn the tap on full blast, desperate to add more, to cover her completely. She sinks beneath the surface, her hair fanning out like dying kelp.
But as the water rises over her chest, she doesn’t relax.
She thrashes. “No,” she chokes out, surfacing with a splash that sends water sloshing onto the tiles.
“Too… fresh. It burns. It’s… empty.” She coughs, and a spray of something dark hits the white porcelain. Blood. But it’s thick, almost black.
“I need… the ocean,” she whispers, her eyes rolling back in her head. The bioluminescent lights on her skin are flickering like dying fluorescent tubes, stuttering, dimming, and failing.
I look out the window. The eye is still overhead, that eerie circle of blue, but the edges are fraying. The wall of the storm is creeping back.
“I can’t get you to the ocean,” I tell her, the panic rising in my throat. “The surge is too high. It’s full of sewage, trees, and power lines. If I put you in that, the debris will kill you before the salt saves you.”
She grips the edge of the tub, her fingernails scratching into the enamel. A crack appears on her shoulder, a literal fissure in her skin, revealing raw, red flesh beneath.
“Then… I die,” she whispers.
“No,” I snap. “No, you don’t.”
I rake a hand through my hair, my mind racing. Salt. She needs salt. Not a shaker of table salt, but the heavy stuff. The real stuff.
I think of the pantry. I have a bag of rock salt, maybe a kilo. It won’t be enough, though. It won’t even make a dent in a tub this size. I need concentration, something industrial.
Then, I think of the bait shop.
Old Mrs. Gable’s place near the marina. It is a weather-beaten shack that smells of brine and old secrets. She sells bait, tackle, and ice, but also other things—‘special blends’ for the serious deep-sea charters. Salts imported from places that don’t appear on standard shipping manifests.
It’s a long shot. A stupid shot. But it’s the only shot.
“I have to go,” I say, grabbing a towel and rolling it up, placing it behind her head.
Nerida’s eyes snap open. The predator is gone. The ancient, terrifying creature that had hunted me in my own living room is gone. All that’s left is something small and scared.
“Don’t,” she wheezes, reaching a trembling hand toward me. Her fingers are stiff, the webbing dry and papery. “Don’t leave me.”
The siren voice, that harmonic resonance that can vibrate in my bones is absent. She sounds like a frightened woman.
I take her hand. It’s like holding a handful of dry leaves.
“I’m coming back,” I promise, squeezing gently, afraid I might crush her. “I’m going to get you what you need. Just… stay under. Conserve your energy. Do not die on me, Nerida. Do you hear me? That is an order!”
She looks at me and gives a tiny, jerky nod and sinks back into the water.
I don’t let myself look back.
If I look back, I won’t leave.
I grab my keys from the hook by the door and sprint down the stairs. The air outside is heavy, pressing down with a barometric weight that makes my ears pop. The silence of the eye is still holding, but it feels fragile, like a sheet of glass about to shatter.
My ute is parked under the carport, miraculously untouched by the tree that took out the shed. I jump in, the suspension groaning. The engine turns over with a cough and a roar, a familiar, mechanical comfort in a world gone wrong.
I throw it into reverse and gun it, mud spraying from the tires as I veer out of the driveway.
The drive is a nightmare.
The road to the marina is a gauntlet of destruction. The asphalt is slick with a layer of brown slime. Power lines are down everywhere, black snakes hissing in the puddles. I mount the curb twice to get around fallen gum trees, their massive root balls torn from the earth like bad teeth.
At the intersection of Main and Wharf, the water is deep. I hesitate. If I stall here, it’s over.
“Come on, old girl,” I mutter, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles ache.
I floor it. The ute hits the water with a massive splash, a wave of brown sludge washing over the windshield. The engine sputters, coughs, and for one heart-stopping second, I think I am dead. Then the tires find traction on the submerged road, and I claw my way out to the other side.
I don’t breathe until I’m on higher ground.
The marina is a graveyard. Boats are piled up on the concrete like discarded toys. Masts are snapped, hulls crushed. The smell is overpowering, a mix of diesel, rotting fish, and the copper tang of ozone.
The bait shop is still standing, though it leans heavily to the left. The windows are boarded up with plywood, spray-painted with the words ‘LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT.’
I skid to a halt in front of it, the ute fishtailing in the mud. I don’t bother killing the engine. I jump out and hammer on the door.
“Mrs. Gable!” I shout. “Mrs. Gable, it’s Jack! Jack Ford!”
Silence.
I pound again, harder this time. “I know you’re in there! Open up!”
I hear the scrape of a deadbolt, then the rattle of a chain. A small slat in the door slides open, and a set of eyes peers out.
They aren’t normal eyes. I’ve always known Mrs. Gable was odd. She is rumored to be ninety years old yet moves with the fluidity of a teenager, but I’ve never looked this closely at her before. Her irises are a milky, clouded white, yet I know she can see me perfectly.
“Jack Ford,” she croaks. Her voice sounds like wet leather. “You should be on high ground, boy. The back of the storm is coming. It’s going to be worse than the front.”
“I need salt,” I say, breathless. “The heavy stuff. The crystals you sell to the deep trawlers.”
She stares at me. Then, she sniffs the air.
Her nose wrinkles. She inhales deeply, her nostrils flaring.
“You smell all musky,” she murmurs. “And blood and…” she pauses, her milky eyes widening slightly. “Reef Mer.”
I freeze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to a hybrid, Jack,” she hisses, though there’s no malice in it, only a strange, detached curiosity. “You’ve got one in your tub, don’t you? A stray. Blown in by the cyclone.”
I don’t have time for this. “She’s dying. She’s drying out. The fresh water is killing her.”
Mrs. Gable stares at me for a long, agonizing second. Then, the slat slams shut.
“Wait!” I yell, raising my fist to pound again.
But the door groans and swings inward.
Mrs. Gable stands there in the gloom of the shop. She is tiny, hunched over, wearing a yellow fisherman’s slicker that is three sizes too big. In her hand, she holds a heavy glass jar. It’s filled with crystals the size of my thumb, dark blue and jagged.
“Deep salt,” she says, holding it out. “Harvested from the Mariana Trench. Highly concentrated. It mimics the pressure and salinity of the crushing depths.”
I reach for it, but she pulls it back.
“Listen to me,” she says, her voice dropping to a serious, vibrating low. “This isn’t bath salts. This is potent. It will burn her. It will hurt like hell, but it will stabilize her cellular structure. It will stop the desiccation.”
“Give it to me,” I demand.
She shoves the jar into my chest. “Half the jar. No more, or you’ll pickle her alive.”
“Thank you,” I gasp, clutching the jar like it is the Holy Grail.
“Go,” she commands, pointing a gnarled finger toward the door. “The eye is closing. Run, Jack Ford, before the sky falls.”
I run.
I throw myself back into the ute, tossing the jar onto the passenger seat. As I slam the door, the wind hits.
It didn’t build up this time.
It just… arrived.
A gust slams into the side of the ute, rocking it on its suspension. Debris skitters across the hood—shingles, branches, and a plastic lawn chair. The eerie blue circle above is gone, swallowed by a bruising purple darkness that rolls in from the East like a tsunami of cloud.
I spin the ute around, tires screaming.
The drive back is a blur of adrenaline and terror. The wind is already howling, tearing at the trees that had survived the first round. Rain begins to fall, not in drops, but in sheets, hammering the cab’s roof so loud I can’t hear the engine.
I drive like a madman. I run a stop sign that’s bent at a forty-five-degree angle. I swerve around a dumpster, sliding down the middle of the road.
Don’t die, I pray, gripping the wheel. Just hold on. I’m coming.
I think of her in the tub. The way she had looked at me. ‘Don’t leave me.’
I spent years hating the water, the chaos of it, and the way it took things without asking. And now, here I am, racing through a hurricane to save a creature made of the very thing I feared.
I skid into my driveway just as the sky opens up completely. The rain is torrential, a vertical river. The wind screams, tearing a gutter loose from the roof with a screech of metal.
I grab the jar of deep salt and kick the door open. The wind nearly rips it off its hinges. I am soaked to the bone in three steps.
I take the stairs two at a time, slipping on the wet wood, scraping my shin, scrambling up on hands and knees. I don’t feel the pain. Then I burst through the front door, slamming it shut against the gale outside. The house is dark, shaking under the storm’s assault.
“Nerida!” I shout, my voice echoing in the gloom.
Silence.
I run to the bathroom.
She’s there, still in the tub, but she isn’t moving. Her head is lolled back against the tiles, her eyes closed. The water is still, the surface unbroken. Her skin is a terrifying, flat gray, the cracks on her shoulder now gaping wounds that ooze a thick, dark fluid into the bathwater.
“No,” I breathe out. “No, no, no.”
The lid sticks, my wet hands slipping against the glass before it finally gives way. Concentrated brine hits the back of my throat, so sharp it makes my eyes water.
"Nerida." I grip her shoulder. Her skin is like river stone in winter.
I tip the jar, sending dark blue crystals tumbling into the stagnant bathwater. They hit the porcelain with a heavy, hollow clink.
"Wake up," I whisper, plunging my hands in to stir the dissolving salt. "Come on, dammit. Wake up."
The crystals dissolve instantly, turning the bathwater a deep, indigo blue. The smell fills the small room, the scent of the deepest, darkest ocean.
I stare at her, holding my breath, bracing for a reaction. Bracing for the burn. The scream.