2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Beatrice
I gaped at the wriggling fish in Noah’s grasp, unable to take my eyes off it, even as I opened my sketchbook and started scribbling.
This thing was a beast, so large Noah—who wasn’t a small man—had to hoist it up with both hands.
The tendons and muscles in his arms strained against his inked flesh while he kept the thing in the air so I could quickly sketch its strange features. “Bea. This isn’t normal. This…”
He trailed off, but he didn’t have to finish. I was thinking it too.
This is what we’re looking for.
The specimen’s gasping mouth was filled with long, needle-like teeth that reminded me of an angler more than anything. It was shaped more like a sunfish, and had translucent flesh, offering a look at its black pulsating guts.
While the rest of the crab pot was filled with ordinary catch, this fish suffered an otherworldly mutation. Meaning one thing alone:
We were close.
“Our calculations weren’t so far off, after all,” Noah muttered, his voice rife with contemplation as we examined our wondrous find. “Do you know what this means, Bea?”
My eyes lifted from the fish to lock with Noah’s. The hope banked in those twin pools of amber had my heart racing.
I nodded. “The sunken city. It’s real.”
Of course, we had hoped it was real. Otherwise, this entire expedition was for nothing. Still, this was the first tangible evidence in hand
My field of vision swam with emotion. Noah had believed in me, when no one else had.
I wanted to kiss him.
Maybe I would have finally found the courage, if it wasn’t for a flash of gold in the mutation’s stomach. My heart hammered as I stole closer across the deck to get a better look. “Did you see that? There’s something in there…”
“Cut it out.”
“But it’s a live specimen…”
“We’ll have to settle for a dead one if we want to find out what it’s swallowed,” Noah muttered as he lowered the fish onto the deck and pulled out his knife. “Hold it still while I cut. Careful of its teeth.”
“Jesus. This thing is freaky.”
Most people would have been unsettled by the mutated creature.
For me, a marine biologist specializing in the research of new species, this was better than Christmas.
“It seems to have traits of an osteichthyes, yet it has no jaw, like an agnatha.” I spoke a mile a minute, and as Noah worked, he listened while I gushed. He always did.
I winced at the first cut. The fish flopped, and if my ears weren’t deceiving me, hissed.
“Fuck! Get back!”
Heeding Noah’s warning, I leaped back as viscous fluid burst from the fish and onto the desk with a wet splat. My sketchbook dropped from my hand in shock, as I watched the boiling hot fish guts eat through the wooden deck like acid.
"Ph'nglui mgiw'nafh Cthulhu R'Lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Noah rasped beneath his breath.
My shipmate was more versed on Eldritch lore than I, but I knew the phrase well enough, and it translated roughly to "In his house at R'Lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
He said it from time to time, usually with more wistful frustration. We’d been searching for the sunken city for years, the allegedly fictional place that was first brought to light in H.P. Lovecraft’s work The Call of Cthulhu.
While the author’s works were mostly fictitious—and often problematic—mentions of the sunken city appeared in other texts throughout history. It was said to be the original temple of Cthulhu, an ocean creature thought to be the high priest of the seas. Or to put it stupidly, the king of all fish.
It didn’t take long for my excitement to override my shock from the acidic fish innards. I carefully stepped around the hole in our deck, which provided a view of our galley, and crouched beside Noah, who was very carefully pulling out the foreign object.
“What if it’s some kind of eldritch artifact? That could be why the fish is so mutated—oh!”
With a sickening plorp, a large bowl-like object dislodged from the fish carcass. Taking a holding bucket filled with ocean water, I poured it over the thing to clean it before gingerly picking it up.
Noah drew closer to me, and his salty musk wrapped around me like a warm blanket. “What is it? An octopus?”
It had tentacles. But it wasn’t organic. The object had been crafted from stone, but it didn’t appear to be carved. There were impressions, like it had been molded by fingers, yet there were no fingerprints.
I turned it over in my hands, marvelling at its craftsmanship. It was terrifying, with many eyes and tentacles. “No, it’s… a mask.”