Chapter 28 Jill #2
Jill strained to see what was happening in the dark. She heard howls of terror. Brief and terrible shrieks of pain. She heard
desperate splashing.
And then, just as one of the swimmers got close to the bow, Jill saw the monster hovering directly beneath her.
She saw a woman’s face, distorted by a flattened nose and too-wide eyes. Saw a mouth filled with daggers. A flash of scales.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
Two arms, long and eel-like with hooked claws at each end, wrapped around the swimmer.
“HELP!” the girl keened. “HELP ME!”
Jill reached out a hand in a futile gesture. A sob rolled up her throat and tumbled into the night as Mrs. Smith’s arms tightened
around the girl and pulled her under the surface.
In the illumination of the hull lights, Jill saw the water cloud. She saw a severed arm float by, a cord of flesh flapping
out of the shoulder like a puppy’s tongue.
“Jill!”
Jill was lost in a fog of horror. Adrift in fear. She thought she heard her name, but the sound was swallowed by too many
other sounds. Even when a hand rattled her shoulder, she didn’t move. She couldn’t look away from the water.
“Where is she?” she murmured.
Next to her, Una said “swan” again.
Suddenly, Charles shook Jill’s shoulder. “What are you guys doing? We have to go down and wait for the lifeboat! They’re going
to drop people on the beach and come back for us.”
Jill pointed down at the arm. It bobbed on the surface for several seconds before it was struck by a serpentine shape. Suddenly,
a swarm of eels was biting the arm, tearing and nibbling.
“It’s her, Charles! It’s Mrs. Smith.”
“Where? I don’t see her!”
“She’s killing all the kids! If we go in the water, she’ll get us, too!”
Charles shook his head. “This can’t be happening. What are we going to do?”
Jill put her hands on Una’s cheeks and turned her head away from the water. “Una. We have to get on a lifeboat. We have to go now!”
Una’s eyes were haunted. She tried to look at the water again, but Jill wouldn’t let her. “I must stop her.”
Charles tugged on Una’s arm. Together, he and Jill finally got her to move.
As soon as they led her away from the bow, Una seemed to come back to herself. Wrenching her wrist out of Jill’s grasp, she
scooped a rectangular plastic bag off the floor and told the kids to hurry.
Bent over, as if the smoke and falling ash were pressing down on them, they hurried to the lifeboat station. The wind shifted
again, and the air around that part of the boat almost cleared.
As they paused to suck in a breath of clean air, Jill scanned the dark horizon, searching for the lifeboat’s bow lights.
“Listen,” Una said, putting a hand on Jill’s and Charles’s shoulders. “When the boat comes back, you two need to get on it. I’m not going with you. I need to wait. For her.”
She unzipped the plastic bag and removed a pair of steel poles. One of the poles looked like the tip of a spear. Jill saw
the lettering on the bag and realized what Una planned to do. Her eyes flooded with tears.
“No, Una! A harpoon won’t work. You’ll never get close enough. You have to come with us!” Jill started crying hard. “Please! I won’t go without you.”
“You must,” Una said, already heading for the stairs leading to the lower deck.
The guests who hadn’t jumped overboard or found a space in the lifeboat were milling around the aft section, sticking close
to the rails. Everyone wore a life jacket. Jill didn’t see any little kids in the crowd. Most of the kids her age were gone,
too.
Unable to find her parents or her brother, Jill felt a fresh stab of fear. Were they in the lifeboat? Were they in the water?
Out there, with her?
Are they still alive?
The lights of the houses along the shore were a world away. There, behind walls of wood and glass, people were watching TV
or reading books. Some were asleep. To them, the darkness was a comfort. It shrouded them in silence, invited them to rest.
To Jill and the other partygoers, the dark night with its eyelash of a moon provided cover for the demon in the water.
The stars turned their shining faces away from the burning boat. Smoke blotted out the impotent moon. The air tasted of poison.
The wind threw ash like confetti.
“The lifeboat’s coming back!” a man shouted.
Jill heard the panicked voice of a woman. “Where are the kids? I can’t see the kids!”
People surged to the starboard side, desperate to secure a seat on the lifeboat.
A crew member tried to instill order. “Stop pushing! Form a line! Women and children first!”
Jill looked around for J.J., or Heather, or Aaron, or anyone she knew. Every face was turned toward the shore. Every head
was veiled in soot. Jill couldn’t tell who was who. She pictured the chewed arm and the heads bobbing in the water like a
pod of seals. She pictured the monster pulling them under, one by one, and biting them. Heather, Aaron, Lisa, Christine, Billy,
Jason, Kim, Brian, Michael.
Bile surged up Jill’s throat, and she rushed over to the rail to vomit. As she heaved, tears escaped from the corners of her
eyes. The wind snatched them away before they could fall into the harbor.
When Jill stopped retching and could stand upright again, Una took the towel-wrapped knife out of her purse. She gave the
towel to Jill and pressed her grandmother’s knife into Charles’s hand.
“Mrs. Smith is killing the children. She killed my sister. I must stop her.”
The lifeboat glided to the yacht’s side. “Rescue boats are on the way!” the crew member shouted up to the guests. “ETA is
five minutes! Stay calm!”
“We don’t have five minutes!” a man cried. “This thing’s gonna blow!”
As if on cue, a bang rocked the boat from bow to stern and a dragon puff of fire erupted from the bridge. People screamed
and began leaping into the lifeboat. Some were too far away and ended up in the water. Others fell on top of other passengers.
Jill heard bones crack. She heard the smack of skulls.
Overloaded with wriggling, shrieking bodies, the pilot cast off.
Guests wailed as the lifeboat disappeared into the darkness.
Suddenly, the captain was there. He lowered the bandanna he’d tied around his nose and mouth and bellowed, “Everyone in the water now! Swim for the shore. The rescue boats will find you!”
The remaining guests began to jump overboard, but Jill couldn’t move.
A crew member frantically gestured for the three of them to get off the boat. “There’s gas in the bilge! Go! Go!”
Charles held out a hand to help Una over the rail. “We have to get off. Even the crew’s jumping!”
Refusing to let go of the harpoon, Una stepped off the side of the boat. Charles tucked her knife into his waistband and motioned
for Jill to jump.
“Wait!” she cried, spying a boat hook rolling across the deck. She grabbed it and, together, she and Charles leapt off the
boat.
The moment the salt water stung her eyes and her dress ballooned around her waist, Jill expected tentacles to wrap around
her chest. She tensed, waiting for a hundred barbed wire teeth to tear into her meaty thighs.
She was afraid to swim. Afraid of any movement that might attract Mrs. Smith.
When gargled screams echoed from the darkness off to her left, Jill’s body kicked into survival mode. She pivoted her right
hip toward the sky and began to do a sidestroke.
“Swim like this,” she called quietly to Una. “You won’t splash.”
Unburdened by a harpoon or boat hook, Charles opted for breaststroke. It wasn’t long before he pulled ahead.
The lights on the shore seemed impossibly small. Behind Jill, a curtain of black smoke fell over the yacht.
We’ll never make it, she thought, her tears falling into the uncaring water.
Somewhere in front of Charles, a woman squealed in terror. A heartbeat passed and then she cried out again, but the sound was abruptly cut off by a violent splash.
Suddenly, Jill heard engines. A searchlight wandered across the water to her right.
“HERE!” she shouted, pausing to tread water and wave. “We’re here!”
A light landed on her face. Held there. Grew closer. It was as bright as the summer sun. It was a beacon of hope.
Please, God, Jill prayed. Please save us. Please get us out of the water.
An inflatable dinghy approached with agonizing slowness. Something brushed against Jill’s back. She shivered at its touch.
Eels.
She shoved the boat hook toward it, but it was already gone.
The dinghy drew up next to Una. A man said, “Give me your hand!”
Jill didn’t wait for an invitation. She swam over and clasped the lifeline.
“I got you,” said the man.
Jill tossed her weapon in and let the man pull her into the dinghy. As soon as she regained her balance, she pointed at the
black water between their rubber boat and the shore. “My friend is there!”
Before the man could respond, the gas tanks on the yacht exploded.
Jill’s back was turned, so she didn’t see the blooming fireball, but she felt a blast of heat and the force of the man’s hand,
pushing down.
She lay flat, holding Una’s hand, as the echoes of the explosion roared over the water. Waves pitched the dinghy violently from side to side. Jill clung to Una with one hand and to a lifeline with the other. Fresh ashes stuck to their wet skin and clothes.
The man was the first to sit up. Hearing him stir, Jill and Una did the same. They waited for him to restart the motor, to
speed them to safety, but he just sat there, staring into the water.
“What the fuck?”
Jill didn’t want to look, but she did.
Mrs. Smith was right under their fragile little boat. She floated inches below the rubber hull, her arms fanning lazily in
the current. Her scales gave off an iridescent sheen. Her eyes were half closed. Her tongue protruded from the depths of her
cavernous mouth like a piece of seaweed.
She didn’t attack. She didn’t do anything. She seemed to be in a daze.
“What the fuck?” the man repeated, raising an orange flare gun into the air.
“Nooooo!” Jill shouted, but it was too late.
He fired the gun, sending a red flare high into the sky.
Mrs. Smith’s eyes snapped open. Two tentacles shot out of the water and wound around the man’s neck.
Una roared and buried her harpoon into a tentacle. Jill picked up her hook and stabbed the same tentacle. They stabbed again
and again while the man clawed at the scaly flesh cutting off his oxygen.
Then, there was a sickening crunch and the man’s head popped off his neck like a champagne cork. It dropped into the water,
a grotesque buoy bobbing in the current.
Mrs. Smith rose out of the water. First came her head, then her serpentine neck, and finally, her calloused torso. She opened
her mouth wide, revealing the bits of skin and flesh between her teeth.
“You took my sister,” Una said.
A series of low clicking noises resonated from Mrs. Smith’s throat. It sounded almost like laughter.
“They will hunt you,” Una went on. Her voice was irrationally calm. “Like they hunt whales or sharks. There is no place for
you to hide. This is not your world anymore.”
Tentacles torpedoed through the water. There was no time to warn Una. No time to do anything but stab at the ones that slipped
over the side. One curled around Jill’s waist. The second roped around her ankle.
The boat hook made holes in Mrs. Smith’s tentacles, but she didn’t let go. Jill stretched out her left arm and grabbed the
flare gun box. There were two flares left.
“Una! Give me the gun!”
Una tossed the gun to Jill seconds before a third tentacle immobilized her arm. She kept hacking away at the one attached
to her leg as Jill loaded the flare gun. As the tentacles tightened and pain coursed through her body, Jill aimed at Mrs.
Smith’s mouth and fired.
The flare buried itself in Mrs. Smith’s right eye. She threw her head back and released a high-pitched keening. Her tentacles
went slack and slipped back into the water.
“Hit her again!” Una yelled.
Jill reloaded the gun and fired. This time, the flare struck the water and was instantly extinguished.
The light from the burning yacht bounced off Mrs. Smith’s scales as she sank. Blood streamed out of the charred hole in her
face, and for a moment, Jill dared to hope she was dead.
And then, she heard claws tearing the dinghy.
More searchlights swept over the water. More boats were approaching.
“HELP!” Jill screamed as the middle of the dinghy began to sag.
Una crooked her finger at Mrs. Smith, daring her to come closer.
“Una, no!”
“Give me that hook.”
Jill passed it to her as the water lapped their calves.
“Tell my boys that I love them.” Una flashed a smile at Jill. “Maybe one day, you’ll write about me. Because you can be anything
you want, Jill Scott. Anything at all.”
And then, Mrs. Smith’s head broke the surface. She lunged at Una, her jaw stretching impossibly wide, her teeth flashing white.
Balancing on her knees as the dinghy crumpled under her, Una crossed the harpoon and boat hook over her chest.
When Mrs. Smith bit down, the points of both weapons went straight through the roof of her mouth and into her brain.
Her powerful body went limp, and she fell back into the water, taking Una with her as she sank.
Jill saw Una’s silver hair spread out like the spikes of a star. A sequin on her dress gave a final wink.
After that, there was nothing but darkness.