#Whale monster | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sydorax-squid · 5 months

Text

The Whale Skin

Rumors about the horror had circulated in my little English seaside town for centuries. Tales of the Hollow Whale had terrified children for as long as my town stood. Old men often claimed to have seen the thing late at night, pale and glistening in the moonlight, the bumpy surface writhing with undead life. But I have truly seen it, seen it clearly, and the memory is a stain upon my life.

As my grandpa told it, the Hollow Whale came from a depth so dark and unknown that God himself couldn’t see the bottom. There the whale waits and feeds on little squirming dark things, lazily drifting through the blackness until it hears a certain cry; the cry of dying men. Grandma would always shush him around this part and grandpa would always tell her to mind herself, that I needed to know what lies below the bows of boats. Grandpa then told me that the Hollow Whale sang. It sang to other whales, heard the sad stories of what men did to them, heard their mourning. The Hollow Whale hates mankind and pursues us, devouring all those unlucky enough to find themselves in the open ocean at night without a boat.

But, my grandpa would say, sometimes the Hollow Whale would swallow whole boats, especially whaling ships. He said that when people disappear in the ocean, they were damned for all eternity to be a part of the Whale. At this point my grandma would tell him to stop filling my mind with scary notions of undead beings because then I’d never go to sleep. I was a notoriously grumpy morning person.

Those were just old stories, things people passed around the fire on cool autumn nights. The Hollow Whale was nothing but legend, old superstitions that migrated to the modern era. That’s what I always told myself, at least. My fear of the Hollow Whale diminished as I got older and spent more time out on the open ocean. I come from a long line of fishermen, so I’ve always been intrigued by, drawn to the sea. However, my inclination was more towards the scientific, so I endeavored to broaden my horizons. I couldn’t afford college, so I instead took up work as a deckhand for an oceanic scientific expedition in an attempt to learn and forge some connections in the community. My first dozen or so excursions proved exceedingly fruitful so I had no reason to feel trepidation for this most recent venture.

My captain, James Dalton, had welcomed a group of marine biologists from Maryland aboard for a three-day run out into the open ocean to study monkfish. Nothing too difficult, except for appeasing the Americans’ fickle palates.

The first day and night were met with failure, but at the beginning of the second day, the biologists deployed a device that they claimed would call the monkfish to us. Captain Dalton agreed but insisted that they turn the device off by sundown. I don’t know if they simply ignored my captain’s request or if the device was left on by fateful accident, but I know the devastation this action incurred.

I awoke just before dawn; excited conversation and hurried footsteps lured my weary body up to the main deck. The biologists were crowded around the side of the boat that had housed the siren device, chattering and pointing excitedly at something in the water. I shuffled over to find a squirming black mass of thousands of devil-fish, many much larger than any I had ever seen of the species in question. Some were upside-down, their circular mouths and inward-facing teeth glinting in the new light. I saw the siren device on the floor, dripping wet and freshly retrieved. Captain Dalton had seen it, too, and his surly face went pale.

An argument erupted between the biologists, but my eyes were on the captain. He was staring off at the ocean, just below the horizon. I turned to follow his gaze and I found what had captured his attention. There was a pale silhouette in the water, approaching our boat silently, swiftly. The enormity of the creature was startling; larger than any submarine I’d ever seen (and I’d seen a few). My blood turned to icy slush as the monstrosity neared, it’s girth filling the ocean as far as my eyes could perceive. I could hear the biologists talking, sounding disappointed that the monkfish had dispersed but also intrigued by the strange texture now below the water’s surface.

I stepped to the side and leaned my body over the railing of the boat. I cannot say just what possessed me to do so. Beneath the gently lapping waves I could see a terrible mass slowly drifting beneath us. I could see what appeared to be a kind of rocky terrain, knotted roots of stone eroded by nature to form crude and jagged canyons and pits and hills. The more I stared at it, the more the formation looked like human bodies carved into a cliff-face. For some reason the artist had chosen to depict their subjects in excruciating pain, mouths agape in silent screams of endless agony. My stomach churned at the frightening realism of the images I was seeing.

Captain Dalton touched my shoulder, pulling me away from torturous images my mind was projecting on the thing beneath the water. He whispered to me, so low that I could barely hear, “No matter what, don’t scream.” I nodded.

Then it surfaced. The monstrosity that had been loitering beneath us suddenly lurched up, hitting the bottom of the boat so hard it threw everyone down onto the deck. We all scrambled to our feet, biologists and seamen alike, and we each dashed to the railings to see what had happened.

I so often wish that I hadn’t looked.

I stared directly into the pale, undead face of a man, a human man, who stared back at me, his mouth agape in a silent, eternal scream. My eyes darted away only to be met by another human face arranged in a similar way, but a part of this man’s face was slipping—no, merging into whatever was below it. I tried to look away again but found that the ocean was gone, replaced with a hellish orgy of bloated, half-dead bodies, all fused together at some point or another but still separate enough to writhe and squirm in ceaseless pain. The bodies looked almost layered, as if more horrifying and grotesque souls dwelled beyond what our eyes could see. Here and there an arm clutched frantically at the air, a leg kicked aimlessly. The bodies were everywhere, seemingly stretched to the distant horizon. And the faces, the faces of the people! They begged for help, pleaded for release, cursed our autonomy and mourned our fates. Suddenly homeless fish flopped around on the surface of the flesh desert, helpless to return to their world. I think my fellow humans realized that they were as helpless as those fish because they began screaming. I very nearly joined them but a glance at my captain steadied my shattered nerves.

The moment the screaming started, the horror began to move, tilting itself to roll our boat and our people into the ocean, into it’s thousands of grasping hands. I held onto the railing for dear life, managing to sustain one rotation of the boat, but not another. I fell into the writhing mass of undead flesh, felt hands grasping and teeth gnashing as I tumbled, finally landing in the sweet embrace of the cool brine.

The saltwater stung my eyes and I felt a huge motion in the water around me, something akin to a tempestuous wave, tossing me further along towards sickness. I managed to surface for a moment, long enough to snatch a single breath before I was overtaken by the sea.

I looked around below the waves and saw a fresh angle on the nightmare that had beset me this day. I believe it to have been the front of the creature, though I am merely guessing. It was enormous, but triangle-shaped with a broad, flat top and then two sides that tapered down to a rounded point. The four fins were smaller than I would have suspected, more reminiscent of the paw-like fins of a seal. They appeared to be more for the use of steering than for paddling. The front of the creature was also tapered to a rounded point, however, much to my everlasting horror, that tip cracked open and split like the mouth of a snake; the bottom jaw widening and spreading open as if it were a blanket being unfolded by two uncoordinated people. This made the maw of the beast so large that it obscured almost the rest of it’s unfathomably enormous body! I nearly fainted right then if it weren’t for Captain Dalton pulling me above the water. We felt the rush of movement in the ocean, the waves throwing us clean past the capsized boat. When I opened my eyes below water again, I saw the beast from behind, observing a long, cetacean tail that ended in a shape reminiscent of a Spanish fan.

The creature turned as if to look at us, but I saw no eyes. Not the kind eyes of a whale, not the inquisitive eyes of a dolphin, not even the haunting eyes of a hungry shark. It hovered there, alone in a universe of horrors. Captain Dalton and I risked surfacing, breathing as quietly as possible. When we were submerged once again by the tide, it was there, right in our faces; the beast had caused the tide! It was all I could do to not scream as a group of familiar American faces stared back at me, open-mouthed and agonized.

I will admit, my bravery faltered, my mind seized up and shut down at the overwhelming fear. I have no recollection of what happened after; my memory returns on the rocky shores of an English beach, a hundred miles away from where I last remembered being.

I’ve never been so happy to see foggy hills and jagged cliffs. Poor Captain Dalton, he was found a few weeks later in Italy. He had washed up around the same time as me, but he didn’t speak any Italian so it took awhile for people to realize what was wrong with him. I asked him what happened once he finally came home and he claimed not to remember, either. But something in his eyes suggested that he remembered a terrible, unspeakable truth. I’ll honor my Captain and let him take that truth to the grave.

As for me, I said nothing of the Hollow Whale to the police or anyone else, instead insisting it was a terrible and sudden storm that swallowed our boat and the American biologists. I doubt my own sanity and I fear the truth as I perceive it may land me in an asylum. I cannot remain by the water’s edge; I must move away from home to escape the memory, even though in my heart, I know I’ll never forget the deep, unknowable horror I have glimpsed out there on the open ocean, lurking and listening beyond our sight.

#short story #horror #eldritch #ocean #whale monster #body horror

1 note · View note