Dark Seas, Dark Skies Page #3

I wrote this story because I enjoy horror and history, and wanted to combine the two genres in an eerie setting which I am familiar with.

• History
• Horror
• Fiction

								

Nikolai didn’t hesitate. Every nerve and fiber in his body begged him not to do so, for what force of nature, what kind of Japanese soldier could hurl a man fifty feet?
But he had no choice. He had a duty to his ship; to his crew. Switching the searchlight on, he swiveled it towards the bridge and opened the shutter.
If Nikolai had been facing the other direction, he would have seen the thrill of anticipation drain from the faces of the marines, could have witnessed the paling of their complexions, the widening of their eyes as they looked upon the sight before them.
Captain Vlasenko, his abdomen torn open, lay impaled upon the handles of the ship’s wheel. His spilled entrails twitched and steamed in the frigid rain. 
The first officer’s limp corpse was draped over the railing, his face an indistinguishable mess of muscle and gristle and bone. He was still moving. 
Minus his head, the Navigator’s pulverized body was in the process of being washed overboard just as Nikolai centered his searchlight on the bridge. 
The entire deck was awash in blood; it dripped from the sides in grisly waterfalls and long, red fingers of it reached across the planks of the deck below. But this was not this aspect of the scene nor the bodies of the crew members that drove a pang of sheer, icy terror deep into Nikolai’s chest, that sent gooseflesh rising on his skin from head to toe. That was accounted for by the uninvited guest. The fifth figure.
It had returned to its perch upon the railing.
Whatever it was.
The figure, once shadowy and obscured, was now revealed in all its glory.
It was tall, thin, and pale, much paler than any man Nikolai had ever seen. The thing’s skin was laced with veins of the deepest black that pulsated and throbbed beneath its paper-thin skin. Its limbs were far too long and knobby at the joints, and its ribs looked ready to burst from the confines of its emaciated flesh. The creature’s fingers — clutching the First Officer’s severed arm — were long, more akin the legs of a spider than those Nikolai possessed, with dagger-like claws dripping with blood. Blood. It was smeared up to the creature’s elbows. But it was its face that assured Nikolai of its identity being totally inhuman.
Its face was long. Too long. There was no nose, only a flat expanse of pale flash. Its eyes were tiny, pale at its skin, and set deep into its skull within blackened sockets. And its mouth . . . the sight of it sickened Nikolai. It had no jaw. No teeth. From the place where its nose should have been to be to its breastbone hung a fleshy, gaping void. The lower half of its sunken face swayed with the wind as it stared at them, that horrible mouth forever agape in a long, thin oval of blackness. 
On and on it stared, crouching atop the rail. It cocked its head at the men before it, their expressions aghast, the warship’s deck completely silent save for the howl of the wind. Nobody dared move a muscle. 
Then, the thing lunged.
Nikolai’s searchlight went dead, plunging the deck into darkness, and pandemonium ensued. The marines began firing off their guns in a mad cacophony of battle-cries and rifle blasts. Gripping Boris’s saber in both white-knuckled hands, Nikolai vaulted over the railing and took his place amongst the marines as the creature loped towards them on all fours across the deck, illuminated in the split-second flashes of the rifle blasts. It seemed impervious to bullets, drawing nearer and nearer . . .
Suddenly, one of the marines to Nikolai’s left let out a scream, and he looked just in time to see the man seized by his ankle, slammed to the deck, and dragged through the lowest gap in the railing into the sea. There was no time to help him. In a flash, he was gone. 
The creature was upon them as soon as Nikolai had seen the marine pulled to a watery grave. It made no sound. Nothing. It attacked the soldiers one after the other, its movements too fast for a human, its claws ripping and tearing at their flash before it flung them overboard to its waiting brethren or against the funnel where a pile of bodies now lay alongside the first kill of the night. Nikolai looked down; saw the man’s cap drift past his feet in a river of blood as Marines shoved past him in a desperate vie to escape.
Boris grabbed his arm and shook him. “Nik! Come on!”
Nikolai, his trance shattered, sprinted after Boris as he threw open the deck hatch and jumped through. After chancing a glance behind himself and spotting three more creatures crouched upon a heap of mangled corpses that had once been Royal Marines, Nikolai leapt in after him. He landed awkwardly in the passageway below, and, scrambling to his feet, pounded after Boris down the corridor, the rolling of the vessel throwing him from wall to wall as if trying to trip him, to condemn him to a the sickening fate that had befallen so many of his shipmates. Adrenaline surged through his veins. This was survival. He felt the part of a rabbit pursued by a fox.
“In here!” Boris shouted, nearly tearing a steel door off its hinges. “Quick!”
He held it open as Nikolai ducked and vanished into the chamber on its other side, then followed and locked it behind him. The two men were enveloped in darkness; silence. All that could be heard was the dull throb of the engines.
Then footsteps, approaching them from down the passage. Nikolai could hear Boris hold his breath. The footfalls were too soft to be human, and the faint click of claw against steel gave away their origin. 
The footsteps stopped — right on the other side of the door. There was a silence. Then, the scratching began. A terrible, grating sound of the thing’s razor-sharp nails grinding against the painted metal of the door. The creature scratched and scratched. 
Nikolai knew they had to do something. Had to find some way out of the room. With the sounds of the scraping claws thick in his ears, he shuffled along the wall and felt his way until his fingers came to a light switch. He flicked it on. Suddenly, the cramped room was bathed in the sickly yellow light of a single swaying light fixture. Boris looked at him, eyes wide with terror. Gone was the soldier’s tough facade. His knuckles, too, were white.	
“Turn it off!” he hissed, teeth gritted. Nikolai could now see the sleeve of his uniform was soaked in blood where one of the creatures’ claws had found their mark. It dripped down steadily onto the floorboards below. His face looked pale; ghostly. 
“It already knows we’re in here,” Nikolai reasoned, pacing to the other side of the room. “We’ve got to get out some other way. I’ll bet we can, too — this is the captain’s quarters.” Although a sparse room, it was luxurious compared to every other chamber in the ship. Instead of a bunk, there was a proper bed. An intricately-carved sea chest lay beside it, along with a writing table, a porthole, and various other simple furnishings. But as soon as Nikolai laid his eyes on the writing desk, and on the ship’s log resting atop it, he knew that he had found what he was looking for. The door was secure — escape would have to wait. A sudden curiosity had overcome him. A morbid curiosity.

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes