The thing in the water, not too far away, was bathed in the cool glowing light of the moon for the briefest of seconds, captured by his mind’s eye. Teeth like razors shone blue in the night, beady yellow eyes like a snake seemed to stare straight through to his soul, hands with claws that looked sharp as blades were poised, ready to grasp him as flew toward the water.
All of this he saw in a matter of two seconds as his body passed through the hole in the wood of the pier amid a steady stream of bullets and plummeted toward the water a few feet away. His scream of horror was cut off instantly as he met the beast that was waiting for him. A creature from the very depths of hell, or so it seemed to Eddie’s drugged brain. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God…were Eddie’s last thoughts as his head passed through the enormous mouth and razor-sharp teeth clamped down on his neck.
An eerie scream, one borne of terror and panic, pierced the otherwise quiet night. That horrific sound succeeded in bringing both Manny and Berto to an immediate stop just before it managed to fade into the wind blowing over the river. The two men looked at each other in utter confusion. Manny could feel the hairs on the nape of his neck standing on end. That sound, that dreadful sound, had not been a normal scream of fear. It had been horrible, long and desperate, a sound of cold and stark fright. A scream of someone who had just seen something come leaping out of his nightmares. Not the sound that a thug would make while being chased by other thugs. At least, not a sound that Manny Blanco thought a bastard like Eddie Perdido would ever make. Damn, it sounded like nothing he had ever heard.
Manny looked over at Berto and shrugged. “Did you hit him?”
“No,” Berto said and looked forward again. A strange and muffled sound could be heard coming from the water below. A churning sound, a munching sound, a sound like something big was…was…eating?
“What the fuck is that, Berto?” Manny asked and the other man merely shook his head. They began to walk forward in unison, trying to make out the sounds of something they did not recognize through the normal sounds of the night; the dark water of the Hudson lapping with a definite rhythm against the pylons of the pier below, the sound of the cold wind howling through the air and the muffled hints of other movement around them on the pier. The sounds of distant traffic were coming from the streets of Hoboken behind them as well as from across the river in New York City.
But this other sound. This was something different. This was something monstrous, something that continued to make Manny Blanco’s hair stand on end. A sound that instilled fear. A sound that meant death out here in the cold dead of moonlit night on this old wooden pier jutting out into the Hudson River.
“I don’t like this, Berto,” Manny said and stopped a few feet away from the hole in the pier. Both men could see the water shining below from the moonlight overhead. Both men could also see the large looming shadow within that hole, something unfamiliar that was moving around down there. In the water. Just a few feet away.
“Where’s Perdido?” Manny asked and Berto just shook his head again, from side to side. “I don’t see him either, Jefe. Let’s get the hell out of here and call it a night.”
“We have to have proof for Emilio, Manny,” Berto said and began digging around for the cell phone buried deep in a pocket of his thick jacket. “We go back without that proof, Emilio acts like we didn’t do anything tonight.”
“I know, I know, but dammit, Berto,” Manny said. “This shit I don’t like. What the fuck is that down there?”
“I have no Goddamn clue, Manny,” Berto said and finally got his hands on the phone, pulling it out with cold stiff fingers. “But I’m going to see if I can get a picture of that pato’s body down there. That should be enough for Emilio.”
“Go ahead, Berto,” Manny said and took a step back. “Be my guest but I’m not getting close to that fucking hole.”
Berto nodded once and took a careful step closer to the hole in the pier. The munching sounds or whatever the hell they were continued to emanate from the murky depths below. Manny watched Berto take one more step, two…just feet from the hole now. Berto’s frozen fingers tried to get the flashlight function on his shitty old phone to turn on but the thing was always freezing up on him. Suddenly, Berto stopped moving and Manny could see the shock on his partner’s face as Berto peered into the hole in the pier, his gun hanging limply in one hand and the phone, with flashlight still not working, being gripped tightly in the other.
Through yellow eyes, it saw another standing above on the wooden platform. The stink of rotting wood and raw water filled its nostrils with pleasant memories. This is good, it thought and continued feasting on the wondrous blood and bones of the thing that had come through the hole above. Very good, more food…
It shuffled a bit closer to the hole, could see the one above peering down through small and limited eyes. Not fit for prey, it thought in an ancient brain as cold water lapped roughly against its torso and blood trickled deliciously from its mouth, but food not to be missed.
It glanced quickly about at the othersin the water with it before finding the one above again with its eyes. Stark and bright in the dim light coming from the white orb above, the one on the rotted wood was coming closer, ever closer to the hole…another for me before the others feast…
Then the light hit its eyes and a wave of pain bit into its brain. Reactions were all that it had left to protect itself from this assault. Forgetting about the remains of the kill in its hands, it leapt from the water, grabbing the rotted wood edging the hole with scaly clawed hands and heaved itself upward.
Manny Blanco couldn’t help himself as his legs propelled him a few steps forward, ever closer toward the hole. The look, that terror-stricken look on the face of his partner spurred him on. Curiosity was getting the best of him and he hated himself for it. RUN! His mind screamed at him but still his legs brought him closer. He peered over the edge of the hole and down into the water, where the eyes of Berto Conde were transfixed. As his eyes met the thing that lay in the water mere feet below where the two of them stood, Manny didn’t know if the screams that tore through the night were coming from him, Berto or that hideous thing positioned just below them in the river. It all seemed to coincide with the flashlight function on the phone in Berto’s hands suddenly coming alive, the bright white light cutting through the inky darkness of the hole and capturing the nightmare standing just feet away in the shallow water.
He finally gave in to the instinct to run but felt rough hands on his jacket sleeve pulling him back. Trying to waive off the interference, Manny stumbled and went down to one knee.
“Fuck this, Berto!” Manny screamed and tried to regain his footing. Through another smaller hole in the pier, Manny could see more movement, more teeth, more yellow eyes peering upward from the water. “Jesus Christ, there’re more of them!” he screamed.
Berto pushed him then, down to the pier, and tried to run past him as Manny felt something strong grab on to his ankle. He looked over his shoulder from his position lying on the wood and felt his heart stop beating in his chest. Ice flowed through his veins and he felt his bladder loose itself into the moist cold timbers of the pier.
The teeth were wrapped around his ankle, sinking slowly into the flesh. His foot could not be seen in the great gaping mouth of the creature before him. Manny screamed and managed to trip up Berto before he could fully get past him in his desperate run toward the streets of Hoboken. Berto went down hard and Manny heard the breath escape his lungs.
“Don’t you fucking leave me, Berto!” Manny screamed as Conde struggled to his feet. “Help me, you fucking bastard!”
There were others now, pulling themselves up out of the water and on to the pier. Gray scaly things with silver claws resembling razors where their hands should be. Their eyes were piercing, glowing yellow in the subdued light of the moon. How many, Manny couldn’t be sure. The teeth, oh my God, those teeth…
The pain that crashed into his brain when the thing chomped down on his knee overrode t
he previous numbness that had filled his entire being mere moments ago. Manny screamed again, screamed into the night over the Hudson River for as long as he could before his throat gave out.
More of them had joined the feast now. His mind separated from his body as he felt more teeth on his arms, teeth biting into his ribs, more on the other leg. He managed to catch a glimpse of Berto as he dwindled in the distance, running for the edge of the pier and for safety. The cell phone that his partner had been holding rested innocently against a loose board now, about ten feet away, pointing its light at him and these things that were eating him alive.
Manny Blanco said his last prayers as he felt hot fetid breath on his neck and, somehow through his terror, managed to turn his head to face the killer about to strike.
So many teeth, so many rows of teeth, how many teeth could one creature have? were his last thoughts as a huge mouth closed over his head, slashing through the thin tissues of the neck and throat and snapping the vertebrae with an audible crack.
Berto Conde ran, kept on running, so close to the edge of the pier now. Freedom and blessed life were only a few feet away. He tried to drown out the sounds of the feasting, those horrible sounds of Manny Blanco’s death, from his mind as he drove himself onward.
No matter how long he lived, Berto knew that the unspeakable horrors he had witnessed this night and the sounds of those teeth gnashing and biting as they fed on his former friend would haunt him to his grave. The tears poured freely from his eyes, freezing on his face in the cold winter night that he had all but forgotten in his mad sprint for River Street and the safety of the city. Would these things follow him into the streets? He wondered as he nearly tripped on a piece of trash littering the pier and worked to steady his gait.
He could hear growls now, and more tearing, as the beasts in back of him made dinner out of Manny Blanco’s now bloodless corpse. Those teeth, those fucking teeth! He swore to himself and turned for one second to try and catch a glimpse of his friend’s demise.
Too far, he was too far away now to see anything in the limited light of his phone’s flashlight beam. He could have sworn that they were dragging Manny’s body over to the hole, to the water where they had come from, these Godawful devil spawn creatures.
Just a few more feet now, just a few more feet, he thought as he swung his head around to once again face in the direction he was heading.
Berto Conde never saw the claws that raked across his face, tearing away his eyes and nose and most of his jaw before the teeth clamped down on his skull…
THE END
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