By the Light of His Lantern

by Abe Moss

  “Not me.”

  The man laughed. “I am only giving you a hard time, my friend.” He sighed, stretched his massive limbs until the boat creaked and whined in protest. “You are not a murderer. Just a coward.”

  Lewis turned his head away. It was all he could manage.

  “A coward. A thief. A liar…” His voice rolled deep in the back of his throat. “That old fool believed you. You gave him a moment of false hope, and in exchange he gave you this boat. Pretty good deal for you, huh?” He laughed some more, until his laughter grew to an overjoyed, shrieking pitch. “I was there, watching in the fire. Old fool. Sad fool…” He squeezed Lewis’s shoulder amicably. “How many others like him are there, I wonder. How many others have you dragged into your misery? I think you have a knack for that.”

  “Please…”

  “I have a suspicion, Lewis. Do you want to hear it? Are you still with me?” He snapped his fingers next to Lewis’s face, until Lewis drearily opened his eyes. “I suspect this talent of yours goes way back. Beyond this place. After all, it is people like you who form the backbone of this world. Did you know that? It is no coincidence the same kinds of people wash up here time and time again. You are far from being the only coward, thief, liar… to roam these lands. Funny. And they say it is the world that is cursed…”

  Lewis felt on the brink of screaming his throat bloody. “Stop talking,” he begged. “Stop talking to me…”

  “I think it is you, Lewis. You, and others like you, who made this world. Not just one curse, but hundreds of them, thousands. A sea of them. People. Walking, breathing curses. Each one of you brings a little darkness with you, and leaves the world whence you were banished a little brighter.”

  He patted Lewis on the side of his smoked face.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “I would like to see how much brighter.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Something rocked the boat, struck it from the underside. The fiery-eyed man said nothing at first. Lewis wondered if they ran into something, or if they were near land. It happened again, harder from one side, and jostled the boat into a slow spin. The bird croaked irritably, nervously. The man sat up.

  “Feels as though we have a guest…” he said.

  Soft splashes. Droplets fell on Lewis’s face. First a couple, and then a stream of them. He opened his eyes, thought it might be raining. The bird took flight in a hurry. Something whispered along the inside of the boat, slithered against the wood, and Lewis squirmed as something slimy and wet pressed against his side. He yelped. Quick as a striking snake, it fastened itself around his arm and dragged him toward the boat’s edge. Metal on metal, Lewis listened to what sounded like a knife or sword being pulled from its sheath. The man growled. The tentacle pulling Lewis by the arm fell limp, slipped away, splashed into the water, and Lewis used all his strength to roll back toward the center. The boat rocked this way, that way, tipped and turned as more appendages worked their way up its sides. The man gave a warrior’s cry, the boat trembled under his maneuvering feet. The bird surrounded them with its screeching. The cool ocean water which had previously dripped over the boat was replaced by hot tentacle blood across Lewis’s torso.

  The wet tip of another tentacle slimed its way up Lewis’s body. He shuddered, shimmied his body to the other side of the boat as it followed. It climbed over him, slipped around his arm, curled up out of his armpit, trailed vine-like to his throat. It twisted around his neck, formed a knot, and flexed around him like a python. He reached with his crumbling arms and wrapped his prickly fingers around its girth. He squeezed. He pulled. It squeezed. It pulled. His face swelled hot and tight, ready to pop like the cap on a tube of toothpaste.

  In the darkness overhead, the spark of fire. Lewis’s eyes, nearly shut in his struggle to breathe, widened at the sight. The man hovered, legs dangled, boots shaking. His head was a torch, a flame so intense it lit the boat like a flare. Sea-creature shadows moved around them like smooth branches. One of these tendrils had hold of the man much like Lewis. Its melted flesh fell in ribbons.

  Something hard jangled into the boat, landed against Lewis’s leg.

  Darkness, different than the darkness around them, constricted his vision. He wondered momentarily if dying might be better at this point. The only downside was he wouldn’t have access to a boat, and who knew how much longer he’d remain alive in the living world…

  He searched the floor beside him until he grabbed hold of the object which had fallen. The man’s blade. A long dagger. He gripped the handle as tight as he could which didn’t feel tight at all. His muscles were weak from head to toe. Any movement he made felt slow and dream-like. He lifted the blade, quivering in his grip, and labored to bring it over himself toward the tentacle at his throat. He pierced it, soft as blubber, dug it in and felt the warm goo run down his hand, his shoulder. He pierced it again, and again, dragged it side to side in a clumsy effort. He pierced it once more, felt the tip of the blade against his own flesh through the other side of the tentacle. With all his strength, bone and muscle alike crying out, he ripped it upward, leaving the tentacle half-severed. He pulled it off from around himself. He gasped for air. The fire above him grew brighter. Hot melted blubber dripped across his already-burned legs. Meanwhile more and more tentacles were rising out of the sea. They crept over the edges of the boat, a dozen of them. He clutched the dagger close to his chest.

  All at once the boat snapped into multiple, splintering pieces and he was briefly airborne. Glistening, monstrous appendages coiled through the air. Then the water swallowed him icy cold. He thrashed his arms, his crispy flesh peeling from his body in excruciating strips. He’d bear the pain if it meant staying afloat. He broke the surface, fought to stay there. He sank repeatedly, inhaled water. Slippery limbs brushed him, threatening to grab hold. He propelled himself upward, face touching the cool ocean surface, coughed up the ocean he ingested, sucked in air like a fish. Maybe if he tried to float on his back—

  Golden light burst overhead, a firework of ember and coat tatters. In the flash of the explosion Lewis saw numerous tentacles blown apart, and their stringy debris rained down around him. Streamers of fire and smoke and blubber and burned fabric fanned the sky. Pieces of the explosion sizzled onto the water. The smoky stench teased his nostrils. He spun, glowing in his panic and confusion, searching the water for danger while the lasting light dimmed around him. In the ensuing dark, after the firelit remains soaked themselves out, only a few embers hung suspended in the air, spiraling slowly down like hot snow.

  Lewis lay floating on his back, doing all he could to keep himself there, paddling his arms and legs gently as he listened to the sounds of things around him pitter-pattering the water, sinking below. It was quiet again.

  He thought again about the possibility of dying, about washing up to another chance at finding a different boat. How long that would take, he had no idea. It might be faster to build his own, but even that was unlikely. By the time he was able to do either of those he’d probably be dead in the real world. He didn’t know how much time he had. And if he did try to go back, would the fire-eyed man be after him again? Did the fire-eyed man wash up, restart like the cursed? Or had he even—

  A hand seized Lewis around the ankle. He screamed, his throat filled with water, dragged down below, raking his hands through the wet at nothing. Another hand, around his other leg. He peered into the smothering ocean and found those eyes staring up at him, tiny little blisters of fire. The man pulled him down, climbed Lewis’s naked body with his pointed fingers. Lewis reached for the surface, pulled it toward him, and he sank deeper instead, his lungs hungering painfully for air. A hand on his shoulder. He looked into the face of his attacker. Bubbles floated past the glowing eyes, his mouth open in a grin as deep as the currents under their feet. Hand thrown over the man’s shoulder, Lewis pulled himself closer.

  The fire wavered. Dimmed. His cruel gaze faltered, drifted down between them. When he looked again in Lewis’s eyes, the fire of
his own was veiled by a dark, ascending cloud of blood. He spoke and his words were nothing but whale songs. Lewis drifted away, then pulled himself back, driving the dagger again into the man’s vulnerable stomach. He tore the blade up, gutting him. A thick plume of blood separated them in its eclipse. Shortly after, the embers in his eyes reduced to nothing. The ocean was black. Lewis lifted his feet and kicked off the man’s body toward the surface.

  When he felt the air of the night on his body, he turned and floated on his back as best he could. He was so thin, his legs sank beneath him again and again. It was a tiring exercise. He was already sore head to toe. If he was forced to fight again he would surely drown. But with his arms spread, dagger still clenched tight, if he remained still enough, he stayed fairly buoyant, at least. It was a dangerous rest.

  With no boat and no star in the sky to follow, he let the waters take him where they would.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  If not for the monsters lurking even in the ocean, he thought he might like to spend the rest of his eternity floating like he was should his escape route not pan out. He bobbed over each wave, blinked his eyes in a forever dreamy wakefulness. He was lost but at the same time found, as he might not have anywhere else to be and this was as good a place as any. His choices in this world, his fight, meant very little. When the suffering never ended, it didn’t make any sense to struggle against it. So, let it wash over him instead, he thought.

  He would never be clean.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A nudge on the shoulder. He winced, prepared himself to be taken under, pulled into the depths of wet and pseudo-finality. Whatever touched him, however, touched him only once and then was gone. He floated onward, charred and bruised and uneasy as before.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  In not much time at all he learned why he was wrong. A person could not drift forever. No matter how still he was, or how monotonous his surroundings, his mind did not melt into the monotony. To float forever would be to lose his sanity. To limit his mind would be to recycle what little it had to occupy itself until those repetitions dissolved him into mindlessness. It was why so many chose community even in a place like this. It was why he sensed the edges of the old man’s sanity already flaking away in his self-imposed seclusion.

  He thought if he floated much longer without reaching some kind of destination, or without being killed off by something else, he would do it himself.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. He would make his way back to Mercy’s Shore—find an easier way, something faster. He could stay with all the others like himself. Maybe he’d see Shaw again. He could learn to make the best of his eternity like they had. Soon he wouldn’t be any different. If it was true he was still alive, he thought it didn’t matter much. The chances of finding a way out were next to none. It was probable the fiery-eyed man’s theory was only that. That he could be floating in the ocean for days for absolutely nothing was almost funny. Almost hilarious.

  To think he deserved anything less than one false hope after another—he wasn’t sure there was any crueler or more apt punishment for his crimes.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Light shown in the distance, peeking through the silhouettes of trees. Lewis first saw it in the corner of his eye—it was too easy to notice something in the nothing—and turned in the water, inhaling a mouthful as he kicked his legs to stay afloat. All at once, though, his surprise was deflated by cynicism. It must have been as the old man described, he thought. The waves had brought him back, as they always did and always would. It just so happened he was washing up somewhere with light. It was someone’s home, maybe. He imagined the outcome of investigating it, like a moth. Whoever lived there, or owned the light, would surely spell the end of his current life cycle. Maybe they’d even torture him first.

  Whoosh.

  Lewis glanced up at the sound just as something clipped the side of his face. He jerked away, choked on more water as his legs forgot to keep him suspended. It came again, two bundles of claws out of the sky, and scissored across the top of his head, a low, throaty croak as it retreated with his flesh in its clutches. Cursing, Lewis swam toward the shore. Each stroke ripped at him, pain down his sides and under his arms. The bird dashed him across his back—once, twice. Lewis’s stomach was so full of ingested water he thought he’d sink before making it to land. He tried to curse the bird but only swallowed more instead. Soon he was close enough to put his feet down. He trudged toward the sandy slope, barely visible under the dim glow through the trees up ahead. The bird’s purring surrounded him. It squawked to his left. He stumbled away, fell forward into the water. He picked himself up. It hissed to his right.

  “Get the fuck away from me!” he shouted, brandishing the dagger over his head.

  The water was up to his shins. The bird came at him, attached itself to his back, his shoulder. Lewis grabbed for it, fell to his knees. That long, curved beak took hold of his ear, clamped down like a clothespin. It tore his ear in half, pushed off his shoulder in a feathery gust with it hanging from its mouth. Lewis whimpered. He put his hand to the side of his head, felt the warm slick down the side of his neck. It returned, swooped in a furious arc, a death screech leading its charge. Lewis made to swing the dagger, brought it across his chest to unleash it in a horizontal slash, and the bird took hold of his hand, sank its claws between his knuckles, cradled the handle of the dagger in its mouth as he released it. Then it retreated, the dagger gone.

  When it returned, likely having thrown the dagger into the waves, it snipped his scalp, drew another fresh trench down his skull. Blood poured down his face, over his eyes. It circled around and Lewis threw himself onto the sand, dodged its splayed talons by mere inches. Instantly the bird came down, set itself in the sand next to him. He rolled away. Its feet scurried toward him, beak biting. It kicked into the air, dove across him, slid to a stop in the sand on his other side. A slicing pain across his face. The bird snapped a crescent of skin from his cheek. Lewis swept his fist at the bird, which cawed in annoyance but not much else. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, scampered up the shore. The bird chased him on foot, nipping at his heels—almost like it enjoyed the game. These bites weren’t attempts to kill, clearly.

  As he crawled, his hand happened upon a thick rock half-buried in the sand. He clutched it. The bird hopped up onto the shelf of his lower back. Its talons pricked him with each step as it traced his spine to the back of his neck. There, it lowered its face next to his, pecked at his jaw, wings unfurled over them both in its wrath. Lewis grabbed at it. It flinched back, snapped at his fingers. As it bent its head to strike once more he made another grab, seized it around its thick, round neck—barely any difference from the width of its body or head. He pulled it off his back, whipped it against the sand under him, pinned it there. Its beak latched onto the edge of his palm, thrashed side to side. Lewis, biting his lip in focused rage, brought the rock down only once. The bird’s skull crunched. He kept it pinned a while longer, waiting. His hand ached. Finally, he let go of the rock and rolled exhausted onto his back. The gritty sand found all the burning lacerations the bird had gifted him. That was okay.

  “Fuck that bird…”

  He lay catching his breath for a bit.

  He heard something. Movement up the slope ahead, in the trees. He glanced up, too tired to move despite his instincts urging him otherwise. If death wanted to claim him at this point, he thought, it could go ahead and take him.

  “Hello?” a voice said.

  Someone was in the trees. He saw them, upside down, ducking and bobbing between the branches toward the beach. Just a shadow. They moved carefully, precisely, sure not to lose their step in the overgrowth. They emerged from the trees and paused at the head of the slope, feet planted in the sand as they peered down at him, bent forward a little to inspect from a distance.

  “Lewis, is that you?”

  Their voice sent his skin rising with goosebumps. He sat up, twisted around to se
e them better, though all they were was a shadow in the dark. His lips parted but his voice was delayed—his breath held. He got to his feet, knees wobbling.

  Surely as much a shadow to her as she was to him, he answered hoarsely…

  “Mom?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Spells

  When she awoke her chest was heavy and thick, each lung a jar of honey. There was gravel trapped in the back of her throat when she swallowed. She lay still for several minutes, too exhausted to try rolling out of bed. Under the covers was deathly hot, an oven, but out of the covers and she was kissed by wave after wave of chills. In an hour after waking, the most movement she managed was to reach for her phone on the nightstand which wasn’t there. She’d forgotten. She’d use Lara’s phone to call in sick to work.

  She got dressed—from pajamas into sweatpants—and found Lara in the living room downstairs eating a bagel.

  “Mom…” she said, and her face told Catherine all she needed to know.

  “I know. I imagine I look how I feel.”

  “You must feel terrible, then.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was a chore to talk. Every word was a scratch at the lining of her esophagus. She coughed and coughed, felt the phlegm running down the back of her throat endlessly. When she stood or moved around too quickly she was out of breath, and heard a whistle from her lungs when she tried to gain it back.

  “It was her, wasn’t it,” Lara said. “That box, with the moth in it.”

  “That’s… no.”

  “That’s what it was.”

  Catherine didn’t care for the look in Lara’s eyes. It was a look of uncertainty and fear, two emotions you didn’t want someone having in response to the sight of you.

  “I’m fine,” Catherine said, her voice that of a decrepit smoker. “It’s not that bad.”

  Catherine took a seat across from Lara. She tried to stifle her cough but found it too difficult most of the time.