“The bead?” said the woman with a man’s voice. “You know about that, do you?”
“So, it was you after all! Get ready to meet your maker!”
Compressed air launched the missile at a speed of five hundred feet per second. Though the shot should’ve slain the woman, it only ended up taking off a bit of her golden hair before it sank into the sea, thanks to a big wave that’d hit unexpectedly and thrown Dwight’s aim off.
“Damn it all!” the fisherman shouted as he reached for the starter button on the engine. But at just that moment, the boat rocked violently beneath his feet.
The sky whirled around—or at least it looked that way while Dwight plunged into the blue water with his coat and his gun, sending up a spray. Even as he fell, Dwight kept his eyes open— dragon fish and ryxan sharks usually attacked people the second they went in the water, tearing the flesh right off of them.
The woman’s face was right in front of him, and her deep red mouth snapped open mercilessly. Even when he saw the rows of fangs that lined the crimson maw, Dwight wasn’t surprised. The mouth of an armor shark was fifty times as big, and its jagged teeth were a hundred times the size of hers.
“You just blew it. Coming at me head-on was a big mistake,” Dwight muttered as he shifted the spear gun to his right hand.
Grabbing his shoulders with both hands, the woman went for the base of the man’s neck.
Shoving her head away with his left hand, the fisherman jammed the spear gun against her side. This time he didn’t miss. A projectile that could go through three feet of tidal whale blubber and another eight inches of cranium pierced the soft female flesh, sailing off with a bloody trail to vanish into the depths of the sea.
The woman reeled backward. As she executed a somersault, Dwight launched a third spear at her torso. Her agonized movements twisted her body in ways unimaginable for an ordinary woman, but the third spear hit her just below the waist—right in her scale-covered abdomen—and sank halfway into her before stopping. As she continued to writhe, the woman stared steadily at Dwight. It was a look of such violence, such loathing.
Gripped by an unearthly horror, the normally fearless man of the sea kicked desperately through the water. His head smacked the hull of the boat. His failure to start the engine earlier had proved fortunate.
Tossing the spear gun into the boat, Dwight then climbed in, too. He hastily started the engine. Ahead of him, the deck of the boat burst upward, and a pale hand shot up through the hole along with the water. The hand then vanished. When he finished stopping up the hole with repair putty, another spot on the deck about a foot away was also breached.
Dwight knew he was in trouble. He wouldn’t have enough time to make it back to land. Instead, he turned the bow of his boat toward the ice floes. It was too dangerous to stay out on the sea. He’d have to lure her up out of the water.
Setting the engines to full speed, Dwight headed back up to the bow to get his spear gun. Snowflakes blew against him. He’d just passed over the boundary again.
The surface of the sea swelled ahead of him. And the woman shot up from the water like a flower’s petals bursting open, blood streaming out behind her. She looked positively demonic. Twisting in midair, she began a rapid descent.
Dwight’s right hand still hadn’t reached the spear gun.
.
What Su-In had forgotten was her textbooks. Even though she was dealing with children in her class, she still had to prepare the lessons. As soon as she recalled her oversight, it immediately started to drive her crazy.
D had told her everything he knew about the attacks she’d witnessed from the cape. She’d also heard that the major figures in the village had been informed about D’s true nature. Chances were she wasn’t going to be able to stay in the village much longer. But maybe that would be for the best. A northern village like this didn’t have anything that would make her want to stay. And if she’d survived up there, she should be able to make a living anywhere.
D’s elegant good looks filled her mind for a moment. That might be the way to live. Not that she’d be able to go with him, but maybe a life of one journey after another would suit her nicely. Hell, maybe she could go with him after all . . .
Su-In then recalled thinking that she might’ve seen D smile once. If she stayed with him, maybe someday she’d get to see that smile again. But all the woman’s thoughts about that first taste of sweet happiness were consumed then by other tiny faces. Teacher, they were saying, when does school start?
Today, Su-In replied to them in her heart of hearts. She hadn’t told them she was leaving yet. At the very least, she was still their teacher. The thought that she might never again stand at the lectern only served to strengthen her resolve.
“I suppose the least I can do is prepare a lesson for them,” she muttered.
It was two hours after D had left that she headed off to her house. The air had a faint bluish tint to it, and it was brighter than usual. But Su-In was wrapped in a feeling of desolation. Empty for just one day, her home seemed as cold and distant as a stranger’s abode. Wu-Lin and her grandfather were no longer there, after all. Su-In could hear the distant music of the festival as she went into the main house.
The textbooks were on a bookshelf in Su-In’s bedroom, but now that she was here, there were a number of other things she wanted to get as well. Detergent, a spare light, fuel briquettes, another coat . . . She ran all over the house grabbing this and that, and before she knew it, the blue world outside was about to don its darkest shade. Gripped by a fear she couldn’t quite understand, Su-In switched on the living room light and began stuffing her belongings into a bag.
Less than five minutes later she was done. Shutting off the light, she grabbed the door knob. Although she could turn it, the door wouldn’t open.
What the hell?! she thought.
She put all her weight against it, but the door wouldn’t budge an inch. It didn’t feel like someone was pushing against it, or that the door had been locked. The entire door wouldn’t move in the least, as if it’d been glued in place.
Then Su-In remembered a similar incident. Clutching her bag, she ran for the door to the kitchen. But just as she was about to go through it, a figure appeared from the right side to block her way. A gust of awful dread stroked the woman’s plump cheeks.
“You . . . But you’re . . . ,” Su-In stammered, listening coolly to her own dazed words. “Grampa . . .”
“Su-In . . . ,” the old man with the pallid face said, winking at her.
.
One blow from the attacker seemed to have blinded the submersible. The light-adjusted screens vanished, and the scene outside the windows was shrouded in a murky darkness. Fortunately, the holographic imaging system hadn’t been damaged, and the Hunter learned quickly enough who his foe was. The three-dimensional image depicted the very same giant crab he’d encountered previously. Clinging to the top of the sphere, it was brandishing its claws.
No matter how resilient the glass of the sphere was, a blow from one of those steel limbs would be dangerous. The giant crab must’ve hidden between the rocks to conceal itself from the submersible’s sensors. No doubt the crab had been closely monitoring D’s movements.
Blows rained down on the craft in rapid succession. Although the sphere’s force field could keep it anchored in one spot, it did nothing to make the craft any more damage-resistant. The lights went out, and a warning lamp came on. Another indicator reported that the generator was about to fail.
D shifted the force field to the top of the sphere. The crab was blown off. Blasted more than thirty feet through the water, the mechanical menace then recomposed itself. Folding all its limbs up, it sped back with incredible velocity. Apparently, the giant crab had highly efficient stabilizers and shock absorbers working on its behalf.
In accordance with the force field setting, the sphere continued to rise as D checked on the damage status of the craft. The Hunter felt a slight shudder. Something was
wrong with the submersible’s stabilizers. The force field projector was losing power, and if it failed completely, the craft would be left completely immobilized. But the gravest possible dilemma had also presented itself—the navigational power gauge was dropping by the second. Even before the Hunter had started this journey, it had been in the caution range. Now the power wouldn’t last another five minutes.
D switched the force field to autopilot, and the force field then slammed into the middle of the crab at full power. The crab’s legs twisted and its carapace creaked. But that was the extent of it. It was still coming after him.
The submersible didn’t have either the weapons or the energy left for an undersea battle. Then the force field projector stopped. Any further fighting underwater would be impossible now. And the surface was still more than one hundred fifty feet away.
.
III
.
What wound up making the difference between life and death were the instincts of this seafaring man who’d lived out in the elements for so long. Before Dwight was even aware of it, his right hand had shifted to his belt instead, pulling out his gaff hook and swinging it at the grim reaper above him. The hook weighed nearly five pounds. With a thunk! it sank into the mermaid’s waist.
A scream rang out, and a man’s voice issued from the beautiful woman’s lips. Due to the way Dwight twisted his body, the mermaid’s descent was ruined, and she suddenly slammed down on the bow of the fisherman’s boat. Dwight leapt over by the pilothouse and armed himself with one of the spare harpoons that were stored down on the gunwales.
The amalgam of woman and fish writhed on the deck. Stabbed in its human portion and still pierced by another harpoon in its lower half, it now had a thick gaff hook sunk in its midsection. No sight could’ve been more ghastly. However, even in her death throes, this beautiful woman had a face that was not of this world and eyes that were like nothing human. Her eyes were dyed deep red, and the fresh blood spilling from her mouth stained the fangs she gnashed incessantly. Fish tale squirming all the while, the woman glared at Dwight. That alone was enough to keep this man of the sea from hurling the harpoon he held at the ready.
The woman’s hand seized the harpoon that pierced her waist. Wailing with pain, she tried to pull it free, but the barbs on the tip hooked into her flesh, stopping it. Agony warped her gorgeous countenance. Yet she kept on pulling. Even Dwight could hear the barbs ripping through her skin. With chunks of her own flesh still clinging to the harpoon, the woman threw it into the sea.
She moved to the gaff hook next. The hook came out easily enough. However, the woman didn’t discard it. Clutching the five-pound piece of iron in one hand, she steadily crept toward the fisherman on her belly. With blood seeping from wounds in three separate spots, her whole body was smeared with vermilion. But even redder than that were her eyes, which smoldered with an awful hatred.
“I’m going to eat you . . . slowly,” the mermaid said, her masculine voice choked with pain and curses. “But before I do, I’ll rip you into a million pieces with this hook. Oh, how you’re going to scream for me . . .”
“That’s what you think,” Dwight barely managed to reply. Despite the fact there was little power behind his words, he added, “Fuck you!” and hurled his harpoon with his remaining strength.
The woman’s hand shot out in a horizontal blow, and there was a dull thud as the warped weapon dropped into the sea.
Covered in a fearful sweat, Dwight’s face was suddenly blasted by snow. The woman was less than three feet from him. And there was still another fifteen feet to the ice floes. A hopeless distance.
Grinning, the woman bared her fangs.
Suddenly, the center of gravity shifted. In the sea just three feet off the starboard bow, a colossal sphere had bobbed to the surface, and the water it’d displaced had formed waves that struck the boat broadside. Although Dwight caught hold of the gunwale in an instant, the mermaid who’d been poised to strike was flung into the sea. Streams of blood trailed after her.
Somewhat bewildered as he watched a bloody cloud form in the sea, Dwight then quickly turned and stared at what had surfaced on the opposite side of his boat. Sounding stunned, he called out, “What in the—is that you, D?!”
It was a second later that the Hunter flew from the top of the sphere like a black wind, seeming to spread a pair of wings before landing on the deck of the boat. Not even glancing at Dwight, D gazed instead at the dwindling sphere.
“Hey!” Dwight called out to him, but then the fisherman’s eyes bulged in their sockets. As if to push the spherical craft aside, a number of black, leg-like objects stretched from the sea.
That’s the thing, Dwight realized instantly. That’s what sank the boats and tried to get us to hand over Su-In’s bead.
“We’ll be onto the ice soon,” D said sharply. “Make your preparations to get off. Here it comes.”
“Got you!” Dwight shot back. Though there were a thousand questions he wanted to ask, he forgot them all, for he’d realized that the deadly battle he was involved in was not of this world. And in order to survive, he had no choice but to work with the gorgeous young man before him.
The blizzard erased the bizarre legs and claws. The ice floes were closer now. Skillfully manning the helm, Dwight brought his boat up against a flat section of the ice. D got off, and he followed soon after.
The wind and snow buffeted the fisherman’s cheeks. As he knotted his hood beneath his jaw, he asked, “What are we gonna do?”
“How deep does it run around here?” D inquired. He was referring to the thickness of the ice.
“A good twenty-five feet at least. No monster’s gonna follow us up through that!”
“Yes, it will.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“There wasn’t any need for you to head out to sea, too,” said D.
His softly spoken words irritated Dwight. “No one asked for your opinion,” the fisherman shouted indignantly. “I came out here because it was the only thing I could think of to do. Did you believe I was gonna just sit back and let you grab all the glory around here? If you’re gonna give me a hard time, you can find another ride back to shore.”
“Su-In would be pleased to know what you were doing, I’m sure.”
“What?!” Dwight exclaimed.
“Keep your distance. It’s me this thing is after.”
And saying that, D spun around. Before him lay a desolate field of ice. The expanse was unusually flat.
“Hey! I ran into a weird sort of monster, too,” Dwight called out.
His words stopped D in his tracks.
“A mermaid,” the fisherman added. “She knew about the bead, too. Sure was a hell of a beauty, though it takes more than just looks to make a woman.”
If Dwight could make such an introspective remark while the situation was still far from resolved, he’d already regained his typical boldness.
“I put two harpoons and a gaff hook into her, and it didn’t even faze her,” he continued. “When you popped up, she dropped back into the sea, but I get the feeling she’s still hanging around here, just watching us for an opening. Heaven help me—I finally see why my dad’s afraid of my mom!” Dwight said, though the groaning wind shredded his words.
Hit head-on by a particularly fierce wind, Dwight lost his balance and was driven back a few steps. “God damn it all . . . ,” he snarled, trying to right himself again only to be driven back a few steps more.
It was a split second later that he learned it wasn’t due to the wind.
The ice field between Dwight and D rose, and legs appeared after breaking through what had to be tons of ice. There were two of them, and the ends of the legs were spinning tremendously fast. While it came as little surprise that they couldn’t break through the whole twenty-five feet of ice, the whirring drills worked on boring a larger hole, and surely the whole creature would appear once the remaining ice was thin enough to shatter. The two men would’ve been stunn
ed if that didn’t take at least a few seconds more. Several more legs appeared, clicking as they twisted around to brace themselves firmly on the ice field with their claws. And then a black saucer that looked just like a crab stood before the pair, launching plenty of ice into the air in the process. The semitransparent dome in the middle of the thick body spun around to the front, and just as it halted, it split right down the middle.
An unsightly face quickly looked straight at D, and in an uninflected tone, the kingpin of Cronenberg—Gilligan—asked, “Surprised to see me?”
.
Su-In immediately guessed what was happening. Thanks to the harsh environment that’d raised her, she’d learned not to wallow in sentimentality. There was no way a dead person would be returning to life. Which meant this person before her had to be an impostor.
“Who the hell are you?!” she snapped.
Her grandfather’s face grew distorted at her cry. The eyes, nose, and mouth all collapsed like melting rubber, and then a completely different face formed—a youthful one. Su-In had no way of knowing that face matched a man by the name of Twin.
“You’re not very surprised, are you? What a disappointment,” he said as he stretched his back, and he actually sounded quite crestfallen.
His clothes were still those of the grandfather. Su-In was just thinking how he was the same height and build as the old man when his proportions suddenly became those of a powerful young man. Taking a big step back, Su-In let go of her bag and braced the short spear she’d brought with her from her hideout. Aimed straight at the man’s heart, the weapon didn’t tremble in the least. She evinced the same skill as she did while fishing.
“Now, I’m not sure just what’s going on,” said the woman, “but you’ve gotta be one of the people after the bead—the same bunch that killed my grandfather and my sister. And the nerve of you, disguising yourself as Grampa Han. I’m warning you, I’m not gonna hold anything back!”
“I know, I know. Don’t get so worked up about this,” Twin said in a somber tone. One look at the spear Su-In leveled at him was probably enough to tell him both how skilled and how intent she really was. “I want to make it perfectly clear that I wasn’t the one who killed your sister or your grandfather. Not that I have any problems with killing when I have to. Okay, just skip the pointless resistance and come with me.”
Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 2 Page 11
