Peter Benchley's Creature

by Peter Benchley

  It was like traveling through a slaughterhouse. Dead birds were scattered everywhere in the wave-wash—some decapitated, some eviscerated, some with their throats cut. Chase picked up one or two, glanced at their wounds and dropped them back into the water.

  "It almost looks like something kids would do," Chase said. -

  "What do you mean, kids?" said Max.

  "Sickos . . . you know . . . vandals. Practically nothing in the ocean kills for the sake of killing. Animals kill for two reasons: to eat and to defend themselves."

  Max hopped off the bow; Chase followed and pulled the Whaler farther up onto the sand. They walked up the beach to the black wire, which the policemen had coiled and tied.

  They dragged the wire back to the boat, loaded it aboard and pushed off from shore. When Chase judged that the water was deep enough, he lowered the motor and started it. As the propeller roiled the water, another dead bird surfaced and bumped against the side of the boat. Chase lifted it from the water. It was a young tern; its wings had been torn from its body.

  "Whatever did this," Chase said, setting the bird gently back into the water, "did it just to do it. Almost for the thrill of it."

  He aimed the boat eastward, toward the island.

  When they were halfway home, slicing through long, easy swells, they saw a big, slow, broad-beamed boat heading toward them. The boat had a tiny deckhouse forward and a huge open stern with a davit on each side. As they passed port-to-port, the captain of the big boat tooted his horn, leaned out of the deckhouse door and waved. Chase waved back.

  "Who's that?" asked Max.

  "Lou Sims. He hauls freight. I guess he just dropped off Dr. Macy and her sea lions . . . must've picked them up at the New London docks."

  In the wake of the freight boat was another boat, still a quarter of a mile away but coming fast. It was a sleek white sportfisherman, with a flying bridge and outriggers. As it drew near, it slowed, and a man on the flying bridge signaled to Chase that he wanted to talk.

  Chase took the motor out of gear and let the Whaler drift. "Hold on tight," he said to Max. "That thing pushes a mountain of water around it."

  As the fishing boat stopped, its deep hull wallowed, and waves surged out from its sides. Chase braced himself as the waves tossed the Whaler from side to side; he saw Max stagger, then half fall, half sit onto the forward thwart.

  "Been lookin' for you, Simon," said the man on the bridge. "We were trolling off Watch Hill; I seen a dead dolphin, for crissakes, hitched up in the rocks,."

  "A dolphin," Chase said. "You're sure it wasn't a shark? It was a dolphin ... a porpoise?"

  "You think I don't know a dolphin from a shark? It was a porpoise. Just like Flipper, only younger, a baby. I couldn't get too close, but the thing looked all cut to ribbons, like something had had at it. I thought you might.want to have a look."

  "I appreciate it, Tony," said Chase. "I will, right now. Where was it exactly?"

  "Just this side of the lighthouse. What the hell lives around here that can catch and kill a porpoise?"

  "Beats me." Chase picked up one of the dead birds. "Maybe the same thing that's cutting the heads off seagulls." And maybe, Chase thought to himself, the same thing that killed two divers.

  "Well, anyway . . . give me a call when you figure it out."

  "I will."

  "Is that your boy?"

  "Yep," Chase said. "Max . . . Captain Madeiras."

  Max waved, and Madeiras said, "Come work for me some summer. You can earn your lunch-pail degree."

  "Thank you," Max said, "but I don't have much exper—"

  "Don't worry, you couldn't do any worse than that worthless Bobby down there." Madeiras laughed and gestured at the stern of his boat. Then he shoved his throttles forward, and as the boat leaped ahead, its two propellers scooped a deep cavity into the water.

  A teenaged boy stood in the stern, looking unwell and unhappy.

  19

  BOBBY Tobin decided that the chances were excellent that sometime in the next five minutes he would throw up. With every breath the stink of blood and guts and diesel exhaust got to him, and he had to swallow constantly to keep bile from oozing into his mouth. Every time the boat yawed in the following sea he felt his stomach drop into his feet and then rush up as if it would burst from the top of his head.

  Though he knew it would make him feel better, he didn't want to throw up—wouldn't throw up, refused absolutely to throw up—for Captain Madeiras would never let him forget it. Every customer that came aboard would be regaled with the story of Bobby sprawled on the bulwark heaving his breakfast overboard; lessons would be drawn about landlubbers, teenagers, summer people, Protestants and kids who had life too easy.

  Bobby rose off his knees and, careful not to touch his shirt or any part of the gleaming white fiberglass with his bloody hands, leaned over the side and drew several deep breaths of clean air, air that didn't smell of diesel oil and dead fish. He could see Osprey Island behind them, and beyond it Napatree Point, and, far in the distance, the water tower in Waterboro.

  "Hey, asshole," Madeiras called down from the flying bridge, "nobody told you to take a break. Swab that shit off the deck before it dries."

  "Yes, sir," Bobby said, and he sucked in a last breath and turned to face the carnage on the after-deck. He had already cleaned ten big bluefish—scaled and gutted them and wrapped each carcass in newspaper—and another twenty waited in the fish box on the starboard side.

  What did two fishermen want with thirty fish? They wouldn't eat more than one or two, there was no market for the rest—bluefish were so plentiful this summer that the fish stores could make money only if they were given the fish for free—and chances were they wouldn't even be able to dole them out to friends.

  Trophies, that's all they were, badges of manhood.

  A dozen gulls hovered over the boat's wake, cawing impatiently as if hurrying Bobby along.

  He picked up the dip bucket by the six-foot length of rope tied to its handle, walked to the open transom in the stern, got a firm grip with his free hand, leaned over the transom and tossed the bucket into the water. It hit, bounced, tipped and suddenly filled, and the weight jerked at Bobby, almost pulling him overboard. He hauled back on the rope and brought the bucket aboard. He sloshed the water on the deck and scrubbed with a brush at the patches of drying blood and scales, shoving them overboard through the transom and the scuppers.

  The gulls wheeled over the new blood in the water and squawked when they spied no bits of meat.

  Bobby put the bucket aside, dropped to his knees, took the filleting knife from the scabbard on his belt and reached into the box for another bluefish. He slashed its gills to start the blood draining, then slit its belly from throat to tail, reached inside the body cavity and pulled the guts out and tossed them overboard through the transom.

  The gulls dove frantically, two of them snatching at the same piece of viscera, and they rose from the water, flapping their wings and screaming as they tugged at the rubbery guts.

  Bobby flipped the fish onto its side and began to scale it with the blade of his knife, cursing himself and his father and Madeiras and fate.

  God, how he wished he'd gone to summer school instead of taking this job. His father had given him the option, go to summer school or get a paying job. In this economy, jobs were as scarce as teeth in a goose; college graduates were bagging groceries, business school students were tending bar. He'd been turned down everywhere from the Mystic Seaport Museum to the Waterboro marina, and he'd been about to start calling around to summer schools when all of a sudden his father had called in an IOU from the Madeirases.

  Manuel, the family's gardener, who had no medical insurance and whose hip-replacement surgery had been paid for by Mr. Tobin, let slip one day that his brother Tony's mate had just come down with hepatitis. Without asking Bobby, Mr. Tobin had called Tony and gotten him the job.

  True enough, Bobby had gone along with it. The job had sounded great: ma
te on a sportfishing boat. Five bucks an hour, plus tips, maybe as much as a hundred bucks a day on good days. Outdoor work. Learn how a professional fishes. The work was long— seven days a week, weather permitting—but he had every night off, and there were bound to be at least ten days of rain and wind that would keep the boat ashore.

  But there were a few things that nobody had told Bobby. First of all, motorboats, especially thirty-eight-footers like the Sea Hunter, weren't like sailboats. They didn't ride the wind and cut the waves and stay relatively stable; they bounced and pitched and rolled, soaking you and bruising you and making you sick all day long.

  Second, the word mate really meant waiter, busboy, garbageman, slopsman, fish-gutter, ass-kisser and drudge. If a customer lost a fish, it was the mate's fault: he hadn't set the hook properly or hadn't grabbed the leader at the right time. If a customer puked, the mate cleaned it up. Worst of all and most common, if a customer clogged the head, ignoring the prominent sign over the flushing mechanism and tossing into the bowl a tampon, a cigarette filter or a condom (it had happened), it was the mate's job to unclog it and clean it out.

  Finally, nobody had told Bobby that Tony Madeiras was a sadistic bully, one of those people who inflate themselves by belittling others. He was also an alcoholic, and though he claimed he never drank on the job, "the job" seemed to be ending earlier and earlier every day. A month ago, he wouldn't touch a drop till the boat was tied to the dock; now he was drinking from a flask stowed on the flying bridge as soon as he started in from the fishing grounds.

  Most of the customers didn't know or didn't care—like today's two, firemen from New London, who had started on beer at seven in the morning and segued into Bloody Marys at nine.

  Bobby cared, though, because he took the brunt of Madeiras's seesawing moods, which could swing from obscene vitriol to lachrymose affection but which tended to linger more on the former than the latter.

  He could quit, of course, but he wouldn't because he knew what would happen. He would tell his side of the story to his father, who would pretend to believe him but really wouldn't. His father would call Madeiras and be told (in the polite code that adults used) that Bobby was a whining, spineless, lazy crybaby. His father would never actually say that he believed Madeiras, but there would be allusions to disappointment and regret that would go on for at least a year.

  Quitting would be too expensive. Better to stick it out for another six weeks.

  Bobby was gutting another fish when the glass door to the air-conditioned cabin slid open and a voice said, "Hey, kid, we're outta ice."

  "Yes, sir," Bobby said, and he dipped the bucket overboard again and washed his hands and went inside. His hands still stank of fish, but these two would never notice.

  It swam back and forth in the froth just below the surface, frenzied by a strong, pervasive scent of prey, and confused at finding nothing of substance. There had been a few bits of food, and it had closed on them, only to have them plucked from its grasp by things from above.

  Tantalized, it swam onward, absorbing the oily, blood-laced water through its fluttering gills.

  * * *

  "Fillet the last .couple and put 'em in Baggies for me," Madeiras ordered. "I'll take 'em home to the missus."

  "Yes, sir," Bobby said.

  There were three fish left in the box, the first three of the day, and the biggest—eight-pounders at least, maybe ten. He grabbed the biggest by the tail and slapped it on the deck. It had been caught hours ago, and its body had already rigored stiff. Its glassy eyes stared in blank menace, and its mouth was frozen open, revealing a row of perfect tiny triangles.

  "I'm glad you don't grow to a hundred pounds," Bobby said to the fish as he felt for its backbone and slipped the knife in beside and drew it backward.

  He didn't scale this fish or gut it. Instead, with swift slashes of the knife he removed all the meat from one side of the fish, cutting along the backbone, around the tail, up the belly and across the gills. Then he turned the fish over and repeated the procedure on the other side. He shoved the carcass overboard—head, tail, bones, guts and all.

  He watched the gulls swarm on the carcass as it bobbed in the wake of the boat. One gull tried to lift it by the head, but it was too heavy, and the bird couldn't get airborne. Another grabbed the tail, and for a moment it seemed that the two birds might cooperate in carrying the carcass away to a safe feeding place. But then a third bird struck the carcass, and it fell away and splashed into the water.

  The birds swooped down upon it again. Before they could reach it there was a sudden flurry in the water, a flash of something shiny; when the flurry subsided, the carcass was gone.

  * * *

  Its long, curved steel claws tore the dead thing to pieces. It sucked the viscera from the body cavity, and the eyes from the head. Its teeth crushed the bones of the jaw; it ate the tongue. It consumed everything, as it drifted to the bottom.

  The large thing from which the food had come moved away and became a fading pulse on the creature's tympanic membranes.

  It wanted more. Not purely from hunger, for it had fed on many things recently—had fed until it regurgitated and then fed some more—but from programmed reflex. Prey was irresistible; killing and eating were its only functions. Though its body was fully fueled, its gastric juices continued to be stimulated.

  It pushed off the bottom, its webbed feet thrusting up and down synchronously, its talons gleaming. It flew through the water toward the pulsing sound.

  Bobby finished filleting the last two fish, tossed the carcasses overboard and wrapped the fillets. He dipped the bucket and washed his hands, and was about to swab the deck, when he heard the engine subside and felt the boat slow, stop and wallow broadside to the little waves.

  "Birds up ahead," Madeiras called down. "Looks like a school of blues kickin' shit out of a bed of fry. Ask them two if they want to toss a couple casts."

  "Yes, sir," Bobby said. He opened the door to the cabin and felt a rush of icy air. The men had been playing gin rummy on the couch. One had fallen asleep, and the other was fumbling with the cards. An empty vodka bottle was upended in the wastebasket.

  Let them say no, Bobby prayed. He didn't want to rig any more lines, clean any more fish. Besides, now that these anglers were plastered, they'd be bound to make mistakes, and he'd be bound to be blamed for them.

  "Captain wants to know if you'd like to cast some," Bobby said.

  The man looked at Bobby and frowned as if he didn't recognize him. "For what?" he said.

  "Bluefish."

  The man thought for a moment, then shook his friend's knee, but his friend didn't waken.

  "Fuck it," he said.

  "Yes, sir." Bobby shut the door and called up to Madeiras, "They said no thanks."

  "They'll be sorry," said Madeiras, looking through binoculars at the diving terns. "Those could be real monsters."

  Bobby sloshed the bucket of water on the deck, tossed the bucket behind him and scrubbed the blood and scales into the scuppers.

  A few spots of dried blood remained, and Bobby picked up the bucket, wrapped the rope around his hand and walked aft.

  "Hey, asshole," Madeiras said, "you missed some."

  "Yes, sir," Bobby replied tightly. "That's why I'm getting more water."

  Madeiras returned to his binoculars. "Soon's you're finished, fetch me my spinning rod. I think I'll try a couple casts from up here."

  Go ahead, Bobby thought angrily. Maybe you're so wasted you'll trip and fall overboard and the bluefish'll tear you apart.

  The exhaust from the idling engine billowed over the stern, stinging Bobby's eyes and clouding his vision. The gulls hovered high overhead, away from the noxious fumes.

  There was no wake now, the boat wasn't moving, so Bobby didn't grip the transom as he flung the bucket. The bucket hit the water on its bottom and bobbed upright; Bobby jiggled the rope, trying to tip it over so it would fill.

  It approached a dozen feet below the surface. T
he large thing had stopped moving.

  It hovered; its receptors sought signs of prey, but found nothing.

  It rose a few feet, and through the still water it could see a refracted image of something moving.

  There was a disturbance on the surface, a little sound and a few ripples; it saw something floating.

  Prey.

  It thrust itself upward, grasping with its claws. Its mouth was agape, its lower jaw rolled forward and a row of triangular teeth sprang erect, into bite position.

  The bucket filled, Bobby pulled on the rope, but even without the drag of motion, the bucket was heavy— two gallons of water weighed sixteen pounds. Bobby pulled the rope hand-over-hand.

  Suddenly the rope went taut, as if the bucket had snagged on something. Then it jerked away from him, as if a huge fish had grabbed hold of it.

  Bobby lost his balance, turned to grab at the transom, but he was too far away, his fingers found only air and he tumbled overboard. As he hit the water, he thought, I hope it wasn't a big bluefish that grabbed the bucket.

  * * *

  It spiraled downward, clutching its prey in its claws, gnawing with its teeth at the soft white flesh. It sucked and drank and chewed and swallowed.

  By the time it reached the bottom, it could eat no more, so it squatted on the sand and, with claws and teeth, tore the prey to pieces. One tooth caught in a mass of gristle and broke off. Another tooth, from the row behind it, rolled forward and took its place.

  Tony Madeiras hung the binoculars on their hook, put the boat in gear and pushed the throttle forward. The engine growled, the bow rose and the stern settled.

  "Where the hell's my rod?" he shouted without looking down. There was no response.