Through a Mythos Darkly

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  Nate found it odd that someone of such low status as himself would cause the captain any concern. Weren’t young men like himself, eager for work, only too readily found? It wasn’t as though he were a more experienced and valuable crewman like one of the four mates who took control of the small harvesting boats, or the ship’s carpenter, blacksmith, or even cook. Though he stood in an erect stance before the older man, inside he fidgeted. “I have not yet acquired other work, sir,” he replied, “though I have made inquiries.” He had hoped to sound respectful rather than defensive, but had only succeeded in sounding vague.

  “I asked you why you do not care to sign onto the Coinchenn again.”

  Nate stumbled over his words as he answered, “As the Coinchenn sets sail again next week, I fear I am too weak as yet from my recent illness to return to sea so soon.”

  “Is that it?” Grigg cocked his head a little. “It is not that you dislike working under my command, is it, Mr. Hittle?”

  “No, sir,” Nate said. “It is as I say.”

  “Really? Well, you look recovered enough to me, my lad. I fear you are making a mistake. I had my eye on you for better work this time out, as one of the flensemen.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Indeed. Think of your mother, Mr. Hittle. She is a widow, is she not? Dependent upon you these days?”

  “That is true,” Nate said uncomfortably. How did he know? Did he know everyone in New Bedford, and everything about them, like some omnipresent god?

  “Then would you reconsider?”

  “Well, I…” Nate hesitated. He did as a matter of fact dislike working under Simon Grigg’s command. He knew no foremast hand who didn’t. But being a flenseman would mean a better wage, if still a minor one compared to what Grigg or even his four officers made. He did indeed have his mother to think of. And there were, of course, the weeks he would get to spend again in proximity to Lottie, though he didn’t see how they could interact in any private sort of way as long as his health was sound. Still, just to see her again here and there, most every day…if only to exchange quick pleasantries…

  He said, “I suppose it would be foolish of me not to accept such an opportunity.”

  “I would have to agree. Then you accept? Excellent. I caution you, though, not to grow ill again, because Mrs. Grigg will not be aboard on our next voyage to nurse you, if you do.” Grigg smiled as if harmlessly teasing the young man, but it was as though he had just spied upon Nate’s thoughts. “I instructed her to remain home this time, after her little experiment accompanying us last time. Even on such a short voyage, I fear the conditions aboard a working ship are too harsh for a creature as delicate as she. Do you agree that this is best?”

  Nate wondered how his opinion could matter to the man. “I suppose so, sir,” he said at last, probably too softly to be heard over the thunderous growl.

  “And her charms, I think, prove too distracting to my men as they go about their work.” He chuckled. “Speaking of Mrs. Grigg’s beauty, that was a remarkable gift you gave her—the carven orb. She neglected to show it to me, but I caught sight of it nonetheless and she then revealed to me its source. I had no idea you were so talented, Mr. Hittle. Impressive work. I especially admired how you gave to that fetching unclothed mermaid my wife’s own face. A remarkable likeness.”

  Nate’s internal fidgeting had turned to writhing, and he felt the flesh of his face burning as if his recent fever had returned. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You no doubt imprinted her face upon your memory, like a work of scrimshaw itself, during those feverish hours in which you two were alone in the crew quarters. Alas, a delicate thing, that orb. My wife mishandled it, and it fell.” Grigg pulled open a drawer in front of him, scooped out its contents in his hands and deposited them on top of his desk. They looked like the shards of a large shattered eggshell.

  It was the milk orb Nate had etched as a gift for Lottie, broken into three large chunks and a number of smaller fragments. On the largest chunk, the mermaid had been bisected at the waist, losing her fishy tail altogether. Just seeing this one piece, one might have believed the image was of a nude woman of a less fantastical nature. Nate stared at this woman…the meticulously scratched likeness of Lottie. The milk orbs, though breakable, were not fragile like glass. Multiple times he had seen them and freshly incised scrying balls alike, still slick with slime, dropped to the deck without shattering or even chipping. He thought one might have to throw such a globe with great force, or even strike it with a hammer repeatedly, to bring about this damage.

  “My wife was saddened at her clumsiness, and extends her apology to you,” Grigg said. “I know you two are quite fond of each other, Mr. Hittle, so I would hope this accidental loss of your gift to her is not too distressing for you.”

  Nate lifted his gaze from the broken sphere to the hard, watching spheres of Grigg’s eyes. “When I can, I shall make her a new one.”

  Grigg’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he smiled again. “Ah…so you are not easily discouraged. A commendable trait, Mr. Hittle. I see more in you than most men would, I think. Yes…I see right into you.” He pushed the broken pieces across the desk. “Why not take these, then, and copy what you can from them.”

  Nate collected up the fragments into both hands and held them in front of him, the way Lottie had held the intact globe as if cupping a gravid belly.

  “Talk to Denton, then,” Grigg said, “to work out the details of your new assignment. It is good to have you aboard again, my lad. I hope you will come to see me as something of a father to you, and approach me with any concern you might have.” Grigg was still smiling, as though this kind offer were merely a joke…a reminder that his own father was dead, drowned after the sinking of his boat when the whale he had harpooned had capsized it.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Nate said tightly, turning away to leave the man’s office. With his hands full, he paused awkwardly before the door’s handle.

  “Allow me.” Grigg jumped out of his seat and came around his desk to open the door for Nate. He clapped the young man on the back as he departed.

  When Grigg fell into his chair again, he leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and clamped his palms tightly over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut hard and emitting a long hiss through clenched teeth. “Fucking hell,” he said. “Blasted fucking hell. You will drive me mad, do you hear? Do you hear me, demon?”

  He lifted his head and looked up at the scrying device’s screen. “I will cut you again,” he muttered to himself. “I will cut you myself, infernal beast.” As he said this he clicked the white knob that had been carved from a milk orb, and returned to the view he had been watching just before he had admitted that very clever, very hungry boy Nathanial Hittle into his office.

  Lottie was wearing the necklace of faux pearls, with its pendant that was a shard of a scrying ball, as he had instructed her to always do. He could tell because the image transmitted to his screen floated here and there throughout their home on the hill overlooking New Bedford, the point of view of a disembodied spirit. He had ordered her to never remove the necklace when they were not together, and in recent months whenever they’d been apart he had watched her movements on this screen or on the screen of his scrying device aboard the Coinchenn more frequently and for longer and longer periods each day.

  This was how he had known Hittle had given her the etched milk orb. He had watched them together in Hittle’s mother’s home, though he hadn’t been able to hear them. He hadn’t seen Lottie’s face when she accepted the gift, but he had seen Hittle’s face when he offered it to her, offered it like his rigid cock in his hand. And she hadn’t told him about the gift later, oh of course not, but Grigg had confronted her and she couldn’t deny it…she knew that he had seen it. Yet she had tried to hide it from him at first, hadn’t she, stupid girl?

  And she had wept when he had smashed it. Wept.

  “Whore,” Grigg said, watching her activities as if from her own viewpoint throu
gh the pendant that lay upon her bosom—his gift to her. “Fucking whore,” he muttered.

  He’d told her never to remove the necklace even when she lay sleeping. Even when she sat to do her private business. Even when she bathed…especially when she bathed. Watching her prepare lunch for herself now, he instead imagined her pushing the pendant inside of her body, and then pressing the pearls into herself one by one. Then drawing them out again, popping them out of her slick oyster in a long slow procession, with the pendant, that veiny eye, showing him the interior of her body the whole time. Emerging at last like a newborn thing.

  As he pictured this in his mind, and watched the innocuous actions of her small pale hands that the screen showed him, he masturbated violently under his desk until he rubbed himself raw, and he cried out as he spurted like some wounded and inconsolable animal.

  The Fallen off the coast of Massachusetts, resting stationary on the floor of the Atlantic with only a small portion of its incomprehensible body protruding above the surface—much like a gigantic iceberg—soared tall as a mountain that had been pared down to two identical bone-white columns. The lengths of these slightly curved, knob-topped pillars were oddly ridged and crenulated, with rows of far-spaced deep sockets. Some speculated they were the tops of two tightly folded wings.

  The enormous white columns were hard like bone, in fact, and resisted the axes of human beings. Between them, though, a subtly rounded mass as extensive as an island, also pallid but smooth and featureless—aside from webs of black veins, some of them as thick around as tree trunks—was composed of a softer, rubbery matter. It was at this island of flesh that the local harvesters always labored.

  From the deck of the Coinchenn, Nate watched as four small boats commanded by the ship’s mates moored themselves to the edge of the living island, spaced evenly from each other. They had chosen a portion of the rim that was smooth. The area they had harvested from on their last excursion, on the opposite side of the immense protrusion, was still somewhat concave where it continued to heal. On that side, a thick congregation of gulls salted the island’s surface or hovered and wheeled above it, still picking at the great wound. Nate remembered Dobbin’s story, and wondered what dizzying secrets the gulls might see and know, causing them perhaps to feast more avidly.

  For several hours, the boat crews—a total of twenty-four men, now standing on the island like the gulls—hacked and sawed and arduously pried loose a long, elliptical segment of that white, vein-laced rubbery flesh, as large a chunk as the body of a humpback whale. Over the next few weeks, on regular sorties as weather permitted, similar fillets of flesh would be carved free.

  Nate watched the whole while, the masts of the Coinchenn towering over him, their sails furled as the ship rested at anchor. Those sails were themselves thin sheets cut from the body of the Fallen, white as paper but covered in a mad calligraphy of ink-black veins, this material lighter but stronger than the canvas sails of old. In his cabin, Captain Grigg could cause these sail membranes to contract tightly against their yards and spars—or unfurl and open wide again—by transmitting commands to them on a machine much like his scrying device. Some of the crewmen Nate had talked with felt the veins in the snowy tissues were actually sensitive nerves, especially since the Fallen never bled when it was cut into.

  The only drawback to the material was that eventually time caught up with it and it died and rotted, as did even the interconnected panels inside scrying devices and their ilk, requiring replacement with freshly harvested matter.

  A veteran flenseman named Warrick, who would be training Nate, had said to him before the ship set sail from New Bedford Harbor, “Those above our lowly station know more about the Fallen and what the pieces of them can do than they will ever admit to us, Nathanial.”

  Nate was anxious to begin his first work as a flenseman, but it was more a nervous anxiousness than eagerness. He was all the more agitated by their nearness to the very source of the roar, which seemed to emanate from the Fallen at some point below the water. The entity’s call was so powerful here that it vibrated every bone in his body like a tuning fork, seemingly causing the plates of his skull to gnash against each other. Even with wads of wax molded into his ears he feared he would suffer permanent hearing loss. But what were they to do…wait for the roar to subside before resuming harvesting operations? What if it never did? What if it only grew louder with time?

  The crew had quickly developed a crude kind of sign language, and were learning the art of reading lips.

  With Warrick beside him smoking a pipe, Nate watched as buoyant floats were affixed to the hunk of flesh, which was then secured to the four boats with ropes and towed toward the mother ship, the oarsmen working in perfect unison.

  Already, a swarm of gulls as frenzied as sharks was alighting on the island where the mass had been removed, as if the flesh below the surface skin was more delectable, more desirable. Until he had begun working on the Coinchenn, Nate had never seen gulls battling each other over a place at which to dine. Their hunger seemed to drive them to madness.

  A cutting-stage—a platform fashioned from three wooden planks—was made ready to be lowered from the Coinchenn’s starboard side in anticipation of the prize’s arrival. Warrick nudged Nate and said, “This is it, boy. Be ready to don your monkey belt.”

  Warrick wrapped himself in his own monkey belt, a wide canvas belt secured to a long rope, and then made sure Nate’s was properly fitted. Nate’s heart drummed faster, and however cumbersome it would have been he wished he had the broken chunk of his milk orb with him for good luck; the portion with the mermaid’s head and human torso. This shard presently resided in his sea chest, near his bunk where Lottie had tended him.

  The glistening slab of flesh with its lattice of veins was brought right up alongside the Coinchenn’s starboard side. Nate continued to watch the process, but he saw Warrick turn to look behind him so he turned that way, too, and saw a figure donning another monkey belt. This man, darkly-bearded, had his head wrapped in layers and layers of white bandages, fully covering his ears and the top of his head like a turban. It took several moments for Nate to realize the man was Captain Grigg.

  Grigg’s beard cracked open in a white grin and he fairly screamed over the roar, “With all respect to you, Mr. Warrick, there is no better man to teach our greenhand here than I!”

  “Sir…” Warrick began.

  “Do you worry about me, Mr. Warrick? I am not yet an aged invalid, am I? And my ears are fortified, sir…fortified against that wretched stentorian roar!” He clapped the seasoned flenseman on the shoulder, then turned his gaze on Nate. His too-bright eyes reminded Nate, strangely, of Lottie’s when he had given her the carven ball. “We will both cut into the beast together, will we not, my pretty young boy? Cut into this bitch together!”

  Warrick looked to Nate, gave a little nod, and motioned for the young man to follow him over the rail and onto the narrow deck of the cutting-stage. A team of foremast hands made ready to lower it down to the buoyed strip of still-living flesh. Once he had his feet planted, Warrick handed Nate a blubber pike with a long, curved blade. Warrick was passed another for himself. Grigg had a tool called a boarding knife: a long-handled instrument with a long, sword-like blade. This was for poking a hole in a strip of flesh, called a “blanket,” through which a hook would be inserted so that the blanket could be hoisted up by pulleys and deposited onto the ship for further butchering before being stored in the hold.

  Grigg stood between the two men, and gestured for the rope team to begin lowering the cutting-stage. Nate steadied himself with one hand on a rope, but Grigg merely stood in a wide stance, the tip of the boarding knife stuck in the cutting-stage’s floor, as the platform was lowered until it nearly touched the hulking, headless and limbless white form floating alongside the harvesting vessel.

  This close to it, Nate saw that the largest of the slab’s black, branch-like “veins,” as thick around as a man’s leg, pulsated rhythmically. If not wi
th blood, then with the thwarted circulation of some mysterious energy, or even with the entity’s thoughts?

  As Warrick had coached him earlier through pantomime, Nate reached down with the blubber pike and began slicing into the flesh. Warrick started defining the opposite side of the blanket they would be excising from the hulk. Naturally, Warrick’s incision was clean and straight, whereas Nate strained more with his implement, doubled back on his cutting, the curved blade veering off course, resulting in jagged edges.

  “Here, here,” Grigg bellowed, setting down his boarding knife and taking the blubber pike from Nate’s hands. “I will demonstrate!” He rescued Nate’s uncertain cut, getting it back on track neatly. Then Grigg and Warrick angled in toward each other to form one end of the blanket. The two blades scissored under this squared end, so as to free it to be lifted. Grigg retrieved his boarding knife and stabbed a hole into the strip at this point. A large hook was lowered, and Warrick got down on elbows and knees to feed this through the hole the captain had punched. When this was done, the hook’s rope was reeled in and the thick blanket of meat began to curl back, peeling free from a deep but bloodless rectangular depression as clearly defined as a freshly dug grave. With continuous sweeping motions from either side, Nate and Warrick scraped back and forth under the strip to separate more of it and allow it to be hoisted up further.

  One of those irregular, higher-pitched crystalline sounds that was like wetted fingers playing the rim of a glass, but horribly amplified, suddenly overlaid the deeper emission. It transfixed Nate as if his head had been skewered with an icy metal lance through the top of his skull and on down through his spinal column, causing him to want to drop his blubber pike to cover his ears, but it quickly faded away again, leaving only the rumbling roar and a ringing aftershock in his nerve endings.

  “Ah-ha!” Grigg cried, pointing with the spear of his boarding knife. “There! You see? A pearl for you, Mr. Hittle! For you to carve for my beloved, to replace the one that was lost!”