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WHEN DENNIS GOT TO the wharf, the sun was starting to set. He moved down the creaking wood and kept an eye out for Kyle’s boat. He carried with him a bucket of chum that he bought from the same bait shop that Max went to. In the center, he passed by a bulletin board that had a missing poster with Nina’s face on it. He understood the dark secret it suggested. He looked away.
He took the boat out west and then hooked around north into the gulf proper and kept the shoreline on his right-hand side. In the cabin was the shotgun him and Kyle fired into the water and in the same crate were the shells. It was an old pump-action shotgun with a brown pump and an onyx colored metal. It was heavy in his hands like it refused to be ignored, and he set it down by the helm where he steered. When he calmed himself, he loaded it.
The sun had set, the sky grew darker, and on this night, the stars had vanished for good. The blackness up above spread further and further until the planet floated in a quilt of pitch black. Soon it will be altogether drained into the maelstrom beneath it.
Dennis heard the ocean stop moving. It was still, biding its time, preparing for battle. The boat stopped rocking. The creatures in the ocean knew. They prepared for contact. They prepared for food.
He stood up from his seat and walked to the edge of the boat. Not a human soul was nearby. Not a ripple was visible in the water. The moonlight was the only light to go by, and he raised the shotgun in his hands. He pumped it once. A little red thing flew from the gun side and fell into the water and disappeared. Then he took the lid off of the bucket and set it sideways on the edge, and the putrid chum spilled out like vomit into the unmoving water. There was no current or tide or wave to pull the chum into any sort of slick. No river of blood would branch out and catch the senses of the predators, but rather, it formed a cloud. The water was still, and the chum poured in gallon after gallon disappearing into the dark water but forming a large pool of stench and guts just beneath and in front of where he stood and then surrounding the boat fully.
For a moment, after the bucket emptied, there was no movement or sound. Then a little splash of water appeared about a yard away, as if something just barely, accidentally, broke the surface. Dennis spun the shotgun that way and fired. A loud blast shot through the quiet beach and sent him stepping backward. The first buck always surprised him. There was a flash that illuminated the area briefly, but then darkness swallowed him up again, leaving him with ringing ears and an overpowering aroma of gunpowder and fish guts. Where the pellets hit, the water splashed, but that was it.
Dennis was a fool up there on that stage. The pellets he fired into the water traveled not far at all but, rather, slowed down immediately, coming to a stop, then sinking to the sandy bottom. Past his vision, under the surface, the creatures moved and dodged. They communicated. They spoke to each other about a strategy. Perhaps they would smash the bottom and send Dennis sliding right into their maw. Perhaps they would simply wait it out and swim away, escaping to fight another battle later on. Perhaps the Elder, deep down in his colossal slumber, will wake up and lay ruin to this island for good, for it could be done with one mighty bite. Teeth rising on either shore, swallowing Marisol for good. But none of those happened. Instead, Rory volunteered to fight, as this was guaranteed to complete his transformation. He was instructed to bring him deep to the Elder as one final sacrifice.
Dennis fired more into the water. The shotgun blasts rang loudly, and some people on the shore turned to look but couldn’t see the source. Some people still on the pier were more drawn to the little flashes of light in the darkness of the water. Each blast was followed by a pump and a falling shell. He muttered to himself taunts and threats, and he fired some more, stopping to reload on one knee.
With the gun loaded, he raised it to fire blindly again, but then he stopped. He came to his senses, and he waited. He stood there on the boat, looking down and around until he saw something reveal itself.
“I know you can hear me in there,” he said as though his conversation partner were across a table. “I know what you’ve been doing. I know you took Max. And I’ve seen your house. And I know you took all the people before. So come out now and show yourself, you fucking coward. You fucking freak.”
Behind Dennis, over the point of the bow, Rory slowly and silently climbed from the water like something evolving, something climbing from its primordial ooze. He stood tall in the moonlight, the water on his slippery body shining like oil. The teeth in his head too many. His nose hooked and bulbous. His eyes as black as the sky they reflected. The rest of them waited in the water for the plunge. They silently cheered on their new blood. Dennis stood at the stern and felt the boat dip down towards the front. Someone climbed on. He could hear the water dripping onto the floor.
Then it all happened so fast. With two great strides, Rory charged him. Dennis spun around to fire but was too slow. Rory scooped him from under the gun, the gun fired over Rory’s shoulder, and Rory grabbed him by the waist and dove with him far from the boat and into the water, both of them being swallowed by a splash.
It was in a space of water and darkness, stretching on for eternity in either direction. Rory, tight around Dennis, swam him deeper and deeper, the trails of kelp and bubbles disappearing, the moonlight from the shimmering surface growing smaller and smaller, colder and colder. Dennis felt the pressure close around him hard, popping his ears, crushing his bones. The shotgun drifted away and puffed up some sand wherever it landed. Dennis was taken deeper and deeper. The acolyte’s brethren swam near in hordes gnashing and chomping in cheer or joy or violent encouragement. Dennis looked at the faces blurred from the saltwater in his own eyes, barely visible in that sunless water, and he watched the powerful body of Rory kick his way down through trenches and cracks until finally he was let go to drift on his own, floating weightlessly, naked in heart, abandoned by hope, forsaken by God, no, not by God, by the false idol, for he was in front of the true God now. He looked ahead of him at the Elder nestled in the sand, half one with the bottom of the ocean. Dennis had to turn his head to see both ends of the Elder’s maw, his row of building-sized teeth, his black hole eyes. In the muffled silence of the water, Dennis failed to hear even his own thoughts or heartbeat. He watched the other predators swim to the side of their Elder. Sharks of all sizes and types. Even other creatures seem to watch from afar, not invited to the evening’s events, or just downright horrified that this was happening again. Dennis floated and felt cold inside and out. He drifted, a speck of dust in a basement. A wall of night moving ceaselessly forward, approaching the fly in its center rapidly. First, his legs caught in the pull and then his back with a knowing shove. He floated on, a star in the sea, moving towards eternity. The grin opened. Unfathomable. Dennis, the dot, the infinitesimal speck, moved silently into that black and then gone forever.