Dark Waters

By Rhonda Parrish, Rose Chisnall, Rob E. Boley and 7 more

Water doesn't need to be deep to be dark.

A remote mountain lake where the locals wear iron anklets for protection, a ghost ship, a goddess, a pearl diver who finds much more than she's looking for, the true story about a familiar fairy tale and more all lurk within these pages.

Featuring dark fantasy and horror by Chris Black, Rob E. Boley, Rose Chisnall, Megan M. Davies-Ostrom, Sharmon Gazaway, Rowena McGowan, Derek Newman-Stille, Thomas Vaughn and Lex Vranick, Dark Waters explores the darker side of water and the creatures that inhabit it. The horrors both above and below.

Proceed with caution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poise and Pen Publishing
• Release date: Sep 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781988233840

Rhonda Parrish

Rhonda Parrish is the co-author of Haunted Hospitals. She has also been published in Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She lives in Edmonton.

Book preview

Dark Waters

Rhonda Parrish

All copyright for individual stories remains with original authors

Anthology Copyright © 2021 by Rhonda Parrish

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

http://www.poiseandpen.com/publishing/

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

Cover design by Psycat Covers

Interior art licensed from DepositPhotos.com

Dark Waters/ Rhonda Parrish. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1-988233-83-3 (Physical)

ISBN 978-1-988233-84-0 (Electronic)

Contents

Siren Song

The Unethical Treatment of Flying Horses

Drowned

Jenny

The Body

Mankiller

Her Relentless Current

Prices

The Black Oyster of Wisher’s Bay

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Siren Song

ROSE CHISNALL

Calypso

H

er father had told her many tales of the goddess, with her dark skin and her darker hair. Of fearsome warriors who would go into battle against the sea, greedy adventurers who sought to steal the ocean’s riches, and the lustful poets who wanted the goddess for their own. All the stories would end the same way: with the men lost in the ocean, searching for the goddess when she was all they could see. Then they would begin to succumb—to thirst, to hunger, to madness. Begging for the goddess to save them from the sea, unable to realise that she is the sea.

She asked each night, while her father tucked her into bed and blew out the candle that lit her room, if the men in those stories were happy. He never answered. Instead he would chuckle, press a kiss to her forehead, and leave her to fall asleep to the sound of crashing waves against the shore, to dream of madmen feasting on each other’s flesh to sate the hunger in their bellies.

She wonders if her father was happy, lost deep beneath the ocean. Whether when his ship capsized he felt despair in the face of death or found comfort in the goddess’ arms. Mostly she wonders if he is still lost, lonely, and calling out her name.

Calypso

They hold the funeral on the cliffs even though her father wanted his funeral to be on the beach. There is no corpse to give their farewells to, so they pay their respects to a facsimile made of bundles of wood dressed in his clothes. They lift the pretense of a body and throw it into the water, but a piece of wood comes loose and falls onto a pallbearer’s toe. She hears a smattering of giggles throughout the crowd, giggles that are quickly silenced by harsh glares from the seamen widows.

Her mother wails into the seabreeze.

She waits until the funeral goers have returned to their lives and her mother has been escorted away by the widows who now call her their sister. The skies are clear and the water still; it is a good day to be at sea. But instead she is standing on land and staring out at the horizon, like Telemachus waiting for Odysseus to return home.

In the whistle of wind she hears the songs of the dead. Her dress is caught in the sea breeze and it sounds as if the gates to hell are between her legs. The hymns of those whose corpses were now adrift in the seaweed echo in her ears. All singing out to the goddess. In those voices she hears the deep calls of her father. Then something higher—a voice of siren song high above, perfect in pitch and tone. It draws her forward, calling out to her from somewhere deep, deep, deep beneath the waves. She digs her feet into the ground beneath her, breathes in, and dives.

Her body shrieks as she hits the water. The water pulses around her, pushing against her ears, her limbs, her skull. Salt stings her eyes, but she can’t close them. She feels a caress against the back of her neck, her back, her chest, and whips her head around to catch sight of what she can feel touching her.

Soft laughter dances through the water.

A woman floats before her, looking no more real than the colour of the ocean but just as beautiful. In the woman’s arms she sees the coral; in her stomach, the whales; and shipwrecks in her eyes. Her lips are coloured by a touch of mischief that darkens as she smiles.

The goddess’ smile breaks her from her daze, and she blushes at staring so brazenly at divinity. Though sacrilege it may be, she cannot bring herself to look away. She decides to devote herself to sacrilege and dares to reach out her hand to touch the goddess before her. It feels like she is caressing the tide.

Her skin is overwhelmed by the touch of water and seaweed. Seafoam dances the whisper of a fingertip over her cheek. The lips of the ocean brush across her own. And she knows that from that moment on, she will taste only salt.

She inhales; water fills her nostrils and her throat and she cannot breathe. In spite of her burning lungs, she feels no panic. She raises her arms—weightless without the burden of air bearing down on her, and floats with the goddess, their hands intertwined.

Arms break through the gap between her peace and the world above. Young hands, still unweathered by the work of the sea, grip under her armpits. The hands tug at her, no matter how tightly she clings to the goddess, until they at last pull her away and she is dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the water. The sweet taste of sea is replaced with foul air and she chokes on it.

A voice is whispering comfort in her ear, promising that she is safe now. There is still seawater in her mouth, mixed with bile from her stomach. She spits it at him. The one who stole her from her home tightens his grip around her waist and swims back to shore, dragging her along with him. He releases her at last when they reach the shore, leaving her curled up on the beach, caressed by the waves but firmly lying on the sand.

I’m sorry, her rescuer says, gasping for breath. He’s just a boy, probably no older than her.

Fuck you, she replies, and vomits onto his shoes.

She turns her head to the sea, and catches the goddess’s eyes, but cannot hear the song that drew her to the water.

It rains that night. She thinks that it is the goddess crying.

Calypso

The ship arrives on her birthday. It is a decadent gift of desolation and mortality. Only a goddess could consider someone worthy of such a thing. It had once been a great ship, used for expeditions into the vast unknown. It would have been teeming with men when it left port, while people waved and wished them well. Now it is a giant husk washed up on their beach. A grave that holds no coffins.

No bones lay inside to indicate that the ship had been laid to ruin by the deaths of its crew but there are no signs of damage neither, no reason indicated for abandonment. The ship is as beautiful as the day it embarked, even the carved woman that guided their journey remaining proud in her post. Perfect, except for the mark where a girl had climbed on and carved into it with rock. A charm of good luck for her father.

A gift, some of the villagers call it. A curse, cry the others. But one name is whispered by all of their lips—

Calypso

Candles are lit and dug into the sand around the ship to keep spirits at bay. As with everything, the villagers decide to have a feast, and gather on the beach with food and wine and bonfires to keep them warm. The village’s children dance around the ship and play games where they dare each other to touch it. Some have gotten close, but none have reached it yet. One of their mothers yells at them for going near it, and she is grateful. She tells herself she doesn’t want them to push the ship over and kill them all. In truth, she doesn’t want them to touch what is hers.

There is movement beside her, and the boy who pulled her from the ocean sits down. He holds two plates of food and she takes the fuller of the two from him. They sit in silence, listening to the crackling fire in front of them and the soft hush of the goddess sung in the rolling waves.

Jack, the boy says. My name is Jack.

Okay, she replies.

Some people have begun to dance on the beach to whatever music they and the sea can make. Their voices echo off the cliffs and are lost in the sea. The dancers look like skeletons in the candlelight.

You know, Jack begins. "Everyone’s saying they’re going to sail that thing next year. There’s nothing wrong with it except for surface stuff. It’s a bit spooky but for a first ship it isn’t bad. I’d offer to take you with us