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The Fate of the Morgan
The USS Morgan was a Gleaves-class destroyer that went missing and was presumed lost in 1943. Given the war and its duties patrolling the Atlantic hunting U-boats and Italian submarines this wasn't seen as a great surprise and was chalked up to enemy action. No one claimed responsibility for sinking it, but again that’s not unheard of. For most people, even historians and aficionados, the USS Morgan is barely a footnote. But not for my family. For my family it was a great weight wrapped around us, dragging us down.
___
I watched the RV Shearwater disappear beneath the waves amidst a swirl of foaming water. The metal hull tore and ripped letting out a ghastly wail as of some great beast dying. The others of the crew who had made it to the beach stared with a look of divine horror that must have been present on my face too. We were all of us soaked and breathing hard from our mad scramble across the water to land. The ship had been caught and swirled inexorably to the center. It had been nothing short of madness born of a desperate desire to survive that had convinced us to bail out and attempt to swim. And yet...And yet we had encountered no resistance. As though whatever held the Shearwater tight in its grip was singularly uninterested in such insignificant things.
___
It's weird growing up with a monolithic tragedy in your family that you weren’t alive for. The sombre tone whenever it gets brought up, the mourning on important dates. My great-grandfather had already been missing for nearly sixty years when I was born, more than twenty when my mom was, yet I feel his loss in my life. This man who almost certainly would have died before I was born anyway. From an early age I wasn’t content to simply mourn; I needed to find out exactly what happened to the Morgan. If I’m honest with you in a way I never have been with my family: it doesn’t have to do with my great-grandfather, not really. It’s the mystery that fascinates me. It has captivated me since I was five years old. How does something so big just vanish? A Gleaves-class class destroyer measures 348 feet and 4 inches; it displaces between 1600 and 2400 tons of water. For perspective that’s about ten times the length of the Electra 10-E that Amelia Earhart went missing in and more than 450 times the weight. And it’s just gone. No reports of enemy action. No distress signal. No wreckage. No bodies.
___
The island was a paradise that couldn’t exist. We were 150 miles from land just inside the bay of the Ionian Sea with nothing but water around us when the whirlpool started. Whirlpool. I clung to the fallacy of that, desperate for things to be rational. Explainable. Looking over the injured that lay on the golden-white sand, it was hard to do. Of the 30 crew aboard the Shearwater 14 made it to shore. Fourteen. Not even half. Sixteen men and women dead, pulled to the depths by...
Most of us had made it with only superficial injuries. Bruises and scrapes sustained as the ship was pulled and twisted and we were thrown about. A few weren’t so lucky. The Chief Engineer, Allison, had caught her leg on something sharp and it had carved a wedge of flesh from her knee to her foot exposing her shin. The bone was inhumanly smooth and shiny as though someone had taken an industrial sander to it. Then there was the deckhand. I think his name was Robbie or Rabbie, maybe Rocky. I’m ashamed I don’t remember. I didn’t really speak to him during the expedition and after the incident, well, he wasn’t in much of a state for talking. One of my fellow researchers, Jayne, had been an EMT before going back to college to become an underwater archaeologist. Thank God she was there because the ship's medically trained officer was the Chief Mate who had stayed with the Captain to the end. Jayne did what she could with the resources available but she made it clear to the rest of us neither were likely to survive without immediate care. Silence fell at that; we all knew there was no help coming. How would they reach us even if there was? As if pulled by the same thought, we all stared at the now-calm waters. Searching for any sign of the thing we knew lay beneath.
“Whirlpools don’t have teeth.” Captain Allan had said in his thick Scottish accent. Then he'd began shouting commands and all about him the marine crew leapt into action.
___
My parents never understood it. The obsession. My dad thought it was a waste of time. “Ocean's big.” He’d say whenever I brought it up. “Took ‘em 70 years to find the Titanic and they knew where to look.” He was like that, matter of fact about everything. Tried to steer my interest to something more productive: Engineering, like him. Mom, well, mom couldn’t handle any talk about her grampa Jack. Said she found it too upsetting. Thanksgivings became even more awkward, any mention of ‘that' was likely to lead to an argument. No one on my mom's side cared about the mystery of it. I was shocked. Even my uncle John, the biggest conspiracy theorist I knew wasn't interested. He thought Bigfoot was a CIA assassin, but just blew off the disappearance of a destroyer.
So, I pretended to lose my interest. At least around them. At school, and later college, I’d be reading up on everything I could find about the Morgan, about the conflict in the Mediterranean during World War II. About ship disappearances and expeditions to find them. I never stopped trying to find out more about the USS Morgan. Sometimes, I think if I really had stopped then maybe so many wouldn’t have died.
___
Robbie was dead by nightfall that first day. I was glad his screaming had finally stopped. I hated myself for being glad, but I was. We’d decided to stay on the beach and send some people to range out tomorrow in different directions. Get an idea of how big this island was and if there was anything we could use to survive. Or, better yet, escape.
Sharp rocks jutted like fingers from the ground reaching out towards the sea and we hunkered in their shadow, a break from the wind. Griggs, the cook, managed to get a fire going. Him and the oceanographer, Bill, had made a brief foray out earlier for signs of human habitation. Griggs had tried to get me to come along, but I was still too shaken. They hadn’t found any, but they didn’t return empty handed. They’d found some firewood and a freshwater stream, little more than a trickle coming down from a hill they spied in the distance. The twelve of us sat in a loose circle around the fire, each lost in our own thoughts. Each pretending not to notice how the cries and moans had abruptly stopped. Pretending we didn’t know what it meant. The only thing worse than that grim silence was the sound that punctured it. A long, piercing howl that chilled the blood. Silence fell again, punctuated by the occasional crackle from the fire. I glanced around at the flickering faces of the others. Felt my heart beat quicken. Then the howling came again, closer now. Not just a single voice, but a chorus.
___
The National Archive have digitized a lot of their records, but not all of them. After wading through everything I could find on the Internet I knew I needed to see the rest. Documents relating to the Morgan were housed at the National Archive in College Park, Maryland. So, I joined a college trip to Washington DC and ubered the 30 minutes to the building. It was incredible. The building looks like 5 or 6 buildings smushed together, all dominated by glass windows in regular squares, some with a bit of concrete visible others almost none. Its a stark contrast to the one in DC itself, which is clearly Greco-Roman inspired with its columns and friezes. Then there was the contents. It’s dizzying the amount of information they have there and if you don't know what you’re looking for then God help you.
I spent hours pouring over documents, drowning in information. It was all so interesting to me, schematics, muster calls, logs. But it didn’t give me anything that pointed to where it was when it went missing that night in July 1943. At least, that’s what it seemed like. There, amidst the myriad of files that related to the USS Morgan was a photocopy of a scan of a report, the text so fuzzy after multiple conversions that it gave me a migraine reading it. It documented a list of naval losses for 1943 and amongst them was the Morgan; the entry simply read “missing, presumed lost.” But next to that, scrawled in pencil at some point was a single word.
SCYLLA?
___
We slept in shifts. We had no weapons and no plans beyond running if the wolves found us, but it felt good to do something. I took a two hour watch with Ekatarina, the ship's MT. The sky was a deep blue and the fires burned down to red embers, causing the sea to look almost the colour of wine. The wolves still howled, but it sounded distant now, on the edge of hearing.
Ekatarina had moved to the edge of the water, staring out over it. There was a rustle and my heart leapt, but it was just Griggs rolling over in his sleep. I decided to go stand with Ekatarina, hoping that would help my nerves. As I approached she bent down and grabbed a rock from the shore.
“-Charybdis.” She said before throwing the stone at the water. It sailed through the air before slamming into the water with more of a plop than a splash.
“Sorry.” I said, causing Ekatarina to jump. “Sorry.” I said again. She gave me a look as if she was trying to gauge how long I’d been standing there.
“In Kefalonia, we have a saying: ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’. It means having to choose between two bad options.”
“Like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.” I said, using the English expression. Ekatarina snorted at that.
“That is a saying? It sounds very silly.”
“I suppose it does, yeah." I smiled, for the first time considering the idiom. “Never really thought about it.” I didn’t need to ask what the options were. I stared out at where the Shearwater had been swallowed up as the wolves sang their terrible sonata.
The next morning we divided up into groups. Jayne would stay behind to look after Allison along Dr Rasmussen due to his age. Meanwhile the Bosun Niklas would head inland with the remaining deckhands Johnny, Lief, and Erika. Griggs, Jamie the assistant engineer, and the ship’s ETO, Thierry would head North-east. That left me, Ekatarina, and Bill to head south-east around the other side. If we found something we’d come back or send someone back. If we hadn’t found anything by midday, we’d turn around.
The island curved slowly and it was a while before we lost sight of base camp. We stuck to the beach for as long as we could, the sea to our right, so we wouldn’t lose our way. For the first few hours we continued in silence, until we came to the cliffs. It defies explanation the way they sprung on us. The ground off the beach started to slope away from us, rising gradually until all at once we curled round the beach to find jagged rocks looming over. They weren’t dissimilar to the ones by the base, but where those were thin columns staked into the ground, here it was a solid wall, jutting out further at the top.
“Do we double back a little and go up? Or see if the beach continues?” I asked.
“It doesn’t make sense.” Bill said. His hands were on his hips and he stared open-mouthed at the cliffs. “Make it make sense!” He yelled. I glanced around, anxious of the wolves that must surely be somewhere.
“Bill, keep it down.” I hissed.
“This island shouldn’t exist!” He continued. “I’ve sailed right through this stretch of sea before. Literally! And the tides. We should experience a shift from high to low twice a day here.” Ekatarina and I stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
“The tide hasn’t moved. I marked it. Last night, while I was on watch. A series of lines along the beach to measure how far the tide came in. It didn’t even cross the first marker.”
The silence hung there and for the first time I realised that the silence extended to the sea. I couldn’t hear the waves. They moved lazily in and out when I looked, but there was no noise. Ekatarina started walking off the beach and up into the interior. It only took a moment for my shock to clear and I was scrambling after her, Bill not far behind. The sand gave way to verdant earth with trees and bushes accentuating but never dominating the landscape. Once again I was struck by the beauty of it all. I could see Ekatarina up ahead, stopped in front of a bush. I picked up my pace, figuring she had found some edible berries. Instead, I was met with something that at once filled me with hope and confusion. There, curled up sleeping beneath the bush, lay a girl in a white dress.
___
Scylla. The name tickled a memory in my brain. It was an Italian naval operation during the war, but the specifics eluded me. I returned to DC and my field trip with renewed hope and a starting point. It didn’t take long once I was home to find out more. Scylla had been an operation for the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy, moving one of their light cruisers called the Scipione Africano. On the night of 17/18 July 1943 the Scipione had passed through the Messina Straits at high speed heading for Taranto and attacked four British torpedo boats waiting to ambush it. There was no mention of the Morgan, or any other ship but it wasn’t impossible to think that the two had encountered each other in the night and the Scipione as the larger, more powerful ship, had dealt the Morgan a fatal blow. If the Morgan hadn’t been sunk immediately, it likely would have limped towards Malta but obviously never made it.
I clung to my theory for years, all through college and my first job at a sleazy telemarketing company. I spent my days trying to sell questionable diet pills to the elderly and my nights sending emails to research organisations and archaeological institutes about my theory. I had very little success in either endeavour.
I was still living with my parents and we’d settled into a routine. We got along well, watched TV together in the evening after work. I did jigsaws with my mom every Friday and once a month we went out for dinner as a family, usually with my uncle John. He’d tell us about some article from the latest issue of Fortean Times while my dad slowly died inside. I honestly couldn’t tell how much John even believed what he said and how much was just to mess with my dad. It wasn’t perfect, but I was happy. Then the letter arrived and everything crumbled.
___
I didn’t see what happened to Ekatarina. One moment we were gathered around the girl, the next a wolf had stuck its head out of the bush. I focused on throwing one foot in front of the other as fast as possible without falling. The ground slid beneath me, my balance wavered, but I kept my momentum forward. My skull pulsed to the beat of my heart. Ahead of me Bill stumbled and fell face-first onto the sand; the girl giggled behind me. Then a shape darted past me, a blur of brown fur. A bone chilling scream was cut short as powerful jaws clamped down on Bill’s throat. My stomach heaved at the gurgling hiss that emanated from him, but I didn’t stop. The body of the wolf was parallel to me, stretching impossibly forward twenty feet to Bill. That’s what made me turn. My eyes followed the elongated torso of the wolf back and back and back. It must have been at least another forty feet before it ended and it didn’t end with the hind legs of a wolf. No. Instead, it disappeared beneath the billowing white dress of the girl. She was smiling playfully.
“Tréxe, pontikáki.” I had no idea what the words meant but her voice was hauntingly melodic. The wind caught her dress and I glimpsed more wolves lying in wait beneath, slavering and snarling. I ran. Away from her, away from Bill's body, away from the camp. I ran and her laughter pursued me.
___
The research vessel was owned and operated by an American non-profit organisation, registered in the UK, and docked at Thessaloniki. That’s where I met Captain Allen and Dr Rasmussen after I got the job. They’d just secured funding from the VA to search for lost US vessels in the Mediterranean. This was supplemented with contracts from Greece and Italy for oceanographic and hydrographic data.
“You been on a ship before?” Captain Allen asked me. He was a tall man and reminded me of the captain from Tintin with his navy-colored gansey, though his beard was a deep brown with hints of red and not black. I shook my head. I had been in the country less than an hour and hadn’t slept during the previous 18 it had taken me to get there.
Captain Allen grunted and shook his head. “Isn’t he a little young?” The question was directed at Rasmussen, who chuckled.
“He's old enough for this.” He said, English clearly not his first language. He proffered a wrinkled, veiny hand which I shook lightly lest I break something.
“We leave at 0600, assuming the weather holds so if there’s anything you need before we set off be quick about it.” With that Allen strode off, Rasmussen gave me a shrug but deigned to walk with me to the Shearwater. He was a congenial man, asking about my interests beyond naval history. There wasn’t a topic I mentioned that he didn’t have an interest in. He spoke with a genuine, almost childlike, joy about all of them whether it was classic sci-fi literature, Bruce Lee movies, or baseball. It did a lot to reassure me that everything would be OK. I’d been so terrified of this trip, of being out at sea with a bunch of strangers.
The RV Shearwater was 250ft long with the hull painted a deep blue and the superstructure in a pristine white. It looked like it had come straight from a repaint at a dry dock. An A-frame and crane stood out at the stern where the ROV could be deployed from. It was a marvel. I think about that moment a lot. The first time I saw the ship. I pour over it obsessively for any detail I missed. Any sign, however small, that we were being led like lambs to the slaughter.
___
I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran and I didn’t stop. Each breath felt like inhaling putrid smoke, each step like someone was swinging a sledgehammer at the soles of my feet, but I didn’t stop. The beach continued through a hole in the cliffs and the sand thinned, replaced with sun-cracked earth. Flotsam and jetsam littered the ground here, torn pieces of wreckage. My legs howled at me but I had no intention of stopping. However, in my haste and delirium I lost sight of what was underfoot. Something snagged my leg and I pitched forward. As I fell I was sure this was it. This was my last conscious moment on earth. The ground raced up to meet me and the bright world went black.
I awoke, that was the first surprise. The sun had set and a full moon shone in the cloudless sky providing ample light. The second was the boot prints. They led right up to where I’d been lying and then continued off down the beach. Someone had found me as I lay unconscious. And they’d left me. I tried not to dwell on what that might mean and instead cast my eyes around for something, anything, I could use as a weapon. At my feet was a forearm, muscle gone but tendons still holding the bones together; I shuddered at the sight. Even after seeing Bill devoured, I was not inoculated to the horrors of the island. There were more pieces on the beach. Bones that I could pretend were from some animal, others that I couldn’t. Then there was the wreckage. A winch from a trawler, a catamaran's crossbeam, a rudder from a small boat, probably a yacht. They all bore signs of wear, some minor, others seeming to have been left there for years. Then I spotted a length of pipe half-buried in the earth. As I approached it I could see that one end flared out slightly, while towards the other the smooth metal bulged and became grooved. My hand reached out for it with trepidation. It wasn’t a pipe; it was a barrel. I’m not an expert in guns, or cannons, by any stretch, but immediately my mind went to a 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft cannon. The kind that the Morgan had on its deck. It was about a foot and a half long and would make a decent club if nothing else so I pulled it free and, not knowing what else to do, set off in the direction of the bootprints.
___
There was an unspoken divide on the Shearwater. The ship crew and the research crew worked apart, ate apart, slept apart. The only exception was Dr Rasmussen, he was the much-loved grandfather at an awkward thanksgiving. I spent most of my time with Jayne and Bill, both of whom were also recent appointees. They’d worked together for another RV before hopping over to the Shearwater because of the better pay. They were laughing about their last job and how Bill managed to get a mouthful of seawater because Jayne had collected a sample for him in a water bottle when Captain Allen came in and all the naval crew hopped to their feet. I looked to Jayne and Bill, Bill shrugged, and we all rose too. “You all know why we’re here.” He said, staring at table where his crew sat, before turning an intense glare on us. “I don’t care if this is your first voyage or your five hundredth; there will be no complacency on my ship. Understood?”
“Yes, captain!” The crew said in unison. Captain Allen bored his eyes into us once again.
“Aye, aye cap'n.” Bill said, giving a salute. Jayne whacked his arm.
“Understood.” She said.
“Uh, yeah. I mean, yes, captain.” I said. He huffed and left again. Everyone took their seats and resumed eating. The captain never ate with us. In fact, I rarely saw him and we never spoke directly. He would always fix me with this stare that was somewhere between resentment and...regret, maybe? Looking back, that’s what I think it was. So, I kept my head down around him or kept out of his way. If I had any questions I’d ask Dr Rasmussen, or Ekatarina, of course.
Ekatarina. I was sort of in awe of her. She spoke Greek, well she was Greek, but I’d never met anyone who spoke Greek. She was in charge of keeping all the oceanographic equipment working so she spent much of the work day with Bill, usually arguing with him about his treatment of the gear. The ROV was a particular point of contention, with Ekatarina insisting Bill not use it.
“I have literal years of experience controlling these things.” Bill said during their last argument on the matter.
“If you touch the controls again, I will break your hands.” Ekatarina used that expression a lot, but only when she said it to Bill did she sound like she meant it. He held up his hands in mock surrender and backed away from the controls. “Malaka.” She shook her head and left. Bill turned to look at me with a glint in his eye and a dangerous smile on his lips.
“I'm gonna drive it.”
___
I followed the footprint as they moved farther down the beach. The strip of sandy earth narrowed, forcing me to press up against the cliff face and I was glad the water was calm. Of course, that reminded me of what Bill had said about the never-moving sea and then about what Bill had suffered. The way his jaw had...I leaned on the rock and took a minute to compose myself before continuing on.
The beach gave way to rocky outcrops that I had to step across to continue on my path until I could see that they, too, ended. I would have turned back, but I thought of the tracks in the sand. They hadn’t doubled back. Had whoever left them simply leapt into the water? It didn’t seem likely. I pushed on, needing to hop over to the final stretch as it was further away than I could otherwise reach. There were remnants of wooden poles, stakes, and planks here. Stuck in the ground, emerging from the water, they were damp and rotten with disrepair but I got the impression it had been a dock once. Opposite the remnants, there was a gap in the rock, about as wide as the dock itself would have been originally. From within I could see a flicker of light, deep orange. A fire. I moved in cautiously, holding the pipe like a bat, ready to swing.
The tunnel ran straight a short distance before opening to a large chamber. A brass bowl the size of a small dinghy rested at the heart, a fire blazing within it. The smell coming from it was warm and slightly sweet, like burned sugar. Light quivered on the walls which I could see were covered in markings. I moved closer, trying to work out what they were. At first I thought it was English, but I quickly realised it wasn’t. I ran a hand over the deep carving and they felt smooth. How long had they been there?
“It's Greek.” A voice said behind me. I jumped and nearly headbutted the wall. The strange cave had made me forget I was following someone. I turned to see Ekatarina rise from the other side of the brazier.
“You're alive.” I felt breathless seeing her.
“Unlike Bill.” She said. I opened my mouth to explain, to apologise, to rationalise. But I stayed silent. What could I say. I hung my head in shame before turning back to the letters.
“What does it say?”
“Much.” She said. I looked back at her, waiting for more and she made me wait before finally continuing. “It is the agreement. Between this island’s inhabitant and the world beyond.”
“Agreement?” I asked. A sense of dread grew in me then. The first inkling that something deeper was happening. Ekatarina moved closer, scanning the walls.
“That if we feed her, she will stay here.” I shuddered at Ekatarina’s words, unsure what to say. Then pain exploded in my shoulder and all rational thought fled me. I fell to my knees dropping the barrel. I glanced back to find Ekatarina standing over me, a sailing knife in her hand, wet with my blood.
“Scylla and Charybdis.” She said.
___
I tried to talk Bill out of it, but he waved me away. The ship was rocking dangerously and even without Ekatarina’s warning, it was a terrible time to launch the ROV.
“How are we gonna find anything if we never use it?” He said. He had a point.
“Maybe you’re right.” I conceded. “But look at the water. Surely we shouldn’t be launching it in these conditions.” There was a look on his face as he considered this and I thought he would see sense and back down. Unfortunately, that’s when Jayne came over.
“We doing this?” She asked, moving over to the winch controls.
“Wait, you two were planning this?”
“Of course.” Jayne said. “You can’t just deploy randomly. We’ve got scans of the area and the ship is anchored for a couple of hours while Allison does her engine cycling and diagnostic.”
“It is, quite literally, now or never for us to be able to take her for a spin.” Bill said, once again at the ROV's control laptop.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“Check the umbilical wire is secured.” Bill called, tapping away. I didn’t know what an umbilical wire was, but could make a guess based on the name. A thick cable snaked along the deck before going up over the crane and connecting to the ROV. I stared at the connection blankly.
“It’s secure.” I said, hopefully.
“And here.” Jayne said, operating the winch. There was a deep whirring as the ROV ascended. “We.” The crane swung out over the edge of the ship. “Go.” The ROV dropped with a whistle and a splash. I rushed to stare at the screen over Bill’s shoulder but all I could see was blue. The winch whirred and whistled as the ROV descended until it finally stopped. A cloud of dirt burst on the screen as the ROV touched down on the sea floor.
“Whoops.” Bill said, moving the controls to raise it up and look around. “Oh-ho, here we go.” He said after a minute causing Jayne to scramble over.
“what have we got?” She asked; I couldn’t see anything interesting.
“There.” Bill jabbed a finger at the screen, what appeared to be just another bit of seabed. He moved the ROV closer and I saw the light glint off of something metal.
“Is that -?” Jayne began.
“Yup. Pay dirt.” Bill said. The ROV continued along. It was part of a hull. Barely visible between time, water, and mud were numbers painted on it. 4 and 3 visible, with the final number illegible due to damage, the metal torn and twisted. My heart was in my throat. The hull number matched the USS Morgan. I’d found it. I was barely aware of Bill and Jayne's continued conversation. Or the changing display as the ROV swept past the hull fragment towards other pieces of wreckage. All I could think about was the numbers. I’d found it. I’d actually found it.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” The booming voice of Captain Allen cut through their revelry and my ruminating. “Get that thing back on the ship. Now!” There was more than just anger in his voice; there was panic.
“Of course, captain.” Jayne darted over to the winch controls and started them up. They whirred briefly, then there was a loud kthunk and the machinery stopped. Something flashed in front of the screen for a split second and the feed cut out. Then the winch groaned and suddenly the umbilical wire was pulling away rapidly. It reached the end of its line and then the whole ship rocked and began moving backward. The wire disappeared into the water almost immediately, but I could see that it was taut and in the distance the sea was beginning to roil.
“Whirlpool!” Someone yelled from the bridge. The captain cursed and began heading for the bridge himself, unsure what to do I followed.
“Cut the line, and dump anything non urgent.” He yelled to Ekatarina as she emerged heading the other way. She nodded and set off at a run. Dr Rasmussen was already in the bridge, along with the chief mate and the bosun. Allen snatched a pair of binoculars from their peg and focused on the threading mass of water.
“Full power, angle fifty degrees port; I want that thing firmly to our aft.” Captain Allen said, the chief mate gave a nod and set to.
“Captain, you’re overreacting.” Dr Rasmussen said, clasping him on the shoulder. “It is just a whirlpool.” I balked. Just a whirlpool, as if that wasn’t serious.
“Whirlpools don’t have teeth.” He spat, pushing Rasmussen away and slamming the binoculars down and started snapping off further commands. I picked up the binoculars and stared back at the thing. My blood froze. The water churned and span, guided by bright white triangles. Teeth. Like sharks' teeth, but much larger, they must have been as big as my palm at least and there were hundreds of them. Concentric circles of teeth, some spinning clockwise, others anticlockwise. And we were being pulled towards it. The engine huffed and yowled, but our pace never slowed. Whatever it was, it had us. It had us and we couldn’t escape. I dropped the binoculars and ran for the life raft.
Other members of the crew were already there, of course, kicking and shoving each other. One raft for 30 people and it would seat 8, perhaps 10 without sinking. It was overfull and others were being beaten back. The ship lurched again and Ekatarina bowled into me, sending us both to the deck. The raft dropped into the water with a plop. I scrambled up and rushed to the gunwale. The raft was holding, though several people had been thrown clear of it by the sudden drop, among them I saw Bill floundering. It was only because I was looking at him, stationary in the water, that I realised how quickly we were being dragged towards the watery maw. For as fast as it was, though, the raft moved even faster. It was mere seconds before the teeth sliced easily through it. I heard a woman scream loud and piercing before all became a cacophony of yelling and shouting and blood geysered from what had once been the raft. I cast one last look at Bill, still floating in place, and dove off the ship.
___
“Why don’t you just kill me.” I asked, grunting as fresh pain surged through the stab wound when she tied my hands. “Live. Food.” She clinked her knife against words on the wall as she spoke and I wished I’d never asked. She began lifting me up, at first I resisted but then the knife was at my throat. “Live does not have to mean whole.” I complied.
She marched me all the way back to camp. If she grew tired as the sun slowly rose during our trek, she showed no sign of it. Nor did she speak to me, just gave me a jab to the ribs if I talked or slowed at all. I was relieved when I spotted the fingers of rock in the distance and knew we were close. My feet burned with pain and the rest of my body felt cold, despite the sun. Before we made it to camp, we found Niklas and the deckhands. What was left of them. The sand was mired with blood and only scraps of clothing and gore were in evidence. It was only because of a piece of skull that I knew who it was. The eye was still present, a deep grey, and the pale skin of the forehead still had a tuft of fiery red hair attached, though it was all caked in blood and lay atop a rock. I stopped at the sight of it all and vomited. I had nothing to throw up but the lining of my stomach and it burned my throat before the yellowy mess flecked onto the sand.
“Malakía.” Ekatarina cursed. “Fool, Niklas. Keep moving.” She jabbed me in the ribs and I grunted in pain as my shoulder electrified, but I moved before she did it again. I kept my head down, focusing on my next shuffling step, trying hard not to fall. I felt so weak. One more prod, the slightest rock, a strong gust of wind; any would be enough to send me crashing to the floor. Then the camp came into view and a small reserve of energy spurred me forward at barely more than Ekatarina’s walking pace. I could see Jayne crouched over the prone form of Allison, and Dr Rasmussen on his knees before...
She was there on the beach. Her white gown ruffling as if in the breeze, though there was none. She was smiling sweetly as she stared at Dr Rasmussen, begging for his life. It stripped me of my remaining resolve and my knees buckled. My breath came out ragged and my vision went spotty at the edges. Ekatarina stopped next to me, hands on her hips.
“Please.” Rasmussen pleaded, hands clasped before him. “Our ship was destroyed."
The girl barked a laugh. “Xypnás tin aderfí mou me dikí sou efthýni.”
“It was an accident.” He said, clearly he understood her. “We were heading for the usual spot.”
I needed to throw up. He was in on it too. The whole expedition was, what, a cover for sacrifices to this thing.
“I’ve lit the brazier, pickup should be here shortly. Niklas and his crop were all accepted” Ekatarina headed over to Dr Rasmussen, careful to keep him between her and the girl.
“Niklas, too?” Dr Rasmussen sounded dismayed. Ekatarina nodded. He glanced back and saw me and he smiled. He smiled. It wasn't the warm smile I'd gotten used to on the Shearwater, it was self-satisfied. Smug. He turned back to the girl.
“Please accept these offerings and, in your magnanimity, allow us to rest on your island until our friends arrive.” He spread his arms wide. I think Jayne may have started weeping at this; I know I did.
“Den tróo ta perissévmata tis aderfís mo.” The girl said, before her eyes cast over Jayne, and then me. Her smile grew. It was so genuine and childlike my skin crawled. “To pontikaki me kánei na chamogeláo. Boreí na zísei.”
“W-what?” Dr Rasmussen sputtered, while Ekatarina gasped. I didn’t have time to even try to guess at what she had said. The girl's smile turned to a snarl and she lurched forward so far she should have fallen, but instead she was moving forward faster than should have been possible. She collided with Jayne and knocked her onto her back. The girl sat atop her smiling wolfishly as her dress began to shift, things rippling beneath it. Jayne screamed and a spurt of blood burst into the air.
I closed my eyes before the worst of it. The girl didn’t make it quick as her wolves ate Jayne. Her screams bore into my soul and my mind conjured up horrors as the sounds of flesh tearing and jaws snapping filled the gaps of Jayne gulping in air between screams. The smell of blood and gore and waste. I don’t know how long it went on for, it seemed an eternity. Even after Jayne's screams gave way to gurgles and then silence, the wet chomping of the wolves had continued.
Ekatarina shook me from my misery and pulled me to my feet. We moved across the island, thankfully our pace was slow due to Dr Rasmussen. I didn’t know where we were going; I didn’t know why they hadn’t killed me yet. I was sure this was a death march, but I was so numbed I couldn’t even fight it. Nobody spoke and if the girl was still nearby I never saw her. The island couldn’t have been very big as it took us less time to cut through the middle than it had to get from the cave back to camp. There was another beach this side and I could see a dock. Intact and well maintained, not like the one by the cave. Griggs, Jamie, and Thierry were there sat on wooden crates. The sight of them didn’t inspire any hope, instead I wondered which of them would kill me.
“Ho, there!” Griggs called with a wave when he spotted us. “Where’s Niklas?”
“Unfortunately, he will not be joining us.” Dr Rasmussen said, sounding solemn. It was amazing how quickly he slipped back into the kindly role he wore.
“And him?” Thierry said. This was it, I knew. Now they would kill me.
“She said he could live.” Ekatarina said, sounding so angry she could spit. I just blinked, the words not really registering. Then, I started laughing, deep painful laughter that soon mingled with crying. I fell to my knees, but was quickly hoisted up again as the men came over.
“She is a mad devil that one, no?” Thierry clucked as he helped me over to a crate. I sat down heavily and before long I was asleep.
A ship came to pick us up full of more people who must have known about all this. They dressed my stab wound, gave me some food, then docked near Syracuse just long enough to throw me off the ship before leaving. That was it. No explanation, no threat not to tell anyone. Nothing but a scar and nightmares to tell me that it ever happened. I never told my family what happened, about the fate of the Morgan. But I needed to get it off my chest even if they kill me for it.
#entertainment
source
The USS Morgan was a Gleaves-class destroyer that went missing and was presumed lost in 1943. Given the war and its duties patrolling the Atlantic hunting U-boats and Italian submarines this wasn't seen as a great surprise and was chalked up to enemy action. No one claimed responsibility for sinking it, but again that’s not unheard of. For most people, even historians and aficionados, the USS Morgan is barely a footnote. But not for my family. For my family it was a great weight wrapped around us, dragging us down.
___
I watched the RV Shearwater disappear beneath the waves amidst a swirl of foaming water. The metal hull tore and ripped letting out a ghastly wail as of some great beast dying. The others of the crew who had made it to the beach stared with a look of divine horror that must have been present on my face too. We were all of us soaked and breathing hard from our mad scramble across the water to land. The ship had been caught and swirled inexorably to the center. It had been nothing short of madness born of a desperate desire to survive that had convinced us to bail out and attempt to swim. And yet...And yet we had encountered no resistance. As though whatever held the Shearwater tight in its grip was singularly uninterested in such insignificant things.
___
It's weird growing up with a monolithic tragedy in your family that you weren’t alive for. The sombre tone whenever it gets brought up, the mourning on important dates. My great-grandfather had already been missing for nearly sixty years when I was born, more than twenty when my mom was, yet I feel his loss in my life. This man who almost certainly would have died before I was born anyway. From an early age I wasn’t content to simply mourn; I needed to find out exactly what happened to the Morgan. If I’m honest with you in a way I never have been with my family: it doesn’t have to do with my great-grandfather, not really. It’s the mystery that fascinates me. It has captivated me since I was five years old. How does something so big just vanish? A Gleaves-class class destroyer measures 348 feet and 4 inches; it displaces between 1600 and 2400 tons of water. For perspective that’s about ten times the length of the Electra 10-E that Amelia Earhart went missing in and more than 450 times the weight. And it’s just gone. No reports of enemy action. No distress signal. No wreckage. No bodies.
___
The island was a paradise that couldn’t exist. We were 150 miles from land just inside the bay of the Ionian Sea with nothing but water around us when the whirlpool started. Whirlpool. I clung to the fallacy of that, desperate for things to be rational. Explainable. Looking over the injured that lay on the golden-white sand, it was hard to do. Of the 30 crew aboard the Shearwater 14 made it to shore. Fourteen. Not even half. Sixteen men and women dead, pulled to the depths by...
Most of us had made it with only superficial injuries. Bruises and scrapes sustained as the ship was pulled and twisted and we were thrown about. A few weren’t so lucky. The Chief Engineer, Allison, had caught her leg on something sharp and it had carved a wedge of flesh from her knee to her foot exposing her shin. The bone was inhumanly smooth and shiny as though someone had taken an industrial sander to it. Then there was the deckhand. I think his name was Robbie or Rabbie, maybe Rocky. I’m ashamed I don’t remember. I didn’t really speak to him during the expedition and after the incident, well, he wasn’t in much of a state for talking. One of my fellow researchers, Jayne, had been an EMT before going back to college to become an underwater archaeologist. Thank God she was there because the ship's medically trained officer was the Chief Mate who had stayed with the Captain to the end. Jayne did what she could with the resources available but she made it clear to the rest of us neither were likely to survive without immediate care. Silence fell at that; we all knew there was no help coming. How would they reach us even if there was? As if pulled by the same thought, we all stared at the now-calm waters. Searching for any sign of the thing we knew lay beneath.
“Whirlpools don’t have teeth.” Captain Allan had said in his thick Scottish accent. Then he'd began shouting commands and all about him the marine crew leapt into action.
___
My parents never understood it. The obsession. My dad thought it was a waste of time. “Ocean's big.” He’d say whenever I brought it up. “Took ‘em 70 years to find the Titanic and they knew where to look.” He was like that, matter of fact about everything. Tried to steer my interest to something more productive: Engineering, like him. Mom, well, mom couldn’t handle any talk about her grampa Jack. Said she found it too upsetting. Thanksgivings became even more awkward, any mention of ‘that' was likely to lead to an argument. No one on my mom's side cared about the mystery of it. I was shocked. Even my uncle John, the biggest conspiracy theorist I knew wasn't interested. He thought Bigfoot was a CIA assassin, but just blew off the disappearance of a destroyer.
So, I pretended to lose my interest. At least around them. At school, and later college, I’d be reading up on everything I could find about the Morgan, about the conflict in the Mediterranean during World War II. About ship disappearances and expeditions to find them. I never stopped trying to find out more about the USS Morgan. Sometimes, I think if I really had stopped then maybe so many wouldn’t have died.
___
Robbie was dead by nightfall that first day. I was glad his screaming had finally stopped. I hated myself for being glad, but I was. We’d decided to stay on the beach and send some people to range out tomorrow in different directions. Get an idea of how big this island was and if there was anything we could use to survive. Or, better yet, escape.
Sharp rocks jutted like fingers from the ground reaching out towards the sea and we hunkered in their shadow, a break from the wind. Griggs, the cook, managed to get a fire going. Him and the oceanographer, Bill, had made a brief foray out earlier for signs of human habitation. Griggs had tried to get me to come along, but I was still too shaken. They hadn’t found any, but they didn’t return empty handed. They’d found some firewood and a freshwater stream, little more than a trickle coming down from a hill they spied in the distance. The twelve of us sat in a loose circle around the fire, each lost in our own thoughts. Each pretending not to notice how the cries and moans had abruptly stopped. Pretending we didn’t know what it meant. The only thing worse than that grim silence was the sound that punctured it. A long, piercing howl that chilled the blood. Silence fell again, punctuated by the occasional crackle from the fire. I glanced around at the flickering faces of the others. Felt my heart beat quicken. Then the howling came again, closer now. Not just a single voice, but a chorus.
___
The National Archive have digitized a lot of their records, but not all of them. After wading through everything I could find on the Internet I knew I needed to see the rest. Documents relating to the Morgan were housed at the National Archive in College Park, Maryland. So, I joined a college trip to Washington DC and ubered the 30 minutes to the building. It was incredible. The building looks like 5 or 6 buildings smushed together, all dominated by glass windows in regular squares, some with a bit of concrete visible others almost none. Its a stark contrast to the one in DC itself, which is clearly Greco-Roman inspired with its columns and friezes. Then there was the contents. It’s dizzying the amount of information they have there and if you don't know what you’re looking for then God help you.
I spent hours pouring over documents, drowning in information. It was all so interesting to me, schematics, muster calls, logs. But it didn’t give me anything that pointed to where it was when it went missing that night in July 1943. At least, that’s what it seemed like. There, amidst the myriad of files that related to the USS Morgan was a photocopy of a scan of a report, the text so fuzzy after multiple conversions that it gave me a migraine reading it. It documented a list of naval losses for 1943 and amongst them was the Morgan; the entry simply read “missing, presumed lost.” But next to that, scrawled in pencil at some point was a single word.
SCYLLA?
___
We slept in shifts. We had no weapons and no plans beyond running if the wolves found us, but it felt good to do something. I took a two hour watch with Ekatarina, the ship's MT. The sky was a deep blue and the fires burned down to red embers, causing the sea to look almost the colour of wine. The wolves still howled, but it sounded distant now, on the edge of hearing.
Ekatarina had moved to the edge of the water, staring out over it. There was a rustle and my heart leapt, but it was just Griggs rolling over in his sleep. I decided to go stand with Ekatarina, hoping that would help my nerves. As I approached she bent down and grabbed a rock from the shore.
“-Charybdis.” She said before throwing the stone at the water. It sailed through the air before slamming into the water with more of a plop than a splash.
“Sorry.” I said, causing Ekatarina to jump. “Sorry.” I said again. She gave me a look as if she was trying to gauge how long I’d been standing there.
“In Kefalonia, we have a saying: ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’. It means having to choose between two bad options.”
“Like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.” I said, using the English expression. Ekatarina snorted at that.
“That is a saying? It sounds very silly.”
“I suppose it does, yeah." I smiled, for the first time considering the idiom. “Never really thought about it.” I didn’t need to ask what the options were. I stared out at where the Shearwater had been swallowed up as the wolves sang their terrible sonata.
The next morning we divided up into groups. Jayne would stay behind to look after Allison along Dr Rasmussen due to his age. Meanwhile the Bosun Niklas would head inland with the remaining deckhands Johnny, Lief, and Erika. Griggs, Jamie the assistant engineer, and the ship’s ETO, Thierry would head North-east. That left me, Ekatarina, and Bill to head south-east around the other side. If we found something we’d come back or send someone back. If we hadn’t found anything by midday, we’d turn around.
The island curved slowly and it was a while before we lost sight of base camp. We stuck to the beach for as long as we could, the sea to our right, so we wouldn’t lose our way. For the first few hours we continued in silence, until we came to the cliffs. It defies explanation the way they sprung on us. The ground off the beach started to slope away from us, rising gradually until all at once we curled round the beach to find jagged rocks looming over. They weren’t dissimilar to the ones by the base, but where those were thin columns staked into the ground, here it was a solid wall, jutting out further at the top.
“Do we double back a little and go up? Or see if the beach continues?” I asked.
“It doesn’t make sense.” Bill said. His hands were on his hips and he stared open-mouthed at the cliffs. “Make it make sense!” He yelled. I glanced around, anxious of the wolves that must surely be somewhere.
“Bill, keep it down.” I hissed.
“This island shouldn’t exist!” He continued. “I’ve sailed right through this stretch of sea before. Literally! And the tides. We should experience a shift from high to low twice a day here.” Ekatarina and I stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
“The tide hasn’t moved. I marked it. Last night, while I was on watch. A series of lines along the beach to measure how far the tide came in. It didn’t even cross the first marker.”
The silence hung there and for the first time I realised that the silence extended to the sea. I couldn’t hear the waves. They moved lazily in and out when I looked, but there was no noise. Ekatarina started walking off the beach and up into the interior. It only took a moment for my shock to clear and I was scrambling after her, Bill not far behind. The sand gave way to verdant earth with trees and bushes accentuating but never dominating the landscape. Once again I was struck by the beauty of it all. I could see Ekatarina up ahead, stopped in front of a bush. I picked up my pace, figuring she had found some edible berries. Instead, I was met with something that at once filled me with hope and confusion. There, curled up sleeping beneath the bush, lay a girl in a white dress.
___
Scylla. The name tickled a memory in my brain. It was an Italian naval operation during the war, but the specifics eluded me. I returned to DC and my field trip with renewed hope and a starting point. It didn’t take long once I was home to find out more. Scylla had been an operation for the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy, moving one of their light cruisers called the Scipione Africano. On the night of 17/18 July 1943 the Scipione had passed through the Messina Straits at high speed heading for Taranto and attacked four British torpedo boats waiting to ambush it. There was no mention of the Morgan, or any other ship but it wasn’t impossible to think that the two had encountered each other in the night and the Scipione as the larger, more powerful ship, had dealt the Morgan a fatal blow. If the Morgan hadn’t been sunk immediately, it likely would have limped towards Malta but obviously never made it.
I clung to my theory for years, all through college and my first job at a sleazy telemarketing company. I spent my days trying to sell questionable diet pills to the elderly and my nights sending emails to research organisations and archaeological institutes about my theory. I had very little success in either endeavour.
I was still living with my parents and we’d settled into a routine. We got along well, watched TV together in the evening after work. I did jigsaws with my mom every Friday and once a month we went out for dinner as a family, usually with my uncle John. He’d tell us about some article from the latest issue of Fortean Times while my dad slowly died inside. I honestly couldn’t tell how much John even believed what he said and how much was just to mess with my dad. It wasn’t perfect, but I was happy. Then the letter arrived and everything crumbled.
___
I didn’t see what happened to Ekatarina. One moment we were gathered around the girl, the next a wolf had stuck its head out of the bush. I focused on throwing one foot in front of the other as fast as possible without falling. The ground slid beneath me, my balance wavered, but I kept my momentum forward. My skull pulsed to the beat of my heart. Ahead of me Bill stumbled and fell face-first onto the sand; the girl giggled behind me. Then a shape darted past me, a blur of brown fur. A bone chilling scream was cut short as powerful jaws clamped down on Bill’s throat. My stomach heaved at the gurgling hiss that emanated from him, but I didn’t stop. The body of the wolf was parallel to me, stretching impossibly forward twenty feet to Bill. That’s what made me turn. My eyes followed the elongated torso of the wolf back and back and back. It must have been at least another forty feet before it ended and it didn’t end with the hind legs of a wolf. No. Instead, it disappeared beneath the billowing white dress of the girl. She was smiling playfully.
“Tréxe, pontikáki.” I had no idea what the words meant but her voice was hauntingly melodic. The wind caught her dress and I glimpsed more wolves lying in wait beneath, slavering and snarling. I ran. Away from her, away from Bill's body, away from the camp. I ran and her laughter pursued me.
___
The research vessel was owned and operated by an American non-profit organisation, registered in the UK, and docked at Thessaloniki. That’s where I met Captain Allen and Dr Rasmussen after I got the job. They’d just secured funding from the VA to search for lost US vessels in the Mediterranean. This was supplemented with contracts from Greece and Italy for oceanographic and hydrographic data.
“You been on a ship before?” Captain Allen asked me. He was a tall man and reminded me of the captain from Tintin with his navy-colored gansey, though his beard was a deep brown with hints of red and not black. I shook my head. I had been in the country less than an hour and hadn’t slept during the previous 18 it had taken me to get there.
Captain Allen grunted and shook his head. “Isn’t he a little young?” The question was directed at Rasmussen, who chuckled.
“He's old enough for this.” He said, English clearly not his first language. He proffered a wrinkled, veiny hand which I shook lightly lest I break something.
“We leave at 0600, assuming the weather holds so if there’s anything you need before we set off be quick about it.” With that Allen strode off, Rasmussen gave me a shrug but deigned to walk with me to the Shearwater. He was a congenial man, asking about my interests beyond naval history. There wasn’t a topic I mentioned that he didn’t have an interest in. He spoke with a genuine, almost childlike, joy about all of them whether it was classic sci-fi literature, Bruce Lee movies, or baseball. It did a lot to reassure me that everything would be OK. I’d been so terrified of this trip, of being out at sea with a bunch of strangers.
The RV Shearwater was 250ft long with the hull painted a deep blue and the superstructure in a pristine white. It looked like it had come straight from a repaint at a dry dock. An A-frame and crane stood out at the stern where the ROV could be deployed from. It was a marvel. I think about that moment a lot. The first time I saw the ship. I pour over it obsessively for any detail I missed. Any sign, however small, that we were being led like lambs to the slaughter.
___
I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran and I didn’t stop. Each breath felt like inhaling putrid smoke, each step like someone was swinging a sledgehammer at the soles of my feet, but I didn’t stop. The beach continued through a hole in the cliffs and the sand thinned, replaced with sun-cracked earth. Flotsam and jetsam littered the ground here, torn pieces of wreckage. My legs howled at me but I had no intention of stopping. However, in my haste and delirium I lost sight of what was underfoot. Something snagged my leg and I pitched forward. As I fell I was sure this was it. This was my last conscious moment on earth. The ground raced up to meet me and the bright world went black.
I awoke, that was the first surprise. The sun had set and a full moon shone in the cloudless sky providing ample light. The second was the boot prints. They led right up to where I’d been lying and then continued off down the beach. Someone had found me as I lay unconscious. And they’d left me. I tried not to dwell on what that might mean and instead cast my eyes around for something, anything, I could use as a weapon. At my feet was a forearm, muscle gone but tendons still holding the bones together; I shuddered at the sight. Even after seeing Bill devoured, I was not inoculated to the horrors of the island. There were more pieces on the beach. Bones that I could pretend were from some animal, others that I couldn’t. Then there was the wreckage. A winch from a trawler, a catamaran's crossbeam, a rudder from a small boat, probably a yacht. They all bore signs of wear, some minor, others seeming to have been left there for years. Then I spotted a length of pipe half-buried in the earth. As I approached it I could see that one end flared out slightly, while towards the other the smooth metal bulged and became grooved. My hand reached out for it with trepidation. It wasn’t a pipe; it was a barrel. I’m not an expert in guns, or cannons, by any stretch, but immediately my mind went to a 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft cannon. The kind that the Morgan had on its deck. It was about a foot and a half long and would make a decent club if nothing else so I pulled it free and, not knowing what else to do, set off in the direction of the bootprints.
___
There was an unspoken divide on the Shearwater. The ship crew and the research crew worked apart, ate apart, slept apart. The only exception was Dr Rasmussen, he was the much-loved grandfather at an awkward thanksgiving. I spent most of my time with Jayne and Bill, both of whom were also recent appointees. They’d worked together for another RV before hopping over to the Shearwater because of the better pay. They were laughing about their last job and how Bill managed to get a mouthful of seawater because Jayne had collected a sample for him in a water bottle when Captain Allen came in and all the naval crew hopped to their feet. I looked to Jayne and Bill, Bill shrugged, and we all rose too. “You all know why we’re here.” He said, staring at table where his crew sat, before turning an intense glare on us. “I don’t care if this is your first voyage or your five hundredth; there will be no complacency on my ship. Understood?”
“Yes, captain!” The crew said in unison. Captain Allen bored his eyes into us once again.
“Aye, aye cap'n.” Bill said, giving a salute. Jayne whacked his arm.
“Understood.” She said.
“Uh, yeah. I mean, yes, captain.” I said. He huffed and left again. Everyone took their seats and resumed eating. The captain never ate with us. In fact, I rarely saw him and we never spoke directly. He would always fix me with this stare that was somewhere between resentment and...regret, maybe? Looking back, that’s what I think it was. So, I kept my head down around him or kept out of his way. If I had any questions I’d ask Dr Rasmussen, or Ekatarina, of course.
Ekatarina. I was sort of in awe of her. She spoke Greek, well she was Greek, but I’d never met anyone who spoke Greek. She was in charge of keeping all the oceanographic equipment working so she spent much of the work day with Bill, usually arguing with him about his treatment of the gear. The ROV was a particular point of contention, with Ekatarina insisting Bill not use it.
“I have literal years of experience controlling these things.” Bill said during their last argument on the matter.
“If you touch the controls again, I will break your hands.” Ekatarina used that expression a lot, but only when she said it to Bill did she sound like she meant it. He held up his hands in mock surrender and backed away from the controls. “Malaka.” She shook her head and left. Bill turned to look at me with a glint in his eye and a dangerous smile on his lips.
“I'm gonna drive it.”
___
I followed the footprint as they moved farther down the beach. The strip of sandy earth narrowed, forcing me to press up against the cliff face and I was glad the water was calm. Of course, that reminded me of what Bill had said about the never-moving sea and then about what Bill had suffered. The way his jaw had...I leaned on the rock and took a minute to compose myself before continuing on.
The beach gave way to rocky outcrops that I had to step across to continue on my path until I could see that they, too, ended. I would have turned back, but I thought of the tracks in the sand. They hadn’t doubled back. Had whoever left them simply leapt into the water? It didn’t seem likely. I pushed on, needing to hop over to the final stretch as it was further away than I could otherwise reach. There were remnants of wooden poles, stakes, and planks here. Stuck in the ground, emerging from the water, they were damp and rotten with disrepair but I got the impression it had been a dock once. Opposite the remnants, there was a gap in the rock, about as wide as the dock itself would have been originally. From within I could see a flicker of light, deep orange. A fire. I moved in cautiously, holding the pipe like a bat, ready to swing.
The tunnel ran straight a short distance before opening to a large chamber. A brass bowl the size of a small dinghy rested at the heart, a fire blazing within it. The smell coming from it was warm and slightly sweet, like burned sugar. Light quivered on the walls which I could see were covered in markings. I moved closer, trying to work out what they were. At first I thought it was English, but I quickly realised it wasn’t. I ran a hand over the deep carving and they felt smooth. How long had they been there?
“It's Greek.” A voice said behind me. I jumped and nearly headbutted the wall. The strange cave had made me forget I was following someone. I turned to see Ekatarina rise from the other side of the brazier.
“You're alive.” I felt breathless seeing her.
“Unlike Bill.” She said. I opened my mouth to explain, to apologise, to rationalise. But I stayed silent. What could I say. I hung my head in shame before turning back to the letters.
“What does it say?”
“Much.” She said. I looked back at her, waiting for more and she made me wait before finally continuing. “It is the agreement. Between this island’s inhabitant and the world beyond.”
“Agreement?” I asked. A sense of dread grew in me then. The first inkling that something deeper was happening. Ekatarina moved closer, scanning the walls.
“That if we feed her, she will stay here.” I shuddered at Ekatarina’s words, unsure what to say. Then pain exploded in my shoulder and all rational thought fled me. I fell to my knees dropping the barrel. I glanced back to find Ekatarina standing over me, a sailing knife in her hand, wet with my blood.
“Scylla and Charybdis.” She said.
___
I tried to talk Bill out of it, but he waved me away. The ship was rocking dangerously and even without Ekatarina’s warning, it was a terrible time to launch the ROV.
“How are we gonna find anything if we never use it?” He said. He had a point.
“Maybe you’re right.” I conceded. “But look at the water. Surely we shouldn’t be launching it in these conditions.” There was a look on his face as he considered this and I thought he would see sense and back down. Unfortunately, that’s when Jayne came over.
“We doing this?” She asked, moving over to the winch controls.
“Wait, you two were planning this?”
“Of course.” Jayne said. “You can’t just deploy randomly. We’ve got scans of the area and the ship is anchored for a couple of hours while Allison does her engine cycling and diagnostic.”
“It is, quite literally, now or never for us to be able to take her for a spin.” Bill said, once again at the ROV's control laptop.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“Check the umbilical wire is secured.” Bill called, tapping away. I didn’t know what an umbilical wire was, but could make a guess based on the name. A thick cable snaked along the deck before going up over the crane and connecting to the ROV. I stared at the connection blankly.
“It’s secure.” I said, hopefully.
“And here.” Jayne said, operating the winch. There was a deep whirring as the ROV ascended. “We.” The crane swung out over the edge of the ship. “Go.” The ROV dropped with a whistle and a splash. I rushed to stare at the screen over Bill’s shoulder but all I could see was blue. The winch whirred and whistled as the ROV descended until it finally stopped. A cloud of dirt burst on the screen as the ROV touched down on the sea floor.
“Whoops.” Bill said, moving the controls to raise it up and look around. “Oh-ho, here we go.” He said after a minute causing Jayne to scramble over.
“what have we got?” She asked; I couldn’t see anything interesting.
“There.” Bill jabbed a finger at the screen, what appeared to be just another bit of seabed. He moved the ROV closer and I saw the light glint off of something metal.
“Is that -?” Jayne began.
“Yup. Pay dirt.” Bill said. The ROV continued along. It was part of a hull. Barely visible between time, water, and mud were numbers painted on it. 4 and 3 visible, with the final number illegible due to damage, the metal torn and twisted. My heart was in my throat. The hull number matched the USS Morgan. I’d found it. I was barely aware of Bill and Jayne's continued conversation. Or the changing display as the ROV swept past the hull fragment towards other pieces of wreckage. All I could think about was the numbers. I’d found it. I’d actually found it.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” The booming voice of Captain Allen cut through their revelry and my ruminating. “Get that thing back on the ship. Now!” There was more than just anger in his voice; there was panic.
“Of course, captain.” Jayne darted over to the winch controls and started them up. They whirred briefly, then there was a loud kthunk and the machinery stopped. Something flashed in front of the screen for a split second and the feed cut out. Then the winch groaned and suddenly the umbilical wire was pulling away rapidly. It reached the end of its line and then the whole ship rocked and began moving backward. The wire disappeared into the water almost immediately, but I could see that it was taut and in the distance the sea was beginning to roil.
“Whirlpool!” Someone yelled from the bridge. The captain cursed and began heading for the bridge himself, unsure what to do I followed.
“Cut the line, and dump anything non urgent.” He yelled to Ekatarina as she emerged heading the other way. She nodded and set off at a run. Dr Rasmussen was already in the bridge, along with the chief mate and the bosun. Allen snatched a pair of binoculars from their peg and focused on the threading mass of water.
“Full power, angle fifty degrees port; I want that thing firmly to our aft.” Captain Allen said, the chief mate gave a nod and set to.
“Captain, you’re overreacting.” Dr Rasmussen said, clasping him on the shoulder. “It is just a whirlpool.” I balked. Just a whirlpool, as if that wasn’t serious.
“Whirlpools don’t have teeth.” He spat, pushing Rasmussen away and slamming the binoculars down and started snapping off further commands. I picked up the binoculars and stared back at the thing. My blood froze. The water churned and span, guided by bright white triangles. Teeth. Like sharks' teeth, but much larger, they must have been as big as my palm at least and there were hundreds of them. Concentric circles of teeth, some spinning clockwise, others anticlockwise. And we were being pulled towards it. The engine huffed and yowled, but our pace never slowed. Whatever it was, it had us. It had us and we couldn’t escape. I dropped the binoculars and ran for the life raft.
Other members of the crew were already there, of course, kicking and shoving each other. One raft for 30 people and it would seat 8, perhaps 10 without sinking. It was overfull and others were being beaten back. The ship lurched again and Ekatarina bowled into me, sending us both to the deck. The raft dropped into the water with a plop. I scrambled up and rushed to the gunwale. The raft was holding, though several people had been thrown clear of it by the sudden drop, among them I saw Bill floundering. It was only because I was looking at him, stationary in the water, that I realised how quickly we were being dragged towards the watery maw. For as fast as it was, though, the raft moved even faster. It was mere seconds before the teeth sliced easily through it. I heard a woman scream loud and piercing before all became a cacophony of yelling and shouting and blood geysered from what had once been the raft. I cast one last look at Bill, still floating in place, and dove off the ship.
___
“Why don’t you just kill me.” I asked, grunting as fresh pain surged through the stab wound when she tied my hands. “Live. Food.” She clinked her knife against words on the wall as she spoke and I wished I’d never asked. She began lifting me up, at first I resisted but then the knife was at my throat. “Live does not have to mean whole.” I complied.
She marched me all the way back to camp. If she grew tired as the sun slowly rose during our trek, she showed no sign of it. Nor did she speak to me, just gave me a jab to the ribs if I talked or slowed at all. I was relieved when I spotted the fingers of rock in the distance and knew we were close. My feet burned with pain and the rest of my body felt cold, despite the sun. Before we made it to camp, we found Niklas and the deckhands. What was left of them. The sand was mired with blood and only scraps of clothing and gore were in evidence. It was only because of a piece of skull that I knew who it was. The eye was still present, a deep grey, and the pale skin of the forehead still had a tuft of fiery red hair attached, though it was all caked in blood and lay atop a rock. I stopped at the sight of it all and vomited. I had nothing to throw up but the lining of my stomach and it burned my throat before the yellowy mess flecked onto the sand.
“Malakía.” Ekatarina cursed. “Fool, Niklas. Keep moving.” She jabbed me in the ribs and I grunted in pain as my shoulder electrified, but I moved before she did it again. I kept my head down, focusing on my next shuffling step, trying hard not to fall. I felt so weak. One more prod, the slightest rock, a strong gust of wind; any would be enough to send me crashing to the floor. Then the camp came into view and a small reserve of energy spurred me forward at barely more than Ekatarina’s walking pace. I could see Jayne crouched over the prone form of Allison, and Dr Rasmussen on his knees before...
She was there on the beach. Her white gown ruffling as if in the breeze, though there was none. She was smiling sweetly as she stared at Dr Rasmussen, begging for his life. It stripped me of my remaining resolve and my knees buckled. My breath came out ragged and my vision went spotty at the edges. Ekatarina stopped next to me, hands on her hips.
“Please.” Rasmussen pleaded, hands clasped before him. “Our ship was destroyed."
The girl barked a laugh. “Xypnás tin aderfí mou me dikí sou efthýni.”
“It was an accident.” He said, clearly he understood her. “We were heading for the usual spot.”
I needed to throw up. He was in on it too. The whole expedition was, what, a cover for sacrifices to this thing.
“I’ve lit the brazier, pickup should be here shortly. Niklas and his crop were all accepted” Ekatarina headed over to Dr Rasmussen, careful to keep him between her and the girl.
“Niklas, too?” Dr Rasmussen sounded dismayed. Ekatarina nodded. He glanced back and saw me and he smiled. He smiled. It wasn't the warm smile I'd gotten used to on the Shearwater, it was self-satisfied. Smug. He turned back to the girl.
“Please accept these offerings and, in your magnanimity, allow us to rest on your island until our friends arrive.” He spread his arms wide. I think Jayne may have started weeping at this; I know I did.
“Den tróo ta perissévmata tis aderfís mo.” The girl said, before her eyes cast over Jayne, and then me. Her smile grew. It was so genuine and childlike my skin crawled. “To pontikaki me kánei na chamogeláo. Boreí na zísei.”
“W-what?” Dr Rasmussen sputtered, while Ekatarina gasped. I didn’t have time to even try to guess at what she had said. The girl's smile turned to a snarl and she lurched forward so far she should have fallen, but instead she was moving forward faster than should have been possible. She collided with Jayne and knocked her onto her back. The girl sat atop her smiling wolfishly as her dress began to shift, things rippling beneath it. Jayne screamed and a spurt of blood burst into the air.
I closed my eyes before the worst of it. The girl didn’t make it quick as her wolves ate Jayne. Her screams bore into my soul and my mind conjured up horrors as the sounds of flesh tearing and jaws snapping filled the gaps of Jayne gulping in air between screams. The smell of blood and gore and waste. I don’t know how long it went on for, it seemed an eternity. Even after Jayne's screams gave way to gurgles and then silence, the wet chomping of the wolves had continued.
Ekatarina shook me from my misery and pulled me to my feet. We moved across the island, thankfully our pace was slow due to Dr Rasmussen. I didn’t know where we were going; I didn’t know why they hadn’t killed me yet. I was sure this was a death march, but I was so numbed I couldn’t even fight it. Nobody spoke and if the girl was still nearby I never saw her. The island couldn’t have been very big as it took us less time to cut through the middle than it had to get from the cave back to camp. There was another beach this side and I could see a dock. Intact and well maintained, not like the one by the cave. Griggs, Jamie, and Thierry were there sat on wooden crates. The sight of them didn’t inspire any hope, instead I wondered which of them would kill me.
“Ho, there!” Griggs called with a wave when he spotted us. “Where’s Niklas?”
“Unfortunately, he will not be joining us.” Dr Rasmussen said, sounding solemn. It was amazing how quickly he slipped back into the kindly role he wore.
“And him?” Thierry said. This was it, I knew. Now they would kill me.
“She said he could live.” Ekatarina said, sounding so angry she could spit. I just blinked, the words not really registering. Then, I started laughing, deep painful laughter that soon mingled with crying. I fell to my knees, but was quickly hoisted up again as the men came over.
“She is a mad devil that one, no?” Thierry clucked as he helped me over to a crate. I sat down heavily and before long I was asleep.
A ship came to pick us up full of more people who must have known about all this. They dressed my stab wound, gave me some food, then docked near Syracuse just long enough to throw me off the ship before leaving. That was it. No explanation, no threat not to tell anyone. Nothing but a scar and nightmares to tell me that it ever happened. I never told my family what happened, about the fate of the Morgan. But I needed to get it off my chest even if they kill me for it.
#entertainment
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