One Night Upon the Shore

The man sat on the seafront, watching the obsidian waves crash and tumble into the kelp-strewn rocks. Like many others before it, the drunken night passed slowly. In his ears, the beating of blood pounded into a roaring crescendo. A drop of sweat fell against his cracked lips—lacing them with the barest hint of pain and taste of salt. Or perhaps it had been some stray droplet from the sea. It didn’t matter to him, as his eyelids began to flutter shut. In his drunken stupor, he thought he saw shadows moving below the surface.

When he awoke, the new moon’s faint shimmer was higher in the sky than when he had drifted into sleep. Some few hours must have passed. Something rhythmic brushed against his shins, cold air chilling him each time the force withdrew. Sweat had dried to his brow, leaving the thinnest layer of sand dried unto his skin. Regaining a semblance of awareness, he brushed the sand off with the back of his hand, the grains scraping as he did. A glance down his body revealed that the tides had almost risen to his waist. The thought of skin on skin flashed across his mind.

With an aggravated grumble, he thrust himself upwards to stand on his feet. They squelched inside his shoes as he did so. He reached for his pocket, the fabric damp like sweat. Withdrawing his phone, he looked at a lifeless face of cracked glass. Despite the man’s attempts to shake out any moisture, the screen refused to illuminate. If only he hadn’t broken his watch on her bedside table, he cursed to himself.

Once the ire had departed his mind, the sting of cold replaced it— sobering him further as an acute alertness filled his senses. He needed to get warm, and it needed to be soon. That was when he saw them, in this moment of realisation.

As if they were ghosts on the moors, the shapes seemed to drift and twirl into one another. Slowly, they came into focus and the man could see them for what they were: women. They danced around an open flame, loose hues of amber and red fading into a column of smoke, winding itself tightly into the midnight sky. The man was moving. He wasn’t sure what exactly drew him onward: the warmth of the fire, or the allure of their figures.

Hauling his heavy feet forward, the man began his procession towards them. The nearer he drew, the clearer the women became. He could see now that they danced naked. Linking and unlinking their arms, their pace quickened with each step they took. Then, as suddenly as the man had seen it, the dancing stopped. The women’s bare heels rooted themselves in the sand and they threw their heads backwards, revealing their teeth to the sky. Laughter rose out of their agape mouths, melodious and soft on the surface. There was something lingering underneath, a wildness of some kind. The man could not place it.  

Their laughter died as the women lowered their heads, attention locking onto the approaching man. Making no efforts to cover their dignity, they extended their hands towards him: beckoning him to join their dance. Animalistic hunger took over him, igniting his eyes as he hurried into their menagerie.

The man had often thought that it can be hard to define the moment a boundary is crossed. Tonight was no exception. All that was clear to him, in this moment, was that one had been crossed; the thought mixed with the odd sensation that it could not be un-crossed. Hands were at his chest, in his musings the man had failed to notice. His heart palpitated as the women ripped off his shirt—exposing him to the night air. The fire licked away at the cold, feeling like ecstasy against the bare skin of his chest.

His trousers were the next to go, effortlessly slipped off as he began to dance. Heat instantly replaced the chill that had bitten his legs. He watched as his clothes were thrown into the fire, igniting instantly. The fire silently roared, before retreating back to its initial form. Somehow the clothes were gone already, nothing but ash on the wind. As quickly as they had started, the women stopped undressing him—signalling for the man to take the last step. A sense of excitement pooled within him, a predatory smile forming on his lips. He drew the boxers down to his ankles and kicked them into the flames.

Once he was fully exposed, the women started to sing. Their voices rolled into each other like high tide rolling back into the sea. Dancing once again to their own melodies, they kept their eyes focused on the man. They sung of the sea, of flames on beaches, of sailors crashing against the shore. Not that the man could understand the tongue the words were in, not that he would have cared if he did. His feet moved inelegantly over the sound as he took the sight of them in, fascinated and hungry. It intoxicated him, his other thoughts burning away in the firelight.

Perhaps it was the circular movements that caused it, the man thought as his head started to spin. His limbs felt light and disjointed, as if his control over them was waning. The women sang on, something other entering the tone of their words. They started swirling into each other once again, compelling him to join their movements. He grabbed one of the women and pulled her into himself, kissing her mouth without hesitation. The kiss was deep and rough, it was all teeth. It tasted of saltwater. Pain erupted from his mouth and his tongue fell to the floor. The corners of his mouth sagged, ripped open by her savage teeth.

She smirked, bloodily, and pushed him into a dance with her companions.

Small, sharp cuts laced across his wrists and calves as he intertwined with the woman. Looking down, the man saw thin lines of red welting against his pale flesh. He attempted to howl in pain, a muffled yelp all that was able to escape. Panic rose in his throat as the women began to laugh—the hideous sound echoing through their tunes. That was when he saw their hands.

Their fingers ended in grotesque points, long clawed nails. They rose, bloodily, from the end of their digits—bursting through skin that peeled away. At the ends of their feet, similar sharp blades protruded. Their teeth were jagged shards of bone, multiple shark-like rows lining their black gums.  The women stopped dancing. The man did not.

Slowly, they meandered towards him, waists slinking as if they were panthers circling prey. The fire wasn’t warm anymore, the flames a cold scald. Behind him, one of the women reached out; her nails ripping skin as she dragged her hands down his back. He looked backwards at her. In this distraction, one of the other women reached at his neck. The cut stemmed from the base of his ear to the midpoint of his collarbone, pearly white against the shadow-strewn sky. He whimpered, gurgling the thick liquid flooding his mouth. He spat it out, crimson staining the pebbles below.

A cry for help escaped his mouth, déjà vu flashing across his mind. One of the women stopped singing, tutting at him disappointedly. As abruptly as she began, she stopped. The others silenced themselves, before replacing their tune with mimicry. Their deformed throats struggled to produce the human dialectal.

At first, the man thought they were mocking his cries. His pain. His pleas. The dread filling him deepened as he realised whose cries the women were actually mimicking. They couldn’t know, it wasn’t possible. He had made sure she hadn’t told anyone what they had done. What he had done.

Their shark-teeth slotted into a row of inhuman grins, then they advanced. All at once, they cut into him. Flesh shredded as if it were paper, blood flowing agonisingly fast. He could no longer dance, dropping tersely onto his knees. Sharp stone dug into the pockets in his skin, ripping into his muscles with the force of his descent. The woman who had tutted, the matriarch, kicked at his lungs. Her too-long nails drawing blood as the force shoved him onto his back.

He lay there, staring skyward, as she signalled for the others to stop. Then, with a malicious elegance, she pointed her index finger at his chest. She lowered it, holding the blade just over the beating of his heart. It sunk into his skin and she pulled, cutting through skin, muscle, and bone all at once.

Her bony hand reached into his chest cavity and severed his still-beating heart from the veins that connected to it. She breathed the scent in deeply and brought the organ to her mouth, her jagged teeth ripping into it as she took a bite. Deep scarlet trickled from the edge of her black lips as she swallowed. The heart was passed to the next women, who copied the matriarch’s action before passing it to the next.

By the time it reached the last woman there was almost nothing left of it. She placed it atop her fleshy tongue and gulped.

Supernaturally tethered to the last fragments of his consciousness, the man cried as the women grabbed his mangled body. The man wondered how he hadn’t died yet, perhaps the women were keeping him alive. They lifted him skywards, and walked rhythmically towards the fire. His nerves erupted as the hearth began to consume him.

In his last moments he watched as the women turned their backs to him. Their cruel laughter ringing through the night as they waded into the tides. They didn’t spare a glance towards him as they sunk below the surface, melting into shadows that lurked beneath the waves.

By the time the sun had risen the fire had died, and the man was forgotten by the world. All that lingered on the beach was a small bundle of ash, and the slightest whisper of singing in the air.