Michael Abberton

Sea fishing has been around for thousands of years, and ever since the days of sea monsters and before the age of navigation, it has been one of the most dangerous pursuits, and not the most profitable. Fishermen have been driven further and further from their home ports in all weathers just to make ends meet and carry on the family tradition. For Captain Patrick Joy and his crew, the drive to get full nets once again has sent them beyond the horizon, into the Twilight Zone. 

Pat came up the companionway stairs and into the cockpit of his boat, Esmerelda. The weather was typically cold and damp  for the North Atlantic in summer, but the sea was relatively calm, which made the roll of the ship bearable. Sean, his son, was at the wheel, in the big chair— though the chair was worse for wear, and most of the fake leather covering had been replaced by layer after layer of duct tape. 

“How’s it going, lad?” he said, looking over the controls.

“Plain sailing, da,” he replied. He was twenty, so though youngest on the boat by a long way, in others, he was more experienced than some members of the crew, as he had been riding the boat ever since his mother would let him. “Weather reports and radar were heading into a fog bank, following the ridge as usual, but it does look pretty dense. Wind and sea seas to continue to be low though, so…”

“Have to watch the radar. Alright, let’s see… not far out now, I’ll relieve you, and you go and get some sleep.” 

“Right, you are, Pa,” he said, levering himself out of the seat and making his way down the companionway to the galley. The boat was 25m by 9m at the beam and carried a crew of ten. The captain’s cabin had two bunks; there were two other crew rooms with eight bunks, each with their own toilet and shower, a galley, and crew room where the crew could eat, watch a movie when they were off shift or cruising to and from the fishing grounds. 

Sean came into the crew room and began to salivate – Matty, who was an electrician and the cook, had made his famous beef stew and that was slowly bubbling away on the hob. Next to that, a baking dish with a lid – suet dumplings. Sean grabbed a bowl and plate and started to help himself. Matty wasn’t there right now, just The Swede. Everyone called him the Swede though Olaf was from Denmark. Despite the legendary sea-faring abilities of his forebears, Olaf didn’t look like the stereotypical Viking at all. He was of average height, of average build though wiry and strong from the physical labour, with short cropped hair and round metal-framed glasses that had a safety strap that went behind his head so that they couldn’t get knocked off his face and into the sea. He was a deckhand and doubled up as an engineer when needed. The legend went that no one had ever seen him smile. 

Sean sat at the table, the bowl secured by the fiddle, and tucked in heartily. Anyone else would have smiled at the sight, but not The Swede. The galley was located directly beneath the cockpit and had an oblong forward-facing window, but in the dark it revealed nothing. Crusted on the outside by salt it was practically opaque, only revealing the rough shapes of the foredeck and the running lights of the ship. 

Sean took a breather from shovelling the food into his mouth and reached into a rack behind him for a bottle of mineral water, which he needed to combat the salty goodness of the stew and the doughy warmth of the dumplings. 

“Have you eaten already, Swede?” he said, unscrewing the plastic top. 

“Yes. It is a very good stew,” he replied, expressionless, continuing to look out of the port. 

“It’s the best! It’s better than me ma’s!” Sean exclaimed, before grabbing up his spoon in a tight fist and starting his second shift. 

In the engine room, Matty and Will were doing routine checks on systems and power against checklists on plastic clipboards. Matty was tall, almost too tall for a boat like this, and skinny, with long curly brown hair that he usually controlled with a brown knitted beanie that never left his head when they were offshore. It was a talisman for him, his lucky Canadian toque – a lot of fishermen had rituals or something that they carried that would do everything from ensuring a good catch to stopping them from drowning. 

Will was the engineer and he spent most of his time either down here or working the deck winches, one of the two members of the crew certified able to do so. He had done the occasional shift in the hold when needed but in some ways, Will was Paddy’s talisman. He knew that he was the most important member of the crew and whilst anyone could steer the boat or work the radio, it was the engineer that would save their lives in a tight situation. Will was an Englishman. Though with his short red hair and bushy matching beard many might assume that he was Irish, and indeed his surname, Connolly, was an Irish name. Nevertheless, as he had discovered to his chagrin when trying to get an Irish passport after Brexit, there seemed to be no Irish in him at all. 

Will checked the last box with a wax pencil, and stowed the clipboard back on its shelf. Matty also passed over his to be stowed. 

“Twenty-four hours out and all good,” said Matty, touching his beanie. 

“Well, let’s hope we get a good haul this time. The chandlers will be coming after us after the last refit if the skipper can’t make the next payment.”

“A full hold and we’ll be sorted and that’s me for Christmas as well,” said Matty. “Need to get back to Halifax and see my boys. It’s been too long this season.” 

“Well, after my engines and your radar, it’s up to the skipper now.”

Matty touched his hat again. “Aye, so it is.”

The senior deckhands, G and Finbarr, were in their bunks. Finbarr was strumming a guitar. He was one of the oldest aboard, having been on the boats for almost forty years. He kept his head meticulously shaved, like a billiard ball, and when he wasn’t strumming the guitar, he had a razor on the sickly white skin of his head. Despite his career, he had the complexion of a vampire, the impression added to by his uncontrollable eyebrows and seemingly randomly arranged teeth. 

G, or Godfrey, was ten years Finbarr’s junior, and again was a career trawler man. His black beard and hair were turning salt and pepper now, and he was broad-shouldered and trim at the waist. A good-looking man in his youth with a square jaw and blue eyes, he was certainly not that anymore. His nose had been flattened by a swinging boom. And in another accident, his mouth had been slashed with a paring knife from his upper left cheek below the eye to his jawline on the opposite side. The best in first aid had caused the worst kind of scarring, so his mouth was permanently twisted into a vicious sneer, that only worsened when he smiled or laughed. 

“Now hear this! Everybody, we’ll be over the shelf in about four hours, so if you are on the first watch, get some  rest now. The weather is good right now, but you know how it can be out there. That’s all.” 

The boat chugged on into the dark, the GPS keeping her on course, and as predicted, with very little crosswind, Pat only had to correct for surface currents. Despite the watches, everyone turned in except Swede, who stayed up in the crew room, reading a book, in case he was needed. But the sailing was so good that even he nodded off eventually. 

Three hours later, the captain sounded the tannoy again and requested duty hands on deck. G and Finbarr changed into their flotation suits and boots and took their station on the fantail. With all the lights on, it was like daylight out there, though beyond the edge of the boat, there was just a featureless, inky void. The two men got to work without a sound, checking the rigging of the nets and preparing them to deploy. The Swede woke up to find himself face down in an open book. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face, then checked the glasses again to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently bent them when he fell asleep. Satisfied, he went to go and change into his flotation gear too. 

The flotation gear was waterproof and hard-wearing, made for working. With a small life preserver worn around the shoulders, it would keep a man afloat and, in theory, visible from the ship, but it wasn’t a survival suit like the offshore oil men wore. It simply increased the survival time from being measured in seconds to minutes. 

Sean went up to the cockpit to take over from his father so Pat could go to the rear of the wheelhouse and operate the cranes to run out the nets. 

“We in position, Da?” said Sean, checking the controls. “I’m not seeing anything on the sonar.”

“Don’t you worry now, the fish are there. You know how they hide over the shelf. They’re there right enough. I can smell them!”

Sean looked at both of the sonar scanners; both showed nothing but noise. No fish. But more than that… nothing at all. “Pa, these readings are weird, don’t you think?” 

But his dad already had his intercom headset on so that he had direct contact with the hands on deck. Putting the nets out was dangerous business, and he needed to know where everyone was. Unlike the window of the crew room, this port was kept meticulously clean and had its own, well-maintained, screen wiper. 

Sean sat in the captain’s chair and went through the checklist in his head, just as he’d done since he was a small boy. He checked the position, the sonar again, the radar for other boats or ships, and then always finished with a visual check for lights. 

He could see lights. Dim at first, but they were there, level with the horizon. He checked the radar again, but there was nothing. If they were in line of sight, that is, if he could see the lights, then the radar should see them too, but both scopes, the short and long range, both showed empty. But even that was odd – though they always tried to get away from port first to get the best pitches for the nets, other boats and ships should have been out there – but they seemed to be completely alone. 

“Pa…?” he said, turning around, but realised that his father was busy and not to be disturbed whilst he was doing this. He jumped down from the chair and, picking up a pair of binoculars, went out of the wheelhouse door onto the companionway that circled the whole structure. The sea was like glass. There was no swell, and the water reflected the boat’s lights back up at him. He concentrated on the lights on the horizon, and there they were, bluish-white, evenly spaced, and in every direction. He took the glasses away from his eyes, and the lights were definitely there. He went back inside and once again checked the scopes; all were blank except the aft sonar, which was now detecting the nets as they descended, opening like a great mouth. 

His dad secured the crane controls and took off the headset. 

“Whatever is the matter, lad?” he said, shocked at Sean’s expression. 

“Pa, all the scanners show nothing, I mean, nothing. But there are lights out there, all around us, in the mist.” 

“Lights will be from other…” Pat checked the radar himself, even impotently tapping the screens as if there was something mechanically stuck. “Radar must be…” 

“Both radars, and the sonar?” said Sean. “What is it, Pa?”

Pat pulled down the handset for the intercom. “Matty to the bridge, please, Matty.” 

A couple of minutes later, Matty appeared, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “What’s up?” he said, casting an experienced eye over the engineering panel. 

“Can you check the radar, please?” said Pat. 

“Which one?” he said, moving over to the controls.

“Both.”

“Both?”  he said, checking the scopes. “They both look fine, and the diagnostics…” he pressed a series of buttons on both units, and both lit up green and beeped cheerfully. “Both are working fine. What makes you think they aren’t?”

Sean pointed out the window forward, then starboard, aft, and port. 

Matty followed his finger. “That’s the whole fleet…” he said, though he realised that something was off. “There are no navigation lights and…” he looked back at the radar, which was telling him nothing was there. 

Matty’s face fell, as if the tall, rangy man had suddenly regressed to being a toddler. “What the fuck are they, Skipper? Is this some kind of trick?” 

Pat moved forward to the engine controls and throttled back, so the ship crept forward slowly – this was to prevent any current from snagging the nets – and activated the autopilot.

“Sean – get everyone to the crew room. And into their suits. Now, lad!”

“Aye… yes, Da!” Sean slid down the companionway and through the bulkhead door. 

“What do you think it is, Skipper?” said Matty, stroking the front of his toque. 

“We’ve all heard stories, Matty. You know me, the sea man and boy, and never paid them no mind. I rely on what the satellites in the sky and the gear on this deck can tell me. But this makes no sense. Those lights have no radar. That’s not possible.” 

They both went outside with binoculars, but now mist was slowly closing in, making the lights into soft, distant globes. They didn’t seem to be getting any closer or moving laterally. 

They went downstairs into the now-overfilled room, made even smaller by the men already in their suits. Pat looked around at the men’s faces. Some looked anxious, some afraid, and one angry. Only the Swede looked completely unmoved, as if nothing unusual was happening. 

“I take it the lad has already told you the craic,” he said, looking around the room. “Now the other thing is, we can’t see any fish either. So if we pull up..”

“Aye. Pull the nets and get the fuck outta here!” said Finbarr, looking to G for approval, which he got immediately. 

“It’s probably nothing,” said the Swede. A sun storm could take out the radar. And those lights are just the other ships who beat us to it, and are taking all the fish. Maybe we need to move on somewhere else and do another drop. But I don’t think we should sail back with an empty hold just because of… superstition.” 

“We can’t go back empty,” said Will. “We’d never live it down! We’d be the laughing stock of every bar from here to Killarney!”

“I’d rather be laughed at than fucking dead!” said Finbarr. 

“Anyway, the fog is coming in, Skipper,” said the Swede, tapping on the plexiglass of the port. 

“Go see to it lad,” said Pat. Sean nodded and bounded up the companionway to the cockpit to activate the lights and horn. The foghorn sounded its mournful cry, loud enough to rattle their teeth though the speaker was mounted high above on a radio mast. A few minutes later Sean’s head appeared again through the bulkhead door. “Pa! The fog is right on top of us now – and I can’t get anything on the radio.”

“Right, that’s it!” said Finbarr, trying to push people out of the way. “Full speed for home right fucking now!”

The Swede scoffed, and looked out the port. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!” said Finbarr, not pleased at that reaction. 

“Fine, I apologise. Let’s go home like frightened children.”

G and Matty grabbed Finnbarr by the arms, and in the confined space, dragged and fought him back to the crew quarters. Without a word, Will headed for the engine room. Pat went back to the bridge. Now all they could see were the lights, softened into indistinct glowing sources. The brightness seemed not to have changed, which given the dense fog and the range, if they were on the horizon, should have made them practically invisible by now. 

“You know, lad,” he said, climbing into the cockpit, “sometimes the simplest solution is the one.” He slowed the throttle, then moving to the crane controls, brought up the nets. 

Immediately the motors began to strain and the boat was dragged backwards with a jerk. 

“Sean! Full ahead!” he said, as Sean pushed the throttles forward, he reduced power on the cranes and began to pull again. Against the drag of the nets, the boat was hardly making any headway. 

“Are we caught on something, Pa?” said Sean, fear starting to creep into his voice. “A submarine?” 

Pat grated his teeth. He reached across and armed the emergency release. A new net would cost hundreds of euros, but at least they would be alive. Still he would wait until the last minute before…

Suddenly he was thrown backwards, hitting his shoulder and head on the base of the captain’s chair. They were accelerating forwards. “All stop!” he yelled, and Sean, recovering from the jolt, complied. The engines’ whine returned to normal and then stopped. Pat stood up and looked out at the fantail. 

Something was in the net. 

Something big. 

All the floods were on, but as the net swung on the cables, the light just seemed to be totally absorbed by it, like it was a hole in reality. Pat went out the door and looked at it again. All he could describe as was an absence. Like nothing he had ever seen before. Sean came out and stood behind him. “Pa… what is it?” he said, a tremor in his voice. 

Below them on the deck, the rest of the crew were coming out, some rubbing their heads. Finbarr was absent, now securely tied to his bunk. G and Matty walked up slowly. G grabbed a boathook, Matty  went to one of the spotlights and aimed it directly at the net. Although the net was evidently full and heavy, it made no sense to look at it. G approached it slowly, the hook extended in front of him like a spear. Suddenly the whole thing shifted violently, as if trying to get away, and the weight was enough to rock the boat for the first time all evening. 

“Steady now, G. Best not do anything hasty,” said Pat. 

The Swede appeared beside Pat on the walkway. He had an adhesive bandage over his right eye. 

“Let’s just dump it,” he said. 

“I’m not sure we can, without losing the net as well,” said Pat, scratching his stubbly chin. 

“Hey!” called Matty from the deck. “If it’s alive, and it looks like it is, it might be worth something. A scientific specimen, something from the deeps or the abyssal. Maybe we should freeze it and take it back… better than being empty.” 

“Pa… dump it. It…, it’s bad, whatever it is. It’s not natural. Don’t care if it is from the deeps. It’s not supposed to be here. And we don’t know what it can do.”

“G? What do you think?” called Pat. 

“Freeze it like Matty said. It could be worth more than a full hold on its own.”

“That’s two and two. Finbarr’s vote I can guess. Where’s Will?”

“He dressed my wound and then went down to check the engines,” said The Swede. “I’ll fetch him.” 

The thing continued to swing in the nets like some oversized hammock, every now and again it would suddenly thrash, trying to free itself, and almost as if to remind them all that it was still alive. 

Will came up on deck, wiping his hands with a rag. No one said anything, as he stood there, studying it, not taking his eyes off it. 

“Well, you want to know what I think we should do,” he said at length. “I’d be inclined to keep it, but the thing is alive now – to freeze it we would have to kill it and I don’t have the first idea of how to do that. And… I wouldn’t be inclined to try.” 

“What about if we cut a piece off? Like a sample?” said Matty. 

“Off you go then,” said Will, standing back out of the way. 

Matty stepped away from the spotlight and took his knife out from the scabbard on his belt. He took another step towards the thing and it suddenly threw itself forward towards him, swinging its bulk forward and lifting the stern of the boat. Matty stumbled backwards and fell on his backside, before skidding into one of the metal workstations. 

“Right, that settles it. Clear the deck, and you two, inside the wheelhouse. I’m going to dump it off the stern.”

They all did as they were told, and Pat resigned his station at the winch controls. Now the thing began thrashing, twisting, turning, destabilising the boat again. “Sean, take the con. Engines ahead one half.”

“Aye aye!” he said, pushing the throttles slowly forward again. 

Pat began to extend the crane arms beyond the fantail, which would have destabilised the boat with the change in weight distribution had he not engaged the engines. But this was still not enough, and the thing was getting more violent. Pat decided to try and time the dump to the swing of the nets, and as the thing swung outboard again, he armed the eject mechanism and hit the button. Two explosive bolts on the winch heads detonated, cutting the guide cables and dropping the pulleys, and the whole mess fell away astern, seeming not to make even a splash. 

“Ahead full!” cried Pat, and Sean pushed the throttles all the way forward. They began to make headway now, and white water appeared reassuringly behind them to form a healthy wake. 

“Right. Set a return course, son. We’re going home.”

“Yes, Pa… Pa? The GPS isn’t registering, and the… Jesus Mary and Joseph!”

Pat and the Swede looked over the boy’s shoulders. Both the GPS main system and backup showed no data. The compass in the binnacle was spinning. Pat pulled the radio mike down again, checking the channels, but all he got was static. He keyed the control. 

“Mayday…” 

The Swede reached out and put his hand across the mike. “This happens all the time with solar flares. It will pass. No need to call a distress. We could lose the boat.”

His words were punctuated by another call from the fog horn.

“We could lose?” said Pat, pulling away from his grasp. “We could be steaming around in circles. We’ve no instruments, not even a fuckin’ compass, and no weather report worth a damn. What do you suggest we do, captain?” he snarled. “And what part of a solar flare was that?”

“It could have been a weather balloon…”

“Get the fuck off my bridge, Swede!” said Pat. Sean was shocked; Pat never lost his temper, not at least whilst Sean was around anyway. 

The Swede, his expression unchanged, turned and went down the companionway.

Pat put the handset back on its clip. “We’ll put some distance between us and that thing. Set a timer for twenty minutes and then all stop, and see if she’ll answer station keeping without the GPS. We’ll see what the craic is then, OK?”

“Yes, Pa.” 

Pat went down to his cabin and crawled onto his bunk. Away towards the aft, he could hear muffled shouts from Finbar, and wondered whether the others had tied him down and gagged him too. He’d seen Finbar like this only once before, at his mother’s wake. He was an experienced, dependable seaman in the best tradition. Yes, he drank, but he kept his drinking off the boat. When they got back – if they got back – he would have to look again at Finbar’s contract and perhaps look for a replacement. As all these things went through his mind, and with the comforting sound of the well-tuned engines, he drifted off to sleep. 

He woke up with a start, wiping cold drool off his mouth and chin. The engines had stopped, and at first that panicked him as you would never completely stop engines at sea. But then he remembered his command to Sean and so figured that – but the engine should still be on to power the thrusters that kept the boat from drifting. He checked his watch. It had stopped at some point, so he had no idea how long he had been asleep. He also realised that the foghorn was no longer sounding. And the human foghorn, Finbarr, was no longer making any noise either. 

He rolled out of the bunk and stood up, listening. The boat was making all the sounds that you would expect a working boat at sea to make. But there was no noise from the crew. 

He went down the corridor and checked in the bunk rooms and the crew room, but all were empty. The view outside the crew room port had not changed either; it was just as foggy as before. 

He went up the companionway to the bridge. There was no one there either. The throttles were all the way back, and the engine was indeed off. All the scopes were exactly as before, and the compass was slowly turning anticlockwise. “Sean?” he called, moving to the rear station. 

Then he saw them all. The whole crew was standing on the deck, looking astern, but he couldn’t see anything there. His night vision was stolen totally by the floodlights, and the fog meant that nothing could be seen off the stern of the boat. Except the lights on the horizon. They were all still there. 

He went out of the wheelhouse onto the walkway. “Lads! Sean! What is it? What are you all looking at? Sean?”

The air felt cold, but not damp, which was odd, in some ways like the air before a storm on land: electricity, ozone in the air. There was an odour,  like nothing he had ever smelled before. It was totally alien, more organic than chemical, yet not a smell he could in any way associate with the sea, whether that be fauna or flora, alive or dead. The smell seemed to permeate his flotation suit, his skin, his hair, and filled him with an icy dread. 

He went down to the deck. The first man he came to was Will. He was the only one not in his gear, and just standing there, his arms by his sides. Pat went around to his front. The man was staring, not blinking, his eyes reddening and watering. As Pat moved in front of him, he moved— as if Pat was blocking his view of something. 

Pat shook him violently, but got no reaction. He slapped his face— Will took it, still unblinking.

“Wake up, man!” Pat yelled, impotently. 

The next was Finbarr, his grey-white skin looking even more deathly pale in the glare from the fantail floodlights. Finbarr was shorter than Pat by a head, and so when Pat blocked his view, he moved suddenly and violently. Pat persisted, but this time did garner a reaction. Finbarr looked straight at Pat, baring his crooked, yellowing teeth, and painfully grabbing Pat’s upper arms, he picked Pat up and threw him aside, before resuming his previous position to stare into the darkness aft. 

Pat stood up and tried to follow Finbarr’s gaze, and then he saw it.

Just like the shape from before, the light seemed to fall into a shadow, silhouetted as it was against the lights beyond the fog. But he could see features now. He lost all sense of scale in the murk, so it at once seemed huge and yet distant, then close… horribly close. It had a recognisable torso and muscled arms ending in long-clawed fingers. The head— though it had an approximation of a face— was more like an octopus, with writhing tentacles where the mouth should be. As he watched, it turned its gaze towards him. The eyes looked massive, all at once like pits of fire, making no secret of its limitless hate and malevolence. He was unable to look away, though what he felt now primordial fear that penetrated to his soul. His mind began to fill with the sounds of an ancient language, a language that grated and seemed to be physically hurting as he heard it. 

…Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

…Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

…Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

He found himself repeating it, as if it was something he had always known. The others began to join in, until all of them were chanting it together, their voices guttural and inhuman. 

…Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

The thing suddenly grew in  size, glowing dimly with a sickly green light. It stretched out its arms, and two massive bat-like wings extended and flexed behind it. 

One by one, the men began to walk forwards and jump off the end of the boat. As they did so, the emergency beacons on their flotation suits triggered, and the lights moved towards the thing as it roared, arching its back, the tentacles flaring out. 

Then it was Pat’s turn. Tears streaming down his face, he was fully aware of what he was doing but was totally unable to stop. He walked forwards and off the stern of the boat, splashing into the freezing water, and began to swim towards his God. 

As industrial fishing and climate change kill our seas, who knows what ancient horror we may awaken in a senseless quest for profit? And do we know whether and if the seas, and our planet itself, will raise some ancient horror in its defence? We can only gain insights by seeking knowledge— which will lead us into the Twilight Zone.