Cthulhurotica

Nathan Crowder THE FISHWIVES OF SEAN BROLLY

The bottle’s neck in Steven’s hand was slick with sweat and blood, and his brow was knit with concentration in the stale motel air. He leaned back to let the table lamp shine down on his work. With a critical eye, he surveyed the cuts. Close, he thought. Close but still not right. Maintaining an erection would be difficult at best. Steven adjusted his position. As he examined his canvas, he licked a drop of salty sweat from his upper lip. There, he thought. He brought the broken glass to bear. With the whisper of parting flesh, he felt turgidity return. Yes. This will do just fine.

“Steve, unlock the damn car.”

Steven jolted awake in the stuffy womb of the rental car to see his wife, Linda, pounding on the driver’s side window. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to hide an unexpected hard-on.

He had been dreaming of Brolly’s fishwives again. Ever since he and Linda had arrived in Grayce Point, North Carolina, he had seen them. Each time he closed his eyes, the women were there, tempting him.

Linda shouted again, veins visible in her neck from anger. “Steven, the door!”

Steven scrambled to comply. Intense pressure from her editor had made Linda more intolerable than usual lately. Any way he could keep her happy was to his advantage. Her door swung open, letting in the muted roar and salty breeze of the incoming tide across the desolate tidal flats. The last book’s success had earned her a big advance, and big expectations. Linda had sold her publishers on another historical fiction novel based on the notorious wrecker Sean Brolly. She knew little more than a story told by her grandmother about the subject. The new book required research, and that required a few weeks in North Carolina. The story’s birthplace was a stone’s throw from historic Roanoke, on one of its less-scenic islands, soaking in the grisly details.

Steven had to go. He was Linda’s personal assistant as much as her husband, if not more. He brushed a lock of fine, windblown hair from her face, hoping to mute her anger with his apparent cheer. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

She batted his hand away with a sigh. “I found the site of the stilt huts out on the flats. The posts are almost rotted away — I bet they only get below the water at extreme high tides. But I had no luck tracking down graves along the surrounding shore.”

“So maybe they weren’t buried,” Steven suggested, nursing his stung hand as well as stung ego. It fit at least one of the legends about the fishwives of Sean Brolly. Spawn of several generations of incestuous relations, the women of the Brolly clan were said to be just as blood thirsty as their husband/father. While Sean merited a historical marker in town, ten feet from where he was hung, there was no definitive answer for what happened to the women. If they were buried, no one knew where.

Some said that the women were killed where they stood, the bodies set to the torch.

Another legend was heard from a rum-soaked old mariner at the dock four days ago. The fishwives of Sean Brolly were monstrous, inhuman, and the townspeople who fell upon them forced Sean’s progeny out into the ocean, pockets filled with rocks and sewn shut.

While Linda loved the more macabre version, she was unlikely to use it in her book. The mariner’s account, told in wafts of sour breath, involved the worship of forgotten gods and ritual sacrifice, not the kind of thing her editor was looking for. No, she would likely stick to having the women killed and tossed on a bonfire. Nothing like a good human pyre for sales, she had said.

The way her eyes sparkled at the thought turned Steven’s stomach, just as the mariner’s description of the wives stirred something else in him. Monstrous, he had said, their affinity for the ocean and its unforgiving god visible upon them like a shroud of sin. He would say no more, his eyes like a storm every time Linda brought the subject around to the Brolly women again. He eventually limped away, pulling his stocking cap down low over his rat’s nest of white hair as he vanished into the salty evening fog. They never saw him again, but Steven doubted they would get much more information. There was something in the way the old man had clammed up — something in Steven’s eyes, perhaps.

That night, the fishwives of Sean Brolly visited Steven in his dreams. Their dark hair was heavy with musky brine, their eyes wide, bulging on either side of narrow noses. In the muted sunset of his dream, their skin was grayish-green, their bellies white, glistening like raw oysters. Their bare backs were rough, scaly to the touch. There was nothing attractive about them, and as they first slid from the murky waters of the mudflats, he was revolted. Paralyzed in dream terror, he watched them advance down the length of the warped pier, a scent of bitter fermentation preceding them.

When their cold, grasping fingers began assailing the buttons of his shirt, his pants, he felt powerless to stop them. Insistent, slimy hands proceeded to touch him in ways his own wife’s had not for years, and his revulsion gave way to base animal lust. Their hungry grasp clutched wetly at him, tracking sticky lines down his torso, up his thighs. Strong, clammy fingers tugged at his manhood, stirred it to life. It was not real, he reasoned, only the dream result of constant frustrations. By the time their foul, black tongues snaked past his lips with a taste of seafood past its prime, he no longer resisted. Inhibitions lost, he gave in to their needs, their hungers.

The dreams continued, pulling him down into increasingly depraved visions of lust whenever he closed his eyes to sleep. He felt his waking and dreaming lives becoming disjointed, and wasn’t certain that he cared.

“Steven! Are you listening to me?”

He turned his attention to Linda. They were in the parking lot of the seaside motel. Steven didn’t remember the drive from the tidal flats, and memory of the briny stench faded beneath the rose soap smell of Linda’s skin. “Sorry. Drifted off.”

“For fuck’s sake. You’re supposed to be taking notes.” She waited for him to fish out his notebook. Once he opened to a blank page, she started in with the tone she reserved for children and idiots. Linda knew he hated it, that pedantic way of reinforcing that she was a success and that he was nobody. “Tomorrow, I need to go see the wreckage of the two ships out on the rocks. Book a charter boat for me. Meanwhile, I want you to search the local newspaper archives for accounts of Brolly’s trial.”

He wrote it down and returned the notebook to his rough, canvas over-shirt.

“And hide your boner before you get out,” she added. “It’s disgusting.”

How would you know, you harridan, he thought, already missing the wet caress of cold hands. You haven’t seen it for months.

The fishwives were waiting when Steven fell asleep. The touch of countless cold hands drained him of warmth and left electric fire in their wake. There were no less than a half-dozen women, the range of ages shocking had they not been figments. Light, sticky tracery of fingertips turned rough, scratching to raise a slow seep of chilled blood. Hands tore at him seemingly at random until he was drained, then wrote strange symbols in his flesh with their gnarled fingernails. Though spent, he felt desire building to new heights with every drop of blood they drew from him, the slow oozing of his essence replaced by energetic spurts of red as his heart raced. He no longer feared their freakishness — he reveled in it.

Steven woke before the alarm went off, sheets sticky with the evidence of his nocturnal escapades. He slipped off to the shower and scrubbed with the pale, unscented motel soap. Fully clothed atop the ripe sheets to avoid Linda’s discovery of his night, he shook her gently awake. “The water’s hot if you want a shower, and I’ll have your boat chartered by the time you get out.”

She grumbled but rolled from the bed without cogent argument. True to his word, he arranged a boat to take her to where Sean Brolly had lured two doomed ships aground over a hundred years ago, stealing the cargo and killing everyone on board.

Steven had already found the library on their first day in town, and resolved to spend all day within the dusty stale air of the periodical room. They ate a quick breakfast across the street, not speaking as usual. Maple syrup on his waffle brought to mind the night before; blood, seawater, and unknown viscous fluids. Linda had a lot on her mind, a lot of irons in the fire and didn’t mind his silence. It wasn’t as if Steven was doing anything worth hearing about. He wanted to talk about the fishwives, but realized it would provoke angry questions, recriminations. Silence was better.

Steven wasn’t sure when his relationship with Linda had turned sour. It might have been when he lost his job right as her career skyrocketed. Sure, she could support him, but “could” was very different than “should.” It fostered a certain kind of dependence, along with a resentment that poisoned the simplest of interactions. He was no longer Steven Haight, ad agency executive; he was the husband of thriller novelist Linda Haight.

After a while, he stopped being able to understand why she kept him around, and started suspecting every man she spent time with professionally. He imagined he could smell them on her when he got close enough. He was certain that if she hadn’t fucked at least two different authors at her last convention, it was only because she was too busy to maintain even the most superficial of relationships. On his worst days, Steven feared that she only stuck with him because of convenience, familiarity, and even worse, out of spite.

Linda was deep in thought when she stepped off the small boat that afternoon. Steven watched her jot notes in her notepad as she walked slowly up the warped wood in the salty breeze. The research had germinated, and the story was starting to take root inside of her. She would be easier to deal with for the next few months as she pounded out the first draft, distant, but less prone to micromanaging the affairs of the house, less prone to running Steven’s life. Of course, she’d still comment that God knows you can’t be trusted to run it yourself.

“You look like you’re ready to start writing,” he said, hands thrust in his pockets despite the heat.

She looked up as if startled to see him. “Yes.” She nodded, looked back at her notes, nodded again. “Yes, I think I’m going to spend tomorrow in the room working on an outline. We’ll be on our way back to Chicago in two days…three at most.”

Despite his wife’s mood, Steven felt the ground below him open and swallow his heart. “Three days?” he stammered.

“Maybe less, baby,” she replied thoughtlessly, letting her mood blind her to her husband’s. “This novel is going to be a best seller for sure. I just want to make sure I get the outline before we leave. Did you find anything in the library?”

Interesting? Beyond a doubt. But she wouldn’t use it. She had her story in place. “Maybe,” he replied instead. Through the sea air, the smell of her shampoo was cloying. “Did you decide what to do with Brolly’s fishwives?”

“Bonfire. It brings the ‘they used to lure ships to their doom’ full circle. I can’t prove it happened that way, but no one can prove otherwise, either. Plus, it makes a better story.”

Steven thought of the briny hair, the swollen, blackened tongues, the cold, slimy hands, the pungent scent of fermentation. He felt a stirring in his jockeys and thought instead about what he had found in the library. That snuffed his passion. “Oh. Good. Then I didn’t really find anything contradictory. Brolly was a madman, arguably a fisherman. He lived in a cluster of stilt homes on the tide flats with his wives.”

Linda nodded. “That, we found.”

“The papers had documented that quite well, as well as the nature of his arrest,” Steven continued. “His ranting as he was led from the tidal flats into the center of town had shaken the most resolute of men. Women who heard his shouting had fainted. The parish priest knotted a rag into Brolly’s mouth to mute his blasphemy, but the damage was done. Too many people had heard his cries to the ancient fish god, Dagon. Too many people had heard him attest to a lost city beneath the waves, of a race of Deep Ones who served, ageless. They were moved to a man to execute him before the madness spread. He was hung from a tree as soon as the mob reached the center of town. There was no trial. Nor was there further mention of his wives.”

“Maybe what happened to the fishwives had been too terrible for the reporters of the time to record,” Linda said, relishing the words as she said them. “Perhaps it had been a dark, guilty secret that those responsible took to their graves. I can work with that.”

The memory of a pungent, salty kiss told Steven all he needed to know. It was a fiery end the fishwives had gone to.

He started back towards the motel with Linda in the passenger seat, jotting down notes, the window rolled down to let in the seaside aroma. “Should we celebrate the beginning of the next book?” he asked.

“I’d like that.” Her hand left her notebook long enough to squeeze his thigh through his jeans. “Let’s stop at the grocery store on the way back to the room.”

Steven tasted the sour bile of panic. He forced a smile and complied like he always did. Wine helped Linda let down her guard, dropped some of her inhibitions. Maybe it would be enough.

She had finished most of the bottle of Merlot by herself with her dinner of BBQ pork and sweet potato biscuits. By the time the bottle rolled emptily along the bedside table, she had slid one hand inside his shirt, fingers curling in the fine hairs of his chest. Her teeth nipped at his ear, breath sour with wine, one leg thrown across his thigh as she ground lightly against it.

Steven closed his eyes, his body responding to her touch though his brain found it hard to remain in the moment. Eyes shut against the harsh realities of faded bedspread, shabby drapes, and shipwreck of his marriage, he could almost lose himself in the sensation. He gave in to the feel of her warm hands on his chest, teasing his nipples, sliding across a belly given more to flab than he would like to admit. Linda massaged his cock through his jeans, felt it eager to please, and so released it from its denim prison. Her touch was real. It was warm. It was drunkenly eager.

And it felt wrong. Her hands were too small, too inexperienced. Even fumbling as it was, her touch was far too gentle.

Steven looked into Linda’s blue eyes, probed for clues, for reactions. He reached up and caressed the soft skin around her eye. Her pupils were dilated with lust, but the eyes themselves seemed too squinty. His fingertip lightly grazed across her eyelid. So suddenly he almost didn’t realize he was doing it, Steven flipped her eyelid back over on itself.

Linda screeched and fell sideways off the bed as she scrambled at her folded eyelid. She collided with the side table, sending the wine bottle to the floor, shattering it on the hard wood of the floor. “Steven! What the FUCK!”

“I don’t know…”

“You’re fucking right you don’t know!” She found her feet, shrieking at him. The passion had converted from lust directly into rage with no stops in between. “You bitch and whine about how we never have sex, then I throw you a bone and you turn into a freak on me.”

Steven stood, his voice shaking as adrenalin surged through his bloodstream. She didn’t understand. How could he explain it to her, that maybe she had never taken the time to care about his desires, his needs? There was nothing wrong about it. No, certainly not. He was just unique. “I’m not a freak, Linda. I’m just a man with needs…”

“The fuck you are!” She shouted, spittle landing on his face, finger jabbing so hard in the chest he damn near lost his breath.

“I’m not a freak!” His shout accompanied a stinging slap that sent her reeling. Her head hit the edge of the side table, dazing her as she fell. “I’m not a freak,” he grumbled again, not caring that she probably couldn’t hear him. “I just know what I like.”

He crouched over her body, pinning Linda’s arms between his knees. Steven grabbed the broken wine bottle by the neck and eyed his canvas. I know what I like, he thought again. Even with eyes open, he could smell the ocean. With a steady hand, he guided the glass to Linda’s throat and began cutting gills.

The warm waters of the tidal surge rushed up across his legs, his naked crotch, washing him clean. The sand and silt beneath Steven’s feet sucked at each step as he waded deeper out towards the center of the tidal marsh. The image of Linda’s body flashed briefly across his mind. Steven saw her as he had left her — submerged in the tub, a cloud of red mist marking the flaps of gills he had carved in her throat, body full of his seed.

The waters rose above his hips, surged against his belly, his chest. There, out past the breakers, he knew the fishwives of Sean Brolly waited for him. With a surge of newfound strength, Steven dove into the breaking surf and swam out to meet them.