Merfolk Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR JEREMY BATES

  "Will remind readers what chattering teeth sound like."

  —Kirkus Reviews

  "Voracious readers of horror will delightfully consume the contents of Bates's World's Scariest Places books."

  —Publishers Weekly

  "Creatively creepy and sure to scare." —The Japan Times

  "Jeremy Bates writes like a deviant angel I'm glad doesn't live on my shoulder."

  —Christian Galacar, author of GILCHRIST

  "Thriller fans and readers of Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, and other masters of the art will nd much to love."

  —Midwest Book Review

  "An ice-cold thriller full of mystery, suspense, fear."

  —David Moody, author of HATER and AUTUMN

  "A page-turner in the true sense of the word."

  —HorrorAddicts

  "Will make your skin crawl." —Scream Magazine

  "Told with an authoritative voice full of heart and insight."

  —Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker nominated author

  "Grabs and doesn't let go until the end." —Writer's Digest

  BY JEREMY BATES

  Suicide Forest ♦ The Catacombs ♦ Helltown ♦

  Island of the Dolls ♦ Mountain of the Dead

  ♦Hotel Chelsea ♦ Mosquito Man ♦

  The Sleep Experiment ♦ The Man from Taured

  ♦White Lies ♦ The Taste of Fear ♦

  Black Canyon ♦ Run ♦ Rewind

  ♦Neighbors ♦ Six Bullets ♦ Box of Bones ♦

  The Mailman ♦ Re-Roll ♦ New America: Utopia Calling

  ♦ Dark Hearts ♦ Bad People

  Merfolk

  World's Scariest Legends 4

  Jeremy Bates

  Copyright © 2021 Jeremy Bates

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-988091-57-0

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 2

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 3

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 4

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Merfolk

  Prologue

  July, 2021

  The Indian Ocean

  With his stand-up fishing rod poking out of the holder at the aft of the boat, Karlo Winkler stared dully at the teasers and daisy chains splashing along the water outside the prop wash eight meters away. A light wind blew, causing a gentle swell over the ocean’s surface, and the scorching noon sun beat down on the back of his neck. The small fishing boat he’d chartered had left the harbor before first light at four a.m. Eight hours later, and he’d yet to catch anything. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten a nibble. In fact, he hadn’t seen any hint of marine life. No dolphins, no whales, no sea turtles, nothing. It was as if the sea were dead.

  Scowling at his bad luck, Karlo was about to head over to the ice box to grab another beer when his 120-pound braided line suddenly went heavy. A moment later the fishing pole bent wickedly. The reel spun and screamed.

  “Missy!” Karlo exclaimed, grabbing the rod with both hands and raising the tip. “Missy, get your butt over here! I got something! I got something big.”

  NINETY MINUTES EARLIER

  With her face shaded beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat and behind dark sunglasses, newlywed Missy Winkler stared out to the horizon where the vast blue sky met the deeper blue ocean. It hit home just how far they were from civilization. Not that Sri Lanka was a mecca of art and sophistication. What she’d seen of it on the drive yesterday from Bandaranaike International Airport to their 5-star boutique hotel was an impoverished island country.

  Missy sighed, longing to be back in the air-conditioned suite in a bubbling Jacuzzi with a glass of chilled champagne. At least she had dinner to look forward to. She would prefer a French restaurant, or Italian; somewhere with class and taste and waitstaff who spoke English. Yet she knew Karlo would insist on something more “authentic,” like last night, which involved sitting on cushions on the beach, eating local seafood, and watching fire performers.

  Which, to Missy, was about as touristy as you could get.

  She heard Karlo grumble something from where he was casting his fishing line from the port side of the boat, and she called lazily to him, “How’s the fishing, pookums?” Lounging in a deckchair amidship, she faced starboard, still staring out at the forever-away horizon.

  Karlo grunted something else that she couldn’t make out above the rumbling diesel engine pushing them along at trolling speed. Missy didn’t bother asking him to repeat himself. He’d been in a foul mood for most of the morning because he hadn’t caught anything. Despite being sixty years old, he could be a real sook, his moody behavior almost childish. If anything, she should be the insufferable, irascible one. She’d wanted to go to Paris or Milan or Athens for their honeymoon, and instead here she was in some dumpy little boat, God-knows-where off the coast of a third-world country, where she had to have three showers a day because of the damn humidity, and where half the mosquito population likely carried dengue fever.

  Why did I ever agree to come here? she wondered.

  She knew why, of course. Because Karlo wanted to, and Karlo, who was nearly twice her age and worth many millions of dollars, called the shots in their nascent marriage.

  Missy said, “Maybe you should try different bait, love button?”

  “It’s not the bloody bait. It’s the location. I thought you said you knew where the bloody sharks were, Chan?” he snapped at the charter boat’s skipper. “All the gamefish I could ask for, you told me. Blue and black marlin, sailfish, swordfish, yellowfin tuna, you told me.” He huffed. “Well, where the hell are they, mate? On vacation?”

  Missy raised her sunglasses and squinted in the bright sunlight. The brown-skinned skipper stood beneath the shade of the paint-blistered wheelhouse, picking at one of his fingernails with the blade of a large knife. He could have been in his early forties or his late fifties. She had no idea. The sun and sea and salt had not been kind to him, turning his skin into old leather, at least what she could see of it behind his scraggly, graying beard. His full given name was Chanidulala, or something ridiculous like that. “Chan” was much prefe
rable.

  “Patience, sir,” Chan said simply. “They here. They come. We follow birds. Birds follow fish. Big fish follow small fish.”

  Standing on the aft deck, Karlo was dressed in a white linen shirt, Ralph Lauren khaki shorts, and leather boat shoes. Atop his mop of silver hair sat a cap embroidered with the logo of the Queensland Maroons, a State Rugby League team in Australia. Missy had met him in October of last year at the Brisbane International Film Festival. She had gone with three girlfriends, all single, all on the hunt for men with fame or wealth (or preferably both). Karlo didn’t have much fame, but he had wealth, lots of it. He’d made his money in real estate and was now happily spending it producing Australian documentaries and short films. That evening, at an after-party on his sixty-foot yacht, Missy worked her magic on him, bedded him, and that was that.

  Nine months later, she was Mrs. Missy Winkler.

  “Maybe we should call it a day, pookums?” she suggested. “Try again tomorrow?”

  “I’m not heading back without even getting a bloody bite,” Karlo griped. Then, to Chan, “What the hell am I paying you for, mate? You said you knew where the fish were! Patience? We’ve been bobbing around out here like a message in a bottle since dawn!”

  Chan set the knife aside and lit up a cigarette.

  “Patience,” he repeated around a waft of smoke.

  “Not a single bloody bite,” Karlo grumbled.

  Missy sighed again. If they were going to be stuck out here for however much longer, she was going to make the most of the time and get a proper tan. She reached behind her back and unclipped her bikini top.

  She shot the skipper a stern look. “No perving on me, Chan. Got that?”

  Chan watched her remove her top, then averted his eyes.

  Karlo left his fishing rod in the holder and joined her amidship. “What in God’s name are you doing, love?” He frowned at her bare breasts.

  “You know I hate tan lines,” she said. “I’ve already been in the sun today for so long I’m going to look like a zebra tomorrow. And it’s not like I can go topless at the hotel pool. There are kids around.” She squeezed some sunscreen from the bottle next to her and lathered her breasts. The cool cream on her warm skin made her nipples hard.

  “Just as long as you don’t take off your bloody bottoms.” He opened the big ice box and retrieved a green bottle of beer. He twisted off the cap and flicked it into the ocean.

  Missy frowned. “I don’t think you’re allowed to do that, honey.”

  “Huh?” Karlo said, distracted. He looked at her, then at her tits.

  “I think it’s illegal to litter in the ocean.”

  He scowled. “What?”

  “A turtle might try to eat the bottle cap. It could get stuck in the poor thing’s throat.”

  “Fuck turtles! I haven’t seen one all bloody morning. Besides, do you know how much trash humans dump in the ocean every year? How much plastic is down there?”

  “That’s the point, pookie. You shouldn’t be adding to it.”

  “It’s a bloody bottle cap!”

  Karlo stomped back over to his fishing rod and slumped into the fighting chair. Missy watched him sulk in silence, wondering if this was what she’d signed up for the next forty years of her life.

  More like twenty, she thought optimistically, given that Karlo, with all his drinking and cigar smoking, likely didn’t have the greatest life expectancy. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll croak in ten. Wouldn’t that be something? Ten years of domestic doldrums for a multi-million-dollar payout. Who wouldn’t take that deal?

  A kilometer south of the boat, an island sporting an aquamarine reef rose out of the ocean. Featuring steep, jagged hills covered with emerald-green tropical vegetation, it reminded Missy of something out of Jurassic Park, a lost world home to giant lizards or other nightmarish creatures.

  It gave her the creeps.

  “What do you think about sleeping over there tonight?” Karlo asked out of the blue. He was also looking at the island.

  Missy shook her head vehemently, even though Karlo couldn’t see her. “No way, babe. No fucking way.”

  “Why not? It would save us the trip back to the mainland and—”

  “No fucking way,” she repeated, thinking again about the chilled champagne and Jacuzzi and air-conditioned suite awaiting her at the hotel.

  Tilting his head, Karlo finished his beer in one long gulp and didn’t say anything more.

  ∆∆∆

  Ten minutes later Karlo’s line went heavy and the reel spun and screamed. Something had taken the pitch bait to the left of the teasers.

  Karlo grabbed the rod with both hands and shouted excitedly, telling Missy to join him. She hurried over, stuffing her breasts back into her bikini top.

  “What do you think it is?” she asked, pressing up against him.

  “Give me some bloody room, will you?” he said, shoving her aside. “I have to reel in the bastard. Chan!”

  “I’m here, sir,” the skipper said, appearing next to him. “Loosen the drag and let it run.”

  “I knew you’d come through, mate! I knew it!”

  ∆∆∆

  Whatever was on the other end of line, it was putting up one hell of a fight. After twenty minutes of hard hauling, Karlo had only managed to get half the line in.

  “It’s a record,” he said, his ruddy face drenched with sweat. “Whatever it is, it’s gotta be a record.”

  “I’m so proud of you, pookums,” Missy said.

  “I haven’t bloody caught it yet! And my arms are about to fall off.”

  “Should I take over?” Chan asked.

  “No bloody way! This bastard is mine.”

  Suddenly the rod bent so far Karlo feared it might snap in two.

  “Stop winding,” Chan instructed.

  Karl stopped, and the fish stopped pulling. “What now?”

  “We wait.”

  ∆∆∆

  A few minutes later the rod jerked and the line unspooled blisteringly fast as the fish took off.

  “Bloody oath!” Karlo said, holding onto the rod with all his strength, fighting to keep the tip high in the air.

  “Let it run again,” Chan said.

  When the fish was around a thousand meters from the boat, Karlo said, “I’m running out of line!”

  “Tighten the drag.”

  Karlo tightened it. The rod bent again, but the reel was no longer spinning. Stalemate. This slogged on, one minute, then two, then five. Every so often Karlo tried jerking the rod to no avail. “It feels like the bloody thing’s hooked to the bottom of the ocean,” he complained. “Maybe it’s dead down there?”

  Chan frowned. “Maybe. I’ll put the boat back in gear and try pulling it up—”

  Yet even as he spoke, the tip of the nearly U-shaped fishing rod rose slowly.

  “It’s surfacing!”

  “It’s exhausted. Do you have slack?”

  “Some.”

  “Then reel it in.”

  Despite Karlo’s previous reluctance to share the catch with anyone, he thrust the rod at Chan. “You reel it in. I’m aching all over.”

  He gave his arms and back a stretch, then winked and grinned at Missy. “What do you reckon, love? Bloody exciting, huh?”

  “It’s wonderful,” she said, though she didn’t look excited. She looked how she had looked all morning: like she wanted to be anywhere else than on the boat.

  He pinched one of her nipples through the bikini top.

  “Ouch!” she cried, slapping his hand away.

  Still grinning, Karlo went to the ice box and retrieved a cold beer. Returning to Chan and Missy, he finished half the bottle, set it on the fighting chair, and snatched the rod back from the skipper.

  “Keep winding,” Chan told him. “Not too fast.”

  Karlo began winding, thrilled by the massive weight on the other end of the line.

  It’s a monster. A bloody monster.

  When he recovere
d about three quarters of the line, the rod once again bent suddenly, almost to the surface of the water.

  “Hang on tight!” Chan told him.

  “Don’t lose it!” Missy cried.

  Away went the line, peeling off the reel at a furious rate.

  “Fuck’s sake!” Karlo said. “You said it was exhausted!”

  “Let it run!”

  It wasn’t long before the reel was almost out of line for the second time. Karlo locked the drag and held on with all his strength, praying the line didn’t snap under the load.

  “Shouldn’t the bloody thing be jumping out of the water and tail-walking all over the place?” Karlo yelled, as he struggled to gain the line back inch by inch.

  Chan shrugged. “If it’s a billfish…”

  “What the hell else could it be?”

  Chan remained expressionless. “Keep winding.”

  ∆∆∆

  Nearly a full hour later Karlo spotted the kite, and a few minutes after that, the dropper.

  “Take the rod!” he said, shoving it at Chan. He leaned over the hull, gripped the line, and walked it in until he made out a huge shadow beneath the surface of the water. “Jesus Christ…” he breathed softly.

  Missy said, “Is that a shark?”

  “It’s a great white,” Karlo said, awestruck, as the white-bellied beast rose dramatically to the surface. It floated on its side, one beady black eye staring up at him. The bait, a half-eaten mackerel, protruded from its smiling, tooth-lined mouth. Karlo’s heart pounded. The bloody fish had the girth of a hippo and must have been at least four meters long from snout to tail. “Missy, get your phone! I need pictures—”

  The shark thrashed and splashed. The abrupt movement caught Karlo off guard. He didn’t have time to think or react, didn’t let go of the line. The next moment he was flying through the air.