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Do you hear me?
Cormac asks, trembling and pointing at the sea. "They all went under! Edmund, Alfie, James, Billy, the captain! They're all down there! Every last one of them!" I try to remain calm. "I hear you. I know. But we didn't go under, alright? They're not all down there. Not us." My words don't console him very much, and it doesn't really make me feel any better either.
Cormac keeps shouting, unable to calm himself. The captain should have never taken us out here. We all tried to tell him to avoid the Drake Passage. Ships that venture into these waters never leave. Not ever. And now we will never leave this place either. I understand where his panic is coming from. I glance out at the void surrounding us. There's nothing but the freezing ocean in all directions. I ponder aloud. I wonder what caused the yearner to sink like that.
"It's the sea! You know it is! It's cursed! We were never supposed to come here!" Yes, these were cold, unpredictable tides, but it didn't take much stock in more outlandish stories about the Drake Passage. Most of the other sailors on board didn't believe in the legends. We've all undertaken treacherous voyages, as so many journeys across the sea often become.
None of us were scared to sail across more unknown waters because we all understood how to navigate the sea, but while I still am skeptical of it all, there is something strange about these waters. The Drake Passage has been notorious for centuries for how difficult it is to traverse. From what I read before, over 800 shipwrecks have occurred here. These rough, frigid waters have a way of bringing ships down into their bowels. This felt different though.
It wasn't just the harsh currents. It felt like something was pulling the ship apart, ripping out pieces beneath our feet. I stare down into the depths. Cormac's right. Our friends are down there along with the ship. They all sank and will remain down in the darkness forever. I don't want to join them. I want to set foot on shore again. I see my reflection shimmering beneath the surface of the water. Seeing myself down in the water reminds me how easily I could have ended up down there with the crew.
I'm happy I survived the sinking, but at the same time, now I'm left with nowhere to go. We're so far south, so far away from most civilizations. "What do we do?" Carmack asks, crying a little. "I don't know," I say honestly. "But we're alive. We can figure this out." Almost just as I try to inspire a little bit of hope, a rogue wave nearly capsizes us.
Our oars go tumbling into the water as our body weights just barely manage to keep us from tipping. With no oars though, we have very little chance of steering ourselves in any direction. The water is far too cold to try to use our hands. We're completely at the mercy of the Drake Passage, and this sea doesn't seem to have much mercy. We drift, I'm not sure for how long. It's hard to tell what time of day it is when the grey clouds above cover every inch of the sky.
We only know it's night when the sea grows black, and we can no longer see each other sitting across the boat. "Do you think we're going to die out here?" Cormac asks, weakly from the darkness. I want to be honest with him. I want to tell him that it's very unlikely that anyone will find us adrift in one of the most treacherous seas. We've been lucky so far not to capsize, but that doesn't mean that we're going to be found. We don't have any provisions either. There's no food.
There's no water. We're probably not going to make it. I try to put on a brave face for his sake. Even if he can't see my face in the dark, I want him to hear that I still have hope, even when my hope is dwindling away. We aren't going to die. Not us. Maybe we aren't the lucky survivors we initially seemed to be. Instead of being dragged to the depths with the ship, we're cursed to meet a slow end on these abandoned waters. It isn't much better. There's little hope.
A day passes. Cormac and I both just lay in the boat, staring out at the void in all directions. It doesn't matter how long we stare, no one is coming. I'm sure of that, but we keep watching for some sign of help anyway. It is the longest day of my life. We barely speak, choosing instead to conserve as much energy as we can. We are going to need every ounce if we are somehow going to hold out.
It takes everything we have to keep the boat from being thrown aside by the Drake Passage's surge and tantrums. The seas were rough enough on the ship, but this lifeboat is even more feeble against the cold might of our surroundings. Night comes again. I can feel myself starting to pass out. I'm exhausted from the shipwreck and from the mounting panic that's coursing through my mind every moment since the ship sank. If I fall asleep, it may be the last time I ever get rest.
Part of me wants to stay awake, to try to find a way to live, but the other part of me wants to rest while I can. Everything's so dark, I'm not sure if I'm asleep or not. I'm startled by the rowboat suddenly shifting and a loud splash coming from beside me. "Cormac? Cormac!" He's fallen out of the boat. He must have passed out too and tumbled right down into the sea. I'm just lucky that he didn't capsize us both.
It's so hard to see in the darkness of the night, but I try desperately to find him, reaching down into the frigid black waters. It takes a minute, but I finally find a hand reaching out for my own. I take his forearm and heave him up to the surface, pulling him back up to the safety of our boat. I can only see a vague silhouette in the dark as Cormac flops back to the other side of the rowboat. He's coughing up water. "Are you alright?" he answers, but his voice is so quiet and so strained.
His answer is drowned out by the seawater he's spitting out. I don't try to press him for more. He's as dehydrated and weak as I am. Maybe even more so thanks to his dip in the salty brine. He should conserve his energy as best as he can. Morning comes, bringing another grey day with it. I blink hard, my eyes trying to adjust to the light after a sleepless night in the darkness. Everything is hurting now. I know my body is slowly shutting down completely.
I don't have any kind of sustenance to help keep it together. We don't have much longer, I'm sure. I look across the boat at the man sitting on the other end of it. It's not Cormac. Someone else is sitting in his spot. Alfie. I saw Alfie sink when the ship went down. I saw him get pulled under the water with everyone else. I saw how scared he was when he slipped beneath the water's surface and never came back up. He doesn't look right. His skin is puffy, pale and almost blue.
He's soaking wet, coated with brine and salt. His eyes seem dim somehow, like there's nothing behind his stare. How is he here? Where is Cormac? "Yelves," Alfie speaks, gurgling up globs of water from his mouth when he does. It's like he can read my mind. "You pulled me up from the water." It doesn't make sense. He would have drowned or frozen long before last night, not long after the ship went down.
"But Cormac…" "Oh, we dragged him into the water, where he belongs. And then you scooped me up thinking I was him." I noticed he said "we," but I didn't get the chance to question it. Alfie starts to laugh. It's a cold, hoarse cackle, and more water seeps through his teeth when he snickers at me. "You two should be down there with us. It's not right to leave the crew behind. The ship still needs its sailors."
This isn't possible. A drowned man isn't on the boat with me. He's dead. Just like the rest of them. I'm imagining things. I've been out here in the middle of the ocean for too long. That's all. I'm starting to lose my grip on reality. It's the lack of food and water that's making me hallucinate. Or maybe I actually drank some salt water. You don't think I'm real? You can't be. The boat nearly capsizes when the drowned man lunges across the length of it.
His cold, wet hands wrap around my throat and press my head down to the water's edge. I stare down into the dark grey seas of the Drake Passage. Faces look back up at me from just beneath the surface. They're faces I know. The people that I used to walk past on deck or sleep besides in our quarters. They're the men that I trusted and travelled across such treacherous waters with. My shipmates. My crew. "Do you see them? Do you see your crew?"
The friends you abandoned! With every yell, stray water droplets spray from Alfie's maw and land on me as he keeps pushing my head closer to the surface. He's trying to make me join the others down below. He's trying to pull me under just like they did to Cormac. I press my hands down hard on the edge of the lifeboat, trying to push myself away from the sea, but the drowned man is strong. Arms sprout from the sea. Wrinkled, waterlogged hands reach out for me, grabbing hold of my face and my hair.
They're all trying to force me under. I scream and look down at the pack of horrifying yet familiar faces. The dead men want me to keep sailing with them down in the dark. I can't. I won't. It takes all of my strength to throw myself backward.
The cold, sopping revenant behind me falls under my body weight but it's slick. Wrinkled fingers stay wrapped around my throat. "Join us down there!" Alfie spits behind my ear. His putrid breath smells like fish. "There's nowhere else to go!" "You're dead, so shut the hell up!" I elbow the wet flesh behind me hard. My blow hits him in the gut as I try to pry myself from his grip.
Just as I manage to pull away from Alfie, another shape surfaces and nearly tips the boat when it climbs on board. It's Cormac. He's no longer afraid. But instead, his swollen, bluish face contorts into such a horrid, terrifying expression of excitement. He throws himself on top of me, so I'm stuck between two drowned men clawing at me. It takes all of my strength to hold them back.
His soggy, moist hands smack at me, and the brine flows out of his lips when he screams. "I told you! They're all down there! They're waiting for us! We were never going to get away! This is how it's supposed to be!" Elfie laughs beneath me. "Listen to him! We can all be together, just like before! This voyage wasn't meant to end yet! It doesn't have to!" I hate this. I hate them.
I don't know if I've lost my mind or if this sea is as cursed as they say, but I can't take it anymore. "Fine!" I roar, completely depleted and hopeless. "Let's go down there then!" I throw my body weight one way while I keep them back and the whole boat beneath us overturns. We plunge into the dark water of the Drake Passage. The water is even colder than I imagined. It sends a jolt of pain through my whole body the moment I submerge, making it hard for me to even more.
The drowned men grab and pull at me, and I can feel even more hands than just Cormac and Alfie. The others in the water are trying to reel me in too. I swing my arms out, trying desperately to get to the surface. When I kick my legs, my feet hit some of the drowned sailors surrounding me. I reach out for the capsized lifeboat that's floating upside down above my head. My hands reach it, and I use it to pull myself upward, away from the dead men below.
I cling to the overturned boat, which is now nothing more than floating debris. It's all I have, the last hope in this freezing abyss. I bop and rock as waves slam down on me and try to knock me away from the boat. I don't let them. This place won't win. It's not just the sea trying to collect me, though. The things within its depths still try to make me join them.
Wet, dead hands grab at my legs and back. They keep trying to bring me back down into the deathly cold, but I hang on to the boat with all of my might, refusing to be brought under again. I kick them as best as I can, even as they all swarm me. There's so many. Too many. I start to slip back into the darkness. It's all too much. If I sink any further, I won't be able to breathe. Death itself seems to shriek at me, with its horrible murky breath and its water-clogged mouth.
You belong down here! You don't get to live! We all go down with this ship! Die! Die! Die! A horn in the distance sounds out. The things clawing at me vanish. They're not pulling me down anymore. I hoist myself up onto the overturned boat, shivering and coughing. But find a beautiful sight waiting for me. A ship!
Everything happened so quickly, but I find myself on the new ship's deck, surrounded by unfamiliar shipmates. They're my saviors, bringing me warmth in such a cold place. I'm treated with so much kindness and so much mercy. The lone survivor of a shipwreck. "What happened?" one of them asks. I don't have the words. I can't speak, not through my rattling teeth. Instead, I just point down at the sea. He seems to understand.
I glance down at the dark seas of the Drake Passage. My ship is down there somewhere and so is my crew. They're all down there, waiting for me. It's 1936 and they still say that the Drake Passage devours anyone that tries to cross it. Maybe that's true about sea-going vessels, but that's not the only way to cross an ocean anymore. Now we can soar high above it, where whatever darkness lingers in the depths of those waters won't be able to reach.
I look down at the supposedly haunted currents below from high up in my plane's cockpit and, honestly, I feel rather comfortable. It's true that the Drake Passage's currents are violent and powerful. That much is clear from where I sit, but none of the towering waves below will ever be able to reach me. While the Drake Passage must be a very scary place for seamen, it doesn't seem that terrible for a pilot.
We aren't at the mercy of the ruthless tides, but instead cut our way through the clouds. It helps that I have a few fellow flyboys gliding right beside me, journeying over the Drake Passage together. There are five planes in total, and it's nice that one of the pilots, Carter Grayson, is one of my best friends in the force. He volunteered to fly over this part of the world with me, all to try to confirm that there isn't anything that anyone really has to worry about.
We're here to prove that all of the ghost stories and tall tales are nothing more than the ravings of bored, drunken sailors. "The Drake Passage is a little less eventful than I expected," Carter's voice says. I turn to my right and can see him looking over from his cockpit, speaking into the radio. "I thought this place was supposed to be terrifying. It's just the open ocean." The open ocean can be scary for the people on it, but for us? Yeah, there isn't much to see.
at least with the Drake Passage. I can marvel at all of the rushing foam and tall walls of water that crash upon one another. The sea down there seems agitated. It's much more volatile than most oceans I've ever flown over. I wonder what makes this part of the sea so tumultuous. There has to be some kind of explanation. I don't get to ponder for too long because one of my pilots calls through the radio. - What's that up ahead? - There's a thick formation of clouds rolling toward us.
It comes up out of nowhere, without any warning at all. "Everyone, stay in formation! No one do anything fancy or you'll risk crashing into each other!" "Understood. Roger." "Roger!" We can handle weather anomalies. We just need to get below the whiff of clouds and carry on. That'll be easy enough. "Steadily lower our altitudes, boys! Let's try to get beneath it!" Our aircraft slice down through the fog, though I'm making sure that we don't go so low as to end up in the sea.
We just need to be able to see again, so there are really only two options: try to ascend above the clouds, or go below where we'll still be able to scout out the sea. I'm not ready for what we find beneath the clouds, when we have a clear line of vision again. We see the ocean, but it isn't the empty horizon we'd been staring at for hours. No, there's a massive shadow in front of us, rising high from the iceberg beneath it.
With how low we've had to descend, the giant's shape is right in our trajectory. Its skin looks pale and slick, leading to long arms with huge claws at the end of them that are clinging to the block of ice. It's impossibly big, as big as a skyscraper or maybe even a mountain. It's one of the largest things I've ever seen and easily the biggest living creature I've ever laid eyes on.
It looks like some cross between a walrus, a man, and some enormous monster of myth that can't possibly be real. I'm sure that no animal like this should be able to exist on Earth, but there's no denying what my own eyes are seeing. It just can't actually be here. But it is. And it's right in front of us.
I snap out of my stupor just in the nick of time before I smash headfirst into its blubbery body. I yank on my controls with all of my might. "Pull up!" I shout. The other pilots are just as surprised over the radio. "You all seeing this?" Carter shouts. "I'm seeing it alright." Boroski calls back. "But no one's going to believe this. We'll even be able to make some money for discovering some new species." "Focus!" I shout into the radio.
If it was some sort of bluff on an island, we could all have easily avoided it. But the tall shape reaches out with an arm and catches Boroski in its grasp. Boroski screams over the radio. "Please God, no!" God doesn't hear him. Not even up here in the air. As the beast's building-sized fingers squeeze down on the plane, I see a fireball erupt in the giant's palm. Boroski is gone, leaving just four of our planes left.
We all pull away, swooping in an arc to try to get away from the monster towering over the water. "What do we do?" Carter yells. We aren't fully stocked for a fight. We weren't expecting a battle in these cold, deserted skies. It seems we've found a fight anyway, and our planes have enough ammunition to maybe try to bring it down, but certainly not enough to last during a prolonged engagement. My mind flashes with the image of Boroski's craft disappearing in this monster's grip. "We kill this thing!"
I'm not trained for a fight like this. I don't even have experience in facing other aircraft, but I certainly have no idea how to go up against some giant beast that's walking below. Something like this is entirely different from enemies we're supposed to have. It doesn't matter if we're ready for it. No need to beat it before it kills the rest of us. It's a living creature, that much is clear. No matter how big it may be, it can die just like everything else. I squeeze down on the trigger.
Bullets pour out of my plane. I'm aiming right at the creature's snout, which alone is bigger than most buildings. My bullets are miniscule in comparison and I'm not even sure if they're big enough or powerful enough to break the creature's skin. It's hard to tell with how big it is. One thing's for sure, my bullets don't kill it. Instead, the monster brings its long arm up and swats at my plane. I just barely managed to avoid the first swipe, but I'm not so lucky with the second.
The pillar of slick flesh comes down upon my aircraft. I bank hard to my left, but I can't get out of the way quick enough. The creature's arm smashes through one side of my wings. I rock hard inside the cockpit and the whole plane is sent spiraling down toward the dark ocean below. The whole world is swirling around me as I descend. The cruel tides of the Drake Passage are approaching quickly.
I bail out while I can. I eject from the cockpit and pull my parachute. The sail deploys above me, catching the wind. It turns my breakneck fall into a gentle descent, giving me time to survey the area as I glide down. My plane, something I've been proudly flying for years, crashes into the freezing ocean and is swallowed up by the unrelenting waves of the Drake Passage. I'll never see it again.
Unfortunately, my slow descent also makes me an easy target for that enormous thing. My chute apparently catches its attention, and it tears its ugly face in my direction. It shambles toward me, the iceberg cracking and groaning beneath its incredible size. The beast reaches for me with its claws, with nails as big as trees. I close my eyes and wait to feel its grasp, just like Boroski did.
One of our birds dives nearby, unloading many bullets into the creature's flesh. It's Carter. He veers past, firing more ammo into the monster as he passes. The wake of his plane flying past sends my parachute further away, and I watch as my friend tries to distract the beast. He's taking its attention off of me, but now it's on him. From this perspective, and having seen how easily it destroyed my plane, I see how outmatched we are.
Our weapons are hitting it, but they aren't doing much damage. No, we're nothing more than buzzing flies to the behemoth. Just an annoyance that it's trying to swat away. I've never seen anything like it. Not even in books. Animals that size don't exist. It makes the largest whale seem small by comparison. How long has this thing been down here in the Drake Passage? How long has it been hidden beneath these cold, vicious waters?
it's just our luck to run into it the flight could have been pretty simple but now we're fighting for our lives and i've lost my greatest asset without my plane i'm not much of anything i glance down and am just relieved to be landing on the iceberg instead of in the freezing sea avoiding getting soaked will help me stay a little warmer at least my feet touch down on the cold surface and i immediately start to run away from the towering shadow looming over me
I need to get as much distance between us as possible. We can't fight it. It's so clear to me now. We just need to run, to escape. I wave frantically for the couple planes we have left up there, trying to signal their retreat. Just because I've been grounded doesn't mean they need to be. My friends should escape while they have the chance. I get to the highest peak of the iceberg and flail my arms wildly, praying that they notice me.
I signal for them to retreat, pointing desperately to the direction that we came from. Thankfully, it seems to work. I see their plane starting to turn away from the creature and start flying toward me. They'll swoop overhead in a few moments, and then they'll be on their way home, far away from this monstrosity. If I'm going to be stuck here, I can take some solace that my men will live. The impossibly large abomination has other plans, it seems.
The monster reaches down into the cold water and rips a chunk of nearby iceberg from its place, clutching it in its hand. It launches the huge block of ice into the sky as if it is nothing more than a baseball. I watch it glint and glimmer as it is hurtled through the sky at great speed. The remaining pilots don't seem to notice it. They're not looking back. They think they've gotten away.
The mountain-sized block of ice crashes down on top of them. Two of the planes go up in flames on impact while only the back of Carter's plane is caught by the catapulted block of ice. It sends him careening into a tailspin. His plane crashes down into the sea, just off the shore of the icy terrain I'm on. I sprint toward him, desperate to save him. I can't be the only one that is alive. I can't be the only one out here. Not against the thing walking through the sea.
I don't care about the cold or the currents. I throw myself into the freezing water and start swimming in the direction of the sinking plane. The waves crash down on me, like the Drake Passage is trying to hold me back. But I push through the wakes and crests until I reach the plane, which has nearly vanished into the depths. I grab hold of the plane, making my way to the pilot seat. Carter! Carter! Are you alright? He's dazed and bleeding in his cockpit, but is able to slowly give me a thumbs up.
I grab hold of him and start to drag him out of the plane. "Come on! We can't stay here!" I look over my shoulder and the creature is just casually walking around the iceberg. It doesn't seem to notice what we're doing. Now that we're no longer flying around it, it might not even care. I manage to get Carter out and swim him back to the icy shore. It takes every ounce of strength I have to help bring him back but I refuse to let him die too. We've lost too many people here on a mission that is supposed to be simple.
The strong waves of the ocean around us lifts us and slams us down onto the shoreline of the large iceberg. I lay on the icy surface, and I've never been colder in my life. We're both soaked, exhausted, and without any planes to fly us home. What is that thing? Carter groans, sitting up, staring at the colossal creature. Nothing good, I say. Come on, we can't let it see us.
We manage to crawl around a bend that makes us more difficult to see. But then the creature turns its head. I can feel its stare on me. It's looking right at us, but it doesn't approach us. It turns away from us. It doesn't care about us anymore. We're not a threat. We're beneath it. Not worth the time or effort. I feel so powerless and so insignificant. It took away our wings and is just going to leave us to freeze.
The creature slowly shambles back into the freezing sea. It doesn't seem to mind the cold as it steps down into the depth. With every movement forward, the tides around it are thrown about, recoiling from the presence of the enormous creature. Perhaps that's where the endless chaotic waves of the Drake Passage came from, the source of the powerful surges out at sea. Although, one creature alone would not be able to make the whole body of water quake. No, it would require more monsters of this size.
More of these colossal abominations walking below the water's surface. I shiver at the thought, and I keep shivering in the cold. I've never enjoyed our voyages out to the cold waters of the Drake Passage, but it is the best way to Antarctica. And that means it's the best way for us to take the pictures we need of the frozen continent.
Half of the crew on board are there for research opportunities at the bottom of the world, while others, like myself, are there to take pictures that so many other photographers would never even try to take. Some of the best photographs ever taken are pictures of places where there aren't usually many cameras. People can have their endless pictures of city skylines, grassy fields, or crowded mountaintops. I prefer to capture the image of a place where most people will never get a chance to see otherwise.
Plus, there are penguins. Everyone loves pictures of penguins. I put my camera in front of my eyes. Most of what I see is through my lens. I take some snapshots of the water. The Drake Passage is as turbulent and rocky as ever. I've never had a calm journey across it. It's not always easy to get a good shot when the deck is constantly rocking back and forth. I usually have to sift through plenty of unfocused, blurry messes before I find a picture that I like.
I can't wait until we find some land. I will gladly take the frozen tundra over the choppy, chilly waters of the Drake Passage any day. Soon enough, I'll be able to get my feet on some solid ground, find some penguins to model for me, and then have a break from the harsh patch of ocean. "Will you just take a good picture already?" my brother David said beside me. Our shared passion for photography in exotic places has taken us all over the world together. It's actually been pretty wonderful.
I think the world has enough pictures of just an open, empty ocean, don't you think? Something catches my eye through my camera lens. Something out in the water. The ocean stretches out into a gray horizon, but a silhouette is in the middle of my shot, standing upright out in the sea. I lower my camera, just to make sure it's not a smudge on the lens that I'm seeing. The shape is still out there in the distance. I point to it. "What is that?" David scoffs beside me. "What's what?"
I want him to follow my finger and to see what I'm seeing out in the ocean. When he looks though, he just seems confused. He apparently doesn't see it. I raise my camera again and zoom in, hoping to get a better look at whatever is out there and to maybe even get a picture of it. I adjust the perspective and get a better look at whatever is out in the distance. I almost drop the camera overboard when I get a clear image. It's a little boy.
He's probably around six years old, but I've never been good at determining ages. He's dressed in old-fashioned clothes, the kind that kids wouldn't ever want to be seen in nowadays. He's sopping wet from head to toe, and his skin is a pale blue, his eyes bloodshot, and his face puffy and swollen. He's covered in frost, some of his skin blackened from the cold, and small icicles poke through his clothes.
When the boy and I lock eyes, he grins at me with a rotting black smile. My brain can't wrap my head around the sight of him standing almost weightlessly on the surface of the water. His body doesn't drop. He doesn't sink and slip beneath the waterline. He's standing there as if the ocean was solid ground. Maybe it's frozen. Maybe he's standing on ice. But the water doesn't look like it's solidified.
"No, it really seems like he's just casually standing on top of the raging seas of the Drake Passage." "What are you talking about?" David asks, still trying to follow my gaze. I wave my hand around, still pointing directly at the soaking wet child. "The boy out in the ocean shouldn't be hard to miss. He's the only person in the area that isn't on board the ship." "I'm talking about that!"
David looks again. He squints for a few seconds, but he clearly isn't looking at anything. Definitely not at what I'm seeing. He shakes his head. There's nothing out there, he scoffs. I knew it was only a matter of time before you lost your mind on one of these trips. I think they call that cabin fever. Just look, all right? Look right over there. I try one last time to get him to follow where I'm pointing. He still can't see it. I raise my camera and take a picture of it.
This will be my proof, my evidence that I am not losing my mind out here. He'll see, and then I'll show the whole world this insane sight. "What are you doing?" David asks. "What I'm supposed to do, right? Capturing the moment? Then maybe you'll take all of this seriously." "I take you seriously," he says. "I just don't see what you're seeing." "You will." I'm more frantic and loud than I might need to be, but I feel crazy. I need him to know that I'm not.
"I need to know that I'm not. Some of the crew gather around me from all the commotion I'm making. They don't seem to notice the boy standing overboard either. Most of them are hardened sailors, the kind of people that aren't easily intimidated or spooked. But what I'm going to show them will change that. They'll all see." "What's all the racket about?" the ship's captain, Hamish, asks David. "It's not like the two of you to be this loud."
"My brother saw something interesting," David says, trying to be supportive despite his own skepticism. He nudges me in the side. "Go on, show them!" What he really means is "show me" because he wants me to prove it to him too. I click the buttons on my camera to pull up the image that I just captured. It comes up on the screen, but the boy in the photo isn't just standing there. He's pointing right at the camera. He's pointing right at us. I don't get a chance to show them the photo.
Hamish stumbles backward, holding his chest. Suddenly, a long, thin shard of ice erupts from his torso, stained with his blood. Seconds later, another large red icicle skewers him from within, stabbing out of his shoulder, right near his heart. He opens his mouth, but a scream doesn't come out. Instead, a large, sharp pillar of ice erupts from down his throat. We all back away. No one on board has ever seen anything like it, and no one knows what to do.
Hamish kneels over, but his body is propped up by the pillar of ice jetting from his mouth that's now freezing to the deck. When I get a closer look at the ice, I see that there are things frozen within. Internal organs. I think I see his heart deep in the glaze. I turn back to the frigid waters. The figure is still standing there on the surface. He's still smiling at me. He raises his hand and extends his index finger, but, again, he doesn't point at me.
He points at one of the deckhands, Harold, who is still standing beside me, completely unaware of what I'm seeing. The moment the boy's finger points at him, Harold lets out a gasp of cold air, his breath visibly spilling out of his airways. He claws at his stomach and, this time, we all clear away immediately. We know what's coming. It's just like Amish. No ice pillars burst from Harold's mouth, though. Instead, it finds other places to emerge from.
Icicles split him open, tearing through his flesh before he even has a chance to scream. There are more smaller blades of ice this time, like he's being riddled with knives before collapsing onto the deck. His blood starts to freeze even as it's still pooling around him. "What's happening?" someone yells. "It's the kid!" I yell, desperately motioning toward the starboard side of the ship. I flail my arms around, pointing right at him again. "It's him! Right there!"
People follow my instructions and look out to the sea, but their confusion is palpable. Nobody else sees him. But he's right there! I point right at him, and then the boy points back. Again, he points to a person near me. The sailor next to me starts to freeze in front of my eyes. Frost spreads across his whole body in seconds, and then he suddenly shatters to pieces. Frozen fragments of his body fly through the air. Some even hit me as he falls apart.
More and more sailors start to freeze or break apart into icy chunks in front of me. The boy keeps pointing at different people, choosing which one is going to die next. One by one, a terrible force takes hold of them and extinguishes any bit of warmth in their bodies until they are just cold corpses on the deck. David takes hold of me and tries to pull me back away from the railing. I hear him letting out a slew of profanities. I've never seen my brother look so scared.
"What the hell is this?" he asks, his teeth chattering from sheer terror. "What is this? It's him!" I keep pointing right at the boy, but that's not good enough. I raise the back of the camera and show it to David, so he can finally see. "This!" David looks down at the screen, right at the boy pointing to the camera. He stares at it for a second, and then looks at me with wide, terrified eyes. "There's nothing there. It's just the sea."
I look at the photo on the screen. The boy is still there in the picture. He's still pointing right at me, directly into the camera lens. Why does no one else see him? I have photographic evidence and he still can't be seen. It's not possible. None of this is. David, come on, just look! I am looking. There's nothing there. Nobody.
"You have to believe me!" "I want to, alright!" he says, still panicked from everything happening around us. "There's obviously something going on here. I see that much." "You think it's connected to the kid you're seeing?" "It is." I need him to understand. "He's doing this to us. To all of us." David buries his head in his hands, like he's trying to wake himself up, or somehow wish all of this away. "How?" he asks. "How is he doing it? Why?"
I shake my head. I don't have a good answer for him. It's clear now that this is not just some boy. This is a force of nature. Some violent thing out here where no humans should be. I want to comfort my brother. I want to tell him that it's going to be okay, but those words don't leave my mouth. I can't even start to form them through my chattering teeth. Telling him that we are going to be okay feels like a lie, because all evidence seems to point to the contrary.
Still, I want to help him more than anything. I want to give him some little bit of warmth in all of this cold. "David!" He doesn't respond. He doesn't blink. My brother just stands there, and then doesn't move at all. And he won't ever again. He's suddenly frozen solid in front of me. He's like a statue. A perfect image of him that's no longer living. He's like the photographs I take. A moment, frozen in time. "No!"
Tears turn to shards of ice on my cheeks. I almost grab hold of my brother, but I'm scared that he'll break into pieces if I do. David keeps staring right at me. He doesn't blink. He never blinks. I look around and the whole ship is silent. The screams have frozen, just like the people have. There is nothing but icy death everywhere I turn. The only person that moves is the little boy out in the Drake Passage. He's walking toward me now, effortlessly striding across the rapid currents of the dark sea.
I fall to my knees. I don't know what else to do. There's nowhere to run and I can't stop him from coming. I wait for his arrival. He steps up onto the deck without a word, coming right toward me. He looks as frozen as David, but it doesn't seem to impede his movement. He grins with those frostbitten lips as he gets closer and closer. I don't know what to do. Maybe there's nothing that I can do. The boy stops a few paces from me, standing amidst all of the chilling carnage that he's unleashed.
He doesn't seem to mind all of the frozen, broken, shattered and bloody corpses around him. All of that death is his own doing, and he seems very happy about it. I don't know if I can reason with him, but at least I try to talk to him. It's the only idea that I have left. If he's going to kill me like he did all of these other people... Why are you doing this? He doesn't say anything. He just keeps smiling at me. He raises his little hand and then points at me. There's no mistaking it this time.
He's not pointing at anyone else. He's finally regarding me and only me. Because there is no one left. I wait for the cold. For the gruesome end of my life. But I refuse to just sit there and let him kill me. There had to be a reason that I could see him and no one else could. "Why are you doing this to me?" Again, he doesn't answer. I climb to my feet and raise my arms defensively. My camera still in my left hand. I know I can't win this fight, but I'm not going to die groveling.
My brother wouldn't have wanted that. David still stares at me with his petrified gaze, and I'm not going to let him see me give up. My skin grows bright red for a moment, but then starts to darken. It quickly grows black. I recognized the condition immediately. It's frostbite, and it's spreading on my left arm. There's nothing I can do to stop it. I see my arm wither and darken. I'm starting to not be able to feel it at all. The camera in my hand grows so cold that I drop it.
It shatters to pieces on the deck, its lens clouded by frost. The picture I took with it couldn't be seen anyway. My arm worsens, growing so numb and losing all feeling completely. The skin on my arm freezes and dies right in front of my eyes and the boy just keeps grinning. He's enjoying watching me suffer, just like he enjoyed watching the crew suffer. He points right at me and he starts to laugh, but no sound comes out of his mouth.
He's just silently pointing and cackling, like my suffering is the funniest thing that he's ever seen. There is no warmth in his grin, just pure sadistic malice. His soundless, hollow mocking continues, and I've never felt worse in my life. My bitter eyelids finally blink and the boy is gone. I sat there on the deck with my frozen brother for a long time. My body and mind are completely numb. I don't feel alive anymore.
I stare out at the raging seas of the Drake Passage and expect to see the boy still standing there. I never see him again. I turn to David. My tears burn on my freezing face, steam rising from my cheeks. "I'm so sorry, David. I'm so sorry. We never should have gone out here. We never should have done this. We shouldn't be here." I don't know if he can hear me. I doubt it. I look back out at the water. The boy still isn't there. Something does appear on the horizon though.
Another seagoing vessel. There's hope in this frozen wasteland. I almost can't believe it. "Do you see that, David? We're saved! We're getting out of here!" My brother never answers. A silhouette moves out at sea. At first, I thought it's the frozen boy. Maybe he's here to hurt more people. To continue his horrible game. It's too small to be him, though. It's a penguin. It's taking a break on a small patch of ice, floating in the sea. I wish I still had my camera.
People love pictures of penguins. Years later, I live far away from the sea. I made sure that I chose a home that resides in a perpetually warm climate. I'm here so that I'm never cold again. I need to feel safe, even if it means sweating for the rest of my life. Usually, I try to keep myself practically boiling. I turn the heat in my home up to uncomfortably high degrees, and I never go to places where it isn't hot. It's the only way to live now.
However, despite my best efforts, when I look down at the empty space where my frostbitten arm used to be, I still feel a shiver. When there's even the faintest draft of cold air, I'm suddenly back on the ship in the Drake Passage. The picture I took of the boy on the water might not exist, but I still see it. It's so clear in my mind. I see him standing there. I see the boy standing out on the ice. I see his blue lips curl into his deranged grin.
I see him point at me, and I feel the touch of his finger on my freezing skin. I have never been able to keep completely warm since my final voyage, and I know I never will.