Song of the Sirens (17 page)

Sneakers and two layers of socks warmed
my feet. Jeans, a thermal shirt, a t-shirt, and my all-time favorite hoodie
warmed my torso. I tied my hair up into a ponytail and kept watch on the door.

I didn’t have a weapon, other than the
chair under my butt, a ruler and stapler behind me on the table, and random
clothes hangers in the narrow closet. I couldn’t fend off a ten–year-old child,
much less a bloodthirsty, ravenous monster from the deep.

I jumped every time the light beneath
the door went out. The hallway lights flickered. The lamp bulb on the table
weakened.

The digital clock read three A.M.

I reached out to touch the doorknob. I
spent many summers on this boat and in this room and felt I knew the area well
enough to walk through it in the dark, not that I wanted to.

Once my palm wrapped around the old,
metal doorknob, a sensation ran up my arm. The metal felt bitterly cold, the
type of cold that numbed the body in a matter of minutes. Ignoring the instinct
to pull away, I turned the doorknob.

The door creaked on the hinges, echoing
in the otherwise silent room. When the door was halfway open, I retrieved my
hand. Before I lifted a foot to step forward, the door swung shut. The noise
reverberated against the walls. The room returned to silence just as quickly.

I jumped, caught a breath, and
continued. I didn’t think too much of it. The waves wreaked havoc below, and
the winds ambushed from above.

I opened the door, and this time kept a
hand on the doorknob until I slipped through the entrance. The door creaked
closed behind me and slammed shut when the boat took another sharp sway.

The hall was dim. The lights failed to
behave. Parts of the electrical system were ready to snap with the tempest.
Only a few lights remained on, and a few others flickered. The combination of
dim and dying light created strange shadows. They crawled up the walls and vanished
with every movement of the waves.

The corridors were empty, quiet. I
expected men to hustle through in the emergency, but suspected they tended to
Dad somewhere and struggled to get the boat on its way back to land.

As the boat swayed with the movement of
the waters, I tilted with it, stumbling down the hall, stopping every half
minute to regain balance. With feet at shoulder width and hands out to the side
to prevent collision against the wall, I walked forward.

The ship leaned to the starboard, and I
moved to the left. I paused. The ship swayed portside, and I staggered to the
right. When the boat evened out, I continued walking. I expected the vessel to
continue rocking back and forth, but I didn’t anticipate the waves to suddenly
change beneath my feet. The boat leaned backward. The stern sunk into the water
as the front rose up in an alarming slant.

I yelped and lost balance. Despite
clawing out to grab the railing, or anything else that I could’ve latched onto,
I tumbled back and fell on my butt. The initial impact sent a shockwave of pain
through my hips and lower back. A scourge of pain swept across my palms and
wrists where they hit the dirty floor in a failed attempted to buffer the fall.

I cursed beneath my breath. Scrambling
around, I crawled to my feet in an awkward scuttle to get to the wall. Once
there, I clutched the railing and hoisted up.

I puffed and moved loose strands of hair
away. A moving figure turned the corridor, startling me at first. Riley ran to
me.

Ah great, falling flat on my butt in
front of Riley seemed to add charm to the already hysterical girl I would soon
become if we didn’t get the heck off this boat and hit land.

He ran with great stability, in perfect
poise as usual. He leaned forward to prevent falling but didn’t hold onto
anything to support his balance like I had to.

Feeling the constant pull of gravity and
wobbling just to keep upright, I hardly believed Riley walked around as if
nothing swayed him.

He approached and placed a hand on my
arm. “What are you doing out here? You should be in your room. The boat’s not
safe right now.”

“I want to see my father.”

“He’s fine.” Riley placed one hand on my
waist, the other around my elbow, and turned me around. “It’s better if you
stayed in your room. You can’t get hurt too bad in there.”

His cold hands penetrated my clothing
and startled my skin. I shivered.

We walked back to my door, one room
away, when I paused and pushed against Riley’s firm and adamant hold.

“What’s wrong?” he asked from behind me.

My entire body tightened and chilled. A
faint whisper penetrated the air like invisible swirls of fog that swam through
the hallways, bounced against walls, and erupted to fill the corridor.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

Riley increased his insistence by
pushing me across the hallway and toward the room. I obliged, despite the
nagging, natural pull of the song. The whisper was light, sweet, and, as
always, hypnotic.

As if the siren behind the voice
responded to my inquisitiveness, the whisper increased. It sought out the
living, breathing souls on the vessel, searched for them, and lured them toward
the source of the song…the siren. She was onboard.

A shadow appeared around the corridor.
Someone approached in a very slow, sluggish walk. Fog appeared with the figure,
swam out and around the corner but didn’t move further than that until she
continued.

I narrowed my eyes. The shadow held a
womanly figure. There wasn’t another female here. I hoped the shadow fell at an
odd angle to create such a form. I hoped the being was not a siren, but I knew
better.

I opened my mouth to call out to the
newcomer, to inquire about who walked the halls, but Riley opened the door and
shoved me into my room. I yelped, losing balance as the boat shifted to the
right, and tumbled to the far wall. I grabbed the bunk bed to the left, wrapped
my fingers around the support beam, and prevented total collision against my
father’s desk.

The boat leveled out as Riley closed the
door.

I grabbed onto the top bunk frame and
spun around to face the entrance. Perplexed and with wide eyes, I watched as
Riley placed his palms against the door and leaned against it.

The whispers became stronger,
transmitting through the wall, and crawled toward us. They pried into my mind
and filled my thoughts with an intangible drug. Without thinking, I released
the wooden bed frame and took a step toward the door.

The areas around Riley’s hands writhed
as if the wood turned into water and he caressed the surface with a light
touch. His body trembled as though he placed an immense amount of energy into
the door.

I stood behind Riley and absent-mindedly
raised a hand with the intent of turning Riley around by the shoulder and
removing him from the barrier. I wanted to go to the song, and at the same
time, hide from it because I knew what lay behind the song’s enchanting melody.

Riley grunted and pressed harder into
the door. He fought against the song. The entire piece of wood glowed and
glistened like moving liquid, and spread outward toward the walls until the
rippling façade surrounded us.

The whisper faded and died without a
trace of ever having been in my head. The hypnotic feeling vanished as I became
sharply aware of my dreaded actions. This peculiar feeling was akin to suddenly
waking up from a dream and thrown into action. The song was stronger now that
the siren walked the ship. She was so close.

Riley removed his hands and turned. He
opened his mouth to say something when a large wave hit. The boat sharply
leaned starboard side, and I stumbled into Riley. I grunted when our bodies
collided. The brief jolt at impact knocked the breath from my lungs.

In a maneuver so fast that I could
hardly believe Riley moved, he steadied himself and caught me before I fell. He
held me against him, his arms around my waist, and trapped me in an embrace. I
couldn’t move, which meant I couldn’t fall.

I wasn’t used to being so close to
Riley, much less cradled in his arms, though this happened a lot tonight. His
body was solid, even against the slight cushion of clothes. The chill he emanated
through layers of fabric made me shudder.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I croaked.

The boat tilted and continued to lean.
The strong force of gravity wouldn’t let me pull away and walk back to the bunk
beds. A transitory thought raced through my mind. I worried about Dad, but I
didn’t mind being locked up with Riley.

“Do you think she’s gone?’ I whispered.

“I think she passed,” he replied in his
own whisper.

“How do you know?”

“I can sense them when they use their
song.”

“But the song doesn’t affect you?”

Riley licked his lower lip, looked down,
and took my hand in his. After the initial coldness, a numbing sensation
pulsated through my palm and arm. I closed my eyes and relaxed.

“The song doesn’t affect us, only alerts
us that they’re near and luring victims,” he replied.

“It sounds like a screeching mess at
first. What does it sound like to you? What are they saying?”

“I haven’t heard the beautifully
destructive song in ages, but I recognized it as though it’s as clear as a
bell. We’re immune to the powers of the sirens, but not immune to their
violence. They can still kill us, as you know. Their song entrances the victim,
forces them to give up their control, and allows the siren to enter their mind.
But they can’t do that to us.”

“How do you know so much about them? You
weren’t alive when they were caught. Did your people study them?”

“Not that I want the images in my head,
but the sirens fed on the commoners in Atlantis when they went completely
insane. The royals are the strongest among us, but we protectors are close
behind and had to fight off the sirens. The protectors passed those stories
down to the next generation, and imprinted the images into my mind. I also have
memories that aren’t mine. So, I didn’t see it for myself, but I know the
memories of the protectors before me who saw it.

“Seeing how the sirens hunted and fed
was bad enough in itself, but having witnessed their barbaric revolt against
their own kind was enough to make me want to vomit. What my people saw that day
was enough to fuel primal hatred against the sirens for eternity.

“I’ll do anything to protect you, Anita.
A starving siren is onboard, and she’s still powerful enough to kill you.
She’ll fight me to get to you. You should be safe in here for now.”

The main light bulb went off, leaving
only the desk lamp to light the room. Perhaps they were fried and died in the
storm, or maybe the generator weakened and electrical wiring snubbed out random
lights. In either case, the boat was darker. Sirens liked the dark. They liked
to creep up on their prey while they stood immobile beneath their power. They
also liked to frighten humans. It worked.

The gravitational pull created an
awkward suctioning action between our bodies. I struggled to lean my head away
and crane my neck so my face wasn’t buried so deeply in Riley’s throat.

As the boat continued to tilt, a flutter
of panic hit me. The boat could turn onto its side and sink, stranding the crew
and research team in the middle of a perilous ocean where the skies churned in
chaos and sirens swam deadlier than sharks.

A dozen flashes of horror blazed through
my thoughts. What if the water crushed us, trapped in this room, as we flipped
over? What if we drowned in the icy darkness and met our end in a watery grave?
What if circling sharks or sirens snatched us off and devoured us while we
struggled to fight? I would never see Dad again, and that was the most
terrifying thought of all.

I shook and pushed against Riley, but he
swung his arms out and reeled me back in. I could have easily hit the wall next
to Riley, or the floor, and succumbed to a coma if he hadn’t.

I refrained from yelling about dying,
that I couldn’t even see my father one last time. I tumbled backward as the
ship leveled out. I tripped over my feet, and on my way to hitting the chair
when Riley snatched me up by the waist and crushed me against his torso, again.

He turned in full control and lowered my
shaking body to the bottom bunk. Riley held onto the top frame and leaned down
so he could be at eye level when he spoke. “Stay here where it’s safe.”

I glanced up. “Where are you going?”

“I have to check on the others.”

“No you don’t,” I argued.

I wanted my father safe, and the rest of
the crew safe, too, but I didn’t want him to leave me alone. I clutched his shirt
and pleaded, “Don’t leave me.”

“I have to kill her before she kills
others.”

“I know, but….” I was selfish and
scared.

He growled and spat out, “I have to
admit something to you, Anita. I think the reason the sirens chose you was
because of my link to you. They searched for us, but never tried to
communicate. They must’ve latched onto my whereabouts and moved down my links
to any humans, to you.”