Sea Harvest

A story that crawled onto the deck and spoke to my soul

This short story shares no ties to STATION DARK or PARLOR TRICKS (except its author), but it sung to me. So I wrote it.

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Sea Harvest

Rugar stomped the last of the briny muck from his boots, sending trembles through the old timber of his home. “Wipe your feet.”

The new guy, Tom, did what he was told. “Thanks for picking me up. Came here looking for work, you know, and-”

“Have a seat.” Rugar gestured to the couch in the cramped living room, which shared the space with a galley kitchen where Rugar’s wife quietly washed the splattered remains of a casserole from dinner plates. A broadcast show hummed from a television in the background and low flames crackled in the fireplace.

Rugar reached into a bucket- a nearly empty bucket- and pulled a piece of rough-cut rock the color of gray haze. It looked like slate, but it was not slate. It burned like coal, but is was not coal. He tossed it into the fire and the flames flickered.

“Is that it?” said Tom, wide-eyed, watching rock burn. A rush of heat poured into the room. “Is that the scale?”

“It’s what we harvest, yes. Stay here. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Rugar caught his wife’s concerned eye, but there was nothing to be done for it. That’s just how she looked these days.

Rugar hiked upstairs to the small room above and found his little girl sitting in the dark, eyes open and reflecting the dwindling sunlight from a split in the curtains.

“Hey, little bug. I’m heading out.”

“Can you read me a story before you go?”

“Sorry, darling. Not tonight. The crew is waiting. I had to pick up a new guy.”

Rugar looked around the room in search of a thing he could fix, as he often did to assuage a small guilt. He found the radio sitting on her dresser which had long since run dead. He pried open the battery case and dislodged the old piece of scale that had been jammed in there, brushing away the crumble and dust. He pulled a fresh chip of the stony material from his pocket and shoved it into place. The scale didn’t need to touch the connectors to work. When near electronics, it just… worked. Better than a battery. Better than coal. And the devil’s work to harvest.

Tinny sounds from the radio fluttered across the room. “There you go, little bug. Go to sleep.”

Tom hopped to his feet when Rugar returned down the creaking stairs.

“Come on,” said Rugar. “Time to go.”

Rugar led Tom along the weathered boardwalk that connected each of the houses of their seafaring town, and the new guy rattled his jaw the entire way. “I can’t believe you still have power out here.” Tom pointed to the dangling lights strung up on thin wire across fences and patios, which jostled in the wind in a fight to repel the settling darkness. “Most of the inland towns have gone dark.”

“We lost electricity years ago.” Rugar looked up over the rooftops behind them, to the towers that descended from the mountains. They stood as lifeless giants above the trees. “It all comes from the scale now. Generators.”

The scale material needed no enrichment, no refining. It required little shaping. It somehow replaced coal, diesel, gasoline, and batteries. As the rest of the coast slowly slipped into shadow, this corner of the world clung to light. A cursed illumination.

When they got to the pier, the crew was already busy about the old fishing boat. John Scup, first mate of Rugar’s crew, met them at the gangway. He was a white-haired man, sturdy in build despite his age, with the steady legs of a long-time sailor. He would’ve been retired if that meant anything these days.

Rugar clapped Tom’s shoulder. “This is the new guy. His name’s Tom.”

“You ever been on a seine boat, Tom?”

“No, sir.”

“Doesn’t much matter,” said John Scup. “We don’t really do with the nets anymore. Just stand over there and stay out of the way. We’ll call when we need you.”

Rugar watched the new guy walk off to marvel at the particulars of a scale harvesting ship, peering most intently at the rusted rack of tridents and spears, bats and crowbars. As John Scup had said, there wasn’t a net in sight.

For a rare moment on this small boat, Rugar found himself alone with John. “Are you sure you’re good?”

John Scup let out a heavy breath, spreading warm wisps to feed the chill air. “Best to keep myself busy.”

“I’m sorry about Cheryl.”

“She was sick a long time. She’s in a far better place than any of us, that’s for sure. As I said, best to keep myself busy.”

That was all that needed saying. Twilight had settled in now, with the sun tucked below the horizon, and the stars had begun to wink above. “It’ll be a clear night.“

“We’ll pull away soon,” said John Scup. “Should be at the rocks in an hour.”

A constellation of bobbing lamps stretched the harbor as boats like this seiner pulled out into the night. Rugar and his Tranquility Dawn joined them with his sullen crew brooding in a huddle, with wide-eyed Tom standing aside as a fresh puddle of water repelled by the oily slick of the others.

“Ready the team,” said Rugar. The seaside town was just a faint halo of light in the distance now, and the rocks were drawing close.

“Arm up,” called John Scup. “We need pushers and scrapers, and lampers, too!”

The long-handled pikes were the first from the rack as the crew readied themselves. The lamps, next, were snatched quickly, until all that remained were the close-range tools.

“Here you go.” John Scup thrusted a crowbar into Tom’s hands. “Just pry off the scale when they get close. Kick the rest back into the water.”

Tom questioned the blunt instrument, unsure how this fit into what he might encounter next. “The rest of what?”

“Just keep your head on straight. It’s a bit of a shock the first time.”

Ahead of the Tranquility Dawn, in the deep haze of waning twilight, the silhouettes of the other boats lined up near the foot of the rocky isle and flared their amber lamps to cut through the permanent fog. Only one of the boats in this long row stayed dark: the shell of the Solace, with no one aboard and its body now cast upon the rocks, itself overtaken weeks ago. At least its crew served to restock the waters.

Clanging and shouts from boats along the line had already begun to ring over the waves, and the crew’s heads were turning as imagination and fear besieged their minds. “Watch yourselves,” said Rugar. “Eyes on the rail.” Whatever crawled over the side of their own boat would be enough to fear on its own.

“We got one!” someone called.

“Wait for it,” said John Scup. “Let it clear the rail.”

The ghast that lurched onto the deck dripped water from soaked and tattered clothes, and its gaunt hands and waterlogged fingers grasped at the air as if it remembered it had once stood on a deck like this. Stony scale grew in irregular clumps across its skin as a priceless slate-colored carapace. Rugar looked to Tom, whose eyes were wide, frozen where he stood with his crowbar clutched white-knuckled to his chest. At least he didn’t run. Or puke. No one wanted to harvest on a puke-slick deck.

“Here you go,” said John Scup, giving Tom a shove. “Just pry the scale off him. Nice and easy, we don’t want to kill the poor soul.”

Tom’s faculties reignited and, eager to prove himself, he lunged forward and pried the largest chunk from the shambling man’s chest while men held it back with spears. The chunk released with a wet slurp that tore the flesh with it, and the first of the harvest hit the deck with a thunk.

More shouts from the crew, more clawing up the side of the ship. “Good work, Tom,” said John Scup. “Training’s over. Let’s scrape what we can and shove off this rotten rock!”

Sailors pressed against the once-human ghasts that emerged from the depths for their twilight dance. Each were pinned down and barnacles of scale were pried from their flesh. Rugar held back, a bat loose at his side, paying less attention to the pile of scale they were collecting than the bodies churning in the water, pale and treading, swimming up from below. In the end, the wave of horrors came to an end. He did not need to pull back an overwhelmed crew. The harvest was complete. “Clean up,” called Rugar. “We’re nearly done here.”

“It’s not much,” said John Scup, reading Rugar’s thoughts.

Sailors were stacking into a pile all the chunks of scale now strewn across the deck. It was not a large pile. There had been too few ghasts.

“The population is getting thin,” said Rugar. “The others were given the same order as us: time to restock.”

They both looked at Tom, who’d returned to his rattle-jawed self once the excitement had ceased.

“I got one,” said Tom. “Absolutely terrifying, but I did it.” He bounced like a schoolboy. “I can’t wait to tell Mary.”

Rugar felt the chill of the sea rush through his bones. “Who the hell is Mary?”

“Well, uh…” Tom stammered, “Look, I know the ad said No Families, but you don’t know what it’s like out there. I’ve got a wife and kid to feed.”

Silence spread across the creaking deck. Waves sloshed against the boat and the rocky shallows beckoned them closer. This hadn’t been the plan.

“We’ve got to restock,” said John.

“No.” Rugar cursed at the deck. He cursed at the sea which heaved beneath them, and he cursed at the foul undead churning within it, already regrowing their rotted scale. Lastly, he cursed at the look he now saw on John Scup’s face. “I said no.”

“Captain…”

“Don’t captain me. Whatever I’ve done to lead us out here, it ain’t worthy of that.”

John looked to the crew, looked to Tom, then looked back at his old friend. “I miss my wife.” The line of boats had begun to pull away, with the fog swirling behind them as if trying to claw them back to the plagued isle. John placed his hand on the rail. “With your permission?”

The silent screams of all the dead Rugar had seen wailed now in his ears. What storm railed against them on this cloudless night? What sins of man brought their lives to this end, the harvesting of their own from the sea? What of his little bug? Would she stand upon this deck one day to reap from the living dead? Rugar sighed, adding his own warm wisps to feed the chill air. “Aye.”

“I’ll be seeing you again.” With a mighty lurch, John Scup sent himself over the edge.

The crew watched, stunned. Tom, too, was seized to the deck, unsure what had just happened, unaware how much his fate had changed in such short a spell.

“Let’s go home,” said Rugar. “Let’s be rid of this damned place.”

For this night, at the least.