The Things the Sea Returned

The Aquarium closed a decade ago. The windows were shuttered and the squids released back to wherever squids go. The building was left to sink below the boardwalk and into the gently rocking waves. It is accessible now only by a hidden passageway, and only to those who need it.

Things that are lost to the sea end up here: wedding rings hurtled down drains; love notes left in glass bottles; torn fishing nets and the casings of flares fired by doomed mariners. Sometimes, there are bodies too. Those who gave themselves to the waves, those who were not given a choice. The sea does not discriminate.

And here I am to guard them.

It’s not the job I signed up for, and certainly I did not expect to still be coming here after the city shut the place down. But there are things one cannot turn away from. 

Sometimes I reunite visitors with those they’ve lost, sometimes I just bear witness.

I walk through the dank hallways to the patter of children’s feet and the squawking of seabirds above. Waves brush gently against the portholes as I look out to the pink domes of jellyfish and the gleaming shoals of cod beyond the glass. Fish never wash up here. I wonder about these things, about the ocean sorcery that keeps them at bay,  though I know no answers will come. The bounties of the deep are inscrutable.

It’s a slow day today.

There is a lone figure in the atrium: the widow. She smells of old salt and ageless grief, just like the ocean around us. Her hair is a nest of grey goose feathers and her tartan shawl is unravelling thread by thread.

This is not her first visit.

“Have you found him?” she says, gripping my hand. I don’t have to ask who she means. Her husband Jonas has been missing for over six months now.

“I am sorry,” I say, “but I haven’t. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

She cries. I offer her tea, hollow assurances. I hope when she returns to the surface, she returns unburdened, at least for a short time. But I know she will visit again.

When I am certain that I’m alone, I descend to the lowest level. It is dark here, there are no portholes and nothing filters in save for the lost things that materialise in the squid tanks. I do not let the visitors into this sanctum. I do not even hint at its workings.

The things that wash up here are altered, rendered into their true form by the primordial magic of the tides. There are dark things below the waves, things older and more violent than man. Some things should never resurface.

A wet howl comes from an old squid tank. I fetch the sack and open the top casing.

Jonas groans as I feed him dead rats. He chomps with his shark’s teeth, spattering their entrails on the glass. His ribcage is open, exposing his still beating heart, ventricles lined with rot, blackened with malice. There are seven bone fetishes in his hair, one for each of his victims. He would dump their bodies in the sea, an offering to whatever dark god called to him in the recesses of his mind. One of those poor souls finally brought him down with her. 

Did he see himself reflected in whatever hateful thing found him? Again, I know no answers will be forthcoming. But I know this: he was always a monster. The sea just revealed it.

Yes, some things should not reach the surface.

And I am here to guard them.