“The Little mermaid‘s here… with caffeine!”

Taylor smiled as she entered the aquarium’s security office; her nickname, a comical tribute to her career in marine biology as well as to her flaming red hair, the trademark of her fairytale namesake.

She handed Charlie his usual mocha latte’. “What’s new?”

“Nada… your fishies are all accounted for,” he responded, “although I think Melville and flipper might have a thing going.”

Taylor chuckled.

Melville was the aquarium’s prize draw, a nine foot sand-tiger shark, who after years of generous regular feedings had become as docile as a house cat.

Charlie yawned, collecting his textbooks.

“One month until graduation” he smiled. “… no more fish-sitting for me.”

Suddenly Charlie stiffened, fixated on the security cameras.

“Holy….” He shrieked, one hand covered his gaping mouth, the other frozen, gestured toward screen 13.

“What is it…?” Taylor studied the shadowy image as a terrified Charlie fled the office, ascending the wide spiral ramp that circled the aquarium’s massive five story cylindrical display.

Taylor’s eyes widened. She noticed something foreign in the murky water. Clusters of silver fish were feeding viciously on a pale lifeless shape. Not the usual diet of fish carcasses; those were… fingers? It was a human arm, buoying up and down as the school nipped at the distended white flesh, exposing sections of bone beneath.

Taylor, charged up the ramp, stomach heaving. She found Charlie, gawking at the image bobbing behind the shatterproof glass.

They watched the suspended scraps of flesh, dissipate in the clear water, fodder for the captive sea-life.

“I’m going in” Taylor stammered.

“”Don‘t you dare” Charlie barked, one ear plied to his cell phone.

Ignoring his pleas, Taylor wrestled into her scuba gear, scaling the diving dock as Charlie, desperate to intercede, fed information to 911. She plunged into the tank, the sudden rush of icy water compressing her rubberized skin.

Taylor was at home in the water. Growing up along Carolina’s remote shoreline; her childhood was spent exploring marshy inlets or combing unspoiled beaches for maritime life. With few locals and only occasional tourists, the rugged coastline was her playground, its untamed inhabitants her constant companions.

“Smart to put it on ice” an impressed Detective Trafford commented, studying the mangled appendage resting atop a cooler. It appeared to be a woman’s. Taylor shuddered, detecting the remnants of a dainty French manicure.

“Forensics will check it out.”

The police department invaded the aquarium with military-like precision, flashing badges, adorning the exhibits with x’s of brilliant yellow tape, and interrogating bewildered employees as they reported for duty.

A confused kindergarten class arrived, diverted by policemen. “An accident” they explained.

“Maybe a shark ate someone!” a boy grinned.

The doe-eyed teacher panicked, “How far’s the zoo?”

Pale and trembling, Charlie was being questioned yet again, his head lowered shamefully, policemen looming over him.

“You saw nothing…? Absolutely nothing?”

Permitted to resume her duties, a shaken Taylor circled the giant tank, clipboard in hand.

Smack! Melville’s tail slapped the glass with an angry reverberating thud.

“What happened buddy?” she whispered, his bead-like eyes monitoring her movements. “Tell me.”

Smack!

Melville retreated to the dark comfort of his man-made cave. A generous grant had supplied the aquarium with funds to construct one of the most impressive exhibits in the area. The animals’ natural environments had been painstakingly reproduced to exacting detail, as if someone had literally scooped a five-story glassful of ocean from the seafloor.

******************

Lir plunged his hands into the icy Atlantic, rubbing the scarlet stains from their weathered surface with his gnarled fingers. Years of seafaring had battered his flesh into a brown leather-like armor; his salt-bleached beard, white as sea-foam. He lifted the large shell and held it to the sky. “To Ilmatar, goddess of the sea” he chanted, pouring the water offering over his parched body. “Return her to me”

“Soon” the waves whispered back.

Six years had passed since Lir boarded the ship as an extra crew hand. A charcoal curtain of clouds had hung heavy over the restless steel-gray waves.

“He’s a whopper!” the captain gloated as the thrashing sand-tiger was finally heaved aboard and thrust into a holding tank. “We’ll get some bucks for him! Don’t worry fella, you’ll live like a king…three squares a day”

Lir stared at the magnificent , creature, cruelly snatched from his expansive home, only to be gawked at by soda-slurping tourists. The animal’s stare sent an icy shiver down the nape of Lirs’ neck. Once ashore, Lirs eagerly headed home shadowed still by the unshakable eerie chill. Hopefully his wife Olga would have returned, maybe there’d be hot chowder on the stove.

Twice before, Lirs had supplemented his meager income subbing for outfits which supplied large aquariums with their catches. A bottlenose went to California, a giant squid somewhere in Canada. This fish was staying local.

But something seemed amiss as Lir approached his fishing cottage. The neighbors and a policeman hovered by his door.

“I’m sorry” the officer murmured, “Your wife… a ferry accident….lost” The charcoal sky went black.

After several days the frenzy of police and TV activity had mellowed; the severed arm an unanswered mystery, as each lead proved fruitless. Taylor remembered years before. A woman’s body had been discovered tangled in some fishing lines nearby. The missing strawberry-blonde plastering the news, had been deemed a suicide.

“You have taken from the sea” clora warned “ and she has taken from you” Clora was what townsfolk called a “sea-witch” Her uncanny ability to predict changes in weather and tides made her a frequent, though discreet, lifeline of sailors and fishermen, whose lives depended on the whims of mother nature. In desperate times, it was said she could cast spells, communing with sea spirits, reversing misfortunes of those who had been their unwitting victim.

Lir gazed at the churning waves, their salty tongues lapping at his bare ankles.

“One more” the wind-kissed ripples whispered, “one more” He could see his wife, as a young woman, her coppery waves of hair graceful in the sea breeze. She reached out a hand as the tide pulled her back.

Taylor checked her watch. Eleven pm. She didn’t mind staying; she was writing an article for Marine Life, and an evening in her empty apartment, proved less than enticing.

Her ear caught familiar dolphin songs and she answered her cell.

“Miss Morgan?” a now familiar voice queried “Sorry to call so late, quick question?”

Her experience and practical level-headedness, had made Taylor the detective’s unofficial go-to person for inside information. It was the third call today.

“Shoot” she responded, stacking papers.

“There’s a… Dylan we interviewed. What does he do exactly?”

Salty dog Dylan, as she and Charlie referred to the suitably grizzled operations worker, had a variety of duties.

“ Mostly maintenance, chops fish for chum, tank repairs, etcetera”

The lanky man kept mostly to himself. Taylor recalled nothing unusual, aside from the enormous dinners he toted to work.

“Big **** cooler for a skinny guy,” Charlie had often joked, patting his own round belly. “Where does it go?”

“Says he works late shift?”

“He and John Macintosh alternate nights.” Taylor noticed a hesitancy in the detective’s voice. “Anything wrong?’

“Not officially” Trafford’s instinct was rarely misguided.

“Well sorry to bother you at home”

“Actually, I’m still working, fish never sleep” Taylor chuckled

“Wait, you’re at the aquarium?” Trafford snapped “Who’ there with you?”

“Charlie Dawson, and…” she looked at the evenings staffing chart, the only other name still checked in was Dylan, Lirs.

“ Taylor, get out! Now!….” he ordered.

“What’s…?” A thunderous crash echoed above her. The lights flickered.

“My God!” She grabbed her flashlight and phone in hand, headed up the carpeted ramp. Where was Charlie?

Taylor edged toward the main exit, her back to the wall, the tiny frantic voice of detective Trafford , penetrating the stillness.

“we’ll be right there…”

Another crash. Her phone shut off.

The swirling reflections of the tanks sea-life splashed ghostly patterns of light against the darkened walls.

“Charlie?” she whispered.

A figure approached, shadowed and soundless, a shimmer of something dangling from its left hand. The long-limbed silhouette, peered curiously through the tank, distorted by the convex glass.

Taylor warily slipped into a small exhibit showcasing “bioluminescence”

“That’s fancy for glow in the dark” Taylor would explain to visitors. Here the lights were lowered dramatically mimicking the deepest regions of the ocean; a kaleidoscope of gleaming candy colored fish darted against the inky blackness.

Suddenly a blast of sound punctured the stillness; her ringtone, Damn. Detective Trafford. She tried to silence it, fingers trembling as the noise resonated through the air like a siren against the safety of the darkness.

Slam! It was knocked from her hand. Without warning she was thrust against the wall, a vice like grip pinning her neck against the tank‘s icy glass. The flinty whites of crazed eyes stared trance-like into hers. She fought to breathe.

“Perfect…” Lirs voice crooned.

Taylor’s thoughts reeled, chaos rampant in her throbbing head. Think. Act.

Suddenly Lirs lifted a quivering hand to her brow, a fishing knife clutched in his grip. She flinched as his knobby fingers lightly traced her auburn waves.

“Perfect” he murmured.

Almost unconsciously, Taylor swung her arm in a violent arc, planting the sturdy flashlight on the bridge of Lirs’ nose.

With a yelp, his hands flew to his face, giving Taylor a split-second to free herself from his menacing embrace.

“Charlie!” she shrieked, willing her suddenly immovable feet to run. She clamored to the top of the diving dock, Lirs treading behind, his face and chest splashed scarlet.

The murky depths of the tank gurgled inches below her. Silently, she slithered into the water, shimmying beneath the dock, face craned skyward, utilizing the small stratum of oxygen between water and wood.

Footsteps thundered above her, drips of crimson coloring the water. Suddenly, two black boots peeked over the edge of the planks. There was a shuffle and face appeared cocked sideways; two sinister searching cobalt eyes.

“There you are…” the voice cackled.

Abruptly Taylor pulled herself from beneath the dock and with a nimble stretch frantically grabbed her scuba gear. She slipped the mouthpiece between her lips sputtering out the salt water as she pitched into the watery world, clutching the oxygen tank to her chest, as a makeshift weight, hastening her descent.

A sudden splash and Lirs was beside her, a sliver of shining metal gripped in his unshorn jaws.

Deeper she swam, the salt stinging her unmasked eyes as the tank’s inhabitants scattered.

The air in her partially-filled tank grew thin as she clung to the cave wall, her body numb without the protection of a wetsuit. A commotion of garbled sounds drifted through the water, but she dared not move. Melville nervously paced the length of his home as Taylor wheezed into her mouthpiece, her chest tightening, her oxygen supply rapidly depleting. She had no choice. Drown or face Lirs? Planting her feet against the rocky coral, she pushed passed Melville into the open tank toward the surface.

Images and sensations whirled in her semi-consciousness: Melville grinning, his ragged teeth dripping ruby red, the taste of salt in her lungs, indigo eyes wide in terror, then a strange red-haired woman walking along a deserted beach. She reached out her hand to taylor but a flurry of frothy white waves pulled her away. Taylor succumbed to the darkness.

A cruel light bore painfully into Taylors eyes.

‘She’ll be fine” a familiar voice boomed. “We don’t know what happened to him. Shark food we think.”

Taylor squinted. She could detect faces around her. Charlie was there, forcing a smile, his head wrapped in white gauze. Again she succumbed to the safety of the dark.

In a ramshackle cottage, Clora was mixing herbs. She rubbed potent mixture into the jagged leg wound and chanting, wrapped it firmly.

Ilmtar was hard to please.

He had failed, but he would not let Olga down again. There was work to be done