Chapter Text
Tom had heard stories, of course. It was ritual for old men to weave yarns and young men to listen, and whether or not anyone believed any of it was of no concern to anyone. But Tom’s still part boy, part soft and fearful wonder, and though he keeps it hidden he indulges when he’s alone and especially after a few pints in thinking of the stuff of the codgers’ tales. Tom likes ghost stories best, the possibility of someone thought lost to the other world lingering in this one. Ghosts can be invisible, Tom believes, and don’t always make trouble, thrashing chains and gliding through walls and the like. Tom’s own personal ghost, a poor docker like himself, gone in his twenty-sixth year from consumption, is just good, silent company, invoked and dismissed at will. And as long as Tom believes in him, he’s not alone.
But it’s not ghosts that concern Tom tonight. He’s just seen something in the water, a thick shimmering flash of scale in the black tide at the end of the pier. It was like no fish he’s ever seen, and stranger still, he’s certain he saw too a flash of ruddy flesh—the swell of a shoulder—cleave the surface and sink again instantly. Maybe even the broad knob of a head.
“Well, John,” he asks his ghost as he approaches the pier, “What do you figure that was?” In the quiet—the soaked, slow beat of the waves, his own breathing—he figures through what John would say. A sea lion, dunce. Of course. Since they were boys, John had been keeping his head straight. And he’s exhausted. He should get back to the crowded boarding house he shares with who knows how many, worm in a place for himself among the men already back from work and tucked in, but no matter how tired he is he’s often driven out to the shore these clear tepid nights to walk the silty margin between the lights of the city and the rocking nothing of the sea. It’s like he has to prove to himself that there’s more to him than hoisting goods all day. An aching spine, his time and his brother both traded away for scant coin. Were they rich, John might have taken a train to the desert, where the water runs beneath ground and the sun is golden pure. Tom’s seen brochures. But instead John worked til the end, worked til the blood poured from his mouth onto his chest and fists like a curse, and he rasped his drenched last hulked over a crate of china.
Tom walks haltingly toward the end of the pier and fishes from his pack a stale wedge of bread, browning meat tucked into a rough slit cut in it, and takes a thick bite. The dry bread sticks to the rough of his mouth and the meat—roast beef, theoretically—is so salty it almost stings. The water rides itself in roils beneath the pier and to the shore, curls back white-spined, and ebbs out again. He likes the rhythm of it and sometimes, when he’s very tired, he imagines himself lifted on the slow beat of the tidal clock and carried away; he imagines himself vanishing. He finishes his roll and wipes the crumbs on the hem of his coat. Probably a sea lion, he reaffirms to himself, sitting down cross-legged. He should be getting back: he owes his mother a letter, and he’ll be wrecked if he doesn’t sleep. But he’s not ready for the fleas, for the stench of men and tallow. Though the fisheries further down the coast tint the air rancid, it is at least air breathed freely. And anyway, that sense of wonder and curiosity lingers. Even if it was just a sea lion, he’d like to get a better look at it. Biggest one he’d ever seen for certain. He turns his head slowly, scanning the dark water for anything out of rhythm with the waves.
But he’s distracted by a small, lone figure down the beach a ways. In the dark he can’t make out his face but he knows by the slippery fit of his coat and the way he walks like a rich man on holiday that it is none other than Hickey. Hickey, who goes by his last name only, works alongside him at the docks, but always avoids the heaviest work somehow. Tom knows what he’s after. Everyone knows what he’s after, but the last man who turned unkind about it got his gut slit while he slept. He lived, but never again spoke on the topic of any other man’s personal proclivities. Tom watches him approach from a long way off and thinks about last time: down beneath the boardwalk they’d done it. Brutal and quick it was, but worth both their whiles, the way Hickey feigned to court him beforehand and tossed him about during, and told him he was a a sweet good lad when it was done with. Such a thing would be acceptable again, so long as Hickey meant nothing of the heart by any of it—as Tom was sure he didn’t.
“I thought I saw something in the water,” Tom says as Hickey comes down the pier. “Big sea lion, most like.”
“That why you come out here? Look at sea lions? Easier to see ‘em during the day, yeah?”
“Well, we work all day, don’t we? Anyway, I was just walking and saw it out the corner of my eye. And you, Mr. Hickey? What brings you out?”
He tilts his head, grins. He likes being called Mister—it’s like petting a cat. “You look cold, Tom,” he says.
“Not particularly, but if you’re angling to hold me you can.”
Hickey shrugs. “Easy game takes the fun out of it though, don’t it?”
“Fancying a bit of a fight then? I’m afraid I’m not your man for that. I’m a sweetheart through and through.”
Hickey sidles closer and, after a perfunctory glance around, seizes Tom’s soft prick in his hand. Twists, his fingers biting into his stones.
“Quit,” Tom says, stepping back. “If you’re after something rough go on and find somebody rough. Sol Tozer, maybe. I heard he’s a scrapper.” Sol trades in what Tom only permits himself to come by honestly and scarcely, so he’s surprised when Hickey answers with casual familiarity.
“Not no more he isn’t,” He says, fishing out a cigarette. “You hadn’t heard?”
“I keep my head down. You’d do well to do the same.”
Hickey rolls his eyes. Sensing his hands won’t be otherwise occupied any time soon, he lights up a cigarette and extends one to Tom.
“I don’t smoke,” Tom says a bit pettishly.
“Well. Anyway, Sol’s joined the choir eternal.”
“Was he — sick? He didn’t seem so.” Sick, for Tom, means consumption. There are other diseases, sure, but consumption, being his personal bogeyman, is always his first instinct.
“Not a bit. Well—sick of this mortal plane, I suppose. Walked off into the sea.”
“...Christ.”
Hickey shrugs. His eyes are bright. “You are correct, however. He was one for a rough tussle. I shall miss that cock of his.”
“Don’t be coarse.” What he means is: Did you give coin for the privilege?
“Did you ever see it? His cock? A beaut, and no lie. And anyway, those were the only terms on which I knew him. I’m sure he was a fine lad otherwise.” He takes a thoughtful drag. “Not that it would matter much to me.” He pauses like he’s waiting for Tom to say something, but when Tom holds out Hickey goes on, “You know, they ain’t found his body.”
“How do they know he’s dead, then?”
“Well, he ain’t been back, has he?”
Beneath the boardwalk’s cool and clammy but Hickey’s warm and clings around him, gentler than last time. He’s got a scrawny little prick, Hickey does, but he wields it well, and he’s not rough as he was last time. The only trouble is the way he talks: real disparaging he is, calling Tom a stupid filthy cunt and the like. He could do without that but he takes what he can get. He works hard and talks little and he’s not exactly handsome. The decent side of plain, he’s always fancied himself, with a narrow little face like a worried kid. But you can get a good ways being plain, if you’ve got dash. Like Hickey does: but then again, Hickey’s not plain so much as strange, something of a nursery tale in those glinting eyes and that heavy nose, that soft red hair. Fey, luminous.
He feels Hickey glide his palm up along his throat and he freezes. “You’d make some man a fine wife,” Hickey’s saying, “sweetheart that you are.” Slowly his grip tightens until Tom can barely breathe, fetching just a little spoonful of air at a time. Just enough to keep his vision from going black. He tries to break free of Hickey’s grip but can find neither voice nor strength—he’s wounded men for certain, would he go so far as to kill one for fun? Surely he’s just taking things too far, being as rough as he pleases, the goddamned brat, but Hartnell finds himself bucking and whining regardless. Can’t shake him, can’t silence him. Pitiful. He ought to be brave, to prove—ah, there, nearly shook him—but Hickey delivers a sharp elbow to Tom’s ribs, a brutal enough blow that he resigns and goes limp. “You’re right obedient, for one thing,” Hickey continues, a shake to his voice making it thankfully clear he’s near to finishing—“and not too strong, clearly. A man likes that. Say, how’d you fancy being my lass? Ain’t much on looks, but you’ve a fine enough disposition…”
But then Hickey stops, tilting his head as he catches sight of something behind Tom. He shoves up off of him and stumbles backward onto his feet. Tom turns slowly, sucking in great gasping volleys of air as he does so, and sees what Hickey’s seen: in the far pitch-black corner, where the water laps at the rocks, two eyes gleam. They emanate a weak, milky light, as though frosted over with cataracts, yet they track Hickey’s movements as he turns to run. Then the thing lunges. Tom can smell the sea—salt and fish gut—and a ferric tang like blood as it flashes past him and tackles Hickey, knocking him onto his back. Its bowed, muscular shoulders heave with each gurgling breath. Smooth, the broad of the back is, well-formed down through the shoulders and arms, but the bones of the spine rise and meld toward its waist to form a kind of stumpy, vestigial fin. The beast’s lower half is like the body of a fish, a greyish-green that glints dully in the shadows.
With a grunt, Hickey turns and curls, reaching for the knife he’s known to keep in his boot, but the thing—the merman, Tom thinks numbly—anticipates this and glides his hand down to clasp Hickey by the wrist. And holds him there. Then he grabs his other wrist and twists the greenish gleaming bulk of his hips and tail to curl across his thighs. Run, Tom’s brain orders his legs, but as in a childhood nightmare they are useless, as insensate as sacks of sand. He watches breathlessly as the merman coils its fanned tail-end around Hickey’s ankles and lowers its mouth to his, crossing one large hand over to clasp his neck. It’s a terrible mimic of what Hickey had done to him, except now the smell of blood thickens in the heavy air as Hickey’s screams are twisted down to a raw, continuous whine in his throat. Then silence. No, not totally: Hickey’s still breathing, sucking air noisily in through a slick of blood in his mouth.
The merman turns and drags himself on his forearms to where Tom is crouched against the post. As he raises his eyes to meet Tom’s, Tom recognizes the face of Sol Tozer. He opens his bloodied mouth and, with a neat inclination of his head, drops Hickey’s tongue at Tom’s feet.