Fish bones line the beach tread upon by portly tourists. They snap pictures of the cove, peaceful and deadly beneath a grey sky. Sputtering rain comes and goes, and Lawrence Murphy plays with a bit of seashell while he drinks whisky and watches the churning of the sky. It’s been a month since he lost his boy, a week since his wife went away. He’s only got Old Tommy and his fiddle for company, but there is no cause for music now.

The great jawbone of a shark hangs over his window, gaping at him, its teeth sharp and white. Was his boy torn apart by such a creature? Or was it something else? Did he drown, as Maggie suggested with certainty bordering on mania? He takes a sip of Scotch from his mug as Old Tommy returns from the store, plastic bags in hand.

Tommy fixes them sandwiches, but Lawrence can’t eat. He just goes on drinking, grappling with some thought. Tommy can tell they are coming to a moment – one of those irrevocable revelations which result in a decision that changes everything. It’s as though Lawrence wrestles with the monster itself, down below those black waves, and can feel its strength slipping in his grasp. He is within reach of something. Perhaps before dark he will subdue the beast.

Dark is coming on fast, though. Storm clouds threaten the tourists down by the shore. Only a few god-rays manage to break through and glitter on the waves. Lawrence hears one of the men on the beach let out a holler. He has seen the monster of Shelby Cove, like so many before. How many Polaroids, snapshots from disposable cameras, recordings on camcorders otherwise used at family Christmas gatherings, thanksgiving dinners; How many had obtained proof of the monster, out there on the cove?

For thirty years Lawrence has lived by the shore. He has always been a believer. Gullible by nature, Maggie used to tease. He has seen the monster once though, when he was eighteen – only a few years older than Lochlin. It had been a dark night – no moon to light the waves, only a kind of glow on the horizon: Twilight. There was nothing which terrified Lawrence more than the sea at twilight. The water, obscured by the darkness, becomes like a door leading into a pitch black room, but you know that in the room squats something awful, something with a mouth the size of a small person, perhaps a boy, and deep-sea eyes which stare, alien, uncaring, yet full of some mystifying arcane knowledge. The monster was as old as time. Perhaps, Lawrence thought, it was the leviathan in the bible, or one of its dread offspring that had wandered to this part of the world.

In his dreams he can sometimes see it, rising out of the water, opening its hideous mouth. Graveyard breath; A translucent belly full of the bones of men.

There were those pseudo-scientists who sometimes came to town, filming an episode of some cable TV show about various urban myths and legends, and some not-so-urban ones. Lawrence has heard every possible explanation, from ridiculous to plausible – Plesiosaur, Oarfish, mutant shark. Then there was the history, sightings which supposedly went back as far as to the pioneer times, some claimed earlier, with Old Indian tales.

Lawrence finishes what was in his mug and gets up to refill it. Tommy says something, but he cannot hear. He regards his face in a mirror on the wall – old, haggard, eyes red like a sunset. He empties what’s left in the bottle into his mug and returns to his rocking chair by the window, beneath the sharks maw. There is lightning on the horizon, chains of electricity which crackle on the seeming edge of the world. It drives forth something in the air, collides with the shoreline like some invisible wave which sends a tingle across Lawrence’s skin. Goose pimples erupt.

In his dreams he is eighteen, out on the water in his rowboat, not too far from shore but far enough that in the darkness he might pretend as though he was in the middle of the sea. He is alone, a little drunk. He brings in the oars and sits there a while, taking in the growing dark, the eerie twilight. There is a thrill to it all. Then he hears the bump from beneath his feet.

Something brushes against the boat – once, twice, a third time. It is a kind of skidding bump, like something long running against it. He freezes, and detects a kind of sound coming from the water, not unlike the whale song, but harsher on the ear, despite how quiet it sounds. There is another bump, harder this time, against the side of the boat. It feels deliberate, and young Lawrence’s mind is filled with images of staved boats. One more bump now, this time lighter, definitely deliberate. It is almost as if something is tapping the side of his boat, beckoning him to peer over the edge.

Whether out of morbid curiosity, or some stranger compulsion, Lawrence always looks. In his dream recollection, he tries to resist, but feels a terrible certainty that should he try to deny the creatures invitation, it will rip his boat in half and then tear him to pieces in its teeth. It only wants to reveal itself to him, that is all, and so it will. Lawrence peers over the edge of the boat and sees the horror just beneath the water. The eyes, dead, yet full of comprehension, the mouth, lined with angler-fish teeth, bent into a hateful grin – demon fish, face of a monster, he regards it and, to his terrible fear, it regards him, it rises up out of the water and opens its mouth, unhinging its jaw, as though to speak, and that is when he hears the noise again – like the collective moan of a crowd of people trapped in some sinking boat. The sound rattles his skull and he awakes.

The next morning, he rises before Tommy and heads into town to buy more booze. The sky is still overcast, but even so he shields his eyes by tugging his cap down over them. He goes to the general store where he receives a few woeful glances from townsfolk. Everyone has heard by this point that Maggie has packed her bags and headed back to her parents’. Mike, who runs the counter, rings Lawrence up and looks as though he wants to say something, but Lawrence ignores him, and he shuts his mouth.

Bottle in hand, wrapped in brown, he heads back up the hill, but his eye wanders, as it always does, to Harold’s shop. He has not been inside there since what happened to Lochlin, but this does not mean he doesn’t peek. Today, there is something of a gathering in there. Nothing surprising about that. Whenever a new bus-load of tourists show up, they inevitably end up in Harold’s for some souvenirs, or perhaps a bit of a history lesson from the man himself, a once good friend of Lawrence’s. Now, though, this is different. He sees a couple of tourists, to be sure, but the majority of the crowd he recognizes as locals.

It is just like his dreams. Something compels him, like a siren song, to go closer, to look over the edge of the boat, to step in through the door. The ring of the bell brings a few eyes his way. There is a double take as one of the locals realizes who’s just entered, but the rest are much too fixated on something. There are whispers and murmurs, one of which is directed to Harold who quickly looks up and sees Lawrence. He seems afraid.

“Lawrence,” he says, and impatiently adds, “What are you doing here?”

“What’s going on?” Lawrence asks, his voice a croak.

“Nothing. You shouldn’t be here,” is what Harold tries to say, but he is cut off by another man.

“We’re trying to tell if this photo is legitimate!”

An argument kicks up.

“I took it last night!” One of the tourists, an older gentleman, exclaims, “And besides, I wouldn’t know the first thing about altering no photograph.”

“S’far as we know,” mumbles one of the locals, “Give it here, again, I wanna take another look.”

The picture is passed around, but Lawrence can’t get a good look.

“Really, Lawrence, you know how it is,” Harold starts, “just another bit of so-called proof. Nothing you ain’t seen before.”

There was a time, Lawrence thought, that him and Harold had themselves poured over such pictures and recordings.

“Don’t look like any fish I’ve ever seen. Don’t look much like a fish at all. Ugly sumbitch though.”

Some men laugh, but in a nervous kind of way.

“Give it to me,” Lawrence says.

“No, you best be getting on home, to your…” Harold trails off, “Well, you best be getting on home anyhow.”

“No, give it here,” Lawrence says, and one of the tourists hands him the photo.

“Don’t!” Harold exclaims.

The face of the monster. Those pale eyes – ghost-like beneath the surface – that nightmare smile, transparent teeth through which can be seen an abyss like no other. He drops the picture and staggers for the door while men call after him.

-

By noon Lawrence is in a drunken stupor, asleep in his bed, half the bottle emptied into his guts, his brain. He snores softly, his body tense. Old Tommy watches him from the doorway, then goes outside to play his fiddle: a sad song. The sky begins to leak and the waves on the sea crash hard upon the rocks below. The beach is deserted today.

Lawrence is dreaming. Beneath those violent waves he rows a staved boat. Dark, boiling water surrounds him and he can hear it: beyond the current, the sound from the belly of the beast, the groans of the dead. One voice in particular wails to him, forcing him to row faster, only he can’t tell if he’s rowing away or towards it. A flash of lightning illuminates the water and he can see the shape of the monster swirling about beneath the troubled surface, twisting itself into some violent shape, some eternal Oroboros. At the centre lies the face, staring at him. Eyes like full moons suspended over the gaping, ravenous mouth.

His ears are filled with water and the moaning of the countless slain – slaughtered Indians, old pilgrims who never found their new Eden, whalers and merchant sailors lost at sea, bathers: men, women, children; Lochlin.

“Dad.”

When Lawrence awakes it is evening. His head swims, his stomach crawls. Slowly the world takes shape around him, and before long he is weeping. Outside his door, Old Tommy sits and listens, but does nothing, can do nothing. Likewise, as he watches when Lawrence emerges from his room and puts on his sweater, grabs an old lantern. For a moment, their eyes meet and Old Tommy sees in his friends a pain that he cannot begin to describe let alone understand. He says not a word as Lawrence steps out and heads down to the docks, towards the rowboat.

Once, when Old Tommy was young, he liked to read philosophy. He got a bit of a reputation as a local wise man which only grew as he aged and became more reticent. People seemed to take his silence for quiet understanding, though the truth was simply that the older he got, the less he understood. So it was that he couldn’t bring himself to help his young friend Lawrence, for as he watched him sink into annihilation he could think of no bit of wisdom that could ease the mans burden. On the contrary, Old Tommy found himself tormented by a thought, something he had read about years ago: The Eternal Return – the idea that we are born into the same life again and again, forced to repeat the events of our lives without end, unable to change them, unable, even, to remember them. So it would be, that Lawrence, who will die this night at sea will be born again in Shelby’s Cove, will grow up to meet Maggie. They will fall in love, get married, and Maggie will give birth to a beautiful baby boy named Lochlin. They will watch with pleasure as the baby grows into a boy and then into a kind young man, until once again his raft washes to shore in pieces bringing with it a cloud as black as a starless midnight in the middle of the ocean.

So to will Lawrence, again and again, depart his home and fix the lantern to his boat, take the oars and row it out onto the temporarily quiet and peaceful sea as twilight falls. He will row until the shore vanishes and then he’ll stop, and as the storm clouds gather, blotting out the fading afterglow of the setting sun he will cry out into the darkness, “Take me! Take me, you bastard! I’m here! I’m waiting for you!”

Yes, there will be moans on the waves; He will hear them at least, and he will smell the reek of bones and seaweed – a deep sea coffin – and perhaps, at last, he will even see those pale eyes he saw so many years ago. In the end, though, there will only be his cries and the answer in the wind of the rising storm.

“Take me! Take me Goddamn you!”