“You’re lucky you could find a driver at all.” said the cabbie, looking at the disheveled man sitting soaked in his backseat.

“Oh yeah?” said Noah, straightening up, his bag clattering metallically as he did. 

They were deep in the countryside, about an hour from any sort of civilization. Nothing but green and raindrops streaking by in the windows. 

“32 Messina’s got a bit of a reputation, hasn’t it?” 

“Hmm?” muttered Noah, scratching his knee anxiously.. “What are people saying?” 

“Well, it’s just a few urban legends. An embellishment here, an exaggeration there. I’ve lived around the area so I’ve heard most of them I’m pretty sure. For one, 32 Messina is a bit of a misnomer.” 

“It’s the only house at the end of the lane. There used to be 31 more but they went missing.”

“Any idea where they went?” asked Noah.

“Some people say storms, but a pragmatic guy like me knows better.”

He turned around dramatically.

“It’s sea monsters.” 

“Sea monsters?” Noah raised an eyebrow.  

“Old ones. Big ones. Wild enough to eat houses. They ate all the houses and built 32 Messina to serve as their lair. 

“That's…creative.” 

“Creative or not. The place has a history. I’m surprised a young fellow like you is heading there.” 

Noah looked at his eyebags in the rearview mirror. “You think I look young?” 

“Well, younger than an old-timer like me. I’m old enough to be your father.” 

Noah was silent for a full minute as he stared out the window. 

“Sorry, I was just wondering even after all the rumors you’d take a guy like me there.” 

“Cash is great for stuffing your ears against bad stories. Heck, if you gave me enough money, I wouldn’t mind living there: Empty bay, pristine water. It’d be worth it to learn how to outswim those sea monsters.” 

“I could never do that.” chuckled Noah. 

“Can’t outswim sea monsters?” 

“Can’t swim in general. Dad never taught me. Never had the chance.” 

“Now that’s a damn shame. So what’s your deal then? Why’re you heading to 32 Messina?” 

“I heard a rumor too. Someone had died at 32 Messina. It took a long time for anyone to do anything about it: The police were far too scared to do anything about it. And the ambulance took ages to get there. They tried to rule it out as natural causes but I’m sure it was something else.” 

“What, like murder?” 

Noah stared into the distance. 

“Where did you hear about this anyway?” 

“I live there.”  

They arrived by midafternoon. It didn’t look nearly as bad as the cabbie imagined it. It was a long stretch of bay, filled with rocks, moss and palms on one side, and more rocks and sandy beach on the other. Looking closely, he could see the vestiges of places that once were—old wooden foundations peeking out from the crags, strange square shaped divots. 

Otherwise the area was almost completely reclaimed by nature. The only real way you could tell people still lived here was the cracked and peeling road that cut through and the lone house at the end of the lane: 32 Messina—it shone pinkly in the late afternoon light. A two story house built upon solid rock, painted a subtle rose with white trim mottled gray by the weather. 

The cabbie stopped just shy of its shadow. 

“Scared?” asked Noah. He had been awfully quiet after his little confession. The tips of his knuckles were just a little white from gripping the wheel. He smiled through it all though. 

Are you kidding me?” smirked the cabbie. “I just—who’s that?” 

The cabbie’s faux grin melted away as he watched the  windows warily, like they were the black eyes on the house’s face. A shabby outline came to focus, as though watching him back. 

Noah glanced nonchalantly. 

“I don’t see anyone.” 

“There! That person 

Noah chuckled. “Oh her. That’s just my mother.” Noah waved. The figure did not wave back.

“You ought to stop listening to such…fantastical stories.Think about how they make me feel.” 

The cabbie chuckled nervously, not taking his eyes off the window for a second.

“Maybe you’re right.” 

He wasted no time driving off, pocket and heart a little heavier as he went hurtling from afternoon to night. Noah on the other hand, left his smile with the car. Clattering loudly amidst the crashing of waves on the shore, he strolled to the house, eyes on the empty windows above. 

“You’re a lot more convincing than I’d like.” he muttered as he peeled the cardboard cutout from the window. He paused letting the house settle in for a second. He listened for the creaking. For the weight to shift…nothing. 

He climbed up the stairs and paused again. Only the dust awaited him, save for the bare spots down the hall. He traced them with his feet, fitting perfectly in the little bare circle by the first door. 

“Mom?” Noah could make out the softest creak of something rusty from behind the door. 

“I’m home.” His voice seemed to echo back to him in the empty hall. He opened one of the cans from his bag. “I bought you more dinner.” The smell of oily fish was pungent in the air. “It’s your favorite.” Somehow it comforted him to imagine he was talking to a cat. Better than imagining his real mother anyway. Noah sneered, pushing down those thoughts like bile down his throat. 

“I got to confirm it today. They really think it was a suicide. It doesn’t explain much, honestly.” His voice caught. 

“Although the cabbie I rode with had a lot to say about what it could have been. There are really a lot of strange stories about us, huh? He was talking about sea monsters. I just remember Dad was really stubborn. He’d keep rebuilding the house–that stubborn old man. Nothing magical about it.”

Noah leaned over to nothingness. 

“Still, I wish I’d have heard some of those stories from him. Or maybe a story from you. But I guess I just get that stubbornness from him.” 

It would be the creaking floors and the wind that lulled him to sleep like a cradle or a rocking ship. That night he dreamed of Heffalumps and Woozles and sea monsters.  

They lived and moved in and out of the houses that were standing tall by his own. Their homes were made of coral and barnacles and other living things. 

“How’s our little nephew?” they asked, with mouths far too large and far too close. 

Noah would run, just a tiny thing in the dream, just to scrape his leg against the stairs. 

“Mommy!” he cried out. 

“I’m over here, sweetheart.” She was at the back of the house standing at the bottom of the clear pool at the back of the house. Her hair danced underwater, the rippling lights around her making her glow like an angel. Her voice floated out of the pool clear as the air, with a soft melody. 

“Dad says I’m not allowed to swim.” 

“That’s because I have to teach you.” she sang. “Come here, sweet boy.” she outstretched her arms. “Come to your mother.” All his uncles and aunts joined in unison. 

He felt someone push him from behind. 

The pool had dried up. It was the next day. Noah was awake and just a little angry. Normally the pool was naturally fed by the ocean, filtered by a little sluice in the wall. But, his father had it cemented years ago, with only seaweed and fish spilling over during storms. Now it had dried up, the stench of rot wafting up into the air in a rippling haze, summoning screaming seagulls to add their shit to the mess. 

He shovelled the stinking mulch into a bucket, his sleep deprived eyes stinging from the salt and the smell. A bird tried to peck at him, which was promptly smacked with a shovel. 

“Look at me now, Dad.” he said to the foulness. “I’m in the pool. Aren’t you gonna freak out?” 

He stuck the shovel in angrily. “Aren’t you going to take care of it? If you hadn’t blocked it off. If you hadn’t…” He paused, wanting to take a breath so badly he began to retch. “I wouldn’t have so much to clean up. I could’ve helped you, you know.” 

There was a terrible itch in his knee, even though there was nothing there. 

He had been cleaning for five days now, trying in vain to put the house back together. A lot of things can change when you’re gone for 10 years, but the house was barely different. Maybe that’s why it was breaking. 

Noah decided to take a break inside. He had actually cleaned quite a lot of the house already. There were only a few places he didn’t want to touch: The little spot near the phone, the nasty empty pool, and the upstairs hallway. 

He took a seat by the phone, the white sheet covering the phone and the floor beneath it. There was a bit of a stain peeking out from underneath. The official report said that he had overdosed on his medication. He had just enough strength to make a call to Noah. Noah was told his father had laid there for days...there was no getting the stain out from the wood…no getting it out from his head. But that’s not what he wanted to pay attention to. His thoughts were upstairs, to the dust and sounds of nothing. He wanted to know if it was true. If she really couldn’t get out. He just couldn’t find a reason to open the door. It scared him. Like those heavy hands that pushed him into the water. 

Noah shivered. There was nothing. Not even a creak. 

The silence began to make things bubble up inside him. Little feelings that loneliness turned into glass and shattered it against his insides. To stave it off, he started to hum. 

His voice filled the place with ease, a rich nostalgic melody. It was the song from his dream. Like a lullaby. 

Suddenly, another sound joined in chorus, just under his song, right above his head. He stopped singing and it went away. Perhaps it was just his mind filling in the blanks. 

But as he sang again, it was a little more distinctive—more discordant. Like rusty wheels. Like thumping. Then a loud crash. 

He stopped his song again but this time the bedlam continued. Something was screeching in his mother’s room.

Noah flew upstairs forgetting his fear and replacing it with rage. He stormed through the door, clattering loudly, only to find a bird attacking an old woman in a wheelchair. It pecked at her over her clothes, while she weakly flailed her arms about. Angrily, Noah caught the bird and flung the creature out the window where it tumbled and flew away disgruntled. Noah looked about him, at his parent’s old room and at the woman he stood over and felt all the strength suddenly leave him. 

He had not seen his mother in years and even then he barely saw her as a child, always being told she was far too sick to move about. But this woman was not the woman he remembered from his dreams nor the monster he imagined lurking behind the door. . 

This woman was small. Much smaller than him as she sat in her chair, which was brown from rust and disrepair. She was covered from head to toe in black cloth, with the only parts of her skin showing being the tatters from where the bird had pecked her and the slit left for her eyes. Her skin was pallid, to the point of almost being gray. Her eyes were large dark pools that followed his every motion. 

“I’m s-sorry for barging in,” he stuttered, stepping backwards, nearly tripping as something clattered beneath him. Looking around he saw the room was a bleak fishy mess littered with the cans he had left there. “I need to go” he said hurriedly as he ran out of the house, the whole time those black eyes watched him. 

He stormed into the pool, mind racing. The scraggle of birds turning into a ravenous flock that flew like a storm around him, as though they were conjured from his restless mind. He cried out ,barreling through the flock, scattering them back into the sea. What remained were his feelings and a wet flopping at his feet: a fat fish, pecked within an inch of its life. The unlucky thing must have accidentally jumped over the sluice. He sat beside the thing waiting to die, it’s wide eye  staring blankly into a sky probably for the first time. Even if he sent it back, it would probably just die from its wounds anyway. Noah thought it looked like his mother. He remembered the clattering, the scent, the dust. He looked down at the fish again. 

Later that evening, she heard a knock on her door. Noah had come again, not with anger or fear but a strange smile, as though it were stitched on. He picked her up by wheelchair and carried her to the dining room. “You’re a lot heavier than you look,” he said, still smiling. 

He carried down into the dining room. She hadn’t eaten there in a long time. It looked different. Brighter. 

“I changed the lightbulbs so it won’t be so dingy,” said Noah. 

Laid out before her was a lovely fried whole fish, laid atop a white porcelain plate. She looked across to see Noah’s plate was just a single opened can of tuna. 

“Haha, don’t worry about it. I saw how you were eating and I thought, hey why don’t I make you something nice for once. It’s been…” he paused. “Anyways, I just thought you’d like it. Go on, dig in.” 

She eyed the knife and fork placed beside the fish. She looked up back at him. 

“Dig in. I know you can do it. Dad used to tell me how you’d sometimes feed each other, but you seemed capable of doing that the past week.”

She remained staring at the knife. Noah’s eyes stayed on her. 

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I am? I mean I’ve only been gone for fifteen years and I haven’t seen you in the last twenty. I’m turning twenty four this year and I barely know the sound of your voice.” 

Silence still. 

“I took nursing so I could do medicine like Dad. Did you know that? Did he ever tell you that?” His voice was slowly rising. 

“He never told me what you were sick with. He just kicks me out without question and then years later, he sends a letter only saying to come home. Urgent. Only, I took a year. A whole year. Like he expected me to fucking get up and upend my life. I could have saved him…I think. Only, I was scared of you, my own lovely horrifying mother. Do you know what they say about this house?” He could feel his leg starting to itch again. His fingers dug into his skin. “That there are monsters. You’re a monster.”

His voice went harsh and soft. He laughed under his breath. “I finally said it. You’re a fucking monster. I can’t prove it, but you killed him right? Why else would his last message be to call me?” 

His smile was still on his face. “So we’re here now together. Alone.” He slammed his fist on the table. “Stop staring at the food and eat. Let’s eat like a real fucking family.” 

Noah walked over. “Do you want to kill me too? Is that why you keep looking at the knife? I know you can move. I know you can say something. I’ve heard you. I know I did.” 

He places the knife in her gloved hand. 

“Do you need help? Come on. Please. Just do it. Let it end. I’m so tired of feeling lonely.” 

Noah sobbed angrily. “Now, it’s your turn, Mom” 

He could feel her grip tighten and he waited for a sharp pain at his neck that never came. As he looked upward at her, he saw she had lifted her veil to reveal her ear. She placed her knife against it and cut downward, releasing blood and a strange harmonic scream. 

He covered his ears while blood dripped down her neck. She dropped the knife and collapsed on the table.

Noah is stunned for a moment. But then instinct kicks in. He picks her up and carries her back to her room to be laid down on her bed, but not before he tries to treat the wound. 

It’s the first time he’s ever held her. It was strange. It was not the mother’s touch he had expected. She was frighteningly thin and boney, like she would fall apart clattering to the floor if he didn’t hold her tight enough. Even stranger was the wound. It seemed to have stopped bleeding without his intervention. But that was not the strange part, it seemed to throb and gape with every breath. 

Noah rubbed his eyes. They were slick with tears. He wiped them away and began cleaning the room. He couldn’t just leave her in that metallic mess. As it started to look like a room again, he found something hidden under the cans on the nightstand. It was a journal, old and leatherbound. As he skimmed through the pages, a picture slipped out. His eyes widened. 

It was the same woman he had seen in his dreams. Smiling and holding his father.

Noah opened the journal, skimming through it. Strange illustrations filled its pages, horrific and fantastical. Near its end was what seemed to be a letter, written in a hasty desperate scrawl. 

Twenty years ago, Noah’s father sat under the same moon listening to the crash of the sea. 

“I write this as my confession to a bloody ocean, such that my sins might be washed away. 

I moved here about a decade ago for my wife. She had always loved the sea. Our neighbors warned against it. Speaking of curses and the old wisdom.. Superstition is nothing to a physician, I thought. And when I saw her clear running water and the light that shined from her smile, I couldn’t say no. 

However, it would be in the evening that I would find my own beliefs to be challenged. In the night, beyond the glass of this very window where I sit, I would hear them singing. 

I could tell they were something unnatural. As I observed them, I suspected they were something from a diluvian era. A sinful creature that defied the will of a wrathful god to become one with the water that was meant to cleanse their wickedness. Their very existence is an actr of defiance. Their very form a mockery. My wife would disagree. They were not monsters to her. 

“Listen to their song and you’ll understand.” she said. 

She would sit up at night by the window, listening and learning their song. She would

sing it to him in the small hours. It never failed to send him to sleep. 

But it happened just a fortnight ago. That damned woman, I was always telling her to shut his door. But as the song began, he crawled out of his bed, and went by the pool to listen. 

I was too late to save him. Those pale arms reached out from the  water just inches away from his face. 

But his mother, his sweet mother wrenched him from that creatures hands. It had drawn blood, but only blood. I thought it was over then. I ran down to check on both of them, but there she was in his place. They did not grab her. She seemed to be speaking with them. Singing with them. She leapt in, leaving me with only her smile before she went into the water. 

I thought it was just my boy left crying. But I realized my own wail was overpowering his. 

She should have been gone for good. That should have been the end. 

However, a few nights ago, I heard her. It was her. I was sure of it. 

I made sure my son’s doors were locked. And when I ran down to the water, in the pool, there she was. Changed, surely, but it was her. 

I should have been happy. She was home. That should have been enough. Instead, I felt a pit in my stomach. 

She reached out her arms, her pointed teeth outstretched in a facsimile of a smile. I should have died. Maybe I should have let her kill me. 

But instead, as her hands clung against my throat, I ripped her from the water with a desperate strength I never knew I had. Her voice was no longer a song but an anguished and pained scream that felt so vividly human I almost faltered. 

She laid there flopping with her strange tail.

I realized then what I felt was anger. Not like fire, but like the icy steel I used to pierce her over and over. 

By the time the rage abated, the work had been done. 

I had studied her for a week. Prodding and tearing till she looked human again. Or at the very least, just enough to be my wife. 

I took her claws. I took her fangs. And most of all I took that song. That blasted haunting song. 

And now here I sit writing. I have taken back from the sea. And somehow I know it will remember. I do not hear them now. I do not see them in the water, but just in case, I’ve made sure to block up that damned pool. 

I am here with my family again. And though the stories will be told and will taint the life I have made, I have made it.” 

Noah closed the book, disgusted. Looking up, his “mother” was already sitting up, having shed her garb in full. 

She did not see the shape of his mother. Only the scars  that adorned her skin. The places where he ripped her skin. The teeth that had been filed down to blunt points. The ridges where he must have stitched down to close.  The scar by her ear throbbed open and closed, wheezing in a shaky tune. 

“I didn’t…how could I know...I just... “ he said. But her black eyes did not hear him, only looking through him, just like a scared animal. Like a fish staring at the sky. No words would mean a thing. 

Instead, he picked her up with his arms and carried her down to the dry pool. Laying her down, he took the knife. She flinched before him, but very gently, he kneeled down beside her. 

With a soft voice, he told her “This is the last time it will hurt.” 

He ran the knife across her skin. Suddenly, she could take a full breath. First it was difficult, choking on the blood that ran down. The second breath was clear and full. Her body shuddered from the life that returned to it. Weakly, she was able to stand. 

She watched as Noah lifted the shovel. He swung it against the hard cement. The sound was deafening in the empty pool. The clang of metal as it shuddered into his shoulders. But he was determined. He swung again, this time there was a crack. He swung one more time and was swept away by the torrent that suddenly broke through. 

It filled the pool lightning fast. And as though the ocean were taking vengeance, the tide seemed to drag him out into the wide blue. 

He opened his eyes as they stung against the saltwater. Through his blurry vision, he could just make her out in the bare moonlight. She could have killed him. Dragged him with her. But she simply swam away, leaving but a trail of blood to mark that she had ever existed. 

Noah kicked and flailed his way back home, just barely making it back. As he was able to surface and finally breathe, he could finally hear it. For the first time in so many moons, the bay was full of song once more. Somehow he could understand it. And as he did, he grew angry. Not at the water but at himself. He wondered if he should have just let himself drown. 

Still dripping, he stepped back inside, to a place that he was sure was more full of ghosts than before. 

Noah laid down where his father had lain in his final moments. He took the cloth that covered it and used it as a blanket. There was no warmth. There was however, a little maggot that crawled through the boards. Without really thinking, he popped it into his mouth. It was surprisingly sweet.