The Swimmers of Cape Fourwind

By Anna Treffer

It wasn’t swimming weather. Thick clouds, like stained pumice, thrust the day into premature twilight. The strengthening wind hinted at a storm, throwing salty spray onto the car that pulled up across from Cape Fourwinds. 

As the engine cut off the pair inside made no move to get out. More salt threw itself against the windows.

The girl on the passenger seat unclipped her seatbelt, and wished she hadn’t. The soft click had more finality than a gunshot.

“I’m scared,”  she said.

Jim thumbed the steering wheel, wishing his little sister had been born a boy instead. “It’ll be an honourable sacrifice,” he rattled off the hollow phrase.

Lola reached into the bag by her feet, fishing out her goggles, and a moment later, a small torch. “Do you think I should attach it?”

Jim barely glanced at it, “sure.”

Lola found a cord and tied the torch to her goggles as best as she could.

“Ready?” Jim didn’t look at her.

Lola made a noise as close to agreeing as she could. Run her mind screamed. Dishonour it screamed back.

She stepped outside, wincing at the cold. Clamping her teeth, she took off her pullover and threw it onto the car seat. Wouldn’t need it again anyway. 

Without the pullover, a plain black racerback swimsuit became visible, with a small square mirror stitched over her chest.

“Superstition”, Jim used to whisper with an elbow in her side.

“Don’t you talk about superstition”, some passing elder would always snap.

Goggles tight in her fist she crossed the road, Jim half a step behind.

The wind blew stronger. If only it could blow her far away from this cursed place.

The top of the cliff was already busy, most of the town’s unmarried girls were there, as young as thirteen, all in identical swimsuits with mirrors stitched on. They were known as The Swimmers, getting to do very little swimming. Some family members were there too, clutching onto each other silently.

About seventy meters out from the cliff was a giant misshaped rock sticking out of the choppy water, it too seemed to be trying to run away from the cape. There was a rope attached to this rock, going back all the way to the cliff side where it was secured to a matching metal ring, hammered in. At first glance it seemed like the rope was covered in some sort of seaweed. 

It wasn’t seaweed. 

It was countless black goggles.

Jim squeezed Lola’s shoulder. She took a step forward, but she couldn’t leave like this. Throwing her arms around him she buried her face in his warm coat, some of her goosebumps subsiding. 

“Go,” Jim croaked.

Lola tore away without looking at his face again, the wind whipping their tears away. She joined the end of the line just in time to see one of her neighbours, and older girl called Cathy, climbing onto the wooden platform that had been attached to the cliff face. With high tide, the wild waters were just a few meters below. If the wind picked up any further, they’d be getting soaked as they waited.

Cathy jumped into the water and started swimming strongly towards the defiant rock. Quicker than a fishing bobber, she was yanked under the rough black water.

Lola twisted her goggles in her hands. Hoping. Hoping. Hoping.

Cathy was thrown from the water like a ragdoll, almost into the cliff. She landed again with a splash, and remained floating there, limbs flung apart, rocking face down in the waves.

Her father jumped into the water, her brother waiting on the cliff to help pull her out. No one rushed over, no one checked to see if there was a miraculous chance of her still breathing. They all knew she was dead.

Lola’s hands were almost entirely numb. The selfish part of her that even now, urged her to run for it, cursed that Cathy had been rejected. Cathy’s father had pulled off her goggles and was tying them onto the rope with all the others.

There was a murmur as a soaked girl climbed up the ladder from under the platform to join the back of the line. Lola hadn’t noticed her jump in.

Rejected, but still alive, so trying again, and she would keep trying until she was dead or someone else had been accepted. The girl’s lips were blue from the cold, and she was shivering as if she might separate the platform from the cliff through sheer vibration.

The line inched forward as the girl at the front leaped in. Swimming, swimming, and pulled under. 

Hoping. Hoping. Hoping.

She was thrown out, immediately thrashing and gasping, composing herself enough to get to the ladder.

The girl at the front of the line now stepped onto the platform, and she stood there. And stood, and stood, and stood. If not the rapid flutter of her eyelids, it would have seemed she was already dead.

“Get a move on, we’re all freezing here,” an older girl snapped.

“I’m scared,” the little girl inched back from the edge.

“It is an honour to protect our town,” someone responded.

“I don’t want to!” She wailed, back on the cliff now.

“You have to!”

Lola didn’t see who did it, in the mass of black swimsuits and slim figures they were all nameless offerings. 

Someone pushed the little girl in. Lola leaned out to peek over the cliff, where the girl was desperately thrashing her way towards the ladder. She was almost there when she too disappeared, like a blown-out flame.

Lola closed her eyes. Hoping. Hoping. Hoping. There was an angry splash. Lola opened her eyes. A small body was floating in the water.

Time became a blur of chattering teeth, black swimsuits and bodies pulled from the water. She came out of her reverie when she found herself standing on the platform.

She missed the weight of a solid knife on her despite the tale of The Swimmers that had tried that. It was as if it knew, each of The Swimmers came to the surface already dead, except for the very last one, that was never seen again. As it should be, honour! Lola’s mind insisted.

Her fingers were solid ice now, she told them to move, working to get the goggles on her face but the clasp snapped. She held them in her hands for a moment, wondering about throwing them into the waves below in protest. She wasn’t just another pair of goggles on a rope. She was Lola. 

…She was nobody, just another sacrifice.

Jim, where’s Jim her mind whispered. She couldn’t look. Remember what you must do. Dropping the goggles by her feet she leapt.

She thought she was ready, but the cold was so crushing her heart seemed to stop for a moment. Popping to the surface she gasped for life, hating all of it. Hating this entire cursed town that decided this was the only way to keep them safe.

If she didn’t start moving soon, her body would surely go into early rigor mortis from the endless frigidness of it all.

I hate all of you except for Jim she thought with her first stroke, awkwardly keeping her head out of the waves. Almost as numb in mind as in body she barely managed to remember her favourite prayer. Lord keep us safe from all evil, something thick and soft wrapped around her ankle.

Her knee clicked from the suddenness of the pull, her mouth was still open when everything went black, and water rushed down her airways. There was something rubbery against her mouth as she started to choke, a moment later it burned as fiercely as if she’d taken a mouthful of stinging nettle.

Dying feels weird.

Lola opened her eyes. It was like someone had turned on a lamp under the waves, everything was light grey, and there was a face staring at her.

“You’ll never pray again,” the woman said.

At least she was partially woman. The facial features were still somewhat discernible, but her scalp, her arms, her torso, were all covered with something like black barnacle. Her lower half was a giant octopus, one arm still wrapped around Lola’s ankle like an anchor.

It couldn’t be. But it was. She was the last one that had been accepted. Her name was Nelly. Or it had been, the voice that came from her curled lips now was ancient and cruel.

“I don’t understand,” Lola took in the bizarre sight, “what happened to you?”

Like choosing a necklace by the types of gems it has, Nelly chose a smile that was studded with hatred, regret, and a fury colder than the water they were in.

“I’m the demon,” Nelly lazily circled around her, holding her still.

“No you’re not, you’re Nelly.” 

“She’s gone, but some of her strongest memories are still around, it’s like moving into a house with the old owner’s junk lying around.”

“I don’t understand,” Lola thrashed slightly, remembering about air, and breathing, but her lungs were perfectly comfortable.

“Do you know what her strongest memories are? They are all of me.” The demon purred, “of tradition, of duty, of fear. I need hosts, and human bodies only last so long before I absorb them. Anyone would do, but of course this town would decide that it can only be female virgins.”

Jim his face floated into Lola’s mind, “but we’ve known for generations-”

“People make the truth they want!” The demon hissed.

“Why me?” Lola said quietly.

“Because I’m bored of throwing them out,” the demon swung a tentacle like hammering a first onto a table.

“B-bored?”

“I don’t need a new body that often, and it’s uncomfortable to move, but since you all decided that twice a year I need an offering, I make do.”

Lola closed her eyes on visions of floating bodies, and the line of goggles swaying in the wind.

“I could just send a memo now and then, but humans are so eager to please,” the demon inspected one of her disfigured hands.

A memo. Stories of entire fleets of cargo ships floating into the harbour in pieces. Or maybe that was all made up too.

“Superstition,” Jim’s whisper floated through her mind. Just how far would people go for it? 

The demon eyed its reflection in the mirror on Lola’s chest, “It’s a little insulting that your priests think my own reflection would be enough to send me back to Hell. But enough chat,” the tentacle on Lola’s ankle tightened, and another wrapped around her torso. The demon pressed Nelly’s lips against hers again, and Lola was inhaling pure flame. Her mind went into a feverish frenzy as the demon forced its way in like a virus.

Driverless, the tentacles around Lola’s body slipped off. Nelly’s dead eyes stared at her as her body sank into the depths, tentacles fluttering like ribbons on a dress.

Agonizing pains stabbed all over Lola’s body as her legs tore into tentacles, unfurling like ferns in the spring time and the barnacle-like disfigurations tore the rest of her flesh.

The fever in her mind roared, they were two dancers fighting for the lead in a sick tango, the demon forcing her back one step at a time.

End it the last shred of her mind screamed. Her new tentacles lent her a burst of speed and she erupted from the water, eyes searching for one last glimpse.

There he was. Jim. His eyes widened in horror and disgust.

The demon was scared, but it had nowhere to go. Lola forced herself above the waves again, eyes closed against the head splitting agony of the demon taking over her mind.

Bang.

She never saw the gun, her eyelids only fluttering once her blood stained the water.

Her face was serene as she sank into the ocean’s arms. 

Jim had done what he needed to do.

Finally, they would be free.

Anna Treffer is currently living in New Zealand where she is doing a Master of Human Interface Technology. In her spare time, she enjoys a vast variety of too many hobbies including writing, dancing and art. She has written two novels, is writing two more, and is going to get them out into the world soon!