Song of the Sirens (4 page)

He stared at me. Those piercing green
eyes were beautiful, but at times they were intense.

“Okay...” I muttered. He wasn’t
yammering away on his ear piece, nor did he converse with an imaginary person.

I crossed my arms. “Are you unhappy that
my dad found Atlantis?”

Riley stiffened his jaw. “I think he’s
mistaken. I think he’s all worked up and excited about nothing, and when he
finds out, he’s going to be devastated.”

“Oh,” I breathed. The thought hadn’t
crossed my mind. I had full faith in Dad, but humans made mistakes.

I stared at the floor. My shoelaces were
untied. More importantly, Dad would be devastated if his coordinates were
wrong. Well, this explained Riley’s unfavorable behavior. It wasn’t that he
hated the finding, or didn’t want Dad to find Atlantis, but that he was
cautious.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he said. “Your dad
will find it one day.”

I didn’t want to think this was another
false finding, but I wanted to know Riley’s deal. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Who you’re talking to.”

He rolled his eyes and looked back at
the ocean. Several moments slithered by. I didn’t want to ruin this chance to
get to know him, so I spoke before someone tore him away from the conversation,
albeit, not a great conversation.

“Fine, then I’ll go first,” I said.

“Have at it.” He seemed disinterested.

“I have memories that aren’t mine. And,
no I’ve never seen them before in a movie or show, either. Plus, I hear
voices.”

We had a moment of silence. We stared at
one another with droll expressions. I feared my words came off as weirdness.
Come to think of it, I shouldn’t have mentioned the voices. I was such an
idiot!

Riley suddenly laughed, shattering the
silence. “Do you
see
dead people, too?”

“No!” My cheeks warmed up in the
descending late afternoon air.

“So what voices?” He maintained a half
smile with a bit more interest in my response.

“You’re not going to laugh again?”

“No.”

“I’m not crazy,” I said with a defensive
tone.

“No one said you were,” he replied
slowly, as if speaking with a mentally slow person.

I huffed, dropped my arms, and took a
step to walk away. “You don’t even really want to know.”

To my shock, Riley reached out and
grabbed my wrist. The sudden iciness sent waves of chills up my arm. I
shivered, twisted at the waist, and gawked at him. He tugged me back.

“No, I’m interested. What do you hear?”
he asked softly. His voice, matched with penetrating eyes, calmed me and urged
me to confide.

“Why are you suddenly so interested?”

He shrugged, released my wrist, and
looked back at the ocean. “Maybe you think I’m weird, but I believe there are
things out there that we don’t know about. So when uncommon things occur, we
should pay attention.”

I mulled over his words.

“Crazy people hear voices, but sometimes
the voices are real.”

I didn’t know why I wanted to tell him,
but his touch, his voice, his closeness relaxed me, and made me feel confident
enough to disclose this personal information. I hadn’t even mentioned any of
this to Dad.

I began, “For the past few nights, I’ve
had nightmares about the same thing. I’m on a boat leaning over the edge and
see a face in the water.”

“What does the face look like?” He
pushed against the railing and stood upright. He showed signs of serious
interest now.

“Well, at first it’s just a normal face
of some random woman. I’ve never seen her before, so I don’t recognize her. Of
course, she looks creepy because she’s staring back at me from beneath the
surface. It reminds me of those scary movies where creatures live in the water,
or someone’s trying to sneak up on someone else to kill them. It’s really
creepy, even though she looks pretty.” I shuddered, recalling the nightmares.

“Then what happens?” he asked in a grim
undertone.

“I hear these strange whispers. They
sound like a sweet song in a different language. I can’t make out anything in
particular. I couldn’t begin to tell you what language it is, or what they
said. My body wants to go to her, fall into the water even though I’m thinking
that I can’t lean anymore over the edge because I’ll drown. I feel like she’s
inside my head and coaxes me to go against natural instinct. I want to turn and
run away because she’s dangerous, but I can’t. She won’t let me.

“She turns from beautiful to repugnant,
like she’s infested with a plague. Before I fall over, cold hands grab my arms
and yank me back just as the woman snaps open her mouth and lunges for me.”

I gestured with my hands and became
animated as I continued, “She had these huge, razor teeth. And when she opened
her mouth, it just kept going. She had a snake tongue that was so long that it
could’ve come out of the water, wrapped around the railing, and pulled her up.”

Riley raised his right brow. “I guess
things are exaggerated in dreams.”

“As much as I love your dry wit, let me
continue.”

Riley nodded.

“Her tongue wasn’t normal, and her mouth
was too large for her face. I’ve been out here too many times and for too long,
because I dreamt she was a mermaid, but an evil mermaid. She was a mix between
mermaid and zombie.”

“A zombie mermaid?”

“I was pretty sure she wanted to eat me.
I saw it in her eyes. Zombie mermaid.”

“Hmm. Did you see who saved you?”

“I’m telling you about this water beast
that no normal person should dream of, and you ask about who saved me? I didn’t
see his face. I just knew he had cold hands.”

Those last words drifted on air as I
glanced away and rubbed my wrist. My dream savior had cold hands like Riley’s,
but that didn’t mean anything. Riley was always outside and always half-naked.
Of course he felt cold.

“Anyway, that’s weird, right? Well,
what’s weirder is that sometimes I hear her whispers when I’m awake.” I twisted
my mouth. “Now that I opened up my can of crazies, you tell me what your
weirdness is all about.” I crossed my arms, determined.

“You hear those whispers?”

“You seem to be stuck on something I
told you before my story. Your turn!”

Riley turned toward the ocean and asked,
“Do you hear it now?”

I paused and listened. I heard the waves
and the howl of the wind, but not those sinister voices, thank god. “No, not
right now.”

“And you’re not joking?”

“No, but I am not crazy. It’s
sleep-deprivation, or I’ve been on this boat so long that maybe I’m temporarily
crazy.”

Riley looked around. He walked to the
other side of the steerage cabin and tilted his head to get a better view. I
gawked at him quizzically.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He hurried back and stopped a foot away
from me. He remained close when he spoke, “You’ve told anyone about this?”

“No.”

“And you’re not joking?”

“No. What’s going on?”

He seemed concerned, almost frantic.
“You want to know my weirdness?”

“Yes, that’s why I asked.”

“All right, here it goes, and I’m not
joking either.”

Riley’s stern jaw, flared nostrils, and
narrowed brows worried me. He seemed so disquieted that I expected him to say
something utterly ridiculous and then have a good laugh at my naïve, fixed
attention. I almost waited for the moment of outburst chuckling.

“Your dreams are dangerous.”

My entire body relaxed. I rolled my
eyes. Here came the laughter, right?

Riley’s cold fingers tugged my chin
toward him so that his glossy green hues looked into my eyes. His stern
expression tightened my reflexes. He wasn’t joking, nor did he struggle off a
laugh attack.

I gulped. He released his gentle hold.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I didn’t think anyone had those
dreams.”

“You know about them?”

“Yes. You’re not dreaming about zombie
mermaids. You’re dreaming about sirens.”

“Sirens? Like in
The Odyssey?”
I
scoffed. “I guess I shouldn’t read that book before bed anymore.”

“You don’t believe they’re real?”

“If they’re real, then mermaids are
real. My dad’s never seen one in all the years he’s been underwater. No one
has. It’s an ancient myth. Is that your weird secret? You believe in mermaids
and that’s who you’ve been talking to? That’s as weird as my secret.”

The image of young, handsome,
intelligent Riley spilling his thoughts to a fictitious creature crossed my
thoughts. The ocean played tricks on a person, which was how the concept of
mermaids came about in the first place. Sailors imagined they saw half women,
half fish creatures waiting for them in the water. What they saw were manatees,
which by the way looked nothing like human women.

I stifled a laugh. What a ludicrous
image! I wriggled my lips as I attempted to trap a chuckle.

Riley kept a straight face.

I frowned and asked, “Seriously? You
believe in mermaids and that’s who you’ve been chatting it up with?” I looked
over the railing into the murky blue water. “I don’t see anyone.”

“They’re not going to appear to you.”

“But you’re special, right?” I
straightened up.

Riley cracked a smile. “Something like
that.”

“That’s your weirdness, then?” I had a
sneaking suspicion Riley made that up to console me after I divulged the most
embarrassing fact about myself. Ah, well. The guy clearly didn’t have much
interest in me. Now I was some sort of freak to him.

I played along. “You’re good with
mythology. What is this siren mess about? Amuse me.”

He raised his brows and smiled. “Sirens
were once known in Greek mythology as half bird, half woman creatures. They
were beautiful and alluring, and seduced sailors with their hypnotic voice.
Once men drew near, unable to retain any senses to sail the other way, the
sirens latched onto the unsuspecting humans.

“Some sirens used the men as unwilling
mates, while others used them for sport. They tossed humans out into the sea
and raced after them. Like how killer whales play with their food, tossing them
into the air until the prey was ragged and broken and near dead. Then, they
would sink their talons into the human’s flesh and rip them apart with their
teeth.”

I made a disgusted face.

Riley went on. “Crimson blood stained
the water, attracting sharks and other creatures. But these animals knew about
the sirens and steered clear because the sirens would devour them, too.”

“So sirens perched on the water like
ducks?”

“Well, sirens are actually half women,
half fish, contrary to the older myths.”

“Oh, mermaids, then?”

“A race of sinister mermaids. While most
mermaids stayed out of sight from humans, sirens hunted them. They believed the
water belonged to them, and humans should stay on land. This was their
retribution for all the sins humans caused against their kind.”

“But humans never truly believed in
mermaids. What sins did they cause?”

“Ancients really did believe in them.
That’s another story.”

“So, you think the nightmares are
nothing.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you going to say?” I
pressed.

“Why are you pushing it?”

“Because you act like you know something
about it.”

He half laughed. “Why would I know
anything about your weirdness?”

I turned away. “Whatever. Don’t tell me
what you know, or what you really do out here, or where you always disappear
to. You’re not a mermaid, are you?”

He stared at me. I expected him to
laugh, instead he corrected, “It would be merman.”

“What?”

“Mermaids are females.”

He stared for a moment longer before
cracking a smile. I opened my mouth to ask him if he were serious, because in
all honesty who would tell a near stranger that sort of secret, but the
captain’s call rang through the speakers. We glanced up at the moving figures
in the steerage cabin.

Riley shrugged and started to walk away.
“Um, I’ll see you later, Anita.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes so hard,
they ached. I wasn’t going to get straight answers from him, despite having
just revealed my dark secret. I contemplated the conversation. I would think I
was crazy, too, had I heard it.

I dropped my shoulders. Returning to
face the ocean, I leaned against the railing and peered into the water. There
weren’t mermaids down there, or beastly sirens. In fact, I couldn’t even see
fish or sharks. Dolphins liked to come to the surface and raced with us, but
even they were absent.