The girl, Lani, knew the sea's moods. Born on Ebon Atoll in the Marshall Islands, she had grown up with its whispers and roars. She respected its generosity but also knew its capacity for rage. Lately, there was something else in the water, something that made the sea feel heavy, like a lung about to burst.
She first noted it with the fish. Gone. The colorful reef fish that once teemed around the coral heads disappeared. Then the larger fish followed. The fishermen returned with empty nets and downcast faces. The ocean, once a provider, turned barren.
"Something's eating them all," old Manese said, his face etched with worry. He'd been fishing these waters for seventy years, his knowledge an ocean of experience. "Something big."
The island's dogs disappeared. It started gradually, a yap, a whimper, then quiet. Some said they'd run off into the jungle, chasing wild pigs. Lani wasn't so sure. There were no pigs on Ebon.
Then came the birds. Ebon was a bird island, alive with the cries of terns and frigates. Now, the sky felt empty. Feathers. Lani found more feathers near the shoreline, always damp, always speckled with something dark.
"It doesn't make any sense," her mother worried, picking at the tattered remains of what she'd been trying to weave into a new mat. "The fish, the dogs, the birds. What takes them all?"
Lani didn't answer. She felt it too. The unease sunk into her bones.
The island's generator sputtered. A vital source of light, against the coming night.
"The fuel supply boat is overdue" Lani heard the adults saying as they gathered around, their faces long with dread.
One day, Lani went to the beach, a place she usually liked, but it was different. The sand was colder, the palms sighed a different song. She scanned the ocean's edge, seeing the sun paint the tide pools in brilliant hues. But now, the tide pools were almost black, in the gloom of overhanging boughs of trees.
Something was caught in the tangle of roots exposed by the last storm. Lani, never being cautious, moved closer. It was a dog collar. Small, woven from coconut fiber. Her dog's collar. But that could have been any islander's. No big deal.
But there was something else. Drag marks led from the collar's place into the sea. The dark marks glistened. Something viscous.
Lani found Manese. He listened as she showed him her grisly discovery. The fisherman's face grew stern as he felt the collar material, but in the dim sunlight he dismissed her anxiety.
"I'll check my nets," he told her, his eyes searching. "Maybe something's fouled them."
But later that afternoon, the sun lowered in the sky painting the landscape in new and alien colors, Manese did not come back. The community waited, holding small oil lamps against the encroaching blackness. Then the crying began. The search started early the next day.
They found his boat first, floating a mile offshore, empty. Some debris was found too: a splintered plank, a torn fishing net. Nothing explained Manese's absence. The mood shifted to a stifling fear. It got into everything.
Lani found a message washed up near her house at the very border where land and sea interact. It was the fisherman's hat, usually very pristine, now saturated and ruined.
She saw something moving in the water beyond. She looked, a dark mass that broke the water's surface. A shape unlike anything she'd ever seen. Bulbous, dark. It was in the shadows of the horizon, and so hard to define clearly. Then it was gone, with hardly a ripple.
The sickness spread. Her baby brother came down with a raging fever, then her mom followed. The few others that had stayed strong suddenly looked pale and feeble, too tired to stand and support themselves.
All but a few that looked well fed and happy despite everything. Their happiness, given the gloom surrounding them, seemed inhuman.
"What is happening?" Lani asked Keanu, a boy who had not been affected by the fever, the only healthy kid near her age. "My mother is so weak."
He looked around the area as if fearful someone might hear him, "My mom thinks it is some ancient curse" Keanu offered, a new kind of fear apparent.
"A curse?"
"Some stories say, the sea has watchers. Guardians, sort of" He sounded more worried. "If we don't respect it. Or if we anger something"
Lani thought of Manese, the missing animals, the strange oily substance.
"What would anger it?"
He just stared, a mix of apprehension and something else, something disturbing, twisting his pretty features into something ugly. "Some things can't be talked about" He walked away suddenly without another word. Lani stood in shock at what his face had expressed.
A council formed as the situation worsened, elders huddling in the meeting house. They spoke of offerings, prayers to placate whatever had been awakened. Still, those individuals with glowing cheeks seemed amused, happy for some odd reason. It was so twisted.
That night, the ocean roared louder than ever before. Rain fell, blinding and angry.
Then, the screams started. The children were hit hardest by the sea sickness.
Not shouts of terror, but cries of pain. Lani's mom told her "Stay with your brother"
But Lani was done. All the secrets, the vague statements, it all just reeked of something evil being done on the sly, in a shadowy place.
She grabbed her knife. She left the hut and faced the raging storm.
The village was empty, but she heard sounds coming from the beach: wailing and chanting. With grim, silent conviction, Lani headed for the light.
What Lani witnessed by the shore that night took her breath. All of those glowing faced were there chanting some language she didn't know while several village men tossed people towards the dark mass waiting just off shore, that black mass, barely perceived. Then everything all fell into place in Lani's mind and everything finally had clarity.
Sacrifice. They were feeding something, trying to survive by sacrificing everything they could until there was nothing left but them. The entity came closer with every offering of islanders being thrown towards it.
Lani wanted to attack, rush in. But something was telling her not to do so, a warning to step back into the forest shadows.
One of the robed figures pulled her younger brother away. They advanced toward the shore with Lani's only family and support system.
The robed individuals lifted her little brother out toward the entity that looked ready and ravenous. Lani was so shaken she nearly revealed her presence and gave up the opportunity for further movement. She shook the cobwebs from her mind.
"No!" Lani screamed. She rushed forward, brandishing her knife. The chanting faltered. One of the figures turned toward her, revealing Keanu's mother.
Keanu's mother opened her mouth and snarled, but not at Lani, behind her. The darkness grabbed all the robed villagers who were taken into the churning ocean, where screams bubbled for a split moment.
All those responsible had paid the piper for their atrocities. The villagers responsible for the awful event became fish food themselves.
It was there where Lani truly laid her eyes on the scale of what she was up against in order to save her brother, which would soon become so difficult, if not straight up impossible to achieve as the monstrous entity came forth to get its final due. It was immense in stature, ancient in the blackest eyes she had ever laid eyes on.
But then Keanu, pulled himself away from its clutches. Keanu looked horrified, remorseful, his moment of blind madness was broken. "Run, Lani!"
Lani had enough adrenaline to move quickly as possible. In that rush, Lani grabbed her little brother and started running as the entity came rushing onto the land like a rocket. She needed to retreat and think, regroup as the entity started tearing the rest of the structures of Ebon Atoll to splinters. Lani kept pushing onward.
"What is happening? Are we safe?" Lani's baby brother would constantly mention to her, but all she could mention to him was to simply continue.
Ebon Atoll had once been considered an area of thriving peace. It will soon fall from that mark as this dark presence came and changed the natural path and direction that many could have only dreamed of continuing, while some plotted its inevitable change to this darker atmosphere and direction that they themselves could feed off for sick twisted gratification that caused their eventual ruin as Lani continues through the thick of the jungles with only the pure hope to have any future possible for at least her little brother as this dark monstrosity of the sea continued on without a moment's doubt.
"Here. The canoe!" Keanu shouted as the three raced into the light of the sea as he pushes it away. The darkness follows still with ill purpose. Keanu gave Lani a warm gentle hug as tears stained his youthful eyes "I hope you two make it out safe!"
"Thank you" Lani sobs, there's more she wants to express but words evaded her quickly.
"There is no escaping this night. Just get out of here with your brother while you can" and just like that, Keanu pushed them away as the darkness followed, all its malevolent attention on Lani and her little brother in hopes of sinking them to the depths.
Keanu dove into the entity's gullet, buying Lani time for herself and her brother to escape as his own redemptive transformation as they sail off, only watching in fear, devastation, grief, trauma. Keanu had thrown his life away and allowed her this grand opportunity to push onwards into tomorrow with her baby brother.
But they continued as they lost a light that gave all the opportunity to shine as brightly as possible as their faces began the painful steps into adulthood as nothing was in their reach but sheer freedom.
They drifted with little rations and even less hope as a tropical tempest came on to batter at her door. They were lost.
They drifted for weeks.
She gave her little brother all of their food, knowing he couldn't last without any resources available to his body while his fragile state weakened him even further from what little immunity his young body contained from all the sicknesses that were on the land she departed from in a hurry as Lani began falling into fatigue slowly but gradually.
One calm dawn, he woke to find her still, eyes open, staring at the empty sky, forever guarding him, sacrificing herself.
The empty boat just drifted. Drifting toward open waters with no ending. A testament that Lani had become yet another ghost story for many across all land and time, a stark contrast between those around them for the opportunity of victory.