Call of the Merrow

Having loaded ice chests full of freshly caught crab into the back of his muddy 4x4, secured his sixteen-foot, red and white Orkney Strikeliner to the trailer attached to the vehicle, and returned to the pier to retrieve the nylon-mesh crab pots left behind, Myles Burke caught sight of something bobbing in the water, an object he hadn’t noticed there before.

He recognised it at once as an old-style lobster pot, its slats covered in thick, brown seaweed, its netting encrusted with barnacles. Mud and silt clung to its frame, and plant matter dangled from its corners, as though it had been buried at the bottom of the creek for decades.

He was confused at first about where it could have come from, but then remembered the trouble he’d had hauling up the last of his pots. It had gotten snagged on something at the bottom of the creek and he’d struggled to yank it loose. Maybe this ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ type relic had come loose too, then drifted ashore in the wake of his boat’s churning engine.

Whatever the case, he shrugged it off as insignificant following his initial fascination, and busied himself stowing the rest of his gear. Someone else could discover it, a local fisherman or curious child, it would make their day and give them something to talk about in this sleepy, coastal town. His eyes kept flicking to it as he worked, however, a curiosity growing that couldn’t be quelled. 

It was probably nothing, but if the cage was as old as it looked it could be of value. This notion nagged at him, so after depositing his cleaned and empty crab pots in the belly of the boat, he returned with a long-handled ice hook, and used it to fish the cage out of the foam.

It was cold and wet, slimy to the touch, but that didn’t bother him. Hitching the hook to his belt he turned the cage this way and that, confirming it was vintage, made of wooden slats, rope netting and leather hinges. He identified the location of its circular trap door but was unable to access it due to the dense accumulation of muck clogging it up. 

Now it was in his hands, he decided it couldn’t be as ancient as he’d thought. The wood didn’t smell or feel rotten. It had clearly been in the water a long time, and there was something inside–he could hear it slosh about when he shook it–but he couldn’t find a chink in its algae armour to see what.

Curiosity mounting, he held the cage tight against his chest and plunged the fingers of his free hand into the kelp. The fronds felt rubbery, springy, and refused to come away, instead seeming to hug the pot tighter. After a few moments, Myles became frustrated and glared at the brown stuff in annoyance. This was not how seaweed worked. The seagulls overhead seemed to agree. Circling restlessly, their shrill cries grew louder, more obnoxious, as though urging him to get the cage open and reveal its contents—or abandon it and leave it where it belonged. He winced beneath their barks, resisting the urge to tell them to shut up.

Voices reached his ears and he turned to see a pair of wizened old fogies in tweed flat caps and woollen jumpers making their way down towards the pier. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk so he hurried to the Land Rover, returning the ice hook to the boat as he passed. The cage was his now, as was whatever was within, and he didn’t want to explain himself to locals. 

Placing the cage like a slumbering infant on the newspaper that occupied the passenger seat, he pulled his door shut and started the engine. Out of habit, he tapped the screen of his phone, which was clutched in the arms of a holder secured to the windscreen.

Six missed calls, six more on top of the five that morning. He didn’t have to check to know they were from his wife, his father, his solicitor. All wanting to know where he was, what he was doing, when he was coming back to the circus his life had become.

He’d come to Doonbeg to escape it, for one last indulgence of his favorite pastime before the Strikeliner, his pride and joy, was taken away. One weekend on the water, fishing and hauling up crab, that’s all he wanted, a chance to be free before it all fell apart. The noose had been tightening for weeks, finally forcing him to come clean to Ciara about the failed real estate projects he’d been hiding—the multiple mortgages, the unpaid contractors, the suing investors. 

Forced him to admit it all in shame. 

The coastal resort he’d poured everything into, the one he thought would save his business, had collapsed before it could break ground. He'd stretched too far, betting that demand for luxury condos would return. It hadn’t and now, with every call he ignored, the threats were growing–bankruptcy, foreclosure, fraud investigations.

Failure, exposure, humiliation.

Tomorrow he’d return his attention to his woes and decide what he was going to do. Tomorrow. Or the day after. Or maybe the one after that. It wasn’t like he had options. He was facing criminal charges and the repossession of his home and belongings. He had no control over any of it. The only thing he had any say left in was his marriage, and even that was slipping further away with each unanswered call.

He had no idea what he wanted to do, fight for the love of his life or let her go. He did know one thing, Ciara did not deserve this. She was innocent, she shouldn’t have to go down with his ship or be expected to support a man who’d cheated and lied.

A loser. An idiot. An asshole.

The last three calls had been from her, and she’d now sent fifteen texts. He couldn’t bring himself to read them, so he swiped the notification screen away, put the car into gear and started driving.

He waved as he passed the old men, a polite gesture, but they only glared, his clean-shaven jaw and sanitised looks marking him an outsider, not someone they needed to acknowledge. Or maybe it wasn’t that. Because country folk were generally friendly. Maybe it’s that they somehow knew what he’d taken, something from the creek that wasn’t his.

He shook his head at the guilt creeping over his shoulders, insinuating he was doing something wrong. It didn’t make sense, but every glance at the cage deepened the unease in his gut. There was something about it that put him on edge, made him feel that it wasn’t his to take. 

And it filled him with a familiar kind of excitement.

“It’s just junk,” he said aloud, though he couldn’t stop thinking about how the seaweed wouldn’t come away from the slats and how something mysterious lay within. Which was most likely sludge but might be treasure, something that would help with the mess he was in. 

Something that might help Ciara.

Driving away from the inlet, following the cliffs towards Doughmore and the quiet B&B he’d booked into, he busied himself with fanciful musings of what kind of treasure the cage might hold, the undulating sea dominating the horizon to his right, gently rising slopes carpeted by fields of purple orchids on his left. It was a magnificent day, all azure skies, cotton-wool clouds, and the scent of salty sea spray in the air. He couldn’t have asked for more. It was exactly the calm he needed before the storm clouds over his life unleashed their fury.

The drive to Airton House took twenty minutes and soon he was manoeuvring his vehicle, boat and all, onto the gravel-covered parking lot at the side of the stone-clad building. He was the only guest that weekend, so space for his car and trailer wasn’t a problem. 

He took his phone, the harbinger of inescapable doom, and climbed out, swinging around to the passenger side to reclaim the cage. He took time to wrap it in paper so it wouldn’t make a mess when he went in, then crunched across the gravel to the door. He was eager to attack it with his knife, cut away the seaweed and get inside, so he was hoping not to bump into the proprietor, a lovely, old dear named Mary Shaw, who could talk like there would never be a tomorrow.  

He wasn’t lucky.

“Ah, there you are!” Mary said, shuffling from the dining room as he entered the hall, a bright smile on rosy cheeks, dead carnations clutched in pudgy hands. “Nice day for it! Catch anything interesting?”

“Not really. I was only after crab today. You can have some if you like, I’m only going to drop it at the market.”

He kept moving, casting her the briefest of smiles as he made his way to the stairs and started up.

“That would be lovely! My Trevor used to catch crab every weekend. Before he fecked off to Australia with that floozy. I was telling you about her, wasn’t I? Her and her ten ex-boyfriends, and my Trevor to be number eleven because he couldn’t resist her ‘charms’. What’s that you have there?”

He was on the fifth step when she spotted it, and he checked to make sure he hadn’t dripped dirt on her carpet.

“Just an old lobster pot. Found it at the pier. It’s ancient but might be worth something if I clean it up. People will buy anything these days!”

“Doonmore Pier?” Mary suddenly looked troubled, and the smile had fallen from her lips. “What do you mean ‘found it’?”

“Just…what I said,” Myles replied, caught off guard by her change in demeanour and questions. “I think it was buried in the creek. I must have dislodged it.”

At the foot of the stairs, Mary creased her brow. “That might not be good, Mr. Burke. There’s terrible legends associated with that place. A lot of people have been drawn to their deaths there over the years. It’s a dangerous place. Haunted, some say. Or worse.”

“Worse?”

“I don’t like to talk about it. Gives me the heebie jeebies. And it sounds ridiculous. Don’t laugh now, but some say the bay is cursed. Some say…it’s home to the Coomara. The Hound of the Sea. The merrow.”

“The merrow?” Myles shook his head to indicate he’d never heard of such a thing, then resumed his climb to the landing. 

“Merman,” Mrs. Shaw elaborated, eyes wide under a mop of grey curls as she started after him. “You know? Like a mermaid, but a man. I know it sounds ridiculous, but some believe it. There are stories of it making off with the souls of the tormented, who drowned or jumped from the cliff. They say it keeps their spirits locked in cages, which it hoards like jewels at the bottom of the bay.”

Her wide eyes were locked on the paper-wrapped cage, one hand on the banister as she climbed, the other crushing the stems of dead flowers. 

“That’s a new one,” Myles chuckled, reaching the top of the stairs. “Never knew we were supposed to have mermaids in Ireland, along with banshees and leprechauns! We’ve some amount of fairy tales, don’t we?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Burke. I’m not a believer in such things.” 

She’d stopped halfway up to catch her breath, but continued to stare as he crossed to his bedroom door. “But at the same time…you can’t be sure, can you?”

“You can’t,” Myles said, fishing in a pocket for his key.

“That could be one of them. A Soul Cage. One of the Coomara’s.”

“Hardly,” he scoffed, guiding the key into the keyhole. He could hear her coming up the stairs again behind him, feel her eyes boring into his skull. “But it’s a great story and it might help sell the thing! If it doesn’t fall apart when I take off the kelp!”

The key turned, the lock disengaged, he opened the door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mr. Burke. If the legends are true, it’s troubled souls the Coomara craves, wayward souls trying to escape…” 

“Sorry, Mrs. Shaw, I’m exhausted so I’m going to grab a shower and take a nap. I might stay another night, I’ll let you know this evening. Oh, and I’ll bring you that crab. Hopefully it’s as good as what Trevor used to catch!”

“I’d put that back,” Mary went on as he shut the door. “Back where you found it, if you know what’s good for you…”

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath as the door clicked shut, then rested against it and braced for more. When he heard her slippered feet slogging back down the stairs he relaxed, placing the mucky cage on his bed and spreading out the newspaper beneath it.

“Jesus. Mermen and soul cages. I’ve heard it all now. Better not be a box of bloody souls. I need something good.”

His heart was pounding, and he had that feeling again, that nervous exhilaration he got when doing something he shouldn’t. He still couldn’t explain why he felt it; he wasn’t gambling with his and Ciara’s future, wasn’t siphoning non-existent funds from account to account or cooking books, he was just messing with some shit he’d found in the surf. It was no big deal. At all. But he still felt the need to take the edge off, so he went to his suitcase for the small paper package containing a Ziploc bag of white powder, a well-used fifty euro note and half an old credit card, then spent the next few minutes at the dresser sorting it out.

Once satisfied, and having wiped some residue from his nose, he took the Swiss army knife Ciara had given him for Christmas from a cargo pants’ pocket and prised out its largest blade. “For the man who has everything,” he recalled her saying, and tears welled unbidden in his eyes. He’d had everything and never deserved it. Never deserved her. He couldn’t redeem himself now, even if the cage contained diamonds, but if he could make things right for her…that would give these last squandered years of his life some kind of meaning. And so, with a sharp inhalation, he knelt at the foot of the bed and started to saw.

Almost immediately, he noticed it wasn’t working. No matter how much he slashed, the seaweed refused to come away. He could see the blade slicing through fronds, watched them sever with his own eyes, but the slimy substance clung to the cage and refused to tear free.

“What the hell?” 

He went at it harder, tightening his grip on the knife, jabbing its blade into the gelatinous sludge, stabbing, carving. 

“What is this?”

And then the blade got jammed and the knife’s handle jerked out of his hand. 

“Damnit,” he said, wiping a sweaty palm on his muddy pants before reaching to take back the knife…only to see it get sucked into the seaweed and disappear.

“What..?”

It was sudden and noiseless, a subtle, casual motion that seemed almost normal. Myles moved his face closer, squinted to peer through the mulch, couldn’t see in. 

“You’re having a laugh.”

He sighed and poked his fingers into the mush where the knife disappeared.

He couldn’t feel it.

He wriggled his fingers in further. 

The seaweed seemed to loosen around his hand. 

He twisted his wrist, and his fingers and thumb slipped inside.

The seaweed seemed to shrivel up and tighten.    

His fingers got a hold of something solid.

Then something solid got a hold of him, clamping around his hand and squeezing tight.

“Myles Burke,” a voice seemed to issue from within.

“Ahhh!” Myles cried, hugging the cage to his chest and hopping to his feet. The thing on the inside pulled, and his hand slipped in up to the wrist. 

“Myles Burke.”

“Jesus!” 

A strange sensation, like aggressive pins and needles, swept through him, starting in his hand and spreading fast, up into his arm, shoulder, face. 

“Get off!”

He maneuvered the cage with the arm it was stuck on, held it against his side with the other. He pulled. He tugged. He staggered around the room as he struggled, yelled and pitched forward when he felt something bite. He crashed into a wall, lifted his head, let his terrifed gaze peer into a mirror.

The face staring back wasn’t his.

Fear gripped his chest and he screamed, falling away from the monstrous visage, all doughy, grey flesh, mossy green hair, pig-like eyes and mouldy teeth.

“Give it to me,” Myles could have sworn he heard it say, before he tripped and fell back, cracking his head on the corner of the dresser and coming to rest on the floor.

He dreamt then, a dream like no other, a strange collection of images and sounds that made no sense. 

Of him lying motionless on the ground, blood painting a pool around his head. 

Of Mary Shaw entering the room.

Of policemen covering him with a sheet and collecting powdery evidence. 

Of Mary driving, walking, standing at the edge of the bay, whispering into the cage, saying: “I warned you. Your tortured soul called out and the Merrow called back.”

Of the cage being cast into the sea. 

Of the dark, murky depths of a jet-black ocean.

Of the pig-eyed Coomara, slithering from the depths to claim its prize, its cage now home to a fresh soul gleaming with torment–a treasure to be savoured for eternity.