East of Samar, 1966
POV: Alfie Gambon
The water was peculiar.
Alfie Gambon couldn't explain how. The sea still swelled and sighed. The boat still rocked in lazy rhythm. But something beneath the surface had shifted—like a breath held too long, like a silence too deep.
It wasn't a smell. Wasn't a sound. It was a feeling.
Low in his sternum, like a fist curling behind his ribs.
The kind of feeling you get when you leave a door unlocked at night and forget until halfway through a dream.
He'd felt it before. Once. South of Jolo. A night slick with rain and too many stars. But that time, it had passed.
This time… it waited.
The San Niklas groaned beneath his boots—a sound not unlike an old woman stirring in her sleep. Her hull, blistered with rust and barnacle scars, whispered as she drifted with idle engines, caught in the slow current like a body too tired to float.
Night had crept in slow. A thick, starless thing—not the kind that fell, but the kind that climbed, swallowing light from the bottom up.
The sky above was a dome of coal. The sea below, a chasm of ink.
Somewhere beneath them: a trench.
Old as the world.
Deeper than names.
A place with no bottom, only memory.
The old ones had names for it. The Deep Fold. The Place Where Memory Sinks. Not cursed, they said—just listening.
Alfie leaned against the rail, the metal cold against his forearms—rust-flaked, salted, pitted with time. He struck a match on the lip of his boot, cupping it from the wind that wasn't there.
The flame flickered in defiance, then caught.
He lit a cigarette and took a slow drag. The smoke curled out of his mouth, sluggish and gray, vanishing into the stillness.
The waves broke softly against the hull, a fragile whisper in the oppressive stillness. The air hung heavy—no wind to stir the sails, no fish to ripple the surface, not even the distant cry of a gull to pierce the silence. The sea wasn't empty; it pulsed with an unseen energy, thick with an anticipation that coiled tighter with each passing moment.
The stillness grew louder, pressing in, a silent drumbeat echoing through his chest.
Then, he saw them.
At first, he thought they were reflections—perhaps stray starlight shimmering on the gentle ripple of waves, or the faint glow of phosphorus from a drifting jelly line disturbed by the tide.
But no, they were moving . Not far, just beneath the portside, where the hull's shadow mingled with the deep's endless blue. They lingered in the water's layered darkness—deep, but not lost to sight.
Lights.
Faint, like the ghost of a memory more than light itself. They resembled will-o'-the-wisps ensnared beneath the surface—aquatic phantoms, soft pulses of blue diffused through salty water, cool and silent. They slipped between the dancing shadows cast by waves above, their glow distorted by the water's shifting lens.
One… two…
Then four.
Then seven.
They ascended without haste, drifting just beneath the surface like curious eyes peering from under a veil of translucent water. Small globes of blue-white, their luminescence breathing gently, as if in rhythm with the ocean's pulse.
Rising with the slow grace of plankton caught in an upwelling current. Fading like moonlight filtered through storm clouds. Holding, suspended in the quiet hush of the sea.
Too smooth for the whims of the current. Too rhythmic to be mere chance.
They weren't bubbles, buoyed by escaping air.
They weren't jellyfish, devoid of trailing tendrils or the telltale undulation of bells.
They moved with purpose, with an awareness—like creatures forged in the ocean's depths, knowing how to be watched from above."Ejo," he called, voice level but low. "Tara, come here."
He didn't take his eyes off the water.
The boy's boots thudded softly on the deck. He was still growing into them—gift from an older brother gone to work a larger rig near Palawan. The cuffs of his pants were damp with seawater and soap from earlier deckwash.
He stepped beside Alfie, hugging his arms tight.
"Anong meron?" he asked, shivering.
His voice cracked slightly—an unintended fracture slicing through the thick, briny air, dissipating into the hollow vastness around them.
Alfie didn't respond. He didn't blink.
Instead, he raised one hand, slow and deliberate, the motion cutting through the dense fog that curled like ghostly fingers around the ship's rail. His finger extended, quivering faintly, as if the mere act of pointing might awaken some unseen presence simmering just beyond the veil of darkness.
Ejo's gaze followed, his eyes narrowing against the oppressive gloom, the tang of salt sharp on his tongue, mingling with the faint metallic tang of fear.
Then he saw them.
Lights. Pale, unnatural—hovering, flickering like distant stars submerged underwater, their glow pulsing softly against the undulating shadows. The air grew colder, a clammy chill seeping through his jacket, coiling along his spine.
His breath hitched—a brittle gasp swallowed quickly, as though sound itself might draw attention. The faint creak of the steel beneath their boots seemed deafening against the suffocating silence.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, boots planted wide on the groaning metal, hearts pounding in eerie synchrony. Both staring. Both silent. Their fear hung thick, as tangible as the mist swirling around them, each heartbeat a fragile drumbeat against the vast, indifferent dark.The lights did not scatter.
They moved… in a spiral.
Measured. Hypnotic. Old.
Like dancers beneath black glass, something calls its own name repeatedly—not with a voice, but with light. Ejo whispered, "Hindi 'yan normal."
But Alfie's jaw was clenched.
His cigarette burned down to the filter in his fingers, untouched.
Then it happened.
A sound—soft, neither loud nor sharp, yet unmistakably out of place, like hearing your name uttered by a stranger.
"Tara, come here."
The words were the same.
The tone, identical.
But the voice? It wasn't Alfie's.
And it wasn't Ejo's.
It came… from below.
Alfie flinched, his heart thudding painfully against his ribs, eyes wide with disbelief as a cold sweat prickled his skin. His breath hitched, caught between recognition and fear.
Ejo gasped, his face draining of color as he stumbled back a half step, his mind racing to rationalize the impossible. A shiver traced his spine, the familiar voice twisting into something foreign and chilling.
Because it was Alfie's voice.
As if the sea itself had recorded it and was now pressing play.
Yet it sounded slower, weary—
""Radio ba 'yan?" Ejo asked, his voice fragile, trembling with a thread of desperate hope.
Alfie's hand shot up instinctively, fingers pressing the button on his chest mic. It felt unnervingly cold against his skin—off. A faint metallic tang lingered on his fingertips. His eyes darted to the deckline lights on the cabin panel, blinking idly in the dim gloom, indifferent to their unease.
Silence.
No static crackle, no voices bleeding through the comms. No word from Mateo. Just the oppressive, hollow quiet, dense and suffocating. Even if the radio had been on… that voice hadn't sounded mechanical. It was too raw, too close. Not filtered through speakers.
It had sounded intimate.
Like a whisper seeping through the steel, slick with moisture.
Like breath, cool and clammy, brushing the nape of the neck.
Then, as if to answer—
The lights pulsed.
Not a flicker.
A pulse.
One synchronized breath of blue light swelled outward, casting shadows that stretched and recoiled before dimming. It felt heavy, like lungs filled with more than just air. The rhythm was like a heartbeat shared between them, throbbing in the walls.
A faint, briny scent thickened the air—a mix of rust, salt, and something metallic, unfamiliar.
And then, the water spoke again.This time—
"Anong meron?"
Ejo's voice.
It wasn't just the words.
It was his voice—the cadence, the slight upward pitch at the end, the nervous edge woven into every syllable. But these sounds didn't come from his lips. They emerged from the deep, bubbling up like a secret, floating just beneath the skin of the sea. Ejo's face drained of color, turning a ghostly white. His mouth opened and closed twice, struggling to shape words, before he finally managed to speak.
"Ayoko na, kuya," he whispered, his voice trembling as he retreated a step, then another. His hands shook with fear, his eyes pleading silently for reassurance. "Seryoso ako. I don't want this. Not funny."
Alfie's chest tightened. He saw the fear etched in Ejo's face, the desperation flickering in his gaze toward the cabin hatch, as though it offered some fragile hope of escape. Alfie wanted to comfort him, to say something that would ease the terror clenching in both their hearts, but the words wouldn't come. Because deep down, he felt it too—the cold grip of dread tightening around them both.
The ocean wasn't just speaking anymore.
It was listening.
The lights in the water drew closer—not darting or surging, but gliding smoothly, deliberately. There was an intelligence in their movement, an eerie precision. They weren't drawn by noise or bait. No, they were drawn by something far more chilling:
Attention.
And Alfie knew that even their fear was being heard.Then—
A sound.
Soft. Wet. Final.
A dull knock against the hull.
Like a hand.
Or a head.
A knock.
Like the beginning of a question.
Alfie stayed frozen, his muscles locked tight, heart thudding wildly behind his ribs as if seeking refuge. His breath grew shallow, each inhale a struggle against the fear creeping through him. At first, he thought it might be coincidence—an echo, perhaps, or some trick of chance. But the longer he stood there, the clearer it became.
This wasn't mimicry. Not an accident. Not a coincidence.
It was engagement.
Whatever was beneath them wasn't merely echoing—it was learning. Observing. Studying him with an intelligence that sent a fresh wave of dread prickling over his skin.
And it was waiting.
Waiting for more.
Ejo had vanished inside, boots thudding down the steel grating as he fled toward the galley.
Alfie stayed.
Alfie stood at the rail, shoulders hunched under unspoken fears. Below, lights spiraled—calm, graceful, like fading memories.
No voices. No knocks.
Just the sea. Just the lights.
Waiting.
Not threatening. Not yet.
But Alfie knew storms, knew predators, knew the sea's chaos.
This wasn't that.
This was older. Patient. Purposeful. Watching. Remembering.
It hadn't come to feed.
It had come to speak.
And deep in his marrow, where old prayers sleep…
Alfie knew—
It knew his name.