Which way is starboard again?

The following story appears in Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side. I’m putting it up here so I can have a freebie to give away to lure more unsuspecting victims (I mean readers) and also to showcase an awesome illustration done by the very talented Shaun Garea. Details on where to get all the things at the end of the story.

***

They’re in love. A love so true they need to make a grand gesture to the world of its permanence. Perhaps they can’t afford an engagement ring. Perhaps they don’t believe in marriage. Perhaps they’re teenagers whose love burns so passionate and bright that it’s too big for just themselves.

Either way, they buy a padlock – pretty and heart-shaped or sturdy and industrial – and have their initials carved into it. They go to the waterfront footbridge and thread it through one of its metal links, feeling it close with a satisfying clunk. To show how serious they are, they take the key, and its spare, and toss it into the bay, holding hands and leaning into each other as they walk away.

There are hundreds of padlocks on that bridge. Hundreds of different sets of initials – and hundreds of keys. Not much thought is given to those keys once they are ceremoniously tossed in the drink. Sure, there are concerns about the impact they might have on the environment and marine life but those are concerns, not actual thoughts.

You see, when an object is imbued with so much passion – be it a ring or a plaque – it changes. It absorbs those intense feelings. It gains power. When part of that object is thrown away like trash, the power doesn’t go away. It changes. Hundreds of padlocks publicly basking in the glow of love. Hundreds of keys festering on the seabed, growing strong and bitter and hungry.

I’m 100 percent the sort of guy who scoffs at these kinds of stories. They’re creepy tales to scare kids at sleepovers, nothing more. But I’ve been down in that murk and seen things that have turned every hair on my body white. There are things in this world that we don’t understand and if we’re lucky, we’ll never need to try. Unfortunately for me, I’m not one of the lucky ones.

The stories about the Oriental Bay piranhas began around 2014. I’ve been hearing them for as long as I’ve been diving in the bay. A disturbance in the water followed by a swimmer losing a finger or a toe. Nobody ever sees them but the story is always the same – searing pain, needle sharp teeth, blood in the water and a piece of a person missing.

Like any sane person I scoffed at those stories, not in the least because those particular fish can’t survive outside of tropical waters. My theory was that someone had a run-in with a barracuda once and spun a tale that grew taller with each retelling. Whatever the origin, the Oriental Bay piranha label stuck.

It was a couple of years ago, though, that things started getting outright weird. The first missing person was a reveller from the last time the Rugby Sevens was held in Wellington. It wasn’t unusual for hypothermic partiers to be hauled from the harbour in their Smurf outfits and mankinis after the booze whispered to them a midnight dip would be a great idea. So, at first, it was thought to be another alcohol fueled tragedy. That may well have been the case, but when he washed up on shore near the Te Papa museum two days later, people had more questions than answers.

His leg was completely stripped of flesh, a cleanly picked bone, attached to a foot sitting neatly in a sneaker. The poor guy had clearly bled to death. It was all over the news: the distraught girlfriend and parents, the ‘experts’ trying to work out whether it could have been a shark. Swimming at the bay was banned until they could track down the culprit.

Things eventually settled down, the swimming ban was lifted and the news cycle moved on – until the next time and the next. There were four attacks, over a period of two years – a kayaker, a man fishing and a couple swimming off the beach on a hot day. The one thing they all had in common was that, when they were found, one limb or another had been completely stripped of flesh.

Even then, after all that strangeness, I didn’t accept that anything unusual was going on. I spent nearly every day in the waters of that harbour as part of my work and I was damned if I was going to be looking over my shoulder for some mystery fish.

I’m a sort of scuba everyman for the Wellington City Council. If the storm water drains get clogged, if a fishing line comes loose and gets tangled around something it shouldn’t, if there’s a big blow and a chunk of the marina electronics end up in the drink, I’m their man.

I’m also part of a volunteer diver clean-up group that hits the harbour once a year to clear up what Wellington has dumped in it. You wouldn’t believe the stuff we find down there. Shopping trolleys, fishing gear, kids’ toys. One memorable encounter with a mannequin that had escaped from a movie shoot gave a few of the guys nightmares for a while. Not all of it can be blamed on people though – the biggest litterer in the city is Mother Nature herself. It’s not uncommon for us to find laundry tangled around pontoons after a particularly decent blow. That doesn’t get you lot of the hook though. A fair bit of the debris we do find is due to people being too lazy to secure their litter or too bumbly to be trusted with technology – as is evidenced by the number of drowned cell phones we have brought to the surface.

***

It was on one of those clean-up dives that my nice comfortable denial bubble popped. My dive buddy Craig and I were in Oriental Bay near the waterfront, filling catch bags with the usual junk. I pointed towards a submerged shopping trolley a couple of metres away and, wiggling two fingers like miniature legs, mimed swimming over. He gave me the OK hand signal and I headed over to tie on an inflatable buoy to mark it for later pick up.

As I fumbled with the inflatable clipped to my suit, the ocean boiled to life around me. Rising from the seabed was a swarm of something I’d never seen before. A massive school of tiny rust coloured fish, only a few centimetres long, were buzzing and vibrating like a swarm of metallic bees. They were heavy too, bonking against my dive tank and scraping skin off my face as they surged past.

As I turned to Craig to signal “what the hell was that?”, I froze on the spot. He was absolutely smothered in the things. All I could see was a mass of bubbles and flailing fins as he tried to beat them off with his catch bag. I launched myself towards him, brandishing my dive knife. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with it. Stabbing hundreds of tiny fish wasn’t really the most practical option.

It must have done something though because as I approached, the things started to drop back, letting me through. Frantically, I scraped as many of them off my friend as I could, copping a couple of nasty bites through my gloves for my efforts. Craig had stopped flailing and was instead making frantic slashing motions across his throat – “Out of air”. I discovered to my horror that the little bastards had chewed through the hoses connected to his tank. I quickly hooked him up with my spare air supply and buddy swam with him to the dock, scraping the last of the creatures off him with my knife.

Thank goodness we weren’t diving deep and didn’t have to stop to decompress as both of us were desperate to get out of the water. I hauled him up and checked his vitals. He was deeply in shock, struggling to catch his breath and covered in scores of tiny bite marks but he wasn’t going to die.

“What the hell was that?” I gasped as I wiped the blood from his face.

“Keys!” he said in between ragged breaths.

“What?”

“Keys. Fucking keys. With fucking teeth. The kind you unlock things with. But with teeth. They went straight for my air hose!”

Certain my friend was delirious, I helped him up. “Mate, I think we need to get you to the hospital.”

***

I left Craig in the hospital, still blathering about keys with teeth. I’d never seen him that spun out before. A couple of gashes on his forehead needed stitches but otherwise he was physically fine. They wanted to keep him in overnight for observation though, theorising concussion or nitrogen narcosis. I don’t recall him hitting his head at any point and we hadn’t been deep enough for him to be narced, but he certainly wasn’t himself. I left him in the capable hands of his fiancé and decamped to the pub.

Three pints in and I was decided – I was going back down there to find out what was going on. I was certain there was a logical explanation. I had never seen my friend like that before and I wanted to put his mind at rest.

Two days later, I was back at the waterfront, armed with a specimen jar borrowed from another friend who worked at a local aquarium. I went solo this time. I know, diving on your own isn’t smart, but I wasn’t going far and I honestly didn’t want to bring anyone else in on this insanity.

I dropped down into the water and swam around to just underneath the footbridge where we’d been gathering junk before Craig was attacked. At first, I didn’t see anything, just murk and rocks and the odd bit of snot-coloured seaweed. But then I spotted them – about two inches above the sea floor was a metallic cloud of creatures, just milling about, taking no notice of me at all.

I swam closer, watching them lazily weave along the current, darting in and out of the weeds. They seemed solid and heavy-looking but they floated easily, like they weighed nothing at all. The water was too grimy to make out too much detail without getting up closer than I would have liked, but whatever they were, it certainly wasn’t fish.

They showed no sign of the aggression they displayed when they launched themselves at Craig. So, while all was calm, I grabbed the specimen jar, scooped up the nearest one and screwed the lid up tight. I dropped it in my catch bag and headed for the surface.

Once out of the water, I pulled my mask off to get a better look and – more shakily than I care to admit – took the jar from the bag, holding it up to the light. Swimming in lazy circles, occasionally doinking into the side of the jar was – exactly as Craig had – a fucking key.

***

Three of us stood around the aquarium table, staring down at the jar.

“Yep, that’s a key alright.”

“Definitely the most key-like thing I’ve seen in a specimen jar.”

I was rather surprised at how blasé they were about the whole swimming key situation and told them so.

“I can tell you right now,” Kim, the friend who loaned me the specimen jar said. “This is by far not the strangest thing we’ve seen in this aquarium.”

One look at her face and I could tell she was deadly serious.

“Let’s give it a bit more space to swim around and see what it does,” she said, gently placing the jar into an open topped tank and letting the key swim out.

She didn’t move her hand fast enough. As soon as it escaped, it lunged at her, its oval ‘head’ somehow stretching and splintering into tiny metallic teeth. She snatched her hand out of the way before it could do any damage.

“Well, that certainly woke it up!”

“So, it didn’t react to you at all?” Kim asked, as she, I and her colleague James watched the key/fish/thing fling itself at the glass.

“Is that going to be strong enough?” I asked, taking a step backwards.

“Bulletproof,” she said.

“Oookay …” I said, still dubious. “Well, it certainly wasn’t carrying on like that.”

“Interesting,” she said, staring with fascination at the frenzied creature trying to smash its way to freedom. “Leave it with me. I’ll let you know if I have any ideas.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I said, heading for the door, quietly glad to see the back of the thing.

***

The next day, my phone rang.

“Where did you say you found it again?” Kim’s excited voice asked.

“By the waterfront, under the footbridge.”

“The one with all the padlocks on?”

“Yes, that one,” I replied, only just making the connection.

“I’ve got an idea. I’m going to need you to come in.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I replied, actually dying of curiosity.

Kim and James greeted me at the aquarium.

“Right, experiment time!” Kim said, rubbing her hands together gleefully as the three of us moved behind the front counter towards the tanks.

“You go first,” she gestured to me, keeping herself out of the creature’s sight line – if the thing even had eyes to see.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Just trust me on this. Walk up to the tank.”

I did as I was told, moving slowly towards the glass, bracing myself for the onslaught. They key-thing barely acknowledged my presence, floating calmly just above the bottom of the tank. I moved closer, peering through the glass. Nothing.

“Great!” said Kim from behind the door. “Now, it’s your turn, James.”

James had barely taken two steps into the room when Keyzilla started throwing itself at the walls of the tank, snapping at the glass. I could have sworn the thing actually hissed. He very sensibly backed the hell out of there. Kim was smiling broadly.

“You look like that’s exactly what you expected to happen,” I said.

“Correct. Want to hear my theory? It’s got nothing to do with fish science and everything to do with Marie Kondo.”

“The ‘doesn’t spark joy’-woman who wants us all to fold our undies?” James asked incredulously.

I shook my head, having zero idea what either of them was talking about but concerned about where it might lead.

“I am NOT going to fold my undies,” I said.

“Settle, petals. The last thing I want is to have anything to do with your underwear,” Kim said. “This is going to sound a little woo woo, but hear me out.”

“No more woo than a key-fish that wants to bite me,” James interrupted.

“Good point!” Kim agreed. “Now for those of you who have been living under a rock,” – she looked directly at me – “Marie Kondo is a famous declutterer. She has a TV show and a bunch of books about getting rid of your junk. She’s very gentle and respectful about it though. She gets people to touch each item to ‘wake’ it and only keep those that ‘spark joy’, and when it comes to the things that you want to let go, she thanks them for their service.”

I raised an eyebrow, utterly clueless as to what was going on.

“It’s something that kind of fascinates me,” she continued. “Not the cleaning, but the philosophy behind it. Her method is heavily influenced by the Japanese Shinto religion. Shinto includes the belief that kami – the sacred – exists in everything. That everything, even inanimate objects, contains an essence or power. This power can be good or bad but it is everywhere and in everything. Even the things we throw away.”

I stared blankly, thinking her stark, barking mad but not wanting to come across as an insensitive douche bag. “I didn’t know you were religious,” was the best I could come up with.

“I’m not, but my grandmother was. She had a shrine and talked to everything in the house. The garden too. I used to follow her everywhere when I was little. I completely forgot about it all until the whole Kondo thing started getting air time.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with ‘that’”, I said, jerking my head towards the thing in the tank.

“Well, think about where you found it. The bridge with the padlocks, objects that have powerful kami, created by people’s love. And after people attach those padlocks to the bridge, what do they do with the keys?”

“Chuck them in the ocean – probably not thanking them for their service when they do,” James interjected, struggling to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“Okay, it may sound ridiculous, but might I point out there’s a very angry key in that tank,” Kim said.

Having been forced to face the existence of flesh-eating keys, I tried to let myself follow Kim’s logic. “So, what has it got to do with the fact that Bitey McBiteface over there doesn’t want a piece of me?” I asked.

Kim’s eyes lit up again. “I worked that part out when you mentioned that your friend was being looked after by his fiancé while he was in hospital,” she said. “He was engaged. I’m married. James has just met a new fella. We are all, to one degree or another, loved up. You, on the other hand, are the biggest bachelor I know, and as far as I am aware that hasn’t changed, has it?”

“No, it hasn’t,” I replied, smiling. It’s not that I haven’t had the odd bit of fun in the past but I really don’t have that much interest in it all. I appreciate my friendships but really have no desire for romance or relationships. I don’t think I ever really had. I know some people feel sorry for me, but they shouldn’t. I’m happy, it’s just the way I’m wired.

“I did some research into the Oriental Bay ‘piranha’ attacks and sure enough, all the victims had partners,” Kim continued. “I think the keys somehow detect and react to the love pheromone, because that was why they were rejected. At least, that’s my theory. You’re probably one of the few people in Wellington who can get near them unscathed.” James was turning purple.

“Are you trying to say that lump of bad-tempered metal is one of the Oriental Bay piranhas? Are you insane? I grant you it’s bizarre, but it’s just a key. It can’t really do any damage!” Having seen the thing in action, I had to disagree.

“I think that it might be,” Kim said, looking towards the tank in quiet awe.

“Are you buying this crap?” James asked me.

When I didn’t answer, he stomped across the room, opened a cupboard and grabbed a pair of industrial looking gloves. “I did not spend four years studying marine biology to listen to this kind of rubbish. It’s a key. It can’t hurt people. I’ll prove it!”

“James, no!” Kim and I cried in unison but we were too late. James had stalked across the room and thrust his hand into the tank, attempting to scoop up the creature inside. The whole thing took seconds. One minute, James had his hand in the tank and the next, he was writhing on the floor screaming in agony, the water in the tank above him stained with blood.

Kim dispatched me to get the first aid kit and, when I returned, was gently prising James’ hand open.

“How bad is it?” he slurred, clearly delirious with pain. “I can’t look!”

I looked and wished I hadn’t. The top half of his index finger was stripped bare of flesh – a clean white bone sticking out of a bloodied knuckle. I suddenly thought of Skeletor from Masters of the Universe, stifling a hysterical laugh as I thrust a bandage into Kim’s hand.

“I’ve seen worse,” she lied expertly. I had no idea how she managed to keep a straight face when all I wanted to do was vomit. “But I think we should get you looked at.”

So, for the second time that week, I found myself driving someone to hospital.

***

Sitting in the hospital waiting room I turned to Kim. “Okay, this is way out of my comfort zone but I’ve seen two people put into hospital, and if you’re right, there are hundreds of angry carnivorous keys, lurking around a popular swimming spot. Do you have any idea what we can do about it?”

“Yes, but you’re not going to like it.”

“That I don’t doubt. Now fill me in.”

“Well, we’re going to have to conduct some more experiments, but I figure since you are the only one they seem to let near them, it could be that they respond to your interactions with them as well.”

“Interactions?”

“Words and feelings specifically. Like the objects imbued with kami were meant to respond to offerings and prayers. If it’s a similar sort of situation, then maybe you could talk it off the ledge, help it not feel discarded. Let it know it wasn’t tossed away for no reason, that it was sacrificed for love and we honour that sacrifice.”

“You want me to give it a pep talk?”

“Exactly! Maybe we can reprogram them not to respond badly to people who care for one another.”

Before I had a chance to respond, a doctor came out to meet us. Kim stood up. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He’s going to need reconstructive surgery on his finger, but otherwise he’s going to be fine. You say he was attacked by some sort of fish at the aquarium?” he asked.

“Yes, a fish,” Kim said firmly.

***

If you told me a couple of months ago that I would be paying nightly visits to the aquarium to whisper sweet nothings to a key in a jar, I would have told you to lay off the weed. Yet here I am. The scary thing is, it actually seemed to be working.

We tested Kim’s theory last night when James returned to work.

“How’s the war wound?” I asked, gesturing towards his bandaged finger.

“Not bad. They couldn’t fix the nerves but they can make it look a bit more like a finger. They are going to graft some skin from my butt. Guess that will remind me not to be such a butthead about things I don’t understand.”

I smiled, glad he’d managed to keep a sense of humour.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Don’t worry. I plan to keep my hands to myself.”

“Okay then,” I said, nervously leading him towards the tank. He walked right up to the glass and – nothing. No reaction. The key-fish barely raised itself from the bottom.

James raised his eyebrows. “Hey! Key thing! I love my boyfriend!” he yelled, taking a step back.

A little waggle, but otherwise nothing.

Kim walked up to the tank, nervously playing with her wedding ring. The key showed no interest in her whatsoever.

“It worked!” she said, grinning and hugging me. I couldn’t help smiling as well, scarcely believing it myself.

The next part of the plan was for me to catch another key (goody) and see what happened when we put it in the tank with its newly chilled-out mate. Kim’s hope was that they’d somehow communicate and, if I could talk enough of them out of their homicidal rage, they might calm down the rest of the pack. School? Bunch? I don’t know what the collective noun is for a bunch of angry sentient keys, do you?

“So, catch and release?” I asked Kim.

“Something like that,” she said with a smile.

I don’t know if it will work, but it’s all we’ve got right now. This is going to take a long time and we can’t guarantee how many we’ll be able to round up. So, if you are loved up and fancy going for a dip this summer, and you don’t want to end up with a butt-skin graft or worse, might I suggest giving the waterfront a miss for a while. Particularly, a certain bridge.

And if you absolutely must do the padlock thing, a quick thank you to a key is not much to ask in return for keeping your limbs.

Want to read more?

Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side is available on most digital platforms here:

https://books2read.com/ghostbus

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Paperback Ghost Bus overseas

If you live outside of New Zealand I would recommend ordering your Ghost Bus paperback via Amazon because postage overseas from here is all over the shop thanks to the rona.

Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side paperback

Want to see more awesome artwork?

Shaun Garea – the creator of the awesome bitey key image is the artist behind The Legend of Gareus – a hilarious webcomic about Gareus, the David Brent of fantasy. You can check it out here:

The Legend of Gareus