The Misguided Merman lay on the quarried stone of the breakwater, orange hull tilted to the sky, rigging trailing into low tide mud. A halo of gulls orbited. The smell of a week’s old catch tainted the air. James recognized his uncle’s fishing boat from a distance as he jogged near the wharf on Commercial Street in Provincetown, sweat slicking his t-shirt to his chest.

The boat had been missing for days. Local papers predicted engine failure or poor navigation. Rumors around town tended towards darker fare, most involving his uncle’s barroom attendance and other habits not suitable for the morning news.

Everyone seemed to know his name, and not in a favorable sense.

The night before, James’s aunt joked about etching “Lost at Sea” on a headstone. Half the gravemarkers in their family plot contained some variation of the epithet, had rough sailboats carved into granite, dates without bodies buried beneath.

Boats flung against the breakwater weren’t uncommon. When weekend sailors mistied mooring lines or storms sheared cleats from rotting wood, another craft would hang up on the rocks. Even with the commonality, James knew something was off. Boats only arrived on the breakwater once they broke their moorings. The Merman had been out at sea for a week. Someone had to steer the ship around Long Point Light and into the Provincetown harbor, otherwise the boat would have run aground near the sandy tip of Cape Cod.

James would have heard his uncle come in the night before if he’d made it to shore. The man was heavy on the stairs, never good at closing doors or oiling their hinges. James had rented a room from his uncle and aunt for two years, deciding whether to pursue the family business on the sea or to attend college. He loved the open air, the salt on his skin, all the unusual aquatic life they’d dredged up only for him to cast back into the sea species absent from their trawling list. James hated the idea of waste, of needless death, unlike his uncle. Twenty percent of fish caught commercially were thrown back dead or alive based on regulations and quotas.

The more James read into it, the more disillusioned he became. For every sea robin he rescued, there’d be three dead. But the nets had been growing lighter with each trip. Predators were getting better at snatching up hauls before they made it to the deck, tunas snapped off long lines, only heads and spines coming in with the hooks. James caught shadows beneath the surface, following the Merman in and out of the harbor, trailing them through open waters.

“It’s just seals,” his uncle had said without looking over the side.

“I don’t think they like to go out this far from land,” he replied.

“Think what you’d like. We’re still losing fish.”

“But…” James trailed off. He’d once looked up to his uncle, thought he knew everything about the sea, but he was continually reminded the only thing the man cared to know was profit margins, how to grow them, how to farm them, how to ignore every other harsh reality that came with his business model.

A BA in Computer Science or Botany was looking better and better with each passing day.

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James had heard his aunt move out into the night around three, returning just before dawn as he was getting ready to go for his morning jog. He knew she visited the docks, a lone watchman in the early morning gloom thanks to insomnia and the questions only brought about by darkness. She’d taken up the habit before the Merman went MIA, staring out over the blank ocean, searching for irregularities in the surf.

Over the past months, James’s uncle had been coming home late, the scent of other women on his neck, his clothing: floral, sea salt, and ambergris. His aunt found it suffocating. Open air was a needed cleanse. They hadn’t been in love for years. Economic dependence staved off divorce. Their mortgage principle wasn’t getting much lower, credit card debt barely kept at bay.

There was always another poorly-reasoned reason to stay.

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Swallowing his gorge, James ran across the beach and traversed the rocks, fighting back the urge to vomit as he scaled the upended hull, fingers bloodied by outcroppings of barnacles. If his uncle was onboard, he’d need help. He imagined heart attacks, propeller lacerations, an arm caught in the winch. James couldn’t wait for an ambulance. He knew CPR, how to tie a tourniquet. High school health class had taught him something.

He stumbled over the tilted deck, sidestepping coiled lines lying everywhere. One door to the below-deck cooler was open, the smell of rot breathing from the chasm.

The cockpit was empty. His uncle’s favorite Red Sox cap hung from a mirror. A woman’s lace bra dangled from the same fixture, seaweed stuck in the clasp. Beer bottles lay heaped in the corner. When the wind stirred, hollow notes rose from their open mouths, their glass sides shivering against one another.

His uncle and aunt had been deep in a feud the day he left. Another brawl over drinking habits and dwindling bank accounts. They never spoke of the women, where he spent his nights. That was never the primary concern. His uncle had left without James that morning, rage spurring his departure two hours before James’s already early alarm went off.

The fish had been moving farther and farther offshore with rising water temperatures. His uncle had to leave earlier and earlier each morning, even before anger issues flared. It wasn’t an enjoyable way to live. Neither was being drunk more hours than not. Leaving was a trend among locals, one of the reasons James’s father moved to Maine to take up timber framing: selling his boat and lobster pots before heading inland.

I’m not telling you how to live your life, but fish aren’t always the best companions, he’d said the last time they spoke.

James was beginning to see what he meant.

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The Merman seemed abandoned. James checked the storage lockers, which were empty. No one hid amongst the tackle. Nothing but loose wires dangled beneath the dashboard. Only gulls landed on the crosstree. A squall of birds drifted overhead as the wind changed direction, dragging with it the rotting scent from below, the tuneless moaning of the discarded bottles.

James circled back to the opened cooler, careful to avoid the lines draped everywhere. Peeling away the second door, he was greeted by a sea of blue-black fins, bloody scales, and the calf and thigh of a grown man, sickly white, severed at the hip.

James lost the battle against his stomach, adding its contents to what lay below.

He remained on his knees, wiping at his lips, as a shuffling at the stern called his attention. A woman stood there, sun low in the sky, a nearly translucent seafoam dress covering her frame. In her left hand was the skin of a seal, split down the middle, eyes empty and bottomless. Her right hand was coated in blood, fingernails tapered to sharp keratin tips. A crimson river ran down her chin, its tributaries speckling the fiberglass deck at her feet.

She sighed, then stepped over the gunnel, dress billowing behind her.

She looked over her shoulder once, before running down the length of the breakwater, feet slapping wet stone. A distance out, the woman leapt from the rocks, sinking into the sea where low-tide depths dropped off. A blur of fabric and seal skin parted the green-black water. There was a single thrash: a foot, a fin, then stillness.

Only the droplets of blood were left to align James’s shifting realities.

He stumbled off the boat, neglecting to call 911. Someone else would find the Merman, what lay in its hold. He wanted nothing to do with it, or his uncle, or the swimmer and her second skin. Romantic notions of the family business had bled out months ago. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore. It was a curse, not a bounty. James wasn’t going to be the one to help what swam beneath the surface, saving the unwanted from careless nets.

Fishing villages down the coast were being abandoned by the fish. Cod and haddock knew better than most of the inhabitants. The scent of death was in the water. James could smell it now, how it clung to his clothing, woven into his hair. Scientists said it was rising temperatures, algal blooms, overfishing, and nutrient dumps.

James wondered if something else affected those numbers.

Something aquatic.

Something hungry.

Something his uncle fancied for a time, before the relationship was no longer viable. You eat when the meal’s on the table, he’d always said. James knew when fish were a scarce commodity predators would look elsewhere for protein. First in their nets, then aboard the ships. How long before they climbed the docks or walked down the sidewalk of Commercial Street? The need to eat was basic biology, something James wouldn’t forget in his new landlocked life of textbooks and midterms, far away from the sea and what now resided in the harbor.

He’d tell his aunt, then pack his things.

He had a feeling she might already know. All those nights on the docks, the way the water grew translucent under a full moon. It was hard to imagine she could have missed the swimmer. More likely she had called to it, pointed it in the direction of easy prey. The cod weren’t coming back and his uncle had a good life insurance policy.

Some fishermen knew where to cast their lines better than others.

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