Death Is a Local Term

by Jason Frederick Myers

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I’ve seen a lot of crazy things. Par for the course in my line of work. As a salvage diver, you’ve got to be ready for anything. I once saw a catfish the size of a Volkswagen swimming through a flooded cemetery with the headstones still standing. I’ve explored underwater towns with cars still in driveways and found bodies and bones. Lots of bones. I was used to that. Twenty years of rescue and recovery will numb the senses like novocaine in your mouth.

When rumors of the sightings spread around town, I heard no mention of them on the news, no confirmation in local gossip about an unidentified aircraft going down over Lake Superior. I called in a few favors but found no unusual radar activity or unaccounted-for planes in the area on the night in question. I almost wrote the whole thing off as a hoax, but something in those witnesses’ eyes gave me pause. Despite being in separate places at the time, every one of their stories matched, and the testimony didn’t come from people like Gus, the local bar hopper and town drunk. These were straight shooters, people with stand-up reputations in the community. They all provided the same physical description and trajectory. All of it matched, down to the craft’s neon pink glow hovering in the night sky.

I gathered some supplies and hit the water in my twenty-eight-foot Sea Ray to check it out. The odds of finding one particular craft in a Great Lake is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, even for an experienced local like me. But, on the fifth day, I hit the jackpot, though “lucky” is not the word I’d use now.

Late in the day, the boat’s sonar hit a potential target below. The water that day was cold and clear, the surface whipped into angry, rebellious waves by a bullying northern front. Low on light and down to my last tank of air, I slipped over the side and descended to the silky bottom fifty feet below. Sure enough, an aircraft sat upright on the lake floor, somehow fully intact.

The large craft was not a typical commercial liner and not like any military plane I recognized. A prototype was my first thought, maybe a top-secret test flight gone wrong. I closed in on the plane, looking for any identifying marks, and as I passed a set of windows, I saw a boy seated inside. He offered a carefree wave and returned to his task, drawing stick figures with his fingers in the condensation on the glass.

I froze, my chest tightening beneath my wetsuit as I swam closer, my eyes not believing what they saw. Adrenaline surged, and I pounded on the outside of the window. The boy smiled, and a school of minnows swam out of his mouth. Thin wisps from the blond curls on his head fanned out like delicate jellyfish tentacles. I screamed, sending a barrage of bubbles from my regulator toward the surface. The boy’s face disappeared, swallowed by a hulking shadow coming from behind me. The shadow eclipsed the surface’s light, and I found myself floating in complete and utter darkness.

Everything after that was fuzzy. I woke up gasping on the floor of my boat, made my way home, and took it easy for a while, trying to make sense of things. My sister in Idaho was the only family I had left after Diane left me, and this conversation wasn’t the type you wanted to have over the phone. What would convince me to jump on another airplane after seeing what I’d seen? Like I said, it’s a blur. I think I just needed someone to confide in, help me wrap my head around what happened down there.

I watched from my window seat as a man approached, walking casually down the plane’s aisle. He was an older gentleman, although the years had been kind to him. A redwood tree of a man, his height and width filled the plane’s aisle like the giant rolling boulder in that movie I could never remember the name of. A large, overfilled bag was slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, his arm muscles rippling as he paused beside me.

“Hello,” he said, his tone cordial. Something inside the bag moved, and he quickly dumped it in the overhead compartment. I shook it off as a trick of the eye, offering him a half nod. He sat down beside me, and the entire row of seats sank in, bowing to his presence.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his mouth framed by a thick gray beard.

“Todd.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking my hand. His grip was firm and damp. My nostrils caught the man’s scent, a familiar odor that took me a minute to place. It was the smell of age, but not human age. It reminded me of an attic in an abandoned house, of long-forgotten objects left to rot—the smell of ancient memories.

A pleasant-looking attendant passed us, red curls of hair falling from beneath a pink beret as she checked on passengers.

“Where you headed?” the man asked.

“Boise.”

“Business trip?”

I cleared my throat. “Nah, I’ve got family there.”

“Ah, a vacation.”

A tickle in the back of my throat made me cough. “Something like that.”

“What is it you do?” he asked.

“I guess you could say I find things. I’m a salvage diver.”

A smile formed on the man’s face, parting his beard.

“What about you?” I asked out of courtesy.

“I’m in acquisitions,” he said.

“Headed home?” I asked.

“Very soon now. Only a few stops left.”

Something in the compartment above us moved. The man ignored it and stared at me. I shifted in my seat, checking my empty pockets for my phone.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to attend to,” he said finally. He rose and strolled toward the rear of the plane. I scanned the seats and floor for my phone to no avail, then stood and opened the overhead storage compartment.

The man’s bag filled the entire bin, its contents bursting out of its seams. A strange liquid oozed from the zipper like an infected incision, and an acrid smell from inside infiltrated the plane’s cabin. As I attempted to reach behind it, the bulging zipper gave way, exposing an animal-like fur. I leaned in closer, and the bag shifted again, revealing unknown flesh.

“Is everything okay, sir?” the attendant asked, startling me. I paused, debating whether to tell her what I’d found, but before I could form the words, my eyes settled on the man standing at the plane’s rear, watching me with glassy, alligator-like eyes.

“I forgot my bag,” I mumbled, finding my voice. “I need to get off the plane.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said, gesturing to the nearby window. I peered through the glass and saw only darkness. I sat reluctantly, trying to remember taking off from the airport, but everything was a blur.

“Please buckle up, sir,” the attendant added, walking away.

Confused, I reached for my seatbelt. As I brought the two ends of the belt together, they began to move, the slimy nylon material slithering through my hands. I looked down to find two eel-like creatures, their wide-open mouths hissing as they crawled up my chest. I thrust them away from me and dove out into the aisle. When I looked back, they were gone, the ends of the seatbelt dangling harmlessly off the front of my seat.

“Do you require assistance?” a different attendant asked, her voice almost robotic. Her smile unnerved me. It was too big and intentional, worn like a Halloween mask. I pulled myself off the floor and staggered toward the bathroom on legs that felt not totally my own, realizing for the first time how quiet the rest of the cabin was. I could feel the eyes of the other passengers pierce my back as I walked, watching me in smirking silence.

I locked myself in the plane’s bathroom, turned on the water in the sink, and splashed my face. The water burned my eyes, and I looked down to find the sink caked with silt and vegetation. I turned off the faucet, but the water continued to flow, overfilling the tiny bowl. The toilet next to it began to bubble, its lid rising as it filled to the top. Aquatic material poured out of it, gathering at my feet. I reached for the door, but it wouldn’t budge, the locking mechanism jammed. As water rose to my ankles, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and froze.

The skin on my face had turned a lifeless gray, my lips swollen and blue. My hair danced across my forehead like living moss. The eyes that stared back at me had lost all their warm luster, their bulging pupils dark and cloudy like two black marbles. My hands were heavily wrinkled, their water-logged skin swollen to an unnatural size. Sickness came over me, and I vomited. Live crustaceans and other tiny organisms poured over my gums and lips into the pool of water on the floor. They swam at my feet and climbed up my legs. I cried out, throwing my shoulder hard against the bathroom door and crashing out into the main cabin in a wave of water.

“Help!” I pleaded. My entire body quaked.

The other passengers remained seated, watching me with identical smiles, their heads swaying back and forth in unison like a field of grass.

“Sir, please take your seat,” an attendant said as she and a second attendant passed out plastic bibs to each passenger. “We’re about to serve the meal.”

Further down the aisle, the man stood next to my seat. He gestured politely, and I staggered toward him, my mind on the brink of collapse.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to no one in particular as I collapsed in my seat.

The man sat down beside me, offering a sympathetic frown.

“Surely by now you must know where you are,” he said.

I looked around the plane’s cabin and spotted the boy a few rows up, his blond curls floating above his head as he drew pictures on the window. At last, the realization hit me, flooded in like water through a cracked hull. I had never returned from the dive site that day. I was still down there, now inside the plane.

Water begins to seep in around the windows as the man stands and removes his bag from the overhead compartment.

“You know, I could use someone like you,” he says, unzipping the bag. “You’re good at finding things. You found us. That’s never happened before. As you can see, there are many mouths to feed.” As he speaks, I notice his teeth for the first time: black and ancient, like fossilized shark teeth.

“Am I… dead?” I ask, remembering my appearance in the mirror.

The man smiles. “I think you’ll find that death is more of a local term.”

As I watch in horror, he reaches into the bag and removes pieces of rotting flesh, carrion, and a few large fish still clinging to life. He hands them to the attendants as the other passengers perk up in anticipation. The hair on their heads rolls back like tiny curtains to reveal hollow lamprey-like mouths beneath, the tops of their skulls filled with row after row of the same distinct black teeth. They cheer as the attendants hand out their offerings.

Across the aisle, an attendant drops a whole flattened possum into the top of a man’s head, the sharp teeth inside shredding it with ease. Blood trickles out of the human mouth on the front of his head, and he uses the bib to wipe it with a satisfied grin.

His bag nearly empty, the man reaches inside it and retrieves a dismembered human hand, its bony digits long and shriveled.

“So, what do you say?” he asks, his jaw unhinging unnaturally wide like a snake.  He throws the hand inside his mouth and swallows it whole. Are you interested?”

The immense outside pressure overpowers the windows, flooding the cabin and pulling me from my seat. My heart races as I swim through floating animal parts and blood-stained water, past the still-feeding passengers, their eyes rolled back in their heads, human mouths frozen in gluttonous grins. A large shadow looms behind me as I pry open a lever on a nearby door and pull myself from the plane. I struggle toward the surface, watching the pinkish glow of the aircraft fade from view beneath me as shock and fatigue claim my consciousness.

I wake on shore to the sound of hushed voices standing over me. It was just a dream, I think, relieved. But, as my vision clears, I see the familiar faces of all the plane passengers standing over me. I roll to my side to find the blond boy beside me, drawing rockets and planets in the smooth, wet dirt. Without a word, he smiles and points to the skies above.

“Thought we lost you for a minute,” a man says, and I recognize him as the possum connoisseur from the plane. “Come on,” he adds. “Don’t want to miss our flight.”

The passengers turn and walk back into the lake, disappearing one by one into the depths. I watch them depart and realize I feel no relief in their absence. I’ve spent a lifetime searching this world, looking for the next great discovery or treasure to satiate my pain, justify the wounds of trauma and loss I’ve endured along the way. But this time, something in me has forever changed. My hand moves to the top of my head, my fingers feeling through my hair into my hollowed-out skull. I feel the neat rows of teeth inside it, all eager for a lesson in nourishment. Smiling, I rise and walk into the water after them, excited for the next hunt. I am a salvager, after all. Death is but a local term. And I am hungry.

Want another gripping story by Jason Frederick Myers? Read “Of Gnarled Roots and Rot” from Horrific Scribes, April 2025.