Serea

Within the depths of the sea near Galicia, there is a lugubrious mermaid of perpetuity that dwells amidst the haunting waters and Tropæan winds that encompass the coastal village of Foz. She is revered by the seamen and fishermen, who immortalise her beauty and are mesmerised by her attractive contours, with their aeipathy. Beneath the tidal waves, you will find her, if you dare to look for her.

There is a statue of her that towers over the port of Foz. Legend says that few men, who have seen her and fallen under her incantation, recover from their obsession for her. They become suddenly mad, driven to the point of no return. It is a blind madness that has claimed many lives, with men drowning in the sunken sorrows of the sea.

I, Francisco Damián, had almost succumbed to the unplumbed depths of the grasp of the mighty sea and the mermaid called Serea. I had arrived at the seaport village of Foz from the city of Málaga. Foz was located in the north-eastern part of Spain, in the province of Galicia. It was a solitary place off the coast, but it was a province where countless men from the country had come to start a new life or to leave for the Americas.

I was still relatively young and seeking a daring adventure upon the seas. I had a family member who had been living in the province and suggested that I move there. So, I did in the spring of 1908. My expectations were high, yet I knew that it would not be easy.

There was nothing that would guarantee me great success or the opportunity to advance my present status. I had faith in my ambitions, but I would never have suspected that fate would bring me to Serea. Foz was close to the villages of Mondoñedo, Burela, and Barreiros, which I was able to pass through and see from a distance.

At the time of my arrival, there was not much to see of the village. It had been abandoned by the youth and forsaken to the misery of time. It was not uncommon to see people from Spain emigrate to other areas of the continent or the world. My parents had once been bold enough to have ventured to the exotic Americas.

I had followed in their footsteps as a traveller and had grown up as a small child with the Mediterranean Sea before me always, but I could not imagine that the sea I would cherish tremendously would harbour a haunting secret and presence lurking beneath its immense vastness.

The northern winds and the ethereal mist from the sea were evidently noticeable. The sky was dull and dreary. It gave the general impression that the village was gradually sinking into the sea. There were barely any ships in the port. The ones that were out at sea belonged mostly to local fishermen.

When I tried to communicate with them at the port, they would not utter a single word to me. I was not certain whether it was because I was a complete stranger or an outsider. Although we were countrymen, I was not embraced as one of them, a pure-blood Galician. This was not a concern to me, since I had sensed this type of regional pride before in the northern parts of Spain.

I did not expect that the antithalian fishermen would prefer to ignore me with their vacant stares, instead of greeting me with a cordial handshake, at least. It was not until I had reached the centre of the village that I was met by a certain elderly man with a slight limp in his gait, who identified himself as Señor Garduno.

I had never met this man, nor did I know who he was. Despite that, he was receptive enough to invite me to his house. There, we spoke at length about why I had come to Foz and who he was. He seemed like a normal man, but there was something odd about his appearance. He wore dark spectacles that concealed his eyes. When I asked the reason for the spectacles, he simply told me that his eyes were extremely sensitive to the light.

What was even more odd was the fact that there was little sunlight to be seen through the patchy clouds of the fog. Perhaps there was some type of light emitting from the sun that I was unaware of, or it was merely precautionary on his part. To have them on inside the house was a bit strange to me.

I did not want to offend him with my curious mind, so I ceased to question his rationale for the spectacles. From what he told me, he too was a fisherman who fished albacore and hake off the coast. When I asked him where the rest of the villagers were, he looked at me, then smiled before giving me a token reply. According to him, most of the villagers had left, and those who had remained were mostly middle-aged to elderly people who had been born and raised in Foz.

It was disturbing to know that the youth of the village had decided to seek their fortunes elsewhere, but I could not blame them. Spain at the time was not a country where much wealth and prosperity could be gained for an ordinary person. Regrettably, the economic woes of the country were evident throughout the provinces.

I asked him where I could find the local inn to stay the night. He suggested one that was not far from his home. He could take me there if I wanted. Naturally, I was thankful and agreed. I had brought sufficient clothing for the trip and my time in Foz.

He arranged for me to stay at the local inn called "A Serea," which meant "The Mermaid." I had some knowledge of the Galician language and understood, for the most part, the majority of its vernacular speech. It sounded like a conglomeration of Spanish and Portuguese.

The innkeeper was a middle-aged man. He, too, like the old man, wore dark spectacles over his eyes. It was bizarre, but I did not ask him the reason for the spectacles. Along my way to the inn, I did not see any children or women. Had they too left the village, or were they inside their homes? I did not pry into the matter at that moment. I was simply suspicious.

The room at the inn was small but comfortable enough for me to stay for the necessary period. If I was unable to find employment with one of the ships, then I would go to Portugal. From my view, I could partially see the sea, even though it was foggy outside. There was something about the sea off the Galician coast that was different from the sea I had been accustomed to seeing back in Málaga.

I could hear the howling of the wind and the sounds of the gulls first, but then I heard the sound of peculiar whispers. Was I hearing what I thought were whispers? I paused to listen more attentively. The whispers increased for a moment before fading into the stir of the sea.

A raging storm was approaching from the distance. The evening and night were spent in my room, awaiting the storm to pass. The lightning flashed, and the sky roared with thunder. I was forced to close the shutters and lock the window, so the water would not enter the room.

I asked the innkeeper for a pair of towels, in case I needed them to prevent the water from entering, but he was nowhere to be found. I looked around the area for towels and found a few in the wardrobe. They were sufficient for me to use. The storm lasted through the early morning hours. I would soon learn that storms were typical in these parts of the country and that it was better for me to acclimatise to the unpredictable weather of Galicia.

The following morning, I awoke to the familiar sounds of the gulls as they hovered over the sea, and the swashing tides brushing the shoreline of the coast. I opened my window to absorb nature’s beauty. It was a breath of fresh air after the turbulence of the storm. That morning, I was visited by the old man. He invited me to his home for a small breakfast. There, I had coffee with croissants.

After breakfast, he took me on his boat out to the vast sea. There, we would fish. We spent hours until we returned with a great number of fish. Señor Garduno was a masterful fisherman. It was refreshing to be out there on the sea, despite the episodes of inclement weather.

It also allowed me to become more acquainted with Señor Garduno. I had learned that he was a mysterious man who divulged very few secrets about his life and past. Of his family, I was told only that they were no longer in the village. His wife had passed away years ago, and his two sons had left the village.

I respected his privacy and did not insist on knowing more about his personal life. He did, however, ask me about mine, and I revealed to him a brief account of my own story. I had established, to some degree, a rapport with him out on the sea. I suppose the serenity and surroundings of the sea allowed one to be more at ease and comfortable. The sea, for me, had always been the genuine place of true comfort and tranquillity.

Upon our return to the village, I asked Señor Garduno about the mystery of the statue of the mermaid that stood at the entrance of the port. He explained its history. According to the legend, the statue was built to honour the mermaid named Serea. An anonymous fisherman, a century ago, had encountered the mystical mermaid out at sea, near the coast.

There was a violent storm that had knocked the fisherman overboard. He was rescued by the mermaid. In her memory, he had erected the statue. It is said that he went mad, becoming obsessed with her, to the point of dying within the sea. Other men had encountered the mermaid and drowned in the depths of the sea as well, driven mad by their delirium.

It was troubling to hear about the horrific consequences. I could not fathom how any man could go insane over a woman who was a mermaid, to the extreme point of losing their life for her. I had often heard fanciful stories about mermaids roaming the sea or ocean in search of the wanton admiration of seamen or fishermen. The statue itself was impressive and detailed. It towered in stature and presence.

Her long, flowing locks of brown curls reached her slim waist. Her contours were curvaceous, and her bosom was tempting. It was her eyes in particular that conveyed the peculiar gaze of her haunting spell. Looking into them was enough to captivate me. I understood then why she was exalted as a goddess.

That day, Señor Garduno offered me temporary employment. He needed someone to assist him for a month in fishing shellfish, which he said was the main delicacy of the remaining villagers. It may not have been the wild adventure I was seeking, but for the time being, it was enough to earn a living and share a new experience away from Málaga.

We had a delicious Galician broth in the afternoon, with steamed mussels. At the table, we discussed the legend of the mermaid. I introduced the topic because I was fascinated by the tale and wanted to learn more details that he could elaborate on. I had never seen a statue built for a mermaid before, and I thought that was unique. Señor Garduno revealed that he had seen the mermaid numerous times. When I asked him how he had not gone mad like the others, he simply responded by saying that he had not.

Perhaps it was because his will was stronger than the others, or he was more fortunate to have been able to thwart her seductive spell? It was interesting to know that he had not yielded to the mermaid's powerful influence. It was indeed ironic that he had achieved what the others had failed to do. I was curious to know what lay behind those shadowy spectacles, and I wanted to see his eyes, at last. But he would never remove them in my presence.

The weather in Foz was mostly foggy and gloomy. There was little sun that would appear on the distant horizon. That night, I pondered in my room the strange occurrences in Foz, its people, its weather, its surroundings, and, above all, the ancient legend of the mermaid Serea.

That night, too, would be the first time I had a memorable encounter with her. Once again, from outside my window, I could hear the roaring tides of the sea, and then, the haunting echoes of her whispers in the wind. They were calling out my name.

I felt the lurking presence of someone or something from the sea. Whatever it was, it was approaching the inn and my window gradually. I could sense it was trying to influence me with an irresistible spell. What I did not know at the time was that it was the siren, who had come to take me to the sea.

There was an intuitive part of me that wanted to close the window, and another part that was under her persuasive effects. Her whispers became more intense, and through the mist of clouds, she appeared before me, with her allure and beauty. I was beginning to be enraptured by her.

She was exactly as the statue that had been built in her memory. I tried to resist her, but I struggled to regain my composure. I closed my eyes, thinking it was only a hallucination or an illusion I was experiencing. Was the sea beginning to affect my vision and mental faculties?

She began to scratch at my window with her long fingernails. Finally, I managed to resist her and closed the window completely. My heart was pounding, and my palms were sweating. The whispers of her voice suddenly dissipated, and she vanished. I realised then that I had had a harrowing encounter with Serea. It was an eerie experience, one I had no desire to relive. I could not believe I had come face to face with the indelible image of the tempting mermaid. Was it a horrible dream conjured by my imagination? It had felt real and authentic.

If my mind was beginning to deceive me, what was waiting for me from that moment on? It was impossible to express the entire experience in mere words, but it would initiate a sequence of events that would follow, daunting in nature. It was a restless night I had to endure unwittingly.

As morning arrived, I could not help but ponder the unusual occurrence of the previous night. My immediate thought was to tell Señor Garduno about my unique experience with the mermaid from the sea. I was not certain whether he would believe me, but something in me instinctively told me that he would.

When I told him at his home, he was not surprised by my candid admission. He told me that many men of the village had succumbed to her irrepressible spell and charm. He did warn me to be aware of her presence and to never let my guard down. I knew he spoke the truth in his words. What I did not know was his personal story and true connection to the mermaid.

There was an ancestral mythology attached to the mermaid. It was deeply ingrained in the legends of the villagers, I suspected. My inquisitive mind urged me to investigate. Once again, we left to fish in the depths of the sea. The fishermen gathered at the port did not speak to us, but they did nod their heads as if to acknowledge our presence.

The mist persisted, but it did not prevent us from fishing. During our time at sea, I thought about the mermaid. Was she near, observing us? Was she listening to our every move? I was becoming consumed with thoughts of her, and Señor Garduno recognised my distraction. He knew what I was thinking.

I began to hear her, as I stood there holding the nets we had used to fish. She was calling out my name. The waves were restless, and so was I. I managed to concentrate for the most part on fishing. When we returned to port, we had caught enough fish to eat for a couple of days. We were lucky that day.

I was still haunted by the presence of the mermaid. Señor Garduno sensed that I was beginning to fall under her heavy influence. He recommended I close the windows at the inn, as he had done. This was how he had escaped the mermaid's incantation. I heeded his advice and would not open the window, despite the humidity.

That afternoon, I visited the lone church in the village. It was old in structure, wrought from dark brown masonry that was vivid in colour. When I entered the church, there was no cross or image of the Christian God. Instead, there was a strange representation of what appeared to be a mermaid.

I was perplexed by the image and did not understand the reason for its placement in the church. Was this not a Catholic church? Were the villagers not Catholic in their faith? As I was walking backwards, a willowy man, whom I assumed was the priest, saw me standing before the idol of the mermaid. He startled me, and like Señor Garduno, he was wearing dark spectacles.

He asked if I needed anything. He knew I was an outsider, but he was neither rude nor insolent. Instead, he smiled kindly and offered his assistance. He asked if I was lost. I told him no, but mentioned I was new to the village. He then asked if I needed guidance.

Once more, I had told him no. I did ask him if the church that I had entered was Catholic. He smiled with a sarcastic grin, I felt, and replied that the church belonged to anyone seeking divine inspiration. I was uncertain of what those words meant. They were more like a spoken riddle. I had supposed that he was referring to the Christian God. If not, then who was he alluding to? I had left the priest and the church to head into the centre of town. I wanted to see the rest of the areas of the village that I had not seen before.

The houses of the villagers were extremely old and built on the surface of hardened stones. I was told that the recent history of the village was over five hundred years old. I could tell this was the case, as I had walked over the cobblestone pavements of the streets of Foz.

There was not much of the village to be discovered. It was not that vast or huge in size. The access roads to and from the village were few and practically inaccessible. As I was walking, I could not help but gravitate to the statue, near the port and the sea itself. Again, the influence of Serea had begun to grasp me into her powerful hold.

Some obsessive force was behind this, but I did not know how to describe it in the simplicity of words. It was beginning to be overbearing and predictable. Her constant murmurs and her angelic voice were tempting me to go into the depths of the sea and into her immense clutch of death.

It was at that exact moment when Señor Garduno had grabbed my shoulder from behind. He had saved me from the clutch of Serea. He took me back to the inn and told me to stay inside and not roam the village on my own. He did not offer any reasonable explanation, but I had known that it was probably due to the irresistible influence of Serea. What else could it be?

A sense of uneasiness had entered my mind, causing my sudden anxiety to be triggered. At the inn, I had attempted to rest, but I could not. The thought of Serea was beginning to obsess my mind and affect my strange behaviour as well. How could I escape her inevitable spell? Would I meet the same fate as the others and drown in the endless souls trapped in the cemetery of the sea forever?

It was a terrible thing to have to accept or even contemplate. Señor Garduno had mentioned to me that few men had ever escaped her possession and lived to tell their story. Perhaps it was wiser that I left the village and never returned. Would she then cease to haunt me, or would she follow me wherever I went?

While I had remained in the village, she would haunt me with an incessant passion that I would never truly defeat. As the night approached, I had prepared myself for her dreadful return. I had closed my shutters and locked the window. This did not mean that she would not come for me.

When it was close to midnight, she would appear scratching at my window. I could hear the loud screeching of her fingernails, as they pressed tautly against the glass. It was utter horror that I had to endure that night. She had made several attempts to enter the room and influence me, but she failed at every attempt.

For that night, I was saved. I had heeded the cautious words of Señor Garduno. There was no doubt in my mind that I could not stay much longer in the village. My options were not that advantageous, and my will was being dominated at the same time.

In the morning, I had determined that I would leave, but not before I would inform Señor Garduno of my decision. It was not easy to make that calculated decision. I had owed the old man at least an explanation and a proper farewell. I had looked for him at his house, yet he was not there. I had searched around, hoping to locate him. I went to the centre, the church. I even went back to the inn where I was staying and could not find him. I had then checked the port, and there he was lying dead in his boat that was fastened. I was stunned to make that horrible discovery.

It was difficult to know what had caused his death. There were no visible marks on his body that could give me a viable clue or trace. It did not seem to me that he was murdered. Was it possible that he died of natural causes, due to his advancing age?

I had touched him, and he had no immediate pulse. He was stiff and cold like a hardened corpse. His dark spectacles were covering his eyes still, as he lay dead on his back. Was it my morbid curiosity? I do not know what had compelled me to remove his spectacles.

When I did, I was shocked to see what my eyes had witnessed in person. Señor Garduno's eyes were completely alabaster. They were devoid of the natural colour of their pupils. The thin layer of film that had reflected was nothing more than a damnable blindness that he had been condemned to.

What I did not know all this time was that he was blind. It was an omission of the truth that I was not aware of its existence. He, like the other villagers, had managed to function blind and with limited vision. He had told me before that he had survived the encounters with Serea, the mermaid from the sea.

If the others were also wearing spectacles to cover up their blindness, then it would mean that they too had encountered the horrid thing that was Serea. This would mean that they did not drown in the sea like the others before them. It meant that there was hope for me, but at the same time, I did not want to go blind. There were no other fishermen present in the port or in the sea.

The raging storm had arrived again from the horizon. This time, it would bring from the depths of the sea, the riveting terror of Serea. I was left on my own to figure out where to go next and what to do. I did not want to leave the old man's body out in the boat, but I needed to bury him in a cemetery. The only place that came to mind was the lone church in the village.

Although I did not know the denomination of the church, I had figured that the priest there would find a proper place for his interment. I had to return to the inn to retrieve my personal belongings. The innkeeper was not present, but I was able to enter the room and get my things without any difficulty.

Afterwards, I went to the church that stood erect past the centre. As I was walking, I began to hear the dreaded murmurs of Serea once more. She was enticing me with her femininity. I had to stop for a brief moment to allow my thoughts to resist her unrelenting grasp on me. I began to stumble and was starting to lose my mind and my vision.

Within a few minutes, I was able to continue to walk towards the church. I was extremely nervous, and trepidation had entered my body, but I persisted with all my might. Once at the church, I could hear a strange noise that sounded like chants being voiced by people. The front door was opened.

When I entered the church, I saw the villagers standing before the statue of Serea. The people were not wearing their spectacles, and their eyes, like Señor Garduno’s, were alabaster and missing their original colour. It seemed to me that they were worshipping the statue, as if she were a living goddess. What was more disturbing was the fact that upon an altar was the deceased body of Señor Garduno. I was aghast at the image that left me motionless.

The priest saw me and told me to join their secret cult. He said that Señor Garduno was an offering to Serea and that his body would be given to her as his ultimate sacrifice. According to the priest, their salvation from her wrath was to worship her and offer her sacrifices. It was pure madness happening before my eyes. I could not believe that everyone, including the priest, were all under the influence of Serea.

I ran outside of the church aimlessly. I did not know where to go. I had left the villagers behind. I wanted to go anywhere that would lead me away from the village, but her control had wielded dominion over me, and I was forced under her spell to run to the port and the sea. It was an impending doom that awaited me. I was helpless to prevent my death and the capture of my soul.

The winds had blown with full force, and the tides had risen into a hastened fury. The storm had roared and awakened with the dark mist of clouds. Amidst the heavy shade came the dauntless Serea, as she called out my name with her haunting murmurs that billowed within the high tides.

I fought and fought her, until I reached the edge of the shore. She rose from the water through the mass of fog, with her familiar appearance. Her flowing locks of brown hair, her shapely curves, her crimson lips, and her ebony eyes suddenly tempted me.

She emerged from the water with the veil of seaweed, and her tail had transformed into legs. She slowly walked towards me with a sinister look in her gaze. She had come to take me with her. I could not look deeply into her penetrating eyes, for it would condemn me to the fatal consequence of my demise and no return.

My eyes were becoming blurry again, and I feared that I was losing my vision. It was the precursor to my unabating horror. I managed to resist her by closing my eyes and walking backwards, away from the sea and shore. The further I got, the more I managed to release myself from her clenching grip.

The rain began to pour down on me from above the heavy clouds. I was drenched from head to toe, but it did not dissuade me from resisting. I could hear her tell me not to resist her will, but my mind was stronger. Her words were more emphatic than before.

A huge tidal wave grabbed me and took me into the viscous water, almost drowning me. I struggled to free myself. I fought to stay afloat and was able to swim back to the shoreline. I ran as fast as I could, running away from the raging sea of death. It was then that I could see her once beautiful visage turn into a decrepit old woman.

Her skin was pale and wrinkled. Her hair was ashen grey, and her eyes were pure white. Her spell was broken, at last. She had returned to her descent at the bottom of the sea. The villagers who had been at the church reached the port and the shore where I was standing. They began to scream and weep uncontrollably, begging fervently for the goddess to return. They all then walked into the water and ultimately drowned. I could not prevent their deaths, but I was able to prevent mine.

On that same day, I left the village on a fisherman's boat that took me to Portugal, where I was eventually discovered, floating off the coast alive. I had survived the dread of Charybdis. When I was approached by a local Portuguese fisherman, he found me lying on the ground with my eyes completely closed. I was breathing normally and physically intact.

When I opened my eyes, I discovered that I was blind. My brown eyes had turned into a cold alabaster colour. I could not see anything at all. I touched his face as he spoke to me in Portuguese. I was in absolute shock and unable to utter a single word at first. It was then, after I realised I was blind and had been saved, that I screamed out loud, the name of Serea.

The days following my rescue were filled with a haze of confusion and loss. My body was alive, but my soul felt hollow, as though the deep core of me had been torn away. The blindness that had descended upon me after my escape from the sea was an unyielding veil, and no matter how hard I tried to grasp at the world, it remained forever out of reach. The shock of it consumed me, and I could scarcely bring myself to acknowledge that I had survived the wrath of Serea only to be cast into an endless abyss of darkness.

The fisherman who had saved me, João, did his best to tend to my needs. He placed me in his small cottage near the shore, a simple refuge, yet one that offered no comfort in my fractured state. The sounds of the waves crashing against the rocks below were constant, relentless—a reminder of the sea that had almost claimed me, a reminder that I was forever bound to it. The wind, the gulls, the salt in the air—everything was as it had been before, but it all felt alien now. The world I had once known, filled with vibrant colours and familiar faces, had slipped through my fingers like sand.

The villagers, with their quiet lives, paid me no heed. They left me to my thoughts, as I sat by the window and listened to the world I could no longer see. The whispers of the ocean were no longer sweet and alluring but filled with a foreboding presence. I could no longer look out across the horizon and trace the distant line where the sea met the sky. The sea had taken my sight, and in its wake, it had taken something far worse: my sense of self.

The days blurred into one another, each one indistinguishable from the last. I spent my time in the small cottage, sitting in the dim light, my mind adrift. Every once in a while, I would hear a voice calling to me, but it was always distant, muffled by the overwhelming silence of my thoughts. I longed to speak, but the words stuck in my throat, caught between the fear of facing my own new reality and the desperation to break free from it. The darkness inside me seemed to grow with every passing moment, and I could feel the weight of it pressing down on my chest, as though it would crush me under its immense heaviness.

The ocean outside, ever constant, seemed to mock me. It remained unchanged, roaring with a power I could not touch, its tides ever shifting, yet always returning. The same waves that had nearly drowned me now washed over the shore with the same indifference they had shown before. The salt air carried with it the scent of decay, and every gust of wind seemed to whisper my name, a haunting reminder of the things I had escaped and those I could never truly outrun.

The fisherman, though kind, could not understand the depth of my suffering. He provided me with sustenance, with shelter, but none of these could fill the emptiness I felt inside. It was as though the sea had claimed more than just my sight—it had stolen my place in the world, and now I was drifting, adrift in the very space that should have offered me solace. There was no escape from it. I was bound to the water, to the memories of the goddess Serea and the fate that had almost been mine.

As the days wore on, I began to venture outside, though I did so cautiously, as though the very ground beneath me might slip away. I felt the shifting sands beneath my feet, the coolness of the air, the faint whispers of the tide as it reached out to claim the shore. The world around me, though silent to my eyes, seemed to pulse with life in ways I could not comprehend. The wind carried with it a rhythm, an ancient beat that seemed to resonate in my chest, as though the earth itself was alive, and it was calling to me.

The villagers, though they avoided me, spoke of the sea in hushed tones. They spoke of the old legends, of creatures that rose from the deep, of gods and spirits that ruled the waves. I could not understand it, but I could feel it—the weight of their beliefs, the reverence they held for the ocean. I had once shared that reverence, had once been drawn to its power and beauty, but now it felt as though the sea had become an endless prison, and I was locked within it.

As the days turned to weeks, I began to lose hope that I would ever find peace. My blindness, once a reminder of my escape from Serea, had become a symbol of my torment. I could not find solace in the world around me because I could no longer connect with it. I was adrift in the dark, with nothing but the memory of what had been lost.

In the lingering silence, something shifted. In the absence of sight, my other senses grew sharper. The sound of the waves became clearer, more distinct. The feel of the earth beneath my feet became more tangible, more solid. There was a rhythm to the world, a pulse, that I had once been too blinded by sight to notice. It was there, in the subtle movements of the wind, the way the air shifted, the sounds of the world around me. Perhaps there was more to this existence than what I had once known, more to this world than what I could see.

And so, I began to listen attentively, knowing that I had to depend on my hearing now than ever before.

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